Welcome to BGS!

Congratulations to all of our newly admitted students, and welcome to the UCLA family! We hope you feel proud of your amazing accomplishment, and we hope you will take some time to explore how the UCLA Bruin Resource Center (BRC) can enrich your UCLA experience. The BRC offers programs and services for current and former foster youth and we would love to connect with you!

Note: Although our office is closed at the moment, feel free to connect with us via email, we are here to support you and your transition in college. 

The UCLA Bruin Resource Center stands in solidarity against racial and gender-based violence. We acknowledge the continued violence against women, with a focus on violence against women of color at the hands of state-sanctioned institutions. As a department that seeks to empower and advocate for several underrepresented student communities, the BRC is committed to keep these cases and others like them in the public forum. We stay committed to interrogating our practices, policies and institutions in order to eliminate systemic forms of oppression. 

We stand in solidarity with the families of Breonna Taylor, Vanessa Guillen, Krysta Martinez and LaVena Johnson. With the recent announcement from the Grand Jury in the death of Breonnna Taylor, we stand firmly with all those who call for justice and truth.  

On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot to death by police who entered her apartment with a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night. On September 23, 2020, the Grand Jury did not indict the police officers related to her death. The outcry in this particular case has reverberated throughout the country and our communities. The pain of her death is only exacerbated by the Grand Jury’s findings. The BRC acknowledges #SayHerName, which aims to make the deaths of Black women an active part of the conversation by saying their names. The BRC is saying her name: Breonna Taylor.  

Racial and gender-based violence against women is pervasive and takes many forms. The other cases mentioned above underscore the severity and magnitude of what women of color face, just in the act of living their lives. Each of the following cases involve violence inflicted by members of the military. Vanessa Guillen was a U.S. Army soldier who was murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, Texas on April 22, 2020. Vanessa had told family members that she was enduring sexual harassment on the base. Krysta Martinez was a U.S. Army soldier stationed at Fort Hood, who said she too had been sexually harassed at the base, and was a vocal advocate in the effort to expose the truth about Vanessa Guillen. She died in a car accident on July 1, 2020. LaVena Johnson died in Iraq in 2005, serving her country. Her death was ruled a suicide, but there is evidence she may have been murdered, and her murder may have been covered up.  The BRC acknowledges the petition to close Fort Hood created by women veterans and the petition to reopen the investigation of LaVena Johnson’s death.   

The BRC affirms that silence and inaction are disservices to our community and our country. We are seeing continued upheaval and protests as justice continues to elude institutions that perpetrate violence against women of color. We stand in solidarity, acknowledging that these structures have failed to make the systemic changes needed to stop violence against women and communities of color. We acknowledge that these failures result in continued violence against women, in particular Black, Indigenous, Latina/x women of color. Their lives continue to be stolen from our community. Their voices continue to be silenced. 

Finally, we stand in solidarity with our students and other members of the UCLA community who are directly or indirectly affected by the violence against women, wherever it happens. We amplify their voices and want them know that we hear them, we stand with them, and most critically we will continue to work towards change and a more just society. We recognize much of this change must start internally, and as BRC staff members we recommit ourselves to intentionally advancing our own learning and understanding of the violence and oppression faced by women of color and other marginalized groups;  examining our practices and policies to ensure that they do not replicate systemic forms of oppression; and actively working in true partnership with students and student organizations to continue to advance social justice on our campus and in our communities. 

We ask all those interested in engaging and partnering with us to contact us via email brc@saonet.ucla.edu or through our BRC social media sites.