January 26. 2017

the California Aggie SERVING THE UC DAVIS CAMPUS AND COMMUNITY SINCE 1915

VOLUME 135, ISSUE 13 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017

BRIAN LANDRY / AGGIE

MO RE TH A N 6 0 0 W OM E N ’S M A RC HE S HE L D TH R O U G H O U T TH E W O R L D

BY ANYA REHON city@theaggie.org In response to the recent election and inauguration of President Donald Trump, thousands of women’s rights activists rallied in front of the California State Capitol Building on Jan. 21 to join in the fight to protect equal rights for women and for all.

“Ladies, and those of you that love them, respect them and know that they deserve equal rights, thank you for being here today,” said Angelique Ashby, a City of Sacramento councilmember, at the March on Sacramento.

The Sacramento Police Department estimated that around 20,000 people attended the rally on the west steps of the California State Capitol Building after a one-mile march that began at Southside Park. The March on Sacramento was just one of nearly 600 sister marches that took place around the world in support of women’s rights, with the grassroots march taking place in Washington, D.C. This march was the first of its kind and welcomed any person, regardless of gender identity, to attend in support of women’s rights. Women, men and individuals of all ages, races, ethnicities and religious and social backgrounds were in attendance.

As countless individuals chanted, “The people united will never be divided” and “We’ve got stamina,” BECCA RIDGE / AGGIE

UC Davis Sexual Violence Awareness and Education Campaign wins award

many other people carried posters and banners with slogans reading, “Love not hate makes America great” and “Love is love.”

Nikki Eman, a fourth-year environmental policy and planning major at UC Davis, attended the event to show her support for equal rights and for climate change research, another issue that has been challenged by the current U.S. administration. She was proud to attend the march and felt empowered by all the people present.

“The atmosphere of the crowd is especially inspiring. Just seeing everyone out here trying to show their representatives that they care is amazing,” Eman said.

Numerous organizations set up tables at the march as well. Some of the groups that participated included the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Women’s Empowerment, My Sister’s House and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW).

NASW works to be a voice for social justice by bringing resources and services such as mental health and WOMENS MARCH on 12 BRIAN LANDRY / AGGIE FILE

HANNAH LEE / AGGIE

UC Davis plans to bottle student wine for $80

Just a number on a calendar

A M C P AWARD RECOG NIZ E S E XC E LLE NC E IN M A R KET I NG, COM M UNICATIONS

CA M P U S W I N E R Y A I M S TO R E M A I N E NV I RO NME NTA L LY SUSTA I NA B L E

ST U D E N T S R E F L E CT O N N E W Y E A R ’ S R E S O LU T I O N S , S EL F-I M PR OV EM EN T

BY IVAN VALENZUEL A campus@theaggie.org

BY JEANNA TOTAH campus@theaggie.org

BY MARLYS JEANE features@theaggie.org

The Sexual Violence Awareness and Education (SVAE) Campaign, a project aimed at encouraging students at UC Davis to take an active role in preventing sexual assault, has won a MarCom Award for its achievements in marketing and communications.

The Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP), which administers the award, reviewed 6,500 entries throughout the United States, Canada and 17 other countries. The SVAE Campaign received a Platinum Award, the highest award in the competition.

“MarCom Awards recognizes outstanding achievement by creative professionals involved in the concept, direction, design and production of marketing and communication materials and programs,” said Ed Dalheim, the executive director of AMCP, in a press release. “Judges are industry professionals who look for companies and individuals whose talent exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry.”

Sam Alavi, a fourth-year sociology major and co-chair of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance Network (GSA), attributed that the effectiveness of the campaign was due to its prevalence on campus.

“I think my approach to sexual violence prevention education is that it really has to saturate every aspect of campus,” Alavi said.

“So not only in our classrooms or our orientations, and kind of embedded it in our curriculum, but also embedded everywhere else in student life, which was the idea behind the coffee sleeves and the posters and our sexual assault videos, all of those were […] meant to remind students about consent and bystander prevention in all the other moments of their lives at UC Davis, and I think we did a pretty good job of it.”

Andrew McDaniel, a campaign specialist for Student Affairs Marketing and Communications who oversaw the campaign, said that the campaign has effectively helped students have conversa-

Due to the passing of state law on Jan. 1, the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology can now avoid pouring student products down the drain — and these high quality bottles of wine won’t be cheap.

The newly-established California law introduced by former Senator Lois Wolk, Senate Bill 683, allows the university to sell its student-produced wine to other wineries for handling. “[The law] authorizes the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) to issue a special nonprofit sales license to a nonprofit mutual benefit corporation that is associated with the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis,” the law reads.

The department has been discussing the complex process with campus counsel, but must first get approval from the university to form a nonprofit organization, obtain an official license from the ABC and draw funds from the federal government.

David E. Block, Department of Viticulture and Enology chair, said bachelor’s and master’s students are able to gain a hands-on experience in the department’s wine production lab. To meet the class’ wine excellence standards, the state law authorizes underage students to engage in all aspects of the class, including wine tasting.

The department collects its grapes for wine production classes from the vineyards on campus, from its Oakridge Station in Napa Valley and from donations from companies that value what chief campus counselor Jacob Appelsmith calls the “next generation of winemakers.” Of the 70 to 100 tons of grapes that the department crushes every harvest season, Block said about 250 to 300 different batches of wine are made, which translates to between five and seven thousand gallons per year.

“The plan with the new legislation is to sell most of this wine to the bulk market,” Block said. “It would end up getting sent to other wineries and they would mix it with their wine, package it and sell it.”

Maddie Elliott and her date moved down the assembly line at Blaze, interacting with multiple employees to craft perfect, individualized pizzas. With each question asked of him, Elliott’s date never failed to use a “yes, please” and “thank you.” Elliott had already ordered her pizza, and, with a twinge of regret, remembered the New Year’s resolution she had made just a week earlier.

“This year I actually did make a New Year’s resolution — I decided I wanted to work on saying ‘please’ more often,” said Elliot, a third-year managerial economics major. “But I have gotten out of the habit of saying ‘please’ when I am requesting something of someone else. Manners are something that is important to me and something I value [in] other people.”

New Year’s resolutions are a tradition in which many Americans take part. According to the Statistics Brain Research Institute, about 41 percent of Americans usually make New Year’s resolutions. However, the study reports that only 9.2 percent of those people feel successful in achieving their resolutions.

Elliott, determined to be more kind in the new year, has not only been more conscious of her manners, but also wants to approach the world with a warmer persona.

“Another thing I’ve started to do is smile at a new person each day,” Elliott said. “There’s so many times I’ll be walking around campus and lock eyes with someone, and then we both just look away. Instead, I’m trying to start giving them a soft smile, even if I’ve never seen them before. You never know what someone is going through, and if I can be the one small act of kindness out of their day, I would be very happy knowing that.”

Along with committing to do more good deeds, many people focus on overall self-improvement, with goals of losing weight and eating healthier. Health-related resolutions make up more than 30 percent of the resolutions made by Americans each year, according to a Nielson survey from 2015.

“This year’s resolution was pretty cliche, but I think it’s pretty

CONSENT on 12

WINE on 12

RESOLUTIONS on 12

2 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

UC DAVIS STUDY ABROAD SECURES $22,000 IN GRANTS FROM FRENCH GOVERNMENT Awards geared toward students of color, students from underserved communities

CAT TAYLOR / AGGIE FILE

BY YVONNE LEON G ca mpu s @ th e a ggi e .o r g

At the end of last year, the French Embassy in Washington D.C. gave the UC Davis Office of Global Affairs a grant of $19,386, while the UC Davis Study Abroad Club won a $2,000 grant from French Mission for Culture and Higher Education, located in New York City.

The Transatlantic Friendship and Mobility Initiative, in collaboration with the French Embassy, aims to strengthen the ties between the U.S. and France by diversifying and doubling the number of students from France and the U.S. studying abroad in their respective countries by 2025.

Under the leadership of Joanna Regulska, vice provost and associate chancellor at UC Davis, UC Davis Global Affairs showed a willingness and ability to leverage the goals of the proposal. UC Davis will match the grant, making the total budget nearly $40,000.

“We were honored to be selected and awarded $20,000 by the French Embassy[,] a sum that will be matched by Vice Provost and Associate Chancellor Joanna Regulska of Global Affairs,” said Aliki Dragona, a faculty director for UC Davis Study Abroad, via email. “The award will promote student mobility to France and enhance partnerships with French partner institutions in 2017 and beyond.”

The budget will allocate $30,000 for

20 students studying abroad in 2017.

Each award recipient must develop a project such as a video blog or photo album for outreach purposes.

Half of the travel funds will be aimed toward students of color and underserved communities.

“UC Davis Study Abroad offers a robust portfolio of faculty-led programs (several in France) as well as programs through UCEAP; consequently, these student travel awards will be critical in supporting UC Davis students (and in particular, students of color and from underserved communities) studying in France in 2017,” Dragona said via email.

The application for the grant outlined a number of new initiatives with France,

HANNAH LEE / AGGIE

BY JAYASHRI PAD M A N A B H A N ca mpu s @ th e a ggi e .o r g

ASUCD held its first senate meeting of Winter Quarter on Thursday, Jan. 1. ASUCD Vice President Abhay Sandhu called the meeting to order at 6:10 p.m. Senator Sam Park was absent and Senator Ricardo Martinez arrived late.

Senator Irveen Grewal was elected senate president pro-tempore. The president pro-tempore is the official representative of the ASUCD Senate and is elected each quarter.

Public discussion began with an appeal for Housing Day volunteers by Juliana Luna, director of the Housing Advising for Undergraduate Students unit. Environmental Policy and Planning Commission chair Sarah Fisher presented a proposal concerning the environmental impact of houseboats and was directed to a member of ASUCD administration.

Kevin Blue, the UC Davis athletics director introduced Dan Hawkins, the new head football coach. Hawkins gave a short speech about the campus, his experiences coaching football around the world and his desire to make a difference through football. He stressed the importance of the creativity and dedication in football and ensuring that players focus on both sports and academic excellence. The floor then opened to the senators to question Hawkins.

Internal Affairs Commission chair Nick Flores asked what football can do to engage students and increase school spirit. Hawkins proposed ideas of contacting Greek life, having camps or clinics or following a past strategy of marching football players through the campus and residential areas.

Gender and Sexuality Commission chair Alison Tam questioned how football players were educated on consent, sexual harassment and cultural competency. Hawkins responded that players were required to undergo a program when they come to campus and would be required to repeat it once they began football season. Hawkins concluded by stating that

football players’ academic progress rate was very high and that football staff was very strict about keeping players on a path to academic success.

Next, senators were assigned to ASUCD committees and units. Senators nominated themselves or other senators for open positions, and roll call votes were held if there were more nominated senators than positions available.

Following presentations and assignments, legislation was presided over. Senate Bill #10, introduced by Joshua Dalavai, concerns giving marketing money to the Aggie Reuse Store. The bill was tabled.

SB #15, introduced by Internal Affairs Commissioner Jacob Engel, concerned a $1,000 ASUCD volunteer award. Senator Julie Jung wanted the bill to be an incentive to volunteer and a way to recognize volunteers of ASUCD without whom many ASUCD operations would not be able to function efficiently. SB #20, also authored by Engel, concerned awarding temporary/trial scholarships that do not fall under the ASUCD Bylaws.

After some corrections, the bills moved into public discussion. Controller Joe DeAngelo expressed concerns over both bills because senators have not been identified to sit on the committee and there was no outline to what method would be used to award money. There was concern over taking money from senate reserves that could be given to staff or misused.

Additionally, certain committees and units that were not as active and had fewer volunteers were less likely to be recognized. After discussion by the senators, the bills were called into question

by Senators Sofia Molodanof and Shaitaj Dhaliwal, respectively. SB #15 and SB #20 both failed with a vote of 0-11-1, with abstentions by Park.

SB #30, authored by Flores, asks to remove section 1410 of the ASUCD Bylaws titled: My Student Government Channel, as it was not in use. Senator Irveen Grewal moved to call SB #30 into question and the bill was passed 11-0SENATE on PAGE 12

including the Performing Arts Live! Summer Abroad program launching in 2017 with the Institute for American Universities (IAU) College in Aix-en-Provence, and further collaboration between Summer Abroad’s art studio program at Paris-Sorbonne University.

Global Affairs is also working on partnerships with other French institutions for students in the arts and viticulture and enology fields.

Alexandria Hartwell, a fourth-year managerial economics major, considers the grant a great opportunity for individuals to experience traveling abroad.

“I think that is is so great that the French embassy is giving UC Davis a $20,000 grant,” Hartwell said via email.

“So many people on campus [...] would love to study abroad but simply do not have the money. [...] This past summer, I studied abroad with the UC Davis Fashion Marketing in Paris, France program.

I enjoyed myself greatly and appreciated the chance to travel that the program afforded me.”

Hartwell is not surprised by the French government’s decision to aid the program.

“Once I actually placed my feet on a Paris sidewalk and had a chance to look around, I was truly amazed and surprised,” Hartwell said via email. “Having been in France, I’m not surprised in the least that wonderful people are generously facilitating the study abroad experiences for our Davis students.”

Dragona believes the grant is both a testament to UC Davis’ efforts and strengthens the school’s relationship with France.

“This is an important award for UC Davis Study Abroad because it affirms the work we do and it further builds on UC Davis’ existing relationships with

France and French partner institutions,” Dragona said via email.

The UC Davis Abroad Club was also awarded $2,000 for winning the 2016 France on Campus Award. Under the guidance of film director Wes Anderson, the award aims to discover, support and celebrate initiatives to innovatively and creatively explore France.

Student organizations are expected to display French culture on their campuses and beyond by launching a France-related project with a “unique package of funding, mentoring and networking,” according to the website for the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

Julianna Roy, president of the Study Abroad Club and a fourth-year psychology major, said the club plans to have a series of 360-degree videos of UC Davis students’ experiences in France by providing participants with 360-degree cameras, creating a website for the videos and developing mobile apps that are compatible with virtual reality devices.

“As president of the Study Abroad Club and as a peer advisor at UC Davis Study Abroad, I helped design a proposal for a project that will give students an interactive experience and encourage them to study abroad in France,” Roy said via email.

Although there will be study abroad staff members helping this initiative, it will be mainly student run.

“Staff members at the Study Abroad Office will be assisting us through the process, but this project will be entirely student run,” Roy said via email. “We also hope to involve other students on campus who are interested in app development, or who have an interest in French culture.”

Students who are interested can learn more by watching the Study Abroad video on Roy’s YouTube channel.

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017 | 3

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

Kevin Samy of Forbes’ 2016 “30 under 30” list brings Dog Whistle event to UC Davis | Former White House speechwriter comes to campus

BY AARON L I SS ca mpu s @ th e a ggi e .o r g

Kevin Samy, a former speechwriter for the Obama Administration Secretary of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Pentagon and special assistant to the Secretary of Energy, spoke at UC Davis on Jan. 13 as part of his “Dog Whistle” event.

According to Samy, this event was hosted by the Davis College Democrats (DCD) as an alternative to Milo Yiannopoulos’ UC Davis stop on his “Dangerous Faggot” Tour on the same day.

Yiannopoulos, an editor for Breitbart News and a controversial “alt-right” figure, planned to speak at a UC Davis event that was cancelled due to a large protest.

UC Davis was Samy’s first official stop on his “Dog Whistle” Tour, sparked by a response to a Yiannopoulos event at Miami University.

“I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll stop in Ohio and offer another perspective’,” Samy said. “We don’t have the resources of internet troll royalty that Milo does — in three days, we packed a room full of hundreds of students.”

According to the Dog Whistle Project’s Facebook and website, Samy and partner Chris Roessner’s mission is to “decode the politics of hate and reaffirm our American identity, and shine a light on the algorithm of the kinds of messages and arguments they’re making that frankly appeal to the extreme fringe.”

Samy said that he and Roessner, who could

not attend the UC Davis event, began noticing a trend in politics since the recent presidential election — dog whistle messages.

Samy explained dog whistle politics as coded appeals or euphemisms. One example he gave was how supporting “family values” can be associated with anti-gay rhetoric.

“We are not an America that says, ‘Since you’re Muslim, we’re going to put an asterisk by your name,’” Samy said. “I see the way people talk about immigrants from Pakistan and it riles you up.”

Samy believes that America needs to become more cognizant of dog whistle politics in order to prevent it.

“There is a lack of depth of understanding of the mechanism by which this kind of affected coded strategy [dog whistling] works that is inherently deceitful,” Samy said. “I had conversations with people of color, and they wanted people to explain ‘What do we do now?’”

Samy also followed Yiannopoulos to the next leg of the “Dangerous Faggot” tour on Jan. 20 at the University of Washington.

In Samy’s opinion, Yiannopoulos was able to play the victim card after his cancelled UC Davis event.

“First, [Yiannopoulos’] message upon return [to the next day’s protest] was predictable and potent, rabble rousing around one-liners we can all agree with, such as ‘they care about diversity, but not diversity of opinion,’” Samy said. “Free speech can be used to tear down or build up. As a guy who goes around saying

‘faggot’ and bad-mouthing entire groups of people, Milo embodies the former.”

Christian Monsees, the DCD president and a third-year political science major, wanted to support Samy’s message and provide an alternative to Yiannopoulos’ event.

“We are thrilled to have Kevin Samy in light of the [Yiannopoulos] event; he believes, as we do, in the dangers of the alt-right and how it’s damaging to our political system,” Monsees said. “He is here to talk about implicit bigotry and how politicians can use dog whistle politics to inspire hatred and bigotry that some people have in order to gain support. We believe that while it is absolutely important to enforce freedom of speech, that does not mean that you should invite just anyone onto a campus.”

Samy described Yiannopoulos as a “provocateur” and “super-villain,” monikers that Yiannopoulos has used to describe himself as well.

“Yiannopoulos is like a toddler in a Darth Vader costume,” Samy said.

For Monsees, Yiannopoulos was not an appropriate guest for the UC Davis community.

“It is one thing to have the right to free speech, but it is another thing to deserve to be heard,” Monsees said.

However, Samy said that he still upholds Yiannopoulos’ right to free speech.

“His action of espousing [his ideas] is an artifact of a functioning, open, free republic,” Samy said. “His existence is actually proof that our nation built on an ideal is working.”

BRIANA NGO / AGGIE

Yolo County’s poverty rate higher than before recession Report finds that various California counties experience similar phenomenon

DANIEL TAK / AGGIE FILE

BY ANYA REHO N ci ty @th e a ggi e .o r g

Yolo County’s poverty rate remains higher than before 2007, prior to the onset of the “Great Recession,” according to a new report issued by the California Budget & Policy Center from the beginning of this year.

This report, titled “Few California Communi-

ties Have Fully Made Up Ground Lost Due to the Great Recession,” used the U.S. Census Bureau’s official poverty measure to determine its findings.

The report concluded that in Yolo County alone, more than 18 percent of individuals were living in poverty. The report also looked specifically at childhood poverty rates. It found that there was an increase in poverty rates by nearly 3 percentage points between 2007 and 2015, with

about 17 percent of children living in poverty in 2015.

In the greater Sacramento region, three other counties’ rates remain higher: Placer, Sacramento and Sutter counties. Not only are the surrounding region’s poverty rates higher than before 2007, but so are 26 other counties rates across California.

Kings, Madera and Sutter counties were found to have the highest recorded poverty rates from 2015 figures, with than 8 percentage points higher than 2007’s numbers.

These high rates of poverty seen across the state and our country indicate the issue’s seriousness. Every year, millions of California residents alone cannot adequately support themselves and their families. High housing costs, the lack of affordable child care available and low-wage jobs are a few main reasons why individuals may be struggling to get by.

“For a family of four with two adults and two children, the official poverty threshold was $24,036 in 2015,” stated the Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2015 Report by the US Census Bureau.

ANSWERS TO PREVIOUS PUZZLES

Chess

Black to move. Mate in two.

Hint: Start with a check. Black can stall, but cannot stop the inevitable.

Sudoku

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

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

In specific, children of color are hit hard by higher levels of poverty; Black and Latino children are about three times more likely to live in poverty than white children. Policy analysts suggest that by increasing the incomes of low-earning families to a living wage, these families struggling to get by will be able to provide better for themselves and their children.

“In California, two-thirds of the people living under the poverty line are working. It is critical that we make sure those people working having a living minimum wage,” said Steven Bliss, the director of strategic communications at the California Budget & Policy Center.

In particular, Bliss stressed the importance of making sure that the various federal and state programs such as Social Security, CalFresh and CalWorks aren’t scaled back in funding due to the assistance they provide to millions of low-income individuals each year. He argued that it is important that that our congressional delegations in both Washington, D.C. and California protect these programs since millions of people depend on them.

4 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

HANNAH LEE / AGGIE

Davis area receives nearly eight inches of rain this month Police chief provides information about safety; Unitrans asks riders to remain patient through delays

BY KENTON G O L DS BY ca m p u s@ th e a ggi e . o r g

A deluge of winter rain has hit the UC Davis campus. In the period of Jan. 1 to Jan. 18, 7.83 inches of rain were measured in the nearby Sacramento Executive Airport, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Large amounts of rain pose a particular set of challenges for campus management and students, especially when it comes to maintaining safety.

According to Interim UC Davis Po-

lice Chief Jennifer Garcia, the most important part of remaining safe is planning ahead.

“Check the weather before leaving [for campus], especially if you are going to be gone all day,” Garcia said.

“For students, you leave your home in the morning and you don’t go back until the evening or sometimes late in the evening. Check the weather throughout the day. It might be really sunny and bright in the morning but by the evening it’s torrential floods.”

Even in the rain, police officers have to be ready to respond at a

moment’s notice. Garcia encourages students to make use of police officer’s weather preparation methods.

“One of the things we like to encourage officers to do is to have what we call a ‘go bag,’ in a case like this when we are experiencing flooding […],” Garcia said.

“In a ‘go bag,’ you have extra socks, extra clothes, your toiletries, any medications you might need, jammies, snacks, a couple bottles of water—to have that in your car at all times. I suggest that for everybody in times of severe weather.”

According to Garcia, a lot of work related to winter weather, especially flooding, falls to UC Davis Facilities Management.

“What we do for severe weather is we do rely on Facilities [Management] to supply sandbags if needed, and they would be the response to areas on campus that are flooding as far as if we need to divert the water or pump out the water of a basement,” Garcia said. “We would work with Safety Services risk management if there was a major problem on campus.”

Garcia also advised students to take extra caution when biking during severe weather.

“Wear some sort of reflective gear, because when it’s darker out it’s harder to see people,” Garcia said. “Also your peripheral vision is very important when you are driving and/or on a bike and even walking. So you want to make sure

MORGAN TIEU / AGGIE

A symphony to children’s ears Ukulele Kids Club donates instruments to UC Davis Children’s Hospital

BY KA E LY N T U E R M E R - L E E c i ty@th ea ggi e .o r g

What started off as one man’s hope to provide community service expanded into a volunteer organization that fundraises to send ukuleles to children’s hospitals. Corey Bergman, founder of Ukulele Kids Club Inc., was

inspired to help others through music — one of his passions — after the loss of his son.

Bergman began volunteering at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in 2012. A year later, he received the President’s Volunteer Service Award from former President Barack Obama.

that your headgear, even though you’re trying to keep yourself really warm, you’ve got to make sure that your peripheral vision is really clear.”

This extra caution when driving also applies to Unitrans drivers. According to Amelia Bizjak, the operations manager for Unitrans, bus drivers must take extra precautions to maintain safety.

“Logistically, the rain provides an extra challenge for our drivers, similar to how driving in the rain in a car is more difficult,” Bizjak said via email. “Like in a car, vision is reduced and in order to be safer drivers need to go slower. There are also many more cars on the road, as people who would normally bike either switch to driving their own car or riding the bus.”

In addition to having to drive much more attentively, drivers also face the challenge of increased ridership on buses.

“Ridership tends to go up a great deal when it’s rainy out,” Bizjak said via email. “A lot of people who ride their bikes switch to alternative methods of getting around Davis on stormy days, and Unitrans is the alternative for a good number of people. Our buses tend to be a lot more packed on rainy days as a result.”

Because of increased ridership, late and crowded buses are the most common complaints during rainy weather.

Bizjak wants to assure riders that Unitrans does everything it can to keep the

In 2014, he and his wife founded the Ukulele Kids Club Inc., a nonprofit organization that aims to aid music therapy in children’s hospitals by providing them with ukuleles.

Initially, bigger cities and hospitals were identified for ukulele donation, but requests began rolling in from all across the country and world. The club transformed into something much bigger and more powerful, yet manages to stay close to its roots.

“Music therapy is utilizing music, music techniques, and music interventions to achieve non-musical goals.

Goals can include improving speech and language skills, physical/motor skills, cognitive abilities, emotional expression and coping, and interpersonal skills,” said Stephanie Epstein, a board-certified music therapist at the Holtz Children’s Hospital and Jackson Pediatric Center.

Epstein first met Bergman in the fall of 2014 when she was working at the Jackson Pediatric Center, a Pediatric Prescribed Extended Care (PPEC) facility.

After further communication regarding music therapy, Bergman appointed Epstein as the Ukulele Kids Club music therapy advisor. Since its start just a few

years ago, the organization has grown significantly by means of social media coverage and fundraising.

“We have donated to a little more than 150 pediatric hospitals. Eight or nine of those are in the UK, five or six in Canada, and the rest in the US. We will be approaching 3,000 instruments

by February,” Bergman said. “It’s hard to put into words — it has a physical, mental, [and] emotional effect.”

Board-certified music therapists at various hospitals select children to receive instruments as Bergman tries to fulfill the many requests for the donation of ukuleles. Although only five ukuleles are shipped to hospitals at a time, some hospitals have received multiple shipments over the years.

The UC Davis Children’s Hospital has been one of many to receive ukuleles from the Ukulele Kids Club.

The hospital has been the recipient of several shipments since April of 2015, when it was one of the first of 10 hospitals to be a beneficiary.

“In the hospital, music therapy helps to reduce anxiety and help kids cope with being in the hospital. It’s using specific music interventions that

HANNAH LEE / AGGIE

POLICE LOGS Slim Jims and Beer cans

NICKI PADAR / AGGIE

CREATING PRODUCTS OUT OF PASSION UC Davis students, alumni enter entrepreneurial world with apps, companies

BY SAM SOLO M O N c i ty @th e a ggi e . o r g

BY ALLYS O N TS UJI f ea tures @thea g g ie.org

Jan. 15 “Son is making holes in the walls.”

Nicholas Doherty started creating apps when he was in high school. Now, as a third-year computer science major at UC Davis, an app which he started on in his senior year of high school has surpassed 300,000 users.

Study Cal is a student-planning app that allows users to track their academic progress by recording classes, grades, assignments and other school-related materials. Study Cal acts as both an academic calendar and a grade calculator.

“It was supposed to help me senior year so I wouldn’t get senioritis,” Doherty said.

“It took off from just a small project and turned into this big thing.”

Doherty’s other major app, Aggie Health, creates a system for users to track their eating habits in the UC Davis Dining

Jan. 15 Man “on bike w/ backpack had a flashlight and possibly a Slim Jim was looking at parked vehicles.”

Jan. 17 “Reporting beer can art at Village Bakery.”

Jan. 20 “Male in his 20’s on bicycle went to open garage on Humboldt and took beer and drank it on campus.”

Jan. 20 “Intoxicated subjects running up and down the street.”

system running smoothly.

“When the weather is more severe we tend to get more concerns about lateness or being passed up at stops than in the more mild weather,” Bizjak said via email. “As mentioned before, the increased ridership and hazardous conditions tend to make our buses run late, and we are always very sorry to inconvenience our passengers who are trying to reach their destinations in a timely manner […] All of our drivers work hard to ensure we can provide safe transportation on a daily basis in rain or shine to the city of Davis.”

For Ariana Camarena, a first-year environmental policy major, the biggest challenge on stormy days is the decrease in morale to face the day.

“It usually just makes me want to stay in my dorm and not really go outside,” Camarena said. “Even though I do have class, I have to force myself to go.

Whereas days where there is nice weather, I am kind of more encouraged to go because you can dress nice and look nice.”

Camarena’s experiences in the rain have taught her how to prepare for such weather.

“I have to wear a lot of layers: three layers of jackets, a scarf, an umbrella and my rain boots,” Camarena said. “It’s a lot more of a process. And you have to deal with locking your bike, so that takes like longer. It’s a hassle.”

Commons. Students can select the foods they have eaten from the dining commons menu, and the app will generate the amount of calories and nutrients consumed.

In creating both Study Cal and Aggie Health, Doherty, who started programming before his freshman year of high school, has learned about not only the app development process, but also the entrepreneurial side of starting a business as a student.

Last year, Doherty coordinated with UC Davis to market the Aggie Health app around campus.

“I made [placards] and I ran around one day putting them in the [dining commons],” Doherty said. “That night I [...] watched everyone going up to get food.

They would see the sign and they’d point at it and they’d look at their friend and they might talk about it. The next morning I’d wake up and check the download [statistics] and I’d see that hundreds of people

are created for each individual,” said Tori Steeley, a music therapist at the UC Davis Children’s Hospital.

Steeley is a full-time music therapist, who came into contact with the Ukulele Kids Club through another music therapist. She studied music performance in college and wished to continue with music by empowering others. “[The Ukulele Kids Club] helps kids cope with being in the hospital by giving them something to do here.

That could be combatting boredom, but music provides an outlet for them to express themselves without having to use words,” Steeley said.

The Ukulele Kids Club receives donations from fundraising and is looking for corporate sponsors. All fundraising occurs on a personal level, as it is a nonprofit organization.

There are hundreds of volunteers involved across the country — a number that is expected to increase as the organization receives more publicity.

“It’s like we’re giving away gold, it’s amazing, it’s such a simple concept,” Bergman said. “Identifying the hospitals and musical therapists is not going to be the problem.”

had downloaded it. That was really cool, to see all that hard work actually […] have an effect.”

For app developers and aspiring businesspeople in the making, Doherty advises that they be persistent.

“It takes a lot of time to get good at anything, and being a programmer, app developer or designer is just like that,” Doherty said. “I think […] the reason that I was successful [...] is because I kept with it for so long and I never gave up.”

Another millennial-founded business that originated in Davis is Caravan, a ride-sharing app that simplifies the process of finding inexpensive transportation.

Shane Smith, the founder of Caravan and a UC Davis alumnus, found ridesharing groups available on Facebook and other sites to be “very unorganized and a bit of a mess.” Starting development in June 2015 and launching the app in August 2016, Smith built a team that included designers and engineers to help him finish the product that began from his own programming.

“I […] learned a ton,” Smith said. “I learned a bunch of new technologies. I learned how to work with a team [and] how to hire people. [I learned] a great deal of professionalism. What it really gave me was something to talk about, [...] a product to call my own. My goal was to be self-employed — it still is.”

While Doherty and Smith work with students’ technological needs, other young entrepreneurs find business in areas such as alcoholic beverages. UC Davis alumni Ian McCaffrey and Chris Borges founded Crew Wine Co. in the fall of 2014 while still at university.

“There’s a lot of history in wine,” McCaffrey said. “[It’s] a product that stands as different from food and art, but at the BUSINESS on PAGE 12

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017 | 5

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

Teaching Togetherness N I C K I PA DA R / AG G I E

Wellness activities create campus community

BY H A N N A H HOLZE R fea ture s@th e a ggi e .o r g

In her senior year of high school, Megan Settles, a fourth-year clinical nutrition major, became interested in yoga and went on to complete the 200 hours of training needed to become a yoga instructor.

Settles, who now teaches yoga classes at the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC), said the activity has significantly changed her for the better. “[During] your first sun salutation [...] you’ll probably feel a little tight and not super relaxed,” Settles said. “Once you do a million of them, you’re going to feel better. [You will feel] a sense of strength in your body which will [allow] you to feel strength outside of class. Feeling good can bring out [...] confidence. It has this domino effect. You feel really powerful and lifted up.”

On and off campus, students and faculty are engaging others in wellness activities as a means to self-improve and create communal bonds. One pioneer of these activities is Stacey Brezing, the

director for the UC Davis Staff and Faculty Health and Wellbeing Program. Brezing and two student assistants use a small budget and pre-existing resources to organize wellness activities for the campus community.

The upcoming Mindfulness Meditation series, a four week class which aims to foster personal wellbeing, will be offered at the Mondavi Center starting on Jan. 31.

“Going back to work after meditation, [staff and faculty are] a little more resilient, [and] able to handle more,” Brezing said. “It [also] decreases stress levels.”

Another event, the four-part Lunchtime Gentle Yoga series, had 50 slots available that sold out in 20 minutes, Brezing said, with another 70 on the waitlist.

From this high demand came the inception of the Meditation Ambassadors and Wellness Ambassadors Program. The Meditation Ambassadors Program trains those interested in meditation so that they can provide meditation techniques to their colleagues, whereas a wellness ambassador volunteers mainly to

promote general wellness activities.

“Especially with [the] wellness ambassadors, they can do something as simple as passing on the word about what’s happening on campus,” Brezing said. “It’s kind of a grassroots effort to promote stress reduction and wellbeing.”

According to Brezing, data from surveys given after the meditation series in the fall showed that 94 percent of those in attendance felt their health had improved, 97 percent felt their wellbeing had improved and 83 percent felt their work performance improved following the series.

Engaging in wellness activities can be experienced as an individual, but oftentimes shapes and creates new bonds with others.

“Wellness activities can definitely be communal,” Brezing said. “A lot of groups get together and knit, color, play four square, meditate, bring in group exercise instructors, et cetera. The social aspect of these activities can really help motivate people to make long-term behavior changes. It also increases employee morale.”

One drawback in seeking out wellness activities such as yoga classes is the typical cost associated with involvement. Yoga classes at the ARC can range from around $50 to $70. Fueled by their passion for yoga and the desire to bring it to fellow students, fourth-year clinical nutrition major Athena LeMay and fourth-year food science and technology major Ana Skomal co-founded the UC Davis Yoga Club.

“The Yoga Club offers free classes and workshops every week,” LeMay said. “We have guest teachers and provide a variety of all sorts of yoga styles.

We have worked with sororities [...] and the new Manetti Shrem Museum [on their] opening day.

The Yoga Club also offers hikes for building community and relationships with fellow yogis.”

With almost 300 “yogis,” or members, on its Facebook page, the Yoga Club’s activities are addressing the student demand. However, Skomal said that the club aims to provide more than just yoga.

“The simple mission of the Yoga Club is to provide a safe community for students to relax, meet new people and practice the art of meditation and yoga for free,” Skomal said. “For being a fairly new club, I believe we have engaged many students to start and continue their yoga journey in the midst of the college environment. Each yoga class or workshop is beginner-friendly and all levels are

welcome.”

In addition to the Yoga Club, Skomal has sought out additional ways to teach others about yoga. In addition to instructing donation-based yoga classes at a studio in Davis, in which all proceeds went to Wind Youth Services for homeless youth, Skomal also taught mindfulness and meditation classes at the Center Against Sexual Harm in Oak Park.

“I made a commitment to continue on my path of yoga outreach,” Skomal said. “[I want to] create a community within the UC Davis campus where yoga is available to all students who are interested in starting and continuing their yoga journey.”

Yoga instructor Maria West teaches a variety of yoga classes, including several at the ARC. West taught yoga at the Juvenile Detention Facility in Woodland and believes yoga can bring personal growth and much-needed reflection.

“The practice of yoga encourages letting go of thoughts that do not serve you,” West said. “I remind my students [that] this is where [they] are today [...and] nothing is permanent, so tomorrow might be different. Tomorrow, [they] just might be more steady in this pose, or not. We’re all trying to do our best. Yoga is also the unfolding experience of humility.”

Both Skomal and West share a passion for using yoga expertise as a way to give back to the community.

“Initially, it was not my intention to teach, [but] after I taught my first class, I was hooked,” West said. “There’s something about teaching that feels like a privilege — [a] privilege to serve and give back, to encourage, to break through walls and help someone feel good, not just about their body but about themselves.”

Brezing said that after meditation or other engagements in wellness exercises, workers are invigorated. Similarly, Settles said that over the course of the ten-week period she spends teaching yoga to students at the ARC, she sees a definite change for the better.

“If you can find five minutes to lay or sit and meditate [...] just with yourself and try and focus on your breath [...], I feel like that would have so many benefits on this campus,” Settles said. “I think an awesome aspect of [yoga] is community. We’re not all like-minded [...] but we’re all here, together, in that time, practicing the same thing. There’s such a powerful, almost magical, experience to just feel so connected to so many people.”

NI CK I PADAR / AGGI E

Socially abroad: an opportunity for heightened communication French Embassy, Office of Global Affairs encourage social networking

BY G ILL I A N A L L EN featu res@ th e a ggi e .o r g

Studying abroad is an opportunity for students to find themselves living in a Moroccan wilderness town of 11,000 inhabitants, studying evolution in the Tahitian tropics or simply people-watching for hours at a Parisian café. No matter where their travels take them, social media allows students to leave a virtual breadcrumb trail of their exciting international stories.

Last December, the UC Davis Office of Global Affairs said oui, merci to a $20,000 grant from the French Embassy. Global Affairs matched this amount, and most of the $40,000 will be awarded in scholarships to students studying abroad in France. In order to receive a scholarship, students must develop a blog, video blog or photo album during their travels in order to promote study abroad programs through social media.

“Social media is a powerful tool and no matter what platform students use, the Study Abroad Office encourages students to take social media to the next level,” said Blake Cooper, the manager of Study Abroad Marketing and Communications. “I meet with students before they travel and help them address beforehand how they want to use social media to share their experiences abroad.”

Cooper has an extensive background in building social networks and and specializes in helping students document their stories on various social media platforms. One such platform is a collection

of stories and articles written by students who have studied abroad, Study Abroad: Our Stories, of which Cooper is the managing editor. Aside from simply posting photos of food or landscapes, Cooper specifically aims to help students document their travels in a way that benefits them in their future careers.

“I’m constantly thinking of ways to help students tell their stories from abroad so when they graduate, they know how to articulate those experiences in an interview,” Cooper said. “Social media platforms can be fun and inspiring to others at home, but is also an important tool to differentiate yourself from hundreds of applicants applying to the job you want.”

Cooper aims to help students harness their social media expertise into an online portfolio, such as LinkedIn. This way, students can present to employers exciting content from several months abroad in 30 seconds or less. It is also a handy tool to use when living abroad.

“Studying abroad led to many adventures and social media was a really big part of that,” said Andrew Borst, a third-year managerial economics major. “There were times when I would travel to a new city and didn’t have a place to stay, so I reached out on Facebook and a bunch of people were able to hook me up with accommodations through distant relatives and friends.”

For Borst, one of the highlights of the trip was being able to capture moments on Instagram and Snapchat so friends and family were able to keep up

with his dynamic adventures. However, even an avid social media user like Borst realized the importance of stepping back from electronics during his travels to Barcelona, Dublin and other cities in Europe.

“There were definitely people in my program who let [social media] encroach on their lives,” Borst said. “We would go somewhere and there would be a beautiful waterfall [...] and I would sit and look at it and take in the moment trying not to have too much of a distraction. Many people would just take a picture then go back inside because it was cold [...] that’s when social media got too far.”

Through his program, Barcelona Study Abroad Experience, Borst spent Fall Quarter in Europe taking classes during the week and taking the weekends to travel. Despite this fast-paced lifestyle, it is still possible to miss home and the people back in Davis. For Borst, social media was a crucial component in staying connected to his California roots.

“Without social media, the biggest change in leaving for three months would be not keeping up with anyone and probably feeling lonely and detached,” Borst said. “I was doing amazing and fun things, but still it gets rough and you want to keep up with your life back home. Social media kept me tied to Davis and my friends at home could also live through [my trip] with me.”

Professor and language program coordinator Julia Simon also expressed the importance of balancing social media usage while experiencing foreign places and cultures.

“I have seen people go through Le Louvre or Musee d’Orsay and just look at things through the camera on their phone instead of having a relationship with the art in front of them,” Simon said. “We often see people here who have to photograph something before they eat it but if you go to France, you’re not going to get away with that [...] the French take eating very seriously.”

While social media can help people brush up on the places they will be visiting before they leave, most travelers believe it is important not to let it impede experiencing the unique cultures in the moment.

Simon noted that immersion allows for crosscultural connections to be built and new perspectives on world politics to develop. Whether students stay in London or the Moroccan wilderness, every abroad story is worth sharing. Even the simplest Instagram post could encourage fellow UC Davis students to venture abroad, or help one stand out to potential employers as a worldly, cultured member of society.

“My daughter travelled to Sri Lanka and posted a video of her at a wildlife sanctuary picking up a tiny, baby sea turtle, and that had much more of a living, breathing impact versus if she had told me about it over the phone,” Simon said. “Social media allows for a running commentary on your daily existence and becomes an interesting living journal where you record things but are able to share them. I’m sure the French government was hoping for more of that with these scholarships.”

6 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

Opinion the California Aggie EDITORIAL BOARD SCOTT DRESSER Editor in Chief

editorial board Show solidarity with Islamic Center of Davis ISLAMIC CENTER OF DAVIS VANDALIZED IN HEINOUS HATE CRIME

ELLIE DIERKING Managing Editor ALYSSA VANDENBERG Campus News Editor SAMANTHA SOLOMON City News Editor ELI FLESCH Opinion Editor EMILIE DEFAZIO Features Editor AMANDA ONG Arts & Culture Editor BRYAN SYKES Sports Editor ARIEL ROBBINS Science & Tech Editor

CHIARA ALVES New Media Manager JAY GELVEZON Photo Director HANNAH LEE Design Director EMILY STACK Copy Chief OLIVIA ROCKEMAN Copy Chief VERONICA VARGO Website Manager ALEX GUZMÁN Social Media Mangager MADELINE ONG Newsletter Manager

The Islamic Center of Davis was vandalized early last Sunday, Jan. 22, in the latest abhorrent hate crime to afflict the Davis community, smashing windows and hanging scraps of bacon hung from the door handles.

After an inauguration that culminated in an unforgettable year for America, and the world in general, it seems ringing in the new president has invoked the bigoted sentiment we all knew would abound, but had desperately hoped would not occur.

Statements from individuals — both those who attend the masjid and those who do not — spread the general disappointment and outrage that we share as the Editorial Board. To be so base as to attack a religious center that advocates for nothing but peace is truly to be the lowest of the low.

In a message to the community, Interim Chancellor Ralph Hexter, Mayor Robb Davis and Adela de la Torre, vice chancellor for student affairs and campus diversity, expressed their “disgust, outrage, and sadness” over the incident and addressed that “acts and words of hatred directed toward Muslims as a group is an urgent and growing problem across our society.”

“Behind our commitment is our strong belief that inclusion of and respect for people from all backgrounds is a simple matter of justice and of recognizing the innate dignity that all humans share,” the message said. “In addition, we have seen how both our university and city are greatly enriched by the presence and contributions of our Muslim populations. Hateful acts or words toward any group have no place at UC Davis or in Davis—indeed, they are direct violations of the Principles of One Community signed by the City of Davis and UC Davis, of the UC Davis Principles of Community, and of city policy.”

This incident not only occurred just hours after the in-

auguration of notoriously Islamophobic President Donald Trump, but it also arrives in the wake of the campus visit of Milo Yiannopoulos, an ultra-conservative media personality who has written, among various columns outwardly offensive toward Islam, that America has a “Muslim problem.” The event, which was sponsored by the Davis College Republicans (DCR) and which was was eventually cancelled due to protests outside of the event location, sparked counter-protests and then countercounter-protests.

The Editorial Board condemns the actions of those who committed the vandalism and sympathizes with the Islamic Center of Davis. We express our disgust at the actions that took place this past Sunday. We hope to never hear of another malicious hate crime occurring in the City of Davis in the future, but the fact remains that racist and malignant sentiment has been on the rise since the election of President Trump.

For students at a loss for how to show support and help those affected by this crime, we can offer a few suggestions. Donate to the LaunchGood campaign created by Omar Awad, a student at UC Davis and member of the Muslim Student Association, aimed at raising money to repair the damages inflicted on the mosque. In less than 48 hours, the project has raised over $20,000. Watch the surveillance video of the perpetrator and offer any information you might have to the Davis Police Department.

Attend “The Davis Muslim,” a lecture series created to spread awareness of Islam on campus and the Muslim experience, presented by The Muslim Student Association in collaboration with ASUCD. But above all, reach out to your Muslim friends and those affected by the crime — to be silent would be to accept this bigotry as commonplace.

Pop culture in the age of Trump UNDERSTANDING OUR NEW CELEBRITY-IN-CHIEF REQUIRES AN EXAMINATION OF HOLLYWOOD

BY JAZMIN GARCIA msjgarcia@ucdavis.edu When the United States elected Donald Trump president last year — arguably giving him the most powerful seat in the world — it capped 2016 as one of the politically contentious years in recent history. It came as a surprise to many, especially in California, that a former reality star was elected over previous Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. This shock was largely rooted in the Trump’s image as a controversial figure, which continues to be fueled whenever he directs offensive comments toward marginalized groups.

Throughout the 2016 election, celebrities publically denounced Trump and urged people to vote for Clinton. Some, like Sarah Silverman, made dramatic and prominent speeches at last year’s Democratic National Convention. This year, following the results, many musicians refused to perform at Trump’s presidential inauguration.

Political satire shows like "The Daily Show" and "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" tore Trump apart. It was hard to tell whether Trump facilitated or thwarted the satirical writing process for these shows; after all, his actions already evoked those of a caricatured tyrant.

What makes Trump unique is that he responds to his critics. He

takes to Twitter to engage in ad hominem attacks whenever "Saturday Night Live" has Alec Baldwin portray him in an (expectedly) unfavorable way.

In October of last year, Trump wrote, “Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me. Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging the election!” Yet, less than a month later, he had won the US presidency. But Trump still seems to have it out for "Saturday Night Live" and Alec Baldwin. Just last week, he tweeted, “@NBCNews is bad but Saturday Night Live is the worst of NBC. Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job.

Really bad television!”

His constant interactions with the entertainment industry are part of what makes Trump unlike any president we have ever had. He’s explosive, which is naturally attractive to the media. Political commentators have speculated about whether Trump’s overexposure in the media contributed to his win. We should expect any less Trump’s coverage in 2017.

Meryl Streep took advantage of the spotlight at the 2017 Golden Globes Awards early this January to speak against the soon-to-be president. “We need the principled press to hold power to account,” she said, before talking about freedom of speech and how it must be defended for the sake of honest and informed journalism. She urged:

“...I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we’re going to need them going forward, and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.” Predictably, Trump sent out a reactionary tweet lashing out at the actress, calling her underrated. Streep’s gesture is one of the most recent episodes in the ‘Hollywood-against-Trump’ trending news saga. There's more to come.

That brings me to this column. I’m drawn to the resistance to Trump within the entertainment industry. Television and film mediums essentially provide platforms— meaning that they’ll give a select group of people an opportunity to voice views and initiate action.

The conversations about Trump’s rise have perhaps been too purely political. This is not to say that Hollywood has ever been apolitical, but examine pop culture more intensively could give insight into our new celebrity-in-chief.

This new era will bring protest art and, with the ever-evolving use of social media (and how celebrity’s posts now form part of the news), more opportunities to challenge the president’s views. Understanding how manifestations of protest and debate play out in an industry that is known for providing an ‘escape from it all.’ will clue us into the direction this country is heading.

The intergenerational technology divide AS TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES, A GENERATION OF WORKERS IS LEFT BEHIND

BY SHOHINI MAITRA samaitra@ucdavis.edu Technology has the awesome ability to connect me with my friends halfway across the world. I can record every second, every minute of my day and have everyone know about it without expending any effort.

But technology and grandparents are another story. I must’ve taught my grandfather how to use Skype a million times, but he is just never able to grasp it. He is way ahead of my grandmother, though, who simply refuses to learn and dismisses modern technology as something she will never need.

Today, there’s a whole generation of people nearly as old as my grandparents who are still working but are on the verge of retirement.

They grew up without social media, at a time when not every home had a computer.

Now, they’re losing their jobs because of the loss of industries that technology has rendered obsolete and this has only caused bitterness among this generation. They consider themselves too old to go back to college, gain new skills or adapt to new technology, but at the same time also too young to retire because they don’t have enough savings for the future.

The decline of the Rust Belt significantly changed the US econo-

my, and some people still haven’t recovered from the transformation.

What was once a powerful industrial sector has deteriorated due to increased automation, an overall loss of US coal and steel industries and outsourcing.

The internationalization of American businesses, as well as liberal foreign trade policies related to globalization, has only caused further bitterness among people who once held jobs at these factories. While some cities have adapted to new technology, many haven’t — and they suffer from high poverty levels and crime rates, poor education and a weak economy.

Detroit, for example, has undergone a complete change in the past few decades. What was once the center of the world’s automobile industry has now become a landscape of urban decay. The population has decreased 61 percent since 1950.

As global competition grew from countries such as China, Germany and Japan, companies were forced to reduce production costs by outsourcing jobs to other countries. In doing so, they could uphold their position in the global market. Slowly, the center of industrial activity moved away from Detroit, along with most of the population, who left to look for jobs elsewhere.

Amid all the noise regarding Trump supporters being racist, misogynistic and xenophobic, we should also be looking deeper at the various issues that have been revealed by this election. Many Trump

supporters were victims of the sharp decline in Rust Belt manufacturing and wanted to return to a normal, financially comfortable life.

Feelings of discontent start to develop when you see others getting opportunities that you feel you should’ve had, and instead of thinking rationally people search for a scapegoat.

What can we do to fix this issue? Clearly, the jobs that have left aren’t coming back. Progress is inevitable. We might be at the beginning of a new phase in which everything is automated and human labor may not be required at all. As we come up with new technology faster than ever before, even our recently acquired technology may become obsolete. When was the last time you used an email to communicate with friends? Yet a mere two decades ago, emails were revolutionary.

The best option to help those affected by automation is to provide them with adequate social security so that they may retire if they so wish. Otherwise, we must provide pathways for them so that they can seek out a different profession and live fulfilling lives.

But the real focus should be on children who will go on to shape the future. The presiding government should make sure that students can get a well-rounded education so they are able to venture out into new areas that will allow for unique jobs to be created.

Progress waits for nobody, and moving backwards only means that the rest of the world will leave us behind.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017 | 7

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

Don’t forget LGBTQ individuals in conservative areas JAI BORNSTEIN’S SUICIDE REMINDS US THAT TRANS YOUTH STILL FACE SEVERE PREJUDICE IN RED REGIONS OF THE NATION

BY TARYN DEOILERS tldeoilers@ucdavis.edu This past December, 19-year-old transgender woman and activist Jai Bornstein took her own life. Bornstein, who was from the conservative town of Bakersfield, dedicated her time in both her hometown and British Columbia, where she attended school, to soothing the pain of her community and empowering the vulnerable and downtrodden — even when surrounding social structures seemed uncompromisingly intolerant.

“Growing up was very challenging because Bakersfield is very conservative when it comes to gender roles and what people’s places are in society,” said Em Opperman, a transgender man and marriage and family therapist intern at the Gay and Lesbian Center of Bakersfield, via email. “I remember driving to community college during [the] Prop 8 [campaign], and I was brought to tears by the large numbers of ‘Yes on Prop 8’ sign-holders,” Opperman said, referring to the 2008 proposition that made gay marriage illegal in California.

The blatant and subtle acts of discrimination that trans individuals encounter in conservative towns like Bakersfield are easily forgotten in light of LGBTQ successes blossoming in progressive cities like the San Francisco Bay Area — which many UC Davis students call home — and small towns like Davis.

“In Berkeley, I found a community of diverse LGBTQ people who thought and felt like I did,” recalled Opperman, a UC Berkeley alumnus. “I felt powerful for the first time in my life, like I mattered and could be anyone I wanted to be.”

But the attitudes toward trans people can differ greatly between red and blue counties, leading students in more progressive regions to underestimate the level of persecution that trans and gender nonconforming youths must brave.

“In conservative environments, transgender individuals face greater rates of discrimination because we are seen as ‘other’ or ‘weirdos,’ whereas in more progressive environments, being different and diverse is perceived as a strength,” Opperman said.

Yet even a community as conservative as Bakersfield holds glimmers of hope for transformation. Dozens of residents from churches, schools and the LGBTQ community quickly mobilized to find Bornstein in the pouring rain when she was missing, while over a hundred attended her memorial service.

“Because Bornstein decided to take her life in a public place, a place where many people go to escape and be around trees and streams, the trauma of the situation became collective, shared by the Bakersfield community,” Opperman said. “Bornstein's suicide has increased awareness in our community as to what it means to be transgender and the additional struggles we face due to society not being accepting.”

Bornstein’s GoFundMe page offers evidence of this growing movement toward acceptance. Originally created by the Bornstein family to fund searching costs, the campaign garnered over $10,000 in just two weeks. After covering funeral fees, Bornstein’s family donated the remaining money to three of her favorite charities — Club GEN at the California State University of Bakersfield, CampOUT! at the University of British Columbia and Bakersfield’s AIDS Project

& Ricky’s Retreat — to support trans youth in Bakersfield and beyond.

But progress shouldn’t hinge on the loss of a community member; it requires allies in progressive cities to take more active approaches to support LGBTQ individuals in conservative areas as well as ostensibly liberal or progressive ones. For some, that entails protesting, writing to elected officials or voting against the recent influx of ‘bathroom bills.’ For others, that means contributing time or money to an organization, supporting trans artists or simply listening openly and lovingly to gender non-conforming friends.

Change will undoubtedly be uncomfortable because it demands levelheaded confrontation with people of opposing opinions. But running from the problem only leaves behind millions of persecuted individuals who don’t have the resources to escape.

"I would encourage college students who go away to school yet grew up in conservative places to go back to their hometown and educate others,” Opperman said. “Additionally, people all over California need to be more mindful of the people they’re electing to positions of power, because this will shape what services and rights are protected, especially in conservative communities.”

We need to emphasize that LGBTQ rights aren’t mere political rhetoric, but substantial policies that radically influence the lives and well-being of those around us. When trans individuals are humanized, entire ideological landscapes can be transformed.

Most importantly, we must work to honor Bornstein’s mother’s concluding words at her daughter’s memorial service: “Let love and kindness, compassion and inclusivity be my child’s legacy.”

What being “poor” really means HOW STEREOTYPES AND EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY TIE INTO POVERTY

BY TAMANNA AHLUWALIA tahluwalia@ucdavis.edu Defining poverty is far from straightforward. The condition spans a range of complexities, from social problems to the federally determined economic poverty line. However, understanding the basics of poverty, and some of its most pertinent issues, is imperative to making a lasting difference in the lives of America’s poorest.

To summarize, individuals or families are defined as impoverished if their yearly pre-tax income falls below a certain dollar amount identified as the poverty threshold. This threshold — which is recalculated every year — is determined and reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. The poverty threshold serves a variety of purposes, including tracking poverty over time to measure the progress of antipoverty efforts, comparing poverty across different demographics and determining eligibility for federal assistance programs.

Comparing poverty levels across demographics sheds light on how poverty affects various races. Based on a 2015 U.S Census Bureau report, 24.1 percent of people below the poverty threshold are African American and 21.4 percent are Hispanic or Latino.

Concentrated poverty, in which poverty is spatially dense in specific neighborhoods and communities, is a worsening epidemic that

dates back decades, and it is intrinsically connected to racial segregation. The first public housing program in the United States began as a part of the New Deal and segregated African American people from White people. The Federal Housing Administration, created in 1934, could have easily prevented segregation by enforcing a nondiscrimination policy. But it didn’t and instead, according to historian Kenneth Jackson, embodied and fueled the “racist tradition of the United States”.

This system of financial apartheid prevented African American people from receiving legitimate bank mortgages, and led to financial predation. In poverty-ridden cities like Baltimore and Chicago, African American buyers resorted to the contract system. Sellers would drive up monstrous rent prices and set financial traps so that they could repossess the home and sell it again if the buyer missed a single payment. This system was unfair, to say the least, and propelled cities such as the ones mentioned into further blight and decline.

That’s how concentrated poverty came about. Currently, poverty among African American and Hispanic communities further propels lower education levels and higher unemployment rates. But more importantly, it ingrains a stereotype about Black people in Black communities as well as the broader American society. In the education system, teachers have been found to hold lower expectations

of African American students. And according to a 2013 Association for the Study of Higher Education paper, students of color reported that faculty members were often unwilling to mentor or work with them because of their race. White peers were usually reluctant to share their work with peers of color.

This negative stereotyping has profound effects on not only African American students’ psyche, but also on communities of color.

As a result, African American students can easily fall into the societal stereotype of being “lazy” and “troublemakers.” On the other hand, they can take it upon themselves to counter the stereotype and not be “another Black statistic.” These students try to do well in school, study hard and refuse to accept the stereotype that places poor expectations on them.

It’s important for both insiders and outsiders of a community to reject harmful stereotypes about others and to try to recognize each person’s individuality. Kill the idea that people of a certain community need to act a certain way or have a certain level of achievement.

Instead of putting people down for defeating their stereotype, celebrate it. One of the most important implications of doing otherwise is that we leave behind some of the most brilliant and talented individuals because they simply never get a chance.

The smoking of our time THE WORRYING IMPLICATIONS OF ESCAPISM AT OUR FINGERS

BY SID BAGGA sabagga@ucdavis.edu As late as the 1960s, taglines like “More Doctors Smoke Camels than any other Cigarette!” and “20,679 Physicians say ‘Luckies are Less Irritating!” blared from brightly hued tobacco advertisements.

These slogans distracted Americans from long-standing folk wisdom and from developing medical knowledge of smoking’s harm.

It horrifies us now that America turned a collective blind eye to the dangers of smoking. Yet our contemporary incessant use of smartphones — the electromagnetic fields of which the World Health Organization said in a somewhat lacking 2011 study could be “possibly carcinogenic to humans” — hearkens back to days of willful ignorance.

Even if we brush aside the cancer conjecture, there is a sharp parallel between smoking and smartphone use: harmful forms of escapism.

Smartphones are addictive. Researchers have found that internet use triggers the release of the dopamine, the same reward chemical implicit in orgasm and (cough, cough) smoking. The tolerance the body builds to the hormone means we eventually need hours of stimulation to match initial levels of gratification. And less exciting

activities, like reading, just don’t do it for us anymore. The percentage of 17-year-old girls who “never” or “hardly ever” read for pleasure has increased from nine percent in the pre-smartphone days of 1984 to 27 percent in 2014.

This constant back and forth between virtual and physical realms — the average consumer spends 4.7 hours on their smartphone — also comes with some nasty side effects. A smartphone screen’s blue light harms eyesight, sleep patterns and occipital nerves. The common behaviors of glancing and typing cause long-term damage to our back and wrists. Earbud and headphone use can lead to irreversible hearing loss. Juggling multiple apps at once lowers productivity and can affect emotional intelligence. This is your body on smartphones.

There is a caveat to the smoking analogy. Unlike cigarettes, smartphones can be helpful tools when used the right way. They bring distant loved ones and a world of information to our fingertips. But I implore you to leave your phone at home one of these days, and watch your peers while you go through your daily grind.

Take a ride on Unitrans in the morning. Show up five minutes before lecture to grab a good seat. Line up at TxMx for a delicious taco salad at lunchtime. Stop by Shields to finish up that political theory paper. Hit the ARC to work off that delicious taco salad.

You’re likely to find that, instead of dedicating the devices to productivity, much of our generation uses them to escape the real world.

At the first sign of boredom, we immerse ourselves in inane status updates and snap stories. While studying or working out, we drown our inner thoughts with DJ Snake’s blaring bass or Migos’ sweet nothings.

It’s time to quit.

Giving up chronic smartphone use doesn’t mean sentencing yourself to an ascetic existence. Be mindful. Don’t think of exercise or studying as a chore. Consider that, in the traditions of Socrates and Aristotle, these acts of excellence are themselves the definition of happiness. Listen to your body while doing bench presses. Ponder the intellectual implications of that problem set.

And for true instances of boredom?

Pick up a novel. Bookworms are exposed to 50 percent more words, have 32 percent better cognitive function, are 2.5 times less likely to get Alzheimer’s and have 68 percent lower stress levels than non-readers.

Do a crossword. Doodle. Do origami. Read the newspaper. Play Sudoku. Make small talk. Keep a journal. Daydream. You don’t need cognitive studies to tell you what your common sense knows.

Your brain will thank you.

8 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

HUMOR Crowded bus offers great experience for future career as canned sardine STUDENTS MAKE THE BEST OUT OF A STEAMY, OVERCROWDED SITUATION

BY BRIAN L ANDRY bjlandry@ucdavis.edu It’s that time of year again when it rains non-stop and everybody takes the bus to campus.

It might be tempting to view this experience in a negative light, but some local UC Davis students are taking another approach entirely.

“I sort of like the crowdedness of the bus,” said Arnold Mantube, a fourth-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major and proud owner of an ‘I’d rather be welding’ bumper sticker. “I’ve always wanted to feel what it’s like to be a sardine in one of those strange rectan-

gular cans at the grocery store. And this is probably the closest I’m ever gonna get,” he said before canoeing away down the sidewalk.

Other students agreed with Mantube’s assessment of the situation and even took it one step further.

“Yeah, I love the idea that we’re all sardines in a giant red can,” said Carissa Sludge, a second-year animal science major and firm believer that “Grown Ups 2” starring Adam Sandler was snubbed by the 2013 Academy Awards. “In fact, I try to think of it as good preparation for what I’d like to do in the future. Everybody at this school wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or my son, but nobody ever has their sights on what really matters — being a canned sardine. The world could always use more canned sardines to sit, unbought and unloved, on

a grocery store shelf. And I think a lot of people tend to forget that when they’re deciding what to do with their lives.”

Strangely, not everyone seemed to be quite on the same page as Mantube and Sludge.

“What…the hell…,” said Mariana Trench, a third-year hydrology major and flat Earth conspiracy theorist.

It’s unclear why Trench thinks it’s strange for students to aspire to a career as a canned sardine.

But one thing is clear — next time you think about how awful it is that the bus is crowded, think about people who will never get a truly authentic canned sardine-like experience.

Think about how sad that is. Sad.

Argue basketball with me and I’ll fall in love LOOKING AT COMMON INTERESTS IN RELATIONSHIPS

BY YINON RAVIV yraviv@ucdavis.edu I visited my housemate in Colombia over Winter Break.

We went to the coast to celebrate New Year’s with his sister and her boyfriend, and we met his sister’s friends, a newlywed couple from Mexico City. They were living proof of the idiom “opposites attract.” The wife was lively, energetic, outspoken, assertive. She demanded that techno music be played at their wedding, she knew all the best clubs in Barcelona, and she was the first to hit the dance floor when we got to the club to celebrate the new year.

Her husband, on the other hand, didn’t say much when we first met him, but he was nice enough. His wife did most of the talking, and he seemed content to just observe. I asked him some questions, and once I hit something he was passionate about, be it European health policy or the state of modern rock music, his eyes would light up and he’d rattle off eight different thoughts in five sentences. His party happened in the club hallways, where he would chat with a beer in his hand. He was a classic introvert, and she a classic extrovert.

Two completely different people. One took charge of every room she entered, the other absorbed her energy and internalized it. I was able to have one conversation with her and a totally different one with him. Even though we were all speaking English (and the occasional “mas aguardiente” from the token American), they each seemed to have their own separate language. It was a miracle they understood each other.

Only when I asked them the most mundane, boring question in the world did I find out how they made their marriage work.

“What do you do for a living?”

He’s getting his master’s in public policy. She’s working for the United Nations, helping resettle refugees from Venezuela and Colombia.

I’ve heard two ideas about the role of common interests in relationships. The obvious one is that common interests matter. What we enjoy doing, what we associate ourselves with, what we spend our precious little free time doing definitely matters when finding our partners. For some, two people with lots in common is exactly what a partnership should look like. That is part of the definition of a relationship to them: two people that trust each other and want to spend time together and have physical chemistry — and also have a lot in common. And I understand this point.

A girl who can argue basketball with me? You’re goddamn right I’ll respond to those texts.

On the other hand, one of my older friends once told me that she thinks it’s narcissistic to expect your partner to like the same things you do. In placing a premium on someone liking the same music as you, you’re only doing it so that you can listen to your own music while spending “quality time” with your boo. I see this point, too. I had an ex-girlfriend that only liked the shows I hated, and hated the shows I was obsessed with.

Seeing her made me happy. Watching TV with her made me wonder if robots could ever be realistic enough to pass for humans so that they could be suitable spouses. But we shared enough of the same values that it didn’t matter to me that she liked country music and wanted to see the same Grey’s Anatomy episode again (all they do is have sex and die in horrific freak accidents — I still don’t get the point). We weren’t really able to talk about music, but talked about our hopes, our dreams, our fears and what our next meal would be because damn, did we love food.

I think both of these ideas have some truth to them. Common interests matter, but not in a vacuum. It’s the right common interests for the right reasons that matter.

The couple from Mexico City doesn’t have the same go-to playlists on Spotify, but they live, breathe and eat politics. They know what they want to dedicate their lives to — what they want to spend their working hours, their social hours, their waking hours thinking and talking about. They share incredible meaning and pleasure in something that’s both extraneous and deeply a part of them.

It’s not just things as significant as a life path or career. Sometimes we like what we like for the pleasure of it. I like plantains because they’re delicious. No backstory there.

I love coffee because it reminds me of my mom and dad serving cappuccinos after hosting dinner parties, as Israelis customarily do — coffee was usually around when their guests would turn and welcomed me into their conversations. I love coffee because I feel like myself when I’m sipping an espresso while hammering away at my keyboard in a coffee shop. So whenever I drink it anywhere else, I’m reminded of how I see myself as a creative person. I have reasons for coffee.

Meeting someone who has her reasons for enjoying coffee isn’t about drinking some dank, overpriced coffee at my favorite espresso bar in San Francisco or her favorite coffee shop in Brooklyn.

What matters is that we have a shared meaning for a part of our lives that we enjoy together. A strong, healthy relationship isn’t just about two people enjoying each other, physically or emotionally. You can physically enjoy many people (as seen in hook-ups) and you can emotionally enjoy many other people (such as your friends).

It’s about two people who are able to connect the dots on what they enjoy, to what they value, to who they are.

Why is everyone in this Spanish textbook having more fun than me?

HELP

BY PARKER NEVIN phnevin@ucdavis.edu It’s 11:30 a.m., and I’m in class looking at slides. I’ve had an adequate amount of sleep. I drank in moderation last night. I did everything right. How are these verb conjugations of “nosotros” not more fun for me? Look at the dude in this book: He’s driving a 1994 Camaro, and his cabello is blowing in the viento. Why is this not me? “¿Porque no me llama Fernando?”

Fernando’s girlfriend is dressed in attire that I can only assume was popular in early 1996. She has a broad smile on her face, and she’s sipping a tall glass of diet coke with ice.

I study hard. I pay my taxes. I shared my bedroom with my broth-

er until my last year of high school. I didn’t smoke weed until I was 18. Why does Fernando’s girlfriend Marie get to have a chill time in a Camaro while I’m forced to sit here and look at that smug grin on her face? She knows I’m not going to pass this class. Dude, she knows. Screw you, Marie. I love you, Marie.

“Luis el hombre de negocios está trabajando en negocios”: “Luis the businessman is working on business.” His company definitely paid for that fancy computer. It probably came pre-loaded with Encarta and Microsoft Money. He’s closing deals with AOL, Yahoo, Radio Shack and Kmart on that thing — it’s the pinnacle of 1996 technology. Check out that power pinstripe. It makes a statement — that statement being “I am literally made of money. And when I say literally I mean literally ‘literally.’”

“¡Es una fiesta!” Easy for you to say. The last time I was at a party I drank too much Captain Morgan and fell asleep. The last time I saw balloons and streamers at a party I was about to go play laser tag.

Nowadays, the pinnacle of festivity is a string of lights pathetically draped over a couch.

Wait, is that Fernando in this picture? Fernando, whom are you dancing with? Fernando, what are you doing? WHAT ARE YOU DOING, FERNANDO? Marie, if you are out there — if you can read this — Fernando is not the man he seemed to be on page 137. Marie, I think you haven’t been looking in the right places. Maybe the answer is staring you right in the face. Maybe the answer is someone you would have never expected. Maybe the answer is Luis.

DISCLAIMER The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held

by The California Aggie. Letters to the editor can be addressed to opinion@theaggie.org.

ISSUE DESIGNED BY

HANNAH LEE | AMY YE | CHRISTIE NEO | CINDY CHEUNG | JONATHAN CHEN | MISHA DEVILLE

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017 | 9

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

SCIENCE+TECH

THE UC DAVIS MODLAB

CO LI N M I LB URN / CO URT ESY

Standing at the intersection of cultural anthropology, English, computer science

BY M ERA L BASI T s ci en ce@ th e a ggi e .o r g

The UC Davis ModLab, located in Cruess Hall, is a place where the humanities and STEM fields collide. The ModLab has multiple ongoing projects at any given time, ranging in topic from video game design to wearable technology.

Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, a Ph.D. student in the Department of English, is the project director for a game coming out of the ModLab called “Frack the Game,” which puts the player in the shoes of a fracking corporation.

Fracking is the process of pumping liquids (water, sand and chemicals) at high pressure into the ground. The high-pressure liquids create fissures in the shale rock layers deep underground, from which oil and gas can flow and be collected from.

Fracking has a controversial history. While proponents say that the practice has driven down gas prices and will provide energy to the United States for years, opponents of the practice say that fracking releases radioactive chemicals, produces large amounts of toxic waste and is polluting people’s drinking water.

The concept for “Frack the Game” came from an undergraduate class at UC Davis that was taught by Joseph Dumit.

“One of the activities in the course was that students came up with this game,” Dhaliwal said.

“You have to capture as much territory as you [can] to frack and to defeat your competitors by making

the most money possible. The whole goal was to get into the mindset of a fracking company, where you might actually be aware of the environmental problems, but you still would choose to ignore them because of your immediate desire to win over your competitor and make more profit.”

After seeing the success of the game in the classroom, Dumit decided to make a video game with the same concept in collaboration with a team at ModLab. According to Dhaliwal, the game gives the player a more contextualized look at the thought process behind a CEO’s choices when it comes to making important environmental decisions.

“There was a very binary, very rudimentary understanding of what things at a corporate level entail,” Dhaliwal said. “Generally, the idea was that either [CEOs] don’t know about the harmful effects of the environment, or, if [they] know and [they] still continue doing it, [they’re] just plain evil. I don’t think that’s an unfair assessment, but I think it’s an inadequate assessment, as anyone playing the game would understand.”

The process of taking a complicated idea and translating it into a medium like a video game is a practice that is commonplace at ModLab, according to Dhaliwal.

“One of the things that we do at ModLab is critical game design or critical video game design,” Dhaliwal said. “The idea is [...] to make video games open certain possibilities of experience and knowledge acquisition that just chatting or talking about them doesn’t.”

IS BREAST REALLY BEST?

G E N E S I A TI N G / AG G I E

STUDY EXAMINES CONTAMINANTS FOUND IN HUMAN BREAST MILK; TOXICANTS ORIGINATED FROM PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS

BY SHI VA N I KAMAL s ci enc e@ th e a ggi e .o r g

The health benefits of feeding infants breast milk, as opposed to formula or other milk substitutes, have been well studied and documented. Immunological protection and significantly decreased risk of asthma, allergy, obesity and various cancers are a few advantages that breast-fed infants have over infants fed substitute milk.

However, contaminants found in human breast milk raise questions to the risks associated with breastfeeding.

A study funded through the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center examined human breast milk for the presence of harmful chemicals, specifically toxicants that originate in personal care products such as toothpaste and liquid hand soap.

As breastfeeding rates continue to rise in America, with 81.1 percent of infants being breastfed, according to the CDC Breastfeeding Report Card, the discovery of toxic chemicals in

breast milk raises significant health concerns for the environmental health research community.

“The main goal of this study was to identify the transfer of contaminants from personal care products into our bodies and to bring awareness [to] how we can avoid them,” said Candace Bever, a PhD student in the Department of Entomology and principal investigator and assistant project scientist.

The chemical triclosan, an antibacterial agent commonly found in consumer products such as toothpaste, soaps, detergents and toys, served as the study’s model research contaminant.

“We chose triclosan to observe because it passes through the body quickly, and we have good detection techniques for it,” Bever said.

Breast milk was used to measure contaminants because it is seen as a food product rather than a waste product. A waste product, like urine, has a higher accumulation of contaminants that pass out of the body; however, milk is seen as more important.

“The most dominant amount of triclosan was found in Colgate toothpaste,” Bever said.

Like Dhaliwal, Katherine Buse is a Ph.D. student in English who works on projects at the ModLab. Buse also believes in the efficacy of video games in learning complex ideas, especially ones pertaining to science.

This is because instead of observing a situation, like one would while reading a book or watching a documentary, the player is put inside of the situation, which allows for enhanced learning.

In addition to producing games that help players think about topics from other perspectives, ModLab also serves to bridge different parts of campus.

“We have people in performance studies; we have people in cultural studies; we have people in sociology, [...] and we have people from computer science,” Buse said. “We’re pretty interdisciplinary.”

The field of English specifically has a long history with games and game design, according to Buse.

“The field of game studies and of critical game design [...] was born to a large extent out of English departments,” Buse said. “[English departments] started looking at different kinds of texts besides literary texts [...] People believed that one of the reasons you looked at literary texts was to study culture, and as new media come up, like television or film or now video games, and become incredibly important to culture, it seems silly to restrict yourself to only look at books.”

Kris Fallon, an assistant professor of cinema and digital media, has been with the ModLab for two years. Fallon believes that the ModLab serves to bridge communities at UC Davis by erasing the The function of triclosan in toothpaste is to fight harmful plaque germs and reduce the risk of gingivitis, a gum disease.

“The triclosan in hand soap products was not demonstrated as more effective than products without it, so the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned this chemical from soap products,” Bever said. “Companies had to take their triclosan soaps off the market.”

There are personal care products that contain much lower levels of triclosan such as mascara and deodorant.

However, its purpose is to prevent bacterial growth within the product — essentially to act as a preservative.

Although triclosan was used as a model chemical for research purposes and has no documented health impact, many other environmental toxins have the potential to harm infants and children, with risks such as abnormal brain growth and development.

“Neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia and other cognitive impairments affect millions of children worldwide, and some diagnoses seem to be increasing in frequency,” said Birgit Puschner, a professor and the chair of the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Some of the highest levels of contaminants in breast milk are seen in women who live in agricultural areas of the world that are treated extensively with pesticides.

“Industrial chemicals that injure the developing brain are among the known causes for this rise in prevalence,” said Jennifer Smilowitz, an assistant professional researcher for the Department of Food Science and Technology at the Foods for Health Institute.

A great area of concern is the San Joaquin Valley region, just south of Sacramento and home to many UC Davis students and their families — key cities include: Modesto, Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield.

The San Joaquin Valley is the agricultural heart of California and a crucial food production zone

pecking order. “[One of the things that] Modlab does really well, and perhaps uniquely on campus, is that it [brings together] multiple people at different stages in their academic careers,” Fallon said. “There are undergrads, graduate students, faculty and postdocs all collaborating on these projects in this really interesting way [...] It gives undergrads the chance to do some research, it gives faculty a chance to draw on their knowledge, and it breaks down the traditional hierarchy in good ways, or at least it tries to.”

One of the projects that Fallon has been working on at ModLab is the Critical Wearables Computing project, which uses wearables (like iWatches or Google Glasses) in its research.

“Wearable computing [...] proposes to help us improve ourselves by getting us to take more steps or consume fewer calories or sit up straighter,” Fallon said. “If wearable computing wants to help us be our best selves, what is the type of self that we want to be, and what sort of assumptions are made when you say you can expose a self through technology? So we started thinking about different ways we could not just analyze how people were using the existing devices, but in a broader research context, what kinds of devices might be different than what was already out there.”

ModLab serves as a place where professors and students from both STEM fields and the humanities can collaborate using critical thinking and technology. for the country. Yet, it is one of the most polluted areas nationwide, and it does not meet the health standards for ozone and pesticide levels set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Research that involves measuring harmful chemicals and how they impact human health is imperative in a society that continuously affects the environment.

“By assessing environmental contaminants in available breast milk samples, we will be able to determine inter and intra-individual variation among women and across lactation, and assess a pathway for unintended exposure to infants,” Puschner said.

Human milk contains numerous beneficial proteins, fatty acids, minerals, vitamins and disease-fighting potential that is crucial for an infant’s healthy development.

When a woman creates milk for her infant, her body utilizes its fat storage. This also happens to be where many toxic chemicals are stored. Therefore, the body transmits a portion of environmental contaminants to the newborn during breastfeeding.

“Typical [toxic chemicals found in breast milk include] pyrethroids […] found in dog shampoo and home products that kill bugs or insects, organophosphates, [found in insecticides], organochlorides, [found in early agricultural pesticides] and flame retardants,” said Ameer Taha, an assistant professor in the Department of Food and Science Technology.

In 1951, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was the first environmental pollutant found in human milk, and today is found in breast milk in women around the world.

Additional well-studied toxic metal contaminants in breast milk include: lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium. These are of great concern to infants because it has been well documented that contamination of these metals lead to neurodevelopmental disorders, lower IQ and mental disabilities.

Further research is required to study environmental contaminants in breast milk in order to raise awareness of the issue and to find solutions.

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

10 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017

ARTS & Culture D IAN A L I / AG GI E

The books that inspire UC Davis faculty GENESI A TI NG / AGGI E

Check out the FOLLOWING BOOKS FOR SOME potential inspiration K R IST IN K I E S E L

BY PA RI SAG A F I a rts @ th e ag g i e . o rg

Books can have deep and profound impacts on the reader, spanning content, time and place. And if we’re lucky enough, they may even help us find the right career. Faculty members Jennifer House and Kristin Kiesel shared their favorite books and the ones that contributed to them finding their professional paths.

Kristin Kiesel Kiesel is a lecturer in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department with an emphasis on teaching and research. She has been teaching for eight years, and recently received a USDA grant with her colleagues to promote a “farm-to-fork” food business incubator in Sacramento. She is currently reading My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem and The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu and teaches Intermediate Microeconomics and Environmental Economics.

Books that contributed to pursuing profession: “I love books and there is always a stack of them next to my bed. Children’s books had the biggest influence on me, the stories my parents read to me.

I wanted to write my own, to explain the complex world around me in a playful way when I started studying. A number of these were German classics and fairy tales. My all-time favorites are Pit Pikus und die Möwe Leila by Friedrich Wolf and Der Tannenbaum by Hans Christian Andersen. Maybe

these powerful stories influenced me in wanting to become a teacher.

Then came the classic novels of the 18th, 19th and 20th century: Goethe, Tolstoi, Feuchtwanger, Mann, Hesse, etc. One that shifted my focus from literature towards social science as a field of study was Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde. In addition to being an autobiographical love story, it is a complex social critique of its times. Reading the news in addition to getting lost in these books and being curious about the underlying causal relationships is probably why I ultimately ended up studying and teaching economics.”

Favorite Books: “There is a long list of novels I deeply cherish and enjoy knowing that I have them on my shelves. Some I have re-read over the years such as Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being while some are more recent additions, like Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. With my now-teenage daughter, we regularly return to those childhood classics already mentioned and added a couple new ones over the years (like Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go!). And then there are my art and poetry books. On top of that list are books about my favorite painter — Paul Klee — and poems by Rilke. I never fail to get lost in these, even for a little while.”

Jennifer House Professor Jennifer House teaches a farm management course once a year with her husband, Professor Greg House, and their son Henry. All three attended

UC Davis, and Jennifer and Greg met in a Pomology class. The family founded Coco Ranch near Davis, where they specialize in organic apples and other fruits, and also own a consulting business called House Agricultural Consultants.

Books that contributed to pursuing profession: “As a young agricultural student sorting out the ways of the world, I was inspired and shaped, as so many are, by philosopher-farmer Wendell Berry’s collected essays in ‘The Long-Legged House’ and ‘The Unsettling of America.’ Then, belatedly, I began reading his fiction, starting with Jayber Crow, a decades-long witnessing of 20th century economic and social change from the perspective of a smalltown barber. I continue today to reflect upon that very human story. I gave the book to my farmer husband Greg; he read the four-hundred page novel to the last page, sighed and went back to the beginning to read it again!”

Favorite Books: “When my life gets crazy-busy and I just want to be elsewhere, I escape into the science fiction worlds of wise woman Ursula K. Le Guin, daughter of writer anthropologist Theodora Kroeber and UC Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. Depending upon the weather, I read from ‘The Birthday of the World,’ ‘A Fisherman of the Inland Sea,’ or ‘Four Ways to Forgiveness’ — short story collections, often interwoven, with time travel, ancient civilizations, cultures in collision, colonization, decolonization, detailed agricultural scenes, mystery, longing, human struggles and brightness, all there.”

SAMMY SANCH EZ-MONTER / COURTESY

Waltz in Magic The Davis Alliance to host Annual Yule Ball at the CoHo

BY BETTY WU art s@t heaggi e. org

Ever dreamed of taking part in the dazzling, magical world of Harry Potter? If so, the Third Annual Charity Yule Ball, hosted by UC Davis’ Harry Potter Alliance, the Davis Alliance (DA), will be the perfect opportunity to escape from reality and waltz into a world of magic. “[DA] use[s] the lessons learned in the Harry Potter books to advocate for the changes in our communities. Some of the topics we cover in our meeting include bathroom justice, gender equity and community support through involvement,” said David Chambers, a second-year gender, sexuality and women’s studies major, DA vice president and coordinator of the Yule Ball.

The Davis club is just one of the many chapters of Harry Potter Alliance, an organization formed in 2005 to engage Harry Potter fans in social justice issues.

“We’re kinda like a Dumbledore’s Army in the muggle world,” said Katie Mignola, a fourth-year animal science major and DA community service and fundraising coordinator.

The DA hosts the Yule Ball every year not only to dance and celebrate their love for Harry Potter, but also to uphold the group’s mission of community service and social justice. This year, all the proceeds from the ball will be donated to Med & Food For Kids, a nonprofit organization dedicated to “saving the lives of Haiti’s malnourished children and other nutritionally vulnerable people.”

“When it comes to choosing the organization, [...] Katie thoroughly researches a few organizations. She tries to find organizations that align with the Davis Alliance’s goals and that also use POTTER on PAGE 12

THROUGH THE ARTIST’S EYE: SAMMY SANCHEZMONTER UC Davis student artist uses paintings to communicate emotions

BY AB I G A I L WA N G a rts@ th e ag g i e . o rg

Although art has always been her calling, Sammy Sanchez-Monter, a thirdyear art studio major, was in denial at the beginning of her college career.

“My whole life I’ve been doing art, and initially coming into Davis I was an animal science major and then I switched to a animal biology major, and after taking some classes I wasn’t happy and even my parents would ask me ‘what are you doing, you should be an art major,’” Sanchez-Monter said.

After her second quarter at UC Davis, she switched to an art studio major and immediately noticed a difference.

“I was completely happy and my mood totally shifted, I was excited all over again, so that’s how I knew I should do art [...] it was the best choice ever,” Sanchez-Monter said.

In addition to exploring her passion, Sanchez-Monter has developed a strong bond with students who are also art studio majors.

“I’ve never experienced this much community within a major,” SanchezMonter said. “[In other majors] there’s that sense of competition but in our major everybody helps each other out even if you don’t ask for help, people give you suggestions on how to be better, and I noticed that community as soon as I made that switch.”

For Sanchez-Monter, painting has always been her primary medium, and she enjoys using vivid colors in her artistic creations.

“I like painting because of the blending aspect of it, and you can make so many colors, the possibilities are endless for me and you can quickly make changes,” Sanchez-Monter said.

Sanchez-Monter has found inspiration from Frida Kahlo and often takes influence from her dreamlike style.

“I really like her not only for the work she does, but because she was very ahead of her time in that she didn’t conform to what people expected out of female artists,” Sanchez-Monter said. “She set her mind to doing something and she

would do it no matter what other artists thought. I think that’s something I need to work on in my pieces — not caring what others think. It was amazing seeing her express herself no matter where she was, she painted whatever she wanted.”

Sometimes Sanchez-Monter feels that her realistic art style can be frustrating since she never feels like her work is complete.

“My art style is very realistic especially with my paintings, I’m still working on it because sometimes I kind of tend to be a perfectionist, but I’m working on that and expanding my technique in being more gestural with my brush strokes or being more free with the energy that I put into my work,” Sanchez-Monter said.

Sanchez-Monter feels that art acts as a diary without words and utilizes it to convey her emotions or stresses she faces.

“I can spend hours painting and forget other things are important too like eating or going to the bathroom,” Sanchez-Monter said. “When I paint I think about things but in a new perspective. In the end I feel very relaxed.”

Even though Sanchez-Monter is very open in her art, she is constantly pushing herself to be more vulnerable.

“My style overall has evolved in that it is more serious, and especially this year I’ve told myself I want to make my pieces more vulnerable and raw and not hold back,” Sanchez-Monter said.

Sanchez-Monter’s connection to art goes beyond the canvas as she finds her work to be very therapeutic. Although she often shares her artwork with her friends to get their opinions, she keeps some pieces to herself.

“In my free time I paint or draw for myself because of the emotional release I get. I can choose to share it and most pieces I create I do show my friends and some I just keep personal and I don’t feel the need to share it, it’s just for me kind of a time-lapse,” Sanchez-Monter said.

In the summer of 2016, SanchezMonter was invited by a family friend to paint a mural at a Larson Park elementary school. The school had been experiencing many problems with graffiti and tagging.

“Even as I was painting people would

come up to me and say ‘it’s going to get tagged eventually,’ but I’d also get like ‘oh it’s so beautiful’ so it was very conflicting,” Sanchez-Monter said.

The mural was revealed at a local festival and Sanchez-Monter left part of the mural blank so the youth could help her paint the last part to complete it.

“It was really cute, everyone was taking pictures and I went back recently and it hasn’t been tagged so people appreciated it,” Sanchez-Monter said. “I was really happy about that, it was my first mural and I went back and it was spotless still, it was definitely my biggest accomplishment.”

In the future, Sanchez-Monter would love to make art full-time but plans to be an art professor due to the influence and inspiration she has received from some of her professors at UC Davis.

“I’ve talked to my professors and just seeing how passionate they are has inspired me to pursue the art professor pathway,” Sanchez-Monter said. “But if I could be an artist and just do that, that’d be the dream.”

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017| 11

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

ACM E THE ATRE / R O B E RT S C H U L Z / COU RT ESY

“PRONOUN” highlights struggles of transgender youth Transgender youth strive to educate audiences of all ages about LGBTQIA+ community through theater

BY BEC KY L EE arts@ th e ag g i e . o rg

This January, Acme Theater Company hosted its new play, Pronoun, written

by British playwright Evan Placey. The play is about a transgender teenage boy, Dean, and how his transition affects his relationships.

Director Emily Henderson wanted the play to be an outlet for young individuals to speak to audiences of different ages and experiences.

However, beginning the project was not an easy task.

“I first read this play about three years ago and I really loved it,” Henderson said. “I thought it was a great match for our theater company. I thought it played to our strengths and I really was excited by the subject matter. It felt very topical to what’s happening in the world right now. At that point I looked around and was like, ‘There are only cis-actors in my theater company at the moment, and I can’t do this play without those voices in the room, without that representation in the cast.’”

Fortunately, she found students from multiple experiences and gender identi-

ties eager to perform. It was perfect timing.

With help from the Davis and Sacramento communities, the cast learned about transgender lives, helping them to better understand the play and prepare them for their roles.

“We rehearsed for 8 weeks and did a series of workshops. We did one workshop with the UC Davis LGBTQIA Center,” Henderson said. “They did a really nice overview of terms and language, and it was right at the start of the rehearsal practice so we immediately established a shared vocabulary. Then about midway through we had [people from] the Sacramento LGBT Center come and give a presentation on gender and gender identity.”

The Acme Theater Company plays are run by students, which sets them apart from other Davis theater companies.

“The students do all the acting and technical work, so it was really fun to use that as an opportunity to dive deeper into learning about some of the issues faced by the trans community,” Henderson said. “For example, our sound designer spent hours and hours of time listening to music by trans artists and email-

ing people whose YouTube videos they found and asking, ‘Hey can I use this for the scene transition?’ All of the music is echoing and resounding around what the play is talking about.”

She hoped that the play would equally impact the cast and crew as it had the audience.

As members of the LGBTQIA+ community, the actors felt deeply connected to the main character of the story.

“One of our goals is to amplify and support trans youth voices,” Henderson said. “I feel like in these discussions, where grown-ups are coming with questions and the young people are able to speak with power and assurance, [young people] are able to respond as equals. I’m most excited to see youth speaking to adults with a lot of power.”

Grey Turner, a freshman at Da Vinci High School and an actor in the play, said that Pronoun was particularly relatable to his transition story.

“The main character is a trans guy just starting his transition — that’s literally me,” Turner said. “I’m trans and I just recently started testosterone hormones which Dean also does in the play,” Unlike Dean in the play, Turner feels

fortunate to be surrounded by friends and family who support and accept his identity.

“In the play, Dean’s parents have a hard time accepting it,” Turner said. “My parents are completely accepting and wonderful people, they fully support me.

I think that I’d really like for people to understand that it’s so hard for trans people.”

Cory McCutcheon, a sophomore at Da Vinci High School and an actor in Pronoun, also relates to the story.

“I’ve been struggling with my gender identity for a couple years,” McCutcheon said. “This year I started using gender neutral pronouns. This is my first show with Acme and I joined because this play seemed relevant to a lot of the stuff talked about in the news right now. Now is a really good time for this play.”

McCutcheon also talked about the importance of acceptance and normalization in the transgender community.

“If someone were to get a breast reduction, people would probably consider it a change in your body to feel more comfortable,” McCutcheon said. “I think that top surgery should be regarded in the same way. It’s really just making an al-

teration in your body so that you’re more comfortable.”

Pronoun allowed these students to share some of the adversities faced by the transgender community. These student actors want an audience of all ages to see the play and leave with valuable takeaways.

“In my conversations with the cast, something that’s come up is how much they wish they had seen this show when they were in 6th or 7th grade and how they’re really hoping that age group comes [to the show],” Henderson said.

“When you’re a young person, three or four years is a huge difference. So they really see themselves as supporting the youth that are coming up behind them.”

For the cast and crew, the play served as a coming-of-age experience. They became confident in themselves and their identities while supporting each other and their community.

“My favorite part of any play is watching these young people really grow into themselves and take on challenges that really stretch them,” Henderson said. “I feel like there are positive, tangible impacts that this piece had on the community.”

CO MEDY CENTRAL / COURTESY

PRESENTING HASAN MINHAJ UC Davis alum, comedian Hasan Minhaj to bring Netflix special, social commentary to campus

BY CAROLI NE R UTTEN ar ts @theaggi e. org

One of stand-up comedy’s most memorable moments is from Chris Rock’s 1996 special, “Bring the Pain.” Rock joked about race relations in America, including a segment that is too inappropriate for print and likely made the white portion of the audience feel uncomfortable. That was the point, though — they were supposed to be uncomfortable.

What made Rock’s special so famous was his unapologetic and blunt attack on a serious and prevalent issue. But, because it’s hard to feel attacked by a knock-knock joke, therein lies the beauty of comedy as a political platform.

Hasan Minhaj, a UC Davis alumnus and correspondent for The Daily Show, will be performing and filming his Netflix special Homecoming at the Mondavi Center on Jan. 27. Having an alumnus performing is a “major point of pride” for UC Davis, said Jeremy Ganter, the associate executive director and director of programming for the Mondavi Center.

“We were selected to film the special because we’re his hometown theater, it’s as nice and simple as that,” Ganter said. “Hasan is extremely popular, and Netflix has a great track record for producing these comedy specials.”

While he is not the first political humorist to perform at the Mondavi Center, Minhaj is expected to bring a new perspective to the array of

performers at the Mondavi Center.

“We have presented other political humorists before, and they’ve always been very well received.

UC Davis, Davis and Sacramento are very politically engaged communities,” Ganter said. “I think the main differences with Hasan are that he brings a younger perspective, and of course that he can speak about personal connections to our community. As always, our goal is to reflect as many perspectives and experiences as possible through our programming. He has a great story to tell, and that’s really what he brings to our campus.”

Similar to Rock’s famous material, Minhaj’s performance will cover his first-generation Indian American experience while growing up in Davis, California, touching on topics of love, racism and bullying. To some students, this material is appropriate given the current political and social climate at Davis.

“It is such a good move on the Mondavi Center [to bring Minhaj],” said Rebeca Nava-McClellan, a member of the Stand-Up Comedy Club and a second-year communications and theater double major. “Everyone is getting such a platform in Davis right now. For example, Milo Yiannopoulos was still allowed to talk; he was part of a protest and addressed the public. He was still given a platform, but we need people to give more productive platforms. Hasan is like our mother who is coming to help us after we were beat up by the bully. We need him. We don’t need to be uptight MINHAJ on PAGE 12

12 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017

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WOMEN’S MARCH

CONSENT

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professional support to individuals in need.

Anthony DiMartino, the chair of the NASW local chapter, said that he is proud to work for the organization and serve as a voice for people who are underrepresented. “[The organization] is a place to be with other people who are working for social justice and serving people,” DiMartino said.

“It’s good to be around other individuals who are serving similar goals and dreams.”

Individuals present at the event showed support for one another through tactics such as banners and safety pins as a message that they stood beside vulnerable, minority groups who may have felt targeted by remarks made by the President Trump.

As the event continued, dance and music groups such as the Sacramento Taiko

Dan and Sacramento Women’s Chorus performed, and local politicians spoke in solidarity for the event.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg spoke about how proud he was to see the march’s outcome.

“Our values proclaim that all of our population is worthy of equal pay, equal opportunity and basic reproductive rights,” Steinberg said.

Councilmember Ashby stressed that individuals should get involved in the community by joining committees, boards and organizations that promote social activism.

“No one is here by accident today,” Ashby said. “You are all part of the solution and part of the energy that is going to propel us forward, from this day forward.”

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Appelsmith said the department will most likely operate with California wineries it currently has connections to through research purposes and grape purchases. According to Block, UC Davis works closely with Silverado Vineyards in Napa Valley to produce wines with similar qualities to those at UC Davis, arriving at its $80 value.

“The $80 bottle of wine is really a function of how good our land is [at] Oakville Station, the quality of grape we’re producing and the quality of wine,” Appelsmith said.

Despite the money involved in the wine market, Appelsmith and Block said it is crucial the department does not have a profit motive and stays true to its ultimate goal of environmental conservation. After all, UC Davis is home to the most sustainable winery in the world and is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certified.

“We don’t want to have to just throw the wine away because of primarily the environmental issues and just the general wastefulness of it,” Appelsmith said. “The idea that you would have to take a perfectly good product and pour it down the drain when it has to be treated, is contrary to our mission.”

Block added that it would also be more financially stable for the facility to sell the wine to companies since the department can recover some of the labor, grapes and equipment costs in order to enhance student programs.

Though the arrangements to sell the wine are not yet completed, Block said the department is going to expand the program next year and produce even more red and white wine varieties.

“We’ll be adding another class in the Spring Quarter,” Block said. “[Students] will take the same wines and finish them through everything after the fermentation [...] so they can understand how to do all the rest of the steps in the winery from filtration to bottling to cleaning.”

Further developing the program is a step in the right direction, as Block hopes to take advantage of the department’s vineyard and one day even sell a small production of the student wine with a UC Davis label on it.

“It would be very high quality wine that would be up to UC Davis standards,” Block said. “[The wine] would be something students, alumni, faculty and staff could be proud of.”

Appelsmith and Block anticipate finalizing the legal process for the sale of wine by the fall of 2017.

SENATE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2

1, with abstentions by Park.

SB #30, authored by Flores, asks to remove section 1410 of the ASUCD Bylaws titled: My Student Government Channel, as it was not in use.

Senator Irveen Grewal moved to call SB #30 into question and the bill was passed 110-1, with an abstention by Park.

New legislation was introduced and will be sent to committees in the following weeks.

There are bills to allocate $650 to the Aggie

Public Arts Committee for its piano project, recognize the longstanding symbiotic relationship between ASUCD and the Student Alumni Association, change staff pay from hourly salaries to stipends for The California Aggie’s 2017 budget and incorporate UndocuALLY and Sexual Assault Bystander Intervention training into the ASUCD Senate’s mandated trainings.

After ex-officio reports and elected officer reports, the meeting adjourned at 7:47 p.m.

BUSINESS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4

same time [is] both.”

Crew Wine Co., which has so far produced two collections of wine, currently hand-sells to restaurants and retail groups located around the Bay Area. McCaffrey and Borges produced their first round of wine in 2015 and now focus mainly on white wines and rosés.

“We’re happy-go-lucky guys,” McCaffrey said.

“Our wines […] portray that because they’re playful [...] and tasty and delicious. [They’re] summertime poolside wines.”

Despite a lot of hard work, Crew Wine Co. has faced many obstacles in terms of promoting and advancing their business.

“Communication is an underlying theme that, in the world of business, you really undervalue [...] until you actually need something done [...] in someone else’s hands,” McCaffrey

said. “It’s [also] difficult to be able to start a business out of pocket.The other thing with young businesses [is] the credibility or bias [people have] against you based on your age, disregarding how much passion you have for something. It’s a bummer sometimes for people to look down on you and not take you seriously.”

Regardless of the challenges that many young entrepreneurs may face, the learning process and personal benefits seem to give value to the hard work endured.

“I think that there are two kinds of things in life,” Doherty said. “There are things that you have to push and things that pull you. I think I found the thing that pulls me, something [where] I wake up every day and I want to do it, and I hate when I have to stop and go to class or go to the gym. I feel very grateful for that.”

tions about consent.

“For me personally, working on this campaign is incredibly rewarding,” McDaniel said via email. “These topics can sometimes be uncomfortable for people to talk about, but the campus has reacted very positively to the messages. It’s exciting to help facilitate these necessary conversations.”

The campaign also recently won a Silver Award in the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District VII Awards of Excellence.

The campaign has also started another segment called “Dear Survivors,” which is a series of photos that aim to support and empower survivors of sexual assault.

“We started the letters to survivors project, which is kind of like a visual forum where people can write letters to themselves or to their loved ones or to survivors in general, and really give them affirmation, and part of my inspiration around was because of Donald Trump, was because of all of these things happening,” Alavi said. “You know it’s kind of emotionally exhausting to talk about this all the time. We don’t really talk about survivors, ever. Even in the beginning of this campaign, it’s very towards preventing sexual violence and not really towards what do we do and how do we support survivors after it happens, and so I think the next part of the campaign for me was making sure they

were talking about survivors and how to support them and how to empower them.”

While the campaign released its first set of photos last quarter, its full launch will come in April as part of National Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

“I’m very proud of the work that we have done so far,” McDaniel said. “It’s been amazing to watch so many people across campus come together to support this campaign.”

Regarding the long-term effects of the campaign, Alavi said that students will be able to remember what they learned through the campaign after they graduate, which could help advance sexual assault awareness for generations to come.

“I really strongly believe in the domino effect,” Alavi said. “These students who we are reaching with this campaign are our future teachers and our future police officers and our future doctors and lawyers and judges and presidents. These are the people who, if we teach them now, [will] teach their kids about consent and those people will teach their kids about it, and I think that there’s something really valuable about engaging all 30,000 students here, plus our staff and faculty. If we can actually reach them and teach them, I think that we’re doing a service, not only to our community but to the larger community.”

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important,” said Kawayan De Guzman, a thirdyear wildlife, fish and conservation biology major.

“It’s to go to the gym no less than four times a week consistently and, during the process, learn how to exercise more efficiently, as well as expand knowledge on how to exercise.”

Although people in their 20s report higher rates of resolution success than those in their 50s, success rates are still low, and resolution maintenance tends to decline just two weeks into the new year. For students, this decline in dedication can be attributed to a number of factors including time management and unrealistic expectations.

“I feel like setting New Year’s resolutions, although they can be really great, puts a lot of pressure on yourself,” said Mazie Lewis, a firstyear human development major. “Once you don’t accomplish that resolution, you feel like you’ve messed up for the whole year. At least that’s the feeling I sometimes have.”

The environment of an unrelenting quarter system can make students feel as though there is simply not enough time in the week for schoolwork, jobs and extracurricular activities, let alone a New Year’s resolution. When unrealistic goals are adopted overnight, it can be challenging to work them into a busy schedule.

“It may be hard to keep a New Year’s resolution because things like diet, personal progress etc are goals that you don’t achieve at a specific time,” said Brian Trainor, a professor of psychology, in an email interview. “We’ve learned from neuroscience that the brain circuits we use for working towards a goal are not exactly the same as the brain circuits we use when we are enjoying that accomplishment. The brain circuits function best when we get the reward in close proximity to when we worked for the goal.”

Trainor further explained that immediate feelings of reward come from activities like shopping, when there is a relatively short delay between the parts of the brain used when shopping and feeling good about what was bought. Exercise, on the other hand, has a longer time between the activity and the payoff. Seeing results such as weight loss lasts longer than the time it takes to go on a shopping spree, therefore the brain has a harder time making the connection between the choice to achieve a goal and the good feeling of achieving it.

This can help explain why New Year’s resolutions, which often take longer than a day to achieve a goal, could be short-lived and eventually fail.

“I think New Year’s resolutions are good if you can stick with them and are dedicated to them,” said Macyn Kopecky, a third-year English and history double major. “But in general, creating goals for yourself is a good thing to do no matter what time of year it is because it gives you some-

thing to strive for. Life is sometimes really boring if you just let it pass you by without trying to make it the best [it can be].”

A common theme among these students is that they agree resolutions don’t have to be onetime deals that happen on Jan. 1 every year. The tradition of a New Year’s resolution is simply a building block in the act of recognizing faults in and improving our lives whenever it is most appropriate.

“Most people do not keep their resolution [because] they see it as ‘new year, new me,’ but in reality nothing has really changed except a number on the calendar,” said Matthew Iwahiro, a thirdyear cinema and digital media and communication double major. “I know I personally made a New Year’s resolution, but I would call it more of a lifestyle change and I just decided to make a resolution on New Years, because it was most convenient.”

Iwahiro’s resolution was to better involve his friends into aspects of his life. Whether it’s inviting them to go for a run or cook a meal, Iwahiro wants to take advantage of his time with his friends before college ends. His approach to this resolution was to make minor achievements to reach his greater goal.

Kopecky made a resolution back in 2012 to lose 70 pounds. She achieved her goal despite knowing that others thought such large, specific goals would be “inaccessible.” Just like Iwahiro, Kopecky took to her resolution one step at a time, planning out her transition to a healthier and happier lifestyle.

“I think you need to set a goal that you’re actually capable of, [and if ] you can’t and get down on yourself about that, it kind of spirals,” Lewis said.

“I feel like we’re constantly resolving ourselves.

Now I do small daily goals [like] ‘do these homework assignments’ and ‘talk to five new people,’ and I feel like that’s a lot more successful.”

It seems that choosing a realistic and achievable goal that can be reached with minor increments is the most reliable path to making successful resolutions. A resolution doesn’t have to be made on New Year’s Day, but rather anytime in life — whenever it is relevant.

“This is the first year I’ve been honest with myself and made a realistic resolution, which I think is good,” Elliott said. “But what I think it comes down to is making a goal, a plan and a timeline. Making resolutions and goals and improving yourself is a great thing, and I think it is something that can be done all the time — not just once a year in January. My advice to others that maybe are struggling with their resolutions or goals is that it is never too late to get back up and start over.”

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their donations appropriately to what their mission is,” said Julissa Larios, a second-year civil engineering major and the club’s publicity coordinator. “This year she came up with four organizations that we then voted on, as a club, to decide who the final organization would be.”

The group has gone through tremendous effort in planning and preparing for the event. They always try to improve the ball experience for attendees by making more elaborate decorations, offering better raffle prizes (the prize this year will be a cake from Let Them Eat Cake) and listening to previous attendees’ feedback.

“One way that this Yule Ball will be dif-

ferent is that our tickets will be cheaper so as to avoid the overpricing sentiment expressed by many last year,” Chambers said. “Additionally, we will be improving our decorations and music selection so that the Yule Ball experience is enjoyed by more.”

Mignola is mostly looking forward to the giant cauldron of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.

The third Annual Charity Yule Ball will be hosted on Jan. 28 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the CoHo. Tickets are $7 each and can only be purchased in advance. For more information about the Yule Ball, please visit its Facebook event page, or visit the Davis chapter’s Facebook page.

MINHAJ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

or tense when we see him.”

Minhaj is not revolutionary in combining politics and humor, however.

According to Karma Waltonen, a senior lecturer in the University Writing Program and the faculty mentor for the UC Davis Stand-Up Comedy Club, the first ancient comedy plays were political and could be used strategically.

“Comedy is a natural tool in politics,” Waltonen said. “It can get people to look at things in a new way, it can draw in audiences who don’t have the temperament or patience for ‘serious’ discussions and it can help us blow off steam. If you can get someone to laugh, it means they’re listening — they haven’t shut down.” ”[Comedians are in a place of ] privilege because they can say whatever they want as long as they are funny,” Nava-McClellan said. However, “most of the time comedians are straight, white males who don’t have to apologize for what they say.”

Successful political humor, then, comes in the humorist’s ability to make fun of him or herself.

“The majority of my material is feminist,” Nava-McClellan said. “For me to make a point about feminism, I have to make jokes about me being a feminist and put me down in order for people to relate to me. There are negative stereotypes and poking fun at them makes the

audience realize that those negative ideas are not what we are about, they are just stereotypes.”

To Nava-McClellan, the work being done by comedians such as Minhaj is especially necessary in this political climate.

“I really appreciate Minhaj, and I really appreciate everyone that works on The Daily Show,” Nava-McClellan said. “They are people of color who have such a third-person perspective on America. It is eye-opening because the points they make are so true, and it hurts a little bit but we need to hear it. They say it in a comedy setting which makes it more comforting.

You have to be really talented to do social justice comedy. For these people to be so well-liked and so famous definitely makes me feel viewers are finally starting to understand what they are saying since they say it so plainly and logically.”

For some people, comedy has been a way to cope with their displeasure.

“Our comedy is changing, our news is changing and our country is changing,” Waltonen said. “Each day when I listen to the news, I know I’m faced with a choice. I can weep or I can laugh. So I laugh. And then I’m stronger and more ready for the fight.”

Tickets for Minhaj’s special are sold out; to be added to the waitlist and for more information, visit the Mondavi Center website.

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017 | 13

BRIAN LANDRY / AGGIE

BECCA RIDGE / AGGIE

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

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JAY GELVEZON / AGGIE

14 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017

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BACKSTOP CI ER A PASTUR EL / AGGI E FI LE ZH E N LU / AG G IE FILE

Women’s basketball prepares to take on UC Riverside Women’s water polo struggles in first matches of season With early 0-4 record, Aggies look to turn play around

freshman and sophomore players who look to grow the team into the Big West competitors they have proven to be in previous seasons.

There are still players to watch out for this season, however, such as senior utility Hannah Harvey, who had 39 goals with 21 assists, 36 steals and earned All-Big West honorable mention in 2016. Freshman goalkeeper Caitlin Golding is most likely going to be the one looking to replace last year’s senior goalkeepers Haley Cameron and Olivia Husted, who both helped set a team record of 314 saves. Golding will share some time in the net with senior Avery Dotterer. Freshman attacker Kathleen Schafle is the young offensive threat to watch this season. Her height (5 foot 11) and speed helped her earn 146 steals at Vintage High last year. Chloe Robinson, a freshman utility and All-Southwestern League honoree for Temecula Valley should be a strong left-handed threat for the Aggies. Finally, freshman attacker Ariana Momen, originally from British Columbia and who played for Canada’s U-17 national team, will be the fastest swimmer on the UC Davis women’s team.

It seems that all that is needed for this struggling UC Davis women’s water polo team is time to know the system and grow into a threat, and, under USA Water Polo Hall of Famer Jamey Wright as head coach coming into his 34th season at UC Davis, this team could grow into a strong Big West competitor.

BY RYAN BUG S C H sports@theaggie.org

It is no secret that consistency is key in developing a program that finishes at the top of the standings year after year. Unfortunately for the UC Davis women’s water polo team, the Aggies have slowly turned around their performance, but not in positive direction. The Aggies have a current overall record of 0-4 in the 2017 season, a fall off from where they were at this point in 2015 (1-3) and in 2016 (3-1). They finished last season ranked 16th overall by the NCAA. Even though the team has not performed well early on this season, it is important to look at some of the key differences between this season’s and last season’s teams. Most notably and perhaps the biggest blow to the Aggies are the five seniors from last season who were huge in contributing to the team’s overall stats and winning performance.

The 2017 season starts with almost an entirely-fresh team with the loss of the five seniors and absence of junior center Carla Tocchini, who is redshirting the 2017 season. Last season, she contributed 43 goals and earned All-Big West honorable mention. While there are a class of veteran sophomores and juniors on the team, they are joined by mostly

UC Davis Women’s Water Polo Compared Stats: 2015-2017 2015 Season

2016 Season

2017 (In progress)

19 9-4

17 7-3

0-4

2-3

2-3

0-0

Home

11 1-2

7-2

0-0

Away

1-2

1-2

0-1

Neutral

7 - 10

9-9

0-3

Seniors graduating after season

3

5

4

Overall Conference

With conference play in full swing, Aggies look to continue their strong start as UC Riverside comes to town.

BY BRADLE Y GE ISE R sports@theaggie.org

Heading into Thursday night’s home game versus UC Riverside, the UC Davis women’s basketball team will have a tough hill to climb. While it has been a successful season up until this point,

the Aggies will need to make sure they show up and compete so that they do not have a repeat of their loss to Long Beach State on their home floor on Jan. 12.

At 13-6 overall, the team has entered conference play looking strong, sitting comfortably at a 4-2 record within the conference. All season, the team has benefitted greatly from sophomore forward Morgan Bertsch’s stellar play, but as the Aggies learned during their loss to Long Beach State, they need to step up in the games where their leading

DANI E L TAK / AG G I E FI LE

MEN’S BASKETBALL LOOKS TO STAY HOT AGAINST UC IRVINE Ags face off against Anteaters on Jan. 28

BY LIZ JACOBSON sports@theaggie.org

Even though the UC Irvine Anteaters remain unbeaten in the Big West Conference at 6-0, the UC Davis men’s basketball team is well-positioned for a win in the matchup on Saturday, Jan. 28. The Aggies will look to utilize a

home-court advantage, having not lost a home game so far this season.

The UC Davis men’s basketball team’s high point scorers — senior guard Brynton Lemar and junior forward Chima Moneke — both have the skill and the drive to challenge UC Irvine’s tendency to score big throughout the game. Moneke’s rebound strength should pave the way for plenty of scoring opportunities.

Senior guard Darius Graham has been a leader right alongside Lemar

scorer’s shots may not be falling. Junior guard Dani Nafekh and junior forward Pele Gianotti have been doing their parts, providing scoring as the second and third leading scorers.

UC Riverside has struggled to find a consistent groove all year, collecting a fair amount of winning streaks and losing streaks throughout the season. The team has an overall record of 10-8 and a conference record of 4-1 and hopes to gain a little bit of momentum as it heads into the final month of the regular season behind its leading scorer, senior forward Réjane Vérin. With UC Riverside holding a 4-6 record away from their home court, the Aggies will need to take advantage of games like this.

Heading into the final month of the regular season, the UC Davis women’s basketball team has to take advantage of games where it may have the upper hand. The team has won many of its games by double digits, many of which were blowouts. The Aggies lead the Big West Conference in points per game and rank fourth in points scored against them, and they will need to keep up this effort on both ends if they want to finish the season on a strong note.

UC Riverside comes to the Pavilion on Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. and Moneke. Both Lemar and Moneke have earned Big West Conference Player of the Week honors this season, and all three have been vital in the Aggie’s season so far. In the recent 76-70 Hawai’i win, Moneke led the Aggies with a career-high 26 points, recording his fourth 20-and-10 game in the process. Graham had eight points and four rebounds and Lemar helped drive the win home with four assists and 18 points.

The team will need to focus on being aggressive during the first half of the game. As of late, the Aggies have been securing their wins in the third or fourth quarter. Scoring an average of 71.2 points per game as a team this year, the Aggies will need to work hard to compete with UC Irvine’s Jaron Martin, Max Hazzard and Ioannis Dimakopoulos, who, in their last game against Cal State Northridge, scored a combined 67 points.

The crowd at the Pavilion can expect a fast-paced, high-energy game. The Aggies’ ability to move the ball on the court will create quite the opponent for the Anteaters, who will be coming off of eight straight wins.

Tip-off is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 28.

ASH LEY LUG O / AG G I E F I LE

Women’s tennis is a doubles force to be reckoned with this season

UPCOMING GAMES Women’s basketball (The ARC Pavilion)

Thursday, Jan. 26 vs. UC Riverside at 7 p.m.

Saturday, Jan. 28 vs. Cal State Fullerton at 2:30 p.m.

Men’s basketball (The ARC Pavilion)

Saturday, Jan. 28 vs. UC Irvine at 5 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 29 vs. San Francisco at 12 p.m.

Women’s tennis (Marya Welch Tennis Center) Women’s gymnastics (The ARC Pavilion)

Sunday, Jan. 29 vs. Sacramento State at 1 p.m.

Aggies to host San Francisco State in home opener

BY NICOLE TTE SARMIENTO sports@theaggie.org

After almost three months on hiatus, the UC Davis women’s tennis team traveled to Arizona last weekend to open its season against the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks and the Arizona State Sun Devils, where the team won 4-3 and lost 7-0, respectively. But this weekend, UC Davis is focusing on getting its revenge at the Causeway Classic showdown held in Sacramento before the Aggies’ home opener on Sunday, Jan. 29 against San Francisco State.

Last year, the Sacramento State Hornets edged out the Aggies in a close 4-3 matchup where now-junior Lani-Rae Green and alumni partner Jessie Lee led the doubles teams. Sophomore Isabella

Von Ebbe also had an undefeated singles record of 5-0 after the Causeway Classic matchup.

The Ags have a packed, exciting schedule for the rest of their spring season, including matches against Santa Clara, Air Force and the Big West Conference opener in Hawai’i. Since the fall, the Aggies’ head coach Bill Maze announced the hiring of doubles specialist and internationally-ranked professional tennis player Raquel Atawo as volunteer assistant coach.

UC Davis found its rhythm in the fall season with its doubles teams, most notably with the duo of freshman Kristina Breisacher and Von Ebbe. Breisacher and Von Ebbe’s success on the court led the Aggies early in the fall season.

With the addition of Atawo as volunteer assistant coach, fans should expect an even stronger performance from the Ags’ doubles for the rest of the season.

In singles matchups, some performances to watch include the team’s veterans,

senior Kamila Kecki and Green, who both posted big wins during the fall season. Kecki and Green competed together in the finals doubles consolation round and were the only Aggies to advance to the final singles consolation rounds at the ITA Northwest Regional Championships at Stanford to end the fall season.

Von Ebbe has impressed with her wins from both last season and the fall season matches at the Battle of the Bay tournament. Breisacher, one of the newest members of the squad, has also proven that she has the potential to improve her singles game with her upset win at the Cal Nike Fall Invitational back in October.

UC Davis has several tough matches ahead, but with the team this season, expectations are high. The Aggies will face Sacramento State this Saturday before hosting San Francisco State to open their season at home at the Marya Welch Tennis Center at 12 p.m.