Vol. 79/No. 11      March 30, 2015

The anti-Semitic remarks were made during an Undergraduate Students Association Council hearing on the appointment of Rachel Beyda to the student Judicial Board.

“Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community,” council member Fabienne Roth asked Beyda, who is a member of Hillel’s campus chapter and president-elect of the Jewish sorority Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi, “how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”

Taken aback, Council President Avinoam Baral told Roth the question was out of order. “I don’t think that’s a question we’d feel comfortable asking other students,” he said.

Then another council delegate asked Beyda if she had any other “political affiliations that could cause a conflict of interest.”

For 40 minutes after Beyda left the room, council members debated whether her faith and affiliations with Jewish groups meant she would automatically be biased. “Even if she is talented,” Roth said, she didn’t think it would be possible for Beyda to leave a legacy that is “not being divisive,” even though “it’s not her fault.”

The council then deadlocked in a 4-4-1 vote on the motion to appoint Beyda.

“What I’m seeing right now is someone potentially being denied a position because they’re Jewish,” Baral told the council after the vote. “I see no other reason.”

UCLA administrator Debra Geller, who advises the students association, intervened and the council reversed its vote, unanimously voting to appoint Beyda to the post.

A week after the vote, the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, printed a letter from Rachel Frenklak, Beyda’s roommate, who was at the hearing. Beyda’s testimony was followed by “a disgusting 40 minutes of what can only be described as unequivocal anti-Semitism during which some of our council members resorted to some of the oldest accusations against Jews, including divided loyalties and dishonesty,” she wrote.

On Feb. 20, after a growing outcry, the four council members who had voted against Beyda apologized in a letter in the Bruin. “Our intentions were never to attack, insult or delegitimize the identity of an individual or people,” they claimed.

“A foul odor is in the air,” said a joint reply by David Myers, chair of the history department; Chaim Seidler-Feller, executive director of UCLA Hillel; and Maia Ferdman, a Latin American studies student, in the March 9 Bruin. “Their contrition is welcome, but these cases are wake-up calls. As much as we assumed it to be dead, the Jewish Question lives on.”

The New York Times in a March 6 article that brought the incident to national attention noted that there “appears to be a surge of hostile sentiment directed against Jews at many campuses.” The Times said it was “often a byproduct of animosity toward the policies of Israel.”

At the council meeting that discussed her candidacy for the board, no one asked Beyda about her opinions of Israel or its policies.

A year earlier the UCLA Judicial Board had taken up a case involving conflict of interest charges filed by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine against two council members who had voted on a resolution calling on the college administration to divest from companies that do business in the West Bank after they went on a free trip to Israel.

UCLA Students for Justice in Palestine distanced itself from the anti-Jewish statements made during the recent student council debate. In a Feb. 24 statement, the group said that it “was not involved in the Judicial Board issue and strongly believes in the ability of any student at UCLA, regardless of background, to serve in that or any other position on campus.”  
 
 
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