Conversations with Donna Bean, the assumed president even
before voting closes this Friday, reveal a settling revelation: Politicians are
actually working together, early and often. With an inevitable sweep of this
year’s elections — in the vice presidential and senatorial races — Student
Voice! candidates, including Bean, have said they are using the advantage to
its fullest. SV!’s advantage gives them both more time to record experience
collaborating with each other and the chance to establish a mandate going into
next year.

The legacy that SV! has established through two presidents —
this year’s Marco Murillo and Harry Khanna before that — will hopefully solidly
evolve into the student movement the slate has aimed to start since its
founding in 2006. Make no mistake, there are glimmers of progress across
campus: students are gaining a foothold in the school’s infrastructure as the
institution itself is growing.

But fundamentally, students still lack power over their own
programs, events and angles of student life. This is a reality that Bean
understands and smartly makes the foundation of her campaign. The amount of
frustration and aggravation she expresses with unproductive and dispirited
relations with administrators is well placed, and gives her the fire the campus
will need to propagate student agendas and increase student profiles.

But to move forward, Bean pragmatically realizes her many
obstacles. First she must clean house
within the council, ironing out undefined and cloudy portions of Khanna’s
restructuring in 2006. Moving onto a stage where she can define the function of
senators, who this year were criticized for being effecting little change on
campus, will mark an early — and difficult — point in her presidency.

Bean understands students’ obstacles at a nuanced level, and
will hopefully execute nuanced plans of improvement. Many of her strategies are
sensible.

Development of student power means extending students’
knowledge base. Bean’s plan to establish a transition program will ease
senators into the campus’ political process and offer them the institutional
knowledge to coordinate and design efforts to better the students’ world. As it
stands, student politicians are woefully misinformed and painfully
uncoordinated. The result is an impotent student body, ignorant to the nature
of their world and powerless to change it.

But the problem goes beyond ignorant students. Bean is quick
to point out that administrators’ ignorance of the student plight is equally
damaging to this campus. Her tales of administrators’ outright disregard for
students’ opinions or worth were alarming. Students are not only lacking
support, but are being deterred from progress.

The mounting cost of college is just one sad angle; students
are being continually strapped with fees at UCSD, last year with the athletics
fee referendum and next year with an events-related fee increase. Bean is
intent on changing this base indifference to students, and the problem rightly
takes priority.