Associated Students Reform Movement — UCSB 2025–26

$2,000 $0. Your money back.

We are not running for student government. We are auditing it. Reform ASUCSB will eliminate mandatory fees, end the waste, remove the politics, and return student government to students.

Join the Movement See the Proposal
Zero fees · Zero politics $50k trips for 12 students Audit the establishment $1000s in honoraria It's your money · Keep it Students only · No outside staff $2,000 → $0 End resume-padding politics Zero fees · Zero politics $50k trips for 12 students Audit the establishment $1000s in honoraria It's your money · Keep it Students only · No outside staff $2,000 → $0 End resume-padding politics
01
The Waste

This is where your $2,000 actually goes.

Not to you. Not to your campus experience. It funds a system designed to benefit the people running it. Here are the receipts.

Conference Travel
$50,000+
Spent sending a dozen students on trips billed as "conferences." Your mandatory fees fund their travel, hotels, and meals. You stay home.
Honoraria Payments
$1,000s
Excessive honoraria paid out to student government officials on top of stipends. Thousands of dollars for positions that are supposed to be service, not salary.
Non-Student Staff
$???
Your student fees pay for professional, non-student staff embedded in a student organization. A student government should be run by students.
Resume Padding
"Leadership"
The system rewards political theater and personal career-building over student outcomes. Titles and trips, funded by you, designed for their LinkedIn.
Political Overhead
Endless
Student government has become a stage for political posturing that has nothing to do with student needs. The resolutions, the factions, the drama — none of it serves you.
Transparency
0%
No public, itemized, real-time accounting of how your $2,000 per year is allocated. The books are closed because opening them would be embarrassing.
02
Our Platform

Strip it down.
Give it back.

Reform is not a political slate. It is a structural overhaul. Every policy below serves one function: return money and power to the students who pay in.

01
Eliminate All Mandatory Fees

The $2,000 annual mandatory student fee goes to $0. Every line item starts at zero and must justify its existence with measurable student outcomes. No legacy spending. No sacred cows.

02
Remove All Non-Student Staff

Student government should be run by students. All non-student professional staff positions funded by student fees will be eliminated. Students are capable of governing themselves.

03
End Honoraria and Executive Perks

No more thousands in honoraria. No more $50,000 "conference" trips for a handful of insiders. Service means service. If you need a paycheck, get a job — not a senate seat.

04
Zero Politics. Students Only.

Student government will refocus entirely on student services and student life. No more political resolutions, factional theater, or national posturing. This body exists for the students who fund it — period.

05
End Resume-Padding Culture

Restructure incentives so that positions exist to produce results, not titles. No more creating roles, committees, or initiatives designed to look good on a CV while producing nothing for students.

06
Real-Time Open Ledger

Every dollar in, every dollar out — published in real time and accessible to all 26,000 students. We treat student government like an open-source ledger, not a closed boardroom.

03
The Ledger

We opened the books.
Here's what we found.

A preliminary audit of how your fees are allocated versus what Reform proposes. This is what transparency looks like.

Line Item Current Reform
Administrative overhead $620 $0
Non-student staff salaries $340 $0
Honoraria & exec compensation $190 $0
Conferences & travel $250 $0
Events & programming $310 $0
Discretionary / unaccounted $290 $0
Total annual per student $2,000 $0
04
The Proposal

Don't just cut. Grow.

Once mandatory fees are eliminated, AS services still generate earned revenue — from the Bike Shop, the Ticket Office, the AS Recycling Center, and other operations students actually use. Reform proposes investing a portion of that earned revenue into diversified market funds and redistributing the growth directly back to students.

Step 01
Eliminate mandatory fees
All $2,000 in annual mandatory fees go to $0. No student is forced to pay for services they don't use or a political body they didn't ask for.
Step 02
AS services earn revenue voluntarily
The Bike Shop, Ticket Office, Recycling Center, and other AS-run services continue to operate and generate revenue through voluntary transactions — not forced extraction.
Step 03
Invest a portion into diversified funds
A fixed percentage of earned service revenue is allocated into low-cost, diversified market index funds. Managed transparently with full public reporting.
Step 04
Redistribute growth to students
Excess returns from market growth are distributed back to the student body — funding grants, emergency aid, and direct student benefit programs. Your money, growing for you.
The Principle
$0 in, growth out.
Students pay nothing in mandatory fees. AS services generate revenue through operations students voluntarily use. A portion of that revenue is invested. Returns flow back to students. The system sustains itself without extracting a dollar from your pocket.
Transparency Guarantee
The investment portfolio, allocation strategy, performance returns, and redistribution formula will all be published in real time on the open ledger. Every student can audit every dollar, every trade, every disbursement. This is not a trust-us promise. It is an open system.
What This Replaces
Currently, your $2,000 is extracted involuntarily, spent on overhead and perks, and you see nothing back. Under Reform, the only money in the system is money that was earned — and the growth on that money goes directly to you.

It's your money. Keep it.

Zero fees. Zero politics. Students only.

05
Questions

We anticipated your skepticism.

Is eliminating all fees actually possible? +
Yes. The fee is a policy decision, not a law of nature. Fees are set and approved through student government processes. Reforming the structure, eliminating waste, and cutting non-essential overhead makes $0 achievable. We are publishing every model and projection for students to verify themselves.
What happens to student organizations? +
Student organizations continue to thrive. Funding is redirected through more efficient, transparent channels and supplemented by earned revenue from AS services and investment returns — without forcing every student to subsidize them through mandatory fees.
Why remove non-student staff? +
Because it is a student government. Professional staff create institutional inertia, bloated budgets, and a dependency that students do not need. Students are capable of managing their own governance. The staff positions exist to perpetuate the system, not to serve you.
What's wrong with honoraria? +
Honoraria at this scale attract people who want compensation, not service. When student government positions come with thousands of dollars in payments, they attract career-builders and resume-padders — not advocates. Reform makes these positions about service, not personal gain.
Is the investment proposal legal and safe? +
Investing institutional funds in diversified index funds is standard practice for endowments, foundations, and public institutions. The proposal uses only earned revenue from voluntary transactions — never mandatory fees. All allocations, performance, and distributions are published in real time.
How is Reform different from every other slate? +
We are not a slate. We are an audit. Other slates promise vague improvements while preserving the system that benefits them. We have one measurable outcome: $0 in mandatory fees. No excuses, no political theater, no resume lines.
What about "removing politics"? +
Student government should focus on student services: transit, campus safety, bike repair, event programming, financial aid advocacy. It should not be a platform for national political grandstanding paid for with your mandatory fees. Refocusing on students is not anti-political — it is anti-waste.
06
Join

The math needs your name on it.

Sign up and we will keep you updated on the audit, the investment proposal, and the vote. No spam. Just data.