Defend Affirmative Action Party/Fighting for Immigrant Rights and Equality

Independent candidates will dominate the ASUC Senate in the next academic year, as announced during the tabulation ceremony Friday. 38 candidates ran for ASUC Senate, including 10 candidates from Student Action, which won a majority of seats last year. Four candidates ran for transfer student representative, a new office in the ASUC.

Throughout the ASUC election season, candidates have run their campaigns with personal contributions, donations or without any funding.

For the upcoming ASUC election cycle, four official parties are running candidates: Defend Affirmative Action Party/Fighting for Immigrant Rights and Equality, or DAAP/FIRE, Student Action, People’s Party and REBUILD.

Defend Affirmative Action Party/Fighting for Immigrant Rights and Equality, or DAAP/FIRE, released its slate candidates running for ASUC office Tuesday. DAAP/FIRE is a pro-immigration rights and pro-sanctuary city student coalition.

About 200 students attended Wednesday night’s regular ASUC meeting to both voice their support for and condemnation of the Judicial Council’s recent controversial ruling that resulted in the retroactive disqualification of all Student Action candidates in the 2019 ASUC elections.

The ASUC presidency is largely symbolic — to many administrators, the president embodies the needs and desires of the student body. A strong president listens to and makes student voices heard in conversations that matter. A strong president doesn’t back down on the issues that are impacting students most. And this year, that president is CalSERVE’s Teddy Lake.

The ASUC Elections Council denied campus junior Jasmine Sheena’s independent senate candidacy for the 2019 ASUC elections, announced the withdrawal of two candidates and enacted a temporary rule regarding filing fee payments at its candidate approval meeting Monday morning.

The newly named Defend Affirmative Action Party/Fighting for Immigrant Rights and Equality, or DAAP/FIRE, announced campus sophomore Stephanie Gutierrez as its candidate for president in the 2019 ASUC elections Saturday.