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It’s 2005. Do you know where your life is?

Yes, I do. It’s right here, sitting on this couch, not going to the Hammer Museum, a UCLA Live event or even a women’s gymnastics meet.

But lucky for me (and you), UCLA has launched a new media campaign – UCLA Happenings – to inform students of all the events on campus so that maybe they will get up off that couch.

While traffic on the happenings.ucla.edu Web site is brisk and attendance is up at events around campus, I have misgivings about the campaign, and they start with the silly slogan, “It’s 2005. Do you know where your life is?” My qualms end with the fact that in the long run I don’t think the campaign can get students off their couches.

In theory the campaign is a good idea because it is important for students to take advantage of everything UCLA offers. Yet, the problem is, in many ways it’s part of the college experience to not go to art museums, classical music performances and lecture series. I mean this in all seriousness: College students are too busy eating, dating, going to class, and seeing their favorite band to go to an Alaskan violinist’s reinterpretation of a 13th century Japanese folk song about wheat. No amount of slick (or not so slick) marketing can change that.

And in case you’re wondering, the media campaign has cost $50,000, which was given by the UCLA Foundation, said Nancy Ozeas, senior executive director of university communications.

In a Feb. 15 Daily Bruin article titled “Traffic is an advantage for media campaign,” UCLA spokesman Lawrence Lokman made it clear that the Happenings campaign could become a part of the school’s annual budget.

“We’ll reassess the investment of resources and what people think at the end,” Lokman said. “I’m committed to finding a place in the communications budget for next year.”

It may be that students here are much less committed to the campaign than university communications.

UCLA students are among the brightest in the land. You work hard in class, and you actually enjoy going to museums (you loved the Louvre). But when was the last time you went to the Fowler Museum of Cultural History?

You’ve never been there. I know. I hadn’t either, until I went on Thursday afternoon to research for this column.

While the media blitz may have spiked interest in many of the cultural events on campus, I fear that the increased interest is only short-lived. As students grow accustomed to seeing the campaign’s ads on kiosks and bus stops, traffic to the Happenings Web site will slow – and so will attendance at events.

Perhaps the Happenings campaign could use some retooling as well. Thankfully, the dreadfully confusing “Drop the laptop” slogan has been put to bed, but the “Where’s your life, bro” slogan still inspires fits of confusion and sleepiness. Does it mean I am living an unfulfilled life?

Also, you may recall seeing spotlights at places like Pauley Pavilion and Royce Hall at various times during the past month. This is part of the campaign as well – it is meant literally to spotlight on-campus events.

“We did have people there, we had street teams near the spotlights,” Ozeas said. “People were out and about checking it out.”

After leaving a recent men’s basketball game I remember seeing the spotlight, thinking it was weird, and then walking home to play video games. Hello malaise.

I do think the Happenings Web site is easy to use and attractive. I also like that many different aspects of the media campaign point students to this Web site as a sort of portal into the cultural wonderland that is UCLA.

When I asked students why they don’t seek out cultural events on campus, I was often told the events available to students simply are not engaging and therefore students aren’t interested.

I put that theory to the test when I visited the Fowler Museum and it proved to be feeble. I was very impressed with Larry Yust’s Street Seen exhibition, and the Botánica Los Angeles exhibition. I even told a few friends they should see the exhibits for themselves. But like I said, I went to the museum to do research.

While at the museum, I carefully noted those who were in attendance. I saw a few adults meandering through the Street Seen exhibit, and as I wandered around the museum (in a state of cultural ecstasy nearing catatonia) I bumped into three young women. Assuming they were UCLA students, I asked them whether they had come to the museum because they heard about it via the Happenings campaign. Nope. They were Cal State Northridge students and had to go to the museum for a class assignment. The only other people I saw at the museum were a large group of UCLA students. I didn’t bother asking whether they were at the museum for fun because they were being lectured by their professor on the Botánica exhibit.

I asked Fowler Museum gallery attendant John Piccione about student attendance and he said it has increased, chalking it up to the quality of the current exhibitions. But Piccione also noted that more “professors are using the museum as a teaching tool.” Isn’t the point to get students to the museum on their own?

But if UCLA can get you hooked on its dance recitals and flute concertos, well, university communications hopes it can keep you hooked for life, peddling the stuff to you deep into your adult years.

“We did this in response to students saying: ‘I’ve been here for four years and I never knew the Hammer Museum existed,’” Ozeas said. “This is useful to alumni too. You may want to bring kids back or go on a date. You are welcome to come back to go to the Fowler, or a basketball game. We thought the best way to attack it was while students are here.”

C’mon, the Hammer Museum isn’t even on campus. Do you really expect us to go there? And who said anything about kids? UCLA, you sure move fast.

E-mail Miller at dmiller@media.ucla.edu.