Monique Ribeiro, a fourth-year Latin American studies student, said she can go days at UCLA without coming across a fellow black student on campus.
But during her first two years of college living on the Hill, it was even harder to come home to the dorms to face a primarily non-black community.
“It just gets exhausting, going all day seeing no one who looks like you,” Ribeiro said. “My freshman and sophomore year, I always wished they had a themed floor designed for black students.”
Now, come fall 2008, there will be one.
The UCLA Housing Administration will be revamping its themed housing options next academic year in order to create a vibrant educational and social living space for students who have unique interests on campus.
For the first time in UCLA history, Housing will offer residents the opportunity to live on ethnic studies floors based on the African and Latino diasporas, which will be open to anyone who shares a cultural interest in the black and Latino cultures. Most of the other UC campuses, including Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz, already offer culturally themed housing to residents.
The various themes will be introduced in a rolling process over the course of the next few years, most likely starting with four new themed floors for the 2007-2008 academic year. In addition to the two ethnic studies floors, these include a sustainability floor focused on conservation and environmental health and a floor dedicated to exploring health, science and medicine.
Though discussions for the new themed housing options are still in the proposal stage, a campus-wide committee made up of faculty, staff, students and representatives from Housing and the UCLA College decided to introduce new housing options based on several themed model concepts, including global studies, public policy, conservation and sustainability, ethnic studies, and gender neutrality.
The motivation for redesigning the themed housing options came from a lack of student interest in the current themed housing options offered on the Hill, which currently ranges from academic enhancement to community service to the intercultural experience, according to the UCLA Web site.
“We’ve had (themed housing) for several years now, but we haven’t been getting a good response. The options weren’t broad enough or detailed enough,” said Martine Hall, assistant director for residential education in the Office of Residential Life and the chair of the campus-wide committee.
While rethinking the current themed floor housing options, the committee focused on making themed housing more visible and connected to the academic vibrancy on campus.
“The emphasis is to bring the classroom and living experience together,” Hall said. “Themes are “˜live and learn’ communities.”
One of the committee’s main goals for the new themed housing was to attract a community of students who are active and excited about the themes, said La’Tonya Rease Miles, a faculty-in-residence representative on the committee and the assistant director for the Academic Advancement Program.
“We want students to know they’re on the themed floor, to be active,” Miles said. “We want intentionality, we want a community, we want people to want to be there.”
In order to choose themes that would be welcomed by the student residential population, the committee received student input from student representatives from the On Campus Housing Council and conducted informal student surveys.
A group of students has already created a Facebook group to show support for the African diaspora-themed housing and generate ideas for possible programs and activities for that floor next year.
“I think (the Facebook group) reflects student interest,” said Miles, also a member of the group. “Some people really care about their experience in residential life and obviously have a particular passion for that theme, African diaspora.”
UCLA is the last UC campus to incorporate ethnic studies into its themed floor housing options, Miles said. In order to generate ideas for redesigning the themed housing options, the committee analyzed other UC themed housing, noting their strengths and weaknesses.
“When you look at the other universities that have theme-based housing, they’re vibrant spaces,” said Kelly Lytle Hernandez, a faculty-in-residence representative on the committee and an assistant professor in the history department. “Ours were not working ““ either we hadn’t found the right themes to attract students, or they just weren’t working as well as we would like them to work.”
Ribeiro said she first noticed the lack of themed housing variety when she came to UCLA as a freshman and now appreciates the introduction of more themed options.
“Campuses like UC Berkeley have (ethnic studies floors), so I thought how come UCLA doesn’t have one?” Ribeiro said. “I think it will be a great experience for freshmen to be able to come in from high school at 17 or 18 years old, still trying to create their identity, and see other people like them.”