Today I sat down with Brandon Broukhim, a political candidate for the position of USAC General Representative, to discuss the election and his platform.
Brandon’s platform focuses on solving issues faced by the everyday student. In our interview, he stressed the importance of representing every student on campus, and his platform reflects that.
The first item on Brandon’s platform that we discussed was the creation of a “Free Food Fund” so that every campus organization can have food at meetings without being forced to take money out of its own budget.
Secondly, Brandon spoke passionately about installing a tutoring outreach mechanism on My UCLA as a way for students to access the many tutoring options offered on campus. Currently, there is no centralized tutoring hub and students must search for tutoring on their own (Brandon joked that you can find out what BPlate is offering for dinner but you can’t access tutoring options on the MyUCLA website).
The final point that Brandon emphasized is the importance of USAC accessibility. He wants to ensure that students can easily request funding, suggest resolutions or policy changes, or simply learn about the USAC system. To accomplish this, Brandon would establish a Bruin Policy Center with an office team fully dedicated to helping students with anything USAC-related.
When asked about his qualifications, Brandon stressed his achievements in previous positions.
For example, as vice chair of the Communications Board at UCLA, Brandon helped pass a proposal for a quarterly $500 stipend for the Editor-in-Chiefs of the smaller newsmagazines. With this stipend, the Editors wouldn’t have to choose between taking this money out of their yearly budget or not getting paid for their hard work – a dilemma that Daily Bruin has not been faced with.
Additionally, as a member of the North Westwood Neighborhood Council, Brandon helped to pass safe parking movements to allow transient students to sleep in their cars safely in UCLA parking lots, thus bypassing strict Westwood regulations on the subject.
Brandon also mentioned that as the chair of the Bruin Political Union, he helps to unify Democrats and Republicans on campus in quarterly debates.
The responsibility of the General Representative position is to represent the general campus population. Because the position does not have specific, outlined duties, the General Representative has the freedom to choose what they want to focus on.
When voting in the election, Brandon wants everyone to analyze whether or not a candidate will be able to deliver on the promises that he or she is making. With Brandon’s previous achievements with community organizations, he believes that he can deliver. He urges students to reach out to him if there is an issue that they think has been lost in the conversation. He wants students to feel like USAC is doing its job in representing every voice on campus.
Students can vote in the USAC election beginning Monday, October 28 until Wednesday, October 30th, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The ballot can be found on My UCLA by accessing ‘Campus Life’ to ‘Surveys and Notices’ to ‘Election.’
Brandon is a first-generation Persian Jew. He is very involved in the Jewish community on campus and believes it is important for the Jewish community to be represented in USAC because, in his own words, “the council is willing to speak for the Jewish community whether we are there or not.”
