“If we pay, should we have a say?”

This is one of the questions Student Union Governance Board (SUGB) asks students in its new opinion poll on the student elections ballot. What isn’t on the ballot is a long-awaited measure that would put Transportation And Parking Services (TAPS) under student oversight and require transparency.

What happened?

After completing an extensive revision process, SUGB received a third round of edits to the Students for Empowerment and Accountability in Transportation Services (SEATS) measure from TAPS and the university’s legal counsel. Those edits removed student governance from the referendum.

“What they did [to the referendum] with these edits was the exact same system where they aren’t accountable to students,” said SUGB chair Megan Amiya. “They wouldn’t have to run anything by students, they wouldn’t have to give students anything.”

The SEATS measure would have created a VEST commission (Voices for Empowerment and Safety in Transportation), comprised of students, with access to all budgets, documents, and information related to TAPS operations. 

In its original form, VEST had direct power in approving TAPS decisions, transforming the unit to be student-run. The Chancellor’s Office and UC Office of the President (UCOP) edited many significant proposals from the original draft. In the edited version, VEST had less power, but administration still required transparent and timely communications from TAPS to the commission. 

On May 3, SUGB received edits to the SEATS measure from TAPS and the university’s legal counsel. These edits include changing “student commission” to “student advisory commission,” changing all language requiring TAPS to report to the VEST commission, and removing a section requiring TAPS be held accountable to the referendum. 

Amiya believes the feedback sends a strong message.

“You are saying that you don’t want to listen to your student body, you don’t want to listen to our concerns,” said Amiya. “You’re saying that this is a campus organization that doesn’t need oversight or more transparency.”

In response to a fatal loop bus crash in December, the California Highway Patrol conducted an inspection of nine loop buses that deemed TAPS operations an “imminent danger to public safety.” The proposed referendum addressed the overwhelming student concern surrounding transportation and safety. 

SUGB consulted with TAPS and the university’s legal counsel during the creation and subsequent revisions of the SEATS measure. Despite being consulted during the writing process, UCOP requested additional feedback from TAPS and Campus Counsel, which was received May 3.

On May 7, SUGB sent the referendum without the edits from TAPS and the university’s legal counsel back to UCOP for final approval with a memo, saying the edits were disrespectful to the ballot authors and violated the trust of a fair elections process. 

The memo further states, “For them to instead wait and propose such drastic changes right before elections reads as purposefully antagonistic.” UCOP never responded, despite SUGB following up multiple times over several weeks.

“The board felt like making the edits the campus asked for would be making a board that’s only there for show. They wouldn’t actually have any power,” said Amiya. “After all of this, we felt it’s not right for the campus. It’s not right to students.”

Kyle Vergara, vice chair of SUGB, said TAPS and the university’s legal counsel did not cite any policy to support their edits, while the edits from the Chancellor’s Office and UCOP did. He argues that the most recent feedback from campus goes against Policies Applying to Campus Activities, Organizations and Students (PACOS) section 120, which details UC commitment to shared governance. 

“[We learned] in this process that administrators are willing to break their own policy to tell students they can’t get what they need,” Vergara said. 

Instead of the SEATS referendum, SUGB put an opinion poll on the ballot to gauge student perspectives on shared governance at UC Santa Cruz. One question asks how students would have voted for a referendum regulating TAPS. 

Despite this year’s setback, SUGB still plans to put a referendum on the ballot in the future. 

“It doesn’t mean that the push for oversight, the push for involvement, the push for answers has stopped,” Megan Amiya said. “We’re not planning to let it stop.”