"This is my pod," she laughed, pointing to the pink resting pod in the corner. "I would come here a lot and sit and work on homework and prepare for midterms and finals."

The resting pods are carved wooden capsules with a small curtain for privacy. Inside the pod, a reading light and outlet allow students to work lying down or sitting up. The colorful furniture and polka dots painted on the tall white walls under fluorescent lighting give a playful feel to the hub.

This BruinHub opened in fall 2021, re-purposed from an under-used racquetball court. It is open from 5:15 a.m. for early commuters to 1 a.m. A second BruinHub was re-purposed inside a conference room and opened this winter quarter in the Strathmore Building, which also houses UCLA's Basic Needs Center that provides emergency housing and food for students in need.

A shortage of campus study spaces, particularly during finals, and a lack of places where students could prepare food made it difficult for student commuters to get work done, eat, lie down and recharge phones and laptops.

"There's a time I didn't bring food at all, because I didn't want to spend money on campus, so I would just bring snacks because I knew I needed to eat and I didn't want to carry my lunch with me the whole day," Barahona said of her time before she discovered the BruinHubs.

Dominique Peñate, program coordinator for commuter support and programs, knows the struggles of student commuters all too well, having commuted from South Gate before graduating from UCLA in 2022

"Some students stack their classes and try to only come in twice a week to save on gas and parking, and I used to do the same," she said.

Gevorgian said the BruinHubs are a good start toward addressing student commuter needs. But she called on the university to offer more online class availability for commuter students and more lenient in-person attendance policies, particularly when bad weather makes driving dangerous. She also advocates for student commuters to have priority to register for UCLA's limited online course offerings.

"We had the atmospheric rain, really heavy floods last month and professors were still requiring students to come in person and that is a danger to the students themselves," Gervorgian said. "And if they do choose to stay home, then they would be missing out on class, so that leaves a negative educational impact on the students."

"I feel like UCLA underestimates how essential it is to have online classes as an option," Barahona said. "For commuters, it's just easier to have that option for Zoom."

UCLA is in discussions to build more BruinHubs in its libraries, in its new 11-story Trust Building in downtown L.A. and at its satellite campus at the former Marymount California University site in Rancho Palos Verdes, Peñate said.

The BruinHubs are not intended to be a substitute for students in need of housing, but to allow the university to tap into underused spaces and re-create them into a space that can help student commuters, Gorden said.

"The BruinHub allows us to think about those niche areas where sometimes students make conscious decisions of where they are living," he said. "But we do have a need to think about the longer-term housing needs of our students."

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