It turned out that last Thursday's "town hall meeting" at City College, which I attended as a new student and posted about here, was mainly about the student trustee, along with an administrator and a faculty advisor who helped him answer questions at the event, encouraging people to get involved with student government.
Apparently, each of CCSF's six main campuses (Mission, Evans, Chinatown, John Adams, Civic Center, and the big campus on Ocean Avenue) is authorized and budgeted to have its own elected student council, but not all of them do. Mission Campus is one of those that do not currently have anyone serving in these positions. The nascent 4-person body (president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer) reportedly has $5000 in the bank waiting for it however, and a $3000 to $4000 annual budget. We were also informed that the president and VP have sometimes received personal stipends of $500 to $1000 for their one-year terms, and that potentially all four officers could receive stipends. All this money supposedly comes from optional $5 student activity fees charged to those students who pay tuition, although now that only students from out of state are charged tuition I'm a little unsure about that.
In any case, the opportunity to have a voice in what is done with these funds and try to at least minimize any harm if not somehow reduce the burden the "free" college places on the community was tempting. Even just the chance to pass some decent resolutions about a few things. So I decided to throw in my hat for president. The odds don't seem bad, and unlike running for local public offices, there's no filing fee or signature-gathering requirement. Merely by running, I may be able to bring more attention to the privacy/data harvesting concerns I expressed in my previous message announcing last week's meeting. Candidates are allowed to submit a 200-word statement with their application, which I'm hoping will appear on student ballots. Here's what I submitted: