PRIME Fall 2023

PRIME FALL 2023

from the daily bruin

Wheeling in Westwood

UCLA’s Housing Promise

Media, Lies and Gazan Lives

by Lyah Fitzpatrick

by Iman Baber and Sharlene Chen on page 30

by Layth Handoush

on page 11

on page 26

letter from the editors

Dear reader, At UCLA, fall is the season for new beginnings. With an entire school year stretching before us, we enroll in new classes, make new discoveries and bond with new friends. Here at PRIME, our team has investigated how Bruins balance this fresh start with the desire for a sense of home.

In our cover story, writer Lyah Fitzpatrick examines forward motion and nostalgia through the lens of UCLA’s biking culture. Comparing Westwood transportation to her childhood in Davis, Fitzpatrick investigates the equity of Westwood’s roads and illuminates an emergent biking community. Writers Iman Baber and Sharlene Chen further examine the idea of finding home at UCLA by showcasing students’ wide-ranging experiences with the new four-year housing guarantee. Folding together the housing stories of a transfer, a commuter and a parenting student, the writers highlight the successes and drawbacks of executing UCLA’s groundbreaking policy.

But this season also brings growingly dire questions of change and belonging. In PRIME’s latest personal column, writer Layth Handoush comes home to his Palestinian American identity as he watches the humanitarian crisis unfold in Gaza. Handoush blends family stories with observations on Palestinian representation to consider his role in this moment’s uncertain media landscape.

At PRIME, we strive to give a human voice to the issues that matter to the UCLA community. From exploring researchers’ developing relationship with artificial intelligence to reflecting on the app that once united the class of 2025, we hope this issue affords you a new perspective on UCLA’s future and our past. Thank you for reading!

Maya O’Kelly PRIME art director on the cover photographed by JEREMY CHEN

2

Kate Green PRIME director

Martin Sevcik PRIME content editor

PRIME CONTENTS

CAMPUS

|

FALL 2023

CULTURE

16

Entering the Concert Renaissance written by TALIA SAJOR

From Beyoncé to Taylor Swift, how have artists this year redefined the modern-day concert experience?

5 Enrollment’s Out-of-Pocket Price

written by MALLORY COOPER AND KATY NICHOLAS

The competitive enrollment process at UCLA has spawned a black market of buying and selling classes – and many students are more than willing to pay to play.

CAMPUS

10 Wheeling in Westwood written by LYAH FITZPATRICK

You see the pedestrians, the drivers and most definitely the scooterists. But the bikers are here, too.

SCIENCE

21 The Next Generation of Scientists written by ADITI KUMAR

Generative artificial intelligence has changed the trajectory of technological development. How do researchers at UCLA see the role of AI in the discovery process?

PRIME | FALL 2023

3

PRIME CONTENTS

PERSONAL CHRONICLE

26 Media, Lies and Gazan Lives

|

FALL 2023

FEATURE

36

written by LAYTH HANDOUSH

As the crisis in Gaza escalates with increasing Palestinian civilian casualties, PRIME writer Layth Handoush addresses the media’s presentation of Arabs through his own experience as a Palestinian American.

The Secret Life of Westwood Pets

written by GABRIELLE SIEGEL

From a service dog in training to a kitten abandoned under a car, students care for a variety of pets throughout Westwood. These are their stories.

COMMUNITY

43

Nights on the Patio (App) written by MATTHEW BEYMER AND SANJANA CHADIVE

Every year, many new Bruins flock to social media in search of community. PRIME writers Sanjana Chadive and Matthew Beymer reminisce on the connections they found on the long-lost Patio app in 2021.

CAMPUS

30 UCLA’s Housing Promise written by IMAN BABER AND SHARLENE CHEN

In March of 2022, UCLA announced a new housing guarantee for incoming students. However, the reality of students’ housing experiences is often more complex than the guarantee may portray.

4

Enrollment’s Out-of-Pocket Price

ER COOP Y R O MALL ICHOLAS N KATY : y b n KAO writte STON L A y: ated b ND r t s u ll i A VIPO VIENN

d by:

designe

T

here was no good solution to her situation.

It was spring quarter of 2023, and a thirdyear physiological science student was shut out of upper division courses. The one thing standing in her way? A completely full Physics 5C class, an essential prerequisite for her major. Student A turned to her department advisor for help and learned she would need to wait another year to enroll in the upper division courses she needed.

Student A felt she could not afford to wait that long.

She worried about falling behind and preparing for the MCAT. But just before giving up hope, Student A summoned a solution right out of her back pocket: her wallet. She bought a Physics 5C spot off another student for $50.

“I don’t think it’s fair. I paid a lot of money just to get a class,” Student A said. “I felt like I was at risk of not graduating.”

Student A is not alone – the competitive nature of course enrollment at UCLA has spawned a black market for buying and selling classes. The UCLA Registrar’s Office said departments have to set seat limits on major preparation courses, leaving students and professors with few sanctioned options for ensuring that students secure the classes they need. Buying a class can help some Bruins snag a spot in full sections. However, many students feel torn over the practice’s financial and ethical costs.

Bruins face a variety of pressures to secure seats in competitive classes. Between staying on track with her major requirements and getting professors that would actually help her succeed, third-year physiological science major Student B said she knew how important it was to get into a Life Science 23L course last fall. But her enrollment window was so late that the class was

completely filled. So, just as she would ask for MCAT advice or internship opportunities, Student B turned to her peers in the UCLA pre-med GroupMe to buy a coveted seat in the class. This was not the first time Student B used GroupMe to purchase a class. In fact, she said she had already spent around $200 buying classes for prior quarters on top of tuition.

GroupMe is just one way students find others willing to cash out their class spots. Classwide Snapchat stories, r/UCLA on Reddit and Facebook groups serve as other popular enrollment marketplaces. Student B said that holding a class, the practice of enrolling in a class on behalf of someone else, usually costs around $30, with an actual class purchase often having a cost between $150 and $200. Student A added that although these prices may seem high to outsiders, students in desperate need for specific classes view them as a necessary cost.

“It’s kind of brutal,” Student A said.

This financial incentive of selling classes opens the door for scammers to cash in on stressed students, Student B added. She explained that some non-UCLA students put up fraudulent ads selling classes, and students fall prey to these hoaxes because they are desperate to find seats.

According to a written statement from the Student Conduct Office, buying and selling classes goes against UCLA’s Student Conduct Code. If caught, students can be referred to the dean or even put on probation.

But few students experience these punitive measures.

According to a statement from UCLA Media Relations Director Ricardo Vazquez, over the course of the entire 2022-2023 school year, the Student Conduct Office handled four reports of buying and selling class spots.

One of the many students selling classes without intervention from the Student Conduct Office is student “KB,” who requested anonymity out of fear of future disciplinary action. KB started selling classes last

“I felt like I was at risk of not graduating.”

6

year after discovering an enrollment loophole while studying abroad. The fourth-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student said she was able to enroll in more units despite already having all the classes she needed through her UC Education Abroad Program. Even though KB said she enjoyed earning the extra $250 in spending money, she expressed some guilt about selling these 10 to 15 classes.

“I know it’s kind of unethical. … I have some moral qualms about it,” KB said. “But in another way, I’m like Robin Hood. If you have the money to pay $50 for a class, you probably have money.”

Although students frustrated by this ethically

“I know it’s kind of unethical. …

I have some moral qualms about it. But in another way I’m like Robin Hood. If you have the money to pay $50 for a class, you probably have money.”

PRIME | FALL 2023

7

murky business might think enrollment is up to their professors, instructors are often equally powerless to increase seats. Life science professor Julie Ko teaches Life Science 7A: “Cell and Molecular Biology,” a popular prerequisite for many upper division science courses and medical school. She said professors have no control over class sizes, which are determined by their departments prior to each quarter. However, Ko said she has heard that the students who need her classes are guaranteed spots.

“I’m told that if they actually need it for their major that they should have had access to enrollment before the general enrollment,” Ko said. “I don’t know if that’s strictly true.”

Select students do have priority enrollment – the ability to enroll in their preferred classes before the rest of the undergraduate population. According to a written statement from the Registrar’s Office, priority enrollment groups include Regents Scholars, athletes in NCAA sports, veterans, Guardian Scholars Program foster youth, homeless youth, students with dependents and students served by the Center for Accessible Education. The Registrar’s Office wrote that these combined enrollment groups account for less than 10% of undergraduate enrollment.

Students ineligible for priority enrollment can turn to Permission to Enroll numbers, or PTE numbers, as another above board way to get into full classes. The Registrar’s Office wrote that PTE numbers are issued at the instructor’s or department’s discretion, or if the student has a compelling reason to override the grade level or major restrictions.

However, these decisions are more often at the department’s discretion than the instructors’. As

8

such, some professors feel as if they can do relatively little to assist students trying to get into their classes, Ko said.

“Once general enrollment opened up, there were very few spots left in the class (LS 7A),” Ko said. “I started getting a bunch of emails from students that needed a

“I started getting a bu nch of emails from students that needed a spot in the cla ss but could n’t get in.”

spot in the class but couldn’t get in, and there’s no waitlist.”

Departments control the enrollment capacities for their classes, according to the Registrar’s Office.

Linguistics department chair Megha Sundara said that instructor and teaching assistant availability, as well as room capacity, are the two main factors that go into this decision.

“Each TA is already handling a lot of students, so to add extra students onto their roster is not right,” Sundara said.

In the eyes of many students, Linguistics 1: “Introduction to Study of Language” is an investment worth fighting for. The course covers multiple GE requirements and fulfills necessary lower division courses for even several non-linguistics majors.

Sundara said the department moved the class online a few years ago because there were no physical rooms large enough to accommodate all the eager students.

Since moving online, the class size has slowly increased over time, with 491 spots in the fall 2022 and 500 spots the fall 2023.

If a class is full but the student absolutely needs it, the department chair will talk to the TAs individually to see if they are willing to

“We are all against each other when it comes down to enrollment.”

shoulder that extra burden, she said.

But with the scarcity of PTE numbers, many students are left feeling as if enrollment pits them against one another and creates a breeding ground for buying classes. Third-year human biology and society student Logan Chin said the class-picking process can force students to view their potential classmates as competitors.

“We are all against each other when it comes down to enrollment,” Chin said.

Even in spite of opportunities to capitalize off of the competition and sell his spot in popular classes for extra cash, Chin said he has never considered selling a class. He explained that he cannot focus on acquiring classes others may need when he has his own list of courses to enroll in. Chin added that the buying and selling system adds a competitive layer to an otherwise collaborative school culture at UCLA. “The existence of this competitiveness and everyman-for-himself mindset when it comes down to the actual classes themselves is a little bit sad,” Chin said.

Limited class space not only makes some students feel they lack control over their enrollment, but it can leave professors like Ko feeling powerless as well.

“What I’ve been responding is basically the same thing: that I straight up have no control over enrollment,” Ko said. “They have to watch the schedule of classes and hopefully someone will drop.”

Acknowledging these frustrations, the Student Conduct Office is taking steps to address the stress of enrollment. The office said in a written statement that it recently created the Degree Attainment and Student Success Task Force to respond to such concerns over the competitive nature of enrollment. Established in 2019, this committee seeks to increase graduation rates by creating initiatives for low-income, first generation and underrepresented students to get the classes they need, thus eliminating graduation rate disparities among these students by 2030.

In the meantime, the class black market continues to fill in the gaps left behind by priority enrollment and the PTE shortage. From begging older sorority members to hold classes to bidding $1,000 for Physics 5A on Snapchat, many students note the buying and selling practice still is thriving at UCLA this fall. To Bruins like Student A, the process of shelling out hundreds of extra dollars to enroll in classes now feels like an overly normalized part of school culture.

“I hope that admin sees within the next couple of years that there’s been an issue with enrollment and do something about it,” Student A said. ♦ Contributing reports from Rachel Rothschild, PRIME contributor.

PRIME | FALL 2023

9

Wheeling in Westwood written by LYAH FITZPATRICK photographed by JEREMY CHEN designed by MIA TAVARES

10

E

ach day of high school, I’d lace on my shoes, don a helmet and roll my bicycle out of my carport for a crisp morning commute. My route took me down a greenbelt and across a bike bridge, merging with the paths of dozens of students.

Some peeled off to Willett Elementary; others powered on toward UC Davis. But the Davis Senior High Blue Devils and I hit the brakes at Oak Avenue to lock our bikes at rows of quickly filling racks. We lived in Davis, California – nobody looked twice at a cyclist.

In 2021, I crammed my bike into the family van alongside my entire life’s possessions for UCLA move-in day. I was ready to wheel my biking habits into a new era of education. But today, my bike sits collecting dust in the corner of my Westwood apartment garage. Daunting hills, zooming automobiles and a seemingly lacking cycling community keep my feet on the ground and my bike chain slowly rusting.

Students and professors alike have found that the UCLA campus and Westwood feel unsafe, inaccessible and unwelcoming to bikers.

But with a bit of snooping, I found a cycling community bubbling beneath the motor-biased face of the university, ready to support any local cyclist.

To unearth this community, I first turned to fellow Davisite-Bruin mashup Owen Yancher.

A former UC Davis undergraduate and former UCLA graduate student studying coaching and leadership, Yancher understands the Davis-curated itch to ride.

“If you are a person that did not bike at UC Davis, that would be very strange,” Yancher said.

When he initially settled in Westwood’s Weyburn Terrace, Yancher tried biking to school for the first week of class at UCLA. When he passed the bike counter in front of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, he said he laughed at its puny value.

While Davis counters boast values over 1,000 before morning classes, the UCLA one failed to exceed double digits – even at midday. Yancher said this disparity is a reflection of

cyclists’ inferior experience navigating Westwood’s streets.

“Not only is it hilly, and that’s hard, but you’re also risking your life every single time you go in any of the thoroughfares,” he said.

As a freshman, I would sometimes bike from the Hill to Westwood for a part-time job at Corner Bakery Cafe. The high-velocity roll down the slopes was exhilarating, but I also felt unseen by automobiles, and, on the notorious climb back to Hedrick Hall, I could barely power myself home.

A 2019 study conducted by the University of Colorado Denver found that bike infrastructure, especially protected bike lanes, was positively associated with increased road safety and fewer fatalities. Over the last decade, Westwood neighborhood associations and Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz have opposed numerous bike lane proposals in favor of turn lanes and parking space. Without such accommodations, not only might Westwood drivers not expect a cyclist, but the study suggests it is more likely for an accident to occur. Just a helmet and horn stand no chance against formidable headlights, tires and a revving engine.

Moreover, a study published in the British Medical Journal found that a minimal cyclist presence can also increase the likelihood of a cyclist being struck by a motorist. According to the 2022 UCLA State of the Commute report, only 1.3% of employees, 2.4% of off-campus students and 1.2% of on-campus students use a bicycle for transportation.

“He (My roommate) brought me in one day, and he’s like, ‘You need to stop

PRIME | FALL 2023

11

biking, it’s too dangerous,’” Yancher said. “And I actually agreed with him, and I stopped biking.”

My first year traversing the rolling hills of campus by foot, I saw little sign of a bicycling community. Junior Linnea Jackson, a third-year biochemistry student, enjoys biking for exercise and a quicker commute to class. But it also took her a bit of time to discover her fellow cyclists.

“When I came here, I assumed it was just an all driving city,” Jackson said.

I once felt the same way. Just last spring, an email pinged into my school inbox with the words “UCLA” and “Bike Week.” My hilly campus had a dedicated week for bicycle awareness? I immediately opened the message. To my pleasant surprise, I found information about mobile bike service hours, a bike luncheon and other bikerelated events. It was my first encounter with a clear, public acknowledgement of a cycling community at UCLA.

On my way home from organic chemistry that day, I took a quick peek at one of the mobile service tents. The friendly repair mechanic detailed his availability and assured me I could bring my bicycle by for a free tune up. For the rest of my trek up the Hill, that whiff of Davis lingered like a stubborn perfume. I needed to continue uncovering UCLA’s bike culture.

Past initiatives, such as the Bike Week hosted by UCLA Transportation last May, have made strides to improve bicycle accessibility and awareness on campus. For example, in 2014, the UCLA Bicycle Academy, an organization focused on improving conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians at UCLA, submitted a letter with 68 signatories to Chancellor Gene Block. The letter called for bike lane expansion and the creation of a campus group focused on bicycle accessibility.

“[My roommate] brought me in one day, and he’s like, ‘You need to stop biking it’s too dangerous.’”

Five years after the Academy’s submission, UCLA improved from a silver to gold rating for bicycle accessibility. The designation was awarded by the League of American Bicyclists, a coalition advocating for bicycle infrastructure and awareness nationwide, after UCLA increased bike lane visibility and protection, improved bike locker infrastructure on campus and introduced programs such as “Earn-A-Bike,” which offers a free $900 bicycle package to employees and graduate students in exchange for their parking permit. More recently, in April this year, the North Westwood Neighborhood Council and the Undergraduate Students Association Council, alongside the nonprofit group Streets for All, initiated a campaign that includes protecting the Wilshire Boulevard bike lane.

12

Such efforts place LA biking infrastructure in a better spot than it was 10 years ago, said Nate Woiwode, supervisor and coordinator of the UCLA Bike Shop, a bike mechanic shop located at the northwest corner of John Wooden Center.

But, he added, Westwood could still improve bicycle infrastructure to encourage ridership and decrease traffic volume.

Michael Cahn, secretary of the UCLA Bicycle Academy, bikes to campus from his home in Santa Monica. Just before our chat, he had paid an early morning visit to the Santa Monica Farmers Market – on bike.

“It brings always a smile on my face to be out on the road and move yourself with your own power and look at all these people who are imprisoned in their exoskeleton cars,” he said. “And, you know what?

“It brings always a smile on my face to be out on the road and move yourself with your own power and look at all these people who are imprisoned in their exoskeleton cars.”

I get a lot of smiles back from other people.”

Cahn, also a transport history lecturer in the history department at UCLA, said LA’s driving culture stems from a larger political history – not just a lack of infrastructure. More specifically, the land use pattern of single family homes in LA makes it difficult to implement public transportation or bicycle infrastructure, Cahn said.

These homes are often built with garages and situated at lengthy distances from public centers, which encourages driving.

Cahn also said the concept of white flight, the migration of white homeowners from city centers with more racially diverse populations, contributes to a more expansive network of homes in Los Angeles.

“They (Policy decisions) have destroyed our cities, and they have destroyed other modes of transportation,” Cahn said.

My family’s carport in Davis is small, creaky and mostly exposed to the elements – definitely not automobilecurated. Although Davis has a relative abundance of single family homes, its 10 square miles and balanced distribution of city centers, along with architectural trends like open yards and small garages, make biking a common and casual activity. I did not get a driver’s license until I turned 19 – nor did I feel pressured to.

As a freshman, however, I once went for a slow evening run through the Bel-Air neighborhood north of UCLA campus. Unlike my hometown, I noticed the neighborhood lacks sidewalks or any sort of painted lanes. Private homes with clearly visible gates and garages wind deep, deep into the hills.

Fostering a larger biking community in LA starts at the level of local politics, Cahn said.

PRIME | FALL 2023

13

“Your question was, ‘What shall we do? Tell me what to do.’ And I say, ‘I want the power structure to be changed and for the voice of the cyclist to be heard better,’” Cahn said.

In his transportation history course, Cahn said he assigns students advocacy projects to teach that transportation issues need to be seen in the context of land use issues driven by city planning. The UCLA Bicycle Academy communicates with UC Regents and Westwood Neighborhood Council to give cyclists a voice in city politics, he added.

Cahn helped create the Academy in 2008 because he felt that university administration and city council members did not show much interest in improving cyclist safety and accessibility.

“Sometimes I think I’ve been struggling for 10 years, and no difference at all has been made,” Cahn said. “Sometimes I think it just takes 10 years to get anything done.”

He added that people can be threatened by sustainable modes of transportation that may feel foreign to them. But linger around the bike racks long enough or listen for the spin of pedals, and you’ll find that a bike community on campus does exist – and is growing.

After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the UCLA Bike Shop officially reopened this fall with Woiwode at its helm. Woiwode and his small staff team complete about 10 to 15 repairs a day.

“It (The biking community) is definitely bigger than I originally thought,” said Jackson, who is also an employee at the bike shop and a member of the UCLA Cycling Team.

Walking into the UCLA Bike Shop in mid-October, the soft scent of rubber whisked me

14

back to my hometown bike depot. The large garage door was rolled open to reveal a small warehouse with bright fluorescent lights and high ceilings. Various bikes hung from racks and tools lined the walls. Woiwode stood behind a counter flyered with bike route maps and helpful tips. Woiwode’s own pink mountain bike was propped proudly against a workbench.

Aside from affordable repairs, students, faculty members and local residents can visit the shop for help designing a safe biking commute or to attend an educational workshop offered through the UCLA Recreation platform. The shop sometimes hosts group rides that travel a short distance and finish with a coffee on campus, Woiwode said.

He added that he hopes that by offering bicycle education and resources, cycling popularity and accessibility will improve.

“When you think of LA, you think of it as a huge driving city,” Jackson said.

“But once you really spend a few minutes to do the research and look at the safe bike paths, you can get around a lot.”

It seems I need to do a bit more research – at times, I’ve found myself temporarily chaining my bike to random

fences and poles in a pinch. However, biking group and said the club Woiwode finds the UCLA campus infrastructure also hosts a larger, road biking group. sufficient and embraces the commute.

“They’re all a great group of people that are “I wish the hills were steeper, and there was more just super excited to get out in nature and ride,” of them, and they were twice as tall, because it she said. would make everybody here buff,” he said with a I think I am starting to get a taste of the cyclist laugh.

I want to be. Although I’ve traveled halfway across I can’t say pedaling my bike up an almost vertical the state of California, there seems to be a little grade, legs straining, is my favorite pastime. But piece of my cycle-centered hometown in LA – I can say I get a good workout in. Sometimes, especially on UCLA campus. freshman year, I’d show up to sorority chapter Maybe it’s time to scrape the rust off my bike, meetings glistening with sweat after a brisk pump its tires and get biking. ♦ ride, earning a few raised eyebrows. But the Contributing reports from Rachel important fact still stood: My travel time from Rothschild, PRIME contributor. the Hill to Hilgard Avenue was halved.

Jackson encourages beginners to try out bicycling, insisting that the community is welcoming and willing to help. She said beginners can purchase bicycles at the bike shop or other locations “Your question was, in the area and also invites riders ‘What shall we do? Tell to join the UCLA cycling club.

She is a part of the club’s me what to do.’ And I roughly 10-person mountain

say, ‘I want the power structure to be changed and for the voice of the cyclist to be heard better.’”

PRIME | FALL 2023

15

ENTERING

THE

CONCERT

RENAISSANCE written by TALIA SAJOR photos by GRACE NGUYEN, TALIA SAJOR AND COLIN WONG

T

16

designed by PACO BACALSKI

he lights dim. The pre-concert playlist comes to an abrupt stop. The chatter amid the stands grows into a unified, anticipatory scream. And as the figure on stage steps into view, the world narrows down.

It’s just the artist and their fans.

Nowadays, it is nearly impossible to open social media without seeing footage from a concert.

Posts showing off the best outfits for Harry Styles’ “Love On Tour,” tweets announcing Taylor Swift’s surprise songs during her “The Eras Tour” and videos of Beyoncé’s “RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR” mute challenge appear everywhere you look.

Live Nation Entertainment, the largest seller of tickets to live events and the company that owns Ticketmaster, reported that overall concert attendance has risen to its highest number ever.

In just the third quarter of 2023, Live Nation

reported selling over 44 million tickets. After pausing during the COVID-19 pandemic, concerts have since made an extraordinary comeback, dominating the entertainment industry and even reviving local economies. But as these live events take the nation by storm, I have found myself wondering: What makes our current concert culture feel so different than previous decades?

My first stadium concert experience was One Direction’s 2014 “Where We Are Tour” at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. The night prior, I had frantically prepared for the most important event in my 11-year-old life, crafting the perfect outfit with fabric paint and Union Jack duct tape. The next evening, I joined a sea of equally dedicated fans of the British-Irish boy band, proudly wearing a sloppily modified T-shirt proclaiming “Tommo ’91” and “I Love 1D.”

That massive One Direction show followed in the tradition of another European boy band that trailblazed our current understanding of concerts: The Beatles.

On Aug. 15, 1965, The Beatles performed at New York City’s Shea Stadium for over 55,000 dedicated Beatlemaniacs. While this may not be impressive by today’s standards – Taylor Swift averaged over 72,000 attendees per stop on “The Eras Tour,” according to Statista – music historians describe that concert as the first-ever stadium concert.

According to adjunct professor at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music David Leaf, prior to that night, watching an artist perform in a sports stadium at that scale had been a foreign concept.

“The Beatles invented the idea of stadium tours,” Leaf said. “Everything about it was (a) spectacle without performance – there were no big screens. It wasn’t about music. It was about mania.”

Watching documentary footage of the historic concert, I was struck by the shots of thousands of fans screaming so loud that the noise overtook the sound of the band’s singing. The setting and the Beatlemaniacs’ unbridled passion catapulted me back to hearing the first beats of One Direction’s “Midnight Memories” and feeling the stadium’s air buzz with frenzy. If it weren’t for the primitive sound equipment, I could have convinced myself it was just another video from One Direction’s Pasadena show.

Leaf agrees that The Beatles were the blueprint for the type of concert culture most students like me grew up with. But 58 years after this paradigm-shifting concert and almost 10 years after the One Direction Pasadena show, concerts are about more than mania: They’re music, spectacle and mania all at once.

To me, no tour

encapsulates this new phase for concerts quite like Beyoncé’s “RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR.” The Houston-born artist’s tour supported her seventh studio album of the same name, which brings ballroom culture – created by queer Black icons – to the sonic and visual forefront.

Beyoncé issued a strict all-silver dress code for her crowds in celebration of her birthday on Sept. 4. When I found myself prepping for her Sept. 1 “RENAISSANCE” show in Los Angeles, I maniacally searched for any silver pieces hanging in my closet. Paint and duct tape would not cut it this time.

I finally narrowed down my outfit: a rhinestone-studded cowboy hat with matching boots, a black midi skirt, a white corset top and a belted chain – the sole silver piece I could find. Twenty-four hours later, I stepped into SoFi Stadium and found myself amid a crowd that felt less like concertgoers and more like a chrome-sheened fashion show.

It’s clear that the spectacle has now converged within the crowd.

Fans put astronomically more effort into preparing concert outfits compared to my tween experience with One Direction or the Beatlemaniacs back in the ‘60s.

According to Bruins, who attended concerts this summer, concertgoers’ extravagant ensembles have become a defining aspect of shows’ atmospheres.

Third-year music history and industry student Grace Nguyen dressed up for the Santa Clara show of

PRIME | FALL 2023

17

Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” this past summer. The international tour featured songs from the different eras of the pop star’s career, from her country-hit album “Fearless” to the folk-inspired “Evermore.”

Nguyen said the dress code for Swift’s tour was to piece together something relating to her varied discography or moments from throughout her career, including exact replicas of Swift’s own tour costumes. In Nguyen’s case, she opted for a mixture of Swift’s debut and “Red” albums, resulting in an A-line white dress and brown knee-high boots, all paired with a red lip.

Alongside the various outfits worn by Swifties worldwide also comes a very important element of any Eras Tour getup – lots of friendship bracelets.

Although prior concert subcultures have adopted bracelet trading, such as kandi trading in rave culture, Swifties adopted the practice after the release of Swift’s song “You’re On Your Own, Kid.” Now ushered into the mainstream, friendship bracelet trading has become an important way for fans to band

together and create a tighter community for themselves, according to Today.

“I know friendship bracelets didn’t start with ‘The Eras Tour,’ but I think it definitely got expedited, and it was a catalyst for most concerts to do it,” said third-year psychobiology student Colin Wong.

“People would have 300 on carabiners just ready to trade and hand out.”

As outfits evolved, so did audience participation.

18

Audiences have engaged in practices such as lighter tributes as far back as the ’60s, but 2023 audiences have developed increasingly niche and detailed ways to engage with their favorite artists.

During “The Eras Tour,” audiences participated in unique chants tailored to specific songs, such as yelling, “One, two, three, let’s go bitch!” before the electropop “Delicate,” Nguyen said.

Similarly, those among the “RENAISSANCE” crowd were encouraged to click their fans throughout Beyoncé’s rhythmic “HEATED.” While Nguyen had interacted with artists at prior concerts, she said the “Eras” and “RENAISSANCE” tours brought the intensity to a new level.

She added that this audience participation works to strengthen the overall connection between the fans and the artist.

“It’s very interesting to see how artists will participate, especially big ones like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé that feel so far away from us,” Nguyen said. “But in concerts, they make it feel like you’re the only one there – like you are literally with them.”

These highly specific interactions have trickled down into smaller concerts, including those of Filipina-British singersongwriter Beabadoobee.

As I waited in line on a crowded downtown LA street to attend her “Beatopia” tour at The Novo, a group of fans passed out pink paper hearts. They told us to hold up the hearts during Bea’s “Ripples,” an introspective, guitar-driven tune.

I felt it was a much more personalized and thoughtful interaction for the artist than holding up my cell phone flashlight as I often had at prior concerts.

As audiences level up their presence at concerts, artists are similarly bringing a new emphasis on visuals and narratives to their shows.

Stig Edgren, a UCLA lecturer who teaches a course on special event and concert production, said “The Eras Tour” has redefined what a concert should look like on a technical level. Although the general structure of a great show has remained the same, he said the overall amount of money on producing these extravagant concerts has reached a historical peak.

“What she (Swift) did is, she broke it down into a very theatrical type of setting with all … the 10 different eras,” Edgren said. “Each one had its own style, its own look, its own visuals, its own content, its own set pieces that came in.”

Edgren also added that such effervescent production value heightens the overall audience experience and immerses concertgoers into the story that the artist is telling.

Watching Beyoncé’s backup dancers vogue down the stage as a giant disco ball spun above them, I can attest that it felt more like I was in a ballroom scene than a

ticket scalpers, record high demand and Ticketmaster’s growing monopoly, the process of acquiring tickets is now a large portion of the concert experience for many, myself included. This past year, the scramble for “Eras” tickets sent such shockwaves through the country that California lawmakers even took action against Ticketmaster.

Having attended 14 “Love On Tour” shows, 10 Jonas Brothers and Swift concerts each, and “RENAISSANCE” once this past year alone, Wong has perfected a complex to-do list to ensure he aces the purchasing stage of concert attendance.

Wong said he first gathers his coIt’s very interesting to see how artists workers and has them all preregister for tickets, improving their collective will participate, especially big ones like odds of receiving a presale code. On Taylor Swift and Beyoncé that feel so far the day of the sale, he logs into several away from us. But in concerts, they make accounts on multiple devices, hoping to get lucky and escape the queue. it feel like you’re the only one there.”

In addition to the traditional websites, Wong said he has also sports stadium. In contrast, the One Direction tour from purchased tickets through accounts on X, formerly nine years ago merely featured a simple stage screen that known as Twitter, that advertise last-minute tickets would flash a different pattern every so often, along with – a side business born in the wake of Ticketmaster the occasional confetti and fireworks. difficulties.

As concerts have evolved to become more than just If someone is lucky enough to escape the Ticketmaster music, the fight to snag tickets has intensified. Between queue with tickets still available, they are often forced to

“

PRIME | FALL 2023

19

While Wong said he typically attends concerts alone, bracelet trading has offered him a way to break the ice and meet fellow Swifties. He said concerts allow him to create friendships with other attendees and even reconnect with these friends at other shows.

Nguyen similarly appreciates the unity concerts bring.

She said with social media, fans can share their excitement for the concert with other concertgoers before experiencing the show together in person.

“It’s definitely not just about the artists – it’s

bear a high financial burden. For example, “Eras” tickets ranged from $49 to $499 without fees at initial sale, while resale tickets rose to prices between $500 and $7,000, according to StyleCaster. Leaf said these high prices are due to the recent advent of dynamic pricing, where companies change a ticket’s price based on a Taking your kid to a concert, suddenly product’s demand. it’s a week or two-weeks’ salary – it’s “When I think of taking a family to a sporting event, taking your kid to pretty insane. So it starts to make the a concert, suddenly it’s a week or two weeks’ events for the privileged and that’s salary – it’s pretty insane,” Leaf said. “So it starts to make the events for the privileged, and not good.” that’s not good.”

Edgren said ticket purchasing difficulties stem from about being with the fandom that you see online in real the high demand for live events within a post-COVID-19 life,” Nguyen said. lockdown society. According to Edgren, the Live Nation The experiences of Wong and Nguyen ring true to me. monopoly has capitalized on consumers’ insatiable Although concert production and culture are now dialed appetites for events following 2020, increasing its prices to up to 11, shows are still fundamentally about sharing our compensate for lockdown losses. love for music. My favorite concert memories are not the “I think it’s (concert culture) come back stronger than it outfits I wore or the set pieces I witnessed but instead the ever has,” Edgren said. “I actually thought there would be human connections I made with other concertgoers. maybe a year or two after COVID where things wouldn’t As I chanted the lyrics to “Diana” at the One Direction be as over the top. ... It didn’t take any time at all.” concert almost a decade ago, I felt a sense of community Although much has changed between the Beatlemania with the thousands of other concertgoers. Since then, I of the ’60s and the “Eras” and “RENAISSANCE” tours of have attended dozens of other concerts not only to see today, concertgoers of every era have experienced the some of my favorite songs performed live but in search same communal bonds. As concertgoers dance, scream of that communal experience. Every time I look at the and cry in the stands, knowing everyone within the venue people around me in the club, theater or stadium, I feel also shares a mutual affection for the same artist is an that same connection to the concertgoers surrounding extremely emotionally validating experience, Leaf said. me as we unite to celebrate our favorite artists.

“I remember when (during) the first solo tour that Paul I know this connection will draw me back to McCartney did in 1976, when he played three nights at countless more concerts throughout my the Forum, I slept overnight on a sidewalk outside the life. I can only hope everyone can Forum,” Leaf said. “Those were actually fun communal experience it at least once in experiences, because you’re all there for the same reason.” their life. ♦

“

20

The Next Generation of Scientists

written by ADITI KUMAR illustrations by HAO TAM TRAN designed by JAYANTI SINGLA

PRIME | FALL 2023

21

T

aylor Webb knew artificial intelligence had historically struggled with solving certain questions on IQ tests. Prior research had suggested that AI found abstract reasoning tasks challenging, making problems such as identifying the missing piece in a matrix nearly impossible. So when he proposed these abstract tasks to GPT3 in 2020, he expected it to struggle considerably.

Instead, the psychology postdoctoral researcher was taken aback to find GPT3 passed these tests with flying colors.

This moment inspired a research study where Webb began feeding the model more difficult problems. GPT3 easily conquered many of those tasks as well. Webb began wondering about the future of AI in research, regarding it with a mixture of curiosity, surprise and skepticism that I have seen many times before as a student researcher.

The release of generative AI tools from ChatGPT to DALL-E sent shockwaves across the scientific community with their ability to generate text, images and videos. But while some scientists are embracing generative AI, others remain skeptical of its abilities.

I felt torn about generative AI’s capacity to truly

a network of nodes that mimic the interconnected network of neurons in a person’s brain. By incorporating new deep learning techniques into generative AI models, scientists could drastically scale up the models and the data used to train them, he said.

Peng added that the recent advent of transformers as a new deep learning model architecture shaped the field of generative AI, allowing scientists to quickly and dramatically scale up models. Grover said generative AI’s progress has surprised even those in the field.

“I remember the early days when I was working on generative models for image generation,” he said.

“There used to be folks who would be skeptics about generative AI ever generating something as beautiful as art pieces.”

Now a person has the world of AI-generated art at their fingertips. Trained on large collections of digitized artwork and associated text, tools such as DALL-E and Midjourney can generate an image exactly as specified,

“There used to be folks who would be skeptics about generative AI ever generating something as beautiful as art pieces.” affect the scientific process due to my differing research experiences in wet and dry lab research this summer.

Terms like transformers and ChatGPT were frequently used in conversation in one lab focused on computational research, while they were hardly ever mentioned in the other lab. The uncertainty that surrounds AI led me to turn to experts such as Webb to shed some light on what the future may hold for science overall.

With increased attention from the media after ChatGPT launched last year, generative AI seemed like a new development in the technology scene. However, assistant professor of computer science Violet Peng said the idea of training a model to understand and generate human language has been around for decades. The field of natural language processing emerged from this trend in research, with ChatGPT as the latest effort to develop a generative NLP model, she explained.

Aditya Grover, assistant professor of computer science, said recent advancements in generative AI are largely due to deep learning developments during the past decade.

This methodology trains a model by feeding data into

22

leading to amazement and uncertainty among users and professionals alike.

But, as Grover pointed out, generative AI has irreversibly altered how artists view their discipline. While generative AI has added new tools to the creation process, it also raises tough questions about creativity and plagiarism that are relevant to the research sector. I became intrigued. How has generative AI altered the research process for scientists at UCLA and the greater scientific community?

UCLA researchers have found immediate benefits to incorporating AI into their work on a day-to-day basis.

Generative AI has proven useful in removing barriers to performing research.

Grover shared that not all members of his team are native English

speakers, making generative AI beneficial for organizing and proofreading drafts of research papers.

Additionally, Peng and Grover noted that generative AI has enhanced the process of data generation and annotation for training models, making it efficient and cost-effective. For example, Grover said AI can be trained to label sentences with the emotion associated with the event described by the sentence. Peng added that the data generated by generative AI can be of higher quality than conventional generation methods.

Similarly, student researchers have taken advantage of new generative AI tools in their approach to research.

Seongbin Park, fourth-year computer science student and an undergraduate researcher in the MINT group led by Grover, mentioned how using these tools to write code greatly expedited the development process. Webb agreed that these tools could prove effective in writing code, though he cautioned that it could lead to difficult-to-find bugs.

Generative AI also inspired new projects for Grover and his research group as they set out to probe these tools for their blind spots and create novel algorithms to address these issues. They found that ChatGPT did not effectively personalize its answers to the user it was communicating with. As a result, his team developed a tool that could be combined with any large language model to generate custom responses based on the user.

For Peng, generative AI has solved lower level problems allowing her group to focus on higher level challenging problems in their research. Basic tasks, such as teaching creative language generation models the rules of grammar, can be handled by other AI models, allowing Peng to focus on advanced tasks such as defining the

elements required for creative writing.

“So essentially you can view it as this model took some of our job in a way,” Peng said with a laugh.

As I marveled at the range of applications for generative AI, I also questioned if it was capable of the same creativity human researchers use to make scientific breakthroughs.

Webb provided some insight into this topic. His study found that GPT3 performed at a comparable or superior level to undergraduate students on many tasks such as determining the connection between two strings of text. But a task found in developmental studies led to an unexpected reaction from the model. In the assignment, a child is asked to use tools to move gumballs in a bowl to another bowl farther away, after hearing stories about an analogous situation. GPT3 was trained on similar stories and was asked to provide a solution to the gumball problem. Its response?

“GPT3 would propose very complex, elaborate multistep plans for how to connect all these tools together, but which were completely nonsensical and in no sense solved the task,” Webb said.

Webb concluded that GPT3’s reasoning capabilities were uneven; while it could outshine college students at certain abstract reasoning tasks, it could perform worse than a 5-year-old at complex tasks that involved physical reasoning.

Though the researchers I spoke to see benefits from incorporating AI into their day-to-day research, they remain convinced that it is not capable of the creativity required to generate novel research ideas and hypotheses.

Peng described scientific creativity as being able to build upon previous knowledge and discover ideas that are wholly new. In her experience, generative AI currently struggles with the latter, limiting its potential for scientific discovery.

But both Grover and Webb believed these models could become capable of the kind of scientific creativity required for innovation. As researchers continue to feed models larger datasets, Grover believes that models could become increasingly creative.

“I don’t think there’s anything so special about human creativity that it can’t be automated in principle,” Webb said. “I believe that we will be increasingly convinced that these systems are doing genuinely creative things.”

Webb said that true creativity stems from the ability

PRIME | FALL 2023

23

“I don’t think there’s anything so special about human creativity that it can’t be automated in principle.

I believe that we will be increasingly convinced that these systems are doing genuinely creative things.” to reflect on a set of ideas for an extended period of time, which can lead to unexpected connections and guide researchers to solutions. Building long-term memory into generative AI could remedy this shortcoming, he said.

He also suggested improving AI’s creativity by building a mechanism for episodic memory to enable it to connect related experiences and thoughts together.

On the other hand, Grover believes that the ability to continuously problem solve toward a greater goal is integral to being a scientist. He said the first solution

24

to a problem, which is not difficult to generate, is liable to failure. A scientist should be able to turn this failure into a launchpad for the scientific process. His words resonated with me as I remembered recently spending months improving the efficiency of an algorithm to analyze COVID-19 samples without compromising its accuracy.

“It’s always this process of being able to see the bigger vision and then iterate over your ideas to improve them to achieve that vision,” Grover said.

“It’s always this process of being able to see the bigger vision and then iterate over your ideas to improve them to achieve that vision.”

Grover added that bringing together people with complementary skills and knowledge to accomplish ambitious research projects is key for success. Building a team that can make progress together is a nuanced process, he said.

Generative AI scientists are trying to capture that interdisciplinary knowledge with the announcement of the Polymathic AI project by an international team of scientists on Oct. 9. The project is bringing together researchers from fields such as cosmology and particle physics to create a generative model for interdisciplinary research. It aims to train the model on data from a range of scientific disciplines, a task that has proven challenging for AI historically.

As scientists have leveraged AI in their research in the last year, it has fallen prey to inaccuracy with data presented and references cited incorrectly in papers using AI. Grover said solving this issue proves particularly difficult as the behavior of these models is complex and not inherently intuitive. He added that it can be difficult to evaluate whether models are truly making progress.

“What we teach in machine learning is that there’s no intelligence if all you’re going to do is memorize what you saw during training,” he said.

Yet Grover said generative AI forces scientists to reevaluate many benchmarks traditionally used in machine learning. As today’s AI systems can be trained on data from throughout the internet, there is a high

likelihood that it may have seen a dataset used to test it during its training.

Despite these concerns, Peng, Webb and Grover believe there is no reason to limit use of tools if they can be successfully leveraged in research. Peng added that she believes that if these tools allow us to make breakthroughs to the betterment of the world, we should embrace it.

If generative AI could become capable of these feats and could actively contribute to research, I wondered if this would change the role of humans in research. AI could one day recreate a human’s ability to hypothesize and the skills necessary to validate these hypotheses which I had spent years to learn. I began to consider how the two could co-exist in the world of science and if there were skills that were uniquely human. ChatGPT could be working alongside researchers, steering them clear of dead ends in the road to success. My feelings were echoed by a remark Grover made as he reflected on the same quandary.

“Should I be replaced by ChatGPT?” he asked.

Ultimately, his response was made in jest. He remained optimistic that humans would always have a place in research, explaining that he believed the agency inherent to a human being was powerful. Grover said he envisioned the future of research as one where generative AI and humans would act as collaborators with AI acting as a research assistant to fill in the gaps.

“Should I be replaced

by ChatGPT?” “Can we generate new materials which have specific properties? Can we generate new drugs which are less toxic and target specific viruses or other kinds of pathogens?” he said. “Those are areas where generative AI will build new science that could be a game changer for the state of humanity. And I am a big believer that it will be possible – it will happen.” ♦

PRIME | FALL 2023

25

Media, Lies and Gazan Lives written by LAYTH HANDOUSH illustrated by KO CARLOS designed by MAYA O’KELLY

26

“Y

our name is so unusual! Where are you from?”

Sirens go off in my head as I think of how to best answer this anything but casual question, aware of the dangerously fraught ways the conversation can proceed. Being second-generation American, I am tempted to align with a state or hometown and nothing more. Another part of me wants to face the question of my ancestry proudly but knows the answer will come out in a stutter. Still, another says to feign ignorance or lie entirely.

Answering such a simple inquiry should not be this scary. However, since the official declaration of war between Israel and Palestine and the resulting news coverage, I no longer feel safe to say that I am Palestinian.

My hesitancy does not stem from any shame or guilt for my culture but concern over media characterizations of Gaza and fear for Palestine’s future.

On Oct. 8, 2023, the Israeli government officially declared war on the militant group, Hamas, following its terror attack against Israeli soldiers and citizens. Israel’s bombing campaign has since caused the deaths of over 13,000 Palestinians and the displacement of more than 1.4 million civilians in Gaza. While this situation seems to have escalated at a rapid pace, the present opposition between Palestine and Israel holds roots in 1967, when Israel began its illegal occupation and appropriation of Palestinian territory and resources. The weeks following the declaration brought Israel’s 56 years of illegal occupational force over Palestine to a devastating climax that the United Nations fears will result in genocide for Palestinians.

All the while, I watch these horrors unfold from a seat of relatively privileged safety as an American citizen. My life, filled with the blissful routine of classes and extracurriculars, is only interrupted by Instagram streams of Gazan parents holding tight the bodies of their children, caked in dirt and blood, as the world they know is kicked out from under them. I cannot feel their pain or fear but merely cry at its sight. I am consumed by guilt over my own safety here in Westwood and anger at my inability to share that safety with them.

I have always tried to do my part in advocating for the oppressed, especially when it comes to Palestine.

As a teenager, I marched the streets of San Francisco demanding the right to a home for Palestinians, just as I now stand with fellow students on Bruin Walk, demanding a ceasefire for Gaza. Though I remain steadfast in my advocacy by sharing factual information about Palestinian history and donating to relief efforts, nothing seems to counteract the devastation in the Middle East.

I feel crushed as the American government and major conglomerates funnel billions of our dollars to support Israel, despite adamant protests by Americans of all backgrounds. On Nov. 2, the U.S. House passed an almost $14.5 billion aid package to Israel. At

the same time, Gazan refugees lacked basic resources such as clean drinking water. I’m left wondering how I, as a Palestinian American, can trust my country when it won’t acknowledge the suffering of those that share my ancestry.

I no longer feel safe to say that I am Palestinian because I no longer feel there is logical hope that our leaders will include Palestinians under the values of truth and freedom for all.

This lack of safety reminds me of previous times I felt the need to obscure my identity. When I first started at UCLA last fall, my Palestinian heritage was not a prominent aspect of how I defined myself. I was the only student with Palestinian ancestry at my suburban elementary and high schools, making me view my culture as a source of isolation and confusion. Being Palestinian was unheard of by my peers and a crime in the eyes of many adults. I wanted to blend in and never spoke about Palestine outside of my home.

I no longer feel safe to say that I am Palestinian because I no longer feel there is logical hope that our leaders will include Palestinians under the values of truth and freedom for all.

It was not until I met other Middle Eastern students in the UCLA dorms and in organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine that I began to feel a greater connection to my heritage. I found a community that shared my unique traditions and favorite meals of warak dawali and knafeh. They understood the boisterous songs and dances from family weddings and acknowledged the strength it took for our ancestors to survive.

Reconnecting with my culture also came in the unexpected form of journalism.

On a whim fueled by the desire to meet new friends, I joined the Daily Bruin last fall.

After completing my first article, a review of a Middle Eastern student’s short film on

PRIME | FALL 2023

27

isolation from home abroad, I became hooked on telling the stories of wide-ranging communities. Seeing my name printed in the byline of the article, I didn’t feel selfconscious anymore: I was a journalist with the power to show people the realities of our world with truth and my unique perspective.

The persisting violence impacts more than just Hamas or the Israeli government but millions of innocent people.

Given that journalism helped guide me home to my Palestinian identity, it pains me to see major media outlets covering the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza with less care than I give my craft. For example, in response to the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion on Oct. 17, which Gaza officials report killed several hundred civilians, Politico implied Palestine’s involvement with the strike. In one of their newsletters published Oct. 18, Politico writers suggested Hamas has an “interest in painting Israel as brutes who don’t care if they kill civilians.” This quote was published prior to the release of any solid evidence implicating Palestine or Israel.

While the cause of the explosion remains inconclusive, President Biden has warned Israeli forces against following military action on other hospitals in Gaza, including Al-Quds and Al-Shifa.

The impact of this misinformation has even seeped into the collegiate level, with the Anti-Defamation League accusing campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine of

28

supporting Hamas. The ADL’s accusations have led to the suspension of SJP chapters, including that of Columbia University, ending the groups’ university funding and ability to facilitate on-campus protests. In an interview with CNN, Columbia’s chapter stated that the ADL “demonizes nonviolent tactics by Palestinian activists.”

As I comb through research to draft my own article, it is difficult to shake from my mind the biased portrayals of Palestinians that flood my laptop’s newsfeed. The passive-voice ridden headlines and paragraphs painting my people as inherently violent stand in stark contrast to the journalistic standards and the Palestinian community that I know. I see media posts of both Israelis and Americans describing Palestinians as ‘animals’ and ‘rapists.’ I hear about unidentified people confronting Bruins at a teach-in webinar and at the UCLA Cultural Affairs Commission office to call students “terrorists.” But my memories of Palestine are of childhood summers spent playing among the grapevines of my tata’s – my grandmother’s – home in the West Bank. The Palestine that I know is not an illegitimate collection of brutes and terrorists but a country of rich history, beautiful art and generous, intelligent human beings.

With the news accusing Palestinians of the devastation in Gaza, I am brought back to the declaration of the 2014 Gaza War, when my third-grade self inherited the classroom blame for conflict in the Middle East. Just as now, news of the conflict circulated through every household in my Bay Area hometown, making the war an interesting “grown-up” topic for my schoolmates to discuss. Stirred by a mixture of fear and curiosity, I confided my concerns about Israel’s airstrike to a friend in study hall. His response held a blunt tact typical of those my age: “You guys shouldn’t have bombed them first.”

At that moment, I was struck by guilt that I didn’t understand and confusion for how my classmate’s claim could be plausible. As a child, I remember my perception of being Palestinian was accompanied by the understanding that I was foremost, like everyone else, a human being. My parents raised me to see culture and religion as means of expression and education, emphasizing that I was my own person and not just a part of any monolith.

It was my classmate’s implication that I personally shared responsibility for the destruction continents away that compelled me to ask my father about our heritage later that night. I wanted to hear if I was unknowingly responsible for the needless deaths of thousands, and if not, why did people think that?

While I sat on the edge of my parents’ bed, he explained to me that my classmate’s comment came from not understanding the over 40 years of history leading up to that current newscycle. He told me that

other students did not know about our experiences anxiously passing through the armed Israeli security checkpoints at Tel Aviv and the Jalazone refugee camp. They did not understand our fear that we would be detained, like my grandmother who was held while in labor with my aunt in 1967. He told me that my schoolmate’s not knowing did not make my life experiences – or those of other Palestinians – any less real.

In high school, I found that my family’s human-forward perspective on identity did not always align with my peers, whose views were shaped by negative stereotypes of Arabs. My teen years overlapped with the era of the television series “Homeland” and the video game series “Call of Duty,” both popular media franchises filled with harmful Arab caricatures. As a high school sophomore, I recall that the labels of “terrorist” and “bomber” at times eclipsed my academic reputation. One student in my biology class even went so far as to tell my classmates that I was in possession of a bomb, believing that such comments held no gravity outside of the fictitious worlds we see on screen.

I was not raised to identify myself or others by the color of my skin or the god that I worship but by the air in my chest and content of my character.

My parents’ teachings about identity meant that I no longer questioned my truths, but the verbal assaults from peers instilled in me enough concern for my well-being to hide as much of my culture from the public eye as possible. Now, I worry this steady diet of dramas and firstperson shooters framing Arab people as inherent enemies has bred apathy toward the civilians of Gaza.

As a young Palestinian American, I am not new to the sting of dehumanization. Those comments in class primed me to understand the framing of the current “Israel-Hamas war.” When I read headlines using this

phrase, I see through the media-made blindspot that obscures how the persisting violence impacts more than just Hamas or the Israeli government but millions of innocent people. I think of all of the Palestinians who share similar experiences to me and my family and how a narrative that solely focused on the actions of extremist organizations such as Hamas excludes their stories.

I was not raised to identify myself or others by the color of my skin or the god that I worship but by the air in my chest and content of my character. Nor was I trained as a journalist to report a perspective that revokes the humanity of a person and desensitizes the public to oppression. I know that coverage of the crisis in Palestine and Israel should not imply that there is a side more worthy of survival. It should compel us to find an equitable solution toward peace for every individual at stake.

As I find myself once more grappling with what it means to own my name, to be unapologetically Palestinian, I find myself again turning to bylines. I look up to the writers currently risking their lives in Gaza to provide reliable information to the global population and assist those in need at the scene. Reporters like Motaz Azaiza with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and Motasem Mortaja of Record Media, who have worked through unlivable conditions in the war-torn city to ensure the safety and recognition of its citizens, stand as pillars of justice that I aspire to emulate as a journalist.

The news they provide is meant to empower us to take informed action, bringing an end to the violence and aid to those in need. They will not allow the Palestinian country, culture or people to be erased from this world, and neither will I. Of this, my name in the byline is a solemn promise. ♦

PRIME | FALL 2023

29

UCLA’S HOUSING PROMISE

written by IMAN BABER AND SHARLENE CHEN photographed by ELLA GREENBERG WINNICK designed by MILLIE WALKER

30

“W

elcome Home. Your future is Bruin.”

Every year, thousands of prospective students log in to their UCLA admissions portals and read these momentous words. The freshman class of 2026 and transfer class of 2024, however, received an additional piece of surprising news alongside their admissions decisions.

In April of 2022, UCLA announced a new housing guarantee for all incoming freshman and transfer students, promising four consecutive years of UCLA accommodations for freshmen and two years for transfers. This guarantee includes all university-managed housing, including the university apartments in Westwood.

For the freshmen in the class of 2026, this program announcement represented housing security and convenience. But as transfer, commuter and nontraditional students navigate this new housing paradigm, they are discovering benefits and nuanced drawbacks that may complicate an already stressful housing application process.

UCLA has not always focused on its university housing options. From its opening in 1919 until 1959, when Dykstra Hall officially opened as the first on-campus residence hall, UCLA was a commuter campus, said Assistant Vice Chancellor of Housing & Hospitality Pete Angelis. Today, for the 2023-2024 academic year, 97% of admitted freshmen live in university housing.

With the announcement of the housing guarantee, UCLA became the first and only of the nine undergraduate University of California campuses to offer a guaranteed housing program for its students. Angelis explained that over the last few decades, development of student housing and the residential experience has been a large priority for the university.

“Everything they need is here,” he added.

“That’s been valuable for them because students that reside on the Hill save a lot of time. All of our students are very much timepressed, and they have all those resources available nearby.”

Besides university housing, students might choose to live in private apartments in Westwood and its surrounding communities or potentially commute from neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles.

To qualify for the guarantee, students must continuously live in university housing while at UCLA, limiting who can qualify for the guarantee, explained Director of Housing Services and Strategic Initiatives Sarah

Dundish. Students who chose to move out of university housing for an academic year lose out on their guarantee.

If these students choose to move back into university housing, they must submit a housing lottery application, and students who forfeited the guarantee are the last to receive offers via the lottery. Second to last are incoming transfers, then incoming freshmen, then finally at the top are returning students whose housing offers have priority.

While Luna Quiroz Beltran, a first-year physiological science student, initially applied for and received housing at UCLA, she ultimately made the decision to withdraw her shot at the four-year housing guarantee and commute – a decision that she said was primarily a financial one. Quiroz Beltran receives reimbursement from the university for her commute because of her financial aid.

“The drive doesn’t seem too bad, since the school is not super far, so I’m just going to take one for the team and just drive to school every single day,” she said with a laugh.

Quiroz Beltran said she commutes from Canoga Park, which can sometimes take over an hour. From navigating congested roads to dealing with car trouble, Quiroz Beltran stated that the ordeal of commuting is quite time consuming and lonely, especially when stuck in traffic on Interstate 405.

Beyond the time spent in commute, Quiroz Beltran said she is missing out on the college community. She has to calculate precisely when she leaves campus to make it home at a reasonable time, impacting her ability to join clubs and engage with other aspects of the

PRIME | FALL 2023

31

“I think that (the housing guarantee) is a really good idea, and family housing was in that category. ...

When I renewed my housing application for the second year, I didn’t experience any problems.”

on-campus experience.

“I definitely have a lot less time to do my work and study,” Quiroz Beltran said. “I’m not really so engaged in student life because ... I can’t really stay on campus super late.”

Because of these challenges, Quiroz Beltran stated that she is definitely considering moving to campus in the future.

“I know that we have the option to apply for housing for our winter and spring quarter,” she elaborated. “So I have been thinking about that, where it’s, ‘Oh, should I do it?’”

Under the four-year guarantee, students who make this choice are still included in the guarantee, as they

32

have lived in university housing at some point during their first year. However, they will be in the lottery when initially applying for housing.

While Quiroz Beltran explained that she is currently able to balance commuting and classes, for others, that may not be an option. Emily Wang, a fourth-year public affairs student and second-year transfer student, chose to move closer to campus to make it easier to schedule classes and bring Wang’s daughter to and from school.

Wang currently lives in the University Village Apartments, which is UCLA’s family housing located on Sawtelle Boulevard. Reserved for students with spouses or families, the building offers one to three bedroom

“It’s just too far. I feel too isolated.” apartments, as well as amenities such as a childcare center, playgrounds and swimming pools.

“When I got accepted to UCLA, ... I lived in the city of Gardena,” Wang said. “We decided to move because once I moved to the family housing, when I come to the UCLA campus I don’t need to go on the freeway ... when there’s no traffic it’s only 15 to 20 minutes.”

Despite being a transfer student, and therefore not top priority under the housing system, Wang was able to secure another year of this specialized housing. Wang is pleased with the initiative’s inclusion of parenting students.

walking distance to campus and lack of nearby students physically and mentally draining.

“It kind of just got to me, and I was just like, I can’t do this anymore,” Robinson said. “It’s just too far. I feel too isolated.”

Robinson switched to the university apartments in Gayley Heights at the beginning of the next quarter, where he spent the rest of the year. Currently, he resides in the Tipuana university apartments. While he recounted that the process of obtaining housing under UCLA Housing was relatively straightforward, he sees shortcomings.

“I think that (the housing guarantee) is a really good idea, and family housing was in that category,” Wang said.

“When I renewed my housing application for the second year, I didn’t experience any problems.”

Though Wang has found success navigating UCLA’s housing system under the guarantee program, other transfer students are wary of their position under the new initiative.

Nicholas Robinson, a fourth-year political science student and second-year transfer student, did not initially realize how much proximity to campus mattered to him. He lived in an apartment on Wilshire Boulevard during fall quarter of his first year but found the long

Because transfer students rank low on the housing priority list, they are often placed together into the same unpopular buildings, Robinson said. He added that he has rarely heard of a transfer who received their first choice of housing and that most are funneled into university apartment buildings, such as Tipuana, Palo Verde and Laurel. These apartment buildings include the four bedroom apartments housing eight people.

He added that these buildings can become filled with a high number of transfer students – which some students might see as a good thing for community building.

However, Robinson explained that he did not want to be labeled as solely a transfer student, distant from the

PRIME | FALL 2023

33

rest of the UCLA community and grouped together with other transfer students.

“I love the transfer community, but we only get so much time,” Robinson said. “It’s good to diversify.”

Additionally, Robinson stated he wishes there was more transparency and details regarding all housing options at UCLA and what the housing guarantee entails for transfers’ building options.

“There was not really an upfront conversation about what the twoyear housing guarantee would look like,” he said. “The biggest thing I would say is just be more open with the new transfers, and just let them know that this is it.”

Although transfer students like Wang and Robinson face systematic issues accessing prioritized UCLA housing, fouryear students have also been perplexed by the process of acquiring housing.

“There was not really an upfront conversation about what the two-year housing guarantee would look like. ...

The biggest thing I would say is just be more open with the new transfers, and just let them know that this is it.”

Some students have taken the initiative to streamline the process through websites or apps such as BruinRent. This start-up,

34

created by the student organization DevX, is an apartment hunting website akin to Zillow, containing housing options for the Westwood area.

Natasha Cheung, a fourth-year business economics student and a BruinRent product manager, said that each feature on the renting advice website is tailored to UCLA students.

Each apartment listing features its rent, included amenities, proximity to campus and a student-reported rating for the building.

Cheung stated that part of her inspiration to create BruinRent came from her own experiences trying to obtain an apartment after leaving the UCLA dorms.

“It was a big problem for me personally, apartment hunting and finding a good place to stay,” she said. “When I was moving in my junior year to an apartment, I didn’t get one until the summer before.”

“I do think it gives people a lot of security, especially people who come from nontraditional backgrounds, people who may not have the funds or aren’t equipped to do the whole apartment search.

I think the four year guarantee alleviates a lot of anxiety.”

Drawing from these experiences and her time building BruinRent, Cheung emphasized the stress that often comes with trying to secure a place to live. She said the four-year housing guarantee would reduce that stress.

“I do think it gives people a lot of security, especially people who again come from nontraditional backgrounds, people who may not have the funds or aren’t equipped or don’t have the time to do the whole apartment search,” Cheung said. “I think the four-year guarantee alleviates a lot of anxiety.”

Wang has found the overall experience straightforward. As part of a transfer class that

receives the two-year guarantee, Wang did not recall facing any problems renewing housing for a second year, even if it required extra effort to stay informed and aware of all the deadlines.

“I think that process is relatively easy for me because I’m a little bit older, and I’m also a parent, so I’m very good at time management,” Wang said. “So I applied as soon as it (housing application) opened, and I also joined a special transfer summer program.”

Wang also highlighted some of the amenities UCLA Housing provided, such as an afterschool clubhouse and a partnership with a nearby school tailored to the children of students. Angelis said UCLA Housing plans to further expand the amenities it offers, including more apartment options and a scaled-up dining program.

“The ideal goal going forward (will) be trying to find two bedroom apartment inventory and maybe apartment inventory that can be flexible between undergrads and grads over the years ahead,” Angelis said.

As the transfer class of 2024 walks across the graduation stage this spring quarter, they will become the first class of students to experience the guaranteed housing program for their entire student experience. They will also not be the last – UCLA plans to maintain this guarantee into the foreseeable future, as well as expand it to include all graduate students.

Robinson will be a member of that inaugural class. As he reflected on his experiences navigating the new program, he recognized the benefits of the program and remained optimistic about its future.

“I still give them (UCLA Housing) props,” Robinson said. “I’ve said a lot of negative stuff, but that’s only because I think there’s potential to do better.” ♦

PRIME | FALL 2023

35

36

The Secret Life of Westwood written by GABRIELLE SIEGEL photographed by MEGAN CAI designed by NHAN NGUYEN

LITTLE’S STORY Payton Smith was not expecting to adopt a kitten the night she met Little.

Lounging at home on an early October night in 2022, Smith, a fourth-year political science student, said she noticed a GroupMe message asking if anyone could watch a kitten. Thrilled with the prospect of playing with a kitten for a few hours, she recalled racing to the provided address.

“They’re holding a tiny, tiny kitten in this dirty rag,” Smith said. “They hand her to me and say, ‘Can you watch her for the night?’”

As soon as she saw the little bundle, Smith said, she immediately realized the kitten needed more than a babysitter.

“They had found her under a car in a parking garage on Gayley,” Smith said. “She was dirty and tiny and

PRIME | FALL 2023

37

“They’re holding a tiny, tiny kitten in this dirty rag. They hand her to me and say, ‘Can you watch her for the night?’”

malnourished – probably barely six weeks old.”

Despite having roommates that claimed to hate felines and have cat allergies, Smith recalled making an immediate decision to bring the kitten home.

After bathing the kitten with dish soap and serving up borrowed cat food from their neighbors, Smith and her roommates rushed the kitten to a 24-hour emergency veterinarian.

The kitten was soon given her name, Little, because of her tiny size that first night.

Smith said she did whatever it took to restore Little’s wavering health in the two months following her rescue.

38

“I was opening her mouth and shooting probiotics in her mouth every day. I was feeding her boiled chicken and pumpkin trying to get the diarrhea to stop and prescription cat food,” she said. “This cat was bougie as hell.”

Eventually, Smith said, Little’s health pulled through.

A year after her adoption, Little has become a beloved feature of the apartment, frequently found munching on deli turkey slices and chirping at birds from her hammock by the living room window.

“I think she’s outgoing and sassy but a big softy,” Smith said. “She’s a lover.”

YOGI’S STORY Yogi, a field golden retriever, was a natural service dog in training, according to Maya Siegel.

“We would go into dog-friendly areas, and he would want to work with me,” she said. “He wouldn’t want to just walk and sniff at things. He was looking at me, looking for commands, looking for something to do.”

Siegel, a third-year education and social transformation student, said she adopted Yogi in late July 2022 when he was just under eight weeks old. She began training him about four weeks later, drawing on her previous experience preparing service animals for training.

Siegel said she has a cardiac condition that some service dogs in training and dogs raised around owners with similar conditions can naturally alert to, and she was looking for a service dog for her own medical issues and disability.

Upon noticing signs of Yogi enjoying working as a service dog, she said they joined an owner training program accredited by Assistance Dogs International.

Despite some of the challenges of having a pet as a student, Siegel said she has enjoyed the experience of having a dog at UCLA. She said Yogi quickly grew accustomed to campus and now loves taking naps under her chair during class.

She added that students have been respectful of Yogi’s presence. She recalled a group of fraternity

members helped clear a path through their event on Bruin Walk for her and Yogi.

“It was really really, really nice to ... know that the vast majority of people aren’t going to interfere with him,” Siegel said.

Siegel added that she and Yogi have joined the owner training program at the National Institute of Canine Service and Training owner training program. Later this year, Yogi will further hone his medical service skills at a foster home for a few months, after which she and Yogi will graduate as an official service dog team. Following that graduation, Yogi will be her permanent service dog.

CHICKEN NUGGET’S STORY Janika Nevlida said it was a natural instinct to adopt a pet in Westwood. The third-year psychology student said she had grown up with dogs, cats, hamsters and fish in an animal-loving home, so she knew she wanted a pet for the upcoming school year.

Walking into a local pet store in Fresno, California, over the summer, a little brown guinea pig with a tuft of white hair atop his head immediately caught her eye, Nevlida said.

“We picked him because he has a little top hat

on his head – it looks special,” Nevlida said.

She said from that moment, she knew he was the furry friend she had been looking for.

“He’s just been kind of our mascot of this apartment.”

Chicken Nugget has developed a taste for carrots, which she and her roommates feed him by hand, Nevlida said.

She also noted that despite her efforts to comb the little white fluff on his head, it refuses to be tamed and has lent to his distinguished look.

“He’s just been kind of our mascot of this apartment, which has been nice to have around,” she said.

Chicken Nugget, as he was soon named, is a beloved guinea pig in her apartment, Nevlida said.

She said although his name was originally Chicken Strip, everyone called him Chicken Nugget, and the moniker stuck. She added that he has learned to recognize his name and squeaks whenever she and her roommates are nearby in the living room, overcoming his initial shyness.

Nevlida said she hoped to get Chicken Nugget a friend within the next year so he would not be lonely in her apartment. She added that she planned to name the next guinea pig Waffles, so together they would be Chicken and Waffles.

ASLAN’S STORY

There was a missing piece to Carrie Karchmer’s apartment last year. Despite her efforts to make her apartment in Westwood feel more familiar, she said she could never quite get past the sterile feeling it provided.

This year, she said, she was determined to find the elusive, final piece to make her place feel like home.

During a trip to a Los Angeles pet store, Karchmer found a vibrant, red-orange betta fish with flowing fins that fit the bill.

Karchmer, a fourth-year human biology and society student, said she and her roommate fell in love with him and knew he was the one immediately. She added that the day they brought the fish home, they spent the whole day hanging out with him and watching him swim.

Aslan’s name came from a childhood love for the “The Chronicles of Narnia” series, Karchmer said. She said his coloration and mane-like fins made him wellsuited to be named after the lion in the nostalgic film.

Karchmer added that she and her roommate bonded over watching the movies in their apartment the previous year.

“He’s just such a glorious-looking orange fish that Aslan made sense,” she said.

According to Karchmer, one of Aslan’s quirks is that he often plays dead. On one occasion soon after his adoption, she said, Aslan gave her roommate quite a scare

PRIME | FALL 2023

41

by floating in stillness in his tank. She added that when Aslan was still adjusting to his new home, he would get frazzled at the sight of his own reflection and try to fight himself through the glass. However, Karchmer said Aslan appears to be healthy, adding that he eats well and likes to swim around his tank.

Karchmer said that over the few weeks of living in her apartment this fall, Aslan seems to already have happily adjusted to life in Westwood. His bowl now resides on a bookshelf in the living room where everyone can always see him swim.

“He seems like a pretty happy dude, in my opinion,” she said. ♦

“He’s just such a glorious-looking orange fish that Aslan made sense.”

42

Nights on the Patio (App)

written by MATTHEW BEYMER AND SANJANA CHADIVE illustrated by JOY CHEN designed by EMILY TANG

D

iscovering Patio: Matthew

“iPhone storage full.”

I shuffle through pages of apps to find my next victim for dismissal. I’m a reluctant chief justice, judging each app for its value to my daily procedures.

I soon come across a familiar cobalt icon: Patio, a now defunct college networking app that I have no practical reason to keep.

But I cannot muster up the courage to delete it – the memories are too strong.

Founded in 2019 from a Palo Alto headquarters, the Patio app set out to form online communities exclusive to new students at participating universities. Freshmen at New York University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin and UCLA hopped onto Patio as soon as unofficial class of 2025 Instagram pages began promoting the platform. Nationwide lockdowns and desolate virtual schooling environments enhanced new students’ fascination with Patio. For some, myself included, Patio engendered a new feeling of community after high school friendships splintered.

Upon opening the app, users encountered a Tinder-esque interface paired with the functionality of Bumble For Friends. Patio then prompted students to choose from a cluster of interest labels to build their profiles and connect with other users. Labels spanned from hobby-focused identities such as “Musicians” to vaguer terms such as “LGBTQIA+ inclusion,” allowing new students to build personalized yet ambiguous digital identities.

Our Patio profiles prompted a desire to learn more about each other in a personable, real-time environment.

As UCLA’s classwide Patio group chat surged to nearly 2,000 members at its peak in the summer of 2021, we increasingly sought out synchronous activities to get a feel

for our fellow Bruins.

The world may never know who initially scheduled the first video call on Zoom.

Whoever that person was, they inadvertently created a hybrid community – a shuttle between the digital and the physical worlds of UCLA – just weeks after the class of 2025 received our March 19 acceptance letters.

We dedicated users soon found ourselves habitually summoned by the fervid force of the Patio chat to the Saturday Zoom calls, which sometimes lasted from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. PST. The allure of a good story brought our group back week after week. But nothing would ever truly match the excitement of the first evening.

The First Zoom Call: Sanjana

Twelfth grade was one of the toughest years of my life.

I was coming to terms with some toxic friendships and dealing with academic burnout – all in the middle of a pandemic. As the year progressed, I had developed a fondness for taking my Zoom meetings in the dark. No one would see my tear-stained cheeks or bloodshot eyes.

Despite being a very active member of Patio, I was debating whether or not to join that first Zoom call. I worried when interacting live with these strangers, I would come across differently from the online persona I had curated in the group chats.

Five minutes before the call officially started, I decided to hop on.

As the clock crept to 9:00 p.m. EST, students started rolling in. I recognized many of them from their Patio profiles – Matthew Beymer from California, Ellie Cohen from Texas and Oliver Strachan from Washington, to name a few. Before I knew it, almost 50 first-year Bruins were staring back at me.

Silence lingered, until one brave soul finally broke the ice by saying we should all reintroduce ourselves. One by one, we slowly stated our names and hometowns. The process took a while; however, it was the first time I had paid attention in a Zoom meeting since … last year?

Before long, our cookie cutter greetings devolved into casual conversations. We discussed everything from our missed proms and graduations to whether or not we would stick with our admitted majors. We also talked about why we joined the call. Strachan, now a third-year theater student, said he appreciated the warm energy of the people on Patio. Current third-year music education student Kobe Sanders said he was captivated by the idea of meeting more people within our year.

“The allure of a good story brought our group back week after week.”

I am not sure how it became 2 a.m. or when everyone peeled off the call, leaving only eight or nine of us stragglers. But I blinked and realized I’d spent all night on Patio.

In the more private setting of the witching hour, our conversation shifted to vulnerable musings on mental health. Beymer and others were especially critical of their high schools’ competitive cultures. That year, I had been struggling with my hometown friends’ reluctance to open up about this exact topic. Hearing other students, most of whom were thousands of miles away, talk about feeling burnt out was refreshing. I felt more connected to these virtual friends I had known for 10 days than my real-life classmates I had known for 10 years.

Reflecting on that night, Strachan also noted how the conversation satiated a desire for connection that we lacked during the pandemic.

“I think we were just craving … any shot we had to connect, especially with people who we don’t have any stakes with,” he said. “It was just a very open forum that I think was elevated by the fact that we were all seeking connection and maybe letting out some vulnerable parts of the crappiness of COVID.” When I finally logged off for the night, I was already wondering when I would talk to my Patio friends again.

Growing Closer: Matthew

The horde on that first Patio Zoom call soon shrank to the same core of usual suspects. Students peeled off the app as they committed to NYU or Northwestern over UCLA, and others simply grew bored of the app’s gimmicks.

The dwindling numbers on Zoom increased the group’s vulnerability. Conversations drifted from venting about the pressure of making final college decisions to intensely

debating religious beliefs in minute detail. I fondly remember slouching in my rolling chair and watching two of my soon-to-be fellow Bruins argue for nearly an hour over the presence of a higher deity. In that moment I truly realized the number of different viewpoints I would encounter at UCLA. The Patio posse also grew closer through developing a shared humor and style of grandiose storytelling. A 2 a.m. rant about working at a boba shop and a 4 a.m. chat about the deep lore of fanfiction built on one another to create a web of inside jokes and intricate backstories for our Patio friends. The hopes of one day meeting in person became increasingly tantalizing as social distancing protocols waned.

Growing Closer: Sanjana

Every Saturday, I would say goodnight to my parents, hop on Zoom at 9:00 p.m. and stay well into the morning hours.

Cohen, one of the most active Patio members and now a third-year public health student, said she felt that the late-night setting brought forth a special kind of bonding.

I completely agreed. Despite living in a later time zone out in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I was drawn to the Zoom because of the myriad personalities who joined each night and the antics we got up to.

No two calls were alike. One night, we trolled the prowling sugar daddies who messaged us college admits on Instagram, and the next we burned acceptance packages from UC Berkeley. Hina Malik, a current third-year labor studies and political science student who became active on Patio that summer, said her favorite memory was going on Omegle, a randomized video calling site, well into the night.

I personally loved playing party games such as “Quiplash” and “Trivia Murder Party” with my new friends. Everyone’s answers to the games’ prompts were so unhinged that I had to muffle my laughter to avoid waking my parents.

“I felt more connected to these virtual friends I had known for 10 days than my real life classmates I had known for 10 years.”

I also found that some of the most beautiful moments from Patio came from our shared camaraderie as UCLA students. Cohen recalled how during one of our first calls we watched the 2021 Final Four basketball game where the Bruins faced Gonzaga and lost. Even though most of us hadn’t even committed yet, the collective school pride we had is something she’ll never forget.

PRIME | FALL 2023

45

2026 joining, but nobody welcomed them with the same warmth of the Patio crew I once knew.

It was no surprise when the Patio app shut down April 6, 2023, after what became months of near radio silence.

Reflections: Sanjana

“Everyone on the call was like, ‘If they win, we’re going to commit,’” Cohen said. “I hadn’t even committed to UCLA – the bulk of college decisions hadn’t even come out yet. But in that moment, I was like, ‘These are my people.’”

In addition to supporting our sports teams, we also supported one another. Sanders said one of his fondest memories from the Zoom calls was listening to everyone inharmoniously sing “Happy Birthday” when a student turned 18 at midnight. People who’ve known each other for years often forget birthdays, yet we punctually gathered with our virtual congratulations without fail.

I had found a friend group at Patio. I was at ease knowing that I wouldn’t have to look for one upon moving in. At least, that was my hope. Who knew what would happen once the school year started?

Growing Apart: Matthew

When our first quarter began in fall 2021, the calls abruptly ended. Who would join a 12 hour Zoom call in the dorms when your virtual friends had materialized right there in person?

Slouching back in the same chair this past summer, I recognized the Patio crew’s unique trajectory. Instead of us meeting as friends in the analog world and growing apart in the digital world, as it usually goes, we met in the digital world and grew apart in the analog world. Our online connections would gradually dissipate once we stepped onto campus.

Yet, the Patio app persisted. New members joined every few days, looking for football game tickets, carpools to and from Los Angeles International Airport, GE course support or even new roommates. But nobody dared to spam the class group chat with unceasing conversations anymore – no more mental health deep dives or religious theorizing.

As my sophomore year began, I gradually realized my estrangement from the original Patio people and the app itself. My notifications buzzed with the news of the class of

46

After the app’s closure, some students stayed more in touch with their Patio peers than others.

Cohen befriended her freshman year roommate on the app and still lives with her two years later. Malik also met her roommate and her current boyfriend on those latenight Patio calls. Sanders is still close friends with six other students from Patio. Strachan and Beymer see each other almost every day as musical theater students.

I found a new group of friends in an organization I joined freshman year and lost touch with the Patio community. That’s not to say I have completely forgotten about them. We still say “hi” whenever we run into each other on campus and engage in the usual small talk about impending midterms, but we do not socialize as we once did.

After drifting apart, Beymer and I wound up in the same professional writing class sophomore year. While collaborating on projects together well into the night, the midnight atmosphere evoked our memories on Patio. I began wondering if I would rekindle similar friendships.

Even if I didn’t, I took comfort in the fact that I had my cherished memories. Cohen expressed a similar sentiment.

“It’s like summer camp,” Cohen said. “I have this group of friends who went through this whole experience, and even though our lives have diverged so drastically, I’m always going to root for these people.”

Reflections: Matthew

Identifying as a member of the Patio community is like a little secret I carry. I occasionally run into someone and we do a double take, realizing we were both once allured by the same fleeting digital force.

Patio was an integral part of my journey out of a disjointed virtual high school experience. Without Patio, I probably would not have met my amazing freshman year roommates, with whom I am still friends to this day. That’s why the app still remains accessible on my phone in 2023, even though I can only view my own frozen profile.

The next time I go on a mission to free up my phone storage, I am sure Patio will stay. I guess I’m not ready to give up on what’s technically already lost. ♦

STAFF

prime.dailybruin.com Kate Green [PRIME director] Martin Sevcik [PRIME content editor] Maya O’Kelly [PRIME art director] Iman Baber, Matthew Beymer, Sanjana Chadive, Sharlene Chen, Mallory Cooper, Lyah Fitzpatrick, Layth Handoush, Aditi Kumar, Katy Nicholas, Talia Sajor, Gabrielle Siegel [writers] Joseph Jimenez [photo editor] Myka Fromm, Brandon Morquecho, Julia Zhou [assistant photo editors] Megan Cai, Jeremy Chen, Ella Greenberg Winnick [photographers] Ashley Ko [illustrations director] Ko Carlos, Joy Chen, Alston Kao, Hao Tam Tran [illustrators] Helen Quach [design director] Tyler Cho, Lindsey Murto, Isabel Rubin-Saika, Mia Tavares [assistant design directors] Paco Bacalski, Nhan Nguyen, Maya O’Kelly, Jayanti Singla, Emily Tang, Mia Tavares, Vienna Vipond, Millie Walker [designers] Natalie Agnew and Kimmy Rice [copy chiefs] Nicole Augusta, Paco Bacalski, Antonio Bayucan, Emma Horio, Maya Parra, Gabrielle Siegel, Vaishnavi Vasishta [slot editors] Nicole Ju, Elaine Lin, Bryson Xiao, Matthew Yu, Tracy Zhao, Jiahe Yan [online editors] Richard Yang [PRIME website creator] Iman Baber, Alyssa Bardugon, Matthew Beymer, Alexa Cyr, Mallory Cooper, Layth Handoush, Katy Nicholas, Rachel Rothschild [PRIME staff ] Carlos Ramirez, Dylan Tzung, Emily Kim, Tea Shulga, Ella Kitt, Alicia Carhee, Davis Hoffman, Julian Dhoi, Jacqueline Jacobo, Julianne Le, Elinor Hough, Tulin Maltepe, Gwendolyn Lopez [PRIME contributors]

Isabelle Friedman [editor in chief ] Abi Siatkowski [managing editor] Emily Tang [digital managing editor] Jeremy Wildman [business manager] Abigail Goldman [editorial advisor] The Daily Bruin (ISSN 1080-5060) is published and copyrighted by the ASUCLA Communications Board. All rights are reserved. Reprinting of any material in this publication without the written permission of the Communications Board is strictly prohibited. The ASUCLA Communications Board fully supports the University of California’s policy on non-discrimination. The student media reserve the right to reject or modify advertising whose content discriminates on the basis of ancestry, color, national origin, race, religion, disability, age, sex or sexual orientation. The ASUCLA Communications Board has a media grievance procedure for resolving complaints against any of its publications. For a copy of the complete procedure, contact the publications office at 118 Kerckhoff Hall.

All inserts that are printed in the Daily Bruin are independently paid publications and do not reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the staff.

To request a reprint of any photo appearing in the Daily Bruin, contact the photo desk at 310-825-2828 or email photo@dailybruin.com.

PRIME | FALL 2023

47

Fast, free delivery and scary movies on a school night.

Try Prime Student. $0 for 6 months.