The broad variety of activism undertaken by the Student Government Association (SGA) and other student organizations serves two purposes. The first is the goal of the immediate campaign, whether it be lower fees, increased student support services, more accountable police practices or any of the many issues that we, as students, face. The second is student empowerment. The activism that has been undertaken by the SGA takes many different forms.

As the Statewide Core Team Leader for the Center for Education Policy Advocacy (CEPA), I have worked closely with students from across the state advocating for affordable and accessible public higher education. For the last year I have been working closely with Massachusetts Students Uniting (MSU), a budding statewide student association that brings students from community colleges, state colleges and the University of Massachusetts system together to increase state funding for higher education. Last year MSU, in coalition with the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM), won a tangible and significant victory. Students, faculty and staff from across the state successfully lobbied the state legislature for a $3 million increase in the Massachusetts Assistance for Student Success Grant (MASSGrant) program, the primary need based financial aid program in Massachusetts.

If elected I will keep students first. This means making sure that students are heard and listened to. I think it is important for student leaders to work with the administration. There are many things that student leadership and administration can agree on, but there are also places where the administration and students will disagree. I believe firmly in going through the traditional methods to support students, but I also know that these methods do not always work, and that frequently students have to work outside the normal channels to be heard. In the last few years we have seen that the administration sometimes does not listen to students when we use conventional means to express our needs. The student body voted last year in a referenda question to allow the use of Your Campus Meal Plan (YCMP) at People’s Market, a student-run business located in the Student Union. The administration backed food services in its refusal to consider making this simple change, claiming that it is concerned that students cannot get a ‘complete meal’ at the People’s Market, despite the fact that the People’s Market sells a far larger variety of food than businesses where you can use YCMP, such as the Procrastination Station.

Sometimes it takes unconventional tactics to get the administration to recognize our rights. After years of using conventional means to lodge complaints about warrantless police searches, increasing restrictions on student use of student space, rising fees and unaccountable use of funds, the leaders from the SGA and several other student organizations called a student strike. When 800 students entered the Whitmore Administration Building, representatives of the administration agreed to meet with elected negotiators to work out agreements on the issues. At the end, the two sides announced a set of agreements, including the creation of a police advisory board and a review of funding practices. Unconventional tactics yielded concrete results.

In this current climate of economic crisis many people’s attention has shifted to budgetary concerns, funding for public higher education and worries about the $1,500 fee increase. I am currently working with MSU, PHENOM and a coalition of students from all four undergraduate UMass campuses to build a student movement and ask the board of trustees to roll back student fees and make UMass more affordable. There is currently $300 million in the federal stimulus bill allotted to Massachusetts specifically for public higher education. Ngozi Mbawuike and I believe that this money should be used responsibly to help struggling students and families in this time of crisis and keep the cost of higher education as low as possible. We are currently asking Gov. Deval Patrick to use the stimulus money to restore campus operating budgets. We are currently collecting students’ stories from across the state with the twofold purpose of building student power and making the University administration and our state elected officials understand the burden this fee increase places on students.

I believe that it is the responsibly of student leaders to keep the needs of students at the forefront of their minds and to work tirelessly to get student needs met. I believe this involves going through both the normal channels of decision making and looking beyond those channels to make sure student voices are heard.

Emily Bloch is a candidate for student trustee. She can be reached at [email protected].