Students from DVC’s San Ramon campus have been taking a stronger role in the student government at the encouragement of the office of student services.

William Oye, dean of student life, stated that strong representation within ASDVC should be the short-term goal for SRC students, but he also indicated that a separate student association for the San Ramon campus may be a future goal.

Oye said the California Education Code states that it is legal for a separate campus to form its own student government.

In the meantime, Yvonne Canada, Senior Academic and Student Services Manager, is helping SRC students get involved in the Associated Students of DVC.

“My interest,” Canada said, “and what I’ve been working on for the past several semesters, is in getting some San Ramon students to serve on ASDVC so that their different needs and concerns and experience can also be part of the conversation.”

Currently there are six students from the San Ramon campus serving on ASDVC.

Some steps have been put in place to make it easier for San Ramon students to be involved, including setting up a webcam between the San Ramon campus and the Pleasant Hill campus during ASDVC meetings, and an ad hoc advisory group.

The advisory group brings San Ramon students together with their ASDVC representatives and lets them discuss the issues that they want those representatives to bring to the Associated Students.

“They’ll have a chance to look at the ASDVC agenda, and they can give their input into the topics on the ASDVC agenda,” Canada said. “They can also share their input with the representatives in terms of anything the college committees are addressing. It’s just a forum for them to speak their piece, and if they have an issue that they want to raise then they can raise it there as well.”

Ultimately, Canada argued that these efforts are meant to bring the two campuses closer together. “ASDVC represents all students at the college, regardless of location,” Canada said.

However, at the time of this writing, ASDVC President Katerina Schreck was unaware of the ad hoc committee.

“Eventually,” Oye said, “when the SRC population grows to a critical mass, they may want to have their own student association.”

“It’s not at this time,” Oye added, “but at some point, that may make more sense, especially if the SRC and the south county area restarts the growth that they were undergoing before the economic difficulties.”

Contact Scott Baba at [email protected]