The 2025-26 Associated Students External Vice President for Statewide Affairs Leiya Kadah has prepared for the academic year by learning the intricacies of her position, hiring her core staff and preparing campaigns in order to advocate for marginalized communities.
Kadah spent her summer familiarizing herself with her position and attending UCSA’s organizing summit. Sherine John / Daily Nexus
The External Vice President for Statewide Affairs (EVPSA) represents and advocates for UC Santa Barbara Associated Students (A.S.) at a statewide level, including the federal and state governments, the University of California (UC) Board of Regents and the UC Student Association (UCSA).
Kadah, a fifth-year psychological & brain sciences major, has spent her summer hiring her full staff, which still has a few vacant positions. She has also familiarized herself with her position by attending UCSA’s Organizing Summit in August, where A.S. students across the UC system voted on campaigns they want to focus on throughout the year.
Given the recent funding cuts from the Trump administration, UCSA is initiating its “Fund the UC” campaign, which plans to combat the $500 million cuts to grants at UC Los Angeles and other campuses. The campaign also plans to protect support systems for marginalized communities at each campus. Kadah specified that these systems may be first to be cut.
Kadah also discussed the “Racial Justice Now” campaign, which aims to maintain racial equality for students on campus and ensure that all marginalized students have their needs met and are respected by the UC Office of the President and the UC Regents. Considering last year the State legislature passed a bill to consider more admissions for students who are descendants of enslaved people, this campaign is meant to combat the Trump administration’s cut of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
UCSA has also established the “UCweVote” campaign, which is meant to increase the legislative power of the UC system by organizing non-partisan student voter registration and education. This campaign focuses on growing voter registration for presidential elections, along with midterm and local elections.
“[It’s] just getting more civic engagement within students, trying to get them to pay more attention. We had our big national election last year, but even just paying attention to local politics, things that often affect our communities a bit more intimately than they would on the national level,” Kadah said.
Another campaign by UCSA is the “ACQUIRE” campaign, which plans to focus on improving basic needs for students, such as more accessible transportation and textbooks, advocating for housing needs and providing resources for students suffering from violence or hate crimes.
Kadah spoke on the importance of students having their basic needs fulfilled in order to succeed in their academics.
“I think [basic needs are] unfortunately something that we have to focus on every year, as many of these students are not getting their basic needs met. And also how that hinders their opportunities and experience as students to perform to their best ability,” Kadah said.
The last campaign UCSA will be bringing to action this year is the Students Enacting Environmental Defense campaign. This initiative will pursue environmental justice initiatives across the UC campuses through community organization, education and legislative advocacy. According to Kadah, this initiative mainly focuses on advocating for native and Indigenous communities, particularly respecting their sacred land, which the UC system utilizes.
Kadah is entering the EVPSA position during a transitional period for UCSB and the UC system as a whole. With James B. Milliken stepping up as the new UC president and Dennis Assanis as the new UCSB chancellor, Kadah spoke on the importance of building a strong relationship with the incoming UCSB administration.
“There’s certain things where we haven’t seen UC administration step in as much, so I do expect to take on a bit more of the advocacy role in ways that the UC won’t,” Kadah said.
She mentioned she is hopeful Assanis will be more open to divestment campaigns, since according to Kadah, “every UC [campus] has expressed that they would be interested.”
“Even just speaking on a more UC-wide level, now, every single UC within their student government has passed a resolution saying they would like to divest from BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] companies,” Kadah said. “And I think when you even go and see how so many of the basic needs of students aren’t met, it’s kind of ridiculous that we work towards funding things like war internationally, rather than going and focusing on the students who make it possible for these fundings to happen.”
Since the EVPSA position operates at a statewide level, Kadah is tasked with not only advocating for the needs of UCSB students, but also working to meet those needs at the statewide level. Kadah plans to hire a coordinator who would work within UCSA to specifically represent UCSB, and elaborated on UCSB-specific issues that may be affecting students at other campuses, such as the housing crisis and food insecurity.
In 2022, 43% of undergraduate students within the UC system face food insecurity.
“With all the resources that we have, luckily we have things like the Food Bank that do assist with [food insecurity]. But it is just shameful on the University that many students say that at least once a week they go hungry,” Kadah said.
She continued by emphasizing how disabled students may not have the same access to basic needs as an able-bodied student, making them potentially more vulnerable.
“I think unfortunately on our campus, from what I’ve seen and heard from previous student workers and leaders, is that we do face a lot of these accessibility issues,” Kadah said. “So that is something I would like to focus on more specifically within UCSB, is just advocating for those students who have often come and spoke about how our ramps are not accessible enough, concerns about if an emergency were to happen, how does one evacuate from the third floor if there’s no elevators present or working.”
Kadah plans on continuing to create the Disability Cultural Center, which was initiated by the prior EVPSA, Monica Mekhlouf, and would be built on the third floor of the University Center. However, she mentioned this would be a lengthy project and likely wouldn’t be finished within her term.
Earlier this month, Kadah attended the Student Labor Organizing Conference hosted by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 3299, which aimed to connect different advocacy groups across the state. Kadah said this event helped her gain insight into developing strategies to help marginalized groups on campus.
Given the overlap between the groups, Kadah said she is interested in connecting labor advocacy with student advocacy.
“I think that developing a very much more working relationship with unions like AFSCME and [United Auto Workers] on our campus … would not only be beneficial to the laborers on our campus, but students, so that we can work together to advocate for ourselves,” Kadah said.
Throughout her term, Kadah’s major priority is to protect marginalized communities that are affected by the current administration by ensuring crucial services won’t be cut.
“All these different cultural backgrounds that are being impacted by this new administration and the threats that are being made, I [want to be] able to protect them to the best of my ability and put services and programs into place where they did feel like they were being heard and their needs were being met,” Kadah concluded.
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the Oct. 2, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
