Light shows on Royce Hall, enormous fundraisers and fancy graduation sashes marked UCLA’s 100 year celebration, as it made the promise of “Lighting the Way” for generations to come. But with the spotlight on the Centennial Campaign, everyone else was left in the dark. The Centennial Campaign is a fundraising effort meant to celebrate 100 […]
Author Archives: Lisa Basil
Administration ignores concerns of Campus Safety Alliance, focusing on PR instead
Four times a quarter, administrators and student advocates come together to discuss the safety of the nation’s top public university. Students raise their concerns after weeks of interfacing with communities on campus. And each time, administrators pretend they’re listening. The Campus Safety Alliance was revived earlier this school year after being disbanded back in recent […]
UCLA boasts activists-in-residence to distract from on-campus inequity
UCLA asks whether activism can be taught. What it really means to ask is whether activism can be bought. UCLA Activist-in-Residence is a position put on jointly by the Asian American studies department and the Institute on Inequality and Democracy. The institute started this program in order to create a space for activists on campus […]
Groups for inclusion of marginalized communities instead enforce exclusivity
“It’s not my responsibility to teach you, it’s your responsibility to learn.” That’s the motto boasted by many in the LGBTQ groups on campus. The problem is: Who are students expected to learn from? This is an important question many students are asking at UCLA. The Gender, Sexuality, and Society Living Learning Community on the […]
Extreme density of finals week schedule adversely affects students and faculty
Friday of finals week is a day of mourning for Bruins – for their fried brains, that is. You can thank UCLA’s cramped final exams schedule for that. UCLA’s final exam period is unreasonably short. The majority of exams take place within the five weekdays directly after classes end Friday of week 10, with a […]
UC engaged in necessary fight for open access to research-based knowledge
Academic research is about the spread of knowledge. For publishing companies, it’s about how many more millions of dollars they can pad their profit margins with. The University of California is in the midst of negotiating a new contract with academic publishing company Elsevier in the hopes of lowering unsustainable subscription costs, after their contract […]
UCLA Labor Center report uncovers unfair work practices in nail salon industry
A UCLA report found that full-time nail salon workers earn less than half the median income of other U.S. workers. Researchers from the UCLA Labor Center released a report Tuesday showing that the majority of nail salon workers in the United States are low-wage workers, and that while many work long hours, 89 percent are […]