When UCLA statistics lecturer Vivian Lew received the alert of police activity in Engineering IV, she immediately thought of her students’ safety. There was an exam scheduled for her Statistics 20 students in a nearby building, so she hastily sent an email instructing them to ignore the scheduled location and avoid the area, reassuring them that they would have the opportunity to take the exam at a later time.
During this time of confusion and crisis, there was a substantial time delay on the email system. Her email, though sent significantly earlier, was only received by students after the campus-wide lockdown and active shooter alert. As a result, the email was widely misinterpreted as forcing her students to take the exam despite the lockdown. However, once she realized the severity of the situation, she canceled the exam altogether, and gave a full and heartfelt apology to each of her students, as well as an explanation of what had happened.
In the aftermath, news and media outlets accused Lew of placing an exam above student safety. Their source? The embellishments, fabrications and misinformation surrounding a single email, taken out of context by people who knew neither the person nor the situation, carelessly cobbled together into clickbait.
I have been a student of this teacher for several years, and she is one of the kindest, most caring individuals I know. Lew goes above and beyond to help her students, even when it is not directly related to her classes. Step into her office for a quick chat, and you’ll find yourself leaving an hour later having talked about everything from coursework to career to life (and often with sage advice in all three areas).
Here is just one small example of her kindness: Once on my birthday, she treated me to a “birthday dinner,” and we had a really nice time catching up. On the way back, she insisted on walking me all the way to my apartment, even though it was in the opposite direction of where her car was parked. Contrary to the rumors that strangers have spread online, this is clearly someone who cares deeply about her students and their safety.
Now, however, that same teacher has to worry about her own safety. Serious threats and vicious personal attacks have made her feel more unsafe than she has in 35 years of calling this campus her home. For someone who has worked so hard and given so much to her students, this is just not right.
It has been shocking to see the level of hatred that people are willing to project upon a complete stranger. But it is has also been heartening to see so many of Vivian’s students rallying behind her – posting all over social media and checking in on her in such large numbers that she’s developed her own personal posse of well-wishers. This piece itself is a response to the student-run Statistics Club, which called upon its members for submissions to the Daily Bruin in her defense. All of this unwavering support is, I think, only further testament to how much she has done for us as a teacher.
My heart goes out to everyone who was affected by this – I can only imagine how incredibly difficult this must have been for those on campus, how stressful it must have been not to know what was going on. In such a highly-charged atmosphere, I know it can be easy to make snap judgments and accusations. The tragic events of June 1st have left many in shock and searching for answers – I just hope that the UCLA community will rise above the misinformation, and find a way to support each other during these troubling times.
Xu is a former statistics student who graduated in winter 2016.
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The shooting “bruinalert” was issued 4 min after the first “police activity alert”. Even if she had hastily sent her first email trying to set up an electronic exam, she should have followed it up IMMEDIATELY with an “exam is cancelled” email when students were told to go into lockdown at 9:54am. Instead she put students’ safety in jeopardy by making them believe they needed to find a computer and take this exam when she choose not to quickly follow up her hasty and poor email with a cancellation email. It’s unfathomable that she allowed students to take the exam at 11am and didn’t email them again until past noon. This is not just an issue with this faculty member, it’s a much larger issue at UCLA and the utter lack of preparedness that many faculty exhibited (reports of professors continuing to lecture). How can you actually tell students to find a computer when they are told to go into lockdown and then not correct that decision instantly? Despite this though, she absolutely does not deserve malicious and hateful comments or threats. She does deserve to be punished for endangering students’ lives but that is for the university ultimately to do, not the public. I think her “explanation” email lacked sincerity, care and was riddled with attempts at jokes (this is not a funny situation) and ultimately I hope UCLA holds her accountable because this wasn’t a mistake or a delayed email decision, it was a professor thinking they were above the law.
If you have a serious dyslexia, please DO let me know. I would be more than happy to refer you to a good doctor. Or I can help you in person to understand this article thoroughly. It indeed surprises me how you can accurately reiterates all the points that this article just defended. Good job! By the way, would you like to vote for Donald Trump?
“She deserves to be punished for endangering students’ lives” is perhaps the kind of high-horsed condemnation–and misrepresentation of the intent of her email–that fuels the vitriol directed at her that you graciously allow she doesn’t deserve.
Holy armchair analysis! And it’s all bull.
I am glad you and everyone else are oh so perfect during emergencies and can perform your duty with all of the facts at your fingertips when nobody else has them, and make no mistakes. For the millionth time, several people, myself included received NO BruinAlert about the shooting, only to avoid E4 due to “police activity.” She found out about the lockdown from another email that was skeptical about what was going on. There was a lot of confusion. If you were even on campus, I am glad you knew exactly what to do, but I can bet you don’t even go to UCLA or know anybody that does.
Professor Lew will not be punished, and she should not be punished. Someday you will be in the same position, and I sincerely hope you get judged just as harshly as you are judging Professor Lew and UCLA in general.
As this article mentions, most of the complaints about this professor are by stupid people who like to complain about things even though they know nothing about the class or professor. I had Lew when I was a stats major, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she was my favorite professor, but she was definitely the most willing to go above and beyond to help her students. I rarely went to office hours for any class (her’s included), so I never developed much of a relationship with any professor, but Lew made such an effort to make sure that each student could perform to his/her potential that she’s probably the only professor that would be able to tell me my name if I were to go back to UCLA. People also don’t understand how certain classes work. The final for Stats 20 is online and taken in multiple sections. Students have to log into a system that is coded to only allow access during a certain time period. Because of UCLA’s final exam policy, professors can’t reschedule final exams. The Bruin Alert system is also overused to the point where it becomes less effective. I still receive the alerts even though I graduated, and when I saw that I received a Bruin Alert, my first thought was “Here’s another text that says ‘In the event of an actual emergency, you will be notified here'” or something like that. Also, as many times as I mark Bruin Alerts as not spam, when multiple Bruin Alerts are sent close together, the second one usually hits my spam. Lew didn’t initially cancel the exam because she wants to give students every opportunity to improve their grade, and if she at the time knew the severity of the situation, she surely would have offered to cancel the final as the first complaint by the whiny student looking for a free pass. She’s not a vicious professor or anything; I was actually amazed by how many people received good grades from her when they probably didn’t deserve to pass her class. Let her own students evaluate her, and everyone else should shut up. Part of the reason this shooting turned into a big news story is because people like to talk about incorrect information and how there were according to certain people up to 4 active shooters scattered across campus. Turns out only one person died who shouldn’t have, and no students were ever in danger. Better safe than sorry, but everyone would’ve been a lot less freaked out if people just waited for information to be properly distributed.