You need UCLA

I was just on The New York Times website looking for interesting stories—one of those to follow—when I noticed this ad directing me to ioucla too. I guess I missed this story in the The Daily Bruin, but it looks like IOUCLA is trying to separate UCLA’s fate from the feeble state:

IOUCLA is a platform for people to organize and advocate for the issues they care about—whether the arts, community service, health care, education, research, the environment, economic growth or the millions of other ways UCLA impacts our world every day. …

We need everyone in the UCLA family; every member of the leadership community; every business, large and small; anyone who benefits from this university; anyone who ought to know what’s at stake.  That would very likely be every one of us.

Speak up. Sound the alarm. Get active.

If this is a campaign to save UCLA, I say amen. The future certainly looks bleak. And UCLA, like UC Berkeley, is a vital part of the California economy.

I do hope, though, that the name, I O UCLA, is a reminder to Californians, not to Bruin alumni. Because as grateful as I am to the undergraduate education I got at UCLA, and for the legal education I’m getting there now, I’d like to think the steeply rising tuition I already paid—something like $4,000 a year during college and an average of $40,000 a year for law school—fulfilled that obligation.