DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Students get rowdy
during finals week last year around the apartment complexes in
Westwood. Police arrested 20 students.
By Laura Rico
Daily Bruin Contributor
If administrators or university police have any say in the
matter, students won’t be partying like it’s fall
quarter of 1999 this finals week.
“We will not hesitate to suspend a student who endangers
the life of others,” said Bob Naples, dean of students and
assistant vice-chancellor of Student Affairs.
A UCLA tradition know as “Midnight Yell,” where
students scream at the stroke of midnight every day during finals
week, got out of control last fall, as students burned couches and
threw bottles and raw eggs at police officers and firefighters.
Police arrested 20 students and detained many others.
Charges against students ranged from failure to disperse to
disturbing the peace and arson.
For some students residing in the apartments, Midnight Yell is a
chance to alleviate the stress and anxiety of final exams.
“It’s a way of relieving stress and releasing
energy,” said Banafsheh Khorram, a third-year environmental
studies student. “We are so confined here by building
managers and cops that disruptions are bound to happen, and
there’s not much else to do in Westwood anyway.”
In a press conference last month, Chancellor Albert Carnesale
said the administration has been substantially more involved with
management of the midnight hours in the past year to minimize
disruption and danger.
“Among the steps we took was a great degree of presence
early on, getting our people in to remove obstacles that have been
placed on the street or things that might be set on fire,” he
said. “We also worked on having greater presence of
(university) police and less presence of LAPD.”
According to the UCLA Student Code of Conduct, the university
may take disciplinary actions against students who participate in
the Yell.
“The university shall have discretion to exercise
jurisdiction over student conduct, if the misconduct indicates that
a student poses a threat to the safety or security of any member of
the university community,” states the code of conduct.
Since last fall, cooperation between UCPD and the Office of
Student Affairs, which oversees various aspects of student and
campus life, have resulted in a more subdued Midnight Yell.
“We are rolling out the same plan we used for spring and
winter quarter last year, and it has been pretty successful,”
said UCPD Lt. Manny Garza.
“We’ve added additional personnel on Glenrock,
Landfair, and Kelton Avenues, which are known as traditional
trouble spots,” he said.
Facilities workers will be on hand to clean up trash, debris and
other objects which could be used to start fires, he said.
Representatives from Student Affairs will be present to observe
student conduct and judge students’ safety, said Naples.
Third-year electrical engineering student Ambar Mukherjea
vividly recalls events of last fall, but does not expect similar
events to occur this year.
“Helicopters were floating overhead, and people started
lighting fires and kicking trash cans, which the cops responded to
by firing rubber bullets,” Mukherjea said. “But I think
it’ll be more mellow this year.”
On-Campus Housing officials have chosen to deal with Midnight
Yell by offering residents stress-relieving alternatives to
screaming.
“Some halls plan activities for study breaks or provide
snacks to take people away from the temptation to yell out of
windows,” said Suzanne Seplow, south area director of the
Office of Residential Life. Resident Advisors monitor halls and can
issue 15 hours of community service to residents who participate in
the yell, she said.
But Dykstra Hall resident Alex Palmer, a second-year sociology
and economics student, does not see the need for regulations.
“I think that Midnight Yell is dumb, but it’s only a
problem because RAs and others make it a problem,” said
Palmer. “Being torn away from studying for a minute to hear a
couple of guys yelling “˜finals suck’ isn’t going
to hurt anyone.”