Listen to another episode of Curious Clubs as we interview the Forensic Bruin Investigators and discover the fascinating world of forensics, criminology and more!

William Gauvin: I’m William Gauvin, and this is Curious Clubs, a Daily Bruin podcast that explores the many different and unique clubs here at UCLA. In today’s episode, I am joined by Godwina Ogbeide, a fourth-year sociology major and president of Forensic Bruin Investigators Club, alongside Cristal Balderrama, a third-year psychology major and an events coordinator for the club.

Welcome to Curious Clubs! Today I am with the…

Godwina Ogbeide: Forensic Bruin Investigators.

WG: For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the Forensic Bruin Investigators, or as your acronym, FBI, what is this club all about?

Cristal Balderrama: We actually started it because like everybody, we have hobbies, and ours started with watching criminal shows – so things like “Criminal Minds,” “Forensic Files,” anything of that sort. And Godwina is actually the founder of the club, and she sent out this blast email to a bunch of people and she was just like, “Hey, anybody who has an interest, please just reach out,” and she got us started.

WG: And how long has this club been around for?

GO: Two years. Yeah, we started last year, officially got registered as a club 2025 winter quarter, but I was reaching out over the spring of my second year, so 2024, and then we met over the summer, and it’s been up from here.

WG: And what was kind of the initial spark of, “Hey, let’s create a club dedicated to forensics?”

GO: I know for me, coming into UCLA I was always interested in forensics, but I didn’t know that UCLA didn’t have any majors that catered to criminology or forensics specifically. And so going into my third year, I was kind of at my lowest point, I won’t lie, and I just thought, “I think I want to start a club here,” just because I knew I was in a dead end anytime I would reach out to the career center or professors.

And so I remember I was studying for my finals that spring quarter in second year and I decided to just make a flyer with my friends and then put it up all over the Hill and then all over campus the next day after I bombed a final. I honestly neglected the forms that I made because in the summer I was just like, “Oh, I don’t think anybody even signed up, and I don’t think I’m fit to actually make a club and be the president of a club because I’ve never done that in college.” But then I was like, “Let me just do it and then see,” and I saw a bunch of names. I was like, “Oh wow, there’s people like me here.”

WG: And what does a typical meeting of the Forensic Bruin Investigators club look like?

CB: Our club, technically we do things – we try to give it a good mix, so we do some things where it’s very educational. We try to give members a good understanding of different types of career paths they can take. We don’t want to limit it to things that you only see in the media like police work or FBI work. We try to give it kind of a leeway into forensic labs or even forensic law – I feel like a lot of people don’t know that that’s a pathway.

So, that’s one of the ways that we organize our club – through educational stuff – and the other one is more like social interactions. So we have a murder mystery night, or we just recently did a Jeopardy where we did categories, like the FBI, where it was about our club, and then the different topics like law, science, anthropology, anything like that. So we definitely try to mix it up, and we don’t want it to be too serious, but we still want to make it about what we started it for.

WG: Interesting. And then do you have any guest speakers, say, from law enforcement or forensics that come in, give their take on this subject, field?

GO: Yes, we do. We have– we try our best to make sure that there’s a variety of professionals that we bring to our club just because there’s various majors of students that are in our club. So we’ve brought a medical examiner, a forensic psychologist. We have yet to bring an actual FBI agent, but we have plans to bring one hopefully this quarter. We just try our best to make sure that we hit the spots of each field in forensics, just because there’s a wide spectrum of what you can do in forensics, and a lot of people don’t know that.

WG: What’s the breakdown? Are people interested in doing forensics? Are they doing it out of personal curiosity? How does your student population– what does that look like?

CB: I would say that our group is actually pretty diverse in that aspect. There are people, one of the other event coordinators actually, she’s a biochem major, and so she’s more interested in doing lab techniques and stuff. That’s kind of also why we really try to focus on expanding the breadth of forensic categories that we preach about, I guess. But there are other people who are premed, and they might be interested in forensic psychiatry or forensic psychology. There’s people who want to go into the FBI. So we really don’t want to limit anybody to, like, it has to be strictly forensics. It could literally just be that they have an interest in a forensic show, and that’s enough for us to be like, “Welcome in.”

WG: And then oftentimes do you screen these, say “Forensic Files” or “CSI,” from time to time?

GO: Yes, we do. Our first GBM (general body meeting) of the quarter, we were looking at forensics in the media versus forensics in real life. So we were showing the different depictions of how forensic psychology or DNA analysis is done in films like “Criminal Minds” or “Forensic Files” and comparing it to what it truly looks like in real life. And then we’ve also streamed, what was the movie…?

CB: “Silence of the Lambs.”

GO: So that was another cool filming that we showed to members during October in the fall.

WG: And what are some of the big differences between forensics as portrayed in the media and more on the ground?

CB: One of the things that we actually found was that forensics in media is very obviously dramaticized, I guess is the right word for it. They really do try to focus on how to grab your attention, and obviously they don’t want to show, like, FBI agents doing paperwork or lab analysis where they’re literally just waiting for results and they start working on other cases.

So they really do have a very fast turnaround. So they’ll usually catch whatever their suspect is within a week, and it’s usually months or even years at times. Or lab results will come in within an hour, and they usually take weeks, sometimes. DNA analysis usually will take a week. We realized that it’s a very long process. There’s a chain of custody, which is where people have to sign off whenever they get evidence and they handle the evidence to make sure it’s not compromised. So those things also take forever to get from the crime scene into actual files where they start looking into it.

WG: Interesting. And how do you navigate attracting new members, especially because the club is still pretty young?

GO: Well, currently our mission right now is putting up flyers all over campus because we know we’re trying to hit all types of majors, and that’s our best way of publicizing our org. And then I think I’m very vocal about my interest in forensics, and that always stirs up conversation with other people. I tend to meet individuals that are also navigating what they want to do in general, and I know that they either have an interest in crime shows and stuff of that nature and speaking to them about the different fields that you can do allows them to be like, “OK, I think I’m interested in seeing what this club can allow me to to learn about what I can do with my future.” But I think our best way is just putting up flyers on campus. That’s how I find other orgs and that’s how people found our org as well.

CB: I think other than that, we’ve done a couple of tabling sessions where with any opportunities that we have– I think Bruin Day we were there – we didn’t have a table, but we were handing out flyers like she said. Basically any opportunity that comes up, we want to just make sure that we’re getting as much publicity as we can. Also our publicity and media outreach, they do a great job of posting flyers online and making sure that we’re keeping members updated through that.

WG: And have you collaborated with other student organizations in the past?

GO: Yes, we have. We collaborated last quarter with Think Tourniquet, and they are a Stop the Bleed organization, and we were able to get certified in learning how to make tourniquets, and that was a really cool opportunity for us. It’s not a CPR certification, but it’s another way of getting certified in those type of events. We’re also trying to be able to collab with a lot of other psych orgs because we have a high psychology population within our club. We’re looking towards getting more collaborations in the future just because we know that helps us spread the word on our campus.

WG: Speaking of the future, what are some of the plans or ideas that you’re entertaining for this club and taking it to new heights?

CB: Well, recently the humanities department at UCLA hosted an FBI panel, and so a couple of our members were able to go to that, and we tried to network with a couple of the agents, and so we are in communication with a couple of them. We’re hoping to maybe bring in a panel or even just have one guest speaker. They said they might even be able to bring a BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit) agent, so we’re hoping to get that. That’s definitely one of our big goals since our club is definitely, I would say initially built off of things like the FBI, the actual organization, so being able to bring in an actual FBI agent would definitely I think be one of our main goals in the future.

WG: Interesting. And what have been some of the fun events you’ve held in the last quarter or past year that really just come to mind?

GO: Yeah, I think our biggest hit is always our murder mystery night, and that’s when we put together a fake crime scene and we allow members to solve the crimes through different stations. They get to go through a medical examination process looking at DNA analysis and looking at a coroner’s office to kind of look at the body, like toxicology assessments, really cool things that me myself, I’m not very aware of. Then we also do interrogation processes, so utilizing our board, we have them as actors, and they get to kind of defend their case, and altogether it turns into this court case where we allow our members to be able to solve the crime at the end. And I think that’s a big hit. We usually get people that are just merely, just interested in crime shows, and they just want to come and have a good time.

CB: Yeah, I would say those meetings are definitely where members really go crazy because especially if you are one of the actors being interrogated, it’s scary. They go all in, and it’s things that aren’t even in our script that we write for the actors, and they’re going into so much detail and they’re cross-examining that we’ve just got to make stuff up on the spot at that point.

WG: How do you kind of plan these murder mystery nights?

CB: Yeah, to plan it, usually we try to start it at least two to three weeks in advance just so that we have enough time to format all the documents like Godwina was saying. We have the forensic reports. We try to make a timeline so that there’s something to compare it with, like eyewitness testimony, like we were saying. And so making all those documents, making sure they’re cohesive and then also making sure that we have the time to provide those documents and then any other evidence that we might need. I think the one that’s most relevant to this is our very first murder mystery, where we actually had fake bones out and we pretended, “Oh yeah, this is where the break is at, what do you think caused this?”

GO: Yeah, and I know when our second murder mystery night last year, we had an actual medical examiner come. And so he was able to walk our members through the actual process of looking at toxicology reports and different assessments. That again is really cool, and that was a way for members to also connect with him and his practice as well.

WG: Interesting. And then you said that while UCLA doesn’t have a formal forensics program, do you collaborate with, say, criminal justice faculty members or other kind of connected fields?

GO: Yes, I know one of our first meetings in the fall, we connected with the forensic psychiatry fellowship in the medical school, and that was my first time learning that UCLA did have that. They don’t have anything for undergrad, but I know in the grad department they have something just catered to higher education. We’re still also trying to work with the criminal justice program within the law school. We were also supposed to have a law student come for that specific event, but I know that we’ve had issues just reaching the criminal law students themselves. We got in contact with law students, but the fields that they’re interested in doesn’t really cater to forensics.

It’s just really all about outreach. I think that’s our biggest struggle, but we are working towards just being able to infiltrate into the different departments here at UCLA, just so that way we can build those connections and also pour out into the greater outreach paths through UCLA, like getting on newsletters that are being sent to the entire population here at UCLA. And we know that having those stronger connections allows us to do much more, just because we’re ran just by us.

WG: If you could only describe your club in one word, what would it be?

CB: I would say it’s blooming. I feel there’s still a lot of growth to happen in that sense, and I feel like we haven’t reached our full potential. Like she said, we’re still getting our footholds into financing and trying to make bigger events, trying to collab with other groups and other clubs, and so I definitely think, hopefully, there’s a lot more improvement that we can make.

GO: That was a really good word. I’m trying to think of something very different. I guess we could say we’re a niche club. Interesting is very bland and vague, but every time I tell somebody, “Oh, I’m interested in forensics,” they’re like, “Oh, that’s cool, that’s interesting.” And even when I tell people about FBI or when they see us on Bruin Walk, we just say it. They’re like, “Oh, what’s FBI?” So I think we’re a pretty cool club here at UCLA, and there’s nobody like us so far. But yeah, I’m really glad that we were able to start this club here.

WG: Well, thank you for your time. It was great having you.

CB: Yeah, thanks for having us.

GO: Thank you.

WG: Thank you. This episode of Curious Clubs was brought to you by the Daily Bruin Podcasts, and you can listen to this episode and all other Daily Bruin podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. The audio and transcript of today’s interview are available at dailybruin.com. I’m William Gauvin. Thank you for listening.