Campus-wide ‘Moment of Reflection’ encourages community to pause, recognize the weight of recent tragedies

The event featured guest speaker Quentisha Davis Wiles and highlighted on-campus mental health resources available for students

BY SONORA SLATER campus@theaggie.org

A campus-wide “Moment of Reflection” took place outside of the Memorial Union at noon on Feb. 1, offering a space for community members to come together to reflect on the tragedies that have taken place over the past month, including gun and police violence throughout California and beyond, and closer to campus, the death of a UC Davis student on Jan. 24.

There were several speakers at the event, including International Student Representative Keven Zhou, ASUCD External Affairs Vice President Celene Aridin and Rev. Quentisha Davis Wiles, the senior pastor at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Sacramento. There were also tables set up in the area highlighting various mental health resources available to the campus community, including Student Health and Counseling Services, Aggie Mental Health, the ASUCD Mental Health Initiative and

At the campus-wide Moment of Reflection Feb. 1, people bow their heads for a minute of silence. (Gregory Urquiaga / Courtesy) the recent tragedies our school, state and nation have suffered, and the weight that can place on people as they “continue to live [their] day-to-day lives.” the Craft Center. Wiles centered her speech around the idea of compassion, saying that the word speaks to the idea of “having your heart impacted by great suffering, and having a great desire to respond.” She invited listeners to pause and recognize

“We are inundated by violence at home, in our schools, at the shopping stores, in our faith communities, in our

Hundreds of UC student delegates come to Davis for Students of Color Conference

The annual conference was hosted at UC Davis from Jan. 20 to Jan. 22 with the theme “A World We Imagine” work communities; we are not exempt from the violence, none of us,” Wiles said. “And yet, we continue to live, [as] people who understand that bad things happen, but we have the power and ability to make a difference.”

She went on to explore what it might mean to take action following these tragedies, first saying broadly that she believes we must be people who “don’t ignore the things happening around us,” before speaking directly to “those [...] who are studying policy or are in positions of leadership.”

“For those of you who have authority, take authority,” Wiles said. “As the granddaughter of someone who served in the Korean war, as the niece of law enforcement officers, I want to say that policy gives permission for people to do certain things. When we don’t change policy, when we don’t take responsibility, when we don’t care about the situation in front of us because it doesn’t impact us directly, we participate, and we give permission.”

Next, Wiles invited attendees to take “three collective deep breaths,” each with a different theme to meditate on. She explained that the first was “in the spirit of self-care.” REFLECTION

Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology professor donates UC Davis teaching prize

The professor, John Eadie, will use the prize money to establish a scholarship to promote diversity within the WFC department

BY RACHEL GAUER campus@theaggie.org

John Eadie, a professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology (WFC) was recently awarded the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, according to a recent press release. The prize is awarded annually and honors a member of the faculty who is an exceptional teacher, lecturer and scholar. Eadie is the 36th recipient of the award.

Eadie arrived at UC Davis in 1995 and has served as both the Dennis G. Raveling Endowed Chair in waterfowl biology and the WFC department chair.

“After 28 years of teaching here, I still love what I do, and I’m still passionate,” Eadie said. “It’s an honor to work with students, and they keep me young. It’s just like — wow, I get paid for this?”

Alexandria Ginez, a third-year WFC major who currently serves as a peer advisor in the department, commented on their experiences with Eadie.

Annie Maliguine, a UC Davis alumna, graduated from the WFC program in 2018 and currently studies arctic sea ducks through a University of Alaska graduate program. Maliguine spoke on the influence Eadie had on her professional goals.

“He is someone who definitely influenced my whole career path,” Maliguine said. “I chose the WFC major initially when I was enrolled at UC Davis, but it wasn’t until I took [Eadie’s] bird class that I decided to pursue a career working with birds. I didn’t really even know that would be something I’d be interested in.”

Maliguine said that she still keeps in touch with Eadie and has even gone to him for career advice.

“He’s really approachable to everybody because he’s such a goofy guy,” Maliguine said. “Especially when you’re in a class full of so many other students, it can be scary to approach professors. But with him, he is just a big goofball and talking to him feels really easy.”

BY KAYA DO-KHANH campus@theaggie.org

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From Jan. 20 to Jan. 22, the annual Students of Color Conference (SoCC) was hosted on the UC Davis campus by the UC Student Association (UCSA).

The SoCC is the group’s largest and longest-running conference. It began in 1988 and “aims to serve as a safe space for students of color to engage in socio-political education and to strategize both statewide as well as campus-based actions and advocacy,” according to the delegation guide sent out for the conference.

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The theme for this year’s conference was “A World We Imagine.” ASUCD External Affairs Vice President Celene Aridin elaborated on the theme, saying that it focused on “[how] we see the world and [what] we want to achieve in terms of student advocacy and student engagement in this ideal world that accepts students of color for who they are.”

There were more than 300 student delegates from across the UC campuses in attendance. The main conference took place in the ARC ballroom, while the workshops and identity caucuses were held in Wellman Hall.

“This is the first year that we’ve had it in-person in a long time, and we were really excited to get to host it at UC Davis,” UCSA University Affairs Committee Chair Saishruti Adusumilli said. “It was really exciting just to have so many people from all over the state come and see the campus.”

Adusumilli, who served as the external affairs vice president for two years previously, said that one of her goals was for Davis to increase its presence within UCSA.

“Over these past two years, I think we’ve done a really good job at representing Davis on a system-wide level,” Adusumilli said.

The keynote address was given by Taharka Anderson, who is a scholar, educator, speaker and organizer with over a decade of experience supporting social justice efforts. His research and activism focus on the social vulnerabilities of Black men and boys, the social construction and criminalization of Black children and anti-Blackness in schools and school discipline, according to his website.

There were 16 workshops offered at the conference, including “Women of Color In POWER,” “Closing Equity Gaps by Improving Financial Aid Awareness and Application Completion” and “Bayanihan: Uplifting Activism Within Cultural Identities.” A number of identity caucuses were also held by students and non-profit organizations, featuring guided discussion spaces for people with similar identities to come together and discuss their unique experiences.

Valeria Cantor Mendez, a third-year community and regional development major at UC Davis, hosted the Central and South American identity caucus and said that she found the workshops “very educational and very inspiring.”

“My peer advising office is directly across from [Eadie’s], so I see him a lot,” Ginez said. “He is always just a ray of sunshine in the office; he’s really great to work with and talk to. If anything were to change my life goal from working with fish to working with birds, it would be John Eadie.”

Ginez has also taken WFC 111, “Biology and Conservation of Wild Birds,” with Eadie as a professor. The course is offered every fall quarter.

“Every lecture was just so interesting, and he was really into the topic and very passionate about it,” Ginez said. “He had almost everyone attending on a regular basis. [It] tells you something if a professor can get everyone up before 9 a.m. to go listen to a lecture about birds.”

The award also includes a monetary prize of $60,000, which Eadie has decided to use to establish a scholarship for underrepresented students in the WFC department. “I want to focus on what we can do to help students get hands-on experience without being financially or otherwise challenged,” Eadie said. “And especially what we can do to bring in new students that don’t know this is even a possibility for them. We really need to be training our next generation of professionals to better represent society as a whole.”