Gov. Gray Davis will be on campus today for the ground-breaking
ceremony for the new California Nanosystems Institute. And since he
will not have enough time in his busy schedule for a thorough
campus tour, we’d like to highlight some of the more
interesting sights UCLA has to offer.

Davis should take a trip through the UCLA Store and meet one of
our student employees who has to work an extra 58 hours at about
$7.00/hour to pay for the $405 annual raise in student fees.
Perhaps, if Davis wants to buy something, the employee should raise
the price of the item mid-purchase so the governor can empathize
with UC students, whose fees were raised mid-year because of his
budget cuts. If Davis buys a calculator, maybe he can figure out a
student working an on-campus job will have to labor approximately
114 hours to pay off the $795 undergraduate fee increase probably
going into effect next year.

Having to work all those extra hours will make it difficult for
a student employee to attend every class in his schedule, so maybe
Davis can attend instead and take notes. If Davis doesn’t
arrive early enough to secure one of the tiny desks in the
300-student lecture, he’ll have to consider other options.
Maybe he can take notes sitting in an aisle or while standing at
the back of the classroom.

While in class, Davis can look around and wonder why there are
so few non-white or non-Asian faces. He can look to K-12 outreach
programs ““ established to help the University of California
attract underrepresented students cut in half by the
governor’s budget cuts ““ for part of the answer. If
Davis is disappointed with the teaching quality, maybe he should
reverse the proposed $179 million cut he made to the UC
instructional budget.

In an overcrowded campus like UCLA, Davis can rest after a hard
day of institute ground-breaking in the empty cubicles in Bunche
Hall, previously occupied by lecturers the university can no longer
afford.

Or, Davis can retreat to a three-person dorm room in a high-rise
residential hall. Hopefully he won’t get sick in the
overcrowded dorms, because funding for the Arthur Ashe Student
Health Center has also been reduced. The difficulty of climbing
onto an bunk bed without a ladder might serve as a hint about how
much better student housing would probably be if it had state
funding.

Lucky for Davis, he can escape from UCLA’s problems at the
end of the day. His chauffeur can drive him across the street
through the beautiful, enormous homes of Bel Air. He can get a
little peace of mind from knowing those residents’ taxes will
be a little lower now that students are being asked to fund public
education.

Before he leaves, Davis should introduce himself to a few
students on campus ““ students who’ll certainly have
very loving things to say to him on this Valentine’s Day.