April 27, 2023

Whole Earth Festival returns for 54th year from May 12-14

This year’s festival is themed “Sell Out to Love”

BY SYDNEY AMESTOY campus@theaggie.org

The Whole Earth Festival (WEF) will return to campus from May 12-14 for the sustainabilityfocused event’s 54th year.

Co-unit director and fourthyear sociology and art studi double major Madeline Dei Rossi has been helping organize and plan this year’s celebration, which she said is themed around local businesses.

“This year, our theme is ‘Sell Out to Love,’” Dei Rossi said.

“And that’s basically meant to highlight the fact that we are only sponsored by local businesses.”

WEF is a family-friendly, zerowaste event that began in 1969 and features artisans, food and musical performances, according to the festival’s website.

According to Dei Rossi, all of the artisans who will be selling items are from small businesses, many of them local.

“All of the vendors that you see present at the festival are hand artisans,” Dei Rossi said. “They are making what they’re selling by hand for their friends and their family, and that’s their means of

livelihood. I think the essence of wealth is to directly support people [...] We are part of a community, and we try to support that community.”

Another feature of WEF is the kids’ space, which hosts programming and events for younger attendees. Second-year English major Katherine Krinsky is one of the coordinators of the kids’ space.

“Kids’ space is basically a familyfriendly area on the Quad that has multiple arts and crafts tables with different activities,” Krinsky said. “And then [there are] other activities, facilitated either by us or by on-campus or off-campus groups.” According to Krinsky, some of these activities include yoga instructions, a bubble station and a potato-sack race.

Krinsky said that she was inspired to join WEF after attending last year’s event. She said that the festival’s commitment to zero waste and the energy of the event drew her in.

“The vibe or the energy there, it’s just so joyful and inclusive and warm,” Krinsky said. “And that was the other thing that really drew me to it: I felt like, even if I didn’t get put on staff, I would have volunteered. I just wanted to work with people who had the same

shared goals of sustainability as well as that goal of coming together as a team and producing something that’s really amazing.”

Most of the staff members who are running the event are student volunteers. According to Dei Rossi, WEF is still actively looking for more volunteers to help during the three-day event.

Volunteering is the only way to get a student-designed WEF shirt, according to Dei Rossi.

“I really encourage people to volunteer,” Dei Rossi said. “There is a four-hour shift minimum. I’m biased because we need volunteers, but everyone I’ve talked to who has volunteered has said it’s been one of the most amazing times that they’ve had at Davis — and it just connects you to this whole network of people.”

The festival will take place during Mother’s Day weekend on the Quad, from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.

“It’s just like a celebration of spring,” Dei Rossi said. “And we’re this ongoing community of people who care for the earth and care for each other. We invite everyone to come hang out.”

Aggie Compass Basic Needs Center introduces pay-as-you-can food truck

The AggieEats food truck provides free and low-cost food to students in initiative to address on-campus food insecurity

BY JADE BELL campus@theaggie.org

On April 17, the Aggie Compass Basic Needs Center introduced the pay-as-you-can AggieEats food truck, which is part of a program designed to “increase student access to delicious, nutritious, healthy food and other basic needs resources,” according to its website.

Leslie Kemp, the director of the UC Davis Basic Needs Initiative and the Aggie Compass Basic Needs Center, said that ordering from the food truck is a simple process: pay what feels comfortable for you — even if the price you’re willing to pay is $0.

“Basically, students just stand outside the truck, scan a QR code, look at the menu, decide how much they can pay for their meal and the order goes in,” Kemp said. “If you can’t pay, enjoy some free food. If you’ve got some extra, pay it forward. Either way, you leave with a full stomach and hopefully the feeling that we’re all in this together.”

The food truck provides healthy and freshly prepared food from UC Davis dining commons kitchens in addition to offering recovered food, such as produce, sandwiches and other food that didn’t sell in campus markets. It serves up to 500 meals a day and has a four-week rotating menu.

Kraig Brady, the executive director of Dining Services at UC Davis, shared his and his colleagues’ thought process when developing AggieEats.

“We were brainstorming how to

put forth a program to provide a real solution to food insecurity and one common denominator was that we have plenty of kitchens,” Brady said. “So we were asking ourselves, ‘Could we use our existing infrastructure to produce enough food to distribute and make a difference? And what would that look like?’ We realized that food trucks are all around campus and are very wellreceived.”

Brianne Yale, a third-year wildlife, fish and conservation biology major, shared her thoughts on the new food truck initiative.

“It’s reassuring to know there is an option,” Yale said. “My bus was 20 minutes late, so I just came here and that was really helpful.”

Kemp said that while the project is going well so far, there are some

UC Davis Office of Sustainability, ASUCD Environmental Policy and Planning Commission celebrate Earth

Week on campus

issues that she foresees arising in the long term. She noted that funding will be an ongoing issue, but said that currently, funding for the next year has been secured.

“I think funding is always going to be a challenge,” Kemp said. “For the next year, we’ll be funded by an anonymous donor who approached the school, but after that, it will be a challenge we have to figure out.”

The food truck will be posted at four different locations around campus Monday through Friday. These locations change every week, and it’s recommended to check the website for any location updates. The truck accepts credit, debit or ApplePay via smartphone, according to their website, and the amount you choose to pay is confidential.

Human Relations Commission hosts César Chávez Festival in Central

The annual celebration highlighted workers’ voices

BY ALMA CULVERWELL campus@theaggie.org

On Saturday, April 22, the Davis Human Relations Commission held its annual César Chávez Festival in Central Park. This year, the festival focused on worker voices and labor campaigns and highlighted “Worker Unity Through All Professions.’’ The event included several speakers and performers like United Farm Workers and Peets United and the Bulosan Center. The Davis Human Relations Commission first held this event in 2001 and has held it every year since with the exception of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They

have showcased many performers and organizations throughout the years, including Mariachi Puente, the Davis Phoenix Coalition and Empower Yolo. Davis Mayor Will Arnold explained the reason for the celebration in a press release.

“The civil rights work of César Chávez and others still continues to this day,” Arnold said. “Social justice and community organizing are critical in promoting equity and diversity in our community. I hope everyone will join us to acknowledge and celebrate the important efforts of all those who work tirelessly toward equal rights and opportunities.”

BY KAYA DO-KHANH campus@theaggie.org

The UC Davis Office of Sustainability and the ASUCD Environmental Policy and Planning Commission (EPPC) planned a number of activities and events for the campus community to celebrate Earth Week. Both partnered with The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) to present the Earth Week Challenge, which provides a list of challenges from four different categories: food and waste, water, energy reduction and education. Some of the challenges listed include using one’s organics as fertilizer, going vegan, binging climate change and sustainability films and only walking or biking for a week. Community members were encouraged to join the event and challenge others to participate through social media.

The EPPC hosted two events on campus for Earth Week, starting with a seminar speaker event on April 18 by environmental lawyer and UC Davis Professor Tracy Windsor about the basics of environmental law and specific cases she has worked on. The event was successful and received positive feedback, according to fourthyear environmental science and management major and former EPPC Chairperson Mackenzie Field. The second event was a campus clean-up on Earth Day.

“We hosted a speaker event because responses to our Environmental Justice Survey Report from Fall 2022 indicated that more students wanted to learn about environmental justice,” Field said via email. “We are hosting a clean-up event to make a direct, positive impact on our campus. I hope the community continues to engage in sustainability throughout the year, not just during Earth Week.”

The EPPC also partnered with the UC Davis Office of Sustainability on the Cool Campus Challenge, a competition

between UC Berkeley and UC Davis to claim the title of the “greenest campus.” The competition is running from April 3 to April 28 and encourages students to engage in climate-friendly actions to reduce their carbon footprints. Field said that there has been more engagement in the challenge this year than in previous years.

“We hope the competition will gain more traction during Earth Week when students are more consciously aware of their environmental impact,” Field said.

This month, the Office of Sustainability is promoting their Sustainability Champion Awards nominations for their Sustainability Summit on June 2, which is an opportunity for people on campus to recognize their peers who are environmental leaders on campus, according to Engagement Program Manager for UC Davis Sustainability Carla Fresquez.

Fresquez also highlighted the Office of Sustainability’s recent partnership with Student Housing and Dining Services to give out free, reusable utensil sets to the campus community. There was a reusable utensil giveaway on April 18 at the CoHo and another on April 19 at the Student Community Center for the UC Davis Farmers Market’s Earth Week celebration. Fresquez said that the reusable utensil giveaways have been well received by both students and staff.

“That has been a campaign that I have been really excited to see the response to,” Fresquez said. “We have been getting so many inquiries about how people can get their hands on one of these sets and how they can make these sets available to their whole departments so that they no longer need to purchase disposable items for break rooms and offices.”

Several events and challenges were planned to encourage students and staff to think about their environmental impact and build a culture of sustainability

Students line up for a meal from the Aggie Eats food truck on the East Quad.

(Karin Higgins / Courtesy)

Davis activist Rick Gonzales speaks at the Cesar Chavez Day celebration. (Cruz Martinez / Aggie)

JOANNE SUN /AGGIE

The Whole Earth Festival happens on the Davis campus. (Aggie File)

New state legislation seeks to expedite return of Native American remains, artifacts

The legislation would require UC campuses to report on their progress in repatriation and provide them with better resources to complete the process

BY SYDNEY AMESTOY campus@theaggie.org

A new piece of California state legislation may expedite the return of Native American cultural items and remains from University of California (UC) campuses.

The proposal, put forth by State Senator Bill Dodd, would require UC campuses to report on their progress in returning these cultural items and remains to their respective tribes and ensure campuses have the resources to do so in a timely manner. The bill has been under review by the California Senate’s education committee since late February, and if it passes this step, it will continue on to the committee on appropriations, the state assembly and then the governor, according to an article by the Press Democrat.

A November audit found that only UC Davis and UCLA have repatriated the majority of these items so far, despite all UCs being required to do so. An article in the Davis Enterprise also noted that the audit showed the UC Office of the President “has provided neither the necessary guidance nor the funding for repatriation activities.”

The proposal puts a spotlight on the process that UC Davis has taken on over the past decade with the help of NAGPRA Coordinator Megon Noble.

NAGPRA stands for the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act of 1990, and Noble, who has been with the group since 2014, is in charge of assisting UC Davis’s repatriation efforts on NAGPRA’s behalf.

“I came on at a time of change,” Noble said. “It was the first position dedicated exclusively to repatriation [at UC Davis]. And now we have a team of staff working on repatriation.”

Most of the artifacts and remains are from tribes located in the immediate area and throughout the Central Valley, according to Noble. Information about each of the items still in UC Davis’s possession can be found on the UC Davis NAGPRA website.

ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news organization, published a repatriation database earlier this year that uses self-reported data that was collected from around 600 federally funded institutions that reported possessing Native American remains in their collections in Dec. 2022.

At the time this data was gathered, UC Davis reported that they had made 27% of Native American remains and 93% of more than 45,000 funerary objects that were previously in their collection available for return to tribes. According to the database, many of these remains have been physically returned to tribes, but the data is unclear because institutions do not legally have to report these transfers. Instead, NAGPRA requires them to publish a list of tribes eligible to make a claim on remains after a connection has been established based on tribal traditional knowledge or archaeological evidence. When a tribal claim is made, the remains are available for return. “The way the process works, sacred objects, objects of cultural patrimony and unassociated, funerary objects are dependent on tribal claims,” Noble said.

“I think that we are going to complete the repatriation of [remains] before we complete the repatriation of materials and other categories. It will really depend on the sort of timeline that tribes have indicated.” According to Noble, Dodd’s proposed legislation would not require as large of changes from UC Davis as it might from other

institutions, because full repatriation of artifacts is already underway.

“The last version [of the proposal]

I saw was basically adopting the recommendations of the audit,” Noble said. The repatriation of all artifacts and remains is fast approaching, according to Noble. She expressed excitement

about this, despite the fact that when the effort is complete, her job position will no longer be necessary.

“I’ve been working in repatriation since the late ‘90s,” Noble said. “And I think your job as a repatriation coordinator is to put yourself out of a job.”

UC Davis’s Department of Anthropology houses some of the artifacts in its museum (UCDAM). (Aggie file)

Zero Waste and Sustainability Club hosts concert in Central Park

The event featured local bands, vendors and artisans

BY RACHEL GAUER campus@theaggie.org

On Sunday, April 23, UC Davis’s Zero Waste and Sustainability Club partnered with the city of Davis to host an outdoor concert in Central Park. The concert was the club’s first large event and featured local bands, clubs and vendors.

Eva Barajas-Carmona, a thirdyear environmental science and management major and one of the co-presidents of the Zero Waste Club, talked about the first steps of making the concert come to life.

“This planning process took a while,” Barajas-Carmona said. “When we were talking to people about our club, we were already talking about a possible concert. We’ve had this idea for a while, and we really started to get into the planning process at the end of fall quarter. The city of Davis got involved and co-sponsored the event, and things really blossomed from there.”

The concert was held in Central Park in downtown Davis, which is not technically campus property. Kili Kato, a second-year marine

and coastal sciences major, and the communications officer for the Zero Waste and Sustainability club, commented on how the club was able to successfully secure the venue.

“The city of Davis was more than helpful in the complicated process of getting the correct permits and paperwork for the event,” Kato said. “We were very fortunate [that] the city of Davis Sustainability Program offered to co-sponsor the event to help promote sustainability ideals in [the Davis] community.”

Amelia Swanson, a second-year design major and co-president of the club, described other partnerships with local groups that helped make the event possible.

“We’ve been reaching out to different local bands since January,” Swanson said. “We have also been attending the farmers market on Saturday mornings to find local artists, and we went downtown to talk to small shops like the Growing Groves.”

The concert lasted from 3-7 p.m. and featured five local bands: The

Silver Lining, Baby at the Bar, First Name Basis, Decent Action and Cowboys After Dark. For two of the featured bands — The Silver Lining and Baby at the Bar — the Zero Waste Concert was their first live show. Oscar Alonso, who is a songwriter, guitar player and singer for The Silver Lining, commented on his band’s first experience playing live at the event.

“It was nervewracking, but also great, and we had a lot of fun,” Alonso said. “We had our little trips but we recovered from them quickly and overall it was a really good experience. Davis is a really nice town, and this stage is so welcoming — I feel like the people here welcomed us with open arms.”

In addition to the bands, the event featured several local vendors and clubs that also attracted event-goers. The booths included local shops like Growing Groves, as well as UC Davis organizations, such as Aggie Trading Post and The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF).

The Aggie Trading Post, a sustainable clothing “trade-style” organization, is a portable thrift shop for clothes. Although they typically operate in a “trade-clothes-for-clothes” fashion, they encouraged concertgoers to pick a few pieces regardless of whether they had anything to give in return or not.

Additionally, TGIF tabled to advertise their fee referendum on the ASUCD spring election ballot. They provided flyers with QR codes leading directly to the voting website to encourage concert-goers to cast their vote this week.

Barajas-Camona reflected on the process of organizing the event and seeing it come together.

“We’ve been planning this for so long; it’s been a huge undertaking for every single officer,” Barajas-Carmona said. “To finally see all our hard work come to life is something I am so excited [about]. It really started as a small idea about six months ago and I can’t believe we made it happen.”

CESARCHAVEZ

FROM THE COVER

Carrie Dyer, community relations program manager for the city of Davis, discussed the event.

“Recognizing the agricultural roots that Davis has and the important voice the César Chávez carried in speaking for those who may not be able to, the Human Relations Commission felt it was important to recognize the efforts of César Chávez and all those who worked alongside him,” Dyer said. “Those efforts continue today and the commission strives to acknowledge those who [...] work towards equal rights and opportunities.”

Dyer reflected on the Davis Human Relations Council’s Mission and the impact it strives to have on the Davis community.

“The function of the Human Relations Commission is to promote mutual respect, understanding and

NFLDRAFTPREVIEW

FROM PAGE 12

Wilson is a very talented and lengthy edge rusher; NFL Network Draft analyst Lance Zierlein slated him as the second overall pick in a recent mock draft. Witherspoon is the favorite to be the first defensive back (DB) picked this year, as rumors suggest that the Lions will pick him sixth overall. Meanwhile, fellow DB Christian Gonzalez is another talented player and will likely be among the first 10 picks.

Who has the most at stake in this year’s draft?

The Panthers, Texans and Colts are picking early and need to acquire players that they can build their rosters around — especially since they are all expected to draft QBs. The Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions also need to capitalize on the draft to progress in their rebuilds.

The Bears received a lot of draft capital after trading the first overall pick to the Panthers. In return, they get the Panthers’ 2023 first- and second-round pick, 2024 first-round pick and 2025 second-round pick. Despite adding some talent during free agency, the Bears’ roster is still lackluster. They need to fill holes in several positions in their offensive and defensive lines if they want to improve from last season, in which they had the worst record in the NFL.

The Lions narrowly missed the playoffs last season and have improved during the last two seasons under Head Coach Dan Campbell and General Manager Brad Holmes. They are well positioned in the 2023 draft, having

acceptance among all people,” Dyer said. “Community events such as the César Chávez Celebration and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration amplify the commission’s efforts to build a community where diverse people are valued by all.”

Antonio De Loera-Brust, media coordinator for United Farm Workers talked about the significance of the festival.

“Cesar Chavez’ mission of unionizing agricultural workers is as relevant today as it was 60 years ago,” De Loera-Brust said. “As we saw during the pandemic, farm workers in California are the essential human link in our food supply chain, there would be no food on our tables without them. That’s just one of the reasons why farm workers deserve to live dignified lives, with good wages, safe working conditions, and union representation. The UFW’s fight is not just something to read about in history books. It’s an active fight, happening across California right now. I urge my fellow Davisites to get involved as best they can.”

two first-round picks and two secondround picks this year. With those picks, they will likely be looking to address potential areas of weakness, such as the defensive and offensive lines, and could also select a QB if they want to upgrade from current QB Jared Goff.

A note on Aaron Rodgers Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers continues to dominate the headlines this off-season. In early March, it seemed like his time in Green Bay was over. On the Pat McAfee Show, he announced that he intended to play for the New York Jets in the upcoming season, which meant that the Packers would have to trade him during the offseason as his contract was yet to expire.

Now over a month later, Rodgers has yet to be traded. According to ESPN reporter Adam Schefter, day two of the NFL Draft is the “soft deadline” for a trade like this to happen. The Jets have two second-round picks, the 42nd and 43rd overall picks, which will most likely be involved in the trade so that the Packers can build around young QB Jordan Love. If a trade does not come to fruition before the draft begins, NFL fans will have to watch out for one during the draft.

In the words of California Aggie alum Omar Navarro, the draft is best characterized by the phrase “expect the unexpected.” It only takes one team to make an out-of-the-blue trade or pick to change the draft’s landscape. It is a pivotal event that will have ripple effects for the next 10 years of NFL action, and it begins on April 27, when Commissioner Roger Goodell will say: “The Carolina Panthers are on the clock.”

People watching the band Decent Action performing at the Zero Waste Music Festival in downtown Davis. (Sean Vanderaa / Aggie)

2023 Spring Elections —

Meet the Candidates

This spring, there are two executive tickets, and 13 candidates running for Senate, two candidates for International Student Representative, two for Transfer Student Representative, one for External Affairs Vice President and one for Student Advocate

The Green Initiative Fund at risk of dissolving, posing a threat to campus sustainability projects

If the student-run sustainability initiative does not pass during spring 2023 ASUCD elections, it could be shut down after this year

BY INDRANIL BASU features@theaggie.org

BY JADE

The following candidates are running in ASUCD’s 2023 Spring Elections for elected official positions in student government. Two Senate candidates and the sole candidate for Student Advocate did not respond to a request for an interview.

Elections will take place from Monday, April 24 at 8:00 a.m. to Friday, April 28 at 8:00 p.m. Students can vote online at elections.ucdavis.edu.

Executive Ticket:

JT Eden (he/him/his), a third-year double major in environmental policy analysis and planning and international relations, said that he is running for ASUCD president because he wants to ensure students’ voices and needs are being met. His platforms include creating programs that advocate for mental health, addressing studentemployee concerns like wage equity and expanding paid advocacy roles. Eden has extensive previous experience in various student-government positions, including as a senator, where he became familiar with administrative logistics like budgeting and event planning. In addition, he was previously the chair of the Internal Affairs Commission (IAC) and is currently serving as the internal vice president of ASUCD. A recent project he worked on was the initiative to increase pedestrian safety on campus by introducing crossing guards at the Silo bus terminal.

ThuyAnh Truong (she/her/hers), a third-year double major in philosophy and international relations, said that she is running for the vice presidential position because she believes that good change happens together as a community. She runs a shared platform with presidential candidate JT Eden, which includes advocating for student mental health, increasing studentworker satisfaction and increasing diversity efforts on campus. Truong is currently the internal vice president of the Internal Affairs Commission, where she oversees the legislative process and meets with administrators to discuss areas of improvement on campus.

Francisco Ojeda (he/him/his) is a second-year political science major running for president who previously served as senator alongside his running partner, Aarushi Raghunathan. He said that his reason for running was a lack of advocacy for undocumented students that he noticed and the lack of opportunities he has seen for some marginalized communities. During his time as senator, Ojeda worked with Chicanx and Latinx Student Success Center to provide snacks and worked on a spending bill. He hopes to improve the onboarding process, especially for undocumented students, as well as increase funding for the Entertainment Council and for training Bike Barn employees to repair wheelchairs.

Aarushi Raghunathan (she/her/ hers) is a second-year double major in political science and managerial economics running for vice president with the BLOOM slate. She has experience with ASUCD, serving as a staffer for Sergio Bocardo-Aguilar the summer before her senior year. She assisted with projects, wrote bills, did research and continued his project for free menstrual and safe-sex products into her own term as senator. Alongside her running partner, she hopes to work with the Entertainment Council to expand events for students, working toward fee transparency for students and expanding Bike Barn training for wheelchairs and other mobility devices. She also hopes to increase ASUCD outreach.

Senate:

Dani Antonio (she/her/hers),

a third-year political science and psychology double major, said that she is running with the MOOve slate because both her and the slate value addressing student fees and student labor. Antonio said that her campaign centers around creating safe spaces for students to embrace their individuality, advocate for their rights and learn without barriers. She plans to do so through her threepronged platform of addressing gender and sexuality issues, increasing mental health awareness and resources and ensuring inclusive education. To achieve these goals, Antonio said that she wants to increase sexual harassment and assault prevention and create support systems for victims, establish a human resource department within ASUCD, expand the Pantry to have more locations on campus and lower equitable access fees for students. As an international student from the Philippines, Antonio said that she hopes to represent marginalized voices in student government. Although Antonio has not been previously involved in ASUCD, she said that her four years of high school government experience, involvement in She’s the First, a nonprofit organization that advocates for girls’ rights and education and immersing herself into campus events has prepared her to be a senator.

Trinity Chow (she/her/hers), a first-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major, said that she is running with the Launch! slate because her values of mental health and creating improved relationships between student organizations and ASUCD closely align with the slate. Chow has a three-pronged platform: increasing student fee transparency, addressing student burnout and mental health and expanding campus sustainability efforts. Within this platform, Chow said that she wants to create and expand peer support groups to build a community on campus as well as hold mentalhealth workshops through working with the Student Health and Wellness Committee and the Mental Health Initiative. Additionally, Chow said that she seeks to make composting more readily available on campus and hold more upcycling and flea market events to further promote campus sustainability. Chow said that she wants to address the financial burden that students face through fees. Chow served as a staffer for Senator Priya Talreja this past year, which she said has given her a better understanding of ASUCD and student needs and prepared her for the senator position.

Christine Do (she/her/hers), a second-year sociology and philosophy double major, said she is running with the Just Do It slate. She wants to increase awareness of ASUCD on campus and the organization’s involvement in student life. She has been involved in the Internal Affairs Commission for a year, and she is now running for Senate because she wants to represent students and advocate for their needs in a voting position. She wants to ensure that ASUCD funds are allocated in the ways that students want them to be. Her main platform is increasing professional opportunities and resources on campus, as she said that she has heard from many peers that there is a lack of recruiters actively looking to hire UC Davis students as employees and interns. She also wants to build the alumni network to help students make more professional connections. She is passionate about advancing the Asian American and Pacific Islander and immigrant communities, as she is a child of Vietnamese immigrants.

She wants to work with the AB540 and Undocumented Students Center and provide immigrant communities resources and funding through ASUCD.

She feels she is qualified for this position as she has previous experience in ASUCD and has a good understanding of the units and committees and how

Many students have seen the sheepmowers on the Wickson Hall lawn or the Freedges and compacting compost bins around campus. These projects are funded by The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF), a campus grant program housed in the UC Davis Sustainability office. According to its website, TGIF “promotes sustainable development by providing necessary funding to the UC Davis community” and empowers students to “develop, propose, and enact sustainable projects on campus.” The program runs across five UC campuses in addition to UC Davis and provides between $200 to $20,000 to undergraduate student projects that align with one of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Goals.

question the voter-turnout requirement. While student fee referendums need 20% voter turnout to pass, elections for ASUCD senate don’t have a threshold. In the past election, only 3.87% of students voted for candidate positions. In fact, TGIF had the highest percentage turnout, with 1,499 votes for the referendum compared to 1,041 for senators.

they operate. She has a background in public speaking, and said that she thinks that she would be able to connect with students and talk to people from many different communities on campus.

Binh Do (he/him/his) is a secondyear history and economics double major running with the Just Do It slate. He is currently serving as an Internal Affairs commissioner and after seeing the senate bill process and attending Senate meetings, he decided to try and make a change by running for senator. His platform focuses on three main values: increasing the efficiency of the use of Senate reserves, increasing autonomy for UC Davis subunits and increasing marketing for UC Davis resources. He said that he also has experience with event planning from his time in the Davis Economic and Business Student Association.

Gabriel Gaysinsky (he/him/his), a second-year international relations and Middle East/South Asia studies double major, said he is running for ASUCD Senate as an Independent. Gaysinsky has been involved in ASUCD as an Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Committee (ECAC) (ECAC) since fall quarter of this year. He is running for Senate because he said he feels he can make more substantial changes as a senator as compared to an ECAC commissioner. One of his main platforms is expanding Jewish representation on campus. He was involved with a Senate bill last quarter that aimed to institute a mandatory antisemitism training for ASUCD senators, which did not pass. He hopes to pass a bill that can provide education about antisemitism if elected. His second platform is environmentalism, as he wants The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) to continue to exist and wants to provide services through ASUCD such as micro-grants to maintain a culture of sustainability on campus. His third platform is a focus on residents at Sol at West Village, because he sees a disconnect in that they do not receive on-campus amenities and still have to pay on-campus fees such as parking but are considered to live in campus housing. He wants to resolve that disconnect by working with the External Affairs Commission to ask the administration to either consider West Village residents on-campus residents and provide them with certain amenities or stop charging them the fees associated with being oncampus residents. He feels he is qualified for the position because he has been involved with ASUCD and is familiar with the legislation processes and bylaws. Additionally, he has participated in Model United Nations for about six years, so he is familiar with diplomacy and parliamentary procedures. He would also like for readers to vote for The Green Initiative Fund on this ballot.

Sam Hopwood (he/him/his), a firstyear political science major, is running with the MOOve slate. He wants to focus on improving campus resources to better students’ quality of life by advocating for increased frequency, reliability and range of Unitrans services, increasing the hours of the Pantry and building better online resources such as a delivery service for the Pantry as well as an online internship-finder program. He also noted a commitment to student laborers, promising to work toward eliminating onboarding delays, converting stipend ASUCD positions to hourly ones, organizing monthly open meetings between senators and studentworkers and more. Previously, Hopwood has assisted in labor organizing and political education for high schoolers, which he believes has given him sufficient experience in organizing students in their schools toward fighting for the resources they want.

Founded in 2016, TGIF was funded through student fees until its five-year term ended in 2021. Since then, a measure to renew the program has been on the ASUCD election ballot twice, in spring 2021 and fall 2022, but it has failed to pass both times. Currently, the program is not receiving any funding and is functioning off of reserve money.

“Many students and campus programs rely on TGIF to jumpstart new initiatives and projects that improve campus for all of us to experience,” said Raquel Victoria Navarro, a former TGIF grantee in a testimonial for TGIF. “Without the renewal of TGIF, many students and other programs would have very limited funds to actualize their sustainability goals.”

In spring 2023, ASUCD Senate Bill #88, introduced by the Environmental Policy and Planning Commission (EPPC) and endorsed by the Internal Affairs Commission (IAC), put TGIF’s Sustainability Grant Program Renewal Undergraduate Referendum on the ballot. The measure will renew TGIF with a quarterly student fee of $3.50 and a $0.50 increase every year, capped at $8. Twenty-five percent of this fee would be used for Return to Aid.

To pass in the elections, the fee referendum needs at least 60% of votes in favor. In fall 2022, it received a 79.85% majority. However, studentvoter turnout also needs to meet a 20% threshold, which is around 6,300 students. In the past two elections, turnout has only reached 5.58%.

“It’s not that people don’t want these programs to exist,” said Daphne Crother, a third-year political science major and member of the EPPC. “We just need more people from the student body to vote.”

According to Kelly Abey, a thirdyear environmental policy analysis and planning and sustainable environmental design double major and the EPPC ex-officio representative on the TGIF committee, voter turnout for the referendum is low because many students don’t know about ASUCD elections or when they occur.

“ASUCD has been trying to also help us with voter turnout because of previous elections,” Abey said. “We have been tabling at the MU for the entire quarter basically. And we’re putting out flyers and having a raffle, which you can enter if you have voted to win a gift card to Davis Food Co-op.”

TGIF consists of 12 members in total, with nine student committee members: eight undergraduates and one graduate. Six of these members are voting members. Because of the initiative’s small size, its presence on campus is limited, which contributes to difficulties in getting large numbers of students to vote.

The length of time ASUCD elections are open will increase from 72 hours to five days this spring in an effort to further increase the number of students who vote. Even with this change though, some have begun to

“Before TGIF, I never voted in elections because I never knew it was going on, or even if I did, I’d always have this mentality that I don’t know how to vote,” said Danielle Lowe, a secondyear landscape architecture and design double major and committee member for TGIF. “Being part of TGIF, I learned how easy it is to vote, [...] Take just 10 minutes just to educate yourself about who your student representatives are or what the measures are about, and that way, you can voice your opinions on campus.”

Despite not receiving any additional income since its term ended, TGIF has funded two projects this year, costing $20,000 each, through reserve money. Currently in the works is a rooftop garden on top of the CoHo which will grow produce that will be used in the kitchen. Surplus from the garden will be given to the Pantry. All current projects will continue to be supported by TGIF until they are finished successfully; however, if the fee referendum doesn’t pass, TGIF will no longer be able to fund new projects.

“The stakes are very high for this election,” said Madison Suoja, the TGIF grant program manager. “We are pretty much at the last of our reserve funds. To be transparent with everybody, we don’t have the funds to cover operational expenses for next year. This is TGIF’s last chance. We don’t think we can necessarily pass again in the future if we’re not able to get enough people to vote now.”

Abey and Lowe both believe TGIF benefits all UC Davis students, not just those who receive grants for projects or research.

“One of the main things we look for while approving a project is that it somehow benefits the whole undergrad population,” Lowe said. “Even if you’re not involved with sustainability, you are still interacting with things TGIF does. People get to enjoy the sheepmowers because TGIF was able to fund them. Just seeing a bunch of sheep on campus can make your day, and affect your mental health positively when you’re tugged down with midterms. General things on campus that you can get small happiness from can be from TGIF.”

According to Abey, not many other options are available to fund student sustainability and research projects aside from TGIF grants.

“One of our grant recipients said it’s very hard to find funding for undergrad research […] without TGIF,” Abey said. “I don’t know where else they would find that funding.”

According to Suoja, if the TGIF referendum passes in spring, the initiative will begin receiving funds in the fall and the student fee will last for another 10 years.

“This is a really great funding opportunity for undergrad students to do sustainability on campus and have access to up to $20,000,” Suoja said. “It not existing on the UC Davis campus would be really sad and detrimental to students.”

Voting for the spring 2023 ASUCD elections will be open April 24-28 online at https://elections.ucdavis.edu/. Students can follow TGIF on Instagram at @tgifatucdavis and visit their website at https://tgif.ucdavis.edu/ to view the over 115 projects it has funded or apply for grant funding.

BELL, SYDNEY AMESTOY, RACHEL GAUER, LEV FARRIS GOLDBERG, KAYA DO-KHANH, LILY FREEMAN AND SONORA SLATER @theaggie.org

The ATVs utilized by the Student Farm are funded by TGIF. (Courtesy / Madison Suoja )

Courtesy photos provided by the respective candidates.

Give the gift of effort

The best type of gifts are the ones you make yourself

BY OWEN RUDERMAN opinion@theaggie.org

I’ve never been a very physically creative person. Sure, as an English major, I can craft a solid narrative, but when it comes to creating something tangible, I’m not particularly gifted. I’m sure many can relate; it takes a lot of effort to build or make something — a toy, a meal, a sentimental gift — all by yourself.

But the thing is, it’s precisely that effort which makes those things so great. I believe that dinner tastes better when you make it yourself and that getting an A in a class that was difficult feels better than getting an A in a class that didn’t challenge you at all.

I think this also applies to gifts. The best gifts I’ve personally received have been the ones that I knew took the person a lot of time and effort to create. For example, for our six-month anniversary, my girlfriend gave me a hand-crafted, completely original board game based on milestones in our relationship. It’s one of the most amazing gifts I’ve ever been given. It may not have cost that much money to make, but the time, effort and love that went into it are worth more than the individual materials.

That’s not to say that I hate gifts that aren’t handmade. I always appreciate when someone goes out of their way to give me something, whether it’s food, an item I put on my wishlist, a simple gift card or a wad of cash. However, I strongly believe that the best gifts are the ones you never explicitly ask for.

This is why I’ve begun to try my hand at making some of my own gifts from scratch. A while back, in anticipation of one of my anniversaries with my girlfriend, I headed down to the local craft store and bought a little

wooden box, some paint, glue and stick-on letters and got to work on making her a jewelry holder. The end result was a little sloppy and definitely simple, but she loved it. She could see that I put effort and care into the box — something that a normal gift can’t express nearly as well.

Overall, the price of the materials I used to make the box wasn’t even that much, and I feel like it meant so much more to her than if I were to simply buy something cute from Amazon for the same price.

Granted, there have been times when I’ve toed the line a little bit. For example, I wanted to get her something that was unique and represented our relationship but had no idea what I would make. I decided to go online and buy some items that could be customized. So far, I’ve given her a body pillow with a picture of me on it (we’re long distance, okay?) and an engraved photo locket. I think something like this, while maybe not as impressive as something handmade, is a little more

Happy spring!

How to spend the best season in Davis

personal than a regular gift. Ever since I’ve tried to be more original and creative with my gift ideas, it’s been so much more fun to give them. I love seeing the reactions of people as they open my present and are totally surprised, almost in disbelief, that I’ve taken the time out of my busy schedule to make them a customized gift. So if you have a friend, family member or loved one who has a birthday coming up, or you feel like you just want to give them a gift to show that you care, I highly encourage you to try your hand at crafting something personalized — even if you’ve never done something like that before. The best part is, it doesn’t even have to be good! No matter how shoddy, a gift you create yourself shows genuine effort, which is something money can’t buy.

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.

Gems of San Francisco

A few of the best SF destinations, from a local expert

BY YASMEEN O’BRIEN yjobrien@ucdavis.edu

Flowers begin to blossom, big jackets hang unworn in our closets and the warm sun comes out for the first time in what feels like forever; spring is here. And in Davis, it’s a very special time — my favorite time of the year.

Campus feels lively again. People are out and about, lying on the grass in the quad, grabbing an iced drink at the CoHo or walking to their next class with friends. The Arboretum blooms. Happy people picnic alongside waddling ducks. Hammocks sway in the quad’s breeze.

UC Davis’s springtime traditions of Picnic Day and Whole Earth Festival keep the community engaged and excited about what’s next. The farmers market is more eagerly attended by longtime residents and college students alike.

Summer break is in sight as students begin the final push, the last quarter of the year. There is a certain feeling of anticipation hanging in the air that I’ve found comes with spring quarter. With nice weather comes the desire to be outside — or in my case, the need. But sometimes it can be hard to come up with outdoor activities to do, especially after finally mastering all the indoor winter activities. If you’re looking for a calm afternoon, take a walk through the Arboretum. Maybe bring a blanket and a good book or some snacks and sit by the duck pond. If you’re looking for a little more adventure, head to the rope swing

at Putah Creek to go swimming (the entrance is by UC Davis’s Hydraulics Lab located on Brooks Road). For those who are able to go a little farther, you can also head to Lake Berryessa for some swimming or hiking. There’s a yummy fruit stand you can stop at to grab some snacks on the way. I haven’t found or heard of a rope swing there, but maybe you can be the first to build one!

If none of these ideas are tickling your fancy, fear not. I have a couple more recommendations. Take a bike ride down Russell Boulevard to the cute little town of Winters. There’s a really tasty restaurant there that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner called Putah Creek Cafe which is relatively inexpensive. Attend Saturday’s farmers market and sun yourself in Central Park. They even have live music sometimes if you’re lucky. You can also grab an iced drink at a coffee shop in downtown Davis — Mishka’s, Philz and Temple are popular spots. There are endless things to do now that the sun is shining — much more than I can name. I hope you all have a happy outdoor season!

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.

Fight food waste on campus

The surprisingly large impact of food waste and what you can do about it

BY EMILIE BROWN emrbrown@ucdavis.edu

NATALIE CHENG / AGGIE

BY MAYA KORNYEYEVA emrbrown@ucdavis.edu

Growing up 30 minutes south of San Francisco — a city of skyscrapers, innovation and diversity — meant lots and lots of visits to “The City.” Below are my top cost-conscious picks for a weekend trip, with both local gems and popular tourist attractions that allow you to enjoy SF safely and to the fullest.

Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park is my personal favorite location in all of San Francisco.

With 1,017 acres of breathtaking scenery, including the San Francisco Botanical Garden, the Japanese Tea Garden and The California Academy of Sciences, there’s always something to do and see. There’s also a rose garden, rentable paddle boats and several fairy houses hidden all around the park. Mornings and weekdays are the best times to visit, as parking fills up quickly.

SFMOMA

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a massive, multi-level museum filled with constantly changing exhibits and interactive modern art. Featuring pieces from Paul Klee and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Julian Charrière, statement furniture pieces and historical installations from the past century, you will likely end up getting lost (in a good way). SFMOMA is also located near one of my favorite eateries in the city — Sushirrito — which offers Japanese cuisine with a Latin twist.

Legion of Honor, Golden Gate Bridge

The Legion of Honor is a beautiful museum situated at the very corner of San Francisco, right before the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s free every Saturday for Bay Area residents and proudly displays

Roman and Greek statues, several of Claude Monet’s waterlily paintings and a wide range of exhibitions from the Renaissance onward. After a visit to the museum, I would recommend a walk or drive along the Golden Gate Bridge, especially if you have never visited San Francisco before. The views are truly spectacular — you get a clear view of Alcatraz Island and the dozens of boats entering and exiting the peninsula into the Pacific Ocean.

Marin Headlands

This nature preserve is located on the other side of the Golden Gate and offers one of the best views of the bridge and surrounding San Francisco area. Catch it on a sunny day and you’ll find hiking trails, lookout spots, a historical military facility and a gorgeous beach to explore. This is a prime area for wildlife, and I have, on occasion, seen coyotes, cottontail bunnies, red-tailed hawks and even whales. This is a great option if you want to escape the busy city and get reconnected with native Californian flora and fauna.

Japantown (Nihonmachi) and Chinatown

Visiting these two cultural areas of San Francisco are a perfect way to immerse yourself in the vibrancy of East Asian communities. Chinatown has shops and restaurants selling dumplings and rolls, statues, art, ceramics, engraved stamps and more. While significantly less famous and smaller than Chinatown, Japantown is also a great place to walk around and explore, and it features an assortment of delicious ramen and sushi places, as well as tea shops and anime-inspired merchandise. I would definitely

recommend grabbing some friends and taking a few hours to simply wander.

Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39

Fisherman’s Wharf is one of the top tourist destinations in San Francisco, with merchandise pop-up stores on practically every corner. It is often busy and parking can be difficult, but the Boudin Bakery, Ghirardelli Square and views of the harbor make it well worth it. There are pirate ships and tour boats floating in the water, and Boudin’s clam chowder is particularly delicious.

Twin Peaks

Is this the best view in San Francisco?

It may very well be, depending on what time of day you decide to hike up and if you receive a special visit from Karl the Fog. The Twin Peaks north overlook offers visitors a 180-degree view of SF and the surrounding cityscape, as well as a rare glimpse into the natural grasslands of the Bay Area that have long been covered and destroyed by industrialization. A 360-degree view is also possible if you decide to hike along the network of trails ascending the two peaks.

There’s so much more to San Francisco than just my top picks listed here (like Union Square and Oracle Stadium), but, that being said, these are a great place to start and guaranteed to be worth the two-hour drive from Davis. Good luck with your travels!

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.

With Earth Day just behind us, it’s the perfect time to examine the impact you have on your environment. It’s no secret that college campuses have food waste. From dining halls to dorm rooms, students are notorious for tossing out perfectly good food without a second thought. But what many don’t realize is the impact that this waste has on our planet.

Food waste is a major issue that plagues modern society. According to the EPA, it’s estimated that a third of all food produced goes to waste, totaling up to a staggering 133 billion pounds in the U.S. each year. To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to about 450,000 Statues of Liberty or 15.8 Great Pyramids of Giza. This excess waste has a serious environmental impact.

When food waste ends up in landfills, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Food waste is responsible for a whopping 18% of U.S. methane emissions and up to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it a major contributor to climate change. Eliminating food waste would be the emissions equivalent to taking one out of every four cars off the road.

That being said, we are lucky enough to be on one of the most sustainable campuses in the world. However, we are still producing food waste, and it still has an impact. The good news is that there are plenty of easy ways you can make a difference when it comes to food waste.

1. Plan. Before heading out to the grocery store, take a few minutes to

plan out your meals and make a list of what you need. This will help you avoid buying unnecessary items that could go to waste.

2. Take what you need. The next time you’re at the dining hall, don’t overload your plate. Instead, start with only the food you know you are going to eat. Then go back for more if you’re still hungry.

3. Save leftovers. Feeling forced to finish all the food on your plate is awful, so instead, take advantage of leftovers. Research the best ways to keep your meal fresh and reheat it later.

4. Compost. Have you seen all those compost bins around campus? Take advantage of them. Composting is a great way to turn food waste into something very useful. If you’re about to throw out some food waste, look to see if there’s a compost bin instead of a trash can.

5. Tell others. Inform others about the dangerous consequences of food waste and the easy ways to reduce it. Encourage your friends and classmates to do their part.

Food waste is a serious issue that affects us all, but there are plenty of easy ways to make a difference. The next time you’re tempted to toss out that halfeaten sandwich or extra slice of pizza, remember that every little morsel counts.

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.

MAYA KORNYEYEVA / AGGIE

NATALIE CHENG / AGGIE

ASUCD spring election endorsements: Consider the following

The Editorial Board endorses one executive ticket, four candidates for ASUCD senate, one candidate for Transfer Student Representative, one candidate for International Student Representative and the uncontested External Affairs Vice President candidate, along with The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) fee referendum

ASUCD spring elections began on Monday, April 24, and voting will be open through Friday, April 28 at 8 p.m. This election cycle, there are two executive tickets for the positions of president and vice president as well as 13 candidates running for six available Senate seats. Additionally, there are two candidates each running for the position of international student representative and transfer student representative. The roles of external affairs vice president and student advocate each have one contender. The Editorial Board interviewed 11 of the 13 candidates running for Senate and all of the candidates running for the other positions, except for the candidate running for student advocate. Those who were not interviewed did not respond to the Editorial Board’s interview request.

Executive Ticket:

JT Eden (he/him) and ThuyAnh Truong (she/her) — Launch!

Both second-year environmental policy analysis and planning (EPAP) and international relations double major JT Eden and second-year philosophy and international relations double major ThuyAnh Truong campaigned effectively and exhibited natural cohesive leadership capabilities. They highlighted many tangible ideas they will bring to the table if they win the election, including improving access to mental health resources on campus, expanding ASUCD worker rights and advocating for student organizations. Additionally, the pair has considerable experience within ASUCD, as Eden currently serves as the internal vice president and Truong currently serves as the Internal Affairs Commission (IAC) chairperson. All of these reasons make this executive ticket a compelling choice.

External Affairs Vice President:

Celene Aridin (she/her) —

Independent Third-year international relations major and Arabic minor Celene Aridin is the sole contestant running for external affairs vice president (EAVP), and the Editorial Board wholeheartedly endorses her for a second term in the position. Having been elected last fall as EAVP after two years in the Office of the External Affairs Vice President, Aridin has been working to increase ASUCD involvement in the state Capitol and mobilize students to expand lobbying efforts. We were impressed with Aridin’s work as EAVP so far, and hope to see her continue to advocate on behalf of

marginalized communities on campus

International Student Representative:

Asif Ahmed (he/him) — ASPIRE

Second-year economics major and tech management minor Asif Ahmed impressed the Editorial Board with his notable platform ideas, such as streamlining the internship process for international students and making ASUCD resources more available through translation services. His plans to help international students on campus are pointed and realistic, and we believe that his experience with various student organizations on campus, including the Muslim Student Association, Pakistani Student Association and ASCEND UC Davis, will help him make these goals a reality if elected.

Transfer Student Representative: Kaito Clarke (he/him) — ASPIRE Katio Clarke, a third-year political science major, has extensive experience in public service. Both his work in the ASUCD Executive Office and as part of a congressional campaign give him the experience necessary to excel in this position within ASUCD. Beyond his experience, Clarke’s platforms are compelling; if elected, he will seek to build community for transfer students, improve access to basic needs, advocate for student parents and more. The Editorial Board believes that Clarke has strong ideas and will be a powerful voice for transfer students at UC Davis.

Senate: Danielle Antonio (she/her) —

MOOve The Editorial Board was extremely impressed by third-year political science and psychology double major and gender studies minor Danielle Antonio. Her platforms, including destigmatizing mental health, taking action on reproductive health and sexual harassment issues and advancing inclusive education through the expansion of basic needs initiatives, all tackle issues that are extremely relevant to the UC Davis community. Along with these broader platforms, Antonio seeks to create an HR unit within ASUCD and unify Filipino students on campus. We believe that Antonio has the resolve and drive necessary to hit the ground running on these key issues if she is elected as a senator.

Gabriel Gaysinsky (he/him) — Independent

Second-year international relations and Middle Eastern/South Asian studies double major wowed the Editorial

HUMOR

Board with his resolute goals. His main platforms focus on advocacy for Jewish students, ensuring stability of sustainability grants and eliminating fees for West Village residents. Gaysinsky’s experience working on issues pertinent to the Jewish student community, such as his involvement in the proposal of a Senate bill that, if passed, would’ve made antisemitism training required for the Senate table, prove him a compelling candidate for Senate.

Sam Hopwood (he/him) — MOOve

The Editorial Board endorses first-year political science major Sam Hopwood on account of his experience and enthusiasm. We were impressed with Hopwood’s eloquent campaign for his platforms, such as expanding student resources and improving the reliability of Unitrans. Additionally, he has extensive experience with labor organizing, making Hopwood a qualified candidate for a Senate position, where he promises to have student interests at heart.

Noblejot Sandhu — MOOve

The Editorial Board was impressed by second-year political science major and film studies minor Noblejot Sandhu as a candidate for Senate. His legislative experience and organized campaign goals make him a strong choice for the position. His work in the nonprofit sector as well as his knowledge of ASUCD affairs also strengthen his candidacy. As a whole, we were very impressed with Sandhu’s resume, passion for both politics and creative media and his personable manner.

Measures: The Green Initiative Fund fee referendum

The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) is a campus grant program housed in the UC Davis Office of Sustainability. It provides grant funding for many oncampus sustainability projects, such as the zero-emission Unitrans buses and the community freedges, and is funded by student fees. The measure will renew TGIF with a quarterly student fee of $3.50 and a $0.50 increase every year, capped at $8. The Editorial Board believes that this measure is beneficial to students and reflects the campus’s commitment to sustainability. The measure has failed in the last two ASUCD elections despite its popularity among students because it requires a 20% voter turnout to pass.

WRITTEN BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

What the bike you ride says about you

BY CARMEL RAVIV craviv@ucdavis.edu

KELLIE LU

MARY ANN LEM

Everything’s bigger in Texas

BY SANDHYA PFILE sbpfile@ucdavis.edu

wearing a helmet You’re a professor.

A car

Do you want to be friends with me?

A Trader Joe’s shopping cart You’re drunk.

Skateboard You know you want a bike. Conform. Conform. Conform. Conform.

Disclaimer: This article is

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

To the Class of ‘23: Please graduate faster

Get the senior citizens out of here

BY ANNABEL MARSHALL almarshall@ucdavis.edu

Y’all old as hell. Get out of here. Walking around like you own the place. The only thing you own is pre-arthritic joints and an inability to answer the question, “So, what do you want to do next year?”

I know like 10% of you technically finished in winter quarter. Leave. Go home. Sublease your apartment to someone who recently discovered that being good friends in high school does not mean you will be good roommates. Go travel the world or wander around CVS in your hometown. I don’t care.

“Oh, I’m actually taking a class in the summer but I’m walking in the spring.”

Why? Is that class really necessary to the completion of your education? Are you really learning something in PLS 21 GE that is integral to your Art Studio major?

No. Your advisor can’t stop you if you just run across the stage. I’ll hold them back.

I see y’all clogging up the quad with your 100 functionally identical white dresses, taking photos that will plague my social media feeds for months, if not years. I see you taking the last spot in my

required classes with your fancy early pass time. You don’t even need ENL 184, Mark, you’re an environmental policy major. Get out of here.

I’m so proud of y’all for making it through college. It’s an incredible achievement that should be celebrated as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I do not want to attend four separate commencement ceremonies. Why can’t everyone just say their own name as they sprint across the stage?

To those who say I am acting callous to cover the pain of losing some of my closest friends as they graduate and move on with their lives: wrong. You are making Trader Joe’s so crowded. You have all the best apartments. If someone held a gun to my head and said, “I’ll let you go if you can find parking at Hutch in twenty minutes,” I’d say just shoot me. I’ll see y’all in hell.

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

JOANNE SUN / AGGIE

AARON POTTER

ARTS & CULTURE

Review: Existential Questioning in ‘Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life’

Lulu Miller’s 2020 autobiography explores fish and taxonomy as a lesson on life

BY RUMA POUDELL arts@theaggie.org

Commentary: Creating compelling story arcs in films

Filmmaking undergoes various stages to craft audience-gripping movies

BY SARAH HAN arts@theaggie.org

Films are one of the most enthralling educational mediums today: from motion pictures to comedies, they take the audience on rides that provoke emotion, teach lessons and stir inspiration. One of the most imperative parts of filmmaking is creating the story — this helps the film connect with the viewers personally. However, the journey of creating a captivating story includes several stages, making filmmaking one of the most intricate processes there is.

The first stage is to contrive characters that will seamlessly fit in with the storyline. Most filmmakers create the protagonist or the main character of the film because they are key to the plot and conflict of the story. These characters propel the “emotional narrative” of the film and often play a big part in making audience members feel connected.

However, solely creating the main character(s) is not enough; a good film usually takes the time to develop the character’s personality as the story progresses.

A clear example of this is the character Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wears Prada.” Throughout the entire movie, Miranda is characterized as condescending yet powerful; therefore, there is not much else to say about her personality. When she encounters Andy Sachs, however, her personality becomes more complex, as she is puzzled when Andy decides to split from the company. Although subtle, Miranda’s character development is crucial because it shows how life’s circumstances can soften even the most rigid of personalities.

The antagonist and side characters are important in aiding the protagonist’s journey. Four components are key to writing good side characters.

One is to make sure that each side character has a purpose; for example, a villain’s purpose is to challenge the protagonist and see how they react to unexpected situations. Without a villain, a film would be dull, as it lacks a foundation for the story’s conflict.

The second component is to make them memorable. Like the protagonist, side characters’ personalities should be developed through the provision of screen time exploring their emotions. This will not only make the story more complex but also make interactions with the protagonist interesting.

but to make them stand out even more, filmmakers should brainstorm how they can clearly communicate each side character’s interests, flaws and personality.

The next part of the storyline is to answer the who, what, why, when, where and how questions. Who are the characters? What is the conflict? Why are they trying to solve the conflict? When and where is the story happening? How are the characters going to solve that conflict? These questions can change based on the story, but answering ones along the same lines lays the foundation for a compelling storyline.

Perhaps the most important component is the conflict because it contains the climax of the story. The conflict tests the characters and puts them in the hot seat, which reveals their “true” personalities. In other words, the conflict uncovers a more complex meaning of the narrative and emphasizes each character’s motivations, values and weaknesses.

However, the conflict and climax do not mark the end of the story. There can be unexpected twists that could deter the character’s initial success in solving the conflict; in fact, I think these twists help drive the complexity of the film’s storyline because they will keep the audience hooked until the very end.

After the characters solve the conflict, there comes a resolution stage which shows how the characters have changed. This is when the protagonist’s character development comes to fruition, which is usually shown through reflections and/or monologues.

The story of a girl who’s obsessed with learning about the history of a scholar who was obsessed with fish; “Why Fish Don’t Exist” by Lulu Miller is an autobiographical novel full of existential life crises, moving onto better things and finding meaning in life. Sounds weird? That’s because it is — but in a really cool way.

Miller grew up pondering what it was that ordered the chaotic world we live in. She searched for rules, philosophies and principles that she could live by. But nothing really seemed to stick.

Her father was a man who seemed to have found his own way. In the book, Miller says that he lived by the phrases “you don’t matter,” “live as you please” and “treat [others like they do matter].” But these words of “wisdom” always left her with an unsettled feeling.

Beginning her own search for understanding and being, Miller hears and briefly reads about the late scholar David Starr Jordan. Jordan was a taxonomist, someone who sought to organize the world into categories and hierarchies — he examined fish, determined what species they were and decided which were further along the evolutionary line of development.

“Why Fish Don’t Exist” goes into detail about Jordan’s career and life as

Miller becomes increasingly obsessed with the scholar. Readers are walked through how much he relentlessly studied his fish — disaster after disaster, failure after failure.

While I was not particularly excited to read about taxonomy and did not expect to read about it in such depth, I found myself thoroughly enlightened by the book — about something beyond fish: the world as a place with no limit to possibilities.

The way the novel takes the concept of fish taxonomy and uses it to answer existential life questions awed me. It was so bizarre, yet well executed.

I couldn’t particularly relate with Miller’s experience of existential confusion to the extent that it left her feeling confused and small. However, I can see how this book may be life changing for those going through an existential life experience — something that college students and young adults in particular may resonate with.

By the end of the novel, despite the fact that I didn’t relate to her at first, I found that I shared parts of Miller’s new outlook on life. As she learned from Jordan, I did as well, and it ended up having a similarly impactful effect on me.

My biggest takeaway from “Why Fish Don’t Exist” can be summed up in

this quote from the book: “The best way of ensuring that you don’t miss them, these gifts, the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see them more clearly, is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea what you are looking at.”

We often get so used to our daily routines, our search for something more meaningful and the complexities of our own minds. But if we take moments to become more aware of what we are looking at in the here and now, we might find that what we are looking os right in front of our eyes. We can be engaged with the world by maintaining a sense of curiosity. By staying grounded and focused on learning more from what’s in front of us, we can spend less time in our heads — often time spent worrying about things that don’t necessarily hold weight in the real world.

While Miller may now live by this, not everyone has to. Remembering to find your own way and respecting others’ ways are equally important. Everyone may resonate with something totally different, but “Why Fish Don’t Exist” provides an interesting perspective on existentialism that makes it worth the read.

The other two components are to make the secondary characters unique and memorable. This can be done by focusing on the first two components,

Although this is the basic structure of most films, many are breaking off from this traditional construction in favor of exploring other ways to tell stories. For example, “Shutter Island” follows one of the most unique structures I have seen. This was a snippet of how good films develop, and hopefully, it inspires you to film a story of your own.

Book cover of Why Fish Don’t Exist. (Courtesy of Lulu Miller)

Lights, Camera, Action! The Davis Filmmaking Society allows film lovers and students breaking into film to express themselves

Students at UC Davis draw from various inspirations to make films and tell stories in different genres

BY FAITH DEMEULENAERE features@theaggie.org

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

BY ANA BACH arts@theaggie.org

Movie: “Almost Famous” (2000) dir. by Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe directs this true story about a fifteen-year-old music fan, William, whose love for music takes him to unexpected places. When he lands a job working for Rolling Stone, he is tasked with reporting on Stillwater, an up-and-coming band. Despite the wishes of his overprotective mother, William accompanies them on their tour and embarks on a journey with the help of Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a passionate lover of the band and music in general. This film oozes nostalgia in a way that is so comforting for the audience to watch. I don’t know if I’m just a sucker for the ‘70s, but the stylistic elements, plot and acting all culminate to make this film iconic. I love seeing the side of music that we rarely get the privilege of experiencing. This film is a true ode to rock ‘n’ roll and music’s ability to bridge the gaps between people from all walks of life.

Song: “waves - Tame Impala Remix” (2016) by Miguel

Talk about an anthem for the summer! Tame Impala never fails to impress with his mix of synthetic beats, but Miguel’s voice on the record elevates the song in a new way. The harmonies and melodies are superb — not to mention the musical engineering on the track. Every time I listen, I feel like I am instantly transported to the ocean. The sounds genuinely feel in sync with the waves in the ocean. Overall, this artist duo creates an angelic and euphoric feeling, and I hope that they will release more collaborations in the future.

TV Show: “Entourage” (2004)

The Davis Filmmaking Society (DFS) is a student-run organization that has been making waves on campus and beyond. Club President Sophie Martinez, a fifth-year design major, said students find friends and creative outlets through DFS.

“Everyone is looking for ways to help each other’s personal projects and are extremely passionate filmmakers,” Martinez said. “I think DFS is all about learning new filmmaking skills and developing great stories together.”

According to Martinez, with a focus on bringing together students who share a passion for filmmaking, this club has become a hub for creative expression and collaboration. Over the years, the Davis Filmmaking Society has brought together multitudes of filmmakers and film lovers.

“I write scripts that always reflect things happening to me but translated into much more interesting characters,” Martinez said. “I am always inspired by my friends, and family, as well, who have a huge impact on my life and therefore my stories. I don’t like confining my writing into one specific genre, but I always add comedy into them.”

Each film enthusiast gains inspiration from some of their favorite films. Martinez favors “Memento,” “Lady Bird,” “Spirited Away” and “Mulan.”

“My favorite films are always rotating, but these four are really the ones that made me fall in love with filmmaking,” Martinez said. “Mulan and Spirited Away are beautifully animated and are very nostalgic as I grew up watching them every summer with my family. […] Lady Bird was a film that resonated with me because I watched it during a time [when I] was so similar to the protagonist, and Memento was the first film that showed me that stories can be weird, challenging and still be compelling.”

Alec Gossage, a third-year cinema & digital media and communications double major and vice president of the Davis Filmmaking Society, takes a more lighthearted approach to his inspirations for working in film.

“I love fun films,” Gossage said. “Zoolander, Cars 2 and Shrek 2 are definitely some of my top ones.”

Gossage mainly produces documentaries, but according to the Davis Filmmaking Society’s Discord, there are multitudes of opportunities on campus for filmmakers to express their creativity, including in sports broadcasting for the UC Davis Athletics Department, creative directing for graduate projects in dramatic art or filming advertisements for local businesses.

Some students choose to develop

their own short films independently, such as Brian Kim, a fourth-year cinema & digital media and communications double major. Kim said he has directed a few thriller films, claiming that although they are difficult to produce, the end product is always something amazing.

Sumeer Malik, a fourth-year student double-majoring in psychology and cinema & digital media, said his love for cinema extends beyond just being a part of the club. He cites films like “Jaws,” “GoodFellas,” “Memories of Murder” and “Seven Samurai” as some of his all-time favorites, each of which has left a significant impact on him as a filmmaker.

“I think these films exemplify what cinema is capable of eliciting,” Malik said, “and these films have inspired me with their filmmaking and shaped my voice as a storyteller.”

Malik knows firsthand the power of movies to bring people together.

“Movies unite people,” Malik said. “It’s only in those two hours in a dark room where we forget our race and ethnicity, and we’re in a shared communal experience — that gives me hope.”

The Davis Filmmaking Society will showcase its work at its annual film festival on June 2 in the Manetti Shrem Museum.

This HBO sitcom loosely recreates Mark Wahlberg’s early years of fame through the character Vince and his buddies as they migrate west from Queens, New York City. Vince, played by 2000s heartthrob Adrian Grenier, is a movie star on the rise in Hollywood. His “entourage” includes his less-successful half-brother Johnny, his best friend and agent Eric and their goofy pal Turtle. Together, the four navigate the ins and outs of Los Angeles while discovering where they fit within West Coast culture. The quick-witted humor and overall demeanor of the characters provide the perfect comedic relief. On top of this, the starstudded cast, complete with guest appearances by many early 2000s personalities, makes the show a light-hearted, entertaining watch.

Book: “Blue Nights” by Joan Didion

Joan Didion’s masterful and unique style of memoir writing is hard to match, and is especially the case in her memoir “Blue Nights.” The memoir offers an insight into her grievances towards the passing of her daughter, Quintana, at age 39. Didion recounts the emotions and memories that come with parenthood, especially when losing a child. Didion has a talent for taking emotionally charged experiences and morphing them to showcase their beauty. The title refers to the summer solstice when the twilights are blue and the nights are longer. Didion compares the way that we process grief to the inevitable dwindling of a day coming to an end. Didion is unable to make sense of her own emotions regarding the chaos she faces, which is something the reader can ultimately sympathize with. This novel is a great read, featuring so many valuable lessons to carry throughout adulthood.

A preview of Lawntopia 2023, UC Davis’s spring quarter live music event

The event will feature Isaiah Rashad, Ladies First DJ Club and Byemilo, among others

BY FAITH DEMEULENAERE arts@theaggie.org

Lawntopia, the ASUCD Entertainment Council’s (EC) annual live-music event, will be hosted this Friday, April 28 from 7-10 p.m. at Dairy Field. This is a different location from previous years when the event was held on the UC Davis Quad. The EC’s biggest Spring Quarter production is something you won’t want to miss.

This year, American rapper Isaiah Rashad will be headlining. Siya Pun, the volunteer director of the Entertainment Council, says the EC is extremely excited about this event.

“In the early 2000s we had Drake, Kendrick, Flume, a lot of big artists featured at Davis,” Pun said. “So we’re really excited about this one. We’ve been working on this event for months.”

Although many are looking forward to Isaiah Rashad’s appearance on the UC Davis campus (and rightfully so), this year’s list of openers provides plenty of reasons to get excited. Lawntopia 2023 will also feature Ladies First DJ Club, a DJ collective centered around women DJs and helping women gain more experience and exposure in the music industry. The collective’s members Soulflower Rey and DJ Jazzy, who also opened for pop artist Raveena at EC’s winter quarter event,

Brainfreeze, will be performing.

Singer and rapper Byemilo, who has performed at one of the EC’s Local Limelight events, will also be returning to the stage for Lawntopia 2023.

This year’s lineup is guaranteed to be a good time, and Pun encourages everyone to support all of the featured artists, not just the headliner.

“They’re all really great,” Pun stated. “The headliner is really great. But please do show up for our openers, because we’re really excited about having them and we want to show them our students’ appreciation.”

Lawntopia is an entirely student-run event, organized by the EC and produced by student volunteers. After months of planning and volunteer work, the event will be a fun opportunity to burn off some steam while supporting live music, production and entertainment.

If you’re planning on showing up to Dairy Field for the event, Pun reminded everyone to bring all their friends and plenty of water.

“It’s probably going to be a hot day,” Pun said. “We’re expecting a lot of people.”

To stay up-to-date on everything related to Lawntopia, check the EC’s Instagram page, @asucdec.

ALLISON VO / AGGIE

Duckwrth performing at Lawntopia 2022. (Aggie)

UC Student Association, Unitrans give reports at April 20 meeting

Creative Media also gave a report, highlighting their plans for spring election promotion and Lawntopia

BY SONORA SLATER campus@theaggie.org

Vice President JT Eden called the April 20 Senate meeting to order at 6:11 p.m., before inviting UC Student Association (UCSA) President Alex Niles up to the podium for a presentation.

The organization is an advocacy group with representatives across the UCs, and, according to Niles, some of their current priorities include student housing, basic needs initiatives, campus safety, removing punitive financial practices and disability student programs.

Next, Director Jeff Flynn gave the quarterly report for Unitrans. Its rider numbers have been very high, according to Flynn, which he attributed to the cold and wet weather. The unit continues to get closer to pre-pandemic staffing.

Its main challenge at the moment is dealing with the safety issues presented by the placement of the Silo bus terminal across the street from the relatively new Teaching and Learning Complex. This year is the first time that the building has been open while the number of students on campus has been equivalent to pre-pandemic numbers, and the high bike traffic in this area has made buses slower and more dangerous for riders, according to Flynn.

In the short-term, their solution is to implement a crossing guard system in the area from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on weekdays, which began on the week of March 21. The crossing guards were hired from Men in Black Security, a private contractor, but Flynn is hoping to make the position a student job in the fall. The crossing guards are currently costing ASUCD around $80,000 a quarter.

Longer term, he explained that there are discussions happening about moving the Silo bus station slightly down the road to a less-trafficked area.

“[The crossing guards system] has been a bit bumpy so far,” Flynn said. “We’ve had feedback both positive and negative.”

He also gave an update on the progress of the near-zero emission bus project, saying that 11 out of 13 of the engines have been completed and noting that the project was funded by The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF), which is up for renewal in the ASUCD spring elections.

Unitrans will be hosting a service change proposal feedback meeting on April 27 at 4 p.m. at the Davis Senior Center; the meeting is open to the public, and the focus will be on discussing slight route and schedule modifications and increasing service frequency consistency.

Next, former Environmental Policy Planning Committee (EPPC) Chairperson Mackenzie Field resigned from her position, and third-year

environmental policy analysis and planning and sustainable environmental design double major Kelly Abey was confirmed as the new chairperson.

“I’ve really enjoyed my time here,” Field said. “It’s genuinely been a very swag time. Now that I have infinitely more free time, reach out to me if you want to hang out.”

Next, second-year cognitive science major McKenna Rangel, thirdyear sociology and Spanish double major Silvia Rodriguez and fourthyear biology major Zia Moore were unanimously confirmed as members of the DREAM Committee. Then, second-year international relations and economics double major Vrinda Vutukury and second-year ??? major Sam ??? were confirmed as members of the Sexual Assault Awareness Advocacy Committee.

“I come from a country where rape culture is prominent,” Vutukury said. “There are a lot of women on this campus walking around who have gone through sexual assault. I want to make campus a safe space for them and empower them to hold their perpetrators accountable.”

Creative Director and fourthyear history and English double major Isabella Chuecos gave Creative Media’s quarterly report. Chuecos said that Creative Media has been busy with merchandise orders for various units, election promotion projects and preparation for Lawntopia on April 28 and the ASCUD Pride Festival on June 2.

Transfer Student Representative Logan Ueno gave the office of the TSR’s quarterly report. He said that the recent Student Lobby Day, which was held to advocate for increased student financial aid through Cal Grants, budget increases for disability services and protections for pregnant students, went well. Coming up later this quarter, the office will be focusing on welcoming new transfer student admits, including during Transfer Aggie Day on May 5 and at a transfer welcome panel later

Residents debate rights of trans youth at recent school board meeting

Activists, families and DJUSD community members address anti-trans rhetoric across the nation and in Davis

BY CHRIS PONCE city@theaggie.org

Content Warning: This article contains discussions of transphobia.

Davis Joint Unified School District’s (DJUSD) recent school board meetings have featured discussion and controversy regarding the rights of transgender and non-binary youth. On April 6, DJUSD held its first meeting of the month.

since I am named in these [articles].

I am concerned about my safety and my family.”

While Jorjorian expressed concern about this media attention, she said the group is not intimidated.

in May. After a 15-minute break, the Senate moved into elected officer reports, where senators described their activities. They reviewed the status of previous legislation and then introduced new legislation.

New legislation included Senate Bill (SB) #93, which would limit Senate discussion to 40 minutes to increase the efficiency of meetings, SB #94, which would change the format of ?? reports, also for the purpose of increasing meeting efficiency, SB #95, which would establish the ASUCD Pride Festival as a unit and SB #96, which would establish the ASUCD Innovation and Research unit, possibly replacing the current Research and Data Committee (R&DC).

All of these were assigned to the Internal Affairs Commission for review, with SB #95 also being assigned to the Gender and Sexuality Commission and SB #96 being assigned to R&DC.

There was no old legislation on the agenda, so the table approved past meeting minutes and then moved into open forum.

Daniel Mojica wanted to make the Senate aware of an upcoming protest against a public library event hosting an “anti-trans speaker.”

Another member of the Senate table asked the senators to consider turning off the lights for the beginning of their meeting next week and relying on natural light from the windows, in order to log extra points for the sustainabilitybased Cool Campus Challenge between UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Senator Jacob Klein expressed his opinion that candidates for elections should not be allowed to have oneon-one meetings with the elections chairperson. Eden said that it was not against the bylaws, but the Senate could make changes in the future if it felt that it was necessary.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:57 p.m., nearly two hours ahead of schedule. “Go team!” Eden said.

Teachers, activists, residents rally for trans youth following anti-trans speaker event

Members of the Davis community, Davis Phoenix Coalition held a protest in opposition to event at Mary L. Stephens Davis Library

refer to me as an ‘anti-trans speaker’ and call my talk a ‘message of hate.’”

Anoosh Jorjorian, an organizer of the protest and the director of Yolo Rainbow Families, discussed recent antitrans movements in Yolo County and the organization Yolo County Moms for Liberty.

“Moms for Liberty is a national organization that has been primarily pro-censorship,” Jorjorian said. “So they are trying to eliminate books about the LGBTQ+ community and books about anti-racism, anything that challenges the ‘Make America Great Again’ narrative. And this chapter in Yolo County seems to have been started specifically for antitrans activities.”

Solidarity Action Yolo is a new project started by the Davis Phoenix Coalition with the intent of supporting marginalized communities in Yolo County, according to Jorjorian.

And while it was not an item that was listed on the agenda, during the public comment portion of the meeting, many residents shared support for trans youth while some residents expressed antitrans rhetoric.

The second speaker of the public comment portion who said she is a Davis resident, a mother of two kids and a registered Democrat addressed the school board. She approached the podium with a Davis Phoenix Coalition flyer, which advertised a drag show workshop hosted by the Davis Queer Teen Group, in her hand. She asked the school board to break ties with the Davis Phoenix Coalition, accusing the group of hosting the event without parental consent. The speaker stated that the drag workshop was “sexual” and said that the organization was committing “predatory behavior.”

Anoosh Jorjorian, founder of Inclusive Futures Consulting and director of Yolo Rainbow Families (a Davis Phoenix Coalition project), said that the kids in attendance at the school board meeting laughed at the way the speaker characterizes the drag workshop.

Jorjorian discussed the drag workshop in more detail, expressing its popularity with students.

“We had a drag workshop for our Davis Queer Teen group,” Jorjorian said. “We had to move that location of that workshop because we were concerned that the anti-trans parents had discovered the location, so we wanted to make sure that activity was secure, and it went well. The kids had a blast […] One of the parents supplied dresses and wigs for that. One of our facilitators had put together makeup kits, some of the makeup was donated by community members and the kids just had so much fun. We [were] smiling and laughing and interacting with each other in a way that would just warm any parent’s heart.”

Allie Snyder, another speaker at the school board meeting, claimed she was “publicly denounced” prior to the meeting for being “hateful.”

Snyder spoke in opposition to genderaffirming care and after the meeting, took to Twitter to share her exchange with the board. In Snyder’s Twitter post, she shared that she participated in a local protest in Davis during which demonstrators held signs that Jorjorian said had anti-trans messaging on them.

Jorjorian discussed the protest and how anti-trans protests like these LGBTQIA+ youth in the community.

“In this campaign, they have done things like shown up in front of the Davis High School with signs and banners that have anti-trans messages,” Jorjorian said. “There was one banner that mentioned surgical transition on the same level as lobotomies, so it’s really offensive and it’s also been extremely harmful for our kids who are trans and gender-expansive as well as the others who are LGB, but are cisgender, but know that their peers and friends are being attacked in this campaign.”

The recent school board meeting garnered more attention following Snyder’s tweet. On April 12, InfoWars, a right-wing news outlet founded by Alex Jones, published an article about Snyder’s comments at the DJUSD school board meeting. InfoWars criticized the Davis Phoenix Coalition and supported Snyder’s work. Jorjorian discussed the backlash the Davis Phoenix Coalition received for their advocacy and shared how many members reacted to the article.

“We have a small group of people who live in Davis, headed up by two moms of children in our school district, who have picked up this national campaign against trans kids’ rights,” Jorjorian said. “And so they have been railing against the Davis Queer Teen Group and against various services that are provided to kids in the Davis school system.”

Jorjorian mentioned that while there is an anti-trans campaign that has trickled into Davis, the majority of residents has signaled support for trans and gender-expansive children in the community. At the school board meeting, many DJUSD trustees expressed support for trans students as well.

“We are looking to protect our children from any kind of abuse,” DJUSD Trustee Elizabeth Moon said at the meeting. “And sometimes that abuse happens in the home, sometimes it happens in the community and sometimes it happens by organizations who believe that they are doing the right thing when they’re not […] We as a community, and [I] particularly, will not stand for anyone not supporting our trans children [and] not supporting our LGBTQ community. If you have an issue as an individual, keep it to yourself and your family and work it out and have communication with your family. It is not your right to take away someone else’s right.”

DJUSD shared that its goal is to protect all children, but specifically trans youth, in the Davis community. It cited the Nondiscrimnation/Harassment policy and “We All Belong” Resolution from 2017, which set aside protections for gender-expansive and trans students.

“We know that when students have a strong sense of belonging at school, they perform better, have more meaningful relationships and, as a result, they have increased opportunities for the future. Our [“We All Belong”] resolution aligns with legislation, board policy and administrative regulations,” a representative for DJUSD said via email. “Our top priorities are to ensure the safety, well-being and mental health of our students and to ignite their love of learning, all while increasing their feelings of acceptance in their community.”

Another speaker at the meeting, a 10th-grade student, shared their reaction to the anti-trans rhetoric in Davis.

“I come to you as a teenager,” the speaker said. “A 10th grader, talking about the rights of my friends, which are so quickly being stripped away in other places, and by the people who they thought they could trust. Davis is a small town, I grew up here, I know it like the back of my hand. And I hate to see it spiral into a place that isn’t safe for me, for people like me, [for] my friends and all of the queer people in the world. I’d hate to see it become somewhere where they can’t be themselves. At the end of the day, queer people do not decide to be queer, they do not get forced by adults in their life to be queer.”

Davis Joint Unified School District’s (DJUSD) recent school board meetings have featured discussion and controversy regarding the rights of transgender and non-binary youth. On April 6, DJUSD held its first meeting of the month. And while it was not an item that was listed on the agenda, during the public comment portion of the meeting, many residents shared support for trans youth while some residents expressed antitrans rhetoric.

BY MADELEINE YOUNG AND CHRIS PONCE city@theaggie.org

Content Warning: This article contains discussions of transphobia and suicide

On April 22, members of the Davis Phoenix Coalition, as well as parents, teachers and other Davis residents gathered to protest in opposition to a speaker event featuring Dr. Colin Wright at the Mary L. Stephens Davis Library. The speaker event, which was titled “The Biology of Sex and Gender Curricula in CA Public Schools,” sparked controversy amongst many in Davis who believe it was a transphobic event.

Among those protesting was Rachel Warren, a scientist and engineer from Davis. As a scientist, Warren shared her reaction to Wright and the event.

“There’s no place in Davis for rightwing transphobia and misinformation,” Warren said. “And using science as a pretext for bigotry and fascism is just plain wrong. As a scientist, I denounce

that. A pseudoscientist and entomologist has no credentials to be speaking to whether or not gender and sex are binary or nonbinary. And the science shows that it’s a spectrum. And if he [Wright] was a true scientist, he would know that.”

Wright is an entomologist and according to his website, an evolutionary biologist. The event was hosted by Yolo County Moms for Liberty, an organization that advocates for “parental rights.” Yolo County Moms for Liberty invited Wright to speak about his belief that there is no distinction between sex and gender. On April 21, Wright stated on Twitter that gender ideology is “harmful” and that activists tried to cancel his event.

“Activists in Davis have attempted (and failed) to get my event canceled, and are now planning to protest my talk on the biology of sex and the harms of gender ideology,” Wright tweeted. “They

“Davis Phoenix Coalition recently started a project called ‘Solidarity Action Yolo,’” Jorjorian said. “This is a listserv for community members of this area. Whenever our marginalized communities are under attack, whether it’s the LGBTQ+ community, our immigrant community [or] a Black Lives Matter incident, then we rally the community to help support those marginalized communities.”

Among those protesting in suppot of trans youth was Beth Ochsner, a fourthgrade teacher in Davis, who stated why teaching kids that there is only one gender binary is detrimental to students.

“I think it’s really important that trans kids know that there’s support for them and [we don’t believe the] pseudoscience that there is only one gender binary,” Ochsner said. “I feel like it’s important to really understand that when trans people aren’t supported, they are much more likely to commit suicide and so trans lives are literally on the line.”

“Unfortunately this is not the first time the Phoenix Coalition has been attacked by the right-wing [media],” Jorjorian said. “First of all, one of the moms who is leading this campaign is in direct contact with the person who runs the ‘Libs of TikTok’ social media account. [...] I, personally, have needed to be very conscious about my security,

The second speaker of the public comment portion who said she is a Davis resident, a mother of two kids and a registered Democrat addressed the school board. She approached the podium with a Davis Phoenix Coalition flyer, which advertised a drag show workshop hosted by the Davis Queer Teen Group, in her hand.

Davis community members come together in pursuit of justness at a rally for transgender rights. (Sean Vanderaa / Aggie)

CHRISTINA LIU / AGGIE

Sudoku

Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row, column and 3x3 square must contain each digit. Each Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing.

Crossword

Muslim students speak about observing Ramadan during Picnic Day

Students from UC Davis’s Muslim community share their experiences balancing their faith and participating in campus events

BY MIA BALTIERRA features@theaggie.org

What is the inner child?

Inner child work is more than an online trend, according to psychotherapists

BY KACEY CHAN features@theaggie.org

Students may have come across TikTok posts about someone taking a self-care day or buying a fidget toy. These videos are often tagged something along the lines of “#innerchildhealing” or “#innerchildwork.” However, a lot of people might not know what an “inner child” even is and may just consider it another pseudoscience online trend.

The inner child is, in fact, a very real concept in psychotherapy though. Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, is credited with first proposing the inner child concept.

Essentially, it is a part of us which sits inside our minds and influences who we are and the decisions we make, according to an article from the CPTSD Foundation.

might perceive the dishes as a long to-do list that needs to be finished as soon as possible and therefore panic about it. From the other partner’s perspective, though, the dishes are just fine; they are happy to do what the former wants but don’t understand why their partner is so stressed.

“In therapy, maybe we learn [that] in their childhood, the [stressed] partner was taught to be quiet or not make a fuss, leading them to struggle with asking for help as an adult,” Gonen said. “Over time, we can heal that wound in this person’s inner child.”

Muslim students at UC Davis practice Ramadan as a time of reflection and strength supported by community, yet some find it difficult to navigate their observance of faith with academic life and events like Picnic Day.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, a period of fasting and charity in which Muslims across the globe participate. It is revered as one of the holiest months of the year, and practicing Ramadan is considered fulfillment of one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

A main component of observing Ramadan, fasting, includes refraining from all food and drink from sunrise to sunset. The meal before sunrise is called Suhoor and the meal after sunset is called Iftar.

“Lots of people may think, ‘Oh you’re starving yourself for 30 days; I don’t know how you can do that,’ but it’s way more than that,” said Ariana Tahmas, a fourth-year international relations and communication double major. “It is a way of [practicing] self-discipline while also connecting to your faith and proving to yourself if you are able to abstain from eating and drinking, […] that you are able to control yourself from other pleasures in this world. [...] We call [it] dunyā, so it is a way of protecting our dīn, our morals and faith.”

At the end of the month, Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr where they break fast for a final time and come together to celebrate their strength and accomplishments of the past month.

Aleeza Khan, a third-year economics and Middle East/South Asia studies double major, shared her experience observing Ramadan at Davis.

“It’s different; at home, it’s a lot more community-based,” Khan said. “I do both [Suhoor and Iftar] with my family. We often go to other houses to eat Iftar together and we pray at the Mosque a lot. In Davis, I don’t have Muslim roommates. My non-Muslim roommates are really cool, sometimes they fast with me, but overall it’s a little more isolating; I do a lot more stuff on my own.”

MEETTHECANDIDATES

FROM PAGE 3

Zahar King (he/him/his) is a third-year transfer student majoring in English and design. If he is elected senator, King plans to prioritize improving identity-affirming resources for LGBTQIA+ students, extending assistance for students with disabilities beyond the classroom and uplifting student organizations. He has previously worked with ASUCD as a senate staffer where he had the opportunity to connect with several student organizations. King stated that as a transfer student who lost healthcare coverage, he was not given Student Disability Center accommodations while struggling with self-identity, so he wants to improve these programs so no other student will have to experience these struggles.

Rahul Mukhopadhyay (he/him/ his) is a first-year political science major who is running as an Independent. He noted that he did not want to be affiliated with any “big groups” or slates and preferred to run for himself and his constituents. Mukhopadhyay chose to run because he felt the issues on campus, particularly recent hate incidents, have not been responded to accordingly. He is running on a threepart platform. Mukhopadhyay hopes to improve campus safety, stop bigotry and hatred in all forms and increase the dining options for students on campus. Because Mukhopadhyay is a first-year student, he feels that he can provide the perspective of the current freshmen to the Senate table. Mukhopadhyay noted his lack of experience with ASUCD but said he believes that he makes up for it with passion and energy.

Inbar Schwartz (she/her/hers) is a first-year international relations major running as an Independant. Schwartz’s platform includes three main goals. First, she hopes to improve housing

The exact dates on which Ramadan falls change every year, as it follows the lunar calendar.

“The traditional method is to see the moon sighting to start Ramadan and look at the moon again to determine the end of Ramadan,” Khan said.

This year Ramadan began on March 22 and ended on April 21. While the dates of Ramadan change, for the past several years, it has landed during a period when many major campus events occur, like Picnic Day.

Picnic Day is anticipated by many, as a time to roam campus with friends in the sunny April weather, buy food from food trucks and visit exhibits. Partying is another common component associated with the UC Davis event.

Many Muslims feel their observance of Ramadan prevents them from participating in these activities.

“I wanted to have fun with my friends and experience Picnic Day, but fasting and not even being able to drink anything was really difficult because you are walking around all day and it’s a lot of exertion, so you just get tired really easily,” Khan said. “All my friends got to get lunch from the food trucks and try out the nitrogen ice cream, and you go along and have a good time, but you miss out on some things because of [Ramadan].”

Some students believe that the school should move the date of Picnic Day altogether, as the dates of Ramadan are known beforehand every year. For instance, this year’s Picnic Day was celebrated on April 15, only a mere six days before the end of Ramadan.

“If they moved it two weeks later,” Khan said, “we would have been able to do everything everyone else was doing.”

Still, not all Muslim students feel their Picnic Day experience was hindered by their observance of Ramadan, such as Jannat Ashfaq, a third-year microbiology major.

“I had all these friends around me who were accommodating and we did all these other things together, and when they did want to drink, I had alternate activities because of my amazing clubs here,” Ashfaq said. “The Pakistani

support and services — especially for first-year students. Second, Schwartz wants to improve resources for students with disabilities, neurodiverse students, English-language learners, and study abroad students and improve student involvement in ASUCD government. Schwartz aims to increase lecture recording for students who may not be able to attend class in person regularly. Obtaining proper captioning technology for recorded lectures is also key, the candidate said. She also hopes to increase student voter turnout, transparency from senators and faceto-face interaction between ASUCD and the student body. In her first year at Davis, Schwartz has been involved with the Student Advocate’s Office, a non-partisan office dedicated to assisting students in disputes with the university. She is also a member of Davis Women in Business (DWIB) and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission for the Design Department. Shwartz also worked with NYU last year to review curriculum materials to improve its level of cultural responsiveness. Schwartz is running for Senate because she wants to make a meaningful difference in the everyday lives of the student body.

Noblejot Singh (he/him/his) is a second-year political science public service and cinema and digital media double major running with the MOOve slate. Singh’s campaign slogan is “Don’t Vote Later, Vote N.O.W.” N.O.W. stands for “Nothing is negligible, Open the outdoors, We are Davis.” According to Singh, the first point in the acronym describes his goal to advocate for basic needs resources on campus, like free bike lights, laundry supplies and rent negotiation assistance, that are available to students but not well advertised. He hopes to collaborate with ASUCD media units to address this issue. For Singh, “Open the outdoors” is his idea to improve collaboration between centers on campus. For example, he notes that building pipelines between the Internship and Career Center, Alumni Center and Student Startup Center could create more opportunities for students. “We

Student Association and the Muslim Student Association [MSA] had a lot of activities to be involved in. We had an Iftar in the evening. Everyone got food, we got dessert after [and] it was fun.”

Tahmas said her Picnic Day experience was also spent with Muslim community members off-campus.

“This year we had a student-led group called Project Rahman from the Muslim community,” Tahmas said. “One of the leaders put together an event at Colleges at La Rue where we bagged a bunch of meals for the homeless. We went to an area in Sacramento with a large homeless population. We handed out around 200 [meals].”

Tahmas emphasized the important role the community has played in her positive experiences practicing Ramadan, even during events like Picnic Day.

“On campus, I’ve developed such a beautiful community, especially at the Islamic center, with the MSA on campus and even just with my ethnic background,” Tahmas said. “It’s cool to come in congregation and be able to practice faith with one another and know that you are not alone on campus, so I think that’s really amazing.”

While Muslim students shared varying Picnic Day experiences, many still hope the school will take religious holidays into further consideration when planning campus events.

According to Ashfaq, accommodations for Muslim students are open during campus events, such as the reflection room, a multi-faith room for students to practice their faith in, located in the Cross Cultural Center on campus.

“It is kind of in a corner, so I think it would have been nice if they advertised it or made a sign saying you can go here,” Ashfaq said. “I know they post a lot about Picnic Day, if in one of those posts they could maybe post about accommodations like the reflection room, it would be nice. We have a pronounced Muslim community here, and if they could advertise it on a day like this, it would probably mean the world to a lot of Muslims.”

are Davis” is Singh’s vision to connect Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) with corresponding departments and faculty to create an exchange of ideas. As part of the MOOve slate, Singh is passionate about student-worker’s rights and fee transparency. He has five years of experience in student advocacy work. In high school, Singh worked with the Sikh Student Association to advocate to the local school board on education resolutions. He is also a part of Jakara Movement at Davis and has worked with its parent nonprofit organization. He is currently interning for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he is engaged in advocacy for farmers in California’s Central Valley. Singh believes his organizing experience, campus organization involvement and background in advocacy could benefit ASUCD.

External Affairs Vice President:

Celene Aridin (she/her/hers) is a third-year international relations major who is running for the position of the external affairs vice president as an Independent. Aridin said she chose to run independent to both mirror the position’s non-partisan quality in the “real world” and also because she feels the position works closely with all members of the Senate regardless of slate status. She held the position for the duration of the winter quarter and noted that her close involvement in organizing the Students of Color Conference was both difficult and rewarding work. Aridin noted several upcoming events that she feels particularly excited for. Aridin, alongside her legislative director and a selected group of students, plan to travel to Washington DC in May to participate in federal lobbying. Since she is running unopposed, Aridin plans to be reelected and is excited to continue to connect people to resources that pertain to their needs. She plans to hold her office hours outside due to the warmer weather and encourages all students to stop by, especially those who plan to lobby and are interested in collaborating with her office.

“Inner children were us when we were kids that never grew up,” the website reads. “Adults are covertly controlled by their unconscious inner child […] and it is the lens through which injured adults make their decisions.”

Working to heal your inner child can take many forms. Instead of there being one specific methodology of “inner child work,” there are many different approaches that therapists utilize in their practices. Areas such as internal family systems therapy, ego-state therapy and schema therapy are all proven ways of working to heal the inner child, as stated in an article from Time Magazine.

Sevil Gonen, LMFT, is a therapist at a Davis practice, Three Figs Counseling. She employs inner child work through her specialty — emotion-focused therapy (EFT).

“Emotions run fast and hot,” Gonen said. “Because that neural wiring is so fast, EFT helps by slowing way down and rewiring that in a healthy way so it sticks.”

EFT is based on the idea that emotion drives behavior. Gonen said that she often sees peoples’ inner children being utilized when she works with couples.

“When couples fight about the dishes, it’s never really about the dishes,” Gonen said. “Rather, the conflict is the interaction between the two partners and something underlying it going on.”

According to Gonen, one partner

Inner child work is not only applicable for couples but is also extremely beneficial for individual therapy. A particular exercise Gonen employs is roleplay. The idea, essentially, is that the therapist acts as a medium for the individual to create a dialogue with their past and unpack painful experiences.

“If the experience involves a parent, for example, I may ask them what that parent would say realistically,” Gonen said. “Then afterward, I’d ask them to state what a strong, wonderful parent would say to you instead.”

Gonen said she wants her clients to visualize what their inner child needs and then provide it for themselves instead.

“I want to empower the individual to become what they needed as a kid, what their inner child now needs today,” Gonen said.

Inner child work helps people by allowing them to acknowledge their past and heal from it. Some individuals may have had wonderful, less traumatic childhoods with emotionally welladjusted parents, making them able to form secure attachments. Others might have instead faced trauma or other difficult circumstances causing them to ignore their inner child and not process those experiences in a healthy way.

“As we grow up, our inner child gets continually muted,” Gonen said. “We may set aside their needs to be an adult and be responsible, but that doesn’t change the inner child screaming inside us.”

International Student Representative:

Asif Ahmed (he/him/his) said that his main focus is strengthening the international student community on campus. The second-year economics major and coordinator at the Cross Cultural Center is an international student himself, and engages with the community frequently in his current role. His plans if he is elected include numerous events to build that community and help international students adjust, such as hosting a job fair with companies looking to sponsor international students. Ahmed also stressed his availability, especially when it comes to answering questions an international student may have, as part of his qualifications. “If anything, even if I don’t get elected for the position, I’m always on campus,” Ahmed said, “I’m always willing to listen to people. And everyone can feel free to come up to me and say hi, just express any concern.”

Khaled Al Mutawa (he/him/his), a third year mechanical engineering major, has had no previous ASUCD or political experience but feels that his collaborative work as an engineering student has given him the communication and people skills to work with others successfully. Al Mutawa previously tried to run as ASUCD president, but was unable to obtain the threshold of 400 signatures to begin the campaign. If elected, Al Mutawa has two goals he hopes to achieve: increase the amount of resources that ASUCD can provide to international students and specifically provide more information about internships and career opportunities for these students. He noted that from his own experience, it has been difficult to both find internships and know which ones accept international students. Al Mutawa also noted that he does not want to make any promises except to try his best and always take students’ suggestions. He also encouraged students to participate in elections because ASUCD is behind services such as the Bike Barn and the CoHo.

Transfer Student Representative:

Erek Leschyn (he/they), a thirdyear political science major and transfer student, is running with the MOOve slate. He has served as an ASUCD senator since last fall, and worked with the Office of the Transfer Student (OTSR) throughout the year. He also has experience in leadership and management for nonprofit organizations outside of ASUCD. They plan to continue the work that the OTSR has been doing throughout the past year in terms of lobbying and advocating for transfer students, re-entry students, student parents, formerly incarcerated students and student veterans, as well as hoping to build a strong transfer-student community next year through in-person and online events.

Kaito Clarke (he/him/his), a thirdyear political science public service major, was initially not planning to run for the position; however, he was approached by current ASUCD senators who encouraged him to run. Clarke serves as the director of communications for the Executive Office and also has political experience as both a staffer for a county supervisor and later as the digital coordinator for a congressperson’s campaign. Clarke has three priorities for his campaign: increasing communitybuilding for transfer and re-entry students, expanding access to resources and improving academic flexibility. He noted that as a transfer student himself, he faced issues adjusting to the quarter system and finding community and hopes to help other transfer students through similar issues. Though Clarke is aware he does not have much power to change the “Pass/No Pass” deadline, he wants to advocate for pushing back course drop deadlines as well as work with the Academic Affairs Commission to ensure that lectures are recorded and mandatory attendance is reduced when possible. He emphasized that the mental and physical health of students should be prioritized and that students’ basic needs of housing and food should be guaranteed.

During Picnic Day a variety of new food trucks were invited and dispersed around campus. (Maia Zhu / Aggie)

JOANNE SUN / AGGIE

SCIENCE AND TECH

Study shows Lake Tahoe is the clearest it has been since the 1980s

Lake water clarity is expected to continue improving as long as zooplankton populations remain high

BY LILLY ACKERMAN science@theaggie.org

From August to December of 2022, Lake Tahoe’s clarity was the best it has been since the 1980s, according to the 2022 annual clarity report from the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC). Lake clarity averaged 80.6 feet during these five months, starkly clearer than the approximately 70-foot average seen over the last 20 years. The TERC monitors several aspects of Lake Tahoe, including its aquatic ecology, physics, atmospherics and even nearby forestry. Notably, researchers with the TERC have been measuring water clarity since the late 1960s.

Clarity measurements are taken using a tool called a Secchi disk; the one used by the TERC is a white disk with a 10-inch diameter that is lowered into the water until it disappears from view. The depth at which it disappears is averaged with the depth at which it reappears upon being pulled back up to give an accurate clarity depth reading.

Several factors can negatively influence Lake Tahoe’s clarity, including land disturbance, fires and the amount of snowpack each year, as these factors affect the amount of sediment and other fine particles added to the water. However, the recent increase in clarity seems to be tied to the lake’s aquatic ecology.

According to Geoffrey Schladow, a professor in UC Davis’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the TERC’s founding director, a shrimp species called Mysis was introduced to the lake in the 1960s

with the intention of feeding game fish so that they would become larger and more abundant.

Unfortunately, the shrimp began feeding excessively on the lake’s native zooplankton, the microscopic animals that live in the water — notably the species Daphnia and Bosmina, instead.

“What wasn’t realized is that the Daphnia and Bosmina are very efficient grazers,” Schladow said. “So the way they eat is they literally just shovel everything in a certain size range into their mouths. The net effect of their feeding was to gather up all these tiny particles that impact lake clarity and just remove them from the water.”

Naturally, the rampant consumption of these zooplankton by Mysis shrimp since the 1960s has removed a lot of the zooplankton’s filter-feeding power and has had a long-term effect on water clarity that has only very recently been considered.

According to Brant Allen, a field lab director and boat captain at the TERC, it wasn’t until 2002 that researchers began to think zooplankton might have substantial impacts on water clarity. This came after a brief decrease in Mysis shrimp and a resurgence of Daphnia.

“With the resurgence of the Daphnia, we saw a dramatic increase in water clarity that we really couldn’t attribute to anything else,” Allen said. “So it has given us this new view that the aquatic ecology of the lake and restoring the native zooplankton could have a serious impact on water clarity in a positive way.”

According to the researchers, a reduction in Mysis in late 2021 allowed for blooms in Daphnia and Bosmina zooplankton populations, contributing to the recently observed increase in lake clarity.

Due to the life cycle and history of Mysis in Lake Tahoe, researchers at the TERC believe that clarity will continue improving throughout 2023. However, they emphasize that Mysis will likely return within the next few years and lower zooplankton abundance once again.

“The restoration target for Lake Tahoe is to get the average annual clarity to be about 97 feet,” Schladow said. “I think by the end of this year, we would be very close to that target of 97 feet, but it’s not going to last, so it’s a great learning opportunity.”

Knowing what has strong effects on Lake Tahoe’s water clarity can inform future management decisions about maintaining zooplankton populations and minimizing swells of Mysis numbers. For now, we can appreciate Lake Tahoe’s increase in clarity while being mindful of what has caused it and why it may not last.

“[We will see if] we can actually track that decrease in water clarity with the resurgence of the shrimp and the loss of the zooplankton,” Allen said. “And if we do, that’s really powerful information for being able to say that the zooplankton have a strong correlation to good water clarity.”

DJUSDYOUTH

FROM PAGE 8

She asked the school board to break ties with the Davis Phoenix Coalition, accusing the group of hosting the event without parental consent. The speaker stated that the drag workshop was “sexual” and said that the organization was committing “predatory behavior.”

Anoosh Jorjorian, founder of Inclusive Futures Consulting and director of Yolo Rainbow Families (a Davis Phoenix Coalition project), said that the kids in attendance at the school board meeting laughed at the way the speaker characterizes the drag workshop.

Jorjorian discussed the drag workshop in more detail, expressing its popularity with students.

“We had a drag workshop for our Davis Queer Teen group,” Jorjorian said.

“We had to move that location of that workshop because we were concerned that the anti-trans parents had discovered the location, so we wanted to make sure that activity was secure, and it went well. The kids had a blast […] One of the parents supplied dresses and wigs for that. One of our facilitators had put together makeup kits, some of the makeup was donated by community members and the kids just had so much fun. We [were] smiling and laughing and interacting with each other in a way that would just warm any parent’s heart.”

Allie Snyder, another speaker at the school board meeting, claimed she was “publicly denounced” prior to the meeting for being “hateful.” Snyder spoke in opposition to gender-affirming care and after the meeting, took to Twitter to share her exchange with the board. In Snyder’s Twitter post, she shared that she participated in a local protest in Davis during which demonstrators held signs that Jorjorian said had antitrans messaging on them.

Jorjorian discussed the protest and how anti-trans protests like these LGBTQIA+ youth in the community.

“In this campaign, they have done things like shown up in front of the Davis High School with signs and banners that have anti-trans messages,” Jorjorian said.

“There was one banner that mentioned surgical transition on the same level as lobotomies, so it’s really offensive and it’s also been extremely harmful for our kids who are trans and gender-expansive as well as the others who are LGB, but are cisgender, but know that their peers and friends are being attacked in this campaign.”

The recent school board meeting garnered more attention following Snyder’s tweet. On April 12, InfoWars, a right-wing news outlet founded by Alex Jones, published an article about Snyder’s comments at the DJUSD school board meeting. InfoWars criticized the Davis Phoenix Coalition and supported Snyder’s work. Jorjorian discussed the backlash the Davis Phoenix Coalition received for their advocacy and shared how many members reacted to the article.

“Unfortunately this is not the first time the Phoenix Coalition has been attacked by the right-wing [media],” Jorjorian said. “First of all, one of the moms who is leading this campaign is in direct contact with the person who

WWATERPOLOSENIORDAY

runs the ‘Libs of TikTok’ social media account. [...] I, personally, have needed to be very conscious about my security, since I am named in these [articles]. I am concerned about my safety and my family.”

While Jorjorian expressed concern about this media attention, she said the group is not intimidated.

“We have a small group of people who live in Davis, headed up by two moms of children in our school district, who have picked up this national campaign against trans kids’ rights,” Jorjorian said. “And so they have been railing against the Davis Queer Teen Group and against various services that are provided to kids in the Davis school system.”

Jorjorian mentioned that while there is an anti-trans campaign that has trickled into Davis, the majority of residents has signaled support for trans and genderexpansive children in the community. At the school board meeting, many DJUSD trustees expressed support for trans students as well.

“We are looking to protect our children from any kind of abuse,” DJUSD Trustee Elizabeth Moon said at the meeting. “And sometimes that abuse happens in the home, sometimes it happens in the community and sometimes it happens by organizations who believe that they are doing the right thing when they’re not […] We as a community, and [I] particularly, will not stand for anyone not supporting our trans children [and] not supporting our LGBTQ community. If you have an issue as an individual, keep it to yourself and your family and work it out and have communication with your family. It is not your right to take away someone else’s right.”

DJUSD shared that its goal is to protect all children, but specifically trans youth, in the Davis community. It cited the Nondiscrimnation/Harassment policy and “We All Belong” Resolution from 2017, which set aside protections for gender-expansive and trans students.

“We know that when students have a strong sense of belonging at school, they perform better, have more meaningful relationships and, as a result, they have increased opportunities for the future. Our [“We All Belong”] resolution aligns with legislation, board policy and administrative regulations,” a representative for DJUSD said via email. “Our top priorities are to ensure the safety, well-being and mental health of our students and to ignite their love of learning, all while increasing their feelings of acceptance in their community.”

Another speaker at the meeting, a 10th-grade student, shared their reaction to the anti-trans rhetoric in Davis.

“I come to you as a teenager,” the speaker said. “A 10th grader, talking about the rights of my friends, which are so quickly being stripped away in other places, and by the people who they thought they could trust. Davis is a small town, I grew up here, I know it like the back of my hand. And I hate to see it spiral into a place that isn’t safe for me, for people like me, [for] my friends and all of the queer people in the world. I’d hate to see it become somewhere where they can’t be themselves. At the end of the day, queer people do not decide to be queer, they do not get forced by adults in their life to be queer.”

First nephrectomy performed with the use of a robotic arm on living kidney donor

The use of robotic technology decreases scarring, blood loss and hospitalization time

BY KATIE HELLMAN science@theaggie.org

The first fully robotic nephrectomy was performed on a living donor in Sacramento through UC Davis Health, which offers robotic-assisted technology for transplants. A livingdonor nephrectomy is a surgery where a healthy kidney is removed from a living donor and inserted into the body of someone without healthy kidneys.

“Living donation gives the recipient freedom from dialysis and allows them to enjoy a longer life full of energy and productivity,” an article by the UC Davis Health Transplant Center reads.

“About half of all kidneys available for transplant come from people who have

died and whose families give permission for organ donation. There are not enough of these organs, however, for everyone who needs them.”

The nephrectomy was performed using the Intuitive surgical robotic system, which has robotic arms that can be operated by surgeons from a console. The robotic arms have greater precision than human ones, which allows surgeons to make small incisions and gain better visualization to perform the procedure.

The use of this technological method allows for a quicker recovery time and less scarring for patients than there would be with a minimally invasive abdominal surgery, laparoscopy or an open surgery approach.

Bahareh Nejad, the medical director of robotic surgery at UC Davis Health, commented on the benefits of the use of robotic technology.

“In comparison with laparoscopic surgery, you have a 360-degree range of motion of your instrument and it has tremor reduction and ten times magnification,” Nejad said. “We’re doing surgery with smaller incisions, so it allows for a much more precise operation with lower blood loss and a faster return to home.”

While it can take time to adjust to the techniques, robotic surgery can become much more efficient with practice.

“When you switch to robotic surgery, at the beginning of your learning curve, you’re going to take longer — sometimes even one or two

hours longer,” Nejad said. “Usually after about 20 cases is when most people start to get faster at robotic surgery, and then, after 50 cases, they’re significantly faster.”

Junichiro Sageshima, the surgical director of the living kidney donation program at UC Davis Health and the physician who performed the procedure, commented on the broad services that robotics can provide in the medical field.

“Robots are also used in other surgical specialties, such as cardiac, thoracic, colorectal surgery, gynecology and urology,” Sageshima said via email. “The implementation of advanced technology at UC Davis Medical Center has improved the quality of patient care.”

The program consists of a large group that includes the transplant team, robotic surgery team, operating room staff and nurses. The faculty hopes that technology-assisted surgical techniques will continue to be utilized to improve the outcomes of various surgeries.

“In our specialty, not only donor surgeries but also some of recipient surgeries will be performed robotically in the future,” Sageshima said. “This will be good news for patients whose access to kidney transplant surgery using conventional techniques has been limited due to their body habitus [or physical build]. We hope that robots using artificial intelligence will act as co-pilots to assist surgeons, allowing for less invasive surgeries.”

FROM PAGE 12

Following Wijnbelt’s heroic shot to tie the game, both teams kept the game leveled, each scoring another goal. With only five seconds left in the game, Long Beach State drew an exclusion, resulting in a powerplay goal that put them up by one and ended the game 12-13.

“We all played really well, which is a good feeling heading into the last individual conference game in Hawaii and then the conference championships. Of course, it is not fun to lose, but we all played really well, and we were on the same page for the whole game, which, in my opinion, is a better way to lose,” Wijnbelt said. “I think we are all really excited for the last few games, and this game definitely set us in a cohesive and confident mindset to potentially play Long Beach again.”

Following the game, the senior

INNERCHILD

FROM PAGE 10

This contrast in childhood is why certain couples might see one person being consistently more stressed than the other or starting arguments, according to Gonen.

“Their partner may not understand why the other is in turmoil and why things are so challenging,” Gonen said.

Those with healthier childhoods generally become more in tune with their inner child and are able to handle such stressors, while those who are not tend to struggle more with processing stressors. In regards to the social media trend, Gonen believes the trend represents young people utilizing an innocence they feel they’ve lost.

“I see a lot of teens, and I’ve noticed this shift where they accomplish all these things like learning a language, getting into school, then getting their dream job, but they are now more depressed and dissatisfied than before,” Gonen

day ceremony took place, recognizing Clague, Makenna Ferguson, Lengtat, Sophia Noble, Morgan Polterock, Wijnbelt and Hailey Williams.

“There were a lot of emotions surrounding our final home game of the season, especially for the seniors,” Clague said. “I am a high-energy player, so the excitement surrounding senior day and Picnic Day with lots of fans and alumni coming to cheer us on played to my strengths.”

With high emotions and intensity during and after the last home game, the UC Davis Aggies are looking forward to traveling to Hawaii for their last game before their Big West Conference Championship in Santa Barbara during the weekend of April 28.

“After seeing the team’s performance against Long Beach on Saturday, I am even more confident and excited for the conference tournament taking place next weekend,” Clague said. “We are peaking as a team at just the right time, and I look forward to our next match.”

said. “Because they don’t have enough time to both fulfill these goals and find what makes them happy, young people get distracted by these supposed metrics of success and miss out on finding happiness.”

According to Gonen, connecting to the inner child is a way for teens to take a break from life stressors and remember what they actually want and need. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to healing the inner child, it is an extremely useful part of therapy that allows individuals to process traumas in a healthy way. While it is possible to work on your inner child by yourself through online resources, according to Time Magazine, it can be especially beneficial to work with a mental health professional. It can help people form adult relationships with healthy boundaries and also empower individuals to become what they needed growing up.

“The work is slow,” Gonen said. “But once we can acknowledge the past and heal it, we actually heal the present time too.”

BASEBALL

Aggies’ baseball comes out on top against UC Riverside

After a tough battle, the Aggies beat UC Riverside in first matchup of the series

BY CAROLYN (CARI) FENN sports@theaggie.org

After a tough 14-2 loss to Saint Mary’s on the Phil Swimley Field at Dobbins Stadium in Davis on April 18, UC Davis Head Coach Tommy Nicholson used the few days leading up to Friday’s matchup against UC Riverside to refresh the team after a long stretch of away games.

“We’ve been on the road for the past three weeks so we needed to regroup a little bit,” Nicholson said. “We had a couple of good days of practice and wanted to come out today with a lot of energy and just play hard.”

From the start of the game, it was clear that the Aggies weren’t going to let Tuesday’s result stunt their performance.

After a home run by third-year infielder Alex Gouveia in the first inning, the Aggies came out swinging in the second inning, increasing their 1-point lead to 5.

Second-year infielder Nick Leehey started the Aggies’ impressive secondinning performance with a single down left center field. Directly following, firstyear infielder Ryan Lee hit a double down left-center field, which allowed Leehey to reach home plate and score the Aggies’ first of four runs of the inning. Then, to top off these backto-back hits, third-year infielder Jack Gallagher hit a homerun straight into left field, scoring two more runs for the Aggies.

One more run came later in the inning when the bases were loaded.

First-year outfielder Leighton Helfrick was able to score from Gouveia on a fielder’s choice. This resulted in secondyear outfielder Mark Wolbert getting out at second base, but not before the Aggies obtained their fourth run. Due to the Aggies’ impressive performance on the plate during the second inning, they were able to fully cycle through their lineup, with Leehey both starting and ending the inning at bat.

Despite a strong start to the game,

the Aggies began to struggle in the fourth and fifth innings, allowing UC Riverside to take over the lead, 6-5.

Despite strong pitching in the first three innings, UC Davis’s second-year pitcher Bryan Green found himself in a bit of trouble in the fourth inning, walking three batters. With the bases loaded and two outs, UC Riverside’s second-year outfielder Jacob Badawi hit a single down the left-center field, resulting in two runs for UC Riverside. Nicholson called Green’s performance on the mound “uncharacteristic. Bryan Green walked four guys and he typically is pounding the zone. That’s not like him.”

After this, Green was replaced by third-year pitcher Nate Freeman, who finished off the inning, striking out UC Riverside’s third-year utility player Tyler Weaver.

Despite Freeman’s strong start at the end of the fourth inning, he was not able to keep it going into the fifth. After allowing a single and two walks, Freeman let Riverside load the bases again after walking third-year infielder Mason Grace. UC Riverside’s first-year infielder Alfredo Capacete singled to the left side, allowing third-year infielder Anthony Mata to score and keep the bases loaded.

Freeman was substituted for third-year pitcher Danny Carrion, but Riverside was not stoppable. They scored two more runs, once again off a walk due to the bases being loaded and a single down the left side. After the multiple walks and singles that had occurred in the fifth inning alone, the Highlanders were able to secure a 6-5 lead against the Aggies. However, the Aggies didn’t let them stay comfortable with their lead for long. While the Aggies did come back and tie the game against Riverside in the bottom of the fifth inning, they really came back to life in the sixth.

After three back-to-back walks by UC Riverside’s second-year pitcher Corbin Barker, Gouveia singled up the middle, allowing both third-year outfielder

Damian Stone and first-year infielder Joey Wright to score. Then, after Barker was replaced with first-year pitcher David O’Neill, UC Davis’s third-year infielder James Williams III singled to left field, allowing Wolbert to score.

The Aggies weren’t slowing down after these three runs. With the bases loaded, Gallagher once again sent the ball flying into left field for another home run, gaining the Aggies another four runs for a total of seven in the sixth inning.

“Setting up that inning, when Jack hit the home run, Leehey had called a timeout, and we put on a bunt sign with him, and it might’ve been one of the first times he ever got that bunt sign and he did a great job,” Nicholson said.

BSBVSUCR on 11

Aggies fall short in overtime on senior day

UC Davis women’s water polo hosts last home game before Big West Conference Tournament

What You Need to Know About the 2023 NFL Draft

The NFL draft is where dreams come true for college prospects

BY PATRICK FIGUEROA sports@theaggie.org

After months of anticipation, the 2023 NFL Draft begins on April 27. The annual event is often filled with uncertainty, and this year is no different. It is an opportunity for teams to either turn their franchises around, continue their successes or set themselves back for several years. Many believe that the 2023 draft class lacks true blue-chip prospects, but it does have incredible depth, which means there will certainly be difference-makers drafted in the later rounds.

An emerging QB1, uncertainty elsewhere

but the Arizona Cardinals possess that pick. They agreed to a large contract extension for current QB Kyler Murray last year, so another team would have to make a trade to acquire Richardson. One team rumored to have an interest is the Tennessee Titans, who currently possess the 11th overall pick.

The Indianapolis Colts have the fourth overall pick, and there have been rumors that they favor Levis. Still, this could be complicated if Stroud is available as well. Regardless, the Colts are expected to take a QB with their first pick in order to solve the QB carousel that has plagued their team for years — in the past five years, the Colts have had a different QB to start each season.

Premium defensive talent

Aggies Celebrate Senior Day during their game against Long Beach State. (Courtesy of Ashley Tongo / UC Davis Athletics)

BY ELOISE ENGS sports@theaggie.org

On April 15, the UC Davis women’s water polo team hosted their last home game of the season against Long Beach State. The game was also the Aggies’ senior day where seven seniors were celebrated for their contributions to the team throughout the years. The game was close throughout the four quarters. After a tie at the end of regular play, the game went to overtime, in which the Aggies were defeated by one goal.

UC Davis went into their final home game ranked No. 10 in the conference rankings. They faced a strong offensive team, Long Beach State, who was ranked No. 6. The Aggies started off strong, gaining a a 4-1 lead by the end of the first quarter. Sixth-year graduate student and captain Ally Clague scored two of those goals.

“After the first quarter, the team and myself were feeling extremely pumped,” Clague said. “Especially because Long Beach State plays fast and physical, our goal going into this game was to set the tone in the first quarter and control the flow.”

Clague continued, “Long Beach is having a strong season, just coming off of a big win against Cal [Berkeley]. For us to go out and dominate them in the first quarter was a huge morale boost. We were not having the perfect game, and mistakes were made even in the first quarter offensively and defensively, but being in control of the momentum put us in a great position to win the game.”

The Aggies maintained their lead in the waning minutes of the first half, and to close out the second quarter, fourthyear center Noëlle Wijnbelt scored the Aggies’ fifth goal.

“Going into the second half we all really had to keep our composure and remember that we still had a whole second half to go,” Wijnbelt said. “There is always excitement when you’re up against a team that is ranked higher than you, but we just had to remember to focus on our defense first and then capitalize on offense.”

After Long Beach State won the sprint at the beginning of the third quarter, the Beach made a comeback, bringing the score to 6-5 in favor of the Aggies. With six minutes left in the third quarter, Clague responded with a goal, making the score 7-5. The score was back and forth throughout the middle of the third quarter, with UC Davis’s second-year attacker Kelly Hungerford scoring the Aggies’ eighth goal. Long Beach answered back in the final three minutes of the third quarter, scoring three goals and putting them ahead of the Aggies 8-9. With 13 seconds left in the third quarter, the Aggies tied the game.

“The team’s momentum did not shift after Long Beach State’s goals in the third quarter because I knew we could still win,” Hungerford said.

“I think the team was still confident because in a sport like water polo, you have to have confidence if you want to dominate the other team. You also need to show confidence for your team, to show them that you still feel like the

game is winnable.”

The Aggies’ confidence was running high going into the last quarter of the game. The fourth quarter started off slow, without a single point scored until the final two-and-a-half minutes of the quarter. Hungerford assisted sixth-year graduate student and attacker Alyssa Lengtat to put the Aggies up by one on a power play. However, on Long Beach State’s next possession, they successfully tied the score, sending the game into overtime.

“I am the type of player who brings energy and gives it all I have while I am in a game,” Clague said. “I always tell my team that we need to ‘leave it all in the pool.’ During the team meeting before overtime, our coach, Kandace Waldthaler, gave corrections and words of encouragement and then I led us in our team cheer.” The overtime consisted of two quarters. In the first, not a single player appeared on the score sheet until the final eight seconds, when Long Beach State scored. Twenty-five seconds into the final overtime quarter, Wijnbelt tied the score with an even-strength shot.

“I think the goal got everyone excited and made us remember that we were still in the game and we needed to get a stop on the defensive end,” Wijnbelt said. “My goal was a team effort and I would not have gotten that goal without the initial counter-attack to offense as well as the pass that turned into a goal for us.”

University of Alabama quarterback (QB) Bryce Young has emerged as the favorite for the first overall pick by the Carolina Panthers. After visiting the Panthers and the Houston Texans, who have the second overall pick, Young canceled his pre-draft visits with other teams. Vegas Insider has Young as the clear favorite to be selected first overall, but if he is not, the Texans are likely to pick him second overall.

For the other top quarterbacks in this class — Ohio State University QB CJ Stroud, the University of Florida QB Anthony Richardson and the University of Kentucky QB Will Levis — there is no certainty as to where they will land.

If Young is gone, the Texans may pick a premium defensive player rather than a QB with their second overall pick. With an abundance of draft capital, including the 12th overall pick, the Texans could then trade back into the top 10 to get a QB a few picks later.

Currently, Richardson is the favorite to be drafted third overall,

At the top of this draft class, there are also some incredible defensive players: the University of Alabama EDGE Will Anderson Jr., the University of Georgia IDL Jalen Carter, Texas Tech University EDGE Tyree Wilson, University of Illinois DB Devon Witherspoon and University of Oregon DB Christian Gonzalez. Among these defenders, the expectation is that Anderson will be chosen first. He is predicted to be drafted as early as the second overall pick and no later than the fifth overall pick, which belongs to the Seattle Seahawks.

Carter is one of the most uncertain players in this entire class. While he may be the most talented in the draft class and is expected to be among the first 10 picks, there have been several teams to remove him from their draft boards because of off-the-field concerns.

NFLDRAFTPREVIEW on 11

Outfielder Damian Stone is up at bat during the Aggies game against the Riverside Highlanders. (Jersain Medina / Aggie)

Aggies take home a victory against the Riverside Highlanders during the Big West series. (Jersain Medina / Aggie)

WOMEN’S WATER POLO FOOTBALL