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VOLUME 139, ISSUE 26 | THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2021
COPS OFF CAMPUS WALK OUT COMMENCES ABOLITION MAY The Davis group, composed of students, faculty and staff, gathered on the Quad calling for the abolition of campus police BY REBECCA GARDNER campus@theaggie.org
Activists painting a banner during the “Cops off Campus” rally on May 3 at the Quad at UC Davis. (Justin Han / Aggie)
The UC Davis Cops Off Campus group participated in a nationwide day of refusal on May 3 to demand the removal of campus police, kicking off Abolition May. The walkout was the first event of a series of Abolition May events. In lieu of class and work, about 100 students, faculty and staff attended a gathering on the Quad where attendees made signs for the upcoming May 24 rally, according to Amanda Kong, an English Ph.D. candidate and Cops Off Campus member. Beyond conversations about abolition and community safety, there was music, screen printing and zine swapping. The national Cops Off Campus Coalition, which spans over 40 campuses “across Turtle Island” suggested a variety of other local direct actions to engage in Abolition May, according to their website. Among the suggested actions are street puppet theater performances, holding a town hall (without administration) and letter writing to the administration. The UC Davis group stuck to zine distribution and dancing on the transnational day of refusal in which participants withheld all university-based labor including attending Zoom lectures, teaching and corresponding via email. Chancellor Gary May said that he was aware of the walkout. May has previously addressed faculty demands for immediate abolition,
NEW AGGIES SUBMIT THEIR STATEMENT OF INTENT FOR FALL 2021
referencing the plan as “not necessarily a constructive or complete one,” and endorsing the Next Generation Reforms to Advance Campus Safety Task Force. The task force will make their final recommendation in June. Joshua Clover, a UC Davis English literature professor and Cops Off Campus member, participated in the walkout. Clover said that he doesn’t care what the current administration thinks, asserting that abolition is certainly achievable as opposed to merely a lofty ideal. “If Gary May is going to try and stop this movement and repress it [...] and not take part in a serious reconsideration of whether we need police to have campus be safe, or the reverse, then Gary May is going to go,” Clover said. Kirin Rajagopalan, a cultural studies Ph.D. student and Cops Off Campus member, stressed solidarity as being a critical component of organizing. “Most importantly, refusing work and class actually strikes a tangible blow at the university as an institution,” Rajagopalan said. “I think it sends a powerful message, just like wildcat strikes from last year sent a message, that we can come together and we can act without being mediated by a union or a task force.” According to May, the walkout had no impact on campus operations. COCSTRIKE on 11
UC DAVIS STUDENTS AND STAFF VOICE CONCERNS OVER ACCELLION NATIONWIDE CYBER ATTACK
Admissions for the 2020-2021 applicant cycle have come to an end and prospective students have Recent breach of private information leaves many said they are looking forward to joining the UC Davis employees and students in a state of campus in the fall paranoia and questioning if their private information BY CHRISTINE LEE is truly confidential campus@theaggie.org May 1 was the UC Davis’ Statement of Intent to Register (SIR) deadline for fall 2021. Statistics show that UC Davis received 87,118 applications, which is roughly a 10,000 applicant increase from 2020. The undergraduate admissions process for incoming students was impacted by COVID-19. In light of this, UC Davis applied changes to the past year’s cycle to new students, such as temporarily suspending letter grade requirements for A-G credits and the cap on pass credits. Applicants encountered their own challenges and solutions through the second year of impacted admissions. “I wasn’t able to be in touch with my counselors and be able to have a talk with them in person so that they could help me,” said Rebeca Moreno, a prospective clinical nutrition major from Sacramento, CA via Instagram Direct Message. “I also wasn’t able to ask Cal-SOAP helpers in-person or have that one-on-one talk with them about college.” Moreno recounted how she overcame obstacles in the admissions process. “I got a lot of help from a friend who went through the UC application last year,” Moreno said via Instagram Direct Message. “She always answered any questions I had regarding certain parts of the application as well as giving me advice on how to manage through it.” Despite the challenges, new students feel excited for UC Davis’ decision to have full in-person classes for fall 2021. “I am really excited about full on-campus classes this year,” said Liam Glenn, a prospective computer science major from Carlsbad, California, via Instagram Direct Message. “The past year of distance learning has been really tough, and I am looking forward to being in class again. I also think that it will be pretty safe with the vaccine requirements so I feel comfortable about it.” An important step to welcoming new students is orientation. Catrina Wagner, the director of New Student Academic Services, has managed orientation since 2009 and has many events planned with important goals in mind. “[One goal is] creating an experience that gets students looking forward to their first year in college and excited to be back to some ‘normalcy’ after enduring the pandemic,” Wagner said via email. “All new students have had an extremely challenging year and a half, often in isolation. It’s important we provide social interaction and engagement with peers, activities that help them navigate the physical campus and create opportunities to connect with resources, faculty and advisors.” Orientation is an important time to make sure a student’s well-being is accounted for as well, according to Wagner. FRESHMENSTATS on 11
The Welcome Center at UC Davis. (Quinn Spooner / Aggie)
BY EMMANUEL FONSECA features@theaggie.org
Following the hacking of Accellion, a vendor of software that UC Davis uses to transfer sensitive information, the university is offering complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection to UC employees. (Justin Han / Aggie) The entire UC system, including UC Davis, fell victim to a nationwide cyber attack in which there was a breach in the private information of many employees and students. On Wednesday, Mar. 31 2021, the UC system released a statement and sent an email to the UC community regarding the Accellion cyber attack and the precautions students should take in order to protect themselves. Potential stolen private information include students’ names, birth dates and social security, as well as bank account information. The UC advises students to sign up for a free, one-year credit monitoring program, Experian IdentityWorks, courtesy of the UC system. Experian IdentityWorks helps protect students’ and employees’ private information by notifying them if their social security, phone number or email addresses are published on the dark web. Marlem Reyes, a second-year biological sciences major, expressed her concerns regarding these findings. “I do not think the Accellion cyber attack was properly addressed; a lot of students found out through social media,” Reyes said. “The email sent to us did not thoroughly explain the situation and its consequences. [It] lacked accountability for them not having appropriate security measures in place to protect our private information, including my email and social security.” To ensure the security of private information, UC Davis officials advise students to take precautions such as watching out for suspicious emails, monitoring bank alerts, placing a credit fraud alert and considering a free credit freeze. Andrea Medina, a third-year Chicana/Chicano studies major and student employee for UC Davis Student Housing and Dining Services raised concerns over the fact that individuals have to take it upon themselves to handle the UC system’s mistakes. “I had to call Experian, my bank, social security and the credit bureau,” Medina said. “I pay all this money, and I expect my privacy. The UC system just informed us and expected us to handle everything on our own. It’s not fair.” The Accellion cyber attack is still under investigation, so further information has not yet been released by the UC. Students and staff still remain unsure of the measures being taken to ensure that this will never happen again. DATABREACH on 11
VANDALS REMOVE BLACK LIVES MATTER ARTWORK FROM CENTRAL PARK SOLIDARY SPACE The community comes together to replace missing artwork BY RACHEL SHEY city@theaggie.org On April 20, activists noticed that the art display in the Central Park Solidarity Space had been removed just before the guilty verdict was announced in Derek Chauvin’s trial. Since then, community members have gathered to replace the missing pieces. The Solidarity Space was founded last summer by UC Davis Outcomes Advisor Sule Anibaba and community organizer and artist Kate MellonAnibaba after George Floyd’s death. After seeing how her husband Anibaba was profoundly affected by Floyd’s death, Mellon-Anibaba decided to “take up space in Central Park.”
“I made some portraits of some folks that had been murdered by the police recently and brought some candles and flowers and asked people to come over and hold this vigil for George Floyd,” Mellon-Anibaba said. “I thought maybe a few people would show up, but it turned into a huge thing.” Mellon-Anibaba described how the Solidarity Space changed and grew as more people started visiting it. “It became a meeting space; it became a social justice learning space,” Mellon-Anibaba said. “Some other amazing people in the community took this space and did educational radical forums and brought more art to the space. BLMVANDALISM on 11
Black Lives Matter Solidarity Space at Central Park in Davis, CA. (Quinn Spooner / Aggie)
2 | THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2021
THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE
ARC, REC POOL OFFER SLOW TRANSITION BACK TO IN-PERSON EXERCISE As long as Yolo County avoids purple tier status and COVID-19 cases remain low, the ARC will remain open and is planning for operations during fall 2021 BY NICHOLAS MURPHY campus@theaggie.org The Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) reopened on April 19 for in-person operations. Staff at Living Well, the fitness and wellness program at the ARC, hope to expand exercise classes to accommodate extra students come Fall Quarter. For now, all workout classes besides dance, yoga and pilates are held outdoors. The maximum number of people allowed in outdoor classes is 10, while indoor studio classes have a cap of 14 individuals, according to Living Well Coordinator Kayleigh Rohrbach. The difference in capacities of the outdoor and indoor classes is based on the size of the respective spaces. Group exercise, dance and martial arts will be offered frequently throughout the week and through the weekend. All class registrations open five days before instruction through the Rec Portal, except those for cycle classes, which open three days before. Through the Rec Portal link, you can also access a fee waiver for paid classes, but the application closes Friday, May 28 at 5 p.m. The Daily Symptom Survey is required in order to access any on-campus facilities or classes, face masks are required throughout the ARC and physical distancing is enforced by squares marked on the floor of indoor and outdoor classes. Students are encouraged to use sanitation wipes to clean the machines and equipment before and after use. However, the staff at the
ARC also sanitizes equipment during the 30 minutes between reservation windows. It is part of Rohrbach’s job to ensure COVID-19 protocols continue to be followed. “It’s been a great experience to watch the student staff adapt to the many challenges this year, and they have really risen to the occasion,” Rohrbach said. For individuals who feel inclined to stay home, free Facebook live classes are offered every week and are open to people of all skill levels. Past videos can be accessed through the UC Davis Campus Recreation Facebook page. Alexa Carter, a second-year communications and managerial economics double major, mentioned that during her workout at the ARC, she felt very comfortable as the machines were spaced out enough to where it didn’t feel crowded. “It feels really good to be back on campus and in an environment where I can exercise while staying safe,” Carter said. Sara Wasielewski, a fourth-year political science major, has been a Living Well instructor for over a year and currently teaches cycling classes on Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings. Wasielewski said the staff at Living Well works to cultivate the “Come As You Are” mantra, which she said she believes is “imperative for the modern fitness world.” “I also do my best to promote positive selftalk, especially with our bodies and the way they move,” Wasielewski said. “I want everyone to leave the class with a greater appreciation for their bodies and its capabilities.”
Top: The ARC during its reopening in Fall Quarter 2020. Bottom: Staff at the Rec Pool having their group photo taken in 2019. (Justin Han / Aggie) In regards to the Rec Pool, which has been open for lap swimming since June 2020, Aquatics Coordinator AJ Rooney said that the Rec Pool is “offering student swim lessons for enrolled students on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which will run for the entire spring quarter.” This year the Rec Pool has also been offering intramural innertube water polo, sand volleyball and cornhole as well as kayak sessions, stand up paddle boarding and slacklining through
“Outdoor Adventures.” In 2021, the Rec Pool also collaborated with “Sport Clubs” to reopen club water polo and triathlon practices. Individuals are encouraged to cancel their appointments if they decide to forego their scheduled time slot so that others have a chance to attend.
UC RESEARCHERS INTRODUCE POLICIES FOR ZERO CARBON EMISSIONS BY 2045 Researchers from four UC campuses, including UC Davis, worked together to make a plan for California’s transportation emission goals
Offices of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis. (Quinn Spooner / Aggie) BY EMILY REDMAN campus@theaggie.org Researchers from UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley and UCLA are taking steps to neutralize California’s transportation carbon emissions by 2045, according to a report released in April.
As a leader in sustainability, the state is making plans to improve its environmental awareness. “California is seeking to become more green and sustainable,” said Bernadette Peters, the executive director of the Center for Regional Change at UC Davis. “In order to achieve these goals, California is focusing on transportation to reach carbon neutrality.” UC Davis has a goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2025. The campus is a Platinum Bicycle Friendly University, and driving down transportation emissions on campus requires the encouragement of bicycle use, according to Daniel Sperling, a UC Davis professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the leader of the report. “[This is achievable by] continuing to make biking safe and easy, improving pavement quality and making it safer at intersections,” Sperling said. “The city and campus must work together.” In addition to the use of bicycle transport, discouraging the use of gasoline transportation and incentivizing electric transport are large parts of the policies proposed by the report. “[The policies] have implications for consumers,” Sperling said. “Some of them are creating incentives such as creating fees and rebates for consumers.” Beyond the use of purchase incentives, there are a wide variety of economic benefits as well. “In California, you get some tax breaks for owning an electric vehicle,” said Lewis Fulton, the director of the Sustainable
Transportation Energy Pathways program. “Electric vehicles are reaching a point to be competitive with gasoline vehicles in purchase price, operation costs—as the costs of electricity is lower than what it costs to run a gasoline vehicle—and lower maintenance costs, [since] you don’t have to change the oil.” Within a number of years, the price differences will decrease and electric vehicles will become widely available to the public, according to Fulton, but the transition to purely electric vehicles is still farther in the future. “If things go to plan, by 2035, there will be no new cars that are gasoline,” Fulton said. “They are going to have to be zero emission, so either a plug-in electrical vehicle or a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.” He also said that aggressive policies on vehicle ownership should not be taken until around 2030 to allow the public time to react. Beyond the main campus, there is room for improvement as UC Davis begins to expand. “There are a lot of opportunities to look forward to as we are expanding our Sacramento campus, so that we can have both campuses be a representation for really great sustainable policies,” Peters said. “This new expansion requires extra effort when looking at housing and transportation to and from the campuses to ensure a small carbon footprint.”
SENATE RESOLUTION #14 PASSED AT APRIL 29 ASUCD SENATE MEETING The resolution calls for a UC Davis counselor who specializes in individuals with autism; SB #94 was also passed at the meeting and acknowledges that UC Davis was built on stolen Indigenous land and promotes land recognition on campus BY MADDIE DULEY campus@theaggie.org Internal Vice President Emily Barneond called the Quarterly Town Hall Senate meeting to order at 6:10 p.m. on April 29. Senator Kabir Sahni then read the 12 town hall questions students asked ASUCD, beginning with how ASUCD will support student organizations during the shift back to campus in the fall. “Moving to the next year, we need to continue to expand our scope and outreach to partner student organizations and recognize that they often know student communities best and can provide areas of expertise and help us do our jobs to represent students,” said ASUCD President Kyle Krueger. Several students had concerns regarding resources and support for international students who may not be able to come back to campus in the fall. “The resolution that we passed last week, SR #13, gives us provisions to fix or provide suggestions to admin for international students,” Sahni said. “A ton of them include simultaneously offering classes that are happening in person, asynchronously as well.” Sahni then voiced the concern of students who have noticed an increase in crimes in Davis, notably stalking and breaking and entering, and asked what ASUCD can do to better protect students. “[There is] a group within the city currently advocating for administration to add more blue lights on campus to help students who might feel threatened by individuals on campus,” Senator Kristin Mifsud said. In response to concerns regarding students receiving vaccinations by fall, Krueger responded
that ASUCD has proposed a vaccination policy to the UC Office of the President. The policy will require all students, faculty and staff to be vaccinated before coming back to campus. After the town hall questions were answered, Sammy Veres, the co-director of Mental Health Initiative (MHI), provided the quarterly report for MHI. “We’re kicking off mental health awareness month [by] featuring some therapy llamas on Facebook live,” Veres said. Veres shared that MHI worked alongside Student Health and Counseling Services this quarter to share movies for mental health last month. “We had about 60 students in attendance and essentially it was showing movies related to mental health, and then there was a panel discussion afterwards,” Veres said. Anjini Venugopal, the editor-in-chief for The California Aggie, then provided the quarterly report for The Aggie. Venugopal shared that The Aggie was getting ready for the “Best of Davis’’ issue and reminded everyone to vote for their favorite things in Davis. Morayah Horovitz, the creative director of Creative Media, and Jillian Nguyen, the executive producer, then presented on behalf of Creative Media. “Our programming team has been hard at work, updating ASUCD’s elections website and posting candidate photos and statements,” Horovitz said Creative Media has also been working with the Bike Barn to improve their sales system, as well as with the CoHo to create new signage and graphics for their menu, according to Horovitz. Yalda Saii, the chairperson of the Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission (ECAC), then presented on behalf of ECAC. “We voted on the Housing Commission
amendment [and] we voted on SR #12, which was the Ramadan resolution,” Saii said. “In terms of events, we are in activism week and tomorrow is the final event, which is going to be the tunnel of resistance. We are still working on committee revamping [and] the ethnic studies projects.” Bia Myanganbayar, the chairperson of the Student Health and Wellness Committee (SHAWC), then provided the quarterly report for SHAWC. Myanganbayar shared that this quarter she has been focusing on reaching out to different health organizations on campus. “The most important connection that we’ve made so far is with Student Health and Counseling Services,” Myanganbayar said. “Hopefully our committee can be a guide for students. We will be sharing with students what
services they offer so they have better and easier access to it.” Additionally, the committee is partaking in the vaccine hesitancy campaign. Committee members will share their vaccine testimonials alongside a photo of themselves to share why they got the vaccine. The committee is additionally sharing research regarding antivaccine precautions and advice from UC Davis medical professionals on social media, according to Myanganbayar. The table then introduced three pieces of emergency legislation, beginning with SB #93. Controller Alexis Lopez-Perez shared author’s comments on the bill.
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THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2021 | 3
HEALTHY DAVIS TOGETHER FOCUSES ON VACCINATING UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES Sixty percent of those eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine in Yolo County have received at least one dose BY SHRADDHA JHINGAN city@theaggie.org In the fight against COVID-19, Healthy Davis Together has been increasing its distribution of vaccines to members of the community, especially those who may be from underserved communities. Medical Director of Healthy Davis Together Dr. Sheri Belafsky explained that Healthy Davis Together is working with CommuniCare to provide vaccines to people without insurance or to people who have Medi-Cal. “Healthy Davis Together has a particular focus on vulnerable populations and underserved populations in Yolo County,” Belafsky said. “To that end, we partnered with CommuniCare, which is a federally qualified health center, so they have three clinics in Yolo County and they provide healthcare to the 20 to 30 thousand people who don’t have insurance or they have Medi-Cal.” Healthy Davis Together has set up two vaccine clinics in Yolo County, according to Belafsky. “We created a call center so that CommuniCare could message their patients and let them know that we have these two vaccine clinics set up in locations that were convenient for their patients,” Belafsky said. “One is in Woodland and the other one is in West Sacramento, and we have been prioritizing CommuniCare patients since we opened about two months ago. We’ve seen about 6,500 doses that we’ve administered so far and most of them—about 50 to 55%—have been to Latinx community members and the lion’s share of course have been to CommuniCare or CommuniCareeligible patients in the county.” On-call Yolo County Public Information Officer Frank Schneegas said that Yolo County has administered over 50,000 vaccine doses total. “As of Wednesday, May 5, Yolo County has administered about 28,753 first doses and 22,587 second doses,” Schneegas said. “The actual number is higher—there’s usually always a lag” during the wait for data entry to be finished. As of May 3, Schneegas said that 48% of the approximately 220,000 residents in Yolo County have received at least one dose of the vaccine, which is roughly 60% of all eligible Yolo County residents. Of this percentage, 83% of agricultural workers and 60% of those aged 65 and older have received at least one dose. With the increase of vaccine supply and the support of CommuniCare and Yolo County, the clinics set up by Healthy Davis Together are also taking community appointments, although they’re still prioritizing CommuniCare patients, Belafsky explained. Belafsky described how Healthy Davis Together has been doing outreach to underserved communities. For instance, Healthy Davis Together has been collaborating with the Homeless Coordinator for Yolo County and have a mobile vaccine team that goes door-to-
People waiting in line to get vaccinated at a COVID-19 vaccination site at Visitor Parking Lot 2 on the UC Davis campus on April 14 in Davis, CA. (Justin Han / Aggie) door in motels once a week to vaccinate people, who Belafsky said may not be aware “that the vaccines are available to them” or may not be able “to get to the clinics.” Corner Drug, which is located in Woodland, has also been administering vaccines at its site. Co-owner of Corner Drug Erik Daniells explained how the administration of vaccines has been going “smoothly with appointments available several days a week,” although demand has leveled off. “Now we have vaccine inventory but the demand has plummeted from what it was a month ago,” Daniells said via email. “We hope this changes once the vaccine is approved for younger people.” Daniells also shared that all of Corner Drug’s staff is vaccinated and tries to show others that the vaccines are safe and effective. “We are hopeful that vaccine hesitancy decreases and we can show that the vaccine is safe and effective,” Daniells said via email. “Our staff was vaccinated early and we are very relieved to be able to safely help others.”
On-campus vaccination efforts have also been going well. UC Davis Medical Director of Student Health and Counseling Services Cindy Schorzman described that at the ARC vaccine clinic, as of May 4, more than 12,500 doses have been administered. Appointments can be booked through My Turn, and up to 375 doses are delivered each day. Students should also report their vaccine status through the Health-e-Messaging portal, Schorzman explained, since high student vaccination rates will allow UC Davis to open with a higher capacity next fall. UC Davis also plans to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for students attending in-person fall quarter classes. “We have had over 3800 students report their vaccinations so far through the portal,” Schorzman said via email. “We definitely appreciate these responses, and they will help guide us as we plan for fall 2021. The higher the vaccination rate throughout our campus community, the greater the likelihood that we will be able to keep services open and operating at high capacity in the fall.”
UC DAVIS STUDY SHOWS COVID19’S DISPROPORTIONATE NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON CARETAKERS UC Davis Health’s Family Caregiving Institute studies caretakers’ ethical dilemmas during pandemic MARIO RODRIGUEZ / AGGIE
KATIE DEBENEDETTI features@theaggie.org During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have had to step up as caregivers for family members—especially for elderly people—whose support services were shut down as nonessential services in March of 2020, according to Dr. Terri Havrath, the director of the Family Caregiving Institute at UC Davis Health. Havrath said that the lack of resources for the elderly during the pandemic has put a strain on their families who have had to step in as caretakers in the interim. “Community services that had been available to support them closed their doors when the pandemic struck and the stay-at-home orders were implemented,” Harvath said. “Families who had been using senior centers or adult day healthcare were suddenly cut off from those services. Families who are in the middle, who have children at home and are caring for aging parents suddenly have double duty at home and are torn between: how do you keep your kids engaged and having opportunities, and how do you protect your parents?” This strain has been a point of interest for Harvath and her colleagues at the Family Caregiving Institute, including Dr. Mark Fedyk, an associate professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. Fedyk has launched research examining the ethical dilemmas that these family caretakers have faced and continue to face amid the pandemic.
“[The motivation for this research] comes out of a broader tradition of research that you can basically summarize as ‘Please don’t forget about caregivers,’” Fedyk said. “A lot of health outcomes are driven by stuff that happens outside of the hospital, outside of the clinic, stuff that happens at home and is usually the responsibility of the family.” Fedyk’s goal has been to come up with a way to ask caregivers how they have been affected by ethical dilemmas during the COVID-19 pandemic. He explained that these family caregivers are an often under-recognized component of the health system. “[Fedyk’s] research is really groundbreaking in that it recognizes family caregivers as ethics workers, as frontline individuals who are called to make ethical decisions,” Harvath said. Fedyk first tried to gather data from caregivers via a few different forms of survey, but he said the response rate was “not great.” While gathering this data and doing preliminary research, however, Fedyk said that he and his team found online forums where caregivers were discussing the dilemmas he was trying to learn about. “In the process, we came across a couple of online forums in which caregivers were talking in great detail about how the pandemic had impacted them,” Fedyk said. “We did a preliminary analysis of some of these online discussion boards and we had over 15,000 data points, and we found that we could organize [a sample of ] them into [...]16 different themes
that began to uncover what caregivers had been experiencing.” He and his team are now examining those data points to determine how many of them contain moral or ethical dilemmas, which as of now, they estimate is about 8-10%. As a part of this process, they are organizing these dilemmas into different themes. Fedyk said that the most common themes that they have identified are burnout, validation seeking, increased financial burden and guilt. Fedyk said that the goal of conducting this study is to learn more about the issues caregivers are facing and to come up with programs that could provide solutions. “The hope is that this will give us a small but useful database that can serve as a foundation for further research to the world’s difficulties and the solutions that caregivers come up with to those difficulties,” Fedryk said. One such program that Fedyk and Harvath have been collaborating on is a decision support service for caregivers. “[Fedyk] and I are developing [...] a ‘decisional support for caregiving dilemmas’ program that will offer consultation to family caregivers who are struggling in making decisions that put their concern for the safety of their older relatives with concerns about quality of life,” Harvath said. “Families are called to make these difficult decisions without very much training, either in the clinical aspects of the decisions they’re making or in the ethical aspects. Dr. Fedyk’s research will inform the clinical services that we want to develop for families to give them some support and help them identify ways in which they can think about the dilemmas they are facing and make more informed decisions.” In addition to this service, Harvath and other employees at the Family Caregiving Institute are using Fedyk’s research, as well as their own findings, to address other dilemmas affecting family caregivers during COVID-19, including family caretakers worried about taking elderly family members to the hospital and being unable to accompany them due to COVID-19 restrictions. “[Hospitals have] made exceptions for parents who have minor children and partners of pregnant women, which are appropriate exceptions, but they did not extend those same exceptions to caregivers for frail, older adults,” Harvath said.”That meant that [for] older adults—some with Alzheimer’s disease or for whom English is not a language they speak, much less their second language—if they got ill and had to go to the hospital, they were there by themselves with no one to advocate for them.”
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AGGIE FILE
Oh, so that’s where my katana went!
April 25 “Loud music for the last 5 hours— possible party—drunk subject from the party in purple shirt climbed fence onto respondent’s property.” April 26 “Husky and small terrier running loose in the complex—not aggressive but unable to contain dogs.” April 30 “Dodge ram diesel purposely blowing smoke.” May 1 “Neighbor left garden hose on in backyard for over 24 hours, now flooding the street.” “Katana ‘sword’ left underneath the bleachers.” May 2 “Concerned over sprinklers causing puddles on sidewalk, respondent nearly drowned while bringing in her groceries.” May 5 “Respondent was attacked by 5 neighborhood cats.”
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International students, scholar speak out about COVID-19 crisis in India The crisis has affected many UC Davis students who are from or have family in India BY REBECCA BIHN-WALLACE campus@theaggie.org With a mounting death toll and COVID-19 case numbers soaring in India, international students and a postdoctoral scholar from India spoke to The California Aggie about what it’s like to be studying and working abroad as the current COVID-19 crisis worsens in their home country. All three interviewees have been living in Davis during the pandemic. “I was vaccinated completely before my 50-year-old father [living in India] could get his first shot,” said Kabir Sahni, a third-year communications and international relations double major and ASUCD Senator whose family is from New Delhi. “That in itself just shows how serious the vaccine inequity problem is globally and how drastically different countries’ vaccine rollouts have been.” Recently, Chancellor Gary May released a statement about the events in India, encouraging students to access mental health resources and to reach out to professors with their concerns. Sahni recently co-authored SR #13—a resolution calling on university faculty to ensure equitable access to academic instruction for international students in fall 2021. He said that while he’s grateful for the UC Davis administration’s support, some professors have been less understanding. Since many Zoom classes are held
synchronously, international students staying back home may be unable to meet regular, prepandemic course requirements that are still being enforced. “As much as we appreciate professors being incredibly kind and lenient, there’s professors who have graded us on participation,” Sahni said. “And that just makes me think, what about people in other countries? What about people who can’t be in the United States? If you hold office hours
at 2 p.m. here, that’s 2 a.m. in India. A ton of professors have not been comfortable with adapting to an online format.” Student senators at UC Berkeley, UC Riverside and UC Los Angeles have authored similar resolutions, urging professors to record lectures and acknowledge the specific struggles that international students have undergone during the pandemic. Sahni also spoke about the emotional toll the
KIYOMI WATSON / AGGIE
COVID-19 crisis has taken on Indian students studying in the U.S. “I go through my Instagram stories every day, and I see people I’ve known all my life asking for ICU beds for their fathers, or their grandmother has a collapsed lung and is at home and they don’t have a bed, or there are people asking for oxygen,” Sahni said. “Every night and every morning when I’m calling back home, I have to deal with the reality that I’m in my bubble and that is a completely different world. At this point I can only channel prayers and be glad that my family went through the virus at a time when resources were more accessible.” Dr. Krishna Balasubramaniam, a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, described a similar dilemma. “The helplessness kicks in each time we speak to our family and essentially ask them to ‘take care and stay safe,’” Balasubramaniam said via email. “Both my spouse and I come from a privileged, well-to-do background, and although our parents have gotten the vaccine, our siblings and their spouses haven’t, and don’t look like they’ll have access any time soon. The bigger, more devastating story has to be about the under-privileged… about the millions of dailywage workers, low-income groups, and other minorities who have suffered disproportionately heavy losses.” READ THE FULL STORY ONLINE
On-campus organizations celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month UC Davis’s AAPI community continues to celebrate its history and culture amid lockdown restrictions and anti-Asian racialization of COVID-19 BY LIANA MAE ATIZADO feature@theaggie.org Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month in May is a time for celebration of AAPI culture and their contributions to the U.S. To commemorate this month, students and faculty members at UC Davis have organized events to foster community and acceptance among AAPI students. The Cross Cultural Center (CCC), one of seven UC Davis Community Resource and Retention Centers, supports a variety of student communities on campus. To kick off AAPI Heritage Month, the CCC hosted Asian Pacific Culture Week (APCW) from May 3 to May 8. The week’s events included talks from AAPI professors, artists, farmers and community organizers, as well as a resource fair for AAPI student organizations. According to Olivia Hernandez, the associate director of the CCC, these events aimed to look at the different facets that make up the Asian diaspora as a means to highlight creative social justice and community work and to share a virtual space with members of the AAPI community. The CCC also collaborated with KDVS for APCW’s final event, “Lockdown Sessions: AAPI Represent.” During this event, students showcased their talents, listened to AAPI artists and celebrated AAPI heritage.
“I’m hoping that people see the graphics, attend the programs, get inspired and feel connected somehow,” Hernandez said. “I hope that students also know that, even if we continue to be hybrid, virtual or whatever it looks like in the future, the CCC will still have a space for you here.” KDVS also highlighted AAPI organizations that students can donate to and connect with
in order to show their support for the AAPI community even after APCW. Anyone who wishes to uplift the AAPI community is welcome to support these organizations regardless of racial or ethnic background. Hernandez emphasized that even though she is not a member of the AAPI community herself, she believes it is important for her to actively support the AAPI community. “[Being an ally] is about figuring out ways to
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uplift without taking up space,” Hernandez said. “Then, allowing for the doors to be more open and accessible, so that more scholars can come through the door and feel empowered.” The Asian Pacific Islander (API) Retention Initiative is the newest of four retention initiatives on campus that serve historically underrepresented student communities. According to Katherine Parpana, the interim director of the API Retention Initiative, their mission is to connect student scholars with resources to support them during their time at UC Davis. Parpana said that her goal for the API Retention Initiative during AAPI Heritage Month is to uplift programs that are being hosted by partner departments and promote on-campus student organizations. This includes working with the CCC to spread the word about APCW and connecting with student leaders to learn about their upcoming events. Parpana explained that there are many unique identities that fall under the umbrella of AAPI, and that AAPI Heritage Month is a time to make each of these identities more visible and celebrate their unique histories.
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Fourth-year Native American student strives to make UC Davis’ data on its Native population more comprehensive Tori McConnell, in collaboration with faculty and other Native students, aims to break down the data of UC Davis’ Native student population to more fully represent its diversity BY LYRA FARRELL features@theaggie.org Tori McConnell, a fourth-year Native American studies major from the Yurok and Karuk Tribes of Northern California, helped to form the Native American and Indigenous Advisory Committee to the Chancellor in 2019 and is currently serving in her second term. McConnell is currently working with the committee on a data disaggregation project that focuses on Native American student data. UC Davis’ data currently only reflects ethnic and racial categories, and disaggregated data on race and ethnicity at the UC level provides a breakdown of categories within every race and ethnic group, but doesn’t provide any further information under the “American Indian/Alaska Native” category. McConnell hopes that through the committee, she and other Native American students can work with the university to create a more accurate breakdown of data reflecting the Native American student population at UC Davis. “Some of the student sentiment around the committee was we were feeling like we weren’t getting a whole lot done, we weren’t feeling like we were actually seeing a huge difference,” McConnell said. “And so one of the things we thought to change that was to look at the data.” Erika Jackson, the assistant director of
institutional research in charge of student success, has supported McConnell and the Native American and Indigenous Advisory Committee to the Chancellor. Since the project began, members of the committee and UC Davis staff members have focused on reviewing data on Native student retention and graduation rates as well as survey data regarding Native students’ experiences to help the committee better focus their efforts. “As a campus committed to diversity and inclusion, it’s critical that we examine all of our measures of success by race and ethnicity so we can ensure that the UC Davis experience is benefitting all students,” Jackson stated via email. “Our goal is to eliminate gaps in retention and graduation between different racial and ethnic groups by 2030.” Deserea Langley, a Ph.D. candidate in Native American Studies and Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone member of the Susanville Indian Rancheria, is the current chair of the committee. “In starting the committee, we really noticed representational things that were happening in the Native student community that we weren’t happy about,” Langley said. “We’d seen appropriation of our culture, we’d seen the lack of Native representation in university administration. We are less than 1% of the population with Native faculty and staff [and] students are often on the
periphery, so we really wanted to improve that.” One factor that can cause inaccuracy in the data reflecting Native students is the fact that the federal government reports on Native Americans who also identify as Hispanic as only Hispanic, which obscures their Native American identity. In addition, the university has a policy stating that data on groups with fewer than 10 members cannot be reported. This policy may KATHERINE HUNG / AGGIE
exclude smaller tribes from being included in data. A third factor, according to Langley, is that some applicants who self-report their ethnicity may indicate that they are Native American in hopes that this will increase their chances of being accepted or that it will help them receive a scholarship. DATADISAGGREGATION on 2
THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2021 | 5
THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE
OPINION EDITORIAL BOARD MEETS WITH CHANCELLOR MAY, UC DAVIS ADMINISTRATORS May, administrators discuss fall quarter plans, recent UC-wide data breach and continued COVID-19 precautions
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ANJINI VENUGOPAL Editor-in-Chief MARGO ROSENBAUM Managing Editor SABRINA HABCHI Campus News Editor
Chancellor Gary May, Provost Mary Croughan, Vice Chancellor Pablo Reguerín, Vice Chancellor Kelly Ratliff, Associate Chancellor Karl Engelbach, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Dana Topousis, Campus Counsel Michael Sweeney, Director of Athletics Rocko DeLuca Below is a transcript of the meeting that has been edited for length and clarity The California Aggie: How is UC Davis preparing for inperson classes this fall? Gary May: That’s a great question that is on many people’s minds. There are many people contributing to preparing for the fall. But, the campus lead for classes has been Provost Croughan so I’m going to let her answer that question. Mary Croughan: A lot of preparation for the fall. The primary factors that influenced our ability to actually resume in-person instruction was the potential for a vaccine mandate, having the case rates come down on COVID and honestly just how well all of you have done as students in wearing your face coverings, doing your weekly asymptomatic testing and so forth. So we’re feeling quite confident in our ability to return to full in-person instruction that is 100% capacity and classrooms and laboratories, studios, field work taking place and so forth. More than likely, face coverings will be required in all those settings still because going through the fall, the situation will still not be ideal and the pandemic will still not be completely over and actually through ASUCD they’ve made that request as well. For students who are not able for medical reasons to be vaccinated there will be a process where they can apply for exemption for that. That’s one of the reasons ASUCD has asked for continued face coverings, so any student sitting in a classroom knows that either the other students in the classroom are fully vaccinated or everyone has a face covering that can reduce transmission that could occur. Last but not least, in looking at all aspects of fall instruction, we are still a little challenged for our international students. The consulates across the world have still largely not reopened to have international students able to receive these. Thankfully, the chancellors and the president of UC have submitted letters encouraging the state department to open consulates but also to place student visas at a higher priority. Gary May: You know, we actually had this concept—quarter in the cloud—that we were developing even before the pandemic, and the pandemic gave us a chance to test it, and I think we’ll be prepared to accommodate students who need to be remote still.
TCA: How is UC Davis deciding which classes will be in person, which classes will be hybrid and which classes will be entirely online? Gary May: I think that’s another one for Provost Croughan. We have a pretty rigorous review process in place to make those decisions. Mary Croughan: The mode of instruction for every class is actually a decision made by the Academic Senate as an overview over the entire campus. Traditionally, if the class wanted to be held remotely they had to go through a review process with the Academic Senate. We’ve been given a variance to offer classes remotely this whole year by our accreditor and the Academic Senate. While we still are working out the details, more than likely what we’ll be doing in the fall is the reverse of what we did this year. For this whole year of 2020-2021, everything was expected to be offered remotely and if it was going to be offered in-person, then we had an application process and a review process to do so, to make sure there was pedagogical justification to offer it inperson. In other words, a good reason to do it and also to make sure it met the safety guidelines. What we’re exploring right now is the reverse for the fall. The expectation is everything would be offered in person and we would have a review process for things to be administered remotely instead of the process we used last year where the committee were predominantly experts in education and not so much a senate review process because it was just looked at from a safety standpoint. In the fall, we would need to do that together with the Senate. So, a faculty member would ask their department if they could offer something remotely would be one option, and the other is if we have international students in large numbers that are not able to come, then we would ask the department to offer one course or a selection of courses remotely. Individual students can work with their academic advisors as well, so if they are not able to attend in-person for medical reasons, we will do our best to also offer the course in a hybrid fashion. In other words, recorded lectures that are offered to the students afterwards. So, it will be a combination, but it will be predominantly in-person instruction in the fall.
EDEN WINNIFORD City News Editor CALVIN COFFEE Opinion Editor SOPHIE DEWEES Features Editor ALLIE BAILEY Arts & Culture Editor OMAR NAVARRO Sports Editor MADELEINE PAYNE Science & Tech Editor
CAMERON PERRY New Media Manager JUSTIN HAN Photo Director KATHERINE FRANKS Design Director JOELLE TAHTA Layout Director KAITLIN ARAGHI Copy Chief ALEX WEINSTEIN Copy Chief KESHAV AGRAWAL Website Manager BEN CHENG Social Media Manager JOSHUA GAZZANIGA Distribution Manager LAURIE PEDERSON Business Development Manager
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SOCIAL MEDIA’S MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY NEEDS TO CHANGE One-size-fits-all solutions to mental health conditions need to stop BY ISABELLA CHUECOS ifchuecos@ucdavis.edu Whenever I choose to forgo my responsibilities and open Instagram I am greeted by one of three things: an exciting, yet impossible makeup tutorial, a picture of an old friend from middle school or posts regarding any of a few mental health conditions. I used to ignore these posts. “10 Signs of Depression” didn’t catch my eye because I didn’t feel like I had depression and “Six Things You Can do to Cope With ADHD” didn’t seem to apply to me either. These posts seemed to flit in and out of my span of attention, but I’ve noticed an increased prevalence in the past year. Infographics have been experiencing an intense revival that began in 2020. Ever since the pandemic began, our lack of inperson contact has led users to explore different ways to interact and spread information online. The eye-catching design and simplicity of infographics was a breath of fresh air compared to the dense language of infection rates and death tolls. One could say that having all of this information at our fingertips is beneficial. After all, there’s no harm in knowing about
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how mental health can manifest in our lives and how we can combat the negative effects of mental illness. There’s also something to be said about accessibility too, not everyone can afford to have an official diagnosis with a psychiatrist (one of the many qualms of the American healthcare system)—the Internet can be a helpful tool in allowing people to learn about symptoms and treatments. Social media, however, has completely botched these efforts, mainly because of the tendency for reduction and generalization in mental health posts. There are infographics for everything from aesthetic note-taking habits to critical race theory. According to what we see on Instagram, if a concept exists, it can be condensed. This reductionism, however, can be incredibly harmful. There’s simply not enough context for these very complex conditions in a 1089-pixel frame. Mental health conditions are also not a “one size fits all” type of thing, and the information in these posts give off that feeling. Posts that specifically outline symptoms of mental health
conditions can also be very triggering. Unfortunately, the individuals who create these posts seem to follow the standard “get viral quick” method that most Instagram users try to emulate: eyecatching colors, in-your-face fonts and catchy slogans. The other day, I stumbled across a post titled “Eight Ways We Self-Sabotage.” The post was designed to look like a checklist, with statements like “telling yourself a negative story: ‘I will never be good enough,’” being paired with a cheery and affirmative checkmark. It felt like the post was a checklist of self-sabotage techniques. The design of this post shows a complete lack of knowledge on the right way to present this information. We can criticize the content and layout of these posts all day long, but there’s something that we don’t always see on first glance: the creators. Who has decided that they’re the authority on these topics? Who decided that they were the ones to make these posts? Oftentimes, mental health accounts on Instagram are completely anonymous. There’s no personal Instagram account attached to whoever makes these posts. For all we know, it could be a random high schooler writing these posts or anyone else who’s simply not qualified. These accounts also tend to create a sort of mental health “umbrella” in their theme. Depression, eating disorders and ADHD posts could all sit alongside each other in one row of posts. This generalization of mental health conditions is incredibly harmful by implying that all folks who suffer are the same and, therefore, can be treated the same. This just isn’t true. Mental health conditions are not a “one size fits all.” We can’t help people who suffer from these conditions if we don’t know how they are distinct from one another. There are plenty of ways we can amend how we discuss mental health on social media. One way that I find to be particularly helpful are folks that use their accounts to reflect on their specific experiences with their mental health. Actor and podcaster Marc Maron, for example, suffered a devastating loss in the middle of the pandemic and chose to document his grief through frequent Instagram live videos. Creating a space where we can relate to each other and understand that there are unique ways to process emotions is a great way to support those who are suffering and give solace to those who are experiencing similar feelings. The world of social media isn’t perfect, but putting a human face to a human experience without implying any sort of expertise is much more helpful than a faceless, sourceless and sans serif post.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.
6 | THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2021
THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE
OPINION How immigrant entrepreneurs disrupt the Model Minority Myth The Model Minority Myth is engineered to tell one version of the Asian American Dream BY RENEE WANG reswang@ucavis.edu What is the Asian American dream? Since the 1960s, the Model Minority Myth (MMM) has praised Japanese and Chinese immigrants not only for their seamless integration into American life, but also “empirical evidence [of their] success” drawing from “highstatus occupations, rising incomes, and low rates of mental illness and crime according to Keith Osajima, a Race and Ethnic Studies professor. Because Asian Americans were able to break through racial barriers, the MMM creates a monolithic Asian American success story of doctors, lawyers, engineers and nothing more. However, the basis of the MMM does not draw from empirical evidence but rather a constructed agenda. U.S. immigration laws are purposeful devices—and in the interest of serving “national interests” immigration laws give the government authority to sustain systemic inequalities through selective immigration practices. Through the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, Asian Americans were rebranded into the Model Minority: immigrants with higher levels of education and technical skills were prioritized. It brings into our discourse successful lawyers and engineers and ignores Asian American immigrant entrepreneurs and serviceindustry workers whose stories and struggles become obscured. By placing 22 million Asian Americans under a singular narrative of success, it expels crucial Asian American narratives. In the U.S., the nail salon workforce is 81% female and 79% immigrant-born, of which three-quarters are Vietnamese. The nail salon industry is vital for many in the Vietnamese community— many Vietnamese-Americans are nail technicians thanks to a fateful day in Sacramento, where the paths of 20 refugee women and actress Tippi Hedren crossed paths. Hedren visited the camp in Sacramento to help these women find a trade to learn. The decision to pick nails as their trade came from Hedren’s noticing the women admiring her manicures. Hedren’s suggestion was met with excitement and soon after she called upon her beautician and utilized the services of a beauty school to integrate the women into the nail trade. Vietnamese women have been particularly impacted by a triple threat of “prolonged salon closures, low wages, and anti-Asian racism” during the pandemic. Nail salons were left behind in the initial reopenings, resulting in lost wages and many have been targeted by hateful, profanity-filled letters telling Asian Americans they “do not belong” as well. Nail salons were further devastated by
Ted Ngoy stands inside a Christy’s Donut Shop in Hawthorne, CA. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) Gov. Gavin Newsom’s unsubstantiated claims that it was a nail salon that started the first spread of COVID-19. Newsom’s claims did little to help an industry some are afraid will never recover—Newsom’s statements compound on the fact that Asian American businesses have already been subject to falsehoods about the virus and questions about their cleanliness. Even before the pandemic, nail salon workers—due to the nature of their job—are constantly exposed to toxic chemicals. The documentary “Painted Nails” sheds light on this: shy, hardworking and resilient Van Hoang is the subject of this documentary, an immigrant entrepreneur who becomes one of the first people to testify before the U.S. Congress for the passage of the Safe Cosmetics and Personal Care Products Act that would require safety standards and labeling requirements on cosmetic products, including nail products. Because of a loophole in a 1938 law, the cosmetics industry has been unregulated in its use of toxic chemicals in their products without testing or consequences for the adverse health effects it creates. Working in a nail salon, Hoang is constantly exposed to the “toxic trio,” ingredients that have been standard in the nail polish industry for years: dibutyl phthalate, formaldehyde and toluene. These chemicals have been associated with cancer, birth defects and other chronic diseases. Hoang herself suffers daily headaches
and difficulties with carrying pregnancies to term as a result of her exposure to these chemicals. AGGIE Even after arriving at her American Dream as a nail salon FILE owner, struggle is still present for Hoang. While she becomes the voice for others in her industry to fight for regulation against toxic chemicals, she also dispels a central view of American society supported by the MMM: that America is a meritocratic, fair society under the notion that Asian Americans are successful because of “qualifications, skills, attitude and behavior.” Hoang and her husband, who work seven days a week, according to the documentary—are no doubt hard working. Yet their American Dreams are wrought with struggle. If America is a fair society, per the MMM, and success is rewarded based on behavior, where does that leave Americans like Hoang? Cambodian donut shops have many parallels to Vietnamese nail salons as well: around 80% of donut shops in California are owned by Cambodian-Americans. For Vietnamese nail salon owners and Cambodian donut shop owners, their businesses represent more than their livelihoods, but the way their stories differ greatly compared to the one molded by the MMM. Their business negotiates different meanings: For Hoang, her nail salon is described as a “dear friend” but in a way, also tethers her because she had to drop out of school at such a young age. As she expresses: “If I left the salon, I wouldn’t know what to do.” This sentiment is reflected by Cambodian donut shop owners, where donut shops “evoke a value particularly dear: survival,” according to the author of “Selling Donuts in the Fragmented Metropolis” Erin M. Curtis. Cambodian Doughnut Creams owner Bunna Men expresses: “I don’t like anything about donuts, but I have to, for a living.” The danger of the Model Minority Myth is that its dominance fails to acknowledge the many Asian Americans in service industries—particularly in nail salons and donut shops where Asian immigrant entrepreneurs constitute a large number. The struggles of these businesses ultimately become obscured from our public consciousness. The MMM perpetuates the false notion that America is fair because Asian Americans found success because of their work ethic. This notion offers little equity for Asian Americans not incorporated by the MMM; if America is a meritocratic society, it is sorely lacking in its protection for the success model it created for Asian Americans. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.
HUMOR
Course recommendations for summer sessions No, they don’t have the major class you need. Have you considered “Zombies Civil Rights”? BY ANNABEL MARSHALL almarshall@ucavis.edu
Students playing toss on a warm summer day. (Photo via UC Davis) As spring quarter slowly draws to a close, you might be thinking that your last day of Zoom lectures is near. Do not despair, however, for there remains another chance to pretend your microphone has stopped working: summer sessions. Lucky for you, we’ve sifted through the myriad of courses offered and we’ll now present you with a roundup of the best classes to take while daydreaming about the simplicity of 2012’s impending Armageddon.
Summer Session I:
Summer Session II:
• Cinema & Digital Media 002 - How to Cope With the Death of Your Favorite Character • Political Science 103 - Cyberbullying Ted Cruz Course Credit Limitation: Only two units of credit for those students who have completed Cyberbullying Lindsay Graham. • Religious Studies 048 - The Flying Spaghetti Monster • Communications 162 - How to Avoid Talking to Your Homophobic Aunt Description: Standard diversion tactics, faking static on the telephone and miming an unspecified emergency that requires your immediate attention. • Sociology 120 - Avoiding Social Pressure to Watch Anime Description: Not watching “Attack on Titan” is your constitutional right. May be taught abroad. • Chemistry/Psychology 008 - Mandatory Therapy for Students Taking Organic Chemistry • Linguistics 019 - Elementary Klingon Description: The class that says, “My parents are working hard to pay for my education and I do not care.”
• Films Studies 045 - Twilight Workload Units: Eight. • English 177 - Study of an Individual Author: Your TA’s Edgy Poetry • Education 103 - Perfecting the “I Don’t Know, Can You?” • Nutrition 100 - Cooking the Appropriate Amount of Spaghetti Description: Those weird portion gadgets are for the weak. • Political Science 118 - Is Humanity Doomed? Yes. Course Materials: TikTok, that movie they made out of a Wattpad story, the U.S. Constitution. • Philosophy 035 - Veganism is Immoral, Embrace Cannibalism • Geology 130 - Licking Rocks Description: The Rolling Stones, crystal meth and Pop Rocks not included. • Communications 180 - Are You Mad at Me? • Viticology & Enology 070 - Explaining Your Major to Other People • Spanish 025 - Just the Curse Words
Disclaimer: This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.
Do you really have to follow your friend’s bad art account on Instagram? I asked an ethics professor “Julie.paints_4_fun, wants to follow you”… oh shut up, Instagram BY KATE HARGES klharges@ucavis.edu “Could you give us the backstory,” Professor Levings asked. I shifted in my seat, “Ok, well, Julie and I have been in school together since preschool. The classic friendship. I bullied her until age six (oh c’mon, it builds character), we didn’t speak to each other for four years, and by seventh grade we had developed a friendship in P.E. class as we bonded over our fear of tampons during the swim unit. I’m pretty sure her mom still hates me; moms are weird about holding grudges. The girl is just about great at everything. The type of friend your grandma constantly asks about after only briefly meeting her at your birthday party. To be clear, we’re talking about my Gammy who can’t even remember her own son in law’s name (or at least chooses not to). Julie is the type of person that didn’t watch Spongebob growing up, and has never eaten at McDonald’s, but doesn’t brag to you about it. She’s smart, funny, kind, talented—I mean, she took ‘girl next door’ to the next level. So you can imagine that when I oh-so-quickly peeked at her art account, I was shocked. I’d never seen one of her pieces before. As I looked at her sketch of a sunflower, I couldn’t help but think of how much more youthful and innocent I was just seconds before seeing it.
She has about eight posts. A painting of the beach, a drawing of a chandelier, some wildflowers painted on the side of her sneakers. I don’t know, it’s like she couldn’t get the proportions right, you could see the stark lines from shading with colored pencils and everything looked a little… unfinished. Just critiquing her artwork makes me feel evil, which leads me to my question, Professor, do I have to follow one of my dearest friends on Instagram at the cost of my own sanity?” Professor Levings sighed, “Trust me, you’re not the first to ask this. Just like you, my son is on Facegram… Instant... Instabook… I forget the name. He has expressed countless times that he also doesn’t want to waste his time with accounts he’s not crazy about following.” “Unfortunately though, I believe that you should follow the account. Plato famously said, ‘Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.’ I encourage you to think of this action as an act of service, that will create a domino effect of good actions.” Mr. Levings’ response was not what I wanted to hear, but what I knew I needed to hear. That night, as I lay in bed scrolling on my phone, I slowly brought myself to click “Follow Back.” I haven’t been the same since.
Phone with the Instagram app logo. (Getty Images /Instagram)
Disclaimer: This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and names of “sources” are fictionalized.
THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE
THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2021 | 7
Fast fashion’s increasingly rapid trend cycles are driving major overconsumption How social media is stoking the already raging flames of environmental issues in the fashion industry and what we are doing about it BY CLARA FISCHER arts@theaggie.org Fast fashion has been a mainstay of popular culture for decades. From the fabulously wealthy to the wannabe millionaire with expensive taste, people rely on trendy clothing that’s accessible to all. But a recent increase in the rate at which we cycle through trends has sparked concern: particularly among the TikTok-loving, newly minted environmental advocates of the younger generation. Looking back, rising levels of globalization and offshore manufacturing in the ‘90s led to the development of unsustainable fast fashion as we know it today—a chic, flashy beast, fashioned from inhumane conditions and gargantuan contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. That being said, overconsumption is not an entirely modern issue. In fact, calls for sustainable fashion have been around since the flower power movement of the ‘60s, but the term “slow fashion” was coined as recently as 2013, following the disastrous Rana Plaza collapse. What sets this past year apart in fashion history, however, is the tremendous upswing in the speed at which we are cycling through trends. Social media’s rise in popularity over the past decade has produced a world divided into the influencers and the influenced. Visual sites like Instagram, Pinterest and, most recently, TikTok, feature a plethora of visual imagery that users can emulate. “I usually look to Pinterest when I want wardrobe inspiration,” said Isabela Garcia, a first-year undeclared major. Other students are in the same boat as Garcia. “I look on Instagram mostly or TikTok for cute outfits,” said first-year economics major Elizabeth Mendoza. Nareh Derhartounian, a second-year history and American
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studies double major, takes inspiration from influencers. “[I look to] Pinterest and models like Gigi Hadid, Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner [for style inspiration],” Derhartounian said. “I am a fan of their street style and how they’re able to incorporate comfort pieces with pieces of luxury.” This is an effective business model for both influencers and brands. Consumers are left feeling out of fashion if they can’t keep up with the immense amount of products being pushed into their faces on a daily basis. Fast fashion companies capitalize on this, making goods more accessible to the general public by producing vast amounts of poorly made products for shoppers to pick from at a cheap price. This insanely rapid pace is becoming near-impossible to keep up with for those of us who haven’t figured out how to make money grow on trees, not to mention the damaging effects it has on the
planet. This pattern has raised alarm for many environmentallyconscious shoppers. For Zoe Slipper, a third-year international relations major and director of the Aggie Trading Post at UC Davis, sustainable fashion is something near to her heart. “Not only do I care about what I’m wearing aesthetically, but I also really care about how and where clothing is made. The most important thing is buying something that lasts,” Slipper said. And it seems she is not alone in her sentiments. “I like to stay away from trends because I feel like it allows me to create a personal style and a closet I can wear in the long term,” Derhartounian said. The younger generation is prominently represented on TikTok and sustainability is promising to be the next big trend. Short videos promoting a more sustainable attitude toward shopping are constantly trending and reaching a large audience composed of mostly younger viewers. Viewers are becoming less enthralled with massive hauls that glorify purchasing hundreds of dollars of clothing every season just to have most of the pieces eventually collect dust at the bottom of a closet. Thrifting has also gotten a lot of attention in recent years, most notably among those who have historically gravitated toward big retailers such as H&M or Zara. Among these new thrift store frequenters are those who can theoretically afford to buy new, but prefer to shop second hand out of environmental concerns. “I love thrift stores, consignment stores and buying second-hand vintage,” Slipper said. “I don’t really like to online shop after learning more about the harmful things these stores do.”
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Commentary: The worst Academy Awards decisions over the years With viewership on the decline, here’s a look into some of the Academy’s past oversights and mistakes BY JACOB ANDERSON arts@theaggie.org
Academy Awards voters, and to this day, there remains no requirement that voters actually watch the nominated films. While there’s no way to know if voters watch the movies they vote on, we do know for a fact that they’ve routinely shut out brilliant foreign and independent films pretty much from the Awards’ inception in favor of things like “Crash” (2004). Here are a few memorable decisions: “Crash” Winning Best Picture: Have you ever seen “Crash”? No? Good. It’s melodramatic, self-fellating and imbued with the quiet subtlety of a Cannibal Corpse album. But the Academy deemed it deserving of three awards, even beating out the much better films of “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) and “Capote” (2005) for Best Picture. “Crash” (2004) also took the title of the far more challenging and interesting “Crash” (1996), which is perhaps worse than the film winning Best Picture.
KATHERNE HUNG / AGGIE Viewership of the Academy Awards has hit an all-time low in 2021. Just 9.85 million live viewers tuned in, a decrease of 59% from 2020, which was already the low point in Oscars viewership since the turn of the 21st century. Reasons are legion—studios delaying notable releases due to COVID-19, the strange closed-off feel of the ceremony (also partially a product of COVID-19) and, maybe most importantly, a general decline in the number of people who want to watch millionaires pat themselves on the back for making substandard movies. The decisions made by Academy voters have always trended toward dubious. As of 2021, there are more than 9,300 eligible
Neither Alfred Hitchcock Nor Orson Welles Winning Best Director: The Academy Awards never recognized two of the most influential and virtuosic American filmmakers to ever live for their talents. If that doesn’t tell you something deep and dark about the Academy Awards, nothing will. While Welles at least won Best Screenplay for “Citizen Kane” (1941) despite being snubbed of all eight other nominations for that film, Hitchcock never won anything. Any of These Getting Nominated For Anything—“Patch Adams” (1998), “Suicide Squad” (2016), “Norbit” (2007): Terrible, terrible movies. Seemingly getting a wide release is enough to put your film into the same echelon as classics of cinema regardless
of how inept and actively lamentable it may be. There is nothing redeeming about any of these movies and they should all burn. “Going My Way” (1944) Over “Double Indemnity” (1944) for Best Picture: “Double Indemnity” is a veritable masterpiece, rich and nearly flawless and armed with some of the most memorable characters in noir. “Going My Way” is whimsical and unchallenging. But of course “Going My Way” somehow won best picture, which at this point in the list should not be surprising. The Existence of the Best Foreign Feature Category: When your award system is designed so that the absolute best movies from around the world are more or less sequestered into one little category and in all but the most extreme cases (like the 2019 film “Parasite”) excluded from the competition for Best Picture—and allows despotic governments to choose what films are even eligible—something has gone wrong. In the case of the Academy Awards, it may well be by choice that movies are suppressed simply for being made in another country—American viewers typically don’t watch many foreign films, so allowing these great movies into proper competition would likely hurt interest in the ceremony. But if the Academy Awards aren’t designed to select the best movies then why does anyone care? It’s tough to say what the future of the Academy Awards will look like. If viewership trends are anything to go by, interest in the ceremony is dwindling, and without the expectation of other eyes on the Awards, there’s little reason for anyone to tune in. The real test will be next year’s awards, probably. If viewership bounces back, the Oscars may retain their cultural importance. That is, however, a big if.
Dr. Theanne Griffith, principal investigator at the new Griffith Lab of the UC Davis School of Medicine, shares her story A researcher, author and mother explains the educational path that led her to publish children’s books about science BY JUSTIN WEINER science@theaggie.org In the labyrinth of overcrowded lab offices that is the fourth floor of Tupper Hall, there is one more lab squeezed in: the Griffith Lab. Dr. Theanne Griffith is one of the newest faculty members in the Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Her new lab is devoted to determining the molecular and cellular mechanisms of the transmission of thermal sensation in the body. Griffith’s interest in science, like so many other scientists, began in high school when she was taking AP Biology. “I was first introduced to the world of neuroscience as a junior in high school. It was, believe it or not, the sodium-potassium pump and action potentials that did it for me,” Griffith said. Her introduction to neuroscience led her to earn a double major in neuroscience and Spanish at Smith College. Throughout her undergraduate degrees, Griffith was able to participate in research thanks to an underrepresented science student’s scholarship. “It was a pretty new program at the time. I was able to then train in work-study hours in the library or something like that with actual time in the lab. So I got paid work-study/financial aid in order to do this work [in the lab],” Griffith said. After earning her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Northwestern University, Griffith moved to Columbia University to be a postdoctoral researcher. While working full time as a researcher, Griffith decided to pursue another childhood ambition: to become an author. “I’ve always really loved storytelling. I’m an only child and I tell
stories in my head—I’ve always been a storyteller,” Griffith said. Griffith recalled being asked by a high school teacher what she dreamed of doing, to which she responded, “I want to write a book that will be in Oprah’s book club!” While on maternity leave with her first child, Griffith decided to write her first book. Griffith’s passion for science inspired her to write children’s books encouraging children to go into science. To date, there are now three books in her “Magnificent Makers” series with two more books set to come out in the next year. The books are designed to encourage children’s scientific curiosity and inspire them to work toward becoming scientists. Importantly, Griffith chose to feature children of color as characters in the books, as she felt that it was important for children of all backgrounds to see that they could achieve their scientific dreams. “When I was a kid, most of the books that featured Black voices were about racism or slavery or pain or something like that, which are important but not the full story. We are more than that,” Griffith said. “People see the importance of these books to the community, to future little scientists, that we can create a more inclusive diverse representation of what a scientist can be.” As Griffith transitioned to her new position as an assistant professor at UC Davis, it was important to her to be able to continue writing these books and supporting the scientific community. UC Davis, having recently been ranked a leader in diversity, continues to support Griffith and her efforts to create a diverse and inclusive image of science. In fact, the diversity and inclusion of the Davis community is a key reason that Griffith ultimately chose to move her family to Davis and start her lab at UC Davis.
Dr. Theanne Griffith, Ph.D. is a professor of physiology & membrane biology and author of the Magnificent Makers series. (Theanne Griffith / Courtesy) “I’m not the only Black PI [principal investigator] in my department!” Griffith exclaimed. This is something that Griffith hadn’t experienced before at the previous universities she had worked at. “You just feel that the message isn’t just lip service,” Griffith said. “UC Davis is trying to be a leader on many fronts, with one of those being diversity, equity and inclusion.” CHILDRENSBOOK on 1 1
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Commentary: Elon Musk hosted SNL, but why? The Tesla CEO has nothing to do with SNL, and is another example of the show’s controversial clout-chasing BY ANGIE CUMMINGS arts@theaggie.org The announcement that Elon Musk was to host Saturday Night Live (SNL) on May 8 was the straw that broke this particular camel’s back. This has more to do with my extreme disappointment in SNL and Lorne Michaels’ (the producer and creator of the show) integrity than my own personal hatred for Musk. First, we must ask, why did SNL, a sketch comedy show where hosts often go on to promote their newest entertainment endeavor, have a CEO with no background in entertainment or comedy—unless you count his Twitter account—host the show? The only logical explanation for having a tech-based billionaire who is constantly shrouded in controversy on the show is Michaels’ clout chasing—it seems that man will do anything for ratings. The show has been experiencing a significant dip in ratings for the past few years, and having people like Musk and then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump on the show are just one of the many tricks to get ratings up, no matter how unfunny the content of the show is. Just as in Musk’s case, there was no other reason for Trump to be on this liberal-leaning, NBC-owned comedy show other than getting some of the best ratings in years. Are the views and publicity worth abandoning any morality the show might have had, and making much of the cast incredibly uncomfortable? Apparently to Micheals it’s all worth it. Among those in the cast who signaled at their
disinterest in having the Tesla CEO on the show are Bowen Yang, Aidy Bryant and Andrew Dismuke— who all took to social media commenting on Musk’s “eccentric” tweets, or calling his wealth a “moral obscenity.” If anyone is somehow unaware of Musk’s antics on the internet, and particularly on Twitter, brace yourselves. He has done it all on that app, from making fun of people who provide their pronouns on their profile, questioning and belittling the severity of COVID-19 and a myriad of middle-school level jokes that led him to be removed as Chairman of his company. While some may applaud Musk for addressing his controversy on Twitter during his SNL monologue, it was clear that this was in no way intended to be an apology, nor some form of ownership or understanding of all the harmful things he has said to his 53.7 million followers. Musk did just what he was there to do—get the show’s ratings up, not to prove himself as an actor or likable public figure. The entire internet and countless news outlets were buzzing leading up to his episode’s premiere, and that only intensified as it aired, with little to no focus on the actual content of the show, as that was in no way newsworthy. No matter how hard it was, I truly attempted to ignore the entirety of the context surrounding Musk on SNL as I watched the episode. Needless to say, it was not good let alone funny. The best way to describe every time Musk was involved in a skit was tense, as the acting was extremely sub-par (trying my best to be nice) and the premise of some of the skits were extremely tired—most notably, the “Gen Z Hospital” jab at internet slang, which
CHRISTINA LIU / AGGIE is simply an appropriation of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), but that’s a whole different story. This was the kind of SNL episode where one hopes and prays that Weekend Update might have some good guest characters to perhaps save the show from its host—and Ego Nwodim did just that with her sad Disney adult segment on an otherwise yawn-inducing Weekend Update (looking at you, Colin Jost).
This brings us to perhaps the clearest and most consistent form of “clout-chasing” the show’s producer has given into: keeping Pete Davidson as a cast member for the past 7 years. It is clear to anyone who has seen any of Davidson’s skits, cameos in other shows or movies and of course his semi-autobiographical starring role in “King of Staten Island” that he is only able to play one thing—himself. SNL on 11
The KardashianJenner women ‘with no talent’ created an unrivaled empire A look into the infamous family’s influence BY ITZELTH GAMBOA arts@theaggie.org
Television Show: “Shadow and Bone” This Netflix series is based off of author Leigh Bardugo’s book series, which gives us an entrance to what fans call the Grishaverse. The series is centered around the fictional country Ravka, which is split between the East and West by a darkness called the Shadow Fold which is inhabited by carnivorous winged creatures that terrorize anyone that dares attempt to cross. The country’s only hope of ridding themselves of this darkness is the mapmaker Alina Starkov (played by Jessie Mei Li), who only recently discovered her power to create light, giving her the potential to destroy the Shadow Fold. I loved “Shadow and Bone” so much, I tried to convince everyone I know to watch it. I binged the entire eight-episode series on a Saturday, happily watching our main protagonist struggle with her self-doubt and conflicted feelings. While the story could have played out a lot better if there were a few more episodes to give the characters an opportunity for more substantial character development, this one flaw doesn’t undercut the series. With a beautiful and immensely talented cast that match the characters perfectly, it seems like this series was given to us on a silver platter after the rush of midterm season where we can wind down before a hectic finals week.
Movie: “Detective Pikachu” dir. by Rob Letterman When a well-known detective is presumed dead after a car crash, his estranged son and Pokémon partner riddled with amnesia team up to discover what went wrong in the investigation of his car crash. I’ve repeatedly and unabashedly told everyone that the movie “Detective Pikachu” is criminally underrated. It is one of those children’s movies that deserve to be watched by everyone because the jokes walk the line between being entertaining for kids and giving adults a nice laugh. You don’t have to be a fan of Pokémon to enjoy the colorful world and appreciate this movie.
Book: “Lore” by Alexandra Bracken Every nine years Greek gods are thrown to roam on Earth as mortals for a week and be hunted by their ancient bloodlines who strive to kill them and take their power and immortality in an event called the Agnon. After the brutal murder of her family, Lore Perseous wants out of the Agnon, deciding never to go back to the rituals and ignoring the idea of revenge. Years later, she finds herself at the start of another Agnon with the goddess Athena asking her to bind their fates together, giving Lore her ultimate chance to leave the world behind. But teaming up with one of the last original gods means going back into the world she swore never to return to. Bracken takes me back into the Greek gods universe that author Rick Riordan once threw me into as a middle schooler falling in love with the Percy Jackson series. “Lore” is one of the more mature books that Bracken has written, but it was a nice addition to her worlds. I read this book before bed, giving me something light to take my mind off of things. It’s a lot easier to read about Greek gods trying to keep their immortality than it is to think about all of the lectures I have yet to watch.
BY MUHAMMAD TARIQ arts@theaggie.org Let’s take a peek into one of America’s most well-known families, the family that has graced our televisions for 14 years and 20 seasons, the family that always knows how to steal the spotlight, the family who went from Calabasas middle-class to having wealth that expands all over Calabasas and Hidden Hills: The Kardashian-Jenner clan. With most family members having at least 100 million followers on Instagram, the KardashianJenner family is easily one of the most influential and powerful families in the world. The family boasts seven members, in descending order by age: Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Rob, Kendall and Kylie, with Kris Jenner acting as “momager”—both mom and career manager for the six of them. Despite being called the family with “no talent” by Barbara Walters in 2011, the KardashianJenners have created a media empire that few could rival. Up first is Khloe Kardashian’s Good American clothing line, which lands her a rumored, easy $3.6 million a year. There is Kourtney Kardashian, who has a booming lifestyle brand Poosh—think Gwenth Paltrow’s Goop but more affordable and realistic. Then, there is Kendall Jenner, who was touted as the highest paid model in the world in 2018 and is the creator of the tequila brand 818. Then there are the last two Kardashian-Jenner titans—Kim and Kylie. Kylie Jenner has a reported net worth of $700 million and was given the title of the “youngest billionaire” in 2019 by Forbes, mainly due to her earnings from her company Kylie Cosmetics. Finally, there is Kim Kardashian-West, the woman known for her curves, the 72-day marriage, the “ugly crying” face, her breakdown over $75,000 diamond earrings that were lost in the crystal clear waters of Bora Bora and helping launch her whole family into an incredible amount of success and stardom. Kardashian-West’s repertoire of ventures includes her popular mobile app game “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,” which has over 45 million downloads, her fragrance line KKW Fragrance, her beauty line KKW Beauty and finally her shapewear line, Skims. Kardashian-West is an entrepreneur, a businesswoman and someone who knows how to milk every single opportunity and platform. She is even an aspiring lawyer who has become a powerhouse figure in the fight for criminal justice reform.
Not only that, but this trend-setting family gave us these iconic, Gen Z-defining moments: the quote, “You’re the least interesting to look at”— from when Kardashian-West dissed Kourtney for being uncompromising with their Christmas holiday photo shoot schedule, the cat-fight brawl between Kim and Kourtney—a personal favorite, “Kim, there’s people that are dying” and finally the catchphrase that everyone uses when they are having an Instagram photoshoot: “You’re doing amazing, sweetie,” which Kris Jenner so iconically says to Kim Kardashian-West when she posed mostly nude for a Playboy shoot. Then there is the golden ticket that put the Kardashian-Jenners on the reality TV show map— ”Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” The show first aired in 2007 when the Kardashain-Jenner family had just begun their take-over of Calabasas, and it has propelled each of the KardashianJenners’ careers from regular, privileged rich people to one of the most well-known families that fuels American popular culture and media. In addition, the series is the major generator of E! Network’s ad impressions where 2020 alone saw five billion impressions generated by some form of viewing the show. After 14 years of having their whole lives broadcasted for millions of viewers, a reported $150 million filming deal from 2017 through 2020, a plethora of meme-worthy moments and too many spin-off shows to count, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” will air its last season in 2021. However, there are major criticisms of the Kardashian-Jenners, from not admitting to using lip fillers to being blamed for creating unrealistic and unsustainable body image standards for women to sometimes having poor takes on major political and social issues, like Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad and her tequila brand’s exploitative nature. There is also the denial of plastic and cosmetic procedures being considered culture appropriators and taking tropical vacations during a pandemic. The famous family is not above critique, controversy or accountability. At the end of the day, whether you’re a fan, a hater or indifferent to the Kardashian-Jenner family, there is no way to escape their faces, their many companies and products and their names in the headlines. It is difficult to deny that this family has changed the world of media. As Kim Kardashian-West so unironically once said, “Not bad for a girl with no talent.”
Album: “Hollywood’s Bleeding” by Post Malone Post Malone’s third studio album was released in 2019 and won two awards: the Billboard Music Award for top rap album and the American Music Award for favorite album rap/Hip-Hop. I blame my roommate’s constant blasting of Post Malone while in the shower for getting me into his music. But I couldn’t help it; the subtle hints of pop in his most recent album made me listen to it on my own and now we both enjoy it. This album has heart wrenching break-up songs mixed in with dance tunes. Promotional image for the final season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. (E! Entertainment)
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SUDOKU Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row, column, and 3x3 square must contain each digit. Each Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing.
Answer to previous puzzle 5/6/2021
CROSSWORD Answer to previous puzzle 5/6/2021
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SCIENCE & TECH Researchers discover the implementation of the California Tobacco 21 law is associated with a decreased prevalence of daily smoking in youth Raising the purchasing age of tobacco presents potential to discourage tobacco use in adolescents, according to research from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center BY MICHELLE WONG science@theaggie.org In 2016, California implemented the Tobacco 21 (T21) law that raised the age for purchasing tobacco from 18 to 21 years old. A recent UC Davis study by the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center discovered just how impactful this law was—the prevalence of daily smoking in 18 to 20-year-olds in California decreased to 0.4% in association with this policy. Melanie Dove, an assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at UC Davis Health and first author of the study, explained that tobacco is the single most preventable cause of disease and a serious problem in youth. The T21 policy presents the potential to reduce tobacco initiation and addiction in young people, according to Dove. Despite the significant reduction in 18 to 20-year-olds in California’s daily smoking rate, the study did not find such an association between the policy and non-daily smoking in youth. Dove explained that this is because daily smokers are more likely to buy cigarettes from a store, whereas non-daily smokers are more likely to receive cigarettes from friends or other social sources. In order to help target these non-daily smokers, Elisa Tong, the Stop Tobacco Program leader and medical director, explained that it is important to offer free cessation support along with implementing policies to help support people who smoke. She also expressed the importance of educating the general public about the significant risks associated with non-daily smoking and secondhand smoke. “Reducing the availability of tobacco with T21 may have contributed to reducing daily smoking and consumption of
cigarettes,” Tong said via email. “The hope is that an environmental change will encourage and support individual behavior change.” Dove expressed that in order to continue preventing tobacco initiation and use in youth, it is important to continue enforcing T21 policies and researching what factors would be helpful in improving such enforcement, such as educating tobacco retailers or monitoring retailers to make sure they are not selling tobacco products to underage youth. In addition to the T21 policy, Tong explained that California has passed a ban on the retail sale of flavored tobacco products. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration has recently made a ruling to start taking menthol—a kid-friendly flavor—out of cigarettes and cigars. Dove emphasized the need to research the effectiveness of these new policies as well as find ways to enforce those policies. Since the law has been passed across the entire U.S., Tong also identified the implementation of the T21 policy across the country and its national impact as a future area of research. However, this issue cannot simply be solved with the implementation of policies. Cari Shulkin, a national certified tobacco treatment specialist at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, emphasized that nicotine is a highly addictive substance that can be as difficult—if not more difficult—to quit as alcohol, heroin or methamphetamines. In addition to the substance being highly addictive, she added that those with comorbidities, such as mental health issues, may struggle even more with quitting. Shulkin expressed the need for a combination of medications and counseling to ensure patients are given the highest chance to stop smoking. “For me, if they’re a light smoker or a daily user, [it] doesn’t matter,” Shulkin said. “We’re going to get them connected to resources and medication use, whatever it takes to make sure that
MARIO RODRIGUEZ / AGGIE they become smoke-free or tobacco-free.” Dove also expressed that in addition to policies such as T21, youth need to be educated on the harms of smoking behaviors and provided with evidence-based cessation tools to help them stop smoking. In addition, she emphasized a need to change the social norms surrounding smoking behaviors such as vaping. Dove explained that while smoking cigarettes used to be considered “cool” by society, this standard has slowly faded. Similarly, she believes equivalent public health strategies need to be applied to help reduce all other smoking behaviors. “It’s not just going to take one policy such as the Tobacco 21 policy or one city banning flavors from e-cigarettes,” Dove said. “We really need a whole comprehensive approach to tackle this problem.”
UC Davis Mind Institute transitions to virtual therapy sessions in study to treat anxiety in children with autism Specifying and Treating Anxiety in Autism Research (STAAR) study is testing cognitive behavioral therapy and the medication Sertraline to treat anxiety symptoms BY BRANDON NGUYEN science@theaggie.org Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) express symptoms that can vary from one individual to another. However, one of the most common symptoms that surprisingly has little to no published research in this area is anxiety. According to the Mind Institute on the UC Davis Health website, at least 50% of children with ASD show symptoms of anxiety. In 2018, the UC Davis Mind Institute began the Specifying and Treating Anxiety in Autism Research (STAAR) study and has expanded its operations online to continue conducting research in response to the pandemic. The study is currently testing two different treatments, one is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and the other is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medication called Sertraline, to which subjects are randomly selected and placed. Erika Bickel, the project manager of the STAAR study primarily overseeing the medication arm of the study,
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described the study’s significance and purpose. “A really common symptom and associated issue that kids on the spectrum have is anxiety,” Bickel said. “There’s just not a lot of providers or clinicians who know how to treat anxiety, specifically in this population, and so that’s one of the things we’re trying to figure out with this study. So the hardest part of autism and anxiety is that there’s just not a lot of providers who feel capable and feel ready to administer these treatments, not because they’re not trained on how to utilize things like BIACA therapy, but that they’re just very cautious about how to do it and hope that it’s beneficial in this population.” The UC Davis Mind Institute applies a very specifically adapted type of CBT called the Behavioral Interventions for Anxiety in Children with Autism (BIACA) program. Children selected to be in the therapy group for the study will undergo weekly one and a half hour BIACA therapy sessions for 16 weeks. READ THE FULL STORY ONLINE
Chardonnay grape residue has been found to contain human health benefits Recent study finds the oligosaccharides in pomace could contribute to intestinal health BY FRANCHESKA TORRES science@theaggie.org Chardonnay pomace, which is the solid remains of wine grapes after juicing, has been found to increase health benefits in humans, according to a study written by a food science research team at UC Davis. Oligosaccharides are a type of carbohydrate characterized by 3-10 simple sugars linked together. Chardonnay pomace (or marc) consists of the seeds, flesh and skin of the grapes that are classified as waste and benefit one’s health. The bioactive compounds responsible for the health benefits were uncovered through a seed extract. The pomace has been identified to be a product of winemaking that is about 30% of the grape’s original mass. Along with having health benefits, Chardonnay pomace can also be an ingredient for making grape seed oil, a source of food for livestock, and can be used to produce alcoholic beverages such as grappa. Dr. Daniela Barile, a professor and chemist at the UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology, was one of the authors of the study. Barile is the principal investigator of the Barile Lab, an analytical chemistry lab that focuses on identifying small molecules in food with a bioactive function. According to Barile, having a
bioactive function means that the molecules are not in the food for nutritional purposes, such as calories, but are beneficial for health like feeding the bacteria in a gut. Amanda Sinrod, the lead author on the published paper and a master’s candidate and graduate student researcher in the Barile Lab, led the carbohydrate portion of the research. This consisted of conducting a gross characterization of the grape marc to find the protein, fiber, fat and total carbohydrates, including analyzing the medium-sized carbohydrates called oligosaccharide compounds. Sinrod partnered with the Wang Lab, led by Dr. Selina Wang in the food science department at UC Davis. Dr. Wang’s lab manager, Xueqi Shirley Li, MS, Food Science and Technology, conducted the phenolics research. The main finding of the study was that Chardonnay marc has other properties besides being extremely rich in phenolics, which are wellstudied health compounds. These phenolics have antioxidant, anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties, according to Sinrod. According to Sinrod, the researchers also discovered that the Chardonnay pomace has really diverse and complex oligosaccharides that could potentially improve gut health by encouraging good bacteria to grow. Since wine is a major industry in California,
a large quantity of grape marc is being produced each year. These grape marcs are filled with bioactive compounds that could benefit human health and help feed people. “Food waste is a tremendous issue that the food industry is facing right now,” Sinrod said. The research started in this study is going to continue for another year. Now the researchers have a method to fractionate the two types of bioactive
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compounds, phenolics and oligosaccharides. “The next step is to analyze one fraction of purified oligosaccharides, another fraction of phenolics and then study the two together in vitro in collaboration with microbiologists in our department […] and understand what is the contribution of oligosaccharide and phenolics,” Barile said.
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Despite the UC Davis Cops Off Campus group’s distaste for task forces, Joseph Farrow, the UC Davis police chief, said abolitionists have actively participated in May’s task force and the UC Office of the President’s Campus Safety Symposium. “I know people who are calling for abolition have been well-represented in a lot of those meetings,” Farrow said. “So their voices are certainly being heard. I think people are very keenly aware of the position which they represent.” Many students received mass emails from the UC Davis Cops Off Campus group advertising the walkout and other upcoming events including the May 24 rally. The UC Davis rally and noise demo precedes the culmination of Abolition May with national action among Cops Off Campus groups on May 25, the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. Karan Brar, a fourth-year managerial economics major and chairman of the Davis College Republicans (DCR), said he and his fellow DCR associates were surprised to have received emails from Cops Off Campus. “I think their ideology is definitely destructive and detrimental to communities,” Brar said. “If there is a conversation to be had about policing reform and certain tactics, I think we can have that conversation, but abolition is just an extreme proposal. Even many progressive senators like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—they’re not for it.” Clover recounted that most Americans disapproved of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights era—noting that in a poll of U.S. citizens, a mere 30% indicated that they supported Dr. King. “People have this weird fantasy that things only happen because the vast majority of people support them,” Clover said. “Changes don’t happen because of massive majoratian struggle. They happen because a committed group of people who were right keep fighting.” Cops Off Campus is peaceful and nondestructive, according to Kong. “It’s not divisive or harmful,” Kong said. “I think a lot of people are like, ‘It’s so harmful to us as a community.’ The police have literally harmed members of our community.” The UC Davis Police Department (UCDPD) has described itself as unlike a traditional law enforcement unit. Farrow said that campus police are not on campus to police students, faculty and staff.
Kong said that she is skeptical of UCDPD’s self-described progressive approach. “If they were progressive, then why aren’t they acknowledging the very valid arguments that we are making,” Kong asked. “If they were progressive they would say ‘yeah these kinds of things have happened in the past. They are racist. They are bad.’” Farrow said that UC Davis is in a new era of policing since the pepper spray brutality incident. He advocated for discussion among all parties and taking small steps. “Policing is different today at UC Davis than it was 10 years ago when pepper spray happened,” Farrow said. “It’s just totally, totally different. I don’t know if I’d ever get to the point where I’d actually accept or tell people that abolition is the answer. Certainly on the road to abolition there are meaningful conversations that could take place and we could deal with things in small steps.” UC Davis, along with five other UC campuses, increased UCPD’s 2020-2021 budgets despite summer 2020 protests calling for divestment and reallocation of funds. The greater Cops Off Campus coalition demands that UC and CSU campus police are gone by fall 2021. UC Davis Cops Off Campus organizers said they want to see police off campus immediately, but some acknowledged their vision isn’t one that can be fulfilled overnight. “We are not really setting a timeline on this. We know that it is a long project,” Kong said. “That’s the whole point because abolition isn’t just about getting rid of the police. It’s about getting rid of things that are bad for us and replacing them with systems that are good for us.” Campus police departments are not standard at colleges and universities in other parts of the world, according to Clover. Within the U.S., only 38% of private universities housed a campus police department (compared to 92 percent at public institutions), according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics 2011 survey of campus law enforcement agencies. “Given that the presence of police on campus is just a ludacris absurdity which for some reason people have gotten used to and think is natural and reasonable, I think there is a real chance of getting rid of it because ludacris absurd outliers often melt away,” Clover said. “Whether this administration will be the one that does it, I don’t know, but the point is if they won’t do it, then we’ll get rid of them.”
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It’s important we provide social interaction and engagement with peers, activities that help them navigate the physical campus and create opportunities to connect with resources, faculty and advisors.” Orientation is an important time to make sure a student’s well-being is accounted for as well, according to Wagner. “It’s important that we provide spaces where students can talk about what’s happening with racism and violence, the political and global climate and introduce them to conversations about what the Principles of Community look like in action,” Wagner said. “My advice is to take advantage of the opportunities, resources and people that will be provided during orientation and throughout their time at UC Davis. Students should actively engage with their college and major advisors.” There are multiple resources for incoming
students who are struggling, according to Wagner. “The OLs, advising staff, counselors; everyone wants to support students and see them have a successful first year,” Wagner said via email. “New students may struggle or encounter unexpected challenges but they are not alone and there’s a circle of faculty, staff and other students who will be there for them.” Jennifer Peng, a prospective sustainable environmental design major from Elk Grove, CA, notes the diversity at UC Davis as an important aspect of the university. “I was deciding between another school and Davis, and Davis attracted me more because of [the diversity],” Peng said via Instagram Direct Message. “I really want to meet new people of different backgrounds and ideas and learn about it all! Also, Davis’ dedication to sustainability since it aligns with my major and what I care most about.”
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Harvath has lobbied with UC Davis Health to change this policy successfully, so now any patient who comes to the hospital is allowed to have a support person come into the facility with them. She said that the Family Caregiving Institute is also working in partnership with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to develop services and educational programs to further support family caregivers. “We’ve helped them develop a number of videos that teach family caregivers how to do things like managing continence or help somebody with mobility problems or do complex dressing changes,” Harvath said. “We’re developing consultation services through the clinic, and we hope to be able to implement caregiver support groups. On my big wish list is to develop workshops where family caregivers can come and learn how to do some of the things that I went to nursing school to learn how to do: transferring somebody in and out of bed,
on and off the toilet, helping change a bed when somebody is still in it. I think if we offered some workshops for family caregivers, that might help them feel more confident in some of the care that they provide.” Fedyk said that the pandemic has been especially challenging for family caretakers and that his research has exposed the important role that they play in the health system and how they have had to adapt. “The optimistic [takeway] is that caregivers are very creative,” Fedyk said. “Caregivers, almost by definition, are having to compensate for the absence of formal support by creating all sorts of informal solutions. The pessimistic thing is just seeing how it wasn’t too soon after the pandemic became the pandemic [...] that caregivers really started to get impacted. They ran out of the usual tools and the usual strategies and solutions. They had to balance working full time and being a fulltime caregiver.”
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“It really hurts us because it looks like we have a larger population on campus than we do, and I think it’s hard on our students since we do have small numbers,” Langley said. “If there’s not enough resources on campus currently, how are we expected to get our numbers up? If our Native students don’t feel represented at the university campus, how are we expected to retain and recruit more Native students?” Despite the challenges Native students face in promoting accurate representation of the groups under the broad category of “American Indian/Alaska Native,” Langley is hopeful that McConnell’s efforts will help Native students feel more comfortable and welcome at UC Davis. “I’m really happy that [McConnell] started leading the charge on this data [disaggregation project] because I think we can see how Native students are going to be affected by feeling more
represented in the community with the creation of the Native American and Indigenous Advisory Committee,” Langley said. Because this is the first time a Native American student has undertaken a project of such nature, McConnell sees her efforts as an opportunity to better understand the needs of the Native American student population as she continues serving on the committee. “We’re definitely in the beginning stages of trying to figure out, ‘Is this data even useful?’” McConnell said. “Does it actually reflect what we want and what we need? It’s all part of the process, the birthing of trying out something new, something different and seeing if it’s an effective tool for improving the UC Davis campus for Native peoples and its relationship with Native peoples.”
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Second-hand stores also step in at the intersection where both pricey sustainable stores and cheaper fast fashion retailers fail, offering a diverse selection of styles that shoppers can choose from without compromising their conscience or their wallet. “It is important to me that a brand values sustainability,” Derhartounian said. “I have just had trouble finding sustainable stores for prices I can regularly shop from and that cater to my varying style.”
Today’s fashionistas still have an undeniable infatuation with buying a gross amount of cute clothes for cheap prices. It’s easy to see why—the promise of a cheap investment that will do well on the explore page is very enticing. More and more people are recognizing the urgent need to protect our Earth so that future generations can enjoy the same planet we do, and it seems that this flame is lighting a fire under the sustainable fashion movement.
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to the creators and signatories of the petition. “The University of California should make sure the program Experian is life long, not just temporary,” Antonio Fernandez-Arias, a secondyear clinical nutrition and Chicana/Chicano studies double major said. “This is not going away, information is out there now, and the least the institution can do is extend this program.”
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You could see white families having hard conversations with their kids because they had to, because it was in their face.” According to Mellon-Anibaba, the Solidarity Space also received a grant from the city and was “reactivated” over the past few weeks as the weather became more suitable for putting out public art. Some speculated that the pieces were removed to protect them from the weather, but Mellon-Anibaba stated that this was untrue. “Nothing’s been returned,” Mellon-Anibaba said. “The timing of it was not lost on us. The space was completely erased. Things were cut from the back panel—there were wires holding it up, zip ties—so obviously it was a multipleperson job in the middle of the night so nobody would see it, and they just took everything. They wanted to make a statement, I feel.” Mellon-Anibaba had archived certain pieces at her house over the winter when the weather wasn’t suitable, but was slowly putting everything back with the return of spring. “As things got nicer outside and the antiAsian hate vigil happened, more people started bringing more art,” Mellon-Anibaba said. “It started getting filled up, and art was showing back up the same way it was showing up last summer. It was like another freedom summer, another chance for folks to come together and talk about the next steps forward. Then right before the
acknowledging whose land we occupy is the minimum that we can do to address this long history of genocide and settler colonialism.” SB #94 passed unanimously. Mifsud then provided author’s comments regarding SR #14. “We are using this resolution to advocate for a counselor that specializes in individuals with autism,” Mifsud said. “There have been numerous studies done, that are recorded within this resolution, that show that autistic individuals respond far better to mental health counselors who actually specialize in that field.” SR #14 passed unanimously as emergency legislation. Barneond adjourned the meeting at 10:42 p.m.
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Many members of the UC community have expressed their concern that one year is an insufficient amount of time for free credit protection and have started a petition that demands free credit monitoring for life from the UC system. This petition has over 6,000 signatures and counting. UC Davis students shared similar sentiments
“This bill is consolidating [the Campus Center for the Environment] and the gardens,” Lopez-Perez said. “We’re able to give a lot more resources to both of these units that historically have been critically underfunded.” The bill will also be creating the MHI and IT units in order to provide compensation for those working for the Mental Health Initiative and separate IT from the Creative Media unit. SB #93 passed unanimously. Yalda Saii then provided author’s notes on behalf of SB #94. “UC Davis, just like all institutions in the United States and the country itself, is built on stolen Indigenous land,” Saii said. “The UC system at large continues [to] have a strained relationship with Indigenous communities, and
results of the trial, everything was erased.” Despite this setback, it is clear that the Solidarity Space is here to stay, having secured both a nonprofit fiscal sponsor (International House Davis) and grant funds from the City of Davis. International House Davis Executive Director Shelly Gilbride further explained that the role of a nonprofit fiscal sponsor is to manage funds granted to the initiative. “In order to sustain the space, International House started talking about what needed to happen on the back end administratively,” Gilbride said. “We are the nonprofit fiscal sponsor for the space—a fiscal sponsor is an administrative entity that has the fiduciary responsibility for the initiative. We take care of accounting practices and we hold the Solidarity Space bank account so it can have the administrative backing of an existing nonprofit organization.” Gilbride described why the long-term existence of the Solidarity Space is important for the community. “After the space began, the organizers of the space started thinking about how it can be sustainable for the future and recognized that this isn’t just a one-time need that the Solidarity Space is satisfying, but an ongoing need to support people who may not always feel a sense of belonging in the community,” Gilbride said.
Although the Griffith Lab is just getting started, they are already producing promising data in temperature sensing pathways, though the data is not currently ready to be shared. “My favorite aspect of working with Dr. Griffith is our similar enthusiasm for science makes our lab a fun place to conduct research,” said Cyrrus Espino, a Ph.D. student in the Griffith Lab. Griffith continues to foster that supportive environment in her lab, as her junior specialist Cheyanne Lewis explained. “The thing about starting a new lab is that we are all learning together. When one person learns a new technique or has experience using specific equipment or software, we are able to teach each other and help,” Lewis said. “I love how
passionate she is. Even on days when experiments don’t work or if I’m just having an off day, her energy always lights up the room. She encourages us to do our best, and she gives great advice and guidance. Honestly, it’s nice to see someone who looks like me doing amazing science. She is also the jack of all trades: a neuroscientist, an author, a mentor, a mother and most recently, a plant mom. How she manages everything on her plate, I have no idea, but I admire her a lot for it.” Even after achieving so much, Griffith still looks to others for inspiration. She follows the motto of “put in work and be good at it.” Whether that is applied to her research, being a professor, writing her books or being a mother, Griffith is going to be putting in good work.
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Davidson adds little to nothing as a comedian on SNL, but what Davidson lacks in talent, he makes up for in controversy and tabloid covermaking drama. Davidson began as the Weekend Updates “Resident Young Person,” and has not grown much past that dazed “Chad-bro” aesthetic, so maybe it’s time to move onward and upward (and away from SNL). Perhaps the most upsetting thing about the lingering of Davidson on the show is not Michaels’ desperate attempts to keep ratings up, but the persistence of white male mediocrity within this cast—cue Weekend Update cohost, Harvard-alumni and husband to Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost. The entire point of this show is to make audiences laugh, and it has stood the test of time because it evolves and adapts as the years go on, but something about those types of cast members who produce more laughs with their controversy and awkwardness with risky
subjects (Jost and Michael Che’s joke swaps) doesn’t sit right. Jost has skidded by with his fratty demeanor and bland punchlines, just as Davidson has made it by breaking almost every time he is in a skit, while there are exceptionally funny cast members getting entirely overshadowed by these mediocre, outdated dudes. Perhaps I just have far too much of an emotional investment in SNL, and a personal vendetta against Lorne Michaels, but I feel it is necessary to ask the bare minimum of this show; which is to simply be funny. Save the hosting for those within the entertainment industry, prioritize having a cast that brings in laughs over tabloid stories (yes, this is a jab at Pete Davidson), and maybe even get a fresh face running the show (this is a big request). Billionaire CEOs, presidential candidates or any other unfunny public figure who is constantly in the news do not belong on Saturday Night Live.
12 | THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2021
THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE
SPORTS UC Davis Women’s Lacrosse clears championship hurdle After heartbreak in years past, the Aggies finally overcome them to win the MPSF title BY OMAR NAVARRO sports@theaggie.org The UC Davis Women’s Lacrosse team’s season was not ordinary this year. After having last season cut short and only being able to play six games, the Aggies were determined to make this season count. Throughout the entire offseason, however, the team did not know if they would even get their shot—setting up their most uncertain season yet. “Starting the summer and the fall not really knowing what we were preparing for and how to prepare was the biggest challenge for all teams,” said UC Davis Women’s Lacrosse head coach Suzanne Isidor. “The approach we took since the fall was ‘We are going to be prepared for it.’ We would rather be prepared and then have the crushing blow that it’s not going to happen than it to happen and we look back and think we didn’t do everything we could.” The ability to train individually in small or large groups was something that took a lot of time and progressed gradually. Despite the rigorous routine of class, training for an uncertain season and constant COVID-19 testing and safety precautions, the team took that challenge and remained focused—something that would pay off in the long run. Still, one of the biggest challenges in the pandemic was growing relationships and team camaraderie— an element that would play a large role in a normal year. With the addition of nine new freshmen, the team knew they had to work together with what they had. “It was definitely challenging in the beginning because our team is so close,” senior NPB major Sorana Larson said. “It was especially hard to keep up the chemistry with the freshmen we had never met before, but we put our focus into doing what we could in our small groups. If we could meet in groups of five, we did, or had dinner outside [while] socially distanced. We really tried to work on getting to know each other outside of practice.” From freshmen to upperclassmen, each member played a big part in sticking together even if they didn’t know what the future held. The team did not get the green light for the season until the month of January following their return from break. Now with a season to look forward to and months of training, the Aggies set out to get back what they lost last year due to the cancellation. “We had a great season going last year and then everything got cut short,” Larson said. “We knew we were good, and we knew we could reach new heights that we had never reached as a program before. Especially the four [players] that decided to come back for an extra year, we wanted to create the [best] year possible for our coaches and teammates.” Kicking off their season on Valentine’s Day, the Aggies did not miss a beat. Hosting the Fresno State Bulldogs on opening day, UC Davis came out firing, winning by a score of 20-12. Showing off their high-powered offense and fine-tuned defense, the team was firing on all cylinders as if they had never stopped playing. The following week—still at UC Davis Health Stadium—they were able to cruise to an 11-goal victory over the visiting Oregon Ducks. After an impressive win on the road in Berkeley, the Aggies suffered their first loss of the season against No. 22-ranked Stanford. For the next four games, the team alternated wins and losses. With the season in full swing, it was still much different than what the team was accustomed to in years past. Throughout the year, they had to get tested three times a week, but one of the bigger changes came through travel. Precautionary measures were
The UC Davis Lacross Team in action during a match against Georgetown in 2020. (Agness Song / Aggie File) taken on the road, as the team depended more on buses than airplanes as a way to limit the chance of contracting the virus. What were once team dinners at restaurants turned into takeout food at a park or even eating inside their own hotel rooms. But despite the changes, the team looked at it from a different perspective—one of gratitude. “It doesn’t sound that exciting but just to be able to travel and be together on the bus, stay in a hotel and take all the precautions we needed to take, it was still great,” Isidor said. “We were so grateful to still be able to do it. We got to travel, leave Davis, be safe and compete against somebody else.” Sitting with a record of 7-3, UC Davis had their April 4 rematch against Stanford postponed due to COVID-19 concerns. As a replacement, they were able to schedule a date with the Colorado Buffaloes. After a slow start, the Aggies rallied back but came up just short, falling to Buffaloes by a score of 13-16. Following the loss to Colorado, the Aggies entered what would be the final stretch of the regular season. With two of the final four games remaining against Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) rivals, UC Davis knew they had to win those games in order to clinch an automatic bid in the conference championship game. After knocking off the conference for San Diego State, they were able to handily beat both Oregon and UC Berkeley once again, to set up their final game of the regular season against Fresno State. Having already beat the Bulldogs twice earlier in the season, the third time was no different, as they dominated throughout, winning by a final score of 27-13. At 11-4 and one win away from the MPSF Championship, UC Davis was close to the goal they set out at the beginning of the season. Waiting for them was, once again, Fresno State—who edged out San Diego State to book their spot in the championship. The Aggies were no stranger to the MPSF Championship Game,
as they lost their only two appearances. This was their first championship matchup against Fresno State, and they would not be denied another conference title. Behind big games from the MPSF Tournament Most Valuable Player Sorana Larson, seniors Maddie Myers, Anna Hofgard and junior Kendall Seifert, UC Davis was able to capture its first MPSF Conference Championship in a big 23-13 win. The Aggies also achieved their most wins in a season since 2004, finishing with a final record of 12-4. Led by an experienced group of upperclassmen, UC Davis would not be denied this attempt at the conference championship. “I think from the beginning, we knew we had a special team,” Isidor said. “We had the leadership, we had strong attackers, midfielders, defenders, goalies. We had everything we needed so I think that helped us stay focused. We just kept wanting more. This team was never satisfied. It was always what we would do next. I think that’s what made that championship so satisfying.” The changing landscape of the pandemic during the fall made it hard to predict whether the Aggies would even have a chance at the championship. Now with the title in Davis, the team achieved the goal they set for themselves. Plus, finishing the season with zero positive COVID-19 tests on the team was another accomplishment in itself. Although it wasn’t what UC Davis was used to, the team made the most of it and was able to send the seniors out on a high note. “There’s so much that went into [the season],” Larson said. “We had to work through things that we had never faced or never imagined. But we knew if we put in the work and put in the time, we would reach the goals that we wanted to—and ultimately we did.”
Behind the club: UC Davis Women’s Rowing Training does not stop for this UC Davis sports club despite inability to compete due to the pandemic BY KATHERIN RAYGOZA sports@theaggie.org After high school, many students entering college look to join different sports teams to maintain their physical health or to explore a wide range of physical activities. UC Davis has a wide range of club sports that many people may be unfamiliar with, one of which is rowing. The Women’s Rowing team is a competitive club with a long history at UC Davis dating back as far as 1977. Practicing out of the Port of Sacramento, the club is open to everyone and is another way students can connect with peers. “I remember as a freshman, the first week, just because we wake up so early for practice, I thought to myself, ‘There is no way, I’m not going to be able to do this,’ but it’s so rewarding,” said Jill Kraus, the team’s travel manager and third-year English and psychology double major. “I found my friends pretty fast and that’s what helped me [to keep] going.” Considering that their usual season is during the Fall and Spring Quarters, the UC Davis Rowing Club hasn’t competed since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of the team’s players were juniors when they participated in their last competition—called a regatta—and will be graduating as seniors without competing in their three final seasons. The women’s rowing team had their last formal competition in 2019. Both their Varsity 8+ and Novice 8+ teams competed at the national level for the American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) before the pandemic began. The Novice 8+ successfully landed in third place and raced against some of the best crews in the U.S. Since the pandemic began, all races, events and tournaments, including nationals, have been canceled. The crew team is hoping to potentially compete in a few races before the year ends, but they are aware that things have not returned to normalcy yet. It’s been almost two years since the UC Davis’s Women’s Crew team participated in a race that isn’t a scrimmage. “We’re allowed to travel and race schools in California under certain conditions,” said Kraus. “There’s no one available for us to race, so it looks like we won’t be having any scrimmages and nationals, along with other tournaments that are canceled for the year.” Although this year’s team cannot race, they still practice four days a week, with optional practices on the remaining three days. During practices, every rower is socially distanced and must wear a mask, and all equipment is heavily sanitized. Because of this, rowers aren’t allowed to see each other in person outside of practice. A group of eight rowers requires all of its members to work in unison and be on the same page physically and technically, but keeping in touch with each other has been difficult. “Usually getting to know each other would all be happening in the fall and so by spring everyone is close,” said team member Libby Polston. “Now we’re at the point where we still are getting
to know people and new faces. And because we’re not racing, we haven’t done enough intense things that are fun to bring us even closer together.” Every two weeks the team would get together for a movie night, game night or other typical social activity through Zoom, something that Polston said “wasn’t the same as in person.” Still, the team makes the most out of the situation by connecting with their teammates and creating opportunities to get closer to one another. The team always tries to be filled with energy, especially during the pandemic, and being a good example for the rest of the team is important so that everyone can pass on positivity to one another. “Setting the example, being focused, being driven, putting the work in and then when you have a good row, you tell everyone you
UC Davis Women’s Rowing team. (Rebecca Weissman / Courtesy)
have a good row,” says Polston. “A lot of people who come the first week leave and say ‘oh this is too hard.’ But everything is thrown at you the first few days, then you get the hang of it. Those first few days are a barrier to people and if they get through it, it will be worth it.” Even though this crew team, along with other team sports, have fallen victim to the pandemic, they continue to maintain a determined and positive attitude toward rowing. They all look forward to being in the water and hope that they will be able to participate in another competition soon. *If you would like to contact the team for more information, please visit www.ucdrowing.com.