Engineering teaching assistant holds office hours in tent by Bruin Bear
Graduate teaching assistant Alvin Chen, center, talks to students with questions about an assignment in his mechanical and aerospace engineering class on smart grid technology. He decided to hold his office hours in a tent by the Bruin Bear.
By Devin Kelly
Jan. 14, 2012 2:54 p.m.
Alvin Chen sat cross-legged in the tent with one hand gripping a picket sign and the other scrolling on a laptop computer.
It looked like a small protest on Bruin Walk late Friday afternoon, except for the group of mechanical engineering students with questions about an assignment.
“So you want to see what our topic is and what we’re planning on researching?” fourth-year mechanical engineering student Jason Bakhshi was asking.
“Yeah,” Chen said, craning his neck upward to start explaining. “And as the quarter goes on ““”
It was actually an official office hours session for Chen, a graduate teaching assistant in the engineering department who had taken part in the Occupy movement. He just chose a more unusual setting.
Earlier that week Chen wrote his office hour times on the board of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering 188, the class he’s co-teaching this quarter. The upper-division course focuses on smart grid technology.
The location: near the Bruin Bear, to the bemusement of students.
“Is this real life?” one student said, walking up to the one-person Coleman tent on the edge of the quad in front of the J.D. Morgan Center.
Chen had been there since 3:30 p.m. He told university police ““ stopping by to point out UCLA’s no-camping policy ““ that he’d be leaving by 7:30 p.m.
It helped that Chen could tell UCPD his purpose for being there was primarily academic.
“It’s my first time having office hours outside,” Bakhshi said. He’d heard of North Campus discussions being held outdoors, but never a South Campus class.
“It was definitely kind of weird,” he added, laughing.
The homemade sign Chen held throughout the session also looked familiar. It has come every day to class, Bakhshi said.
Chen called it his “depressing reminder sign.” One side, visible to those passing on Bruin Walk, read “We are victims of an unjust war.” The other calls for spending on education rather than foreign conflicts, such as the war in Afghanistan.
Chen said he has attended Occupy UCLA general assembly meetings in the past. But he added that he’s acting independently.
The tent Chen requested at a Occupy UCLA working group “”mdash; it keeps him dry when he’s sitting, he said.
Perry Johnson, a third-year graduate student in aerospace engineering, did his undergraduate work at UC Berkeley. He said he wished he could have been there to witness the Occupy movement when it hit in full force this fall.
Chen is the first TA he’s had who has shown interest in the movement, Johnson said.
Friday’s office hour session combined Chen’s desire to express himself politically with his job as a UCLA teaching assistant.
“I guess he doesn’t have time to do multiple things,” Alan Wakida, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student in the class, said with a smile.
Chen said he also generally wanted to “point out how financially unsustainable it would be for the police to arrest everyone (who was camping).”
He plans to hold office hours there Monday and Wednesday from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. If there’s bad weather, he’ll announce a change.
“But otherwise I hope to be (here),” Chen said.
