My Bruin Review Article

If you’re a Bruin Baddie, Baudrillard’s for you!

Sharing the first article I wrote for the Bruin Review, an independent alternative, opinion and satire (just be everything why don't you) magazine. Check it out here: https://bruinreview.wordpress.com/2025/12/20/if-youre-a-bruin-baddie-baudrillards-for-you/

With the rise of UCLA’s social media presence, false realities confront us everywhere. UCLA is losing its physical sense of self in favour of online culture.

UCLA’s symbolism has become ubiquitous—the signs around Westwood, the flood of blue and gold merchandise, and the influencers drawing stampedes of young people are only a few examples of how the school’s imagery has infiltrated its surroundings. Marketing, branding, and symbolism present a false reality of our school, though, a fantasy. Something the empty-eyed watcher wants.

UCLA’s reputation is forever insecure. Our lurid colors are symbolic of that.

We were founded, unfortunately, in the modern 20th century. We stand separately from schools established in the enviable 18th century like Princeton and the 17th century darling, Harvard. Oxford was founded (and we all gasp!) in the 12th century. Every school that ranks above us is older. We are jealous of the centuries of history that other schools have; time affords a prestige like no other. 

To compensate, UCLA tries to be different. We use the quarter system, we have fancy food, we have the Hill that separates academic buildings and dorms. The Hip-Hop Research Initiative, De Neve Learning Center and its DJing classes, Canna Club, and the fact that we have no strictly business undergraduate degree are all ways we embrace our modernity and differences. 

We're a young school. UCLA is the kid at the grown-ups table trying to get its voice across. On student tours, Kerkhoff Patio glitters when we’re informed of the Harvard Crest intaglioed on one of the arches for a filming of Legally Blonde when UCLA posed as the superior Harvard Law School. There is nothing special but the names, yet we feel special nonetheless. 

Last year when I arrived in Westwood, there were “#1 Public University” signs everywhere you looked. Westwood itself is cute, quaint, and full of Persian shops. However, it feels like an extension of the impressionist bubble because of UCLA’s symbols. The posters are bumper stickers on my Monet. Any sign telling you to live in the moment is insincere. When there is an excess of symbols, facsimiles become the physical place they originally described and hyperreality is formed. To people who don’t study here or live nearby, their conception of UCLA is based on what they see online: the headlines, rankings, and forced connotation of excellence. As such, we begin to live in the ideal of should rather than what is. 

Relating this to all the #1 posters, a certain insecurity is manifested into all of UCLA’s marketing. If UCLA students were the best, they would know it. Naturally, when everybody is telling you should be the best, you’ll inevitably burn out. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls this “The Violence of Positivity”: the possibilities of everything stacked high come crashing down on you. 

UCLA is trying desperately to impress its reputation and standards for excellence upon its students. Whether it is needed depends on the student. Some people have had this place as their dream school since they were 7 years old and go to class confidently. Some people never wanted to go here and need the constant validation. This is a massive school, and the spectrum of priorities could not be wider. 

On the other hand, UCLA’s online presence belies working conditions and strikes. The administration is continually unable to reach fair contract agreements with the people who drive the former “#1 Public University” and the “#1 Dining Hall in the US.” The institution is out of touch with students; it is trying to maintain a spotless facade in an attempt to cover up its issues. On October 20th, BruinLearn was offline, and UCLA posted a video celebrating that students finally got to ‘touch grass’ because the website was down. The administration admitted through this move that UCLA’s students are so burdened by work that they cannot go outside and rest, but framed it as a crafty marketing strategy. This comes across as out of touch, not something a college Instagram should necessarily be making light of. 

Our manufactured sensationalism distracts from the overadmission, poorly handled enrollment, and morass of collegiate bureaucracy that makes inquiries and work permissions for international students hard to get. In the midst of all this, UCLA is spending 80 million dollars to breach the Rose Bowl contract and begin hosting home football games at the Sofi Stadium. Everybody comes here with high hopes, and when our hyperreality doesn’t live up, we complain on YikYak. UCLA itself has become the influencer. Baudrillard scorns at the back of the class.

One could argue that our reality is this way because of our proximity to LA culture, where glamorous appearances disguise an uglier truth. LA is the land of many promised things: of the movie “La La Land,” of dreams, of sunlight, of fame, of Hollywood, of glamour and celebrities, of camp, of a beat generation, of revolution, of palm trees, and of people trying to live Joan Didion’s life. Colleges take the shape of the city, and in many ways, the college shapes the city too. 

UCLA’s insecurity could just be our unique college identity. Maybe it is something to be proud of.

“An insecurity to be proud of?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Baudrillard says. 

At the end of the day, this is a public school and, with our enormous student body, a synecdoche for life. Everything will change into a hyperreality—one might say it already has. But those who thrive here will succeed in their ambitions after college. As far as the school goes, we are privileged. The same problems that all public schools face do beleaguer us, but UCLA succeeds in many places. We should take a very straightforward approach and view this for all it is, the physical training for a life, one with very good facilities. The physical, somatic sense of place is what matters. 

One can go on and on about how UCLA has lost its sense of place, how it is lacking in heritage and instills false pride, but you cannot deny how breathtaking Royce can be on a good day. Just as William Gass refuted the lofty Barthes’ Death of the Author, “you can deny the concept of the author for as long as you want, the fact remains that a person wrote the book,” nothing can refute the ontological and objective fact of the gorgeous red bricks and prairies and sunlight on campus. It will always have a place until the Fourth Reich bombs New Los Angeles.