Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Five minutes with some dude
Danny Montes goes for the smiling, crossed arms, looking up picture, which I refer to as the "confident midget" pose. It's actually pretty appropriate for his job, since he has to try to tell people, from a position of weakness, that they should do what he says.
The Daily Californian: What are some of your goals for the position and for the coming year?
Danny Montes: My main goal is to have student involvement in advocacy work ... and that includes stuff that deals with getting involved with voter registration, getting interested in learning about politics, about issues that affect them at a city level, at a state level, at a national level, even international issues that are going on just so they could ... clearly use the power they have as students ... to make their voice be heard. Booo! I disagree, and insist that X gets the square. If we just "use the power we have as students," we're fucked, because we don't actually have a lot of it on those issues. Making our voices heard is great for the feel-good dudes, but it doesn't get much done. If we want actual change, we have to first build our power before using it. And we'll never build power on international issues.
DC: And how are you going to get those students involved and get them interested in the office?
DM: Well, the main thing that we're working on this semester is with voter registration. ... We work on getting students on this campus registered to vote so they could exercise their power ... come election time ... during the primaries. Nothing says power like a tiny contribution to lopsided election results. Voter registration is just the least creative way to go about this.
Another way is to outreach and recruit for students to be on city commissions ... and also the same thing with national and international issues. National and international commissions?
DC: You mentioned working on the national and international level. What issues do you hope to address and how can students get involved?
DM: At a national level, one of the issues we're going to work on is the Federal Dream Act to make sure that there's equity when joining a university and that all the UCs and all the privates and all the community colleges and all the state schools are not only affordable but desirable for all students, that there's a diversity of students within every college campus and that that affects (them.) Also reauthorizing the Higher Education Act ... so making sure that we look at higher education and see the financial aid and everything is good to go for every student and it's up-to-date with higher education standards and the standards of the students that are going to campus now. He does realize we don't have the power to do any of that, right?
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