While student advocacy certainly has a place on campus, those who present skewed facts and fallacies to students, such as the writers of The Advocate, need to realize that with advocacy comes fidelity to factual research.
The Advocate is a student magazine published by Live Action, a student organization that claims to educate the UCLA community on the “right to life of all human beings.”
On a campus that clearly has a large liberal community, it’s good for students to be exposed to and engaged by a variety of views on controversial topics. Abortion is certainly no exception.
Of course, having this dialogue comes with the expectation that all views are supported by logical and reliable evidence, which The Advocate lacks in its recent attack on UCLA administrators.
The second issue of the magazine, which was distributed on Tuesday, includes a feature discussing the 1999 suspension of prenatal services by the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, as well as an argument that the Ashe Center still does not provide suitable prenatal care at all.
The writer argues that administrators continue to portray pregnancy care resources in a “new way,” stifling any discussion on reinstating prenatal services.
This analysis cites a letter sent to Feminists for Life from JoAnn Dawson, interim director of the Ashe Center. In the letter, Dawson states that administrators had “crafted a response (to the January publication of The Advocate) through the Daily Bruin.”
The Advocate assumes this “response” to be a Daily Bruin story about UCLA’s student prenatal and child care services, published Feb. 5. The writer insinuates that administrators influenced the editorial decision by the Bruin to publish the story.
It goes on to state that resources offered to faculty, such as child care, should be extended to students.
If there were some way to be further from the truth, this Editorial Board would be surprised.
The most important point to address is the factual inaccuracy that the Ashe Center has no recourse toward providing students with prenatal care.
The Feb. 5 story referred to by The Advocate states that, though the Ashe Center itself does not provide services, it works with the UCLA Medical Center and other surrounding hospitals in order to provide suitable prenatal attention to students.
Furthermore, the letter from Dawson does not refer to the Feb. 5 story in question, but to a Viewpoint submission published in the Daily Bruin on Feb. 2, co-written by Dawson herself and Elizabeth Gong-Guy, director of Student Psychological Services.
Finally, the statement that child care is not offered to students is inaccurate. UCLA provides the Infant Development Program and the Early Care and Education Program to students and faculty alike.
If The Advocate looks to take issue with the quality of these available resources, its writers should be more keen on critiquing the system’s shortcomings. Espousing completely untrue statements about the Ashe Center’s lack of concern and the alleged ambivalence of UCLA administrators completely undermines the arguments put forth by The Advocate.
Students should be wary of accepting the views put forth by The Advocate until its writers start to take the facts seriously.