Daily Bruin – Page 50

‘Scorched’ shines a light on the role of maintaining identity through hardship

Aya Saleh’s father gave her a play to read when she was 13 years old.

Now, Saleh is directing the same piece as her senior thesis within the theater department.

“Scorched” will premiere Friday at the Little Theater in Macgowan Hall. The story, originally written in French by Wajdi Mouawad in 2003, follows twin siblings, Janine and Simon, in the aftermath of their mother Nawal’s death. Through her will, they’re tasked with traveling from Canada to Lebanon to find the father they never knew and a brother they were unaware of.

The narrative touches upon the harsh reality that Lebanese people faced as the civil war tore their homeland apart from 1975 to 1990, Saleh said. Specifically, the graduate directing student said the nonlinear narrative explores both the past and present of Nawal’s life, paralleling her struggles to Lebanon’s.

“We’re presented (with) the country that suffered so much trauma and that has been continuously ripped apart,” she said. “I think it’s interesting that (Mouawad) represented the country as a very female energy.”

The Lebanese Civil War resulted from myriad religious and political issues, Saleh said, but the immediate cause was an invasion by Israel which led to 15 years of conflict. Being Lebanese herself, the director said the story is close to her heart because her parents and loved ones lived through the war. In one scene, for example, Nawal is late and misses her bus only to learn all of the individuals aboard were killed by armed men. Saleh said this event parallels a real incident in 1975 when Palestinians were massacred on a Lebanese bus. She said she also sees pieces of her mother – and many other Lebanese women – in Nawal because of their shared connection to the war.

This pain forces Nawal to keep secrets from her children – most notably their lineage – and also leads her to stop speaking for five years. She goes mute the day of a tribunal where she is faced with her rapist from the war. This is a stark shift from her youth, when she was known as the “women who sings,” because of her musical abilities.

Inhabiting Nawal’s character was difficult, said Ceridwyn Quaintance, a first-year theater student who portrays the mother. However, she was drawn to the character arc because Nawal had many beautiful experiences in her life, yet is unable to overcome the traumas she endured, such as having her first love taken away, Quaintance said.

“The fact that Nawal stops talking for five years … that takes a lot of restraint but also a lot of trauma. The reason she doesn’t tell her children about what happened to her and who she really was, is because she didn’t want to pass on her trauma,” she said. “That was her only way of protecting them.”

As the twins cope with the revelation of their ancestry, the dynamic between the siblings becomes a focal point of the play, said Madelyn Rose Davis, a first-year theater student who plays Janine. Being mixed-race herself has allowed Davis to understand Janine’s struggle of feeling split between Lebanon and Canada, she said. She worked closely with Derrick Rose, a second-year theater student who plays Simon, to understand the complex dynamics between the siblings.

“It’s so much more interesting if it’s not just anger and hatred,” Davis said. “That underlying love is what is really beautiful about their relationship.”

She and Rose decided that the first time Janine and Simon walk on stage should be together, rather than entering separately, to emphasize the twins’ close relationship despite their differences. Saleh said this duality – between love and hate and right and wrong – permeates the play signifying the moral ambiguity in life, especially during wartime.

“Nothing can be one without the other, and that goes back to Lebanon. There can be no peace before you accept violence,” she said. “During the war everyone did good and bad things … and the lines between them begin to blur.”

Though the play is specific to Lebanon – evident through references of locations such as Nabatieh and Keserwan – the country is never explicitly stated to make the story feel more universal, Saleh said. She believes Mouawad did this so the work could feel relatable to those who aren’t Lebanese, as the main theme about the complexities of identity can be understood by all, she said.

But the play also exposes western audiences to an authentic story about the Middle East, said Michael Aghasaryan. The second-year theater student who plays two roles – a shepherd and a revolutionary leader – said it’s important to present an honest narrative of what Lebanese individuals experienced during the war. “Scorched” describes the aftermath of living through such brutality told through one family’s perspective, he said.

“It’s about how keeping silent about the past and keeping silent about your identity never resolves itself. It never leads to good,” he said. “That’s where bitterness and conceivable distances are made, and that’s what this family’s going through.”

Email Bhatti @ubhatti@dailybruin.com or tweet @bhatti_umber.

As long as LA municipal codes criminalize homelessness, federal aid won’t help

They say home is where the heart is.

But politicians’ pretty words won’t address homelessness in Los Angeles.

California alone has the highest homeless population in the U.S. In LA County alone, the homeless population is roughly 58,000 – and growing. In fact, LA hosts the largest homeless population in the state.

California leaders like Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Congressman Ted Lieu have tried to address this by drafting a bipartisan bill called the “Fighting Homelessness Through Services and Housing Act” to grant $750 million to local governments for skills training, substance abuse treatment, mental health care and family care services.

But in the local purview, solving homelessness has become a publicity stunt to clean streets through short-term solutions. No matter how promising the bill’s provisions are at the federal level, they won’t be accessible here in LA, where antiquated local practices discriminate against homeless individuals. Local politicians enforce policies that lead to the displacement and increased criminalization of the homeless, not the compassionate approach they use in their rhetoric. This municipal system renders the federal bill moot in helping LA’s homeless individuals.

Throwing money at the problem clearly doesn’t work. The last city budget approved $30 million to address public health concerns about the living conditions found inside homeless encampments. That money is not going toward housing stability or food provisions. Instead, officials have taken to kicking homeless individuals out of their communities so sanitation workers can power-wash the streets.

Homeless people only get 24 hours’ notice before sanitation workers and local law enforcement arrive. Often, the postings are barely visible and can even be placed right as a sweep starts. Unattended personal belongings are tossed into the trash or confiscated by the city – even tents, food or personal documents that could have been used to apply for housing, jobs or welfare.

“If the intention was to actually clean the streets, they could add bathrooms in Skid Row or pick up trash, but they don’t,” said Gary Blasi, a UCLA law professor emeritus. “The larger intent is to respond to complaints about homeless encampments.”

These quick fixes make for sparkly streets, but leave officials’ hands dirty. Sanitation sweeps aren’t helping the victims of homelessness access public health or housing. Instead, they make the city look better, while homeless individuals suffer possibly permanent consequences.

And this practice isn’t new. Municipal codes are weaponized against homeless people for circumstances out of their control, like sleeping on benches, streets or sidewalks. They’re intended to maintain public order, but are used as a justification to continue pushing homeless people out of the public eye.

A Million Dollar Hoods report found that the proportion of homeless arrests has increased, the predominant charge being failure to appear in court. And none of the top five charges for these rising homeless arrests were for violent crimes.

Ashraf Beshay, a North Westwood Neighborhood Council member and part of the Homelessness Task Force in Westwood, said he often sees this issue hitting close to home.

“They’ll have to deal with jail time, which goes on their records,” Beshay said. “It feeds into a cycle of poverty, leading the homeless into incarceration.”

And despite lawsuits in the past, police haven’t stopped targeting homeless individuals. LA was sued in 2003 for unconstitutionally enforcing an overnight sidewalk sleeping ban, and the court ruled that punishing people for circumstances beyond their control violates the Eighth Amendment.

However, there are hundreds of other citations that continue to be used against them beyond the ones delegitimized by the court case. These archaic and repulsive municipal codes need to be reformed before we can think about funding initiatives to address homelessness.

“If you don’t have political will, it’s just money that’s going to be sitting around,” said Kienna Qin, a second-year statistics student and advocacy director for the Hunger Project at UCLA. “That’s what happened with Measure HHH, and not much came out of it.”

That’s not to say the city hasn’t tried. Mayor Eric Garcetti has pushed for housing projects, including Proposition HHH and “A Bridge Home,” both of which aim to build permanent and temporary supportive housing units. Yet by the end of 2018, not a single housing unit was built by Proposition HHH. And the fine print of the “Bridge” housing policies allocates more money for increased police presence and sanitation sweeps than it does for the construction of housing units.

So no matter the amount, it’s hard to believe federal aid will finally solve LA’s homelessness when municipal codes and sweeps would inevitably block the benefits of any helpful legislation.

Local politicians can say what they want – but it’s clear this city’s heart and home aren’t open to homeless individuals.

Editorial: Controversial lecture sheds light on divisive Israel-Palestine debate on campus

This post was updated May 29 at 6:41 p.m.

A guest lecturer, a mute administration and an ideologically divided campus.

That’s all it took for UCLA to turn into a discordant frenzy this month.

An Arab and Muslim ethnicities studies professor from San Francisco State University gave a guest lecture about Islamophobia two weeks ago as part of an anthropology course titled “Constructing Race.” The talk, which included discussions of the genesis of discrimination against Muslims and the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, devolved into a verbal volley when the professor, Rabab Abdulhadi, said she believed the state of Israel has committed colonialist actions that could be associated with white supremacy.

Two students expressed their concerns about those viewpoints in the Q&A session, one stating she was offended the professor would conflate her Zionist identity with white supremacy and another saying she would file a formal complaint with the Discrimination Prevention Office. The back-and-forth seemed to die down after Abdulhadi acknowledged the ideological disagreement.

The Tuesday afternoon exchange has since exacerbated up UCLA’s cultural divides. Some faculty have called for a formal apology from the anthropology professor teaching the course, while the Anthropology Graduate Student Association came out in defense of the guest lecturer and research done by students in the department.

Talk about a tense campus.

The two-state solution isn’t going to make an appearance in an hourlong guest lecture or even in this editorial. But the ideological gulfs that characterize the divisive Israel-Palestine debate on campus won’t be bridged anytime soon if we don’t acknowledge the double standard surrounding it: Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli speech are both protected by the First Amendment. And yet only the former has historically been stamped out by the campus administration.

That’s not to discount the passions surrounding the conflict. Students upset at Abdulhadi’s viewpoints were justified in feeling that way – she noted that herself in her lecture.

But silencing confrontational dialogue altogether perpetuates a legacy of slanted storytelling at UCLA.

For years, organizations like the David Horowitz Freedom Center have been slapping targets on the backs of students and faculty who advocate for Palestinian human rights. The center has taped posters several times on campus walkways claiming student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA and the Muslim Students Association are supporters of terrorism.

Some iterations of these have gone so far as to list the names of faculty and students alongside a manufactured photo of a toddler holding a machine gun.

Less than a month ago, the DHFC circulated a newspaper-style brochure with similar messaging.

These are just the most egregious examples of institutionalized antagonism to a valid – and understandably disagreeable – viewpoint. Just last year, administrators threatened to cancel the 2018 National SJP conference because its logo featured a bear flying a kite alongside the letters “UCLA” on an event brochure. Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck even wrote a letter to the organization claiming the iconography seemed to imply UCLA endorsed violence against Israel – an overtly ideological judgement to make.

Certainly, pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist dialogue can be anti-Semitic. And members of this campus are right to be sensitive, if not worried, about legitimizing hate speech that our political leaders are too tepid to call out. This campus has even seen blatant examples of anti-Semitism in levels as high up as the undergraduate student government appointment system in previous years.

But it’s not accurate to generalize those concerns to all pro-Palestinian speech. Moreover, we have to acknowledge that this dialogue has a track record of being dampered.

The First Amendment demands we allow people like Abdulhadi and the students upset with her to speak their minds.

That kind of debate is bound to spark outrage – but democracy was never a silent art to begin with.

33rd JazzReggae Fest brings community together to celebrate music under the sun

The May gray subsided just in time to shine sun down upon the 33rd Annual JazzReggae Fest over the Memorial Day weekend.

The music event, held Monday at the Sunset Recreation Center, featured performances from a motley of seven artists, including two jazz groups from the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Despite the previous night’s heavy rain, the crowd trickled in over the course of a few hours, mostly laying on blankets and perusing the vendors and live artwork.

The festival began just after noon with a few songs from The Roswell Universe, an eight-member group that plays a subgenre they call “International Space Music,” which featured synth tracks underneath their instrumentals. The band’s performance included dynamic trumpet and saxophone sounds more akin to ska than reggae, but most of their songs still featured smooth, jazzy rhythms.

Between performers, DJ Q Bwoy reminded patrons that the festival had been “jamming since ’86,” in reference to the event’s first on-campus occurrence. He played classic reggae as well as R&B songs from Bob Marley to The Temptations and encouraged the crowd to support the performers with applause. Q Bwoy introduced every artist who took the stage thereafter, including the two UCLA music groups.

“These young men and women are the future of jazz in this nation,” Q Bwoy said.

The UCLA Contemporary Jazz Ensemble kicked things up a notch with traditional-sounding jazz numbers. Though the songs were rhythmically consistent, the melodies felt a little heavier and more instrumentally full with the large number of performers on stage.

In contrast, the ensemble from the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA featured about half a dozen players, with a strong emphasis on the horn section – and one harmonicist. The performance included more time devoted to freestyle solos, particularly in the horn section. The bass guitar, keyboard and drums provided consistent, fast rhythms which paired well with the horn-focused performance.

The festival then moved on to more vocal performers with the stylings of Rayana Jay – an R&B singer who encouraged the audience to bounce to the music as she sang a variety of slow- and fast-tempo tunes. Her low, earthy voice evoked a tone equivalent to soul singers like Diana Ross or Mary J. Blige. She was also the first performer to include the audience in a call-and-response, as they helped her sing her song “Sleepy Brown.”

“I just came to sing some songs, is that alright with y’all? Good, ’cause I was gonna do that anyway,” Jay said. “I hope y’all are still rocking on y’all’s blankets.”

The vocal trend continued with a performance from Etana, a Jamaican reggae singer who recently received a Grammy nomination for her album “Reggae Forever.” Her music strikes a strong balance between the rhythmic sensibility of reggae and the vocal harmonies of R&B. She encouraged the entire audience to get on their feet to finish out the set.

[RELATED: Spring Sing 2019]

Chicago-based hip-hop singer Tobi Lou then performed for a full 45 minutes. Between songs he talked to the audience about his time as an Uber driver, and that his appreciation for hard work has influenced his music. But he said that he misses being a student sometimes.

“I’d take UCLA over the real world any day,” Lou said. “The real world is hard, everybody.”

The last musician to grace the stage was Freddie McGregor, an old-school reggae maestro from Jamaica who has been releasing music since the 1970s. Some audience members rushed toward the barricade to get as close as they could to the reggae legend. His sound was classic to the genre: simple beats, smooth rhythms and silky lyrics celebrating good feelings and marijuana.

Before McGregor took the stage, however, co-director of the JazzReggae Fest, Nosalina Joane Omorogieva, voiced her appreciation to the crowd for coming out on the hot, sunny day to see the performers play for them. She thanked the performers as well as the security, staff and volunteers for helping make the event possible.

“Thank you for making this festival a terrific experience for everyone,” Omorogieva said.

Track and field prospers at NCAA west regional with 20 qualifying athletes

There will be more UCLA blue at the NCAA championship.

UCLA track and field will be sending 20 athletes to the NCAA championship in Austin, Texas, after qualifying in 18 events at the NCAA west regional in Sacramento this weekend. The Bruins sent just eight athletes to last year’s NCAA championship.

“It’s definitely mind-blowing compared to the number of athletes we had last year,” said sophomore thrower Alyssa Wilson. “It just shows all the hard work our team has been putting in. I’m proud of everyone and how far this team has come so far.”

Three of last year’s berths came from Wilson in her three events – the shot put, hammer and discus. The 2019 Pac-12 Women’s Field Athlete of the Year qualified in the three events again this year.

Wilson cracked the 60-meter barrier for the first time in her career and set a new personal best by over 12 feet with a 60.76-meter toss in the discus.

“It felt awesome that I finally put a throw together and was able to execute the finish and stay in the ring,” Wilson said.

Redshirt senior thrower Ashlie Blake will join Wilson in the shot put at the NCAA championship in Austin with a qualifying mark of 16.40 meters after missing last year’s championship by four placings.

Redshirt senior thrower Dotun Ogundeji led the shot put tandem with a fourth-place finish. Redshirt sophomore thower Nate Esparza and freshman thrower Otito Ogbonnia placed ninth and 11th, respectively, to punch their tickets to the NCAA championship.

“It was amazing to see two guys get to their first national championships,” Ogundeji said. “I was super excited because I remember my freshman year when I was the third qualifier.”

Ogundeji took first place in the discus when he tossed 60.31 meters, defeating two of the top three discus throwers in the country – North Dakota State’s Payton Otterdahl and Texas Tech’s Eric Kicinski.

“Going into (the NCAA regional) and having a great performance like that helps me have a big confidence boost going into championship time,” Ogundeji said.

Redshirt senior thrower Justin Stafford and junior thrower Simon Litzell will be returning to the NCAA championship for their second and third consecutive seasons to compete in the hammer throw and javelin, respectively.

Junior distance runner Robert Brandt placed second in the 10,000-meter among BYU’s gauntlet of distance runners that own the country’s best four times in the 10,000m. Brandt narrowly qualified into the 5,000-meter at the NCAA championship when he grabbed seventh place to outpace Stanford’s Alex Ostberg by two seconds.

Two of the Bruins’ men’s relay groups – the 4x400m and 4x100m – notched qualifying marks within the top 12. Redshirt senior sprinter Leon Powell ran in both events and said competing in his final year as Bruin served as his motivator.

“I know that I had to get to (the NCAA championship),” Powell said. “And if I didn’t, those potentially would’ve been my last (races), so I had to give it my all on my first leg and it paid off.”

Freshman Sondre Guttormsen and redshirt senior Elleyse Garrett also earned trips to the final in the pole vault after no Bruin qualified in the event a year ago.

Senior sprinter Meleni Rodney was the only athlete from the women’s track team to land a qualifying mark and placed third in her heat with a time of 52.09 seconds in the 400m.

Redshirt junior Christina Chenault – who qualified in the heptathlon – will be the first Bruin to compete in the NCAA championship when the heptathletes kick the events off June 5 in Austin.

UCLA baseball earns No. 1 seed on quest to College World Series

After 10 straight weeks atop the national rankings, the Bruins have locked down the top seed.

UCLA baseball (47-8, 24-5 Pac-12) earned the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament on Monday’s selection show for the second time in program history after being named one of the 16 regional hosts Sunday. Baylor (34-17, 14-8 Big 12), Loyola Marymount (32-23, 15-12 WCC) and Omaha (31-22-1, 20-10 Summit) round out the rest of the Los Angeles regional.

UCLA last played Baylor in a three-game series in February 2018, taking two out of three to win the series and outscore their opponent 14-10 over the weekend. Then-sophomore right-hander Ryan Garcia pitched a one-run inning in UCLA’s lone loss of the series, while then-freshman right-hander Zach Pettway – who is projected to be out for another few weeks – led the Bruins to victory in the series finale with eight scoreless innings in his second career start.

UCLA has won eight of its last 10 against LMU and is currently on a seven-game winning streak in the head-to-head matchup. The Bruins took both of this year’s matchups by five runs.

Omaha’s last trip to LA ended in a series loss to USC in February, with the Trojans outscoring the Mavericks 26-17 over the three games.

Four other Pac-12 teams have made the tournament, including two additional regional hosts. No. 16 seed Oregon State (36-18-1, 21-8 Pac-12) will come to Westwood for super regionals should both squads advance, while No. 11 Stanford (41-11, 22-7) will have to go through the other side of the bracket to make it to the College World Series.

The Bruins went 18-7 against teams that made the tournament. This marks the first time since 2015 they will host a regional – the same year the program secured its last Pac-12 title.

UCLA’s road to the College World Series will start Friday against Omaha at Jackie Robinson Stadium.

Previously missing student reported to be located and safe

This post was updated June 2 at 3:52 p.m.

A student was found after previously being reported missing.

Marc Kalis, a fourth-year statistics student, was reported to be located and safe by his mother, Christina Kalis, on May 31 after being reported missing for almost three weeks.

Marc Kalis, 22, had last been seen moving out of Sproul Hall, where he stayed as a resident for the 2018-2019 academic year before he went missing. Kalis previously worked as a resident assistant at Sproul Hall and Rieber Hall.

Kalis was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and raised in Bahrain. Christina Kalis said she and his father traveled from Bahrain to Los Angeles to aid in the search, and would remain in the country until their son was located.