Osprey Spring 2025

student-run magazine of Cal Poly Humboldt since 1973

small town changes in an ever changing world

FREE SPRING 2025 1

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We would like to acknowledge the fact that this magazine was conceived of and produced on the ancestral homelands of the Wiyot Tribe- territory that was never ceded to the current ruling order, but rather taken as the spoils of genocide. And more than just acknowledging the wrongs of the past, we encourage our readers to take steps to right the future.

It is important to understand the long history in which you now reside and to understand your place within that history. Colonialism is a current and ongoing process, not something of the past. The staff at Osprey put together this magazine being mindful of our present participation.

Learn about whose land you live on.

Pay the Wiyot Tribe’s honor tax. Visit honortax.org to learn more.

Support the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab, right here on Cal Poly Humboldt’s campus.

Support Native American owned businesses.

4. Beneath The Haze: The Unique Experience of Practicing Sobriety in Humboldt

OSprEY CONTENTS

12. Lesbians Let Loose: Being Queer Is The New Trend 22. Roy Tsatoke: A Drop in the Ocean 28. The Food Banks that Fend Off Humboldt Hunger 34. Looking Into 50. Local Night Life: Coastal Snowy The New Era of Small Plover Conservation Town Social Scenes Practices 56. Welcome to the 42. The Impact of new ecosystem: A.I. The Axe: The Effects of Cutting Humboldt 60. Talking in the Football trees

ON THE COVER Vintage football helmet and lumberjack axe photo by Aidan shelton

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

OSPREY SPRING 2025 Carlina Grillo editor-in-chief Jordan Pangelinan layout editor Ryndi Greenwell copy editor Bennett Silberman copy editor Aidan Shelton social media manager

We are so back.

If you’re reading this, let it be known you are a part of Osprey history. Across the last 50+ years of Osprey magazine, last semester was a low point. Due to lack of enrollment, Osprey magazine was cancelled for the first time ever. The fear of being forgotten is everyone’s worst nightmare. We were tasked with making sure that didn’t happen…

And I think we succeeded.

To me, this magazine is like my sweet beloved frankenstein. This team has worked extensively to zap this publication back to life, and I’m ecstatic with how it turned out. For a group of people who were winging it in the face of extinction– similar to the snowy plovers (see: pg 34)– we DIY’d this thing into a masterpiece.

This magazine used every ounce of creative energy our little newsroom could muster, sewing together the bizarre collection of our experiences. If we haven’t scared you off yet (that’s a frankenstein reference), I hope you’ll spend some time in our little corner of the world.

As a graduating senior, it’s been an honor to spend my last semester building this issue from the ground up. This project was exactly what I needed to get out of bed when my senioritis was weighing me down. At the same time, this project has been nothing short of a party. I will miss our time together, but I am glad the memories will live on here, until this paper disintegrates or the computers all crash.

Always remember, student journalism is the best journalism.

With love and a tail wag, Carlina Grillo & MJ

Starsong Brittain distribution manager Luke Shanafelt ad manager and photo editor Jack Hellesoe photographer Leah Spiers photographer Alexis Sarmiento photographer Mary Jane (MJ) newsroom dog Jessie Cretser-Hartenstein advisor all stories and photos written and taken by cal Poly Humboldt Students

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Beneath the haze: the unique experience of practicing sobriety in Humboldt County

by carlina grillo

A

curtain of fog, or perhaps a veil of smoke, appears as you drive North on Highway 101.

As the scent of marijuana comes through the car vents, your destination becomes clear: Humboldt County– the epicenter of California’s emerald triangle. Cannabis farming isn’t just an agricultural pursuit in the area, it’s a culture, a way of life and a societal norm. So– what does it mean to break away from the mainstream that defines your community?

For some, sobriety exists on a spectrum, ranging from a means of survival to merely a trend. With mainstream media normalizing sobriety fads like Dry January and semi-sobriety approaches like California sober, being on the wagon has become more complicated than ever.

In this leafy echochamber, with dispensaries lining every block and college kids looking to party, it can be difficult to imagine a substance free life. Mental health issues run rampant within the area’s stormy and dreary atmosphere, aiding in the struggle for sobriety. Yet for some, it’s the perfect place to recover. For a place tucked away in the trees, Humboldt County has a number of resources for folks looking for support.

For many, Arcata is considered the heart of Humboldt, and the plaza is seen as the heart of Arcata—as well as a trigger for substance use. This town square, historically parallel to a row of dive bars—Everett’s Club, Toby & Jack’s, The Alibi, and Sidelines Sports Bar, most of which have now closed—was dubbed Tavern Row and holds strong memories.

Those who experienced Tavern Row at its peak describe sobriety today as far different than it was then.

Cassandra May, currently a Blue Lake resident, reminisced on the social scene pre-pandemic.

“With those four bars existing, there was more diversity of nightlife. You go to TJs to play pool; you go to Sidelines to dance If you want a quiet place, you go to Everett’s,” May said. “The Alibi [consisted of] people who were getting off work I went there with coworkers.”

People who have moved to Humboldt from elsewhere may remember their first time at the plaza. The bright colors of pastel artwork on the sidewalk, the smell of farmers market produce, hippies slacklining, or maybe a safe place to stand while watching people navigate giant artistic sculptures to the starting

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line of the Kinetic Sculpture Race.

Jim Hight, local author of the fictional book Moon Over Humboldt, paints a nonfictional portrait of how addiction shatters lives and what recovery can look like. Themes from Hight’s own recovery journey appear throughout the novel, especially in Jonah—a young activist battling a marijuana addiction—and Bill—a seasoned logger navigating fatherhood and the grief of loving an addict. The story follows two men who are objectively polarized and how they connect with themselves, each other, and their loved ones through 12-step recovery.

In “Moon Over Humboldt”, Jonah recalls his first encounter with this iconic hub saying, “The town’s central plaza, lush with damp grass. Parents chatted over their strollers, panhandlers held cardboard signs asking for money, clumps of young people lounged on blankets, beating drums and playing guitars, drinkers hid their bottles, and weed dealers tried to look casual.”

It is clear Hight drew from personal experience when creating this scene.

“We were just beguiled by the vibe [of the plaza]. At the time there was an outdoor musician, there were people hanging outThere was this group called Food Not Bombs, that were giving people free food,” Hight said, recalling what inspired him to initially move to Humboldt from Boston. “Then the plaza became a hazardous place for me to go because I was trying to quit pot. And it was clandestine at the time. It was still illegal, mostly. So, you could get it there. You could meet, make connections, and people would offer it to you, to sell to you and you’d smell it all the time.”

One Humboldt bartender, who asked to remain anonymous, recalls their potent Halloween experience as a 17 year old on the plaza. “The entire plaza was packed, everywhere, and then leaking out into the blocks around it, and everyone’s dressed up– full on chaos,” they said. “First of all I was 17, someone just handed me a bong. But if I had wanted acid, if I had wanted coke, it was there. It was in the crowd, it was available.”

From the other side of the bar, this millennial identifies as sober-curious. Someone who currently uses alcohol as a means of networking within their industry. This dramatic realization was a long time coming.

“Humboldt is weird [in the sense] where you run into a ton of people who don’t drink, but they do mushrooms or MDMA. That’s very uniquely Humboldt. I would say just generally, this generation of college kids is not drinking like I did 10 years ago,” they said. “I think, to a certain extent, it is cooler now to be some version of sober.”

Elise Fero, a Cal Poly Humboldt student who moved to Arcata from Colorado while attempting to maintain sobriety, heard the warnings.

“When I first was talking about coming up here, everybody was telling me not to, because they said, ‘Humboldt. Everybody’s smoking. You go downtown and it just smells like weed,’” Fero said. “And when I first came back, I walked downtown, and I was like, ‘Oh my God. This is difficult.’”

Despite the alluring factor and proximity of drug meccas like the plaza, people struggling often find recovery through 12 step programs. Hight and Fero both found comfort in local meetings.

“I was trying to get clean and sober, and it was a difficult place to do that, being a pot addict, but it would

have been difficult anywhere,” Hight said. “I started going to meetings right away, and eventually I found a mentor, a sponsor, and I just kept going and kept going and relapsing. Constantly. I’d get clean for a week, a month, two or three months, and then slip and go back to meetings. And finally, in 2000, I managed to get desperate enough to work the program, hard enough to achieve eventually, one day at a time, you know, long lasting sobriety.”

“I started doing the steps more recently, and that brought a lot of change to my life. Suddenly I felt like I had more coping mechanisms, and I had a community of people who would support me, and I was struggling to find that elsewhere,” Fero said. “Community has been one of the most important parts of getting sober.”

Outside of 12-step recovery programs, like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Humboldt County has unique resources to aid people searching for sustained sobriety. Maril Walpole, owner of Red Phoenix Recovery, decided to launch an online counseling program after the discontinuation of Southern Humboldt’s Singing Trees Recovery Center. Through

her online counseling format, Walpole is able to provide an affordable third option for people who experience anxiety from group meetings or who lack support in the area.

“Think about it here, when you go to college and you’ve got all the pressures and you want to go out, you want to have fun, you want to do self care, but those times are really limited because your workloads are heavy. So what are you looking to do when you want to let your hair down?” Walpole said. “Depression is one of the hardest things up here, because we don’t have sun, and then we’re stuck indoors Oh, it’s too cold, it’s too wet. I’m gonna scroll on my phone because it’s easier. I’m just gonna have a drink because I’m at home and I’m not driving. I can have weed because it’s legal. And all those things are true and legitimate, but it doesn’t mean they’re the healthiest thing. So when it comes time to try to change those, our brain has been hardwired.”

Red Phoenix Recovery supports people who need extra help, but it is not a replacement for fellowship. Walpole has provided support for people who struggle with staying healthy given our climate, including providing light ther-

apy lamps, but she believes that one of the biggest resources is an encouraging community.

“What I believe is you need some type of support system, and what that means to me is the same like-minded people,” Walpole said. “It can be family, it can be friends, it can be whoever, but you’ve got to have people you have things in common with, because if you’re the only sober person and all your friends are drinking and partying, what are you doing? ... We want to feel like we fit in.”

Demonstrating this point, Fero attributes her sobriety to the support from her community while also recognizing the importance in setting boundaries.

“I was having to set boundaries, and I lost a lot of friends because people thought it was boring and it was easier for them to stop talking to me than it was to accommodate friendship. So I learned who were my real friends and who wanted to support me, and the people I have in my life now are everything to me,” Fero said. “My mom was very supportive. She stopped drinking in order to help support me, which was really great, and one of my best friends in Colorado also wasn’t drinking [in solidarity] I honestly would not have been able to do

“I was 17, someone just handed me a bong. But if I had wanted acid, if I had wanted coke, it was there. It was in the crowd, it was available.”

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that [get sober] without them.”

Many people, including Fero, lean on nature as a means of recovery. Whether it’s associating the great outdoors with a higher power or using the wilderness as an escape, Humboldt can serve as an epicenter for nature based recovery. This was the draw of the now-closed Singing Trees Recovery Center. “[Singing Trees was] unique. It’s just different,” Walpole said. “They talk about being spiritual, not religious, and a lot of people confuse the two together and they’re not the same. Trying to get people to understand that they’re different– oftentimes that’s where they’re able to find their spirituality. Because it might be the wind in the trees. Nature is very healing, so being out in nature, I think, gives them a much better opportunity to find their spirituality. But it doesn’t mean it’s the only place.”

Similar to Bill’s higher power in “Moon Over Humboldt”–which is, spoiler alert, the moon– Fero’s higher power is outside the mainstream.

“My higher power has always been the universe, and I have always trusted the universe,” Fero said. “A lot of my experience has been that the universe has three answers: yes, yes but not now, and no but something better is coming. I read that somewhere, and it just stuck with me. I also think everything happens for a reason. I don’t think there’s a specific

plan, but I always think the universe has its best intentions, and I think people are inherently good, so I trust that the universe is like guiding all of us in the right direction.”

“ A lot of my experience has been that the universe has three answers: yes, yes but not now, and no but something better is coming. ” For people wanting to take a more evangelical approach, Mountain of Mercy is a faith-based recovery center with a retreat-like feel. Taking a holistic healing approach, nestled in the hills of Honeydew, this center serves as a unique detox

program within the area. The assistant executive director, Shelby Lindsay, found out about the center through a profound encounter with a higher power, whom she calls God. “Well, it was really a crazy thing, because I never believed in God or anything like that. I was a meth addict from 16 all the way to 27, which is when I came out here,” Lindsay said, who reached out to a sister center, House of Hope, with the intention of escaping the environment she was raised in. “He told me to go to California, but I had no idea where to go in California I got on a Greyhound bus and I rode out here, I did the program, and I’ve been sober ever since.”

Outside of the phenomenal view from the property, Mountain of Mercy is unique because it provides an eight to ten month program that’s available to anyone free of charge. Every center runs entirely off donations and provides necessities to everyone on the property. Additionally, the remote feel of the facility can benefit those looking to be far away from temptation.

“I didn’t know anything about Humboldt County, and I thought it was really weird that the Lord would send me to a place that is known for marijuana to get clean off of weed and meth,” Lindsay said.

Originally from Indiana, Humboldt

has been the only place Lindsay has been able to maintain sobriety.

“You couldn’t ask for a more beautiful place to come heal from all of the crazy that you’ve been through, because addiction world is like darkness, awful stuff most of the time,” Lindsay said. “The way that wildfires have been burning away all of the old stuff and growing something new– it’s just like the process that you’re going through here with the dying to your old self and rebirthing anew” According to Lindsay, Mountain of Mercy prioritizes loving people back to health, “You are loved, you are worthy, you are valuable, we start telling [people] these things every day, even through their hard moments, you know, it’s like, ‘Hey, I know you’re feeling this way, but we love you’” Sobriety takes many forms, from complete abstinence in 12-step programs to harm reduction approaches that focus on minimizing substance use rather than eliminating it entirely. Some people find recovery through spirituality or faith, while others rely on community and leaning into other passions. There’s also a growing “sober curious” movement, where individuals explore life without substances without committing to lifelong sobriety. No matter the path, each person’s journey is valid and shaped by their unique needs and experiences.

Rory Beninger has been a Humboldt resident on and off since the 90s, initially interested in the area because of the cannabis culture. Beninger is a daily cannabis user, with a multitude of disabilities, and advocates for the use of medical marijuana. After a 32 year career of drug abuse, including alcoholism, heroin, and a resuscitation away from death, he reached four years of sobriety this St. Patrick’s day. Now a self-proclaimed mycophile, Beninger enjoys all Humboldt has to offer.

“For the younger generation, come up, do your sh–, do it responsibly. But when you’re ready and you’re in that mindset, being sober up in Humboldt is mind blowing. It’s such a different experience,” Beninger said. “You can be so much more open to everything this area has to offer, and just kind of become a better person.”

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For the non-alcoholics...

The ultimate non-alcoholic beer bracket, brought to you by a house full of girls.

One night, five housemates, and 16 non-alcoholic brews.

In a march-madness style tournament, we used democracy to decide which beverage was the ultimate go-to designated-driver-approved bellywash.

notes from the tasters...

• Clausthaler Original

“Sweet, tastes like pot, boring bottle, really good, raisin taste, gets old?”

“Better, hoppy (in a weed way), 1G of protein, sweeter, cool shape, wheaty”

• Fresh Squeezed IPA by Deschutes Brewery

“IPA, pretty can, tastes good, nostalgic of times at the Wild Hare” “Hoppy, pretty can, sour, bad” “Bitter, purple hazy?, cool can (def an IPA)”

• Upside Dawn Golden by Athletic

Brewing Co

“Why millennial graphics” “Chill, not too beer-ish, light, sippable” “Refreshing in a beer way. I like it!”

• White Wheat Beer by Sober Carpenter

“Water? Ginger Ale? Bad!” “Watery, ginger, really cool can (lowkey refreshing?)”

• Stella Artois 0.0

“Hmmm. No” “Yum. Light, classic, interesting bottle with a paper seal, smells bad, good carbonation”

• Heineken 0.0 “Whatever”

“Classic, sippable, beer but good, love bottle”

• Just the Haze IPA by Samuel Adams

“No. Sour. Yuck” “Awesome can.

Toast with jam?”

“Patriotic can, juice?

Meh”

• Lagunitas IPNA

“Love bottle & logo.

YUM!!!”

“Forever fave” “Oh yea baby! Best beer eva!”

“Classy bottle, love dog, best one so far”

• Trail Pass IPA by Sierra Nevada

“BOO” “Yuck, beer, tastes like outside– not in a good way.”

“Pine trees. Refreshing, so good!”

“Okay… like if [IPNA] sucked”

• Premium O’Douls Golden Brew

“UGLY A– BOTTLE.” “Can is mid– doesn’t look like beer. Mid” “Eh, not beer?

Citrus?” “[Step-mom] core can. Too light, I don’t like it” “Okay can (very millennial), fruity, good smell, yummy”

• Weihenstephaner Wheat Beer

• Fieldwork Light American Pils

• Brother Maker Double IPA by Barrel Brothers Brewing Co

“Good. Cool name” “No. Beer yuck.

Gross idk. Ugly can” “It’s OK. Not bad, but I wouldn’t buy it” “Hella cool name, ugly can, very bitter”

“+1 Ireland. Boring a– bottle” “Hint of pennies” “Tastes like actually nothing I’m confused?

Sparkle water” “LITERALLY PENNIES??? No thanks. & I like pennies… Cool bottle” “NO. NO WEINER HYMEN” “Penny, olives? Bad” “Why. Olive fizzy water? Not sweet.”

“BAD!! EW!! VOMIT!” “OLIVES & PENNIES??? Worst beer I’ve ever had. Okay bottle”

• Einbecker Brauherren Beer

“Curvaceous. Ugh” “$3. Heineken but stronger. Awesome bottle” “Not fun. Beer yuck. Not sweet, sour. Cool bottle” “Like Hein but worse” “Thicc a– bottle”

• Asahi Super Dry 0.0

“Alright, not too beer, doesn’t linger. Pretty fonts/bottle” “Cool font, really pretty bottle, wheaty pennies”

• Corona Non-Alcoholic

“Yup yup. Mexico let’s go. Beer good. Love bottle” “So good! Tastes like real Corona” “Tastes like regular Corona, GOD I LOVE CORONA”

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Lesbians let loose

BEING QUEER IS THE NEW TREND

by alexis sarmiento 13

L

eaving Southern California a bisexual and arriving up north to realize I am actually a lesbian was one of those liberal school side effects my parents joked about, hoping it wouldn’t happen to me, but it did, and it was worse than they thought.

I come from a very religious household, six girls, no queer people in my family, and hardly any queer friends. That is unless you count girls kissing each other while drunk in which case, yes, loads of queer friends. Ultimately, it was a cultural shock leaving SoCal and finding myself in a new social setting. To find out that queer people did exist, and I could find community amongst them was refreshing. Navigating this scene, however, was a bit different than I had imagined.

At times it felt like a ghost town. I found myself constantly playing hide and seek trying to find all the lesbians. I felt like this may be a dilemma only I had, but once I found out that other queer people have also experienced this I realized more people have adapted to these key queer details than I had thought.

This is my take on the Humboldt Queer scene, what I identify the scene as and the harmful ways society has picked up on queer motives and attributions– making it seem like a “trendy” lifestyle.

Using personal testimonies and diving into topics like queer baiting, queer community, and queer stereotypes, I want to spread awareness of this issue while providing resources in humboldt.

Queer Baiting “Because Humboldt is so queer a lot of straight people want to tap into that, but then they don’t realize if you try to tap into the queer culture you actually have to be queer. It’s not just a presentation and a way to look,” Chloe Vaisset Favuel, second year art education major at Cal Poly Humboldt, said.

We have fallen into a scene where it is almost like a trend to wear queer clothing, to be queer, and to be submersed in the queer lifestyle. That is not to say that the progression we have made in the last few years to find this representation has amounted to nothing.

However, I feel people find comfort in a label that they can admire, appreciate, consider, but never actually act on.

“I feel like, as a person that looks

gay, people come up to me trying to be friendly because they want a gay friend.

And I would be somebody to solidify their gayness, but when it comes down to it they wouldnt even want to try to be with a girl, I have alot of friends that don’t ever mention having a boyfriend, making it seem like a secret,” Vaisset Favuel said.

“I think there is a lot of queer baiting here, I honestly get confused a lot because I can’t tell if it’s just me in my head or if it’s the way that the people are presenting or acting towards me,” Cash Fry, a former Cal Poly Humboldt student, said.

The Independent, a British news source, defines “queer baiting” as “a term used to describe purposely teasing the possibility of being queer in an effort to appeal to audiences.”

It’s not a crime to be a flirty person, but acting romantically towards someone that is openly queer, for your own benefit, is like a slap in the face. Especially when the queer person in question uses your dialogue as an indication that you’re interested, when really you were just bored. Maybe you are bored and curious, but maybe that curiosity needs to stay in the closet until you’re ready for your own deep internal reflection.

What I’m saying is, not being sure of your

sexuality is okay– but being sure of your sexuality and still playing mind games on people that are queer, is not.

The Bisexual Epidemic “I wanna think that I see a lot of lesbians but they’re probably just fake bisexuals, I also think that I see alot of gay men, but then they have girlfriends,” Vaisset Favuel said.

This leads to the next identification of “the fake bisexual”.

To prefer this is in no way hate towards bisexuals, I too was a bisexual up until the end of high school, you are valid! But people that use this label without any intent of holding equal feelings and actions towards both sexes, are not!

“I define a fake bisexual as someone who has more of a preference for men, which is fine, but when they get with a woman it’s like, ‘oh i’d kiss her! I’d make out with her!’ But it’s like the emotional sense is not there, it’s mostly physical, so like if it’s all physical, are you truly a bisexual?” said Jahni Caldwell, a third year mechanical engineering major.

It’s hard to hear the same tale of a bisexual woman that just so happened to fall in love with a man, while all their past relationships were men as well, and their next partner will most likely be a man

it wasn’t just a trend to them and an actual preference that they live every day with.

So PSA to you fake bisexuals, go find a new trend! Or actually kiss the opposite sex without having to take a shot or two perhaps?

Religious Restrictions I am not invalidating anyone’s real experiences though. I come from a very religious household, and grew up very Ccatholic. I understand the pressure and difficulty of coming out. How hard it can be to admit being gay to yourself after years of religious trauma . The feeling that you have to marry a man, have children, and do all the traditional religious normatives or else you may be casted out by your family, viewed differently, or forced to live a life that you don’t want. I completely see you, and I know that when the time comes for you it will, and the words concerning “fake bisexuals” are not for you because you know your position and you know what’s at stakecost.

This goes for all the different positions people may be in that limits them

too, big yawn. Maybe they think women are just scarier than men to approach, which is true, but that doesn’t mean use that reasoning to only pursue men, and never actually pursue women. Potentially finding out you may be straight, is very valid, go you! just don’t get any other girls’ hopes up in the process!

In terms of bisexual men, not too much to comment on this because I love yall! The same thing applies though, using the label of “bisexual” as a way of getting closer to gay women, to women in general, because hey, you like men too so it’s okay to be close and flirty. That being said, bisexual men please stop flirting with lesbians, yes you are gay, no you are still not a woman, unless you identify as one! But if not I’m sorry but we are unfortunately still not attracted to you in that way.

Maybe I’m just petty because I got my hopes up with one too many of these “bisexual women,” or maybe I just find it unfair towards women and men that actually do identify as bisexual who have to fight to validate their label without people doubting them. To prove that

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do so with the most abundant support.

Because we’ve all been there at some point, and everyone’s timeline is different, just know that you have the queer community at Humboldt, and all the love and support in the community.

from pursuing the people they want to pursue, and in those cases the “fake bisexual” is not you. Because you know that if you could be with the person you wanted you would, it is more a wake up call for people that don’t have an excuse.

People that make it harder for other queer people to experiment with their sexual preferences, because for them, they know that’s not really their preference at all but they enjoy the flirt. People go years trying to figure out their sexuality, and some don’t get the chance to go after what they want because of their

own restrictions and understanding the difficulties that coming out can bring.

So if you are sure of your sexuality, don’t harm someone else’s experience, or play mind games with the possibility of being queer and what they want, when you know you can’t be that, and know you don’t fully want that. If you know you have your own reasoning for not being able to fully commit to the queer lifestyle or fully come out then you know “fake bisexual” is not targeted towards you. I hope that when you are able to express yourself you can

Queer Fashion “A lot of fashion trends start with queer people, but then it gets popularized by straight people so it gets harder to pinpoint who’s gay and who’s straight,” Favuel said when asked about queer fashion. “Since a lot of straight people are using our trends because they think it “looks cool”, it makes it harder for us to find gay people because straight people look gay now.”

It’s not all lost hope though, it’s easier to figure out someone’s sexual preference based on key details concerning their style. What identifies someone’s style as queer you may ask? Well since around the 1970s, queer people have used “flagging” and “coding” to signal to other queer folks of their preferences.

During a time where you were bashed and harmed for your sexual orientations, signals like these were essential to pursue the gender and person you wanted. According to History Project.org the “hanky code” was one of the first sartorial codes to identify queer identity and sexual preferences. Though the handkerchief isn’t as commonly used to this day, there are many other indicators that the queer community has adapted to signal to others.

For lesbians and queer women we have the carabiner, septum, piercings, different colored box hair dye, signals to let all the queer women know that we all want the same thing: eachother. Having your nails shortened is a good indicator, as well as wearing rings. Rings being a queer fashion concept dating back to the mid 20th century, wearing them on your thumbs to present neither masculine nor feminine. Butch lesbians wore rings for the practicality, same reasoning for them working blue collared jobs, to not appear as masculine or feminine, but still get the point across that they are into women without the repercussions. Although hands are not the “lesbian phallus”, they are still essential components to the lesbian identity.

“Piercings associate a lot with

queerness, jewelry, and stuff like that, so fashion definitely, I feel like, helps scope out who might be gay and who isn’t,” Caldwell said, when asked about queer fashion. “The carabiners, the carharts, stuff like that, you’re like, ‘oh she’s definitely gay’.”

Lately, a lot of queer women have started getting the wolf cut, a shag, or a pixie cut. I have fallen victim to it as well, but I know when I see a fellow diy wolf cut that there is likely a chance we like the same things…

“Fashion is fashion, so cool, express yourselves, but at the same time it might be deceiving, so wear what you want to wear, just know you may attract the gays,” Caldwell said.

This isn’t to say that owning these clothing articles or having a trendy haircut makes you a lesbian, but that these “signals” have become more or less the lesbian culture, so don’t get offended if you get hit on by another queer person, honestly you probably should have seen it coming walking out in Doc Martens and a wife beater.

Everyone becomes friendly fast at a tight knit, small college campus. Also, you could easily be rejected because– more often than not– the person you were getting along with and flirting with wasn’t actually queer, but enjoyed the attention.

Even scarier, the person you are interested in could have already been with a few people you know, and maybe you find out they’re the person your roommate told you about that broke their heart.

But hey, there’s always more fish in the sea right? Well actually hardly, so maybe just take your chances, it’ll make for good lore.

Everybody knows everybody in the queer dating scene!

“The dating scene is all connected, everybody knows everybody, it’s hard to connect because it’s like, oh that’s my friend,” Caldwell said.

Attending school in a rural, and sometimes unknown, location like Humboldt, which hosts around 6000 students, it is very easy to know everyone in your classes, everyone in your major, and everyone at the school. That being said, the dating scene can be difficult when the person you are interested in most likely has been with all of your inner circle, or is now in a relationship within the first semester of freshman year.

“I wouldn’t say it’s the best,” Fry said when asked about the dating scene. “I get very confused about the gay men here, I honestly couldn’t tell you who they are and where they are.”

“Since the queer scene in Humboldt is so prevalent, it’s hard to find people that don’t know you, because everyone is so interlinked here,” Vaisset said.

The dating selection at Cal Poly Humboldt is so minimal that it’s difficult to try to pursue someone without them thinking you are just being friendly.

Certain queer identities can hold limitations Though the queer community at Humboldt is very diverse, there are still limitations for certain sexualities. The reality of this new “queer trend” is that people outside of the community get to be the ones that determine what is “cool.” They determine what should be taken from queer culture and presented in the media. That leaves a lot of room for many people in the community to be unrepresented or not given the same energy of approval as gay men, bisexuals or lesbians. Lesbians have been more (to an extent) accepted through perversions and fantasies that are usually held by perverted men. The idea of two women making love, is appealing to men, and the general public, so the sexuality isn’t as bashed but rather has become a kink in the media. Bisexuals run into this dilemma as well, where many women find out their partner enjoys the thought of them being interested in women, and the men in the relationship often fetishsize about it. As for gay men, they have been more socially accepted than other queer identities through all the exposure and communality throughout recent years.

Though still a very oppressed sexuality, they do not see as much hate and backlash compared to trans men and women.

There is no contest on what sexualities are more oppressed than others, but it is good to be aware of the sexualities that are undermined in the media and queer culture, which is usually through the lens of people who aren’t queer.

All in all I think it’s disheartening to see white men, privileged people, and non queer people, use these forms of“queer culture” to their benefit. They get the privilege of getting praised, especially in the media, while marginalized groups and people of color get constant hate and shame. That doesn’t mean that this language, this media, this clothing, this culture, is completely exclusive to the queer community, but rather that one must acknowledge where this culture came from, what it means, and just a reminder to be aware that what may be a cool, fun, trend to you, is someone’s reality, and maybe it’s time to see what new trend is out there that doesn’t undermine someone’s real, truthfully hard identity. It wasn’t a phase mom! and it wasn’t trends either!

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From

to F

the Story Behind Don’s Donuts

m Surviving Pol Pot T

Feeding a Town

o many people’s surprise, some of those who hold our community together have lived through some of the worst atrocities in human history. Rasmey Chum, who has run Don’s Donuts with her husband, Kim since 1992, is one of them.

As a child in Cambodia during the late 1970s, she endured the reign of terror under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities in an effort to create a classless society of rice farmers. An estimated 1.5 to 2 million people were killed — about a quarter of the population. Every day was a fight for survival.

A reporter from Osprey Magazine met with Rasmey to hear about her experience.

Rasmey: When you are captured, when you’re in there, you don’t know, you just survive day by day. So I have no idea until, you know, I’m here and calculating all the numbers of how old I was and stuff. But when you’re there working from morning to dawn, you really don’t know what day it is because every day is the same day. It’s like a routine thing every day, seven days a week, you work, you get food. You don’t work, you don’t get food.

Osprey: What was your family’s background before the Khmer Rouge took over?

by aidan shelton

Rasmey: My dad was a military doctor, so he’s at a military base, which is probably a half an hour from where my grandparents lived. My mom is from the city and my dad from Providence. I mean, he was an exchange student to Paris with my uncle who is still there and then we lived in the city and then basically the military base and I just converted from between the military base, between my grandma’s house, which is behind the big hospital… When the war [was] happening, my mom just had my sister in April so she was just born like three months before… We were well off. We had like a driver and we had like a servant and my mom doesn’t know how to do anything and we have to learn all that. So when it happened, all I know is that the bombs that happening and I just remember, you know, like hearing the bomb and the sh-- and we were kind of hiding underneath and we gather, so the first thing we did was escaping so once because you see like everything blowing up and then we kind of underneath the metal shed.

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Osprey: What do you remember about leaving the city?

Rasmey: Dead people, on the street and I remember I had to hold my uncle’s hand at the time and he was very protective and especially of my little sister that was just born. And I was holding my little brother’s hand who’s about three years younger than I am. So, um, yeah, there was a dead body on the road still, and we were navigating to get out to the countryside… So we would have to jump in the bushes and like, you know, we’re not only people that [are trying to] escape and there’s a bunch of other people that we’re just kind of following where they’re going… That’s why I hate camping because it reminds me of escaping.

Osprey: What else do you remember about your family’s attempt to escape?

Rasmey: The first thing we have to do is go to my dad’s hometown, which is in Providence, which is probably about four hours away from the city. So we went there and we couldn’t find my dad, but we were there first in his hometown, because the war happened to cities first, so the Khmer Rouge wasn’t in the countryside yet, at that time. So when we got into the countryside, we waited for like a couple months for my dad and he finally found us and my dad knew my mom just had a baby too, so he picked [up] a bunch of baby formula on the street… They invaded the city first because they know that in the city there’s the educated. You educated, they execute you. So my dad, at that time, finally changed his identity into a motor pedalist driver. That was his new identity and he had to bury his glasses. So my grandpa went to talk to the leader of the Khmer Rouge. She said no, you can’t stay here, we want to see who it is. That’s when we started escaping from the well at nighttime, but when we were escaping, they finally caught us… My grandpa didn’t leave because they weren’t executing them or anything like that because they’re not educated.

Osprey: What did your family do to avoid being targeted?

Rasmey: So my dad had to downsize how he looked and had to not wear glasses.

He had to bury his glasses and just burn all their wedding pictures. So we didn’t have anything when we were escaping, we only have jewelry, and because my mom didn’t know how to do anything because she was

so spoiled in Cambodia, she didn’t know how to do any countryside work. So we had to trade for food, so any jewelry, the dow that my grandparent gave us, we have to trade them a little bit at a time for food, and once it went out, my mom traded for like a fishing net… I ate everything I could find.

I eat a snake and I eat, you know, a water snail. Any food I can find, especially when I was escaping.

Osprey: What was life like as a civilian under the Khmer Rouge?

Rasmey: We have to cut our hair short.

The United Nations took a picture of us before we came here. I only have one picture of my childhood, which the Khmer Rouge

took for identity. They dye all clothes black so we have to wear a scarf and we have to wear black clothes only, any clothes you have to dye it black so we would all wear black clothes. They assigned us jobs, who does what. It’s just like the Nazi’s.

Osprey: How do you think the Khmer Rouge were able to rise to power so quickly?

Rasmey: I think the reason it happened was because of the bombing happening during the Vietnam War and I think they actually bombed our country and instead of Vietnam, so they bombed our country, it gave the Khmer Rouge the opportunity to invade it… Like I say, it’s not anybody’s fault but the leader. I remember a lot of young Khmer Rouge at the time, they were just doing their job, you know, they’re young and they were trained to execute. They were trained to kill people and then their gun is their power and they’re learning for that.

So a lot of them don’t have a choice either.

They’re just trying to survive themselves… you either join them or you die.

Osprey: How did you end up making it to America?

Rasmey: We escaped, when we were taking my dad away, the leader of whoever took my dad away to help his family or one of his crew members helped us escape from the Khmer Rouge and then he helped lead us to the road to [the] United Nations, which is the campground. So we were the first group at the end of 1979. We were the first group to emerge into the Thai boulder.

That’s where the United Nations set up a ground for the refugee people. And that’s when they give you a number in sections and then do your interview, you know, and my age isn’t my real age and you can just give them any number you want because there is no [verifiable] identity. So a lot of our age isn’t real, it’s kind of made up, our date of birth isn’t real. We can just give the United Nations anything you want so once we fill that out, the United Nations get all of our information, they found a country who wanted to take us and where we wanted to go so that’s how we got to Oregon. Our sponsor was in Oregon.

Osprey: How long did you stay in Oregon before moving to Eureka?

Rasmey: Two years. So we got to Oregon in January of 1981 and we were there until 1983 and then we moved to Eureka because my dad says in California the government helps and he wanted to go back to school because he couldn’t afford to go to school in Oregon and work. So we had five kids at the time. I did not know a word of English when I came to Eureka. All I know is bullsh– I didn’t even know my ABC’s… So we moved from Oregon to Eureka, Eureka to LA, LA to Modesto, but once I got married I moved back up here.

Osprey: How did you end up running Don’s?

Rasmey: I was a nurse major, and then when I came up, Kim was a business major at CR and I was a nurse major with my dad in Modesto. After I was finished and I worked at a Medical Center at postpartum and then I moved up and he didn’t ask me to help him with anything so I started applying at Mad River and that’s when I got offered a job at Mad River and then we bought Don’s right away. It was seven months later that we bought Don’s. We bought Don’s and then he asked me, hey, can you work blah, blah, you know, we don’t have anybody to work, and we can’t afford to hire anybody because which we can’t, you know, with donuts, you can’t afford to hire anybody so I have to let go of my hospital [job] and help him out. I sit there after 10 o’clock there’s no one coming in. I’m like, you know, we’ve got to do something else. You cannot live off of just donuts. That’s when we start expanding.

Osprey: How did you start expanding?

Rasmey: The first thing we did was add espresso in, that sold pretty good at the time, so changing stuff and so on. Then we do sandwiches and bagel. The first thing we did was bagel. You know, I’m like, okay, we gotta do something for lunch. So after we did the sandwiches, which took me about seven to nine months to do the right pickle and slowly a little bit at the time… Just testing it, seeing how it goes. And we couldn’t afford to hire anybody else so it was just me and Kim would bake at night and then he’d go help me before lunch hour. Once that picked up after two years and that’s when we started hiring a part-time job to help us out. And after that, I’m like, okay, let’s do

something else, and we’re not gonna grow anywhere else… So I went down, I took Tanak and Tani down too because we never took vacation. We were always stuck there so when the kids went on vacation, we usually sent them with the family and I’d just drop them off. And so I went to try out the pizza places at Morgan Hill and I told him, look, you gotta try this pizza, the dough is different. And that’s when we decided to do something for dinner, because you already rented the place, you know, might as well add something else to it, you know, who’s going to eat donuts for lunch and donuts for dinner? That’s when we start expanding that for something for dinner.

Fast-forward to today, and Don’s is a

core business on Arcata’s plaza. Known for donuts, specialty pizza and Asian-style sandwiches, Don’s is the spot many people rely on after a night out. Not only do they serve customers at their own location, they also supply donuts to coffee shops and gas stations across Humboldt County.

Kim and Rasmey came from unimaginable hardship and built a thriving business — a true embodiment of the American dream.

So next time you’re at Don’s late at night, remember: the person serving you that donut might have survived things that would make your problems seem small by comparison. Everyone around you is living a life just as complicated and chaotic as your own.

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Roy tsatoke: a drop In The Ocean

A

by bennett silberman

n unlocked door. An empty house.

A phone pinged in the middle of nowhere, never again to be seen.

A mother left wondering what happened to her son, and a community wondering where their friend is.

This is what happened to Roy Tsatoke, but his case is not an isolated one. Native Americans in California are seven times more likely to go missing than the general population—but so often these statistics remain just numbers. Until something happens that brings it closer to home.

“I feel like it has to do a lot with his age and him being Native.. Him being Native is enough to be like, oh, he probably just ran off… I feel like that was the first assumption that I got from law enforcement,” Atira Montgomery, one of Tsatoke’s closest friends, said.

This sentiment was a common one felt by those closest to Roy in the days and weeks following his disappearance. Their frustration at the efforts to find Roy Tsatoke is amplified by fond memories of his character.

Depending on who you ask, you might get a variety of responses to the question of what Roy is like. “He could be a hippie one day and a cowboy the next, or just an old soul or really high tech,” Trinity Tsatoke, one of Roy’s sisters, said.

“He knew that he could charm anyone…

Even the way he would walk, he just walked like no one was around and everybody could see him and knew him,” T. Tsatoke said. “He could get along with everyone. It doesn’t matter where you came from, what you look like, what you’re going through. It was like he could just strike up a conversation with you.”

“I feel like he’s the kind of person who would definitely do anything for me, or for you,” Montgomery said. “If you’re friends with him, he would do anything for you.

There was this cool rock that I found [on the beach] and I forgot it when we hiked all the way back, and we get back to my house in Arcata, and he drove me back the next day to go get it… Little things like that are big things. They’re very big things, these little things.”

Montgomery helped lead the drive to print and distribute fliers raising awareness about Tsatoke in the days following his disappearance. They were also involved in the community-led search effort as well as in planning an upcoming show to raise

awareness and funds for Roy Tsatoke’s case.

“At first, there was some help from a few of my friends, but there was not as much support that we need[ed],” Montgomery said.

It is a tale as old as time; posters become waterlogged, fly away in the wind, or are covered up by posters anew. What remains, however, are the endless unanswered questions. What happened to Roy Tsatoke?

The months following his disappearance have been marred with frustration and devoid of any conclusive answers.

While protocols such as the Feather Alert warning system have been devised in order to deploy the adequate resources in a swift manner, some combination of hesitation and incompetence allowed for Roy’s case to seemingly slip through the cracks.

This initial hesitation to respond to Roy’s disappearance allowed for precious weeks to slip by before any kind of adequate deployment of resources was initiated. The Feather Alert, an interagency emergency notification protocol specifically designed to help locate at-risk Indigenous people, was only issued, after much tug-ofwar, two weeks after his disappearance.

“They refused to issue or initiate the Feather Alert,” his mother, Heather Allen White, said. “And I got really frustrated because they kept telling me ‘he doesn’t meet the criteria’ and I would ask them [what the criteria was] and they didn’t know.”

Studies have shown that the chance of solving a missing persons case decreases by roughly 50% if a person isn’t found within the first 48-72 hours of their disappearance. By waiting two weeks before issuing the Feather Alert, crucial time for finding Roy Tsatoke was irretrievably lost.

Owing to the missing’s nomadic nature and the lack of concrete evidence pointing to foul play, the case remains a low profile missing persons case even as his mother pleads for it to be upgraded to a criminal investigation.

According to those who knew him most, what happened on the night of September 22nd was most unusual, and worthy of far more attention and investigation than what it has since received. While he was known to bounce around, those who know him say that Roy Tsatoke would never vanish without contacting his family or making sure his beloved dog, Buck, was cared for.

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“The last text message that I received did not sound like how my son communicates to me,” White said.

“Between 5:00PM and when his phone shut off, he sent a series of messages to random people.. Not me, not our sister, not mom… It was very random and all of his friends were like, ‘hey, buddy, what’s going on? This doesn’t sound like you,” T. Tsatoke said.

“It didn’t sound like him. [Trinity] would have gotten one, the other sister would have gotten one. There would have been some message about Buck, his dog,” White said.

“Because Roy always told me- ‘take care of my dog’ or ‘check on my dog,’ you know?” T. Tsatoke said.

Nevertheless, Buck was found alone in the house Roy was supposed to be watching over, his beloved caretaker nowhere in sight, phone shut off and his friends and family growing frantic.

In the midst of these suspicious circumstances, his mother and sister recounted their frustrating dialogue with law enforcement and their seeming unwillingness to take action.

“There’s no way my son is going to leave a place he was house sitting and travel back to Redding, home, without his keys, or his shaving bag, or his dog- he wouldn’t have gone anywhere without his dog,” his mother said, remembering her frustrating dialogue with law enforcement. “And [the police] are like, ‘Well, when people aren’t right, they’re going through an emotional crisis..

You know, they’re not doing typical behavior stuff.”

The Arcata Police Department, who was in charge of leading the investigation into Tsatoke’s disappearance, was contacted multiple times for comment, but declined to respond.

There are a variety of aspects in MMIP (missing and murdered Indigenous people) cases that contribute to their high rates of occurrence and low rates of resolution, and failures to find answers often can be attributed to much more than just shortcomings or conspiracy from any one branch of law enforcement. One major difficulty in ensuring an adequate and timely response is the labyrinthian nature of the interactions between tribal, state, and federal authorities.

“When someone goes missing in Indian country… we have this wiffle waffling back

and forth between who has jurisdiction,” Alanna Wright, an MMIP drone pilot whose locus of operations is focused around the Yurok reservation said. “Does the sheriff have jurisdiction? Does the tribe have jurisdiction? At the end of the day, the only one who suffers is the family. And we’ve had it before really wiffle waffle back and forth between jurisdiction. Sheriff, the tribe, sheriff, the tribe. [Is it a] Hoopa tribal member missing on Yurok Indian country?

Is it Hoopa? Is it Yuroks? Is it the sheriff?

Who knows? Nobody knows. Is it the FBI? Nobody knows.” This lack of coordination between agencies makes an effective and hopefully successful search more difficult.

But it was not always like this. Prior to the passing of Public Law 280 in 1953, the relationship between tribal, state, and federal authorities was much more clear.

State and county police rarely made an appearance on Native lands, and pressing issues like missing persons cases were nearly always handled by federal authorities. Since Public Law 280 went into effect, however, cases like Roy’s enter into a confusing and interlocking web of sheriff departments, local police departments, tribal police departments, and federal law enforcement agencies, all competing for primary jurisdiction. Native American activists are petitioning to have Public Law 280 repealed, and argue that it was born out of an effort to eliminate Native nations and assimilate Native people into white America.

The legacy of the genocide of Indigenous peoples is expressed not only through these hostile legal frameworks erected or the intergenerational traumas like poverty and addiction haunting Native communities, but also in the types of cases that receive the most attention by the media, and thus, the most resources which are necessary to solving these cases.

“Most high profile cases that I see are white, at least the ones that hit national news,” Wright said.

Without the attention and resultant mobilization arising from a nation-wide media frenzy, people are forced to take matters into their own hands, often using a variety of unconventional means.

Born out of this failure to gather adequate resources through pre-existing channels was the creation of the Yurok Tribe’s search-and-rescue drone program. Frustrated by the lack of progress

in the search for Emmilee Risling, another missing Indigenous person, Wright started the drone program back in 2021, which has since grown from its humble beginnings.

“I like video games and stuff, let’s try drones, so we ended up getting funding and they let me run with it,” Wright said, in

“There’s no way my son is going to leave a place he was house sitting and travel back to Redding, home, without his keys, or his shaving bag, or his dog- he wouldn’t have gone anywhere without his dog.” reference to how the program’s beginnings.

Since then, the tribe has procured a variety of aerial drones with thermal and ground-penetrating-radar capabilities, and even has an underwater drone on the way.

They were utilized in the search for Roy Tsatoke, but were unfortunately unable to find anything.

The search for answers still continues, however, as Roy’s family members have, with the help of the community around them, retained the services of a private investigator. A benefit show is being arranged, happening on June 7, 2025 at the Eureka Veterans Hall, with doors opening at 5:30 p.m. and a total of six bands playing.

The proceeds from this will go towards the retaining of these private investigative services, as well as supporting his family and friends.

Measures like this, while inspiring hope, are not what communities should be forced to rely on when one of their own goes missing. In light of the failure of law enforcement and the media to give this case and others the attention it deserves, the need for grassroots organization becomes increasingly clear.

“We need some more resources,” Wright said. “It’s just plain simple- there’s no resources… I would like to encourage people who are able bodied who have some free time to scrape up to devote to helping, in any way they can, whether it’s joining a search and rescue team… getting wilderness training… raising awareness…

Anything helps, you know? You can’t just sit by and go, ‘oh, that’s happening.”

Let the disappearance of Roy Tsatoke serve as a harbinger for the changes necessary to end the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

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27

the food banks that fend off Humboldt Hunger by ryndi greenwell & Jack hellesoe

A

Cal Poly Humboldt student opens their fridge to find a delectable meal of absolutely nothing. They then check their bank account to ascertain if they can afford food.

The answer is no. They have two options: go hungry or seek food assistance. This is the reality for many Humboldt students and residents. The food banks that support this community are doing their part to fight hunger.

Food security is hard to come by in California. The state is well-known as the beating heart of the agricultural sector in the United States because California produces more than half of the country’s grown food. However, according to the California Association of food banks, more than 20% of all Californians are food insecure. Humboldt County is no exception. Feeding America found that its food insecurity rate ranks among the highest in Northern California at 15.8%.

Post-pandemic rises in grocery prices have since added fuel to the food insecurity flame. A report published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in February 2025 found that national food prices have gone up by 23.6% since 2020. In response to the county’s widespread food insecurity, more of Humboldt’s residents are turning to local food banks to fill their empty stomachs.

For Cal Poly Humboldt students, the go-to food pantry has been OhSnap, located at the Recreation and Wellness Center. It is a convenient spot for students to easily grab snacks or basic grocery items. OhSnap’s hours during the Spring 2025 semester are limited to 1-4 pm on Mondays/Wednesdays and 10:30 am-2:30 pm on Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays are available only by appointment, and students are limited to one visit per week.

OhSnap also offers delivery to residences spanning from Eureka to Trinidad.

According to Rose Glass, OhSnap’s Coordinator, there has been a large increase in students visiting the food pantry since Fall 2024.

“During the 2024 Fall semester from August 1st to November 15th, we saw 2,318 students and had 14,187 visits,” Glass said. “Since the start of the Spring 2025 semester, we have already seen over 1,200 students!”

Because of the increased strain on their resources, Glass encouraged stu-

dents to seek assistance from other local food banks for more well-rounded food assistance.

“We also want students to know there are amazing community resources available for students to access that can better accommodate their immediate needs,” Glass said.

Despite this, last spring semester’s hours were longer, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m on Mondays and Fridays and 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays. Now, the demand for food assistance is higher. Sophia Martin, a freshman geology major, visits OhSnap weekly. She described how food insecurity has impacted her as a student living on campus.

“I only have the five-day meal plan,” said Martin. “I can’t afford food on week-

“The food bank is a resource people lean on in those times; it’s one of the reasons we’re here.” ends without OhSnap.”

A student employee at OhSnap, Fiona Bowman, said that she wished OhSnap had longer hours to accommodate students.

“I think that the lack of hours we’re open has become something that has made the pantry less accessible,” Bowman said.

“If we were open more, I think more people with diverse schedules would be able to visit, but unfortunately, we just don’t have the capacity to be open more right now.”

One of the main food pantries that serves Humboldt County is Food for People, based in Eureka. Opened in 1979, Food for People worked out of a small food pantry room not unlike OhSnap to make up for the lack of a countywide food assistance program. Food For People slowly gained more traction over time as Humboldt’s premier food bank and started to assist other food pantries throughout the county. In 1998, they moved out of their original pantry room to a warehouse

on 14th Street in Eureka.

Since then, Food for People has moved to its flagship location, the Eureka Choice Pantry, near the previous warehouse. They have also added 23 other pantry locations in Arcata, McKinleyville, Fortuna, Ferndale, Garberville, and more. Executive Director Carly Robbins explained that Food for People has been increasingly popular among those going to food banks, particularly because of increasing rent prices.

“We live in an area with a high cost of living and traditionally low wages,” Robbins said. “Anything from transportation to housing to food, with all that people are struggling, and definitely a little bit more in the last few years.”

The cost of rent in California is 34 percent higher than the national average, and this has caused people to go hungry in exchange for keeping a roof over their heads.

In this housing economy, food banks are a vital piece of keeping the community fed.

“The food bank is a resource people lean on in those times; it’s one of the reasons we’re here,” Robbins said. “We would rather people come visit us rather than not afford rent.”

Food for People also offers assistance with applying and re-certifying for CalFresh food stamps, as well as nutrition education to show people how to shop for and prepare the foods they purchase with CalFresh benefits.

Another factor is inadequate food distribution. Humboldt County is the least densely populated county with a population of over 100,000 in California and 42nd in overall density, making access to food in remote parts of the county even more difficult than it already is. In 2012, Food for People started their Mobile Produce Pantry as a way to provide Humboldt’s more remote communities such as Orleans and Redway. After noticing a lack of outreach in rural parts of Humboldt in 2016, they created a mobile food pantry to fill those gaps.

“We have a big refrigerated truck that goes out to areas on a monthly schedule and status up a one-day distribution,” Robbins said. “Folks in that community know that they can come and access it that day.

It helps out those smaller communities that don’t have a brick-and-mortar food pantry.”

Food for People has seen its fair share of struggles, though. During the pandem-

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ic, CalFresh provided food compensations known as emergency allotments, where recipients would be granted a particular balance to spend on food depending on the number of people using a single program. Those programs were cut in March 2023 as the pandemic became less of a global health concern. Robbins explained that this contributed to the recent wave of people taking advantage of Food for People’s pantry.

“Those allotments went away, and everyone went back down to their original CalFresh benefit level, which was exceptionally low for a lot of folks who had gotten used to this higher benefit level,” Robbins said. “In

the last two years, we’ve seen a 30% increase.

This past year, we were setting new records every single month for the number of hosts served, and it hasn’t really gone down.”

Both OhSnap and Food for People reported significant increases in Humboldt residents requiring their assistance due to an inability to afford soaring grocery prices. With 50% of the Food for People age demographic being in the 18-59 range, according to Robbins, it’s no surprise that Food for People has been a go-to for Cal Poly Humboldt students as well. Mary, who wished to go by a pseudonym, is a senior and accounting major who lives off-campus in Eureka. They said they regularly go to Food for People when Oh Snap! isn’t available.

“They’re really awesome, basically like

OhSnap but a lot bigger, and they have a bunch of fridges you can go through,” Mary said. “They also offer a lot of meat products. The application is super easy, just as long as you’re below a certain income, like around 3,000. I’m totally around that.”

While food pantries are great for basic food items, they can’t always be relied on for getting fresh produce, as most of the food donated is non-perishable. The Arcata farmer’s market supplies EBT users with credits to spend on fresh produce

on Saturdays. If that timing doesn’t work out, a great way to get fresh produce is the North Coast Growers Association’s Harvest Boxes. They can send customers fresh produce directly to their door using EBT credits. The Harvest Box program was started by NCGA Harvest Hub director Megan Kenney in 2020, as a pandemic food response program. The produce is seasonal and always sourced from local farmers.

“People could pay online ahead of time, order their boxes, and then when they drove up to the plaza, they didn’t even have to roll their windows down,” Kenney said. “They could just write their name on

a piece of paper and hold it up to the window, and we’d put the box in their truck.

100% contactless.”

During the first summer after its conception, the Harvest Box program was averaging around 80–90 boxes a week, according to Kenney. Unfortunately, those numbers dropped soon after pandemic-related closures were lifted.

“People weren’t getting as many of the emergency allotments with their CalFresh and didn’t get as many CalFresh dollars to spend,” Kenney said. “We also weren’t getting all the stimulus payments from the state or the government anymore, and inflation was going up, so we definitely saw a downturn in

customers as that was happening.”

While Harvest Boxes sounds like something that would easily work for Cal Poly Humboldt students living off-campus, those living on-campus may have it a bit harder. Harvest Box coordinator Hailee Nolte explained that the program doesn’t deliver food to campus housing, primarily due to lack of adequate parking and difficulty locating what exact room any potential student customers live in, but also due to institutional hurdles surrounding the school itself.

“In terms of resources, the bureaucracy that the Harvest Hub has to go through to get institutions like Cal Poly to support local food systems would be greatly supported,” Nolte said. “It would make programs like the Harvest Box and the Farm to School program even more accessible than

it already is just having resources where you’re eating local food and supporting the local economy.”

Food delivery programs like Harvest Boxes can be beneficial for many reasons. People working multiple jobs might not have the availability for the farmer’s market nor the money to shop at organic-centric stores such as Wildberries or the North Coast Co-op. They can also provide access to fresh produce for people who are disabled, immunocompromised, elderly, or otherwise have difficulty leaving their homes to shop.

“I was a poor student compared to my shopping habits to be like ‘Oh, I get the Harvest Box once a week. I’m going to make my meals in that mess,’” Nolte said. “It’s a lot more beneficial because it’s seasonal. It’s the things that have the most nutrition in them. It’s things that I would have never used before, and they’re really good, and I don’t have to do as much shopping.”

The people that work hard to make sure that people in need are fed are some of the strongest pillars in Humboldt’s community. They deserve to be recognized for their functioning under the rising strain hunger holds on Humboldt’s populace.

Resource list for students: OhSnap! CPH Food Pantry : Recreation and Wellness Center (WRC) Room 122 Mondays and Wednesdays 1-4p.m.

Fridays -10:30a.m.-2:30 p.m.

Food For People Choice Pantry: 307 W. 14th Street, Eureka, CA 95521 Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, 10 a.m. — 3:45 p.m.

Contact: (707) 445-3166

Arcata House Partnership Lunch Truck: 14th & Union Street at entrance to Redwood Park Sack lunches distributed noon-12:50p.m. Mondays through Fridays.

Arcata House Partnership Annex Food Pantry 501 9th Street, Arcata CA 95521 Wednesdays 4-6p.m.

Arcata Food Not Bombs: Arcata Plaza, Sundays at 4 p.m.

Apply for the basic needs food swipe request program on campus:

osprey 6231

ANYONE CAN COOK Ingredients: - One 15 oz can of chickpeas, drained - One 14.5 oz can of crushed or diced tomatoes - ½ white or yellow onion, diced - ½ tbsp Tandoori masala spice blend (found at Asian grocery stores/online) OR mix together cardamom, chili powder, coriander, cumin, cloves, and turmeric - ½ tsp of cayenne pepper for heat, add more if you like it hot!

- ½ can of coconut milk - Vegan butter or regular butter (measure with your heart !)

- 2 cloves of garlic - A small knob of ginger, finely chopped.

- Salt and pepper to taste Optional: fresh parsley or cilantro for garnish

Canned chickpea chana masala (3-4 servings, 30 mins)

If you’re craving something warm and filling with a bit of a kick, this is the dish for you.It is also conveniently vegan!

Begin by sauteing your chopped onions, garlic, and ginger in some butter on medium heat until they become fragrant and the onions are translucent. At this point, add the spice blend to marry the aromatics together. Once the delicious smells of the spices fill your kitchen and your mouth is watering, add the tomatoes. Follow that with the addition of salt.

Allow this to simmer on mediumlow heat for about 10 minutes to allow some of the tomato’s acidity to cook off. Then stir in the coconut milk and simmer for another few minutes. Taste and adjust for seasoning at this point.

If you enjoy a smooth textured curry, add the mixture to a blender or food processor and then add it back to the pan. If you like it chunkier, skip this step.

Add your chickpeas and simmer for 10 more minutes, and finish with melting in some more butter. Serve and enjoy with rice or naan. (Or both!)

Nutritious recipes using canned proteins from the food bank. Affordable, easy, and packs in the protein!

Canned salmon burgers (2 servings, 15 mins)

If you’re looking for a way to get those omega 3 fatty acids in while enjoying a delicious burger, you’ll love this nofuss weeknight meal.

Ingredients: - Enough oil to cover bottom of pan (vegetable/ canola is best) - 5 oz can of pink salmon - 2 tsp of lemon or lime juice - 1 egg - ½ tsp of cayenne pepper - ½ tsp cajun seasoning (Old Bay seasoning would also be good here!)

Preheat your pan with oil over medium-high heat to ensure a crisp patty.

- ¼ cup of all-purpose flour - ¼ cup diced onion (2 tsp dried onion or subbing with green onion works great too!)

- Salt and pepper to taste

In a medium sized bowl, mix together salmon, lemon juice, all seasonings, flour, egg, dill, and onion with a fork until it is a homogeneous texture that looks a bit like wet cat food.

For serving: Lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and your favorite condiments.

Optional: fresh chopped dill

(Trust the process!)

Form mixture into balls and press into patties onto your pan.

Cook on each side for about 5 minutes or until golden brown.

Put on a bun and add your favorite toppings/ condiments!

Ibus audam rem ide rest rereius apiendunt poribus alit, ut assinctota sum fugiae

33

L o ok

o t n i g in

Coastal Snowy Plover Conservation Practices

by Leah Spiers 35

T

he western snowy plovers (Charadrius nivosus nivosus) have been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 1993 and have been a part of a rehabilitation plan by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 2007. The plan identified 62 locations in California with specific goals for breeding numbers, with the species considered a “special concern” by the state of California.

This comprehensive plan includes habitat restoration, predator management, and public education initiatives aimed at fostering a sustainable environment for the snowy plovers. These birds are approximately six inches long, with their pale color helping them blend in with their surroundings. During their breeding season, March through September, plovers can be found nesting along the Pacific Coast.

Human activities such as urbanization and increased raven populations have significantly impacted local bird species in Humboldt County, including snowy plovers.

The destruction of nests on open beaches and the loss of habitat due to coastal development has caused a decrease in their population.

These birds rely on open, sandy beaches for nesting and any disturbance can

lead to nest abandonment an higher percentage of predation.

Snowy plovers help control insect populations by feeding on various invertebrates found in coastal areas. Without them there could be an overpopulation of insects, leading to imbalances in the surrounding ecosystem. Their

extinction could disrupt local food webs, forcing predators to shift their diet to other species. This would reduce abundance and nutritional suitability. Amidst these challenges, the growing interest in wildlife viewing offers hope for conservation.

According to a 2023 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey, 37% of the U.S. population aged 16 and older have participated in birdwatching.

This survey highlighted the importance of conservation efforts for species like the snowy plover.

This increased public awareness provided opportunities for funding conservation efforts. These efforts included removing invasive plant species, planting native vegetation, and creating suitable nesting sites for the plovers.

Daniel Barton, professor of quantitative population ecology and vice chair of the Wildlife Department at Cal Poly Humboldt, has 26 years of ornithology under his belt. Barton

explains how the North American coastal population of snowy plovers has been in decline due to habitat loss and nest predation by ravens. Ongoing conservation efforts have led to a gradual recovery in their numbers. When asked about the conservation efforts of the snowy plovers, Barton shared how they are a success story. “[The population of] western snowy plovers is substantially larger than when they were listed under the Endangered Species Act,” Barton said.

In 1993, officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service counted only 45 breeding adults. The numbers have steadily increased, with a 2024 survey counting 440. This is a major improvement compared to a few decades ago.

Barton further added how the snowy plovers have been disproportionately impacted due to a history of bad luck.

“They’re short distance migrants on the Pacific Coast,” Barton said. “They evolved to nest on western beaches, and those are places that are subject to lots of human development and heavy human use.”

Barton emphasizes the changing attitudes of Americans towards outdoor activities over the past 30 to 40 years. He points out that a significant segment of the wildlife economy in the U.S. is driven by wildlife viewing. Ornithology enthusiasts play a crucial role in this trend, motivated by the thrill and chase of spotting rare species.

Cedrik Von Briel, a third year wildlife major and president of the Cal Poly Humboldt Birding Club, shared how he’s been birding for around eight years—referring to it as a treasure hunt.

“You never know what you’re going to find out there,” Von Briel said.

Von Briel explained the reason why some species of North American birds are more common to spot than others, citing migration patterns and habitat accessibility for each bird species.

“Around this time of year it’s [easier to spot] usually Townsend’s warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, chestnut-backed chickadee, and Anna’s hummingbird is pretty fun,” Von Briel said.

When asked about the more coastal bird species, Von Briel mentioned his experience last summer banding snowy plovers and looking after nest sites in Centerville and along the Eel River.

“Researchers want to band these

snowy plovers, kinda track their movements, see where they’re ending up, to conserve them and their breeding grounds,” Von Briel said.

“They’re almost completely hidden in the dunes, the same color as the sand.”

Von Briel highlighted that humans have invaded their beaches for so long, that every little disturbance prevents the plovers from breeding in those areas, making them a very sensitive species. He then shared how depending on weather conditions, it’s easier to spot the western snowy plovers in the winter up and down the coast.

The ravens also have taken notice.

“Ravens like to look for human tracks of biologists around snowy plover nests. And then end up recognizing, despite the camouflage, where these nests are,” Von Briel said.

Common ravens (Corvus corax) are a subsidized predatory species attracted to debris and other

landfill on beaches, due to human consumption and waste distribution. They feed off anything they can find, including small eggs from bird nests, small insects, and even roadkill.

According to a 2023 study Management of Conflicts Associated with Common Ravens in the United States conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, ravens cause 70% of known nest failures. This is mainly due to trash left on beaches and other human activity in snowy plover habitats, such as off-leash dogs and footprints, leading the ravens to find these nesting sites.

Owen Sinkus, a second year wildlife major and member of the Cal Poly Humboldt Birding Club, emphasizes the importance of wildlife in our ecosystems. He noted how his passion for birding, which began in 2018, has shaped his view on wildlife conservation.

“I think that wildlife are an integral part of the ecosystems that

37

we inhabit, and I think people don’t understand that we are also part of those ecosystems,” Sinkus said. “And if we don’t protect wildlife, those ecosystems fall apart, then we are in danger.”

Sinkus emphasized the potential collapse of ecosystems without active conservation efforts. This aligns with the broader goals of conservation biology, which seeks to prevent the untimely extinction of species and maintain ecological balance.

This further brings awareness to the interconnectedness of humans and wildlife within ecosystems. The health of these ecosystems is crucial for maintaining biodiversity and ensuring the stability of the environment, which in turn supports human life.

“I think that these animals should not have to suffer because of our actions, and we should take accountability, and we should conserve the species because they deserve to live in habitats that they inhabit,” Sinkus said.

Continued efforts in habitat protection and public engagement in wildlife viewing are vital for the snowy plover’s recovery. The unpredictability of weather and predators, along with human development, poses ongoing challenges.

By understanding people’s connection to ecosystems and taking responsibility for human actions, researchers can help ensure that species like the snowy plovers thrive in their natural habitats. This approach not only benefits wildlife but it also supports the broader goal of sustainable ecosystem management, which is essential for the future of the planet.

The journey to recovery for the snowy plovers is ongoing, but with sustained efforts and a collective commitment to conservation, a significant difference can be made.

Protecting their habitats, mitigating the impact of predators like ravens, and fostering public awareness is crucial in ensuring the survival of these delicate ecosystems.

*photo of snowy plover taken by Sasha Cahill, a third year wildlife major and member of the Cal Poly Humboldt Birding Club

HUMBOLDT PEOPLE FLOW CHART Are you or do you?

in a sh-band? (yes) you think ur better than me?

Smoke weed?

Disc golf? (yes) ur cool

(No) what are u scared?

(yes) NO SH--!

(no) what’s music?

Pacific Paradise or Heart of Humboldt?

ciderbar or everett’s?

(H.H.) What are you hiding?

(C.b.) respectable alcoholic

(E.) alcoholic

(P.P.) You’re sick

(no) Don’t want to see my ex meditating in the forest

Wildberries vs.

Winco

(W.B.) Suburban Health Mommy

(winco) cig-mommy

39

DIY TiE-Dye Step 1: Prep the Materials Pre-wash the fabric to prevent any sizing or chemicals that might interfere with dye absorption. Rinse the fabric under cold water and wring out until it’s damp. Lay the fabric on a flat, protected surface. The most common fabric to use is a cotton t-shirt. Keep in mind when it washes it will shrink, so choose a size you think will be the best fit for what you want to create.

Step 2: Fold and tie your fabric in desired pattern Find the middle part of the fabric almost towards the center. Pinch the fabric and start twisting it into a spiral shape, keep twisting the fabric until it creates a tight bundle. Section off the designated parts of the fabric you want to dye and tie them with elastic bands.

Add as many elastics as needed to secure the fabric, criss-crossing them to create wedge shapes.

Step 3: Mix your dyes When mixing the dyes, add about half a cup of warm water to the dye powder and shake until the designated color has formed. Set aside the colored mixture until ready to use.

FOR a Break in the Rain Step 4: Start the Dye Application Before dyeing the fabric, wear plastic gloves to prevent dye from staining your skin. Then, take the mixed dyes and start covering the sectioned-off parts of the fabric. Coverage is up to your choice, the less white spots the better. Remember to dye both the front and back for full coverage.

Step 5: Let the Dye Set After dyeing the fabric, conceal it in a plastic bag and leave it overnight to let the colors fully set. Roughly 12-24 hours is a good amount of time to ensure the dye sets completely.

Step 6: Rinse, Wash, then Wear!

Remove the elastics and start the rinsing process. Rinse the tiedyed fabric thoroughly under cold water until the water runs clear.

Wash the tie-dyed fabric separately in cold water to avoid dye bleeding onto other clothes. Hang the fabric to dry. Once fully dry, you’ll be ready to rock your tie-dye creation!

41

THE

IMPACT

OF THE

AXE THE EFFECTS OF CUTTING HUMBOLDT FOOTBALL

BY AIDAN SHELTON 43

A

s Strength and Conditioning Coach Drew Petersen looks towards Redwood Bowl on a sunny morning, he reminisces on what used to be. What was once a packed stadium of thousands of people is now empty. The Saturday night lights have been turned off, and time moves on.

Since Cal Poly Humboldt’s administration, known as Humboldt State at the time, made the controversial decision to cut the football program of 94 years due to funding shortfalls in 2018, the campus has been struggling to redefine its identity. The other athletic programs and the culture of the surrounding community have changed, some ways for better, some for worse. How has Cal Poly Humboldt athletics transitioned from Humboldt State, and what will Humboldt sports look like moving forward?

As Petersen sits in his office during a morning weightlifting class, the walls surrounding him are littered with old football team photos, like a museum of Humboldt athletics. Having started the strength program as a grad student in 1990, Petersen has been a longstanding pillar of support for Humboldt’s athletic program. He recalls spending significant time with the football team because while strength training helps

in other sports, for football, it’s a matter of survival. He’s nostalgic for a time when football used to draw in a large crowd, not just players and fans but those hopeful of earning a spot on the team.

“We had a roster that was always about 110 or 115, and then you’d have redshirts within that, and then people that would come here, basically hang out in the fall, take the weight training class, and join the redshirt program with the hope of walking on in the fall.

There were a lot of people here because of that program,” Petersen said.

With the memory of the football program getting farther into the past, the large number of roster spots it once held has now been replaced by other athletic programs, old and new. New sports have been added to the mix with the addition of the triathlon in 2018 on the women’s side and wrestling on the men’s side at the start of the Fall 2024 semester. Just as importantly, existing programs like track and field have been able to grow exponentially, especially on the men’s side. The men’s track roster has expanded to 58 athletes compared to the women’s 26. When Assistant Track and Field Coach Teigan Eilers was on Humboldt’s track team from 2012-17, there would be about

50-60 athletes on the roster for both men and women. There were also fewer resources for the team compared to the present day.

“Scholarships are definitely something I’ve seen improve dramatically, travel resources in terms of team funding, operational budgets is something that’s made it a lot more convenient for us to go to more competitive meets, better meets as well as gear provided for the athletes has been a big improvement since then,” Eilers said.

“We didn’t have any team-issued gear. There were no track spikes, there wasn’t a lot of the basic equipment that’s needed for our sport. It was provided by ourselves or our parents.”

Fast-forward to today, and Cal Poly Humboldt’s track and field athletes get top-of-the-line Nike spikes along with a plethora of team gear to wear.

However, it’s not just specific athletic programs that saw changes in the aftermath of the loss of football.

Something that is the core of any collegiate athletic program are the athletic trainers, who are responsible for the care and prevention of injuries. This covers a wide range of duties involving injury recognition and diagnosis, prophylactic measures, muscle support, and other things to allow athletes to continue practicing and working through injuries. Shannon Childs, the Head Athletic Trainer, has spent 29 years working with athletes at Cal Poly Humboldt. Childs primarily worked with the football team when they were here, having six to seven other certified athletic trainers working with the other teams. Now, there’s only three trainers along with interns to work with all of the sports teams. While football being gone cleared up space, a smaller staff and more room for other athletes to come in meant the trainer’s room only got busier.

“What [football’s absence] did is it freed up the athletic trainers, all of the other sports that felt like they could never come in because there’s always football [players] in here. It was just too busy. So now they’ve been able to come in and use us a lot more,” Childs said.

According to Childs, the usage of the athletic trainers has increased across the board with all of the different sports teams. However, the track team and their increased roster has been utilizing it the most with the absence of the football team. In the Fall 2024 semester, the athletic trainers administered over 5000 treatments. With football being gone, other athletes have

the team. Traveling for any sports team is already expensive, and the large roster size and travel distances only added to the weight that football was putting on the budget.

“The budget isn’t the only problem with football, it’s the fact that there’s nobody to play,” Childs said. “So Division 2 football, if you look in the western six states, there’s two Division 2 football programs. Western Oregon and Central Washington. That’s it. So if you wanna bring back a program and you wanna play games, then you’re constantly travelling.”

In 2016, at a time when money was tight, Humboldt hired Strategic Edge Consulting Firm to review Humboldt’s

fund it. Fund our athletics, build up our athletics and make it something unique and that if we drop football we’d lose that diversity that it brought on campus. We’d lose the community, we’d lose the alumni and we’d lose anywhere from 500 to 1000 students that year, and we did.”

The question arises: Since football and its budget were cut, where has that money gone? While first thoughts may be that the funds which would’ve been dispersed to football would be distributed among the other teams, that hasn’t been the case.

“The initial thought is well all that money that we’re spending on football is gonna go to our other sports and make them healthy, no that money just disappeared,” Petersen said. “It’s gone,

“The budget isn’t the only problem with football, it’s the fact that there’s nobody to play.”

been able to get the care that they need.

While the loss of Humboldt’s football program was a tragedy to many in the community, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Humboldt was the second to last D2 college in California to still have a football team, with Azusa Pacific University being the last. After Humboldt cut their program, Azusa followed shortly after in 2020. With very limited competition, football would have to travel long distances to states like Utah, Colorado, and North Dakota. Former Offensive Line Coach Cory White recalled driving to Simon Fraser University in Canada and being on a bus for two days straight. Eighteen hour bus drives were a common occurrence for

athletics program and consider what should be kept and what should be cut.

After they did an in-depth analysis of Humboldt’s situation, they came to the conclusion that football should be kept and embraced.

“It was a thorough review of our athletics, and the future, and what division we should be at and what teams we should have, and it came back and overwhelmingly [said to] keep football.

What you have here makes Humboldt unique, that you bring all these kids here and there are studies that they’ve done that for every one football player or athlete that comes here, you get a couple of more people that are coming because of them,” Petersen said. “They said not only to keep football, but fully

and now it just seems like we’re fighting for relevance again. Then you throw in COVID and all that stuff and it’s just been an odd transition. I think [Cal Poly Humboldt is] still kind of struggling to find an identity,” While many in the local community remember what went down when Humboldt’s football program started being in jeopardy, many new college students weren’t here to experience the situation and understand the weight it had on the community. The idea of football being cut started as just a rumor until it became an impending reality.

Rob Smith, Humboldt’s Head Football Coach from 2008-17, first became concerned when Humboldt State’s longtime Athletic Director Dan Collen resigned in 2016. The story finally broke in 2017 while the team was getting

45

ready for their season opening game against Azusa Pacific when the front page of the Times Standard revealed talk of dropping the football program.

With the potential of this season being their last looming ahead, Smith tried to use it as motivation for the team. The news came at a time when the team was very strong. They had a career passing leader, career rushing leader, and career receptions leader. They also had Alex Cappa, an offensive lineman, who would go on to be drafted to the NFL in 2018 and became a Super Bowl Champion in 2020. Many players thought that their successes could save the program, which was expressed by offensive lineman alumni Lucas Govan.

“When it was kind of more whispers than anything, it almost felt like a Disney Channel movie where if we win the conference we keep the program, you know?” Govan said.

After they ended the 2017 season with an 8-2 record, many thought it

was the end. The day before a meeting on campus discussing football’s fate, Smith told the players that he believed the program would end tomorrow.

Thirty minutes before the meeting, he was called into another meeting and was told that the program was going to survive. However, it was apparent to Smith that this was only temporary.

He believed that the President of the university at the time, Lisa Rossbacher, did not see value in football and that the new Athletic Director, Duncan Robins, was brought in to axe it. After being denied the ability to recruit and facing heavy resistance from the administration, Smith reached his limit and resigned.

“I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t handle it the best but you know, I knew it was the end of my career,” Smith said. “I had been a head football coach for 27 years and the disrespect that was shown by the administration at the time [was the last straw]. I never once talked to the president about it. She never talked to me.”

After Smith left, the reins of head coach fell upon Offensive Line Coach Cory White. The university laid out a five year plan for the community to fund the football program to keep it alive. However, it was a steep goal.

The fundraising goal for the community to save football for each year was $500,000. Seeing the writing on the wall, White resigned and took a position at University of San Diego as assistant coach. Defensive Line Coach Damaro Wheeler assumed the position of Interim Head Coach, and Robins halted the search for a new head coach.

“That whole plan is not sustainable, and they knew that because it was over a five year period, and they knew that there’s zero, zero chance. Even if they

hit it year one, there’s zero chance they would hit it year two and it’s just that it is not a sustainable fundraising model to have people giving in that fashion.

So it was like their way of saying, ‘oh, we tried, but sorry,” White said.

The fund drive efforts by the community led by HSU alumnus Jim Redd were strong, but the sum only added up to $410,000, just $90,000 short of the goal. In a summer press conference, former President Rossbacher announced that the football program would end to halt the growing budget deficit in athletics.

“In the community’s eyes, they got scorned. They coughed it up and we

“I had been a head football coach for 27 years and the disrespect that was shown by the administration at the time [was the last straw]. “ didn’t come through,” Petersen said.

It can be hard for newer students to understand what they’re missing out on when they were never there to experience the height of the football games. A major advantage Cal Poly Humboldt has over other universities in more urban areas is that being isolated means Humboldt sports games are the big show in town. While other universities might not get engagement outside of the campus, Humboldt sports get engagement from the broader community.

“If it was raining or something you might get 1500 people, but most of the time it was anywhere between 4000-7000 people,” Petersen said. “Just the atmosphere and the festivity, the Marching Lumberjacks, of course were a huge part of that [environment].”

In a town of only 18,000, including college students, this meant a significant portion of the town’s population

was present at the games. With the games came a large tailgating culture that has completely disappeared from campus since the loss of football. Petersen also expressed that this engagement with the games increased the nightlife and vibrant college feel of the town, as after the game, people would go out and have fun. Whether it was to college parties, bars, or just out on the town, the presence of the football team improved the social setting of Arcata because it got people out of their houses.

“Saturday nights in the Redwood Bowl was as good as you’re going to find You know, it just would bring 5000 plus people together,” Smith said. “And we would do that five, six times a year in the fall with football, so it was pretty unique, pretty special.”

While D2 football programs on the West Coast have been falling one by one, that isn’t necessarily the case across all divisions. On February 10th, 2025, Whittier College announced that they will be resurrecting their football program, with former Humboldt Coach White as their Head Coach leading the charge. Whittier is a private university in the NCAA’s Division 3 for athletics. White expressed that when he had his interview with the president, vice president and athletic director of the university, he could see that their vision was sincere, and that they thought athletics was the answer to increasing enrollment.

“They think athletics is the answer to returning some pride to the school and building a better campus community,” White said. “They really, you know, struck a chord with me because of what I had been through previously,” With football programs like

“Before we ever entertain the thought of bringing it back, we’d have to have more students at the school and we’ve gotta build up our other programs to where they’re successful.”

Whittier’s being revived, that raises the question: Could Humboldt’s football program ever come back? While there are definitely a lot of obstacles to overcome, it could be a possibility if the right circumstances arise. The most hopeful situation for the future would be if enrollment at Cal Poly Humboldt spikes up and athletic funding and resources increase to the point where it could become a Division 1 college.

While this is all just speculation, the one fact known for certain is that the community support is already here.

“If you look at the problem and you study it, it’s only a positive to bring to the community,” White said. “There were always going to be challenges there. Who do you play? Where do you play? The amount of travel involved.

But there’s answers, and if Simpson College is starting football and ready, you know, Southern Oregon University has a sustainable football program that won a national championship, there’s answers. They can do it, and it’s only gonna make the place better.”

However, with cuts to athletic programs to California State college athletics, the talks of bringing programs back are farfetched compared to the talks of keeping what we have.

When Sonoma State announced that they’d be cutting their entire athletics program to address their 24 million dollar budget deficit, it sent shockwaves throughout the entire CSU community. People could only wonder if another college would be next.

“As fun as it is to talk about reviving our football and bringing it back and what we would have, in the scope of what our state is facing budget wise and what happened to Sonoma

47

State when they dropped their entire athletics program and the possibility that that could happen to more schools in the CSU’s, I wanna really focus on keeping what we’ve got and building it up,” Petersen said. “Before we ever entertain the thought of bringing it back, we’d have to have more students at the school and we’ve gotta build up our other programs to where they’re successful.”

When universities decide to do sweeping cuts to address budget deficits, they only back themselves into a corner and start a spiraling doom loop.

While they might save some money short term, they’re losing a lot of the engagement and draw to their universities that sports bring, worsening enrollment drops and makes the problem more dire. San Francisco State, another CSU that could potentially put athletics on the chopping block in the near future, announced last year that they’d be increasing tuition while they were making budget cuts and laying people off across all departments. Students are now paying more for less than what they got in previous years. SFSU just recently announced on March 6, 2025, that they’d be cutting men’s soccer,

baseball, and women’s indoor track and field at the end of the semester.

All of these factors put college football and athletics as a whole in an uncertain place, but not all hope is lost. A big thing holding college football back is the fact that they’re strictly tied to their division regarding who they could compete against. For D2s on the West Coast, this means they have nobody to play. A solution to this issue would be to loosen the rules and allow football teams to compete against different divisions so they have many more options for competition. This is already the case with track and field, where Humboldt athletes often find themselves competing against D1, D3, and community college athletes at meets.

“I think the real answer is they need to petition the NCAA for the West Coast division two football teams to be able to separate like that,” White said. “And I’m sure the NCAA doesn’t want to open that Pandora’s box, but just simply, if you want to save the sport, the NCAA needs to be flexible enough to allow either for those schools to compete at a lower level at division three or to compete at the NAIA level.”

For students at Cal Poly Humboldt,

the solution comes with funding and vouching for the athletic programs the school does have. With Humboldt’s distinct situation in the redwoods, the ability is there to take advantage of what makes the area special and turn the athletics into something truly unique.

“We’re so lucky that we’re isolated up here, Humboldt athletics is the only game in town,” Petersen said. “We get that support that the community maybe doesn’t get at places like Sac State and UC Davis and Cal Poly SLO. The fact that we’re isolated makes this just the perfect scenario to have a legit D2 athletics program.”

While there have been major losses and gains from cutting the football program, we can only go forward in time. The important thing now is to appreciate and support the sports teams we do have so they can thrive instead of facing a similar fate. The only thing left now is for Cal Poly Humboldt to answer this question: Does Humboldt want to be a school that embraces our athletics and does the work necessary to allow them to thrive, or do we want to be a school that’s complacent with our athletics fading away?

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49

LOCAL NIGHTLIFE

The new era of small town social scenes

by Jordan pangelinan 51

T

hose who move to Humboldt, perhaps from a city in Southern California, often experience what is called a culture shock.

The average population for a city in Southern California is about 250,000, whereas the small town of Arcata, CA, has about 19,000 people, barely making up 7.2% of the population of an average Southern California city. Humboldt itself is an experience one has to live through for oneself. What makes moments so special in Humboldt is the social life and community that bring people together.

Humboldt could be seen as a mini mixing pot of many different cultures, upbringings, histories, and genders.

Home of Cal Poly Humboldt, Arcata is essentially the college town. Thrift stores and dispensaries line the streets along with venues filled with people of all ages. However, since 2021, there have been numerous venues that have closed down due to natural disasters, leases ending, new ownership, and new branding, with many more still being at risk of closure.

Sirens Song Tavern is one of two all-ages venues in Eureka, CA, that is now having to find a new home for their business. It was announced in November of 2024 that Sirens Song Tavern’s lease would not be renewed and would be forced to relocate or close up the business. Liza Sibley, the owner of Sirens Song, was surprised to find out that their business would be forced to relocate by Jan. 1, 2025.

“They [the landlord] were under the belief that the lease started and ended Jan. 1, but it didn’t. It started May 1, 2022, and ended April 30, 2025,” Sibley said. “I sort of said, can you [landlord] clarify something for me? Because, you know, even on your tenant portal, it matched the dates that I thought”.

Now under pressure from a lease date being moved closer, Sibley recounts on why Sirens Song holds space for community, and how its doors’ closing removes a place for people to break out into the music scene. “I think it’s important for several reasons, we both give local musicians a spot to play as well as bring out, you know, touring musicians in for others to hear or make connections. We pair them with local

bands a lot of the time,” Sibley said.

[After confirming lease dates between Sibley and her landlord, the lease would hold till April 30, 2025] The Basement, a bar in Arcata, which sits in a historic spot–The Jacoby Storehouse– has been open since Oct. 2023. The owners, Bill Chino and Dillon Savage, both help create a space to display talents in Humboldt.

“I think restaurants and bars and places of social gathering are extremely important to society. They’ve been around forever. There were always the taverns, for the wayward traveler and all that. I think that’s where the importance lies. It’s a meeting spot,” Chino said.

For some, venues that host local artists are all they have. “There’s no stadiums. There’s no big concerts, no big musicians that we still enjoy. Of course we all love and support local music, but we do like other big artists that play

stadiums and go on country and world tours, and they don’t come to Humboldt County,” Michael Rivas-Romero, a venue goer, said.

The closure of Sirens Song, one of

“ restaurants and bars and places of social gathering are extremely important to society. “ the few all-ages venues, impacts those who rely on it for community and sometimes jobs. Sirens Song also offers a space to display the talents of both locals and those travelling through the

county. Sibley is currently on the hunt for a new spot that can cater to her mission as a business owner.

Sibley recognizes the friendly competition and others in Arcata but knows how to keep venue goers coming.

“Like sometimes Savage Henry’s has metal, every once in a blue moon, The Shanty has a show. Some people were expressing the other day, they were like, ‘but that’s all like, you know, punk and metal, for us other musicians who don’t play that, like there’s not really anywhere for us,’ At least since I’ve been involved here, and I feel like it was the same way before too. I’ve tried not to pigeonhole this into any one type of music,” Sibley said.

But it’s not just about the music:

Non-profit or DIY venues are common in a scene like Humboldt’s. Being such a small town, community involvement is an important part of why some

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venues, like non-profits or DIY spaces, are alive. For certain venue goers, the sound isn’t the only thing that brings people to these venues —the environment and the people within it is what makes an impact.

“I think there’s this sort of out of touch feeling that you get with some of these, stiffer places where it’s kind of a different crowd. It doesn’t feel young, it doesn’t feel like I know people who are there, it doesn’t feel relatable. I think that’s really important to me,” Jess Carey, a student at Cal Poly Humboldt, said.

Places like Arcata Playhouse and OuterSpace Arcata are volunteer based– or in the words of Jacqueline Dandon, the Executive Artistic director of Arcata Playhouse– “We’re all the owner”. Arcata Playhouse hosts events like open mics, school events, plays, and more. Dandon understands economic struggles unique to small towns like Arcata, and ensures those who attend Arcata Playhouse can come for free, or pay what they can, and for those who perform get a split of 70%.

“We also try to keep it low income so that people who can’t afford [to buy] maybe a $60 or a $50 ticket or to drive to the Bay area to see someone, chances are they’re coming here and they can see them for less money,” Dandon said.

Brandon Hook, the Technical Director at OuterSpace Arcata, helps run an all ages and sober venue. Their goal is to build community and empower youth by promoting the understanding of oppression through education and creative expression. Similar to Arcata Playhouse, “the community owns OuterSpace. Yeah, I mean, any of the volunteers do, people that are involved in helping make it happen are the people that run it and own it,” Hook said.

With Arcata being the epicenter for Cal Poly Humboldt students, venues being accessible, financially and locationally, is one challenge when choosing a spot to go to. “Majority of the people going to these shows are gonna be college students, right? And what’s the constant stereotype about college students? They’re broke as f–.

Like, no one has the money to drop like $20 every Friday night, you know?

And so having these community spaces like OuterSpace Arcata are really important,” said Juniper Morris, a local musician and CPH student.

If not music, what’s it about then?

Community in small towns is crucial to the economic success of businesses as well as to the social lives of those who reside in it. Holding spaces that are inclusive of all people can make or break their decision to stay or

“The most important thing for local music is feeling like you belong...” go. Knowing the people who run a venue and their reputation invites people to attend it more than once.

“I think what attracts me to a venue is also knowing that it’s safe and knowing that the people who are running it are working with the values that I hold, which I think makes me tend to kind of be more excited to go to things at like OuterSpace or like that new DIY spot by Redwood Retro because it’s like, shows that are happening for the people, for the community,” Carey said.

“The most important thing for local music is feeling like you belong because it’s for local people who are maybe underprivileged or marginalized and they’re looking for something they can be a part of,” Rivas-Romero said.

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by Starsong brittain

O

n February 4th, 2025, California State University (CSU) Chancellor’s Office announced the partnership of the CSU system and ten computer development companies. The partnership is to get artificial intelligence programs available to all 23 schools across California. As one of the 23 schools part of the partnership, these programs will be able to be used by students, staff, faculty, and administration.

Usage of and opinions on A.I. at Cal Poly Humboldt varies.

Most people can be put into one of three levels of interaction with A.I. programs; Those that are against it, people who use it for brainstorming and general activity, and those who use A.I. systems for a lot of the academic process.

Enoch Hale, the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, said “We [Americans] are freaking out about A.I. based on our relation to it.”

The Cal Poly Humboldt Library has started developing its own A.I. chat bot. This program is named Ask Alex. It was started in November and is a combined effort between the Library and Information Technology Services. The goal of Ask Alex right now is to be able to answer queries relevant to the Humboldt Digital Commons and anything published by Cal Poly Humboldt.

John Gerving, a second year computer science and math major, is part of the team working on Ask Alex. “[Ask Alex is] a Humboldt focused way to gather information that is interactive,” Gerving said.

Ask Alex will be an additional interface to the general search engine available on the Cal Poly Humboldt Library website. Ask Alex is a Large Language Model type of A.I. program. This is a multi-year project that was formally presented at the Cal Poly Humboldt Library’s

Innovations Summit in May 2024.

Ask Alex is not the first A.I. model to be developed and used by the campus. In 2019 Cal Poly Humboldt launched HumBot, an interactive webpage and text messaging ser-

“You learn a

allows for the use of A.I. systems in his classes with different levels of use depending on the class level. Students who use A.I. systems are required to include a footnote describing how A.I. was included in their work, including what the scope and scale were. However, students are not permitted to use A.I. to write any of their work. “[A.I.] requires us to think critically about our teaching to reflect what is on the ground and what is really going on,” Zerbe said.

Zander Leigh, fourth year Environmental Resources Engineering, capstone course allows the use of A.I. The students that choose to use A.I. are instructed to include how the system was used and what the exact queries were– as well as what the student chooses to use from the A.I. system’s answer. Leigh has chosen to not use A.I. systems in his project.

“Coding your own program you know, and producing your own model, it gets lost when using [A.I.] generated,”Leigh said. “Specifically in finding mistakes and understanding the code and program instead of blind trust, a lot of it right now can’t capture the nuance that someone has in their field.”

lot when you can’t figure things out.” vice program. Students can ask HumBot questions anytime. It provides answers based on information available on the Humboldt.edu website. If it can’t find information, it will get students in contact with a staff member to provide assistance.

In the classroom, educators are exploring how and when to use A.I. programs effectively. Whether or not a teacher allows A.I. usage, students will learn about A.I. systems and how to use them.

This is prompting some teachers to adjust teaching styles to keep up. “[We] value intellectual transparency,” Hale said. “[That’s] why we have citations.”

Professor Noah Zerbe has been teaching at Cal Poly Humboldt for over 20 years in the Political Science department. Zerbe

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Last semester, for an upper division class on food and politics, Zerbe created a custom ChatGPT, with help from ChatGPT. The system was given custom instructions based on access to the assignment guide. This allowed the system to better contextualize feedback from students that is more relevant to the work they are doing.

By doing it this way, it also allows for the system to tell students how well they are doing on their project, staying close to what is expected to fulfill the assignment expectations.

“Balance retaining [one’s] own voice and taking advantage of these tools that are very empowering,” Zerbe said.

Tyler Lynch, a second year history major, feels that his classmates who use A.I. programs are either students who excel in class already and know how to use A.I. programs effectively, or who are not as engaged in class material, and use A.I. programs to efficiently get through the class.

Lynch himself has periodically used “Grammarly and Claude A.I.” “Basic knowledge on a topic is important, otherwise it is easy to be led astray by its misinformation,” Zerbe said.

Leigh has noticed that newer engineers rely heavily on A.I. systems. He feels that these students are having a disconnect with the intrinsic knowledge a person gains when not using A.I. systems so heavily. He has noticed this in how many of the reports turned in by those students have a similar product in the end.

“There is merit in the journey of finding answers, [rather] than just making the products,” Leigh said. “You learn a lot when you can’t figure things out.”

How does the Ask Alex program address the concern of taking away the experience of learning for students?

The Ask Alex program has the

goal of being a learning tool. As a means of not simply providing the answers to student queries, but also being able to show the student how it got those results. “[We] don’t want [Ask Alex] to just show the answer but how it got there and ask follow up questions,” Gerving said.

The potential that artificial intelligence has to be used and incorporated into modernity is heavily impacted by how an individual chooses to interact with the programs. To people who come from a culture that is more conflicto r power structure centered, a relationship with A.I. will more

often be viewed as something to be subjugated.

Conversely, when a person comes from a culture that is more focused on group effort for group benefit, A.I. will be used and seen as more of a companion or a collaborator.

“The way we think about things determines the realities we live.”

Hale said.

Natural Language Processing are programs that work with queries by users and not keyword searches for finding results. A Natural Language Model retrieval-augment is a gener-

ation of systematic meaning using a query and the topic of a search.

Then, the information is given to the language model. These systems use vectors. Vectors equal a list of numbers which is able to be understood by computer systems. This list of numbers is capable of representing concepts in a document. Then, the query posed is turned into a vector that is used for searching for other vectors that look the most similar. “[Natural Language Programs are a] more natural way of interacting with a system for the information that you need,” Gerving said.

Zerbe gives his students an informational handout that walks them through the best practices for using A.I. Large Language Models.

“Treat it like a conversation,” Zerbe said.“It’s not Google, it’s not a search engine. Treat them like a conversation partner.”

The benefit of natural language queries is that they are a more natural language experience compared to that of a search engine.

An example would be a person looking for information about rocks: A search engine would return results that contain the word “rocks” like “rock ‘n roll”. Natural language models’ goal is to reduce the amount of wrong hits and find targeted information within the context of how the person searching desires. “[The] whole idea with semantic search is to code with meaning,” Gerving said.

Another area of concern about the A.I. industry development is about regulations and transparency. There is a real possibility that these open models could become closed. Or new A.I. models will debut that are closed. Meaning, the models can become trade secrets.

A recent change in some of Gerving’s classes has resulted in professors no longer being allowed to use

Google Co-lab. The program was recently updated to automatically have A.I. assisting users without a way to turn off the function.

Due to this, professors have turned away from Google Co-lab to find other programs where A.I. options can be turned off or on.

At the end of the day, A.I. is a tool, and like all tools, they do not have an internalized moral or ethical code. It follows the morality that the programmers give it.

Many ask the question, “Does A.I. impact the environment?”, but the answer is ambiguous.

Artificial intelligence does need resources to run. The way it is being used can benefit the environment by helping to solve problems on how to preserve, save, or salvage environmental issues. A.I. has a range of functions. It can help with understanding laws or policies in a local capacity.

In the ethical debate about whether to use A.I. or not out of concern for the possible environmental impact on energy use and thus emissions, it can be hard to compare the environmental damage of using A.I. ver-

sus a person’s regular search engine.

“Like how does it compare to, you know, when thinking about

“the way we think about

is the extraction of metals and silicones, which are already scarce materials. The mining process for extraction is generally unsustainable. Additionally, as the programs go through updates, there is the waste produced. All new technology updates or new models of phones and computers already have this problem.

“Waste production is already hard to get rid of and recycle,” Leigh said.

For the environmentally concerned person, it can be better to use local sources.

For students, instead of relying on A.I. programs for help with writing an essay, going to the Writing Center is an alternate option without the concern of the environmental impact.

“People are getting paid for [tutoring students], they are signing up for it presumably and it’s what they want to do,” Lynch said.

things determines the realities we live.” when y o u r congressman or woman takes a private jet somewhere,” Lynch said.

The physical hardware demands of A.I. systems are sometimes forgotten when discussing the potential environmental impact. There

59

TALKING IN THE TREES

By Luke Shanafelt

I

walked through campus for the first time on a cold December afternoon. I breathed in the crisp air and felt different. The trees waited for me while I walked up 17th street. From the moment I got out of the car I felt a weight lift up off my chest and float away into the atmosphere. It was replaced with a euphoric feeling of freedom and possibility.

I transferred to Cal Poly Humboldt in Fall 2024. As I fell into a routine and became preoccupied, that weight returned onto my chest, but that was to be expected. When I looked around the quad, I saw a lot of people. People with all new perspectives, personalities, and endless possibilities of friends.

One of my passions in life is interacting with people. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, I haven’t been convinced that our lack of social interaction benefited anybody. I saw a lot of people become more engaged with social media and online communities that pulled their attention away from in-person interaction. I came to Humboldt thinking I would be friends with all my neighbors in College Creek, but my roommate preferred playing video games over making intimate connections with people at school.

There are many different things a person can tell you when you meet them for the first time. The connection I make with a person is addicting, and I wanted to chase that feeling at a faster pace than I was doing by naturally meeting people.

Thus the social experiment was born. A friend and I came up with the idea to sit down at a table and interview people with in-depth questions with the sole purpose to get to know them better.

After a couple weeks of preparation, I went to Cal Poly Humboldt’s main quad for multiple days, trying to get to know as many people as possible. I wanted to find out what kind of people would come up to me, why they felt the need to, unsure what I was going to accomplish by talking to all these strangers.

After weeks of on and off spring

rain, I went out to table on a gorgeous, sunny day in Arcata. I interviewed people— focusing on the depth of the conversation, rather than the quantity of people I interviewed. I prioritized free-flowing, natural conversation, but included some prepared questions as well.

Right off the bat, Dan Wassenaar came up to me. A passionate student, he returned to Cal Poly Humboldt to take classes for fun. He enjoys gardening, hiking, and biking.

“I graduated in 1986 now, I just came back to school to take classes I never took,” Wassenaar said.

Wassenaar expressed concern about the government and how that is affecting his anxiety.

“I don’t like what’s happening in the government, I don’t like what’s happening in the world. [It] seems like our basket is getting tipped over and dumped out.”

“I don’t like what’s happening in the government, I don’t like what’s happening in the world. [It] seems like our basket is getting tipped over and dumped out.” Wassenaar said.

Wassenaar and I talked about mental health and how it looks on somebody.

“I don’t sleep, [I] try and solve things I can’t solve that are beyond my capabilities,” he said.

Afterwards, I asked him what helps ease his anxiety.

“I haven’t found a way out.” he said.

Anxiety, worry, and fear are all emotions most people are familiar with. It’s a part of life. It is one of the reasons I conducted this exper-

iment. It can feel confusing when you have these feelings for the first time. Wassenaar’s been having these thoughts for a long time and still has battles. Our conversation focused on how he feels about his place in life.

“I’m pretty anxious. I’m pretty worried, pretty bothered,” he said.

“So I look at my friends, I look at my financial situation, I look at my own specific place in the world, and it’s good, but I worry about people who are coming behind me. I have a 16 year old son. He’s got a long future.”

The next person I talked to had a unique personality and a notably positive mindset. Fletcher Edwards is a student at Cal Poly Humboldt who enjoys videography, his girlfriend, and all kinds of media.

I asked Edwards what his favorite thing to do is and he started the conversation talking about his passion for video editing. We talked about movie soundtracks, video games, and music that we both enjoyed. It felt nice to talk to someone so passionate about what they love.

I felt honored to be someone who could provide a supportive space for Edwards to share his interests. He was so passionate about his hobbies, and I think that is important.

“I’ve got autism, but I’m not negatively affected by it,” Edwards said.

Being someone who does not have autism, this invigorated me with curiosity. I’ve never had a first person explanation of autism so I followed up with the topic and we talked for a bit about how it can sometimes make things a little more fun. Edwards went on to talk about creating a character to play in real life that makes his social interactions a little easier.

“It makes it very easy for me to play a particular type of archetypal role,” Edwards said. “I love being the sort of like quick talking, intellectual savant who’s a little bit weird socially, but still kind of fun and charismatic.”

To Edwards life seems more malleable. The social barriers that most of us have strictly govern our behavior and limit the amount of flexibility we have with our personalities.

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Edwards takes full advantage of his autism and uses it to have a little fun.

“I love playing that sort of a character, and being autistic makes that really easy,” Edwards said.

This interaction was an eye opener for me. Talking to him really inspired me to appreciate all that life has to offer.

Edwards talked about his advancement from when he was a child.

Change is hard, but necessary in life.

His transition from an energetic kid to witty tweed-wearing intellect is awesome. To be able to look forward and strive for improvement is nothing short of noble.

“I’m most proud of my improvement,” Edwards said.

Ian Riley is a student and surfer from San Clemente, a Southern California coastal town. San Clemente is the heart of Southern California surfing, home of many pros. Surfing spots, like T-street and Lower Trestles, made these surfers who they are today– like Riley.

“It’s just the one activity I’ve done for the longest time… and I still get butterflies. [I get] super excited to go [surf] to this day. Depending on how good it is, or where I am, what I’m doing, who I’m with, doesn’t even matter. Doesn’t matter,” Riley said.

Riley loves being connected with nature and his favorite way to do that is with a surfboard. He talked about every wave being completely different and complex, almost like a everchanginging puzzle with the same start, but getting more complex as you solve it.

We got to talking about anxiety and the effect it has on our lives.

There was a theme within that

conversation that we both noticed.

The fact that anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses can be extremely powerful and change the way you function, but it is not who you are.

“You’re not your depression, you’re not your anxiety, you’re not your stress, you’re what you do.”

Riley said.

I agree that there is somewhat of an observer in your head. You are the one who looks at the anxious, depressing, or ridiculous thoughts that

“You’re not your depression, you’re not your anxiety, you’re not your stress, you’re what you do”.

circulate in the brain. But you are not the thoughts themselves.

Then, we circled back to surfing.

Surfing is an incredibly addicting activity. Sitting in the water, sometimes by yourself, staring at the ocean hoping it will provide you with one more surfable wave, then getting up and riding it, focusing completely on the task at hand. It is a beautiful sensation and many people use it to help cope. Riley talked about the deeper context to surfing.

“When I’m thinking about surfing, what I’m doing, where I am, what I’m connecting with, and then, especially in those moment when I’m freezing cold up here in Arcata, and I’m surfing College Cove, and it’s just me dude, it’s a really humbling moment to just be connected with nature like that,” Riley said.

After, we talked about gratitude and being appreciative of everything we get to experience– the good and bad.

Relationships, love, nature, and health were some things we mentioned being grateful for and making the worst of life still worth living.

“Yeah, and that’s what’s so cool about, like, being in this space, is that when you put your head down in the times you have to and, like, just give yourself that time, something good comes up and, like, sparks around with that effort given, you know, you end up being really, f…ing lucky,” Riley said.

Gage Goodnight, Cal Poly Hum-

boldt Junior, came up to my table next. He, like most of these people, came up not knowing what the interview was about. I told him it was just a nice conversation between two people who have never met before.

At first we talked about music.

Goodnight is an avid musician and uses that medium to stay present and help distract himself from anything that is going on in his head.

“My brain is constantly in a bunch of different directions. I’m sure you’ve noticed it with me looking all around and s...t. But yeah, when I make music, it helps to just get rid of paranoias and anxieties,” Goodnight said.

I pushed further on Goodnight’s experience with paranoia, anxiety, and found out some things that would help me understand him on a deeper level. He went on to explain his experience growing up and growing apart from people that didn’t appreciate him for who he was.

“Growing up, you just think your brain is the way everybody else’s brain works,” Goodnight said.

It doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, or bad, it is just a unique trait that identifies you. Goodnight continued and talked about how people tried to cookie cut his personality into exactly what they wanted him to be for them. He talked about interacting with people after going through a period of hyper awareness that was brought onto him by someone with much more experience.

“Whenever there’s like a 1% possibility I could have made someone feel bad or uncomfortable, that 1% becomes 100% in my mind, ” he said.

Goodnight’s perspective on life

was interesting. It was definitely different than mine and I found that is when I learn the most about people. When differing views talk with listening ears it creates sympathy. I can feel emotion for a fellow human being who’s struggling, because I’ve seen a good part of them. I get to see the person that comes up to a random table and talks about some of the deepest parts of their life.

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How lucky am I to be a part of that person’s life?

“It’s hard to know whether stuff’s really gonna work out for you or not,” Goodnight said.

Of course there will be doubts about if things will truly be alright in the end. To be fair, there’s no guarantee of anything, but I’ve seen life do so many beautifully unexpected

things. I can not imagine a world where everything doesn’t go back to equilibrium in the end. The deviation from center will always conclude back at the line that it started, at least that’s what I believe.

I had talked to these people about anxiety, aliens, passion, love, death— but what was the point? What was the goal here? I couldn’t give you an exact answer of why I went out and did all this, but this is what I learned.

I am trying to show people who want face to face interactions that there are people who are willing to have a conversation. Call me old fashioned, but I love talking to people. It doesn’t matter if the other person has a differing opinion, comes from a completely different place, or if our personalities are on the opposite sides of the spectrum– I will still take talking to them in person over messaging them on the internet.

The goal is connection. To be more connected is to be more present, and that helps with compassion, empathy, and understanding. I think bringing people together can help heal internal wounds that might be hard to get rid of. Connecting people will cure our depression epidemic. It will help with confidence, and maybe it will help people realize that there is so much more to discover in yourself when you reflect it through someone else’s experience.

This experiment has made me realize this is how humans solve issues, create memories, and live happy lives. So if you see a stranger on the street and something makes you want to talk to them, do it. What’s the worst that could happen?

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Osprey Spring 2025

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