I hate writing for Opinion. Sometimes.
Sometimes, the column-writing process directly contradicts things I’ve learned in college.
During these years at UCLA, I’ve learned to complicate and question – how to seek nuance, listen to others and empathize with their perspectives, or challenge them where necessary.

Campus communities that felt invisible in the past are finally seeing some change in how university data represents them.
The University of California Information Center released enrollment and graduation data in April disaggregated by ethnicity.

Ask first- or second-year students at UCLA their major and some will emphasize they’re only a “pre-major.” The reason: They haven’t officially been accepted to their desired major.

I usually get reactions of doubt when I tell students who do not live on campus that UCLA undergraduate apartment rooms are separated by gender.
I ran into the issue last year during room sign-up, when my request to live with two female apartment mates felt all but revolutionary at first.

 
There is a myth that sensitive “snowflake” students demand safe spaces, the destroyers of dialogue that impede vibrant educational exchange in universities. Critics often zero in on the fragile, progressive “social justice warrior” – the more liberal and politically correct, the better – although some college conservatives have echoed these demands for safety as well.

Let the people protest.
Lazy, entitled, ungrateful. Violent, animals, rioters. Childish, crybabies, sore losers. Political affiliation no matter, Americans have flung every name at anti-Trump protestors over the last week.

UC Berkeley student groups have been pushing demands for nearly 30 days for administration to relocate the school’s multicultural center to new facilities. But down in Westwood, this kind of center doesn’t even exist for UCLA.

SOOF, CPC, CAC, PAB, ASUCLA, USA, SGA, GSA, SWC and even TGIF. As two-year director of an on-campus youth mentorship organization, I still find myself lost in the sea of UCLA funding acronyms.

This year’s incoming class will bring almost 1,000 more bodies to campus than last year’s 8,786 newly admitted freshmen and transfer students.
If you think this is just another drop in the big bucket of the most populated college in California, it might be a little more unnerving to know that the University of California intends to enroll another 5,000 students systemwide over the next two years.

The Bruin community was under national spotlight three weeks ago as we tried to heal from a lockdown and murder-suicide on our campus. Gun violence had officially come to our home, and we lamented becoming the 186th school shooting since Sandy Hook in 2012.