Children all over Los Angeles learn in schools adorned with bright murals that UCLA students have painted on hot, sunny Volunteer Days year after year. UCLA’s annual Volunteer Day was created nine years ago as a chancellor’s initiative, said Ashley Love-Smith, interim director of the UCLA Volunteer Center. The initiative was meant to ensure the […]
Category Archives: Opinion Columns
William Bleveans: UCLA should mandate service hours, expand Volunteer Day
Ask any New Student Advisor and they’ll tell you service is one of the three pillars of the university and a crucial element of UCLA’s mission. Given that sentiment, you would be forgiven for thinking UCLA has consistently demonstrated its support for community service and outreach programs. In fact, the opposite is true. The UCLA […]
Chris Busco: UCLA should host a variety of speakers to debate contested issues
Liberal and conservative, Globalist and nationalist, anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights. The nation is more divided now than before, and all our ideological debates boil down to the same general principal – us versus them. However, real life isn’t ever that simple; it doesn’t function in the realm of absolute right and wrong. Unfortunately, these harmful […]
Ankita Nair: UCLA should improve shadowing opportunities for pre-med students
Admission into a top-20 ranked medical school is notoriously difficult – acceptance rates hover around 1.8 percent to 3.9 percent. But for many pre-med students at UCLA, gaining access to student shadowing opportunities can seem just as challenging. Aside from requiring a strong academic record and stellar extracurricular activities, getting into a medical school often […]
Pravin Visakan: California labor unions must stop combating climate change bills
Imagine a state senator stepping up in the final days of California’s legislative session to present his bill to revolutionize the Californian energy sector. Unbeknownst to him, union representatives are preparing to sabotage it. Labor interests have started working against Californian legislative efforts aimed at combating climate change. This pattern of opposition was prevalent in […]
Clea Wurster: More sexual violence awareness training must be required on the Hill
Bruins, get ready to enter the “red zone.” No, this isn’t another campus tradition like Bruin Bash or the Enormous Activities Fair. Rather, the “red zone” is a term used by sexual assault researchers to describe a six-week period each fall when increased numbers of first-year female students experience sexual violence. About 23 percent of […]
Scott Bays: Attack on affirmative action is designed to appease conservatives
Those who worry some applicants receive unfair advantages in the college admissions process, have no fear. America’s legacy-admission-in-chief, President Donald Trump, and his administration are here to save the day. The United States Department of Justice circulated an internal memo in early August calling for attorneys interested in “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional […]