Daily Bruin – Page 92

USAC sees lowest voter turnout in over a decade, cites publicity issues

Student government voter turnout dropped to its lowest point in at least 11 years.

Only 16.18% of students voted in the 2019 Undergraduate Students Association Council election last week. Sixteen candidates ran for 12 positions, less than half of the number of candidates that ran in the 2018 election.

Voter turnout dropped about 10% from the 2017 and 2018 elections, which had a 27.5% and 26.5% turnout, respectively. Turnout has fluctuated over the past 11 years in an overall declining trend.

Kyana Shajari, the USAC Election Board chair, said she thinks the election board and council’s failure to sufficiently publicize the election contributed to the low voter turnout.

“The former chair failed to publicize the election as much as he could have, and I failed to publicize the election. Just because of all the circumstances I had to deal with, publicity was the last thing on my mind,” Shajari said. “For me, it was more of like a cleanup mission.”

Shajari also said she thought the 2018-2019 council could have done more in terms of publicity, but added she thought it appointed people to the election board as quickly as it could considering Richard White, former election board chair was removed two weeks before potential candidate election materials were due.

Shajari said she thinks the disorganization of and controversy surrounding last year’s election may have contributed to feelings of mistrust toward USAC as a whole. During the 2018 election, the candidates received a total of 56 sanctions, and several were investigated for voter coercion.

Kimberly Bonifacio, the newly elected internal vice president, said in an email statement she thinks changes made to the election calendar that were initially announced one day before the deadline may have contributed to the low voter turnout.

“Lastly, the toxic, petty politics from previous years has really affected students’ trust on USAC,” Bonifacio said.

Michael Lee, a fourth-year computer science student, said he voted in previous elections but not in this year’s because he knew someone on the ballot those years, but did not know any of the candidates personally this year. He added he heard less about the election in general because there was less drama surrounding the election.

Aaron Boudaie, a former Financial Supports commissioner, said in an email statement he thinks the election was inaccessible due to the lack of publicity.

“The devastating low participation level in voting and candidacy for the USAC election are not some natural disaster for which there is no explanation,” Boudaie said. “The candidate filing period was not advertised.”

Boudaie said he thinks the election board should have made changes to the election board calendar to accommodate changes made to the election board personnel.

Even after the election, three seats on the council are still vacant. A special election will be held in the fall for the Financial Supports commissioner and two general representative seats.

Shajari said she plans to continue her post as election board chair for the upcoming year if she is reappointed, and said she thinks many improvements could be made to the election code.

“I’ve seen a lot of things that have gone wrong and I have a vision for how I could fix them, so hopefully they’ll go smoother, because there’s going to be fall and spring election,” Shajari said. “It’s definitely going to be a trial and error, as it is every single year, but hopefully it’ll go well.”

Contributing reports by Isabella Fortier and Andrew Fortin-Caldera.

UCLA professor named Royal Society fellow for research in depression and genetics

A UCLA professor-in-residence was named a fellow of the Royal Society of London, an academic society that aims to promote science and recognizes excellence in the field.

Jonathan Flint is a professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Flint, who is an expert in the genetic determinants of depression, is on the executive team for the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge, a campus effort to understand, address and treat depression.

Flint was on the team that was the first to identify two genetic markers reliably linked to major depressive disorder in a study published in 2015. He left his position at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford in 2016 to join UCLA.

Flint was elected to the Royal Society for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and his discoveries in the genetics of depression, said Nelson Freimer, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, director of the UCLA Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics and director of the Depression Grand Challenge.

The Royal Society was founded in 1660, and its fellows include around 1,600 scientists from around the world. These fellows have included Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.

AFSCME announces May 16 strike in protest of labor outsourcing

University of California service workers will hold a systemwide strike May 16 in response to the University’s alleged illegal outsourcing of labor.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, the UC’s largest employee union, announced Monday it will strike May 16 at the UC’s 10 campuses and five medical centers. The union filed three unfair labor practice charges in April claiming the UC illegally sought out and entered into agreements with private contractors.

This will be the fifth strike held by AFSCME Local 3299 in the past year.

The University Professional and Technical Employees-Communications Workers of America 9119, which represents about 14,000 research and technical workers in the UC, will join AFSCME Local 3299 in its strike.

AFSCME Local 3299 spokesperson John de los Angeles said the union is striking in protest of the University’s behavior.

“We hope to raise awareness of the University’s inappropriate behavior,” de los Angeles said. “We hope to shed a light on the concerns that UC workers have had for several years.”

De los Angeles said the University began outsourcing in 2015. He added those concerns have led to audits that found the University has in fact been displacing its workforce in favor of cheaper labor.

UC spokesperson Claire Doan said in an email statement the UC is confident its practices align with University policy, collective bargaining agreements and state law.

“It is clear AFSCME leaders are going to desperate lengths for attention, from sporadically announcing baseless accusations against the University to calling for a boycott of commencement speakers that squarely hurts students and their families,” Doan said.

Doan said the UC’s agreements with AFSCME Local 3299 limit the UC from contracting out labor for the sole purpose of saving on wages and benefits.

She added the number of AFSCME Local 3299 employees at the UC and their earnings have grown over time. The union grew by 17% from 2013 to 2018 and AFSCME Local 3299 employees earn 21% more on average than they did five years ago, she said.

Doan said the UC pays AFSCME Local 3299 patient care and service workers at or above market rates. She said AFSCME Local 3299 is demanding 8% annual raises for all of its units, or 36% increases over four years, while other UC employees average at most 3% a year, or 12.5% over four years.

“The University cannot justify to taxpayers or other UC employees giving AFSCME excessive raises, which has been one of the union’s primary aims in negotiations,” Doan said.

De los Angeles said the union will continue to strike in the future if the University does not change its practices.

“As long as the University continues to deny the legitimacy of outsourcing and inequality, workers will do whatever it takes to fight back against these illegal practices,” de los Angeles said.

Professor elected to National Academy of Sciences for research in parasite biology

A UCLA professor was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a nonprofit organization composed of the nation’s leading researchers in science.

Patricia Johnson, a professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, was one of 100 new members inducted into the National Academy of Sciences on April 30, according to the Academy website.

Johnson, who directs a lab at the David Geffen School of Medicine, studies Trichomonas vaginalis, a parasite which causes the common sexually transmitted disease trichomoniasis, according to the press release. According to its website, her lab researches how T. vaginalis establishes and maintains infection in the human body as well as its potential links to prostate cancer.

There are 2,347 active members in the Academy. New members of the Academy are elected by current members for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, according to the Academy’s website.

The Academy was chartered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to advise the national government on issues related to science, engineering and medicine. It also publishes the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Forty percent of the new members elected to the Academy were women, the highest proportion of women ever offered membership in a single year, according to the Academy’s website. Since 1970, 53 UCLA faculty have been elected to the Academy.

Students say campus offers inadequate kosher dining options

Students said they think UCLA Dining’s kosher food practices could be improved.

Concerns from students include food safety practices, scarcity of options, and mixing kosher foods and foods following other religious dietary guidelines. Covel Commons Residential Restaurant is the only dining establishment on the Hill that offers kosher meals, which adhere to a set of dietary restrictions in the Jewish community.

Ran Noy, a fourth-year philosophy student who keeps kosher, said after two trips to the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center due to food poisoning, he decided to take photos of prepackaged kosher meals to document how long they were available to students.

Noy said he reported his concerns about food safety to the UCLA Office of Environment, Health & Safety, an entity which ensures compliance with health regulations. EH&S reported there were zero food safety violations, said UCLA spokesperson Alison Hewitt.

Hewitt said EH&S conducted an unannounced on-site health inspection of the Covel dining hall Feb. 21 and reported zero health violations of food handling, temperature control and facility cleanliness for kosher food options offered at the dining hall.

“EH&S inspected kosher meals served at Covel for safety of storage and handling and found that kosher meals were all appropriately kept frozen, never thawed or refrigerated, and kept for no more than six months, as recommended by the manufacturer,” Hewitt said.

Noy said he thinks perfect health inspection results are impossible and that EH&S’s inspection may be biased due to conflicts of interest regarding how inspections are conducted. The office trains university workers in food safety policies and inspects their compliance with these policies, according to the EH&S website.

“The same person who actually investigated those complaints, he is the same person who is training the employees,” Noy said. “The person who’s training is not going to go admit to the problems with the training of the employees.”

A Los Angeles County Department of Public Health spokesperson said a perfect health inspection is possible but unlikely.

“While unlikely, it is possible for no violations to be found at the time of a food facility inspection,” the representative said.

UCLA Dining does not fall under LA County jurisdiction because its food is not sold for retail.

Devorah Norton, a third-year philosophy student who keeps kosher, said she thinks UCLA Dining has mishandled kosher food.

“They have given away my food to Muslim students then offered me Halal food even though it’s not the same thing,” Norton said. “They did not offer kosher for Passover food.”

One student said he thinks kosher options should be expanded on campus.

Justin Feldman, a third-year Middle Eastern studies and political science student who keeps kosher, said he thinks there is a scarcity of kosher food options available to Jewish students on campus. There are some kosher options off campus, Feldman said, but having to leave campus for food is inconvenient, especially during exam season.

He added he thinks UCLA should offer more to-go kosher options.

“I would love for there to be more accommodation for to-go foods … to make sure there are more options available … that they have sizable portions and not overly priced,” Feldman said.

Noy and Norton met with Maria Blandizzi, the dean of students, about their concerns, but said they have not received an update on the situation.

University tenure clock disfavors women weighing academic ambition against family

Professors aspiring to get tenure are working against a ticking clock.

For women, though, this clock ticks much louder.

Faculty at UCLA typically start off as assistant professors and work within a roughly eight-year time frame to obtain tenure, or permanent employment. Every two years, they’re evaluated and have the opportunity to climb the hiring ladder.

And every one of those years matters. Faculty run against the clock to prove that their research and contributions to the university are valuable enough to merit tenure, but many end up getting stuck as regular faculty.

A lot of candidates know that’s a possibility from the start, especially with the increasing trend of universities hiring adjunct faculty to cut costs. But women have disproportionately had to face that truth.

Women hold 49% of faculty positions in the U.S. – which can be praised as significant progress from what was once an exclusively male institution.

But they hold only 38% of tenured positions.

It’s worse at UCLA, where only 33.7% of professors in 2016 were women.

This doesn’t happen by chance. The tenure clock is long and tedious, and universities value those who can devote themselves to their work and produce results. For some women, that can feel like choosing between having a career and having a family.

That apparently is a deterrent to promoting more women for universities like UCLA.

It’s a cultural problem. Faculty members up for tenure are evaluated by fellow faculty based on their research, commitment and expected promise.

Contributions and promise, though, can be pretty subjective to evaluate, especially in a system that’s barred women from higher education for centuries. And this can be attributed to how the system itself is set up: Despite years of women being able to obtain college degrees, universities don’t acknowledge that many of them who seek positions in academia have greater responsibilities than their male counterparts.

Ashley Blum, a doctoral student in political science, said the system hasn’t adapted to be inclusive of women who want families.

“The difficulties that women face, particularly in the period between graduate school and going up for tenure, are the biggest detriment to women doing well in academia,” she said.

The tenure clock often takes place at the same time that people are establishing their families. Marriage and children can be obvious deterrents to productivity, and it’s still apparently the woman’s job to bear that responsibility.

Women with families are often evaluated more critically for what they’re able to contribute to universities, presumably under the assumption that they’d have less time to do research on top of providing child care.

“I do worry about being pressured to choose between being a serious academic and having a family,” Blum said. “I’m hoping the systems will have adapted to be better to women who really want to do both, but so far I don’t think that they have.”

That’s not to say academia has been inept at factoring in women. Some universities have updated their tenure policies to pause the tenure clock for what amounts to parental leave – the more kids you have to care for, the more time you get. That period also means less grading and teaching.

But this has tipped the scales only further in favor of men.

Male professors have been able to use stop-the-clock policies to their advantage by simply doubling down on their research, according to a recent study. Women, in contrast, actually use this time to parent their children.

So while both women and men are able to utilize this policy change, men are able to increase their productivity while women are still forced to remain stagnant – perpetuating the same double standard that put them in this position in the first place.

Moreover, while women can extend the tenure clock if they have children, that isn’t something they can explain on their academic resumes, said Jessica Collett, a sociology professor.

“People can just see … that over these nine years this person has not accomplished as much as other people would accomplish in that time, (and they might say), ‘So maybe we shouldn’t give her tenure,'” she said.

Of course, it might seem like women’s uphill battle against the tenure clock is because of some faculty’s insensitivities – faculty, after all, are the ones who ultimately evaluate their peers for tenure. Yet the numbers show there’s clearly an institutional double standard: For example, in 2016, there was almost an equal distribution of female to male faculty in UCLA’s humanities divisions. But the higher up you go, the fewer women you’ll see. Those numbers only get worse the more rigorous the degree program and the more masculinized the field of study.

The fact of the matter is that tenure, by design, fails to let a lot of women into the university ranks. It perpetuates the false idea that women must choose between pursuing their career ambitions or having a family, which worsens the gender gap in higher education.

Tenure is a representation of who universities value. At UCLA, that apparently means only a handful of women.

Students express artistry with original makeup looks on social media platforms

Linda Casillas used to wake up at 4 a.m. every day just to do her makeup in high school.

“I would wear a full face – fake eyelashes, contour, colorful eye shadow,” the third-year art history student said.

Now, Casillas says she usually keeps her makeup neutral, but still expresses her artistry through her Instagram page, which features bright color palettes and themed designs – including an outline of Royce Hall adorning her eye, rimmed with yellow and blue eye shadow at the bottom.

The first inkling of her passion arose in middle school, she said, when she began watching online tutorials and, being particularly insecure about her eyebrows, playing with makeup. Later in high school, Casillas joined a dance team and started investing more time into her craft, helping her teammates with their makeup and sharing her work on Instagram.

Casillas, along with other students, has contributed to a growing community of makeup artists at UCLA who display their vibrant creations online. Though each has their own story of developing their passion for their craft, Casillas cultivated her skills through an artistic background.

She attended an arts high school in the San Fernando Valley that focused on the visual arts. She said she found a link between the things she was learning in class and her newfound hobby.

“I started finding that there was a connection between painting and makeup artistry, so I tried to combine my love for both of them – trying to do creative looks on my face and using my face as a canvas instead,” she said.

Casillas typically gets the inspiration for her own looks from other makeup artists on Instagram such as James Charles and Nikkie de Jager, widely known as NikkieTutorials on social media. In addition to the passion they have for their artistry, Casillas appreciates how the beauty influencers can be both avant-garde and natural in their styles, she said. Currently, the beauty industry focuses more on skin care and a healthy complexion in lieu of more experimental makeup. And though Casillas is interested in adopting this trend, she said she still loves crafting bold looks, one of her favorites being a dark, Halloween look, complete with black lipstick and black glitter eye shadow.

Second-year biochemistry student Olivia Watters said she doesn’t think these vibrant designs will go out of style because she is consistently inspired by what people can do with makeup, be it a new technique or a crazy color scheme. Like Casillas, Watters said she doesn’t often wear the looks on her Instagram page, such as rainbow gradient eye shadow or black lipstick, on the day-to-day. However, she still showcases them for parties and donned them this summer while working at Ulta Beauty. She often would take pictures of her extravagant makeup in the car just before heading into work, a couple of which she posted on her page, she said.

“I personally will always have love for colorful looks,” Watters said. “I might not do them all the time, but I think people are fascinated by them. But the intimidation factor, and the fact that it’s not super normal to wear teal eye shadow on a normal basis just scares people, and that’s why people don’t really want to try it.”

Watters began watching beauty YouTubers like Jackie Aina during her sophomore year of high school and would use her paychecks to buy makeup and recreate their looks. The de-stressing activity soon became one she shared on Instagram. Though Watters doesn’t hesitate to go out sans makeup, she said it still serves as a remedy for times when she feels like she is in a rut.

“On this journey with makeup and my own journey towards self-confidence, makeup helped prop me up a little bit for me to be able to come into my own … now I’ll walk around without makeup. I don’t care, I still think I’m that chick but it just really helps me sometimes get out of a rut if I’m feeling sad.” Watters said.

Serena Truong, president of Beauty and Cosmetics at UCLA, used to have a negative perception of makeup, thinking people who chose to wear it were too focused on their looks. However, the third-year sociology student realized makeup had a therapeutic effect in addition to a transformational quality and liked the idea of using it as an expressive and artistic way of presenting oneself. Though she usually reserves makeup for events or going out, sometimes it helps boost her mood to put on things such as fake eyelashes and purple, sparkly eye shadow on days when she’s not particularly keen on going to school, she said.

Instagram isn’t the only way people display their work. Truong said she was impressed by users on the short video platform TikTok who drastically changed their appearances using tools such as plaster and inserts in addition to makeup.

“I think that’s what really sparked this change of, ‘This is my face – I can do whatever I want,’” Truong said.

In general, Truong said she values the communities that have congregated around beauty – ones in which people can share their tips and techniques without judgement. Keanu Balani, a third-year political science student, has garnered more than 38,000 Instagram followers with his tutorials and holiday-inspired looks. He said that makeup has given minority communities, such as men who wear makeup, a way to express themselves.

“It’s a blessing because it’s given me and so many other people a platform to share our art and our creativity – it has normalized, in a sense, the trend of makeup,” he said.

Casillas also admires the inclusiveness of the industry, especially since her interest in makeup manifested when makeup for males became more popular, she said. She said she values the one-size-fits-all quality of cosmetic artistry.

“It’s an art form, and I think that’s something that everyone can appreciate, no matter what their race is, their gender (or) their background (is),” Casillas said. “I feel like art is universal, and everyone can appreciate it.”