March 7, 2019

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VOLUME 137, ISSUE 19 | THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019

CONGRESSMAN JOHN GARAMENDI COSPONSORS GREEN NEW DEAL AFTER HEATED TOWN HALL MEETING WITH ACTIVISTS After initially refusing to take a stance on the Green New Deal proposal, Garamendi announces support in Facebook post

BRIA N L A N D RY / AGGI E

BY T I M L A LON D E city@theaggie.org

Congressman John Garamendi hosted a town hall meeting on Feb. 19 where local activists pressured him to support the Green New Deal, which he initially declined to back, after a heated hour-anda-half exchange with attendees. On Feb. 24, Garamendi unexpectedly announced on Facebook that he would co-sponsor the House Resolution 109 for the Green New Deal.

On Feb. 8, activists convened outside of Garamendi’s Davis office for the first of two local rallies this month in support of the Green New Deal, a resolution put forward in Congress by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The Green New Deal aspires to combat both climate change and income inequality. It proposes, among other things, to transition the U.S. to 100 percent renewable energy and create federal programs that would guarantee living-wage jobs and high-quality healthcare to all Americans.

At the time this article was written, 89 House members and 11 Senators co-sponsored the bill, according to The Sunrise Movement. But Garamendi, who represents Yolo County and the rest of California’s Third District in the House, had not voiced any position on the proposal prior to the town hall meeting.

Lynne Nittler, a retired teacher and activist from Davis, organized the first rally in front of Garamendi’s office. Nittler says she was inspired by an email she received from 350.org, urging activists to push local congresspeople to declare support for the Green New Deal.

“I thought, ‘Okay, I can pull together a gathering outside John Garamendi’s office’,” Nittler said. “I could get a little turnout and let him know that there are those of

us out here who wish he would endorse the Green New Deal.”

Nittler said she reached out to a network of activist contacts, including Nick Buxton, another Davis-based organizer, who said about 70 people showed up to the Feb. 8 rally outside Garamendi’s office.

After the first rally, Garamendi agreed to meet with the activists in a town hall meeting on Feb. 19 at the Veterans Memorial Theater in Davis. At 5 p.m. that evening, activist groups began setting up tables outside the theater, distributing pamphlets and petitions and holding signs that read “Green New Deal,” “No Crude Oil” and “Medicare for All.” Activist groups in attendance identified themselves with signs and shirts, including the UC Davis Young Democratic Socialists of America, the Yolo County Progressives and the Citizens Climate Lobby.

Around 5:30 p.m., congressional staffers began seating the activists, who quickly filled every seat in the room, leaving many to stand in the back. Over 100 people appeared to be in attendance by the time Garamendi arrived at about 6:30 p.m.

Garamendi opened the town hall with a speech, touching on his opposition to President Donald Trump and his current and past policy work dealing with environmental issues. He spoke on his role as a member of the House Armed Services committee, stating he hoped to “take [the committee] in a new direction” in regard to environmental issues.

“I want the U.S. military to be the leader in addressing the issues — the profound issues — of climate change and climate crisis,” Garamendi said.

Though he spoke at length about the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change in the coming decades, Garamendi had little to say about the Green New Deal. Some of the activists in the room

SECOND ANTISEMITISM AWARENESS TRAINING WORKSHOP HELD OL I V I A KOT L A R E K / AGGI E

BY R EBE CC A BI H N -WAL L AC E campus@theaggie.org

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) hosted an anti-Semitism awareness training workshop at the Student Community Center (SCC) on Feb. 27. The workshop, attended by approximately 30 people, was the second oncampus event this year to address student concerns about the rising tide of anti-Semi-

Advocacy groups take different approaches to addressing antiSemitism

tism at U.S. universities.

The organization of these workshops has highlighted different approaches to anti-Semitism awareness within the student body. Both anti-Semitism awareness training workshops were explicitly unaffiliated with the chancellor’s office.

“We are witnessing a rising tide of empowered white supremacists in the United States,” stated the Facebook event page for

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grew impatient, booing and yelling during his speech.

“Let’s do something: We’re going to be polite,” Garamendi said, shushing the hecklers. “I can [get] pretty riled up too, and I’ve been known to do that, but let’s be polite.”

After his speech, Garamendi opened up the floor to questions. He declined to answer any questions about the Green New Deal, however, until the end of the meeting. Some of the questions and comments began to take on a contentious tone, with attendees accusing Garamendi of avoiding the subject.

“You are a smart man and a strong leader,” one attendee stood up to say. “[But] what you’ve been doing tonight is dodging the questions.”

As he brought the meeting to a close, Garamendi didn’t explicitly state his position on the Green New Deal, but implied that he felt the proposal was “aspirational” in comparison to concrete effects of his policy work. “[Is] signing on to a document that is aspirational going to solve this problem?”

Garamendi said. “No more so than the years I have — with every fiber of my body — dealt with issue[s].”

Garamendi closed the meeting to mixed applause alongside shouting and booing, as some began a chant of “Green New Deal.”

A few days later, on Feb. 24, however, a post on Garamendi’s Facebook page announced he signed on as a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.

“I am now a co-sponsor of H.Res.109, the Green New Deal,” the post read. “I welcome the energy and commitment of the supporters of H.Res.109, and I join with them as I continue my decades-long effort to stop Climate Change and save our planet.”

GREEN DEAL on 11

this event. “From Charlottesville, to Pittsburgh, to college campuses across America, white nationalists are more visible and more violent than they have been in years.”

In an email to The California Aggie, Dr. Tallie Ben-Daniel, a research and education manager for the JVP and a UC Davis alumna, wrote that “as white nationalists are becoming more empowered under the Trump presidency, and in the aftermath of the worst antisemitic violence in the United States, it is crucial that we are all more aware of antisemitism, what it is, and how to intervene when we see it.”

“Everyone should join the fight against antisemitism, racism, and white nationalism,” Ben-Daniel added. “I’m honored to return as [an] alum of UC Davis to discuss this issue with the campus community.”

In its mission statement, adopted in 2009, JVP emphasized its opposition to “anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab bigotry and oppression.”

“JVP seeks an end to the Israeli occupa-

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UC SHIP HEALTH CARE PLAN FACES CHANGES FOR UPCOMING SCHOOL YEAR Premiums for student families, mental health resources to decrease

BY ALLY R USSELL campus@theaggie.org

The UC Davis SHIP Committee approved six changes for the 2019-20 insurance coverage year at its Feb. 20 meeting.

The committee is a branch of the UC Davis graduate student association that collaborates with the vice chancellor for Student Affairs regarding SHIP coverage.

A survey was sent out by the Healthcare Committee within the Student Workers’ Union (UAW 2856) to gather support from the graduate student community on specific coverage issues.

The survey focused on specific proposed changes including, “a measure to substantially lower the costs of insuring dependents on SHIP by making dependent and graduate student premiums equitable,” said Deborah Young, an associate professor and graduate researcher working with UAW 2856 on these proposed changes.

“Currently, dependent premiums are far more expensive than subscriber costs,” stated the survey notice sent by the committee. This change will reduce premiums for spouses and children by $1,700 per year.

“Our UAW Healthcare Committee ran an issue campaign mostly centered around the first measure and sent out a notice to graduate workers to rally around this cause, to make UC SHIP more affordable for grad families,” Young said.

The notice, which has now been taken down, acknowledged that these coverage changes will not impact every graduate student, but still asked for the graduate student community’s support.

UC SHIP on 11

tion of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem; security and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians; a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on principles established in international law; an end to violence against civilians; and peace and justice for all peoples of the Middle East,” the statement reads. “[Our] members are inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, equality, human rights, respect for international law, and a U.S. foreign policy based on these ideals,” the JVP wrote.

The workshop first focused on the sociopolitical context of anti-Semitism, with specific reference to recent incidents including the desecration of Jewish cemeteries; the Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va. and the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Ben-Daniel then addressed the definition and origins of anti-Semitism itself. The workshop JVP EVENT on 12

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B R IA N LA N DRY / AGGIE

Feb. 21 Senate report: closed session held to discuss Senator Brandon Clemons’ consistent absences Senate meeting sees several quarterly reports, introduction of three new bills

BY CL A I RE D O D D campus@theaggie.org

On Feb. 21, the ASUCD Senate met in the Mee Room of the Memorial Union for its weekly meeting, with President Michael Gofman absent for its entirety. Senators Maya Barak and Noah Pearl were also absent and Senator Brandon Clemons was tardy.

The meeting began with a presentation from Creative Media, an on-campus student design firm operated through ASUCD. The team presented its plan for rebranding The

Pantry, an ASUCD unit that provides up to three free meals a day for students. Creative Media discussed how, through updated advertisements and a newly designed space, they plan on alerting the student body about The Pantry.

In conjunction with Creative Media, Shubha Chakravarty, the executive producer at Aggie Studios, showed a video that their team made to advertise the Unitrans Fee Referendum, stating that reactions were overwhelmingly positive. The referendum ended up passing the next day.

Creative Media also announced that their

ASUCD rebrand is fully underway. The image change encompasses both ASUCD and all its units as well, with the goal of creating a more cohesive brand identity.

After several questions were posed and praise was given, the meeting moved on to the Picnic Day Committee’s quarterly report. Elise Pohlhammer, the chair of Picnic Day, presented about the team’s winter retreat, the kickoff to the public and the status of fundraising for the event.

The Picnic Day Committee has raised $16,600 thus far, bringing them close to their goal of $25,000. They hope to reach this number by the first week of March.

The meeting pushed on to the Experimental College’s quarterly report.

Stacy Wong, the unit director, announced that the college would be adding a brand new class to their spring 2019 schedule, titled “Introduction to Electronic Music Production.” A Kung-Fu class will also be available.

The college also plans on advertising their programs in the dorms and potentially even at freshman orientations to grow the college even further.

Following the Experimental College’s report, the Aggie Reuse Store also presented the Senate with its quarterly update. The store is collaborating with the Internship and Career Center to host an interview workshop for all of their interns as a way of thanking them for their help this past quarter.

In addition to the workshop, the store managers are trying to figure out an alternative payment method for their customers.

Currently, they only accept cash and are looking into creating a Venmo account.

The Senate then moved on to the Environmental Policy and Planning Commission’s (EPPC) quarterly report. Commission Chair Alice Beittel began by addressing an upcoming goal: expanding what the term ‘environment’ means to emphasize that the word bears deeper societal significance.

February 19 “Grandson is at the residence ‘trashing’ the place.”

February 20 “Occurred week ago. Two aggressive solicitors came to business and made vague threats to steal reporting party’s glasses.”

Stop vacuuming so loudly

DAV I S W H A L E N / AGGI E

February 21 “Subjects with amplified music.”

Shopping cart ordinance to come before City Council Ordinance to address abandoned shopping carts in Davis, impose fines on businesses for impounding carts

BY SA RA G L I C KLIC H city@theaggie.org

The Davis City Council is taking steps to address the shopping carts littered around Davis. The council and city staff are drafting up an ordinance that would require businesses to put containment systems in place, as well as impose fines and fees upon businesses for the impounding of carts.

Once a draft of the ordinance is drawn up, it will be voted on by City Council. According to Kelly Stachowicz, a staff member in the city manager’s office, businesses would only have to comply with the ordinance if they were the source of several complaints.

“We would allow everybody to have a waiver of the ordinance until, or unless, we received multiple complaints about that particular entity within a specified period of

time,” Stachowicz said. “So, within a fixed period of time, if we received more than three complaints, we would require them to implement the ordinance.”

To comply with the ordinance, businesses would have to put a containment system in place. Common containment systems are wheels that lock once taken off the property, security guards to prevent customers from taking shopping carts or something that blocks the cart from leaving the store, such as a bar that is wider than the door. This is different than the shopping cart ordinances many other cities have put in place, in which all business are forced to comply.

“What we are proposing to the council — or will be proposing — is an ordinance that allows for flexibility, so that if you are determined to not be a problem, then you wouldn’t have to enact anything because

Beittel also announced that a composting consultant will be visiting the university soon to assess the entire campus and to see how much it would cost to bring more compost bins to the school. The commission also hopes to create a composting internship in addition to their other positions.

The report highlighted a UC-wide “cool campus” challenge that will begin in April.

Individuals will sign up online and earn points for their respective campuses through logging their sustainable activities.

A break was held at 8:30 p.m.

The meeting resumed with public discussion. The External Affairs Commission Chair Nayzak Wali-Ali stepped up to introduce the new Police Accountability Commission representative: Jonathan.

One of Jonathan’s major projects includes working with the UC Davis Fire Department to implement ‘Stop the Bleed’ training, which would prepare individuals for worst-case scenarios. They also plan on looking into the placement of more blue light emergency phones on campus and teaching students how to deal with 911 emergency situations.

Overall, the creation of the Police Accountability Commission representative position is intended to improve relations between law enforcement and students.

The meeting continued with three new pieces of legislation. SB #59, an ASUCD Senate Bill to amend Section 1104 of the ASUCD Bylaws to remove redundancy and to act in accordance with Section 102 of the ASUCD Bylaws, SB #60, an ASUCD Senate Bill to amend Section 205(C)(b) of the ASUCD Bylaws and SB #61, an ASUCD Senate Bill to amend Chapter 7 of the ASUCD Bylaws, were all sent to IAC. The meeting adjourned at 9:55 p.m., with a closed session held immediately afterward.

The closed session was held to discuss Clemons’ consistent absences from Senate meetings.

February 22 “Unknown suspect used reporting party’s bank account at Davis Nugget.”

February 23 “Unknown made access to backyard and graffitied fence.”

February 24 “Upstairs neighbor vacuuming.”

you’re already policing your own carts,” Stachowicz said. “If you were a problem, and those carts were taking trips on their own, then we would require you enact something to keep those carts on site.”

The ordinance would also impose fines on businesses failing to contain their carts.

“There would be a couple of different fees associated with the ordinance,” Stachowicz said. “One would be a more administrative fee that, if we were called by someone, and they said there’s a car[t] on such-and-such street and we gave the owners a chance to pick it up, and they hadn’t picked it up and we had to go get it, then there would be a charge of the cost to pick up that cart, store it and contact the owners to come deal with it. In addition to that, if somebody was not abiding by the ordinance, there would be a fine, probably per cart, but that hasn’t been determined yet.”

The impetus for the ordinance was numerous complaints from residents. Other than being a visual blight in the community, if abandoned in the street or parking spot, shopping carts can pose a safety hazard for drivers and cyclists. Additionally, the time and money it takes to collect and return carts wastes city resources. Davis Police Lieutenant Paul Doroshov expressed support for an efficient solution.

“Whenever you have a problem, you obviously look for the most efficient way to

February 25 “No emergency son was having a nightmare.”

February 26 “Tenant was asked to stop slamming doors, he started yelling profanities and got close to reporting party’s husband’s face like he wanted to hit him, both separated now.”

solve it,” Doroshov said. “Obviously, sending the police out to go track them down isn’t super efficient. Having to go out for the stores and clean up these shopping carts, that’s still an issue. Why not attack the problem right from the get-go, where the source is, which is where the shopping cart is in the store parking lot. If we can prevent it from being taken out of the store parking lot, that’s the most efficient way.”

While the ordinance is a potential solution, it may not eliminate abandoned shopping carts entirely. The Davis Safeway on W. Cowell Blvd. has a wheel-locking containment system, yet it still deals with stolen shopping carts. Robert Morten, the assistant store manager of the Safeway, said that such containment systems may stop most carts from being taken off lot, but not all of them.

“It’s certainly better than not having anything,” Morten said. “Sometimes, they’ll either replace the wheel that is alarmed or they can just pick it up. If you damage the wheel, you know, it’s still a wheel. If you damage the alarm system, then it doesn’t function.”

While it may not be a perfect solution, the city is still moving forward with the ordinance. The ordinance will be brought before the city council once a more finalized version of it is drawn up. If the council does approve the ordinance, Davis residents may notice new containment systems at certain stores.

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MELIN DA CHEN / AGGIE

Neighbors of Pacifico affordable housing unit express concerns at City Council meeting City Council reconsiders plans surrounding Pacifico, including creation of mental health facility

Parks nearly pesticide free in 2018, Integrated Pest Management policy reduces pesticide use Focus on environmentally-friendlier weed control alternatives over chemical products

BY R EN EE HO H city@theaggie.org

Updates to the City of Davis’ pesticide application suggest that there was only one chemical application in Davis parks throughout 2018 and thus far in 2019. The city’s Integrated Pest Management policy established an emphasis on cultural and mechanical ways of weed control over pesticide use.

The Pesticide Information Hotline offers transparency for the public on the date and location of each pesticide application in addition to e-notifications. The Anticipated Pesticide Application Calendar also informs people 48 hours prior to the application of a pesticide. The last documented spraying in a park was on May 7, 2018 in Arroyo Park.

Sprayings, however, still occur in the city’s open space areas.

Alan Pryor, a member of the National Resource Commission and the Hazardous Materials Subcommittee, advocated for the decreased use of pesticides for safety concerns.

“We wanted them to fulfill that promise to their citizens,” Pryor said. “We demanded accountability. All this led to the newground changes implemented a new IPM policy that required all these notifications like email and signs being put up.”

The changes occured after former IPM Coordinator Martin Guerena resigned from his position following disagreements with

upper management regarding pest management. Near the end of his employment with the City of Davis, Guerena found that the IPM program was not always considered a “priority.” Guerena still established a downward trend in pesticide use, which earned him the city’s Environmental Recognition Award in 2018.

“You can see the history,” Guerena said.

“I was there for 10 years, so I’ve made the annual report every year, and it showed a steady decline — not total elimination — but a steady decline of the major pesticides.”

Since then, the IPM Policy, last updated in 2017, requires signage indicating an application location and phased-out use of glyphosate. According to John McNerney, the Wildlife Resource Specialist for the City of Davis, the city is moving away from chemical herbicides overall in response to concerns over “pesticide hazards to non-target organisms,” such as humans and wildlife.

“Multiple control methods are utilized including mechanical, cultural, biological, and chemical,” McNerney said via email.

“Chemical control methods are considered the ‘last resort’ when all other methods are either not working or are known to be the only effective method of control. When needed, only least-toxic chemical pesticides are considered for application in parks, greenbelts or other high use public areas.”

PESTICIDE FREE on 12

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BY H ANNAN WALIULLAH city@theaggie.org

The Feb. 19 City Council meeting featured a discussion of the current state of the Pacifico Housing Property located in South Davis. The city staff provided a report on the historical background of Pacifico and the issues that it currently faces. After long public commentary from people who live in the same neighbourhood as Pacifico, the council remained uncertain about the future of Pacifico.

Pacifico an affordable housing unit jointly owned by Davis and Yolo County Housing, is located at the end of Drew Circle and connected to the Putah Creek bike path. The average annual income for Pacifico residents is $8,400, which, according to the city’s staff report, is 15 percent of the median income in Davis. Students make up 6 percent of the demographics, and disabled residents make up 34 percent.

Originally, Pacifico was designed as a 112-bed cooperative housing development for students. Due to lack of student interest to live at the property and the physical layout of the property, Pacifico went into foreclosure in 2011.

The city talked about how it could be reopened, and YCH then took over management operations from the Center for Cooperative Development. By 2015, the property was at full occupancy again for the two open buildings. However, only around

40 beds are in use.

In 2012, YCH and Davis entered into an agreement to create a plan to redevelop the two vacant buildings. In 2018, the County approached YCH to use these buildings for community needs, such as a mental health center.

The development is structured similarly to a residence hall. Each floor features communal kitchens, bathrooms and living rooms, along with single and double rooms.

The city and the county are also both in charge of managing and rehabilitating the units. While the property has four buildings in total, only two of them are in use. Part of the goal of the council meetings was to review potential uses for the vacant buildings.

One of the current plans that the council is looking at is to make Pacifico a mental health facility.

Pacifico counted toward Davis’ required Regional Housing Needs Allocation numbers, which were assigned by the California government. Despite two of the buildings being closed, the city counts those beds toward meeting the affordability requirement.

During the public comment portion, many residents from South Davis raised concerns about the current state of Pacifico and the bike path that leads to it. According to the staff report, there were 560 calls for service within the areas surrounding Pacifico from October 2017 to October 2018. Of PACIFICO on 11

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M IC H A E L L E A H Y/ AGGI E

THE ART OF PASS TIMES AND PLAYING YOUR CARDS RIGHT

Students discuss their thoughts on pass times

BY ANJINI VENUGOPAL features@theaggie.org

It’s week eight of Winter Quarter. Your pass time is at 6:30 a.m., and two days before this brief appointment there is only one spot available in the lecture you know you need. White-knuckling your phone with three tabs open to Schedule Builder, you try to sleep.

Scheduling and registering for courses for the upcoming quarter can be a source of stress for students, particularly those who worry about their pass times and not getting the courses they want. For undergraduate students, course registration is done via Schedule Builder, an online portal.

Students are given two pass appointments, which are the beginning of four-hour windows during which students can register for classes. Many students, however, believe that they are only thirty minutes long due to the way they are advertised.

Claire Lu, a fourth-year psychology and statistics double major, works in the Tercero

SOCIAL MEDIA’S EFFECT ON STUDENTS

Academic Advising Center as a peer advisor for the College of Letters and Science. She advises students on a broad range of academic topics including schedule planning and course registration. “[Students ask] and also parents come to our office and ask, ‘Hey, my kid has a really late pass time and other people, like his roommate, have an earlier pass time than my kid. Why is that?’” Lu said.

When students or parents ask her questions about pass times, she generally refers them to the Office of the University Registrar because they know more than the peer advisors. Lu says that people don’t really ask her and the other peer advisors too many questions about pass times, mostly because they can’t be changed.

While some students like first-year psychology major Brandon Law utilize online tools such as MyDegree when trying to figure out quarterly coursework, some students like first-year psychology major Kelly Huang try to plan out four years worth of classes and go from there.

“It makes it easy to be flexible and to imagine how your year will end up looking like,” Huang said. “Like in case I get waitlisted or classes become unavailable.”

Huang says that to some extent, “it’s too irritating of a topic to even bother with” since students have no control over their pass time. Meanwhile, Law, who didn’t know exactly how pass times worked, considers that a good thing, because there’s no way to really change pass time (other than by the units taken). To him, that means pass times don’t contribute to a competitive environment at school.

Law once missed his pass time because he overslept and described the “intense anxiety” he attributed to the course registration process. Huang started a quarter later than most freshmen students and said that it was frustrating to not get certain classes that are required for her major. Because she started later, she didn’t attend orientation and was left to figure out scheduling on her own.

However, she makes sure to reach out to get advice when she needs help.

“[I go to] academic advisors or the psychology department,” Huang said. “[Or] my high school teachers or past instructors, especially since they already have master’s degrees. I never trust asking just one advisor.”

According to the Office of the University Registrar’s website, “the two-pass registration system ensures that all students have access to the courses that are most critical to their curricula and attain full-time status and that access to registration is distributed fairly throughout the student body.”

Until their first Spring Quarter, newly admitted freshmen are assigned zero units and newly admitted transfer students are assigned 90 units. Pass times are based on priority groups — which are established according to UC Davis units, excluding the current term, transfer units, and units from exams.

There are two assigned pass appointments, each followed by open registration.

Students can only add themselves to waitlists for classes during the second pass. After the first two passes and their respective open registrations, a registration freeze begins on the the day the student fee payment is due, and no students can register for classes. Students who have paid fees are registered, and those who haven’t are dropped.

According to associate registrar Patti Flynn, there are certain groups that receive priority registration.

“The following should cover most (if not all) of the groups currently receiving priority registration: Regents Scholarship recipients, University Honors Program (UHP) participants, student athletes, students identified

by Student Disability Center, students who are veterans, foster youth students, Special Transitional Enrichment Program (STEP) students, resident advisors, TRiO Scholar recipients and Chem/Math Science Honors students,” Flynn said via email.

All three of the residence areas — Segundo, Tercero and Cuarto — offer academic advising centers with peer advisors and tutoring. Each of the colleges at UC Davis offers academic advising. Students can enroll in up to 17 units during Pass One, 19 units during Pass Two and 28.5 units during the schedule adjustment period after the registration freeze. However, that might be a lot to take on for any student.

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How students can change the way they use social media, how they are currently affected by it

BY VINCENT SANCHEZ features@theaggie.org

Decades ago, the move to college came with tears and uncertainty when parents left their children in a dorm, not knowing when they’d next see their face or hear their voice.

Today’s technology, through FaceTime, phone calls and text messaging, have made this separation seem far less severe with parents and high school students only being a tap of a screen away.

Despite increasing communication, social media can also have negative consequences when it comes to time management and students’ self esteem. Liking posts, scrolling through endless feeds and becoming distracted from the outside world are all burdens that come with the glowing rectangle most students (and people in general) carry. Getting sucked into the digital world at students’ fingertips can slowly start to become a heavier burden than originally anticipated.

Fifth-year computer science major Kush Patel only recently picked up on some of the more popular social media apps like Instagram, though he previously used other platforms like Facebook.

“I generally use social media for texting friends,” Patel said. “The other side of it would be searching Reddit or Instagram for content and different material.”

While Patel has noticed the common habit of students to immediately check their phones and social feeds for new updates right after a lecture period, he feels that the effects of that habit depend on the ability of the person’s self-restraint.

“If you’re in class and you’re going to text, you might as well not show up to

class,” Patel said. “After class, you open up your phone, it’s your personal time, why not? I think it’s their own choice.”

In Patel’s case, his focus has been largely placed on his academics and trying to graduate as soon as possible. He finds that social media, as a result, takes a backseat most of the time, but he indulges whenever free time allows it.

“There’s no universal rule that says, ‘Oh, social media is bad,’” Patel said. “I think it comes down to the mindset of the person using it, whether they are easily distracted or they’re not stable in the sense that, if someone says something crazy in a group chat, they might lose it.”

Patel, however, has encountered students who, like himself, do not frequent apps or social media.

“Some people barely use it,” Patel said.

“My first roommate, he didn’t use social media at all. I know other people who use social media a lot, and they’re still just as successful and social.”

Patel recognizes the potential that social media has, as he also commented on the ways it can encourage people to express creative interests and find outlets to share information. His reliance on social media has dwindled over the years, which has been a positive change for him overall since he now

has more time to focus on what he feels to be important in his own life.

Patel tries not to compare himself to what he sees his peers doing, instead choosing to support and congratulate their accomplishments and using that motivation to carry out his own goals.

Hugo Hernandez, a UC Davis alumnus currently working with the Early Academic Outreach Program in Undergraduate Admissions, discussed his use of social media in his academic career and how he has since shifted his focus after being away from school.

“I used social media a lot more when I was younger,” Hernandez said. “My friends and I mainly used it to promote events going on around campus or to connect with one another about classes. It was also great to let my family from far away see everything that I was involved in and doing over here while they were over there.”

Since Hernandez has started working frequently with students, he has noticed their reliance on their phones and social media.

Even as a student, seeing students reach for the phones after lecture was something he felt should change.

“That was actually a pet peeve of mine, seeing students pull out their phones just looking at a screen,” Hernandez said. “I tell

the students I work with all the time to get off the phone for a few minutes and go outside, enjoy nature. That was how we used to play and socialize as kids. Now, people would rather look at a screen for hours instead of having actual conversations.”

Hernandez has seen considerable improvements in his life since limiting his social media usage and implores students to do the same. He stressed the value of reaching out to friends to meet for coffee or lunch for personal interaction, something he feels is becoming too scarce in our current society.

“I have learned to not be so reliant with my phone and technology,” Hernandez said. “Sometimes it’s nice to relax and use the phone for music or to find information.

I think we need to get back to appreciating time spent with friends and family in real life.”

While social media may not be going anywhere in the near future, it may be time to reevaluate its usefulness. Students should consider alternative ways to spend time and connect with those they care about by engaging in activities that allow for quality time to be shared. Although photos and videos may last forever, a crucial conversation or much needed gathering can make a profound impact far greater than any social media utility can create.

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019 | 5 DI A N A LI / AGGI E

THE UNIQUE AND ENGAGING EXPERIENCES OF FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS Program offers professors, students the chance to delve into topics that spark passion

BY LI N H N G UYE N features@theaggie.org

Stand-up comedy. Figs. Honeybees.

Zombies. All of these are at the top of syllabi for many first-year students thanks to a unique seminar program.

Incoming college students often find it difficult transitioning from traditional high school classroom sizes of 30 students to college lecture halls of hundreds of students.

For this reason, UC Davis implemented the First-Year Seminar Program designed specifically for first-year students.

“It’s been around for about 30-plus years,” said Eddy Ruiz, the associate director for the first-year seminars and the University Honors Program. “We’re a big research uni-

DINOSAUR CLASS MAKES A ROAR AS POPULAR GE OPTION Many non-STEM major students choose to take GEL 012 as a GE for science and engineering credit

BY MARGO ROSENBAUM features@theaggie.org

Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, Iguanodon, Brachiosaurus, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus — all names of dinosaurs that students learn about in GEL 12: Dinosaurs. The two-unit class grants students science and engineering general education credit, making it a popular choice for non-STEM majors.

According to Sandy Carlson, a professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences who teaches GEL 12 every Winter Quarter, the class aims to introduce lower division students to a variety of different concepts in evolution and paleobiology, using dinosaurs as examples. The class is especially geared toward students without a strong science background.

“I took [GEL 12] because everyone at a young age loves dinosaurs and goes through that phase,” said first-year English major Cami Nembach. “And with the ‘Jurassic Park’ movies, you just have a soft place in your heart for dinosaurs.”

The class meets twice a week for a

versity, a lot of classes are large and so their focus is for first years, and they’re small, limited to 19 students, so what that does is it creates a space for students to feel some connection to students with their faculty and engage in low-risk activity that has academic rigor attached to it because it’s only one to two units.”

Each seminar is focused on a different topic, anything ranging from stem cell and genetic engineering to the philosophy of tai chi chuan. These courses are proposed by professors and must meet the criteria and core values that first-year seminars are based upon.

“We want to have interdisciplinary thought, communications, ethics, people that are going to think about change, inclu50-minute lecture. According to Nembach, each lecture starts off with the professor showing the class a current event article involving dinosaurs. New information is always being discovered about dinosaurs, and the professor makes connections between these events to the theme of the class that day. Then she moves on through the rest of the lecture.

Usually every quarter, the class is almost full with around 250 students. The class was first taught around 27 years ago and has changed from being offered once a year to being offered every quarter due to the high demand, according to Carlson.

Carlson says one goal of the class is to gain a better understanding of past worlds and extinct animals. Understanding this will help students better appreciate the world they live in today and have a deeper understanding of how science, the scientific method and hypothesis testing work.

“You see [dinosaur] characteristics in animals that are around today,” Nembach said.

“It’s crazy to wrap your head around these animals that were so much bigger than us.”

A goal of the class is for students to be able to understand and be critical of scientific reports. This is often a new concept for those who are non-STEM majors.

“The scientific reports that you see are sometimes exaggerated or misleading in some ways,” Carlson said. “And developing the critical skills to detect what’s false, I think that’s really important as well. I think in college, it’s appropriate to start questioning.”

The workload of the class mostly involves studying for the midterm and the final exam

sivity […] those are all core values that we hold in our evaluation of the program and the courses taught within it,” Ruiz said.

Ruiz also noted the popularity of firstyear seminars over the program’s duration among faculty and students.

“I take them because they are about interests that I have and they’re also low-stress, so I can explore interests in a low-stress environment,” said Chris Pettit, a first-year political science major. “They’re the smallest classes I have, so I get to spend a lot of time with the professor, who’s an expert in that interest.”

There are many reasons why students take courses within the program. A number of classes in the program are supplemental to academic courses while others, being more silly, just offer students a new hobby or niche interest. The unique topics of each class attract other students to experiment with different breadths of study while they explore their interests.

“I’ve taken two first-year seminars, one in the fall and one in the winter,” Pettit said.

“I also plan on taking another one in the spring. The one in the fall was about the first amendment and freedom of speech. The one in the winter was about Mad Men.” The professors teaching these classes also understand the amount of stress students experience, especially during their first year in college as they are still transitioning into a system that is unfamiliar to them. These classes, however, don’t just benefit the students, but allow professors a unique opportunity.

Professors come to propose and lead these classes out of their own interests as well.

They may choose to escape teaching large

lecture hall sized classes to teach a smaller group of students and drive the students’ interests in a certain field of knowledge while feeding their own interests in that topic.

“It is important for me to share my knowledge and motivate people and excite them about [a field], and also, I get great inspiration from people like the students in my class because everyone is so bright, so motivated and it inspires me,” said Robert Hackman, a professor in the department of nutrition who is currently teaching a firstyear seminar called ‘Applied Nutrition for College Students.’

Hackman responded to a question on how he develops topics for the seminars he teaches. “I want to blend the information with the excitement I feel about nutrition and make it applicable to people’s daily lives so that instead of talking about theory, we can talk about practical, real impacts,” Hackman said.

Hackman’s teachings are reflected in his student’s experiences outside of the classroom. Tonie Leech, a first-year pharmaceutical chemistry major, and Chiso Akams, a first-year biochemistry and molecular biology major, expressed that what they learn in the class is applicable to their lives out of class.

“I’ve been a faculty member for 38 years and I think this is one of the most valuable educational experiences here,” Hackman said. “To have small class sizes in your first year where the professor knows everybody’s name and knows what everyone’s doing every week by the homework assignments and discussions is the best way to promote behavior change and promote critical thinking skills.”

A LLYSON KO / AGGI E

since there is no homework. Reading from the textbook is recommended but optional, according to Carlson.

“We set it up so it would not be hugely burdensome,” Carlson said. “I think it’s really important for people to come to class, so I think that’s part of the workload. There’s a textbook that’s recommended but not required, but I think it’s good for a lower division class to have some kind of backup for people, especially for people who are not science majors.”

Carlson believes that the course is so popular because it is fun, and people in general are interested in dinosaurs.

“I think the whole dinosaur-bird connection is really compelling because it makes people think about the nature of evolution and how we live with birds today and they are related to these many large, terrestrial dinosaurs,” Carlson said. “Terrestrial dinosaurs are extinct, so it just makes people wonder about them. So what we try to do in the class is to try to put that wonder into

a scientific class, to set up hypotheses and test them.”

According to Nembach, she likes GEL 12 because it is a relaxing class and the professor is very animated and involved.

“She’s really into the topic so it helps the students get more interested in the subject,” Nembach said. “If we know that she loves it, I’m having a fun time.”

Carlson attested to her love for this class.

“Here, the subject matter is also so much fun that it really does make it fun to teach,” Carlson said.

First-year cellular biology major Kacey Zimmerman said that she took the class not for Science and Engineering GE credit, since she is a science major, but because she wanted to have a little more units than just her main classes. In addition to her really difficult STEM classes, she wanted one interesting, easy and fun class.

“There’s not a lot of outside work, which DI NOSAUR S o n 12

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

6 | THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019

Opinion THE

C ALIFORNIA A GGIE

E DI TO R I AL B OAR D

Now, more than ever, people need to say his name: Stephon Clark District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert announces officers

EMILY STACK Editor-in-Chief

involved in fatal shooting will not face criminal charges

OLIVIA ROCKEMAN Managing Editor HANNAH HOLZER Campus News Editor KAELYN TUERMER-LEE City News Editor TARYN DEOILERS Opinion Editor OLIVIA LUCHINI Features Editor LIZ JACOBSON Arts & Culture Editor DOMINIC FARIA Sports Editor HARNOOR GILL Science & Tech Editor

SYDNEY ODMAN New Media Manager BRIAN LANDRY Photo Director TREVOR GOODMAN Video Production Manager OLIVIA KOTLAREK Design Director JONATHAN CHEN Layout Director HANNA BAUBLITZ Copy Chief CECILIA MORALES Copy Chief ZOË REINHARDT Website Manager HALI ZWEIGORDON Social Media Manager GRACE SIMMONS Newsletter Manager LAURIE PEDERSON Business Development Manager

After a yearlong investigation of two Sacramento police officers who fatally shot 22-year-old Stephon Clark, District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert finally announced on Saturday that the officers will not face criminal charges. On Tuesday, State Attorney General Xavier Becerra said that the California Department of Justice also won’t press criminal charges against the officers.

Clark, an unarmed black man and father of two, was entering into his grandmother’s backyard at the time he was pursued by police after receiving a call from a neighbor that someone was breaking into cars. Clark was shot eight times while reaching for his cell phone, which officers mistook for a gun.

Officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet fired more than 20 rounds at Clark, according to The New York Times. It was also estimated that Clark, despite the severe injuries he sustained from the shooting, could have been alive anywhere from three to 10 minutes after the shooting. It took approximately six minutes for medical assistance to arrive on scene, and another five for them to finally approach Clark.

In a press conference reviewing the findings of the shooting, Schubert called the death of Clark “a tragedy for both his family and the community,” yet failed to serve justice by not holding the officers accountable.

Schubert did not address that officers muted their body cameras, and instead proceeded to discuss the role of the district attorney’s office, as well as irrelevant information such as the toxicology reports and Clark’s text messages.

This extraneous evidence, however, was obtained after Clark’s fatal shooting. This evidence was not pertinent to the simple question the DA had to decide: Should the two officers who killed Clark be held accountable for their actions?

Racism and other prejudices still widely persist. The Vallejo Times Herald detailed an incident in which six police officers shot 20-year-old Willie McCoy, a black man, on Feb. 9 as he was sleeping in his car at a Taco Bell. Although McCoy had a gun in his lap, video footage from the scene appeared to show police officers asking to see McCoy’s hands only after shooting him from a close range. In another case, the San Mateo County DA’s office announced that it would not seek charges against deputies that tazed 36-year-old Chinedu Okobi, another black man, to death last October, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

These are not isolated incidents — acts of violence with excessive force against unarmed people of color occur time after time. Police officers and other high-ranking officials like the DA continue to protect their own, refusing to admit when a wrongful act has been committed. Furthermore, police officers have too much leeway when it comes to what constitutes a dangerous situation that enables them to use their firearms. A reasonable use of force should be better defined, and police officers need to be more effectively trained. Family members and supporters of Clark are advocating for the passage of Assembly Bill 392, which would “affirmatively prescribe the circumstances under which a peace officer is authorized to use deadly force to effect an arrest, to prevent escape or to overcome resistance.” The district attorney has failed Stephon Clark, his family and all communities that continue to suffer from police brutality. Police officers shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind their badges; they must be held accountable for their wrongdoings.

The Editorial Board urges community members to fight for those being unjustifiably treated due to prejudice or bias. These hateful acts of violence have happened far too many times and need to stop now.

Been here, done this?

GRAD STUDENTS MAKE LESS MONEY, PAY HIGHER RENT, HAVE FEWER JOB PROSPECTS THAN IN CHANCELLOR MAY’S DAY

BY D UA N E W R I GH T Guest

Years ago there was a meme circulating around called “Old Economy Steve,” which featured a high school yearbook photo of a man from the late 70s or early 80s with contrasting text. Hits included: “‘When I was in college my summer job paid tuition’” followed by “Tuition was $400”; “Bought a house in his 20’s with a 9-5 job that didn’t require a bachelor’s degree” followed by “Kids these days have it so easy”; and, perhaps most poignantly, “Has it better than his parents… And his kids.”

I have often used this meme as an example to teach my students sociological thinking, as it gets them to understand how our individual life stories are situated in larger social and historical contexts

— which in this case is telling the story of economic changes and the declining living standards of the working class in the United States from the 1970s to today.

We go over the decline in union membership from about one in three workers to less than 7 percent in the private sector today, and connect that lack of bargaining power to the declining value of the minimum wage, the stagnating value of the average wage, the huge rise in household debt as people try to make up for their declining purchasing power and the large growth in income and wealth inequality. This is what many people today are talking about when they rightfully mourn the “decline of the middle class.”

I also teach them about how race and gender and immigration status intersect with this decline in living standards.

That, for example, the Great Recession of

2008 increased the racial wealth gap; that white women still make less than what a white man makes, and that women of color make even less that white women; that the subprime mortgage crisis was disproportionately felt by Black and Latinx families, and the normalization of routine violation of labor law in some industries, such as minimum wage violations and wage theft, are more likely to happen to undocumented workers.

On a post from the UC Davis Memes for Egghead Teens Facebook page about Chancellor Gary May doing a version of “Undercover Boss” where he takes an undergraduate class, I commented that I would be interested in seeing May take a 96 percent pay cut and be an overworked and underpaid TA (because, yes, your TA only makes 4 percent of what the Chancellor makes). To this, May dismissively

responded, “Been there done that” — as if I hadn’t considered that our Ph.D.-in-Engineering Chancellor had gone to graduate school.

The problem here, though, is that he hasn’t been here and done this. Living and working conditions have changed quite drastically in 30 years. If you are a graduate student at UC Davis, you are likely earning below a living wage. The MIT living wage calculator puts a living wage in Yolo County for a single person at $27,000. If you are supporting a dependent like I am, this goes up to $56,000.

However, both of these values are higher than the roughly $20,000 yearly salary TAs make. Furthermore, housing costs have been rapidly rising in northern California. Renting an apartment in a college WRIGHT on 12

Biking to freedom WHY I TRADED MY CAR FOR MY BIKE AND HAVEN’T LOOKED BACK

BY DA N I E L O R O P E ZA daoropeza@ucdavis.edu

While I was growing up in the suburbs of south Florida, having access to a car meant that I could go to that house party, or meet up with my friends at the beach. The car was the gateway to my freedom. So you can imagine how excited I was when my dad passed his ‘98 Camry down to me during my junior year of high school. South Florida was mine for the taking.

As I drove around the suburbs blasting my music and singing at the top of my lungs, I could feel my world expanding.

I was free from the prison of the suburbs.

Although I enjoyed riding my bike, I never saw it as more than a toy for riding around in my gated complex with my

brothers.

After high school, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy. The idea of seeing the world and becoming independent was too tempting for a suburb kid.

My first time abroad was in Amsterdam, the most bike-friendly city in the world. I was in disbelief. Could people here really get around the whole city using just their bikes? As I walked around, I saw kids getting out of class and riding with the same facial expression I had when I drove my car around in the suburbs. Freedom.

Amsterdam opened up my eyes to how we should plan our cities — around people, not cars.

In the past, American urban planning gave priority to cars. We built highways across the heart of cities, which destroyed

communities and restricted transportation choices.

It didn’t take long for American cities to shift gears and start building their cities around bicycles, which has improved our environment, helped businesses and fostered communities.

Unfortunately, there is still much work to do to compete against the top bicycle-friendly cities around the world.

Biking infrastructure in U.S. cities favors the wealthy over lower-income residents, even though lower-income residents use bicycles to commute more than higher-income people do.

Bikeability in cities is increasingly seen as a standard for progressive thinking. It addresses the two biggest problems seen in many cities: environmental socioeconomic disparities, such as air pollution hot

spots, and the never-ending headaches of traffic jams. Transportation plays a major factor in how desirable it is to live in cities.

After my enlistment in the Navy, I drove across the United States with my bike on top of my car, trying to expand my horizons while searching for a college education. I was not expecting to end up in a little farm town in the middle of nowhere, especially having grown up in the Florida suburbs, but the little town of Davis had something I’d been looking for ever since that trip to Amsterdam: biking freedom.

Ever since I started my education at UC Davis, I’ve used my bike to go everywhere from the grocery store to the library to Aggie parties, while my car has collected dust in the parking lot. Leaving my car behind has never felt so liberating.

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019 | 7

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

HUMOR

A definitive take on the best water fountains at UC Davis BRINGING A NEW MEANING TO ‘WET’ CAMPUS

BY CO N N E R SH AW cjshaw@ucdavis.edu

As a Davis student, countless factors of student life breach the veil of background noise into coherent, active thought on a daily basis. So, when I say that on-campus water is important to me, you should understand how serious I am.

I have spent countless hours with my lips wrapped around water spigots, streams and fountains for my own personal enjoyment, and my authority on this subject is, as humbly as I can say, unchallenged. Today, I’m bringing this vast knowledge of the public water fountain trade at UC Davis to the layman water-goer.

I evaluate fountains based on their stream arc, water temperature, mouthfeel and general atmosphere on an index of one to ten. Then, I give each fountain a rating of one-to-three Good Year Stars: one star meaning you should travel from another building to get there; two stars, that you should travel across campus to get there; and three stars that a trip across the city of Davis would be appropriate.

With that, let me take you on a journey into the water fountain scene at UC Davis.

Storer Hall, first floor

Arc: 8 Temp: 9 Feel: 7 Atmosphere: 6 Tucked away in between two offices in a hallway of Storer Hall is a gem of a fountain with some of the most delectable water to grace my tongue. I stumbled upon this fountain based on a friend’s recommendation, and I must say, it lives up to the hype. What they do with the temperature here is simply stunning. After I left for the first time, my lips would keep sending me wisps of cold that had me craving more. I assure you, I have returned. Stars: 2

Science Lecture Hall Arc: 6 Temp: 6 Feel: 10 Atmosphere: 7 Although a well-known spot already, the fountain at Sci Lec produces perhaps the smoothest water I have encountered at UC Davis. When the water enters your mouth, try swirling it twice before swallowing and let it wash over your taste buds. Truly, a delight. Stars: 1

Haring Hall, first floor S H AW on 11

Little Caesar’s celebrates Ides of March with collectible knives stabbed into every pizza CAESAR WASN’T HOT-N-READY FOR IMPALEMENT, BUT THIS PIZZA IS!

BY MADE LINE KU M AGAI mskumagai@ucdavis.edu

What’s better than getting a large pepperoni pizza to celebrate the brutal murder of history’s favorite dictator?

Getting a free knife as well! That’s right, the brains behind your favorite I’mdrunk-and-it’s-2-a.m. pizzeria chain are giving away collectible knives with the purchase of every pie on Mar. 15.

Everyone knows that all Little Caesars employees are big history buffs, so chefs are painstakingly recreating the day Julius Caesar should have called in sick for work. When you first open the box, you’ll realize that the employees didn’t put any of the toppings you wanted on the pizza. You’ll feel betrayed, and then you’ll realize you could never feel more betrayed than Caesar when he saw Brutus pull out a dagger. Et tu, pepperoni?

If you’re intolerant of the ol’ lactose, that’s even better. This pizza is extra cheesy, and you’ll feel like the mozzarella is skewering you right in the gut, Caesar style. Marinara is haphazardly sprayed onto the pie to recreate that spurt-ofblood-from-being-stabbed-by-an-entireSenate look. This flavor profile is so tasty,

it’s to die for.

Don’t get it twisted: this pizza was not made with love, like the normal Little Caesars fodder. It was crafted with a seething hatred for totalitarian, un-democratic methods of governance. Seething hatred, and a blend of Italian herbs and spices. There are 60 different variants of collectible knives, one knife for every co-conspirator! Now, employees only stab one of these knives into the heart of each pizza, so be sure to spend your rent money on collecting as many as possible.

The California Aggie recommends that you order this sweet deal to fuel a late night of completing, by yourself, what was supposed to be a group project. As you sob into the thick crust, you can think about how your group members abandoned you to go to a rave in Sacramento. Now that’s what I call backstabbing!

JAMIE CHEN / AGGIE

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ISSUE DESIGNED BY JONATHAN CHEN | PATTIE CHEN | ADAN JUNAID | OLIVIA KOTLAREK | SHEREEN NIKZAD | YOON RHA | TAMARA SHOUBBER | CINDY CHEUNG | AMY YE | SYDNEE RODRIGUEZ

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8 | THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019

SCIENCE+TECH NEUROFEST IS COMING FOR BRAIN AWARENESS WEEK From brain zoos, trivia and research featuring mice on opioids, NeuroFest strives to bring a transformative experience for community members of all ages and backgrounds.

BRI AN LANDRY / AGGIE

BY FOXY ROBI N S O N science@theaggie.org

On Saturday, March 9, the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience will host NeuroFest at the UC Davis Conference Center from 12:30 to 5 p.m. NeuroFest invites all Davis community members and UC Davis campus communities to spend a day exploring UC Davis research, culture and communities passionate about neuroscience.

“NeuroFest is a public outreach event led by the UC Davis CNS with the support of the Society for Neuroscience, UC Davis Neuroscience Graduate Group and the Dana Foundation,” said Diasynou Fioravante, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and the NeuroFest co-chair. “Our goal is to inform the public on innovations about the brain, brain health, treatment for brain diseases and exciting brain science research

at UC Davis.”

When Fioravante joined UC Davis as an assistant professor, she recognized that the CNS lacked an outreach event promoting neuroscience research to the general public. She collaborated with other members from the CNS to develop her idea into the NeuroFest event, reaching the Davis campus community and beyond.

This year, NeuroFest will celebrate its fifth year at UC Davis, focusing on “Mind in the Making: Executive Brain Functions in Health, Aging and Disease.”

Researchers from the CNS and across campus will feature their work and findings.

Tim Hanks, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurology, will discuss the decision-making process through neural mechanisms and how disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia, shape decision-making.

Jennifer Whistler, a professor in

the UC Davis Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology and associate director of the UC Davis CNS, will present her work with opioid addiction, including neurological mechanisms which can be used to make balanced, non-addictive drug treatments and how opioid addiction shapes behavior in mice.

“We have an opioid epidemic because people are in pain,” Whistler said. “Everyone wants to feel normal, and there’s stigma behind that. Opioids act like a light switch for pain that is always on, shining a light saying ‘feel no pain and instead only joy.’ The opioid light switch can’t be turned off. The cells go shop for dark glasses to make the light dim since the body’s natural light switch isn’t working. They make adaptations to make the light seem dimmer, even though the light is just as bright, which builds tolerance toward the effects of opioids. When you take away the light, the cells still wear their dark glasses in the dark, leading to withdrawal and unbalanced responses to pain.”

Brittany Dugger, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, will discuss aging and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

“A lot of medicine is based on upper-middle class, white Caucasian volunteers,” Dugger said. “Our Alzheimer’s disease research center

wants to create treatment and intervention for people over the age of 65 of all different backgrounds, not just one group of people.”

Steve Luck, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Psychology, will address how schizophrenia, among other disorders, affects attention, memory and cognition.

“One of our dynamic booth activities features a chance to control someone else’s movement, where electrodes are connected to someone’s arm and if you have electrodes connected to your hand,” said Najwa Marrush, the Neuroscience Graduate coordinator and events coordinator at the UC Davis CNS. “When you close your hand, the other person feels a pull and they close their hand.”

The daylong event features a poster competition, where graduate students and trainees compete as they convey their research findings to all attendees in an engaging way.

“Community engagement is about sustaining a dialogue that is understood by both parties,” Dugger said. “The true genius of a great scientist is the ability to talk about science at any place and any time to people of any background.”

Attendees will have the opportunity to vote and choose the best poster as poster judges. NeuroFest volunteers invite attendees to become judges, visit five posters and vote for their favorite research presentation.

“As someone who works be-

hind the scenes, one of my favorite things at NeuroFest is seeing the kids in awe over the booths,” Marrush said. “They have so much joy on their faces as they see what’s going on in the brain, what it looks like and what each part does.”

The CNS also joins K-12 education for brain education and awareness. UC Davis graduate students and faculty visit local Davis schools, creating activities for different grade levels to learn and interact with brain research.

“When we visit the second and third-grade classes, we teach the students about helmet safety and traumatic brain injury,” Fioravante said. “We introduce students to neuroscience and brain research through games and interactive activities brain specimens and drawing different parts of the brain.”

Any UC Davis student is welcome to volunteer and become involved in the CNS’ outreach efforts, including NeuroFest.

“In celebration of NeuroFest’s fifth year anniversary, we are launching a $75,000 fundraising campaign to endow the Center for Neuroscience outreach efforts, including NeuroFest and K-12 education,” said Jennifer Scott, the director of Development at the UC Davis CNS. “We encourage the entire UC Davis family to donate on Give Day, April 12 through April 13, to support our efforts and reach our local communities with permanent community outreach efforts.”

SEALED BUILDINGS SAVE ENERGY A construction technology partially developed at UC Davis is being used to seal buildings and make them more energy-efficient.

A ME R I C A N H O N DA MOTO R CO M PANY / CO URTESY

BY P E T E R SM I T H science@theaggie.org

Anyone who experienced the haze of smoke that descended on Northern California during the Camp Fire last year understands the benefits of an airtight building. When a structure doesn’t leak, the air quality inside can be closely regulated, and the building can be heated and cooled more efficiently.

Because of these benefits, homeowners and developers demand that buildings be airtight. Finding and patching tiny leaks in a complex structures, however, can be a fool’s errand. In many cases, builders must spend hours searching for tiny leaks. A new technology called Aerobarrier, partially developed at UC Davis, could change the way leaks are identified and sealed.

With the Aerobarrier process, a blower fan is used to pressurize a

structure, and then an aerosol sealant is sprayed inside the building which fills small leaks with a permanent seal. The process is quick and can fill gaps that workers cannot find, producing an incredibly airtight structure.

Aerobarrier is the successor to a technology called Aeroseal which is used to seal duct systems. Both products were developed by Mark Modera, a UC Davis engineering professor who is also the director of the Western Cooling and Efficiency Center. Aeroseal was initially developed by Modera when he worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1994. Modera and his research team had done research demonstrating that leaky air duct systems waste a lot of energy. Manually sealing the systems could save energy, but it was time-intensive and difficult to do.

Modera and his team set to work

to find a technological solution to the problem.

“I found little robots that would go through a tape the insides of the ducts of a pipe, I found things that were used for sewer pipes, but then I had the idea based upon something I saw in the newspaper about using aerosols,” Modera said. “The newspaper said they sprayed the stuff in the ductwork to get rid of dust mites, and then it said; by the way it also seals the leaks.”

Modera invited the people who were using the aerosols to his lab but since the aerosols didn’t work as advertised, Modera and a graduate student worked for three years to develop an aerosol sealing technology that would. The product they came up with was called Aeroseal that uses pressure to distribute a sealant sprayed in a duct system. According to Modera, the pressure difference between the in-

side and outside of a duct system causes the particles to accumulate at the site of the leaks in the system and clog the gap.

“The air goes to make the turn to go out through the leak, and because you maintain the pressure difference between inside the duct and outside, that determines the velocity,” Modera said. “So it’s a high velocity and it’s a sharp turn, so the particle basically skids out and smashes into the side of the leak.”

Since the launch of Aeroseal in 1997, the technology has been used to seal upwards of 200,000 houses and won numerous industry awards. After the success of the company, Modera realized that the technology could be adapted to seal houses.

Buildings are more complicated to seal than air ducts but the principles are the same. The Aerobarrier technology works alongside a common air tightness test called the blower door test that is required to meet building codes in many states. To complete the test, a fan attached to the door of a building depressurizes the building, and then sensors measure how much air leaks in. With Aerobarrier, the fan is reversed to pressurize the building, and then sealant is sprayed inside and delivered to gaps in the building envelope by positive pressure. The tightness of the building is measured in air changes per hour. Most requirements dictate that buildings be under three or five air changes per hour which can be a challenge to meet by manual sealing leaks. Aerobarrier can get a building below

one air change per hour and has even even gotten some buildings down to .19 air changes per hour.

While in development, Aerobarrier was tested at the Honda Smart Home, a house located in West Village that was built to demonstrate energy-efficient technologies. When the home was built six years ago, an early iteration of Aerobarrier was used to help seal the house and make it airtight. According to Michael Koenig, the director of the Honda Smart Home project, they chose to use the technology because they wanted greater control over the air quality in the house, and wanted to heat it and cool it as efficiently as possible.

“We didn’t want air to just move through walls and cavity spaces and under sills, because it will intrinsically be less clean, than if we bring in nice clean dry air and run it through a filter,” Koenig said. “Reducing the amount of infiltration and using mechanical ventilation is part of our energy reduction strategy.”

After applying the technology twice, they were able to increase the air tightness of the building fivefold.

Last year the product launched commercially, and has been widely adopted according to company data.

“We will soon have almost 50 installers in the marketplace across North America,” said Paul Springer, the head of Business Development at the company. “We’ll have an annual run rate of seals of around 4000 homes, by the end of this year.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019 | 9

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Review: “Flora and the Red Menace” Student production showcases talent, professionalism

BY CAR OLI NE R UTTEN arts@theaggie.org

Television: “Mad Men” UC DAVIS DEPA RTMEN T OF THEATR E A N D DA N CE / COU RTESY

BY A LYSSA I L SL E Y arts@theaggie.org

The UC Davis Department of Theater and Dance opened “Flora and the Red Menace” on Feb. 28. The musical, written by George Abbott and Robert Russell, takes place in 1935 in New York City. The story follows a group of artists trying to make a name for themselves while struggling with the effects of the Great Depression.

“Flora” originally debuted in 1965 and was Liza Minnelli’s first starring role on Broadway. Although the play was not commercially successful, Minnelli won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role. It was also the first collaboration between composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, who would go on to work together on award-winning titles such as “Cabaret” and “Chicago.”

The Davis production was directed by Mindy Cooper and Judy Blazer, two women with decades of Broadway and theater experience. Cooper, now a UC Davis professor of theater and dance, has worked as a performer, choreographer and director in several Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. Blazer is the UC Davis Winter 2019 Granada Artist-In-Residence and has performed in several Broadway productions such as “Titanic the Musical” and “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.”

Cooper and Blazer took their extensive knowledge of the world of professional theater and channeled it into teaching the student actors for the production. The expertise of the directors translated on the stage and created a top-notch production.

Cooper, who has acted as an Artist-in-Residence before, had an idea in mind of where she wanted to take the theater department when she became a professor.

“I loved the work at the department,” Cooper said. “But one of the things that I wanted to bring here was musicals.”

That is one of the many reasons the directional team chose “Flora and the Red Menace” for the students to perform. The musical score is fun, poignant and challenges the actors’ vocal ranges.

Cooper also chose “Flora” because

of the relatable content of the plot and script.

“I chose it because the characters in this piece are young, passionate artists trying to find their way in the world, and I knew that the storyline would resonate very heavily with my actors,” Cooper said.

The cast of students, who only began rehearsals at the beginning of the quarter, fully immersed themselves in the characters and the era of the musical. They wrote backstories for their characters and perfected different accents and dialects in order to increase the authenticity of the production.

Third-year theater and dance major Talia Friedenberg truly shined as Flora, the headstrong and passionate female-lead. Friedenberg carries the show effortlessly on vocals alone, which when paired with her impeccable comedic timing made her the ideal leading actor.

Third-year communication major Nathaniel Challis starred alongside Friedenberg as Harry Toukarian, a fellow artist and love interest to Flora. Friedenberg and Challis’ on-stage chemistry and Challis’ strong vocal performance made any duet the two performed mesmerizing.

The rest of the supporting cast took on the challenge of playing multiple characters throughout the course of the show. In keeping with the history of the musical, there was only a cast of nine people to play the 25 different characters of the show.

“I teach my actors how to change DNA on a dime,” Cooper said. “If you put a different hat on, you’re a completely different human being.”

This challenging feat was executed to perfection by the hardworking and talented cast. Fourth-year theater and dance and wildlife conservation biology double-major Shannon McCoy was particularly strong as both Elsa, a fashion designer and friend of Flora, as well as the haughty secretary for Flora’s boss, Mr. Stanley. McCoy was believable as two completely different characters and made each of them feel unique.

Third-year theater and dance and English double major Charlie Lavaroni functioned as a narrator and comedic relief in the role of Willy.

Lavaroni gave an understated, but

If Trees Could Talk A whimsical, interactive art piece brings focus to environmental issues

ZO Ë RE I NH AR DT / AGGIE

BY ITZ E LT H G A M B OA arts@theaggie.org

Third-year studio art and psychology double major Maxine Aiello turned campus trees into pieces of art through a project titled “If Trees Could Talk.” Aiello placed mirrors in tree hollows around campus, as well as dog-tags

directly underneath to demonstrate personal responsibility in environmental degradation. Aiello transformed 14 trees last year for her sculpture class, Art 150 2A: Studio Projects. The project took a total of five weeks to complete. To alter each tree it took four hours.

Inspiration struck when she was working on a different project for

extremely nuanced performance, and his likability was evident in each character’s hat he adorned. He was able to move the story along without distracting from the other characters, a true testament to Lavaroni’s thoughtful performance.

Second-year human development and theatre and dance double major Sophie Brubaker’s portrayal of the vehement Communist Party advocate Charlotte is what really stole the show. Sporting a bright red wig and a pinstripe suit, Brubaker became the perfect antagonistic caricature. She was an instant audience favorite with her musical number “The Flame” and continued eliciting genuine laughs and astounding people with her vocals throughout the night.

Fourth-year international relations major Hannah Ross attended the show as an assignment for class and was amazed by the production of it all.

“The set is amazing, the performers are amazing,” Ross said. “I’m pleasantly surprised.”

The show is held at the Wyatt Pavilion Theater, an intimate and small venue. The cast played the size to their advantage, often weaving in and out of the rows during musical numbers or having the characters pass out plot-related flyers.

In a post-show question and answer portion, Challis spoke to the intimacy of the theater and the effect it had on the show.

“Being able to bridge the gap between audience and cast was a really cool experience,” Challis said.

The show was a delight from start to finish. The hard work of the production team was evident in every detail of the show.

“I’m most excited for the students to relish in what they have created,” Cooper said before the performance.

“It’s a very moving piece, it’s a very touching piece […] and I’m excited for them to get an audience and make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel. That’s what theater does.”

“Flora the Red Menace” will hold its second weekend of performances March 7, 8 and 9 from 7 to 9 p.m., as well as a matinee performance on March 9 from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Tickets cost twelve dollars for students and can be purchased online or at the door.

Art 150 2A, which consisted of three smaller projects and one larger final. They weren’t necessarily meant to build on each other, but Aiello took them in that direction.

“My philosophy in the class is to have them dig deeply and find something that they care about,” said Robin Hill, an art studio professor in the UC Davis Department of Art and Art History. “And that they put their work into context that acknowledges not only contemporary art history, but the world around them.”

As Aiello worked on her smaller projects, she was inspired by “Alice In Wonderland.” Aiello saw a tree with a small opening at its base where the grass touches and thought it resembled the rabbit hole that Alice fell into. As a response, Aiello created small polyester clay woodland creatures and placed them at the bottom of a tree on campus. “[It was] kind of my way of

To be quite honest, I’ve been off my television-watching game. I have, however, become an avid Youtube television-analysis junkie. In such instances, I find myself gravitating toward the critically-acclaimed “Mad Men.” Each episode rewatch or YouTube clip adds a new layer of analysis. Themes of developing personal identity for Don Draper and other characters overlap with the turmoil and ideological shift of the 1950s. “Mad Men” is sophisticated and, ironically, timeless. “Mad Men” is available to stream on Netflix.

Movie: “Paddleton” This story follows the dynamic of best friends Andy (Ray Romano) and Michael (Mark Duplass), two neighbors who both work dead-end office jobs.

Although reserved during the day, their authentic and attractive personalities emerge when they’re together as they watch kung-fu movies, make pizza and play their invented game “Paddleton.” When Michael is diagnosed with terminal cancer and decides to undergo assisted suicide with the help of Andy, we witness the last few weeks of Michael’s life and the remaining memories of their friendship.

While it is a comedy, the tragic undertones of this movie create a sentimental aura that will make you cry as much as you want to laugh. A compelling plot combined with an undeniable chemistry between the two actors made me watch the movie over and over.

Novel: “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy I’ve been on a bit of an old-school, Western kick — Wranglers, boots, thick southern drawls, open skies and all the dirt and grit associated with such.

Cormac McCarthy is notorious for his western plots which are quite violent — uncomfortably so at times. “Blood Meridian” is no exception, as the title even seems to imply. His masterful descriptions of both violence and the great outdoors combines grotesqueness and beauty in one work, displaying the mastery and diversity of McCarthy’s writing.

Album: “Half Light” by Rostam As a die-hard fan of Vampire Weekend, it seemed incumbent upon me to become equally as acquainted with the individual work of Rostam Batmanglij, the former production mastermind of the band. Much of his sound is reminiscent of early Vampire Weekend, which differentiated the band as a unique entity in the music industry. He expands on it, however, by toying with different international sounds and often sentimental, melancholic lyrics.

Batmanglij has proven himself to be an artist who has evolved from his roots and developed his own musical identity worthy of listening in its own right.

dealing with life’s anxieties,” Aiello said. “To shrink down and just go into this world that I made up that was basically the opposite of how it is now where everything is fantastic, and everyone respects the planet. Everyone respects each other, and we’re just sustainable and thriving.”

With this idea in mind, Aiello realized what she wanted to do for her next smaller project: put a mirror in a tree.

“I really just wanted to see people’s reaction to it,” Aiello said. “I was itching to watch people see it.

I wanted to just post up 30 feet away and see who walked by. I was just excited. I think I knew once I put the first [mirror] in that it wasn’t going to be the end of it.”

While her final smaller project included placing a mirror in a tree, the first tree also had an impact on what would later become her larger project of fourteen trees.

The first tree was Aiello’s take

on a mini magical mirror, the dog tag containing the phrase “mirror mirror in the tree who can stop the third degree.”

“There’s this article [that argues that] by 2030 if we’re going along this path, we’re going to increase [the earth’s temperature by] three degrees which is detrimental to us and animals and basically everything,” Aiello said. “That was kind of the source of me really wanting to say something in my gigantic project. I thought it was just a really good opportunity for me to say what I want to say and make everybody hear me.”

With the idea of placing mirrors inside trees, Aiello developed the concept for her final project in the class. She combined her whimsical mindset with an environmental one.

“At this point, a lot of information had come out about how bad TALKING TREES on 12

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these calls, 101 were from Pacifico. According to the residents, the Putah Creek bike path has become unsafe.

“We had quite a good turnout of folks who came out [to various different public meetings in South Davis], and I just wanted to acknowledge and recognize the frustration that neighbors have been experiencing in this area,” said city manager Mike Webb. “That’s part of what tonight’s about — to provide an opportunity to recognize those frustrations as continued dialogue — and I think that’s how we see it.”

Webb said that the area around Pacifico will be up for discussion and that the managers at Pacifico have taken some steps to engage in helping alleviate problems that may stem from Pacifico.

“It’s a continued dialogue moving forward,” Webb said. “There has been some initial further understanding of some of the issues here, [but] there’s more to be understood. There’s more to be discussed.”

Council member Lucas Frerichs and Mayor Pro Tempore Gloria Partida have been to some of the community meetings

and have heard from the residents of South Davis.

“There’s no question that we’re taking this issue seriously,” Frerichs said. “Residents have asked for this item to be agendized. We’re doing that. Gloria and I attended the public meeting at Montgomery Elementary School on Jan. 10 [...] we were very happy to attend and listen to discussions and stuff and talk to a number of neighbours about additional efforts at the council to discuss these issues.”

The council members seem to agree that they should reconsider their current plans of making the vacant buildings in Pacifico an in-patient mental health facility.

“I’m glad that the council is taking a proactive approach here,” said council member Will Arnold. “We’re taking this order holistically. The issues of homelessness are very much connected to the issues being experienced at Pacifico for better or for worse.[...] I agree with my colleagues that we need to take a fresh look at the use here and, frankly, we have an opportunity to do so.”

Sundays Feb. 3 – Mar. 17 11a – 1pm 500 1st Street Davis Commons S IDE A 3 3 ⅓ RPM

HIGH FIDELITY STEREO

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UC SHIP CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

“[A reduction in costs] might make this coverage affordable for some and we must never forget the importance of solidarity because when we support and fight for the needs of others, everyone benefits,” Young said.

The UAW healthcare committee also pledged support for measures that would reduce mental health copays and lab diagnostic test prices. Both measures were approved at the meeting. Beginning in the 2019-20 school year, mental health copays will be lowered from $15 to $5. Lab diagnostic tests currently are co-insured at an 80/20 split, which means students are responsible for paying 20 percent of test fees, while UC SHIP covers the remaining 80 percent. Next year, a flat $10 co-pay will replace the 80/20 split.

Other measures passed included low-

ering Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS) pharmacy co-pays on name brand medication from $25 to $15, lowering urgent care co-pays from $50 to $25 and an elimination of co-pays for web visits for STI screenings.

While these changes were approved on Feb. 20, the 2019-20 healthcare coverage plan is not yet finalized. Sandy Santiago, the director of information and technology with SHCS, commented on further measures that will be taken before the finalization of SHIP. “We hadn’t received the UC SHIP vision and dental rates prior to the February 20 meeting,” Santiago said. “The UC Davis SHIP Committee will hold another meeting early in March to finalize these rates.”

SHAW CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7

Arc: 9 Temp: 6 Feel: 8 Atmosphere: 7 Another hidden fountain, down in the corner of the western end of Haring Hall.

I stumbled upon this spot after being disappointed with the other prospective fountains in Haring. I was immediately startled by the amount of water that could come from a single fountain, giving the stream a lovely arc and unique mouth-feel that I can only describe with a single word: exquisite.

Stars: 2 The Grove Arc: 8 Temp: 7 Feel: 6 Atmosphere: 7 There’s a reason why The Grove is named separately from the other Surge facilities, and it’s not the ground traffic. I walked into The Grove expecting just another overblown operation, and although the mouth-feel fails to reach the bars others set, I was pleasantly surprised. Easy to find, pleasing to watch and overall a wonderful place to enjoy your water. Stars: 1 Sprocket Hall, second floor Arc: 8

Temp: 10 Feel: 8 Atmosphere: 9 This one was an exception amongst the other sub-par spots along the bike path to The ARC. When I discovered this fountain, I felt as though my mouth had transcended into Poseidon’s realm, with chilled mermaid kisses and waves of crashing water upon my throat. Any time I’m passing by campus, I take the opportunity to relive my enlightenment. Yes, it’s just that good.

Stars: 3 Music Building, second floor Arc: 9 Temp: 10 Feel: 9 Atmosphere: 10 We all remember our firsts. First love, first job, first kill. My first water fountain at Davis just happened to be the best fountain on campus. Nothing can compare to that first sip, which I have yet to replicate at any other fountain. Along with the sounds of struggling musicians practicing in the background lulling you into a trance of continuous drinking, this is far and away the best fountain on campus (so nice I had to say it twice). Stars: 3

St. Patrick’s Day Celebration Eileen Ivers and JigJam SUN, MAR 17 | 7PM

Get jiggy with it!

Get ready for great craic! This spirited evening features JigJam, which blends traditional Irish music with bluegrass and Americana and Eileen Ivers, one of the great innovators and pioneers in the Celtic and world music genres. Free beer tasting for 21 and over.

UC Davis student tickets start at $12.50

FREE for UC Davis Students!

An Evening with Greg Miller Trump, the Media, and the Fight for Truth TUE, MAR 19 | 7PM UC Davis alumnus Greg Miller (’90) covers national security for The Washington Post, and is the author of the book The Apprentice—Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy (HarperCollins, 2018). Miller was among the Post reporters awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their coverage of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the fallout under the Trump administration.

This event is FREE to UC Davis Students. Tickets may be acquired online or at the Mondavi Center Ticket Office (with valid student ID).

FAQ #11

Q: Is the student discount limited to certain sections or seats?

A: No! The discount can be applied to any level of ticket price. (Subject to availability.)

GREEN DEAL CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Garamendi has seemingly changed his mind since the night of the town hall meeting.

Buxton expressed surprise and pleasure at the announcement, speculating on the rationale behind Garamendi’s apparent reversal of opinion.

“I think such a bold and ambitious approach was something outside his initial comfort zone,” Buxton said. “But he realized this is the only kind of action that actually has a chance of addressing the climate crisis on the scale that is needed. So I think he came to that realization that he needed to be on the right side on this issue. So we’re really glad he did this.”

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Aggie Run: MAR 7, 2019

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explored the tumultuous history of European anti-Semitism as well as the experiences of Jews in the Muslim and Arab world. Ben-Daniel also spoke about the intersection of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the context of white supremacy.

The second half of the workshop addressed the need to combat false claims of anti-Semitism, particularly those issued

by Canary Mission which, in Oct. 2018, released the personal information of UC Davis professors and students who have publicly criticized the Israeli government’s policies.

Ben-Daniel also discussed forms of anti-Semitism founded in hostility to Israel — examples of this include randomly interrogating Jewish people about their political beliefs with respect to the state of Israel, assuming all Jews are Zionists and holding Jews accountable for the actions of Israel. Ben-Daniel also talked about the use of the Holocaust as a form of emotional blackmail or as a means of comparing genocides and other forms of extreme suffering.

Workshop participants then split up into groups to discuss different real-life scenarios that could be construed as being anti-Semitic, including specific incidents that took place at Tufts University and UC Berkeley in recent years. The prompts included questions such as: Is there real anti-Semitism in this scenario? If you were a part of this situation or heard about it, how would you respond to it?

Group members discussed the necessity to proactively report incidents of anti-Semitic hate speech. For example, one group spoke about the imperative to report a hypothetical scenario in which certain students were photographed performing the Nazi salute. Another group also spoke about the need to address assumptions about prominent Jewish public figures, including George Soros.

“What I appreciated most was the combination of the history of anti-Semitism as well as the discussion of the weaponization of anti-Semitism, and how that weaponization harms all of us,” said Dr. Caren Kaplan, a professor of American Studies at UC Davis, who was in attendance at the event. “I also appreciated how the speaker combined an attention to history as well as more current issues and concerns.”

UC Davis has a troubled history of anti-Semitism, an issue highlighted in Oct. 2018 when fliers appearing to blame Jewish people for the controversy over since-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh were distributed throughout campus.

Jewish student leaders then met with the chancellor to express concerns over the way the university addressed the issue. After this meeting, the administration agreed to host a town hall which would allow Jewish students to voice their concerns as well as a series of workshops aimed at combating anti-Semitism to be hosted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). None of these events have taken place.

The ADL did facilitate a workshop titled “Combating Anti-Semitism as Student Leaders Workshop” in the MU on Nov. 28. The event was hosted by the Jewish-interest sorority Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi and ASUCD. The administration was explicitly unaffiliated with this event.

The fallout after this workshop highlighted the differences among students regarding the various approaches to addressing anti-Semitism by on campus advocacy

groups.

After the ADL workshop, the campus advocacy group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), expressed concerns about the ADL’s involvement in facilitating future workshops, petitioning for JVP to be used instead. The petition, which gathered 149 signatures, was sent to the administration.

Kauser Adenwala, a leader with SJP, explained the group’s stance against the ADL’s presence on campus, stating the ADL has “an explicitly tumultuous history of suppressing the voices of Palestinian activists and deeming them as anti-Semitic.”

“While the work ADL does in the grand framework is integral, especially for the safety of Jewish communities and awareness into what anti-Semitism is, the underlying stances they take by encouraging the subjugation of Palestinians through Zionism is intolerable,” Adenwala said via email. “Although ADL is deemed as a civil rights group, they are selective in which injustices they choose to speak up against and defend Israel for its actions.”

Sheri Atkinson, the vice chancellor of Student Affairs, confirmed that the chancellor had received the “request and petition” from SJP. “[The chancellor] acknowledged the SJP petition, but made no commitment to honor its request to replace future ADL campus workshops with JVP facilitated events,” Atkinson said.

Moreover, some Jewish students have found the implementation of the Feb. 27 JVP workshop alienating.

“As a Jewish student leader — along with many other members of the UC Davis Jewish community — I chose not to attend the JVP event,” said Arielle Zoken, a third-year economics major and Jewish studies minor, in an email to the California Aggie.

Zoken said JVP does not represent the views of the vast majority of U.S. Jews — “JVP does not combat anti-Semitism and refuses to acknowledge anti-Semitism across the political spectrum,” she added.

Zoken also expressed concern over the lack of communication with students about the second workshop.

“I found out about the event on my Facebook newsfeed, although it is us, as Jewish students, who should be involved in any conversation about anti-Semitism on campus from the get-go,” she said.

“We do not agree with the planning nor the execution of this event. Furthermore, no Jewish student leaders were contacted about this event.”

Zoken stated that JVP “is blind to nuance,” has a “narrow view of what constitutes anti-Semitism” and added that JVP “propagate[s] anti-semitic sentiment.”

She also alleged that JVP “marginalize[s] the struggles of Jews of color to advance their anti-Zionist cause,” and said that she chose to skip the event to avoid being “triggered by [their] rhetoric.”

And although the chancellor has expressed support for student leaders’ efforts to combat anti-Semitism, the UCD administration has not played a role in organizing the two workshops themselves.

The chancellor has thus remained unaffiliated in any capacity with the SJP, the ADL or the JVP. Despite listing the event on the Equity and Inclusion page of the UC Davis website under 2019’s Principles of Community Week, the Facebook event listing clearly stated that the workshop was “not involved with the Chancellor’s office.”

Instead, the city uses mechanical methods such as weed whackers and weed flamers, as well as significant amounts of mulching to inhibit weed growth. McNerney also credited “the change in land use [and] pest management requirements at our wastewater treatment facility” with reducing the city’s pesticide use. Extension Weed Specialist, Brad Hanson, notes the benefits and potential drawbacks to non-herbicide weed control.

“Any weed control effort is really a series of tradeoffs,” Hanson said. “You can do it with chemicals like the herbicides, you can do it with labor crews, people pulling and hoeing weeds, that has a different set of tradeoffs in terms of logistic costs and social justice. You can do it with mechanical cultivation using tractors and tillage implements and that has a carbon footprint and speed of operation. So there’s not really a one-size-fits-all approach to weed control.”

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, categorized glyphosate, a common active ingredient in pesticides, as a group 2a carcinogen. The decision followed lawsuits alleging that the ingredient, found in popular Roundup products, caused cancer, which may have further precipitated Davis’ battle against pesticide use. Pryor shared his praise for the city’s actions.

“It appears the city has done 180-degree turn, rather than increasing pesticide usage as we were fearful of –– we lost Martin Guerena –– we have gone way beyond organic-only pesticides,” Pryor said. “They’ve gone to functionally pesticide-free parks in Davis in the last year.”

Guerena finds that the ability to sustain this trend of pesticide-free parks is unpredictable.

“Especially right now with it being a wet year, you’re going to have a lot of weeds emerge, and they’re either going to have to physically remove them or probably apply more pesticides to catch up,” Guerena said.

“So in other words, not doing anything is not an option.”

Hanson noted that Davis may, in theory, be able to bear the economic responsibility of being pesticide-free.

“That may not be achievable in every similar size city,” Hanson said. “It may be sustainable given the ability of a relatively highnet income city like Davis. If they are able to eliminate pesticides, then more power to them.”

Moving forward, Pryor expressed his desire for the Davis Joint Unified School District to follow the lead of the City of Davis and the Woodland Unified School District in elminiating glyphosate use.

WRIGHT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

town now is not comparable to the late 1980s.

Over 70 percent of my income goes to rent (30 percent is considered affordable).

On top of that, soaring costs of undergraduate tuition have led to students taking on ever-larger student loan debts. For example, UC tuition has more than tripled since 2000, and this rise in cost is reflective of a trend across the country. Student debt now totals over $1.5 trillion dollars in the U.S. Tuition and textbooks costs have risen at a higher rate than other costs like healthcare, childcare and housing. So as graduate students, we are coming to grad school loaded with much more debt than was common in Chancellor May’s day.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, are the changes in the academic job market that took off in the 1990s, after May had already secured a tenure track job at Georgia Tech in 1991. Universities now rely on adjunct professors to do the bulk of teaching, who account for over 70 percent of new hires. Adjuncts are low paid with basically low to no benefits and temporary hires often secure a job for only a semester or two.

These are not tenure-track positions that lead to high pay and job security. Of those who graduated in my own program, only about 50 percent landed tenure-track positions.

This means we are making less money and paying higher portions of our income on rent, and the prospect of a good-paying academic job with security at the end of the program is much less likely, all the while knowing that we’ve acquired more debt to get to this much more precarious position.

May’s experience may have shaped his perspective of graduate school, but it is obsolete. If it was hard before, it is even harder now, and especially if you are a student parent, first-generation student, a student of color, or a combina-

tion of those, among other things.

This is why anyone who calls themself a leader in higher education should be listening to the stories of students and campus workers — why when we say we need a living wage and other improvements in learning or working conditions, they should be out there fighting with us on the picket line and in the bargaining room. But I have never seen May or any administrator do this. UC’s lowest-paid workers, the campus service workers in AFSCME 3299 who are disproportionately women of color, will be going on strike again soon, along with professional and technical employees in UPTE-CWA. I don’t expect to see May out there, as he told a room full of concerned students at an open meeting last year that he won’t ever advocate for campus workers because it’s an HR issue. This was the same meeting in which he refused to drop charges against student protesters demanding lower tuition and living wages, among other things.

I said it then and I will say it again, those undergraduate students who spoke up and challenged power are the real leaders. They were willing to take a risk and make a sacrifice. Leadership isn’t hiding behind rules about HR while the attacks on public education and campus workers continue unabated.

I guess when chancellors easily brush aside claims of increased hardship, it’s no surprise that students and workers will just have to go out there and fight for these things themselves without, and often against, UC Davis administrators.

The writer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology Department at UC Davis studying education and labor and the former Davis Unit Chair of the UC Student-Workers Union UAW 2865 from 2012 to 2014.

DINOSAURS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

I think is a good thing for a GE because for me personally, even though [GEL 12] does not give me GE credit, when I’m taking a GE class, I want to learn new things that aren’t really included in what I would learn about and I want to spend most of my energy on classes that do pertain to my major,” Zimmerman said.

According to Nembach, she recommends

the class to students who like dinosaurs, even if they are not very involved in science. Zimmerman shared Nembach’s sentiments about GEL 12.

“I would recommend it even if you aren’t very sciencey,’” Zimmerman said. “It’s pretty easy to go in and get this information. You don’t really need much background knowledge.”

TREES COULD TALK CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

our climate is doing and how scary it is that our planet is going down this path,” Aiello said. “I was just overwhelmed with the idea that we were kind of on this unstoppable path, and people weren’t really paying attention to it. So the messages I was adding to the trees ended up being my way to get people to think about the planet and think about what they’re doing, how they’re affecting it, what they can do and kind of finally take some personal responsibility for their role in our future. So each mirror has a different message engraved on a dog tag that’s just lightly nailed into the tree below the mirror.”

While the idea of bringing attention to

the environment was Aiello’s motivation, others perceived it as a different type of artwork entirely. There exists a spectrum of reactions and interpretations to Aiello’s work.

“I feel [the art piece] tries to show that there’s so many people here,” said Kate Heller, a third-year economics and statistics double major. “If you look in the mirror, there’s so many different people that come to Davis. There’s going to be so many people passing by this tree and seeing themselves in the mirror. Davis is a very diverse place, and we all don’t look the same.”

In order to get the mirrors to fit inside the hollows, Aiello used butcher paper to estimate what shape the mirror would take.

The butcher paper would then be used to outline cardboard. If the cardboard fit well inside the hole, Aiello cut out plexiglass using the cardboard as a guide. This created a problem for Aiello, and it was one of the most frustrating aspects of the process.

“The art building is in a weird corner of campus and some of these trees were far away from it,” Aiello said. “And it was starting to rain. Some days I was just out in the rain because that’s when I had the time to do it. I mean, I can’t not do it just because it’s raining outside, and there was just some points that just seemed like ‘I’m never going to get this mirror to fit, should I scrap this tree all together,’ ‘should I try and find an-

other one?’”

But once the trees were finished, Aiello felt satisfied.

“I kind of get taken over by this person that just won’t stop until I’m satisfied and can be proud of whatever I made,” Aiello said. “So it’s hard, and there was times where I’m in the Art Building until like 4 a.m. engraving something, and I really want to leave, but there’s something else in me that won’t let me leave.”

This quarter, Aiello’s upcoming project falls in line with her environmental concerns. She will be using recycled milk cartons, which are nondegradable and stay on the planet for years after they are produced.

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019 | 13

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

14 | THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019

backstop UC Davis equestrian falls to visiting Fresno State

JUSTIN HAN / AGGIE

Program making progress, looking to grow as season approaches its end

BY B OBBY JO HN sports@theaggie.org

UC Davis equestrian hosted its final home meet against No. 9 Fresno State on Saturday, ultimately falling 12-4. The Aggies now stand at 1-4 on the season, which started in late January, while the Bulldogs improved to 4-6.

While not a new event for the Aggie riders, fans, friends and family were able to watch reining for the first time at UC Davis, as

the event was not held during the team’s first home meet on Jan. 31.

Reining, a discipline in western riding, is an event where riders perform a set of prescribed patterns which include spins, flying lead changes, circles, back-ups and the sliding stop. This last maneuver requires the rider to build up speed and suddenly stop the horse on its hind legs.

“It’s a fun event, everybody loves it,” said Head Coach Jessie Weisinger.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Throughout its season, the reining squad hasn’t been able to actually practice on reining horses, which are trained in a fashion that suits the relatively fast pace of the format.

“But [the reining team] has been hanging in right there with the other teams,” Weisinger said.

Despite the lack of reining horses, senior Laurel Jackson and sophomore Charlize Zuraek were able to snatch a pair of reining points two weeks ago against No. 4 Southern Methodist University, a team that has sent riders to the Collegiate Reining Championships for the past two years. Visiting Fresno State’s Paige Barton was also selected as a representative for last year’s championship.

Zuraek went head-to-head with Barton and fell only a point short, 73.0-72.0.

“Today we knew it was going to be tricky,” Zureak said, noting that Fresno State supplied the reining horses for Saturday’s meet, giving the away team the familiarity edge with the horses’ quirks and tendencies.

UC Davis Beach Volleyball Makes History

Senior western rider Haley Fredericks made the decision to attend UC Davis for academic reasons, but when she found out UC Davis would add an equestrian program in her last year as a student, she saw it as an opportunity to fulfill her goal of riding for a Division I equestrian program.

“This was a really good experience, I’m glad I have this under my belt,” Fredericks said of her experience riding for the team in her final year. “I had a year to get used to it, it was really fast and furious and I went out there with a positive mentality and enjoyed every minute of it.”

Junior hunt seat riders Sabin Marquardt and Stephanie Don secured two points early on in the equitation over fences event, while freshman Keely Laughlin finished out the event with a score of 81.0 to beat her opponent’s score of 76.0.

Laughlin also posted UC Davis’ best score of the day on the flat with an 80.0, and it appeared that UC Davis would have secured that point, but her opponent, Alex Dirickson, topped Laughlin’s score

Inside the Game: UC Davis Lacrosse’s Grace Richards Senior goalkeeper talks team and changing positions

The UC Davis Beach Volleyball team begins its inaugural season with a double header sweep of Sacramento State WAYNE TILCOCK / AGGIEPHOTO.COM

BY CA RSO N PA RO DI sports@theaggie.org

The 19 Aggies that made history on Saturday were all smiles when they took to the brand new sand courts on Howard Field for the first time. The UC Davis Women’s Beach Volleyball team began its inaugural campaign with a double header series against Sacramento State, defeating the visiting Hornets 4-1 and then 3-2 in the program’s first-ever matches.

The UC Davis Athletics department announced the addition of Beach Volleyball last April, leaving little time for the University to build a place to play and for Head Coach Ali McColloch to assemble a roster. But other than a temporary chain link fence enclosing the four new courts, Saturday’s initiatory matches showed little signs of growing pains.

The Aggies got off to a fast start in their morning matches, with four out of five pairs winning in straight sets. After the rain cleared, the Hornets gave the Aggies more of a fight in the afternoon matches.

Three of the five Davis pairs were taken deep into the third set, but the Aggies held their composure and won two. Junior Lauren Matias and freshman Jane Seslar were less interested in a close match, defeating the Hornets again in straight sets — the only tandem on the day to do so.

The majority of the team’s members made the transition from the UC Davis Indoor Volleyball team, whose season just finished in November and are committed to helping guide this program through its juvenescence.

“It’s definitely new for them,” McColloch said. “And we haven’t had that much time in the actual sand. They’ve been at the park, in the gym, but I think that they’ve been working really hard on all the details so that made a huge difference today.”

To an average spectator, indoor and beach volleyball may appear to be the same general game, but to lump them together would discount the work these athletes have put in over the last three months.

“We did a lot of detail oriented stuff in the beginning with footwork,” McColloch

said. “The first couple weeks we didn’t even really play we just worked on footwork. And then we pushed pretty hard on the conditioning too which is good for them and I think that showed.”

That hard work paid off, as the Aggies chased down balls and dug out the Hornets spikes during some fast paced, competitive games.

“There’s really nowhere to hide in beach volleyball,” Seslar said. “There’s only two people [compared to six], so it’s more depending on people who can play all around and not just a single skill, so it’s a lot of fun.”

But beyond the technicalities of adapting to the outdoor game, an aura of excitement and pride lingered over the courts on Saturday — something that transcended the morning rain delay, the cold weather, slippery volleyballs and wet sand.

“The biggest thing was that the girls all looked like they had so much fun out here,” McColloch said. “Today was just really exciting because it’s the inaugural season and getting a W feels good. But more than anything, the fact that they had so much fun doing it was probably the best.”

It’s rare to find a college coach who emphasizes having fun as much as McColloch is this season, but she says that she wants her players to feel like their success is coming from putting in all the effort, and growing as a team and as players in a new, but familiar, sport. In McColloch’s mind, as long as the players are giving it 100 percent, and playing with heart, the wins should come naturally, and they will continue breathing life into this young program.

“Our main priority is just to have fun,” Matias said. “And we’re just trying to set a good culture and foundation for this program because I feel like we can go really far.”

The Aggies will play Stanford University and UC Berkeley on March 9, but right now are just enjoying the feeling of finally kick-starting what is already a successful season.

“Made history,” Matias said. “It’s awesome.”

with Fresno State’s best score of the afternoon, an 85.0.

Freshman Laura Wise secured the lone UC Davis point on the flat with a score of 70.0.

“The girls are making huge improvements, they’re gaining confidence,” Weisinger said, noting the continual progress the team has made since the first meet back in January.

Moving forward, Weisinger will start recruiting more riders in the summer. The UC Davis roster currently lists 19 riders. More established programs typically have much larger rosters — Fresno State, for example, lists 34 riders.

The program is looking to add 12 new horses over this summer as well, says Weisinger. This would double the program’s current supply of competitive horses.

UC Davis will travel to Fresno to square off against the Bulldogs one last time on March 30, before traveling to Waco, Tex. for the NCEA Championships in April.

“The work’s not done, it’ll be busy over this summer for sure,” Weisinger said.

BY O MAR NAVARRO sports@theaggie.org

Change can often feel uncomfortable and arrive unexpectedly. For the UC Davis lacrosse team’s starting goalkeeper Grace Richards, change has been a big part of her collegiate experience. She arrived as an attacker from Bel Air, Md., a popular lacrosse city where she played from a young age.

“I started playing lacrosse in first grade, and I was always an attacker,” Richards said.

“That’s what I always thought I would be.”

In her freshman year, Richards appeared in nine games, scored three goals and recorded two assists. In her sophomore season, however, the team’s lack of personnel led Richards to change into a position she had never played before.

“We had one goalie, and she was amazing,” Richards said. “But she didn’t have a backup. So they were worried that if something happened, they wouldn’t have someone to step in. So, they needed to train somebody to be able to hop in if it was necessary and that happened to be me.”

Over the course of a few weeks, the Assistant Coach Emi Smith, a former All-American goalkeeper at Penn State, trained Richards and taught her everything she needed to know about the position.

“After that, I kind of just hopped into drills and tried to stay as positive as humanly possible because you’re not going to be great right away,” Richards said.

As she went along with the transition, she not only had the help of her coach, but also her brother, who was a collegiate lacrosse goalkeeper as well. She called him before every game and asked him about the mental aspects of playing in front of the goal.

“When the game is on the line and things happen, you have to take everything shot by shot rather than thinking about past plays or things that happened,” Richards said. “That’s mainly what I would ask him about. Like how you deal with the pressure and needing to perform at the best of your ability when people are expecting you to. The mental aspect was really hard for me at first. I am a positive person, but I am also a perfectionist

which is hard to deal with because goals are going to happen. It’s a high scoring game and a lot happens throughout. It’s still something I have to work on.”

Richards guarded the net in 12 games and had a save percentage of .435 her sophomore season. She was also included in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation’s All-Academic squad.

Her junior season saw her start 14 games in front of the net, earning her MPSF Defensive Player of the Week three times. Her save average improved to .459, and she recorded 16 saves in the MPSF title game.

The transition to goalkeeper has given Richards confidence and a new outlook, not only as a player, but as a person as well. “[The transition] has given me the power to be able to look at things in a positive light that may not be positive or taking something and thinking, ‘what could I have done better?’ Richards said. “It’s made me more accountable as an athlete, as a person, as a student and I think that that’s the biggest thing this role change has given me, and I couldn’t thank anybody more. My goalie coach Emi Smith, my Head Coach Suzanne Isidor and [my assistant coach Ashley Johnson], they’ve been so great in teaching me how to deal with it and being patient when I need it.”

Now in her senior season, Richards has started all seven games for the Aggies thus far. UC Davis is currently 3-4. After winning their season opener on Feb. 8, the Aggies also beat Mercer 16-13 on Feb. 17 and Oregon 15-12 on March 2, but lost a tough one to nationally ranked Stanford on Feb. 24.

Optimistic and excited about this season so far and going forward, Richards describes this team as having strengths at every position. Her goal for this season is clear: Win the conference.

“We’re in a small but mighty conference with San Diego State and Fresno State, two of our biggest rivals,” Richards said. “We lost [the MPSF championship] in overtime last year which kind of burned for a while understandably. I think that winning that conference would be so great, and the fact that it’s here in Davis is going to be even greater.”

Even though the transition took place a little over two years ago, Richards hopes to keep improving as a goalkeeper and keep being the trustworthy player her team needs.

The next game for the Aggies is at home tomorrow versus Central Michigan. The rest of the season is highlighted by games against Georgetown and Fresno State on the road, before finishing off the season at home against rival San Diego State.