Daily Bruin – Page 147

Professor creates organization encouraging students of all majors to explore poetry

Every member of the UCLA community should read or hear a poem sometime between this April and June, said English adjunct assistant professor Reed Wilson.

UCLApoem – Wilson’s brainchild – is a new student-run organization that will organize several poetry readings and events during spring quarter, with the goal of directing an annual UCLAPoetry Festival every spring quarter. The class is also offered for credit as English M192.2: “Public Poetry Project.” Wilson, Creative Writing Coordinator for the English department, said the organization originally started as a practicum course in winter quarter 2018. But there are nonliterature students who wish to develop their affinity for poetry and don’t know how to do so, Wilson said – through UCLApoem, he hopes to help these students and demystify the subject.

“The late poet W. S. Merwin once said that when times get tough, people turn to poetry,” Wilson said. “It’s always there as a source of inspiration, wisdom and advice.”

Wilson blames the way poetry traditionally has been taught – with books in a classroom. He said he hopes to invigorate some of the great tradition of poetry in live readings that invite a more sensuous experience. Students also tend to be more aware of works by dead poets, as opposed to contemporary poets, Wilson said. He wants to pay special attention to living poets, like Jane Hirshfield or Brian Turner, in an effort to better engage students.

“We certainly want to foreground our efforts in the living art of poetry,” Wilson said. “By understanding the living art, that draws people back to the inspirations … from the past.”

Annalis Masters, a fourth-year political science student, said she was not exposed much to poetry in high school. Even now, because she is not an English student, poetry is not part of her curriculum. Masters said the stigma of undertaking artistic endeavors without an art background was discouraging, and she felt like she wouldn’t understand the poetry she attempted to. But after joining UCLApoem last quarter, she gained an appreciation for the art through Wilson’s weekly assignments.

The assignments were simple: Each student sent Wilson a link to a poem of his or her interest, which Wilson printed out and brought to class for discussion. Wilson said the purpose was to respond to the poem emotionally and intellectually. The English students had more literary context in their responses, but all students, regardless of their academic background, had similar emotional and intellectual responses to each poem. Masters said she enjoyed being treated the same as any other student in the class.

“A lot of students from other departments like (political science) or (economics) or the sciences would really benefit from reading poetry,” Masters said. “It’s important to break the stigma.”

Masters was encouraged to join UCLApoem by her roommate, Katheryne Castillo, a fourth-year English student and the organization’s student director. In earlier iterations of the class, Wilson would assign poems he considered difficult to comprehend, Castillo said. The exercise forced her to consider the perspective of a nonliterary student, she said, and the experience was akin to approaching poetry for the first time.

Castillo said it was one of the activities the original class presented last year that convinced her to join the organization. American poet Frank O’Hara wrote poems during his lunch breaks and compiled them into a book called “Lunch Poems.” Inspired by him, the class organized an event on the steps of Powell Library to read O’Hara’s book aloud while students sat and ate lunch.

“I thought it was so cool to have poetry being read. … People would randomly come in and sit down to join on the steps,” Castillo said. “It was such a peaceful event.”

For fourth-year English student Jodi Scott Elliott, the finer details of language drew her to UCLApoem. Elliott is an editor of Westwind Journal, the undergraduate journal of the arts, and while she said she has a background in fiction and nonfiction writing, she recently has been more interested in poetry. As a writer, poetry has helped Elliott look at language in a way that is very different from other forms of literature. She said it helps her slow down and consider individual words, punctuation and syntax in order to achieve the desired message.

“All forms of writing are communication,” Elliott said. “Sometimes, (writers) forget that we’re actually one person trying to communicate something to another, and we get lost in the artistry of the words.”

Wilson said he understands students are often barraged by organizations on Bruin Walk, but he wants to set UCLApoem apart by holding poetry events and activities in other places around campus, such as the Court of Sciences, the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden and perhaps even on the Hill. He wants to reach nonliterarature students in the places where they work and study, Wilson said.

Planned events so far include poetry readings, zine-making, a poem hand-out activity for National Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 18 and a Shakespeare reading event on the Bard’s birthday at the end of the month. Wilson said students often feel they need special knowledge or skills to appreciate and understand a poem, but he hopes to prove that wrong by having activities pop up in places one might not suspect.

“It’s never a bad thing to be surprised by poetry,” Wilson said. “I think you’re more receptive when you’re surprised by it.”

Student-made film shines a light on escapism and its consequences

Peter Yang wants to give students food for thought about escapism in his film “Strange Fodder.”

The fourth-year biochemistry student’s film project stars fourth-year sociology student Daniel Vallejo, who mentally enters a series of new realities after experiencing an unspecified traumatic event. The narrative follows both what is actually going on around the main character Daniel and the world he creates in his imagination. The film explores the ways people utilize escapism in order to cope with what has happened to them, Yang said.

Entering new realities can be as simple as immersing oneself in a medium of entertainment, such as Netflix or podcasts, or acting differently in certain contexts, such as at work or a party, Yang said. For example, someone watching the show “Friends” could imagine what it would be like living in New York and sitting down to have coffee with their friends. Such thought processes could serve as a form of escapism, which he said many college students use to cope with their various stresses.

“Sometimes you watch a TV show, you see these characters and you feel like you’re in the show, you feel like you’re a main character,” Yang said. “You pretend, ‘Oh, what if my life was like that?'”

Yang said he did not want the film to center on mental health, instead focusing on dealing with the much broader issue of escapism. In the film, Daniel will integrate aspects of his real life, such as his friends, into his imagined state. However, these versions of his friends have entirely different personalities than they do in real life. For example, one of his friends becomes judgmental and snarky, which is the inverse of her actual personality. This creates a contrast between real life and the new reality Daniel has entered.

Vallejo said the role requires him to sustain a sad, contemplative state as his character is constantly switching from an contemplative state and being fully present in the real world. Despite fluctuating between realities, Vallejo said his character doesn’t change much throughout the film. Instead, his character development relies on other characters’ constantly changing personalities.

“It’s basically me reacting to different facets of my imagination,” Vallejo said. “I don’t change much throughout the film; however, I do tend to react to what the other characters are doing differently.”

Yang said the film will use elements such as lighting, sound and editing to convey the sense of multiple realities. For example, scenes that take place in reality will have darker lighting, while scenes that take place in one of the new realities Daniel enters will be lit more brightly.

Erratic cuts and special effects will also help to convey the various realities, said Michael Evangelista, a fourth-year applied linguistics student and the film’s main editor. The film will also break the 180-degree rule in film, thus creating a distortion of screen direction, he said. Breaking this rule can make two characters that are facing each other look as if they are both facing the same direction, which he said skews the audience’s perception of direction in the scene. In doing so, Evangelista said he tried to point to the issues Daniel faces by focusing so intently on his imagined reality.

Escapism is context-dependent within the film, which Yang said is similar to what students go through. During finals week, for example, he said students have to change their mindset in order to study, as opposed to a more casual week in the quarter. Similarly, Daniel tends to become more imaginative when he interacts with media, such as listening to podcasts on his way to work, he said.

“If you look at libraries on a normal midterm weekend versus a finals weekend, everything is much more exaggerated and dining halls close down for people to study,” Yang said. “It’s sort of like we all transport ourselves to a different mode.”

But while Daniel is in those new realities, Yang said his real-life problems persist, which shows that escapism doesn’t permit you to fully escape from real life. The climax of the film, Daniel’s mental breakdown, is a result of him not coping with his real-world problems. Similarly, Yang said students in college all have issues they have to handle; however, they may not overcome them if they use entertainment to escape them.

“I thought the issue of dealing with traumatic events or difficult situations sort of forces us to put on a mask and also imagine ourselves in different masks because we want to escape our given situation,” Yang said.

2019 GSA candidate endorsement: Shrinidhi Balasubramanian for vice president of academic affairs

Graduate students are at the heart of UCLA’s academics.

That’s worryingly easy to forget – something graduate students themselves might forget given the university’s treatment of them.

Luckily, the soon-to-be Graduate Students Association vice president of academic affairs wants to challenge that.

The board endorses Shrinidhi Balasubramanian as the next vice president of academic affairs for her enthusiasm to increase transparency about the graduate experience on behalf of the administration and introduce straightforward, actionable platforms to that effect.

Balasubramanian’s primary platform pertains to transparency for incoming graduate students and their recruitment. She wants to highlight the university’s inconsistency in announcing the availability of teaching assistant positions, specifically the widespread need among graduate students to self-fund given the slim chances of obtaining one. She plans to advocate for open communication of campuswide historical data about TA positions.

She also has spoken about the need to advertise university housing, ensuring more students are informed about their chances of being granted housing by UCLA and about the price tag attached to it – an insidiously increasing value that harms both students and the university.

The first-year Master of Business Administration student also wants to increase visibility of interdepartmental graduate schools, and promote collaboration between schools where subjects have interdisciplinary crossovers, such as business and education.

While she is relatively knowledgeable of the GSA’s procedures from her current position as a representative, she does not have any real ideas about pushing policy in the Academic Senate – a key part of her role.

Everything from the minors offered at UCLA to the policies faculty and TAs must abide by are dictated by the senate. A key part of pushing for better treatment of graduate students is ensuring the proper accommodations are voted in by faculty. A key tool Balasubramanian will have at her disposal is the ability to affect student appointments to academic committees – she’ll have to do her homework to learn how to best wield it when she comes into office.

Still, her ideas are encouraging. She is running with the Moving Forward slate, which has a principal mission of affordable housing and engagement. Balasubramanian’s platforms adhere to that philosophy and are very much welcomed at a university that all too often helps us forget the real reason for its research and educational accolades.

2019 GSA candidate endorsement: Paul Nesterenko for vice president of internal affairs

Everyone can have ideas – but it’s a matter of implementing them.

Paul Nesterenko is the only candidate running for the Graduate Students Association vice president of internal affairs seat. And needless to say, he has a lot he wants to accomplish.

He is running on the Moving Forward slate first organized by current president Michael Skiles. As a collective group, candidates in this slate are advocating for affordable housing and improved socials to better integrate graduate students into campus life.

Nesterenko’s plans for organizing these events are promising. He wants to increase the frequency of socials and diversify how they are held for students not necessarily interested in the typical graduate student bar scene. He also wants to speak with administrators in order to prevent further increases and negotiate lowering costs for graduate student housing.

His plans also include increasing student stipends – which he argues are hardly enough to live on given the current cost of housing. And he wants to make graduate noncritical program fees, which show up as a blanket cost on students’ BruinBills, transparent. This kind of forthrightness is an essential ingredient to dismantling the many price tags tacked onto graduate students during their time at UCLA.

But Nesterenko has no clear plan for getting UCLA to show the books. Not only does this make his ideas about transparency vague, but it also makes it doubtful he’ll be able to achieve them at all. And this is a pitfall for people who take the position of vice president of internal affairs – focusing on talking to other people but never actually getting to acting on those identified issues.

Moreover, transparency is only the first step toward reducing the many fees graduate students pay. Not having a plan for how to get the university to find funds from other places is a nonstarter for getting administrators to come to the negotiating table.

Certainly, the approach to on-campus advocacy is to hear from others. This will be especially critical for Nesterenko, who doesn’t have much experience in GSA, having only been involved in it for a year. But even though he’ll need to learn from others, he’ll also need to work on making his many ideas a reality.

This board endorses Nesterenko for his promising goals, but he’ll need to ensure throughout his term he doesn’t become stagnant. Transparency for noncritical program fees, for example, is a worthy issue to look into – but it’s only a starting point.

After all, being a leader isn’t about making goals. It’s about achieving them.

2019 GSA candidate endorsement: JP Santos for vice president of external affairs

The North and South Campus divide isn’t just an undergraduate phenomenon – it rocks the Graduate Students Association too.

In a big way, actually.

Student participation in the association from the Court of Sciences is beyond dismal – that title is already granted to the abysmal turnout and engagement GSA has gotten in recent years.

You can understand why the board was excited to see a candidate from Boelter Hall who not only wants to participate in the association, but has a clear plan for challenging the status quo that shackles graduate students.

JP Santos, the only engineer on the GSA ballot and a doctoral candidate from the electrical and computer engineering department, has a singular yet thorough focus: affordability.

He wants to improve teaching assistant and graduate student researcher wages to help address Westwood’s housing crisis. He wants to engage more engineers in GSA with town halls, social media and in-person visits to inform them of the resources the association offers and allow their opinions to shape the often North Campus-saturated bills and policies that come from the body.

The former undergraduate student representative at his alma mater, University of Utah, has a plan of attack too.

Graduate student researcher rates are comparable across U.S. universities, and Santos seeks to build a diverse coalition of graduate researchers to lobby the state and federal government. He plans to advocate for locality sums from the University of California Office of the President to help graduate students in pricey areas like Westwood make enough to live where they research and teach. He intends to work with the North Westwood Neighborhood Council to bring in more affordable, high-density housing and improve university transportation for students living outside the neighborhood because of how expensive it currently is.

He has the connections to do that. Santos said he has been working with United Auto Workers, the teacher assistants’ union, and plans to improve representation of South Campus students in GSA and on his cabinet by tapping into the Engineering GSA, which exists within the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is also cognizant of how true representation means engaging those outside of his academic and social circles.

Some of these qualities are hard to find in Santos’ opponent, Noreen Ahmed. The other candidate for vice president of external affairs is no doubt qualified and experienced in lobbying, but lacks concrete plans. Ahmed said she plans to build her platform primarily by surveying students after getting into office, stating the need to understand their needs before proposing a more concrete platform – a move that, while an important part of understanding student wants, cannot be the be-all, end-all of any vice president of external affairs’ platform.

Lobbying the University, state government and federal government requires, at the very least, an idea of what that lobbying will be for.

Santos has a clear conception of what he wants to do. He has the makings to engage a community that has long been uninterested in – and sometimes excluded from – GSA. And he has the know-how to pull off what he has in mind.

Those are the qualities you need to engineer a successful vice president of external affairs – and this board endorses Santos for that reason.

2019 GSA candidate endorsement: Zak Fisher for president

An untenable housing balloon. An administration intent on raising student fees. A counseling center with precipitous staff turnover. A campus bereft of child care facilities for most student parents.

UCLA is lacking in many ways. And Zak Fisher, the apparent dark horse presidential candidate for the Graduate Students Association, is intent on changing that.

The law student and member of the Student Fee Advisory Committee aims to get university administrations to lower university apartment rent dramatically, below $1,000 per month. He wants to double the number of Counseling and Psychological Services Center employees to cope with the university’s mental health crisis. He wants to expand the campus’ affordable child care resources so every student parent has access to help. And he wants to initiate the process of decrementing student fees.

Those are big words. But Fisher might just be able to pull off some of that.

He has authored bills in the GSA forum, including one to limit the salaries of administrators to be no more than that of the governor of California – which sits hundreds of thousands of dollars less than that of current administrators at just over $200,000 a year. As a member of SFAC, he has been unapologetic about his attempts to hold the chancellor accountable for allegedly violating university policy when disseminating fee money. He has voiced concerns about student privacy given UCLA’s new policy of installing security cameras throughout campus. He has spoken to vice provosts about graduate students’ mental health needs. He has made ties with the UC’s teaching assistant union.

Fisher means business. And his interview with the board made clear he is not one to bow out of a disagreement with this university’s leaders over its treatment of students and services.

That kind of willingness to be adversarial is a necessary facet of any candidate running for GSA president – especially at a time when it’s clear administrators don’t have an understanding of student needs nor a care for how to adequately address them. The GSA president is the campus lobbying machine of the graduate student body, and Fisher’s uncompromising, self-critical and matter-of-fact conduct makes him the best candidate to fill that seat.

Of course, Fisher’s opponent, Ernesto Arciniega, is of a similar caliber and has experience working with the cabinet of Michael Skiles, the current GSA president and a seasoned negotiator with administrators and the City of Los Angeles. Like Fisher, Arciniega has the qualifications necessary for the role of GSA president, a plan to participate in the North Westwood Neighborhood Council to ensure graduate student needs are met and many connections within GSA that give him the know-how to navigate the space. In fact, Arciniega has more pronounced plans to better engage the graduate student body via GSA socials and events.

But making dents in issues like affordable housing requires an emphatic and focused effort. GSA has tossed around big ideas like affordable housing for several years now, and while it is an issue that deserves attention, it more importantly deserves action.

Fisher has demonstrated a stronger ability to work within the bureaucratic system the president operates in to achieve their goals. And he seems most capable of delivering on the promise of at least lowering graduate student university housing costs given his penchant for questioning norms and strongarming administrators into paying heed to student needs.

At a time when this university is gearing up to drown out the noise with its centennial celebrations, the graduate student body needs leadership that is unabashedly willing to go toe-to-toe with Murphy Hall and demand more commitment and resources. Fisher has already proved himself willing to do that in his current capacity.

The graduate student presidency would only enable him to do what he has already set the stage for.

The Quad: Our recap of UCLA’s involvement in the college admissions scandal

In the wake of the nationwide admissions scandal a few weeks ago, it seemed like everyone had something to say. The internet and social media were abuzz with angry tweets, crafty memes and official statements from universities and their athletic programs across the country.

But in the midst of all this chatter surrounding the scandal, it’s hard not to get tangled up in all of the tiny details. If you felt bombarded by the news coming at you from every angle, or if you find yourself questioning what a racketeering conspiracy even is, you’re in the right place – here’s the Quad’s breakdown of things you ought to understand about the scandal and where the university stands in the ongoing aftermath.

You may have heard by now that UCLA’s former men’s soccer coach, Jorge Salcedo, was accused of accepting bribes for essentially recruiting fake athletes. But what really happened and how was our university involved?

It all started March 12 when U.S. federal authorities released court documents that revealed a widespread cheating and bribery scandal involving several top universities, including UCLA.

Salcedo, as well as a USC’s assistant coach for women’s soccer, Laura Janke, was among the defendants indicted with involvement in the racketeering conspiracy. Racketeering involves organized groups running illegal and, in this case, fraudulent businesses. Bribe payments were concealed and moved in charitable accounts of an illegitimate college prep and counseling business called The Edge College & Career Network, and also known as The Key.

Other defendants on the list included coaches and an athletics director from Georgetown University and Wake Forest University, as well as two high school faculty members who served as standardized test administrators and two employees of The Edge College & Career Network.

Some defendants on the indictment were involved in a cheating collusion. This involved parents bribing administrators of standardized college admissions tests to allow their child to cheat on the exam, arranging for someone to take the exam for them or to correct their incorrect answers.

Other defendants on the list, including Salcedo, allegedly accepted bribes to facilitate the admission of individuals into the university under the guise that these students were top athletic recruits.

According to the court documents, in 2016 Salcedo received an email with a fake soccer profile and later an additional email with the standardized test scores and transcript for the prospective student. Salcedo sent this fake profile to the UCLA Student-Athlete Admissions Committee, which conditionally admitted the student.

Shortly after, Salcedo received a payment of $100,000 from William Singer, the founder of the aforementioned college prep business, who allegedly worked with the parents seeking to buy their children’s admission. The documents then state a similar event occurring with another falsified soccer profile in 2018 and another payment of $100,000 being sent to Salcedo.

Since then, UCLA has largely cut ties with Salcedo. On the date of the documents’ release, he was placed on leave while his actions were under review. He then resigned March 21. On March 25, the former coach UCLA coach plead “not guilty” to racketeering charges.

As of Monday morning, the parents of Lauren Isackson – who were charged with bribing UCLA athletic staff to get their daughter recruited for the women’s soccer team – have announced they plan to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud and apologized for their conduct.

Needless to say, this scandal hit hard.

Chancellor Gene Block said in an email statement the day the documents were released that he was shocked and angered to hear of the bribery scheme and called UCLA and other universities “(victims) of an alleged crime.”

Similarly, UCLA Athletics Director Dan Guerrero said in a statement March 22 that all members of UCLA Athletics have a duty to represent the university with integrity and that Salcedo’s alleged actions were “disturbing and unacceptable.”

Just two days after the scandal was uncovered, two students at Stanford filed a lawsuit against Singer and several universities involved including UCLA, USC and Stanford. They complained that their degrees from Stanford will not be valued as highly, believing that employers will question the legitimacy of their selection for a top university after the admissions scandal.

The U.S. Department of Education is currently investigating UCLA and the other universities involved in the bribery scheme.

As we wait to hear the results of their exploration into the matter, Bruins everywhere are left wondering whether we can trust the current college admissions system. In the wake of these events, students need to feel assured by the university that steps are being taken to prevent any type of similar scheme from occurring ever again.

As for the results of this ongoing investigation and the future of college admissions in the United States, only time will tell.