November 30, 2023

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VOLUME 147, ISSUE 9 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023

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ASUCD fall 2023 election results announced

Voter turnout was between nine and 10 percent for this election

BY LILY FREEMAN campus@theaggie.org

Rizk said. “The fact that people took the time to go [to] the next page and vote is encouraging. It’s all better than where we were last year.”

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In the ASUCD fall 2023 election, 21 candidates ran for six seats in the Senate and three constitutional amendments were voted on. Here are the results:

This fall’s elections had a greater focus on internal improvement, according to Rizk.

“For me, the priority of this election was less about getting out the vote and [more about] building things up,” Rizk said. “I believe that we needed to do a lot of stuff on the inside to make processes work and make sure that we’re cooperating as a whole.”

Jonathan Ng was elected to the Senate.

Katia Bouali was elected to the Senate.

Curtis Chen was elected to the Senate.

However, during the spring 2024 elections, Rizk said that ASUCD is aiming to have a much more external focus. This is especially because there is going to be at least one student fee referendum (including The Green Initiative Fund) on the ballot, which requires a 20% voter turnout to be implemented.

Yara Kaadan was elected to the Senate.

Jacob Klein was elected to the Senate.

Leah Jung was elected to the Senate.

CA #86, which moves to change the title of members of the Judicial Council to justices, passed with 79.62% of the vote.

from the executive branch and formally defines what it means to be an ASUCD representative, passed with 87.99% of the vote.

CA #87, which formally establishes the Office of the Transfer Student Representative and the Office of the International Student Representative as legislative bodies, removes them

CA #88, which moves to change the number of members on the Judicial Council from five to seven, passed with 92.2% of the vote.

While ASUCD can not determine a specific voter turnout percentage due to there being no fee referendums on the ballot, the voter turnout for this fall’s election was between nine and 10%, according to Elections Officer Reid Rizk.

“This is encouraging,” Rizk said.

“It’s definitely better than where we

The importance of financial literacy at the collegiate level

UC Davis students and staff discuss options for students to become financially literate before entering the workforce NOVA MAI / AGGIE

were this time last year.” Last fall’s turnout was 5.58%.

Rizk also said that voter retention rates improved with this election.

“We only lost about 250 people from the measure ballot to the Senate ballot, which in previous elections, we’ve lost about one thousand people,”

“We’re hoping this will allow us to promote more, do more posters and more outreach in general,” Rizk said.

“We’ve set aside a lot of money for the spring election, and I’m hoping the next elections officer who comes in uses that in a smart way.”

ASUCD Senate bill for equitable parking costs needs to find alternative funding

The bill cannot be funded by the Senate reserves budget as it was originally passed due to issues regarding the use of student fees

BY SYDNEY AMESTOY campus@theaggie.org

BY ZOEY MORTAZAVI campus@theaggie.org Throughout college, newfound financial freedom and responsibility hit the average student like a truck.

Unexplored financial territory quickly plunges students neck-deep into student loans, bills, rent, taxes and plenty of other concepts that have been laid out since they were kids as “far off” or “adult” concepts.

The idea of the “broke college student” is a widely normalized concept, attached to stubborn stigmas announcing that college students have limited financial knowledge and can get themselves into trouble because of it. The question continues to present

READ MORE Two UC Davis Graduates and the creation of a new fabric to revitalize the fashion industry

Alumni Akshay Sethi and Moby Ahmed co-founded a textile recycling company, Ambercycle, which recently made deals with major fashion labels

itself, asking whether anything can be done to begin taking some of these stigmas away. In other words, can college students beat the “financially illiterate” allegations?

Alongside this question, many are beginning to advocate for financial education to not only be an option, but something that will eventually become mandatory for all college students.

With many of these unprecedented concepts creeping up on them very quickly, many students at UC Davis have expressed concern for the lack of mandated financial education at the collegiate level.

“If financial concepts are something we start to handle as young adults, it’s crazy that we aren’t taught more about them while we’re still young and in school,” Annaliese Dobbins, a first-year biochemistry major, said. “No one ever really explained how we’re just suddenly thrown into being an adult. It’s scary to feel like I don’t know how money works, and I want to change that. But with a major that has such a high unit count, I have a feeling I’ll struggle trying to fit a finance class into my schedule.”

There are a handful of finance courses offered at UC Davis, many of which can be applied to different majors and general education credits.

Many at UC Davis are beginning to promote and discuss the fact that if students can make room for finance classes in their schedules, they should. Utilizing resources like schedule planning and course advisement, students can do research to see whether they can make space for personal finance courses to help them

better prepare for their futures.

“Learning about personal finance early will definitely better prepare me for my financial life in the upcoming years,” Aditi Inamdar, a first-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major, said. “As a student who is making the decision to change to the managerial economics major, taking some of these classes early on and learning finance will definitely help me grow within the business field.”

Professors working in economics at Davis aim to remind students that they should make time to learn about the nuances of the financial world so that it doesn’t creep up on them. Countless organizations and foundations work tirelessly to spread the message that college is a crucial time to become financially literate.

The U.S. News and World Report wrote that in a survey of approximately 30,000 college students from across the nation — coverage of over 440 institutions — only 53% reported that they felt remotely prepared to handle their individual finances.

“On the college side of things, we want to take whatever is taught in high school, if anything, and expand upon it,” Phil Schuman, president of the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance and executive director of financial wellness and education at Indiana University — Bloomington, said. “Really provide people a look at what post-college life could look like with what their financial situation may be based on their degree and based on how much student loan debt they may have.”

FINANCES on 3

Student Bill (SB) #8, which would provide ASUCD funding to financially disadvantaged students for on-campus parking, needs to find an alternative source of funding. In its originally passed form, the bill would have seen $12,500 allocated from the ASUCD Senate Reserves Budget.

Passed during the Nov. 2 ASUCD Senate meeting, Senator Gaius Ilupeju, the bill’s author, said that the bill would also create an Equitable Parking Oversight Committee.

“The goal of the initiative is to subsidize parking for financially disadvantaged students, commuter students and student workers,” Ilupeju said. “That’s the short term goal, [and] the long term goal is to, you know, create affordable parking on campus for everyone.”

However, according to Ilupeju, the bill in its current state needs to be reworked due to its reliance on funding from the Senate reserves budget.

“After we passed it, [and] we should have probably done this before, we reached out to our campus legal council which advises all university departments on spending and sending in contracts or agreements to make sure that they don’t run into legal issues,” Ilupeju said. “This program is not one of the things that was explicitly listed on the fee referendum that students vote on, which makes up part of the Senate reserves budget.”

During deliberation for an emergency spending bill at the ASUCD Senate meeting held on Nov. 2, Controller Allyson Francisco mentioned that the Senate reserves budget was a quarter of the way spent already. That statement is no longer accurate, according to Francisco, as it included the $12,500 for SB #8.

According to Francisco, the ASUCD budget, and more specifically the Senate reserves budget, is made up of a variety of sources, from state

funding to income made from units such as the ASUCD Bike Barn. On the other hand, the Senate reserve budget – which is around $91,000 and used for bills and emergency spending – is funded through set student fees which have been voted on in ASUCD elections.

Currently, according to Francisco, students pay $85 per quarter, with that number increasing by $8 every year until the 2029-2030 school year.

This was voted on through the Basic Needs Fee referendum in the winter 2020 ASUCD election.

“We have one of the lowest base fees of any UC campus,” Francisco said. “UC Santa Barbara is in the hundreds, and the same with UCLA. This is all public information […] their students are paying hundreds of dollars per quarter for their student government.”

Since the money for subsidized parking was not part of the Basic Needs Fee referendum, according to Ilupeju, this meant that it was recommended that a new source of funding was needed.

“So that $12,500 is in limbo,” Ilupeju said. “We’re just waiting for further meetings for communication.

But once everything is sorted out another option that we have for the subsidization programs is to just give it to students directly as a grant through financial aid. The problem with that is a lot of these students or a lot of students who qualify already receive a lot of financial aid to kind of regain over the cost of living […] So [if ] we give them an additional grant, that might mess up their financial aid.”

According to Ilupeju, there have been other considerations for sources of funding, including writing a new bill that would allow this money to come from Senate reserves.

Currently, according to Francisco, the true status of the Senate reserves budget is not a quarter of the way spent, but spending so far has accounted for 15 percent of the budget, which is on track with other years.

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Senate discusses workplace environment toxicity and answers community questions at Nov. 16 meeting

The meeting also saw discussion regarding the impact of the Entertainment Council’s annual budget being cut as well as the need for alternative sources of funding for the Equitable Parking Initiative

BY MADISON PETERS campus@theaggie.org Vice President JT Eden called the Nov.16 town hall meeting to order at 6:10 p.m. in the CoHo. He then read the UC Davis Land Acknowledgement.

A quarterly town hall meeting is held at the Coho in which members of the community can express any concerns and get their questions answered by ASUCD senators.

One question focused on ASUCD’s plan to increase communication with clubs on campus.

External Affairs Chairperson, Daniel Mojica responded.

“Now that I have a full team of people I’m going to make sure that these guys are reaching out to respective clubs that are most in relation to advocacy work,” Mojica said. “I want to make sure we are uplifting the transgender community. I want to make sure that their voices are heard.”

There were also several questions that asked about the allocations of ASUCD’s budget and how to access this budget information.

After the town hall meeting, the senators moved upstairs to the MEE Room in the Memorial Union to hold the Senate meeting.

Vice President JT Eden called the meeting to order at 7:38 p.m.

After roll call, the meeting started with the confirmation of a chairperson and alternates for the Disability Justice Committee (DJC). Two members were confirmed unanimously.

Next, DJC Chair Miranda Phinney presented the DJC’s quarterly report.

They debriefed their two successful events during the fall quarter, and talked about their plans for holding a “know your rights” event for students with disabilities.

Additionally, the DJC was allotted $15,000 for accessibility improvements on campus, according to Phinney.

After the DJC gave their report, Picnic Day Chair Bradford Martin, presented the Picnic Day quarterly report detailing the plans and changes community members are expected to see for Picnic Day 2024.

First, Picnic Palooza was announced as the theme for this year’s Picnic Day, and Martin confirmed that Sherry Ackenson will be the Picnic Day parade Grand Marshall.

Martin then went on to explain how the new university accounting system has affected their ability to purchase goods for Picnic Day. “We don’t know if we are going to

be able to purchase things and it’s either going to take one week or a month to come,” Martin said. “We are all very hesitant about [the new system]. So with that, we have been purchasing thousands of dollars of goods in advance.”

Following the Picnic Day presentation, the Entertainment Council (EC) gave their quarterly report. They debriefed on the many issues they are having funding events after their budget was cut by $180,000 earlier this year.

Siya Pun, EC volunteer director, brought up the cancellation of Sunset Fest.

Pun said that the event was canceled due to issues surrounding approval of the headliner and a lack of funds and staff.

“Our biggest question of Sunset Fest was the ability of acquiring a stage [since] getting a large scale stage costs around $10,000,” Pun said. “With the current budget, Sunset Fest would’ve been a much more scaled event with limited openers and they wouldn’t have been adequately paid.”

The EC expressed concerns about their ability to host future events like Lawntopia and Brianfreeze to previous standards, if at all.

“We need additional funding or we will not be able to have a Lawntopia that is comparable to last year or even years prior,” Pun said. “We have done as much reallocation as we can within our current budget… but we need more” Many senators took blame for the difficulties facing the Entertainment Council and expressed a desire to solve the budget issue as soon as possible.

“Sunset Festival is already screwed, but you know what isn’t? Lawntopia,” Senator Binh Do said regarding the issue. “We can still make change. We can still fix this guys, we can still make up for the mistakes that we made.”

Next on the agenda were the confirmations of vice chairperson and alternate chairperson for the External Affairs Commission (EAC).

Both candidates were confirmed unanimously.

Afterwards, Christina Smith, a third-year political science and public service major, was unanimously confirmed Aggie Housing and Transportation Advocacy (AHTAC) Chairperson.

Smith said she not only wants to improve affordable housing and transportation, but also wishes to improve safety surrounding transportation to and from campus.

A new vice chair of the Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission (ECAC) was then confirmed unanimously.

Following the confirmations, Kaito Clarke, the transfer student representative, gave the Office of the Transfer Student Representative (OTSR) quarterly report.

Clarke discussed OTSR’s plan to increase the number of social events for transfers as well as improving on campus child care for student parents.

The meeting then moved on to public comments where ASUCD Controller Allyson Francisco gave a report on the state of the senate reserves, specifically the financial feasibility of SB #8.

“Unfortunately per the Budget and Institutional Analysis (BIA) and UC Legal, there is nothing in the UCD fee referendum that allows for Senate reserves, to create or allocate funds to cover parking for those in need,” Francisco said. “This is not my decision, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

Despite the inability of the Senate reserves to fund the bill, other sources of funds are being examined such as using grants from financial aid.

Senator Gaius Ilupeju said that resorting to financial aid is the worstcase scenario, and said he will first try to resubmit a bill to find a clean resolution.

“I’m confident things will get resolved,” Ilupeju said. “I will probably be authoring a bill to recommit the $12,500 back [into the bill]”.

Next, Vice President Aarushi Raghunathan addressed her absence from the last Senate meeting.

She said she was not able to attend after receiving large amounts of hate speech in response to concerns about her role in campus correspondence surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“I’ve been getting hate emails, hate DMs, hate texts on my personal number,” Raghunathan said. “No caller IDs yelling at me over the phone. It’s been rough. I don’t know who’s been leaking my number but it’s really not ok. I’ve just heard a lot of really nasty things and I’ve had to get excusals from all of my professors because I really can’t be on campus”.

Senator Gaysinsky then read the ASUCD Student Bill of Rights and said that he felt that the Senate had not been honoring this document.

“Unfortunately, I feel that I have not been afforded this right by some people here since the ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza following Oct. 7th,” Gaysinsky said. “Members of this table have posted or reshared extremely dehumanizing language that knowingly or unknowingly promoted violence against me and people like me.”

Gaysinksky said that though he has attempted to share his concerns

about this issue, he has not received any response or willingness to discuss the matter.

“Other members of this table have been completely open to working on projects with me before Oct. 7th, but since then rebuffed any form of collaboration,” Gaysinsky said. “We are coworkers. This is unprofessional and makes me feel genuinely unsafe while doing my job and sitting at these meetings. This obviously goes both ways. If any of you ever have any issues in any language that I have expressed please tell me. I’m willing to work past my differences that I may have with any of you. It makes it really hard to do this when I am consistently left on read when discussing really important initiatives or when a coworker calls me a valid military target, verbatim, due to my nationality.”

Senator Jacob Klein then spoke on previous allegations made by members of the Senate regarding Senator Gaysinsky doxxing Senator Nur Ambaw.

“We as a table should not make personal attacks that are not based on truth,” Klein said. “I know for a fact that Senator Gaysinsky did not dox anyone. Senator Ambaw being doxxed is completely unacceptable, and everyone at the table and in the UC Davis Community needs to fucking acknowledge that”.

The possibility of having an open

forum to discuss these issues more indepth was discussed.

Additionally, a plan enacted by UC President Michael Drake which allocates nine million dollars to the nine UC campuses to fund various programs that will support and educate students and staff affected by the IsrealPalestinian conflict was brought up as a possible solution.

The Senate as an organization has been silent regarding the conflict, but discussed the possibility of making a formal statement.

After reviewing previous legislation, Senator Raghunathan introduced two new pieces of legislation.

SB #29 is a spending bill for the lobby and was assigned to both IAC and EAC for consideration.

SB #30 is a spending bill for the office of Senator Antonio and was assigned to IAC for consideration.

The consent calendar was then passed unanimously, and senators went on to consider old legislation.

SR #3 which would support the use of increased funding to expand UC Davis’ collegiate recovery, was unanimously passed.

Lastly, past meeting minutes were approved and the meeting was adjourned at 11:30 p.m.

Recent Davis City Council meeting sparks discussion over possibility of vacancy tax

The proposal was brought before the council and resulted in discussions of a new revenue stream and its implications for residents

BY HANNAH SCHRADER city@theaggie.org On Nov. 7, the Davis City Council convened its scheduled meeting and discussed a contentious proposal regarding a vacancy tax in the city of Davis. Vacancy taxes, such as a commercial vacancy tax, are taxes that charge property owners for vacant properties.

Mike Webb, the Davis city manager, presented background information on the tax, stating that it would need to be approved by voters in a ballot measure. He also discussed further implications.

“Some agencies, including some not far away from here, have implemented what they call [a] vacancy tax,” Webb said at the meeting. “As a tax, it has to be approved by the voters on a ballot measure, but as is the case in California, the ability to tax any number of issues is fairly broad for local jurisdictions. And that can include taxing property owners for residential, commercial or undeveloped land that is vacant [...] for it not being in ‘productive use.’”

Webb then spoke briefly about

FINANCES FROM FRONT PAGE Many groups, including recent efforts by nonprofits such as Next Gen Personal Finance, have put efforts toward implementing more personal finance course options in the state of California, hopefully being fully mandated by 2029. However, it is a difficult thing to implement at a mandatory level for students.

Despite the difficulty, there are many advocating for the eventual mandate of financial education courses for students — their advocacy argues that the payoff will be well worth it for students as they transition from college into their adult lives.

“A good foundation in finance is essential in today’s volatile market,” Jens Hilscher, a UC Davis professor who teaches a principles of finance course, said. “Whether saving for retirement, saving for a down payment on a house, choosing financing

the potential benefits of putting the vacancy tax into effect, stating that it could be used to encourage property owners to not leave properties vacant.

“A vacancy tax can be pursued for any number of reasons; it could be pursued as a revenue generation tool for a community,” Webb said. “More often than not, though, we see that they’re used as really more for landuse regulation. Sort of proxy to try to entice property owners to think twice about leaving a property vacant.”

Webb suggested that large investors are largely responsible for property vacancies in certain areas.

“Some of what we’re finding in other jurisdictions where there, I will say, can be fairly prevalent vacancies is [...] a theme [due to large investors],” Webb said. “Where investors are coming in, buying up a large number of properties and, you know, maybe they’re not even investors that are local or even in the country, but they’re buying up the [..] property as investment properties.”

Alan Hirsch, a local resident, shared how this tax could prevent the housing crisis from worsening in Davis during the public comment section.

“I think we should make sure

that infrastructure is fully used and [that] revenues come from it, so I would encourage you to consider this thing,” Hirsch said. “Consider a tax, because we certainly have a shortage of housing. I think we want to encourage that and get ahead of the game before someone comes and starts to withhold property from the market.”

Vice Mayor Josh Chapman discussed his focus with a vacancy tax, which is not necessarily for a revenue source but rather a way to manage some of the issues that the city has dealt with from vacant land space.

“I am supportive of us continuing this conversation and getting a more in-depth data set around what some of these are,” Chapman said. “[...] I would be interested in learning more about what options we have around commercial and vacant land space.”

While still considering the tax, Mayor Will Arnold expressed interest in narrowing the focus of the tax to primarily target commercial land vacancies.

“I’m more inclined to really want to dig into this on the commercial side,” Arnold said. “There are some significant commercial vacancies that exist in town and if the incentive

options when purchasing a car or when making business decisions, a good foundation in finance helps guide your decision making.”

Hilscher and other professors working in economics at Davis are currently promoting the UC Investments Academy, a program that is free to all students that promotes careers in the financial and economic world. Interested students are offered countless opportunities and resources to enter the financial field, as well as gain exposure to many already working within it.

There are a great deal of opportunities and resources available for students who are interested in learning more about their financial futures. Professors, both here at Davis and all across the country, would strongly recommend that students invest time in learning about one of the most crucial facets of their adult lives.

Ultimately, the idea behind this advocacy is to remember that it’s never too early to start planning ahead

and educating yourself about these concepts before they’ve caught up to you.

BOARDGAMES FROM PAGE 6 As for why this matters, having a game based on luck evens the playing field. By being random, children’s board games are also egalitarian. A child has an equal chance of winning “Snakes and Ladders” if they’re playing with their parents, their best friend or an AI superintelligence. This can be empowering to children — in a world where adults hold the power, this is the first real chance a child has to be an adult’s equal.

These board games being so luckdependent also keeps the rules simple.

In many of these games, all a player does is roll a die and move their game piece that many spaces. Such rules are easy for children to learn and remember, a necessary feature as their brains aren’t developed enough to

KELLIE LU / AGGIE

isn’t there to get them rented, it may behoove the city to want to change that equation.”

Mike Webb closed off the discussion by mentioning the upcoming housing element that would allow the city to identify what is considered commercial land to further understand the implications of the tax.

“In terms of doing an updated

inventory of commercial land, since we do have a number of properties that we’re bringing forward as part of the housing element for rezones,” Webb said. “[It] probably makes sense for us to coordinate on that and identify what properties are being changed to what designations and make sure all that is reconciled.”

think through complex rules.

Only starting at around age 12 are children able to fully reason out abstract hypotheticals, according to foundational psychologist Jean Piaget.

From ages seven to 11, their reasoning is more logical and rigid. Without the ability to think through multiple hypothetical futures, children have difficulty making long-term plans and strategies. Their brains aren’t well equipped to play complex 10-hour board games. Games with a simple and rigid structure like “Monopoly” are better suited to meet children where they’re at.

Children’s minds don’t develop passively, according to another influential psychologist, Lev Vygotsky.

A child can achieve more advanced kinds of thinking at an earlier age through teaching and guidance.

Mentors provide the “scaffolding” that children use to build their growing mental abilities. One of the most important roles of children’s board games is to help children learn new skills, to be that scaffolding.

Children’s board games are educational in several distinct ways.

In “Snakes and Ladders,” children move their pieces forward based on the number on a die roll, which helps them both learn and count numbers.

“Monopoly” can introduce children to the basics of negotiation as they make deals with other players. “The Game of Life” teaches not only skills but cultural values, as children play through a simulation of an archetypal middle-class American life.

Little of what makes these games good for children makes them fun for adults. Children’s board games are just that — games made for children. It’s a mistake, however, to assume that they’re merely a watered-down version of adult games. Children’s board games are good at being games for kids. I still dread “Monopoly,” but I’d play it for the sake of a young person who was interested. Whether or not they go on to enjoy board games later in life, nearly all children could benefit from what children’s board games have to offer.

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023 | 3

Yolo County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Sudwerk Brewery host dog adoption event The Davis community showed support for the SPCA through games and a dog runway show

BY EMMA CONDIT city@theaggie.org On Nov. 12, Davis’ Sudwerk Brewery collaborated with the Yolo County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to host a dog adoption event called “Dogs at the Dock.” The event lasted from 1-5 p.m. and was just one of the many dog adoption events that the Yolo SPCA holds throughout the year.

The event took place entirely outside and began with a meet-andgreet with dogs that needed adopting.

Community members brought their pups, bought raffle tickets and socialized throughout the afternoon. Each raffle ticket supported the Yolo SPCA. The SPCA is a non-profit animal shelter that serves as the mediator for pet rescues and their adopters. They focus on outreach and education and also aim to spay/neuter animals in the community to decrease pet overpopulation, according to their website. Rachel Gagnon, the SPCA’s canine program coordinator, described the work she does with dog adoptions.

“We want to find a good longterm fit for each animal,” Gagnon said.

“We take a bit of time to review each application, but events like this give people a chance to meet the animals.”

Gagnon explained that the SPCA places dogs and cats in both foster and permanent homes. They receive pets of all ages from rescue agencies across the county. Pets that require long-term medical attention are placed in homes

Hosted at Sudwerk Brewery in South Davis, was a dog costume contest. A variety of pup-licants showed up with their best outfits from burgers and ice cream to flowers and astronauts. (Emma Condit / Aggie) that can support their recovery.

The final event of the day was a dog runway show, where anyone with a dog

could participate. Pups young and old sported hotdog costumes and tuxedos.

Alex Fisher-Wagner, the events planner

California Office of Traffic and Safety endows grants to fund the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Program The Davis Police Department acquired three grants amounting to $310,000 with the goal of improving road safety

BY LAUREN LEE city@theaggie.org On Nov. 6, the California Office of Traffic and Safety (OTS) allocated $310,000 in grants to the Davis Police Department, mainly to help fund the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Program.

Additional resources and programs will be created in response to the grant, many focusing on Davis youth.

“These grants will support the D e p a r t m e n t ’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Program, improve efficiency in the reporting of traffic records and reporting of crash and citation data and to support ongoing enforcement and education programs that help reduce the number of serious injuries and deaths on our roadways,” a press release from the Davis PD reads.

Bicycle training courses and presentations will be introduced to educate elementary school students on bike safety. In the training courses, instructors plan to acknowledge serious roadway incidents. Heightened road inspections will also take place with more DUI checkpoints and

VOTELOCAL FROM PAGE 3 Another key cause of low voter turnout is that people don’t fully understand what issues are on the local ballot. Many people don’t view largescale social issues to be relevant in local elections, resulting in them skipping out on voting.

Additionally, it is one thing to vote for a presidential candidate who has been laying out every reason you should vote for them during a two-year campaign. However, it’s another thing to read through all the policy goals of your local school board candidates and select the ones which you most closely identify with. Overall, it takes more effort to vote in local elections because it is usually harder to inform yourself.

Despite these obstacles, we must find a way to increase turnout in our local elections.

One of the clearest examples of the importance of local elections lies in the extreme polarization of school boards in recent years. Whether it is through book bans, debates on critical race theory or attacks on members of the LGBTQ+ community, almost every major social issue has come up in some way at local school board meetings.

Right here in Davis, school board meetings have repeatedly become places of debate for transgender rights. These debates often include comments from the Yolo County chapter of Moms For Liberty, a national organization that, according to their website, is “fighting

patrols inspecting bicycle roads. Older Davis residents will also be able to engage in walking field trips to actively improve their

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understanding of pedestrian safety.

In the press release, Barbara Rooney, the director of the OTS, talked about the significance behind these expanding programs.

“Everyone deserves a safe for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” This group is defined as an “anti-government extremist group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and they have repeatedly spoken out against Davis Joint Unified School District’s (DJUSD) efforts to provide services for transgender youth.

Extremist groups such as Moms For Liberty have taken advantage of the low involvement levels in local meetings and elections to work their way into local decision-making. This can be seen through their endorsements of their own candidates and repeated efforts to change DJUSD policy surrounding transgender youth.

While changing the timeline of local elections is unlikely to be an easily attainable solution anytime soon, we as voters have the ability to change the narrative surrounding local elections.

Sure, it might take a bit more effort to prepare yourself to vote, but it can feel good to do your own research on candidates whose names you won’t find in the national news. So next time a local election comes up, look a little closer at what’s on your ballot, you might be surprised (or appalled) at what you find.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

environment to travel, regardless of how people get to places,” Rooney said.

Davis PD Deputy Chief Todd Henry also addressed improvements in the community that will be enacted as a result of the recent funding in the press release. He shared that he believes the programs will help strengthen public safety in Davis.

W i t h a dense population of bikers, funds offered by the OTS will also help Davis use resources to promote better road safety for bicyclists. With a strong scope for improvement, Rooney emphasized the community’s commitment to this endeavor.

“This funding will strengthen our commitment to public safety in our community,” Henry said in the press release. “We will be able to increase our efforts in making our roads safer for everyone and focus on critical areas such as bike safety, distracted driving, impaired driving and speeding.”

1989TV FROM PAGE 3 On top of all of those layers, the re-released version has the addition of five never-before-heard songs “from the vault” of Swift’s songwriting journals. “Is It Over Now?,” one of these songs, has already topped charts, alongside a few of its sibling tracks. The combination of old and new, nostalgia and ingénue, creates a powerful record that has yet to come down from its high, even as of more than three weeks past its release.

Swift has a notoriously passionate and dedicated fan base, and it’s only continuing to thrive. This album means more to the fans than it’s possible to see from a casual listener’s perspective, which is why it’s been unprecedentedly successful. No artist has done what Swift has done and gotten away with it, nonetheless expanded from it. But Swift’s allure is so multifaceted (from her lyricism to her vulnerability to her stage presence to the deep lore behind her music) that it’s almost impossible to compare her to anyone else anyway.

So while it might seem nonsensical to an onlooker that a 10-year-old, bygone album is making a splash today, it’s merely a matter of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” being “so magnetic it was almost obnoxious.” Its impact is far from “over now,” it’s the “one thing I’ve been wanting,” it’s “gonna leave you breathless,” and, honestly, it’s “gonna screw me up forever.”

at Sudwerk Brewery and MC of the runway show, described how the event brings the community together.

WHYILOVETJ FROM PAGE 3 This also creates consistency in their product availability; unlike many stores that discontinue brand partnerships every once in a while, I have noticed that Trader Joe’s keeps products for as long as they can, especially if it’s a popular customer favorite. The high value that they place on customer happiness and satisfaction is one of the many reasons that the chain continues to be a staple in many communities.

This focus on customer connection is absolutely the reason why I spend more money on trying out different Trader Joe’s products. Just last weekend, I was persuaded to purchase their new bakery item, the Chantilly cream vanilla bean sheet cake, because an employee avidly explained how delicious it was when they brought it home to try. It was indeed quite tasty, so no regrets there.

Similarly, every single time that I am checking out items with a cashier (have you noticed there are no self check-out stations available inside Trader Joe’s?) they happily strike up a conversation, whether it is a simple inquiry about how my day is going or a kind comment about one of the products I purchased.

Often I find myself comfortably chatting with them, even though I am not a very extroverted person.

Finally, the strong emphasis that Trader Joe’s places on the design of creative art for all their product labels continues to amaze me every single day. The fonts all look digitally printed, although the slight imperfections are proof that they were done meticulously by hand. The paintings that adorn the walls above the shelves also make the space feel bigger and brighter, and the lighting is a warm yellow with lots of emphasis on natural sunlight. The large selection of plants is also unusual for a typical grocery store, but it works to make the inside of Trader Joe’s vibrant and inviting.

Some of my favorite products that I keep coming back for include the “Taiwanese scallion pancakes” (a perfect lunch size!), the “dark chocolate peanut butter cups” and the “soft and juicy dried mango.” Trader Joe’s ice cream is also superb, and I’ve had a tin of their vanilla ice cream always stocked in my fridge for nearly five years. Not to mention, the “mini hold the ice cream cones” are absolutely delectable, and a perfect dessert to share with anyone (I guarantee those cones will be gone in three minutes, tops).

Overall, with their unconventional yet genius approach to marketing, — from word-of-mouth communication to decorative signage to private labeled products — Trader Joe’s maintains a high standard that many grocery stores don’t even begin to measure up to. This is why, if anyone asks, I will enthusiastically proclaim my love for Trader Joe’s over and over until I have convinced another lost shopper to journey through its glorious isles.

LETTERBOXD

“This was a fun way to not only support the Yolo SPCA but to also bring the community together,” FisherWagner said. “The atmosphere here is great and a bunch of people came out.

One of the great things about Sudwerk is you can bring kids and adults, you can bring your dog, you can listen to live music — it’s all free.”

Fisher-Wagner talked about what is ideal in a dog runway show and how to properly judge contestants.

“In a dog runway show, you’re looking for personality,” Fisher-Wagner said. “You want style points but also the enthusiasm of the owners and the crowd to get behind it.”

Ashley Ricafrentea, a recent UC Davis graduate and participant in the event, shared her thoughts.

“Things like this make me love Davis,” Ricafrentea said. “I’m glad my dog Georgia got to meet some other pets. We’ve had a great time.”

Gagnon spoke about SPCA adoption events and how events like this help raise awareness for dogs in need.

“Even if we don’t get adoptions [from these events], it just gets the word out and interest in the animals,” Gagnon said.

To adopt a dog or cat from the SPCA, there is an application online.

For more information about the SPCA, you can visit their website with information regarding their services.

“Bark bark,” Ginger, an honorable mention in the dog runway show, said.

“Woof woooof bark woof!”

you’re someone of very few words, in this case zero, you’re free to stop there.

But if you’re feeling just the tiniest bit daring, challenge yourself to write the very first things that come to your mind about the film. It doesn’t have to be serious, and it doesn’t have to be academic. The most popular review for “Barbie” (2023), soaring to the top of the list with 81,835 likes simply reads, “s(he’s) bro(ken).”

The best thing about Letterboxd is how well it not only allows but encourages creative freedom when writing film reviews. There is no pretension or snobbiness when it comes to discussing movies on Letterboxd. Like a true community, users can interact with one another while staying in their respective lanes, never trying to force other users to take it more, or less, seriously. As a Letterboxd user, you’re able to see a range of perspectives wider than you ever would have just by talking to your friends about a film, and as a result can expand the types of movies you watch, how you analyze them and what you

BADBUNNY FROM PAGE 7 “I wouldn’t go to a concert of his because why would I waste that huge amount of money to see him?”

Godinez said. “I could just do that in the comfort of my own home, watching his concert on YouTube or watching people I know post the whole concert on their social media.”

Mayra Torres, a student at Santa Rosa Junior College and Bad Bunny fan, also commented on the concert prices and the controversy, blaming Bad Bunny for how unaccessible his concerts have become overnight.

“I hate that they used dynamic pricing for him because Bad Bunny is a very popular artist, which made his tickets more expensive since they are always in high demand. I think the thing that many people didn’t realize [is] if it was set as normal prices tickets would have been a lot cheaper,” Torres said. “I luckily was able to find cheap tickets in the ocean of overly priced tickets and ended up paying $400 for pretty good seats… if rumors are correct and Bad Bunny’s stage is a floating stage then I will have a good view.”

Torres went on to note Bad Bunny’s return to his trap roots after side-tracking in “Un Verano.”

“I think that this was a good album, but it is definitely not my favorite out of all his albums, I would rate it a 7/10 overall. [That said], I really like the beat and the references to some of his past trap songs. For me, it was one of the closest to his old style of trap too.”

Amidst the controversy and feedback that Bad Bunny is facing, his newest album serves as a way to experiment with both trap and reggaeton elements, creating a new popular sound for this generation.

FROM PAGE 3 Lastly, and most importantly, create your own reviews A f t e r getting a good sense of the layout, casual nature and overall elements of the app, you’re finally ready to write your first review.

Hit the plus sign icon, search for the movie title and begin by giving it a rating between zero and five stars. If

CATHY TANG / AGGIE

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

4 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023

OPINION

Here’s how to push the human race to new heights in 2024

My pitch for uniting the world, boosting the economy and advancing humankind ALLISON VO / AGGIE

Is ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ a Christmas or Halloween movie?

Let’s settle this

BY JOAQUIN WATERS jwat@ucdavis.edu

BY MALCOLM LANGE mslange@ucdavis.edu Next year holds an important event and its results could upset the current world order for the next four years.

This is when our country depends on us to show a united front despite our differences. Of course, by now, you must know what I am speaking about — the 2024 Olympics.

The Olympics is a multinational sporting event viewed by billions of people around the globe.

Approximately 3.05 billion people watched the last games. That is roughly 38.7% of the world’s population. But how do we increase the viewership?

Almost the whole world is represented in the Olympic Games, so why aren’t more people watching?

The Olympic Games will host 32 sports in 2024, and people have debated which sports need to be added or removed for years. However, people need to focus on the bigger picture. Adding baseball back in will not drastically change the number of viewers. It is not about adding a new sport but a new league for each sport within the Olympics.

Here, I propose the Drug League.

In the Drug League, there are very few restrictions on substance abuse. Sure, Usain Bolt is speedy; he pushes his body’s natural speed to extreme limits.

But what about unnaturally? How fast could he run if he were permitted to use any drug he wanted?

With the Drug League in the Olympics, we can finally see what humans are capable of to the fullest extent.

The Drug League will not just have sports where performanceenhancing drugs are permitted; there will also be some in which drug consumption is a requirement, and it will definitely not benefit the athlete.

For example, javelin throwing but on acid, pole vaulting after drinking profusely or fencing while on ketamine. This will push the athletes to different types of extremes they otherwise would not have to face. It would give a better scope as to what we humans can endure physically and mentally and showcase the resiliency of these athletes. Do not worry, of course, there will be extensive physical checkups and paramedics for each event to ensure the safety of everyone.

Having a new addition to the Olympics and one as big as this would increase their viewership tenfold. Watching it would be amusing even if you disagreed with the Drug League as a legitimate sports league. A herd of intoxicated athletes trying to clear hurdles as they stumble around the race track? Now, that is entertainment.

HUMOR

Aggie Math

There are so many things that can divide us: religion, politics and class relations to name a few. But without a doubt, there is one issue that divides us more than anything else. Wars have been fought over this conflict (well, more like heated discussions at dinner tables, but you get the point). So, I have taken it upon myself to settle this once and for all. I, volunteer opinion columnist Joaquin A. Waters, will finally answer the question that has plagued humanity for generations: is “The Nightmare Before Christmas” a Halloween or Christmas movie?

Let me clarify that I am not in the least bit exaggerating — this debate is of utmost importance to the future of the human race. The world must know whether they are obligated to watch the animated classic about a skeleton’s midlife crisis in October or December. Otherwise, what are we to do? Compromise and watch the movie a t Thanksgiving like some kind o f coward? I refuse! There is a correct answer.

Recently we have all (correctly) come to the conclusion that Bruce Willis’ action classic “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie despite the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas besides its December 24th setting. We must apply that same level of trivial nerdy discipline to “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

For the two people on the planet who have not seen the film (you should by the way, it’s wonderful), the story revolves around Jack Skellington, the self-proclaimed “Pumpkin King” of Halloween Town. Dissatisfied with his role as a creature of fright, Jack accidentally stumbles into the neighboring city of Christmas Town — which must place Halloween Town in the vicinity of the North Pole, though this is completely unsupported by its dry volcanic landscape. The film then chronicles Jack’s efforts to claim Christmas as his own and take the role of Santa Claus for himself, culminating with his inevitable failure and revelation that he had everything he needed all along. In my quest to determine which of the two central

holidays takes precedence over the other, I have collected every relevant piece of evidence for either argument.

Allow me to lay them out now:

Halloween,” which has gone on to become, along with “Monster Mash” and “Thriller,” one of the holiday’s central musical themes.

Evidence that “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a Halloween Movie: The bulk of the film is set in Halloween Town or its surrounding areas, with Christmas Town itself only being featured in two scenes. Thus, the aesthetic of the film — designed

by Tim Burton, one-time King of the Goths — is made to evoke Halloween more often than not.

Basically all the central characters are Halloween-related: Jack, his love interest Sally (who is modeled after Frankenstein), the sinister O o g i e Boogie and more.

The f i l m opens with the

Evidence that “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a Christmas Movie: Christmas is far more central to the film’s plot. Only the aforementioned opening sequence is set on Halloween night, while the entire third act — a third of the overall runtime — is set on Christmas Eve. The impending arrival of Christmas is what sets the plot in motion and drives the characters’ actions.

Jack’s story arc, that of a lonely grump who rediscovers happiness and love through the spirit of Christmas, follows in the long-standing tradition of Christmas protagonists: Ebenezar Scrooge, the Grinch, Jimmy Stewart in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” the dad from “Elf ” and more.

iconic song I s

“ This

Anyone who has studied story structure knows that the underlying themes of a story are far more important than the window dressing that surrounds them. Therefore, though the aesthetic of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” may be largely Halloween-related, it is my opinion that the structure of the story more closely follows a traditional Christmas tale, and thus the film is best classified as a Christmas movie.

You may argue t h a t all of this is in the eye of the beholder, and that trying to assign this label as definitively as I have is pretentious and irritating. To which I reply, I am an English major. Being pretentious is written into my DNA. Others still among you may be pointing to an answer given by the director of the film Henry Selick (not Tim Burton, contrary to popular belief ), that “I’ve picked one over the other at various times, but the answer has to be both.” To which I say, he is entitled to his opinion but once art is ushered into the world, it no longer belongs only to its creators.

“The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a Christmas movie. Get used to it.

MAYA KORNYEYEVA / AGGIE

Creatively creepy artists on Youtube

A YouTube deep dive to give your brain the creeps

I don’t check my bank account because I don’t need that toxicity

BY CARMEL RAVIV craviv@ucdavis.edu Girl Math, a comforting concept in this money-driven, neo-capitalistic society — the idea that some purchases simply do not count. Here are some examples of Aggie Math here on the Davis Campus.

Anything you purchased with Aggie Cash does not count (It’s like Monopoly money.) (You literally paid for it.)

A sweet drink from Peet’s after you bombed a midterm does not count A sweet drink from Peet’s after you slayed a midterm does not count and actually puts money into your bank account A yerb purchased with your TxMx does not count (The burrito was only 7 dollars so a 3 dollar drink just rounds it out, honestly.)

Canes bought from 1:45-3:00 a.m. doesn’t count (You’re just draaaaank.)

Pizza from the Coho does not HEIDI TEJEDA / AGGIE

count (It’s like 3 dollars which is basically nothing.)

Your first two purchases at the vintage fair do not count (You’re boosting the local economy.)

Any breakfast bought after an 8 a.m. class does not count (You are a survivor.)

If your friend buys you a boba and you buy them a boba, the two cancel out to zero UC Davis merch discounted by more than 10 percent, it’s basically free Getting a double over a single at the coffee house does not count if the barista gave you a longing stare and austere smile as you dug around your bag for your card (You were seduced into it so it doesn’t count.)

If you go on a bad Tinder date and they pay for your meal, you can use the money you would have spent on food to buy hot clothes (Clearly, you need them to attract better dates.)

Disclaimer: (This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)

Youtube / Fair Use.

BY MIAH JORDANE mjcampos@ucdavis.edu If you’re chronically online like me, then you often find yourself scouring YouTube looking for something new to watch. During high school, I endured a YouTube dry spell as I felt I consumed everything there was to consume. It’s thanks to this, though, that I explored a side of YouTube I feel needs more recognition! If you’re also experiencing a content dry spell, then I’ve got you covered with some videos that won’t make your brain rot, but might instead give you the creeps.

Originally published in 2004, the disturbing short series “Salad Fingers” by the artist David Firth stars a humanoid creature with muted sickly skin and long, arching fingers. However, this series didn’t start getting extremely popular until around 2010. This series is a classic in the odd, creative scene on YouTube. It follows a deranged yet eerily charming little green guy as he embarks on his extremely off-putting adventures to touch rusty spoons, create personas for his fingers and more. If this description entices you, then this series is a good starting point.

Though “Salad Fingers” is likely Firth’s most famous work, he has a plethora of other creepy and fun videos that are a bit less disturbing but just as interesting. I got sucked into his work during high school and explored his entire collection of videos on YouTube, so here are some of my favorites: O9i 98bn “Cream” introduces an

all-curing and all-powerful product that comes in the form of, you guessed it, cream. Created by a (not real) scientist named Dr. Bellifer, this video depicts what life looks like after this revolutionary product changes the lives of everyone and “cures” all personal and worldly issues. But this powerful product begs the question, is it too good to be true?

The next recommendation is a bit of a short series by Firth, too. They can definitely be watched separately and out of order, but I always enjoyed plowing through a couple of videos at a time in order to fully get a feel for the chaos they encompass. These videos are a bit difficult to describe, but it’s basically Firth’s imaginative play on creating false news. His style is a mashup of animation and real-life images blended together; which I feel adds to the chaos of the videos.

However, Firth does not stand alone as one of the artists I binged on YouTube in high school. I also fell deep down the rabbit hole of Lee Hardcastle’s work. Though his work embodies a very creepy tone, it is vastly different in style to Firth. Lee Hardcastle works with claymation –– but with a twist. Through an extremely cinematic filming style, Hardcastle has created a large archive of unique videos, most of which are extremely gory.

He grew a lot of his fame through remaking movies or shows into 60-second claymated reenactments which explore what the shows/movies would have looked like if there was a lot more gore and violence. For example, some of the shows and movies he’s done this with are “Sean of the

Dead,” “The Simpsons,” “The Belko Experiment” and more. Hardcastle also has had a few of his claymations showcased on Adult Swim including some “Rick and Morty” adaptations as well as some smaller projects like “Earlier” and “Fight Room.” However, my favorite claymations of his are some of his earlier works: “Filthy Apes and Lions” –– a music video for Mark Stoermer’s song. This video uncovers an interesting storyline involving animals and secret spies in a zoo while being paired with the catchy song “Filthy Apes and Lions.” It’s a quick watch, but definitely one that I recommend.

“Ghost Burger [full film]” –– a 22-minute video that depicts the journey of a couple of friends who are hunting down ghosts in order to make burgers with them (obviously).

This one is the sequel to “T IS FOR TOILET,” which I also highly recommend. The extremely vibey lighting in this video contrasts the intense gore, but I feel it makes even more of an enticing watch. Hardcastle describes this video in the description of the video as being “like a dodgy bootleg version of ‘Stranger Things’ if it was a cartoon show.” So, if this doesn’t draw you in, I’m not sure what will.

These two artists are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creatively creepy artists on YouTube, but they’re a great starting point. I couldn’t even dive too deep into all of their work and my favorite aspects about them, so I hope you take it upon yourself to discover things you personally like about them.

5 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

The Editorial Board meets with Chancellor Gary May, UC Davis administrators

May and administrators discuss Leidos involvement, campus safety measures, an academic advising overhaul and more WRITTEN BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD The California Aggie’s Editorial Board met with Chancellor Gary May, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Croughan, Associate Chancellor and Chief of Staff Karl Engelbach, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Pablo Reguerin, Vice Chancellor for Finance, Operations and Administration Clare Shinnerl, Vice Chancellor of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Renetta Garrison Tull, Chief Marketing and Communications Dana Topousis, Chief Campus Counsel Mike Sweeney, Associate Athletics Director Heather Hunter and Faculty Advisor to the Chancellor and Provost Ari Kelman.

Below is a transcript of the Nov. 21 meeting that has been edited for length and clarity, and some of the questions have been reordered for the sake of readers’ ease in navigating the meeting content. Where questions have been moved, we have noted the change.

TOPIC 1: ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT Q: Last month, a UC Davis faculty member shared a post on X that directly addressed “zionist journalists,” stating that they “have houses [with] addresses” and “kids in school,” seemingly intended to come off as threatening.

The university has since put out a statement condemning the post and stating that the review process for instances like these is confidential. What do you consider to be the university’s responsibility towards students and other UC Davis community members who may feel triggered or threatened by this incident?

May: Yeah, great question. As you know, I strongly condemned the poster’s public statement after it was posted, after I became aware of it, just as I would with any similar hateful, revolting comments

that are really antithetical to our values here at UC Davis. My responsibility is to provide an environment where everybody feels comfortable and safe and can succeed. So in a situation like this, where the faculty Code of Conduct may have been violated, we review the matter, and the provost then refers the matter to the appropriate campus offices that investigate harassment and discrimination in faculty conduct. We don’t comment on specific personnel matters, generally, as they are confidential; they’re privacy matters. We recognize these comments impact members of the community, though. We have robust resources in place to support those members of the community, including students, faculty and staff, with a holistic system that addresses mental health and cultural experience and more.

Reguerin: Also, a big part of being responsive was being able to respond to the various increases in concerns that were expressed. The Provost’s Office took the lead, and there were a lot of different constituent groups. But in terms of students and parents and making sure they feel safe, we followed up beyond the Provost’s Office with individual students through our student support team, as well as with parents.

Q: Just to follow up, you said that you don’t comment on matters like this because they’re confidential — is there going to be a time when we can expect updates on the status of the complaints?

personnel matters. While the Chancellor prefers transparency, the law in this case does not allow for that transparency, unfortunately, and so it’s not satisfying, but we need to comply with the law in this area.

Q: Recently, events related to the Israel-Palestine conflict have generated a reaction from students on campus in the forms of rallies, protests, walkouts, vigils and more. What role does the university play in creating a safe environment for students to express their often conflicting views on these matters?

May: First, we recognize the community wants to express their perspectives, including some very strong and divergent viewpoints. And it’s not just the students, it’s the entire community; faculty and staff are in that boat as well. While there have been some incidents of what I would call disrespectful behavior, at least at this point, the reactions have not been violent. I know that many people are really deeply personally impacted by these events. In fact, we met with a group of [Davis] Faculty for Israel and some of the [members of ] Aggies for Israel this morning and talked about these issues.

READ MORE Read the rest of the transcript online

May: No, unfortunately, the whole process is confidential so I can’t discuss details. We do follow the system-wide policies for faculty conduct, and there are very specific procedures that are available that we can refer you to if you’d like to see them.

Sweeney: Yeah, so just like for students, for employees the law explicitly prohibits us from discussing

Don’t forget about local elections The age of pessimism Fight the polarization of local community at the ballot box

BY CLAIRE SCHAD cfschad@ucdavis.edu Every four years, when the presidential election comes up, the country goes through a predictable cycle. People run to social media to encourage their friends and family to vote, many post selfies with their “I voted” stickers and some share information about polling places. This influx of content surrounding voting is always encouraging and often provides us with a reminder of the power of democracy.

However, the situation looks a bit different in years without presidential

elections. The elections go on, yet absent are the constant voting reminders and media attention. Despite the continuing elections, many people don’t seem to pay any attention to them, or maybe don’t even know they are occurring.

Many cities held local elections this November — did you pay attention to them? As college students, we have the unique opportunity to register to vote in our hometown or where we are attending school. So, while Davis didn’t have an election this November, your hometown may have. Unfortunately, turnout remained low for most local elections this November.

This is a problem — one of the strongest connections to democracy we NOVA MAI / AGGIE

have in the United States is our systems of local government, yet people don’t seem too inclined to participate. Voter turnout in the United States sits at about 66 percent for presidential elections and about 50 percent for midterm elections. In contrast, voter turnout in local elections is only around 15 to 27 percent.

This phenomenon is confusing since local elections usually have the most direct impact on a voter’s everyday life.

Whether it’s voting for school board candidates, public safety initiatives or funding for local parks, voters are likely to be able to see the impact of their vote much more clearly. Nevertheless, people don’t show up to the polls for local elections.

So why is this? Why don’t people vote in local elections? Well, it’s likely due to a number of factors, however, a couple stand out: the time at which local elections are held and the information people receive.

Local elections usually occur in off-cycle years, meaning they don’t coincide with midterm or presidential elections. This was originally done with the hopes that voters would be able to spend more time focusing on the local policies and candidates without the distraction of state and federal elections.

Unsurprisingly, it seems that this idea has backfired.

VOTELOCAL on 3

Put down your phone and frolic through the arboretum

BY ANDIE TARABZONI rmtarabzooni@ucdavis.edu

For most of my teenage years, spent online, I geared up to be the most miserable person there is. I found a talent and habit of always seeing the negative, even if things were relatively okay or good. It was not until my more formative years that I began to realize that the disposition I had was part of a falsified identity I no longer wanted to take part in.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve seen this ideology transgress generations. Why is that? I have always felt the Internet was simultaneously increasing our knowledge and kind of making us feel worse. I take, for example, the usage of terminology such as “kys” becoming widespread amongst social media as a “joke.” Even as a joke, I refuse to believe that it does anything positive on the human psyche. I can only imagine that terms like these being used in children’s games like “Roblox” only become increasingly damaging as time goes on.

I also think it’s time to blame 2014 Tumblr. Was Sky Ferreira being your stylistic icon really beneficial to anything about you? Was the romanticization of Effy Stonem part of your character development or just a justification to project any angsty emotion you have on the people around you?

I have a deep-rooted hatred for multiple content creators, such as Onision and Shane Dawson. Although

those names are now dated, their influence on young audiences and interactions with them are a big part of why I think anyone who grew up on the Internet felt entitled to being perpetually miserable and making it everyone’s problem.

However, I don’t think the problem ends there. I’ve recently seen an influx of people talking about how “their impact will never be enough” and completely taking on a victim complex when they’re clearly the ones with power in a situation. Why are we so pessimistic about things that we have power over?

If you have an opinion, say it! You can always do something about the things that you see in a negative light. Life doesn’t just stop when life treads dark.

It’s okay to have hope. It’s okay to want things to be better.

Though not everything can be cured or fixed within minutes or even at all, trying to find the best perspective or highlighting the good and having hope is just one way to cope with things rather than focusing on the negative. I like to think of my friend Marco, who will usually post about something good that’s happened to him with “life is so beautiful.” And even though he might secretly be a millennial mom, maybe life IS so beautiful.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ — magic, madness, heaven or sin? Why I love Trader Joe’s Is it gonna be forever, or is it gonna go down in flames?

BY MOLLY THOMPSON mmtthompson@ucdavis.edu Why doesn’t Taylor Swift ever “go out of style?” Is “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” a “wonderland” or “is it over now?” Is she “gonna be forever” or is she “gonna go down in flames?”

With the ongoing Eras Tour, the release of the Eras Tour film, multiple recent re-recorded albums and new projects always in the works, Swift is currently at the peak of her career. At least, that’s what sources like Billboard, Time Magazine and The Guardian say.

So why does she need to re-release old albums, and why do people care so much about them? I mean, we’ve already heard the songs, why is everyone so excited to hear them again?

In short, the re-recordings are symbolic. Yes, Swift benefits financially from that set of parentheses at the end of every re-released song, but to her as a recent member of the billionaire club, it’s not primarily about the cash.

It’s about her art being in her name — she wants her work to belong to her, for legal, logistical and emotional reasons. Her discography is incredibly vulnerable, which is one of the reasons for its mass appeal, but it’s also one of the reasons why it’s so important for it to belong to Swift herself — it’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s her life’s work, but it also represents her life. Her

songs create a poetic, anecdotal diary of her life: the lessons she’s learned, her emotional growth, her heartbreak, her love and her triumphs — it’s inevitable that she wants it all to be her own.

In a way, it transcends that too.

Beyond Swift’s personal reasons for wanting to reclaim her masters, the “Taylor’s Version” eras have arguably brought more to her fan base than anything she’s ever done before. Each new, revamped era brings a unique kind of nostalgia and sentiment to her followers, many of whom grew up listening to the songs that are reentering the spotlight. The lyrics that meant so much to them a decade ago take on a whole new meaning now.

“1989” was originally released in 2014. It was, in a way, a cultural reset in that it broke numerous records, won countless awards, pioneered a genre of pop music that drew no inspiration from other contemporary pop records and was a significant genre shift for Swift; its uniquely “pop-y” sounds contrasted her previous country releases.

Even the album title itself — “1989,” the year Swift was born — was intended to symbolize a rebirth of her artistry and public image.

Suffice it to say, the original version of “1989” made its mark on society.

So now, as Swift and her fans have simultaneously grown, “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” has a doubly powerful impact: it appeals to a very specific sense of

yearning for the carefree yet heartsick, sophisticated yet unsure, empowered yet broken feelings of the original “1989” era a decade ago. It also provides comfort and a reminder of growth. Echo McFadden, UC Davis student and avid Swiftie, notes the depth of what “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” means to them. “[...] Because of those long car rides with my mom when I was younger where we would blast it on the stereo,” McFadden said, “some of my best core memories were made with Taylor’s music in the background, and I am glad I can continue making them with her version[s].”

“1989” is arguably Swift’s most anxious album. She’s spoken about the eating disorder and other mental struggles she dealt with during its prime, and while the most well-known songs are exceptionally upbeat and optimistic, the majority of the album carries a more fretful, troubled tone beneath its confident rhythms. Fans who are intimately familiar with the album know this all too well, which makes it, as a whole work, even more dear to them.

So when the re-recording came out, fans were able to look back on that initial period of time, in both Swift’s life and the parallels of their own, and savor the bittersweet sensation of looking back on a low point after having learned, grown and survived.

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The genius of TJ’s marketing strategy and some product recommendations

BY MAYA KORNYEYEVA mkornyeyeva@ucdavis.edu

Ah. Trader Joes. It is no understatement to say that this iconic grocery store franchise is, to me, like a beacon of light on the horizon: a place that I gravitate towards like a moth to a flame and which I choose over several other stores to do my weekly shopping.

Continuously, I am baffled by my fondness for Trader Joes. Is it, perhaps, my admiration of the detailed signage that adorns the shelves? Could it be my awe at the fresh rows of fruits and veggies, stacked high next to the flower bouquets? Is it the affordable prices, the incredibly friendly staff or the calming atmosphere that emanates throughout

MAYA KORNYEYEVA / AGGIE

the entire store?

To tell you the truth, the answer could very well be all of the above.

Even though Trader Joes never does any sales or discounts, and doesn’t offer an outlet for online shopping or a rewards program, I have never really felt the absence of these so called ‘perks.’

One of the things that Trader Joe’s historically values is consistently offering affordable prices for their products, 80 percent of which are private label — meaning that they are made by Trader Joe’s and only for Trader Joe’s customers.

By not outsourcing from other brands, the company can retain the full profit from their private label sales, and ensure that the quality never wavers.

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ARTS & CULTURE

6 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023

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Commentary: What is the value of children’s board games?

The Arts Desk’s weekly picks for music, movies and more

How board games go hand-in-hand with children’s psychology

BY ELI KELLEY arts@theaggie.org

BY NATALIE SALTER arts@theaggie.org Song: “Margaret” by Lana Del Rey ft. Bleachers (2023) “You’re asking yourself, ‘How do you know?’” Jack Antonoff, lead singer for Bleachers and collaborator on the track “Margaret” vocalizes with palpable emotion. “And that’s your answer: the answer is ‘No.’” Though American singersongwriter Lana Del Rey’s newest album, “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd,” is filled with moving sentiments, listening to “Margaret” invokes a particularly bittersweet feeling, between its slow instrumental and reflective lyrics. On this track, Del Rey and feature Bleachers muse on the idea that “when you know, you know,” urging the listener to reflect on the past while also acknowledging when it’s time to let go. It’s hard not to listen to a song with such hard-hitting lyrics and not come out feeling a little introspective, if not also a little more grateful for everything that makes life worth living, even the littlest of things.

Book: “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

As someone with a lifelong love of board games, I’ve sometimes looked at my earlier years of game-playing with regret. Why had I wasted so much time playing “Snakes and Ladders?”

And not just “Snakes and Ladders,” there’s a catalog’s worth of games — “Monopoly,” “The Game of Life” and “Sorry” to name a few — which had captivated me as a child that I now consider boring.

In comparison with games I enjoy playing today, children’s games have little room for strategy, feature only the simplest kinds of interaction with your fellow players and determine the winner by little more than chance.

However, there’s something to these

games that once engaged me and countless other children. In thinking about this issue, I’ve identified several reasons why, for children, these board games continue to hold meaning.

Before knowing why children’s board games work, it’s important to know how they work. For starters, children’s board games feature large amounts of randomness. The winner of “Snakes and Ladders,” for example, is based entirely on what numbers come up on the dice. “Monopoly” and “The Game of Life” have some amount of player choice and therefore player strategy and yet, still, are heavily based on luck. I have never heard someone describe themselves as skilled at “The Game of Life” or “Monopoly,” in the same way someone would be skilled at chess.

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I know what you might be thinking — “‘Jane Eyre,’ what is this, AP Literature?”

— but trust me when I say, if you haven’t already enjoyed Charlotte Brontë’s Gothic masterpiece through the joy that is high school assigned reading, you’re missing out. Though unassuming at first, it is the woeful tale of the titular character’s journey to becoming a governess for the young ward of the brooding and wealthy Mr. Rochester. Without disclosing the novel’s unexpected twists and turns, “Jane Eyre” is an initially withdrawn novel that conceals a dark and compelling story beneath the surface. Not to mention the novel’s melancholic aura is perfect for the gloomiest of November days. Brontë’s polished and immersive writing will capture the attention of even those with AP-Literaturesummer-reading-trauma and is a classic more than worth the critical praise it receives.

Album: “The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We” by Mitski (2023) If you’re anything like me, and have a penchant for the most melancholic and heart-wrenching music, you’ll be enraptured by Mitski’s most recent album, “The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We.” Its opening track, “Bug Like An Angel,” cuts to the chase with its mournful and introspective lyricism, with Mitski touching upon broken promises and the treacherous comfort a drink can bring to a lonely soul. Still, though the album has its woeful moments — “The Frost” muses upon lost friendships, while “I’m Your Man” is laced with poetic self-loathing and a desperate longing to be loved — Mitski demonstrates her talent for masterfully capturing an immense range of emotions through tracks such as the romantic “My Love Mine All Mine” and the shiningly hopeful “Star.” Whatever you’ve felt, be sure that Mitski has felt it too and put it into words with a stunning eloquence that reminds you that your experiences are not only yours.

Movie: “Stardust” dir. by Matthew Vaughn (2007) “Stardust” has all the makings of a proper fantasy film — magic, romance, sword-fighting, a political succession crisis that could be right at home in an episode of “Game of Thrones” and yet it remains one of the most underrated and excellent gems of the genre. When Tristan Thorne (Charlie Cox) promises his unrequited love that he will bring her a fallen star in exchange for her affections, he is thrust into a fantastical world of flying pirate ships and conniving witches hungry for eternal youth, all whilst the male heirs of the nearby kingdom compete for the newly available title of king. Between Claire Danes’ radiant (quite literally) performance as the fallen star Yvaine and Robert DeNiro’s delightfully subversive Captain Shakespeare, what ensues is a brilliant and heartwarming adventure that will surely find its way into your heart, and into your collection of ever-rewatchable comfort films.

Davis MoMA: Watery Night

‘Original: “The Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh’

Disclaimer: (This cartoon is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and names of “sources” are fictionalized.)

Campus turkeys

Castles of Burgundy is a multiplayer game with the objective of building regions and accumulating the most amount of victory points. (Courtesy of Mshuang2 / Creative Commons, CC0 BY 1.0)

Letterboxd is the new and improved Goodreads, but for film lovers

How to kick-start your Letterboxd account and engage with a global film community

BY SAVANNAH ANNO arts@theaggie.org Inevitably, you will find yourself watching a movie that your friends have never heard of before. One that they will probably never want to hear you talk about — an overly specific documentary, a strangely animated story that you saw as a child or a silent black-and-white movie that you had to watch for a Film class. When this happens, turn your attention to Letterboxd.

Created in the 2010s by Matthew Buchanan, the app currently has more than 10 million registered users, according to an article in the New York Times. Available for free on both iOS and Android, the easy-to-use app creates space for people to say what they’ve been thinking about their most recent watches, in as many characters as they’d like.

Similar to other social media platforms, Letterboxd fosters interaction with like buttons and comment threads. Users can either combat someone else’s page-length review, add to a short critique or laugh at a well-thought-out pun. They’re also able to save each other’s carefully curated lists of films — that can be categorized by genre, mood or director — as well as follow each other’s profiles and receive notifications when their friends post new reviews. To get started creating your own profile, the following is suggested: Choose a username and profile picture that speaks to you While it is technically a social media platform, and you can engage with hundreds of others, there’s still an aspect of mystery that goes into using the app. Most of the time, you’ll end up being mutuals with people you don’t know in real life. Take advantage of the anonymity; Letterboxd isn’t Instagram. Use a selfie you would never think of posting in your monthly photo dump or a picture of your favorite movie character. Pick a username without worrying about having to include your full name.

“Bottoms” (2023) and “Shiva Baby” (2020) star Rachel Sennott, for example, simply goes by “girlactress.”

Disclaimer: (This cartoon is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and names of “sources” are fictionalized.)

Select four films to showcase on

your profile page This is the first thing people will notice about your Letterboxd profile, a defining feature that users pride themselves on. It’s easy to go for popular choices, but the app encourages honesty and letting your movie-watching range shine. It’s more than okay to have a movie like “Past Lives” (2023) right next to a movie like “Surf ’s Up” (2007) on that list of all-time favorites.

Browse through user lists, popular accounts and the Journal This is where it really gets fun, you’re free to explore the Letterboxd app in all of its film-nerd glory. One of the most helpful features is that the app allows users to add whatever movies they’d like into different folders, kind of like playlists but with film. The titles can be almost too specific, like “Best Closing Lines of All Time” by Mike Flanagan, or focus on a broader category such as place or culture, like “Palestine” curated by Laurs Kemp. The Letterboxd Journal is also a great way to stay informed and up-to-date on the latest film gossip and has its own page on the app where you can read about interviews, analysis and recommendations all in one place.

My recent favorite: “Raw Deal: eleven filmmakers peel back the layers of the ‘women in horror’ label,” by Katie Rife.

Another interesting way to dive into Letterboxd is to search for secret profiles made by actors, directors and writers. While Letterboxd has millions of users, it’s not as dependent on name recognition and reputation as other social media platforms are. People just want to rate movies, and most of the time that doesn’t require a profile that provides a lot of personal information.

Most celebrities skip out on promoting their accounts, or even purposefully keep them a secret, and so can often get lost in the sea of movie-watchers, like “The Bear” (2022) star Ayo Edebiri or “Saturday Night Live” writer and actor Bowen Yang. If you’re lucky enough to stumble upon an account created by someone in the film industry that inspires you, be sure to check out their lists and favorites for new movies to watch. Maybe even comment on some of their reviews and see if you can start a conversation with them.

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023 | 7

A newcomer’s review of ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’

The fanbase brings the franchise to life through clever theorizing of its animatronics, pizzeria and characters

BY ELIZABETH WOODHALL arts@theaggie.org

Theatrical release poster of Five Nights At Freddy’s. (Courtesy of Universal Pictures / Fair Use)

The much-anticipated film “Five Nights At Freddy’s” (FNAF) was released on Oct. 27, 2023, almost nine years after the first video game in the series was released in 2014. Although the film seemed to underperform based on critics’s reviews, with one Rotten Tomatoes review describing it as “muddled and decidedly unscary,” this was not the case for fans who were introduced to new lore — and who finally got to see this adaptation come to life.

The movie was initially going to be a Warner Bros. production but was ultimately moved to Blumhouse Productions, a company that is popular for delivering well-performing boxoffice thriller movies like “Get Out,” directed by Jordan Peele. Emma Tammi took on this project as a director and screenplay writer alongside Scott Cawthon, the video game creator.

Although the first game, “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” was meant to be underground with a smaller fanbase, the game has now seeped into the mainstream culture that has been cultivated by fans who theorize what everything means in the game. For example, some people who grew up hearing about the games learned about the “Bite of ‘87” and then went down a rabbit hole of countless theories of

what it all meant.

The game holds a nostalgic element of horror, filled with seemingly nice but dangerous animatronics that haunt the once-popular Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.

The pizzeria was once known for its arcade-style, welcoming (but a little bit unnerving) ambiance. Children went there to have fun, play some games and most definitely not to get terrorized by the animatronics. The animatronics in the first game aren’t too hard to forget: Bonnie, a purple rabbit; Chica, a yellow chicken; Foxy, a pirate fox with an eyepatch and hook and Freddy, a brown bear.

The protagonist in the game is Mike Schmidt, a new night guard who has to make sure that everything stays well-maintained at the pizzeria. During those five nights, Mike has to switch between watching the security cameras and making sure that no one — aka the animatronics — gets too close to his office. Once they get close enough, the player has a few seconds to close the door before Mike gets torn up by the animatronics. Can’t forget about the energy saving, though: the players can only use up so much energy — usually taken up from looking through the security cameras, keeping the lights on and keeping the door closed — until it runs out, ultimately leaving the player without electricity. When that happens, Mike is cornered in his office, left defenseless and gets eaten alive by any of the animatronics who are “freeroaming.” Not too scary, right?

As the player navigates through the different nights, they learn more about the history behind the broken-down building that’s run by these animatronics who are hungry for human flesh.

The movie starts with a night security guard being strapped to a torture device, one that seems to trap him in an animatronic. In a scene that introduced a gruesome and gory death, watchers — both new to the franchises and those who are familiar with the lore — are in for quite the treat. The protagonist Mike Schmidt is forced to take on a job as a night security guard after assaulting someone who he interpreted to be a kidnapper but was actually the child’s father. Steve Raglan, Mike’s career counselor, offers him the job, stressing that it’s not an easy one and most quit after a few weeks. He is desperate for a job after social services threaten to take his sister Abby away from his custody and place her in the hands of her money-seeking aunt Jane. He now has to depend on Abby’s babysitter, Max, to take care of her while he is away at night. This causes a greater strain on their relationship since Mike cannot seem to understand why Abby is so detached from the world, scribbling away with her crayons and imagining a different world.

During Mike’s first night, he has a recurring nightmare of his little brother, Garrett, being kidnapped by a stranger while they’re on a camping trip.

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Manetti Shrem Museum holds its first Art Review: Bad Bunny Jam of the year returns to his roots in art jams aim to provide a comfortable space for students to creatively ‘Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a The express themselves through art and culture Pasar Mañana’

The artist acknowledges the controversy and stays true to his sound

BY LORENA ALVAREZ arts@theaggie.org Bad Bunny has recently received backlash for his relationship with Kendall Jenner and his alleged hostility towards fans. Some fans blame the singer and supermodel’s relationship for the change in the melody in his song, “Nadie Sabe” and his defensive responses towards criticism. While some feel that his new album, “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” has “flopped” and wonder if the album cover featuring a horse is a nod to Jenner, the shift from predominantly featuring reggaeton in “Un Verano Sin Ti” to trap in his new album is a return to his roots.

When you google Bad Bunny, as of Nov. 16, many articles spotlight his relationship with Jenner and his negative reaction towards AIgenerated NostalgIA, completely disregarding his music. Although it has become natural to want to keep up with celebrities and their love lives, their romantic relationships should not influence how viewers perceive artists’ work.

This frustration towards the constant judgment and naive belief that we as fans know our idols as people is seen in “Nadie Sabe,” a single in his new album. Here, the singer opens with an orchestra filled with prose discussing the hate and misconceptions that come with fame.

“Making money while you comment/but nobody knows/what it feels/feeling alone with a hundred thousand people in front/that all the people talk about you/without knowing a thing, without knowing you/and they even wish you the death/ but not me, I wish you good luck,” read lyrics from the song translated by Genius.

Bad Bunny goes on to acknowledge the hate he received for throwing a fan’s phone.

“You’re not my real fan, that’s why I threw your phone /the real ones, I’ll love forever,” the artist said.

Through “Nadie Sabe,” Bad Bunny notes his desire to stay true to himself, something he believes his fans will support. He even goes on to comment on the desire to confine artists to genres, noting that his music will not be bound to a single style or thing.

The singer demonstrated this with lyrics like “This album is not meant to be played and get a billion views/

it’s so my real fans are happy” and “and it’s true, I’m not a trapper, nor a reggaetonero/I am the biggest star in the whole world… I have lost love, I have lost money/[for] my best defect, being very sincere/But I don’t lose faith nor the desire to kill [it].”

His blunt and vulnerable album was greeted with mixed emotions because of how different it is from “Un Verano,” an understandable reaction given that his most streamed songs on Spotify are “DÁKITI,” a collaboration with Jhayco at 1.84 billion streams and “Me Porto Bonito,” a collaboration with Chencho Corleone at 1.58 billion streams. These popular songs are reggaeton, which has led to some fans being disappointed by the shift to trap in “Nadie Sabe.” This change was met with surprise by fans who listen to his newer music, missing his first studio album, “X 100pre” which “was instrumental in bringing Latin trap to a global audience without diluting its regional spirit,” according to a review

by Albums in Order.

Despite the general public having mixed feelings about the album, some fans responded positively to the reminiscent effect the album has.

Jessica X. Contreras, a fourth-year sociology major, commented on Bad Bunny taking the time to acknowledge his fans.

“I like his new album. Some songs more than others but I like how he recognizes his fans and his love for Puerto Rico,” Contreras said.

When asked about her go-to songs, Contreras noted the 2022 album, “Un Verano Sin Ti,” and Bad Bunny’s performance skills.

“I have so many [favorite songs].

It’s between ‘Moscow Mule’ and ‘Enséñame a Bailar’ both in his ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’ album. I like this album as well because it just reminds me of a good point in my life. I was able to go to his ‘Un Verano’ tour and hear it live. This album also celebrated Puerto Rico and it had overall a lot of ‘hype’ songs that were fun and cultivated happiness.”

Even though fans enjoy the music, it is still difficult for them to have access to the concert experience because of popular demand, resulting in ticket sales skyrocketing. Cristian Godinez, a fourth-year English major and professional writing minor, reminds those who could not buy tickets of other ways they could watch the show.

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Posing for the camera, Bad Bunny sports an all white outfit at the recent Billboard Latin Music Awards. (Billboard and Gustavo Caballero / Fair Use)

BY RODRIGO VILLEGAS campus@theaggie.org

On Nov. 16, the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art hosted their first Art Jam of the year, celebrating Chicanx culture and printmaking inspired by their current exhibition, “Malaquias Montoya and the Legacies of a Printed Resistance.”

Previously called Student Nights, the events highlight an exhibition at the museum, foster student creativity and serve as a fun, sociable space for students.

“As a student, even if you come here for a class assignment or because you have a class that’s held in one of the classroom spaces here, you’re coming in with a slightly different mindset,” Linda Alvarez, the coordinator of museum programs and student connection at the museum, said. “It’s something where you bring your friends, you have a snack — it’s the same space, but [you’re] using it as a social space.”

Attendees had the opportunity to partake in two different printmaking activities: screen printing with Taller Arte del Nuevo Almanecer (TANA) at their paleta pop-up print cart and making papel picado with the Mexican Student Graduate Association.

The screen printing activity included a commemorative print by Elyse Doyle-Martinez, a Woodlandbased artist, designed for the title wall of the exhibition.

For many attendees, these activities, and the event itself served as a means to connect to their culture, feel a sense of

Students gather at the first Manetti Shrem Museum Art Jam of the year to celebrate Chincanx culture and printmaking. (Rodrigo Villegas / Aggie) community and experience a new form of artistic expression.

“I feel this event is a great opportunity to learn more about my own culture,” second-year sociology major Manuel Villa said. “This is my first time doing papel picado.”

Shortly into the event, a line of attendees had formed for the two activities — a pleasant surprise, according to Alvarez.

“I didn’t expect our studio space to fill up so quickly,” Alvarez said. “I’m just really happy with how many people turned out.”

While attendees patiently waited in line, they had the opportunity to watch a dance performance. At around 8:30 p.m., Danzantes del Alma, a student folklórico dance troupe at UC Davis, performed two traditional folklórico dances from Jalisco, Mexico. The first performance featured a captivating solo

dance, while the second performance saw a vibrant group dance accomplished by two pairs of dancers, both renditions performed to the rhythm of mariachi music.

Following the performance, attendees spent the remaining time socializing with others, making intricate papel picado patterns, viewing art at the exhibition or waiting in line for their turn to screen print.

“I hope in the future there are more events like this,” Villa said. “I hope the university keeps supporting this type of event because they bring culture, community and art together, and I think that’s really important.”

According to Alvarez, this was the first Art Jam in a series set to continue for the rest of the year.

“Our next one is going to be in January,” Alvarez said. “We’re aiming to have at least one per quarter.”

Two UC Davis Graduates and the creation of a new fabric to revitalize the fashion industry

Alumni Akshay Sethi and Moby Ahmed co-founded a textile recycling company, Ambercycle, which recently made deals with major fashion labels

BY KAYA DO-KHANH campus@theaggie.org Akshay Sethi and Moby Ahmed were seniors at UC Davis in 2015 when they came up with the idea for a textile recycling company. In 2023, they have since made deals with major fashion labels.

The roommates both earned a bachelor’s degree during their time at UC Davis, Sethi in biochemistry and molecular biology and Ahmed in genetics and genomics. According to the pair, they were thinking about a lot of different things as their graduation day approached when they landed on the topic of plastic pollution.

They noticed that plastic pollution was an issue that was not being actively addressed and questioned the recycling process as they wondered if putting plastic into blue bins could in turn make it come back as a new material. They thought that there might be something interesting about developing a new way to recycle things.

Upon graduation, they co-founded a startup company, Ambercycle, which focuses on decarbonizing fashion through regenerative material.

Through molecular regeneration, their technology takes end-of-life textiles and converts them into new materials for brands and manufacturers.

“The goal has been exactly the same since day one: how do we create a system of producing and regenerating clothing that makes more intuitive

sense?” Ahmed said. “At UCD, we learned that water gets regenerated in nature in the water cycle [and] that nutrients flow circularly in the nutrient cycle — the materials in our clothes should be able to do the same.”

Their recycling process creates the new fabric, cycora®, which is highquality regenerated polyester with the same strength as virgin polyester but with less than half of the carbon dioxide emissions. The Ambercycle website states that the industrywide adoption of their technology is predicted to offset more than 15 percent of fashion’s overall global emissions.

“I think we’re solving two problems; number one, the waste problem, there’s a lot of garments that go to landfill today that we’re going to be able to redirect away from landfills, and number two, the

products that we make have much lower CO2 footprints,” Sethi said.

“The decarbonized yarns that come out of our process are helping a lot of brands get to really advanced climate targets. I think we’re going to have a very foundational effect on the fashion industry overtime.”

In Oct. 2023, Inditex, a fashion distribution group which owns Zara, Pull & Bear and Bershka, signed a three-year agreement with Ambercycle to buy textile to textile cycora® for over 70 million euros. Additionally, as part of the deal, Zara Athleticz launched its first capsule collection in collaboration with the startup, which consisted of pieces made up of 50 percent cycora® content.

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Ambercycle, founded by two UC Davis alumni, focuses on decarbonizing fashion through regenerative material. (Ambercycle / Fair Use)

8 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023

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Aggie Eats food truck mitigates food insecurity on campus

The passionate student-staffed operation gives back to UC Davis

BY LYNN CHEN features@theaggie.org On campus, there is a wide selection of food trucks to visit as students. Whether you’re a loyal fan of Shah’s Halal or a curious customer of the Smoothie Operator, there will always be a business for you.

One truck that stands out from the rest is Aggie Eats, a service that aims to mitigate food insecurity among students.

From Monday to Friday, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., the Aggie Eats food truck distributes delicious, healthy meals to UC Davis students lining up for the program.

The operation runs on a paywhat-you-want pricing structure, so students can get the food for free or for a few bucks. Money that is paid goes right back to supporting the operation.

Meals that the food truck freshly serves include pork carnitas bowls with pinto beans and tortilla chips with pico de gallo salsa, chicken and potato bowls with broccoli and cheese as well as chicken tacos with papas con rajas and Spanish rice. Almost every day, the menu also offers vegan or vegetarian options for its meals.

Food insecurity at UC Davis

is quite prevalent. In 2022, 42% of the student population reported having very low to low food security, according to the UC Undergraduate Experience Survey.

“We have had some students [...] that come to the truck tell us that they survive on only us [for food],” Sal Ramirez, food truck coordinator for Aggie Eats, said.

Food insecurity on campus has especially been exacerbated by rising prices from inflation.

“The cost of food has gone up so much,” Ramirez said. “It makes it really hard for people of all age groups [to access proper nutrition].”

Ramirez added that these challenges are especially real for college students who are just beginning to learn to budget.

Additionally, food insecurity impacts the emotional well-being of a student. A person may feel shame over their circumstance or fear that there is a stigma associated with their food insecurity, even though the situation may have been uncontrollable in the first place.

Fortunately, Aggie Eats is focused on relieving the stress over this issue for students.

“It’s a safe spot when you come to the truck,” Ramirez said. “There ain’t no shame about it.”

“We all go through things and that’s okay,” he added. “Hopefully, we can brighten someone’s day and make it a little easier for them.”

At Aggie Eats, Ramirez is responsible for leading a team of student interns and Aggie Compass staff to make the food truck happen.

Even though the food truck operates for only four hours a day, a lot goes on behind the scenes to make sure the program runs smoothly during those hours.

Meals that are served mainly come from the Segundo Commissary Kitchens. Every morning, the kitchen staff cook and prepare all the food to be distributed later in the day. Every meal item is then bagged or boxed in large, separate containers to be picked up by the food truck.

At the same time, the food truck itself needs to be prepped for the day as well. Every morning at 7 a.m., student interns go and pick up the food truck vehicle from the Unitrans center. They complete tasks such as filling up the water tank in the truck, loading the food onto the vehicle and checking fridge and meal temperatures on the truck.

During its operating hours, student interns and staff at the truck package and portion out the food to each customer. On average, Aggie Eats

Local organization provides free food to the community

Volunteers bring the historic Food Not Bombs to Davis

BY LAILA AZHAR features@theaggie.org Boxes of fruit salad, rice and split-pea stew stacked on a ledge in Central Park don’t exactly seem like the hallmarks of a terrorist group. But Food Not Bombs, the organization behind this food distribution program, has been called exactly that by the U.S. government.

When Brian Fieganbaulm was arrested at an occupation attempt of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station in 1980, his friends attempted to raise money to pay for his legal fees by holding bake sales. Protesting led to social services and an increasing military budget. They dressed up as generals, displayed a poster that read, “Wouldn’t it be a beautiful day if the schools had all the money they needed and the air force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?” and told people they were raising money to do just that — buy a bomber.

While they didn’t make much money, they caught people’s attention.

At their next demonstration, the group set up a fake soup kitchen outside of a bank stockholder’s meeting — insinuating that this bank’s policies resembled the banks that caused the Great Depression.

Not wanting the food to go to waste, they communicated the nature of the protest to the local homeless community and were able to share food with over 70 people.

And thus, Food Not Bombs was born. The organization collects food that would otherwise have been discarded from local grocery stores, bakeries and produce markets and distributes it to members of the community. From their inception, political action — especially antiwar action — has been central to the group. As their mission statement puts

it, “When a billion people go hungry each day, how can we spend another dollar on war?”

This commitment to political action alongside food distribution is central to a distinction the group makes. “Even though we provide meals and groceries to thousands of people,” they clarified, “we are not a charity.” Rather, Food Not Bombs is a mutual aid group.

Mutual aid groups operate under the idea that current systems of power aren’t doing enough to meet people’s basic needs, and that communities should come together to support one another.

It is exactly this involvement in politics that has led to surveillance by the U.S. government. Food Not Bombs has protested cities’ bans on groups feeding more than 25 people at a time without a permit, stating that “food is a right, not a privilege,” earning them the title of “food terrorists” from Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.

The organization was included on an FBI counterterrorism official’s list of “groups that people intent on terrorism might associate with.”

Their meetings have repeatedly been infiltrated by law enforcement officials; their houses have been raided, their ties to other activist groups investigated.

Co-founder Keith McHenry claims to have been arrested nearly 100 times for work relating to Food Not Bombs.

This intense suppression is the direct result of the financial interests of the U.S. government, according to the organization.

“Military contractors are worried that we might influence the public to realize our taxes could be spent on human needs instead of war,” they said. “Since we will provide food wherever and whenever it is needed, this interferes with the government’s ability to use food for social control.”

Despite the intense backlash they’ve faced, today Food Not Bombs operates over 500 chapters, including one here in Davis. The Davis Food Not Bombs chapter has been serving free vegan meals to the community on and off since 1996. Currently, the group can be found in Central Park on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of every month.

As Josh Redman, a volunteer with the group, described the work: “We collect donations from local farms, the farmer’s market and the food co-op and then we get together and cook a vegan meal and come out and share it at the park.”

Groups like Food Not Bombs help target a pressing issue in Davis:

Students register and wait for their meals of spaghetti (both meat and vegetarian options). The Aggie Eats truck can be seen at a variety of places from the Quad to the Green Apartments. (Kegen Wells / Aggie) distributes around 500 meals a day.

At the end of the day, the truck’s team works together to clean and return the vehicle back to the Unitrans center.

A lot of thought also goes into deciding the menu for students, which Ramirez achieves in collaboration with the Student Housing and Dining Services.

For example, the menu items change every week and are seasonal to make the eating experience more enjoyable for students. In fact, the truck has been quite active on its social media accounts to gauge students’ opinions on what it has been serving.

“We kind of want to give people what they want,” Ramirez said. “You want to feel good about what you’re

eating.”

Ramirez also needs to consider the capabilities and equipment available at the Commissary Kitchens to cook certain foods.

However, since the goal of the program is to make nutrition and food as accessible as it can be for students, Ramirez has been considering making trade-offs in the ingredients of the food.

“We might start steering away from more expensive cuts of protein, such as beef,” Ramirez said. “You might end up seeing more chicken on the menu.”

food insecurity. Defined as “a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life,” a study

by UC Davis researchers found that 45% of undergraduates at UC Davis experience food insecurity.

“Food access and food insecurity are problems that can make or break a community,” first-year political science major Reena Panikar said. “Food Not Bombs gives people a crucial resource that they need.”

Staying true to the organization’s activist history, Davis Food Not Bombs has collaborated with clubs at UC Davis, such as Cops off Campus and Students for Reproductive Freedom. The group also works closely with other mutual aid organizations providing food to Davis residents.

For example, the Davis Food Co-op, a community-owned grocery store, is one of the providers of food for Davis Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs has also provided food for the co-op’s “Freedge,” which is exactly what it sounds like: a fridge full of free food.

The spirit of community and solidarity are evident from the way Food Not Bombs volunteers talk about other mutual aid resources in Davis. “There’s lots of other food in town too,” Redman said, eagerly directing me to more resources. “The Night Market is here Monday 9-11, there’s a whole bunch of things.”

Volunteering for a group that provides food to Davis can be a powerful way to help one’s community. As first-year international relations major Aminah Syed put it, “Volunteers are united by their passion for change and empathy for marginalized communities. It’s a perfect way to find like-minded people who are committed to the same causes as you.”

For students who want to get involved with Food Not Bombs, Redman said, “I would encourage people to come to a serving and meet people and talk there. There’s lot to do.”

AGGIEEATS on 12

Food Not Bombs logo at their location on 4th and C street in Central Park. (Cruz Martinez / Aggie)

How difficult is it to get a job after college?

Recent graduates and Executive Director at UC Davis’ Internship and Career Center, Marcie Kirk Holland, share their experiences

BY SABRINA FIGUEROA features@theaggie.org Graduation is one of the biggest events that will happen to a student in higher education. Being both relaxing and stressful, graduation is a doublebound finish line in which students feel the weight of coursework come off their shoulders, only for the weight of the “real world” to take its place.

Among students in the United States, about 87% agree that obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher helps with acquiring a well-paying and stable career. However, an influx of recent Gen-Z graduates has taken to social media platforms, such as TikTok and X, to say that the act of acquiring said “stable career” is hard in 2023.

“I think it’s human nature to say something you don’t know how to do is hard. Students don’t know how to look for jobs, most of them have never done it,” Marcie Kirk Holland, executive director at UC Davis’ Internship and Career Center, said.

“The way they have gotten their jobs in high school, or even their on-campus jobs, often is a little bit different than what they have to do going through looking for career positions. It’s brought with rejection. So yeah, that’s really hard.”

Rejection is difficult to go through, especially when you’ve just finished

college and you don’t know that it’s normal. Fear of lack of experience adds to that frustration of rejection and the difficulty of finding a job. A LinkedIn analysis found that 35% of entry-level positions posted on their website required at least three years of experience.

Ibeth Ramos, a 2022 Sacramento State University alumnus with a degree in business and fashion merchandising, recalled her thoughts on the post-grad hiring process.

“I felt like maybe I would get rejected for some [positions] since I don’t have much experience in managing or anything besides retail,” Ramos said. “Anything that listed a lot of experience was frustrating because I always thought they would reject me.”

Future college graduates get anxious that they will have the same rate of rejection during that process due to inexperience.

“Having to get internships and experience for an actual job makes me a little more terrified than getting the actual job,” Karla Torres, a second-year health science major at Sacramento State, said. “I’m always like, ‘What if no [employer] wants me?’”

Students are heard when it comes to their fears of job rejection and inexperience, but they shouldn’t count themselves out yet. Holland explained that there are “transferable experience and skills” from regular

customer service jobs, clubs and even coursework that can be put on resumes for employers to see.

“A job posting is a wishlist,” she stated. So if job-postings are posted on websites such as Handshake, the employers know that the target audience is going to be recent college graduates.

“The posting may say four years of experience is required,” Holland said, “but odds are high, most people applying will not have that.”

Ramos gave her advice on applying for positions that students may feel inexperienced for.

“Apply to as many jobs as you can even if you think you are not qualified,” Ramos said. “They might still give you a call back for an interview.”

It is also heavily encouraged to apply to jobs fairly early. Many think that you have to have the actual degree before you can apply to a job within your field of interest, but that isn’t true.

In fact, it is encouraged that fourthyears in college start looking for a job before they graduate. Holland noted that this is because it can take several months for students to get a job offer.

“If you wait until after graduation, it might be that your lease is up in August, and you might have to move back in with people that you lived with in high school,” she said.

She noted that the new independence that college graduates

may seek disappears if they have to go back to depending on their legal guardians.

At UC Davis, the Internship and Career Center urges students to leave their college experience with stable career positions by graduation.

UC Davis human development alum Amena Mushtaq said she started looking for jobs right before graduation.

“The job I was looking for did not require a degree in my major, but it was highly preferred,” Mushtaq said.

On average, the amount of time it takes for students to get a job offer after they begin their search is about three to six months. At UC Davis, the average time frame is around six months, but varies quite a bit depending on the kind of networking and preparation the student does, such as attending career fairs at their schools.

Mushtaq shared her experience and said that she stayed confident in herself during the search process.

“I had experience in many areas related to the jobs,” Mushtaq said, “and knew it was all a learning process moving forward.” It only took her about one week to get her first job offer.

Ramos stated that it took her only a couple of weeks after her last semester at Sacramento State University began to get a job offer.

Karen Aguayo, a San Francisco State University alumnus with a degree in nursing further discussed this topic.

COLLEGEGRADS on 11

KELLY GUAN / AGGIE

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023 | 9

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Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces.

Every row, column and 3x3 square must contain each digit. Each Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing.

Crossword

Answer to previous puzzle 11/09/23

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SCAN TO SUBMIT Scan to submit to our litmag. The theme is “Love, Actually.”

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City of Davis launches G Street Community Survey to gather input on how to develop the area

After an Oct. workshop, the city is still seeking community input on how to manage the popular space

G Street section closed-off in Davis. (Summer Sueki / Aggie)

BY ALMA CULVERWELL city@theaggie.org The city of Davis recently conducted a citywide survey seeking community input on how to proceed with the G Street activation project. The 16-question survey included a range of questions to better understand people’s engagement with the area, ranging from asking the most popular times to visit to furniture and art choices for the future.

The survey opened on Nov. 8 and was closed on Nov. 17 at 5 p.m.

The survey included detailed

models of potential renovations for the space, complete with labels and dimensions. They provided two main options for utilizing the area, one that would maximize retail and dining space and the alternative that would maximize shared-use space. The survey also included potential drawbacks and benefits of each plan.

There were also questions related to more specific visual components of the area including furniture choices, seating arrangements, design themes and parking options. The city included an area for community members to

suggest possible names for the area as well.

Aaron Wedra, a board member of the Davis Downtown Business Association, explained his thoughts on how to best renovate the space.

“The city should invest significant effort and funding into improving this pedestrian-only section of G Street,” Wedra said. “This street is Davis’ historic main street and deserves to be a point of pride for our downtown. Three years ago, the city council decided that this space would be pedestrian-only, but since then, essentially no work has

been done to improve the space for pedestrians. Additionally, businesses there have not been given guidance on how to maintain their outdoor patios, leading to the installation of temporary structures that are eyesores.

In defense of the businesses, they cannot invest significantly in lasting, beautiful outdoor patios without direction from the city on what is allowed.”

The G Street activation project was originally started as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020 by the city of Davis with hopes of supporting local businesses and bringing community members together in a safe way.

Co-owner of Woodstock’s Pizza, Laura Ambrose, talked about her thoughts on the development of the G Street area.

“We are very happy about the development of G Street into a downtown promenade for Davis,” Ambrose said. “This has the potential to really transform downtown, with spaces for outside dining, entertainment, commerce, just sitting and enjoying outside and engaging with the community. We as business owners are hoping to have more interaction with the city planners on an overall win-win plan. The success of the G Street promenade will depend on business owners investing into these outside spaces to create the energy that attracts people to the area. It has to be a partnership.”

Ambrose shared her and other business owners’ hopes for the space; she said that she’d like to expand the patio area over the sidewalk among other improvements.

“Ideally we would like the city to consider leases of the space in front of each business, with entries to these spaces from a central pedestrian

promenade down the middle of the current street,” Ambrose said. “So rather than having a public sidewalk dissecting our space, we would extend our patio over the current sidewalk and out into what is currently a parking area.”

On Jan. 17, the council approved activating a portion of G Street between 2nd and 3rd Street by keeping it closed to automobiles. The city hired Psomas, an on-call design firm, to further develop their landscape architecture, engineer, plan and understand community feedback. Some of their long-term goals include establishing public space for friends and family and creating outdoor spaces for businesses.

The city held a community workshop in Oct. in order to better understand people’s preferences and opinions on how to best use the space. The workshop attracted more than 200 community members and included detailed plans, explanations and diagrams.

Wedra preferred the in-person workshop to an online survey. Wedra believes that a survey is not a substitute for the effect an in-person workshop has with city officials present.

“I would like to see additional charrettes that are in person,” Wedra said. “The city held only a single forum of this type, and it’s not realistic to expect a single time and date to work for everyone. The online survey is not a substitute; it includes diagrams that are very complex. The in-person charrette, at least, had staff on-site to help explain the designs before stakeholders put a green dot on their preferences.”

The city has a budget of approximately one million dollars for the project and plans to adequately invest American Rescue Plan Act funds allocated by the city council.

The AB540 and UC Davis CALPIRG Undocumented Student Center ran three campaigns embraces change in order to during fall quarter The campaigns aimed to increase student remain an inclusive space involvement in renewable energy, voting

The center reflects on their goals as they continue to create a safe space for undocumented students

BY RAGAVI GOYAL campus@theaggie.org

BY JULIANA MARQUEZ ARAUJO

features@theaggie.org In an education system that predominantly lacks awareness and resources for undocumented students, the AB540 and Undocumented Student Center at UC Davis strives to create equity within their community while informing students of their power.

The center is home to a large group of professionals and staff who wish to fulfill the inquiries of students as they navigate higher education and turn to them for help, providing a space that not many were fortunate to grow up with.

Laura Bohorquez Garcia, the director of the center, has experienced firsthand the hardships of being a part of the undocumented population and has since learned the importance of building resources for undocumented students and educators.

“We want to be able to create that space for folks who are brave enough to challenge us or challenge their professors and create this beautiful mission,” Bohorquez Garcia said.

She commented that the center has held its name since 2014, making next year its 10-year anniversary. The community is excited to celebrate how far the center has come. However, she is aware that progression is important.

“A lot has changed since that time,” Bohorquez Garcia said. “Ultimately we want the center to still continue to be a space for not just resources but for community because a lot of times, while we are bringing access to resources like scholarships and programming, at the end of the day, folks really want community.”

The AB540 and Undocumented Center continues to grow with its time at this school, and this growth hones a question for those in charge of establishing the center for what it is. Does the name and bases of what this foundation once stood for still represent the image we want to express today? When Bohorquez Garcia came to this conversation with her students, she found that the answer was no, not exactly.

“The students wanted to make sure that the way [they] saw the center moving forward, was still resonating with them on how to find us as a resource,” Bohorquez Garcia said. “But also how to find themselves being seen as a part of the identity of the center.”

The center was introduced to change nearly two years ago when the committee decided that a new logo was better fit for their vision as it “embodies [their] community at large,” as said in their Instagram post revealing the new logo. Since then, they have asked new students and revisiting ones to kindly fill out a Google form, informing staff members what name they think would be more fitting for the center’s goals.

Bohorquez Garcia mentioned that with this support from voters and alumni, they have been able to decide on a name,

and eliminating single-use plastics

Undocumented Student Center entrance on the first floor of the Student Community Center. (Cruz Martinez / Aggie) which will be introduced to the public very soon.

She explained that in order to settle on a new name, they had to acknowledge that students preferred to associate themselves more with community and did not solely want to be connected to policy or law.

“AB540 just no longer encompassed who was coming to the center or how people identified,” Bohorquez Garcia said. “Folks are not necessarily saying ‘I am an AB540 student’, they most likely are going to say ‘I am an undocumented student’ or ‘immigrant student’ or ‘I am just a student.’”

Many undocumented students have lacked this sense of acceptance and understanding in other settings.

Oftentimes, they find themselves shocked by the amount of support provided at UC Davis.

Daniel Barrientos Garcia, a firstyear transfer chemistry major, shared his experience with this new atmosphere.

“For me, it’s amazing to have a place like this,” Barrientos Garcia said.

“When I was transferring from my community college, one of the reasons why I chose Davis was because of its strong undocumented community that this center creates.”

He discussed that while most undocumented students understand their political situation and relate to one another in that sense, it should not be the sole thing to define them.

“We have different personalities, different interests and we don’t let the phrase undocumented define us or put us into a cookie cutter personality,” Barrientos Garcia said.

A large category of school counselors and advisors nationwide are unaware of how to help undocumented students. More commonly, these students turn their attention to search engines such as Google to help them discover information about possible opportunities or cultural connections, which most times leads to disappointment and a disheartening glimpse of reality.

“In high school, there was no undocumented representation and often, some of the counselors or teachers didn’t know what undocumented was or how to help people with my situation,” Barrientos Garcia said. “Undocumented is something you hear on the news and often in a bad light, this leads to people being misinformed.”

The AB540 and Undocumented Student Center combats this misinformation as it works to not only build a sense of belonging in their students, but also “educate and build awareness of changing policies affecting California’s undocumented population,” as said on their website’s mission statement. Bohorquez Garcia understands that in a few years, they may have to make more changes to the center, depending on what students need and how the country progresses.

In the meantime, this program acts as a resource like no other, providing scholarship opportunities, mental wellness events, diverse job listings, a community pantry and even lifechanging help through legal counsel.

In past recent weeks, the center has been gifted $25,000 from the Women and Philanthropy Impact Award winner, Colleen Bronner, who said, “I have had the privilege of working with several students who are either undocumented or have AB540 status, and they always inspire and amaze me with their grace and perseverance.”

While the center shares their enthusiasm for receiving this opportunity, Bohorquez Garcia said that they have to consider three main topics before taking action: “Is it an opportunity for scholarships and grants for students? Or two, is it an opportunity to implement a new program that can be a pilot program? Or three, can it reinforce an already existing program?”

Regardless of how the center decides to make use of these new funds, it is surely in for some astounding developments as the program grows and impacts the undocumented population in inspiring ways.

During the fall 2023 quarter, UC Davis’ California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) has pursued various campaigns to increase student participation in a variety of topics.

CALPIRG is a statewide non-profit organization that has been operated by students across the UC system since the 1970s, according to the CALPIRG website. “[CALPIRG chapters] started popping up all over the country on college campuses to advocate for the public interest,” CALPIRG UC Davis Campus Organizer Marea Ayala said.

“Young people felt like there was a lot happening in their world that they didn’t have a whole lot of agency over and thought that [this] really shouldn’t be the case.”

CALPIRG is training the next generation of activists, advocates and organizers, according to Ayala.

“Not only should young people not have to wait until after they get their degree to make a difference on issues that they care about, but a lot of the issues that we’re working on right now are just that urgent,” Ayala said.

To achieve this mission, according to Ayala, CALPIRG has held three different pledge drives during this fall quarter: the 100% renewable energy campaign, the new voters project and the “Beyond Plastics” campaign.

The organization’s lead campaign is the 100% renewable energy campaign, where their goal is to get the entire UC system to commit to 100% clean and renewable energy by 2035.

“Last year, [the UCs] signed on to have 90% renewable energy by 2045,” Sophie Massengill, a second-year environmental policy and French double major and campaign coordinator, said.

“They have committed to being mostly renewable energy based and they can do it in a shorter timeline. We’re just trying to push it to an even quicker timeline given that we have less and less time every year.”

To participate in the pledge drive, according to Massengill, students both signed physical or digital petitions stating that they support the campaign and want UC Davis to be

at 100% renewable energy within this new timeline and answered questions pertaining to why they care about clean energy.

“Once we get all of these petitions, there’s a certain whole number that we have we’ll turn in to the chancellor,” Massengill said. “Because the UC system is such a big and influential system, we really believe that if they make this commitment, it’ll cause a really big ripple effect of just a lot of other influential places making this change.”

The new voters project, which is the second campaign operated by CALPIRG, aims to institutionalize voting on campus, according to first-year political science major and CALPIRG Head Chairperson and Campaign Coordinator Rena Cohen.

“Our work basically involves reminding people that you have to show up at the polls and a lot of voter coalition work with some other organizations on campus,” Cohen said. “[We] try to target students at every avenue to reach out to them and tell them that they should vote.”

Cohen said that CALPIRG got over 20,000 students to show up at the polls for the 2020 elections and they have a similar strategy for the 2024 campaign.

Calpirg’s third campaign of the quarter, Beyond Plastics, revolves around getting the Davis City Council to ban single-use plastics in Davis, according to second-year environmental science and management major, CALPIRG Vice Chairperson and Beyond Plastics Campaign Coordinator Caitlin Perea.

“I am going to get student support and public support and try to get restaurant sign-ons as well and then lobby directly with Davis City Council,” Perea said.

The goal is to get support through petitions and social media and ultimately have a meeting with the Davis City Council to show them all of the support that there is for the cause, according to Perea.

All three campaigns are running throughout the fall 2023 quarter.

Students can sign petitions through the UC Davis CALPIRG Instagram and website.

“A lot of issues that we work on are profound and students want to, can and should make a difference on them right now and CALPIRG enables them to do that,” Ayala said.

Students design and paint a variety of catchy slogans on posters to promote sustainability on campus through CALPIRG. (Ragavi Goyal / Courtesy)

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023 | 11

SCIENCE AND TECH Technique developed to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the immune system

Positron emission tomography is allowing scientists to study how viral infections affect T cells

BY KATIE HELLMAN science@theaggie.org

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a technique used by scientists and medical professionals to better understand various body systems. It utilizes a tracer, which is a radioactive drug, to get a clearer image of metabolic activity.

UC Davis scientists are using PET to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the immune systems of recovering patients. These studies could lead to increased knowledge of how the body responds to infection and pave the way toward advancements in the field of immunology.

“Understanding the adaptive immune response to viral infections and subsequent immunological memory is critical for the development of vaccines and therapeutic options,” the study, published in Science Advances, reads. “Most of the immune cells involved in the adaptive immune response and immunological memory reside and function in tissue, particularly in lymphoid organs such

as the bone marrow, spleen, tonsils, and lymph nodes.”

The uEXPLORER is a total-body PET scanner developed by UC Davis scientists along with United Imaging Healthcare. It allows for both dynamic imaging and kinetic modeling in organs throughout the body and produces higher-quality images than traditional PET scans.

“Because it captures radiation far more efficiently than other scanners, EXPLORER can produce an image in as little as one second and, over time, produce movies that track specially tagged drugs as they move around the body,” an article by UC Davis Health states. “The developers expect the technology will have countless applications – from improving diagnostics and tracking disease progression to researching new drug therapies – and ultimately a profound impact on clinical research and care.”

The research focuses on the use of PET to measure the distribution of CD8+ T cells in humans, which become activated during a viral infection in order to locate and kill infected cells. A portion of these T

cells become antigen-specific memory T cells that protect against reinfection long-term, and they are typically found in non-blood tissues.

The study consisted of three healthy participants and five patients recovering from COVID-19 with mild symptoms of infection. The participants were then injected with radioactive liquid to target CD8, which was followed by a 90-minute scan, a 60-minute scan after six hours, and then another 60-minute scan after 48 hours. The patients recovering from infection repeated these scans after an additional four months.

Researchers discovered that there was a high uptake of CD8+ T cells in the lymphoid organs of the eight participants, mainly in the spleen but also in the bone marrow, liver, tonsils and lymph nodes. Furthermore, CD8+ T cell concentrations were much higher in the bone marrow of recovering patients than they were in the healthy individuals. The additional imaging obtained after six months showed that these concentrations had increased from their levels during baseline scans.

NATALIE CHENG / AGGIE

Negar Omidvari, first author of the study and assistant project scientist in the UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering, commented on the significance of the findings in an interview with UC Davis Health.

“Bone marrow has been identified as a major pool and the preferred site for proliferation of memory CD8+ T cells following a viral infection,” Omidvari said. “This trafficking of

memory T cells to certain tissues like the bone marrow is critical to developing immune memory after viral infection.”

The PET techniques utilized for this study have multiple applications in the medical field; this includes the study of immune response following infection, immune memory, treatment response in cancer patients and the development of future vaccines.

Networking, hands-on coding experience and free pizza all highlights of female-centric HerHacks event

Girls Who Code hosts beginner-friendly hackathon focused on sustainability and student life

First-year data science majors Varshini Peddinti and Michelle Lin enjoy free pizza while working on their solution for the HerHacks hackathon on Friday, Nov. 17. (Sonora Slater / Aggie)

BY SONORA SLATER science@theaggie.org “This is my first hackathon,” first-year data science major Varshini Peddinti said with an excited smile, sitting in California Hall on a rainy Friday night waiting to participate in the HerHacks hackathon. She wasn’t alone in the sentiment — in fact, it was echoed by many of the nearly 100 attendees of UC Davis’s first femalecentric hackathon.

The event, which took place on Nov. 17, was hosted by the UC Davis chapter of Girls Who Code, a national

FNAF FROM PAGE 7 Unlike the past nightmares where it ends with him seeing the car drive away, this time, Mike encountered five kids who’ve witnessed it, too. They all run away before he can get his answers. On the second night, Mike falls asleep again with the help of his sleeping pills, but he is awoken by a strange gash. A police officer named Vanessa Shelly appears to aid him. Mike seems to be unaware of the place where he works, so Shelly briefly described that the place closed during the 1980s when five kids went missing, where the suspects nor the victims were ever found.

The audience finally gets to see the animatronics come alive on the morning after the second night. Jane hires a group of people — one of whom is Abby’s babysitter and has been feeding information to Jane — to vandalize Mike’s workplace and hasten the custody. As they trash the place, the group is terrorized by the animatronics, especially with the help of Mr. Cupcake, an animatronic that is small and shaped like a cupcake, resulting in a blood bath. But since Max disappears, Mike is forced to bring Abby to the pizzeria.

For someone who is overprotective of Abby, mostly because of the trauma he faced from the disappearance of his little brother, it’s odd that Mike decides to bring her to a place that is known for the disappearance of younger kids.

Nonetheless, he brings her into the pizzeria, falls asleep and is awoken by Abby playing with the animatronics.

She seems to connect with them and often communicates through drawings.

It is then that the audience sees that they are possessed by the ghosts of the five missing children. As if that weren’t foreshadowing the lurking danger of having Abby there, Mike decides to bring her in again on his fourth night, especially because his brother’s

organization that aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science.

Hackathons are collaborative events in which teams design codebased solutions, such as websites or prototype apps, to thematic problems, like elections participation or campus sustainability. They’re meant to be an opportunity for networking and experiential practice in coding and design — and they are these things. But with their long hours and technicallyadvanced participants, they can also be something else: intimidating.

The idea behind HerHacks, according to first-year data science disappearance seems to be linked to the animatronics. It is then that Abby is accidentally injured, and Mike gets Jane to babysit Abby. During that night, Mike finally confronts the little kids in his dreams, and they propose that he can stay with Garrett if he lets them have Abby, who seems to be content when they are around. He initially accepts, but after rationalizing it, he says that he takes it back — but it’s already too late because Foxy attacks him and then he is trapped in the torture device. He manages to get loose, and somehow Freddy, the bear animatronic, kills Jane and takes a cab back to the pizzeria with Abby but the driver doesn’t question it.

Vanessa cares for Mike’s injuries and reveals that she is the daughter of William Afton, the owner of the former pizzeria and the person who kidnapped and murdered the five children, including Garrett. He hid the bodies in the animatronics and captured their souls, which allowed the animatronics to be as realistic as humanly possible — literally. Mike defeats the animatronics, but they are revived by Steve (the career counselor) — actually William Afton — who reappears in a yellow rabbit suit, his signature. Ultimately, he is defeated by the animatronics who are led by Abby’s drawing, showing the truth of what happened to them. Williams’s suit triggers the internal spinlocks and locks him in. As the animatronics drag him off to a room, Venessa, Mike and Abby all make it out alive. As if she wasn’t traumatized enough, Abby asks Mike if they can visit them sometime.

Although many had expectations before going into the movie, beyond the very little knowledge of the original game franchise, the movie was surprisingly entertaining. Despite the many jumpscares and knuckle-cracking that may have distracted viewers, the movie offers a satisfying adaptation to all the passionate fanbase who bring these theories to life, making the franchise all that more enjoyable and terrifying.

major and co-lead of the HerHacks committee Keren Skariah, was to make hackathons more approachable.

Instead of a several-day time period, participants were given about two hours to build their solution. And rather than code being the only acceptable submission format, the students were encouraged to use basic tools like Figma or even Google Slides to design and present their project.

For nearly 80% of the students who signed up, according to Skariah, HerHacks was their first hackathon.

But even if there were some people who had previous coding experience, Skariah said that they designed their scoring rubric for the event to focus less on traditional measures of difficulty and more on less technical aspects of the design.

“Does it go with the theme?”

Skariah said. “How creative is it? How was their presentation? That type of stuff was more emphasized, because if we really did emphasize that it’s beginner friendly, we didn’t want the people who won just to be the ones who actually coded something.”

Despite the changes, the basic structure of a hackathon was still intact: the organizers gave the teams a “problem,” or a general theme, and the teams took that theme and designed solutions. So what problem were the HerHacks participants solving?

“Ours was the three S’s: Social impact, Sustainability and Student life,” Skariah said. “For example, [you could] design a recycling app that

FASHIONALUMNI FROM PAGE 7 In Nov. 2023, Ambercycle partnered with GANNI, the Danish affordable luxury brand, to support their Fabrics of the Future initiative, which includes GANNI’s carbon reduction goals and approach to responsible fashion.

With both of the recent projects, Sethi said that he was surprised by how different the audiences were for both brands. The Zara partnership gave them a lot of traction in terms of business press with many investors reaching out, and with the GANNI launch, there were more celebrities and designers that reached out.

Ahmed said that when scaling up new materials there is always a cost curve: as the scale goes up the cost comes down. Overall, the regenerative material does not increase the price of a clothing garment by a significant amount.

“When purchasing clothing itself the difference is quite small, as the portion of the end garment cost that can be attributed to the raw material is low, relative to the total embodied cost of labor, transportation and retail,” Ahmed said.

Sethi said that the university was very supportive as they received a lot of mentorship when forming the startup. On campus, it was easy to find technical resources as they walked into the Genome Center with their idea and were provided with analytical equipment.

“I think the best part about UC Davis is that a lot of people are very accessible, you could walk into any professor’s office or send an email [...] almost everyone was down to talk,” Sethi said.

They worked in a lab on campus with UC Davis Biomedical Engineering Professor Marc Facciotti

shows you where the closest recycling bin is on campus.”

The winning group, Skariah said, came up with the idea of an app called Bike Buddy that was meant to encourage students to bike to campus.

On the app, users would have a virtual pet, and when you biked you would earn coins that you could use to buy food and toys for the pet.

Many of the groups that formed knew each other prior to the event, but for anyone who didn’t know people interested in participating, the organizers made it easy for students to sign up alone, and be randomly placed in groups when they arrived at the event.

“I remember pairing [groups] up in the beginning of the night, like, ‘Oh, hey, do you guys want to work together?’” Skariah said. “And at the end of the night, I saw them making jokes together. So I think HerHacks definitely fostered a community and brought a lot of people closer together.”

She went on to emphasize the importance of female community in the tech industry specifically, saying that she has experienced and heard about coding environments in which women are outnumbered.

One of the ways their team tried to promote building community even beyond the event was by inviting “mentors” to the event, including female upperclassmen at UC Davis who hold leadership roles in STEM clubs as well as female faculty

members in the computer science department. The mentors were there to offer immediate advice on the teams’ solutions, as well as to answer any questions about internships or careers in tech.

“If any of us needed any advice on how to get an internship, they were like, ‘Hey, I’m your girl, if you need help,’” Skariah said. “That type of networking, and having the resources right there [is great]. I can talk to someone who’s been at my dream internship, and I can ask them, ‘What did you do to get there?’”

This may have been the first hackathon held by Girls Who Code — but according to organizers, it won’t be their last.

“There was one group I saw that didn’t get [an award],” Skariah said.

“And they were like, ‘Guys, next year, that’s gonna be us.’ So they were already deciding they’re going to do HerHacks next year and going to be a group next year. And that just made me so happy.”

Skariah said that she felt proud of the event, despite the fact that “not everyone came out as a coding pro.”

“I feel like everyone definitely came out with a stronger network,” Skariah said. “Or everyone came out with a stronger passion for tech, or with a bigger knowledge on what a hackathon is, and those are wins in my book. I’m really proud of the fact that I can say we made a meaningful impact on the girls at Davis.”

who was very encouraging to them.

“It was a pleasure mentoring and working with the Ambercycle team way back in the day,” Facciotti said. “I was at the time, and remain, tremendously impressed by their ability to identify and focus their attention and energies on key problems. It’s been a tremendous pleasure to watch them apply themselves and to grow and evolve their initial idea so successfully.”

Ambercycle has come a long way since the idea of it first started out at UC Davis, from its cycora® material being featured at New York Fashion Week in the Vogue fashion fund finalist Kozaburo’s collection this fall to partnerships with major fashion companies such as Zara and GANNI. The startup has many other upcoming projects in the future.

The name for the company came about when Sethi and Ahmed were up talking late one night. They based it on the process involved in the creation of amber.

“Trees produce sap, and sap is a dirty, sticky material that no one likes,” Sethi said. “But if you do something to it, if you apply heat and pressure to it, it turns into amber, which is very valuable in the same way plastic pollution is really dirty, disgusting [...] and if you could do something to it, then maybe you could turn it into something valuable. That was the amber concept and Ambercycle seemed right.”

doesn’t see the offer as sufficient. This can happen for a myriad of reasons, the main one being that recent graduates tend to reject job offers that have low salaries. A CNBC report showed that most students won’t take less than $72,000 and overestimate their expected salaries by $30,000.

This overestimation can contribute to the difficulty level students perceive when acquiring and looking for a good career position.

“I’ll be honest, some people are unrealistic about what they’re going to make at an entry-level, but sometimes companies do try to undercut and don’t pay well,” Holland said. She explained that thinking through the offers — and even going to career advisors or family members for help — is an important step in the process.

Aguayo rejected her first offer due to the duration of the contract and the terms behind it, plus the incentive. She later elaborated that she received help from a family friend during the offer process, since she is a first-generation college graduate.

“I was frustrated because I felt like I had no one to fall back on at times,” Aguayo said. “[...] Navigating everything on my own was new.”

Beginning career searches for positions is an overwhelming and difficult process, but that’s no secret.

Although students can find themselves in pools of frustration and tears during this time, it’s not their fault and the feeling is mutual amongst many.

There are a plethora of resources for graduates to use much like the Internship and Career Centers at their selected schools, career fairs, family members and the use of networking through speakers, recruiters or internships.

Whether there is a long wait for the first job offer or students have to take a job that isn’t necessarily updated to the cost of living, the experiences of Ramos, Aguayo and Mushtaq show that there is still hope for students.

COLLEGEGRAD FROM PAGE 8 “I received a job offer three weeks after I passed my NCLEX licensing exam,” Aguayo said, “but it wasn’t until three months after that I received a job offer at my dream hospital and unit.”

The first job offers, though, don’t have to be accepted if the graduate

12 | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

SPORTS MEN’S SOCCER

UC Davis men’s soccer team finishes season out strong, makes it to finals An end-of-season lookback from some of the players

BY MEGAN JOSEPH sports@theaggie.org As one of the most well-known UC Davis Division I athletic teams, the men’s soccer team finished out their season with a difficult game against the UC Irvine Anteaters. The game ended in a nail-biting penalty kick (pk) shootout with neither the Aggies nor the Anteaters scoring in normal time or overtime during the game. The shootout began strong with both teams only missing one shot; that was, until Irvine’s goalkeeper Luke Pruter made a crucial save. When it mattered most, his save blocked an Aggie goal resulting in the 8-7 final pk score.

As the first Aggie to take a penalty kick in the game, second-year offensive player Cason Goodman reminisced about that moment in the game.

“I’d taken a lot of PKs in practice,” Cason said. “We really drilled those right before the finals. I knew I had to do exactly what I had been working on in practice. When you walk up there, it’s really surreal. You have to believe in yourself. I shot first and scored, so there was an immediate feeling of relief to set a strong tone for the team.”

Prior to the finals match, the Aggies earned a substantial amount of wins throughout the season — one of the most thrilling being the semifinal match against the Cal State Fullerton Titans.

The Aggies emerged as victors having earned the winning score of 2-1. With the Aggies losing to the Titans earlier in the season, the win in this Fullerton game was a chance for the Aggies to show everyone that they were prepared to fight for the championship title.

Even with their immense success against the Titans, the Davis team still had a battle ahead. Cason, the leading scorer on the team this season, described how the Fullerton match provided momentum for the Aggies.

“I took the season one game at a time and after every game, you get more and more excited and [filled with] more belief,” Cason said. “Fullerton boosted us and earned [us] the win. Our coach said this last year, which I agree with, we peak at the right time. Going further into the championship also means new players find a way to score like Scott

Surrounding the goal, UC Davis continues a strong offensive play, head butting the ball into the goal. (Aggie File) [third-year Scott Buie]; scoring in the semifinal for his first collegiate goal was incredible.”

Despite the strength the team displayed in the championship matches, the Aggies still underwent some hard losses this season. Nevertheless, the team did a great job of using those losses to fuel their motivation.

“We all knew that the loss or game did not define us as a team and was a building block for us,” Zack Lillington, a second-year offensive player, said. “If we wanted to get the result we wanted, everyone needed to look forward to the next game and we were all confident that we could just build off the loss.”

Lillington had an outstanding season, taking a record number of shots on goal and playing a considerable amount of time even while battling an injury. In the last few weeks of the season, Lillington suffered a knee injury from an on-campus bike accident that resulted in him getting reduced playing time in the finals. Even so, Lillington still played in the final games of the season, keeping the team together and unified.

“[The team is] more of a family than just a team,” Lillington said. “Just coming out and appreciating everyone for what they bring on and off the field is important. It is so much more than just soccer for all of us.”

Second-year defensive player Luke Goodman fought hard on the back line to prevent the Aggies from having any additional losses this season. As a resilient part of the back line, he commented on some of the hardest games for the team this season.

“Sac State loss, Causeway Cup loss and the final conference match senior night were tough,” Luke said, “And then going from there straight into the Cal Poly game the following week in the start of the playoffs was hard. But, many games were tough all season for different reasons that we tried not to focus on.”

The senior night game against the Sacramento State Hornets proved to be a serious challenge for the Aggies as the visitors scored an early goal that would go on to earn them the win. The Aggies held possession for the majority of the game with the help of fourthyear defensive player Ethan Hoard

playing on the defense, but were just short of scoring and taking the lead.

Hoard, having played for the Aggies for a significant number of seasons, spoke on the team's positivity and unity.

“Throughout the losses, ties and wins, we still prevailed and got to the championship where our goal was,” Hoard said. “I think bonding is an understatement to say what we did.”

During his first experience holding a captain position for the team, Hoard handled the responsibility well, seeing the Aggies through their ups and downs as they played this season. Hoard highlighted what came with being captain for the Aggies.

“It was a shock how much stuff we had control over, like planning meals and helping with formation,” Hoard said. “But, the most important part was getting the entire team motivated and to listen to what needs or thoughts the players had so we could come together as a team.”

Along with keeping the Aggies motivated and ready for the upcoming games, it's important for any team, including the Aggies, to have a strong

connection and ability to work together cohesively. Luke described how the Aggies went about achieving this team dynamic.

“Team chemistry is important,” Luke said. “Everyone on the team gets along and loves each other. We are all super close as a team which is one of our greatest strengths.”

As the season is officially over for the Aggies, they are all looking forward to next season and working hard to prepare and train for whatever they will have to face. With the team immediately starting off-season training following their last game, they will train all winter long and have a small spring season before returning in the summer for the official season.

For their off-season training, the team practices on the field two days a week and the remainder of the week is spent playing indoor soccer or lifting weights — an intense schedule that should get the Aggies ready for their future games.

Following the end of the season, here is some advice and knowledge from some of the players on the team: We have a lot of talented younger players and I’m excited to see how they develop, but everyone should use this time to improve their individual game and work on what they are good at,” said Cason.

“I’m looking forward to next season and coming out strong and knowing we had a great team this season and that it will move forward to next season,” stated Lillington. “Also, coming out with the confidence that we know we can win and we know that we can make it to places maybe we haven’t before. I think coming out with confidence is all we need to move forward.”

Luke noted that “coming from being the best one on your team to a group of amazing players can be hard where you might not feel like you fit in. Having the best mentality to handle that is crucial.”

Hoard emphasized the importance of a good mentality.

“Treat every game like it's your last because sitting where I am now, the time flew and I can't believe I just finished my last game,” said Hoard. “Play your hardest but also enjoy the games while you're in them.”

NJ/NY Gotham FC wins first NWSL Championship in club history Fairytale ending for Gotham as they triumph 2-1 over OL Reign

BY LUCIENNE BROOKER sports@theaggie.org In front of a sold-out crowd at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego, NJ/ NY Gotham FC defeated OL Reign in a dramatic match to claim their firstever National Women’s Soccer League Championship. Typically known as just Gotham, the eventual champions faced a rocky road on their journey to the podium.

Having finished in last place during the 2022 season, no one expected Gotham to even make the playoffs in 2023, let alone win the title. In contrast, OL Reign finished first in the league in 2022, going on to lose in the semifinals of that year. To make it to the final, Gotham and the Reign both pulled out narrow wins in their respective quarter and semifinal games.

Although the championship game was relatively low-scoring, finishing 2-1, it did not lack excitement. Both teams started out playing aggressively, each looking to be the first to capitalize on a mistake. Gotham scored first on a tap-in goal by Lynn Williams in the

24th minute, but the Reign were quick to respond. Five minutes after Gotham took the lead, Williams’ teammate in the U.S. Women’s National Team, Rose Lavelle, scored on a breakaway and a calm finish to put the Reign tied with Gotham.

The game remained even and fastpaced, with neither team able to find an edge until the end of the first half. Two minutes into stoppage time, Gotham FC earned a corner kick and Esther González, a member of Spain’s World Cup-winning team last summer, headed the ball into the goal to put her team up 2-1.

This would end up being the winning goal, but not the last of the game’s excitement. The second half passed with few solid chances for both teams, until the last minute of stoppage time when Gotham goalkeeper Mandy Haught made the controversial decision to punch the ball right on the edge of the penalty box.

After a VAR review, it was determined that she had handled the ball outside of the penalty box, resulting in an immediate red card. Soccer rules analyst and former referee Christina Unkel explained the decision by the referee.

"All four considerations of what we call denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity (DOGSO): distance, direction, likelihood of regaining the ball and preventing the attacker from being able to play it,” Unkel said. “As soon as I saw the VAR review, I knew it was going to be sent down [...] It is a DOGSO red card and the proper decision with the last couple seconds of this game.”

Haught was ejected from the match and Gotham had to scramble to replace her.

Substitute goalkeeper Michelle Betos was ready to enter the match, but

Gotham was notified that they no longer had any substitutions left to use, so an unlikely hero stepped up. Defender Nealy Martin pulled on a goalkeeper jersey and stepped into goal for the final minutes of the match. Luckily for Martin, OL Reign was unable to create any scoring opportunities and the game finished 2-1, cementing Gotham’s remarkable transformation from a team that only won four games in 2022 to NWSL champions.

One of the biggest marketing points of the championship match was the retirement of U.S. Women’s National Team veterans Ali Krieger of Gotham and Megan Rapinoe of the Reign.

As USWNT teammates, Krieger and Rapinoe won two World Cups and an Olympic Gold Medal together, but coming into the final, neither had won an NWSL title. Unfortunately, less than three minutes into the match, Rapinoe went down with a non-contact injury.

She had to be helped off the field and said later that she believed she had torn her Achilles tendon.

It was an emotional moment for viewers and players alike, contrasted with Krieger ending her career on the high of a championship win, and Rapinoe left to deal with not only a loss in her last match, but a major injury as well. Rapinoe underwent surgery on her Achilles tendon on Nov. 15 and is reportedly recovering well.

In the 10 years since the National Women’s Soccer League was founded, the annual championship game has always been notorious for being a tight match full of drama and the 2023 Final was no exception. Looking forward to 2024, the NWSL is scheduled to add two new expansion teams and continue to improve their product both on and off the field.

most impact on students.”

With a great cause and plenty of effort going into it, it is no surprise that the Aggie Eats food truck is popular among students.

“It’s a bright green truck roaming around campus, so it definitely does draw a lot of attention,” Marilou Vazquez, a second-year community and regional development and Chicana/Chicano studies double major as well as a student intern for the Aggie Eats food truck, joked.

“But, I really think it’s a very popular thing because not only are our meals really good, we also serve a really

good purpose,” Vazquez said.

Bianca Tomat, a third-year biotechnology and food science double major and student manager and social media chair for the food truck, added on to this statement.

“We were kind of a victim of our own success,” she said. “We never really had to promote or market [the Aggie Eats food truck].”

Tomat has been part of the program since its inception on campus.

“It was really fast growing and students knew about us really quick,” Tomat stated. “We were almost not prepared for this many students to just

NOVA MAI / AGGIE

AGGIEEATS FROM PAGE 8 This decision comes back to the fact that it’s difficult to know and measure the varying individual levels of needs in students, so the program has been trying to scale up its overall impact to support everyone.

“We are just trying to meet a wide range of needs, and it is complicated to do so,” Ramirez stated. “Our variety might be cut down, but at the end of the day, we’re just trying to make the

come to us.”

Furthermore, the program itself is powered by a tight-knit community of students and staff passionate about its cause.

“The whole food truck team is very close,” Vazquez said. “We have such a good relationship and environment in the workplace.”

“I take a lot of pride in our team, because I do believe that our team has this very awesome energy to it,” Ramirez said. “[The team] is very loving, it’s very playful. This is something that is very rare to see in any job. I think this is the thing I

enjoy the most out of this experience.”

Ramirez hopes to nurture future leaders who can create work spaces where people can be happy, be themselves and learn the importance of interpersonal relationships.

“We’re doing something cool and everything [for UC Davis],” he said.

“But it’s very, very important to me to try and make an impact on the students that work in our team.”