HINGYI KHONG/Daily Bruin  Mark Nickel
Send comments to Nickel at mnickel@ucla.edu. Click
Here for more articles by Mark Nickel
It’s Friday night at UCLA. You don’t have a car, but
you still want to go out, so you gather a few friends and head down
to the only area within walking distance ““ Westwood.
When you get there you’re presented with a few, and I
emphasize a very few, options for what your evening activity will
be. You’re limited to one of the three bars that have
reasonable prices, or God forbid, if you aren’t 21, movies
and coffee shops. Why is it that Westwood doesn’t have clubs
or popular hangouts for the students who live on and around
campus?
It’s due to the local homeowners associations’
efforts to clip the wings and nightlife of UCLA students by keeping
those kinds of places out of this town. And do you know what? They
have every right, because it’s our own damn fault.
Students at this school are some of the best and the brightest
in the nation, privileged enough to live between three of
L.A.’s most affluent areas: Brentwood, Bel Air and Beverly
Hills. And despite our posh surroundings and our apparent intellect
we persist in doing things like setting fires in streets, throwing
bottles at firemen and police officers, and screaming, fighting and
rioting to mark significant events during the year.
Let’s look at this year’s Black Sunday, the biggest
fraternity party night of the year. Three thousand people flooded
onto Gayley Avenue, cutting off access to one of this area’s
major streets. Thousands of freshmen going to their first college
party were greeted by a lawless mass of fellow students who were
drunk, rowdy and numerous enough to necessitate the calling of riot
police.
Riot police, people. I’m all for having a great time at
parties; hell, I’ve been known to drink a little too much at
times. But never in my entire life have I ever gotten so drunk or
so rowdy that I helped create a situation in which the police
needed to come out with hats and bats ready to keep the peace.
And do you know what? The police were justified in responding
the way they did. When bottles come flying through the air, the
intent clearly being to hurt officers and destroy their vehicles,
people need to be taken to jail and parties need to be shut
down.
Black Sunday is not an isolated incident either. Every finals
week students join in a collective release of stress and
frustration with a tradition called the Midnight Yell. But
somewhere along the line it became less about innocent yelling and
more about unleashing a wave of limited mayhem on Westwood
streets.
My second year at UCLA, Midnight Yell turned into complete
anarchy. Once again, police had to be called out in riot gear
because students in the apartments were lighting mattresses and
couches on fire and, oh, throwing bottles at the firemen, who were
trying to put out these blazes.
What kind of evil geniuses came up with this plan? I can almost
hear their logic, “If we stop the firemen, then the building
we live in can burn down and we can be homeless and lose all of our
stuff.” I know we need a release at the end of the quarter,
finals are hard and taxing, but trying to hit firemen with bottles
is not an acceptable way to relax.
By now you might be thinking, “OK, so there are a couple
of events during the year when things get out of hand. Does that
really mean we deserve to be singled out by the homeowners
associations?”
If that were the case ““ that things get out of hand on
several predictable occasions ““ the answer might be no. But
that’s not the case. Every month the UCPD gets dispatched to
dozens of parties for various reasons including noise, fights and
property damage.
424 Landfair is a place we’re all probably familiar with;
it’s the apartment building that by all rights could justify
the Westwood Homeowners Association’s wrath on its own. On
September 29th, I went to a party there and while things were
definitely in full swing, they weren’t out of control. But as
more and more people showed up, the fun became dangerous when the
line was crossed and a group of about 20 men started fighting.
Police were dispatched and the hundreds of people packed into this
place started flowing out: so many people that the police were yet
again forced to close a Westwood street.
Over the summer, outside of that same building, someone set fire
to a stack of mattresses that burned so hot they melted the back of
a Ford Mustang that was parked near the blaze.
Another example of an out of control party took place at the
Sig-Ep house during spring quarter 2001. A police woman, when
trying to control the crowd, was pushed toward the balcony and fell
off. She had to be taken off duty for an extended period of
time.
Surely we’re not the only school that has insane parties,
but we’re the only school I know of that has insane parties
in the middle of an area where families live and upscale businesses
try to prosper. Los Angeles is much larger than many other cities,
and as a result, we don’t have much of a college-town
atmosphere at UCLA ““ it’s the price we all decided to
pay when we sent in our statement of intent to register
letters.
If you want Chico parties, go to Chico. If you want Santa
Barbara parties, go to Isla Vista. Westwood is surrounded by and
filled with people who have property that they want to preserve.
Can you blame them for trying to keep UCLA students on a short
leash?
So this Friday night, when you’re stuck in your apartment
or dorm room and you get pissed off that there’s nothing to
do in this crackerjack town, I’ve got a suggestion for you.
Sit back and remember all those blasts you’ve had in the past
and hope the memories entertain you, because if you want to keep
acting like a group of rioting prisoners, Westwood’s not
likely to get much livelier than it is now.