Matthew Gerring | Staff Writer
gerrinm@imail.losrios.edu
While City College’s Associated Student Government might be seen through a cynical lens by some on campus, there is much ASG has done recently. ASG has made strides in challenging the high prices of textbooks this semester.
The ASG vice president Debbie Dixon, said ASG has also offered a proposal for legislation to increase student coverage for the Board of Governors Fee Waiver.
ASG has also started holding Lobby Day every year, where representatives from all four colleges in the Los Rios Community College District go to the State Capitol and lobby their representatives on issues that affect their campuses. In doing so, ASG is meeting a key responsibility, according to its constitution, to advance the interests of students at the college, district, state and federal levels. According to ASG members, legislative outreach has shown a marked improvement.
Recently, the ASG board offered support for Senate Bill 1384, which will require textbook authors to offer an electronic version of all their textbooks by 2020 and place limits on how much they can charge.
In addition, City College has recently become more involved in other state-level organizations.
Reid Milburn, a Student Senate for California Community Colleges senator and City College student, started coming to ASG meetings this semester and encouraged City College to become involved at the state level. City College now has a delegate at the SSCCC after a long absence.
The Los Rios Community College District also sent four representatives, including ASG President La Toya Daniels, to Washington, D.C., this year to lobby federal representatives on federal financial aid reform, specifically to lower the age at which a student can be considered independent.
As is often the case with government, positions of authority can sometimes put the leaders themselves out of touch with the people they are representing. Daniels said that in her three years in ASG, she hasn’t been a real student.
“I have no idea what it’s like to eat in the cafeteria and study in the library and have to fight for computers,” Daniels said.
Other ASG responsibilities, as described in its constitution, state that the governing body should “provide services and coordinate activities for the entire student body” and “promote student involvement in the total college community.”
In these areas, the ASG has encountered some challenges.
ASG has to grapple with student interest, or what Daniels characterized as “campus pride.”
A planned school dance for homecoming week was canceled because of low ticket pre-sales.
“No amount of publicity or anything like that can really get students to pay to come back here after they’ve already left,” Daniels said.
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