Students sent a strong message to UCLA Athletics by voting against moving the student section in the new Pauley Pavilion.
In a strictly advisory poll that was attached to the undergraduate government elections ballot, 69 percent of students opposed Athletics’ plan to move student seating behind the west basket. 8 percent were in favor and 23 percent had no preference.
Mark Harlan, senior associate athletic director for external relations, said UCLA athletics recognizes the vote and will take it into consideration.
“Our plan all along has been … to get everyone together who’s involved with student spirit and get their opinions on the best way forward from here,” he said.
Moving forward, athletics will work primarily with student groups that have already been involved in the development of a seating plan for the new arena, including the Undergraduate Students Association Council, the Spirit Squad and the Den, Harlan said.
The advisory vote was proposed at the April 26 USAC meeting by Sean Wang, a graduate student in statistics and member of the Den.
Wang voiced concern that students had been misled in the proposal of the new seating arrangement, which was presented to the Den at a meeting in March.
Wang, who was present at the Den meeting, said he felt members were presented with a choice between two bad plans. Students would either be put behind the west basket or would be split into three different sections: the lower section of the south side, the upper section of the south side and behind the west basket.
The Den approved the proposed plan, arguing that the ability to have a single unified section outweighed the disadvantage of poor location.
Den president Elan Bigknife, a fifth-year aerospace engineering student, said he was shocked by the decision to put the issue on the USAC ballot because students had shown little response to the proposal.
“There hadn’t been any student reaction other than online on one blog, so it was kind of unknown that student-backed petitions were going to be done,” Bigknife said.
Wang said he chose to raise the issue with USAC because he believes students were ill-informed about what effects the change would have, and a campus-wide vote would best capture the opinion of the student body.
Brandon Scapa, a first-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student, started a Facebook group after the vote was announced to promote a return to courtside seats. The group has since attracted more than a thousand members.
“A lot of students aren’t going to the games … I wanted to get the students more involved, to get them to find out about this,” he said.