In order to make their voices heard, UC Davis students will be carpooling to San Francisco this week to attend the University of California Board of Regents Feb. 3-5 meeting.
Participants will be attending the meetings on Wednesday and Thursday to speak during public discussion. ASUCD is organizing carpools and will cover gas costs.
Members of ASUCD’s University Affairs advocacy unit, which is leading the event, plan to discuss a variety of issues concerning UC and the current budget cuts. They will urge the regents to lower executive compensation in order to accommodate the budget cuts that UC is currently facing, while also keeping mental health programs afloat with decent funding.
“We want to show [the regents] that students at Davis do care about current issues and that we are aware of what is going on,” said Matthew Blair, the statewide affairs coordinator from the University Affairs at UC Davis.
All UC Davis students are invited to participate in lobbying the UC regents, Blair said. Interested students should contact Matthew Blair at mjblair@ucdavis.edu with information on what days they are willing to attend, if they are willing to drive and if they can drive other people.
Davis students will also be advocating for the Blue and Gold Plan, in which UC would match Cal Grants given out by the government in order to give students more financial aid.
“The [Blue and Gold Plan] offsets university cuts in order to keep money in the system for low income students and it would offset half of the fee increase for middle income students,” Blair said.
Blair will also ask the regents to make the meetings more convenient for students to attend, as the last few conferences occurred during finals and midterms, making it difficult for most UC students to participate.
Organizers believe that visiting the regents in the past has been effective to a degree, but over time they hope to be taken more seriously and hold more sway in order to get their voices heard and issues validated.
“UCD offers a unique view to the regents that makes it important for us to go,” said Matthew Shannon, director of University Affairs.
CORY BULLIS can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
