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Driveway parking may be punished

The perpetual problem of parking in Westwood has reared its ugly head again.

This time the issue is the common practice of “apron parking,” where residents of the North Village park their vehicles in driveways, thereby blocking the sidewalk and street – a practice that is illegal.

Hundreds of people living west of campus – mostly students – park this way. Take away that option and hundreds of students will be ticketed and will have to find another place to park in an already over-saturated Westwood.

Los Angeles has not made a decision on “apron parking” yet, but if enforcement of the ban on this kind of parking goes into effect, it will be within the next month. This is undeniably a huge issue that needs to be addressed by not only our student leaders, but administrators and L.A. City Council member Jack Weiss alike.

More parking on campus seems to be the likely solution until you consider the agreement UCLA has with the city to cap its parking in order to limit traffic and pollution. There’s a ceiling on how much parking UCLA can offer and we’re close to that limit.

We need to empower the North Village as an advocacy group for student issues, work with the City of Los Angeles, and at the very least, educate students on this issue that threatens students’ way of life.

P.C. Zai USAC Facilities commissioner

Slate merely creates facade of diversity

The article “Diversity key to Students First!” flagrantly crossed the line from news to editorial in passing off highly controversial assertions as fact (News, May 30).

The very headline implies that Bruins United, the chief competitor of Students First!, does not value diversity.

Can Students First!, a slate that harvests most of its candidates from a select set of ethnic and cultural student groups through blatant tokenism, be characterized as diverse? Who recalls the last time they ran an engineer, a pre-med, a Jewish or Greek student, or a straight white male like myself?

Jacob Leven Second-year, mechanical engineering