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the California Aggie
SERVING THE UC DAVIS CAMPUS AND COMMUNITY SINCE 1915
VOLUME 136, ISSUE 13 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2018
People Power of Davis group works to achieve greater transparency from UC Davis Police Department Group hopes to improve reporting process
BY AL LY RUSSEL L campus@theaggie.org
The ACLU People Power of Davis group is a local branch of a national grassroots movement that aims to uphold the constitution on a communal level. The movement was founded in light of the Trump administration and its perceived abuses of civil rights. “By mobilizing in defense of our civil liberties, volunteers will build and strengthen local communities that affirm our American values of respect, equality, and solidarity,” the People Power website states. In the People Power of Davis group, students and civilians are uniting to take a closer look at the process of reporting officer misconduct to the UC Davis Police Department (UCDPD). Currently, if students have a complaint regarding the conduct of a UC Davis police officer, they have a few options for reporting. Students can fill out a form at the UC Davis police station, or they can report the incident to the UC Davis Police Accountability Board. The PAB is made up of faculty and students and is completely independent of the UCDPD. Complaints, once submitted, are filed through a complex chain of review. Complaints are first viewed by the Office of Compliance and Policy before they are reported to the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor. Finally, reports are
sent to the PAB, where they are investigated. The proceedings end with the PAB’s official report and recommendations, are sent to the UC Davis Chief of Police. “The current police accountability board does not have the authority to require any actions within the police department in response to a complaint or investigation,” said Caitlin French, a member of People Power of Davis and a Ph.D. candidate in nutritional biology. “The PAB can make recommendations, but the chief of police maintains the authority for disciplinary or any other action. I believe the process would be more effective in improving civilianpolice interactions if the PAB had some say in what happens after an investigation, not only in terms of discipline of officers but also department-wide actions, such as policy changes and trainings.” Furthermore, the chief of police is under no obligation to inform students or the PAB of any measures that have been taken in response to a report. PAB is also unable to process any anonymous complaints of misconduct, which may discourage students from reporting. Daphne Carlson, a member of People Power of Davis and a graduate student in the School of Veterinary Medicine, also discussed the shortcomings of the reporting process on the UCDPD website. “We found that the reporting form is missing
KAUSI RAMAN / COURTESY
a bunch of things,” Carlson said. “For people to report troubles they’ve had with the UC Davis police, one thing that they’re missing is sexual harassment.” When reporting, students currently have the option to select one of several possible options for their report including discrimination and improper detention. The form currently lacks an area to report incidents of sexual misconduct. The People Power of Davis group is conducting a campus-wide survey to gauge students’ opinions regarding the accessibility of reporting incidents of misconduct, whether students have ever used the site and what students feel they deserve to know about occurrences and reports filed against the UCDPD. People Power of Davis hopes to take its findings to the UCDPD and assist in implementing system-wide reforms to make the reporting process, and follow-up regarding investigation reports, more available to students. Ray Holguin, a police officer and the outreach coordinator for the UC Davis Police Department, spoke about current partnerships the UCDPD has with student organizations and possible ways to strengthen transparency. “We work closely with student groups to include Center for Student Involvement, Fraternity and Sorority Life, Student Recruitment and PEOPLE POWER on 11
Grants given by UC Davis Blum Center aim to alleviate poverty Blum Center for Developing Economics offers grants to undergraduate, graduate students
BY SABRI N A HA BCH I features@theaggie.org
The Blum Center for Developing Economics at UC Davis offers grants to both undergraduate and graduate students who are focused on alleviating poverty in developing countries and areas. According to its website, the Blum Center’s goal is “finding solutions that have a lasting and tangible impact on people living in poverty.” Kausi Raman, a second-year design and economics double major and the outreach coordinator for The Blum Center, discussed the different grants the center offers, including the Poverty Alleviation Through Action (PATA) grant and the Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Solutions (PASS) grant. “We offer a couple of different grant programs: PATA is for undergraduate students, and PASS is for graduate students,” Raman said. “The travel grant for undergraduate students is up to $2,000 and allows students to visit other parts of the world for research or service projects. PASS is between $1,000 to $4,000, and it’s seed funding for students to find and execute viable solutions for reducing poverty in the developing world.” Raman talked about her own experience with The Blum Center after she received a grant from the group. “I received the PATA grant last summer to travel to India,” Raman said. “The grant allowed me to go over there and work directly with government schools to test out the different things [my nonprofit organization] had been developing. We were also able to work directly with
teachers and directors of schools to see exactly what it was that they needed.” Although students who are awarded grants from The Blum Center tend to travel to a different country facing poverty constraints, some students have chosen to direct their efforts toward domestic issues. “This program actually doesn’t have to be abroad — it just happens to be that way because people mostly go to developing areas,” Raman said. “It can be a developing area locally as well. A couple of the grants that we funded last year actually stayed in the Sacramento area. For example, one person worked in a clinic locally. It does have to work to alleviate poverty in some way.” Fourth-year global disease biology major Maria Bala received the PATA grant last year and traveled to Nicaragua in hopes of implementing her project. “My project is a community resource database,” Bala said. “The whole idea of it was to connect patients to resources outside of the healthcare settings. Oftentimes doctors make recommendations, give prescriptions and advise patients to do certain things, but when patients leave the hospital or clinic, they don’t have the means or the knowledge of where to get those resources from in their communities.” Bala’s hope is that, with her database, Nicaraguans in rural areas will be able to utilize the different services available to them. “There are a lot of non-government organizations in Nicaragua that provide a lot of different resources like water improvement and special education services, and people aren’t aware of those CHECK OUT OUR
services,” Bala said. “The goal of my project was to connect people to those external resources, to improve health overall, and to get people to follow doctors’ recommendations.” Bala elaborated on a number of unforseen problems that may occur while trying to implement projects to alleviate conditions in developing countries. “I designed this project as an original idea without seeing the community I was going to serve,” Bala said. “I spent the first couple of weeks speaking to different members of the community to get their input on whether this project is something they would actually want and use. After getting their input, I finalized my idea upon tweaking it to serve the community. It took several weeks to hurdle through liability issues and feasibility issues and collecting the needs-based assessment.” According to Bala, The Blum Center is mainly involved in approving the projects of students and awarding them grants — it is up to the student to accomplish the project. “I was only able to finish taking the needsbased assessment. I wasn’t able to finish making the database,” Bala said. “Technically, our Blum Center projects are done after the summer because they only gave us enough funding to last for a few weeks. In essence, the Blum Center is done with our projects but it’s on us, the students, who had involved ourselves into the projects and into the communities to find a way to continue what we had started. I want to go back to Nicaragua sometime after I graduate from UC Davis and finish doing the project.”
PHOTO FROM BLAIR FOX’S FACEBOOK PROFILE
Blair Fox’s life, legacy Second-year student remembered as charismatic, joyful, dedicated BY SABR I NA HABCHI campus@theaggie.org
Blair Fox, a second-year UC Davis student, recently passed away in a skiing accident in Lake Tahoe. An economics major, Fox was a brother in the Sigma Nu fraternity and a member of Model United Nations. Involved in numerous ways both at UC Davis and within the Davis community, Fox touched the lives of many people. “Blair was the type of person who would make anything really fun and who was just friends with everyone,” said fourth-year psychology major Jade Mawhinney, who was a good friend of Fox’s. Mawhinney fondly described some of the memories she shared with Fox in the time that she knew him. “One night, we ended up at Burgers and Brew at 2 a.m. and Blair got these disgusting fries and he was obsessed with trying to get me to try them,” Mawhinney said. “I always tagged him in memes on Facebook, and it turned into a tagging spree. He would respond and tag half of his chapter. It sounds so 21st-century millennial, but we were trying to just out-meme each other and it was just really funny.” Andrew Isaac, a second-year community and regional development major and member of Sigma Nu, spoke about a few of the ways Fox’s presence in his life affected him. “I met Blair when we were rushing Sigma Nu together [in the fall of 2016] and we were also living in Cuarto,” Isaac said. “I will never forget the image of Blair smiling because that is all he did. I have never seen him not happy or at least he didn’t show it. He was also really into political science and we would have our debates and that’s how I got to know him and really understood what a great person he was. He changed all of our lives.” Colton McHugh, a close friend of Fox’s, a fourthyear communication major as well as a member of Sigma Nu, mentioned a few of the ways Fox was unique. “He was extremely social,” McHugh said. “Anytime we had some kind of social event on campus, he was always trying to get everyone to go and participate. People say this about people all the time when stuff like this happens, but Blair was genuinely the most excited, positive, happy guy I have ever met. He was always hyping everyone up about everything. It was ridiculous how excited he was just to do the most ordinary stuff as long as he was with his friends. He was so positive and he made everyone else just happy all the time.” Jake Webb, a second-year managerial economics major and Sigma Nu member who was also close to Fox, talked about the way Fox impacted his life and the lives of the rest of the fraternity members. “One of [Sigma Nu’s] big events is going down to Grace Gardens to garden every Saturday morning,” Webb said. “Blair would do that with a smile on his face every single time. A lot of us woke up Saturday mornings pretty tired, but he just cheered everybody up and he did some great stuff over there. He put his all into everything.” Many Sigma Nu members who were close to Fox also mentioned his passion for community service and involvement, in addition to his work with the Grace Gardens. “Blair was probably the most involved person I have ever met at Davis,” Isaac said. “He always talked about Model United Nations — he had such a big role in that and he made a lot of friendships and bonds in that club.”
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