As I sat at my desk the other day, contemplating my past four years here, I could not help recognizing the truth in Aristotles’s proposition that man is a “political animal.”
While we may be young ““ ÂÂand more naive than even I care to admit ““ UCLA students have managed to create here a microcosm of America’s political world. Beyond the work we’ve done in classes, our time here has been practice for real life, an adolescence in our development as political animals.
Take, for instance, USAC, the slightly ridiculous student government that I’ve had the pleasure of covering. While the quibbles that drive political conflict in the body are, at face value, quite petty, they are at base driven by ideologies that clash even more violently in the real world.
This year, Bernice Shaw, the lone councilwoman for Students First!, fought heroically to realize her vision that students can radically change society. The Bruins United majority fought back, arguing that our funds should be spent selfishly on improvements to student life. Shaw’s political battles, though fought occasionally with too much vitriol, reflected a larger battle in American politics. Like many in the American left, she fought to make a campus free of racism and sexism and with equality of opportunity for all. The opposition, with whom I sympathized a bit too frequently, were more conservative, like other Americans. They preferred the status quo, even with all its flaws.
In our body of 25,928 undergraduates, one sees also how far race relations in America have to come. Reporting on Bruin Walk’s identity groups, such as MEChA and the Afrikan Student Union, I’ve confronted ““ and come to appreciate ““ the depth of the grievances held by the marginalized groups they represent.
As in America though, not all UCLA students have had to confront these grievances. Some prefer to stay aloof, keeping close with their own race and class at the north village’s debaucherous parties. Members of identity groups too, like the one who told me I was the first cool white guy she’d met, have a hard time meeting those who don’t share their “struggle.”
It’s as if we were all thrown into a box and forced to mix. Some encountered others and fought battles, others shied away in corners, but we were all part of one body politic.
Though I’m excited to enter the “real world,” I’m terribly sad to leave college. To me, politics feels more real here than it does out there.
Reed has been a Viewpoint columnist since fall 2006. After graduation, he will spend one year in Sierra Leone as a research assistant for the Jameel Poverty Action Lab before beginning classes as an economics Ph.D. student at Harvard.