Category Archives: Uncategorized

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block takes a selfie with a delegation visiting Washington, D.C., that included 15 undergraduate student leaders.

UCLA senior Christian Green had high expectations when he traveled to Washington, D.C., with Chancellor Gene Block and student leaders to examine race, immigration and other important issues with leaders from Congress, the White House, and cultural and advocacy groups.

“I left in hopes of gaining an understanding of what this ideal of diversity really meant to the people on Capitol Hill, and to our chancellor, the faculty and my fellow student leaders on this trip,” said Green, a fourth-year sociology and African-American studies major who is external relations director for the pre-law fraternity Kappa Alpha Phi. “I wanted to leave D.C. feeling empowered as a leader here at UCLA … and that we, as a campus, could create this ideal of solidarity here at UCLA.”

Green, active with a student group that supports African-American transfer students like him, said this week that his “expectations were far surpassed.”

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Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph gives a tour of Skid Row to a group of UCLA representatives.

Los Angeles Police Department Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph has enough sad stories to fill a dozen seasons of “Law and Order”, but through his 17 years patrolling downtown L.A.’s Skid Row, he has not succumbed to despair. Joseph is hopeful, and he has a goal of opening the minds of Los Angeles residents.

On Dec. 11, a delegation of UCLA staff and students visited Skid Row to get a better sense of the area and the challenges presented to both police and human service volunteers in the area. They had an eye opening experience and were left with the knowledge that there is much to be done — via police enforcement, infrastructure investment and seriously tackling mental health and drug issues — in order to improve the area.

UCLA staff had met Joseph at a community forum in San Pedro on homelessness earlier this year, and the lead officer stopped by the UCLA Day in Downtown L.A. reception to chat with Chancellor Gene Block and again offer a special tour of Skid Row to discuss homelessness and the issues there, something he is looking to offer to any group in Los Angeles willing to hear him out. He was first assigned to Skid Row in 1997.

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Students and employees gathered for a Project SPELL graduation and reunion event.

Project SPELL celebrated the conclusion of another successful quarter with a special graduation and reunion ceremony on Dec. 4.

Approximately 48 participants completed the quarter. There were 29 employees from UCLA Housing (housekeepers, food service workers, on campus housing maintenance) and 19 from UCLA Facilities Management (custodial, maintenance and alternation, MDDS and grounds).

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UCLA volunteers visited the VA campus to help out at the Westside Thanksgiving Community Dinner and Celebration.

A bus of about 60 UCLA alumni, faculty and students unloaded at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System campus to volunteer during the annual Westside Thanksgiving Community Dinner and Celebration.

The effort was put together by the UCLA Volunteer Center, in partnership with UCLA Alumni Affairs, as part of its One Bus, One Cause program. This is the second year that the event has taken place at the VA campus, and approximately half of the thousands of people served were veterans visiting or living at the site.

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