a proper university in its own right and not simply a branch of the UC system.
=== Recent history ===
On June 1, 2016, two men were killed in a murder-suicide at an engineering building in the university. School officials put the campus on lockdown as Los Angeles Police Department officers, including SWAT, cleared the campus. In February 2022, Matthew Harris, a former lecturer and postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, was arrested after allegedly making numerous threats of violence against students and faculty members of UCLA's Philosophy Department.
In 2018, a student-led community coalition known as "Westwood Forward" successfully led an effort to break UCLA and Westwood Village away from the existing Westwood Neighborhood Council and form a new North Westwood Neighborhood Council, with over 2,000 out of 3,521 stakeholders voting in favor of the split. Westwood Forward's campaign focused on making housing more affordable and encouraging nightlife in Westwood by opposing many of the restrictions on housing developments …
