The Hill to make Red Wedding from ‘Game of Thrones’ a reality during Geek Week

Students can attend a feast on the Hill reminiscent of “Game of Thrones'” Red Wedding.

“A Night of Ice and Fire: a Game of Thrones Experience” will take place Wednesday in the De Neve Commons Plaza Room. The Geek Week event will include a dinner feast, where attendees also participate in a “Game of Thrones”-themed Mafia game – intended to mirror the Red Wedding. Asya Cook, the resident director of Delta Terrace, who is overseeing the event, said there will also be “Game of Thrones” trivia from the television series as well as facts exclusive to the books. Though the events take place on the Hill, Geek Week activities are open to the public. Cook said she hopes the event will serve as an opportunity for fans and other attendees alike to embody their inner geek.

“I believe that this “Game of Thrones” event, and Geek Week overall, really serve as a good reminder for people to embrace what they like and different fandoms that they may be into,” Cook said. “We definitely want to invite as many people as possible to just experience different things … and get a chance for them to just learn something different that they may have never thought about before.”

Cook said the Geek Week committee decided to theme the event around the television series because of a general survey conducted fall quarter. The committee asked what fandoms people were a part of, and “Game of Thrones” came up multiple times. “Game of Thrones” also is headed into its final season, she said, leading the committee to choose it.

In the Red Wedding episode, titled “The Rains of Castamere,” the protagonist Stark family intends to celebrate the wedding of another character on the show, but the feast ends with some of the family being murdered.

The event’s dinner will be served buffet style, offering carb-heavy foods in an aim to represent medieval times. While eating, students also will be playing a game of Mafia, infused with characters and other elements from the series, such as the “Game of Thrones” soundtrack playing in the background.

As students file into the room during the first-come, first-served event, each person will receive a card with their role and how to act throughout the evening. One of the cards reads “Hodor,” the name of a character, and whoever gets that card must only say “Hodor” throughout the evening, as the character does in the show. Another playable character is Cersei Lannister, and whoever has that card has the power to kill additional people during the Mafia game, since the fictional character is one of the main antagonists in the series.

“I think it adds to the feel of the Red Wedding piece of people just unsuspectingly going into what they think is the feast, but at any moment, we can call to say, ‘Hey, it’s wintertime,’ which is the equivalent of Mafia’s ‘Go to sleep,’” Cook said.

While students play, they are getting to know each other and moving around, she said. They must also try to figure out who has been assigned which role and who the “White Walkers,” or primary antagonists, are. Participants can form alliances while sharing some food, all reminiscent of the medieval times, Cook said.

This will be the first Geek Week event for fourth-year computer science student Benson Han, a former Daily Bruin staffer. Having read the books and watched the series, he said he plans to attend the “Game of Thrones”-themed dinner. However, because of the number of characters and plot lines within the franchise, Han said the trivia portion might be a bit challenging.

Rieber Terrace Assistant Resident Director Cathy Banh said she attended Geek Week events when she was a student at UCLA, her favorite being a “Harry Potter”-themed dinner – similar to the “Game of Thrones” event – which featured chocolate frogs and a Sorting Hat activity. With its multitude of activities, Banh said Geek Week allows fans of different media to connect with one another.

The sheer number of student organizations on campus to match the large student population leads to highly individualized clubs, Banh said.

“You’ll have one (club) specifically for one interest, and Geek Week does – as much as we can – all of them. It’s giving spaces for students who have different interests to meet each other,” Banh said. “It’s a place for fandoms to cross.”

In addition to honoring the “Game of Thrones” fandom among students, Cook said the Geek Week committee does want to slightly broaden the audience of the event. Die-hard fans familiar with the series and its characters will have a strong understanding of what is going on during the dinner. But the committee organized the game so students who have never seen or read the series can still enjoy it, she said.

“(The event) serves as a good break to say, ‘Hey, you are a person outside of academics – what else are you interested in? What else is a passion area of yours?’” Cook said. “Whether that be comics or ‘Game of Thrones’ TV, a movie, we want students to explore that and embrace that part of them.”

Student-founded vegan ranch company presents sustainable sauce

A blink-182 album inspired the name of the student-run company Dude Ranch Dressing.

The brand will make its official debut Jan. 17 at a release party in a Westwood apartment. Co-founder Megan Hullander, a third-year English student, said although she is not vegan, her love for the environment and interest in vegan lifestyles led her and co-founder Angela Simmons to make a vegan ranch recipe – currently Dude Ranch’s only product.

“We tried to make it as Earth-friendly as possible and as healthy as we possibly could, and get all the ingredients while still maintaining the taste,” Hullander said. “We started out making recipes that we found, and then just replaced ingredients to use ones that were either more sustainable, or added things we thought would be good for flavor.”

Simmons, a fourth-year geography/environmental studies student, said she used her knowledge from her classes to contribute to the sustainable goal of Dude Ranch. The drought in California is a major issue, Simmons said, and the brand tries to avoid contributing to it by cutting dairy out of the recipe, because of the vast amount of water it takes to raise dairy cows. It takes up to 2,000 gallons per gallon of milk produced to raise dairy cows, according to a Natural News article.

The co-founders said they paid close attention to the carbon footprint of their ingredients when formulating their recipe. One way Dude Ranch emphasizes sustainability is by avoiding the use of almond milk, which also takes a lot of water to produce. Instead, they said they use products that require less water consumption. According to a New York Times article, it takes about 15.3 gallons of water to harvest only 16 almonds, and it would take even more water to grow enough almonds for a gallon of almond milk. Simmons and Hullander also avoid excess by using glass mason jars for packaging – selling each for $6 – and painting their logo on the jars instead of using labels.

“I think it is the sustainability that makes it important,” Hullander said. “Because even if things are vegan, they’re generally thought to be better for the environment, but there’s a lot more to it than that.”

Despite being a complete ranch fiend, Simmons said she had no idea what the classic dressing was composed of before starting the company. When she and Hullander began researching recipes, Simmons said they noticed they could switch heavy dairy products – such as mayonnaise and buttermilk, which are typically found in ranch – with alternatives such as vegan mayonnaise or soaked cashews, which demand less water when used on a smaller production scale. They merged vegan recipes they found online with their own taste preferences, adding components such as hints of parsley, dill, fresh garlic cloves and other spices.

web.ae.ranch.KS.picB.jpg
Hullander and Simmons switched dairy products like mayonnaise with their vegan counterparts, which require less water to produce. (Ken Shin/Daily Bruin staff)

“It’s pretty packed with flavor but it’s not overwhelming,” Simmons said. “So it’s a really good balance between this crazy flavor, (but) you can enjoy carrots, or pita bread, or whatever you want to put your ranch on, and it doesn’t take away from the flavor of the food.”

Colin Tandy, a third-year English student who is friends with Simmons and Hullander, said he was able to test early batches of the product. The ranch’s zesty flavor makes it taste homemade and less processed than a brand you might buy in a grocery store, Tandy said.

“It’s cool knowing when it’s not a bunch of weird chemicals in your food,” Tandy said. “It’s like certain basic vegetables, spices and items that you know that you can taste for yourself.”

Hullander and Simmons are still in the early processes of building their company, but they are optimistic about their plans for the future. They hope to expand their product range, Simmons said, such as by creating a buffalo flavor titled “Mark Ruffalo.” While continuing to grow their budding company, they said Dude Ranch hopes to stay committed to spreading awareness for sustainability and giving people following plant-based diets access to ranch dressing.

“We’re more focused on bettering not just the environment, but people in general, and making people laugh,” Simmons said. “It’s a little bit more of a passion project, and just two well-intentioned kids trying to have a good time.”

Hammer Museum’s $180 million expansion to improve accessibility, add exhibits

This post was updated Jan. 8 at 6:13 p.m.

The Hammer Museum will undergo renovations and expansion on Wilshire Boulevard through 2020 to include new galleries and office space.

The Hammer acquired the first floor of an adjacent building on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Glendon Avenue from City National Bank, as well as an extra floor in the current museum from UCLA. The expansion and renovation, which began in fall 2016, is part of a $180 million campaign to transform the museum, as well as increase its endowment.

Scott Tennent, chief communications officer for the Hammer Museum, said the new space where City National Bank is currently located will be used to house a full gallery and a new entrance to the museum. The third floor of the current building, which houses offices as well as an art gallery, will be expanded to a full gallery. Office space for the museum will then be moved to the fourth and fifth floors of the building.

A new restaurant at the Hammer will open in February and offer lunch and dinner as well as a full bar. Tennent said the restaurant will feature indoor and outdoor seating and lighting from artist Jorge Pardo, which he said will make the courtyard more lively.

Other renovations include adding a wheelchair-accessible ramp and transforming the terrace facing Lindbrook Drive into an enclosed space for educational projects.

Tennent said Michael Maltzan, the architect for the project, wanted to create a warm and inviting atmosphere for patrons.

He said the museum spread the renovations to the existing building over multiple years in order to stay open to the public during construction.

The Hammer plans to present art in the new building’s gallery similar to the current museum, including 19th-century paintings, contemporary art from emerging and unknown artists and works from the UCLA Grunwald Center, Tennent said.

The expansion into the new building will be completed in 2020, Tennent said.

Refat Ahsan, a fourth-year biochemistry student, said he thinks the design of the new gallery looks welcoming.

“The more open spaces and modern aesthetic feels much more inviting,” Ahsan said.

Tennent said he thinks the expanded museum will be a major attraction for users of the Metro Purple Line Extension exit that is expected to be fully functional on Wilshire and Westwood boulevards by 2028.

Andrew Thomas, executive director of the Westwood Village Improvement Association, said the new entrances to the building would make the museum more accessible. He added the expansions would make good use of the new building, as much of it was unoccupied in the past.

“The Hammer is not too open right now and the access points aren’t that nice, but the new entrances will be much better,” Thomas said.

Ted Park, a fourth-year business economics student, said he thinks the new exhibits would entice more students to visit the museum.

“It’s exciting to see the Hammer Museum is bringing more exhibits to the area and to encourage more students to explore the museum’s diverse collection,” Park said.

 

UC in negotiations with publisher Elsevier for open access to journal articles

The University of California is negotiating a new contract with an academic publisher due to unsustainable and increasing subscription costs.

The UC’s contract with Elsevier, the owner of over 2,500 journals including Cell and The Lancet, ended on Dec. 31. The UC aims to lower subscription costs and make all of its research available for free to the public in the ongoing contract negotiations.

The contract cost the UC more than $10.5 million in 2018. This is a significant portion of the UC’s approximately $40 million yearly budget for journal subscriptions, according to an email statement from Ivy Anderson, the co-chair of the UC’s Publisher Negotiation Task Force.

UC researchers additionally pay approximately $1 million per year through grants to publish in the subset of Elsevier journals that are open-access, she said. Open-access journals make articles available to the public for free, and instead charge fees to the authors to publish their research.

Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, the university librarian at UC Berkeley and co-chair of the UC Journal Negotiations Task Force, said in an email statement that Elsevier and other publishers have been increasing subscription costs for many years, while library budgets have been decreasing. As a result, libraries are cutting costs by ending journal subscriptions and buying fewer books.

“We can’t continue any longer without serious harm to our campus libraries, and so we are pushing aggressively for a price reduction,” he said.

Additionally, in negotiating a new contract, the UC wants all of its research published as open access, he said. He said the UC would ideally have a “publish-and-read” agreement that combines the cost of subscribing to journals with open access fees to accomplish both goals of lowering costs and providing open access to UC research.

Both Anderson, the associate executive director of UC’s California Digital Library, and MacKie-Mason said they could not discuss the ongoing negotiation in detail. Access to Elsevier publications was extended until Jan. 31 as the negotiation continues.

MacKie-Mason said if a new agreement is not reached by then, UC students and faculty will still have permanent access to most already-existing articles in Elsevier journals, but it is unclear which new articles will be available, if any. He said there are other ways to get new articles without a subscription, such as an interlibrary loan, asking an author directly or purchasing individual articles.

Elsevier offers access to all its journals in a bundle, said Burt Totaro, a professor in the UCLA mathematics department. He said some of its journals are at the top of their fields while others are not equally prestigious, but university libraries have to pay for the whole bundle to get the journals they want.

Edward Walker, a professor of sociology, said he thinks publishers like Elsevier know libraries are a captive market because they have no choice but to pay large amounts of money for a few prestigious journals.

“A lot of the time at universities the faculty and students are not always aware of exactly how much they’re paying for these,” he said.

The UC is not the first institution to take issue with Elsevier’s rising costs and resistance to open access. Recently, Swedish and German institutions canceled their subscriptions with Elsevier, said Joseph Bristow, a distinguished professor of English and chair of the UCLA Academic Senate for 2018-2019. He said skepticism of Elsevier’s business model has been growing.

“They’re relying a lot on the relatively or completely free volunteer labor of professors at universities to produce the content for these journals as well as do the peer reviewing for them,” Walker said.

However, publishing companies benefit the most from the subscription costs that universities must pay to access this content, he added.

In 2017, Elsevier had a profit margin of nearly 40 percent, higher than that of Springer Nature, another large journal publisher, which had profits of around 23 percent. Totaro said 40 percent is an enormous profit margin for any business.

“It seems bizarre that we’re having to buy back our own work at a very high price,” Bristow said.

Totaro said he may have a stronger opinion on Elsevier than most; he has been boycotting the publisher since 2000. However, he said there is a general feeling among faculty members that the current publishing model is flawed.

Bristow, Scott Waugh, the executive vice chancellor and provost, and Ginny Steel, the Norma and Armena Powell University Librarian, sent an email in December asking UCLA faculty to consider not contributing to Elsevier through publishing or reviewing during the negotiation period.

John Villasenor, a professor of engineering, public policy and management, published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education criticizing the email as an institutional promotion of boycott, which he thinks would set a bad precedent. However, Bristow said this email was not promoting an enforced boycott, since faculty members are still free to decide where to publish their research. He added faculty from certain departments on campus agreed with the email’s sentiment and overwhelmingly support moving toward open access.

Walker said he thinks it is reasonable for UCLA to ask faculty to play a role in helping with the negotiations, since Elsevier’s journals are relying on the faculty’s labor.

The growing pushback against Elsevier is directly connected to the rise of open-access publishing, Walker said. He said researchers are aware of open-access alternatives to paid subscription journals that offer more transparency and reach a wider audience.

“The landscape of scholarly publishing is going through transformation like never before,” Bristow said. “The mechanism of sharing work is changing rapidly.”

LGBTQ+ Bruins find independence and support amid familial conflicts

This post was updated Jan. 8 at 2:03 p.m.

Buddy Al-Aydi was disowned by his family after he told his parents he was gay in November.

Although he had known he was gay since he was 12 or 13 years old, Al-Aydi, a first-year biochemistry student, said he recognized that his parents would not approve of his sexuality based on their judgment of his own self-expression.

“As a kid I would put my hand on my hips or I would sway my hand and my parents would be so disapproving of that,” Al-Aydi said. “For that reason, I’ve tried to hide it for a while.”

Al-Aydi said he was 16 when he learned more about the LGBTQ+ community. He said he decided to come out to his parents for the first time in June 2016.

“Because I didn’t want to worry them too much, I came out as a bisexual. At that point, they took it as a threat,” Al-Aydi said. “They got really scared and they allowed me to befriend girls and date girls, which is even untraditional in a Muslim household.”

Al-Aydi tried coming out for a second time in high school, but he said after his parents tried to convince him that sexuality is a choice and offered him conversion therapy, he dropped the topic for the remainder of high school.

On Nov. 13, Buddy submitted a voice recording of his experience with his family to Storybooth.com, a website that animates recordings of people recounting personal stories and posts the videos to YouTube. He described the ongoing tension in his household and his joy and relief when he left the East Coast to go to college at UCLA. Al-Aydi said to his surprise his video became the No. 1 trending video on YouTube and currently has more than four million views.

When his family found out about the video, Al-Aydi’s father called him. Al-Aydi said his father told him to respect the family’s boundaries and to never speak to them again.

Al-Aydi said he could only assume that meant his parents had also cut him out financially.

Anna Kondratyeva, a first-year cognitive science student, was with Al-Aydi while he was on the phone with his father. She said Al-Aydi’s dad asked his son to take down the video because Al-Aydi’s sisters were being bullied in school. Al-Aydi said he stood by his sexuality and his video.

“You almost have the perspective of seeing a family breaking apart,” Kondratyeva said. “Literally right before your eyes, someone’s family collapses.”

Since the phone call, Al-Aydi has been cut off from his family’s cell phone plan.

Al-Aydi has been working with the UCLA administration to attain financial independence and secure funding for future quarters at UCLA. Al-Aydi’s friend from high school started a GoFundMe page on Nov. 19 to raise money. The fundraiser has accumulated more than $17,000.

In addition to financial support, Al-Aydi said he has received personal support from UCLA faculty members. Sarah Stein, a history professor, reached out to Al-Aydi when she heard about his situation and introduced him to other professors as a way to show Al-Aydi that he has a community within the university that will support him. Stein also said that she recommended resources to Al-Aydi such as the dean of students, the LGBT Resource Center, the Los Angeles LGBT Center and It Gets Better, a global nonprofit organization that supports LGBTQ+ youth.

Al-Aydi said he has also received a lot of support from UCLA students. In addition to reaching out, people offered him swipes into dining halls and places to stay over winter break.

Charlotte Suiza, a first-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student and Al-Aydi’s friend, said Al-Aydi was one of the first people she met at UCLA. She added that seeing Al-Aydi’s experience firsthand left a greater impact on her than hearing about similar incidents happening to others.

“You hear stories about these kinds of things happening to LGBTQ+ youth on the internet but … you can’t imagine it until it happens to someone you actually know,” Suiza said. “And when it happens, it’s a shock.”

Al-Aydi is not the only student at UCLA to apply for financial independence because of familial conflict regarding sexuality. Kai Huang, a second-year psychobiology student, preemptively took independence from his family when he started medically and legally transitioning.

“I knew I wanted to be able to just pay for my own college and not worry about losing that financial support and kind of entering into an emergency or crisis situation,” Huang said. “Being able to take that agency for myself and not be afraid of what they think and what they say and whatever they might want to do, it really helped me with feeling like I have control over my own situation because I definitely didn’t in high school.”

To support himself, Huang works two jobs – one at the LGBT Resource Center and one as a resident assistant on the Hill. He said the work takes up roughly 20 hours per week.

Huang said although there were similarities in their experiences, Al-Aydi is struggling now because he was unable to plan how he was going to handle financial independence.

“I feel like it’s hard for (Al-Aydi) because he was kind of thrown into it with really not much warning,” Huang said.

He added that while he and Al-Aydi came out to their parents, coming out is not the best option for everyone, and people in similar situations should not feel that announcing their sexuality to others is the ultimate goal for a queer individual.

“Coming out should never be the end-all, be-all of what being LGBTQ+ is about, and that shouldn’t be the narrative, like, ‘Oh it’s so brave of you, your end goal should always be to come out,’ because it’s so unsafe for so many people,” Huang said.

Huang said he came out to his parents as transgender thinking his parents would accept him because the narrative he kept seeing on social media was of white American LGBTQ+ people being accepted for their sexuality. He added because he never saw the representation of LGBTQ+ people of color, he was not aware his situation might be different.

Al-Aydi said he stands by his sexuality and his decision to express himself, and added he encourages others in a similar situation to do what is best for them.

“Do what you need to do in order to be happy. People will be there to help you to get what you need and make sure you’re on your feet,” Al-Aydi said. “You’re not alone.”

Students, faculty react to attempt to promote diversity to UCLA’s hiring process

UCLA administrators implemented changes to the hiring process in hopes of fostering greater diversity within the faculty.

All prospective UCLA faculty were required to complete Equity, Diversity and Inclusion statements beginning the 2018-2019 academic year. An EDI Statement is a statement in which a candidate describes their past, present and future contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion, according to the EDI office.

Scott Waugh, UCLA executive vice chancellor and provost, said he implemented the policy to gather information about equity, diversity and inclusion more consistently by using an institutional approach. Prior to this mandate, only certain departments required an EDI Statement, while others made it optional.

The EDI office described the new mandate in an email statement as a tool that better positions UCLA to live up to its ideals, but acknowledged the measure offers only a modest attempt at resolving the campus’ lack of faculty diversity.

UCLA faculty was roughly two-thirds white and two-thirds male as of February 2016, according to the EDI website. UCLA undergraduate students were 27 percent white and 44 percent male, according to the UCLA 2015-2016 undergraduate profile, presented by the Academic Planning and Budget Office to provide information about the undergraduate population.

Richard Sander, a law professor, said a diversity gap may exist between students and faculty because the student population turns over completely every four years while faculty experience a slower turnover rate.

Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences, said he believes UCLA should actively make sure its faculty reflects California’s population.

“We are in an incredibly diverse state where taxpayers of all ethnic backgrounds and cultural backgrounds contribute to public goods like the University of California, and it just seems just that an institution like UCLA should do a better job of reflecting the state and the stakeholders,” Hunt said. “And of course, one important stakeholder group are UCLA students, who themselves are quite diverse.”

Faculty diversity has slightly increased since 2012. For example, women comprised 37.7 percent of faculty members in 2016, compared to 34.7 percent in 2012, according to the General Campus Faculty Demographics on the EDI website.

Although the impact of the campuswide mandate has not yet been thoroughly studied at UCLA, its implementation sparked differing opinions from faculty and students about addressing diversity at UCLA.

Chon Noriega, director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, said he supports the new mandate, but added the measure cannot sufficiently address diversity issues at UCLA on its own.

“For the search committee, the statement gives you a more dynamic understanding of the candidate as a scholar, as a teacher, but also as a colleague who is involved with shared governance in your department or school in the same way that teaching statements do that or community engagement or civic engagement statements,” Noriega said.

Noriega added the statement may offer a more complex and dynamic insight into a professor’s life.

“I don’t think the statement is going to be a cure-all, it’s not going to resolve things, it’s just another piece of information,” Noriega said.

Hunt said he also believes the EDI Statement alone is not going to be enough to address the lack of faculty diversity but supported its campuswide implementation.

“I think there’s going to be lots of different, necessary, but insufficient, … individual strategies that you have to employ, and I think (the EDI Statement) is one of the important ones,” Hunt said.

Both Hunt and Noriega are part of departments that have independently required EDI statements prior to the mandate.

Jaime Vela, an anthropology graduate student, said while he believes UCLA is not doing enough to increase diversity awareness, he does not believe the EDI Statement should be required in the hiring process.

He added he thinks requiring the statement can lead to candidates writing what they believe will earn them a position as opposed to genuinely caring about culture and diversity.

“You run the risk of ‘I know what gets me in,’” Vela said. “To me, the best assessment is ‘OK what have you done, and let me research some of the articles you have published.’ … If none of your research or papers have anything to do with culture, well obviously you do not care about culture.”

Although Vela commended UCLA’s attempt to address the diversity gap between faculty and students, he said he is concerned about how UCLA plans to enforce the policy’s intent once the new faculty gets acclimated to the campus.

“So this could be a good thing for future hires, but it does nothing to change the diversity climate currently here on campus,” Vela said in an email statement.

Sander said he also has concerns about a candidate’s ability to be sincere in EDI statements, and added he does not support the new policy because of the politicized nature of diversity.

“It discourages people from talking about these issues in anything other than the prescribed, politically correct way,” Sander said.

He added he believes the requirement could easily become political since diversity in higher education is a controversial issue in the United States, and added that political tests are not permitted under UC’s code of operations.

“Requiring candidates to provide a statement that’s extremely politicized is essentially implying that there is a correct position that they should take,” Sander said.

Sander added he believes issues of diversity should be addressed during the tenure of a faculty member’s academic contributions, rather than during the hiring process.

“To build diversity, it’s important to look at the entire pipeline, and understand from the time people enter college to when they enter the academic market, try to become assistant professors, what are the things that cause women or minorities to drop off the pipeline, and trying to address those things,” Sander said.

Still, others said they believed the EDI Statement mandate was a step in the right direction for the university.

Kathleen Corpuz, an Asian American studies graduate student, said she strongly supports the EDI Statement mandate because she thinks UCLA needs to better address its diversity gap.

“It’s really crucial for me to see people of color in faculty. It was one of the deciding factors of me coming to UCLA,” Corpuz said. “Understanding and putting a pressure on the hiring practices that this institution does for faculty and for the student population is so vital in understanding how we can succeed.”

The EDI office said EDI statements are only part of a larger campus effort to increase awareness and promote equity and diversity in the hiring process.

“EDI (statements) comprise one piece of a broader institutional effort to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion at UCLA,” the EDI said in an email statement. “In the context of faculty hiring, these efforts take multiple forms.”