Maegan Carberry  Carberry is a third-year
political science student. E-mail her at maegs@ucla.edu. Click
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We all get those e-mails from Chancellor Carnesale with an
invitation to his office hours. I usually respond to them and get
rejected. I was able to talk with the chancellor after I wrote a
Viewpoint article which accused the UCLA administration of being
too displaced from students. Imagine my surprise when, shortly
after the article ran, I found that the chancellor himself had read
my column and wanted to meet with me to discuss my criticism.
Grimacing at the remembrance of referring to him as “Big
Al” once in the column, I called his assistant to schedule an
appointment. After meeting with Chancellor Carnesale and speaking
with him about what I thought to be pressing issues on campus
(student apathy, declining diversity among students, the dual role
of professors as teachers and researchers), I gained a new respect
for him.
We met in his office for about an hour that first time, and we
talked about the benefits and drawbacks of a large university.
Obviously, UCLA has a wonderful reputation and an enumerable number
of avenues available for students to pursue. But people also have a
tendency to feel like numbers, that their efforts will not make a
difference, and that they will graduate without the sense of
camaraderie that others get from smaller colleges. We tried to
think of ways to combat that feeling, and have met since then with
others to discuss these issues further.
One of the things I like most about the chancellor is his
ability to see UCLA in all of its capacities. This campus is very
broad. It is a research university, a forum for undergraduates, a
place to train in professional schools, an athletic powerhouse, and
a symbol of the Los Angeles community. It is his job to be
constantly attentive to each of these demanding components. I think
we oftentimes forget the complexity of this campus.
 Illustration by AMY HABER/Daily Bruin
Carnesale referred to UCLA in our meeting and in a recent
Viewpoint column (Daily Bruin, Sept. 25) as a “research
university.” I’ve heard this term used in the past and,
before I really thought it out, it left a bad taste in my mouth. It
is the kind of term that is oftentimes used as an excuse to justify
ignoring undergraduates, nourishing the “let’s take
their tuition money and leave their education to the
TA’s” mentality.
It’s great that we have Nobel prize winning professors,
but when you only have 20 minutes to get help with a paper, is it
more logical to seek out our resident rocket scientist or meet with
the graduate student who is going to be grading it? A lot of
students are so busy working in order to afford our faculty’s
costly expertise that there is little time left over to utilize
it.
That’s my gut reaction. But then I think, “Since
when has research become chopped liver?” And when did we
become so lazy that everything has to be dropped off at our feet?
That’s how you separate yourself at UCLA.
Everybody’s working hard, but there are a lot of students
who still find a way to get to office hours and make an effort to
connect with faculty.
At UCLA, there is a lot of pressure to be a frontrunner in the
technological/information explosion of the millennium. I think
it’s a good thing that we are focused, as the chancellor
noted in his Viewpoint column, on being at the head of the pack. We
would not be a very competitive university without a commitment to
being on the cutting edge of what is happening and changing in our
society. I also agreed with our commitment to expanding outreach in
the Los Angeles community as well as our efforts to be involved in
academic and artistic endeavors. I enjoyed much of what the
chancellor had to offer in his column and I thought he gave a very
positive and goal-oriented outlook on the future of UCLA.
What troubles me is the way in which the administration is
painted to the student body. I’ve been referring to the
chancellor’s contribution to the Viewpoint section. The
column was introduced as a butting of heads between the chancellor
and the student regent, Justin Fong. It led you to believe that
they saw progress at UCLA in two different lights, when what I saw
were two excellent observations about our campus.
Justin Fong pointed out the horribly disappointing information
that underrepresented minority admissions have dropped from the
thousands to the lower hundreds. I agree that the figures are
outrageous and I was disturbed by them. But was he really
conducting an argument with the chancellor? It seemed like they
were working off of two different prompts. The chancellor was
addressing what lies ahead for UCLA and Fong was evaluating how
campus demographics would play out in the future. Granted, both are
issues that UCLA will be facing, but the last thing we need is an
“us vs. them” mentality.
I originally took an interest and wrote about the administration
because I felt that in this large university it is easy to lose
sight of what our purposes are and become just another number. It
is also easy to let the administration take on the role of a large
cloud of bureaucracy that cannot be utilized or is too busy to make
time for students and their concerns. When these two things happen
we get what we have: the protagonistic students versus the evil
empire.
But we all need to remind ourselves of something very important:
the administration is composed of incredibly intelligent people and
who became involved in education because they like students.
I’m sure that Chancellor Carnesale’s having been a
presidential aide and an expert in nuclear physics makes his brain
worth a lot more than his UC salary. He and all of the other
administrators chose this path because they want to work with us,
talk to us, and learn from us. I have heard from the chancellor
himself that he cannot do his job without knowing what is important
to us ““ and that he values our opinions immensely.
I believe him. And I don’t think we are going to win any
battles for affirmative action or diversity at UCLA by putting the
administration in the other corner of the ring.
Remember, UCLA is much bigger than any of us and it serves many
roles. Administrators know and care about the declining diversity
here on campus. They would like to see it change, but this is a
very political situation (as Justin Fong pointed out). I know that
we would like them to take more of a stand, but we have to view the
big guys pulling the strings in a different way. They are not a
roadblock in our journey. They are more like a freeway onramp.
We can’t just take side streets around them, bitch about
how the freeway is always jammed up with traffic, never allowing us
to go anywhere, and expect to get to our destination all the same.
We need to utilize them. If you want to talk about how we can make
it better, then make some noise. There really are eager and
influential ears waiting to listen.