Michelle Singer
Click Here for more articles by Michelle Singer
UCLA is a ranch.
It is nothing more than a large commercialized estate that pulls
together well-bred children from high schools all over California
(and elsewhere) and places them in an environment that only
facilitates more similarity and banality. Students who attend this
university have been bred to perform, bred throughout their high
school careers to measure up to certain standards and attain
certain grades and numbers on meaningless tests.
When they actually arrive at this wonderful university, students
seem to expect nothing more from their college careers than they
did out of their high school ones. Their goals remain in the
superficial realm of grades and tests ““ they do not focus on
learning for the sake of being well-rounded knowledgeable people,
but for the sake of making the grade.
This is partially because UCLA is structured in such a way that
its main goal is to usher its students through their
“education” as quickly as possible in order to accept
more students and make more money.
Take, for example, the new minimum progress requirement, which
forces students to complete at least 27 units every two quarters.
This places constraints on peoples’ lives and molds them into
workhorses (or cattle as the situation may be), racing through
their time here, unable to pursue outside individual interests or
hold jobs because they must devote so much time to studying. It is
about the ends and not the means; it is about getting into
graduate, law or medical school instead of being about experiencing
all college has to offer.
As is plainly visible by this policy and others like it, UCLA is
a research-first, education-second university. You will be more
readily identified by your student identification number than your
name, professors are often as apathetic as students, and
administrators are more concerned with sniffing out contributions
than attending to students’ quality of life.
How can individuality, something UCLA prides itself on, thrive
in such an environment? Of course there are people who are
recognized more than others (such as recent Undergraduate Student
Association Council members), but most of those people are singled
out because they are leaders of the herd, not because they are true
individuals.
In the face of such oppression, students eventually break down
and conform to the cattle persona. But in embracing this image,
students’ minds are slaughtered because they are not in the
mindset to break free. They don’t even realize they’re
just following the herd because their minds become limp from disuse
and misuse.
There is hope yet. UCLA can change, and the student body can
change too. All individuality has not been lost ““ just the
observable type whose presence is badly needed if others are to
understand it is acceptable, even wonderful, to walk their own path
in life. It is okay to not drink that last beer despite
“friends'” provocations; it is all right not to
go to medical school despite parental insistence to the contrary;
it is okay to explore options and devote time to a job that might
have a lot of real-life application. College is not about parties,
clothes and getting A’s ““ it is about finding yourself
in whatever way you see fit. And UCLA’s herd mentality should
not be allowed to change that.