#SFatPauley ("Students First at Pauley"): UCLA Must Restore Court-side Seating for Students

Bruins are officially blitzing UCLA Athletics Facebook page voicing their disappointment at the latest episode of Pauley renovation fiasco. We have been closely rearing the outpouring of overwhelming disappointment here on Bruins Nation while the AD has taken pathetic measures to shut out concerned Bruins. We are not going to let this issue die away, which UCLA is probably hoping for it in a desperate manner. The way UCLA athletics mislead (there will be more posts on this specific point) the students is completely unacceptable. It is appalling and an insult to the four letters proudly worn by our alums, students, student athletes and fans of the greatest university in America.

We are going to pursue a resolution preserving what we believe is one of the fundamental parts of UCLA basketball tradition, which is having our student body present at least along one side of Nell and John Wooden Court. So with that in mind we are expecting UCLA athletics to take the following steps:

1. Reverse the bogus seating plan billed as an ‘enhancement' of student experience, banishing our student body behind one side of the basket and go back to the original plan as shown by Tasser10 here;
   
2. Launch an investigation with a reasonable time table (30-45 days) that would provide answers with regards to who was responsible for misleading the students, and then follow-up with adequate disciplinary measure which should include the consideration of dismissal from the Athletic Department.

We hope UCLA will take the steps outlined above by end of this coming work week. If they do not take those steps, at that point we will launch a sustained and if needed protracted campaign against UCLA athletics, which would put all online advocacy actions on the table, including calls for all out donation freeze for the University.

In the meantime, here is what you - members of Bruins Nation - and any other UCLA alums and students who agree with the demands above need to do, we have some recommended actions and "to dos" after the jump.

Tweets:

Tweet the following:

RT @BruinNation #SFatPauley ("Students First at Pauley"): UCLA Must Restore Court-side Seating for Students http://sbn.to/gXgsJW

and

RT @BruinNation Academic Misconduct? #UCLA Needs to Investigate the Cooked "Den Survey" http://t.co/rgfxAsF #SFatPauley

If you have a Twitter account, please tweet those 2 messages right away using the hashtag #SFatPauley.

Please use that hashtag from now on with every twitter post that concerns this issue. We are going to use that tag in the title of all of our posts, and also use it to tag all related stories, fanposts and fanshots. If you are blogging about it on BN in Fanposts, Fanshots section, please use that in your title whenever possible and include them in your relevant tag section.

Facebook

Even though UCLA is trying hard to stop the avalanche of criticism by deleting reasonable and respectful feedbkac, please continue to flood UCLA's Facebook page with your messages. Please be respectful and courteous while expressing your disappointment. Here are three great examples of messages you can share on UCLA Athletics' Facebook page starting with Dan Colby:

I will not be making contributions to UCLA or UCLA Athletics until the students are returned to the sidelines of Pauley. They should have already been on the television viewing side, but this is just unacceptable. The athletics department is being run in the interest of the bottom line instead of the students.

Connie Linn:

I'm unbelievably disappointed by the UCLA Athletic administrators. You do not ask students whether they want more "unity" in student section without telling them specifically where that contiguous student section is going to be. Removing students from the sidelines is going to be a joke. Increased home court advantage? Students will ...become useful during 1/4 of the game when the opposing team is playing on West side of the court. How much of a home court advantage do you think that is? Whatever happened to the original floor plan where students have both sideline AND behind the basket?

Morgan Center should be ashamed of that misleading if not deceitful survey they conducted and the seating arrangement they came up with. You do not move the students out of seats which you perceived could be sold for lots of money and say that it's for the benefits of the students. In other words, you do not rip off the students and pretend that you're doing them a favor.

Trisha Howard Ananiades:

I'm so disappointed by the new seating arrangement at Pauley. Although I began my career at UCLA during a tumultuous time for UCLA basketball (Fall 1999), I was inspired by the passion demonstrated by my fellow students. We camped out for good seats for big basketball games, wore UCLA apparel, and cheered until we lost our voices. I l...oved being down close to the action. When I attended games at other schools, I always felt UCLA treated students better seat-wise. As an alumna, I looked forward to the time that I might be able to afford sideline seats again. Note that this passion and excitement was borne from my time as a student on the sidelines.

Now all that we will see on the sidelines are people arriving late, empty seats, and then the mad rush at the 8 minute break of people fleeing for the exits to get a jump on traffic. It's disappointing that you'd like more seats to fill with that type of fan rather than students.

Please follow those examples and then submit your Facebook messages to UCLA here. It would be perfect if you can reiterated the expectations we presented at the top of this post. Here they are again slightly edited or purposes of Facebooking:

1. Reverse the bogus seating plan billed as an ‘enhancement' of student experience, banishing our student body behind one side of the basket and go back to the original plan as demonstrated on BN;
   
2. Launch an investigation with a reasonable time table (30-45 days) that would provide answers with regards to who was responsible for misleading the students, and then follow-up with adequate disciplinary measure which should include the consideration of dismissal from the Athletic Department.

You can also take Facebook action on a new grassroots page- Fix The UCLA Athletics Department. Like it and crosspost the comment you posted on UCLA AD's page on Fix The UCLA Athletics Department.

Email

You can use the old fashioned route of contacting the UCLA officials by emailing the following accounts:

chancellor@ucla.edu

dguerrero@athletics.ucla.edu

mharlan@athletics.ucla.edu

Those are some to dos for this weekend.

We hope the UCLA athletic department will come to its senses in very near future and take the steps outlined above. We are not going to let this go. Stay tuned.

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