UCLA Fires Back via YouTube Administration "Appalled" By Student Rant, Posts Response in Same Forum03/18/2011  by Alexis Mattera
One week ago, Alexandra Wallace took to YouTube to post her thoughts on her Asian UCLA classmates in the library. You can probably guess what happened after that – the junior’s rant went viral (viewed nearly 4.5 million times...and parodied), she was called a racist for her remarks and she backtracked with an apology in the Daily Bruin – but the school’s reaction was less than typical: Administrators posted a response on the same site.
Chancellor Gene D. Block called the debacle a "sad day at UCLA" and talked about how the school was "appalled by the thoughtless and hurtful comments" in the clip posted on Monday. Despite UCLA's disappointment in Wallace, disciplinary action has not yet been taken because the school is focusing its efforts on ensuring Wallace’s safety, as she has received numerous threatening e-mails, which are being investigated by the campus police department. Campus spokesman Phil Hampton hopes the incident will serve as a lesson about the impact of posting material to public websites. "Once you put information out there, it’s difficult to take it back," he said.
I personally applaud UCLA’s course of action thus far because the video was produced using the school’s own broadcast studio and released through channels (YouTube, Facebook and the UCLA website) favored by and accessible to all students. "If it’s a response to something that was seen by people in a new-media format, it’s important that the response be made in a new-media format," Hampton said. I agree...do you? |