A football game is an odd place to have an epiphany, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened recently. No, I’m not talking about the realization last week that we’re not really the eleventh best team in the country ““ thanks, Utah, for debunking that myth. No, this one came a little more than two weeks ago, in our very own Rose Bowl, as the entire student section was engaged in a vigorous 8-clap to propel us to victory over BYU.
“1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, U! C! L! A! U-C-L-A! Beat S-C!!”
Huh?
I looked back down at the field, and seeing no tear gas, confirmed that we were not, in fact, beating ‘SC. Confused, I decided to ignore it and return to my challenge of staying inebriated past halftime for once.
About 30 minutes later, the gentlemen behind me got very upset at a BYU first down, and began chanting something along the lines of “Fuck the Mormons.” At this point, I felt compelled to turn around and politely inform them that our starting quarterback was, in fact, Mormon, as is his best offensive lineman, Shannon Tevaga. The guys looked a little embarrassed, and reverted to more traditional chants for the rest of the game.
I spent the rest of the fourth quarter pondering why this episode had bothered me so deeply. I realized I had gone about it all wrong; the real problem was not that one or two of our idolized football players happened to be Mormon. It was that any one of our fellow Bruins in the stands could have been Mormon. It was that thousands of members of our Bruin family are Mormon. It was that Ron and Alan Geisler, the dedicated and spirited maintenance workers who haven’t missed a UCLA football game in 34 years, are Mormon.
What my overeager peers behind me didn’t understand is that they were insulting their players, their peers, and their fellow Bruins. This lack of understanding is instructive to what I believe is the biggest issue facing our campus today: our division, our segregation, our lack of community.
Ralph Amos, the new executive director of the Student Alumni Association, recently stated, “We have diversity here at UCLA. We just haven’t figured out how to deal with it.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Too often I see a campus that focuses more on what divides us than what unites us.
The symptoms of this problem were on full display that epiphany-filled game. Instead of being proud of who we are, we find ways to hate our opponents. Instead of recognizing the diversity of our university and our peers, we insult each other in an odd attempt to cheer on our teams. Instead of urging our team to “fight, fight, fight,” we’d rather “beat ‘SC,” regardless our whether we’re even playing them or not. Look, I hate ‘SC as much as the next guy, but when we care more about that than we do about ourselves, its time for some self-reflection.
So this is my plea, my call to all of you as we begin this year. Look around you, at your surroundings and your peers, and realize how lucky we are to be here. We go to UCLA, the most applied-to school in the country. One hundred national championships. Best dorm food in the country. We wear Rainbows in January, for goodness sakes.
We have so many reasons to be proud of UCLA. And we all have at least one thing in common ““ we’re Bruins ““ and that should be enough. So next time you’re at a game, lets forget about who we’re playing, and lets hear a “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Rose is president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council and a fourth-year political science student.