State official pushes issues

By Ryan May
Daily Forty-Niner

Assemblywoman Sally Havice, spoke at Cal State Long Beach Friday, addressing affirmative action, financial aid and labor issues at a meeting sponsored by the California State Employees Association.

As guest speaker for the CSEA Local 1,000 union meeting, Havice, democrat for the 56th assembly, briefly spoke on her background as a public servant after receiving recognition and applause for her strong stance on labor issues.

Recruiting help for her re-election campaign in November, Havice also briefly addressed the issue of equal pay for equal work.

"I'm a democrat and democrats have people," Havice said. "Maybe we don't have money but we have people."

A petition against the ban on affirmative action, an issue passed in 1996 as Proposition 209, was circulating at the meeting. The ban prohibits public universities and other state sanctioned organizations from discriminating against or giving preferential treatment to people based upon their gender or ethnicity.

Following her appearance, Havice said that although she felt the ban was unfortunate, as a public servant she was sworn to uphold it.

"I think it's sad that we lost that," Havice said. "But that's what the voters of California wanted."

Further, Havice pointed to the Cal Grant Program as a means of increasing the diversity of college campuses. Within this program, students receive scholarships based upon their financial situation after meeting a minimal GPA of 2.0.

"It's wonderful to support academic achievement," Havice said. "At the same time, we need to support and give a break to those students from lower income levels."

A former student and employee of Cal State Long Beach, Havice spent several years in the early '70s working on campus as a department secretary in international student affairs.

In the years that followed, Havice took notice of the preferential treatment given to men in the form of job title and salary, with women referred to as secretary while performing the duties of an administrator.

"It's easier to create that inequity in clerical and grounds keepers because you can't quantify anything in that work," Havice said, referring to the way professors can be evaluated based on their performance.

Running for her third term in the assembly, Havice remains focused on what she called "the working people."

"One thing politics does is it brings issues to the surface," Havice said. "Shine the light, and that holds their feet to the fire."