# Associated Students of the University of California

The Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) is the autonomous and officially recognized students' association of the University of California, Berkeley. It is the only students' association within the University of California that is fully autonomous from the university administration. Founded in 1887, the ASUC is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit, and unincorporated association. The ASUC controls funding for all ASUC-sponsored organizations, advocates on behalf of students to solve issues on campus and in the community, engages with administrators to develop programming, increase student-organizational resources, and increase transparency.

## History

The ASUC was founded on March 2, 1887. Prior to this, Berkeley had no residence halls, sport teams, or permanent student organizations. The original purpose of the ASUC was "to organize the Student Body in such wise that it might take effective action upon all matter relating to the general welfare of the student body and the University in general." The organization went on to absorb the Cal Student Store, become the center of student organization oversight, and run all university athletics until the 1960s.
Various student political parties – popularly known as "slates" – and independent student communities participate in the ASUC. SLATE, a pioneer organization of the New Left and precursor of the Free Speech Movement and formative counterculture era, was a campus political party at Cal from 1958 to 1966, while VOICE (a radical party) and Pact (a liberal party) were campus political parties at Cal in 1967.
The emergence of modern-day student political parties within the ASUC began with the formation of Student Action. Student Action, founded in 1995, formed as a coalition of organizations, including the Greek life, Pre-Law, and Engineering communities. Since its inception, Student Action served each year as the largest political faction in the ASUC, producing numerous alumni that went on to become prominent political figures at the state and federal level. Over the years, Student Action expanded their party, slating candidates each year from the South Asian, Jewish, International, and East Asian communities. After 28 years, Student Action officially announced in an Instagram post that the party would be disbanded. The controversy of student-political parties at UC Berkeley became notable during Student Action's iron grip on student elections, but it certainly did not turn away other groups of students from creating political parties of their own. SQUELCH! is a satirical party which has run and won seats in the past before suffering a major blow in the 2017 elections, when they won no seats in the senate. The Pirate Party centers their messaging on technology and humor, campaigning in pirate costumes during election season. As of the 2017 elections, they held one seat in the ASUC Senate. The Defend Affirmative Action Party (DAAP), founded by national activist and left-wing militant group BAMN, campaigns on a platform of radical racial justice and inclusion for students, though has found relatively little support, having won no seats for 9 years as of 2017. BAMN itself began at Berkeley in 1995 and ran candidates starting in 1996 under its own name, which, at the time, was The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary. The major parties from the late 1980s and early 1990s included: the Bears Party, drawing from a similar constituency as today's Student Action; Students for Progress, a center-left party; as well as Cal-SERVE. Minor Parties that won seats during that era included: More centrist groups like GRASP (Grass Root and Student Power), APPLE (A People's Party for Loyalty and Experience), Vision, SEED, a progressive party to the left of Cal-SERVE; Crusaders for the Rights of Undeclared and Confused Students (CRUCS), focused on initiatives to improve student life such as extending the P/NP and drop deadlines beyond the first round of midterms; the Monster Truck Party, appealing to Greek constituencies with the slogan: "what will knowledge of other cultures do if your car throws a rod 10 miles outside of Kettleman City"; the PENIS Party, with the slogan "erect a leader," and a platform advocating for more urinals and a taller Campanile; and the Science and Engineering Party, which advocated for the interests of science and engineering students and who partnered with CRUCS to win 4 executive seats between 1990 and 1992.
Today, the largest political party at UC Berkeley is ElevateCal. ElevateCal's founding values are centered around the inclusion of marginalized communities in student government and transparency within the student government. In the 2024 ASUC Election, ElevateCal won the Presidency, Vice Presidency, and 7 out of 20 Senate Seats, with Independents winning AAVP, EAVP, Student Advocate, and the other 13 seats.

## Programs and resources

The ASUC's responsibilities include allocating student group funding through a yearly spring budgeting process. The finance officer evaluates each club's funding request, length of time as a sponsored organization, and history of funding in order to determine how much money each registered student organization should be allocated. The ASUC budgets in excess of $1 million each year to campus organizations, including the Bridges multicultural resource & retention center.
The offices of the president and the external affairs vice president focus much of their time on student advocacy, often relating to issues of sexual assault, campus safety, student voice, mental health, equality, and diversity.

## Governance

The ASUC Constitution establishes a students' association with elected officials modeled after California's separation-of-powers and plural elected executive framework.
The executive officers and the Senate of the ASUC are popularly elected by single transferable vote. Chief appointed officers are non-partisan officials appointed by the Senate. The six chief appointed officials are the chief communications officer (CCO), chief financial officer (CFO), chief legal officer (CLO), chief technology officer (CTO), chief personnel officer (CPO), and chief grants & scholarships officer (CGO).
The five elected executive officers of the ASUC are the president, executive vice president (EVP), external affairs vice president (EAVP), academic affairs vice president (AAVP), and the student advocate. Political parties that compete in ASUC elections usually run candidates for the first four positions, while the fifth, student advocate, is traditionally won in a nonpartisan race by a member of the staff of the outgoing student advocate.
In 2019, the student body passed the Transfer Remedy Act ballot proposition, which added the transfer student representative as a unique ASUC office intended to represent the campus' growing transfer student population. The Transfer Student Representative is a voting ex-officio member of the ASUC Senate, serving as the de facto twenty-first member of the Senate and maintaining all of the responsibilities of a regular ASUC senator. The Transfer Student Representative is chosen a separate election using the single transferable vote mechanism. The position was on the ASUC election ballot for the first time in the spring 2020 election.

## Notable alumni

* Jesse Gabriel, member of the California State Assembly from the 45th district.
* Christopher Cabaldon, Mayor of West Sacramento, California.
* Jesse Arreguín, member of the California State Senate from the 7th district.
* Josh Fryday, former mayor of Novato, California and Chief Service Officer, State of California.
* Nick Pacheco, member of the Los Angeles City Council from the 14th district (1999-2003).
* José Huizar, member of the Los Angeles City Council from the 14th district (2005-2020).
* Rigel Robinson, member of the Berkeley, California City Council.
* Pedro Noguera, Dean, USC Rossier School of Education.
* Wally Adeyemo, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury; inaugural president of the Obama Foundation.
* Leigh Steinberg, American sports agent.
* Ki Hong Lee, American actor.
* John Cho, Korean American Actor.

## List of Executive Officers

| Years | President | Executive Vice President | Academic Affairs Vice President | External Affairs Vice President | Student Advocate |
| 1985-1986 | Pedro Noguera | Karen Licavoli | M. Bruce Robinson | Linda Asato | Steven Ganz |
| 1986-1987 | Steven Ganz | Nicole Maguire | Tom Malinowski | Christopher Cabaldon | Matt Denn |
| 1987-1988 | Michael I. Berry | Julie Chang | Beth Bernstein | | |
| 1988-1989 | Jeff Chang | Pamela Brown | | | Pete Kennedy |
| 1989-1990 | Tisa Poe | Pamela Brown | Jan Young | Jose Huizar | Bonaparte Liu |
| 1990-1991 | Bonaparte Liu | Shahed Amanullah | | Bess Dolmo | Ben Austin |
| 1991-1992 | Mark Yablonovich | Cecelia Wang | | | Rachel Settlage |
| 1992-1993 | Margaret Fortune | Mimi Aye | Greg Lewis | Tim Yeung | Lisa (Swartout) Zwicker |
| 1993-1994 | Marco Pulisci | Scott Kamena | Mike Young | Anny Huang | Andrew Wong |
| 1994-1995 | Andrew Wong | Alex Weingarten | Joanne Loh | Victor Martinez | Auren Hoffman |
| 1995-1996 | Jeff Cohen | Felicia Sze | Eric Higashiguchi | Esa Yu | Mark Schlosberg |
| 1996-1997 | Grant Harris | Sharon Yuan | Christina Pak | Renee Dall | Aaron Butler |
| 1997-1998 | Sharon Yuan | Lee Fink | Margie Brown | Sanjeev Bery | Hikari Kimura |
| 1998-1999 | Irami Osei Frimpong (resigned) Preston Taylor | Rishi Chandna | Amanda Canning | Shin Honma | Randolph Gaw |
| 1999-2000 | Patrick Campbell | Conor Moore | Ally McNally | Gray Chynoweth | Jen Shen |
| 2000-2001 | Teddy Liaw | Alex Ding | Jen Chang (resigned November 2000) Jose Luis Lopez (appointed December 2000) | Nick Papas | Kevin Hammon |
| 2001-2002 | Wally Adeyemo | Justin Christensen | Catherine Ahn | Josh Fryday | Alex Kipnis |
| 2002-2003 | Jesse Gabriel | Han Hong | Tony Falcone | Jimmy Bryant | Salam Rafeedie |
| 2003-2004 | Kris Cuaresma-Primm | Taina Gomez | Gustavo Mata | Anu Joshi | Dave Madan |
| 2004-2005 | Misha Leybovich | Christine Lee | Rocky Gade | Liz Hall | Dave Madan |
| 2005-2006 | Manuel Buenrostro | Anil Daryani | Jason Dixson | Sharon Han | Vikrum Aiyer |
| 2006-2007 | Oren Gabriel | Vishal Kumar Gupta | Joyce Liou | Jason Chu | |
| 2007-2008 | Van Nguyen | Taylor Allbright | Curtis Lee | Danny Montes | |
| 2008-2009 | Roxanne Winston | Krystle Pasco | Carlo De La Cruz | Dionne JIrachaikitti | Matthew David Demartini |
| 2009-2010 | Will Smelko | Tu Tran | John Tran | Dani Haber | |
| 2011-2011 | Noah Stern | Nanxi Liu | Viola Tang | Ricardo Gomez | |
| 2011-2012 | Vishalli Loomba | Chris Alabastro | Julia Joung | Joey Freeman | Samar Shah |
| 2012-2013 | Connor Landgraf | Justin Sayarath | Natalie Gavello | Shahryar Abbasi | Stacy Suh |
| 2013-2014 | Deejay Pepito | Nolan Pack | Valerie Jameson | Safeena Mecklai | Timofey Semenov |
| 2014-2015 | Pavan Upadhyayula | Justin Kong | Summer (elected): Jeanette Corona Fall (acting): Pavan Upadhyayula Fall-Spring (appointed): Mon-Shane Chou | Caitlin Quinn | Rishi Ahuja |
| 2015-2016 | Yordanos Dejen | Lavanya Jawaharlal | Melissa Hsu | Marium Navid | Leah Romm |
| 2016-2017 | William Morrow | Alicia Lau | Frances McGinley | Andre Luu | Selina Lao |
| 2017-2018 | Zaynab Abdulqadir-Morris | Helen Yuan | Andrew-Ian Bullitt | Rigel Robinson | Jillian Free |
| 2018-2019 | Alexander Wilfert | Hung Huynh | Melany Amarikwa | Nuha Khalfay | Sophie Bandarkar |
| 2019-2020 | Amma Sarkodee-Adoo | Andy Theocharous (resigned in April 2020) Nathan Mizell (appointed in April 2020) | Aastha Jha | Varsha Sarveshwar | Nava Bearson |
| 2020-2021 | Victoria Vera | Melvin Tangonan | Nicole Anyanwu | Derek Imai | Joyce Huchin |
| 2021-2022 | Chaka Tellem | Aditya Dev Varma (resigned in August 2021) Antonio Kobe Lopez (acting) Giancarlo Fernandez (appointed in September 2021) | James Weichert | Riya Master | Era Goel |
| 2022-2023 | Chaka Tellem | Giancarlo Fernandez | James Weichert | Bailey Henderson | Crystal Choi |
| 2023-2024 | Sydney Roberts | Shri Gopal | Kenneth Ng | Alexander Edgar | Ariana Kretz |
| 2024-2025 | Shri Gopal | Robert Carrillo | Kenneth Ng | Saanvi Arora | Antonio Caceres |

## List of Senators

| Term | Senator |
| 2020-2021 | Alexis Aguilar | Sarah Bancroft | Julia Castro | Maddy Chen | Sheena Dichoso Echano | Naomi Joy Garcia | Will Liu | Samuel Peng | Apoorva Prakash | Sahvannah Rodriguez | Michael Savides | Ruchi Shah | Ronit Sholkoff | Rebecca Soo | Ellis Spickermann | Chaka Tellem | Mateo Torrico | Aasim Yahya | Liam Will | Rex Zhang |
| 2021-2022 | Muz Ahmad | Amy Chen | Sam Coffey | Jason Dones | Mehnaz Grewal | Amanda Hill | Varsha Madapoosi | Sophie Morris | Adrianna Ngo | Osirus Polachart | Sammy Raucher | Ashley Rehal | Isabella Romo | Dil Sen | Elif Sensurucu | Gabbi Sharp | Jerry Xu | Griselda Vega Martinez | Stephanie Wong | Kalli Zervas |
| 2022-2023 | Deena Ali | Emma Centeno | Shay Cohen | Manuel Cisneros | Shrinidi Gopal | Kailen Grottel-Brown | Yasamin Hatefi | Raymond Hufnagel | Anjali Jogia-Sattar | Mahathi Kandimalla | Deborah Kim | Joshua Lee | Tyler Mahomes | Soha Manzoor | Charles Peng | Akash Ponna | Thin Rati-Oo | Carlos Vazquez | Stephanie Wong | Megan Yao |
| 2023-2024 | Lanah Duque | Caitlyn Guntle | Kailen Grottel-Brown | Luca Hadife | Andrea Jimenez | Jose Massuh | Ayal Meyers | Ashi Mishra | Ariel Mizrahi | Sky Montogomery | Isabel Prasad | Thin Rati-Oo | Aanya Niharika Schoetz | Christine Song | Imaan Sultan | Bianca Torres | Doty | Andy Liu | Helena Wu | Sonia Zu |
| 2024-2025 | Abigail Verino | Annabel Wang | Ayden Reading | Carlos Julian Gonzalez | China Duff | Ellen Tong | Ethan Hu | Isha Chander | Jonathan Franco | Jonathan Ngai | Justin Taylor | Kaila DuFour | Kailen Grottel-Brown | Maitri Halappa | Max Rodman | Medina Danish | Owen Knapper Jr. | Shaya Keyvanfar | Tony Ordoukhanian |

## List of Appointed Officers

| Years | Chief Communications Officer | Chief Financial Officer | Chief Legal Officer | Chief Personnel Officer | Chief Technology Officer |
| 2019-2020 | Bryan Huang | Lucy Liu | Jedidiah Tsang | Evan Cui / Ilene Kung | Leon Ming |
| 2020-2021 | Annie Pan | David Wang | Athalia Djuhana | David Zhou | Grace Luo |
| 2021-2022 2 | Nancy Kim | Soomin Kim (resigned in January 2022) Henry F. Isselbacher (Appointed in January 2022) | Mina Han (resigned in February 2022) Athalia Djuhana (acting) Stephany Su (appointed in May 2022) | David Zhou / Eliana Kim | Oscar Bjorkman |
| 2022-2023 | Ryan Barba / Jennifer Rojas | Henry F. Isselbacher | Jason Dones | Eliana Kim / Michael Moy | Saruul Amarbayar |
| 2023-2024 | Jennifer Rojas | Catherine Park | Jason Dones | Michael Moy / Riley Anderson | Vedha Santhosh |