02.08.23

The Lumberjack

STUDENTS OUTRAGED OVER HOUSING CRISIS

by August Linton and Camille Delany

On Feb. 4, CPH quietly updated the housing website without any notice to on-campus residents, leaving returning students to find out for themselves that they should not expect to live in the dorms or campus apartments for the remainder of their time at Humboldt.

On-campus housing will not be provided for any returning students. All on-campus housing will be reserved for new freshmen or

transfers, starting in Fall ‘23. Should continuing students try to access housing through the university, they will be placed in temporary, off-campus housing.

“There was absolutely no email about it,” student Valeria Reggi said. “We found out by checking the website, which they updated with no warning.”

Due to a preexisting housing shortage that has left many students houseless, temporary options were explored in 2022 with the housing of over a hundred upperclassmen in the Comfort Inn motel.

A Feb. 6 email update stated that

The great Humboldt diner crawl

by Valen Lambert

In a Western world fraught with the tasteless chrome of modern design (AKA gentrification), we seek refuge in vestiges of the past. That’s why nothing hits home more than the timelessness of a good ol’ fashioned diner.

Americans love diners; besides baseball, rock n’ roll and the worst gun violence in the world, it’s a sliver of culture we can really call our own.

What does it take to be a diner? I can tell you it is not looking like the nauseating drab that is Toni’s. What they need is a waitress who is certainly going to call you hun. They need to serve eggs, sausage, bacon, toast and pancakes. They need to have the worst coffee you’ve ever had in your life. The food is always mediocre at best and the interior design needs to look like the inside of a 1970’s old folk’s home, or the kind of retro where you’d expect Elvis to walk out of the bathroom at any moment.

Deb’s Great American Hamburger Co. – 5/5 stars

Tucked away in the 1,500 person town of Redway, just a 5 minute drive from Garberville, lives Deb’s Great American Hamburger Co. If you ever really want to wow a hot date or need a moment of respite on your heinous commute to anywhere south of Humboldt county, this is the place to go.

Walking in, I could tell it’s the kind of spot that serves as a living room for locals. A little boy was running around

while his parents watched a show on their laptop. In the corner were several arcade games where two guys drank beer and cussed over a deer hunting game. Then there was me, bent over a slice of pie.

It’s got faded black and white checkered floors, and the walls are adorned with tacky Betty Boop memorabilia and

pictures of motorcycles. It’s got classic American breakfasts and dinners. It’s wonderfully retro; the ghost of an American past. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to a Twin Peaks diner around here. If you need a muse to write a Tom Waits song, this is the place.

Cal Poly Humboldt.”

The email panicked current students, many of whom expected to return to on-campus housing in the fall. This prompted an immediate response. A post circulated on social media inviting students to gather that night to organize. At the meeting, a large crowd of students filled the Gutswurrack, voicing their concerns with over-enrollment and planning a protest scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 8.

Filling every square foot of available standing room, students even packed onto the balcony. Organizer Lars Hansen spoke using a megaphone, and called on members of the crowd to voice their opinions on the new policy.

“We wanna know what’s going to happen to our housing, what’s going to happen to our community, and what’s going to happen to Humboldt,” Hansen said.

SEE HOUSING

PAGE 3

SEE DINERS

PAGE 5

Graphic courtesy of The Lumberjack | Cartoon graphic originally published in the Nov. 17 1971 issue of The Lumberjack, along with the story “The facts of life on students housing.” The labels have been changed, and the original graphic runs above.

Photo by Valen Lambert | Kristina’s Diner in Eureka, CA, right off Highway 101.

Luke Fischer plays five hours of pool a day.

Employees speak on the controversy.

Pedestrians live in fear.

The Lumberjack

FEBRUARY 17, 2023 AT 2:30PM-4:30PM IN GUTSWURRAK STUDENT ACTIVITIES CENTER 2ND FLOOR

STUDENT ASSOCIATION FEE REFERENDUM FORUM 1

FOCUS GROUP: BIPOC AND CAMPUS CULTURAL CENTERS

Learn about:

How much will the fee increase?

How will increasing the Student Association Fee make a difference?

For any questions contact: hsuas@humboldt.edu Instagram: calpolyhumboldt_as

LAYOUT EDITORS:

AUGUST LINTON

ANGEL BARKER

CAMILLE DELANY

NINA HUFMAN

DEZMOND REMINGTON

WEB EDITOR:

ANGEL BARKER

DELIVERY DRIVER:

JASMYN LEMUS

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER:

AUGUST LINTON

FACULTY ADVISER:

DEIDRE PIKE

CONTRIBUTORS:

AUGUST LINTON

CAMILLE DELANY

JAKE KNOELLER

DEZMOND REMINGTON

JASMIN SHIRAZIAN

EMMA SJOSTROM

VALEN LAMBERT

ALINA FERGUSON

HARRISON SMITH

Mission Statement

The Mission of this newspaper is to fairly inform and share the stories of the Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community. We strive to report with accuracy and honesty. We hold ourselves accountable for errors in our reporting. We invite all readers to participate. Views and contents of The Lumberjack are those of the author and not those of Cal Poly Humboldt. Unsigned editorials appearing in the Opinion section reflect a majority opinion of the editorial staff. Advertising material is for informational purposes and is not an expressed or implied endorsement of such commercial ventures of The Lumberjack, Associated Students or Cal Poly Humboldt.

CONTACT US:

What is our current Cal Poly Humboldt Student Association Fee?

THE A.S. OFFICE IS LOCATED IN NELSON HALL WEST SECOND FLOOR

HOUSING FROM PAGE 1

“I can’t fathom why you guys are accepting this many students when you can’t support them,” student Julia Kurtz said.

She questioned the logic of reserving the on-campus housing for freshmen and incoming transfers.

“If you are proud enough to put your current students in that housing, you should be proud enough to put new students in that housing,” Kurtz said.

Humboldt has a well-documented problem with student houselessness, a situation that some students said the new on-campus housing rules will make worse.

“I can just sleep in my car on campus, because that’s not any shittier than living in a motel, and it’s 10 to 15 times cheaper,” student Sam Mah said.

Many are considering dropping or transferring out of Humboldt in the wake of this announcement, according to students in attendance.

“You have capacity that’s limited and you’re putting no limit on the flow,” Jack Williams said. Some raised concerns that the massive influx of students into the community without adequate on-campus housing to support them would strain relationships between students, the University, and the community.

“It seems like you just shift responsibility of building up infrastructure onto the community,” Alan Cooper said.

One of the main issues brought up by students was the lack of basic amenities at proposed housing locations. The rooms at the Comfort Inn don’t have kitchens, which poses a serious problem for students on EBT and those with dietary restrictions.

Students with disabilities are concerned with accessibility at the temporary housing locations. They also raised the issue that those who gain access to on-campus housing through their accommodations would be outed as disabled to their peers.

“Every single upperclassmen that has disabilities or problems with mental health, what the fuck are they going to do with us?” one student asked.

The University administration was represented at the meeting by the newly appointed vice president for Enrollment Management & Student Success, Dr. Chrissy Holliday, as well as Indian Tribal and Educational Personnel Program (ITEPP) coordinator Sasheen Raymond and Stephen St. Onge, Humboldt’s Executive Director of Auxiliary Services.

Several of the students speaking purposefully gave admin a chance to respond to their comments, but often their response was lost, drowned out by the large crowd and interrupted by jeers. Holliday especially struggled to be heard over the crowd completely filling the Gutswurrack.

They offered little reassurance or explanation of substance, but expressed their sympathy for students impacted, and their commitment to hearing student perspectives.

“We will come and get beat up over it if we need to,” St. Onge said.

He explained that they were being required by the CSU to enroll more students in order to get funding.

“Now you need to hit this FTE [full time enrollment] and draft a plan to do it,” St. Onge commented. “We’re

looking at some different options, hopefully in a week or two we’ll have some more information.”

Recent rumors and apparent email leaks indicate that the University is considering the purchase of a barge that would moor at the Eureka docks and house 650 students. At one point during the meeting, alleged evidence of the barge plan was airdropped to attendees’ smartphones.

University officials did not respond when asked for comment.

At the end of the day, the damage to morale was already done. Students felt betrayed by the administration. The school’s liberal reputation and reported recent influx of cash seemed incongruous with what many perceived as a shocking disregard for the housing policy’s impact on continuing students. At the end of the meeting, there was a call to bring the protest to the Arcata City Hall on Feb. 16.

“I thought ‘this is a school that’s going to see me, that’s going to hear me,’” Haley Kitchman said. “I’ve lived in motels and it’s traumatizing. It’s not easy, and it’s not okay.”

Wildberries employees speak on store-wide profiling

by Dezmond Remington and Jasmin Shirazian

Colorful and bright, full of fresh produce, natural foods and community bulletins, Wildberries looks like the perfect hippie store. A store where people of all kinds can purchase their $10 a pound granola and oat milk free from judgement. They have juice and salad bars, a cafe and even a sunroom. It’s the platonic ideal of suburban crunchiness. It doesn’t look like the kind of place where customers are regularly judged on their appearance. You wouldn’t think it’s the sort of place where employees are instructed to watch certain customers and follow them around the store. It is.

Former employee Samuel Alatorre worked at Wildberries from Oct. 2020 to March of 2021. In his time there, he said he saw many instances of management profiling customers. Often, when someone they thought looked suspicious came into the store, a manager on the PA would use a code word and an aisle number to tell employees who to keep a specific eye on.

“It’s usually someone who has a backpack, if somebody looks like they’re houseless, and also usually racial profiling—I’ve seen that as well,” Alatorre said. “It’s never been outright said ‘that person looks suspicious because they’re black,’ but OTW [one to watch] aisle four if it’s someone of color.”

One instance in particular stood out to Alatorre when a man that looked homeless tried to shop at Wildberries. He was stopped outside the store and got into an argument with a manager. When he was finally allowed inside, he was followed by several people everywhere he went. Even after paying for his items, he was still being followed

until he left the store.

“That kind of incident right there, where you continue to follow him even after you’ve seen he hasn’t taken anything, is where it just kind of seems

ymous) who has worked there since late August thinks the profiling is understandable.

“Some people know about certain customers and tell them to leave, and

like it’s more of a power trip thing than anything else,” Alatorre said. “It’s more of a hate against the homeless community than anything else.”

Alatorre said Wildberries management often felt like they were untouchable, taking any opportunity they could to exercise their authority. Head manager Aaron Gottschalk was especially prone, whom Alatorre said he saw on multiple occasions physically confront people suspected of shoplifting.

“He in particular sees an opportunity to be that person in a position of power and he wants to exercise it by any means,” Alatorre said.

Alatorre doesn’t think that using force or profiling people to prevent shoplifting is justifiable as there are other ways to stop shoplifting, such as hiring loss-prevention security.

“I don’t think shoplifting is right,” Alatorre said. “But I also don’t think that using force in the way he does is right either.”

Not every Wildberries employee agrees with Alatorre. One current employee (who requested to remain anon-

some customers just have this sketchy kind of energy about them and some of my managers who have been working there for 15 to 20 years seem to have a pretty good sense of who doesn’t have good intentions there and who does,” he said. “And while there is some profiling going on, I don’t think it is racial and I don’t think it’s based off of how they look.”

However, the employee did later contradict himself, saying those people with the “sketchy energy” often looked like they were homeless or even just didn’t look like they had good intentions.

“I guess [justifiable] profiling would be pointing out people who they know have already stolen or following your gut instinct based on how you see a person acting,” he said. “A lot of my managers can tell the difference between a person who’s coming in there to shop and a person who’s coming in there to steal just based off of their gut instincts, and how they’ve dealt with those people before and watch them come in and watch them leave.”

He also disagrees with other characterizations of Gottschalk as somewhat violent and vindictive. He said that Gottschalk was generally a good person, if at times a little awkward, and allaround an outstanding member of the community. Any violence is just his years of experience coming into action. “I can sympathize with what he was probably feeling when he [pinned a 16-yearold girl to the ground several months ago],” the employee said. “I don’t think Aaron woke up that day and said, ‘hey, who am I going to target’ or ‘who am I going to pin to the floor,’ that’s not the type of guy he seems to be to me.”

According to former employee Tatum Keller, shoplifting skirmishes were fairly common in their experience there. They also saw people who looked to be homeless being followed around the store, especially people of color and younger people.

“It was probably every single day, if not every other day, someone was chased out whether they had something or not,” Keller said. “...It happened before I worked there, it happened during the time I worked there and it’s going to continue to happen still.”

Photo by Alex Anderson | Protestors standing outside of Wildberries on Jan. 21. Several dozen people protested Gottschalk’s treatment of a minor accused of shoplifting.

Tattoo Expo brings body art to Humboldt County

by Emma Sjostrom

Tattoo artists, enthusiasts, piercers and piercees alike came together this past weekend for the 13th annual Inked Hearts Tattoo Expo at the Blue Lake Casino and Hotel. Featuring over 30 artists, the three day event allowed attendees to get tattoos, piercings and to simply witness tattoo artists’ work.

Not unlike the planners and artists themselves, some patrons have been looking forward to the event for weeks. Take for example, Ashley JuarezMazariegos who came to the expo for a long-awaited tattoo.

“It’s my first time at the expo so it’s exciting,” Juarez-Mazariegos said.

As music rang and tattoo needles buzzed, attendees excitedly chatted with artists and meandered around their booths. Expo goers were not the only ones excited. What started as a rushed event scrambled together in 3 months and just a $15,000 budget back in 2009, has turned into a much-anticipated showcase of art that draws numerous tattoo artists from Humboldt County and beyond. Co-hosts and owners of NorCal Tattoo Ted and Amy Marks spoke about what an event such as this brings for the community.

“Humboldt gets to see the best work they’re ever going to see, and artists get to see Humboldt for the first time,” Ted Marks said.

This so-called heart-to-heart connection is what in part inspired the convention, and the logo for that matter. According to the Marks’, the event allows for local artists to work alongside artists who have traveled great distances to get to the event.

Ventura Tattoos for example made the over 600-mile trek from Southern California to be in Humboldt for the event. Artist Danny Rentevia expressed excitement for the convention, despite what he described as the stress and jarring nature of leaving the familiarity of their shop and coming here.

“It’s a great event, it’s a great time,” Rentevia said. “It’s just fun to be here.”

As a local, Amy Marks touched on how the expo has grown into the event that it is now and what that has brought for the community.

“I love [this event], especially growing up here there was never anything like this,” Amy Marks said. “Nobody’s done it up here, so it’s fun for us to work together.”

More than just a prime time to get a tattoo, featured tattooists say the event serves as a sort of celebration of the art form, or at the very least a chance to interact with other artists. The event allows for artists to speak of their work with each other and clients, be highlighted in daily contests, and even get tattooed by fellow artists.

“This cannot be replicated, I guarantee it,” Ted Marks said. “[Large shows] are cool and sometimes there’s a lot of people, but none of the artists talk. And art doesn’t grow in that environment.”

As a relatively small event, Ted and Amy marks have gotten offers to expand their operation, offers that they have readily denied.

The Marks’ also commented on what Cal Poly Humboldt students have brought for their shop and expo. Ted Marks mentioned his pride from seeing new students come to their shop to bond with new roommates and friends to witnessing them graduate.

“It’s amazing, without [the students] we’d be done,” Ted Marks said. “Cal Poly keeps us going.”

While the event has passed, students have not missed their chance at a tattoo. Artists featured at the event can be found through the event’s Instagram page @inkedhearts_tattoo. Students can also enjoy discounts for good grades at NorCal Tattoo. They are located at 750 16th St., in Arcata, and can be contacted by phone at (707) 4967034 or Instagram @norcaltattoo707.

Luke Fisher plays five hours of pool a day

by Jake Knoeller

If you’ve ever stopped by the Student Activities Center to play pool on campus, you have most likely seen Luke Fisher, who has become somewhat of a celebrity at Cal Poly Humboldt in his first year here.

Fisher is known for his extroverted personality and almost always having a pool cue in his hand.

“Luke is just here so often, it’s kind of impossible to not see him if you come here every now and then,” said Dremaine Boyd Jr., a newcomer to pool who likes to play socially. “It’s kind of infectious because it makes you want to play more.”

It is almost a surprise not to see Fisher if you are in the pool table area, meaning he is usually eating or getting some work done instead. If you strike up a conversation with him, he is pretty much always up for a game of pool with anybody.

“I’d say he is here 95% of the time I’m here,” said Chance Arendt, a friend of Fisher’s who also plays pool on campus regularly.

Fisher has always played a little bit of pool, but started playing every day last semester. He spends about five hours playing in a day when he has the time.

“I think I’m one of the few who doesn’t ever get bored of it,” said Fisher.

According to Fisher, he has really good luck when playing pool. His record for pockets in a row is six and he wants to reach eight in a row at some point because a few of his friends have. He hopes to continue improving.

“I’m hoping maybe I can get as good as Efren Reyes, but that’s gonna take a long, long time because he’s the best pool player ever,” said Fisher. “If I can get better than Cole Insalaco

I’ll be happy because he’s the best on campus.”

Fisher is majoring in journalism with a news concentration. He is from the Central Coast and has lived there since 2014. If there is one thing Fisher loves doing as much as pool, it’s showing off the tattoo he has of Nicki Minaj at the bottom of his leg.

“I think Luke is the most social person I’ve ever met,” said Arendt. “He really cares about everyone.”

Luke Fisher is unapologetically himself, which is one of the reasons why many people enjoy being around him. He intends to continue working towards his goals in the game of pool.

“He has something that he’s working towards, which is pretty remarkable,” said Boyd.

Photo by Alex Anderson | Juan Gonzales tattoo’s a piece on Dennis Johnson at the Inked Hearts Tattoo Expo on Feb 4

Photo by Alex Anderson | Former Eureka high teacher, 63 year old Craig Carroll shows off his tattoos at the Inked Hearts Expo.

Photo by Jake Knoeller | Luke Fisher lines up a shot with his pool cue.

DINERS FROM

PAGE 1

Kristina’s – 5/5 stars

Kristina’s is a place you can’t miss, resting right at that sharp turn as you drive the 101 north, just before that shady strip through downtown Eureka. It’s got an inviting pink exterior and abundant booth and bar seating that makes it look hauntingly empty on a quiet night. It lies more on the old-folks-home side of the design spectrum, but just a tad saucier with pink

neon lights, red accents and funky carpeting.

Here, you can eat a classic diner breakfast anytime between 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., or go crazy and get some New York steak and scampi for dinner. My waitress didn’t call me hun but she was wearing 4-inch platform knee high goth boots and that was good enough for me.

Samoa Cookhouse – 6/5 stars

Dear reader, I am saving the best for last. In the odd little town of Samoa lives the revered Samoa Cookhouse, which has literally been in business for 150 consecutive years. It was original-

ly an old dining hall that fed 500 mill workers at a time but opened up to the public sometime in the 1960’s.

It’s a huge red building overlooking the bay that always has stray cats lurking around outside. Inside is a massive cafeteria layout with plaid tablecloths and old logging equipment adorning the walls. They even have a little museum where you can eat amongst rusty old chainsaws and other ambiguous logging paraphernalia.

Their only menu item is a breakfast, lunch or dinner special that changes everyday of the week that they serve family style. You can eat breakfast until you pop and it’ll only be $14.25. To my

luck I landed on their sausage, scrambled eggs, and homemade toast special, but I was weak, and barely made it through two rounds of their perfect diner breakfast.

When this world gets a little too shiny for you, when the fluorescent lighting of the classroom starts to burn a hole in your brain, when TikTok starts digging your personality into a grave, you can time-travel away from all your problems in the dusty neon lights of Humboldt’s diners.

Photo by Valen Lambert | Inside the Somoa Cookhouse featuring their classic checkerboard tablecloth.

Photo by Valen Lambert | Neon lights shine outside Deb’s Great American Hamburger Co.

“Little time capsues of frozen ice”

Comet visable from Humboldt County.

by Alina Ferguson

A comet is a ball of ice which burns up when it passes the sun. That burnoff is what is seen by the human eye. On February 1, the green comet known as C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was at its closest and able to be seen by the naked eye, though it was 26 million miles from Earth.

Though it was visible in the Northern Hemisphere, the conditions in Humboldt were not optimal for viewing. Many may have had a hard time seeing this comet, referred to as C/2022, due to fog and pollution in the sky. For those who missed it on Feb. 1, it was still visible by telescope or binoculars Feb. 2.

Comets have an elliptical orbit. They spin close to the sun and then away from it, interacting with the gravity of other objects along the way. When they pass by the sun, they sometimes become visible from Earth. What we see is the comet releasing gasses.

Comets are from the outer solar system and they spend most of their lives very far from the sun. Tyler Mitchell, a physics professor at Cal Poly Humboldt, refers to them as, “little time capsules of frozen ices and a variety of different types of dust, like carbon and silicates.”

C/2022 is a green comet. “The color comes from two carbon atoms stuck together,” said Mitchell. “The tails of most comets are yellow.”

To Tanner B. Hooven, a student and member of the Cal Poly Humboldt Astronomy Club, C/2022 is a reminder of Earth’s past. We are the first people since the recording of time to see this comet.

“This comet is special because of its orbital period, or the time it takes to make one full journey around the sun, is approximately 50,000 years according to Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,” Hooven said. “The last time this comet approached its perigee was at a time in which Neanderthals were still roaming the earth.”

Comets are sometimes called “dirty ice balls”, though they should be referred to as an icy dirt ball, given their respective ratios. Comets can become asteroids, which are referred to as “dormant comets.”

When identifying comets, or asteroids, astronomers look for what is essentially a “photobomb” and streak that was not previously there, or a bright shining star that was not before visible, according to Mitchell.

This comet is currently on its way out of the inner solar system. It will take months for it to fade from our view.

“It is likely this comet will continue to orbit the sun for millions of years until the off-gassing process subsides due to a lack of ice left in the comet,” Hooven said.

Photo courtesy of NASA

Fuck cars

by Harrison Smith

At any given moment in Arcata, there is a game of frogger being played on a grand scale. Students who walk or ride their bikes to class are familiar with the everyday peril of crossing L.K. Wood Blvd. where it meets Sunset Ave. Drivers rolling down the Sunset overpass towards campus regularly blow through the long, winding crosswalk, which is about as useful at protecting pedestrians as is a paper shield against a lance.

I have lost count of the times I have almost been hit by an unaware driver while riding my bike to campus. The three gauntlets which I run daily are the roundabout at Foster Ave, the intersections of Sunset and H St., and the aforementioned L.K. Wood crossing. At the Foster roundabout, I was nearly paved into the street by a lifted white (and squeaky-clean) F-150. I let out a perfunctory, “Fuck you!” to the prick whose $35,000 dealership-bought manhood nearly killed me. His response was to pull the truck to a screeching halt in the middle of the roundabout, hop down from the cab, and scream, “You got somethin’ to fuckin say?” I, who had a chemistry quiz that morning, did not have anything to

say. I turned my happy ass around and rode away.

Last Wednesday, my boyfriend witnessed three separate screaming arguments in quick succession between drivers waiting their turn to cross the intersection of Sunset and H St. It even sucks to drive here, let alone walk here. Driving everywhere has made it impossible to walk anywhere. So why do we design our cities like this?

Because of Robert Moses, baby. The Biblical Moses may have parted

the Red Sea, but Robert Moses did something far more impressive–part every street in the United States (and the world) with a stream of cars. Robert Moses was the municipal planner for the city of New York for over forty years, beginning in 1924. He was never elected to office, but nevertheless used his position in city planning to dramatically expand New York City’s automobile infrastructure, and thus structural racism.

Moses worked like a factory farm-

Playing roulette with my sanity

Reagent testing should be accessible for students

by Dezmond Remington

The envelope was postmarked from a rural village in Poland, and within it was 500 milligrams of a powder that smelled weird and tasted worse. If my information was correct, that powder was the novel psychedelic 2C-B, and the 15 milligrams I had measured out on my high-powered scale would not lead to a screaming, agonizing psychosis. I did not have any way to verify this beyond the word of the faceless dark web vendor who sold it to me.

Life is short and I’m stupid. I wrapped that 15 milligrams of burning chemical powder in toilet paper and swallowed that toilet paper and had a fun time. It could have turned out very differently. If that powder was pure DOM and I had taken the same amount, I would have been tripping for damn near a whole day, an absolutely nightmarish 24 hours. If it was MDMA, I probably would have just been pretty bored, confused and angry at myself for wasting so much money on a drug that didn’t do anything. If it was raw crystal LSD I would be in a psych ward right now.

I got lucky. Don’t swallow strange Polish powders based entirely on digital trust. What I should have done was use a test kit, something like the Marquis reagent test, which would have told me I did indeed have 2C-B. Or I even could have sent a sample off to a lab with a gas chromatography machine to tell me exactly what was in that funky substance.

The only reason I didn’t? Access. Test kits can be hard to buy online, and are often of sketchy quality as well. Why isn’t there a place on campus where I can get them? This is a science-focused university, with a fresh injection of cash to the tune of over $450 million. These tests are not very expensive, and can save lives. It’s only a matter of time before a student here dies from an ecstacy pill stuffed full of meth, cathinones, or some other powerful stimulant with no history of human use before a year ago, manufactured in some underground lab overseas. It wouldn’t be a particularly hard program to implement.

It’s strange to me that a university flush with money dead in the heart of an area long known for chemical experimentation hasn’t started something like this already. Not providing services like these sure as hell won’t stop dumbasses like myself from doing a little synthetic voyaging. People have been messing with their brain’s chemical composition since we were apes and found some fermented juice in an overripe fruit on the jungle floor. Nothing is going to stop the human race from trying all sorts of uppers and downers and color-makers, least of all a lack of test kits, which most people don’t even use anyways. Why not change that? Why not make it easy? Why not save every life possible? If even one responsible drug user took advantage and found deadly adulterants in their pills or powders, it’d be worth it.

That’s not to say there aren’t any resources in Humboldt county. There is the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction, which has supervised injection rooms and syringe exchange programs, as well as fentanyl strips and Narcan. They have offices in Arcata and Eureka. However, they don’t offer reagent testing. There is also the Peer Health Education Center on campus, which also offers fentanyl strips. However, these will only tell you if there is fentanyl in your drugs, which is unlikely if your drug of choice is a psychedelic or a stimulant. These resources are definitely helpful for those who use depressants, but if someone wants to see if their MDMA has meth in it, they’re out of luck. What campus needs is reagent testing, which will give users more precise results as to what exactly is in their pills and powders.

I’m sure I can guess a few of the whitebread responses those in charge around here have to my suggestion.

‘Bu- but that would mean we’re encouraging drug use!’ No, it doesn’t. Does having a frozen yogurt machine at the J mean you’re endorsing eating like shit? I don’t think so. The name of the game is prevention. Just having a place or a program here on campus

where students can make sure the substances they’re consuming are exactly what they think they are is simply a way to keep people healthy, physically and mentally. That should be a university’s top priority. Nothing is going to stop people from trying drugs. Might as well be realistic about it and try to keep people alive.

‘But you said most people don’t test their drugs anyways! Why would they start now?!’ Most drug users don’t test because they don’t know they should! A little education goes a long way. Reagent testing isn’t hard. At the bare

er, plowing up historically Black and low income neighborhoods to sew a crop of asphalt and steel. He connected the boroughs of New York with the ribbons of highway that would come to serve as a shining example of urban design to younger architects all around the country. He designed his infrastructure to exclude public transit—for example, Moses ordered the bridges over the Jones Beach Parkway be built too low for buses to access the beach, ensuring that it was only accessible to those (white) people prosperous enough to own their own automobiles.

Robert Moses shrugged away this mortal coil in 1981, but his legacy lives on in the 4.17 million miles of road that stretch across the United States and the 286 million cars that ply them. City planners in the latter half of the twentieth century followed the example set by New York, designing cities to be traveled by private car.

The only future for our planet and for our cities is one with streets designed for people, not cars. Ride your bike to class. If you’re unable, take the bus. If you can’t take the bus, carpool with your friends. Agitate with the city council for safer streets. Fight for a car-free future.

minimum, some literature about how to properly use and handle the tests could really help. I’m absolutely certain people would love to know how much of that cocaine they’re snorting is caffeine powder or baby laxative. People should know exactly what they’re putting in their bodies. Plenty of drugs out there are mislabelled or full of other, unadvertised chemicals. They can be glorious and life-changing. They could also traumatize you forever, or kill you. The guessing game won’t hold out. Test kits can save lives, and they should be plenty easy to get.

MDMA / MDA / 5-MAPB / 6-APB

/

2C-B / C / H / I CATHINONES (NO REACTION)

Graphic by Nina Hufman

Photo by Harrison Smith | Vehicles careen past the H St. intersection crosswalk in Arcata.