Utsav Gupta has been eyeing the A.S. presidency since before he set foot on this campus. As a wide-eyed incoming freshman in the summer of 2006, he called then-president and Student Voice! slate founder Harry Khanna to express his enthusiasm for student government. Before long, Gupta had become a Khanna protege, tagging along on the chief’s lunch dates with student organizations and taking notes on his every move. The young politico went on to spend nearly three years with the Student Voice! slate. Now, after being denied his slate’s presidential bid, Gupta is relying on his own merit ‘mdash; and institutional memory ‘mdash; to draw the independent vote.
Gupta’s priorities include uncaging the Sun God Festival from RIMAC Field, freezing tuition and redefining the council as an inclusive body that represents all UCSD students.
It sounds like a lot to chew in one year, but Gupta will be the first to tell you that his platform is ambitious. His goal, he said, is to galvanize an increasingly stagnant A.S. Council.
‘Ambition, especially in a student government, is what we need at this point in time,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s fair to the student body to always campaign on short-term measures. We need to continue moving forward instead of moving sideways.’
In order to unify the campus during the Sun God Festival, Gupta intends to reintroduce elements that existed prior to 2008, such as a daytime stage in Price Center and a line of student-organization booths on Library Walk.
Current AVP of Programming Garrett Berg said this plan is unrealistic, considering the occupancy of these areas. Last year, over 20,000 wristbands were sold for the event.
‘The festival, as big as it was last year, could never exist in those venues,’ he said.
But despite historic administrative concerns that spreading the festival out would raise security costs, Gupta is confident that by collaborating with college councils to promote college-specific events during the festival, crowds will disperse and no single location will be too full.
He added that making colleges feel more invested in the Sun God Festival would help repair relations between the A.S. Council and college councils that have deteriorated in recent years.
‘We’ve seen a cutting of ties in the past few years,’ he said. ‘We reduced their representation and funding, and now we don’t even try to reach out to them for things like the referendum. We just go ahead and do it and ask for their vote.’
Gupta also proposed a Bear Garden on the day of the Sun God Festival to provide space for legal, contained drinking and to decrease the rate of drunk driving to the festival from off-campus housing.
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veteran of Khanna’s and Marco Murillo’s presidential offices, Gupta was elected A.S. all-campus senator in 2007, and has served on the Sixth College Council since 2006.
As an all-campus senator, he worked with the Berkeley-based Greenlining Institute to gather signatures for the Students for Tuition Relief Now! campaign, which supported the same legislation that is now before the California Assembly as the College Affordability Act. The bill stipulates a five-year tuition freeze at UC and CSU campuses.
In his role as A.S. associate vice president of student organizations this year, Gupta said he has worked to address flaws in the current funding-request system.
‘I’ve helped out organizations that have very unique sets of priorities that aren’t always covered by our event-based funding process,’ he said.
One such organization is the Players, a theater group that recently requested funding for props. In addition, Gupta secured funding for the Books for Prisoners project, whose primary expense is postage.
He also helped publicize the effects of last quarter’s student activity-fee referendum on student-organization funding.
But on the council floor, Gupta is quiet, and councilmembers have suggested that he does not engage with student organizations or report back to the council as actively as he should.
A.S. President Donna Bean, for example, said she worries that Gupta’s academics and his editorial position at the Sixth Sense newspaper have undermined his council work.
‘A majority of the time, [Vice President of Finance Naasir Lakhani] has had to pick up his slack,’ she said. ‘He is overstretched.’
Eleanor Roosevelt College Senator Alex Vu, who works with Gupta on the finance committee, expressed a similar concern.
‘I’ve had to pick up a lot of slack from the AVP of student orgs,’ he said.
Gupta said that partisanship in the council has been detrimental to the working environment.
‘Student Voice! has become something very introspective,’ he said. ‘A.S. is all about Student Voice!, and I’m running to bring A.S. back to the entire student body.’
He said he has received little direction from Bean, and Lakhani has not responded to his phone calls or e-mails in recent weeks.
Lakhani declined to comment on Gupta’s performance this year.