Week #1
Article One:
The headline of the first article that I decided to take a look at from UCLA’s student run paper The Daily Bruin was “It’s just a fact: Understaffed CAE office fail to meet student needs.” So first of all we need to know what CAE stands for CAE stands for the (Center for Accessible Education). The article’s lead states “Out of the nine total disability specialist positions the Center for Accessible Education typically maintains, only three were filled at the start of the 2023-2024 academic year.” This automatically sets the tone and gives some context for the article. Now we know that this is not an issue that is normal for the CAE and they are usually able to fill and maintain those positions. Therefore this issue is unprecedented on the UCLA campus. After the lead the nut graph explains why the CAE is so important for the success and wellbeing of the disabled students. The CAE is supposed to be a tool that is supposed to help disabled students flourish.
When properly staffed the CAE is supposed to provide the medically necessary academic accommodations students need to succeed and learn. The office’s disability specialists are also supposed to guide students through the process of selecting and applying for the classroom. Staffing shortages have left students to fend for themselves. There is a lot of really interesting data provided in the article and one point that really stands out to me is the ratio of 1,281 students per specialist when the national average is 133 students per disability specialist. Another shocking piece of the data from the article was how underpaid the disability specialists are the average pay for a disability specialist at UCLA in 2022 was $35,788. In comparison, the average pay for disability specialists was $54,607 at UC Berkeley and $79,600 at UC Davis.” Wouldn’t you think because they are so understaffed they would have more money to the few employees they do have left.
The article also goes into many different student testimonials. They have testimonials from Nina Zamora, Quinn O’Connor, Katie Bogue, Hilary Wu, Madelyn Kelly, Julia Alanis, Gwendolyn Hill, Megan Borella who are all either current students or alumni of UCLA and also a few different faculty members. Being able to see all of the different perspectives and to hear all the stories of the frustrated students really gives you a new perspective and is helpful to comprehend what a wide scale problem it is and why it’s so important. One of the quotes from a student that I think wraps up the ending of the article is that “Fier said she only sees two viable solutions: a coalition-based approach to educate more students about disability issues or a class action lawsuit.” The only way these problems are ever going to change is if legal action is taken. Overall when the CAE office is understaffed the disabled community of UCLA suffers.
Article Two:
The headline from the second article that I decided to focus on from The Daily Bruin this week states “USAC unanimously passes resolution endorsing 100% clean energy at UCLA by 2035”. The news article starts off with some of the challenges they faced when trying to transition UCLA to clean renewable energy. One of the main challenges that they faced was the fact that there is less room for infrastructure because their population size is larger than the campus. There are some direct quotes from the campaign coordinator of the 100% clean energy campaign that talk about how we need to invest in long term safety and the fact that climate change is a very pressing and urgent issue. This is why UCLA has made decarbonization a bigger priority in the last few years and has set their date for complete decarbonization by a whole 10 years earlier than what they thought was originally possible.
The 100% clean energy campaign came up with the resolution draft that identifies UCLA as both a model on environmental issues and a polluter responsible for hundreds of thousands of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. But there are many things on the UCLA campus that contradict this statement, the power plant on campus being the biggest. Nurit Katz, the chief sustainability officer at UCLA and co-chair of the Decarbonization Task Force, said in a statement that “the effort to reach carbon neutrality was challenged by a reliance on carbon offsets, while decarbonization will require substantial financial resources but ultimately encompass broader goals.” I think this statement embodies the main problem that is dealt with in this article. The fact that there are many challenges that the 100% clean energy campaign faces financially and socially but they are working through them and good progress is being made.
