Matthew Knee Send your comments to Knee
at [email protected].
North Campus has been looking very different lately. You might
have noticed ““ if you could get there in the first
place.
After passing a sign proclaiming something about you granting
Dreamworks the sacrifice of your firstborn child for merely walking
past the set, some guy wearing one of those tacky CIA earpieces
stops you and insists, “You shall not pass” ““
filming is in progress.
Almost late for class, you nonetheless resist the urge to
dismember him as per the Black Knight. (If you don’t get the
reference, go rent “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”
now. You’ll thank me later.) Lacking any feasible alternate
routes, you wait several minutes until they let you through. By the
time you get to class, your professor just finishes saying,
“…And that, pretty much, is what you need to know for the
midterm.”
It shouldn’t have to be this way. UCLA’s wholesale
disregard for the privacy of the student body is a disturbing
problem. The Supreme Court ruled that students don’t give up
their constitutional rights when they enter school grounds, yet the
administration apparently thinks they can make an exception if they
sell out part of our school grounds to King Katzenberg.
It is within the university’s rights to do this because
they do have the right to allow filming on their property, and thus
force people to consent to be filmed unless they wish to leave the
premises. But does the school really need the money so badly that
it has to force students into servitude to Hollywood producers as
unpaid extras as well as allow production companies to block off
major thoroughfares, clutter North Campus with their
infrastructure, and mock us with their superiority?
Some might argue visibility will help spur popularity, but how
many people who don’t know a lot about UCLA will actually
know the movie was filmed here? Besides, there really is such a
thing as bad publicity. The last thing UCLA needs is to sully its
reputation as a relatively well-behaved university by hosting a
remake of “Animal House.”
For all you Southies out there who don’t necessarily know,
Dreamworks’ takeover of North Campus has been obnoxious and
insidious. Once you reach Royce Quad, you see the blitzkrieg has
arrived. Vehicles of all shapes, sizes and functions, from prop
shops to mobile generators and catering trucks, litter the campus,
blocking walkways and assaulting the senses more offensively than
the annoying WTC monument that defiles the Sculpture Garden.
A web of wiring crosses every path, but at least they have the
courtesy to cover them up with gaudy yellow and black contraptions
to prevent us from tripping and taking their overstuffed pockets to
court.
And of course, being Hollywood types, the originators and
popularizers of modern immorality ““ the perpetual Exxon
Valdez of world culture ““ they have no qualms about mocking
students with just how much more important they are. They ride
around on their fleet of golf carts while we peasants are forced to
walk miles just to get to and from class everyday. They lay out
gourmet banquets for all to see, savoring their feasts as we
commoners are forced to dine upon dorm food.
Some of our new overlords are so important they don’t have
to go and get this food themselves, even on their electric steeds.
Rather, they have servants ““ “Production
Assistants” ““ who, like fraternity pledges and members
of secret societies and cults, have to undergo a demeaning ““
and supposedly educational ““ initiation ritual before
entering a world of decadence, evil and betrayal.
Obnoxious as production companies can be at times, I don’t
advocate going to the extreme of banning smaller media operations
on campus, as UC Davis has done. The university recently prevented
MTV from following the life of a sorority on its campus.
UCLA administrators must use UC Davis as an example and take a
good look at the impact filming on campus has on student privacy,
instead of envisioning the dump truck full of money the movie
studios drop in front of Murphy Hall.