Letters

Better safe than sorry

Editor:

OK already, I get the picture. Save my life and the lives of
those I love – get tested for HIV. Rationally, the next thing that
I should get are the phone numbers of local testing sites. After I
get those numbers and attempt to call them, the only thing I get is
"Try next quarter" and "beep, beep, beep."

Public service announcements and flyers and other propaganda are
great, but why waste our UCLA resources on them when testing in our
community is as hard to come by as an appointment with a financial
aid counselor?

When I called Student Health Services, the receptionist at
Women’s Health told me that the rest of the quarter was booked, and
that they "don’t make appointments" for the following quarter.
"Well, when do you?" I asked. "Probably at the beginning of next
quarter." Hmm, really?

Then I tried the only other accessible testing site for most
students – the UCLA Family Planning Clinic. "We don’t have
appointments open until the week of the umpteenth." As one might
rationally respond, "Okay, can I make an appointment for then?" The
receptionist answered, "We don’t make appointments more than two
weeks in advance." Two weeks before the umpteenth and with the
warning that appointments "go fast," I tried to break through the
busy signal – as if.

An HIV test is not like, "Sorry, but we’re out of calamari
tonight, would you like something else on the menu?" Nor can one
obtain a test at a local pharmacy – yet. What are the options for a
student who does not have a car, as a large portion of these
clinics’ target audience does not?

What I caught was the regular bureaucratic runaround. What I
wish health providers would catch is the clue bus. We know that the
rate of HIV infection is growing exponentially, and because there
is no vaccine, the only leverage we have to aid in preventing its
spread is testing.

Excuses like "lack of … facilities, budget, time, staff" are
not going to change this fact. My response to that is, "Do we have
a choice?" Death’s response to that is, "So?"

Any person who calls for an anonymous appointment should not be
abandoned so easily. Why not make appointments for the next quarter
that are subject to be given away if not confirmed by the week
before? It is my understanding that there are only a couple of
people who do anonymous HIV testing at Student Health – hire
another one, and another one … Do something, anything, because
that caller may never decide to call again.

Your access to an anonymous HIV test at UCLA should not depend
on how well you can work the system. What I finally did was call
UCLA Information, and then spoke to the sexual health educator, who
hooked me up with a doctor at the Men’s Clinic, who doesn’t usually
see women, who left a note for his receptionist to squeeze me in
for an appointment.

The next time a receptionist says to me, "Sorry, but we don’t
blah, blah, blah," my only response will be, "We’ll all be sorry if
you don’t do something soon."

Stephani Crespin

Fifth-year

Sociology

Menaces to society

Editor:

As if construction, registration fees, Bruin Walk solicitors,
protest rallies and psycho squirrels weren’t enough, we now have
little kiddie skaters on our campus to contend with as we try to
learn ("Roll with the punches," March 6).

Anyone else fed up with these squirmy little teenagers zipping
around our campus on skates? Don’t these prepubescent punks have
anything better to do than deface property and make a general
nuisance of themselves?

Instead of skating around campus, getting in people’s way,
showing off and marring handrails (among other things), shouldn’t
these kids be in school or studying?

I am particularly annoyed by their antics with handrails. How
can people complain when protesters spray-paint their propaganda
onto temporary fences, but not mind the skaters who are marring
handrails, which do more than just hide unsightly construction?

What about the implications of injuries to these skaters? True,
nobody’s been seriously hurt yet, but when it happens, who’s going
to absorb the costs? It’s easy to imagine a case where a kid falls
trying to boost his ego with a fancy move and breaks his neck, and
mom decides to sue the university for some ridiculous sum of money
just because the railings were freshly repainted or some student
was cramming in that last bit of knowledge as he/she rushed to a
midterm and didn’t see the skater. Silly as it may seem, it’s how
things actually work here.

The Bruin should have no place in promoting the behavior of
minors who are here to have fun on campus at the expense of its
real students. If the people skating around here are UCLA students,
I don’t have problem; that, indeed, is their right. But it’s time
for the teenage skater dudes to go.

Andrew T. Ikeda

Third-year

Psychology

RACHAEL CHANG

13-year-old Sean Lessen blades down a rail near Lu Valle
Commons.Comments to [email protected]