To the Editor:

To Our Brave Explorers (in gratitude):

They take our boldest dreams and use them for wings.

Soaring higher, but always tethered home, they become the kites of our hope, the principal scouts of the unknown, the sole pioneers of the ever fearful future.

They make manifest with courage and resolve all that we barely dare to consider.

They lead us upward, and we hang on as if our civilization’s best chance for success depends on their ascent.

And so it does.

Solomon M. Matsas
Staff Development Coordinator
Student Affairs

To the Editor:

In the Dec. 10 issue, there appeared an article on UCLA employees’ passion for service to others (Bruin Angels). In the portion of the article highlighting Pam Cysner is the following: “Anger is a natural emotion. What’s important, Pam Cysner explained, is how one chooses to express it. This is the message Cysner seeks to convey to teens in Inglewood, where poverty, gangs and other dismal conditions lead all too commonly to violence.” As a UCLA employee and Inglewood resident, I am concerned about the writer’s portrayal of the city in this fashion. I am not saying “poverty, gangs and other dismal conditions” don’t exist in Inglewood. What concerns me is that this characterization negates parts of the city where residents are not in the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder and where gangs have not taken over. Media representations of neighborhoods such as Inglewood and South Central paint these areas and their residents with a sweeping brush. Because so many people obtain their perceptions through the media, reporters, journalists and writers have a responsibility to vigilantly avoid such representations. Bottom line is that this could have been said differently and in a way that avoided generalization.

Alva Moore Stevenson
Administrative Specialist
UCLA Oral History Program