Former first lady Michelle Obama and the Reach Higher Initiative brought College Signing Day 2019 to UCLA, an annual event that recognizes high school seniors and transfer students for their achievements to pursue higher education.
Michelle Obama, celebrities encourage event attendees to pursue higher education
Former first lady Michelle Obama told students to reach for higher education at an event on campus Wednesday.
Roughly 9,000 incoming college students packed Pauley Pavilion for the sixth annual College Signing Day, hosted by Obama’s Better Make Room and Reach Higher initiatives. Both campaigns aim to encourage students in their pursuit of higher education. Roughly 30 additional celebrity guests attended to show their support for the initiatives’ message.
Obama hugged students and told them about her experiences being disparaged as a student.
“I had someone tell me that I shouldn’t reach too high,” she said. “They told me that I wanted too much for myself, I should dream a little smaller.”
She warned students they would likely encounter these same challenges, just like she and her husband, former president Barack Obama, did. However, she emphasized that she loves and supports students, and that she believes they can succeed in the face of obstacles.
“I want you to understand you do not do this alone,” Obama said.
Several of the celebrity guests said they were proud of the students and told them not to give up in their pursuit of higher education. Celebrity guests included John Legend, Usher, Conan O’Brien, Lea Michele, Elizabeth Banks, Don Cheadle, Nina Dobrev, Adam Rippon, Billy Eichner, Lena Waithe, Justin Baldoni, Bebe Rexha, Pentatonix and various NBA and NFL athletes.
John Legend said he was taught from a young age to prioritize education. He now operates an educational non-profit to promote that goal.
“We can’t be the land of opportunity unless we make sure our young people, no matter where they come from, no matter how much money their parents make, we want to make sure they have a chance to get a quality education,” Legend said.
Chancellor Gene Block and University of California President Janet Napolitano told attendees about how the UC hoped to support them in their education.
Caylee Hermanson, who will attend California State University, Chico in the fall, said she was encouraged that so many celebrities chose to attend the event.
“They didn’t have to be here,” Hermanson said. “They were here for us.”
Several students said they felt inspired by Obama and the celebrity guests. Kenna Flores, who will attend Illinois Institute of Technology in the fall, said she has faced discouragement throughout her academic career, as Obama described.
“It was empowering to hear someone like Michelle Obama had been through the same thing,” Flores said.
Joy Vivar, who attends Mira Costa College, said she was excited to see a woman as intelligent and powerful as Obama.
“Like she made more (money) than the president last year,” Vivar said. “That’s pretty awesome.”
Other students said the messages they heard at the event will help them navigate higher education going forward.
David Fernandez, who will attend UC Irvine in the fall, said he was excited to see so many first-generation students like himself in one place.
“I don’t know anyone who goes to college … so I think it’s cool,” Fernandez said. “I just want to get inspired.”
Sara Masateh, who will attend UC Riverside in the fall, said she hoped the event would encourage her to put herself out there as she begins college.
“I hope to take away from the event to just put myself out there and not be afraid to try new experiences, like making new friends in the upcoming fall,” Masateh said.
Stephanie Lopez, a second-year anthropology student who staffed the event, said she thinks the event helped inspire students during the final stretch of the academic year.
“Sometimes when we’re in college, you kind of lose hope,” Lopez said. “I’m just trying to get some inspiration, to keep motivating myself.”
Obama said she hopes the students will use the same grit, resilience and commitment that got them through their education up to this point to succeed in higher education.
“So if you stumble, because stumbling happens to all of us, I want you to get back up,” Obama said.
Obama reiterated that the students in attendance will become future leaders.
“People like me and Barack, we’re stepping out of the way,” she said.
Document shows three people account for majority of property appeals in Westwood
Nearly two-thirds of appeals against Westwood businesses and properties in the last 20 years were made by the same three community members.
A document compiled by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning listed 72 appeals made since 1998. Of the 72 appeals, 61% were filed by the same three community members in a community of over 50,000. Appeals are alteration requests filed with the Los Angeles Department of City Planning addressing areas including building amenities, violations to city plans and conditions on operating.
Grayson Peters, a North Westwood Neighborhood Council member and second-year political science student, released the document on Facebook on Monday.
Peters said he thinks the documents reveal an abuse of the appeal process. He added he thinks this abuse has caused business stagnation and high storefront vacancy in Westwood Village.
Steve Sann, chair of the Westwood Community Council, is listed as filing 23 appeals, making up nearly one-third of all appeals since 1998. However, Sann said three of those appeals were not correct because he represented another community member and one was to readdress a previous appeal. Seven of his appeals were filed specifically against businesses’ use of alcohol. Sandy Brown, president of the Holmby Westwood Property Owners Association, filed 10 appeals. Brown said one appeal did not pertain to Westwood Village. An additional three appeals were filed under the association directly. Wolfgang Veith, a member of the Westwood Community Council, filed 11 appeals.
Sann said he operates as an individual, and does not consult with Brown or Veith when filing appeals.
The Department of City Planning compiled the list and last updated it in September 2018. At least one appeal has been made since then by Veith, against changing a UCLA fraternity house to an apartment complex, according to city planning documents.
The department did not respond to request for comment on current appeals.
Westwood Forward, a coalition of students and stakeholders aiming to revitalize Westwood, recently campaigned to save a longstanding sports bar from closing. They decided to publicize Westwood’s history of obstructionism and bureaucratic setbacks, Peters said in an email statement.
“The problem is that, as the list shows, a very small minority of Westwood stakeholders has disproportionately accounted for a clear majority of appeals made to the Los Angeles planning department over the past 20 years,” Peters said.
While appeals can be filed by any member of the public, every appeal costs the appellant $89 and the city $13,538, according to city documents.
A business must have some plans filed to zoning or city administrators before an appeal can be made, said Andrew Thomas, executive director of the Westwood Village Improvement Association – a non-profit organization tasked with improving the state of Westwood. The Westwood Community Design Review Board also provides recommendations to city planning on project applications. The appeal is then sent to the West Los Angeles Area Planning Commission where they plan a public hearing for both parties, upon which they make a decision to either grant or deny the appeal.
Thomas said the numerous appeals filed from the three community members created a perception that opening a business in Westwood is challenging.
Business owners who receive appeals are faced with stalled business openings and extra fees, Thomas said. While they fight the appeal, some business owners are also paying rent months before they are able to finish the appeal process and open.
Broxton Brewery & Public House faced setbacks due to a window restoration project which Sann filed an appeal against. Eventually, the business owner withdrew the project plans to add a window to the property because it would have cost an additional $16,000 in consultant fees to fight the appeal, according to city planning documents.
A business also faced an appeal due to conditions placed on the building by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, which regulates the state’s alcohol consumption and sale.
In one case, Rocco’s Tavern faced an appeal after installing windows that could open, allowing sound to travel out of the establishment. They were instructed to install fixed windows. Maurice Meyers filed the appeal, on behalf of Gayley Properties, LLC. Other businesses faced appeals because they do not provide the amount of parking required by the Westwood Village Specific Plan, a zoning ordinance created in 1989.
In addition, several building plans have been appealed because the buildings exceeded the maximum height for the Village. Businesses like Tocaya Organica faced appeals against their alcohol license applications.
Sann said he files appeals because he cares about the character and history of Westwood. He often voices his opinions in meetings for the neighborhood council, the association and the Design Review Board.
“Sometimes when the city does something wrong, on those rare occasions, I have to take it to an appeal because I believe the city made a mistake,” Sann said.
Brown said she speaks for homeowners when appealing a business or property. She added parking is a major issue in Westwood and she has tried to address it and other violations to the Westwood Village Specific Plan through appeals.
“I’m not against anybody. I’m just trying to bring in the perspective of people who live in Westwood,” Brown said. “We just try to make it as good as we can for our neighborhood: safe, clean, beautiful, (with) streets working.”
Peters said the appeal list document is not intended to stop community input on businesses and zoning issues in Westwood. Rather, it was meant to expose the three community members.
Thomas said he feels the main issue about excessive appeals is that the three community members are not representative of the entire Village. He added he thinks the city should address these concerns and increase transparency on the individuals filing the appeals.
A board member of the Holmby Westwood Property Owners Association said at a Department of City Planning public hearing in September 2018 for Tocaya Organica that Brown did not represent the beliefs of the association and filed an appeal without consulting the association. In addition, many Holmby Westwood residents submitted emails to the city in favor of granting Tocaya an alcohol license.
The NWWNC will discuss limiting appeals against existing or prospective businesses at a meeting Wednesday.
Student Activities Center to offer crutches, wheelchairs for rent
Injured students can now borrow crutches and wheelchairs for free from the Student Activities Center.
The Undergraduate Students Association Council’s Student Wellness Commission teamed up with the Good Clothes Good People redistribution center to rent out mobility aids, like crutches and wheelchairs, to students for free. In the past, there was no centralized system that allowed temporarily disabled students to borrow mobility aids for free and return them after they healed.
George Faour, the student wellness commissioner, said the idea for the project came to him when he was walking around campus with an injured friend.
“I sort of remembered how difficult it was for her to get around campus, so then I just realized that a lot of us able-bodied students don’t really take a second to appreciate how fortunate we are to get around this campus with ease,” he said.
To test the accessibility of mobility-aid services on campus, Faour said he tried to borrow a wheelchair from different entities on campus like the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center and the Center for Accessible Education.
“No one really said that they had a system where you can rent out crutches or a wheelchair or any sort of mobility-aid resource,” he said.
UCLA spokesperson Katherine Alvarado said in an email statement that students could get crutches for free with UCSHIP or have the option to buy them without UCSHIP, from the Ashe Center if prescribed by a clinician. The Ashe Center has never directly provided wheelchairs. This is in part due to a lack of space and a system to maintain and track loaned mobility aids, she said.
“The Ashe Center has concentrated on providing the healthcare to its patients and has made available any needed crutches or wheelchairs as part of their medical care,” Alvarado said.
Faour said the main challenge in establishing the project was finding a space. Even though the Ashe Center approved his proposal, they were unable to accommodate the loaning program due to a lack of space.
The project was eventually able to find a space at the GCGP redistribution center in the SAC, Faour said. The SWC had worked with GCGP in the past to provide free menstrual hygiene products on campus.
Students can now check out mobility aids with their BruinCard for two weeks at a time regardless of whether or not they have health insurance.
The SWC is piloting the program with two pairs of young adult crutches, two pairs of adult crutches and two wheelchairs to gauge interest in the program, Faour said.
Several students who have been temporarily disabled said having to store bulky crutches at home can be a hassle, and being able to rent mobility aids could help alleviate this problem.
Steffi Yeo, a fourth-year psychology student, said she injured herself rock climbing this year. Yeo, who does not have UCSHIP, had to pay to see a clinician at the Ashe Center and receive crutches. She said she still has the crutches she got from the Ashe Center.
“It circled around my friend group as quite a couple of us got fairly injured throughout the year,” Yeo said.
Yeo said she thinks the new option to borrow crutches could be helpful for students.
“It could be pretty unnecessary to just buy a mobility aid for a temporary disability or injury so it’s great that students have the option to borrow them,” Yeo said.
Diego Costin, a second-year engineering student, said he paid about $20 to get crutches, but said it was relatively easy to get them. He still keeps his crutches at home.
“That would be a good program because I don’t need my crutches anymore,” Costin said. “Like maybe I will eventually, but they’re kind of cumbersome and they take up space.”
Faour said he hopes students will not have to deal with financial burdens in addition to their injury.
“I just hope that students don’t really have to feel the weight of insurance and the payments, or the financial disparity of buying these resources, and also to be able to walk around this campus with ease if they’re ever unfortunately injured,” he said.
Noam Chomsky kicks off lecture series on linguistics at UCLA
The father of modern linguistics delivered the first of several public lectures at UCLA on Monday as part of a weeklong lecture series.
Noam Chomsky, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is giving a series of open lectures on linguistic theory at UCLA from Monday through Thursday.
The event was hosted by UCLA’s Department of Linguistics. Roughly 250 people attended the first lecture Monday, said Claudia Salguero, linguistics department manager. Attendees included UCLA undergraduate and graduate students, USC students and visitors from overseas who flew in to attend the lecture, she said.
Chomsky spoke about the history of linguistics during Monday’s lecture, as well as several linguistic theories he developed. One of these theories was the theory of universal grammar. Chomsky proposed there are universal linguistic rules that are innately hard-wired in humans. These basic rules apply to all languages on earth.
One piece of evidence Chomsky presented for his theory of universal grammar is that children are able to learn the basic grammar of a language despite being exposed to limited and sometimes ungrammatical speech. This would only make sense if humans are predisposed to learn language.
“Acquisition of language should be based on some kind of capacity to pick out what’s significant and important from quite an impoverished data,” Chomsky said.
This innate, biologically driven linguistic system must be rich enough to account for the variability of all human languages, and simple enough to evolve, he added.
“The faculty of language must have been very simple,” Chomsky said, “Galileo urged that we accept the idea that nature is simple as the task of the scientists to show it.”
In addition, this innate linguistic system is found only in humans, Chomsky said.
“It’s unique to humans. There’s nothing analogous in the organic world,” Chomsky said. “It’s the foundation of human culture, human creativity.”
He added there is little evidence of communication systems similar to human language prior to the appearance of modern humans.
Chomsky emphasized the value of studying languages. Most people take their language capabilities for granted, but it’s fascinating how humans can create an infinite combination of expressions by using just 25 to 30 sounds, Chomsky said.
“(Language) permits us to express all our secrets,” he said, “It affects everything we see, the most diverse movements of our soul. And if you stop to be willing to be puzzled, it’s a pretty amazing fact.”
Many students attended the lecture because they have heard of Chomsky in their classes or on their own.
Tina Huang, a fourth-year bioengineering and linguistics and computer science student, said she attended the lecture because she has read Chomsky’s theories in class.
“I have studied many of Chomsky’s proposals and theories and I’m very fascinated by his philosophy,” she said.
Some student attendees said they were daunted by the technical depth of the lecture.
Jessica Tomlin, a fourth-year political science student, said she found the lecture confusing for students who did not have a linguistics background.
“As the lecture progressed, it got more and more technical and nonaccessible for people who didn’t have a very good understanding of linguistics coming in,” She said, “I definitely wouldn’t go to the next lecture since I think it’s only going to get more technical from here.”
Emily Melik Aslanian, a fourth-year applied linguistics student, said she was excited to attend the lecture because Chomsky is a prominent figure in the linguistics field.
“I honestly thought I’d never see him in person, so it’s crazy that he’s here right before I’m graduating,” she said. “I don’t think I would miss that.”
Societal expectations, familial preferences worsen girls’ performances in STEM
Parents’ preference for boys may negatively impact their daughters’ test scores, according to a recent study.
Researchers from UCLA, Northwestern University and the London School of Economics found American families prefer the birth of boys over girls, which in turn lowers girls’ test scores in math and science.
Girls who were born into a family that favored the birth of boys over girls scored an average of three percentage points lower on math and science standardized tests than girls who were born in a non-biased household, the researchers found.
Paola Giuliano, a UCLA economics professor and one of the authors of the paper, said the bias against women has persisted since the advent of agriculture, in which men were favored on the field due to the physical nature of farm work.
“If your ancestors were involved in plow agriculture, then men were working in the fields and women were staying at home,” Giuliano said. “And over time, there was the belief that women should stay at home.”
This belief continues to persist into contemporary culture, Giuliano said. Women are less likely to pursue careers in math or science in countries that maintain the traditional values of their agricultural beginnings.
“If you take a country like Iceland where they are pretty much gender equal and then girls tend to do very well in mathematics, and if you take a country like Turkey, the beliefs of men and women in society are very traditional and in this country, women do much worse in mathematics,” Giuliano said.
Giuliano said she and the other researchers analyzed these gender biases in the United States using school records from Florida.
The researchers used records from Florida because the state’s management of records made it easier for them to compile the data, said Gaia Dossi, a graduate student at the London School of Economics and one of the authors of the paper.
The researchers linked the records from 2002 to 2011 to birth certificates and were ultimately able to reconstruct family trees. She said they found Florida had a boy-biased family structure, in which boys were more likely to be the last-born child, especially when preceded by several girls.
Dossi said a previous study found families in the U.S. are more likely to keep on having kids if the firstborn child is a girl versus a boy, creating boy-biased family structures.
Giuliano said the structures of Florida families showed a preference for the birth of boys.
“We looked at if fertility was higher if the firstborn was a girl and then we did find that there was still a preference for boys in the fertility pattern,” Giuliano said.
Kate Lehman, associate director for the Building, Recruiting and Inclusion for Diversity initiative, said she thinks the gender bias in STEM begins before girls arrive at college.
“These experiences girls have in middle school, that’s a time when they lose their confidence in their math abilities, and that has a long-term impact on their later interest in pursuing a STEM major,” Lehman said.
Annina Iseli, a graduate student, said she has noticed in her own experience that female students tend to doubt themselves more in STEM fields than their male counterparts.
“I see biases in a subtle way, in a sense, for example, that girls just doubt themselves more in general, or if they do something wrong they think that it is horrible,” Iseli said. “Whereas boys, when they make a mistake, they just go on. Society is less forgiving with girls.”
Giuliano added she thinks the problem is societal, not biological, as there is no scientific evidence supporting that girls are less scientifically inclined than boys.
“People have been doing tests on IQ to see if there are predispositions, but it seems that we are all equal,” Giuliano said. “This is definitely not something genetic or biological.”
Students share quarantine experiences in Bradley Hall after measles outbreak
Resident assistants knocked on every door of Karl Danielsen’s floor looking for him. UCLA did not have his measles immunization records on file, and Danielsen had missed a secure message from the Arthur Ashe Health and Wellness Center saying he should be quarantined immediately.
“Someone knocked on the door and asked if I knew where Karl Danielsen is and I responded, ‘I am Karl Danielsen,’” he said.
Danielsen, a second-year computer science student, was one of more than 500 people contacted for proof of immunization records after a UCLA student was diagnosed with measles and UCLA was identified as a site for potential measles exposure April 22. If students could not provide complete vaccination records, they were quarantined until blood test results proved the virus was not in their system.
He was supposed to report to the quarantine area two hours after the initial email was sent. When Danielsen did not show up, a manhunt ensued. He did not even know there was a student at UCLA that had been diagnosed with measles or that he had class in the same building as the infected student earlier that month.
“I basically just said, ‘Okay, whatever,’” Danielsen said. “I’ll do what (the Ashe Center) wants and try to get out of this as fast as possible.”
Danielsen packed an overnight bag and left for Tom Bradley International Hall, where UCLA housed students at risk of contracting measles. The entrance of Bradley Hall had metal plates screwed over the crack in the double doors, sealing the quarantined area from the campus outside.
“Seeing that, I thought ‘Oh my God, this is really serious,’” he said.
Danielsen was assigned to one of the rooms in the male section of the quarantined area. He said the students inside looked on edge, hunched over laptops trying to reach parents and past doctors to obtain their medical information.
“If you cracked a joke, they would sort of just give you a ghostly, wide-eyed look,” Danielsen said. “And that was especially weird because everyone I spoke to said they were in the same boat as me.”
Danielsen did not mind being quarantined, though. Each room had a 65-inch flat screen television, bottled water, toiletries and candy bars for the students to snack on.
“It was a freakin’ summer camp and everyone was acting like we were in a morgue,” Danielsen said. “UCLA definitely made sure we were comfortable.”
Jade McVay, a third-year bioengineering student, was also quarantined last week. A nurse at the Ashe Center told her she could agree to go to Bradley Hall or face the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
She had class in Franz Hall, one of the buildings which the infected UCLA student visited. The Ashe Center also did not have her measles immunization records.
“I think overwhelmed is the right word because there was that thought in the back of my head that what if I haven’t actually gotten the booster shot,” McVay said. “What if I have caused harm to myself or others without even realizing it?”
She said she expected Bradley Hall to be chaotic and crowded with people, but it turned out to be incredibly relaxed and relatively empty. The staff also accommodated McVay’s nut allergy by consulting a dietitian to find a suitable meal.
“They really tried to make it as comfortable as possible in what could have been an incredibly stressful situation,” McVay said.
Garrett Dahn, a second-year economics and geography student, was at a concert when he learned he needed to be quarantined. Dahn’s roommate told him people were looking for him, so he left the concert and went straight to the quarantined area.
“If I have measles, I shouldn’t be in a room with a bunch of other people,” Dahn said. “So I ended up leaving this concert in the middle and then I went to Bradley (Hall).”
Dahn, who had class in Franz, said he couldn’t believe he was involved with the measles quarantine.
“I was just thinking about ‘Contagion’ the movie,” Dahn said. “It’s very surreal.”
Dahn also enjoyed his quarantine experience and said it was fun.
“I did some of my work, they have great snacks, pizza,” Dahn said. “I was chilling.”
McVay’s father and her friend’s boyfriend are both allergic to the measles vaccination and are thus vulnerable to the disease, so she was disappointed to hear measles had spread to UCLA.
“You’re putting these people who physically can’t protect themselves at a huge risk, especially when things like outbreaks happen,” McVay said. “The fact that there’s a risk for people who can’t protect themselves makes me a little saddened that people are choosing to put themselves and others in harm’s way.”