Bargaining for Your Buck, and Radical Solidarity

Interview with UVA’s First Trans Student Government President, Abel Liu

Abel Liu is the current student government president of the University of Virginia (UVA), and is the first Chinese American and transgender man to hold this position. He is originally from San Francisco, California, and is the oldest of five siblings. Recently, he’s been named UVA’s newest Truman Scholar—a premier graduate fellowship for those pursuing a career as a public service leader. 

Abel joins us to give some insight into his experience governing as the student council president (an experience that he likes to refer to as lobbying, or bargaining). He leaves us with powerful thoughts on how to move towards tangible change in American politics.

Graphic: Claire Kim, Social Media Strategist

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Jalen Jones:

So you've been making lots of historical firsts! I mean, it's been all over the news that you've been elected as the first openly transgender student government president, as well as UVA’s first Chinese American president, and so I was just wondering—did the need for better representation serve as a motivating factor for your campaign? 

Abel Liu:

I'm the first student government president out of university who was openly transgender at the time of their election. There was a student government president at the Virginia Commonwealth University, who is transgender, but they came out after their election. There was another student government president at American University in the early 2010s who came out as transgender at the end of her term. So there have definitely been others, but nobody has had to run in an election as a transgender candidate before. I just found that to be interesting because my gender identity became an issue in the race in ways I didn't expect for it to.

I think that’s significant because of the impact it has in the election and my experience as a candidate. I definitely have had a lot of time to think about being the first Chinese American speaker and President for UVA and the first openly transgender student government president at UVA… I think what’s lost on a lot of people is that being the first isn't necessarily a triumphant thing in the moment. It’s something that catches up to you; I didn't really think much about my gender identity or racial identity as integral to my candidacy, that is until it became an issue externally. 

So I guess that is all to say, being the first isn’t easy, but I also, in my experience, didn't feel like I was aware that I was the first until I was made aware.

Jones:

Transgender and Asian American are typically identities that usually don't get the spotlight very often, especially in leadership positions like yours. How do you think like we as college students can increase the support for these voices moving forward?

Liu:

I think that the most important thing in our collective effort to empower marginalized voices, is to hand them the mic. On college campuses, it's important to elect Asian American and transgender candidates to positions of power because marginalized communities know how to advocate for themselves better than anyone else. And that's true at any level.

I also think that fully enfranchising transgender and Asian populations at college campuses goes beyond representation and formal student leadership positions. Student governments should also make sure that they are increasing funding for less institutionalized organizations around campuses.

To fully empower marginalized populations, we need to make sure that we're fully enfranchising those smaller social units that attract and keep people at universities.

Jones:

Now I'm wondering how different you think this process will work in terms of our local and federal governments.

Liu:

I would personally love for us to begin to think about American foreign policy as a positive sum game. I don't endorse universal American hegemony, and as long as that is our foreign policy paradigm, then we will continue to see anti-Asian sentiments and rhetoric from politicians that will continue to harm Asian American communities drastically.

For the transgender community, I'm not sure that there's any one place that matters as much as the Supreme Court. So, within the next few years, the proliferation of anti-transgender legislation policy at the state level will probably be challenged, and ultimately reach the Supreme Court.

It will be up to the Supreme Court to preserve and protect the medical autonomy and privacy of transgender minors and their families. Those rights are under attack, and what's lost on people is this that is a life and death issue.

I don't have unique thoughts about what local state governments can do for Asian Americans people besides recognizing that even though Asian Americans don't experience, for example, anti-Black racism, they still are marginalized Americans and citizens. They have their own unique experiences with racism, violence, etc., and so offering proactive support to Asian American communities does start at a state and local level—and the Asian American community is not a monolith, so it will probably be hard to tackle that issue at the federal level. 

Jones:

So clearly, as the student government president, you must have a lot of faith in the power that student governments have in enacting real change—But this faith isn't too common on most college campuses. I mean just speaking on behalf of my own school’s election turnout, it always comes out as less than half of the student body actually participating.

What helps you maintain your beliefs that such student politics will in fact make tangible differences?

Liu:

Even as students at the University of Virginia, we're disillusioned by our student government—at least prior to the most recent election, and for as long as I've been a student at the University.

The reason why is that students want the Student Council to take on issues that are tangible, and actually impact the institution and student life. But student governments don't have direct jurisdiction over any of those issues. At best, they're able to control funding for student clubs. 

Everything else is a question of lobbying and negotiating with the university administration. 

The framework that I use to explain the powers in government is: “we are not governing we are bargaining.” We need to be thinking in terms of our strength in our numbers. We should use that as leverage in negotiating and lobbying campaigns against our institutions. To do that, not only do student governments have to become effective lobbyists, but I think that you're also going to see the most effective student governments are ones that are able to align themselves with organizers and community activists at the university. 

I've employed this framework of bargaining and governing, as well as building leverage and systems of shared student power over the last year. The results have been very promising. My administration has worked with committee organizers in our YDSA (Young Democratic Socialists of America). We secured a tuition freeze for the 2021 to 2022 academic year, we were able to make sure that the university distributed block grants from our Higher Education Relief Fund funding so essentially providing students with stimulus checks… that's just a sample of some of the things that have gone well, or that are actively going well. 

Because of these strategies, student governments will continue to wake up and realize that they are not quasi governments, they’re collective bargaining agencies. As soon as people adopt that framework and are committed to organizing systems of shared power, student governments can become extremely effective.

Jones:

Wow. I'm thoroughly convinced. My student government could take a page or two from yours, if not the entire book haha.

Now unlike the voter rates on college campuses, the 2020 presidential election saw record breaking turnouts—especially from minority citizens. So now that the country has reached a post Trump era, how do you think Asian Americans and Americans in general can champion values of equity and empowerment in a way that creates real, tangible change?

Liu:

Interestingly enough, I think that similar principles from making student governments effective probably apply to national politics. Obviously the federal government and state governments do have direct jurisdiction over issues that we would like to see fixed. As I mentioned earlier, the ability for marginalized populations to advocate for themselves is huge—and that's something we should be prioritizing.

Now more than ever, I think it's also very important for us to recognize the intersectionality of a lot of these issues so that anti-immigrant sentiments anti-undocumented sentiments don't just affect Latinx populations that are immigrating from our southern border, but that it also includes and should center Asian Americans who live in the United States. The politics of representation are complicated, but intersectionality is one beginning of a solution to making that actually effective. 

The principles from Student Government bargaining should also carry over. People need to be organizing and spending the way people spend their privilege by contributing to mutual aid efforts. Everybody, regardless of class, race, gender, ethnicity, etc. needs to join together in solidarity against a common enemy of white supremacy. Ultimately that’s the goal—I'd say radical solidarity in organizing and in approaching these issues will be critical if we're ever going to create change on the issues that I think the Trump era highlighted.

These systems have always existed, and have in fact been worse in the past than they were from 2016 to 2020. I just think that there was a cognitive shift for a lot of people in terms of the way we want to think about and acknowledge these issues.

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