GSA elections? What GSA elections?
Editor:
Regarding the Graduate Student Association’s announcement that
it would extend the deadline for the submission of candidate
petitions for the upcoming elections, I must ask, "What
elections?"
No one I know even knew about the elections, never mind the
deadline for candidate petitions for office. In my five years as a
UCLA graduate student, I have never experienced such an invisible
(and in my opinion, irrelevant) GSA as the current one.
If the graduate association is to retain even a minimum of
legitimacy and respect among the graduate students at UCLA, it must
relaunch the election process and do so in a vigorous and public
way. As such, the association must extend the election deadlines in
order to prevent the candidates being limited to the handful of
people who know GSA President Tim Beasley. Basic decency and
democratic principles demand it.
Joseph Yamaguchi
Graduate student
Chemistry
It’s time to stop scapegoating fraternities!
Editor:
As a fourth-year UCLA student, I have been around to hear a lot
of the criticisms of fraternities over the past couple of years.
Not really knowing anyone in a fraternity and from what I read in
the Daily Bruin, I guess you could say I also believed fraternities
were a gathering place for rowdy alcoholics who treat women like
shit.
Recently, however, I had the opportunity to spend time with a
lot of the guys in Phi Psi and not one of them met any of these
stereotypes. They are a close bunch of guys who value each other’s
friendship above all else. Just like everyone associated with UCLA,
they got excited when the basketball team won on April 3, and I was
there at the house to witness it. Just like 8,000 other people in
Westwood, some of them, along with myself went out in the streets
to celebrate with other UCLA fans. Yet now the police want to pin
the blame of 8,000 people celebrating a monumental occasion in the
school’s history on a few fraternity houses? Give me a break!
My teammate was sitting on his balcony at his own fraternity
during the whole thing and the police stormed the house and
arrested him for "failing to disperse" Â from his own home!
Stop scapegoating fraternities for the problems that occur at UCLA
and find someone else to blame, like the guys that showed up to a
celebration wearing riot gear.
Michael DeNucci
Fourth-year
History