Community relations

  PATIL ARMENIAN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Chancellor
Albert Carnesale speaks at a press conference
regarding UCLA and its relationship to the surrounding community
Monday, Nov. 13.

By Barbara Ortutay
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Though often called a bubble, UCLA is by no means an island.

As one of the few public universities in the country located in
a major city, UCLA is in a unique position in terms of its
relationship with the surrounding metropolis. Day after day,
students, faculty and staff interact with their neighbors ““
who range from merchants in Westwood Village to high school
students in East Los Angeles.

In a recent press conference, Chancellor Albert Carnesale
outlined the university’s effort to channel its relations
with the community through the UCLA in L.A. Initiative.

“There is a phenomenal resource here that should be tapped
for the benefit of the community and the university, and
that’s the essence of the initiative,” he said.
“That is to try to make the whole of this relationship
greater than the sum of its parts.”

The main areas the UCLA in L.A. Initiative currently focuses on,
according to Carnesale, are children and youth, arts and culture,
and the business community.

The mission of the Fowler Museum, for example, is to address
diversity through the legacies of L.A.’s constituents,
according to Betsy Quick, director of education at the museum.

“I think we have an active, engaged relationship with the
community,” she said.

Through a 1997 exhibit of cloth woven in Ghana, the museum
involved students from Crenshaw High School. Students interviewed
people in the community, asking what the cloth meant in relation to
the African American identity.

“Many came back to intern in the summer and in the summers
after,” Quick said.

Of the three components of the initiative, Carnesale said,
outreach programs to youth in disadvantaged communities continues
to be an important element. In addition to outreach, the university
plans to work more broadly with the communities themselves, through
health care programs and educational resource centers, he said.

“We do indeed concentrate our efforts in schools that have
been disadvantaged in the past and certainly there is a correlation
between those schools and the schools in which underrepresented
minorities are the majority of the student body,” Carnesale
said.

While the university’s Early Academic Outreach Program
mainly focuses on academics, student-initiated outreach seeks to
affect students through a more holistic approach, according to
Lynda Manalang, outreach coordinator for Samahang Pilipino.

“The main difference is that we try to target any and all
students,” Manalang said. “EAOP targets students who
are already going to college.”

“The goal is diversity, but we approach it in a different
way,” she continued, adding that the university should fund
student initiated outreach more, and that they are currently
working with Carnesale on this issue.

The university’s long term goals include helping build a
connection between families, schools and the students, said Jack
Sutton, executive director of the Outreach Steering Committee.

Students at UCLA also work through community service programs to
help youth in disadvantaged communities get into college.

“We have an obligation to represent the university in
inner city areas,” said Nazareth Huoth, director and
historian of Project Literacy, a student-run community service
program. “There is a need to instill hope in these
kids.”

She added there is a difference between the student-run and the
university-run programs, and there is value in the autonomy
student-initiated programs receive.

Although the university deals day to day with the greater L.A.
community, it must also relate to its immediate neighbors ““
the residents, merchants and businesses of Westwood ““ who may
not always see eye to eye with UCLA.

“Westwood merchants have sometimes been concerned with
commercial competition on campus,” Carnesale said.

For example, when a hair salon opened in Ackerman Union earlier
this year, some Westwood merchants were concerned that it will have
a negative impact on their businesses.

“This basically creates a tension between businesses on
and off campus,” said Clinton Schudy, manager of
Oakley’s Barber shop in Westwood. “They should be
trying to build more of a rapport with established
businesses.”

When Campus Cuts opened in Ackerman, Schudy said the salon
unsuccessfully recruited some of his stylists to work there.

Oakley’s Barber Shop, Schudy said, opened at the same time
UCLA arrived at Westwood, in 1929 and has since been working with
the campus community.

He said instead of opening services that already exist in the
Village, the university should work to start things not currently
offered.

“This basically says they don’t care about the
businesses,” Schudy said.

Carnesale said one of the main concerns Westwood merchants and
businesses have in relating to UCLA is dealing with the parking
situation.

“There were some concerns at the beginning of the year
with parking, and students using basically all the available
parking in Westwood,” he said, adding that the situation has
since been eased.

Although officials anticipate a significant enrollment to UCLA
and the University of California in the upcoming decade, Carnesale
said UCLA plans to take in the excess if all goes according to
plan.

“We intend on absorbing our proportion of the enrollment
growth from Tidal Wave 2,” he said.

Carnesale referred to UCLA’s relationship with the Village
as “a constant trade-off.”

“We are not able to satisfy everybody, but I think by and
large we do our best,” he said. “We have to be
respectful to the village and also realize in all of our interests
for the village to thrive. This is not an “˜us vs.
them.'”

With reports from Dharshani Dharmawardena, Daily Bruin Senior
Staff.