By: Elizabeth Basile, Linsey Towles, Anthony Orrico and Acsah Lemma
California State University Long Beach’s Associated Student Inc. elections are underway and candidates for the executive vice president position answered student centered questions for the Daily Forty-Niner.
Matt Melendrez:
Q: “What are your plans to mitigate the effects of the planned tuition increases?”
A: “First off talking about tuition increase, I was there at the board of trustees meeting and we were actually able to voice our opposition against the tuition increase, and I made sure to let Eleni [Kounalakis] know and the board of trustees that, you know, I said to her 184,000 students and she understood it. I’ve told the board of trustees that’s how many students are going to be affected by tuition increase and the way that we need to mitigate it just because by using our lobby Corp, making sure that we create resolutions as well that support our students by expanding our basic needs, for example.”
“Also making sure that our lobby corps is working with the California State government and they continue to expand funding to the CSU and make sure that that funding is transparent.”
Q: “What are your plans to address food insecurity among the student body?”
A: “It starts off with supporting our beach pantry and supporting our Beach Kitchen.”
“As I said in the debate, it’s up for us to be able to support our Beach Pantry by, you know, creating food drives, for example, to ensure that the students are actively donating to our Beach Pantry, students are actively engaging. Making sure that from different organizations on campus, we can work together to supply our food pantry and then actually promoting our Beach Kitchen so that they can use those ingredients and turn them into affordable meals.”
Q: “What are the plans to address housing insecurity among the student body?”
A: “So definitely when it comes to housing insecurity, a lot of students, you know, they can’t afford it. So again, I’d like to [bring] it back to the original point of just expanding, you know, the financial streams that our students can receive, but also being able to show them or being able to create a way to be transparent with our students about different resources that they can get.”
“So for example, our students can get money through these scholarships, but not a lot of them know how to fill it out and you know, it helps them be able to afford the places that they’re living in.”
“And then also like we need to emphasize the need to create affordable, you know, beds, create… continue that initiative where they’re creating affordable beds in our dorms, making sure that students can actually be able to afford a bed to sleep at night.”
Sheesh Dhawan:
Q: “What are your plans to mitigate the effects of the planned tuition increases?”
A: “So my idea is to go off campus to go to our alumni, to go to previous donors who have the same cause, who belong to the same communities that we have been and ask them for donations so that they can boost graduation rates.”
“We can boost, we can help our students financially and help them move forward in higher education, and so that when we graduate, we can do the same for our coming generations.”
Q: “What are your plans to address food insecurity among the student body?”
A: “I think supporting our Beach Pantry. Beach Pantry is [something] a lot of students, but currently it’s just working with donations. So it’s just donations from different donors.”
“[…] To mitigate food insecurity on campus I really want to allocate a budget from ASI specifically to fund the pantry.”
Q: “What are the plans to address housing insecurity among the student body?”
A: “We have a very good program on campus called Basic Needs Program. I have also suffered housing security. When I came in, I was evicted from my apartment after a few months so I contacted them and that [program] also runs on donations.”
“So I really want to have a specific budget and expand on the budget so that we can give to the Basic [Needs] Program so that students can apply.”
“It’s easier for them to apply. They can have a reliable source on campus that can help them house and also we can collaborate with different alumni that have motels and different properties in Long Beach to house housing insecure students.”
This story was edited on March 21, 2024 to correct the spelling of Melendrez.