By: Linsey Towles and Acsah Lemma
The Long Beach State candidates vying for the position of Associated Student Inc. vice president of finance addressed what role the position plays in CSU tuition increases and student insecurity during an interview with the Daily Forty-Niner.
The position focuses on the management of finances and assets at ASI.
Jaimin Suthar
Q: With tuition increases on the horizon, what do the vice president of finance candidates plan on doing to mitigate student needs?
A: What we have the power to do is we can get more money for the students, instead of fighting the tuition hike.
I would say getting more jobs is one of the ways and that’s what I want to do.
It’s frustrating to apply for three websites in order to get a job. And then if a person has a job, there is some way they can pay the tuition. Another factor is the scholarship allocations.
So if you want to include the scholarship allocations that can be bettered, that would affect people that [have] tuition hikes. So tuition hikes will be affected by every single CSU, it’s not just CSULB. So it’s a big decision to make.
And then we can’t handle every single one of them. But we can handle what we can handle, which is just people can get the money in their hands.
And how we can get it, scholarship. Just allocate better, just get more jobs to the people. That’s two ways to do it. And there’s more ways if you just sit in that position and think about it.
Q: What does the position of vice president of finance have in mind to address student housing insecurity?
A: It’s not even in the hands of the ASI government. It’s a decision to be made by [the] president of CSULB and even she has to agree with the CSU. But in India, there is a word for this, it’s called jugaad. That means that you work around the thing and find something that works for what you need right now.
We can just talk with the apartments and see if they can lower the cost of housing for us if we guarantee them [a] certain number of houses will be taken.
There are a million ways to do it, you just have to talk with person to person in order to collaborate rather than just saying, “Oh, we’ll build more housing over here on campus,” because you can’t do it.
Andre Achacon
Q: With tuition increases on the horizon, what do the vice president of finance candidates plan on doing to mitigate student needs?
A: In my role as Lobby Corps and what Lobby Corps was doing this past weekend, they went to Sacramento, sat down and directly spoke with legislators, highlighting issues on our campuses and trying to work and collaborate with legislators and their staffers to figure out better state funding props, state funding, revenue and also getting more federal funding.
There is also system-wide advocacy. So going to the Chancellor’s Office using our roles, positions and connections to work with our administrators on campus and say, “Hey, so we get one-third of the tuition increases going to state university grant, how can we make sure that the State University grant reforms that are happening right now at the CSU Board of Trustees are properly allocated?”
Lastly, campus-wide initiatives — that’s the largest impact that we can make because we have more influence over that.
It’s our campus so we can support students financially as a result of this tuition increase.
Q: What does the position of vice president of finance have in mind to address student housing insecurity?
A: With affordable housing, there’s multiple routes we can take. And that’s building subsidized affordable housing around campus and that’s a conversation we can have with our city.
It’s really tough because the surrounding area, it’s already developed and then we have a luxury gated community right next to campus.
So how are students going to access that space? Our dorms, our on-campus housing is another way to address affordable housing and we’re already doing that.
I sat on the university resource Council and also I’m an on-campus housing and residential student.
This past year, our university was able to receive funding from the state to build a brand new set of housing, and that’s 400 new beds for students affordable housing beds that cost less than $1,000 per month which is still super expensive.
So again, just ongoing conversations are so important.
Mohaddisa Naqvi
Q: With tuition increases on the horizon, what do the vice president of finance candidates plan on doing to mitigate student needs?
A: The current consolidated operating budget is accumulated of $27 million that falls under paying the staff, paying the student employees and whatnot.
There’s a lot left over for ASI and other events. I think figuring out a way to see which organizations or where we’re allocating funds that are kind of getting uselessly wasted, figuring out efficiently, like looking at a balance sheet and figuring out if they’re actually providing some sort of benefit and profit.
Maybe looking at a balance sheet and figuring out the excess funds that can somehow be used instead for tuition hikes. I think that’d be one thing that I would try to do.
In terms of really trying to decrease the tuition, the most I would be able to do in regards to that would be to look over any excess funds, if we have any.
I would also bring it up to the higher-ups again because they’re the ones also deciding the salaries of students, salaries of everyone.
Q: What does the position of vice president of finance have in mind to address student housing insecurity?
A: The main focus we need to do is educate our population of students who have knowledge and want to apply for work, but they don’t know how to. A lot of jobs they like to see a polished resume with a cover letter and these students don’t know how to do that.
So one thing I do want to do is create workshops for students to educate them on how to polish your resume. How to create their LinkedIn. Expand your scope of what issues students are having.
It’s small other things that you wouldn’t see a certain position where, say you have that experience or not being able to present it in a way. So that’d be my main thing.