Letters

Student parking problems cannot be
disregarded

I am writing in response to the submission by Christine Austin
regarding parking costs (“Parking Fee Increase
Necessary, Warranted,” Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, May
31). Austin broadly states that when it comes to
complaints, “(she doesn’t) care because the
complaints are all unjustified.”Â I disagree. The
opinions of commuters are justified and are not merely
personal attacks on UCLA parking over a buck. The
lack of available parking spaces is a challenge for both commuters
and parking services.

Austin suggests the use of carpooling as a solution to the
transportation problem. Carpooling, however, is difficult to
accomplish. Imagine trying to find someone who
will carpool with you if your class schedule changes
every 10 weeks and you need to work off-campus between classes,
occasionally staying late at school for extracurricular
activities or leaving early to run errands. Even if you
are able to find a carpool buddy with a
really flexible schedule, he/she would have to live
in the same direction you do. Public transportation would mean
living relatively close to campus, which requires yielding to the
prices of Westwood apartment landlords (or other landlords nearby)
““ a luxury not everyone can afford.

Building more parking structures is going to be expensive and
will not be an easy task. I’m sure building a
state-of-the-art hospital wasn’t easy either. But rather
than rolling her eyes apathetically at commuters (who arrive
40 minutes before their only class of the day to wait in
line at the parking kiosk only to be told that the only
parking available is in Lot 32), Austin and UCLA parking
services should combine their efforts with commuters who
should pay a little more to fund a project for a long-term
solution.

Adenna Kwan Fourth-year

Graduation needs to accommodate large
families

I am writing this on behalf of this year’s graduating
class from the College of Letters & Sciences. Words cannot
describe the utter shame and disgust I feel toward the
administration on the bungling of the commencement ceremony
scheduled for Friday, June 14, in Pauley Pavilion. By holding the
ceremony indoors they have successfully limited the amount of
people who can attend this important moment in student life. I am
unsure of their reasoning, given that graduation is in June, that
the ceremony should be conducted indoors. I have heard the decision
was made because of dwindling participation in years past. Well, I
have news: by limiting guests you are not going to increase
participation!

I am a married student and am unable to invite all of my direct
family to the graduation because I do not have enough tickets. It
is a sad statement being made by the administration when a student
cannot invite grandparents or in-laws to an event that they helped
bring about through their support over the years. All we hear about
nowadays is that we need more family values, but that is hard to
accomplish when a student graduates but cannot invite the
family!

I am sure I am not the only one in this situation. This type of
arrangement made by the university is embarrassing because it plays
into the stereotype of two parents and a sibling. What happens if
you have divorced parents in new marriages and numerous siblings or
step-siblings? I guess they are not that important or they
don’t fit into the thinking dominating this campus.

What if the student is married like myself and has a family of
their own and wants to invite their parents? Sorry, better get a
babysitter. We wouldn’t want to set a good example that an
education is important by allowing for the kids to attend.
Nevermind extended family or friends.

Since graduation is the last academic event one participates in
as a college student, you would think the administration would want
to make it memorable for their future alumni. As alumni, students
become important sources for revenues and donations, I for one will
think twice after this experience before giving any money. In fact,
I am more likely to give it to my wife’s alma mater, who
welcomed my family and me to her graduation, than to UCLA. Funny
how one UC can get it right and another can get it so wrong.

Geoffrey Ross Fourth-year Political Science

Anti-abortion display equivalent to
screaming

This letter is regarding the pro-life display that was set up in
Bruin Plaza during Monday and Tuesday.

Have you ever had a discussion with someone who, when you knew
they were wrong, just started shouting at you, as if to say that
just being louder made them right? This is a kind of logical
fallacy known as argumentum ad baculum, or appeal to the
stick. 

A university is supposed to produce educated people capable of
logic and critical thinking, so here’s a critical question:
if the people who are in the pro-life movement are so confident of
their position, why do they have to resort to this graphic version
of shouting to get their point across?  Why the need to
disgust and revolt and try to motivate educated people with
emotional tactics?

Here’s another example: as you approach the display,
there are signs warning you of “genocide”
ahead. The Merriam-Webster defines “genocide” as
“the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial,
political or cultural group.” Yet, it is obvious to the
casual observer that the fetuses which have been aborted belong to
many such groups. Again, this begs the question: why abuse
such an emotionally charged word to support a cause? The attempted
stretching of the term only weakens the whole
argument. Further, it is insulting for those groups that
really have suffered genocides.

To the promoters of the demonstration: If you cannot prove to me
the propositions of your cause are true, I have no reason to
believe in them. The more you shout at me, the less I believe
you can prove they are true.

Glenn Glazer, Alumnus Class of 1999 Computer
Science

Some psychology students never got grad
e-mail

As a psychology student with less than two weeks left until
graduation, you would think that I’ve escaped what the
psychology department at UCLA deems the “system:”
Classes and discussions that are full after the first week of open
enrollment, professors who say that they’re
“sorry” that they can’t help you because
it’s not in their hands and the lack of course variety every
quarter. And now, just to top things off and wave farewell to all
those who have struggled to finish the requirements for the B.A. in
psychology, we now face another obstacle ““ tickets to our own
graduation ceremony.

“I’m sorry but we can only give you four
tickets,” claims the lady who sits at the desk in Franz Hall
when only two weeks earlier they were handing out 20 tickets left
and right to those who “received some e-mail.”

Unbeknownst to several of the graduating seniors in psychology,
an e-mail regarding the need to pre-order tickets was apparently
sent out. From here, students were to reply with how many tickets
they needed, 20 being the maximum. Unfortunately, those who missed
the e-mail suffered, and now have to seek out individuals who may
have extras just so that their parents can come to the ceremony. So
I asked the lady at the desk, “Excuse me, what happens when
someone’s parents get there and they don’t have
tickets?”

The lady sighed and replied, “Well, if you don’t
have a ticket, then you don’t get in. Pauley Pavilion is only
so big.”

After hearing this, I only cringe at the idea that
someone’s own parents may not be let in to watch their own
son or daughter graduate. I can’t wait to see the look on
these parents’ faces the morning of graduation.

The psychology graduation was previously held outdoors in the
quad area between Young Hall and the Math Sciences Building. Here,
students didn’t need to get tickets and graduates were
allowed to invite as many people as possible. The ceremony was
moved to Pauley Pavilion so as to accommodate the growing number of
psychology graduates and their families. And yet again, they failed
to meet students’ expectations with their
“system.” So, as I continue to call every graduating
senior I know to see if they have extra tickets, I hope that
everyone else is having better luck. To those of you who still have
some time before graduating, stay on top of changes that occur in
the psychology department. The “system” may one day
work in your favor.

Removing extra grade point for AP courses is
wrong

In his submission on weighting honors and AP classes
(“APs, honors classes create admissions gap,” Daily
Bruin, Viewpoint, June 3), Ryan Hutchinson makes several broad,
stereotypical accusations of the kind of high school that I
attended. These remarks not only cheapen the high school
achievements of myself and students from schools similar to mine,
they misrepresent the admissions gap problem and are the result of
flawed logic.

I take offense to Hutchinson’s statement that
“honors courses are obviously a joke at many affluent public
and private schools.” I attended a just such successful and
“rich” school, and I can say from personal experience
that the honors courses there are no joke. I consider many of my
high school honors classes more challenging than any of my UCLA
courses. What’s more, students worked very hard at my school
to get into AP and honors classes with limited seating. I do not
remember anything at my school that even remotely “screams
grade inflation.” My transcript carried four different
versions of my GPA and weighted only those classes designated by UC
guidelines. I would hazard a guess that Mr. Hutchinson did not
attend or bother to research the “predominantly rich, white
schools” like mine that he blasts for their conduct.

One student I know well who attends a “poor, minority
school” indeed has to struggle to take AP classes at his
school. His problem, however, is not a lack of money but a lack of
interest. Fewer than 100 students at his large high school express
any interest in AP classes. The problem is not unequal funding (how
much more does it cost to teach an AP class, anyway?), nor is it
any kind of institutional prejudice. The real problem is apathy on
the part of many students at inner-city schools. I do not doubt
that if most of the students at these schools clamored the way my
peers once clamored for access to AP classes’ challenging
course work, it would almost immediately be provided.

If Hutchinson wants to close the admissions gap, de-weighting
honors and AP classes is not the solution. All that approach would
accomplish is to drive interest in these classes even lower and
cause even fewer AP and honors classes to be offered at the
struggling public schools.

The solution lies in the students and convincing them that
“the path to success,” to borrow a favorite educational
cliche, lies in taking rigorous and challenging schedules that
teach the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed at a premier
institution such as UCLA.

Robert J. Johnston First-year Biochemistry

Israel deserves legitimacy

Kelly Rayburn most certainly had an agenda in printing his
article (“Prager claims Israel is legitimate,” Daily
Bruin, News, May 30). The headline of the piece alone shines a
glimmer of doubt on whether Israel ought to even exist.

But Israel’s legitimacy is an irrefutable fact. Why is it
that only Israel’s statehood is questioned since it involved
removal of a people? America was taken over by the same means
(against the “Native Americans”). California’s
joining the Union involved annexation from Mexico by means of
force. Despite this, individuals like Rayburn stand on their pulpit
of superiority and point fingers at imperfections that lie in the
history of America as well.

It’s interesting to me that these inconsistencies lie
principally in the liberalism that pervades American academia,
which is supposedly founded on open-mindedness, objectivity and
rationalism. But their positions in particular are difficult to
balance with historical record, while the implications of their
agenda smack of racism and immorality.

Benjamin Nabati Third-year Political
science