Every year, the A.S. elections are fraught with unreasonable proposals, but apart from the obvious “take away A.S. Council stipends to fund another concert” one, most of the proposals this year have been entirely reasonable and admirable. Many ideas brought forth in the election, including some strong proposals for greater online A.S. representation, are entirely doable if A.S. councilmembers drop their “saving the world” crises for an afternoon or two and put in the work to get the job done. There is no acceptable reason for the absence of an online survey to aid with concert act selection, or for not posting agendas online before every A.S. Council meeting. The students of UCSD understand the incoming council’s passion for national issues, and share its enthusiasm for those issues, but students will not share in the council’s trust of state and national representatives unless their own government shows it can work toward tangible improvements to current conditions. Consider the addition of more online services to the A.S. Web site a freebie: It’s a cheap and effortless way to prove you actually care about UCSD students.

— Brian Uiga

Senior Staff Writer

The incoming A.S. Council would do well to connect better with the student body. Most of us don’t have the slightest clue what the council does. Some of us don’t even know that we pay a fee that Associated Students allocates to various organizations and events. The new cabinet should reach out to the campus and help more people understand what it does. This could entail more publicity in the form of flyers and placards; maybe the council could issue a parking manifesto or something to catch the eye of the typical UCSD student.

Granted, it’s the responsibility of the individual student to care about student government. But maybe it would be worthwhile for the council to sit down and assess how to really reach out to the campus. They could try asking random people in Price Center what Associated Students means to them. And the responses could be a starting point in diminishing the disconnect between student government and the constituents it’s supposedly serving. One hopes that the “in the dark and that’s OK with me” attitude of most students does not reflect future attitudes toward participation in the political process on the national front.

— Evelyn Hsieh

Staff Writer

Maurice Junious, incoming commissioner of student services, and Soap Chum, incoming commissioner of communications, must both learn how to deal with media attention and controversy. As evidenced by his pathetic display under the public eye at the infamous A.S. Council meeting on March 2, outgoing Commissioner of Student Services Kian Maleki was completely incompetent in his duties as representative of Student-Run Television to the A.S. Council.

Learn from Maleki’s failures: Take the time to learn all about the rules and charters of your organizations, as well as UC Office of the President policy, before hastily declaring any legal interpretation “incorrect.” Answer the siren call of the national media with a firm hand and a strong voice; do not allow yourself to be made a fool on national television.

Realize that even though you personally may not agree with the actions of your constituents, you are obligated to act in their best interests. Above all, consider this year’s events lessons to be learned from.

— Brian Uiga

Senior Staff Writer

So, barely 20 percent of the student body voted in this year’s elections — 19.86 percent, to be exact. Should we laugh, should we cry, should we just give up caring at all? Let’s just laugh — for while such a turnout is pitiful, the causes of such pathetic political participation could be much worse than they are. At least we are apathetic in lieu of having something to get seriously upset about; we could roil up campus politics all we want, but hey, Library Walk is nice as it is: calm, peaceful and sunny. People go about their duties in ways that don’t make any demands on anyone else; the atmosphere seems to say “mind your own business,” and consequently students go unmolested and are free to worry about whatever they choose — like student porn, of course, which apparently represents the height of our ability to give a damn. Yet, students are supposed to get upset about the little, administrative things; they are supposed to care, right? Well, perhaps social entanglements are overrated. None of that for UCSD — the A.S. Council should recognize that we reserve the right, as the future educated sector of the country, to glory in our apathetic content.

— Robin Averbeck

Staff Writer

The new A.S. Council has a tall order to fill. It faces a bevy of problems — well, perhaps to be more positive, we should term them opportunities — mostly related to how the student body views it and its mostly behind-the-scenes toil. It must either defend or trim its travel budget, do the same for stipends and other perks, save outreach in the midst of state budget cuts compounded by the failure of the referendum to fund student-initiated outreach, and cut bureaucracy for student organizations seeking funding. Picking and choosing from these tasks is not an option; the new council, loaded with raw talent, must attack all these problems at once, while neglecting none.

Most importantly, it must not only work on behalf of students but make it abundantly clear to a skeptical student body what excellent work it’s doing. The student electorate did well this year, in choosing representatives who have proven their competence and passion or, at the very least, shown great potential. If these representatives ignore the PR aspect of their jobs, it will be at their own peril.

— Marianne Madden

Opinion Editor