We have an advocacy agenda, but what does that actually mean?
Every year, we at UCGPC send out a survey to graduate professional students with one question:
What matters most to you?
It’s a relatively simple question in theory, but it actually can have some pretty complex answers. We’re asking in the context of graduate and professional school within the UC, sure, but things outside of that can have a bearing on what someone’s answer might be.
For example, childcare is just one of the many concerns that graduate and professional students have especially in the wake of UCLA’s closure of childcare centers, and we as an advocacy organization have a responsibility to include it in our advocacy efforts especially because 11% or graduate and professional students are parents. So, when graduate and professional students tell us they’re concerned about childcare, we add it to what’s called the Advocacy Agenda. But what exactly does that mean?
UCGPC’s advocacy agenda, in the simplest terms, is a list of priorities we have for the academic year that guides the work we do. As an advocacy organization, our job is to write support and opposition letters, speak to lawmakers, keep up to date on court cases and proposed laws, and stay in the loop about all things University of California.
We do those things in a general way – no matter what they’re talking about, we will always have people at the Regents meetings to stay up to date and comment. However, items and issues on our advocacy agenda are things we can point to that we know graduate and professional students really care about. The advocacy agenda also informs our committee formation and the way we structure advocacy days. Coming back to the childcare issue, if we know that a Representative from Sacramento is co-authoring childcare legislation, we can schedule meetings for students to meet with that Representative and express support. Even more meaningfully, students can share their personal experiences – which, as this study and others show, is often the most important piece of gathering support.
Our advocacy agenda isn’t the end-all-be-all of what we prioritize as an organization and in our work. But, it does give us an important roadmap and ensures that we stay true to the people we’re serving. Each graduate and professional student probably has a different reason for why a given issue is most important to them – and those reasons are the “why” behind the work we do at UCGPC. This means that if students care about transit, healthcare, or anything else that influences their lives during their time at UC, we do too. Then, we show that care by putting it on the agenda and getting to work.
To learn more about what’s on our Advocacy Agenda and why, take a look at our AY 2026-2027 Advocacy Priorities.