May 10, 2018

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THREE-DAY STRIKE HELD UC-WIDE AFSCME workers joined in solidarity by other unions, students, faculty

TAYLO R LA POIN T / AGGIE

Chancellor announces UCDPD will focus on deescalation, not everyone satisfied Chancellor, police chief, students weigh in on deescalation policies of campus police IAN JONES / AGGIE FILE

BY SABRI N A HA BCH I campus@theaggie.org

Following the March for Our Lives movement, nationwide marches that took place after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Chancellor Gary May released a statement on gun violence. He described feeling disturbed “by the violence that continues to plague our society.”

May said he is “encouraged that UC Davis Police Chief Joe Farrow has made de-escalation training a priority for his campus officers.”

UC Davis Chief of Police Joe Farrow gave his definition of de-escalation.

“De-escalation is part of the way policing looks at officer-citizen contacts and de-escalation really started on the way we dealt with people with mental illness,” Farrow said. “We look at what is truly important, what we are trying to do and how we can take the police officer and citizen contact and resolve it in a way that is as close to mutually beneficial as possible. How do we have the citizen walking away and say, ‘That is fair, the officer has done their job?’ De-escalation is all about how officers train in a way where they calm rather than heighten situations.”

May responded to questions regarding the importance of de-escalation as a focus of UC Davis Police Department via email.

BY TAYLO R LAPO INT G E O RG E LIAO campus@theaggie.org

VOLUME 136, ISSUE 26 | THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

AND

Three days of striking began on the morning of May 7 as UC Davis service workers and union representatives set up tents on Hutchison Field.

Employees represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Chapter 3299, the UC’s largest employee union, were on strike from May 7-9 at UC campuses and some hospitals.

AFSCME workers were joined in solidarity by members of the University Professional and Technical Employees union and the California Nurses Association as well as groups of students and other faculty and staff members.

After a year of bargaining negotiations between AFSCME and the UC, an AFSCME press release states the “UC still has yet to offer real wage increases, benefit protections, job security, safe staffing and ending discrimination in the workplace.” The union also called for the UC to acknowledge and fix racial and gender disparity in pay, especially among Latinas and black women.

Workers say they are also concerned about the outsourcing of jobs to contracted agencies, which takes away work from previously trained UC employees and contributes to high turnover.

“A lot of new people coming in can lead to accidents,” said Shamus Sullivan, who works as a cook at the Cuarto Dining Commons and took part in Monday’s

“UC Davis police officers are in contact with members of the public every day,” May said. “Fortunately, ‘use of force’ incidents are rare for campus police, but officers have to be prepared for incidents that can be stressful, unpredictable, fast-moving or pose a risk to the subject, officer or members of the public. It’s important that every such contact has the best outcome possible and that’s why this philosophy of de-escalation is important in modern policing.”

The chancellor also mentioned steps he is taking in order to make de-escalation a reality.

“All UC Davis police officers complete eight hours of training in responding to people with mental health issues,” May said. “The department has committed to have all officers go through Crisis Intervention Training, the national standard for working with people in crisis, far exceeding required state standards. Additionally, the department is training officers in cultural diversity and hate crimes, implicit bias and in the human factors that affect how people react under stress. I’m committed to supporting the Chief and the department in providing the best training in these areas.”

Amara Miller, a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology at UC Davis and a member of the UC Student-Workers Union (UAW Local 2865), said that the chancellor’s message is not assurance enough for her.

“I think it’s still a little vague: de-escalation training is wonderful and great but if it’s not coupled with policies that actually mean de-escalation is the first thing that cops are supposed to do, it’s not a guarantee that they’ll actually use the de-escalation training that they are given,” Miller said. “Not to mention the fact that there are no clear guidelines in any of these conversations about when cops have to have de-escalation trainings [...] once they’re hired. It’s not a guarantee that it’s going to get to people that need it.”

B.B. Buchanan, a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in sociology and another UAW 2865 member, was also not completely assured by the chancellor’s message.

“It’s a first step,” Buchanan said. “The problem isn’t just that there is not the right training, but rather research shows that when you have a weapon on your person, you’re more likely to use it. For example, British cops don’t go around with handguns, which means they are forced to rely on de-escalation training. Cops in the United States have de-escalation training that they don’t often utilize because their first response is lethal force. The problem isn’t with the training, it’s with the organization as a CHANCELLOR on 11

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strike. “There’s not enough time to properly train people.”

A sea of strikers, students and UC Davis community members carrying signs and dressed in green shirts saying “We Run UC” marched through campus on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On the first day, around 100 students and 250 workers marched on the Quad, calling for students to join them and recognize the injustices faced by the workers. A rally was held among the tents set up along Hutchison Field that featured speakers from UPTE and the group United Students Against Sweatshops.

On Tuesday, strikers marched to the university’s Human Resources Department, the medical district, facilities management and Mrak Hall. A rally featured representatives from Yolo County Progressives, the graduate student workers union, and the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns.

The strikers then returned to the Quad.

“We will march on management wherever they are,” said one of the organizers.

Across campus, teachers, teaching assistants and technical workers joined the strikers in solidarity.

Simon Sadler, a professor of design, was one of many faculty members who came out to show solidarity with the strikers.

“I do think that it is actually within everybody’s interest to support one another to make UC work,” Sadler said. “I can’t really see how I would be able to separate one type of colleague at UC for another type.”

Participants commented on the size of the turnout.

Proposed Unitrans fare hike is first in 14 years Unitrans currently running $450,000 deficit, projected $750,000 next fiscal year if no changes made

JORDAN CHOW / AGGIE

BY PRIYA NKA SHR EEDAR campus@theaggie.org

On March 29, 2018, the ASUCD Unitrans bus system proposed its first increase in fare rates in 14 years in addition to various service adjustments to promote a more efficient bussing system.

In a press release sent to The California Aggie, the timeline of the fare increase was described as follows: “Davis’ two local public transit systems, Unitrans and Davis Community Transit, are proposing to raise fares July 1 — the first increases in 14 years for Unitrans and nine years for DCT.” Unitrans general manager Jeff Flynn explained the budgetary necessity behind the adjustment and cancellation of bus lines.

“Unitrans is currently operating in an annual budget deficit,” Flynn said. “Operating costs are rising significantly due to the annual $1 increase in the California minimum wage. Unitrans currently employs a mostly part-time UCD undergraduate workforce with wages at or near minimum wage.

With every annual dollar increase, our costs increase.”

Flynn projects major deficits if no changes are made.

“Unitrans is currently running a $450,000 deficit for fiscal year 2018 and is projected to have a

“This is incredible,” said Joaquin Chavez, the statewide vice president of UPTE-CWA 9119, one of the unions striking in solidarity with AFSCME. “It’s amazing to see the workers come out and fight for dignity on the job and fight for each other and stand together for a common cause. We are out here supporting AFSCME in their contract fight and we really feel solidarity with AFSCME service workers because we experience the same kind of conditions that they do.”

During downtime between marches, strikers said they felt confident and relaxed as they joined as a community and enjoyed catered meals, provided by the union’s strike fund that comes from a small portion of the union dues.

Strikers are optimistic that they will receive a good solution.

“I believe that strikes are really where you see people at their best,” said Chris Flint, the communications specialist for the Service Employees International Union. “Strikes are harder than working.”

Flint also noted that while striking, workers are not being paid.

“It’s a big sacrifice,” said AFSCME organizer Scott Hill.

On Monday morning, a car struck three strikers in UCLA as a city marshall directed them across the street. The individuals were treated for “minor injuries,” according to the Daily Bruin.

California Senator Kamala Harris has cancelled her commencement speech at UC Berkeley due to the strike after pressure from AFSCME.

$750,000 deficit next year if no action is taken,” Flynn said. “Unitrans has approximately $1.5 million in reserves; however, this reserve will not last long with costs increasing. The annual projected deficit is expected to increase to $1.6 million per year within four years if no changes are made. The service and fare changes are necessary to reduce our deficit and ensure we are more sustainable next year.

Without significant new revenues though, major Unitrans service reductions will be necessary within the next two to four years.”

An article published by UC Davis University News briefly described the two transit systems impacted by the budgetary and service changes occurring.

“Unitrans, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, carries more than 4 million passengers annually around the campus and city — operating 49 buses (including vintage double-deckers from London) on 18 routes,” the article stated. “The Associated Students of the University of California, Davis, runs Unitrans in partnership with the city.”

The article also stated that DCT, a “city-run service for qualifying disabled residents, is pursuing its own fare increase.”

The proposed fare changes, according to the press release, will increase costs for single rides, 10ride tickets, monthly passes, quarterly passes and annual passes.

“Under the Unitrans proposal, the fare for a single ride would go up 25 cents to $1.25,” the release stated. “Unitrans’ other fare proposals: 10-ride ticket — $7.50, (from $6), Monthly pass— $30 (from $25), Quarterly pass — $77 (from $64), Annual pass — Two-stage increase, first to $198 (from $180) on July 1, 2018 and to $216 in July 2019.”

Flynn attributed the transit system’s steady prices to the sound fiscal planning done by Unitrans.

Flynn went on to describe the transit system’s reasoning behind the increase in fare and how it compares to other local public transportation.

“Unfortunately, with rising labor costs, Unitrans is looking at both cost reductions and revenue increases,” Flynn said via email interview. “Unitrans will still have lower fare and pass prices than any transit agency serving Davis. Yolobus currently charges $2.25 per ride, the Solano Express charges $2.75 per ride, and the UCD-UCDMC Shuttle charges $1.50 per ride.”

Undergraduate students will not be impacted by the fare changes due to the quarterly fees paid by students, which bypass the regular bus pass or cash fee.

“It should be noted that while the cash fare and

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Vice Chancellor Kelly Ratliff presents on distribution of student fees; Senate confirms individuals to Administrative Advisory Committees

SHEREEN LEE / AGGIE

BY E LIZ AB E T H ME RCADO I campus@theaggie.org

Why did the goose family cross the road?

April 26 “Male with knife approached reporting party asking where his friends were at.”

“Subject throwing drinks and other items out of her vehicle and at reporting party’s vehicle while on the freeway and also flipping reporting party off.”

April 27 “Mother goose and her babies trying to cross the road just north of this location and vehicles are swerving to avoid them — reporting party concerned they will cause a traffic control and requests officer to assist with stopping traffic so they can cross the street.”

April 28 “Residents are having a house party with a live band. Reporting party advised male neighbor walked into home uninvited and complained about the music.”

April 29 “Met male on an online dating website. He has recorded conversations and now threatening to put reporting party’s name on university watch list to harm her chances of getting into college.”

“Reporting party heard ‘scraping noise’ on right side of residence. Not expecting anyone. Heard for five to 10 minutes [...] Concerned someone in backyard.”

April 30 “Reporting party believes a vehicle in the area chronically parks without a valid permit and never gets ticketed.”

ASUCD Vice President Shaniah Branson called the weekly Senate meeting to order on April 26 at 6:10 p.m. in the Mee Room on the third floor of the Memorial Union.

Senate Pro Tempore Jake Sedgley called for a moment of silence for the passing of Susan Williams, 66, a distinguished professor of evolution and ecology. She died on Tuesday, April 26, in a car crash.

Kelly Ratliff, the vice chancellor for the UC Davis Office of Finance, Operations and Administration, delivered a presentation to the table alongside Assistant Vice Chancellor for Divisional Resources of Student Affairs Cory Vu. The presentation laid out the distribution of funds the university receives. Ratliff explained revenue sources as appropriations from the state, student tuition and student fees. Student fees are additional charges meant to fund student services, mental health and recreational services.

After Ratliff and Vu’s presentation, they took questions from the table. Senator Jumoke Maraiyesa asked about a cap on student admissions and whether ASUCD would “cease to exist due to no student fees.”

“It’ll create financial restraints on the entire university,” Ratliff said. “Salary increases, student wages and minimum wage always go up.

When it flattens we can catch up where we’re at, but the bad news is our revenue won’t grow.

There isn’t a magic source to bail out across anything.”

Sedgley asked Ratliff about the status of

12 mental health counselors the university planned to hire.

“When the Mental Health Initiative came out, we looked at the projected funding,” Vu said. “The number of counselors we recommended was five, but we saw the funding and thought we could afford 11. We hired eight counselors, and one is in progress right now and two for next year. In terms of how we ensure those people are hired, [Budget and Institutional Analysis], Student Health and others send reports on how we’re hiring those positions. BIA is monitoring us to make sure we’re using the funds appropriately.”

Vu justified the amount of time taken to hire counselors with a desire to train long-term career counselors rather than hire temporary ones all at once.

Next, Stacey Wong, the unit director of the Xperimental College, then delivered the unit’s quarterly report. Plans are still in place for a new Zumba class and an updated window display.

The vice president, legislative director and organizing director for the Office of Advocacy and Student Representation followed with their quarterly report. Senator Atanas Spasov asked the unit about on a previous discussion regarding the director of OASR and whether the position should be elected or selected by the ASUCD president.

The unit acknowledged that, while other UCs elect their OASR director, voter turnout at UC Davis is poor and its budget is lower than those of other campuses that hold elections.

Senator Alisha Hacker asked OASR whether they have a group of individuals specifically for lobbying as others UCs do; UC Davis no

longer has lobbyists. According to the legislative director of OASR, the unit does not want to have “stock students” set in place to lobby for issues that do not pertain to them.

During consideration of old legislation, the table voted to see Senate Resolution #16, emergency legislation in response to the charges against students who participated in a sit-in protest in Mrak Hall. The resolution condemns the charges and calls for changes in administrative policy on how they deal with peaceful protests.

The table addressed students who had protested in Mrak Hall in the past and faced no repercussions. The fact that there were fewer students in the recent sit-in was noted as an easier way to identify protesters for law enforcement to charge. The students have not been charged for protesting but rather for trespassing. The resolution passed.

Housing Advising for Undergraduate Students reported that they made $26,050 from Housing Day and hosted over 1,400 participants. The unit plans to implement walk-in office hours but cited difficulty due to a lack of office space.

The Green Initiative Fund received 29 applications for grant money to fund sustainable projects. $150,000 is projected to be given out this quarter for projects. The organization is in the process of searching for and hiring a grant manager.

A 10-minute break started at 8:22 p.m. and ended at 8:32 p.m.

A series of confirmations for membership to

UC DAVIS PROFESSORS ON INTERVENTION

SHEREEN LEE / AGGIE

BY ST E LL A SAPPI N GTO N features@theaggie.org

On April 14, the United States dropped bombs on Syria in cooperation with France and the United Kingdom.

While Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W. White said that France and the United Kingdom showed solidarity with American military actions, Sunaina Maira, a professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis and the co-director of the Comparative Border Studies Mellon Initiative, seeks the solidarity of countries on whom these missiles fall.

“I think it’s up to them to call for solidarity,” Maira said about nations undergoing civil unrest, like Syria has been since 2011. “I think on the point of intervention specifically, [...] I actually think that it’s really important to remember that communities have the right to self-determination.”

The phenomenon of intervention

under humanitarian pretense, and of intervention by powerful western militaries begs the question of political motivation and neocolonial impulse. The military actions of the U.S. were in response to alleged chemical attacks by the government under Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, on Douma. Douma is located in Eastern Ghouta and is a remaining rebel force. Chemical attacks are contrary to international law of war, but this is not the first time that Syria has used chemical warfare against its people. The 2013 sarin gas attack by Assad on rebels did not invite airstrikes by the United States.

In the context of the near post-Iraq War, military intervention can be unappealing and politically unpopular.

History professor Lorena Oropeza contextualized the roots of the situation in Syria alongside that of Iraq and makes a parallel to her own research focus.

Oropeza recently completed a book on a 1960s social movement leader situated

ASUCD COFFEE HOUSE CELEBRATES 50TH ANNIVERSARY BRIAN LANDRY / AGGIE

Celebration will feature special deals and speaker events

in New Mexico.

“It is hard to say what a good intervention looks like because so many have long-range, negative consequences,” Oropeza said via email. “In the case of Syria, for example, one root of the current humanitarian crisis is the spillover from U.S. intervention in Iraq after 9/11.

That war was not quick and easy despite all promises to the contrary. Similarly, if we look at the caravan of migrants now at the U.S.-Mexico border, these are people trying to escape the poverty and violence of their home countries in Central America. And a lot of this violence is gang-related and these gangs were a U.S. import.

Americans do not always connect these dots.”

History professor Baki Tezcan also made a significant allusion to the Iraq War. It foregrounds his emphasis on thoughtfulness and care in militarized cases of intervention. According to Tezcan, threats must be verified before they are addressed violently.

“In 2003 we invaded Iraq and at the time, at the time of the invasion we were led to believe that Iraq had a close connection with Al-Qaeda, the government of Iraq had a close connection with Al-Qaeda, which proved to be false,” Tezcan said. “We believed that the government of Iraq was involved in producing weapons of mass destruction which it was about to use and that also proved to be false. Nothing was found. And so the, that intervention led to so many things including, including, in a sense what has happened in Syria today by several steps.

And not directly but indirectly. So that

BY C LARA Z H O U campus@theaggie.org

The ASUCD CoHo is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a series of special events and deals throughout Spring Quarter.

“I am extremely thrilled to be celebrating the CoHo’s 50th anniversary,” said Darin Schluep, the food service director of AS Dining Services. “As someone who’s been a part of the Coffee House family for the last 20 years, I am so proud of the impact this operation has had on so many members of the UC Davis community.”

As part of its celebration, the CoHo is holding #TBT pricing every Thursday through May 17, when prices on select items are reverted to what they

is why I am just trying to say that it is important to be cautious before intervention and making sure that there was need to intervene.”

Tezcan’s observation is relevant to the case of missile strikes on Syrian weapons development and storage, as these bombs fell hours before a team arrived to make an official investigation. To be confident of chemical attacks, samples must be taken and analyzed from the scene. The reports of chemical weapons use still have not been officially verified, as photo, video and personal testament still may not be cause for intervention.

While both Tezcan and Oropeza make reference to the seeds of resistance and violence sown by intervening forces in the Arab world which gave birth to the conflict in Syria as it exists today, Tezcan also sheds light on the complex political dynamics that made the Syrian political makeup untenable and led to rebellion.

“The government in Syria has mostly been a secular government in the last decades and yet it’s been controlled sort of in terms of its personnel, its recruitment,” Tezcan said. “And the Alawite Muslim minority was very well-represented which made some Sunni Muslims feel kind of disenfranchised, to a certain extent. So that I think might have been [one] of several things that happened in Syria, people wanted to have more representative governmental system at the time when the Arab Spring things were happening in different parts of the Middle East.”

The Arab Spring was a series of civil upheavals following an act of resistance in

were decades ago.

The first TBT special was held on April 5 and rolled the price of a small coffee back to 68 cents.

Other events will include Decade Days (May 14 to 17) where staff members will dress up and play music from the ‘60s to ‘90s and Alumni Speaker panels (May 14 to 16) where CoHo alumni will speak about the impact the CoHo had on their college experience and careers after college.

Among the speakers are Joe Sasto, the winner of Food Network’s “Chopped” and a third-place finisher on Bravo’s “Top Chef ”; TJ Adams-Falconer, the former White House media affairs manager under Obama; and Karina Harris, the founder and CEO of Waffles & Honey Jewelry.

The CoHo was started in 1968 as a student-run foodservice operation with a simple menu of coffee, pastries and sandwiches.

Today, the CoHo employs over 350 students, serves over 7,500 customers a day and provides real-world job skill training to employees, student supervisors and student managers.

“It is a good place to work and an integral part of the community,” said Malena Hansen, a third-year design major and an outfront supervisor at the CoHo. “They’re planning a lot of great discounts that are awesome for students.”

The celebration will also include a reception on May 17 featuring CoHo employees both past and present to celebrate its historical impact on the

SENATE on 11

U.S. missiles strike Syria on April 14 Tunisia. Many of these upheavals called for a change of government, though in Syria the people are still resisting for change. Meanwhile, Oropeza explained the material cause of violence. The arms available in Syria and some neighboring countries which have contributed to some of the violence within the transition can be traced back to the U.S. “Even when the U.S. does not directly intervene, its military equipment is there,” Oropeza said. “In Syria, anti-Assad factions that have both been armed by the U.S. are now fighting each other.

Nearby, Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen with arms purchased by the United States. The result is not only another major humanitarian crisis there but, for those people on the ground being bombed, another reason for anti-American sentiment.”

While conflicts outside of Syria are propelled by American arms, Syria is itself not an insular war. Maira noted its highly international nature and the self-interest of involved nations.

“It’s fair to say the Syrian people rose up against the dictatorship of Assad but the point is also that the U.S. has also been engaged in various wars and has left many dictators also untouched,” Maira said. “Clearly this is a proxy war with other countries with which the U.S. is engaged in a struggle for power in the region, notably [...] in Iran. I think that clearly [...] the great game is being played out on the Syrian battlefield between these other powers.”

US INTERVENTION on 11

UC Davis community. Speakers at the reception will include Bob Black, the ASUCD president of 1968 and Sharon Coulson, the CoHo director of 27 years.

“The 50th anniversary is a great time for us to not only celebrate our place on campus, but to also reflect back on the thousands of student employees who have dedicated themselves to the success of the Coffee House over the years and in the process helped shape the CoHo into the student-focused campus institution it is today,” Schluep said.

Many students who frequent the CoHo expressed excitement over the celebration.

“I love the CoHo,” said second-year cognitive science and sociology double major Shreya Deshpande. “And the discounts sound great!”

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018 | 3

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ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REMEMBERED AT UC DAVIS

Future of downtown Davis in the works under Downtown Plan Advisory Committee

Armenian students hold die-in at MU V E N OOS M OS H AY E D I / AGGI E

BY G EORG E L I AO campus@theaggie.org

On April 24, the Armenian Students Association at UC Davis held a “die-in” on the Quad for an annual commemoration of the Armenian Genocide that occured in 1915. This year is the 103rd anniversary of the tragedy.

At 1:03 p.m., students peacefully lay down on the Quad with signs in a silent remembrance of the 1.5 million Armenians killed during the genocide.

Signs were later held to the chest by the protesters to inform students of the bloodshed.

On April 19, an emergency ASUCD resolution, Senate Resolution #12, was passed to recognize the anniversary and provide support to the ASA and the Armenian community in Davis.

ASUCD President Michael Gofman, a second-year economics major, spoke via an email interview about the work it took to bring the resolution to a vote.

“I felt incredibly proud to be a part in making this happen,” Gofman said. “As someone who comes from a marginalized community which has been the victim of genocide, I felt honored in recognizing the Armenian Genocide and supporting this community and helping unite communities around campus.”

Gofman said collaborations like SR #12 can bring students together.

“The response from ASA has been amazing,” Gofman said. “They feel included in ASUCD. Supporting student events and club events could be a way to make ASUCD more relevant on campus, especially for relatively apolitical issues like this.”

SR #12 was authored by Senator Atanas Spasov, a third-year economics and mathematics double major.

“My family is Bulgarian, so as a result we have a lot of Armenian friends and family because there is quite a [large Armenian] population in Bulgaria that escaped the genocide back in 1915,” Spasov said. “I grew up with these influences around me, and I heard a lot about the historical events. Coming to college, I realized that nobody actually knew [about] the Armenian Genocide or took the time to recognize it. As the day of recognition was coming

up, I reached out to the Armenian Student Association to help me co-author this resolution to allow more people to be aware of the atrocity.”

Spasov shared his feelings on the completed resolution, which passed with a 12-0-0 majority.

“I was actually quite ecstatic,” Spasov said. “I was very excited by the fact that it passed unanimously.”

On the day of the commemoration, Anais Stepanian, a fourth-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major and a member of the ASA, said the event is “very important” to her.

Stepanian said she has been involved in the Armenian cause since she was a child, when she would go with her parents to “march on the streets and fight for this cause to be recognized.” She has partaken in the annual commemoration since she “first got on campus.”

“Hitler used the Armenian Genocide to justify the killing of the Jews in the Holocaust,” Stepanian said. “He said [...] ‘Remember the Armenians.’ This stuck with me. If this injustice is not recognized, this will continue happening in history over and over again.”

Arpi Deirmendjian, a second-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major and an ASA member, offered a brief recounting of the history behind the Armenian Genocide.

“The genocide was a time when the Ottoman Empire came into Armenia and forced people to leave their homes and their families [to] march in deserts and systematically attempted to massacre the race,” Deirmendjian said. “They ended up killing one and a half million Armenians. A small percentage of the population were able to escape and create the diaspora that we have today.”

Deirmendjian talked about the meaning of SR #12 in support of the remembrance.

“I think that it says a lot about how much our UC Davis Senate [cares] about their students,” Deirmendjian said. “They really want to make an effort to reach out to all the student organizations on this campus and make everyone feel welcomed, appreciated and acknowledged for their history.”

Raffi Samurkashian, a third-year biomedical engineering major and a member of ASA, supported ARMENIAN GENOCIDE on 11

DOWNTOWN DAVIS READY FOR A MAKEOVER

BY ST E LLA TR AN city@theaggie.org

The future of downtown Davis rests in the hands of the public as the Downtown Plan Advisory Committee collects input from the community about architectural plans and design to shape the city in the years to come. The KDRT radio program “Davisville” seeks input from the committee about its work so far.

Bob Buchanan, the radio host for “Davisville,” elaborated on how the radio show’s goal is to help give the community a voice where they probably wouldn’t be heard through conventional media.

Buchanan noted his stance on the presumed changes that will be made to downtown Davis.

“It’ll depend on what happens,” Buchanan said via email. “And, whatever the committee comes up with will only be one factor in shaping downtown’s future. I’d like downtown to remain a lively center of the community, attractive to students and to people who make their homes here. I don’t know exactly what that means, in terms of details. I’ll be curious to see what the committee recommends.”

Michelle Byars, the vice chair for DPAC, also went on the “Davisville” radio show. Byars explained how the public can get involved in the project to transform the future of downtown.

“Bob Buchanan was excellent — [he] asked us important questions about how people can get involved and what it’s all about,” Byars said. “The best way to be involved is the charrette, however.

We will follow up the charrette with online surveys that will be happening, which are online forums for discussions and taking comments. They’ll have important pieces of the presentation posted so others can understand what is happening.”

Meg Arnold, the committee chair for DPAC, made it clear that DPAC is solely advisory in nature. The community can contribute its input on what it foresees in Davis’ future.

“The purpose of that discussion was to raise awareness among Davis residents of the Downtown Plan process and to encourage broad participation by residents in the public process — especially in advance of the multi-day ‘participatory design workshop’ that took place last week, April 24-

28,” Arnold said via email. “Input from as many residents as possible is important in these types of design workshops, so the consultants hired by the City, as well as DPAC members themselves, invested a fair amount of energy in conducting outreach and raising awareness. For example, one DPAC member took it upon himself to provide information about the design workshops to all of the public schools in Davis, so the information would be sent home to parents of all the school kids in town.”

Arnold mentioned that no one can be sure about the changes in downtown Davis in the following years, but people will certainly need to adapt.

“I’ve lived in Davis for 16 years and recall that, for most of that time, downtown storefronts were full,” Arnold said. “Now, we have significant vacant storefronts, because some buildings have been sold, new landlords have raised rents, and local merchants have had to depart. A Downtown Specific Plan cannot, on its own, solve this problem, but it can contribute to its resolution, and can provide a foundation for private property owners and developers (as well as business owners and downtown residents) to have much greater confidence that all parties understand what types of building proposals are likely to be approved by the City.”

Bob Wolcott, the principal planner for Davis’ Community Development and Sustainability Program, explained the committee’s upcoming plans.

“The current plans for the downtown are reflected in the current Core Area Specific Plan adopted in the 1990s, downtown zoning districts, and the Davis Downtown and Traditional Residential Neighborhood Design Guidelines,” Wolcott said via email. “These are the policies and codes that are being studied for consolidation and clarification, in addition to implementing a new community-based vision to be developed through the plan process.”

Arnold added that new infrastructure could be in the works in this downtown plan.

“The City is looking to create guidelines for the future development of downtown Davis that will help to shape how these future impacts are reflected in the physical layout and design of downtown,” Arnold said. “This might include taller buildings, DAVISVILLE on 12

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JA MIE CHEN / AGGIE

Yellow Light — Stop Sexual Assault Awareness Month fights for prevention, creates discussion around consent.

BY SAHI T I V EM UL A features@theaggie.org

The UC Davis campus and a number of student organizations came together in April for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. From a calendar of events held throughout the month to symbolic pairs of jeans and teal ribbons on the West Quad trees, SAAM’s goal was to fight for prevention and create a discussion around consent.

SickSpits, a spoken word collective on campus, joined hands with the Sexual Assault Awareness and Advocacy Club to host an open mic event for SAAM. “SickSpits strives to create a safer space where members of the collective

can express themselves and join in a love for poetry and performance,” said Gloria Marin, a fourth-year international relations and Spanish double major and the SickSpits treasurer, in an email interview.

“We worked with [SAAAC] last year and wanted to do this event again, and provide a space for survivors and warriors to share and heal. We made sure to keep performances limited to those related to the theme and ensure a respect for the survivors and warriors.”

Marin expressed the importance of creating a safe space where people are able to share and articulate difficult stories through art with people who are willing to listen.

“It was empowering to see our per-

J ER EMY DA N G / AGGIE

Davis waste removal company sold to Recology Recology began city operations April 20

BY AHASH F RA N CIS city@theaggie.org

On April 20, Recology, an employee-owned company based in San Francisco, took over waste collection operations

from Davis Waste Removal Company after purchasing all of the company’s assets. DWRC was previously the only waste and recycling company to operate in Davis, exclusively operating within and around the city since 1972. Now,

formers feel comfortable enough to share experiences that deeply impacted them,” Marin said. “It’s important to know that there are people willing to listen to even the most difficult things we have to say, and seeing performers take the stage is truly a special experience.”

Art such as spoken word poetry gives the performer an outlet through which difficult experiences and emotions can be expressed. In Marin’s opinion, art can help survivors recuperate from the past and make sense of the present.

“As a survivor of sexual assault, events like this Open Mic and Take Back the Night were key to my healing and acceptance of the past,” Marin said. “I really think there is something irreplaceable about art’s power to join people together and show support for one another when they need it most.”

Greek life organizations were also involved in raising awareness for SAAM. Zeta Beta Tau presented its annual Green Light Go philanthropy event on April 30 on the Quad. As elaborated on the Facebook event page, the program “aims to educate participants on sexual assault prevention, bystander intervention, and healthy relationships with their partners.”

The philanthropy event consisted of a game similar to the familiar version of “green light go” many have played for fun, where participants run as far as they can get during the green light and have to stop at the red light. But Zeta Beta Tau added a twist called “yellow light” which was described as “a compelling analogy for consent in relationships where participants practice responding to Green as Yes, Red as No, and Yellow also as No.” Dhruv Nandakumar, a second-year computer science major, was one of the founding members of Zeta Beta Tau in

2016. Nandakumar wanted to start an organization where he and his brothers could add their own direction to do something different on campus, particularly in terms of raising awareness against sexual violence.

“Sexual violence prevention is something that we need to incorporate more on campus and preventing rape culture and stopping the spread of rape culture dead in its tracks. It’s something that we are very passionate about,” Nandakumar said.

Nandakumar believes that the yellow light twist helped facilitate a discussion between partners in whether they want to proceed or take a step back, emphasizing the necessity of complete consent.

“It’s where you can move forward, but before you move forward, you to ask your partner if they’re okay with moving forward with you, and then you [can] take a step forward,” Nandakumar said. “And we feel like this really facilitates a discussion about consent and why it’s important. We gave them a lot of examples of what you can ask because we work closely with a lot of organizations on campus, like CARE.” Nandakumar and Zeta Beta Tau emphasized the necessity of stopping rape culture before it takes a larger toll than it already has. They pointed out that sexual violence is a daily occurence and that preventative measures, along with raising awareness, are good ways to begin counteracting it.

“It is very, very important that we address this issue before it grows any further,” Nandakumar said. “And I think we addressed [that] in the speech [at the event] — that it’s very important we stop [sexual assault] dead in its tracks right now, before we allow more people to get hurt or allow the rape culture to grow or sustain. We need to stop it.”

Recology will take the place of DWRC, managing day-to-day operations.

“The Davis community has always been a recycling leader and in 1974 was one of the first cities in California to implement ‘curbside recycling, and that recycling leadership has been well served for decades by the Giesler family and locally owned Davis Waste Removal,’” said Mark Murray, the executive director of the environmental group Californians Against Waste.

Murray explained that Recology was originally from San Francisco and has come to Davis to ensure their zero waste policy.

“A decade ago, Recology brought curbside collection and composting of food and green waste to San Francisco,” Murray said. “From that successful demonstration, policy makers in Sacramento and across the country have taken notice. Policy makers in Davis have committed our community to a ‘zero waste path’ for residents and businesses alike.

I can think of no better partner in that effort than Recology.”

Recology and Davis Waste Removal are both employee-owned companies, which

was one of the reasons Recology was attracted to the acquisition. Although the Californians Against Waste were excited by the prospect of Recology taking over operations within the city, other environmental groups — like the Sierra Club’s Yolano Group — opposed parts of the sale.

“The City has to make a finding that it’s in the best interest of the city to allow the transfer of that contract to a new entity, in this case Recology,” said Alan Pryor, the chairman of the Sierra Club Yolano Group.

Pryor went on to describe that the Utility Rate Advisory Commission had several questions regarding the transferring of operations that went unanswered.

“The Utility Rate Advisory Commission came up with 21 questions that they thought needed to be answered before the city could make that determination,” Pryor said. “None of those questions were ever answered by the city, or Recology.

The city conducted all their deliberations for this transfer in closed session without any public participation [...] Things may have been on the up and up, but no one

THOMAS MA / AGGIE

Introducing Aggie Compass Basic needs center in newly-expanded MU

BY G R AC E SI M M O NS features@theaggie.org

Aggie Compass, a basic needs center for students, will open later this spring in the east wing of the Memorial Union.

Aggie Compass will open up shop as a center for students to obtain help concerning food, housing and other basic needs.

Aggie Compass will be an aggregation of several resources already on campus, including Fruit & Veggie Up!, The Pantry and Aggie Food Connection, as well as the incorporation of the federal program CalFresh.

“We can help more students if we bring these resources together, network them and create relationships between students and between the resources and make it available,” said Leslie Kemp, the di-

rector of Basic Needs Services and Aggie Compass.

“The real value here is in creating a network and relationships around these resources and the students.

It’s like the saying, the total is greater than the sum of the parts.”

Aggie Compass is run by the UC-wide Global Food Initiative which aims to promote food security, health, and sustainability on all 10 UC campuses.

“I believe we are the first UC to open a brick-andmortar basic needs center, but we won’t be the last,” Kemp said. “Berkeley is hot on our tail and expects to open one this summer. Right now our focus is the global food initiative, all of our efforts are directly directed at food, but we will expand after this year to basic needs.”

The space that Aggie Compass will be occupying is part of the newly-expanded east wing of the MU. Former ASUCD president Josh Dalavai explained the delegation of this space.

“ASUCD was promised four retail locations, or retail properties if you will, for us to rent or delegate as we saw fit,” Dalavai said. “We decided these during my time as ASUCD president, and one of the spaces we decided upon was to allocate space to the Aggie Compass.”

Dalavai went on to explain the MOU, or written agreement, which was a collaboration between ASUCD, Leslie Kemp and the executive director of the Center of Student Affairs Assessment, Timo Rico.

“When my vice president Adilla Jamaludin and I were deciding how to allocate the space, a large emphasis and priority for us was to highlight the issues of food insecurity and disabilities justice,” Dalavai said. “The Aggie Compass wants to address issues of food insecurity by pointing students to different food resources on campus, and that’s why we entered a partnership with them.”

The center in the MU will be a community-oriented hub where students can pick up food and supplies as well as seek help from student interns and volunteers.

“The real compass team is all student-interns,”

knows because none of those questions were answered.”

Though the Sierra Club objected to parts of the transition, Recology has already begun taking over operations within Davis. Residents will not need to cancel, register or renew any current subscriptions.

According to the company’s press release, collection service days will remain the same and the company is currently working to transfer all subscriber data safely from DWRC’s system to their own.

“All processes will remain the same as they were with DWR,” said Scott Pardini, the general manager of Recology Davis. “The only changes the public will see is that Recology-branded trucks, carts and advertising will replace the DWR branded items over time. Davis is a very nice community with a lot of citizens engaged in waste and recycling efforts. This fits well with our philosophy of Waste Zero. Our principles of waste diversion and recycling by putting our resources to their highest and best use fit well with the community here in Davis.”

Kemp said. “It’s exciting because this group of students will be the founding staff of the center and it’s really up to them to set the tone for the space. Setting the strategy for how we are going to reach out to students, how we are going to make the space work and how are we going to be effective in helping students.”

Kemp hopes for the center to be a collaborative process with her staff, allowing students to pick their own roles and projects. The objective of the center is to create a supportive community with the goal of students helping students get the help and resources they need.

“Our priority is feeding students today, and sometimes there are policies in place that would make that difficult, so I’ve talk to the staff about how this can be frustrating,” Kemp said. “My role is to help navigate some of the business professional aspects and navigate some of the relationships with admin, but this is really about the students and the students taking ownership of the space.”

In addition to the student staff, Aggie Compass will provide a desk for Yolo County’s CalFresh Public Assistance Specialist Maxwell Vaca.

“I work for Yolo County and I come to campus as much as possible,” Vaca said. “Right now I’m here four days a week at various locations to assist individuals, specifically students, helping them apply and making the daunting process a little simpler.”

Vaca explained that in Yolo county there are a lot of individuals eligible for CalFresh, mostly students, who are unaware of its benefits or how to apply.

“And that’s where I come in, to clear up any misconceptions they may have and to make the process easier for students,” Vaca said. “What they’re going to do is have a space for me so I can be on campus full time helping students with their applications and interviews to enroll in CalFresh.”

Aggie Compass will be hosting events during the Basic Needs Fair on May 14 on the MU patio. As its official brick-and-mortar opening, there will be a soft rollout on June 1 and a grand opening event on June 14.

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018 | 5

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

Wong Fu Productions to make Davis appearance Asian-American media, film group breaking barriers in the industry CHRISTIE NEO / AGGIE

BY EM I LY N G UYE N features@theaggie.org

The Asian American Association will be hosting its annual film festival this year from May 7-10.

The three-day event was created in an effort to acknowledge and celebrate Asian-Americans in the film and media industries. This year, the AAA has invited members of Wong Fu Productions to come and speak on a special panel about their journeys and successes as Asian-Americans trying to navigate their way through a non-Asian dominated industry.

Nearly 12 years ago, three undergraduates — Philip Wang, Ted Fu and Wesley Chan — began filming amateur videos from their college dorm room and ultimately decided to upload those videos to YouTube under the username Wong Fu Productions. The trio eventually gained enough momentum and support to launch their own media company based in Los Angeles. In 2018, Wong Fu Productions has over three million subscribers on Youtube along with an ever-growing fanbase, proving that Asian Americans can, in fact, be successful as artists and filmmakers.

“Wong Fu Productions has been a real leader in showing Asian American representation [in the film industry], and their work has inspired many,” said Nathan Kong, a second-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major and the events coordinator for the AAA. “Wong Fu has shown that just because you’re Asian-American, that doesn’t mean you can’t be in the film industry.”

One of Wong Fu Productions’ primary goals is to bring more Asian American representation to the world of entertainment, a sector that heavily lacks diversity and inclusion. Kong believes that mainstream media fails to see Asian Americans as serious actors in the industry because society imposes stereotypes and false generalizations onto Asian Americans, seemingly undermining their artistic capabilities.

“Most of the times when people think of Asian Americans, they think of the ones who achieve great things in the academic field — they’re expected to become either doctors or lawyers or engineers,” Kong said. “A lot of times there’s a stereotype that if there is an Asian in a movie, [they’re] either doing Kung Fu or some other stereotypical thing.”

Michael Ng, fourth-year international relations major and president of the Taiwanese American Organization, agrees with this sentiment, adding that these stereotypes prevent Asian Americans from acquiring eminent roles in various artistic fields.

“I think there’s a stigma that Asians aren’t so prominent in the entertainment industry — they are supposed to work on the more technical aspect of the job market,” Ng said. “I think it’s very patronizing. You can see that a majority of Oscar winners are white males and white females.”

Ng appreciates Wong Fu Productions’ attempts to integrate Asian American narratives into its media and film projects and give Asian cultures the exposure that they deserve. “[Wong Fu Productions] brings a fair share of representation of Asian American values and cultures into more mainstream media,” Ng said. “It’s pretty refreshing and exciting to see the food you grew up eating [and] the values you were taught by your parents being represented on YouTube and having millions WONG FU on 12

ANH-TRAM BUI / AGGIE

Taking academic advantage of summer months

Finding a niche Students look to cultural clubs, religious organizations for peer solidarity

Students, administrators share summer session experiences MACLEAN HARTFORD / AGGIE

BY S N EHA RA M AC H A N DR AN features@theaggie.org

As the academic year comes to an end, many students are on the lookout for job opportunities or volunteer positions that may advance their understanding of their respective career goals. However, UC Davis also offers students the opportunity to take courses during a six-week period over the summer.

Danica Fisher, the director of UC Davis summer sessions, has worked alongside administrators and professors toward improving the summer session experience for the past year, primarily by accommodating classes of the most interest.

Fisher expanded on why she thinks taking classes during summer sessions might be beneficial to students.

“I think that some students will find that over the summer they enjoy having a shorter time period to focus on one, or maybe two classes,” Fisher said. “Some students enjoy having less traffic on campus so you get a better sense of a smaller community. The class size might be smaller depending on the course that you take, which is another thing a lot of students prefer.”

Spending six weeks focusing solely on one or two courses is an opportunity for success in classes students might find more difficult to balance in a regular 15-unit quarter.

Fisher explained how during the summer, students have a lot more access to resources that can support them in their classes.

“Students might have a different level of access to a professor or instructor that they might not have during the regular year,” Fisher said. “Some of the same services that [the Student Academic Success Center] offers during the academic year they also offer during the summer, so tutoring, academic counseling, advising and academic success coaching. You have less students who are accessing those services over the summer so you get more one-on-one attention than you might get during the school year.”

Aside from academics, many students also are concerned with the social environment of the campus when school is not officially in session. Although there might not be as many club activities or parties to attend, Fisher

explained what social events she hopes that these summer sessions and future summers might hold.

“I think the social opportunities are a little less, but one of my goals for this summer and the summers that follow will be to think about how we can implement more social activities on campus during the summer,” Fisher said. “I think there are a lot of resources, if not on campus then in the neighboring cities of Davis, Sacramento and the Bay Area that we can help promote and provide access to for students. We’re looking to do a lot more to sort of figure out how to make this space not just academically exciting, but also socially exciting for students.”

The university also offers on-campus housing for students who are considering taking classes during the summer. According to Fisher, on-campus housing for the summer is secured through conference housing.

“You can get housing in the summer and it’s short-term lease housing on campus which is ideal for most people who are here over the summer,” Fisher said.

Moreover, students who are on financial aid also have the option of accessing the funds as long as they take a minimum of 6 units. In addition, this year students will also have access to Pell Grant money.

For the rest of the quarter, the summer session team will be tabling every week outside of the Silo and at other campus events. The registration freeze for summer session one will be from June 15 to 19, and July 15 to 17 for summer session two.

Alejandro Lara, a fourth-year Spanish and communication double major, explained his reasoning behind taking a summer session last year.

“I wanted to have a somewhat chill senior year and I didn’t think I would need to do [a summer class] but I wanted to have a relaxed Spring Quarter,” Lara said. “Right now I’m only taking 12 units and ever since my junior year I’ve been taking 16 units nonstop and it’s kind of nice to take a step back and not have to worry about taking a 20unit quarter. I had an on-campus job, too, so I was able to keep working and take classes at the same time which was cool.”

SUMMER SESSION on 12

BY ALYSSA HADA features@theaggie.org

Throughout time spent in college, individuals may find different groups that lead them to develop a sense of community. Students can take advantage of different peer groups, varying from classmates to neighbors, in order to make connections.

Organizations often provide opportunities to bring together students of similar backgrounds or interests. Through these groups, individuals can find a community that they relate to and can quickly connect with. Brian Jahja, a second-year food science major, noted how the structure and supportive nature of on-campus organizations helps facilitate this feeling of community among students.

“To me, community is an active support system and a place to feel like you belong and I’ve found this sense of community in the various organizations on campus,” Jahja said. “I think that a lot of the organizations on campus are really good in their attempts to well-integrate you into their community.”

Organizations on campus provide a place for people of similar upbringings or circumstance to relate to one another and foster community through the bonds of mutual understanding and similar roots.

“As an international student from Indonesia, the Indonesian Club has definitely helped me find community,” Jahja said.

“The club brings all the Indonesians on campus to one localized place and they hold tons of events throughout the year. You might not be able to see those people every day but that’s why the structure is in place, it gives you more of a reason to meet up.

Membership isn’t mandatory, if anything it gives you an opportunity to get involved

with a community.”

Other organizations, such as Christian fellowships, give students the opportunity to surround themselves with others of similar beliefs. Emily Trang, a third-year design major, recounted finding her main community through her fellowship during her first year, and how she maintained that community throughout her college experience.

“I found community through [Davis Christian Fellowship], my fellowship on campus,” Trang said. “They’re all people who support me and who I can go to with anything, whether it’s something happy or sad. We all have the same beliefs and they remind me about things when I need to be reminded. They support me through pretty much everything.”

Students can also look to find communities outside of structured on-campus organizations. Angel Fang, a third-year managerial economics major, noted how most of her current community stems from the initial relationships she made in the dorms during her freshman year.

“I didn’t necessarily find a sense of community through campus organizations like a lot of other people do,” Fang said. “I think I mostly found community through my current housemates who I initially met because of dorm life. It would usually start with one or two people I’ve met and just branch out from there. Usually people they know through things like clubs or organizations or classes somehow become incorporated into my friend group and my community.”

Fang explained how the structure of dorm life facilitates friendships and community in a way that’s difficult to replicate in another setting.

COMMUNITY on 12

6 | THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

Opinion editorial board

the California Aggie EDITORIAL BOARD

Power imbalances in academia open door to abuse

BRYAN SYKES Editor-in-Chief EMILY STACK Managing Editor

UC Davis conductor faces few consequences for sexual misconduct

HANNAH HOLZER Campus News Editor KAELYN TUERMER-LEE City News Editor TARYN DEOILERS Opinion Editor GILLIAN ALLEN Features Editor ALLY OVERBAY Arts & Culture Editor VERONICA VARGO Sports Editor HARNOOR GILL Science & Tech Editor

CHIARA ALVES New Media Manager BRIAN LANDRY Photo Director CHRISTIE NEO Design Director AMY YE Layout Director MAXINE MULVEY Copy Chief OLIVIA ROCKEMAN Copy Chief JAYASHRI PADMANABHAN Website Manager ALEX GUZMÁN Social Media Manager CARAJOY KLEINROCK Newsletter Manager LAURIE PEDERSON Business Development Manager

Christian Baldini, the UC Davis symphony conductor who was put on unpaid leave after sexual misconduct toward a female undergraduate, has returned to campus.

Though he received a disciplinary letter from Chancellor Gary May, the letter will not be placed in his academic review file and he will face no further sanctions. His explanation for kissing a student on the cheek, pressing up against her while teaching the tango, calling her a “bad girl” and requesting private meetings with her was that it “never occurred to him” that such behavior could be construed as sexual.

Those in positions of power must be more aware of the possible interpretations of overly friendly behavior. The excuse of “I didn’t realize my behavior would be interpreted in a sexual way” no longer cuts it amid the ongoing onslaught of news stories about similar or identical behavior being interpreted in a sexual way. Ignorance is no excuse.

For those who lead performance ensembles or artistic groups, being friendlier with students than a typical classroom professor may be or seem more acceptable. In such settings, where the pressure on victims to not report or make a fuss for fear of “breaking up the band” may be stronger, instructors have a particular duty to pay close attention to their interactions with their students.

With story after story of women being denied promotions or sidelined at their jobs after turning down a boss’ advances — and more dramatic headlines about girls being stabbed after turning down promposals — young women are acutely aware of the risks of saying no.

Particularly in the academic or artistic worlds, where careers and futures can be highly dependent on letters of recommendation and personal connections, it can be extremely difficult to give a clear, direct “no” to a wellknown, well-respected professor. There are benefits to knowing a mentor on a personal level and cultivating a relationship with them, but such closeness can also open the door to abuses. Women go to great lengths to squirm their way out of private meetings and uncomfortable interactions or simply grin and bear it, hoping that career success will eventually be worth the emotional distress or, in extreme cases, the physical abuse.

It’s worthwhile to note that while nearly all university students are legally adults, there is still an extreme imbalance of power between students and faculty members.

Students’ grades are at the discretion of the professor, and some may feel that they may suffer retaliation if they rebuff unwanted advances. Members of performance ensembles, whose future careers may depend on their success in the ensemble, may feel that they have to suffer in silence, lest their chances at a first-chair or soloist position be compromised.

Those on the receiving end of unwanted attention must figure a complex social calculus: If I say no, will he still write me a letter of recommendation? If I don’t accept his attention with a smile, will I suffer for it? When the boss asks you for a favor, it can feel like it’s less of a request and more of a demand. It’s time the academic world recognizes that too.

Domestic terror is not as big of an issue as you may think

BY PLAYING ON OUR FEARS, THE MEDIA HAS INFLATED THE THREAT OF ISLAMIST TERRORISM

BY H A N A D I JO R DA N hajordan@ucdavis.edu

From 1995 to 2014, 3,264 people died in the U.S. from acts of terrorism. From 1999 to 2015, 533,879 people died in the U.S. from gun violence. More Americans have been killed by guns since 1968 than in all U.S. wars combined, and yet Americans are far more afraid of Islamist terrorism than they are the Second Amendment.

A survey conducted in January 2017 revealed that on a “feeling thermometer” ranging from 0 (most negative feelings) to 100 (most positive feelings), on average, Americans gave Muslims a rating of 48.

“Terrorist attack on nation” and “victim of terrorism” both rank among Americans’ top five greatest fears according to the 2016 edition of Chapman University’s survey of American fears. These views are very much attributable to American fears over Muslim capacity for violence, or more commonly spoken of as “terrorism.” This is directly traceable to the media and its penchant for overcoverage of Islamist terrorism.

Media scholars have found that people construct their models of the world through the media they consume. In an analysis of network and cable news shows from 2008 to 2012, communication scholars found that just 6 percent of terrorist acts were committed by Muslims, while 81 percent of terrorists on the news were portrayed as Muslims.

Given that attacks by a Muslim perpetrator get an average of 4.5 times more coverage than attacks perpetrated by non-Muslims, it’s not unreasonable that the availability heuristic for many Americans enables them to recall acts of Islamic terror far more readily than those by non-Muslims. In effect, the media has composed an unrealistic worldview of the threat of Muslims as terrorists, when in reality, radical Islamic terrorism is nowhere near as imminent a threat as some might think.

Much media, in an attempt to grow viewership and ratings, has successfully implemented fear-based news programming into much of the dialogue surrounding Islamic terrorism, creating a society with a deeply tainted perspective on danger.

This instigation of mass fear would not pose as an issue if it did not yield consequences, but it does.

Recent years have witnessed a spike in hate crimes against Muslims, reaching 9/11-era levels. Muslims have been shot execution-style and killed in their homes and outside of their mosques. They have been stabbed, beaten in stores, schools and streets, shot in cabs, punched while with their children, kicked off airplanes and far more.

The issue arises when society views the term “Muslim” as analogous to “terrorist,” which then affords hate crime perpetrators justification in their anti-Muslim attacks. Through the continued insistence of a faulty stereotype, hundreds of Mus-

lims have suffered from what people assume they are, rather than what they are — which is average citizens, like any other non-Muslims.

Based simply on facts, the notion that Muslims inherently possess the capacity for terrorism based on their religious affiliation is completely and utterly unfounded. Muslims pose far less of a threat than gun violence and the existential threat of climate change. And yet the U.S. is seating a president who neither believes in climate change nor restrictive gun laws. Rather than make an effort to combat a weapon that has killed over half a million Americans in the past 16 years, Congress has allocated $44.1 billion in funds to Homeland Security to combat an issue that accounts for a death toll that is approximately 0.6 percent that of gun violence victims. It’s easy to point the finger at Muslims, but it’s harder, and vastly more consequential, to point a finger at the Second Amendment.

9/11 was one of the most horrific moments in U.S. history, but acts such as this did not persist in the U.S. in the same way that gun violence has — and will continue to do so if the media continues to undermine its threat in favor of overcovering Muslim terrorists. The threat of domestic terrorism has been inflated to the point in which far more pressing issues, like gun violence — which far more Americans have been subject to than terrorism — are ignored, both socially and politi-

cally. The word “terrorism” has been afforded so much power and gravity that, when used, it shifts our focus from more present dangers.

The term “terrorism,” for far too many, has come to encompass a race despite the fact that the term is beholden to neither race nor religion. Islamic terrorism does not even account for the majority of domestic terror in the U.S. From 2008 to 2016, right-wing extremists were behind nearly twice as many as terror acts /associated CAIincidents TLY N SAMP LEY AG GIdomestic E with Islamist terrorism. 76 percent of the Islamist terrorism was foiled by police, while only 35 percent of the right-wing extremist acts were derailed. As a result of the overcoverage of Muslim terrorists, not only do alternative issues go unnoticed by the public, but they also go unnoticed by law enforcement. So while the real issue continues to fester, Muslims continue to be arbitrarily stereotyped as terrorists — and suffer as such.

Responsible reporting is a vital tool in constructing an appropriate worldview for broader society; the news dictates what issues we’re exposed to and, therefore, what issues we care about.

Continuing to overrepresent Muslims as terrorists in the media establishes a worldview that centers on misplaced fear. Rather than combating more threatening issues, we continue to distract ourselves while simultaneously and most unjustly typifying an entire religious group.

Staying informed is a social obligation

Private data harvesting unlikely to stop after Cambridge Analytica scandal

WHY TUNING OUT AND AVOIDING THE STRESS OF FOLLOWING THE NEWS IS ONE OF THE MOST LAZY, OFFENSIVE AND IRRESPONSIBLE THINGS ONE CAN DO

BY BENJAMIN PORTER bbporter@ucdavis.edu

It’s a privilege to live in a country with a free press. Unfortunately, many people take this for granted and instead award themselves the unearned privilege of tuning out.

There’s a strong tendency to free-ride on other people’s knowledge of current events. Knowing that others actually understand what the hell is going on in the world convinces some that it’s a waste of time to think about topics over which other people have far more influence.

But as members of a free society, we have a responsibility to know as much as possible about national and global events and to broaden our perspectives. The votes and non-political actions of informed people are crucial to changing attitudes on a macroscopic level.

Even with this view, I sympathize with the health arguments for avoiding news. Too much news can cause increased stress and anxiety, which

can cause hormone imbalances and physical ailments. However, because of negativity bias, we are predisposed to place greater weight on potentially harmful negative information. If this is a neurological trait that has arisen evolutionarily, we should not work against it. Of course, it’s difficult to convince somebody who is happy and not stressed that they should become more stressed and pessimistic about the world, but the rewards of avoiding harms and injustices far outweigh the stress, time and effort of staying informed in the first place.

So can ignoring the news be considered a proactive time management strategy? No. Everything you see in the news teaches you something or helps you form a new opinion. This is more valuable than a little extra time, and I know that it’ll help my thought process in a future class or job or help me to more fully appreciate a film or book or joke.

I can’t think of many other uses of time that accomplish so many positive objectives.

People who aren’t informed often display indifference or inauthenticity that damages the credibil-

ity of people who actively work to influence causes that matter to them. I know people who went out of their way to march with protesters on Donald Trump’s election night but have made no effort to keep up since then, asking questions like, “Has he fired Comey yet?” and “What tax bill?” How can somebody feel outraged enough to join a protest without continuing to learn about what supposedly outrages them?

Following the news isn’t hard — it’s everywhere, and it’s one of the best forms of self-education. Refusing to tune in is just lazy. People experiencing horrible circumstances worldwide would be offended by those who think they are lucky enough to not trouble themselves about it. It’s irresponsible to feel so isolated from the world that you only worry about what’s right in front of you. The water crisis in Cape Town, for example, has global implications and may be a harbinger of future events in other locations, so everyone should be reading about it. Everyone needs water.

At a young age, my parents indoctrinated me

into the sacred rituals of reading the paper and listening to the radio every morning, and I still make time for news no matter what. It’s important to approach it as something that can enlighten, not just entertain, even with today’s frenetic and selfparodic news cycle. Despite this, I often doubt the merits of my approach and I admit that I’ve become increasingly obsessive.

It's difficult to define an acceptable bare minimum of what people should be expected to know.

How often should you check the news? Is it okay to fall behind? Which important names and stories should you know off the top of your head? What level of cluelessness should permit you to slap your friend in the face?

My personal answers to these questions are stricter than average, and I recognize the problems with that. However, there’s never been a moment when I wished I hadn’t learned something. A friend

INFORMED on 12

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018 | 7

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

HUMOR

Stuart, the “Study” Squirrel

Group text for final project found to be more empty than vacuum of space

BY DI A N A O L I VA R E S abhilomen@ucdavis.edu

GROUP PROJECT ONLY BECOMES COMPELLING AFTER FORMING A SMALL BLACK HOLE

BY PARK E R NE VIN phnevin@ucdavis.edu

A group physics project became a lot

more interesting this past Friday when a lack of initiative was so great that it caused a rift in spacetime.

“Late in the quarter, for whatever reason, students begin to lose their unquenchable thirst for knowledge regarding balls rolling down inclined planes,” explained Barney Dalton, a physics professor at UC Davis. “So naturally I wanted to inject some excitement into the class. Since the dean informed me I couldn’t legally play Russian roulette with students, I reasoned that group projects were

the perfect facsimile. It always backfires spectacularly, but this time it backfired spectacularly spectacularly.”

The project in question was to be a presentation on the mechanics of a bullet shot from a speeding train underwater on Europa, the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter. What began as a silent standoff over Groupme escalated in tension as the deadline approached, eventually morphing into a full-blown game of mute chicken. The only break in tension occurred when a group member by the name of Karen accidentally sent a thumbsup emoji. Other group members interpreted the thumbs-up to be sarcastic, which

only strengthened their resolve to do and say nothing.

Professor Dalton hypothesized that the breach in the fabric of time was caused by “the amount of energy applied to the application of zero energy.”

The discovery of this anomaly was not the only incident in this event, as scientists also claim that the monumental workload inevitably done by a single group member at the last minute may slightly shift earth's orbit around the sun.

Although the resulting rip in the fabric of spacetime was groundbreaking, it’s unlikely to lead to any scientific progress, as ultimately no one was willing to write a report.

UC Davis, inspired by internet service providers, offers new bracketed tuition system

CITING THE SUCCESS OF AT&T AND COMCAST, UC DAVIS BEGINS TUITION CHANGES THAT MODEL THE CURRENT NET NEUTRALITY ENVIRONMENT

BY CO N N OR SH AW cjshaw@ucdavis.edu

As more telecom and internet service provid-

ers announce altered pay brackets, the Northern California school UC Davis has decided to follow the trend. Starting in Fall 2019, UC Davis will integrate a new tuition collection system they believe will “make students, parents and especially Davis administrators happy,” according to an anonymous source.

Our source tells us that undergraduate tuition

will maintain its in-state, out-of-state, and international status differences and split into three new options within each of those categories. Those in the lowest bracket will pay $10,000 for in-state, $30,000 for out-of-state or $45,000 for international status respectively, and those in the highest will pay $20,000, $42,000 or $60,000.

Sounds logical enough, but here is where the system ditches the ISP model.

As our source informs us, to find out which bracket they fall into, students must take an extended written examination on “whether Chancel-

lor Gary S. May looks like the lovechild of Danny Glover and Ben Carson.” UC Davis will provide students with three pictures of each man and require that students speak “honestly and openly, using analytical excellence expected from an Aggie.” Based on their responses, students will then be placed into their appropriate tuition bracket, although there is no clear indication as to which responses will receive the lowest or highest placement.

Students who believe this is not a fair assessment fortunately have another option. According

to the same source, students who choose to opt out of the written exam must answer a simple questionnaire about their pornography consumption habits, including how often they watch, their most-used sites and what kind of pornography they enjoy. Again, it is unclear what responses will place students in higher or lower brackets, but our source tells us that this idea is in coordination with Comcast, Davis’ primary ISP, for unknown reasons.

We will keep you updated on this story as more details arise.

Behind little wild ones is a calm pediatrician.

The boundless energy of kids is a constant source of joy and memorable firsts. Along the way, it’s reassuring to have a Dignity Health Medical Foundation—Woodland and Davis pediatrician who offers both of you care and kindness. When illness slows your little one down, our same-day appointments make it easier to get back to your daily routine—and all the pleasant surprises, too.

To learn more about our pediatricians or to schedule an appointment, call 530.668.2600 or visit dhmf.org/woodland/peds.

Medical services provided by Woodland Clinic Medical Group, a Medical Corporation

Dignity Health Medical Foundation— Woodland 2081 Bronze Star Drive 632 W. Gibson Road Woodland Dignity Health Medical Foundation— Davis 2330 West Covell Blvd.

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DISC L A I M ER: Th e vi ews a n d op in i o ns ex p re ss e d by i nd i vidu al colu mn ists be lon g to th e colu mn ists alon e and do no t necessari l y i ndi cate the vi ews and o pi ni o ns hel d by The Cal i for n ia Ag g ie. Le t te rs to t he e d i to r can be addre ss e d to opin ion @ th e aggie.org.

ISSUE DESIGNED BY AMY YE | CHRISTIE NEO | CINDY CHEUNG |JONATHAN CHEN | PATTIE CHEN | SHEREEN NIKZAD | LILY LEAVESSEUR | GENESIA TING

8 | THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

SCIENCE+TECH HANNAH LEE / AGGIE FILE

Startup Class to SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS Class for aspiring entrepreneurs can help students create small businesses

BY R AC HEL PAUL science@theaggie.org

Creating a business venture from the ground up seems like a daunting task. So how does one go about forming a startup?

“Just start,” said Liz Tang.

Tang is the director of the Student Startup Center at UC Davis and is a part-time lecturer for entrepreneurship classes. The Student Startup Center is an area where students can tinker around with different technologies such as VR, 3D printing and small computer kits. The room, in Bainer 1122, is where Tang teaches a project-based entrepreneurship class and is also where Japa got started.

Created by undergraduates Mathew Magno and Charles Chen, Japa is one of a few small businesses that began in a class at UC Davis. In some UC Davis parking lots, where Japa is currently active, small sensors determine if a car has filled a parking spot.

Users then can check their phones to see where open parking spaces are. TAPS at UC Davis can also find this app useful, since it automatically counts how many cars are in a parking lot and can show how long a car has been in the same spot.

“I think why [Japa] really became a real, viable business is that [parking] is a real problem that everyone or a lot of people have on campus,” Chen said. “So [Magno] and I are drivers and we experience this pretty often.”

Tang teaches the course so students can continue their business ventures after the class is over.

The first step is forming a team with members who all want to tackle a problem or an idea.

“It’s really common in entrepreneurship in general,” Tang said. “If you think about it, these cofounders and you, it’s a relationship like a marriage. You have to be completely dedicated to each other and to the idea.”

Traditionally, entrepreneurs draw up business

plans and present these ideas to investors. However, Tang has seen evidence that shows going a different route is better.

“We’ve learned the best way is to […] identify whether a company’s going to work is by testing assumptions,” Tang said.

For Japa, Magno and Chen tested the assumption that people wanted an easier way to find parking spots. For Picnic Day, they dressed as traffic cones and saved spots for people. Then they would call drivers and direct them to that spot. In this way, Magno and Chen could get direct feedback from drivers on whether or not they appreciated being directed to a spot. The results were a success.

One of Tang’s favorite quotes is by Steve Blank — “No business plan survives first contact with a customer.” With this, Tang explained the pitfalls of entrepreneurship, where one steadily loses confidence in their ideas and work. However, being persistent and willing to adapt to the customer’s needs is key. Tang acknowledged that it is hard to keep going with a company or an idea when it seems like nothing is going right, but all of the successful startups get their confidence back after hitting a low point.

Initially, Chen and Magno intended to create the parking sensors themselves. After many unsuccessful attempts, they found a hardware company, nWave, to partner with. With the parking sensors already made, Magno and Chen just have to create the software that connects the sensors to the app.

Recently an investor put $300,000 into Japa, and other schools and hospitals have been interested in the program. Magno and Chen are planning on working on the app full-time after they graduate this quarter.

Chen hopes that he and Magno will follow the path of the “Paypal Mafia.” The people who started Paypal became very successful and started many other businesses and ventures. By being part of the “Japa Mafia,” Chen aims to be successful in his future startups.

“We’re just starting to blow up now,” Magno said. “We’re doing city parking, so street parking [...] the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento [...] eventually we want to do everything.”

JEREMY DANG / AGGIE

Motherhood in the academy Despite challenges, mothers in academia continue to thrive

BY KR I T I VA RG HES E science@theaggie.org

A recent article in “Scientific American” by Professor Rebecca Calisi in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior at UC Davis brought to light many of the challenges mothers face while pursuing careers in academia. The article lead to a paper about resources that should be provided to new mothers at academic conferences to ensure that their careers aren’t hindered by the responsibilities of motherhood.

Studies show that one of the main reasons women leave academia is the perception that colleges and universities are not conducive to the growth and maintenance of a family. Whether it’s the lack of facilities at academic conferences or the lack of emotional support from their communities, being a new mom can become something to endure rather than something to enjoy.

One of the topics addressed in the paper is networking, primarily the time at which networking events are held. UC Davis could provide more support with regard to its childcare grant.

“Most networking events, including those specifically for women in science, are in the evening. This should change,” said Alana Chin, a Ph.D. student at UC Davis. “The childcare grant is only $900 per quarter regardless of family size. This is very helpful, but the amount should increase. Social and networking events held by graduate groups are rarely family-friendly — this should change. On-campus, affordable, full-day childcare should be available to all students regardless of gender.”

A university could have a variety of networking events for women in academia, though they would be proven useless if women couldn’t make it to them

YEAST FOUND TO HAVE ORIGINATED IN CHINA Large-scale genomic survey of S. cerevisiae genome provides new information on evolution, origin of yeast

KYRIA BOUNDY-MILLS

because of family obligations. 75 percent of parents are on a social network and mothers especially use this as a way to offer and receive support. Establishing a conference-specific parent network would offer a more flexible form of networking, making it more accessible for working parents.

Another solution brought up by LeShelle May, a computer engineer who serves as a senior technical lead for CNN, is the idea of bringing human resources into the conversation.

“If you don’t link it to HR, which is a part of the campus that can make a difference, what’s the purpose?” May said. “You’re preaching to the choir. So one of the bold ideas we’re thinking is an online toolkit that allows more strategic planning of what HR should do and the differences they should make.”

Professor Teresa Steele of the anthropology department agreed that human resources taking action would also send a message of solidarity to working parents in academia.

“Expanding the travel grants would be helpful,” Steele said. “Just something to say we acknowledge this as a concern and want to do our part to help support it would be helpful.”

BY K IRA B U RNE T T science@theaggie.org

For thousands of years, we have relied on yeast to make bread and alcohol and, more recently, for industrial products like enzymes, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In biology, yeast is a popular medium for genetic experiments; it’s easy to grow and easy to manipulate. Experiments using yeast have led to Nobel prize-winning work such as Elizabeth Blackburn’s research on telomeres and co-discovery of telomerase and Roger Kornberg’s studies on how DNA is translated into RNA. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a particular species of yeast essential to baking, brewing and winemaking, and its usability makes it a model organism for science.

“It grows quickly to high numbers, and 26% of human genes have a comparable gene in yeast,” said Kyria Boundy-Mills, the curator of the Phaff Yeast Collection in the Department of Food Science and Technology at UC Davis, in an email interview. “We can do experiments with large numbers of yeast cells that would be impossible to do with large numbers of humans.”

While about 1,500 species of yeast have been named, there are thousands more that haven’t

been identified yet. There is relatively little genetic information in the database compared to the data on humans and model organisms, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, a small, common flowering plant.

But thanks to a new comprehensive study of the S. cerevisiae genome, its evolutionary history and mechanisms are better understood than before.

Jackson Peter and Matteo De Chiara of the University of Strasbourg and their colleagues sequenced and phenotyped 1,011 S. cerevisiae isolates to determine their genetic relatedness and similarity with respect to their relative location.

Their analysis found that yeast probably originated in China and spread to the rest of the world in a single “out-of-China” event, followed by several independent domestications.

“Interestingly, these various domestication events impacted genome evolution differently,” said Joseph Schacherer, a professor of genetics at the University of Strasbourg, in an email interview. “Whereas the sake and wine populations are characterized by a low genetic diversity, beer populations present a higher genetic as well as more complex genomic diversity.

YEAST on 12

The peculiar case of koala gut biomes JAMIE CHEN / AGGIE

Disruption of koala microbes raise questions for microbial biologists

BY MATT MAR CUR E science@theaggie.org

A recent study from the Jonathan Eisen Lab at UC Davis looked at how the gut biomes of koalas are being disrupted by antibiotic treatment. Katherine Dahlhausen, a graduate student of biophysics and the lead researcher, came upon the project almost by happenstance.

“I was on a holiday in Australia, and I went to an Australian zoo,” Dahlhausen said. “Outside the koala exhibit, there was a sign that had a picture of a baby koala with brown stuff on its face and the sign said ‘It’s not chocolate! Babies eat their mom’s poo before they eat eucalyptus leaves.’ I was like, well, that has to be microbial.”

Indeed it is, as Dahlhausen found from her research into the literature on the gut biomes of koalas. The baby koalas eat their mother’s excrement, also known as pap, in order to receive the critical bacteria necessary for their digestion of eucalyptus leaves as an adult. If the koalas do not receive these critical bacteria, they may have decreased lifespan due to the fact they the live almost exclusively on eucalyptus leaves.

While little is still known about gut microbes, it is generally thought that they play an important role in overall health.

“For mammals and other animals it is thought that for many the microbiome of the gut plays some key roles in health and well-being,” said Jonathan Eisen, the lead microbial biologist of the lab responsible for the study. “Examples include aiding in digestion, helping with development of the immune system, preventing the invasion of pathogens and preventing the development of some cancers and more.”

Being fussy when it comes to their diet, koalas present a highly specific subject of study for microbial biologists such as Dahlhausen. One bacterium that has been correlated to the health of koalas is Lonepinella koalarum, a known degrader of the harsh tannins found in eucalyptus leaves.

During her research, Dahlhausen found out that koalas have an exceptionally high infection rate for chlamydia, with some populations having a rate as high as 100 percent. Likely infected originally from coming into contact with the fecal matter of livestock introduced by Europeans to Australia, infected mothers can pass the disease on to their babies through the pap. Because of the obscenely high infection rate, koalas are now regularly treated for chlamydia with antibiotics.

“As in human medicine, veterinarians practice antibiotic stewardship,” said Valerie Fates, a student at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

“Excessive use of antibiotics is a big problem and leads to drug-resistant bacteria and infections that we can’t treat effectively. So when antibiotics are required for treatment, we make sure to use them wisely.“ Even with antibiotic stewardship, the antibiotics are likely disrupting the composition of gut bacteria in koalas.

“In humans, when you take a course of antibiotics, you can kill the infection you’re taking antibiotics for, but it also disrupts the microbial communities that you have already,” Dahlhausen said.

“There was no research as to how these antibiotics were affecting koala gut microbes, and to me this was really interesting.”

In her research, Dahlhausen found that the koalas who died after antibiotic treatment failed to have Lonepinella koalarum in their gut biome. In those that survived the treatment, the bacteria persisted.

While it is unclear if the antibiotics are solely responsible for the loss of the bacteria, a complementary treatment that considers the health of the koala’s gut biome is being considered.

One such treatment that Dahlhausen thinks could be effective is fecal transplant, where feces from a healthy animal is transplanted into an unhealthy animal. While it has been shown to be effective in humans, it remains a controversial procedure.

“I argue fecal transplant because you don’t know if we just gave them a probiotic of the Lonepinella that we know degrades tannins, maybe that won’t be enough, because we don’t know what community is making them resilient through the end of treatment,” Dahlhausen said.

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018 | 9

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

Nishi Will Not Solve The Housing Crisis.

Because an expensive tunnel and bridge must be built to get to Nishi it will take Over 5 years to build With only 16 units an acre The project is too small Because Nishi requires new private roads and a +12 million dollar rail crossing Nishi apartments will be very expensive And prominent air quality experts agree, Nishi is not a safe place to live

No on Measure J Paid for by Davis Citizens for Democracy - No on Measure J - No on Nishi 2.0

NoOnNishi.org

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Sudoku

This week’s puzzle is a tactics end game. How can we get a queen fast and efficiently?

Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row, column and 3x3 square must contain one of each digit.

Each Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing.

Hint: sacrifice...

AGGIE CLASSIFIEDS JOBS

JOBS Unitrans is Hiring Drivers!

The Aggie is Hiring!

The California Aggie is hiring managing staff positions for next year. Apply on vacancy.ucdavis.edu today!

LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS

Arts and Culture Editor Campus News Editor City News Editor Copy Chief Design Director Distribution Manager Features Editor Layout Director New Media Manager Newsletter Manager Opinion Editor Photo Director Science and Technology Editor Social Media Manager Sports Editor Website Manager

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THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

10 | THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

ARTS & Culture

Style Watch Tomboy Chic

TAYLO R L A P O I N T / AG GI E

TAY LOR L A POIN T / AGG IE

TAYLO R L A P O I N T / AGGI E

BY CA RA JOY KL E INR O C K arts@theaggie.org

Renee Handley, a second-year environmental science and management major, knows how to thrift like a pro. Her style has evolved from wearing boy shorts to wearing dresses — all of which she procured at thrift stores.

ASW: What’s your style?

Handley: I would say it’s pretty tomboy; I used to dress up in boy shorts when

I was younger, and I think it escalated from there. Whatever is comfortable. I thrift a lot of my clothes, and I really like Eco Thrift in Sacramento.

ASW: Where did you get your outfit?

Handley: My shoes I got in Philadelphia at a Doc Martens store. This dress I got at a Goodwill in Santa Barbara. And this long sleeve shirt I got at Buffalo Exchange in Ventura.

ASW: What advice do you have for people who are trying to be more stylish?

Handley: What deters me a lot from

getting an article of clothing or wearing something is that it’s something I don’t see myself wearing but I want to wear. But I would say just go for it. You don’t have to put yourself in a box.

ASW: Where do you get your style inspiration?

Handley: From friends and people I see on campus. On Instagram, you see a lot of outfits you think about when you go shopping and think, “I kinda want that.”

ASW: When did you start getting into fashion?

Handley: Pretty late. I started to get into fashion in junior or senior year of high school.

ASW: What style do you regret the most?

Handley: I went through a lot of style phases to get to where I am. Looking back on pictures is kinda cringy. I used to be into tie dye for a second and I slightly regret that. It was a good time while it lasted. No hate on tie dye but yes.

ASW: How has your style changed?

Handley: I’m trying to wear more girly clothes, like more dresses and I’m trying

to make more of an effort. But some days i’m looking pretty grungy and I’m wearing the same thing everyday. I definitely have a favorite pair of jeans and t-shirt.

ASW: What is your go-to outfit?

Handley: A really nice pair of blue jeans, like vintage Levi’s, and I really like this t-shirt I got in Australia when I was a kid. It fits me perfectly. I literally shop in the boys section because I’m like a kids size large or medium. It’s an embroidered shirt that says Sydney, Australia and it’s light blue. And just a pair of sneakers.

2018 Whole Earth Festival 49th annual UC Davis celebration seeks to “bloom” awareness

N IC HO L AS C H A N / AGGI E FI LE

BY JOSH M A D RI D arts@theaggie.org

May 11 to 13 (Mother’s Day weekend — don’t forget, kids) marks the 49th

Whole Earth Festival on the UC Davis Quad. The celebration will include several art spaces and food vendors as well as a fantastic lineup of local and student bands. Of course, it’s a zero-waste event,

Armadillo Music offers more than vinyl Local record store presents live, in-store shows

D IA N A L I / AG G I E

so put your trash, recycling and compost in the right bin.

With rising awareness of universal environmental issues, student enthusiasm for the festival is at an all-time high. Will Rogers, a fourth-year psychology major, reflected on the importance of this student awareness.

“The festival made me think more about my consumption and what I can do to give back to the Earth,” Rogers said. “Buying biodegradable products was easy way to integrate environmental awareness without having to change my routine while having an impact.”

Tinka Peterka, a second-year design major, is this year’s chaos control and publicity coordinator for the festival.

“We just announced our Friday night headliner, called Sure Sure,” Peterka said.

“They’re an experimental pop band.”

Choosing the lineup required the help of many volunteers, who are integral to the festival’s operation.

BY CARO LINE RU T T E N arts@theaggie.org

Armadillo Music is not only a mecca for record and CD collecting Davisites, but it also serves as a concert venue. Located on F Street in downtown Davis, the store has a small, makeshift stage in its front corner where local musicians perform for fans and browsing customers.

Third-year Spanish major Chloe Breaker has been in charge of booking in-store concerts since September 2017. She also took on the role of growing Armadillo Music’s publicity and community outreach with social media posting and features on websites like The Davis Dirt.

“Recently we have been getting a lot of [performance] requests because we have been advertising it more,” Breaker said. “I have been reaching out to other record shops in different areas; we send each other different bands. A lot of the times people inquire in the shop since they will see the stage.”

According to Breaker, many artists inquire about booking shows after they see the stage or hear other bands perform.

Kat Gallardo, a fourth-year mechani-

“The volunteers are the heart of the festival, and we need hundreds of them to keep the festival going,” Peterka said.

“At the end of the day, it’s worked for 50 years, so I think it’ll be fine.”

In light of recent controversies concerning relations between the police and civilians, Whole Earth Festival will be implementing a non-violent conflict resolution tactic.

“The whole point is not to escalate things and that can be easy to do,” Peterka said. “You try to show how the person’s actions are affecting you and potentially the community around you.

We want the other person to have just as much fun, while maintaining mutual respect. It’s security without intimidation.”

According to Peterka, there will be security at the festival; however, they have agreed to act as a last-resort method.

Meral Basit, a fourth-year biochemistry and molecular biology major, is taking on the part of experiential space

cal engineering major and frontwoman of the musical project katgrüvs, performed at Armadillo Music with the intention of expanding her audience. For many musicians like Gallardo, the centrality of Armadillo Music to downtown and its support by the local community makes the gig a valuable opportunity.

“They are always looking for people to play in-store,” Gallardo said. “If you’re a musician who is looking for more exposure, they are open to having that available to musicians. I think that is really awesome.”

The show itself acts as its own advertising for musicians, targeting the city of Davis as an audience.

“It helps that Davis is a small town, and just having our poster up on Armadillo’s window allows people to recognize us and acts as a stepping stone for us,” said Jesus Rico, a third-year civil engineering major and member of local band Busy Lighthouse.

Especially for maturing UC Davis musicians, that expansion beyond on-campus shows is integral to future success.

“My first two or three years here, I have been just playing on campus events and occasionally have off campus,” Gallardo said.

coordinator.

“I design and curate what I want the space to be like,” Basit said. “This year, I chose to design the Experiential Dome around engaging the senses. We’re going to have a coffee bean smelling table, a (non-marine) touch tank and a lot of workshops dedicated around exploring your senses.”

“Bloom” is this year’s Whole Earth Festival theme, the perfect thing for a college student to do during their time in school.

“To me, ‘Bloom’ means getting outside of your comfort zone and allowing yourself to grow despite maybe having doubts and fears,” Basit said. “Blooming is about thriving under duress, which I think a lot of people can relate to in the world today.”

Information regarding the festival and events happening during are available on the Whole Earth Festival Facebook page as well as its website.

“But now that I’m a senior and looking to grow my fan base beyond UC Davis, I am starting to book more in downtown Davis and do more Davis community-oriented events.”

The venue itself is ideal for many musicians — its smaller stage prompts an intimate setting and interaction between viewer and musician.

“It was not as much of a formal venue with seating,” Gallardo said. “There is less pressure in that sense, you can get a feel for the audience. It’s perfect for being a onewoman band.”

The Armadillo in-store shows enable a symbiotic relationship based on publicity for both the store and performers alike.

According to Rico, random people would come to browse items, but they would stay to listen to the performer.

“Generally people come when they are browsing, and I think it’s a good environment to have,” Breaker said. “People won’t expect it and it adds to the feel of being in an old school indie record shop.”

More information and a lineup of upcoming shows can be found on Armadillo Music’s website.

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018 | 11

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

CHANCELLOR

UNITRANS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

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whole and it’s with the fact that American police view lethal force as reasonable.”

Police Chief Farrow mentioned that simply requiring de-escalation training is not enough in his view either.

“Our de-escalation program started here last fall when I got here,” Farrow said.

“It’s ongoing. It’s not as simple as you go to a class and you’re cured, it is an ongoing systematic change that is reinforced through training, policy [and] supervision, and it never ends. For example, most of our officers had a form of mental illness training before I got here. The state standard is eight hours. They’re all receiving 16, 24 and 40 hours of training, and de-escalation training is part of that.”

Farrow said officers will “be going through procedural justice” — a class he has both taken and taught before — and “de-escalation training is part of that course.” He also said the department has a “roadmap and a very ambitious plan over the next year” to incorporate values from these kinds of classes. “[The incorporation of values] is also being reinforced by the way we operate through policies and through training and guidance and the way we supervise,” Farrow said. “I don’t want to paint the illusion that everything changes because we go to a class, it has to be reinforced, it has to be deep-rooted in the people here.”

Miller discussed why UAW 2865 is pushing for demilitarization and de-escalation of UCPD in current contract negotiations with the UC Office of the President.

“If you’re a graduate student who’s a person of color on our campus or you’re Sikh or something where you’re targeted or racialized as being an enemy combatant

by a militarized police force — even just going to work or going into your teaching room where you’re educating students can be potentially endangering,” Miller said. “If you have police out and about on campus and you’re targeted as being a terrorist or a thug, you are not safe in your workplace.”

According to Miller, UAW 2865 is requesting a number of specific policies in order to ensure the safety of its members and other students and faculty on campus.

“We’re trying to get more required trainings with specific time requirements of when police have to have these trainings,” Miller said. “We want more than just de-escalation training. We want to ensure that [police] have training on how to deal with mental health crises, how to address certain populations. We’re trying to make it so that they can’t use lethal weapons unless it’s something like a mass shooting. On everyday use, [police] don’t need to have a gun on [their] persons.”

Farrow described a number of ways in which his department has been looking into de-escalation strategies, including the fact that the department is moving beyond state minimum standards and seeking national accreditation.

“National accreditation is where you try to figure out what everyone else is doing and you try to achieve that,” Farrow said. “In order to do that, there are 476 standards you have to look at and that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re going to look at every policy, the way we train, the way we guide our people, what procedures we have in place, what procedures we don’t even have in place and we’re going to try to bring them into our department.”

Recognizing that past incidents with

UCDPD have caused students and workers to distrust UCDPD, Farrow said that he and his department are working hard to gain that trust back.

“There are people that still remember the day that we had the pepper-spray incident — that was a violation of people’s trust,” Farrow said. “You can look at it any way you want, but at the very end of the day, the incident of itself was bad and it has painted a cloud over an organization for a long time. We have done a lot of good things to try to re-identify who we are and what we do, but I think we’ll never forget that incident. We should always remember that incident because that incident defined us one day, and we lost the trust of a lot of people, and we wounded the people we were supposed to serve. Now, we’re trying to move forward and not forget, but learn from what that felt like.”

Farrow pointed to this year’s Picnic Day as an example of police on campus providing a helpful service and ensuring safety, rather than focusing on writing citations and making arrests.

“We had a really good Picnic Day and it was all about de-escalation and training,” Farrow said. “At the very end of the day, we had thousands of people here and it was safe, it was fun, and there were very few officer contacts. We provided a service, but at the same time, if something bad was to happen, we were ready. We create a vision for our officers and they’re expected to follow that.”

Farrow said that he is committed to listening to student concerns and having productive conversations that will hopefully lead to mutually beneficial results for students, workers and the campus police department.

that permeates discussions around intervention seems to have the potential to welcome and settle asylum-seekers and refugees.

“Humanitarianism has become a fig leaf to provide cover for western imperial intervention because it’s no longer possible or justifiable to just openly invade another country,” Maira said. “This began really with the wars in the Balkans and the Bosnian conflict when, under Clinton, we must remember it was not under a Republican regime, that the west engaged in the war in Serbia and Bosnia.

It was done under the kind of notion of the responsibility to protect, R2P. And this doctrine is being used, invoked, by the international community, by certain [...] countries to claim that it is their responsibility as global policemen who have annointed themselves with the responsibility to protect supposedly other, weaker populations and to invade them.”

R2P, or the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, is signed by all members of the United Nations and commits them to prevent genocide, war crimes and other humanitarian violations. Being the legal doctrine of the phenomenon of humanitarian war, it has been used in cases of dubious intention.

“The idea of humanitarian war is one that has increasingly been used, particularly by powerful weaponized countries to invade and undermine the sovereignty of other countries,” Maira said. “The

problem with it, the two problems, is one: it’s done highly selectively. There are numerous human rights and humanitarian abuses that are happening in different countries around the world, in the U.S. and European countries choose to intervene very selectively in some cases and not others. So, just take the Israeli occupation in Palestine. Israel has committed numerous illegal attacks and wars, it has used chemical weapons on the Palestinian population, it has done so repeatedly every two or three years there’s a war on Gaza in contravention of international law and the U.S. not only does not invade Israel or attack it, the U.S. actually supports Israel and funds it. So there’s a huge hypocrisy.”

It remains to be seen whether in this case, the Assad-led government used gas on its rebels. Although there may be a final answer to this question, that of intervention cannot be concluded with finality. The reality of displaced peoples in the Syrian conflict remains pertinent. Maira reminded the UC Davis community to think about what they can do for refugees and asylees who suffer the lived experience of civil unrest and U.S. intervention.

“I think the word conflict probably doesn’t do it justice because the [...] country has been decimated,” Maira said. “You have billions of people who have been forced to leave and displaced [...] the infrastructure has been destroyed, Syria doesn’t exist anymore as we know it.”

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U.S. political interests, in addition to motivating the financial/arms support of some rebel groups, may also be the basis for its military intervention. Referring to a longstanding tradition of invoking war to garner the support and faith of a disappointed or disgruntled public, Maira ponders Trump’s impulse toward military intervention.

“There were many Syrians who actually were calling for U.S. intervention openly and the U.S. has actually not been [...] engaged,” Maira said. “Trump definitely wanted to distract from the numerous problems that are bedeviling him at home in the domestic arena [...] and we hear the drumbeat of war to distract the population and kind of try to unify them against some evil threat overseas. It’s not new.”

In an official statement, President Donald Trump invoked the multilateral powers of the U.S., France and the UK including “all instruments of our national power: military, economic, and diplomatic.” Maira inquired into the forms of aid made possible by economics and diplomacy, which are seldom utilized.

“I think if the U.S. cares so much about the Syrian people they would be resettling all Syrian refugees because they have the funding and the resources to do that,” Maira said. “Instead, Syrians are being housed in poor neighboring countries of Lebanon and Jordan and Turkey that are completely overwhelmed by the influx of Syrians.”

The discourse of humanitarianism

pass prices haven’t been increased since 2004, UCD undergraduates voted in 2004 and in 2007 to increase the quarterly fee every UCD undergraduate pays for Unitrans service,” Flynn said.

“The Unitrans undergraduate fee has not been changed since 2007.”

Unitrans is also adjusting its bus routes and various other service changes including adjustments to the B and K Lines while discontinuing the C Line. “[Unitrans will] reroute the B Line to serve Wake Forest Drive and UC Davis’ Cuarto Residence Area,” the press release stated. “Service would continue on a 30-minute frequency. Because the C Line operates later than the B Line and the K Line, which operates on Russell Boulevard, Unitrans would extend service to 9:30 p.m. on the B Line and 9 p.m. on the K Line.”

The adjustments extend further to the D, G, J, W and V lines, which will be reducing midday service to 30 minute intervals between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.

The T Line will also be adjusted to serve the Wildhorse and Slide Hill Park neighborhoods as well as Holmes Junior High School. A new line will be established in order to provide direct access between West Davis and Davis High School and Holmes Junior High School. Additionally, the Amtrak Sunday evening shuttle will be discontinued.

Flynn described how Unitrans will be communicating these changes with university students and community members in Davis.

“With the changes, we will be posting notices at impacted bus stops, placing information inside our buses and at the terminals, placing ads in the Aggie and Enterprise, and displaying changes on Nextbus and on the bus electronic headsigns,” Flynn said. “Route changes are expected to begin on Monday, August 6 when Summer Session II begins.

We will need to retrain drivers and other employees however we do not foresee any difficulties in doing this.”

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Administrative Advisory Committees followed. Members were confirmed into the Disability Issue Administrative Committee, Transportation and Parking Committee, Staff Diversity, Status of Women at Davis, Child and Family Care, Media Board, Arts and Lectures and the Council of Student Affairs and Fees.

Senate Bill #57, a “bill to create a Picnic Day (restricted) reserve,” was tabled for next week’s meeting.

Senate Bill #62, to “revise Chapter Eight (8) of the ASUCD Bylaws,” passed as amended.

The table held a discussion over Senate Bill #59, authored by Alisha Hacker.

SB #59 “allow[s] students to serve on no more than three (3) subordinate

bodies of the ASUCD Senate.” The house was divided over whether the allowed number should be two or three.

Opposition to three was over possible oversaturation of the same individuals within ASUCD rather than opening up positions to more students.

The bill passed as amended after a roll call vote with 10 yes’s and two abstentions.

Senate Bill #63, “to move the Elections Committee from the Legislative Branch to the Judicial Branch and consolidate election oversight under the Judicial Council,” was tabled for next week’s meeting.

The meeting concluded at 11:59 p.m.

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Deirmendjian’s response to the Senate resolution.

“I think it is spectacular that all the way out here at [a] university in Northern California so far away from our homeland that we have people who are dedicated to recognizing the truth, dedicated to rejecting the lies of denial and really setting the record straight,” Samurkashian said. “They were the ones that came to us. They were the ones that invited us to be there with them.

We were not the ones that pushed for this to happen.”

Deirmendjian also expressed what it means to have a peaceful protest. He described “a particularly dark time for the Armenian people” when children were sent to partake in violent protests without knowing “what the future of the cause was going to be.”

“Recognition of the Armenian Genocide has been something that the Armenian people have been working toward for the better part of [a] century,” Deirmendjian said. “It was not always peaceful. There was a time when we considered the only way to get the world to recognize what happened to

us was through violence. We decided it was inappropriate to try to continue this campaign of recognition through violence. We made it a collective transition to more peaceful protests.”

Gardenia Nahigian, an ASA alumna who studied under the human rights program at UC Davis, added to the commemoration by expressing the importance of learning about human rights. Nahigian said it’s important for “students to be educated about crimes against humanity and it is also bringing a lot of unity among students.”

12 | THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

“WELL, THERE’S SOME EXCITEMENT!”

BY TERRY HUDSON

arts@theaggie.org My pupils dialated at the slightly affirming “sure” that he decided to respond with. I suggested that we go to Temple because it was the only place that my bougie self had managed to wander to in downtown. Not to mention that my constant desire for caffeine is detrimental to both my health and my budget.

It was Sunday, so I suggested that we go that afternoon before school started the next day. He agreed, and I waited on the patio for him later that afternoon. When he arrived, I learned his name was Jack and he was studying economics. He was

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

living in Tercero and complained how the draft in the morning made his room smell like cow shit.

“It’s an organic alarm clock,” I said, trying to make a joke out of an unfortunate situation, which is what I often try to do.

He didn’t laugh at my joke, or any other joke I made, so that meant we weren’t meant to be. While I tried to distract myself from Jack by investigating if the fig plant in the window was fake, I accidentally spilled my hot coffee all over him because I reached for my coffee without looking. I said to myself this time, “Well, there’s some excitement!”

He just sat there, so I decided to get up and ask the barista for a rag to clean up the weiner aisle.

We talked for a bit more and then parted ways. I opened up Grindr and found another guy about a thousand feet away that I felt like taking back to my dorm with me, so I did.

We talked for a bit — just a bit. Fast forward to an hour later, as things were getting down under, when I heard the key swipe on my door. My roommate was pushing the door open.

Next Week: Looking

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Aside from the academic benefits, Lara described other social activities students can engage in to keep busy during summer sessions.

“I got to see the Davis fireworks on the Fourth of July which was kind of a cool thing to do,” Lara said. “I was in the pool almost every day and you kind of have to, it’s like 110 degrees. It’s ridiculously hot so wear sunscreen, but if you take a summer session you will have fun as long as you put in the time to do the work.”

Each summer session lasts about six weeks, during which students are expected to learn 10 weeks worth of material. While the quarter system is fast-paced,

Lara explained how rigorous he found summer session to be.

“I think if you only take one class during summer session your workload will be very manageable,” Lara said. “Just know that you are taking accelerated courses, if you’re doing 10 weeks worth of material in six weeks you have to kind of move at a faster pace within and outside the class.”

Anupya Nalamalapu, a fourthyear computer science major, offered a closer look into the grading dynamics of summer courses.

“The classes are a lot smaller so the curve is definitely better,” Nalamalapu said. “The teachers are usually more lenient and you

would think that the classes would be harder because it’s a faster pace, but it’s really not that bad because you can focus on a few classes at a time.”

Nalamalapu took concurrent courses during summer sessions including math, English and technology management. Nalamalapu offered her advice for any students considering attending a summer session.

“Don’t slack off because since [a summer session course] is so fast-paced you still can fall behind,” Nalamalapu said. “Classes are definitely longer, so more material is covered, so don’t be tempted to skip them.”

are a difficult source of foundation for a community.

“It’s definitely easier to find community through organizations than classes,” Trang said. “With classes you usually just show up for class and when it’s over you leave; organizations are always there.”

Other students tend to find that working with peers throughout the quarter is helpful purely

while in the class and working toward a common goal. However, without the structure of the class in place, students often fall out of touch with one another.

“I haven’t found a strong, sustainable community from doing things like group projects or meeting people in classes,” Fang said. “I find that after the class is over, it’s really rare that you talk to them again after that.”

reached the point where I’m hurting myself more than helping.

Our current situation with news consumption is analogous to the story of Aron Ralston, author of “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” and the subject of the film “127 Hours.” Our need to stay as informed as possible, despite the toxic political environment, is

akin to Ralston needing to continue filtering and drinking his own urine while his arm was trapped by the boulder. This is not ideal, but there’s no choice if we want to stay hydrated and keep democratic ideals alive. Only by doing this can we discover the metaphorical equivalent of amputating our own arm so we can escape this cave.

caused by the pressures of being student-athletes.”

The football team’s senior running back, Ethan Hicks, was one of the founders of the group, alongside three other student-athletes. He shared how the four of them got the idea to form AGS on UC Davis’ campus.

“We were sent down to a conference in San Diego, where schools from all over the country came together to create an action plan to fight the stigma against mental health amongst student-athletes for their respective schools,” Hicks said. “We heard from several schools [...] about how they created a program recently to help support student-athletes and mental wellness. Our goal was to learn from this conference, and take a plan back to UC Davis, which is how Athlete Guidance and Support came to be.”

Hicks also mentioned the group’s aspiration to be a safe space for athletes.

“Typically with Division I student-athletes, there is a belief that you always have to have your ‘game face’ on, and that struggling mentally leads to vulnerability and failure,” Hicks said. “Our goal with AGS is to let athletes know that it is okay to be vulnerable, and hopefully this improves the overall environment regarding mental health in athletics.”

Third-year track and field athlete Sydney Holmes, another one

of AGS’s co-founders, also commented on some of the drawbacks student-athletes face and how AGS works to combat that.

“Most athletes dedicate countless hours to practicing, travelling and competing, which can sometimes lead to minimal time studying and involvement in the rest of campus,” Holmes said. “While we love our sport [...], it can also add a tremendous amount of stress as well. One of AGS’s goals is to pinpoint some common stressors among athletes and work together to reduce or alleviate them.”

Gonzalez, an ambassador for AGS, mentioned how she felt the positive impact of AGS during the group’s very first event.

“I got to speak along with another student-athletes, we had lots of food and sweets, and then we all watched ‘Inside Out’ on the football field,” Gonzalez said. “We received so much positive feedback afterword that I was drawn to tears. I’m a transfer student, and we had nothing like this at my previous university. If we did, it probably would have been very helpful to me. But I’m happy to be able to make a difference here and now.”

Student-athletes and all students interested in mental health issues are encouraged by AGS to attend events and get involved as they strive to support athletes and eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health in athletic departments.

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changes in how our streets and roads are allocated to different types of transportation (cars, bike, peds), standards for energy sustainability, and much more. The intent is also to simplify the current complex set of design, zoning, and other requirements that makes any development activity in downtown complex and uncertain — for both developers and neighbors.”

Changes will not happen right away but will come over time.

“Plans for cities take many years to implement and involve both the public and private sectors,” Wolcott said. “A good plan guides both public and private investments.”

The next charrette to gage public opinions will be from July 10 to 14.

“Being forced to live with people you don’t know definitely forces you to open yourself up a little more,” Fang said. “My roommate in freshman year was completely random but I still live with and talk to her every day.”

While structured organizations or living communities may be effective ways to meet new people, students tend to agree that classes

YEAST CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8

Furthermore, human-related environments foster expansion and loss of genes, resulting in rampant variation in genome content. By contrast, wild isolates share a similar genome content and genetic diversity is mainly generated via the accumulation of mutations.”

This diversity of wild yeast helped determine that all non-Chinese yeast strains were equally related to Chinese lineages, key evidence for an out-of-China event. This study has provided a foundation for genome-wide association studies in yeast, and further in-depth genetic research in this organism. It’s also given a new direction to look to for diversity: China. In genetics, generally the

INFORMED older the population is, the more diverse. This diversity also means there are more interesting traits to be studied. Yeast-related industries as well as science could look to China for new ideas.

“Our native strains may be much more similar to Asian strains than they are to European strains,” said Lucy Joseph, the curator of the Department of Viticulture and Enology Culture Collection at UC Davis. “All of our wine strains tend to come from Europe. We might actually want to start looking at the diversity in the Chinese strains, to get new and different products and characteristics for products that we want to make.”

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suggested to me that news consumption is a case of diminishing marginal returns — meaning there’s a point at which you start gaining less proportional utility from each unit of news consumed — which seems logical. I carefully manage my sources and biases and am always amazed by the stimulating content that’s out there, so I don’t believe I’ve

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ATHLETIC

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NCAA. Not many know the ins and outs of this process better than Associate Athletic Director of Compliance and Intercollegiate Services and senior women administrator Katherine Zedonis, a veteran of college athletics compliance with more than a decade of experience in the industry.

“In terms of interpretations, it really comes down to the fact pattern,” Zedonis said. “If someone comes in with a question, we have to almost be like detectives and try to pull up more information based on the nature of the question the coach has.”

This additional information could be pulled from established precedent or past case studies.

A final answer cannot be given until compliance cross-references the many jurisdictions that UC Davis athletics falls under to ensure that the action taken is not in violation with any of these guidelines.

This is all complicated stuff, but in the eyes of Zedonis, the role of compliance stretches far beyond simply being available for questions and interpreting rules. There are, in fact, three overarching components to working in compliance.

Education is one, and this involves “demystifying” and sharing the rules with student-athletes and coaching staff so that each party is aware of the guidelines. The second is monitoring, or making sure that all parties are actively following these guidelines and that no violations are committed.

The final component is enforcement, where, if there is in fact a rules violation, compliance services is responsible for self-reporting this violation to the NCAA. For an office of just four people, it is impressive that compliance has been able to handle providing thorough educational, monitoring and enforcement services for over 20 different teams.

“We are a one-stop shop for everyone that is under our umbrella,” Qualls said, referring to how compliance is there for every step of each student’s journey, from recruit to college athlete.

Zedonis jumped in to explain that for mid-major programs, compliance offices are usually shorter staffed than that of larger, power five conference programs. The four UC Davis compliance directors thus are trained to become “generalists” out of necessity; they are able to navigate the entire rulebook and handle a wider range of issues than the typical compliance director with a larger staff.

This allows student athletes to come to compliance for nearly all of their needs rather than going to multiple different campus offices.

The fact that each of the four compliance officers handle everything from admissions, to housing, to financial aid and more for each student athlete-plays a key role in how compliance manages to do its job effectively. By being involved from day one, compliance facilitates a familiarity and a

level of comfort between it and the student-athletes, making its job much easier in the long run.

“It’s being a face,” Sandlin said, discussing how compliance likes to be as available as possible for the athletes if they have any questions or need any help. “For me, getting out of the office and seeing practices, especially going to games, that’s like a reward. Because you do all this work, you make sure there’s a lot of eligibility points to hit and then you’re able to go to the games, and you’re like this is why we do what we do.”

Qualls expanded on this point, emphasizing the important role of human interaction involved in the compliance industry, where the focus is less on being “the bad guy” and more on providing a customer service-type experience for the entire athletics department. Qualls claims that each compliance director’s personal background and set of experiences has allowed this office to successfully build positive relationships with the student-athletes it serves. “[Senior Director of Compliance and Intercollegiate Services Tracy Cumming] has been here for a very long time, so obviously she’s a familiar face,” Qualls said. “[Zedonis] is a former student-athlete, [Sandlin] and I went to Davis, so student-athletes are real comfortable with us because we have been there before. We know the Davis experience and what they’re going through [...] I think that makes our shop really special.”

Having a former student-athlete and two UC Davis alumni on staff has certainly allowed the compliance office to better relate to the large network of UC Davis student-athletes. But even more importantly, the approachability and openness of the compliance directors has allowed the office to overcome the negative stigma that commonly surrounds the compliance industry on campuses across the nation.

“There’s a negative stigma around compliance being the police,” Qualls said. “We’re not the police. We’re here to monitor and enforce the rules, but we’re also here as more of customer service for student-athletes and coaches. Obviously everyone sees the big stories, like what’s going on in [college] basketball right now, and [people] think compliance are the guys that you want to run from. But, mainly we’re the guys that’s trying to protect the institution, protect the student athletes and make sure that they are eligible to compete.”

It is difficult to completely rid the compliance industry of the “policing” stereotype, especially in today’s college athletics seemingly plagued with scandal. For the UC Davis compliance office, however, the directors are finding that the best way to combat the conventional way of thinking is to work with passion and to develop enduring professional relationships with the student-athletes they serve.

team’s efforts. Because of the general age range of student-athletes, this group is more at risk for these hard times to lead them to turn to substance-related disorders and various eating disorders.

Laughlin’s teammate, thirdyear history major Nina Gonzalez, commented on one of the main mental drawbacks she struggles with as a female athlete.

“Being a Division I athlete requires 20 hours a week of in-season work, which can be very stressful when also balancing a full course load,” Gonzalez said. “For me personally, a drawback to being a female athlete — and especially one who wears a swimsuit every day — is unrealistic body standards propagated by the media as to what a female athlete should look like. I know many female athletes struggle with body image issues.”

With these struggles that student-athletes go through in mind, four UC Davis student-athletes decided it was time to take matters into their own hands this year. The students formed Athlete Guidance and Support, an organization run solely by student-athletes to promote mental health awareness and support in the athletic community. The group’s Instagram page describes its own mission statement: “Our goal is to guide UC Davis athletes towards healthy strategies to deal with stress, anxiety, or other negative feelings that are

WONG FU CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

views. It’s also about giving people outside of the [Asian-American] community a more nuanced way of looking at things.”

Progress for Asian American inclusion seems to be looming on the horizon as more Asian Americans are claiming their rightful presence in these media spaces.

Liane Wang, a UC Davis alumna and current staff member of the Davis Christian Fellowship, maintains a positive outlook on the future of Asian American representation in all professions, saying that hope can be a real catalyst for profound change.

“I believe we are in a season of immense growth for the Asian American community, but of course I would like to see more representation in all types of media,” Wang said. “With topics dealing

with race, I believe in being thankful for the change we see happening while maintaining hope for more.”

Kong stressed the importance of educating youth on the importance of diversity in order to give society the capacity to gradually move away from the negative attitudes surrounding Asian Americans in film, media and all other fields and truly acknowledge the work that they have done for those communities.

“To ensure more diverse representation, I’d really say it’s just [about] breaking down the stereotypes and barriers and viewing people as people,” Kong said. “For me, I feel like teaching is a really good way to do that. If [children] see that we all start out as equals with no biases, they’ll realize that it’s really just our experiences that differ us from each other.”

13 | THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2018

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

SPORTS ATHLETES COMPETE AGAINST MENTAL HEALTH STIGMA

KAT E SN OWDON / AGG IE F IL E

Student-athlete run group works to combat mental health stigmas in athletics, provide safe space for athletes

BY KENNEDY WALKER sports@theaggie.org

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and many organizations on campus have made their voices heard about the issue of the stigmas surrounding mental health –– including the athletics department. Student-athletes have come together to provide a safe place for the players of UC Davis sports teams to come to where they can experience the highs and lows of an athlete’s life with a supportive, like-minded community.

On top of keeping players in physically good shape, playing sports has an array of benefits –– especially for the mental and emotional health of athletes. Psychologically speaking, any form of exercise releases chemicals called endorphins into the brain. These endorphins are known for being the substances related to feelings of happiness and relaxation.

IA N J O N E S / AG G I E FI LE

WOMEN’S LACROSSE FALLS SHORT IN CHAMPIONSHIP THRILLER Aggies cap successful first season under Isidor with overtime defeat to San Diego State

BY B RE N DA N O G B U R N sports@theaggie.org

The UC Davis women’s lacrosse team suffered a heartbreaking, season-ending 11-10 loss to host San Diego State on Sunday afternoon in the MPSF title game.

The Aggies fought back from a three-goal halftime deficit and forced sudden-death overtime when sophomore attacker Amanda Outcalt fired a game-tying goal, her 30th of the year, with just over a minute left in regulation to make it 10-10. UC Davis barely had time to catch its breath, though, as the Aztecs scored the championship-winning goal a mere 23 seconds into the overtime period.

The Aggies’ final record of 8-6 in head coach Suzanne Isidor’s inaugural season marks the program’s best finish since 2014. Prior to the title game, Isidor was named the league’s Coach of the Year for her efforts all season long.

“It’s been great,” Isidor said. “We’ve come along

The continued, constant release of endorphins has also been tied to aiding athletes in sleeping better, reducing stress and helping to prevent the development of depression. Continually keeping the body active also keeps many mental skills sharp, such as concentration abilities and critical thinking, which can help athletes battle different disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

In addition to all of these medical pros, sports is also a means of socialization for many athletes and allows them to meet regularly with other people to form a team bond and long-lasting friendships. Participating and contributing to this team effort has also been shown to be beneficial in boosting players’ confidences and self esteems.

Solie Laughlin, a third-year psychology major on the swim and dive team, shared some of the biggest mental benefits she sees in playing sports.

“Being able to get a workout in and forget about the normal day stressors or pressure from school re-

way since we started off 1-3. The growth of this team has been so much fun to watch.”

Isidor is just one of the several Aggies who were recognized for their contributions on the field this season.

Junior midfielder Taylor Cuenin, with her team-leading 38 goals, captured the program’s first ever Player of the Year honors. Over the course of the season, she averaged nearly three points per game and finished second in the league in both goals and turnovers forced.

In addition, Outcalt, senior attacker Kate Fellner, junior defender Natalie Garces, junior goalkeeper Grace Richards and sophomore attacker Sorana Larson were all named to the AllMPSF squad. Larson came in clutch in the title game with a team-leading three goals.

“I got lucky that I inherited such a great group that’s really fun to work with and will keep getting better,” Isidor said.

Overall, Isidor credited the relentless nature of this year’s team and its drive to continue improving as reasons for its success.

“Each day, they work on what they need to work on,” Isidor said. “And that sort of created this mentality that we’re just going to keep getting better.”

The Aggies showed incredible resiliency at times this season and battled back from deficits on numerous occasions, including Sunday’s championship bout.

“If the first half of a game doesn’t go well, they were so good at making adjustments and coming out in the second half ready to go,” Isidor said.

This attitude and mindset paid dividends for the Aggies, a team that either trailed or was tied at the halftime intermission in three of its eight victories.

This program has a bright future ahead, due to its experiences this season and the fact that most of the team’s top players will be returning again next year.

“This team is really in a good place mentally,” Isidor said. “They have some great leadership and great young players. They work hard and they have each other’s back.”

ally helps relieve stress and get yourself calmed and ready to tackle the assignments assigned,” Laughlin said. “Also, working out releases dopamine, leaving you with a happier feeling overall. The adrenaline from performing in practice and workouts gets your blood pumping and gets energy flowing throughout your body.”

While there is a whole laundry list of benefits to playing sports, being an athlete can come with its fair share of drawbacks as well. For student-athletes especially, there can be immense pressure to perform successfully during sporting events while balancing a

UC DAVIS ATHLETIC COMPLIANCE

full class schedule and other activities. This pressure can lead to feelings of depression and can take a toll on an athlete’s overall well-being and self esteem.

As with any physical activity, there’s also always a chance for injury, which can be extremely difficult for student-athletes to mentally cope with. On top of being in physical pain and having to adjust life around an injury, those that are injured can experience emotional trauma from not being able to compete with their teammates and contribute to the STIGMA on 12

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An inside look at athletics compliance services

BY DO MINI C FAR I A sports@theaggie.org

It is the binding force that holds the UC Davis athletic community together. It is the bridge that connects student-athletes with the university at large. Its staff of just four members is responsible for ensuring that each of the university’s 23 different NCAA affiliated athletic programs are operating within the law. Its existence is often overlooked by those not intimately familiar with the inner workings of collegiate athletics, yet it plays one of the most vital roles in keeping UC Davis athletics functioning.

This elusive, under-the-radar industry is known as UC Davis Intercollegiate Athletics Compliance Services. Its job, while not all that flashy, is to ensure that UC Davis athletics complies with the pages upon pages of rules and regulations set forth by the NCAA, the university and all of the subsequent levels of governing bodies. In doing so, Compliance Services must work alongside the university’s student-athletes, coaches and staff to ensure that these many rules and guidelines are being met.

As a member of the NCAA, UC Davis has agreed to follow and uphold all of the institution’s rules and can face punishment if these rules are violated. But according to Assistant Director of Compliance Services Lydia Sandlin, NCAA bylaws are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the layers of policy that compliance directors must constantly be aware of.

“Not only do we have the NCAA rule manual,” Sandlin said. “We have UC Davis policies, we have federal and state laws that impact what we do. And then we have six or seven different sport conferences who each can have their own nuances, too.”

The policies that dictate the dos and don’ts of collegiate athletics are plentiful in number and sometimes complex in nature. In many respects, working in the compliance office has a similar feel to working for a law firm. Compliance directors act as lawyers and trial judges, studying the laws that govern collegiate athletics and seeking to find the law’s correct interpretation.

According to Assistant Director of Compliance Services Ryan Qualls, the compliance office regularly fields questions from student-athletes and coaches pertaining to any and all aspects of eligibility and athletics operations. When confronted with a question that the office does not immediately know the answer to, compliance must dig through the hefty rulebook to find and interpret the specific bylaw to provide the proper response.

To aid in this search, the NCAA has an enormous online database, known as the Legislative Services Database –– LSDBi for short –– that provides various interpretations, violations, case studies and educational columns for every rule.

Sandlin says that this is one of many tools available to the staff to help guide compliance toward a proper interpretation when the exact answer is unclear.

There is a fair amount of research and attention to detail involved in the job. The ability of the compliance office to take words written in a rulebook and correctly apply them to multi-dimensional, real-life situations is paramount to keeping UC Davis athletics in good standing with the

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