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  DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Students get rowdy during finals week last year around the apartment complexes in Westwood. Police arrested 20 students.

By Laura Rico

Daily Bruin Contributor

If administrators or university police have any say in the matter, students won’t be partying like it’s fall quarter of 1999 this finals week.

“We will not hesitate to suspend a student who endangers the life of others,” said Bob Naples, dean of students and assistant vice-chancellor of Student Affairs.

A UCLA tradition know as “Midnight Yell,” where students scream at the stroke of midnight every day during finals week, got out of control last fall, as students burned couches and threw bottles and raw eggs at police officers and firefighters. Police arrested 20 students and detained many others.

Charges against students ranged from failure to disperse to disturbing the peace and arson.

For some students residing in the apartments, Midnight Yell is a chance to alleviate the stress and anxiety of final exams.

“It’s a way of relieving stress and releasing energy,” said Banafsheh Khorram, a third-year environmental studies student. “We are so confined here by building managers and cops that disruptions are bound to happen, and there’s not much else to do in Westwood anyway.”

In a press conference last month, Chancellor Albert Carnesale said the administration has been substantially more involved with management of the midnight hours in the past year to minimize disruption and danger.

“Among the steps we took was a great degree of presence early on, getting our people in to remove obstacles that have been placed on the street or things that might be set on fire,” he said. “We also worked on having greater presence of (university) police and less presence of LAPD.”

According to the UCLA Student Code of Conduct, the university may take disciplinary actions against students who participate in the Yell.

“The university shall have discretion to exercise jurisdiction over student conduct, if the misconduct indicates that a student poses a threat to the safety or security of any member of the university community,” states the code of conduct.

Since last fall, cooperation between UCPD and the Office of Student Affairs, which oversees various aspects of student and campus life, have resulted in a more subdued Midnight Yell.

“We are rolling out the same plan we used for spring and winter quarter last year, and it has been pretty successful,” said UCPD Lt. Manny Garza.

“We’ve added additional personnel on Glenrock, Landfair, and Kelton Avenues, which are known as traditional trouble spots,” he said.

Facilities workers will be on hand to clean up trash, debris and other objects which could be used to start fires, he said.

Representatives from Student Affairs will be present to observe student conduct and judge students’ safety, said Naples.

Third-year electrical engineering student Ambar Mukherjea vividly recalls events of last fall, but does not expect similar events to occur this year.

“Helicopters were floating overhead, and people started lighting fires and kicking trash cans, which the cops responded to by firing rubber bullets,” Mukherjea said. “But I think it’ll be more mellow this year.”

On-Campus Housing officials have chosen to deal with Midnight Yell by offering residents stress-relieving alternatives to screaming.

“Some halls plan activities for study breaks or provide snacks to take people away from the temptation to yell out of windows,” said Suzanne Seplow, south area director of the Office of Residential Life. Resident Advisors monitor halls and can issue 15 hours of community service to residents who participate in the yell, she said.

But Dykstra Hall resident Alex Palmer, a second-year sociology and economics student, does not see the need for regulations.

“I think that Midnight Yell is dumb, but it’s only a problem because RAs and others make it a problem,” said Palmer. “Being torn away from studying for a minute to hear a couple of guys yelling ‘finals suck’ isn’t going to hurt anyone.”