The advocacy branch of USG should not be overlooked

The Undergraduate Student Government recently proposed a restructuring of its internal branches, essentially combining the six existing branches into three: executive, legislative and judicial. In this reconfiguration, all of the preexisting branches fit nicely into the overarching new ones — well, all except for the advocacy branch. In fact, USG’s proposal seems to ignore the advocacy branch, citing “overlap” between it and the legislative branch of government as reason to remove it. 

In getting rid of the advocacy branch, USG would be removing a space for students to directly work with administration and communicate about various issues affecting USC students. Holding Senate meetings to discuss issues surrounding the community is an effective way to interact with students, but without it, there is no liaison meant to also work with the administration. The advocacy branch is specifically dedicated to giving students and administrators a chance to work directly with USG. As such, the advocacy branch must not be removed during any restructuring of student government.

Like the other branches, the advocacy branch serves its own unique purpose within USG, which is “staying in close contact with key administrators and students about issues affecting students that lie in their area of focus.” Essentially, the branch addresses prominent concerns among the student body and works to make students aware of the resources available to them. Some of the areas of work include academic affairs, accessibility affairs, sustainability affairs and wellness affairs.

Certainly, these are all important issues. In the case of wellness affairs, it is essential that students are made aware of resources available to them. On the other hand, it is equally important that the administration is in contact with USG about student concerns. This is not an issue that can be satisfied simply by putting all of our energy into creating new legislation — it instead concerns the general upkeep and spread of public information among the USC community.

Despite the work that the advocacy branch has done in these areas, the proposed plan states that the legislative body will supposedly replace the advocacy branch of student government. As USG Vice President Mahin Tahsin explained in a Senate Meeting last month, “[USG] wanted to make [their] organization a bit more legislative-focused in terms of putting forward more resolutions and proposals because that’s a primary role of the Senate.” 

There is nothing wrong with wanting to effect long-lasting or permanent change at USC. Particularly within the realms of wellness and sustainability, long-needed legislative changes certainly have the potential to benefit the community. However, the purpose of having these six separate branches in the first place is to divvy up the roles and responsibilities within USG. In adding advocacy work to the legislative branch, the organization is simply piling more work onto the legislators’ plates. Who’s to say that this work will actually get done if there are fewer roles dedicated to it?

There must be room within USG for student issues to be heard by the administration and for information to be spread throughout the community. In removing the advocacy branch of government, the proposed restructuring of USG does away with any sort of space for this. In sum: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.