Men’s basketball faces duo of Oregon teams in first road trip of Pac-12 play

UCLA and Oregon began the season as the media’s top-two choices to win the Pac-12 men’s basketball title.

To say they have not been playing like the favorites would be an understatement.

The Bruins fired coach Steve Alford after losing four straight games to close its nonconference slate. On the other hand, the Ducks’ crown jewel – top-five national recruit center Bol Bol – is out for the season, and coach Dana Altman has only eight healthy scholarship players.

The two schools will try to reverse their fortunes as UCLA (9-6, 2-0 Pac-12) embarks on its first road trip in conference play. The Bruins visit the Oregon Ducks (9-5, 0-1) on Thursday and the Oregon State Beavers (9-4, 1-0) on Sunday.

“(Oregon’s crowd) is right up there with the best of them,” said redshirt junior guard Prince Ali. “Every time I’ve played there, it’s been sold out, so that’s going to be loud.”

UCLA hasn’t fared well as visitors in recent years.

Under Alford, the Bruins had a 21-30 record in road games. Their lone road contest this season culminated in a 93-64 loss at Cincinnati in which the Bruins turned the ball over 14 times.

“Turnovers are a major, major concern,” said interim coach Murry Bartow. “Because Oregon, in their last three games, they’ve turned people over at about 18 a game. And we just had 22 in our last game.”

Over the past six games, UCLA has averaged 16.5 turnovers per contest. Only four players have more assists than turnovers this season.

“We have to care more for the possession of the ball – every possession matters, that’s how we have to treat the ball,” said sophomore guard Chris Smith. “We’re a little careless sometimes, myself especially. I have a lot of bad turnovers every game, that’s just little lapses every now and then that we have to fix.”

Something the Bruins don’t have to worry about is a size advantage inside the paint.

The 7-foot-2-inch Bol recently had season-ending surgery for a left foot fracture and Ducks forward Kenny Wooten is out for upwards of three weeks with a broken jaw.

What was billed as a duel between two five-star, 7-plus-foot freshman centers now features UCLA big man Moses Brown against an undersized Oregon frontcourt.

Brown is coming off a 17-point, 10-rebound performance against Stanford and a 16-point, 9-rebound outing versus California. He averages just over eight shots per game on 67.8 percent shooting, a mark that ranks No. 6 in the nation.

The Ducks’ tallest healthy rotation players are forwards Louis King and Paul White, who are both 6 feet, 9 inches tall.

Brown’s ability to finish in the paint and above the rim adds another dimension to UCLA’s offense in a critical area.

“Analytically, you want shots in the paint,” Bartow said. “If you can’t get shots in the paint, you want clean 3s. Anything in between there is really not a great shot.”

Balling against the Beavers

Last season, the Beavers and the Bruins split the home-and-home series. The lone yet significant departure from coach Wayne Tinkle’s roster is forward Drew Eubanks, who averaged 13.2 points and 6.8 rebounds per game.

Oregon State was picked to finish No. 10 in the conference this year, but after losing at home to Kent State, the Beavers won their Pac-12 opener against their in-state rival Saturday.

Forward Tres Tinkle leads the team with 20.5 points per game, and he has scored in double figures in each of the three games he has played against UCLA.

Men’s tennis’ new season uncertain but with potential for younger players to shine

Nobody is quite sure what UCLA men’s tennis will look like this season, not even their coach.

“I’m not sure who will step up for us this season,” said coach Billy Martin. “There’s no guarantee or certainty of what’s going to happen, and that’s sports and that’s what’s so fun about it.”

Led by Martin for the 26th consecutive year, the Bruins, ranked seventh in the ITA preseason rankings, will look to replicate the success of a season that included a team loss in the NCAA semifinals, an NCAA doubles championship, and an NCAA singles semifinals loss.

Martin Redlicki, who went to the singles semifinals, along with Evan Zhu, who captured the doubles championship with Redlicki, have both moved on from the team, leaving holes at the top of UCLA’s lineup.

Next up for the Bruins appears to be sophomore Keegan Smith. In his freshman season, Smith accrued a 40-7 record playing singles and a 21-15 record playing doubles on his way to winning Pac-12 Freshman of the Year. However, Smith said the adjustment to top competition is never easy.

“I worked on my game a lot (in the offseason), certain things I needed to improve,” Smith said. “My volleys, backhand slice, my fitness, I really worked to be ready for the grueling season ahead.”

Martin said he was clear about what he expected from Smith.

“(Smith), even though he’s somewhat young, has a lot of experience under him,” Martin said. “He’s going to probably be playing really high for us.”

Alongside Smith, four sophomores and seven incoming freshmen return for the Bruins. Martin said junior Ben Goldberg and senior Max Cressy will play a crucial role for the team this season.

“(Cressy) is going to be a great leader for us,” Martin said. “(Goldberg), our only junior, he’s been through a lot, and is a very experienced player.”

Martin said Smith is another player whose resilience and leadership growth from his freshman year will help impact UCLA positively.

“We saw a player like (Smith) last year really get frustrated early in the year,” Martin said. “He digested the whole situation and really, from the Stanford match forward, he really came about as a mature young player in college tennis.”

However, Martin said more underclassmen will have to play a role if UCLA is to be successful this season. One player on the rise is sophomore Connor Hance, whose 18-8 singles record as a freshman showcased his abilities. Hance said he believes his success this season will hinge on his ability to manage his fitness and attitude.

“I lost some weight, and that’s going to help a lot,” Hance said. “Even a few pounds can make a big difference in tight, competitive matches. Mentally, I think I’ve also been a bit better, and that really should help me this year.”

Sophomore Bryce Pereira returns with a year of experience under his belt and a 24-12 doubles record. Redshirt sophomore Connor Rapp also returns with match experience, and freshmen Govind Nanda, Eric Hahn and Patrick Zahraj will all have the opportunity to break into the lineup and make a positive impact for UCLA.

Martin said he knows the Bruins are headed into the season with a lot of unknowns and many experiences to learn and grow, but he isn’t worried about the youth and uncertainty.

“The younger teams are always so much more enthusiastic,” Martin said. “They are so much more excited going in to each and every match, and that can make a big difference.”

The Bruins will open play this weekend at the National Collegiate Tennis Classic in La Quinta, California.

Throwback Thursday: The rowdy past of Bruins’ finals week traditions

During the demanding days following tenth week, we yell away our troubles when the clock strikes midnight, disturbing the eerie silence saturated with the anxiety of impending finals.

Or at least that’s what the tradition of more than 30 years is supposed to be about.

Nearly two decades ago, the Midnight Yell turned into what the Daily Bruin’s then-editorial board referred to as “Midnight Hell.” On that chaotic 2000 evening, students flung bottles and rocks at firefighters who arrived at the scene to extinguish a burning couch thrown from a rooftop, resulting in the arrest of 19 participants.

“The mental and physical exertion of finals can drain the intelligence out of anyone,” the then-editorial board wrote.

Though the stress of finals may have driven the students to the verge of insanity, they were not the only ones to blame. Media, policemen and university administrators all dealt with the situation inappropriately by “irresponsibly increasing the hype,” according to the board.

The combination of exaggeration from the media, aggression from the police and inaction from administration aggravated an already tense situation, the board wrote.

While the midnight disturbance of 2000 may be the pinnacle of Midnight Yells gone wrong, the tradition continues to be a topic of controversy.

In the weekend preceding finals, resident assistants remind residents of their obligation to obey finals week quiet hours between 7 p.m. and 5 p.m. every day. Failure to comply results in the resident being written up and ultimately needing to meet with the resident director of the building. However, only students with multiple offenses seem to face any real consequences.

While some students aren’t fazed by the repercussions, others go to extreme measures to participate while still ensuring anonymity. One strategy for these students is to yell out of the window in one room and then dash down the hall to seek the refuge of another room, leaving their screams untraceable and unpunishable.

The Undie Run is another finals tradition that descended from the Midnight Yell for the students who felt they couldn’t carry out the original tradition with integrity, while remaining within the context of the law. The tradition was started in 2003, and participants run through the streets of Westwood, often wearing nothing but their underwear, while feeling invigorated and safe from opposition.

It is clear that both policemen 19 years ago and RA’s today want to ensure a peaceful environment for students during an otherwise stressful time. However, The Bruin’s then-editorial board wanted to make clear that these intentions should not get in the way of a tradition that, at its heart, is innocuous.

“The police presence destroyed what is normally a harmless opportunity for student camaraderie and a release from the stress of final exams,” the then-editorial board wrote.

In 10 weeks, the yells of overly stressed students seeking collective catharsis will liven the campus once more despite objections – hopefully without the mayhem of the fall 2000 Midnight Yell. Having survived this long, it doesn’t seem like the Midnight Yell is going anywhere, so you know what they say – if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Elon Musk’s elitist tunnel system to bury hopes of less traffic six feet under

Imagine this: Toyota promises to build a bridge between Manhattan and Queens to help commuters, but you have to buy a Toyota to use it. Silly, right?

Only a few weeks ago, Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, revealed his prototype tunnel designed by the Boring Company. The tunnel is straight out of a sci-fi movie: 20 to 40 feet underground, 1.14 miles long and illuminated by blue and white LEDs.

Per Musk’s plan, this is only the beginning. The billionaire engineer plans to construct a network of tunnels all over Los Angeles with the intention of alleviating traffic and shaving minutes off Angelenos’ daily commutes.

But his elitist thinking will only relieve the one percent.

Only fully autonomous electric cars are permitted in the tunnels – meaning only Musk and people who can afford self-driving cars can utilize the high speed tracks. It is selfishly inefficient to construct a transit system that only one type of vehicle can use.

Los Angeles, though incredibly wealthy, is socioeconomically diverse and geographically dispersed. If the goal of the tunnels is to create a more efficient transit system, the masterminds behind it need to think about the majority of commuters, who make less than six figures. Focusing on a larger demographic would have a greater impact on congestion and could act as the first step toward long-term traffic relief.

According to a 2016 report, the average Angeleno’s commute is 44 minutes long. While other cities like New York City experience similar congestion, the expansiveness of Los Angeles combined with its high population makes the average daily commute one of the worst in the United States.

In other words, Angelenos need more than just a few tunnels.

The primary method of transportation in Los Angeles is by car. This is because Los Angeles County is large, industry is relatively concentrated and the city doesn’t have a reliable public transportation system. Investing in green form of mass transit – something Los Angeles is prioritizing – would be a more worthwhile way for the people at the Boring Company to serve a wider demographic and really cut into commute times.

“(The tunnels) might be effective in Beverly Hills, but in other areas where there are not a lot of Teslas, maybe not,” said Maite Nieblas, a third-year sociology student who commutes to school. “I think we should focus on public transportation as a whole, considering Los Angeles is one of the bigger cities that doesn’t have efficient public transportation.”

Moreover, Teslas aren’t an affordable mode of transport. The baseline cost of the cheapest model – the only widely known self-driving electric car – is $33,450, and customers wait months, even years, to get behind the steering wheel. According to the United States Census Bureau, Los Angeles’ median household income is $61,015, and paying $33,450 for a car you don’t immediately have access to just isn’t an investment many Angelenos can make.

Families that live the farthest distance from the city and make the longest commute to work cannot and should not have to make a massive financial sacrifice to use Musk’s tunnels – a project City Hall has been supportive of. The same goes for students at UCLA.

Musk’s tunnels are a gimmick engineered to relieve the commutes of the wealthiest Angelenos. Rather than developing a transit system that would push people to make sacrifices and further instituting a wealth disparity in Los Angeles, Musk – who has committed himself to alleviating the city’s traffic – should partner with the public sector to produce a green and efficient public transit system.

Los Angeles recently adopted Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “Twenty-Eight by ’28” policy, which will address 28 major road, transit and bicycle projects before the city hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. This is a prime example of an endeavor Musk could donate his futuristic technology to and help the most people with.

After all, as Matthew Chan, a second-year economics student who commutes to school pointed out, the solution to Los Angeles’ traffic problem is not one size fits all.

“The tunnels aren’t just going to fix the problem,” he said. “We need to fix public transportation and to do this the private sector needs to get involved.”

Of course, some may argue that building these tunnels would encourage people to purchase electric cars, benefitting the environment overall. However, as electric cars become more popular in the marketplace, it is likely these alternative models will cost more than Teslas. As of right now, Tesla is the cheapest autonomous electric car for sale and will likely remain so, since the company is at the forefront of the engineering pursuit and has a large budget at its disposal.

Additionally, the Boring Company’s standard requirements for “full autonomy” may vary from vehicle to vehicle, potentially only permitting certain brands with certain technology to use the tunnels. Aside from the narrow-minded approach to public transit, the tunnels demand large sums of money and research. This same money and time could be used for something that everyone can use – something Los Angeles is already working on.

Doing otherwise would just be tossing cash underground – and the Boring Company has already dug itself into a hole.

Visiting professor lectures on role of mass print media in Japan’s history

The Meiji Restoration generated not only an industrial boom in late 19th century Japan but also a new wave of mass-produced media.

Bard College assistant professor Nathan Shockey will speak about this surge of magazine printing in his colloquium at Royce Hall on Friday, titled “Developing A Paper Empire: Late Meiji Magazines And Modern Japanese Mass Culture.” The lecture, hosted by the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, will explore the role of photography and oral performance in making typographic print a widespread, mass phenomenon.

Morgan Montelius, a representative from the Terasaki Center, said the center hosts about three colloquiums per quarter, with the goal of community outreach and accessible education.

“There’s a large Japanese-American community in Los Angeles and being able to bring in scholars from across the world to give lectures reinforces our ability to promote Japanese studies to the greater Los Angeles area,” he said.

Faculty members involved with the Terasaki Center suggest speakers for the series. UCLA associate professor of history William Marotti invited Shockey to lecture after previously having him speak on a panel he organized. He said the colloquium series is important because it highlights, in part, up-and-coming scholars, like Shockey, who are able to relate to students and present new ideas.

“He really draws out this link between the print media itself and then nontypographic, nonprint traditions or forms,” Marotti said. “And he’s very skilled in weaving together an interesting and evocative cultural history.”

Shockey’s lecture will chronicle the rise of two specific publishing companies in the later years of the Meiji era: Hakubunkan and Kodansha. The latter, which is now a well-known publisher of manga comics, was founded in 1909 by Seiji Noma, a graduate of the University of Tokyo who had a special interest in the oratorical arts, he said.

Noma first started a magazine called Yuben with collaborators drawn from his network, such as professors from the university. Instead of just rote transcription, the magazine presented a “metadiscourse” on the act of giving speeches itself, such as what it means to give a speech before an audience and its influence on democracy.

“He sees this as not just, ‘I’m going to reproduce the text of what’s being said in a speech in a magazine so that you can read the speeches on paper,’ but actually kind of talk about what it means to create oral culture and the role of oral culture in a print age,” Shockey said.

The follow-up to the highly successful Yuben, a magazine titled Kodan Kurabu, or Kodan Club, gave the company its name and focused more so on oral performance art. Descriptions of art forms, such as sung, narrative ballads or types of comic storytelling, were accompanied by images or sometimes commentary on the genre as a whole.

Shockey said that Kodan Club really engaged its audience by encouraging them to form readers clubs or taking submissions, from which a winner would be rewarded, perhaps by having their work published in the magazine. Kodansha reinvented the way people interacted with written forms of mass-produced media, he said.

While Kodansha is known for its popularization of oral performance in print, Hakubunkan, founded a couple decades earlier, made great strides in visual media. It was among the first publishers to heavily feature photography its magazines, which, at the time of the First Sino-Japanese War, was especially noteworthy because many consumers had never lived through a modern war, much less seen it documented.

Hakubunkan’s “True Record of the Sino-Japanese War” sold hundreds of thousands of copies and the company was later able to invest in a new set of magazines spanning different genres, such as literary and children’s magazines. The texts, which had pictures and advertisements for popular commodities, appealed not only to the intellectual elite but to anybody that had an interest in the topics.

“With this big kind of new wave, Hakubunkan is able to create a format for each of those, at a new scale, that features something like literary fiction as a marketable, easily consumable commodity,” Shockey said.

Many factors characterizing the Meiji era led to the popularization of magazines. Shockey said the government’s focus and prioritization of literacy among its citizens — partly to impart state ideologies — paved the way for textbooks and other forms of print media to flourish, coupled with an educated generation.

“From really the very beginning of the Meiji period, you have a sense that is shared by some of these Meiji elites and the government,” Shockey said. “One of the things that a modern, civilized nation-state and empire and modern civilization needs to have is print.”

Geek Week’s finale spiced up with all flavors of geekdom, student performances

Anime fans and Trekkies will intermingle at Geek Week’s MegaCon.

As part of UCLA Residential Life’s annual Geek Week, the convention is the culminating event taking place Friday evening in the Tom Bradley International Hall and the De Neve Plaza rooms. The event will encompass themes from throughout the week such as comics and “Game of Thrones,” and include student performances, exhibition booths and a gaming room. This year’s MegaCon will also focus more on anime and manga, an interest unexplored in previous Geek Weeks, said Katherine Dumangas, the assistant resident director of Courtside and a Geek Week committee member. By getting student feedback and incorporating fandoms students wished to see, Dumangas said their goal was to cater more to student interests.

“We’re trying to incorporate every single fandom,” Dumangas said. “We know that not everybody is interested in comics, not everybody is interested anime … so we tried to be really inclusive in making the theme for Friday.”

MegaCon collaborated with UCLA students to create an event that would appeal to their target audience. While planning the event, Dumangas said the committee consulted with various student organizations on campus, such as the Student Committee for the Arts at UCLA, and received input about what students wanted to see. Many students mentioned anime as an underrepresented interest, she said. This year the Geek Week committee made an effort to showcase the Japanese anime culture. They also aimed to other incorporate other cultures by inviting student-run talent groups to perform on the main stage, such as UCLA Japanese drumming ensemble Kyodo Taiko, Japanese idol dance group Kirigami, Korean dance team Koreos and Shenanigans Comedy Club.

“(MegaCon) is really showcasing the student organizations we have (on campus) that are full of talented students,” Dumangas said. “We wanted it to be more student-focused this year because our students love the (geeky) culture, they are the ones immersing themselves in it.”

Kennedy Hill, a third-year human biology and society student and website editor for the Student Committee of the Arts, had the chance to work with the Geek Week committee. During weekly meetings with ResLife and the Japanese Animation Club, Hill said she helped find performers for the main stage as well as recruit students to showcase their artwork. She said she is particularly excited that ResLife decided to take a more holistic planning approach by teaming up with student organizations because it helps broaden connections and contacts as well as raise student interest in geek culture.

“I think it’s really great that they’re trying to branch out,” Hill said. “Getting involved with other students helps broaden the raise of appeal for MegaCon because usually, it’s for the geeky culture, but involved with different groups on campus you can reach different students.”

Dumangas worked closely with Kevin Kawakami, resident director of Canyon Point and co-chair of the Geek Week committee, to plan the schedule. In addition to the panelists and student performers, Kawakami said there will be a drawing workshop led by student artists, encouraging levels ranging from Picassos to experts in stick figures to follow along. Students will also have the chance to showcase their cosplay in a contest, even if that just means grabbing some butcher paper and wrapping themselves in it, he said.

Attendees can expect a large gaming component during MegaCon which will take place in Bradley Hall, Kawakami said. The committee teamed up with UCLA’s Bruin Duelists’ Association to bring various card games to the event, including Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon, as well as video game options including “Super Smash Bros.,” he said. Enigma, UCLA’s student-run science fiction, fantasy, horror and gaming club, will offer various board games as well, Kawakami said.

But students don’t have to be experts in order to find their inner geek at MegaCon, Kawakami said. Those who wanted nothing more than to play Yu-Gi-Oh! on the playground growing up, or who enjoy playing Monopoly but are interested in trying out Dungeons and Dragons, can find organizations and like-minded geeks at the event to connect with, he said.

“The Mega Convention is a celebration of all things geeky,” Kawakami said. “It does not matter what your flavor of geekdom is, whether that’s comics, TV and film, whether that is (that) you’re strongly a fan of ‘Game of Thrones’ or you’re like ‘I’m a Pokemon,’ the idea is that anyone and all are welcome to the event.”

UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive strikes celebratory note with reopening concert

The UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive will return with a new sound.

The archive is an audiovisual library where scholars have been able to submit materials such as field recordings and interviews from their research. The changes will provide space for more research to be added and will also be accessible to all students. To celebrate their reopening Friday, the Herb Alpert School of Music will host “Documenting the Sounds of Africa,” an event which will also honor Professor Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, who was director of the archive from 2000 to 2007. DjeDje’s research is on West African music, which will be featured in the symposium and concert by UCLA’s Music of West Africa Ensemble, Afro-Cuban Ensemble and Wondem Band at the Jan Popper Theater.

“We have a lot of really great African collections because that’s always been such a strong part of ethnomusicology,” said adjunct assistant professor of ethnomusicology and archivist-librarian Maureen Russell. “From the beginning, we’ve had faculty and students and ensembles mainly focusing on West Africa, and other parts of Africa.”

The performances during the celebratory event will encompass different musical styles from Africa, some of which are represented in the archive’s collections. For example, a group of students will play drums from Ghana made specifically for UCLA. Aaron Bittel, adjunct associate professor in the department and an ethnomusicology archivist-librarian, said the drums are historically important because they were commissioned by Mantle Hood, the founder of the ethnomusicology department.

“Documenting the Sounds of Africa” will also feature an open house that showcases the renovated archive rooms. The archive went under construction at the beginning of 2018 to expand the space so more collections could be implemented. Since the updates, all the collections have been moved to a separate room with high-density shelving as well as a viewing room for students and faculty to listen to recordings of the collections. Currently, there are more than 150,000 documents and recordings of music from around the world. However, Russell said she believes there is still room to grow and hopes for the archive to include more research in currently lacking areas.

“We don’t have really strong holdings in South America because nobody was really working with South America,” she said. “On the other hand, we have the earliest known recordings of rural Mexican music.”

The expansion will allow the archive to continuously develop and grow. Chair of the Ethnomusicology department at UCLA, Mark Kligman, said the department is influential in ethnomusicology as a whole, with the archive playing an important role in preserving and documenting music traditions.

“UCLA (has) the largest department in ethnomusicology and in some ways was very much a part of the beginning with some of the main scholars that shaped the field who were graduates and teachers at UCLA, and the archive is a record of all this great material,” Kligman said.

Dexter Story, the frontman for Wondem Band and a graduate African studies student, said he wants to fuse his studies with his musical compositions through his research with the department. He said he believes the archive can be a resource for all students because it contains collections from renowned researchers and musicians.

“I think that this archive is very necessary for our work; UCLA is so lucky to have this reopening reinvigorated,” he said. “It’s filled with richness and treasures and it could be so wonderful for students.”

Along with being a space for students to research and have access to a wide variety of collections, Bittel said he hopes the archive becomes a place where students and faculty can interact outside the classroom.

“We’re also planning to do a lot of programming, a lot of events, performances, film screenings and talks, and so that’s part of this configuration too,” said Bittel. “When we planned this space there is this big open area and this can actually be a small concert space.”