PRIME Fall 2021

Up Close & Personal Long lines, short staffed

by Kate Green

#President

by Megan Fu

PRIME | FALL 2021

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letter from the editors

Dear reader, Welcome back to UCLA, and thank you for picking up PRIME’s fall issue. After more than a year apart, Bruins are back in Westwood and eager to be close together again.

In this issue, we tell the stories of a changing campus. Bruinwalk, for instance, looks a little different than before COVID-19. Writer Megan Tagami explores how vending machines stocked with COVID-19 tests came to line the popular campus thoroughfare. Outside of campus and into Westwood, the long standing “progressive Chrisitian” community of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church is facing change with the arrival of Rev. Yein E. Kim – who happens to be only the second woman to lead the church in its 90-year history.

We also get up close and personal with Undergraduate Students Association Council president Breeze Velazquez. Writer Megan Fu sits down one-on-one with Velazquez for an honest discussion about everything from imposter syndrome to social media controversies.

Protests have shaken campus this fall as well. Several writers take a closer look at recent movements at UCLA, from lecturers fighting for fairer working conditions to dining hall employees speaking out against outsourcing and understaffing.

At PRIME, we aim to shine a light on the untold stories of our community. Thank you for picking up a copy of our magazine, and we hope you enjoy getting up close and personal with the many faces of UCLA.

Emily Dembinski PRIME art director

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Justin Huwe PRIME director

Abigail Siatkowski PRIME content editor

PRIME CONTENTS

FEATURE

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FALL 2021

CAMPUS

15 Anatomy of a flood written by JUSTIN HUWE

Tens of thousands of gallons of water, $2.7 million in damages and lots of angry professors. What do you know about the flood in Kaplan Hall?

5 Preaching progress

PROFILE

written by LAUREN CAMPBELL

on the cover photograph by ASHLEY KENNEY

“The church should be like 10 years ahead of the society but, in reality, we are like 20 years behind.”

SCIENCE

10 The story of the spit test written by MEGAN TAGAMI

Swipe. Scan. Spit. Since returning to campus, COVID-19 testing has become a regular part of Bruins’ lives. But how exactly did this technology come to be?

20 #President

written by MEGAN FU

Undergraduate Students Association Council president Breeze Velazquez has rocked the boat, from her brazen Twitter presence to her bold campus advocacy.

PRIME | FALL 2021

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PRIME CONTENTS |

FALL 2021

WORLD

34 Milk tea against tyranny written by RANIA SOETIRTO

Sweet and creamy, with a splash of revolution. Milk tea has transcended from a popular beverage to a symbol against authoritarianism.

CAMPUS

28 How lecturers live

written by KAITLIN BROWNE

Many lecturers face low pay and long commutes, all while having to reapply for their jobs each year.

32 Up Close:

Lecturers & loved ones written by BREANNA DIAZ

Lecturers often struggle to support themselves. When they have families, it gets even more complicated.

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40 Long lines, short staffed written by KATE GREEN

Bruins are back on campus – but is campus ready for them?

Hear from workers on the front lines as labor shortages impact UCLA’s award-winning dining halls.

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written by LAUREN CAMPBELL photographed by TONY MARTINEZ designed by SHIRLEY YAO

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Seated confidently at a grand desk before multicolored stained glass, her white clerical collar peeping through her long black cassock, Rev. Yein E. Kim felt refreshingly normal.

A

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lthough she is one of the mere 20% of women in the United States clergy, Kim seemed at home in her office at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church. She is only the second female reverend to serve at St. Alban’s, which was founded in 1931.

The church, nestled between the sorority houses on Hilgard Avenue, is closely connected with UCLA and its students – some of whom Kim preaches to at weekly Sunday services.

Six years after UCLA moved to Westwood, St. Alban’s was purposefully situated near the new campus in order to serve students. Almost a century later, the quaint Westwood church has far from forgotten its close kinship with the university.

At a time of widespread secularization, Kim said St. Alban’s hopes to focus on recruiting college students to join their church community. The reverend believes religious affiliation among college students has decreased because young people feel disillusioned by the more traditionalist culture that dominates Christianity.

According to the annual Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey, which tracks the views of incoming college students, the number of students who indicate a lack of religious affiliation has

increased from 10% in 1986 to 31% in 2016.

Although some may consider “progressive Christianity” an oxymoron, St. Alban’s congregation characterizes itself as just that.

On Halloween in 2019, St. Alban’s hosted a performance of “Rocky on Halloween: An Act III Horror Cabaret Show,” featuring students from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Naturally, the show included drag queens.

“The first time I heard it, I literally thought it was a joke when they told us that it was at the church,” said Lauren Stevens, a third-year theater student and performer in the show. “It wasn’t really mentioned until we were at rehearsal and they were like, ‘Oh, we’re doing this at a church by the way.’”

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It is the perfect juxtaposition to have two men grinding on each other right in front of the literal giant cross that hangs in the basement of St. Alban’s.

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The prospect of performing a show like “Rocky Horror” – known for its vulgarity – at the church came as a welcome shock to many of the show’s performers.

“It is the perfect juxtaposition to have two men grinding on each other right in front of the literal giant cross that hangs in the basement of St. Alban’s,” said fourth-year theater student Isabella Navarro.

Navarro, who performed in “Rocky Horror,” said that she sometimes feels her arts education is not prioritized by UCLA as much as other endeavors, like athletics.

“I love UCLA, but we all know the state of arts and arts education: It will never take priority, it will never be number one,” Navarro said.

St. Alban’s, however, was different. By the time it housed “Rocky Horror,” the church had been a known supporter of UCLA theater productions.

“But then there are places like St. Alban’s that open up their doors and let us have our fun and be creative,” Navarro added.

Struggling to fight back tears, she shakily described how the experience of performing at St. Alban’s struck a chord for her.

“To have rows of queer kids feeling safe in the basement of a church, that is a very special thing,” Navarro said.

According to Kim, the Episcopal Church is known for its tolerance. It remains one of the few denominations that allow the clergy to marry and that support women and members of the LGBTQ+ community joining the clergy, Kim said.

But that’s not to say that there aren’t ongoing debates about how progressive the church should be.

Kim felt a pull toward church leadership as she came to believe that was where she would have the most impact.

In 2014, she received her master’s of divinity at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And by June 2020, she was the new rector at St. Alban’s once its first female reverend retired.

As a young child in Korea, Kim never fathomed being a female member of the clergy – even growing up as the daughter of a priest.

“When I was growing up, there were no female priests,” Kim said. “It definitely wasn’t an option.”

As a young woman, the female church leaders Kim saw were often pushed into assistant roles and were certainly not rectors. She wasn’t exposed to many ordained women until she came to the United States, she said.

As she transitioned into her role, Kim was hyper-aware of how few people in church leadership looked like her.

She was keen not to take it for granted, and actively worked to represent her community in the hopes of

“

To have rows of queer kids feeling safe in the basement of a church, that is a very special thing.

”

Despite St. Alban’s support of UCLA arts and the queer community, Kim grew noticeably reserved when asked if the church would be willing to host shows like “Rocky Horror” in the future.

“I would be shocked if those shows were held here at this moment with my parishioners being here,” Kim said.

Although she believes the church is meant to serve the whole community, she needs to prioritize her parishioners.

“I was talking to my parishioners about how far can we go. At what point do we say, ‘This is not OK to do in the church?’ and the consensus was rather conservative,” she said.

Formerly a political science student at Korea University,

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normalizing women of color in church leadership.

“I said yes to everything – like every conference, every talk ... because if I wasn’t there, there would be no Asian female of color,” Kim said. “My goal is that a girl, (an) Asian girl, walks into the church, sees me preach and she doesn’t think that’s special.”

This openness to diversity is what originally drew UCLA alumnus John Hirning to St. Alban’s over two decades ago. Hirning was introduced to St. Alban’s at a Long Beach Pride event during his sophomore year of college, and he has since remained a faithful member of the congregation for the last 23 years.

“One of the things that attracts me to it is nobody is excluded,” Hirning said. “If you want to be a conservative person, you are welcome, if you want to be a liberal person, you are welcome. ... That sort of diversity has always been present at St. Alban’s.”

Back in 2008, Hirning experienced a defining moment during his time at St. Alban’s. At the time, gay rights weighed heavily on the nation’s conscience after California’s passage of Proposition 8. The constitutional amendment narrowly defined marriage as between a man and a woman, rejecting same-sex couples.

As California’s own progressiveness was called

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into question, St. Alban’s faced inner turmoil as the congregation deliberated over hosting a gay marriage at the church. A teary-eyed Hirning described an especially pivotal discussion he had with Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, former Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

“So we are having this conversation and, at one point, the bishop says something to the effect of, ‘If we’re not going to do gay marriages, if we’re going to tell these people that they are not welcome, ... we shouldn’t be in the business of doing straight marriages either,’” Hirning said.

Asked if there have been more gay weddings held at St. Alban’s since then, Hirning lit up.

“Absolutely, including my own!” he said.

Kim expressed that this is a tradition she intends to uphold as a reverend.

“I know that might not be true in many churches, but definitely this church and this denomination, definitely would not blink an eye in most cases like that, ” she said.

However, Kim acknowledged that, like many other churches, St. Alban’s is always trying to catch up.

“The church should be like 10 years ahead of the

The church should be like 10 years ahead of the society but, in reality, we are like 20 years behind.”

society but, in reality, we are like 20 years behind,” she said.

On one hand, St. Alban’s and the Episcopal Church as a whole have made strides in electing more female clergy members – including Kim. Between 1994 and 2017, the percentage of clergywomen in the Episcopal church tripled in size.

On the other hand, notable disparities remain.

For instance, Kim pointed to the gender pay gap that still plagues the church. According to the Church Pension Group, as of 2019, male clergy members in the Episcopal Church were paid $10,000 more on average than female clergy members.

Kim also said that St. Alban’s remains more than 90% caucasian, which doesn’t represent the broader Westwood community, including UCLA. But this disparity is something she hopes to change.

Although St. Alban’s has wavered in its relationship with the UCLA community in recent years, Kim said she has been working hard to turn that around.

“I think it just doesn’t make any sense for us to not engage since we are so close with the students,” Kim said.

Kim acknowledged that young students might feel alienated from the church because they believe that Christianity is in competition with their socially liberal perspectives. She hopes that by stressing the openness of her church, students might feel safe enough to come to St. Alban’s.

Awaiting such students at the entrance to the church is an eye-catching banner celebrating the arrival of Kim as the new priest.

“Welcome! Rev. Yein Esther Kim, St. Alban’s New Rector,” the sign reads.

The welcoming hand St. Alban’s has extended toward a young Korean American clergywoman mirrors Kim’s own mission to include the diverse members of the Westwood and UCLA community in her congregation.

“The biggest motto that the Episcopal Church uses is ‘(The) Episcopal Church welcomes you,’ and we really try to mean that,” Kim said. ♦

PRIME PRIME || FALL FALL 2021 2021

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The story of the

spit test written by MEGAN TAGAMI illustrated by BIONA HUI designed by KERI CHEN

PRIME | FALL 2021

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I swiped my BruinCard with the bar code facing toward me, then flipped it in the other direction. Standing on my toes, I struggled to get the vending machine to recognize my card, well aware of the line forming behind me. Finally, my dad stepped in.

With the push of a button, the machine finally spit out the coveted good – a COVID-19 testing kit.

Soon, the vending machine for COVID-19 selftesting kits outside of Pauley Pavilion became a weekly detour on my trips to campus, albeit with fewer attempts to swipe my BruinCard. My weekly access to two free testing kits rarely went unused as I religiously tested myself after attending everything from sporting events to theater performances.

After a few weeks, the self-testing process became muscle memory. I’d swipe my BruinCard and receive a plasticwrapped testing kit from the vending machine. Back in my apartment, I’d scan the bar code on the test tube to register my test before spitting into a plastic funnel to fill the plastic tube halfway. I’d then unwrap the free peppermint included in the kit, my reward for completing another self-test. On the way to class, I’d drop off my test tube in a collection bin and await a text message with

“

“When this whole (thing) first started, everyone was like, ‘No, you can’t test saliva.

It’s terrible,’” Kosuri said. “Turns out, it was better.”

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my results.

In fact, the spit self-test became so commonplace that it became hard for me to remember a time when COVID-19 tests were scarce, and people were discouraged from getting tested unless they were symptomatic.

So how exactly did UCLA go from having limited testing options to a seeming abundance of them?

UCLA’s COVID-19 vending machines were first introduced to campus in July, according to a university press release. Summer courses were still online and Westwood was relatively empty. By the end of September,

the machines began to play a central role in meeting the student demand for tests in the midst of traveling, moving in and participating in week zero festivities. Between Sept.

20 and 25 alone, UCLA processed over 28,000 COVID-19 tests, according to an emailed statement from Chaitali Mukherjee, the executive director of the UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center.

Although UCLA no longer requires vaccinated individuals to test weekly, the university incentivizes students to regularly get tested by providing a $2 credit on their BruinCards.

But there’s more to the vending machines than just spit tests and results. To better understand how UCLA went from testing very few students in winter last year to processing tens of thousands of COVID-19 tests a day now, I needed to go back to the start of the pandemic.

In March 2020, Valerie Arboleda saw two things: unused genetic sequencers in UCLA’s labs and a dire need for COVID-19 tests. Arboleda, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, said she recognized that in order to eventually reopen campus, asymptomatic individuals needed access to testing to minimize outbreaks.

While clinical labs and hospitals were overwhelmed with processing tests at the time, Arboleda saw the potential to develop

“

So how exactly did UCLA go from having limited testing options to a seeming abundance of them?

a new COVID-19 test – one that would later be stocked in campus vending machines under the name SwabSeq. Over 300 miles away in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sri Kosuri was doing some brainstorming of his own. Kosuri, the co-founder and CEO of the biotechnology company Octant, said he and a few other colleagues began working in Octant’s lab in March 2020 to see if they could use preexisting technology for measuring RNA to

determine the presence of COVID-19 in nasal samples.

By April, Kosuri, who is also currently on leave as an associate professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department, was working to develop a new COVID-19 test with Arboleda and other UCLA researchers whom he knew from his professorship.

During our conversation, Kosuri also brought up a discrepancy: Despite its name, the SwabSeq saliva tests in the vending machines use test tubes rather than nasal swabs. Although Kosuri and his colleagues initially used nasal swabs in earlier versions of the test, they pivoted to saliva out of necessity. Supply chains were backed up, and swabs were nearly impossible to purchase at the beginning of the pandemic, Kosuri said.

The technology was named early on in the development process, Kosuri said. He and his colleagues at Octant thought the name SwabSeq was a humorous reference to pirates and how they “swab the deck” – and it stuck.

Creating the SwabSeq saliva tests was relatively simple,

only was it easier to decontaminate positive samples, but it also allowed for a cheaper processing of tests.

“When this whole (thing) first started, everyone was like, ‘No, you can’t test saliva.

It’s terrible,’” Kosuri said. “Turns out, it was better.”

By April, while the rest of the nation was facing a testing shortage, the research team already had preliminary data supporting SwabSeq’s efficacy.

“We had been building this thing at Octant and knew it was working,” Kosuri said. “We knew you could do it with a small group of people, and we didn’t need these huge labor pools that a lot of the other tests needed.”

Over 1 1/2 years later, SwabSeq’s operations on the eighth floor of the Center for the Health Sciences remain minimal. While UCLA processes up to 20,000 tests a day, only 10 to 15 staff members work in the lab, Arboleda said. Much of SwabSeq’s testing process, such as uncapping individual test tubes, can be done through automation, Arboleda added.

The low levels of labor required by SwabSeq as well as the genetic sequencers’ ability to process thousands of samples at a time later enabled UCLA to scale-up its testing efforts at a low cost, Eskin added.

While the technology behind the test was developed relatively quickly, researchers still faced challenges

“

“You’re told on stuff like this, ‘This will never work, leave it to professionals,’” Kosuri said. “It was really fulfilling to see that ... you can actually make a difference.”

said Eleazar Eskin, chair of the computational medicine department. The technology adds unique molecular bar codes to students’ saliva samples. Samples are then mixed together in large batches, which allows researchers to run multiple samples under a genetic sequencer to identify traces of the COVID-19 virus, Eskin said. Because each sample has its own molecular bar code, labs can trace back results to individual test-takers, Eskin added.

At the time of SwabSeq’s development, researchers were unsure if saliva analysis was a viable method for COVID-19 testing, Kosuri said. However, he and his fellow researchers soon found that using saliva had several benefits: Not

navigating the pandemic’s impact on production lines and laboratories. Eskin and Kosuri, for example, found themselves scrambling to order a million funnels and borrowing a testing machine from a nearby facility in the dark of the night.

At the same time, there were uncertainties about how the team would implement SwabSeq at UCLA and beyond.

In fall 2020, Arboleda was unsure which universities would use SwabSeq. UCLA received its current testing supply from a different vendor, and UC Santa Barbara was actually the main consumer of the SwabSeq product.

Arboleda added it was not until December that the UCLA

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Health workers finally began using SwabSeq Saliva Tests – eight months after the tests were developed on campus.

The vending machines UCLA students have come to know well were still not in existence yet.

It was not until this summer that the vending machines arrived on campus. According to Mukherjee, UCLA drew inspiration from UC San Diego, which was the first University of California school to move on-campus testing

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“It just seemed really complicated before, but the vending machines definitely make it easier.” efforts to vending machines in January.

The transition to vending machines did not come without its challenges, Mukherjee said.

I gasped in surprise when I learned the peppermints I had come to enjoy after taking the COVID-19 tests were not meant as a sweet treat for students but were instead intended to increase the kits’ weights and help them properly dispense from the machines.

Of course, I was not the only one making use of the COVID-19 tests and complimentary mints. As the school year continued, many students came to regularly rely on the vending machines as well.

Giana Wang, a fourth-year psychology student, said she tests twice a week as part of an agreement with her roommate. Because she strongly dislikes using nasal swabs, Wang said she appreciates being able to test her saliva instead.

Charlotte Levittan, a third-year psychology student, said she tests three times a week in order to participate in the UCLA Chorale, a biweekly in-person course at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. She added that the machines are a convenient way to fulfill her weekly testing requirements.

“Before (UCLA) had the vending machines, if I wanted to get a test, I’d have to maybe drive somewhere, figure it out through the Ashe Center,” Levittan said. “It just seemed really complicated before, but the vending machines definitely make it easier.”

However, Levittan wishes the university had included more vending machines on campus, as she sometimes has to walk out of her way to secure a test.

While the machines generally make testing more accessible, they also create some challenges, Arboleda said. In the medical field, there are always extra checks to ensure the accuracy of procedures. With the vending machines, this extra layer of precision is

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lost, Arboleda said. Individuals do not always take the test correctly, sometimes neglecting to fill up the test tubes with a sufficient amount of saliva.

Test-takers are also liable to incorrectly input the bar code numbers of their test tubes into the registration website, later preventing lab workers from matching test results back to individuals – including positive ones.

But Arboleda said this level of error is the cost of providing widespread testing.

While the vending machines will never reach the landmark status of Royce Hall or Powell Library, it is likely they will remain a fixture on campus for a while.

Kosuri said he believes surveillance testing is the only way to help campuses return to normalcy for now as navigating the COVID-19 pandemic becomes a part of daily life. He added that although the early months of the pandemic required hard work from him and his colleagues, he is proud to see how their efforts have played out.

“It was one of these things that a small group of people can actually go do. ... You’re told on stuff like this, ‘This will never work, leave it to professionals,’” Kosuri said. “It was really fulfilling to see that ... you can actually make a difference.”

As for me, I now have a greater appreciation for small, plastic funnels, individually wrapped mints and vending machines. Whenever I correctly swipe my BruinCard to receive another testing kit, I can’t help but take some pride in knowing the story of the spit test. ♦

ANATO M Y OF A FLOO D written by JUSTIN HUWE photo illustration by CHELSEA WESTMAN & ASHLEY KENNEY designed by EMILY TANG

C

onfused and panicked, Jeremy Kelley was short on options.

“I started going through the bathrooms and just grabbing paper towels and trying to create a little bit of a barricade to keep it from going further down the hall,” said Kelley, an associate director and lecturer in Writing Programs.

But he wasn’t trying to clean up a spilled drink, or perhaps even a leaking fish tank. Instead, water was cascading down the stairs outside his office in Kaplan Hall, flooding the floor.

“The water started to increase and increase and increase, and before we knew it, we had a waterfall in the stairwell.”

Only moments before, the quiet Friday evening in Kaplan Hall had been interrupted by the sound of flowing water.

The noise sounded like an overflowing sink, Kelley said, but it soon became apparent that the problem was much more severe.

“The water started to increase and increase and increase, and before we knew it, we had a waterfall in the stairwell,” he said.

Kelley and his colleagues sprang into action, calling the university’s 24-hour Facilities Management hotline and trying to make sense of the chaotic situation around them.

Christine Holten, the director of Writing Programs and the UCLA Undergraduate Writing Center, quickly ran down to the basement of Kaplan Hall to check on the center.

Large puddles had already started forming in the hallway, and water had even started to seep in through the ceiling tiles above her, she said.

“I just grabbed all my stuff and unplugged all the computers because I didn’t want any electrical fires or anything to happen,” she added.

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Soon, both UCLA Fire and Facilities Management were at the scene, clearing everyone out of the building. Faculty and staff began gathering outside Kaplan Hall in the dark, watching the water flow down the front steps. Many people’s personal belongings were still in the building, becoming more soaked by the minute.

The full impact of the flood quickly became clear: Approximately 60% of the rooms in the building were damaged, said Kelly Schmader, the assistant vice chancellor of Facilities Management. That’s a total of 129 rooms – and everything in them, from the walls to the carpets to professors’ personal books, was drenched.

But something curious happened after the flood: Despite the extent of the damage, the flood went largely unnoticed by many in the UCLA community, Kelley said. Although the flood greatly inconvenienced those in Kaplan Hall, he felt that few people outside of the building’s community heard about the incident. In fact, the Daily Bruin published a grand total of one news article about the flood and UCLA Newsroom published none.

“This was very localized,” Kelley explained. “But I think that if you’re the one who’s affected, you’re kind of like, ‘I wish people were talking about this.’”

So let’s talk about it – let’s talk about the flood in Kaplan

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Hall.

The flood in Kaplan Hall happened Feb. 7, 2020 – more than 1 1/2 years ago. Nurit Katz, the former executive officer of Facilities Management, told the Daily Bruin in February 2020 that the flood began between 5 and 6 p.m.

Following the incident, Facilities Management determined that a type of pipe connector called a Victaulic coupling failed on the third floor of Kaplan Hall. This disconnected a chilled waterline, which is used for air conditioning, and caused tens of thousands of gallons of water to flow through the building, Schmader said.

“Anytime you have a flood in a building like this, the key question is, ‘What floor did it occur on?’” he added.

Because the flood in Kaplan Hall occurred on the third and uppermost floor, the water flowed down throughout the building via stairways, ceilings and walls. Consequently, all three aboveground floors, as well as the basement, sustained fairly equal amounts of damage from the flood, Schmader said.

As water rushed through Kaplan Hall, multiple faculty members were shocked by how long it took for help to arrive and shut off the water, Kelley said.

“I remember us thinking, ‘This is water coming down this building; this is something that someone should have jumped up and responded to immediately,’” he added.

According to Schmader, he was initially notified about the flood at 6:17 p.m. and Facilities Management secured the water in approximately 45 minutes. So what might have caused the delay?

One reason might have been the timing of the flood.

According to Schmader, the flood happened after Facilities Management’s day shift staff had already gone home for the night, leaving only a “swing shift” on campus. After emergency calls started coming into the university’s 24hour hotline, staff from the hotline had to locate personnel who were still on campus to respond to the disaster.

Another reason for the delay could be the structure of the chilled water system. The chilled water system is a loop

The total cost of repairing the damage was more than $2.7 million. of piping that brings water from building to building on campus, which means isolating a building and shutting off the water flow can be challenging, Schmader said. Thus, the waterline responsible for the flood was able to pump tens of thousands of gallons of water into Kaplan Hall while shocked faculty and staff were left helplessly watching.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the total cost of repairing the damage was more than $2.7 million, Schmader said.

UCLA ultimately paid only the $100,000 maximum deductible per their insurance program, said Neil Berkovits, a General Liability Risk Administrator at the UCLA Office of Insurance and Risk Management, in a written statement.

However, hitting the deductible cap in fact highlights the severity of the Kaplan flood.

Compared to other floods on campus, the incident in Kaplan Hall was relatively large, Schmader said.

“When a Victaulic coupling fails, it’s a catastrophic thing,” he said.

Indeed, the repairs were extensive: Stained and broken ceiling tiles had to be replaced, as did wet light fixtures and flooring that had become warped from water exposure. The bottom 1 1/2 feet of drywall had to be cut from multiple walls, Schmader said, and large fans were brought into the building to remove remaining moisture in the walls and prevent molding.

Along with the drywall, carpeting in the building had to be replaced, but Kelley said this was actually one “shining light” of the flood because the carpets were a stifling dark green color he did not personally enjoy.

Although Kaplan Hall did not suffer structural damage, Schmader said the flood severely impacted electronic equipment in the building. Water broke printers and computers, and the fire alarm system became so wet that it went temporarily offline.

Server rooms were also not spared from the flood, meaning that expensive computer equipment suffered damages. Consequently, the internet connection in Kaplan Hall was impacted by the flood.

Many professors lost personal books in the flood as well. Because Kaplan Hall houses mainly humanities departments, much of the research conducted involves books and paper manuscripts, which are especially vulnerable to water damage. In particular, professors in the English department were heavily impacted, Holten said.

“A lot of English professors, especially English professors of a certain generation, view their books as their friends,” she said. “It would be like having a friend drown or something.”

In the immediate aftermath of the flood, Facilities Management moved faculty members’ belongings away from the walls and into the centers of their offices, allowing professors to sort through their possessions while workers repaired the walls.

However, Kelley took issue with Facilities Management’s treatment of his books – or as Holten would say, his “friends.”

“They took a lot of the wet books and put them in a plastic bag. And I think that that was probably the worst thing that they could have done, because it made mold start growing inside of it,” he said. “And within a few days, those

books looked black. And so we had to get rid of all of them quickly.”

On the second floor of Kaplan Hall, the Grace M. Hunt Memorial English Reading Room was devastated by the flood as well. The ERR is a library run by the English department containing 35,000 books and periodical volumes, which were particularly susceptible to water damage.

According to a UCLA Library Instagram post, roughly 7% of the ERR’s collection was lost. In the aftermath of the flood,

attempts were made to rescue the damaged books by using dehumidifiers. A third-party contractor was called in to help given the sheer magnitude of the damage, and they moved some of the collection to an offsite location. Ultimately, the books were returned later that summer when the repairs in the ERR were fully completed.

ERR librarian Lynda Tolly was not immediately available for comment, and no other representative from the ERR responded to requests for comment.

Given the slew of damages, the UCLA Registrar’s Office needed to quickly arrange new classrooms in other buildings for the students with Monday morning classes in Kaplan Hall. While faculty waited for their offices to be repaired,

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many had to find short-term places to continue their daily work. Some started sharing offices with colleagues who were less affected by the flood and utilized foldable tables to do work. Professors were even given the option to temporarily do work in UCLA library spaces, Schmader said.

But before faculty and staff returned to the building,

many wanted to be reassured that it was safe to enter. They were concerned about mold, air quality and structural damage to the building, Schmader said.

In order to address these concerns, Schmader facilitated a town hall meeting five days after the flood. At the meeting, faculty and staff were understandably frustrated, he said.

“There was no way I could tell you that I was talking to a bunch of happy campers,” he said.

Holten described her colleagues’ attitude after the flood more bluntly.

“Oh gosh, they were mad,” she said. “Emotionally, they were not happy about it.”

At the meeting, industrial hygienists from the UCLA Office of Environment, Health & Safety spoke to concerned community members about the kinds of testing that would be performed in Kaplan Hall to ensure the building was safe.

The meeting helped assuage some concerns, Schmader said, and in the days and weeks after the flood, he and his team

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earned praise for their response to the incident.

From early February to late April, more than 100 personnel from Facilities Management and an unknown number of third-party contractors worked on the repairs.

Schmader said the COVID-19 pandemic caused the repair process to drag on because the Facilities Management workforce dropped to only 35% to 40% of its usual size after the pandemic hit in mid-March.

As Facilities Management was hard at work making repairs, the insurance process also began in earnest.

Although UCLA’s insurance policy covered all damage to university property, damage to professors’ personal belongings was not covered, said Assistant Dean of Humanities Reem Hanna-Harwell. After attempting to file a third-party insurance claim, the university was unable to get lost personal belongings covered. Instead, Dean of Humanities David Schaberg used money from his discretionary fund – which typically allows him to give faculty research funding – to cover the damage to professors’ personal property, HannaHarwell explained.

Kelley, for example, lost thousands of

For Kelley, a major question remains: “Why are we not maintaing these pipes a little bit better?” dollars in books because of the flood, which he applied to get covered through the discretionary fund, he said.

Throughout the aftermath of the flood, multiple sources said they worked with Chief Administrative Officer Laura Clennon, who functions as the building coordinator for Kaplan Hall alongside Chief Administrative Officer Diane Ohkawahira. Both CAOs communicated with faculty and staff throughout the crisis and were also involved with the insurance process, Hanna-Harwell said.

According to Schmader, they were particularly helpful throughout the recovery period after the flood. Although multiple sources recommended interviewing Clennon and Ohkawahira for this story, the former declined to comment and the latter did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite the extended period of time since the flood occurred, some were still feeling its repercussions more than a year and a half later. In August, Kelley was still awaiting compensation for the books he lost – although he partly attributes the delay to distractions he faced from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over in the ERR, the insurance process was also ongoing. According to the Office of Insurance and Risk Management, staff were still processing the claim associated with repairing and replacing the large number of damaged books, Schmader said in August. This means that, more than a year and a half after the flood, a final assessment on the cost had not been reached yet, and the $2.7 million total that Schmader provided may have grown.

For Kelley, a major question remains: “Why are we not maintaining these pipes a little bit better?”

Schmader admitted that this is a fair question. But he said there was never any reason to worry about the university’s Victaulic couplings before the Kaplan flood.

“We had never – knock on wood – had a Victaulic coupling failure in the 30 years that our chief engineer had worked at UCLA,” he said. “None of us could remember ever having one of these couplers fail, so there was no way to predict this.”

Accessing a Victaulic coupling to inspect it is also a tedious and expensive process. The coupling is covered with a layer of insulation, Schmader said, and can only be inspected once the insulation is stripped off. Removing and replacing the insulation can cost up to $1500, Schmader added.

But Kelley thinks spending money on regular pipe upkeep is a worthwhile investment.

“The money that it probably costs to repair all of this stuff probably far outweighs the money that it would cost to maintain the pipes,” he said.

After the flood, Schmader said he and his team decided to inspect the Victaulic couplings in the area around the one that failed. Ultimately, their inspection found that multiple bolts were partially corroded.

In response to this discovery, Schmader’s team replaced the corroded bolts with stainless steel ones in order to prevent further breakages. Small water leak detectors were also installed in the building, he said, so that Facilities Management would be digitally notified of any future floods and could respond to them more quickly.

Hopefully, these measures will be enough to stop further floods from happening – or at least dampen their impact – on campus.

But Holten joked that she remains less optimistic about the possibility of another disaster, especially in light of the past year with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m waiting for the locusts now,” she said. “Since disasters come in threes.” ♦ Flood damage photos courtesy of Yadira Marquez.

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#Pre 20

F

reezing in my blazer, I anxiously waited for Undergraduate Students Association Council president Breeze Velazquez to meet me at the tables outside her office in Kerckhoff Hall. The image of a steely, intimidating commander in chief loomed in my mind.

Then she arrived.

Velazquez excitedly greeted me, adorned in a velour track jacket and matching red high top sneakers.

“Cute fit,” I thought, before shaking her hand.

Watching her fidget with her jacket zipper, I realized she was just as nervous as me. My apprehension and preconceived notions soon faded. I stifled a laugh as she tucked her hair behind her ears like Debby Ryan in “Radio Rebel” and spoke with the Gen Z TikTok vocabulary I knew all too well.

Now warmed by her sunny disposition, I asked her to start at the very beginning: the night she won the presidency.

It was a chilly Friday night – May 7, to be exact.

Sitting on the porch with her mom back home in La Puente, California, she restlessly awaited the spring 2021 Undergraduate Students Association Council election results. Months of tireless campaigning had led up to this moment.

Instead of her phone, Velazquez held a steaming cup of Mexican coffee her mom had just brewed. Plagued by nerves and the emotional toll of the campaign, she didn’t have it in her to watch the live results.

“I prayed – you’re going to win,” her mom said to reassure her.

“Yo no pienso,” Velazquez replied – “I don’t think so.”

But after hours of waiting, her chiefs of staff called to

relay the news: she’d won.

Velazquez recalled what her mom said after she heard the outcome.

“She was like, ‘Your grandpa always envisioned that one of his grandkids would have the opportunity to go to college, and you’re really going to be the president of UCLA,” Velazquez said. “‘He’s so proud of you. He’s looking down on you tonight.’”

Tears streamed from her eyes as she recalled the sentimental moment – and I couldn’t help but feel my eyes well up too. Hearing the tremor in her voice, I was touched by her vulnerability.

“More than just being president, I feel like it’s just very beautiful for me to set that example for my nieces and nephews and really show other students that something like that is possible,” she said.

In her work as president, the fourth-year Chicana and Chicano studies and public affairs student heads the ship of 14 other elected student officers, working closely with them to make policies that affect the entire student body. She prioritizes taking individual student issues and advocating for them on a larger scale.

As a low-income student of color, she said she centers her platform around helping students from similar backgrounds. She added that she sympathizes with fulltime student workers as somebody who’s been juggling jobs with classes since high school.

Having personally listened to students’ stories, Velazquez said she aims to bridge the gap between students and the resources available to them.

“A lot of those passions and wants for the improvement of students of color at this university (are on) the basis that the university doesn’t do enough,” she said.

esident written by MEGAN FU photographed by ASHLEY KENNEY designed by ARCHIE DATTA PRIME | FALL 2021

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“Your grandpa always envisioned that one of his grandkids would have the opportunity to go to college, and you're really going to be the president of UCLA.”

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As part of her efforts, Velazquez advocates for student workers accused of academic dishonesty because she understands how the compounded stress of financial responsibilities and academic deadlines might lead someone to cheat, she said.

So far, she has helped establish the six-member Student Advocate Board but aims to fully implement an office that assists students accused of cheating at the university. Such an office, she explained, would inform students of their resources and let them know how to avoid suspension.

Unafraid to wield her power and connections, Velazquez often helps students access support systems in other ways as well.

Recently, one of her friends who works full time was dropped from all her classes because she was unable to submit paperwork to the Financial Aid Office, Velazquez said. After her friend contacted the office and received no response, Velazquez stepped in to get her connected immediately.

“There’s so many students out there who ... don’t know where their resources are,” she said. “I definitely want to use my platform to ... guarantee that as many students that reach out to me, I’m able to assist them.”

On top of the USAC presidency, Velazquez balances a 30hour workweek as a programming intern and a tutoring gig on the side. Sometimes, her days start at 6 a.m. and don’t end until 10 p.m. An early morning shift at work is followed by six hours of classes, and then she finishes off her night with seven hours of meetings.

The heavy workload can take its toll, she said. But Velazquez is no stranger to hard work.

Growing up in a single-parent household, she and her older siblings held jobs to support themselves and their mother. First employed at 16, she said work has become second nature. Velazquez recalled a particularly stressful time when her Subway manager consistently scheduled her to work 30 hours a week during college application season.

But Velazquez credits her mom for bestowing her with the resilience and headstrong nature needed to preside over USAC while handling her other responsibilities.

“My mom didn’t have access to an education, but she’s such an intelligent woman, and she was really wellinformed and always taught me right from wrong,” she said.

Velazquez never imagined she’d be USAC president when she started at UCLA, she said. As a first-generation student, she struggled to navigate the transition from high school to college and experienced intense imposter syndrome.

When applying to colleges, she searched online for the average GPA of students admitted to UCLA. Her own GPA fell to the bottom of the distribution, and she worried she had no chance of getting in. Even after opening her acceptance letter, she said there was still a long journey ahead before she finally started to feel like she belonged.

Pointing to the Kerckhoff steps next to us, she recalled how, during her orientation week, she wwhad sobbed on the phone with her mom while sitting on those very stairs. While in a discussion group, Velazquez explained,

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she quickly began to feel out of place as she listened to her male classmates boast about their high school accomplishments.

“They were sharing AP exam scores, ... and I was like, ‘Fuck, I’m so dumb,’” she said. “I never scored nearly as high as any of them on any of these exams, and I remember that I felt really overwhelmed.”

Such feelings continued to weigh on her. During her second quarter on campus, she came close to dropping out.

“I just couldn’t figure it out at all, and I just felt like I was

“The campaign was hard for me to witness as her friend, as her big, just as someone who loves her so much,” said the fourth-year labor studies and political science student.

“Because campaigns do get kind of ugly, in a way that I honestly never knew was possible.”

While Rivera acknowledged that students are entitled to their opinions, she felt they were attacking Velazquez’s character rather than her platform.

“I remember reading something, feeling like, ‘That seemed like coded language to me,’” Rivera said. “Would you be saying this if Breeze wasn’t a first-gen Latina

“I just felt like I was navigating this university completely alone.”

navigating this university completely alone,” she said.

It was only when she leaned on her support system of female mentors – or “femtors,” as she calls them – that Velazquez was able to find her footing. Since finishing her first year, she has consistently earned high marks in her classes, she said.

Although Velazquez now feels she belongs at UCLA, her run for president was not free of criticism.

Anonymous internet users have mocked the sound of Velazquez’s voice and claimed she had nothing substantial to say. Some have also taken issue with Velazquez’s “radical” political affiliations as part of the For The People slate.

Jazmin Rivera, Velazquez’s sorority sister in Lambda Theta Nu, recalled the emotional and physical toll the campaign process took on Velazquez. Because the entire process was held online, Rivera said people on Reddit and other platforms were quick to judge Velazquez.

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woman trying to hold this office?”

Grappling with the criticism, Velazquez weighed her options: either end her bid for presidency or work through the negativity and run a “badass campaign.”

She chose the latter.

Former USAC President Naomi Riley has helped Velazquez weather the criticism. The two worked together in the 2020-2021 school year during Riley’s presidency and Velazquez’s time as academic affairs commissioner. Riley is no stranger to judgment herself, she said, so she took Velazquez under her wing.

“It always comes back to just reminding yourself ... that you were elected to serve 30,000 people at one of the largest public schools in the nation,” Riley said. “The naysayers and the people who tell you that you don’t belong there kind of don’t matter.”

Velazquez credits watching Riley, also a woman of color, take on the role with much tenacity as a source of

motivation. Serving as Riley’s chief of staff during Riley’s time as academic affairs commissioner, Velazquez was able to watch her thrive in a space dominated by men and apply that experience to her own time in office, she said.

“Even in my role as president, sometimes men who are in my office will mansplain things to me and I’m like, ‘Sir, you don’t think I know this?’” Velazquez said.

Criticism of Velazquez has also extended into her time in office – her unfiltered social media presence has come particularly under fire.

Admitting she does not adopt the most “presidential” persona, she has been open about drug use, politics and criticism of UCLA on her online platforms – especially Twitter.

Refusing to subscribe to the inauthentic, squeaky clean image of a typical politician, her tweets are candid, brazen and unapologetically herself.

Some days, she’s calling out the men in her life.

“Mans has the whole audacity to tell me I was not girlfriend material… sir I’m literally student body president.”

Other days, she chooses to challenge the university

directly.

“The fact that this school continues to accuse students of academic dishonesty and is tarnishing the records of so many that are going through so much crap on the side is heartbreaking.”

And occasionally, she’s open about her mental health.

“Instead of running for student body president I should have gone to therapy instead.”

While Velazquez’s transparency online grants students a glimpse into her life outside the presidency, Associated Students UCLA and her chiefs of staff have often asked her to reconsider what she shares on Twitter.

“Some conflicts happened right when I came into office,” she said. “But I feel like since then, they’ve kind of seen that I’m still going to tweet what I want to tweet.”

Given her outspoken social media presence and bubbly personality, I was surprised to hear that Velazquez considers herself an introvert. “I always have found peace and comfort in being alone. … My social battery runs out a lot of days, and by the time I get back (home), I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want anyone to look at me,” she said while laughing.

“Velazquez weighed her options: either end her bid for president or work through the negativity and run a ‘badass campaign.’”

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When in public, Velazquez said she actively avoids disclosing her position and has told her friends to do the same unless she’s already been recognized. She prioritizes separating her identity from her role as president and maintaining a work-life balance.

“When I arrive (at) social functions, sometimes people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, the president’s here,’ and it’s always super overwhelming” she said. “Sometimes I could be having a bad day, but I’m going to smile, I’m going to act happy because I don’t want people to say, ‘I met the president; she’s a bitch.’”

Fidgeting with the cord of her earphones, she revealed she might not have run for president if the campaign process had been held in person. Although virtual canvassing presented its own set of challenges, Velazquez found the confidence to speak to people from the safety blanket Zoom provided.

“I feel like imposter syndrome had a lot to do with, a lot of the time, me not speaking up or not vocalizing what I wanted, or feeling very insecure at this university,” she said. “The only good thing Zoom did for me is building up that confidence, where I could see myself as more than just this little timid, shy girl.”

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Despite her social anxiety and the pressures of the presidency, Velazquez said she perseveres with the strength of her support system – from Riley and Rivera to her mom back home in La Puente. Hoping to have a lasting impact once she graduates, she wants to pass the torch on to future first-generation students and students of color at UCLA. “Having been in this role has opened so many doors of opportunity for me, and I really want every student of color to have those same resources and to feel like they’re empowered at this university, even though it’s hard,” she said.

Glancing at the time on my phone, I was shocked we had already exceeded the hour we had agreed to meet. I quickly thanked Velazquez and extended my freezing hand out to her.

Instead, she stood up to give me a hug. I was surprised – not by the kind gesture, but by the fact that I towered over her.

“Oh my God, I didn’t think I’d be taller than you,” I found my 5-foot-2 self saying.

“Yeah people don’t expect the president to be 4’11,” she said with a laugh. ♦

SHOUTING THE SAME MESSAGE From rallies for lecturers’ rights to protests against outsourcing, many Bruins are shouting the same message: change. Explore some recent movements on campus in this PRIME special feature.

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HOW

LECTURERS LIVE written by KAITLIN BROWNE photographed by GRACE WILSON and NINA MORASKY graphic by LINDSEY PARUNGO designed by EMMA COTTER

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PRIME editor’s note: On Nov. 17, the University of California and the lecturers’ union came to a tentative agreement after years of negotiating new salaries and job security provisions.

Multiple sources were interviewed for this story prior to the new resolution, which will be fully implemented by the 20222023 school year.

I

nstead of spending his weekend relaxing, Cody Trojan was applying to jobs.

After attending his daughter’s soccer practice, Trojan was finishing up a cover letter to Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, over 2,600 miles away from his current job at UCLA. Trojan has been a political science lecturer at UCLA for two years. Because his contract expires every year, he must always have a backup plan. He is swallowed by a sense of constant uncertainty about finding stable employment, so he spends his free time applying for jobs. Each job application requires about 100 pages of documents – almost all unique to every listing, Trojan said.

Lecturers are also frequently hired only part-time, Trojan said, which adds to the general instability of the job. Many students take classes taught by lecturers because lecturers primarily teach undergraduate lower-division courses.

Professors, on the other hand, are tenure-track faculty, meaning they have greater job security and greater access to benefits, like health care and full retirement plans.

Professors teach more upper-division courses, which are often smaller in size. Much of their work with the University, however, is associated with research.

According to the UC accountability report, about one in every five UC faculty members is a lecturer, and since 2011, lecturer hirings have increased by 41%. In 2020, UCLA employed 481 lecturers and 1,842 full-time tenure-track professors.

A Daily Bruin analysis of 2020 UC payroll data revealed that the average salary for lecturers at UCLA was $40,309, which stands in stark contrast to the $241,931 that tenured professors earned that year. According to the United States Department of Commerce, the per capita personal income in Los Angeles County was $65,094 in 2019.

Job instability and low pay mean that many lecturers, like Trojan, have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. In addition to teaching at UCLA, Trojan also lectures at Cal Poly Pomona. He wakes up early to beat traffic for his 7 a.m. class in Pomona, California, and once his class is over, he rushes to make it to his 12:30 p.m. class at UCLA, more than 40 miles away.

Trojan’s position at Cal Poly Pomona gives him a little more job security than his job at UCLA because the university has a basis of evaluation for rehiring lecturers, unlike the UC system. Still, Trojan commutes to work in hopes that he can one day find a more stable job to provide

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for his daughter.

Having and supporting a family is another obstacle for lecturers, Trojan said.

“If one wanted to defend the system, one would need to admit that you’re just not allowed to have children or families because it makes you a bad parent to be moving around all the time (and) constantly uprooting your family,” Trojan said.

Between teaching, Trojan also has to make time for grading, reading texts for class, preparing lectures and responding to his flooded email inbox. Letters of recommendation and mentoring students are also forms of unpaid labor – they’re not included in lecturers’ contracts, but lecturers find themselves working on these tasks frequently. Oftentimes, lecturers are writing these letters even when they are no longer employed by UCLA, Trojan said.

Dedicating time to finding employment is often strenuous and takes away time from teaching, said Rahul Neuman, a continuing lecturer in the music department.

“We have to reapply for (our) jobs, look for other jobs so that we can actually make a living wage, and then all that time is taken away from the time we can devote to students,” he said.

Continuous lecturer turnover decreases the quality of education UCLA can offer, linguistics lecturer Elise Bell said.

“Key core courses that are often taught by lecturers are usually starting from scratch every fall, which means every year there’s a new crop of students who come in hoping to get this strong baseline education, and it’s being taught by someone who’s never taught it before,” Bell said.

“But if someone had been allowed to keep their job for another year, the level of education, the quality could have continued to improve.”

Neuman is lucky, though. He has worked at UCLA for 10 years, and after six years, lecturers are allowed to apply for continuing lectureship – a title that provides more job stability.

Continuing lecturers are rewarded with special privileges because of their experience.

They do not have to regularly reapply for their jobs nor do they have to worry about their classes being taught by other lecturers, Neuman said.

Most lecturers in the

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UC system, however, have an average career of two years before losing their employment or heading to a new job.

This low average stems from a churning problem – or rapid turnover in a workplace’s staff as old employees leave while newer employees are hired. According to a CalMatters report, about 25% of the 6,000 lecturers annually employed by the UC do not return the following year.

Hung Pham, an assistant adjunct professor of chemistry and former lecturer, said his workload as a lecturer averaged 60 to 80 hours a week. A lot of these hours consisted of preparing PowerPoint slides, creating midterms and finals, and grading, Pham said.

Because of the high cost of living in Los Angeles, Pham commutes from Orange County each day, starting his drive at 6:30 in the morning and not leaving campus until 5 p.m.

Pham spends upward of four hours round trip in traffic.

“If one wanted to defend the system, one would need to admit that you’re just not allowed to have children or families.”

This commute, Pham said, is draining in and of itself.

“People think that it’s just a time thing to commute, but it’s also an energy sink, you know, sitting in the car for two hours and coming out and then having to learn or teach – it’s definitely not the easiest thing in the world,” Pham said.

Teaching on Zoom over the past year relieved Pham of his commuter stress, giving him more time to focus on his classes from the ease of his own home. Commuting, along with the job’s workload, are two of Pham’s biggest stressors.

Pham believes the university could help lecturers by providing them with more job guidance and by making teaching resources more accessible. With a large number

“If someone had been allowed to keep their job for another year, the level of education, the quality could have continued to improve.” of lecturers churning in and out, the structure of the institution feels hazy, Pham said.

“It really is a little bit cloudy on who gets hired for what, who’s teaching what every quarter, which rooms are we in and what times are we teaching – all of that is up in the air every quarter,” Pham said.

Protests have shaken UCLA’s campus in recent months, with lecturers demanding an end to many of the “cloudy” conditions that Pham described. University Council-American Federation of Teachers, the union that represents librarians and non-Senate faculty in the UC system, including lecturers, has been the driving force behind many of these calls to action.

The union held a picketing rally Oct. 13 and 14 on Bruin Walk to demand job security, more compensation and fewer employment tasks.

Caroline Luce, a labor studies lecturer and UC-AFT nonrepresented unit delegate, was eager to talk with students passing by the rally.

The purpose of the rally was to call for the negotiation of a new contract, Luce said, as the UC and UC-AFT have been renegotiating for the past two years and reached an impasse in June. The union wants to get the word out to students so they can learn about the conditions that roughly 30% of their teachers endure.

In November, UC-AFT members threatened to strike across the UC system to protest unfair labor practices. Prior to the planned protests, Neuman said the union hoped that their demonstrations would put pressure on the UC

administration to reach a resolution.

Around 4 a.m. on Nov. 17, the UC and UC-AFT came to a tentative agreement and the strike was called off hours before picketing was to begin. The new contract addresses many of the issues the union has found with the University’s current policy, including job security and low pay. According to a UC-AFT press release, lecturers will begin receiving incremental pay increases until 2025,

merit-based raises and a $1,500 signing bonus when the resolution is passed.

Lecturers will also no longer be hired on year-to-year contracts. After a lecturer’s first year at UCLA, they can apply for a multiyear contract. This change will go into effect July 1, and other changes will be implemented by the 2022-2023 school year, said UC-AFT President Mia McIver.

“I (feel) very happy and excited for this contract and what it means for me and what it means for all of us here in the union and what it means for all of us here in the UC system,” added Kevin Coffey, an earth, planetary and space sciences lecturer.

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Coffey came to campus early on the day of the planned demonstration expecting to be on the picket lines but was met with relief upon hearing the union had reached a resolution that morning. Instead of protesting, he found himself celebrating with his colleagues as music played in the background.

Under the new agreement, lecturers will receive periodic performance reviews to determine if they can continue teaching at the University. Luce mentioned that other universities, such as the California State University system, the University of Michigan and many community colleges, already have employment evaluations in place to ensure more security for lecturers. At Cal Poly Pomona, for example, professors sit in and evaluate the classes that lecturers teach to decide if their contracts will be renewed, Trojan said.

Luce has watched many of her colleagues leave during the eight years she has worked at UCLA – one of whom left because she could not get enough classes to make a living for her young child and family.

“We deserve (protections) here, and we hope (to) become the model employer,” Luce added.

These lecturers’ love for teaching inspires them to continue advocating for better working conditions. They feel that there should be no choosing between financial security and their passion for their jobs.

Before earning the title of continuing lecturer, Neuman was afraid of losing the relationships he built with his music students when he got busy reapplying for his job every year. His stress was only amplified because he did not want to lose a job he loved so much.

Trojan said his work is a day-to-day struggle, but engaging with his students on questions about political theory reinvigorates him.

“It’s kind of a privilege to have your job to be teach(ing) what you’re into to people who want to hear about it,” he said.

But Trojan still often has doubts about choosing an uncertain career path. When he thinks about his family, he sometimes wonders if he should have picked a better paying job.

“It’s hard not to have regret, right? Because it’s about other people (and) not always about you,” Trojan said. ♦

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UP CLOSE: written by BREANNA DIAZ illustrated by CAT NORDSTROM designed by EMMA COTTER

Lecturers and loved ones

T

he struggles lecturers face don’t stop when they get home. For many parenting lecturers, balancing family life with low pay and sporadic hours is a challenge.

Lecturers are in a precarious position when it comes to finding child care, said political science lecturer Tyson Roberts. Oftentimes, their scattered schedules make it difficult to access convenient day care for their kids.

“We can’t say at a child care center, ‘I only want to have my kid there from 10 to 2 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then from 4 to 6 on Wednesdays,’” Roberts said. “That’s a special challenge for mostly part-time lectures, especially during hours we’re actually in the classroom.”

Beyond scheduling constraints, lecturers’ incomes are often insufficient to cover child care costs. In Los Angeles, child care centers typically cost $1,000 per month for preschoolers, according to 2018 data from the California Department of Education. On average, lecturers at UCLA earn $3,359 per month, according to 2020 University of California payroll data, meaning approximately one-third of their salaries would go toward child care.

“Families themselves are paying way more than the percentage that they could afford to pay out of their pocket,” said education assistant professor Anna Markowitz. “People refer to it as a broken market.”

Without his wife’s income, Roberts would not have been able to afford child care for their two teenagers when they were younger, he said.

“I’m lucky that I have a spouse that’s earning enough to be able to pay for their day care,” Roberts added.

Although UCLA offers in-house child care for its faculty, lecturers often can’t reap the benefits of the resource because of high costs and enrollment policies.

The UCLA Early Care and Education centers make up a network of three centers – Krieger, Fernald and University Village – which care for more than 300 infants and toddlers. The centers operate as tools for retaining and recruiting staff and faculty, but for lecturers, the difficulty lies in affording and accessing centers like these.

The ECE centers’ monthly fees place high above LA averages for child care. Depending on parents’ affiliation with UCLA, current prices range from $1,750 to $1,945 for preschoolers – significantly higher than LA averages for children of the same age. Devin Dillon, superintendent of PreK-12 operations for UCLA PreK-12 Programs and Schools, said the ECE centers’ monthly fees are established according to the market rate of child care and preschools in the area.

Additionally, priority enrollment spots are doled out based on faculty members’ pay titles, with first

choice given to professors and lecturers with security of employment. As a result, lecturers without security of employment find it harder to secure a spot for their child at the centers.

Education lecturer Willliam Purdy said the long waitlist at the ECE centers made it hard to access its services while he was raising his daughter as a graduate student at UCLA. Affording the ECE centers was also a challenge, he said, even though he lived in university housing with an on-site center.

Purdy’s family made do because his spouse stayed home to care for their daughter while Purdy worked. When their daughter was old enough, Purdy was able to send her to a local preschool, subsidizing the tuition costs with a stipend from his union.

Now, Purdy’s daughter is 11 years old and spends her days

“Families themselves are paying way more than the percentage that they could afford to pay out of their pocket. ... People refer to it as a broken market.” at school while her parents work. But even as a lecturer, Purdy said he would still struggle to find a suitable child care option if his daughter was not old enough to attend school and his spouse was not around to help.

“I don’t really know what I’d do, because I couldn’t afford child care,” he said. “It would be a scramble.”

Markowitz believes governmental support is needed to fix the broken child care market.

“There needs to be a public investment. (Child care is) something the private market struggles to do really well,” she said.

President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better framework attempts to ease the financial pressure on families through universal pre-K and an expansion of the child tax credit. As it stands, the plan proposes increased funding for child care centers, meaning more families could gain access to such services. The plan also proposes limiting many low- and middle-income families’ child care costs to at most 7% of their income.

In the meantime, the UC lecturers union recently secured a deal with the UC that provides more support for parenting lecturers. They can expect a full four weeks of paid family leave as well as salary increases that could help cover child care costs.

Despite these gains, many educators still face an uphill battle while trying to find adequate child care.

“It’s a tremendous burden on American families to have children, financially,” Purdy said. ♦

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Milk tea agains written by RANIA SOETIRTO illustrated by CAT NORDSTROM designed by LAUREN JAI

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st tyranny “

Milk tea has transcended from a cultural icon to a symbol of unity against authoritarianism and injustice.

W

hen Ken Wu first heard about the Milk Tea Alliance, he was apprehensive.

“The first thing I thought was, ... ‘Is this some kind of wacky way of promoting milk tea to the rest of the world?’” Wu said.

Although the Milk Tea Alliance earned its name from the popular beverage, the alliance has nothing to do with promoting milk tea. Instead, it is a transnational solidarity movement composed of people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Myanmar who are currently fighting against authoritarianism in their home countries.

Citizens of these four nations also share some form of milk tea in their respective regions – from the creamy Hong Kong style milk tea to the thick and sweet Burmese laphet yay. Hence, milk tea has transformed from a cultural icon to a symbol of unity against authoritarianism and injustice.

Wu, a UCLA alumnus, grew interested in the movement after he learned more about the pro-democracy, youth-led nature of the Milk Tea Alliance. He was moved by the

young activists’ awareness of politics and commitment to creating change, which led him to become involved in the movement.

According to Time magazine, The Milk Tea Alliance started on Twitter in April 2020 when several internet users accused Thai actor and singer Vachirawit Chivaaree, known professionally as Bright, of supporting political autonomy in Hong Kong after he liked a post referring to Hong Kong as a country. This prompted a Twitter feud between Chinese nationalists and netizens from Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong, who were defending Bright with a barrage of memes.

The Milk Tea Alliance’s online presence quickly grew. A year later, the Milk Tea Alliance hashtag has been used more than 11 million times to promote the movement and share information about on-the-ground protests.

The movement has also incorporated various pop culture symbols, such as the three-finger salute from the movie “The Hunger Games.” According to The Atlantic,

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protesters use the gesture as a symbol of defiance and unity. Twitter released a milk tea emoji, which appears whenever the #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag is used, to celebrate the movement’s first anniversary in April.

The Milk Tea Alliance has also gained traction among high-ranking government officials. On Oct. 10, 2020, Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te tweeted the Milk Tea Alliance hashtag to commemorate Taiwan National Day. His post has been retweeted more than 11,000 times.

Although the Milk Tea Alliance began as an online movement against the Chinese Communist Party, it has broken away from the initial anti-CCP sentiment to become an in-person, global movement opposing authoritarianism and inspiring protests in cities all over the world, said Pongkwan Sawasdipakdi, a Thai graduate student at the University of Southern California.

On May 8, United States-based activists from Thailand, Myanmar, Hong Kong and Taiwan organized LA’s first Milk Tea Alliance rally under the group name Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles.

During the rally, protesters carried the national flags of the four main Milk Tea Alliance nations as they marched around LA City Hall. The rally organizers also gave speeches to raise awareness about the issues concerning their countries. “(People) were there on that particular day, on that particular spot, and we were all shouting the same message,” Wu said.

On the steps of city hall, the group carried a large red banner that read, “MILK TEA ALLIANCE TO END

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DICTATORSHIP” and “UNITY AGAINST TYRANNY” while participants did the three-finger salute. Free milk tea was also offered at the rally.

Student Activist A, who requested anonymity because of crackdowns against the families of activists in Myanmar, said although the group wants to equally represent their countries’ causes and struggles, the organizers agreed to focus the rally’s efforts on

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We were all shouting the same message.

Myanmar. In February, the military junta overthrew the democratically elected government, leading to nationwide protests that the military suppressed with violence.

Nayzar Myint, a fourth-year philosophy student, said the Burmese community has been advocating to pass a piece of legislation called the Burma Unified through Rigorous Military Accountability Act of 2021 through the U.S. Congress. The BURMA Act would authorize the creation of sanctions against the Burmese military while also offering humanitarian aid to the country. The community has received support from Wu, who used his connections to speak to politicians to promote the bill and advocate for the democratic struggle in Myanmar.

Both Myint and Wu are currently serving as representatives for Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles.

The group has eight representatives – two from Myanmar, three from Hong Kong, two from Thailand and one from Taiwan – reflecting the four main members of the Milk Tea Alliance.

Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles, began when Myint and Sawasdipakdi crossed paths in March during an online conference hosted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies, where scholars and activists gathered to discuss strategies to resist the February military coup in Myanmar.

Sawasdipakdi bonded with Myint after they talked about building a coalition against dictatorships in their home countries. The coalition quickly expanded to include individuals from Taiwan and Hong Kong, who joined them to form Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles.

The group originally had no intention of using the name Milk Tea Alliance, but after seeing other U.S. cities hosting their own Milk Tea Alliance protests and rallies, they decided to adopt the name since they felt connected to the movement’s principles, Sawasdipakdi said.

Sawasdipakdi first heard about the Milk Tea Alliance when it became a trending hashtag on social media and has followed the movement ever since. Her involvement in pro-democracy activism, however, began when she was a university student in

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These young leaders, they’re the ones that really take matters into their own hands.

Bangkok 10 years ago, long before she joined Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles.

Over the past two years, she has been raising awareness in America after Thai police began launching violent crackdowns against protesters demanding the dissolution of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s government and a reform to the monarchy. She has observed in horror as police officers retaliated against protesters.

Despite the issues plaguing each individual region, Sawasdipakdi said the different communities in the alliance have shown support for one another by attending other countries’ individual rallies. All of them shared a similar pain, she said, which made them stand up for another.

Myint, for example, attended a recent protest in front of the Chinese Consulate to show solidarity with Hong Kong’s democratic movement as a member of the Burmese community.

“We are very focused right now on establishing contact between these different communities and to provide a channel of back and forth between ideas and resources,” he said.

Although the Milk Tea Alliance is more commonly known as a youth-centric movement, many older people supported the May rally as well as the movement at large. Longestablished advocacy groups – such as the Formosan Association for Public Affairs and Hong Kong Forum, Los Angeles – have come out in support of Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles, even in its early stages.

In order to accommodate older protesters, Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles chose to march at City Hall so the length of the march would not be an issue.

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Myint laughed as he recalled some of the funnier moments during the May rally. An anti-vaccine rally was happening at the same time, so the organizers had to relocate to the other side of city hall at the last minute. Some of the non-English-speaking participants, however, mistook the anti-vaccine rally as the Milk Tea Alliance protest, and organizers had to chase confused participants walking into the middle of the anti-vaccine rally.

Mishaps aside, the younger members of Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles, also received advice and support from more experienced activists in their communities.

Charles Lam, the Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles representative from Hong Kong and a mathematics professor at California State University, Bakersfield, sees himself as a support system for the young leaders of Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles, and uses his years of experience to offer advice.

But Lam still believes the younger generation should play a more dominant role in the Milk Tea Alliance. Both him and Wu aspire to serve in more of an advisory role to the budding activists that are currently shaping the movement.

“So I think this whole time, these young leaders, they’re the ones that really take matters into their own hands,” Wu said.

The two of them were more than happy to use the network of activists they’ve developed to reach out to people who might be interested in attending rallies like the one in May. Lam said he had advertised the movement to members of Hong Kong Forum, Los Angeles, and encouraged them to come to the May rally.

Myint recalled how he was initially unfamiliar with lobbying when he first joined the movement and has learned more about the practice from Sawasdipakdi, Lam and Wu, who have taken the time to teach him more about activism.

In addition to sharing their knowledge, the more experienced activists have also offered Myint emotional support and friendship.

Myint, who was elected as president of Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles, at the end of July, said he has questioned himself as he juggles his responsibilities as president and a full-time student. The support he has received has allowed him to continue moving forward as president, especially as the group planned their

second rally for Oct. 16.

The second rally, which took place in Thai Town, was a candlelight vigil to grieve the lives lost to state violence in Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Myanmar. “(State violence) is something that all the countries that are in the Milk Tea Alliance right now can relate to,” Myint said. “And this is going to be a great opportunity to raise awareness about the state violence that has happened in the past and is continuing to happen.”

The friendship and sense of community that he has received from other representatives is reflective of the kind of approach that Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles hopes to take, Myint said, as the group tries to unite their different communities. “(The Milk Tea Alliance) is a platform for us to work out our differences and also to share our different platforms,” Wu said.

Student Activist A hopes that the Milk Tea Alliance will educate the American and international communities about the injustices that are happening in Thailand, Myanmar, Hong Kong and Taiwan and push them to take tangible actions to end dictatorship.

Lam, who has worked for years to start conversations about Hong Kong, also shares these sentiments. He believes their solidarity will attract more media attention and further push their cause.

Sawasdipakdi still remembers how curious passersby had stopped by during the May rally to talk to them after the event had attracted their attention.

Sawasdipakdi hopes they can continue to raise awareness of what is happening in their countries.

After its initial rallies, Milk Tea Alliance, Los Angeles, is still in an explorative stage as it tries to expand membership, hold future events and further solidify its organization.

The group is currently writing its bylaws and is considering changing its name to be more inclusive of other nations fighting authoritarianism.

These four regions and their activists are fighting different struggles, but their solidarity against tyranny bands them together.

“It just (shows) that idea that even if our struggles are different, even if it looks different from a superficial level, at the very core, we are still fighting the same battle,” Student Activist A said. ♦

(State violence) is something that all the countries that are in the Milk Tea Alliance right now can relate to.

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LONG LINES, SHORT STAFFED written by KATE GREEN photographed by BRYAN PALMERO & JEREMY CHEN designed by CLAIRE SHEN PRIME | FALL 2021

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“T

he line can’t be this long,” I thought, staring in dismay at the coiling queue outside of UCLA’s supposedly quick-service restaurant, Rendezvous West.

It was my first day living in the dorms, and I was eager to try out a meal from UCLA’s legendary residential restaurants – the best college food in the country, as proudly advertised around campus. However, my excitement for sampling Rendezvous’s vegan burrito bowls was quickly dampened by the sight of scores of students lined up in front of me.

Our sprawling line snaked through Rieber Court and extended beyond my vision into the packed restaurant.

Hungry newcomers joined us by the minute. For the following half hour, I halfheartedly fanned my masked face with my BruinCard and fantasized about the moment when I would step through the door and order.

Over the next few weeks, news about staffing shortages at the dining halls spread throughout campus – reflecting a nationwide employment crisis within the restaurant industry. A chorus of complaints from Bruins about the heat, boredom and inconvenient wait times constituted my soundtrack every time I picked up a meal.

But rarely did this frustrated chorus voiced outside dining hall doors acknowledge the hard work of the restaurant staff inside. What conversations were workers holding beyond the cash register?

On Oct. 21, after breakfast but before the pre-lunch line could stack up, I met with two staff members at Bruin Plate – one of UCLA’s busy dining halls, which has remained open this year. Food service worker Avelina Salcedo and assistant cook Marco Pacheco joined me in a

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private dining room after their busy morning of preparing purple potatoes and over-easy eggs.

Both Salcedo and Pacheco began working for UCLA Dining in B Plate’s nascent days. Around nine years ago, Salcedo applied for a position at B Plate upon a friend’s suggestion and was intrigued by the restaurant’s unique emphasis on fresh and healthy dining. A year later, Pacheco joined the team when the principal of his culinary school put in a good word for him.

The challenge of serving large quantities of food to a lot of students initially attracted Pacheco to his position, and the stability of a university job is what motivated both staff members to stay. UCLA’s residential restaurants shoulder the massive burden of feeding the 14,500 students housed on campus, serving an average of 30,000 meals each day. This task has been made particularly difficult because of UCLA Dining’s staffing shortage this fall.

UCLA spokesperson Katherine Alvarado said UCLA Dining typically employs 692 career workers and 400 student workers annually. As of Nov. 1, only 491 career positions and 104 student positions were filled. The department was still attempting to fill nearly half of its total positions, Alvarado said in a written statement.

UCLA Dining’s labor shortage has forced popular eateries, such as Café 1919 and De Neve Late Night, into indefinite closure, despite the opening of two new dorm buildings that house 1,800 students. Campus catering has also been temporarily suspended, with employees relocating to support the dining halls. In an attempt to alleviate the extensive lines caused by the shutdowns, the department has invited local food trucks on campus to feed students.

Bruins waiting in the long lines often remind Salcedo

and Pacheco of their own children, who are also of college age.

“I treat the kids here like my son, ... so I want to give the best to them,” Salcedo said.

When they claim to treat Bruins as their own, Salcedo and Pacheco are not exaggerating. In 2017, Salcedo brought a student to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner because he could not visit his family in Mexico during the holiday season. Though he has long since graduated and moved back to Mexico, Salcedo still looks back on the dinner fondly.

Pacheco also distinctly remembers the times he has experienced heart-to-hearts with students throughout the years. For example, he once stumbled upon a freshman sobbing in an elevator during move-in day. When the student expressed embarrassment for crying in front of him, Pacheco validated the student’s emotions and quickly offered his support.

“He said, ‘I’ve never been away from home. My parents just left,’” Pacheco said tearfully. “(That gave) me an idea of how you guys may feel sometimes, and that’s why we have to be a part of your lives as a parent can be.”

Pacheco also recalled the moment when a student recognized him walking away from the commencement venue last graduation.

“When I was coming back with my hat and with a mask, this student recognized me, and she even called me by my

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name,” Pacheco said. “She said, ‘I remember you, you used to make my omelets!’... And that, to me, was impactful.”

Salcedo and Pacheco say these positive experiences offset the challenges of working for UCLA Dining.

Pacheco, for example, wakes up at 4:30 a.m. each morning in order to arrive on time for his approximately 10-hour shift. And while Salcedo’s commute to work takes 30 minutes, traffic increases the drive to two hours on the way back home.

Salcedo has also encountered students who don’t acknowledge her presence.

“I always have a smile for everybody, no matter what,” Salcedo said. “Some students, when they come and grab their plate, some don’t say even, ‘Good morning.’”

For every downside to their positions at B Plate, however, Salcedo and Pacheco were quick to identify positive counterpoints. I have to assume that the presence of Rebecca Kendall, the UCLA Housing and Hospitality Editorial and Communications Manager, played a part in their enthusiasm. She remained seated near us for our entire conversation.

Kendall’s presence at the interview followed weeks of difficulties trying to speak directly with UCLA Dining.

Administrators at UCLA Dining repeatedly referred me to UCLA Media Relations rather than agreeing to an interview. Furthermore, dining hall workers at several residential restaurants expressed a hesitancy to speak with me, stating I needed managerial approval.

"I treat the kids here like my son ... so I want to give the best to them."

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Throughout my conversation with Salcedo and Pacheco, it was impossible for me to forget the dire worker shortage backdropping their labor. Evidence of the tensions between UCLA Dining and the union that represents its workers surrounded our talk that Thursday morning.

The hiring crunch’s effect on service workers has stoked controversy with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, the union that represents more than 29,000 UC service and patient care technical workers, including Salcedo and Pacheco. The union objects to what they consider the outsourcing of labor to private contractors.

Just two hours after I arrived at B Plate, protesters outside the dining hall’s entrance demonstrated against UCLA’s handling of the shortage.

AFSCME intern and fourth-year labor studies student Bry Gonzalez attended the protest at B Plate.

“You’ve probably seen how long the lines are for dining halls,” Gonzalez said, as fellow protesters chanted behind her. “That’s because they’re incredibly understaffed right now, … and they’re also not hiring enough full-time workers.”

Alvarado said UCLA Dining has struggled to hire new workers because there simply isn’t a sufficient pool of willing applicants.

“One particular challenge is that the number of people applying for these opportunities, as well as jobs across myriad sectors, is far below what it was pre-pandemic,” she said.

According to Tobias Higbie, a professor of history and labor studies, workers’ increased demands are creating what appears to be labor shortages when, in actuality, more workers are looking for new jobs than prior to the pandemic. He noted that recent studies by Microsoft and

“

“For the first time, lowwage workers and workers in general have the upper hand in terms of choosing their job and working conditions.”

LinkedIn have documented a spike in people considering and actively pursuing new careers.

“There’s a dynamic relationship between how many folks you can hire and what you’re paying,” Higbie said.

“Sometimes the shortages that employers experience are actually because they are not paying a wage high enough to attract people.”

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, the project director at the UCLA Labor Center, added that the rebounding pandemic economy has created a unique atmosphere in which service industry workers, including some AFSCME Local 3299 members, can rethink their relationships with their employers.

Workers nationwide have been emboldened by the tight

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labor market to demand more of their employers, RiveraSalgado told me, citing recent worker movements such as strikes at Amazon warehouses.

“I think that for the first time, low-wage workers and workers in general have the upper hand in terms of choosing their job and working conditions,” Rivera-Salgado added.

Rivera-Salgado explained to me that employers and government officials alike are scrambling to adjust to the labor market’s inverse of power, and the restaurant industry is a particularly difficult hiring market to adapt to the post-pandemic world. While employers in other sectors of the economy make their positions appealing by offering flexible hours and remote work, restaurant employers like UCLA Dining still require staff members’ physical presence during shifts.

Rivera-Salgado says this quandary necessitates innovation from UCLA. In addition to increasing wages,

the university might need to offer career paths with more opportunities for growth, he explained.

Gonzalez asserts that the UCLA administration is avoiding solutions to the dining hall staff shortage.

“There are people in the union who are looking to work, but they don’t want to hire union workers,” Gonzalez said.

Following a B Plate breakfast one busy Thursday morning, I spoke with AFSCME Local 3299’s spokesperson, Todd Stenhouse, on the phone. Stenhouse said UCLA administration’s hesitance to hire union members is due to the university’s desire to fill vacant positions with outsourced workers from private contractors. He said the university can pay these workers lower wages and give them fewer benefits – such as health insurance, pensions,

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sick time and vacation time – than career UC employees.

UCLA’s inclination to outsource workers poses a major problem for AFSCME 3299, which won a contract in 2020 barring the practice in most circumstances, Stenhouse said.

The agreement states, “Contracting out should be used sparingly and treated as an option of last resort to address temporary needs, not as a means to replace employees with contractors.”

The document goes on to clarify that contracting can only occur in an emergency situation where university operations cannot continue without outsourced workers.

Gonzalez believes the university is manipulating the emergency provision of the union’s agreement.

“There are people in the union who are looking to work, but they don’t want to hire union workers.”

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“They use that as their loophole,” she said. “So they’ve started to bring in contracted workers, which they’re not supposed to be doing, which is like a direct violation of AFSCME’s contract.”

UCLA Dining has outsourced workers across the university, Gonzalez alleged, while not responding to students applying for jobs through the administration’s standard hiring process.

Stenhouse emphasized that the union is also speaking out against UCLA’s management of the service staff shortage because of the burdens the labor crunch places on current employees. When organizations are short staffed, workplace dangers heighten, he explained, which puts employees such as Pacheco and Salcedo at risk.

Addressing staff shortages through outsourcing depresses the labor standards for all workers, as contractors accept lower pay than union members have collectively bargained for, Stenhouse added. “(Outsourcing) is how you create more poverty,” Stenhouse said. “That is how you create more insecurity, and last time I checked, the UC was not about either of those. In fact, to the contrary, as a leading employer in California, the UC should be about uplifting standards.”

Despite the union’s allegations, Alvarado said UCLA Dining is hiring, onboarding and training new staff members as fast as possible.

Although solutions for UCLA Dining’s labor shortage remain unclear, Higbie said through simple acts of respect, students can support the current dining hall employees who are picking up the slack.

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Oftentimes the modern service industry renders its employees invisible by separating them as much as possible from customers, Higbie said. I couldn’t help but think about the students who don’t greet Salcedo at B Plate.

“That’s why workers live very far away from their workplaces, it’s because their employers don’t want to see them after hours,” he added.

Higbie further explained that the cost of living in Southern California plays a role in alienating restaurant workers from the customers they serve. According to Higbie, “There isn’t a lot that students can do about that, but what you can do is you can make an effort (of) seeing those workers and recognizing that they’re, you know, fellow human beings.”

Salcedo and Pacheco agree that when students reach out to them and recognize their efforts at B Plate, it makes their jobs worthwhile.

Hearing Salcedo and Pacheco share the stories about working at B Plate put my many hours of waiting in dining hall lines in perspective. As we said our goodbyes, they made me agree to say “Hi” the next time I dine at B Plate and promised to make my portions extra generous. ♦ Contributing reports from Abigail Siatkowski, PRIME content editor.

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