LETTERS

Published: Monday, December 2, 1996

Monday, December 2, 1996

Rush the field!

After the USC quarterback tossed the game-ending interception, with blue and gold face paint all over my face and T-shirt I tackled my friends as we rejoiced in the most incredible victory that we have ever witnessed. Immediately my brain flashed the strong signal, "Storm the field, storm the field," to my body. As I began to run and practically trample the four people in front of me, I looked around and realized that nobody else shared my idea. In a panic, I had come to grips with the fact that my dream to ride above a sea of screaming Bruin fans and touch the mighty yellow goal post would not be realized on this day.

All right, let's do the math, people! I have been a law-abiding citizen all my life, but how are 10 police officers going to arrest a mob of 30,000 crazy college students? Where is the spirit at this school? In probably the most exciting and amazing game that we will ever see as Bruins, especially because of the 'SC rivalry, how could I be the only one in the

stadium with these inclinations to rush the field? I guarantee you that even at the most conservative schools we would have seen pandemonium and students swarming their team with joyous screams after a game of this magnitude.

Bob, Cade, Abdul, Skip and company, on behalf of what I hope is a newly enlightened UCLA campus, I apologize for our lack of spirit and I congratulate you all on a tremendous victory. I thank you because your heart and determination to win have shown this second-year student what being a Bruin is all about.

Josh Kaplan

Second-year

Business economics/history

Yes on Village Center project

With "friends" like Laura Lake and her team ("Westwood finds friends in many places," Nov. 20), who needs enemies? Lake disseminated more misrepresentations and outright untruth at her staged "community meeting" than I can remember previously at any such meeting. Just to set the record straight, Councilman Mike Feuer has established a working group to get the real truth out about the proposed Village Center Westwood project. The group has 22 members, all well-established leaders of this community who are deeply concerned about the future of the village. They have met many times to review the project, offer suggestions, express any concerns, and find constructive approaches to review the project, offer suggestions, express any concerns, and find constructive approaches to problems. There has been and continues to be a lot of community input into this project. Lake declined an invitation to join this group. Could it be that she supports an alternative agenda at the village's expense?

While the Village Center Westwood project is not perfect, it is the most exciting and uplifting project on the boards in Southern California today. It represents an opportunity to place in the village an absolutely first-rate development with a football field-sized open-air plaza with fountains and landscaping, upscale stores, fine dining, a modern supermarket and yes, first-class movie theaters with stadium seating and every modern convenience, not to mention 2,500 new parking spaces.

I suggest we work together to come up with something we can be proud of and which serves residents and their families, students, faculty and staff, and everyone else in our community. Let's not kill the goose that is trying to lay the golden egg.

John Postley

UCLA alumnus, 1945

Bel Air

Sexton bares all

I found Jake Sexton's most recent column to be a thoughtful, lively, well-expressed piece.

Of course, detachment from groups can become as much a game as attachment to them. Conformity is comfy. It offers joys of community, the fantasy of suspending one's disbelief, and the luxury of not overworking one's mind. On the other hand, independence can also be fun as it vents one's ego. It has rewards in increased self-consciousness and a price in isolation or loneliness.

Both introversion and extroversion have their rewards. Watch out; you may be headed into a group. You are showing symptoms of an "academic": an introvert whose instincts prompt such extrovertive activities as writing laying NAKED one's sensibilities for the Daily Bruin. Normal persons might feel driven to such a baring before St. Peter at the Golden Gate, but before the DAILY BRUIN?

If you haven't read the end of "Gulliver's Travels" or Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," you've missed two kindred spirits (hardly a group).

Charles Berst

Professor (group) of English (subgroup)