Barbara Ortutay Send Ortutay comments at
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Rich, white yuppie suburbs have an affinity for wanting to
remove unwanted elements from their town ““ if only as far as
the next ““ lest their pretty little bubble be burst.
Palo Alto, the cradle of Silicon Valley, is a perfect example.
The city (nearly) effectively outlawed homeless people by making
sitting on sidewalks illegal. Now they just walk around more. I
mean, what are you gonna do, stop existing?
But Westwood isn’t exactly a rich, white, yuppie suburb,
and it won’t become one no matter how hard it tries. The
majority of its residents are students, with student needs and
student lifestyles, which don’t necessarily fit in with some
of the more vocal community members. Unfortunately for them,
Westwood will remain a student-dominated neighborhood as long as
UCLA is around, and the rest of its residents will just have to
live with that or move.
Though the North Village Improvement Committee and its managing
director Shelley Taylor may have won a battle in getting 522
Landfair’s Sober Living House shut down, they are losing the
war.
In its crusade to revert Westwood back to the 1950s, which has
included closing down a popular nightclub and helping to bring
about an ordinance that makes opening a dance club in Westwood
almost impossible, the NVIC forgot a crucial detail. Westwood is
not a village. It is part of a sprawling metropolis called Los
Angeles, and as in any community, there are dirty and clean parts,
wanted and unwanted elements, noisy and quiet neighbors. The
picturesque small town the NVIC seeks may have existed 50 years ago
but today is a mere pipe dream.
Even Taylor acknowledges that the majority of the residents here
are students. Yet she seems to only thinly veil her view that
students are a problem in Westwood. Her committee’s Web site
calls Westwood’s residential area a “diverse community
of families, professionals and academics.” While
“academic” surely describes some students some of the
time, perhaps a more fitting way to describe “North
Village,” as she calls it, would be something like “a
residential area consisting mainly of UCLA students, with some
families and professionals.” Academics, if they can help it,
try to stay away from Westwood ““ they see enough students
during the day.
Don’t get me wrong ““ I like Westwood. I like having
to wait two months for my landlord to fix our heater, having to
threaten a lawsuit if I want some of my deposit back when I move
out, paying exorbitant amounts of money for a tiny little apartment
and feeling lucky I even found one. I like having prepubescent boys
skateboard next to my building on Sunday mornings (maybe they are
part of the “families” who live in Westwood?). And
yeah, I like to walk around during finals week feeling like
I’m in a war zone.
The real problems in Westwood are not a few loud parties, trash
or graffiti, and not even a burning couch once a year. The real
problem is unrealistic apartment prices and the fact that having a
responsible landlord who isn’t trying to screw you over is
the exception, not the rule. Why would students want to care about
their neighborhood if their neighborhood doesn’t care about
them?
But perhaps, after all, even students can learn something from
Shelley Taylor. We can learn that if you organize a few fed up
people and bitch and moan for a while, things do get done. What are
you waiting for?