Reporting for duty

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny, Frank Zappa said in 1974 with his own marvelous voice. The same is true of bicycle advocacy at UCLA, not dead, surely, and the funny smell, well, you will have to judge that for yourself. 


The proof? Friday 12/3 2010 at noon the UCLA Bicycle Academy (Steering Committee: from the left Dr Michael Cahn, Aric Gregson PhD, Mihai Peteu) met at Lu Valle for Bike Lunch and designed plans for the future: How to make the voice of staff and faculty cyclists heard loud and clear, and to give the cycling members of the campus community that publicity which will encourage others to try it out. Join us for the next meeting on 7 January at noon, and then every first Friday of the month. 


Student advocacy is important, but advocating by staff and faculty has the benefit of the longer duration, greater familiarity with past developments, and an additional credibility that our demands should have with the administration. We will focus on building up a strong group of leaders (Steering Committee) and we ask for your support. We also want to offer a forum to publicize issues and systemic failures which are easily overlooked in the  car-centric environment we live in. 


We envision to publish first person narratives to bring home the normality of cycling from and to and on campus, and profiles, interviews, reports about campus based research that relates to cycling: historically, physiologically, politically, geographically, semiotically, urbanistically, environmentally, mathematically, you name it. At the same time we want to interact with the campus administration to assist them in improving bicycle services for staff, faculty and student. Because what is good for cyclists, is good for everybody!