UCSA runs five permanent campaigns to address ongoing issues for students. Learn more about ACQUIRE (A Campaign for Quality in Resources and Education), Racial Justice Now, Fund The UC, UCweVOTE, and SEED (Students Enacting Environmental Defense).
2025-26 Campaign Goals
A Campaign For Quality In Resources And Education (ACQUIRE)
The ACQUIRE Campaign is grounded in the understanding that academic success depends on the availability of holistic resources and protections. Tuition is no longer the primary financial obstacle to earning a UC degree; today, the greatest burden lies in living expenses such as housing, food, textbooks, and transportation—which together account for over half of the total cost of attendance. In 2024–25, the average in-state UC tuition and fees were approximately $16,600, while non-tuition expenses often exceeded $24,000 annually, depending on housing status. For this reason, the ACQUIRE Campaign will focus on addressing the hidden costs of college—particularly textbook and transportation expenses—to make college affordability a reality, not just a tagline.
UCweVOTE
UCweVote is UCSA’s signature civic engagement and Get Out the Vote campaign. It works to dismantle barriers to voting and civic participation, empower students to make informed decisions at the ballot box, and emphasize the importance of active engagement in governance. That being said, while the UC claims to embrace shared governance, the mechanisms through which student input is currently solicited are inconsistent, inaccessible, and largely symbolic. Moreover, a single voting Student Regent is insufficient when compared to a governing body of 26 members who serve 12-year terms, while the Student Regent serves only one year. Accordingly, UCweVote’s 2025–26 campaign goal is to reform the UC’s shared governance structures by strengthening student voice, rights, and responsibilities across system-level decision-making bodies, and to establish new standards of consultation between students and UC institutions—with the long-term goal of securing a second voting Student Regent.
Fund the UC
Higher education institutions are under attack across the country, and UC students’ futures are being held hostage. Specifically, students are navigating proposals to increase tuition and reductions in return-to-aid, threats of research grant funding cancellations which impact experiential learning and research opportunities, and a holistic effort to eliminate diversity initiatives and civil rights, suppress civil liberties, and defund public education. In response, the 2025–26 Fund the UC Campaign—Preserving Research in My Education (PRIME)—focuses on building capacity through a federal advocacy-oriented coalition to combat these attacks. Its goal is to “prime” congressional champions to #SupportHigherEd and #SupportPublicEducation through safeguarding funding for resources, programs, and student services in advance of the 2026 election cycle.
Students Enacting Environmental Defense (SEED)
This campaign was founded for the purpose of pursuing environmental justice initiatives within and across the University of California’s campuses, affiliations, and surrounding communities through community organizing, coalition building, education, and legislative advocacy. It is through this lens that we call attention to the UC’s failure to comply meaningfully with CalNAGPRA—the California Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, created in 2001 to provide a state-level framework for the repatriation of Native American human remains and cultural items, complementing the federal NAGPRA established in 1990. This failure is deeply concerning given that, according to the state, “[UC] campuses still hold the remains of thousands of individuals, as well as hundreds of thousands of cultural items and potential cultural items,” with searches incomplete despite NAGPRA’s existence for more than 30 years and despite technical assistance provided by the California Native American Heritage Commission. Therefore, UCSA’s 2025-2026 SEED Campaign goal calls on the UC to prioritize the repatriation of Native American remains and cultural items, and to address longstanding compliance issues with both NAGPRA and CalNAGPRA.
Racial Justice Now (RJN)
Data from the UC Office of Institutional Research & Academic Planning show persistent wage disparities across gender and race among UC alumni. Ten years after graduation, women earn nearly $18,000 less than men, and African American and Latino alumni earn the lowest median salaries across groups. These inequities remain even when controlling for major, industry, and GPA, pointing to systemic barriers in the transition from college to the workforce. In response, the Racial Justice Now campaign—committed to uplifting the personhood and concerns of marginalized UC students through concrete policy change—calls for the development of a transitional career program for first-generation collegiate graduates to assist them in their matriculation from the academy into the workforce.