Men’s volleyball ends five-game win streak as it falters in Santa Barbara

Errors plagued the Bruins as their winning streak came to an end.

No. 4 UCLA (10-3) lost to No. 6 UC Santa Barbara (12-3) in five sets by scores of 25-18, 21-25, 25-20, 19-25 and 15-12. The loss ended the Bruins’ five-game win streak.

Redshirt sophomore outside hitter Sam Kobrine said poor passing was a factor in the loss.

“Our passing isn’t where we expected it to be,” Kobrine said. “(UCSB) came in and hammered some serves and that threw us out of rhythm, especially in the beginning.”

UCSB had three service aces and hit for .524 in the first set. UCLA only hit for .133 to begin the match.

The Bruins had a total of 21 attacking errors and 30 service errors in the match, but Kobrine had his career high in kills with 11 while hitting for .286. Kobrine said his pregame training helped him achieve the milestone.

“It felt really good because I know I have been coming in and watching a lot of video on my swings,” Kobrine said.

UCLA came back from the first set loss with a win in the second set as redshirt junior opposite Brandon Rattray returned to the court after missing the last three games due to injury. He had eight kills, but also four attacking errors throughout the remainder of the game. Rattray said he felt a little out of shape.

“I’m not affected by the injury, but I haven’t been able to get out there in the practice gym and compete,” Rattray said. “Just a little bit rusty not being able to connect with Micah (Ma’a) in the past week and a half.”

Coach John Speraw said he noticed the drop in Rattray’s play.

“(Rattray) looked good at times, but he also looked like he had taken a couple weeks off,” Speraw said. “This hasn’t been a smooth year and we’re 10-3. I’m not discouraged at all.”

UCLA lost the third set before evening the score at two sets a piece by winning the fourth set. The Bruins hit .440 in the fourth set, their highest hitting percentage of the game.

UCLA was down 12-13 in the final set when Ma’a jump served into the net to pick up his fifth service error of the match, allowing the Gauchos to serve for game point.

Speraw said that Ma’a should continue to be aggressive despite his errors.

“(Ma’a) is one of the best servers in the country,” Speraw said. “Would you have a fastball pitcher that is the best pitcher in the country throw a curve when it matters? Hell no. You throw the heater or you lose.”

Ma’a is ranked third in the nation in aces per set, with a line of .698.

UCLA will travel to play No. 1 Long Beach State on Saturday and Concordia on Wednesday.

Weekend-long film festival features preservation of classic Hollywood films

Some films released in the early 20th century have never been seen again because they were damaged by water, lost in a fire or simply deteriorated over the course of time.

But from Friday to Sunday, the 2019 UCLA Festival of Preservation will screen films that are rarely seen anymore, said festival programmer Paul Malcolm. The event, held at the Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum, will feature films restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive over the last two years, Malcolm said. The restoration process for these films, which includes works from different periods of film history, was made possible with the help of grants and donated funds, he said.

“It’s exciting because a lot of the films that they’ve been restoring we’re seeing for the first time too,” Malcolm said. “Some of these films are coming out on the big screen for the first time in decades.”

One of the films being featured hasn’t been seen since its initial release in 1929, Malcolm said. Directed by Roland West, the Academy Award nominee for Best Picture “Alibi” was the first “talkie” of its kind: a motion picture with the sound synchronized to the images projected on screen. The original print had gone missing for several years, but a later copy from 1957 was found at the British Film Institute. Unfortunately, it had a long emulsion scratch scored across the reel from its first frame to its last, which Scott MacQueen, the head of preservation at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, said made the technical process of restoring the 35mm print exceptionally difficult.

“There was dirt and splotches and fingerprints and rippling, an overall very ugly image,” MacQueen said. “We did a complete 4K digital restoration and it now looks magnificent compared to what we started with.”

Films are chosen for restoration at the Archive based on two factors: what works are at risk of deterioration, and what funding is available for preservation, Malcolm said. Non-profit foundations will provide funds for restoring films of their choice – for instance “Alibi” was restored with funds provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. But Malcolm said other foundations specialize in certain types of films. The Film Noir Foundation financed the revival of “The Man Who Cheated Himself” and “Trapped” – both post-war Noir films featuring classic Hollywood actors like Lloyd Bridges and Lee J. Cobb.

Although Malcolm said the archive’s biggest draw has always been classic Hollywood films, there will be a number of shorts and documentaries on exhibit this weekend as well. The National Film Preservation Foundation funded the restoration of “The Savages,” a 1967 short documentary by UCLA alumnus Alan Gorg about a black father in the then-poverty stricken neighborhood of West Venice. Jillian Borders, the senior film preservationist at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, said the original film suffered water damage so she restored this film from an unedited 35mm negative.

“We basically had to remake all of the original edits that the filmmaker did,” Borders said. “We had to make sure that we had all the exact footage that he used, frame by frame, make sure that was replicated in our new restoration.”

The festival is being held over a single long weekend this year, eschewing the previous format of screening over the course of several weekends in one month, Malcolm said. Inspired by historic weekend-long film festivals such as TCM Festival and the George Eastman Museum’s The Nitrate Picture Show, Malcolm said he wanted to encapsulate the feeling of a dizzying smorgasbord of cinema in a short timespan while maintaining the focus on saving films.

“That’s the exciting part of it,” Malcolm said. “To flow through a big history of film in one weekend is pretty amazing.”

Bruins barely escape ruin at Berkeley against not-so-Golden Bears

This post was updated Feb. 14 at 2:31 p.m.

It wasn’t pretty, but the Bruins are back in the win column.

UCLA men’s basketball (13-12, 6-6 Pac-12) came back from a nine-point halftime deficit to California (5-19, 0-12) 75-67 in Berkeley on Wednesday night. With the win, the Bruins also moved up from tenth to seventh place in the Pac-12 standings.

UCLA trailed for the majority of the night and did not take its first lead until the 11:05 mark of the second half when sophomore guard Chris Smith buried an elbow jumper to put the Bruins ahead 44-43.

The Golden Bears – despite not having a conference win this season – remained composed, and built up a four-point advantage at 59-55 with just over two minutes remaining.

Freshman guard David Singleton stepped up and knocked down a 3-pointer on the ensuing possession to pull UCLA within one. After forcing Cal into a miss on the other end, sophomore guard Kris Wilkes connected on a 3-ball of his own to put the Bruins ahead by two with 1:15 remaining.

The Golden Bears tied things back up with a pair of free throws, but Wilkes came up big again, hitting a 3 from the wing to put the Bruins up by three with 46 seconds left.

Cal guard Matt Bradley, however, answered back with a game-tying 3-pointer 19 seconds later. UCLA went on to miss on its final possession of regulation, sending the game to overtime.

In the extra period, the Golden Bears went cold, scoring just three points, while the Bruins scrapped their way to a big enough lead to take the contest for good.

Wilkes finished the night with 27-point, 10-rebound double-double in which he shot 9-of-15 from the field and 5-of-8 from beyond the arc.

UCLA also received a significant lift from its bench unit.

Singleton came in and connected on four of his seven tries from deep while Smith and freshman guard Jules Bernard added a combined 13 points and eight rebounds.

Freshman center Moses Brown struggled to get going on offense, posting just four points on two shot attempts. The 7-footer missed seven of his nine free throws as well, but managed to contribute on the glass by hauling in 11 rebounds.

Cal had three different players score in double figures, but shot just 33.8 percent from the floor as a team. The Golden Bears also missed 16 of their 22 shots from beyond the circle, including five of six attempts in the overtime period.

The Bruins will stay in the Bay Area to take on the Cardinal (13-11, 6-6) on Saturday evening. UCLA took the first meeting between the schools with a 92-70 victory Jan. 3 in Murry Bartow’s second game as interim coach.

Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Dining hall inaccessibility alienates commuter, transfer students

Think about your first memory at UCLA. Maybe you’re grabbing boxes for your dorm out of your parents’ minivan.

Or maybe you’re lost on your way to lecture, chugging coffee to wake up after suffering through hours of traffic and parking nightmares.

While resident and commuter students take different paths to UCLA, you would think we all would share similar experiences at the university – or at least the same meals.

But this isn’t the case. While residents mainly socialize and dine on the Hill, students who live off campus seldom have a reason to make that trek. This means commuter and transfer students living off the Hill can have trouble feeling integrated into the campus’ social life.

UCLA is home to 7,300 transfer students, many of whom live off campus. Only 40 to 50 percent of incoming transfer students live on campus. Once their one year of guaranteed housing is up, most move off campus.

These students can still buy a meal plan on the Hill, but their cheapest option is well over $600 per quarter. This is a prohibitively expensive upfront cost, especially for students who haven’t used a meal plan before. Off-campus students can also buy individual meal swipes at dining halls, but few know this option exists. This makes dining halls, and thus the Hill, inaccessible to commuter and transfer students who live off-campus.

UCLA needs to reduce this segregation of space to foster interaction between residents and commuters. Dining halls are an essential facet of the UCLA social scene, and they need to be made more available to transfer and commuter students to fully integrate them into the Bruin community.

“The way the campus is structured has created a barrier between on-campus students and commuter students,” said Heather Adams, director of the Transfer Student Program.

This doesn’t just hurt transfer and commuter students. Isolating commuter and transfer students deprives all students of critical opportunities to interact with their peers, who may have drastically different life experiences. These diverse social interactions can bring the community together and make its members more empathetic and informed. UCLA makes an effort to admit a diverse student body, but the true value of this diversity is lost if students are robbed of the ability to casually share their diverse experiences over a meal.

Celeste Zarpas, an alumna who graduated in 2017, only ate at a dining hall once – during orientation – while she was a student. She said she would’ve gone to the Hill more often had she known she could buy swipes.

“As a transfer student and a commuter, you already feel like you’re having a nontypical college experience, and I would’ve liked going to dining halls to have more of a typical college experience,” she said.

Instead, Zarpas ate at Ackerman Union with other commuter students.

“I liked Ackerman because it felt like everyone was a misfit,” she said.

Without more support from UCLA, transfer and commuter students will continue to feel like misfits. It’s difficult to juggle adjusting to a new school, managing the breakneck speed of the quarter system and exploring the social life of the UCLA community. It’s almost impossible to do so without access to the whole campus.

“The short time at UCLA plus a long commute cut into your ability to plug into the community and make the most of the experience,” Adams said.

But all students should feel they belong at UCLA, no matter where they live. Encouraging commuter and transfer students to explore residential areas would give them a greater sense of ownership of the school. This is especially critical for transfer students, who only have a few years at UCLA. Providing these students a comfortable place to socialize, like the dining halls, would help them make the most of their time.

“I didn’t feel fully incorporated into the community,” Zarpas said. “Just because we didn’t start here doesn’t mean we’re not Bruins.”

Compared to other universities, UCLA has done relatively little to integrate commuter and transfer students into dining halls and residential social life.

At UC San Diego, faculty, staff and students without a housing contract can use the Community Dining Plan to get a 20 percent discount on dining hall purchases after depositing $25 into their account. This program currently serves 2,800 people. UC Santa Cruz sells Slug Club cards that allow users to purchase meals in increments of five. These meals cost $9.50 each, or $8.50 during sale periods at the start of every quarter. These programs are both more affordable and accessible than UCLA’s.

UC Berkeley has a slightly different approach, but its program still allows off-campus students to purchase smaller meal plans that are hundreds of dollars cheaper on the whole than UCLA’s nonresident meal plans.

UCLA also charges off-campus students more per swipe than residents.

Some schools are willing to go the extra mile. Skidmore College renovated its dining halls in 2006 after it found the spaces restricted the interaction between older and younger students and detracted from a sense of campus community.

Bruins deserve at least that much from the nation’s top public university. UCLA needs to take inspiration from these universities.

Dining halls are more than a place where residents grab a snack. They should be spaces where students of all ages and backgrounds interact casually and start to form relationships that broaden their understanding of the community.

Commuter and transfer students may not live on or near campus, but they should still be able to call UCLA their home.

Editorial: Better integrating e-scooters on campus would help reduce emissions

For a campus with a lot of slopes and walkways, UCLA is awfully opposed to the concept of traveling on two wheels.

Four wheels are somehow fine, though.

The university made national headlines – or rather, Washington Post’s blog’s – when UCLA Transportation reported students called a whopping 11,000 Uber and Lyft rides to and from campus. The peanut gallery was immediately up in arms, criticizing students’ apparent lack of energy to walk to campus and pointing to the major emission contributions of these short rides.

Hailing a ride for an otherwise short journey certainly plays into the narrative of the lazy millennial. There’s just one problem: The journey isn’t short.

And it’s also not how transportation works.

UCLA’s hill-laden campus is a constant source of grumblings for students – and yes, even visitors. The advent of alternative transportation, such as on-demand e-scooters and bike-sharing, cater to the campus community’s frustrations. The university, however, has given the cold shoulder to these transport modes, choosing to instead show the stick to those who don’t dismount and walk their wheels – or leave them in a bush somewhere – up Bruin Walk.

You wonder why Ubers and Lyfts are so popular.

Transportation ultimately boils down to conveniently traveling from one place to another. And UCLA has a major convenience problem: Its rolling hills make for an up to half-hour walk from one end of the campus to another. Those seeking to leverage technology to shorten this travel time are forced to duck between buildings or make use of roundabout protected bike lanes, making bikes and skateboards more trouble than they’re worth.

It’s not difficult to see why strung-out students, exhausted from the increasingly grueling demands of life at a crowded, competitive university would choose a quick ride in a Toyota Prius over wasting precious minutes traversing from the Public Affairs building to North Village.

The irony is UCLA has been privy to these concerns. UCLA Transportation operates alternative transportation programs, such as the BruinBus, Bruin Bike Share and TapRide – an on-demand ride-hailing service. Shoddy promotion or lack of extensiveness have made these transit lines individually insufficient for traveling about campus. They also collectively fail to address a fundamental problem: Alternative transportation should take less time than walking and be more environmentally efficient than driving.

This is where Bird, Lime and Uber Jump scooters – low-emission, dockless e-vehicles that are easy to park and can navigate campus thruways – come in. UCLA’s approach thus far has been to limit where these scooters can travel by barricading Bruin Walk or influencing the operating companies to remotely slow down the scooters’ motors when they enter sections of the campus proper. While these are effective ways to keep students safe, they ignore the demand for a modular transport that can scale the altitudes.

The solution is obvious, though. The university can cogently tackle its first-mile, last-mile problem by creating designated scooter lanes on campus pathways or existing mixed-use walkways and connecting those to established campus transportation – Bruin Bus and TapRide, for example – to connect the distant edges of campus.

Such a move wouldn’t be kowtowing to the demands of private transportation companies any more than UCLA already did in negotiating a flat-rate deal for Uber Pools and Lyft Line rides. Moreover, the university set out a goal to reduce campus emissions, and the sensible move is to meet students where they already are.

For some, that’s on-campus searching for an alleyway to use a Bird scooter in. For the 11,000 without time to kill, that’s in a Lyft Line headed to Franz Hall.

Conductorless orchestra trades hierarchical structure for collaboration

One. Two. Three. Four. What’s the tempo again?

Los Angeles’ Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra must face the issue of synchronization without direction, because they have no conductor.

The orchestra will perform a concert at the Hammer Museum at UCLA on Thursday. Kaleidoscope’s president and UCLA alumnus Benjamin Mitchell runs the orchestra and said his goal was to facilitate an open-minded collaboration between musicians. The unconventional orchestra frequently performs free concerts at local venues, featuring classics as well as more recent music from Los Angeles composers. While performing without a conductor has brought its challenges, Mitchell said, the group has managed to bypass these issues by emphasizing the importance of inclusivity and unity.

“Our goal is to create an orchestra where everyone works together in a democratic, collaborative way,” Mitchell said. “Everyone gets a say.”

Kaleidoscope’s method comes in contrast to the typical monarchical orchestra with one conductor who calls the shots. In a normal orchestra, if a musician were to raise their hand or object in any way to the conductor’s orders, they could be fired, said Kaleidoscope violinist Alex Granger. Kaleidoscope’s collaborative process encourages everyone to share and values their input equally, Granger said.

However, this style of performance raises apprehension among others outside of the group, Granger said. Musicians often doubt the plausibility of Kaleidoscope’s structure because of its atypicality and lack of tempo instruction.

“The status quo is always an obstacle when you’re trying to do something that’s never been done before,” Granger said. “Not everyone believes in this mission.”

Some student musicians are among those who disbelieve. Christian Israelian, a former president of Whittier Area Youth Orchestra, said the ability to perform without someone directing the group seems unrealistic. The first-year public affairs and political science student said the conductor is the focal point of every orchestra.

“(Performing without a conductor) is impossible. I look to the conductor for everything,” Israelian said. “How am I supposed to keep time?”

Yet timing is not a problem for Kaleidoscope. In fact, it was an obstacle that opened doors for them to communicate through nonverbal cues, such as body language and eye contact, Mitchell said. The musicians will sometimes imagine smaller notes within the notes to better keep time, Granger said.

“Instead of looking to the conductor, we communicate with each other through motion, sound and visuals during rehearsal and performance,” Granger said. “It’s like learning a new language.”

Kaleidoscope’s setup also leads to performances that are less self-focused, he said. Each member has to learn each others’ parts – not just their own. The orchestra is thus more of a team sport, rather than a composition of individuals playing at the same time, Mitchell said.

Many orchestras use a system of seats to indicate skill. For example, the first chair player is typically more proficient than the second chair. But musicians in Kaleidoscope rotate seats, eliminating the hierarchical traits that come with them. Israelian said the lack of a first chair seems counterintuitive to the democratic organization of Kaleidoscope; he believes there will always be some element of status in an orchestra, even if the labels aren’t there.

Granger, on the other hand, said musicians appreciate the autonomy Kaleidoscope allows.

Kaleidoscope’s financial structure mirrors the egalitarian spirit the group adheres to. All of their concerts and events are free or donation-based, Mitchell said – everyone is welcome, eliminating price discrimination. Ultimately, Kaleidoscope aims to exude an essence of equality in every concert, Mitchell said.

“It’s really all about sharing,” Mitchell said. “Everyone brings something new to the table, so a little bit of everyone is reflected in our music.”

Author of UCLA common book discusses experience as border patrol agent

“The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border” was chosen as UCLA’s 2018-2019 common book in July. In months prior, thousands of immigrant children had been separated from their parents at the United States-Mexico border.

The campus-wide committee responsible for the selection had no idea that months later, just before the launch of campus programming for the common book, the federal government would shut down for over a month over funding for a proposed border wall.

The memoir details author Francisco Cantú’s experience as a U.S. Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. In the book, he said he reflects on his time as a part of a system that has normalized violence. This past week, UCLA hosted two events with Cantú – a book talk Tuesday and a panel Wednesday, featuring members from the legal community and UCLA faculty to discuss immigration. The discussions sought to connect Cantú’s work with the ongoing developments in immigration, said La’Tonya Rease Miles, director of UCLA First Year Experience.

“We hope that the book increases peoples’ awareness of the border and humanizes that experience, I would say in a way that perhaps our media is not right now,” Miles said. “That really was the goal there, recognizing that not everyone really knows what that experience was like.”

Cantú said he initially joined border patrol because he believed he could observe and change the system from the inside or use the insight for a future career in law or politics. Instead, he found himself deeply affected by the way in which he internalized the workings of the system, and felt the need to write about his experience to help him process the experience. Cantú felt the need to push back on the idea that one can step into institutions that have normalized violence and emerge unscathed, he said.

Cantú finished his first draft of the book prior to the 2016 election, which completely changed the context of his story. Initially, he thought that “The Line Becomes a River” would serve as a testament to an uglier time in history, he said. Instead, Donald Trump won the election after running a campaign kick-started by anti-immigrant rhetoric, and immigration became a central issue in the political discourse.

“Families have been separated and unjustly detained and children have been detained in a lot of the same ways under prior administrations … but I think the biggest thing is the rhetoric that’s being used is more dehumanizing than ever before,” Cantú said.

Wednesday’s panel began with a request that students voice their opinion respectfully. Miles reminded students that if their protest interrupted the event, they would be asked to desist, and if they continued, they would be escorted out and potentially arrested. At past events, activists have criticized Cantú for joining border patrol and being complicit in a system seen by many as deeply harmful to immigrant communities. However, no such protests occurred at Wednesday’s event.

Panelists discussed the varying rhetoric surrounding immigration. UCLA professor of Chicana and Chicano studies and urban planning Abel Valenzuela spoke about the vitriol directed at undocumented individuals by the administration, while UCLA professor of history and African-American studies Kelly Lytle Hernández recounted an interview she had with the BBC that morning, in which she was repeatedly asked about the idea that America is a nation of immigrants. That notion is part of a mythology, she said – rather than a nation of immigrants, the U.S. has always been a nation of settlers.

“We began with native removal, we developed through black enslavement and we have defined ourselves through mass deportation,” Lytle Hernández said. “This is a fundamental structure in the creation and the peopling of the United States.”

In discussing the continuing structure of immigration, lawyer and panelist Angeline Chen talked about her continuing efforts to help families and children reunite. Cantú offered his own insight, suggesting the failings of the system were no accident.

“(It’s easy to think) the system is stressed and that’s why people are falling through the cracks or look at all of these unintended policy consequences,” Cantú said. “But I think from what I’ve seen … the system is perfectly happy to function this way and that there is not impetus to change it.”

However, despite the broad challenges in helping those ensnared in the immigration system, panelists offered some hope for students asking how they could help. Lytle Hernández emphasized the importance of activist work, no matter how limited in reach.

“Remember that it was a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, that helped unravel Jim Crow America,” Lytle Hernández said. “The discreteness of whatever issue you’re dealing with might exactly be its power, and don’t dismiss it as ‘This is too small, I’m not doing enough.’ … With all these little points of light, we’re going to push in the right direction.”