USAC Officer Evaluation: Kimberly Bonifacio, Internal Vice President
By Editorial Board
May 2, 2020 9:23 p.m.
Kimberly Bonifacio started the job of internal vice president with a lot of ideas. She’s leaving the job with a somewhat finished to-do list and the same vague understanding of her role on council as when she started.
She ran on the platforms of creating a student organization advocacy group, providing those organizations with training, updating the USAC website, expanding the Campus Safety Alliance and reestablishing Campus Safety Awareness Week.
If some of those goals sound vague, it’s because they are. Promoting an unspecified advocacy group and providing training to student organizations didn’t do her any favors in terms of completing her platforms. That’s not to say they didn’t happen at all – the Student Advocacy Partnership Committee exists according to Bonifacio, but is nowhere to be found online and has trained only 22 out of the 225 student organizations it intended to serve.
To be fair, there’s a striking correlation between the clarity and completion of Bonifacio’s platforms. She achieved the straightforward goal of updating the USAC website. She ensured the Campus Safety Alliance was meeting with administrators four times per quarter, as opposed to the one time per quarter required by USAC bylaws. And although Campus Safety Awareness Week could not happen during Week 3 of spring quarter, she has at least donated the extra cash to the USAC COVID-19 Relief Fund.
At base, her work as a liaison between USAC and student organizations was fairly successful.
Her work on council was a different story.
This board had concerns about Bonifacio’s ability to navigate and enforce bylaws from the day we endorsed her. Unfortunately, she proved us right.
To be fair, she’s self aware. She said herself that she could have done better at looking over the bylaws and enforcing them on council.
And while the statement is true, it doesn’t make her neglecting her bylaw duties any better.
Outside of bylaws and advocacy, Bonifacio did well in terms of keeping students in the loop with consistent officer reports and meeting notes from her conversations with Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck.
More importantly, she’s honest about her shortcomings, and she hopes her predecessor leaves the officer better than they found it.
And at the end of the day, that’s more than we can say for a lot of USAC officers.
