The trainwreck ends

Hoo boy. The thing that captivated us so mightily for much of last week is finally and mercifully coming to an end. Hopefully. Alexandra Wallace, youtube uploader extraordinaire has issued a very contrite sounding comprehensive statement declaring that she will no longer be attending the university, UCLA's student newspaper Daily Bruin reports.

The exit is to the left of the stage, my friend. Interestingly, she calls the disastrous video a humorous attempt. A humorous attempt at what, exactly? If that was funny, I guess I spent 21 years of my life completely in the dark about the meaning of that good word. Though let me add (as emphatically I can) that the fact she got death threats is distinctly not cool. At all. People who did this are morons. And they need help.

Great to know the tireless truthseekers and muckrakers at the Bruin are spending their finals time covering this hot topic.

That will be all. Too much has been made of this issue (I am guilty of this as well - after all, it does garner a ton of hits for my blog), but it's time to focus on more meaningful things in life. Like college hoops. Or spring break.

And let us also do all that we can to help the victims in Japan. Donate!

And thus descended the trolls

In his farewell speech, President Eisenhower spoke of a military-industrial complex, a shapeless entity that he thought would come to dominate the political field in coming years. I am going to talk about a controversy complex, a vibrant, often creative side industry that merrily springs up around a major controversy, and disappears almost immediately afterwords - like an ephemeral moment of joy.

Like vultures feasting on a carcass, trolls, hackers, and general internet lowlifes have gleefully descended on the facebook page of our dear chancellor. Taking full advantage of the anarchy and reigning chaos, these greedy opportunists have swamped the wall with senseless rants, (hopefully) intentional bad grammar, and quasi-existential non sequiturs.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the finest specimen, the sultan of trolldom:

At least he is honest about his, ahem, movie choices

In such a perfidious and noxious environment, can the Emperor Palpatine stay behind?

Come to the dark side

And very recently, some fellow called Charles Edward Shumar IV (and nowwwwww presenting, his royal highness) has been posting this verbose message on every single post: ( I suspect he is using a bot)

Oh for the days when I went to UCLA and cell phones were just a tech-geek's fevered dream. Now, is there any chance at all Ms. Wallace knew what she was doing and is angling to get a reality show? Or an invite from Charlie Sheen to be one of his new "goddesses" over at Sober Valley Lodge?

Well played, "entrepreneurs" of this dubious side industry.

Update on the Asians in library rant

Wow. This issue has taken on some epic proportions. When I first found out about the Youtube rant by a female UCLA student yesterday, I thought it would be contained within UCLA. But this morning, I woke up to posts about this incident plastered all over the internet, in places as diverse and distinct as twitter feeds, news blogs and message boards. Even the tabloids took a stab at it. To my utter amazement, she even made it across the pond, where the Daily Mail wrote up a blurb about it. Move over, Charlie Sheen.

Meanwhile at UCLA, hundreds of students clogged up chancellor Gene Block's official facebook page with comments and long-winded opinion pages. Although many comments got pretty out of hand and some students took the opportunity to troll around and have some perverse fun, most were pretty much on track.

After hours of waiting, the good chancellor finally released an official statement about the incident, both via an email and through his facebook page:

To the Campus Community:

I am appalled by the thoughtless and hurtful comments of a UCLA student posted on YouTube. Like many of you, I recoil when someone invokes the right of free expression to demean other individuals or groups.
This one act certainly does not represent the views of our UCLA community. Our community is built on mutual respect and civility, and we are committed to fostering an environment that values and supports every member of the community. It is most unfortunate that a single clip on the Internet undermines that environment by expressing hurtful and shameful ideas about others in our community. I believe that speech that expresses intolerance toward any group of people on the basis of race or gender, or sexual, religious or cultural identity is indefensible and has no place at UCLA.
Let this incident serve as a reminder of our collective responsibility to confront hateful and ignorant speech and to uphold UCLA’s core values of respect and integrity.
Sincerely,
Gene D. Block
Chancellor


A very eloquent, appropriate and tactful message by the Chancellor. 

Some enterprising soul has capitalized this opportunity to sell t-shirts. The website claims it will donate all profits to the tsunami victims in Japan.

 
 

Asians in the library? How dare they!

A remarkable youtube video has been circulating today, and it has kicked up a veritable shitstorm. The video features a female UCLA student ranting about how "hordes of Asians" living and studying around her need to learn "American manners" like how to fend for themselves and how not to talk loudly in the library. Among other things, she mentions how she is tired of seeing families of these students flock to their apartments every weekend to cook, wash clothes and help around. Yes, how unusual of families to want to visit their kids?

But that's not her main offense. Midway through the rant, she starts complaining about how these hordes have no respect for proper library etiquette. She does a crude imitation of a generic "Asian" accent.
 
The original copy of the video got deleted but by now there are duplicate copies floating around:


Naturally, the enraged mobs are out on the streets vilifying her as a racist. I don't know if this is necessarily racist (IMO, the word racist/racism - both of which carry very heavy connotations, are woefully overused and abused in our society), but it is bewilderingly crude, offensive and ignorant.