A hideously obese man in a $2,000 suit sits in his cavernous
office, nested among the intricate Romanesque arches on the upper
levels of Royce Hall.
He hears the meow of a kitten somewhere nearby and calls for his
assistant.
“Have it killed!” he screams, and he laughs
maniacally. He looks at his desk and sees a referendum titled
“Student Request For An On-Campus Bar,” laughs again,
sets the petition on fire and uses it to light his cigar. Vengeful,
he raises tuition simply out of spite and congratulating himself on
a job well done, takes the rest of the week off.
This was my assumption about the inner-workings of the UCLA
administrative bureaucracy until very recently. In my mind, it
always came down to a single man somewhere, avaricious and full of
hate, who ultimately decided exactly how and where the chips would
fall.
And so it has been with checked hope that I have been seeing
news recently about a possible on-campus bar. A referendum has been
passed through the Undergraduate Students Association Council, and,
if a large-scale petition succeeds, it will appear as a kind of
survey on the spring ballot, which admittedly sounds progressive
and official.
But in plainer terms, it’s simply a request. USAC has
agreed to let the students vote on it with the goal for proponents
being that the students will stand up and with one voice say,
“We would like this to happen.”
I remember thinking that the whole concept felt weak, as though
the administration is treating undergraduates like 6-year-olds,
giving them a plastic badge and a scepter and letting them march
around the house thinking they are in charge.
But what I didn’t understand, and what many students still
don’t, is that not only is the referendum a good first step,
it is a necessary one. Real progress cannot be made until this vote
takes place.
“We went straight to the administrators,” explained
Jordan Marks, cofounder of the Facebook group “Bruins for an
On Campus Bar.” “They first wanted to know if the
students are for it.”
Maybe it’s a failure of imagination, but outside of Utah,
I can’t see many public universities in this country
declining an offer of more places to drink alcohol and watch
sports. But the argument stands as valid; Associated Students UCLA
wants to know, unequivocally, where the students stand.
Marks then took his fight to USAC, which quickly drafted and
passed the referendum.
“We feel comfortable proposing this question to the
students,” he said. And if the students approve of the bar,
it will be “a significant step toward our goal.”
I wasn’t convinced, despite his enthusiasm. The idea of a
UCLA on-campus bar has been alive longer than I have and absolutely
nothing has come of it. So the natural question for the skeptics
is, “Why not?”
“In the past, there has been a lack of organized
leadership, of people willing to do the work,” said Michelle
Sassounian, USAC Academic Affairs commissioner. “The
referendum will rally the students, which will rally us to push for
it.”
Marks illustrates the student point of view that the referendum
is a way to speak directly to the administration. He said that the
vote is, in effect, declaring: “This is our priority; make it
yours.”
There is good reason to be hopeful. Both ASUCLA Executive
Director Bob Williams and Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Janina
Montero have expressed their support for the idea of an on-campus
bar, according to a Feb. 24 Daily Bruin article (“USAC plans
campus bar,” News).
Williams has said he has a “very high level of
confidence” in students, and Montero ““ one of the main
proponents for the new AlcoholEdu program ““ supports the idea
as a way to “model responsible behavior.” This bodes
especially well for the students, as approval from both ASUCLA and
the chancellor are necessary for final authorization.
The moral arguments about giving booze to the soft and
impressionable youth are weak, thanks to the recent Arthur Ashe
Student Health and Wellness Center survey that says that UCLA
students are about half as likely to drink heavily as their
national peers. In addition, the concern about underage drinking
can be managed with trained, responsible security and available
technology, such as black-light and electronic ID checks.
The glass is half full, and the future will be far too bright to
look at without sunglasses, but that is still some time away. As
Sassounian put it, “The (future) problems aren’t
ideological, they’re pragmatic: time and energy. The mandate
from an approved referendum would do a lot for the future of an
on-campus bar.”
Students have to approve the referendum in the meantime. It may
feel meaningless, but it’s not. The great wheel of UCLA
bureaucracy turns at an excruciatingly slow pace, but it’s
the price we pay for an institution of this size.
There is no hideous misanthrope standing in the way of a Bruin
bar. There is no monster who hates students and kills his pets. Our
chief opponents are bureaucracy and inaction, and we can change
something about the latter. USAC has done their part for the
moment. Now it’s the students’ turn to do ours.
Tired of bureaucracy? Tell O’Bryan at
jobryan@media.ucla.edu and he will respond within 6-9 weeks. Send
general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.