Anyway, I must say I really enjoyed myself this weekend. I don't know if anyone else went, but I felt the diversity weekend was a great experience. The BLSA dinner kicked off the events for some of the admitted students. The dinner included a bunch of alumni, current students, professors, and a 9th circuit judge I believe. The event wasn't really for admitted students, so there wasn't a lot there. It was mostly to honor current alumni. They touched on the racial issues on campus, the 33 video, and the efforts that the campus was taking to handle these issues. The dean also spoke on the racial issues on campus, and some programs that she was piloting as a result. I personally talked to and picked the brains of quite a few students that were in the 33 video. Everyone's experience was different which is all I'll really say on it. Then I met some people of color who said they didn't have any of those experiences and it seemed to be section dependent.
The rest of the week included the events that you'll probably get at every diversity weekend from schools. A tour of decent parts of the city, dinners, law school tours, talking to current students, talking about loans and COA, partying, drinking, and a bunch of crap that I won't bore any of you with. Their BLSA is awesome by the way.
All in all, I think going there and speaking to current black students in and out of the 33 video definitely eased my concerns about the atmosphere at UCLA a bit. At first I was discounting them just based on that, but I can say now that's not really the case. The thing I liked the most was that none of the students I talked to beat around the bush or tried to give me this "Oh UCLA is perfect and happy and everything is great" BS.
