Neverending stories
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 7, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Photos by MARY CIECEK/Daily Bruin Senior Staff To avoid
bad luck, a student skips the sixth stair of the Janss Steps, where
one of the Janss brothers is believed to have been buried. Those
who don’t skip the step are supposedly doomed to spend an extra
year at UCLA.
By Julie Yoshioka
Daily Bruin Contributor
Making her way down Janss Steps, third-year psychobiology
student Kim Nguyen carefully maneuvers around the sixth step.
“It’s haunted,” she said, in an attempt to
explain her behavior.
Nguyen is alluding to the legend describing the two Janss
brothers who designed the staircase. As supposedly requested in his
will, one of the brothers is rumored to be buried under the sixth
step.
The story goes that if a student steps on the particular step,
he or she will have bad luck and be doomed to spend an extra year
in college.
“It’s true,” said fifth-year religious studies
student Shayla Kasel. “I stepped on it a lot. My parents
thought I’d graduate in three years, but here I am a
fifth-year student. That’s why I’m still
here!”
Though many students pay little attention to them, legends like
the one involving Janss Steps evoke curiosity about their
origins.
In her Folklore M15 class, titled Introduction to American
Folklore, Professor Sandra Posey describes legends as being set in
a historical time or present day, dealing with out of the ordinary
events that are sometimes told as if they are true.
They often contest people’s beliefs and are also
localized, referring to real characters and places. In addition,
just because a story is a legend, it doesn’t mean that it
isn’t true.
 Josh Zears, a fourth-year transfer
student, waves his BruinCard in the air ““ according to campus
legend, lost students can get directions from a good samaritan this
way. At UCLA, students encounter their first brush with the
university’s legends even before they start classes.
And even if folklore experts don’t classify UCLA’s
stories alongside the traditional legend genre, student tour guides
value them as entertainment.
On the last day of UCLA’s Orientation Program, counselors
give incoming first-year students a tour of the campus, during
which they relate stories regarding the different buildings and
locations.
This locker, located in the Math Sciences building, is believed
to have been used by Jim Morrison during his days as a Bruin.
“We tell them basically just to make (the tour)
entertaining,” said former orientation counselor and
fourth-year history student Andrew Gafvert. “Imagine how
boring it would be if we took those away.”
And many students do remember these stories ““ some more
well-known than others ““ for a long time after
orientation.
One story many students recall involves the infamous moving of
Bunche Hall.
According to the story, Bunche Hall originally used to face
east-west, parallel to the 405 freeway. But due to its height and
reflections off of its glass windows, the hall blinded motorists on
the freeway and caused accidents.
To solve this problem, UCLA allegedly rented army helicopters to
lift and turn the building to face north-south, where it is
presently located.
 This locker, located in the Math Sciences building, is
believed to have been used by Jim Morrison during his days as a
Bruin.
As preposterous as they may sound, these stories do have a
purpose. The Bunche Hall story, for example, may help first-year
students familiarize themselves in an otherwise enormous
campus.
“There are so many buildings around here, so it’s
hard to remember their names,” said fourth-year computer
science student Puya Partow, who also works as a Student Recruiter
assistant coordinator. “But if you know a story behind them,
you remember them better and when you see them again, you remember
the story too.”
Student Recruiters, who give campus tours to elementary and
junior high school students, also tell legends during their
tours.
“It gives us a tool to make the tours interactive and
interesting,” said fifth-year chemical engineering student
Matt Cardona, also a Student Recruiter program coordinator.
“Stories make the tours fun.”
One story Cardona cited as being popular among visiting students
concerns the architect of the inverted fountain, which apparently
plays on the USC-UCLA rivalry.
The designer, allegedly a former UCLA student who was expelled
for poor grades, is said to have eventually graduated from USC with
a degree in architecture.
When UCLA held an open contest for the fountain’s design,
he applied and won. Since he was still bitter from being kicked out
of UCLA, legend says he designed the fountain to look like a giant
toilet bowl with the water funneling inward and set against the
backdrop of Franz Hall.
Though no one seems to know where some of these legends began,
or to what lengths they tell the truth, some actually do contain
bits of facts.
Royce Hall, for example, was modeled after Basilica of St.
Ambrose in Milan, Italy, and its asymmetrical towers actually
represent human imperfection.
But the part of the story describing Powell, Haines, and Kinsey
Halls as emulating the back and two sides of the church are
false.
Another partially true legend involves a creek which runs under
the two quad areas between Perloff, Murphy and Schoenberg
Halls.
The area over this creek apparently sinks a quarter of an inch
every year. As a result, a new step is added every few years to
even the ground.
In reality, a creek does exist underneath this area, but the
land doesn’t sink every year.
 MARY CIECEK/Daily Bruin Senior Staff An underground creek
is causing the area in front of Schoenberg Hall to sink, according
to one myth. Whether people actually believe that the quad sinks
each year isn’t as important as the tradition of telling the
stories.
“What is important is what people believe about
them,” Posey said. “Folklore only lives because it is
relevant to the person telling the story and the person listening
to it. So in some sense, both UCLA officials and students find it
meaningful in some way, whether they believe it or not.”
Although the core of most legends basically remains the same,
people will oftentimes add and subtract details to customize the
stories.
“The more details the story has, the more likely (the
students) will think it’s true,” Gafvert said.
“Everyone has their own spin on the stories.”
In addition to these more factual stories, are also some more
outrageous ones.
“I was told that if you’re lost on campus,
you’re supposed to hold up your BruinCard and then someone
will come and help you,” Nguyen said. “I actually
believed that one.”
She also said she rubbed the back paw of the Bruin statue, which
is supposed to be good luck during finals. It seems Nguyen is not
alone on this legend for the back paw of the statue does show signs
of wear.
In addition to some of these more wide-spread stories, there are
also a few lesser known legends on campus.
One involves the naming of Haines Hall. Since it was supposedly
built during a hot summer, construction workers allegedly stripped
down to their Hanes underwear to cool off, thereby inspiring the
building’s current name.
Another legend involves the two trees located on the side of
Moore Hall, facing the Math/Sciences building.
Known as the “potato trees,” the large potato-like
objects hanging from the trees are said to be the result of
radioactive experiments done on potatoes during the Cold War.
According to the legend, the project was an attempt to create
alternate ways of growing food in the event of nuclear war.
At the end of the Cold War, however, a graduate student working
in one of the labs decided to play a practical joke and planted the
potatoes. This is why there are potatoes growing from the trees
when they are normally known to grow underground.
In reality, however, the tree is a Kigelia pinnata, more
commonly known as a sausage tree and is indigenous to Africa. Its
fruits, similar in appearance to potatoes, hang from long cords.
The tree also has deep purplish-red flowers which bloom at night
and are pollinated by bats.
The potato tree legend is one of the few legends on campus that
are easier to research since there is a plaque with its official
name attached to its trunk. The majority of the legends, however,
are difficult to trace in origin.
UCLA students have passed most of the stories down over the
years, and groups, like Student Recruiters and orientation
counselors, utilize them over the years.
There are also instances where people will simply make up
stories to explain portions of campus.
Regardless of whether the legends are true, students still enjoy
hearing and telling them.
“I think they’re fun,” Nguyen said.
“They bring character to the school and make the campus more
interesting.”
