 Alex Wilford is nearly one semester into his term as AACC president. Cal TV cut up with him to talk about his office and recent issues. I want to now shift our attention towards something that's been happening on campus, making headlines on the Daily Cal, and making its random social media. I'm curious to ask, to wonder if you've seen this photo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The photo shared over 300 times on Facebook has populated various student group pages. It depicts members of Fiji mocking students protesting sexual assault, some calling for boycotts of frats. The fraternity is not officially recognized by the campus unlike the other 63 fraternities and sororities, all of whom are required to undergo workshops and trainings. It's frankly disgusting. It's a photo that shows how much that community needs to work on addressing the climate in the community, making sure survivors feel supported, addressing issues of toxic masculinity within that community as well. You know, in the wake of such an impactful and really hard, partisan, divisive and difficult time for survivors with the Kavanaugh incidents, no individuals in our community should be in any way disrespecting or mocking those, the trauma or the experiences of survivors. Wilfred says the image demonstrates how much growth has to happen in Greek life. He says the individuals involved need to be held accountable. I think as a community center last year, I think this was a conversation that came up and we really tried to see where the ASUC's role is in this. Obviously the Greek community and specifically IFC is a different, they're not recognized by the university, so there is, you know, certain things that we can and we cannot do, but I think it's really important for me as someone who's seen this consistently that we finally see something happening, that we finally continuously support survivors. We implement survivor-centric policy and that we work with the community leaders like PHC and GASA who are already doing that work. Wilfred says he believes the alleged incidences of roofing and assault happen in Calcicreek community. And I think that needs to change. And, you know, I think there are, there is work being done, specifically panel and the council has been doing work on this. GASA has been doing work on this. IFC has slowly started to do some things, but it's not enough and we need to make sure that every member in our community feels safe. Every member in the Cal community feels safe. We're also implementing accountability standards for RSOs as a whole around sexual violence, around alcohol and drug safety, and around mental health because we want to make sure that every RSO on this campus, so every registered organization, every community on this campus is addressing these issues adequately. That starts with the Greek community, but that's something that we want to do as an ASUC, holistically as well. Wilfred emphasizes that this is not a new issue. This, as we all know, has happened before. What is within the ASUC's reach that can be done? The thing with the ASUC is we don't sponsor Greek organizations. There is one scholarship and that's something we're seriously looking at, whether that money should be put there or somewhere else. But as an ASUC we can call on community leaders to take action and pass bills. But it's really hard because we want to firstly respect community leaders and respect the individuals who have been doing this work. And as an ASUC we're there to support those individuals. But also as an ASUC we need to be looking out for the safety of every student on this campus. And I think that we will be there to advocate for survivors in that community and as a whole. And I think we will not be silent about this issue. This is among the many other issues his office is tackling. Next we move on to his particular office, which he assumed less than a year ago. It's been a really interesting start to the semester. I think we've had a lot of change in the ASUC already. I think we've been seeing a lot of advocacy happening. But we've just been kind of getting the office rolling and getting our policy initiatives pushed through. So I'm excited, I'm excited to see what the rest of the semester holds. His recent projects include the Student Advisory Committee, Campus Climate and Safety, Student Fees, and the larger Berkeley community. He's also got his eye on reforming the ASUC itself. We changed our outreach policy to make sure that we're actually engaging with our communities, requiring senators and executives to town halls to meet with community leaders as mandated in our bylaws rather than just having sitting on sprawl and saying that we're a part of the ASUC. So that's exciting. And then just the third one that I would mention is our advocacy around an international student fee hike. So the university provides core services when it comes to acquiring visas for international students and they wanted these international students who already pay huge amounts of tuition to pay an extra $120 fee. And we pushed back on this. We organized and made sure that we were fighting for these international students so they didn't have to pay this fee and that was something we worked with community leaders and these students. So I'm excited that we stopped that and we made sure that not only did the fee not go up, but we removed the fee entirely. He says he hasn't suffered any major losses yet, but there is always room for improvement. Luckily, right now, administration has been fairly receptive. The ASUC as a whole is doing some great work. So I think we're only scoring some wins right now.