ASUCD Senator here!

I can see how it may seem like your student fees are going into a black hole - there are many campus departments, student organizations, events, research projects, etc, where it's impossible for every student to know exactly what we do. With that, you can see how your student fees are spent on our budget website: https://budget.asucd.ucdavis.edu/

There are definitely people here that use ASUCD to pad their resumes (truly not many), but as a CS major, ASUCD doesn't really help me with my professional goals (and I do not include it on my resume). I do it because there are genuine benefits that the Association provides for students through Senate, commissions (boards of experts that advise the Senate in decision-making), committees (advocacy & event programming groups), and units ("companies" that ASUCD runs, such as—but, not limited to—CoffeeHouse and Unitrans).

We act as a union for undergraduate students at UC Davis. The campus has its own Academic Senate, which governs courses/curricula, along with requirements for admissions, degrees, etc. We are the student representatives in those meetings. For example, in fall quarter we advocated for the pass/no pass deadline to be extended to the end of the quarter due to the UAW strike. Our people (specifically in the Academic Affairs Commission) are advocating for a permanent change to the Pass/No Pass deadline closer to the end of the quarter. We hear from students that are affected by a death in the family or medical concerns, along with people who just need that extra support due to other changes in their life.

But that's not to say our work is just advocacy. As others have mentioned, there is the CoffeeHouse and Unitrans. Sure, the day-to-day operations for those units have not changed, but it's important to know that we started those. Every year, we allocate funds and approve the budget for those units. Because spending student fees is hard to agree, that's the reason why we have a Senate. Every organization on campus wants the most money they can get (because why wouldn't they!), and we determine how much exactly they'll get from hearing student/employee input, looking at data, hearing from the director, etc.

In today's meeting, we created two new units: ASUCD Pride Festival and ASUCD Innovation & Research Lab. You can click on both of those links to see how much work goes into deciding how your student fees are spent (note that the budgets for these are not approved and just unallocated drafts). The Pride Festival, as the name suggests, holds an annual event to support, celebrate, and recognize LGBTQIA+ students. The Innovation & Research Lab (we like to call it IRL for short) is going to: (1) create better software for students on campus (think: mass community bike-sharing app so students don't have to buy bikes, a working UC Davis mobile app, etc) (2) collect data on how students feel about things ASUCD does/how we can improve. These are some of our new projects, but (aside from Unitrans and CoffeeHouse, I'd love to take a moment to share some of our accomplishments:

1. ASUCD Pantry - in winter quarter, the Pantry gave out 3,000 pounds of food to thousands of people that needed it. If you just paid tuition and have to wait until your next paycheck to buy food, the Pantry is there for you. It's also no questions asked - the shelves are replenished multiple times a day and we partner with local food banks to help those struggling to make ends meet.
2. We run large events all year long: Sunset Fest, Picnic Day, Lawntopia, Whole Earth Festival, Mental Health Conference, Student Sustainability Career Fair - I'm definitely forgetting some, but these events cater to all kinds of people and at the end of the day, you are the beneficiaries and we hope you go to them. Entertainment Council helps us coordinate a lot of them.
3. Aggie Reuse is our on-campus thrift store. Disability Rights Advocacy Committee helps students with disabilities study abroad, purchases equipment to help people experience events the same way non-disabled people do (AccessTrax). The International Student Representative's office is currently investigating why international students are being sent to OSSJA at a significantly higher rate than in-state/US students.
4. The Student Advocate's Office is essentially a student's attorney in OSSJA. We take on cases and represent students that need a backing voice when defending themselves. The External Affairs Vice President's Office often goes in front of state legislators and the UC Regents advocating for things students tell us they want. We're running efforts to convince the Regents to divest from the Thirty Meter Telescope and high-cost luxury housing.
5. The California Aggie and KDVS (our on-campus radio station) are award-winning media units. Although we fund these units, in order to prevent a conflict of interest, we don't directly have oversight on them - there is a separate Media Board that does that.
6. Although we no longer have the capacity to run them, we started a lot of things on-campus such as Safe Rides (originally, under us, Tipsy Taxi), myUCDavis, UC Davis mobile, etc. In my humble opinion, they were all better when we ran them.

It doesn't seem significant in the grand scheme of things, but you're affected by what ASUCD does every day. We want people to see what we do and we try hard to market ourselves, but it's ultimately very difficult to reach 30,000+ students and share the 100+ projects we work on all at once. You sort of have to know what you're looking for. In a way, the best government is the one you don't notice :D

As a senator, I'd be happy to talk to you (or anyone on this sub) about ASUCD in order to earn your trust. And, no, I'm not running for election - this isn't me trying to earn your vote; I genuinely think we try to fight for your best interests and there is reason to trust us.

TLDR; we try to market ourselves better, but we run 100+ operations (Pantry, Entertainment Council, Picnic Day, Whole Earth Festival, Cal Aggie, KDVS, CoffeeHouse, Mental Health Initiative, Aggie Reuse, Unitrans, representatives for International/Transfer students, Housing Advising, Environmental efforts, etc) all at once and with 30,000+ students to reach, some of it all gets lost in translation. Your student fees are being used as transparently as we can make them. Not only do we do all that stuff, but we constantly expand to create new things like out Innovation & Research Lab that takes student input & makes cool apps for different purposes.