#SFatPauley – A Crushing & Historic Victory for UCLA Students on Behalf of the Bruin Nation

On Monday gbruin set up this week's historic student vote as an opportunity for "Bruin redemption." Last night's vote was a chance for latest generation of Bruins not only to make up for the disappointing on campus stadium vote from 40+ years ago, but also to protect something very special for the basketball program built by Coach John R. Wooden.

Holy Cow - our students delivered. The result was a smashing victory for current Bruin students, who won it for the entire Bruin Nation. For 37 days we had been subjected to relentless propaganda from UCLA athletic department officials and its sympathizers that the decision to banish our students behind the baseline was done with the support of current students. We have been relentless on our pushback methodically making the point how they were full of lies and contradictions. Now we have a crushing mandate from our student body.

Let this sink in for moment. Thousands of students - over 9000 - voted last night in delivering this win stopping a Morgan Center effort to steal take away their sideline seats based on a cooked survey with just few hundred respondents. Only 8 percent of students supported Morgan Center's land grab. 8 percent! On the other hand, as pointed out by gbruin, while 69% No vote is pretty overwhelming on its own, if you only look at the students with preference 89% of UCLA students voted to preserve our decade long tradition of sideline students. This is simply a smashing victory for students, alums and fans who have organized in last 5 weeks. On the flip side, this nothing short of humiliation and utter embarrassment for the likes of Dan Guerrero and Mark Harlan.

Ryan put up a post last night thanking some special Bruins who have led the charge to get us this win. I want to add another name to the mix. The entire BruinsNation is grateful to the efforts of UCLA14. From his username, I assume he is going to be a member of class of 2014, which would make him a freshman at UCLA right now. A super freshman. It was UCLA14 who took the initiatives to organize the students on Facebook and translate his online activism into offline one by getting the word out on the Bruin Walk. The results of his efforts were astonishing as his Facebook group signed up well over 1,000 attendees and played a massive role in this huge win.

Thank you to UCLA14 and all his colleagues who came out and voted yesterday. We are not done yet though.

The Daily Bruin sports reporters, who have been disappointing through this whole ordeal, tweeted last night:

Vote contradicts student leaders RT @dailybruin Second advisory vote-students voted against moving Den student seating in Pauley Pavilion

Dan Guerrero said last Friday:

Last month, after extensive deliberation with student leadership, Athletics announced new plans for the student seating in renovated Pauley Pavilion. This week, the Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC) decided to further explore the overall student body reaction to the seating adjustment by placing a question on the upcoming election ballot. I fully support USAC's engagement in this process and look forward to working with them as we examine the results of the question. If ultimately, a return to the previously established student section is the desire, then that is what we will do.

The message for Dan should be clear now. We expect quick action from him and his staff to reverse their embarrassing decision to rob sideline seating from students at Pauley. But when Morgan Center reverses their decision to steal sideline seating from students, they shouldn't expect a pat in the back for doing the right thing. They screwed this all up in the first place. They can expect that the scrutiny on Dan will only get more intense. We have been very supportive of Guerrero over the years. No more. We are not going to give him the benefit of doubt until we see our major revenue programs are back on track and performing up to UCLA standards.

I want to add another note before I close. Last night in overwhelming numbers the students contradicted their "leaders" on campus. Their leaders didn't know any better when instead of raising hell on behalf of their colleagues and alums, they simply went along with a very poor decision from the dysfunctional athletic department. We have offered a lot of tough words during the recent weeks to describe the actions of these leaders. We will not make any apologies for how we characterized the exposed maneuvering to shut students out of their sideline seats. But we do extend an olive branch.

We hope the Den Leadership will look at last few weeks and use it as an important lesson. We hope they can appreciate the power of real "unity" not the fake one written up Morgan Center press releases, can bring students on campus and thousands of alums scattered all around the country together into one Bruin Nation. We hope they will come back here and join with us in talking up UCLA sports, while vigilantly protecting our Bruin traditions and best interest of those four letters. We are all in this together. Onward.