Burke is a third-year political science and English student.
By David Burke
It’s time to put an end to the North Campus vs. South
Campus debate once and for all. The winner is … no campus!
That’s right, neither campus is superior in UCLA’s
ongoing civil war. You don’t have to be a genius to figure
that one out. Both campuses offer different attributes and have
students who embody different qualities. Neither one is better than
the other.
Trying to debate which side of campus is better is like trying
to decide which dinner entree is better: soup or salad. There is no
right answer. I enjoy laughing at people from the two campuses as
much as the next guy, but I think that there are aspects of both
sides that are hilarious and meritorious.
In response to Bonnie Chau’s recent column “Down
South, mystery, genius abound“ (Viewpoint, Jan. 25), I
will defend North Campus against the attacks she makes in defending
the South. One of Chau’s primary arguments against North
Campus is that its students are huge “bullshitters.”
That’s a very extreme argument. Generalizing that North
Campus students are pretentious liars is like saying that all South
Campus students are TI-86-using dorks whose idea of a wild night is
downloading anime onto their computer and combing the dandruff out
of their hair.
North Campus students are better at BS-ing because they are
better at writing! I don’t like to BS, but I acknowledge it
does take some skills many South Campus students do not generally
possess. North Campus students are better liars, but they are also
better readers and writers. If there is a more valuable skill than
reading and writing, I would love to hear about it. South Campus
students, whose favorite book is any book about “Star
Wars,” please take note.
I think that North Campus students have an appreciation for some
beautiful things in life that South Campus students are out of
touch with ““ poetry, art, literature and nature, for example.
Electrical engineering students can probably put together a
telephone, but whether or not they can have a meaningful
conversation on it is another question. There is some charm to the
general social ineptness of South Campus students, but that
doesn’t mean I want to attend a chemistry discussion party
next Friday night.
Another benefit specific to North Campus is the overall physical
attractiveness of its inhabitants. Say what you want about the
importance of looks and about superficiality. The bottom line is
that the average North Campus student is Brad Pitt or Catherine
Zeta Jones to South Campus’s Matthew Perry or Joan
Cusack.
Admittedly, North Campus has some flaws too. The pretense Chau
complained about is real to some extent. Everyone who has taken a
philosophy or political science class knows what I am talking
about. There are a lot of North Campus students who act like they
are above it all. They are above school, they are above the trivial
pursuits of their classes, and they are above association with the
average college student. There was a big group of them on my floor
freshman year. They walk around wearing earthtones and Birkenstocks
from Urban Outfitters while making a strenuous effort to appear
like they aren’t consumed with the mind-numbingly lame
customs of a “conformist” society.
These are the type of people who are 100 percent full of it.
They sit in class, stare off into the distance, and stroke their
Van Dyke’s to look intelligent when in reality they are
thinking about what happened on the last episode of
“Temptation Island 2.” That’s just how some of
the North Campus students are. South Campus doesn’t have as
much pretense and image consciousness on its side of the campus.
And yes, as Chau said, that can be very refreshing.
But the bottom line is North Campus is not any better than South
Campus, or vice versa ““ they each have their flaws, and these
balance out.
The average UCLA student is an intelligent individual who has a
good group of friends and succeeds in school.
If you take the time to get to know a person on an individual
basis you’ll see that even the most pretentious or most
socially awkward students are pretty similar to those who you would
define as normal.
My advice is that you should take classes on both sides of
campus to get to know different areas of study and different types
of people. It’s fun to debate, but any intelligent person
will tell you that the winner of UCLA’s civil war is neither
campus.