Women’s basketball closes out the weekend with victories in close games

The Bruins have experience with games coming down to the wire.

UCLA women’s basketball (11-9, 4-4 Pac-12) defeated No. 16 Arizona State (14-6, 5-4) on Friday and Arizona (14-6, 4-5) on Sunday. The matchup against the Sun Devils was decided within the final nine seconds, and the battle with the Wildcats reached triple overtime.

The Bruins have had nine contests this season decided by six points or fewer.

Unlike some of their previous close games, UCLA came out on top in both contests this weekend.

“Getting these two (wins) is just huge in our conference,” said coach Cori Close. “It’s hard to describe to people unless you’re coaching or playing in it how competitive every team is.”

UCLA is experienced in fourth-quarter scrambles, losing in tight matchups to Kentucky, Indiana and Stanford earlier in the season.

Senior guard Japreece Dean said that remaining calm was the key to the Bruins’ success in the contest against the Sun Devils. The guard got the game-winning shot in the final nine seconds of the game for the 61-59 upset win over Arizona State.

“I think regardless of what happened in the game, we stayed steady and poised in the moment,” Dean said. “We have great leaders on our team to help us do that.”

Sophomore forward Lauryn Miller and redshirt senior forward Lajahna Drummer each recorded individual career highs this weekend. Miller posted a career-high 17 points against Arizona State, more points than her performances in UCLA’s previous six games combined.

Drummer logged a career-high 17 rebounds against Arizona. The forward had recorded her 10th double-digit rebounding effort this season and 23rd for her career. Drummer is averaging 9.5 rebounds per game – good for third in the Pac-12.

Close said that mental toughness and discipline is what allowed UCLA to sustain the 55-minute battle against Arizona on Sunday.

“It was about guts and willpower,” Close said. “You have paid the price to put yourself mentally in this situation, and you have to draw on that right now. But honestly, it wasn’t an X-and-O battle, it was will and hustle that was going to win the game.”

After getting its first weekend sweep in Pac-12 play, UCLA will return home to face Washington State (7-13, 2-7) on Friday for an opportunity to keep the momentum alive.

“We know it’s a great conference,” said sophomore forward Michaela Onyenwere. “So just to get these two wins secured under our belt and to see our upward trajectory is really nice.”

After missed chances, men’s golf starts spring season with sixth in Arizona

Devon Bling didn’t even know it went in.

“As we were driving up, I didn’t see a ball around the hole anywhere,” the sophomore said. “Originally, I thought I hit it long.”

Coach Derek Freeman couldn’t tell where it went either – the view of the pin was blocked by a bunker in front of the green. But Freeman did say Bling’s tee shot on the seventh hole was nearly perfect.

“It was his best golf shot of the tournament,” Freeman said. “It looked under control, it looked like he knew what he was trying to do, how he was trying to hit the shot, he had great balance – those are all things that are important to his golf swing. He just hit a beautiful golf shot right at the pin.”

Sophomore Eddy Lai was the one who discovered the ball nestled in the bottom of the hole, and he and Bling went on to celebrate Bling’s first collegiate hole-in-one.

While Bling may have had the highlight play of the week, UCLA men’s golf finished in sixth place with a 17-under 835 at the Arizona Intercollegiate in the team’s first tournament of the spring season. Bling finished last among the five Bruins at the tournament, but his 1-under final round Tuesday was his best of the week.

Junior Hidetoshi Yoshihara was UCLA’s top golfer, finishing the week with an 8-under 205 and tying for eighth-place in the process. Yoshihara was tied for third heading into Tuesday after he shot 67 and 68 in the two 18-hole rounds Monday.

The junior said the long, 36-hole day was tough for him stamina-wise, but getting a second look at the same holes on the same day made it easier the second time around.

“We also got carts for the tournament, so it wasn’t that bad,” Yoshihara said. “And it helped a lot with course management and strategy, for sure.”

Behind Yoshihara’s top-three day, UCLA entered Tuesday tied with Arizona for second place and five strokes behind Arizona State.

But a 1-under, 283-stroke performance for the Bruins in the final round left them in the Wildcats’ and Sun Devils’ dust.

“We got cold, our putters got cold, we missed some opportunities early and we just never could get it going for the rest of the day,” Freeman said. “When you don’t make birdies on this golf course, you fall back, and that’s what happened.”

Arizona won the tournament, with Arizona State three strokes back, while UCLA saw the five-stroke deficit grow to 20 by the end of the final round. Yoshihara had some tips for the Bruins to be more efficient and said he still had high expectations for the fresh spring season.

“Preparation is a big part of it, I think we need to train a little bit better,” Yoshihara said. “Besides that, I think we’ve got a good chance of winning this year, for sure. We’re pretty excited for the rest of the season.”

UCLA also sent three players to the Arizona Medalist on the other side of Tuscon. Freshman Bryan Wiyang Teoh tied for fifth with a 7-under 209, while seniors Patrick Murphy and Jack Ireland tied for 10th and 18th, respectively.

UCLA will have three weeks off before hitting the links at the Prestige at PGA West in La Quinta, California, on Feb. 18.

UCLA commuters struggle with scheduling without option of priority enrollment

Enrollment appointments are out. So now it’s time for students to obsess over what classes they can take to sleep in a little bit longer.

Staying in bed isn’t really an option for commuter students.

Enrollment appointment assignments are based on the number of units students have. The higher the unit count, the sooner the enrollment time. But there are exceptions to the system: Priority enrollment is an additional enrollment time available prior to students’ first pass. It is only available to select groups, such as NCAA athletes and Regent Scholars.

It appears commuter students are not a priority.

While commuting may seem appealing to those students who struggle with the financial aspects of dorming or living close to campus, it isn’t as easy as getting in the car and driving. Students have to wake up earlier than their peers just to sit in two-hour traffic, rushing only to arrive early and get lost in the parking structures while looking for an empty spot.

Commuter students face many of the same enrollment problems as the rest of the student body. But they also struggle with fitting education into their everyday commutes. It’s about time UCLA started considering commuters as eligible for priority enrollment, given their immensely constricted schedules.

Patricia Turner, dean and vice provost for UCLA’s division of undergraduate education, said the last time priority enrollment was discussed was in 2009, when groups were taken off the priority enrollment list. Those groups included the Academic Advancement Program, General Education clusters and ROTC.

“The reason that it was looked at in 2009 was that several other groups successfully lobbied for and (received priority enrollment), but there were so many other groups that had it,” she said. “It wasn’t really working.”

And yet, the way commuters choose their class schedule isn’t working either.

Student commuters shape their schedules around what times they should be on the road in order not to hit traffic. Students often spend their entire day on campus, attempting to minimize the number of times throughout the week they travel back and forth. This ultimately leads to large gaps between classes and late drives home.

Leandra Gharabegi, a third-year English student, commutes because she lives and works in Glendale. In the short amount of time she’s been at UCLA as a transfer student, she’s found the best way to cope with commuting is to decrease the number of days she’s at UCLA, keeping her on campus from morning until nighttime.

“(It’s all about) making my schedule work in a way that I can keep my job that I need,” Gharabegi said. “I have no choice. I have to fit in my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

While students collectively face the problem of classes being full before their enrollment times, commuter students are left with an even smaller pool of classes they have access to. They juggle clubs and classwork like everyone else, but also have to deal with standstill Los Angeles traffic – not to mention working off campus or holding internships.

“(Choosing classes) is kind of like a puzzle, where I’m just trying to make all the pieces fit in with work,” Gharabegi added.

And because commuting students are limited to the classes that fit their schedule and aren’t full, they’re left with very few classes that actually interest them. This can add unnecessary stress during enrollment.

That’s on top of the stress that comes with staying on campus from dawn to dusk.

Jaredd Franco, a third-year political science student who transferred to UCLA, was a commuter her first quarter. She moved into an off-campus apartment her second quarter.

“(Enrollment) is definitely more of a challenge,” she said. “I have more stress when it comes to enrollment that I hadn’t experienced in community college. Classes in community were more accessible.”

Franco moved closer to campus for the sole reason of convenience in her schedule. Prior to moving closer to school she expressed a feeling of homelessness: She often found herself in her friends’ apartments during midterms and finals.

“(One of the biggest) challenges was sitting in the car for two hours,” Franco said, “I can’t waste all the time just sitting in the car. (And while) I was very fortunate that my friends offered that space for me, that space isn’t my space.”

Commuter students don’t have the ability to immerse themselves in the UCLA community. They’re constantly running from class to class, taking courses that don’t necessarily pique their interests. This can leave them unmotivated.

But this shouldn’t ever be the case. UCLA needs to offer student commuters priority enrollment in order to ease the stress involved with their routines. Priority enrollment can make college more accessible for commuters because it makes commuting less of an obstacle to their educations.

After all, UCLA can’t expect commuter students to have the full student experience if they’re forced to camp out in their cars in between classes and minimize their time on campus.

“You have to choose between self-care and your education,” Gharabegi said. “It’s definitely frustrating because it’s not like an extracurricular activity. Eating isn’t an extracurricular activity; doing schoolwork isn’t an extracurricular activity.”

Certainly, offering commuter students priority enrollment isn’t the complete solution to their problems. But that’s not the point. Students are aware of the difficulties that come with being a commuter, especially traffic. But simply because priority enrollment isn’t the answer to everything doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be readily available to commuters.

At the very least, it finally will let commuter students hit snooze on their alarms.

‘Medea’ rendition to highlight ancient story of women’s oppression and revenge

A chorus of veiled women translates intangible concepts into a haunting soundscape for director Sylvia Blush’s rendition of “Medea.”

The play, which opens at UCLA’s Little Theater on Friday and runs until Feb. 9, grapples with issues that have been relevant since the play premiered almost 2,500 years ago, said Blush, a graduate directing student. Euripides’ classic myth focuses on the titular Medea, a scorned woman who seeks revenge on her husband Jason by killing their children. Though it is a story of violence and murder, at its core it is a complex conversation about women’s place in society, said Blush.

“For this to be a play that is done so many years later, there has to be something that doesn’t necessarily redeem (Medea), but helps us understand or ask the questions of how a mother can kill her own children,” Blush said. “You don’t have to agree (with her actions), but they’re justified to Medea.”

Blush approached the challenge of unlocking the vulnerability hidden within Medea’s strength to understand the character’s evolution throughout the story. She said she looked at the events leading up to the final acts of violence to uncover the source of Medea’s anger and grief. Blush found sacrifice to be a root theme; Medea left her home, betrayed her family and used her sorcerous powers to help Jason, only to be betrayed by him. She was promised by oath – which in 431 BCE was regarded highly – that Jason would make her a queen, but he married someone else because Medea couldn’t provide the power he was looking for, Blush said.

“Medea gave up everything for him. … The ideas of Euripides’ time were different than those of 2019, but we’re still asking questions about women’s rights, about the right for women to have their own say in so many issues,” Blush said. “I think what gets overlooked usually is the fact that she’s a woman.”

Ryan Stevens, the dramaturge and a graduate playwriting student, said considering the story of a wronged woman’s wrath within a 21st-century context guided his research on the text and its historical background. He said he views the play as a cautionary tale of ignoring feminist issues; when discussions of equality and welcomeness are pushed off, there’s no choice but to act radically – in Medea’s case, this results in the death of her children, Stevens said.

“There’s some sort of apocryphal saying often used by disenfranchised people which is, ‘Respect our existence or expect our resistance,’ and I think that Medea really summarizes that,” Stevens said. “Her existence has not been respected, so she’s going to resist, violently, in order to be seen.”

Though Medea is the only prominent female character in the original play, Blush said she chose eight women to comprise the traditionally male Greek chorus that guides the audience through the story. Scenic designer and graduate scenic and production design student Madie Hays said while the chorus doesn’t take sides, they mimic Medea’s movements, symbolically supporting her as she speaks to men in power. The chorus acts as a mystical third-party entity that is aware of the full story, but Blush said the central question of the play is deciding who is to blame for the events that transpire: Jason or Medea?

Costume designer Caitlin Kagawa said she reflected on this debate in the costumes by putting Medea and those associated with her in red. Meanwhile, Jason and those on his side are dressed in blue. The chorus wears neutral-colored veils that match the fabric scenery, almost allowing them to become part of the set, Hays said. Since the story features gruesome murder, Kagawa chose the color red for Medea to emphasize her passion and violence.

Stevens said it’s not just the murders themselves that create the horror of the show; it’s the realization that humans are capable of hurting each other. The show is very much about male entitlement and who pays the price when men in power overstep their bounds, Stevens said.

“What if our actions, whether we realize it or not, contribute to making someone feel so disenfranchised and without a home that they have to resort to violent means?” Stevens said. “I think those are the darkest fears.”

Alumna Judy Chicago promotes a feminist conversation on sexuality though art

This post was updated Jan. 30 at 10:19 a.m.

Judy Chicago was the only woman in a spray painting class with 250 men in the 1960s.

The alumna is known for her 3D installation “The Dinner Party” – a banquet table setup with plates commemorating important women in history – and will exhibit her other works at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. The exhibition, “Judy Chicago: A Reckoning” surveys 30 years of Chicago’s works from 1965 to 1993 and will be open until April 21. Chicago started introducing feminist art as a practice in the 1960s, even though it didn’t begin until the 1970s, she said.

“In the 1960s, it was impossible for a woman artist to make art that revealed her gender. The biggest compliment you could get then was, ‘You paint like a man,'” Chicago said. “I set out to create a feminist art practice … feminist themes began to emerge more clearly in my work.”

Stephanie Seidel, the curator of the exhibition, said Chicago is well known for “The Dinner Party,” but her other works have not been given the same attention. Seidel said she was drawn not only to the feminist themes in Chicago’s works and her employment of various techniques, but also to her contributions to the male-dominated art scene of the 1960s.

“It was not really written into our history,” Seidel said. “It’s really about putting her into a context and looking at what happened at the time when she was making those works and understand that she was part of the larger discourse.”

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The exhibit "Judy Chicago: A Reckoning," will be on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art, located in Miami, until April. It includes art pieces created by alumna Judy Chicago over a 30-year period. (Courtesy of Fredrik Nilsen Studio)

When creating the exhibition, Seidel said she categorized Chicago’s works according to techniques, transitioning from abstract to figurative pieces. In the 1960s, when Chicago was in Los Angeles, she felt pressured to tone down some of her more extreme, bright colors by the male community, said Jessica Silverman, a gallery owner who previously exhibited Chicago’s work. However, she went ahead and created minimalist sculptures that shone with bright yellow and pastel colors, in contrast to the popular abstract expressionism at the time that emphasized subtle beige and brown colors. Once Chicago learned to spray paint at auto body school, she brought similar colors to her spray paintings on car hoods, which showed symmetrical images slightly reminiscent of phalluses and ovaries, Seidel said. With “Car Hood” in 1964, Chicago was reflecting on the challenges she faced as a woman in the male-dominated arena of the spray painting class and of the LA art scene.

For her exhibition in San Francisco, Silverman displayed works related to the theme and title “Pussies,” which included Chicago’s watercolor paintings of cats, “Kitty City.” The paintings depict the everyday routines, like eating or sleeping, of cats Chicago encountered and even owned, emphasizing her devotion to the cats and each cat’s individuality. Though the paintings explicitly show feline animals, the idea of female genitalia was still translatable and transferable to the drawings, because it’s implicitly referenced by the word “pussies,” Silverman said.

“(Chicago) hadn’t really been properly historified, properly looked at, put in dialogue with other contemporary artists,” Silverman said. “We’re in this era, a ‘grab her by the pussy’ presidency, and I think that people are looking for someone who stands for something else, someone who stands for what they believe in, someone who stands for women’s rights.”

Besides spray painting, Chicago also worked with pastels. In “Reincarnation Triptych,” three paintings of swirling colors each represent various important women in history, one including Virginia Woolf. Seidel said the paintings were made in the 1970s and will be on display together for the first time since the 1980s.

Moving away from abstract imagery, Chicago’s art became more figurative with the creation of “The Dinner Party,” Seidel said. In her needlework series “Birth Project,” Chicago used a variety of needling techniques, like embroidery, to portray the graphic and beautiful nature of the process of childbirth, Chicago said.

“A Reckoning” finishes with Chicago’s series “PowerPlay” and “Autobiography of A Year.” Seidel said the former depicts men and how they exercise destructive power. For example, in “Driving the World to Destruction” from “PowerPlay,” a heavily muscled man grasps a steering wheel while flames burn in the background. The latter comprises a suite of hundreds of intimate drawings reflecting Chicago’s life in 1993, Seidel said.

Since her sculpture work in the 1960s, Chicago said she has been pushing for female expression in art. Though the playing field in the world of art has yet to reach an even level, Chicago said women are still able to pursue projects, such as “Vagina China” by the Women’s Art League. The project comprises 13 differently adorned casts of vaginas and is meant to empower and celebrate the vagina, demystifying it in the process.

Chicago said women in her generation felt ashamed of their bodies and vaginas, but female artists today can claim the power of their bodies and their sexuality. In addition to creating projects, women are able to have conversations about feminism in art publicly, as Chicago did in an “In Conversation” event with the co-creator of the pussyhats, Jayna Zweiman.

“If you never see images, for example of birth, it makes it mysterious and unimportant – because it’s not part of our cultural discourse, heritage, and changing that has been the goal of my work,” Chicago said. “To make women feel that who they are, and what they do, is important.”

Instructor continues fiction series focusing on Asian culture, women’s power

Kung fu and figure skating merge to promote girl power and Asian representation in a recent novel.

The pairing of the two sports comes to life in UCLA Extension instructor Henry Lien’s “Peasprout Chen” book series, where it is a martial art referred to as wu liu. The series’ second installment, “Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions” was published Jan. 22. The novel follows the titular character on her journey to master wu liu in the fictional city of Pearl, where she attends the Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword. Having been born in Taiwan, Lien sought to integrate his Asian-American immigrant experience into the “Peasprout Chen” books, which are targeted toward middle school readers.

“I was aiming to create my own diverse ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘Star Wars’ – that’s what I wanted,” Lien said. “I love ‘Harry Potter.’ I love ‘Star Wars.’ But I wanted to create something where the diversity and the references to my own backgrounds and culture were built in from the ground up.”

Peasprout must endure academic pressure to be a top student, while facing discrimination for being an outsider from the country of Shin. Despite the series’ marketing toward young readers, the “Peasprout Chen” books address several mature and relevant topics, Lien said. In “Battle of Champions,” Peasprout must excel in multiple school competitions to avoid deportation and possible execution for betraying her homeland, touching on issues such as the war on immigration and immigrant experiences in America. Lien said the setting of the books incorporates themes of resilience and several distinct elements of East Asian culture.

Lien said he wanted the cultures he identified with the most growing up – Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese – to be essential to the books’ settings and stories.

Many details from the books, such as Pearl’s architecture, were taken directly from Asian culture, said Tiffany Liao, Lien’s editor at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. Liao said many depictions of Asian culture on screen tend to be vague in origin, whereas Lien’s books include details that are distinctly Chinese, Japanese or Taiwanese.

When the city of Pearl was originally designed, for instance, certain elements of its layout, such as the location and orientation of structures, were rejected because they did not adhere to the Chinese practice of feng shui. Scenes in the books, such as a banquet, also stay very true to Taiwanese culture, Liao said. Although some of these attributes initially may come off as stereotypes of Asian cultures, Liao said she thinks the book manages to leverage them as nuances to Peasprout’s character.

“What (Lien) did was really pay homage to how diverse Taiwanese culture is. I think what he captures so well is not resisting stereotypes or resisting anything that feels tropey,” Liao said. “But (Lien) leans into that and also finds empathy in that – in (Peasprout’s) background and her character.”

Tina Dubois, Lien’s agent at ICM Partners, said the city of Pearl was unlike anything she had ever encountered, with its novel concepts and cultural inclusions. Lien said the city of Pearl symbolizes being born out of adversity, which is paralleled in Peasprout’s character. Peasprout endures adversity from her peers because of her heritage and ultimately turns its into something beautiful, like a pearl that forms in resistance to sand cutting into the flesh of an oyster.

Peasprout’s perseverance was influenced by Lien’s preparations for writing the series, he said. To help him better describe wu liu, Lien took both figure skating and kung fu lessons. While Lien said he was appalling at both sports, the difficulties he encountered helped inform Peasprout’s character. Lien said he realized that the sports, which reward balance and flexibility over brute strength, had a huge subtext for female empowerment by rewarding the ways that young girls and women are built differently from men, so he incorporated the importance of both physical and mental flexibility into Peasprout’s character arc. Peasprout is a young girl who is confident, headstrong and determined, but also stubborn and arrogant at times, Lien said. As opposed to many fictional characters who discover a newfound power and gain self-esteem, Peasprout’s development occurs in reverse.

“She starts out with all the power in the world. And she needs to learn when she needs to lay down her power and be flexible enough to accept help from other people,” Lien said. “To learn to have friends, and to learn to be weak, and to learn that she’s not always going to win, and that that is okay.”

In order to keep young readers engaged with serious themes, Lien said the books needed to be even more entertaining with the stakes raised. At the launch of “Battle of Champions,” Lien performed original songs he had composed for the series to help audiences connect with the city of Pearl. When designing the setting of the “Peasprout Chen” books, Lien made sure to create a world without magic, unlike many fantasy stories. Lien said he wanted to replace that typical fantasy with culture, history and athletics, which he believes can be as cool as any magic.

“The books are a response to the world that we live today, which is a very imperfect world,” Lien said. “But I also feel very strongly that it’s important to have books that are optimistic. We have to show how we can take on an imperfect world, and not shrink from an imperfect world, and meet it with hope and brightness.”