NWWNC renter stakeholder – Michael Skiles and Katja May

Michael Skiles

Michael Skiles is one determined person.

Skiles, an idea-filled and articulate philosophy graduate student is back to serve another term on the North Westwood Neighborhood Council.

Why wouldn’t he? The council is his brainchild after all.

But the energy Skiles brings hasn’t dampened, even after his three-year term as the Graduate Students Association president or his yearlong battle for a neighborhood council that many thought would just be a pipe dream – until it wasn’t. He is inaugural president of the fledgling council and wants to update the Westwood Village Specific Plan, improve the walkability of Westwood, address the chronic vacancy in the Village and breathe life into the neighborhood’s housing market – to name a few.

It’s clear the council will, under Skiles’ guidance and leadership, continue to aggressively make its voice heard all the way in city hall. His tenure so far has featured him and his fellow council members laying the groundwork for a successful representative body that engages, gives back to and shapes the neighborhood.

Moreover, he has made it clear time and again he has vast knowledge of the inner workings of the city and the Village to help pull off his ideas. He did, after all, unearth the Los Angeles neighborhood subdivision process that made this entire election process possible. It cannot be understated how impactful his presence has been in holding local authorities accountable and reenvisioning Westwood.

The board wholeheartedly endorses Skiles for renter stakeholder on the NWWNC. His track record speaks for itself – and it’s clear he’s just getting started.

Katja May

The North Westwood Neighborhood Council is still in its infancy and in dire need of a steady hand to keep it afloat.

That’s what Katja May brings to the council.

Her experience on the council will inform council decisions and maintain its momentum when tackling some of Westwood Village’s greatest hurdles. She has worked as a volunteer at UCLA, participated in the annual Los Angeles homeless counts and partaken in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Community Police Academy, all while holding a doctoral degree from UC Berkeley and helping to found the NWWNC.

May wants to promote inclusivity in the Village – an important consideration given some area leaders’ attitudes toward students and minority groups in the past. The diversity of UCLA’s campus should trickle down into the Village and certainly into the Village’s leadership.

But it’s worth pointing out May lacks specifics beyond that platform. The NWWNC desperately needs tangible action and results, especially given its political rivals vying for power in the Village, and May would do well to set goals should she win a term on the council.

Still, May edges out her opponent with her experience on the council, which is critical for self-evaluation and reflection as it enters its second term. And this is the reason the board endorses her for renter stakeholder.

NWWNC university staff member – Wren Reynolds

Wren Reynolds is running for university staff member on the North Westwood Neighborhood Council. And if his track record proves anything, it’s that he cares about Westwood.

A lot.

So much so that he was a founding member of Westwood Forward, a group that pushed for the council’s formation. He’s also helped lay the groundwork for the council’s web presence – a promising development for a council that has a history of failing at outreach. Reynolds has also been supportive of transportation initiatives and even reached out to companies like Lyft, Lime and Uber with the intent of helping make Westwood Village more accessible.

His accomplishments speak for themselves. The previous council – the Westwood Neighborhood Council – had a history of suppressing businesses and preventing the community from becoming a better place for students. Reynolds has done everything within his ability to do the exact opposite.

But his goals moving forward are a bit unclear, and it didn’t help that he failed to respond to the board’s attempts to reach out to him to better understand his future plans for the council.

Still, the board endorses him for helping lay the foundation for Westwood to grow and for his ability to foster change in the community – something we are confident he will continue to do on the council next year.

NWWNC graduate student representative – Paul Kurek

The board endorses Paul Kurek for graduate student representative on the North Westwood Neighborhood Council for his clear recommendations and institutional understanding of how to make Westwood a friendlier place for students.

The current NWWNC member and former Graduate Students Association member aims to tackle the restrictive policies on bars and restaurants. In his words, this involves addressing concerns like those about community members who have continued to harass businesses with bureaucratic appeals or outdated neighborhood restrictions on the kinds of eateries and businesses that can operate in Westwood Village.

Housing is another high priority for Kurek, who thinks university housing costs should be in line with the salary the university pays graduate students. He also hopes to loosen restrictions on housing projects in Westwood to encourage the development of affordable housing. His short tenure on the council so far has equipped him with solid knowledge about housing ordinances, zoning and the Westwood Village Specific Plan, all of which can inform his decisions about increasing affordability.

Kurek’s platforms aren’t all fleshed out, though – especially his push to improve public transit and wish to increase event visibility in the Village – both of which are vague, to say the least. Yet with more thought, these ideas can match the ambitious, but reasonable goals he has for continuing to build up the council and its ability to serve the community.

NWWNC organizational stakeholder – Andrew Lewis and Ernesto Arciniega

Andrew Lewis

All politics is local. But for Andrew Lewis, it’s personal.

UCLA alumnus Lewis is a Westwood native: He was born here, he lived here, he studied here and now he serves here.

Community engagement and local governance come easy to Lewis. So it’s only natural the board endorses him as an organizational stakeholder for the North Westwood Neighborhood Council.

In fact, Lewis is one of the founding members of the fledgling council. He chaired its budget committee, allocating grants to community organizations, including $5,000 to the UCLA Community Programs Office’s food closet – a sign that he is in tune with campus and neighborhood issues like food and housing insecurity.

He is also adept at navigating the Los Angeles political labyrinth: He served in the previous mayor’s office, has built relationships with City Councilmember Paul Koretz, represents the NWWNC in the Westside Regional Alliance of Councils and has interfaced with voter engagement groups like BruinsVOTE! and IGNITE at UCLA.

And yet Lewis has maintained close ties to UCLA throughout his time in local governance. He is the president of UCLA’s Mixed Alumni Association and has pushed for NWWNC committee meetings to be held on or near campus, such as in Kerckhoff Hall and the Weyburn Terrace conference rooms, to engage the campus community – an essential step to ensuring the new council’s success.

To be sure, Lewis’ ideas for the council are rather vague. After helping form the foundation of the body this past half year, he hopes to increase housing availability in the neighborhood and improve transportation to and from the campus area – complex issues that require even more complex solutions.

But the Westwood renter has the local relationships to pull off that agenda.

After all, it’s personal for him.

Ernest Arciniega

Westwood has a bad habit of categorizing its community members.

Typically, they fall into six groups: students, homeowners, business owners, homeless individuals, visitors and movie stars.

But one community troublingly slides under the radar each time: university and business laborers. Be it in UCLA’s dining halls or as maintenance staff in Westwood Village, these workers – predominantly people of color – don’t see themselves in local governance and are often forgotten by our elected representatives.

Ernesto Arciniega is intent on breaking that norm.

Graduate student Arciniega has a track record of coalition-building with underrepresented communities. He is the Graduate Students Association director of diversity, equity, inclusion and community engagement – a position that implores him to work with associations like the Black GSA and Hispanics Latinx GSA to advocate for their needs. He has also interfaced with community members as a leader in Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan group that brings people to the polls.

These are qualities we desperately need on the North Westwood Neighborhood Council. Local governance, after all, succeeds with representation from the communities that keep the neighborhood thriving.

Arciniega knows that. He wants to push for the formal creation of a homelessness committee that focuses on collecting donations and making UCLA a more active player in combating housing insecurity. In addition to improving housing availability, he wants to have the NWWNC work with UCLA and the city to prepare for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games – a grand event that will flood Westwood’s streets with tourists, congesting roadways and taxing the infrastructure.

Sure, he doesn’t have all the answers for these big-picture issues. But he has what any successful community representative has: the ability to bring people together – especially those who don’t usually get a seat at the table.

Regents recap – May 15

The governing board of the University of California met for the second day of its May meeting at UC San Francisco on Wednesday. The Board of Regents discussed a systemwide audit of the admissions process, raised Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition at UC Berkeley and discussed LGBTQ initiatives across the UC.

Board of Regents

  • American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, the UC’s largest employee union, protested the outsourcing of UC workers’ positions to outside suppliers during public comment. Agnes Castro, a member of AFSCME Local 3299, said outsourcing affects the safety and security of workers and the people who receive their services.

  • Bryan King, a psychiatry professor and vice chair of child and adolescent psychiatry for UC San Francisco, said child and adolescent suicide is a serious issue, but UCSF lacks the adequate infrastructure to care for child and adolescent patients. He said he supports establishing a partnership between UCSF and Dignity Health, a Catholic hospital system, to bring high level care to patients in need.

  • Ronit Stahl, an assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley, said she thinks this partnership would bind UCSF to the religious constraints placed by the Roman Catholic Church.

  • Julie Wilensky, an attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said she opposes the potential partnership with Dignity Health. She said she thinks Dignity Health would limit a wide range of reproductive rights and harm the UC’s LGBTQ patients, undermining the UC’s legal obligation to serve patients from all backgrounds as a public institution.

  • Irene Pien, a resident doctor of plastic surgery at UCLA, said she thinks the UC needs to better take care of its physicians. Pien said the suicide rate of physicians is high because of the stressful nature of their jobs and that she thinks the UC needs to better address the physical and emotional demands placed on its residents.

Academic and Student Affairs Committee

  • The committee approved a motion to establish a seventh college at UC San Diego. UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said the current six colleges have already exceeded their designed capacity and their resources are being drained by the rapid growth of the student body.

  • The committee approved the establishment of two new Natural Reserve System sites at Point Reyes National Seashore and Lassen Volcanic National Park. The NRS is a network of protected wildlife sites throughout California administered by the UC.

  • The committee approved a proposal to increase Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ proposed a 9% increase in nonresident PDST per year and a 3% increase in resident PDST per year for the first four years. The PDST increase aims to fully reimburse student loan payments for all full-time MBA graduates working in the public sector or nonprofit organizations who earn salaries of $95,000 or less.

  • Shaun Travers, the UCSD campus diversity officer and director of UCSD’s LGBT Resource Center, said current training about LGBTQ issues for employees at UCSD is very limited. Travers said he thinks transgender and nonbinary students should be able to change their preferred name without going through bureaucratic hurdles. He added he thinks students should be able to put their preferred names on their diplomas.

  • Shawndeez Jadalizadeh, a graduate student in gender studies at UCLA, said they have experienced discrimination as a transgender student on UCLA’s campus. Jadalizadeh said they were interrogated on campus when their preferred name did not match the name on their ID card. They added although policies protecting LGBTQ students’ rights have improved in recent years, there is still a stigma surrounding transgender students.

Finance and Capital Strategies Committee

  • The committee endorsed Senate Bill 14, which could provide funding for maintenance projects that have been delayed due to a lack of funding. Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis said this would allow the UC to rely less heavily on student tuition to fund these projects.

  • The committee approved the Upper Hearst Development for the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Housing Project at UC Berkeley. Christ said the project will offer additional housing to students and faculty, office spaces and event venues to students at the Goldman School.

  • The committee approved the budget and design for a project to increase UC Santa Barbara’s campus classroom seating capacity by 35%. UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang said the project will help the campus meet its current projected enrollment growth, lift the caps for lower division courses and minimize the waitlist.

  • Khosla said UCSD is preparing to build a seventh and eighth college. He added the strategy aims to reduce the number of students per college, guarantee four years of housing to every undergraduate student and provide housing that is 20% below market prices.

  • Associate Vice President Mark Cianca said the recent deployment of UCPath at UC Berkeley was the most successful deployment of the payment system to date. Deployment at UC Davis and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources was delayed to September.

    Compliance and Audit Committee

  • Matthew Hicks, the UC systemwide audit officer, said the UC is evaluating undergraduate admissions processes to ensure compliance with regulations and to reduce the probability of fraudulent admissions as part of an audit of admissions practices across the UC. He said the audit will focus on the admission of student-athletes and other cases of nonstandard admissions. He said this phase of the audit is expected to be completed late spring.

USAC recap – May 14

The Undergraduate Students Association Council is the official student government representing the undergraduate student body at UCLA. Council meetings take place every Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Bruin Viewpoint Room and are open to all students. Watch a livestream of the meetings on the USAC Live! channel on YouTube.

Public Comment:

  • California Public Interest Research Group representatives said they are working to promote causes like food security, biodiversity and clean transportation.
  • Justin Feldman, third-year political science and Middle Eastern studies student, said he thinks anti-Semitism and white supremacy must be condemned by the council.

Special Presentations:

  • Daily Bruin staff Marilyn Chavez-Martinez and Melissa Morris laid out communication procedures between the council and the Daily Bruin News section for the 2019-2020 school year.
  • Ryan Ender, the USAC Finance Committee chair, told council members how to reimburse expenses and how the finance committee evaluates funding requests.

Agenda:

  • The council allocated $23,705 from the Contingency Programing Funds for non-USAC entities.
  • The council allocated the $199.88 Contingency Capital Fund for USAC entities.
  • The council allocated $663.72 from the Student Wellness Commission Programming Fund to five non-USAC groups.
  • The council allocated $3,750 from the Academic Affairs Commission Travel Mini-Grant to 15 student group applicants.
  • Two vice chancellors and the director of Counseling and Psychological Services said they hope to reorient the Campus Assault Resources and Education Program to focus on recruiting staff members who have experience in social work, psychology or who have clinical backgrounds. They also said Nicole Green, CAPS executive director, will be taking over as interim director of CARE.
  • Administrative Representative Debra Geller said she thinks offices can merge funding applications to streamline the request process for student groups.
  • The council tabled a resolution to condemn the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Canary Mission website for promoting potentially defamatory information against UCLA community members. Council members suggested modifications to the resolution, which they will vote on next week.
  • The council discussed how they can improve student engagement and suggested having a master calendar for all USAC events, posting more on social media and creating an engagement committee.
  • President Robert Watson said he thinks the council should have combined appointment applications to increase accessibility.

Reports:

  • Watson said he wants council offices to create a centralized office application process.
  • Internal Vice President Kimberly Bonifacio said the Campus Safety Alliance will meet during week 9, but the location is still undecided.
  • Campus Events Commissioner Tara Steinmetz said her office is hosting the 2019 Shorttakes Films Festival on Thursday in the Ackerman Grand Ballroom. She added her office will host Ultrabloom 2019, an electronic dance music event, in Ackerman Grand Ballroom on May 31.

Anthropology guest lecturer accused by students of encouraging anti-Semitism

Students said they think a guest lecturer for an anthropology class promoted anti-Semitic ideas Tuesday.

Rabab Abdulhadi, an Arab and Muslim ethnicities studies professor at San Francisco State University, delivered a guest lecture to roughly 100 students in Anthropology M144P: “Constructing Race,” which focuses on race and racism and is taught by Kyeyoung Park, an associate professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at UCLA.

Prior to the lecture, students said they were told attendance was mandatory and that the lecture would cover topics of Islamophobia.

Abdulhadi said during the lecture she supports Jewish people who oppose the state of Israel. She also said she thinks the state of Israel has committed colonialist actions that are related to white supremacy.

During the lecture, some students snapped their fingers in support of Abdulhadi’s comments. Other students said they think the lecture veered into anti-Semitism.

Abdulhadi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shayna Lavi, a third-year anthropology student, told Abdulhadi during the lecture that she found Abdulhadi’s equating of Zionism with white supremacy offensive as a Jewish and Zionist student. Zionism is a movement advocating for the establishment of the Jewish state Israel in Palestine.

Abdulhadi said during the lecture she respected Lavi’s feelings and continued delivering the lecture. She added she did not claim to speak for all sides on the subject.

“I am coming here to speak about a particular topic, the way I see it as a scholar and a scholar-activist and a public intellectual engaged in things every single day,” Abdulhadi said.

Abdulhadi said while she respected the students’ views, she was invited as a guest lecturer to the class to give her perspective and her comments. She said she would continue lecturing because students should respect all perspectives and her comments should challenge their ideas.

“You cannot interrupt me now, I will tell you why,” Abdulhadi said. “Because today is my lecture. I am respecting you. … It’s alright if you are uncomfortable.”

Viktorya Saroyan, a third-year sociology student, said she did not think Abdulhadi responded well to criticism from students.

Ashari Whitt, a third-year African American studies and gender studies student, said in an email statement she attended the lecture and spoke to Abdulhadi during the Q&A portion. Whitt said she thinks criticisms against a foreign government should not target individuals or religious groups.

Whitt said she thinks Park failed to adequately mediate the discussion between the students and the guest lecturer.

Lavi said Park did not intervene when she saw her crying and has not addressed the lecture with the class after the event.

“(Park) hasn’t contacted me, it’s been over 24 hours, there’s been no apology sent out, nothing reprimanding the speaker,” Lavi said.

Park declined to comment.

After the lecture, Saroyan and Lavi both sent reports of the lecture to Jerry Kang, the vice chancellor of equity, diversity and inclusion. In the letters, both Saroyan and Lavi refer to the lecture discourse as hate speech.

Lavi said she would like Park to bring in a Jewish educator to speak about anti-Semitism. Saroyan said she plans to file a formal complaint with the Discrimination Prevention Office.