FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 19, 2013

Contacts: Sophia Armen, 4th Year 818-625-6284

UCSB STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT CALLS OUT BOARD OF REGENTS’ LACK OF ACCESSIBILITY AND PUTS FORTH DEMANDS FOR MEETING IN SOUTHERN C.A.

The Associated Students Office of the President at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Sophia Armen, is calling on faculty, staff and students to join in the call for an accessible meeting of the UC Board of Regents to occur at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Citing the historical selection of the secluded graduate-only campus of UCSF for this year’s meetings of the Board of Regents, Armen calls to question the Board’s transparency and accountability to upholding shared governance, a cornerstone of the University of California.

In light of recent history around the accessibility, affordability, and quality of public higher education in California, the need for discussion that represents all facets of the campus community, is ever important. The UC system has faced over 900 million dollars of cuts in the last decade. Furthermore, students have watched tuition rise over 300% in that time as well. The past four years, however, has been characterized by increasing student mobilization on all of the U.C. campuses about the future of public higher education. The Board of Regents act as the primary policymakers for now over 200,000 enrolled students, yet students have only one vote out of the 26-member board. As the primary spokesperson for the undergraduate students body, the AS Office of the President cites in a letter dated April 19, 2013 seen below, the increasing issue of holding meetings that are difficult for students to attend and how such efforts speak to larger patterns of not including student leaders in crafting policy.

“Especially after the passage of Proposition 30, which can largely be attributed to students getting out the youth vote, for us, as students, to be continually shut out of the decision-making process is unacceptable. We are at a historic moment for public higher education in California- for the first time in history students are paying more for their education than their State is, and the negligence of governance and policy-makers to include students and California families in deciding what directly affects them everyday, is unacceptable.” –Sophia Armen, 4th Year UCSB Student

“It has been increasingly disappointing especially after we saved the University of California from falling literally into financial disaster with Prop 30, that the same lack of transparency about where our money, as students and as taxpayers, is going, is occurring despite the dedication of students who continue to fight to be at the decision-making table. This University system belongs to the people of California and its time they were included, as the system’s mission and the Master Plan, pronounces.”

–Norma Orozco, 3rd Year UCSB Student

Read the text of the Letter to Chairman Sherri Lansing, UC Board of Regents, President Mark Yudof, and Ex-Officios Gov. Jerry Brown, and Lt Gov. Gavin Newsom: