UCLA explorer takes whirlwind tour of Bruindom
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 15, 1996 9:00 p.m.
Tuesday, April 16, 1996
Journey highlights anomalies lingering in Royce’s shadow
Two quarters of Bruindom unequivocally qualify me as a seasoned
explorer of the UCLA campus. Just as Christopher Columbus traveled
the world and wrote a descriptive journal of his travels, so have I
written the below column detailing the peculiar idiosyncrasies,
vagaries and miscellaneous anomalies of this fine institution:
The first stop on my hopefully four-year foray into the world of
UCLA was the Dykstra Hall cafeteria.
I am convinced that the dorm cafeteria is an institution in
which the level of incompetence is rivaled only by those who filled
the Hindenburg blimp with hydrogen. Let’s take meal plans, for
example.
At the beginning of each quarter, one selects his/her meal plan
of choice: 11, 14 or 19 meals. Each of these meal plans is paid for
in advance. The average charge per meal is about $3.50.
In the event that Ackerman food is more alluring than fine dorm
cuisine, one has the option of obtaining a meal ticket, redeemable
for $1.60 worth of food at Ackerman Union.
Either I forgot how to subtract, or over half of my money
vanished in the wind of the UCLA bureaucracy.
I found this phenomenon rather troubling, as I sat at the Coop
and enjoyed the fruits of my meal ticket: a small soda, a piece of
broccoli and an aging piece of asparagus. I asked the desker at
Dykstra to explain the injustice of meal tickets, and she told me
that the $1.90 difference goes toward the salaries of the cafeteria
workers.
Hmmm … Either the pot roast left me woozy and mathematically
inept (I am a poli-sci/French student, so that’s not much of a
stretch), or Dykstra Hall pays its cafeteria employees $19 per
hour. I realize that happy cooks make better food, but the only
time I feel happy with regard to dorm food is when I see it go down
the conveyor belt.
My travels also brought me to the UCLA Housing Office. Whenever
I enter this building, I feel my flesh and humanity painfully
morphing into a nine-digit number on a two-mile scroll of
dorm-bound Bruins.
Fall quarter, I was denied dorm housing because, according to
the Housing Office, I failed to send my housing form on time. Of
course, they could not comprehend that I had difficulty returning a
housing form which never arrived at my house.
My freshman naivete led me to believe that someone in UCLA’s
mystical hierarchy cared about me. I confidently strolled into the
Housing Office over the summer and explained my dilemma to them. I
was relieved to find out that I had one option: I could appeal.
In short, the "appeal" tribunal did not appeal to me: They
concurred with the Housing Office’s initial edict, but it took them
nine weeks. They informed me a mere two days before school began.
Ergo, I spent fall quarter in a deactivated fraternity house with a
landlord who was a throwback to the flower-power days of the ’60s.
My confidence in the UCLA bureaucracy was utterly annihilated.
Here are a few other notes from my ever-expanding travel
log:
 Am I the only one who notices the plethora of low-riding
Honda Civics with tinted windows and mufflers resembling horizontal
smoke stacks and sounding like constipated hippos?
 In keeping with UCLA’s tradition of sexual liberalism,
URSA has become a transvestite. It sounds like our electronic Bruin
Belle mistook a vat of testosterone for a tub of cool water on a
hot Westwood day.
 Am I the only one whose toilet paper shreds when coming
off the roll in UCLA’s fine lavatories? One would guess that in a
school of internationally renowned engineers, one could conceive of
a toilet paper dispenser whose contents are long and smooth, not
short and torn.
 Faith shattered  Alicia Silverstone at the Academy
Awards looking like a 10-year-old girl who had just discovered her
mother’s mascara.
 Faith restored  Watching "Clueless" till I go blue
in the face.
 Jim Harrick: Hit the road Jack, and don’t ‘cha come back
no more.
 Two enthusiastic thumbs up: UC Regent Ward Connerly. A
wise man once said great men are too often constrained by mediocre
minds.
 Thumbs down: Twilight car alarms sounding like an
orgasmic R2D2.
 Thumbs down: The new Joe Bruin looking like a psychotic
killer in a state of euphoria. May the real Joe Bruin reign once
again on the sidelines of UCLA’s sporting events.
 Thumbs further down: Still no Noah’s Bagels on the UCLA
campus.
 This week’s sign that the apocalypse is upon us: At Cal,
there was a rally attended by over 100 Golden Bears supporting the
Hamas terrorist bombings in Israel.
 NCAA champion Keri Phebus, God’s gift to women’s tennis.
Big serve, big stamina, big heart. May the basketball team take
notes.
 Schtum!!! If only their music were as great as their
name.
 Everyone who supports Slick Willie, go read Primary
Colors and then re-evaluate.
 Make them come back: Tyus, George, Ed, a Republican
president.
 Make them go away: Jews for Jesus on Bruin Walk.
 Like gnats to port-a-potties, so flocks every 12-year-old
with roller blades to Westwood Plaza. Someone give me a fly swatter
and some bug spray.
 Am I the only one who mistook the students’ association
book buyback program for a loan shark outfit? $1.50 for a $20.00
book: puuulease.
 Dork Chang: May he have a promising future as a traffic
director at the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood
boulevards.
 Due to a phobia of foreign languages, the use of the word
"cheeseburger" in France is now punishable by a $100 fine. The word
"hamburger," however, is acceptable.
 Unite, fellow Bruins, and take up arms against UCLA’s
merciless army of deranged squirrels.
 "Large trucks traveling against one-way traffic:" So
reads a sign in front of Lu Valle Commons.
Go figure.
White is a first-year political science/French student. His
column appears on alternate Tuesdays.
