If you know my face or byline, you would know that I am a first-generation college student born to Mexican immigrants. You would know that I am bisexual and a feminist who loves the Earth. And you would know that I wear these identities proudly. What you wouldn’t know is how I got to this […]
Category Archives: Opinion Columns
The Daily Bruin allowed me to discover the virtue in vulnerability -30-
I am searching for the place where these past four years have disappeared to. As I stare at my commencement tickets, I’m speechless, unable to articulate the scale and depth of how much these past four whirlwind years mean to me. But among the countless moments and lessons I will cherish, the most transformative revelation […]
Avvalzameer Bhatia: UCLA must better inform professors about BruinCast, equip more rooms
BruinCast is perhaps the third-greatest invention of mankind, inferior only to the smartphone and Wi-Fi – at least for UCLA students. Fall quarter enrollment is fast approaching, and students will soon begin consulting everything from professors’ Bruinwalk.com ratings to MyUCLA’s class availability to craft the optimal schedule. But perhaps one of the most important factors […]
Emily Merz: Bike safety education should come before violations, not after
UCLA’s campus is not known for being bike-friendly. While many other college campuses such as UC Santa Barbara and UC Davis overflow with bicyclists, UCLA students might only see one or two bicyclists going down Bruin Walk each day. The valley between campus and the Hill, the abundance of stairs and lack of bike lanes make […]
Jonathan Friedland: Fewer stops would increase Santa Monica Big Blue Bus ridership
Taking the bus to Santa Monica from UCLA can take upward of 45 minutes, not including the walk to the Westwood bus stop. When students have the option of saving time while paying slightly more for an UberPool, it’s no wonder Santa Monica Big Blue Bus ridership has dropped 12 percent in the last fiscal […]
Scott Bays: CSO van service can increase publicity through direct link on MyUCLA
UCLA students have “a safe means of transportation around campus during the evening hours.” They probably don’t know about it, though. The Community Service Officer Evening Van Service is a free ride service that provides UCLA students a safe way to get to the Hill and Westwood apartments between 6 and 11 p.m. Students just […]
Arman Sharif: UC must assemble task force to interpret disaggregated ethnicity data
Campus communities that felt invisible in the past are finally seeing some change in how university data represents them. The University of California Information Center released enrollment and graduation data in April disaggregated by ethnicity. This data includes enrollment statistics for individual ethnicities, like Vietnamese or Armenian, as opposed to only reporting information for the […]