This summer, 2025-26 Associated Students Internal Vice President Enri Lala has been shaping the Senate into a project-focused institution as well as completing foundational work for his long-term goals and reforms. 

Lala spent his summer negotiating with University administration and coordinating the logistics of a new planned bike path. Sherine John / Daily Nexus

As the Internal Vice President (IVP), Lala, a fourth-year history and global studies double major, has the responsibility of overseeing the Associated Students (A.S.) 76th Senate and managing its weekly meetings. With this, Lala has created a project tracker that will house all current Senate projects to push for productivity and efficiency within the Senate. 

Lala is in ongoing negotiations with University administration, coordinating the logistics and funding for the planned bike path between the library and the Interactive Learning Pavilion, which he first pushed for in a resolution as a senator for the 75th Senate. While the path will not come into fruition during his term, Lala aims to have the timeline and funding structure completed by the end of the 2025-26 school term. 

Many student fees are controlled by the Student Fee Advisory Commission, a campus entity that is chaired by undergraduate students. Another one of the IVP’s primary responsibilities is to manage the A.S. budget, including student fees. Lala has appointed fourth-year economics major Tyler Ho to be the A.S. representative on the commission, a non-voting role. 

Lala is pushing for that role to become a voting position because pass-through fees, which students vote on through A.S. elections, ultimately go to campus departments. 

“It makes zero sense that we would have a non-voting role in that commission. It’s a little offensive that that has been the case for so many years,” Lala said.

As for lock-in fees, which are completely A.S. managed, Lala highlighted the fact that in the last 15 years, there have not been any con statements on any lock-in fee initiatives that students have voted on in A.S. elections. Lala wants to make sure the student body is fully informed about what they are voting for and where their money is going. 

“It’s a simple question of, ‘Are our students being informed about where their fees are going?’ And that’s going to be a huge push. We’re looking at that very closely and ways of making that information much more readily available to students come spring election time,” Lala said.

Many of the major projects Lala has planned for the school year expand on his previous resolutions and projects as a senator. Student housing security has long been a top-priority issue for Lala, and he is committed to continuing conversations and putting pressure on the administration for activity and transparency for the San Benito and Ocean Road housing projects. 

Additionally, Lala plans to continue his work on the Michael Ma project, which would bring Bloomberg Terminals — professional business and economics data tools — to campus by the end of the school year. This bill was originally introduced by Lala as a senator to honor a close friend, Michael Ma, an economics student who passed away in a car accident. 

One of the 76th Senate’s goals is to build a stronger relationship between the Senate and Boards, Committees and Units (BCUs). In order to strengthen that relationship, he wants to “make their jobs easier and make sure they get paid for the work they do.” One step Lala is taking to honor this is digitizing the honoraria process so that BCU chairs will no longer have to wait months to pick up a physical check for their previous quarter of work. 

In its last election, A.S. saw its lowest voter turnout in at least a decade as it struggled with student engagement. Lala doesn’t believe there is just “one button” they can press to increase voter turnout. He believes that they have to prove themselves to the student body through positive material change on campus.

“So half of the equation in my mind is if we do a better job, if we make ourselves present to students they will be like, ‘Okay well, this is maybe something worth supporting, something worth investing my time in,’” Lala said. 

Lala believes that increased transparency is vital to student engagement. He wants to engage in tabling and social media to show students who their executives are and what they are working on. 

“I really believe in the power of just standing in front of a camera and telling people what it is that you’re doing, as opposed to just expecting them to kind of figure it out themselves or have to go down a rabbit hole to find out,” Lala said. 

As the University of California system is struggling with federal funding cuts from the Trump administration, Lala believes this is an opportunity to “step up and prove [A.S.] to be trustworthy this year by providing those services that, for lack of a better term, the adults are no longer willing to provide.”

Due to these cuts, the UCSB library announced decreased hours of operation which Lala and several other members of A.S. worked to respond to. Lala emphasized that he might not have the leverage to directly fight federal funding cuts, but he can work with other student leaders to organize around campus-specific issues to provide students with necessary resources. A.S. executives and senators are working to see if they can redirect funds to help supplement library funds. 

“It started at the federal level, and it trickles down really slowly, but eventually it hits you very clearly,” Lala said. “The impacts of it are just immediate. And I don’t need to explain this, but it will hit the most vulnerable students when they need it most, at the most vulnerable time of day.” 

From Lala’s previous experiences within A.S. as a communications director in an executive office and as a senator, he has seen how the responsibilities of the IVP can burn out students in the position. This motivated him to fully staff his office over the summer. Lala credits his team for the productivity he has had over the summer, and hopes to continue into the school year. 

“I just saw how executive positions, but especially the role I’m currently in, just burn people through … and I think a part of that was that there was no coherent team built around them that could help set direction and who felt empowered to take on their own projects,” Lala said. “And I think that’s what I’ve really tried to invest a lot on these last few months, is people who are both capable and motivated to do that job. And I think that will be the key determinant in making this year successful.”

A version of this article appeared on p. 5 of the Oct. 2, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.