UC students want a bigger say on the Board of Regents

from Khadija Khan and Phoebe HussCalMatters

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The University of California serves 300,000 students, but only one of two students on the 26-member Board of Regents is eligible to vote. Now, student leaders are campaigning for a second vote, saying it will better ensure UC policy reflects all students.

The Regents are the most important decision-makers in the UC system and set policies for all campuses, including tuition increases. When one student is supposed to represent the desires of the entire student population, some feel that other perspectives are missed out. Last year, when a student regent voted in favor of raising fees for overseas studythe other student regent disagreed but could not vote on it.

Currently, the nonvoting student spends the first year on the board as a “regent-designate.” That student then moves into the next year’s voting position. Students are selected from an applicant pool of all UC graduate and undergraduate students and approved by the board.

By adding a second vote for student regents, UC will follow in the footsteps of the state’s other two public systems of higher education. Legislation passed earlier this decade gave voting rights to two student representatives in the California State University and California Community College management boards.

In contrast, UC board policy cannot be changed by a legislative bill, but can be changed by measures voted on by the regents or by a constitutional amendment approved by both the Legislature and California voters. Unlike California State and community colleges, UC was established from the state constitution as a system that is governed with very limited legislative control. An attorney general once likened the Board of Regents to a branch of state governmentequal to the legislative, judicial and executive powers.

If they decide to support the amendment, student advocates would like to see it passed by the end of next year’s legislative session so the measure can appear on the ballot for the November 2026 midterm elections.

Student advocates take the lead

Current Student Regent Sonya Brooks, a doctoral student in education policy at UCLA, began her term on the ballot in July when they voted at a committee meeting against allowing the UC president to raise tuition for a professional degree. The commission voted to recommend that the president be given that power, six to three. The full council then voted to assert the authority.

“I’ve always been an advocate for justice,” Brooks said. “Now, because of this position and the opportunities available, I’ve really taken advantage of it to really help not only the students … but the faculty and staff.”

Miguel Craven, an energy systems student at UC Davis, is shadowing Brooks this year as a nonvoting student regent. He was a UC Merced student government senator and president during his undergraduate years while also serving as a student observer to the regents.

He hopes to act as a bridge between students and regents in a system that can structurally feel difficult for student participation.

“It’s not that important that the institution consults with the students,” Craven said. “The reality is that it’s the other way around: Students have to consult with the institution. . . . It’s up to the students to make that effort.”

Each year, the UC Student Association, a coalition of UC students and student governments, runs a civic engagement campaign called UCweVOTE to teach students about election processes and encourage them to vote. This year, to increase student power on the Board of Regents, they are taking the lead in advocating for the right to vote for the second student regent.

Aditi Hariharan, the association’s president and a fifth-year nutrition and political science double major at UC Davis, wants to see a broader range of student voices and backgrounds that can’t be captured in just one vote.

“The need for this campaign is the fact that students are not a monolith,” Hariharan said. “Not every student looks at problems the same way.”

Advocates i believe sophomore voting student may also weight the student’s vote on more than one of the 10 regents committees. Boards of Regents meet frequently at the same time meaning that a voting student regent can only vote for one of them.

Committee deliberations often have a big impact on regents’ decisions, says former student regent Alexis Zaragoza. Nonvoting student regents can attend committee meetings and participate in discussions, but Zaragoza noted that even that ability is not protected in policy. She wishes it were so.

“If you have two student votes … maybe the other student votes differently, right?” Zaragoza said. “And it just shows that maybe students are actually kind of divided on this issue, maybe your different backgrounds contribute in different ways. There’s no longer that pressure on one student to represent the entire population.”

One issue on which students and student regents sometimes disagree is tuition. At the November 2024 meeting of regents, the board, including Josiah Behari, the student regent at the time, voted to increase tuition fees abroad.

At the meeting, multiple students expressed concern about the tuition increase, including Craven as a student observer who said the increase would limit accessibility in UC by making the university less accessible to out-of-state and international students.

The two students “didn’t agree” on that point, Brooks recalled. After the vote, Beharry asked Brooks how she would vote if he were her. She told him she would vote against the increase. Behari did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A Journey Through the Legislature

In 2021, former Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda in the East Bay, introduced Senate Constitutional Amendment 5which would require the creation of a second voting student regent. The Assembly Appropriations Committee determined that the costs of the UC amendment would be “minor and absorbable”.

Glazer, however, told CalMatters that the commission decided the amendment would not move forward without giving a reason.

In 1974 a constitutional amendment approved by California voters, authorized the board to have a student regent. The Regents added the position in 1975. Then, in 1993, the Regents created the position of appointed regent by a policy vote, without a constitutional amendment.

According to an assembly committee analysis of the Glazer amendment, no constitutional amendment is needed to add a second student voter. This time, the student association is considering simply proposing a policy change for the board to vote on instead of a constitutional amendment.

If the student association decides to go down the amendment route, they would need a legislator to sponsor the bill, which would require the approval of several committees, a two-thirds vote in both the Assembly and Senate, and a simple majority vote in a statewide election.

As in the Glazer Amendment, students say the change in voting power will not directly result in additional costs to the university, as both student regents are now present at all meetings on the UC penny. This would simply be a transition from a non-voting role to a voting role.

Some students still see value in having the non-voting student regent build an understanding in the first year before they become eligible to vote. Brooks is an active participant in bimonthly regents meetings, asking questions, talking with students and participating in debates with other regents. But when she joined the board, “I didn’t know A to Z,” she said. “If I didn’t have that one year to grow, to meet people, to create these organic relationships … I would be completely lost.”

All regents, including students, complete the same orientation. These training sessions teach them board policies and logistics and include briefings with board leaders. So when student regents join the board, they know what they’re getting into, Zaragoza said.

None of the 18 regents appointed by the governor responded to CalMatters’ requests for comment for this story. The other seven members are “ex officio”, having regent power by virtue of another office they hold, such as governor and speaker of the assembly. These members do not always attend regents meetings.

Craven believes that a second student elector is not the only solution to the lack of student representation. He is interested in ways to expand student advocacy with the Regents beyond existing positions.

“What does student representation mean?” Craven said. “Does that mean someone who actually votes, who sits on the board? Do we want to provide additional space for students to be able to speak? … That’s a discussion that needs to happen.”

On Nov. 19, the regents will vote on whether to reaffirm the annuals training increases for incoming student groups, which was first introduced in 2021. Brooks said few students have shared concerns with her about the increases, but she plans to seek them out and talk to them.

“I will continue to reach out to students and vote accordingly,” Brooks said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.