Students Bring ‘UC Nuclear Free’ Campaign to UCLA
by Noah Grand and Ewan Cameron, December 5, 2002

Published in the Daily Bruin Online

Most UCLA students know more about weapons of mass destruction being developed halfway across the world than those their own university helps to produce.

The UC manages two labs for the Department of Energy – Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories – that design nuclear weapons. But members of a campaign entitled "UC Nuclear Free" argue that developing nuclear weapons is immoral and the university should not be involved. "Students from Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Irvine and now UCLA are now all working on this campaign together," said Michael Cox, a third-year political cience student and member of the UCLA chapter.

The group has raised its profile on other UC campuses, but the UCLA chapter held its first meeting last month. "To get the campaign started in UCLA, students need a forum to voice concerns on this issue and to know about it," said Lindsay Cook, a third-year political science student.

Both Cook and Cox get their interest in the campaign from UC Santa Barbara, where UC Nuclear Free has its headquarters.

Cook said that it is appropriate to have this group at UCLA, a campus whose chancellor is an expert on national security and who was a negotiator for a major international arms control agreement.

The UC labs are not currently responsible for the production or storage of nuclear weapons, but they do develop and maintain nuclear technology.

University press aide Jeff Garberson said debate over the university's nuclear involvement has been a "regular and understandable" occurrence in his 30 years at the UC.

"It is a sign of the strength of the democratic process that people can debate this publicly and openly," Garberson said.

The university started running Los Alamos in 1943, as scientists gathered there to create the world's first atomic bomb in a secret mission known as the Manhattan Project.

Among those protesting UC involvement with nuclear weapons is Sir Joseph Rotblat, one of the researchers of the Manhattan Project who is now lending his upport to UC Nuclear Free.

He resigned from the Manhattan Project before its completion after realizing that Hitler's atomic weapons program was not going to succeed, he said.

In 1995 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Student activists argue that most of the international community is on their side, as the vast majority of nations have agreed to a treaty banning all nuclear testing.

But the U.S. Senate voted against ratifying this treaty in 1999, allowing the labs to keep developing new nuclear weapons technology.

Ironically, a nuclear explosion monitoring system in the Livermore lab is used to enforce other nations' compliance with the treaty, said Michael Coffey, the Youth Outreach Coordinator for UC Nuclear Free.

Members turned to one of Carnesale's speeches titled "Rethinking National Security," delivered in February, for additional support.

"It is hard to argue that others should have zero nuclear weapons, but that the United States needs thousands of them," Carnesale said in the speech. "To be credible, the United States must reduce its own nuclear arsenal."

The group, which has both student and non-student members, is also concerned the UC could be inventing new tactical nuclear weapons that could be used in a possible conventional war with Iraq or North Korea.In spite of the university's long-standing support of the labs' activities, UC Nuclear Free wants the university to cancel its contracts with the Department of Energy and stop running the labs, because it questions the morality of the university.

"Please raise your voices and demand that the University of California get out of the business of making weapons of mass destruction" Roblat said in an open letter he sent to the university in May.

The UC Regents have yet to reply to the letter. They are scheduled to discuss the lab contracts at their March meeting, which is at UCLA.