By: Acsah Lemma, Linsey Towles and Anthony Orrico
The four Associated Students, Inc. president candidates spoke with the Daily Forty-Niner about many topics, including basic student needs and possible tuition increase solutions. Long Beach State’s ASI president acts as the official representative of the ASI association on campus and to the public.
Teresa Falcon
Q: What are your plans to mitigate the effects of the planned tuition increases?
A: It’s really important to advocate for these students and ensure that this tuition increase is hopefully capped. I think talking to our representatives to really make them understand the importance of higher education because it gives opportunities to students that may be trying to better their families and better the opportunities that they’re given. I think we need to focus on financial aid and just overall funding opportunities for students.
Q: What are your plans to address food insecurity among the student body?
A: One of my biggest projects my first year as a senator was to get all the wasted food at the dining halls, and instead of throwing it away at the end of the day was to repurpose it for students. So they re-serve the food and this is a meal that a student can have. So it’s just ensuring that there’s access to meals on campus as well. I know a conversation that I’m a part of is, with the whole USU renovation, is we want to bring in really healthy food options. Options that students want, but also affordable options because paying 14 plus dollars for a meal is not okay, especially for college students.
Q: What are your plans to address housing insecurity among the student body?
A: One of my biggest ones is to foster off-campus collaborations. I actually was in a meeting with President Conoley today where we talked about possible avenues with local apartment complexes and motels where we can convert them to rental facilities for students and we can offer a discounted rent rate for students and they’re able to really benefit from this because they build their credit but also have a place to live nearby campus. Also, for the harsh reality, a lot of students are living in their cars or a lot of students may just not have access to housing. So I think the community collegewide initiative was safe parking. And it’s possible at community colleges but I think we should bring it here to the CSU system.
Q: The faculty’s recent contract has aspirational language to reach a 1,500-1 counselor-to-student ratio. How do you plan to move forward toward that goal?
A: I utilized the CAPS resources multiple times and they are currently great at serving students but I think possibly offering long-term care for students because I think my biggest concern is that you’re always given the well six visits and then you have to find help elsewhere. So that’s really intimidating as a student when I’m dealing with so much stress from life, school and other things, having that limit. So I think really reducing and kind of getting rid of that limit and ensuring that there are more counselors to serve students.
Nikki Majidi
Q: What are your plans to mitigate the effects of the planned tuition increases?
A: I think outreach is where it starts, letting the students know that this is happening. I was speaking to students in the College of Business, they didn’t even know that it was happening. That’s the thing. That’s what I’m talking about up there on the stage. I was talking about how we need to build up our student councils and we need to use ASI and Lobby Corps to transfer more information through these, once these are solved so there can be a more unified campus as well as a unified understanding of what’s happening on campus.
Q: What are your plans to address food insecurity among the student body?
A: So to address food insecurity, I would be expanding the basic needs programs. As a recipient of CalFresh, I want to find ways to make it more accessible. Something that I’ve actually had a lot of conversations about… is the more involved that you are on campus, the less you qualify for other things. I know some other people… because they’re an RA due to their meal swipe they will not be able to qualify for basic needs programs. And that’s something I want to see where I can fix, where I can allocate more money, or allocate better policies, where we can allow all students to get the same accessibility…
Q: What are your plans to address housing insecurity among the student body?
A: I plan to utilize the Lobby Corps, utilize faculty, utilize campus organizations to continue working with Mayor Rex Richardson to see where we can find more options for affordable housing around this area as well as Assemblymember [Josh] Lowenthal to see where in the legislation we can push for better funding or more initiatives.
Q: The faculty’s recent contract has aspirational language to reach a 1,500-1 counselor-to-student ratio. How do you plan to move forward toward that goal?
A: I would speak with students and I would communicate with faculty to see what the best way for collaboration would be.
Johnny Baèza
Q: What are your plans to mitigate the effects of the planned tuition increases?
A: The tuition increases are already set in, so there’s nothing I can do about it. But one of the things that I really want to push are zero-cost courses. It’s something that they’re talking about a lot at community colleges right now with its student enrollment actually going down everywhere except Long Beach, which our enrollments are gonna go down eventually. One of the things that we can do to compete with community colleges is make sure that our courses are also zero-cost courses. Not only does that help our campus grow, but it also reduces costs for students.
Q: What are your plans to address housing insecurity among the student body?
A: Other colleges have it so that the area around their campuses are zoned for student housing. So that means that they can build different types of housing. Currently, CSULB doesn’t have any type of zoning for student dorms or student housing like a private developer, so there’s no way for people to come in and build things. Part of that is working with the City of Long Beach and designating areas for them to put affordable housing and affordable student housing, but also building housing on campus. I look at SDSU [San Diego State University] and their growth. One of the reasons why they’re one of the top-tier CSU is because they have a lot of student housing on campus.
Q: The faculty’s recent contract has aspirational language to reach a 1,500-1 counselor-to-student ratio. How do you plan to move forward toward that goal?
A: Yes, that is not good enough. I think at LAUSD, I think their ratio is like 1 to 500. That’s still tremendous and that’s in the city. I think one of the things that would help is not just having more counselors, but having more drop-in activities where you can just come in and check in. Maybe like group settings, something like that. I have a couple of things on campus that are geared towards specific groups. I would look at how we can partner with other other college campuses, where they have students who are in those like clinical psychology programs, and MFT programs, even on campus and see if that can be a way to sort of expand our offering.
Archie Sehgall
Q What are your plans to mitigate the effects of the planned tuition increases?
A: I feel that being an international student, the tuition hike affects us more than the people who are from here. That’s one of the main issues I look forward to looking at. It’s going to take a lot of bureaucracy but we have to do it. If nobody does anything it will become more and more of an issue. It’s going to stop more people from coming here. Students are worthy of this but money gets in the way.
Q: What are your plans to address food insecurity among the student body?
A: Beach Pantry runs on donations so we need more people to donate. It’s one of the main sources of food for people so we need to work to make it better. We also need partnerships and sponsorships with brands to get more food on campus. What we need is more cheap food options. At events on campus, food should be available at all of them to give people one more incentive to come to the events and they’re not being judged for not having food.
Q: What are your plans to address housing insecurity among the student body?
A: Right now the college gives grants to students who need housing assistance and they allow students to stay in the dorms for one month to find housing. But one month is not enough. We need to figure out a way to give them temporary housing but also permanent housing. I feel one of the ways we can do that is to increase [the] capacity of dorms and maybe have special dorms subsidized by someone. The housing crisis isn’t a one-time thing for students.
Q: The faculty’s recent contract has aspirational language to reach a 1,500-1 counselor-to-student ratio. How do you plan to move forward toward that goal?
A: Just speaking from the perspective of international students, you’re living in a new country for the first time away from your family and that takes a mental toll on you. You’re in a different city and don’t know anybody here. Mental health resources just among international students are [a] basic necessity. For the general population, we need more counselors. You never know what someone is going through. Prevention is always better than the cure.
This article was edited on March 20, 2024 to add visual elements.