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Happy holidays, Bruins Nation! As we draw closer to the end of the world year, it is time to look back on the big moments and to celebrate the great efforts we have seen this year with our annual Bruins Nation Awards.
Today we will focus on the best writing from the community, and in 2 days we will share our nominees for the best comedy. Unfortunately, our administration has been quite the muse for both categories, but fortunately, our sports teams, our school tradition, and our passion for everything U.C.L.A. has also served as inspiration, so we have been rewarded with another year of great contributions from the best online Bruin community in the whole internets.
My personal thanks to everyone who participates here at BN. I'm on this site every day, not just for the latest news and opinion, but also to see the familiar screen names as well as look for some new faces to welcome and encourage. Nestor and company built this place, but it is the community that keeps it going every day. For that reason, frontpagers are not eligible for these awards. Here are links to the 2011 and 2010 Awards.
We narrowed down all the year's fanshots and fanposts to 5 nominees, and you won't believe how difficult this is to do. There were 20-30 of you (no pun intended) who were seriously considered, and I wish time and space allowed me to honor all of you individually. In the end we whittled it down to what we felt were the best of the best.
Your votes determine the winner, and winners receive the coveted Benny - a 5 inch replica of the 40 foot Blue Bear statue outside the Denver Convention Center. No, I still have no idea why we have such a thing, but I'm just glad we do. It makes me feel a bit closer to home. Go Bruins!
With that in mind, here are the 5 nominees for the best writing. The titles link to the original articles if you wish to go back and reread them
Teachable Moments - Bruinut, Jan 8 and Teachable Moments, Part 2 - Bruinut, Jan 31
In this two part entry, Bruinut gives us some of the most beautiful writing we have seen on BN, and more importantly, gives some even valuable lessons for life. Though the examples he uses come from sports, the lessons are applicable to every walk of life we will face. This is Coach Wooden's teaching at its finest, and I'm sure Coach would have given these posts a rec himself.
A Break From Sports: Fun Old Pix of UCLA, Westwood - KSBruin, Feb 20
At a time when things were particularly grim for Bruins fans, KSBruin linked to this incredible archive of old photos of our campus, and in doing so reminded us all about the bigger picture, figuratively speaking, of U.C.L.A. and why we care so much about this place.
An Open Letter to UC President Yudof About UCLA's Chancellor - bruinfollower, Mar 29
Bruinfollower beautifully laid out the diversity of experience that is the heart and soul of U.C.L.A., eloquently expressed his opinion as to where that diversity was being stymied, and was willing to share that publicly with the BN community in this open letter to the head of the U.C. Regents.
The Miranda Rites - MexiBruin, Sep 17
When you look in the dictionary under "Bruin pride", there is a picture of Mexi next to it. The Miranda Rites, along with a primer on John Wooden, should be mandatory components of freshman orientation. In a world with too many rights and too few responsibilities, Mexi lays out perfectly what is necessary to be a Bruin.
Protecting Our Turf -- Literally: No Sword Through Our Logo Campaign - Classof66, Nov 4 - and -
#Defend Our Logo: It's About Pride: An Open Letter to our Football Players and Coaches - JoeBruin15, Nov 11
This is the BN Awards first joint entry, and it seemed only fair to honor both Classof66 who set the ball rolling, and JoeBruin15, who then booted it clear out of the stadium. Thanks to an enlightened idea and a subsequent twitter campaign and petition, these two spared Bruins fans from being subjected to a guy with a broom on his head and wearing a dress jam a toy sword in the center of our logo. By doing so, they fought for the dignity of U.C.L.A. and joined movements like #VetoSeto and #SFatPauley in the ranks of pretty amazing things that the BN community has helped accomplish. Oh, and how did that game turn out again?
Congrats to our 5 nominees. Write-ins are also welcome and will be counted, so if you have a grass-roots favorite, get the word out. Feel free to discuss your thoughts in the thread below.
Voting is open from now until Dec 31 with the winners named shortly afterward (when I have time to get to it). We will also be announcing a special Editors-Choice Award at that time, too. Thanks again to the entire BN Community for everyone's contributions and for another great year at Bruins Nation...dot com! Go vote!