April 8, 2021

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VOLUME 139, ISSUE 21 | THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021

UC STUDENTS CALL FOR UCPD POLICY CHANGES, BUDGETARY REALLOCATIONS DURING SECOND UC CAMPUS SAFETY SYMPOSIUM Many prospective campus proposals to reimagine campus safety and security were discussed at the symposium

BY ANNETTE CAMPOS campus@theaggie.org During the second live University of California Campus Symposium on March 24, students, staff and faculty members met to discuss the future of campus policing and the role of the university’s police departments.

UC students from the UC Student Association (UCSA), the UC Graduate and Professional Council (UCGPC), No UCPD Coalition and more called for policy changes and budget reallocation to the UCPD. The symposium began with opening remarks from UC Regent John A. Perez and UC President Michael V. Drake. Drake reflected on the past symposium and the months of discussion between students, staff and community members about their experiences with policing on and off campus, acknowledging that these experiences and perspectives are important.

“We want to assure you that we are listening, learning and committed to real change,” Drake said.

He mentioned that despite the symposium having no prescribed or fixed outcome, as there is currently no fixed procedure on how campus

safety looks, the discussion is “guided by the same desire” to create a more respectful and safe community within the UC. A proposed summer action plan is designed to inform campus plans for the fall and to envision the future of campus safety and policing.

Due to a lack of student involvement from the last symposium, the discussion began with a presentation from Naomi Riley, the UC Council of Presidents co-chair and an undergraduate student at UCLA, and Naomi Waters, the vice chair of the UCSA Racial Justice Now at UC Riverside. Other students provided opening remarks, including UCSA President Aidan Arasasingham, an undergraduate student at UCLA, and UCGPC President Gwen Chodur, a graduate student at UC Davis.

“The problem of over-policing at the UC in our communities is not new, and students, faculty and staff are justifiably tired of discussing the problem every few years with only Band-Aid solutions on the table,” Arasasingham said. “This symposium asks us to think older, to think and to ask, ‘What solutions truly re-envision [what] campus safety looks like from the ground up?’”

UC Davis Police Department. (Quinn Spooner / Aggie)

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YOLO COUNTY MOVES TO 'MODERATE' ORANGE TIER As Yolo County moves forward with reopening, local businesses are able to provide county residents with increased services

BY YAN YAN HUSTIS HAYES city@theaggie.org On March 24, 2021, Yolo County moved from the red (substantial) tier, into the orange (moderate) tier.

According to a press release, the move follows two consecutive weeks of meeting the orange tier’s metrics. As a result of moving into the orange tier, many Yolo County businesses are now allowed to either expand capacity or resume operations entirely.

Fitness centers and gyms can now operate at 25% max occupancy and both restaurants and movie theaters can open indoors at 50% max occupancy or 200 people, whichever is fewer.

A full list of guidelines can be found on Yolo County’s website.

General store manager of Tim’s Hawaiian Laura Armero explained that while the move to orange tier has allowed for increased capacity, Tim’s Hawaiian has not made any significant changes to operations.

People eating at the outdoor seating area of Woodstock’s Pizza in Downtown Davis. (Justin Han / Aggie)

“We’re still following all the COVID-19 guidelines—we have markers on the floor, we sanitize every 30 minutes or whenever we feel it’s needed and masks are required for employees and customers,” Armero said. “Our indoor space is really small so we have to consider the space.”

Due in part to its outdoor seating options, Amaro explained that Tim’s Hawaiian has actually seen a recent increase in business.

“It’s safer outside,” Amaro said. “The outdoor space lets customers just have a good time. They can eat and enjoy the things we used to do before the pandemic started.”

Amaro also attributed the increase in business to changing weather conditions and the more widespread availability of vaccines.

“More students are coming back, so we’re seeing more business because of that,” Amaro said. “I also think that people are feeling more comfortable with the vaccines coming out and the nicer weather.”

Co-owner of Davis Strength and Conditioning Drew Temple explained that like Tim’s Hawaiian, most of their operations with customers have been moved outdoors since the start of the pandemic.

“We had an outside area that was already built, so we basically have just been adding things back inside as things open up more,” Temple said. “When [indoor capacity] was 10%, we moved some back and now we’ve moved more.

We also schedule when people can come in so there’s not a lot of overlap.”

Temple explained how Davis Strength and Conditioning has been handling the increased

indoor capacity and the health concerns that come with increased indoor capacity.

“In terms of keeping things clean, it was pretty simple—our gym was designed to keep people spread apart, so we’re lucky,” Temple said. “It was just a matter of teaching people.

We have cleaning stations at all of our racks and platforms.”

Temple explained that many customers are eager to return.

“We’ve adopted a grow-as-it-comes approach,” Temple said. “People are desperate to get back into the gym—supply is low, demand is high. We have a lot of student clients so for us to be a place where [students] can interact with people and engage with people is really important.”

While there has been no shortage of customers who wish to return to the gym, Temple explained his frustration with the speed at which reopening has gone so far and his hope for future reopening.

“I’ve seen a lot of business shut down and friends have to permanently shut down their gyms, and as a business owner I’d like to have things go back to 100% open,” Temple said. “As the vaccine rolls out, I see no reason to open up slowly.”

While the State Theatre & Multiplex in Woodland originally reopened on March 5, 2021, its general manager Sally Muro explained that with the move to a higher occupancy in orange tier, the theater has been limiting ticket sales to ensure proper occupancy.

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UC DAVIS HEALTH DONATES JOHNSON & JOHNSON COVID-19 VACCINES TO LOCAL POPULATION WITHOUT HOUSING Staff volunteers supply doses as part of a joint initiative to try to protect vulnerable members of the Sacramento community

BY JUSTIN WEINER science@theaggie.org The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent emergency use authorization of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine has opened new doors in the fight against coronavirus. Unlike the previously authorized Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the J&J vaccine does not have to be stored at ultralow temperatures and only requires one dose.

According to Dr. Angela Jarman, a physician in the department of emergency medicine at UC Davis Health, these features make the J&J vaccine ideal for people who might not have consistent access to healthcare, such as those experiencing homelessness.

“The J&J vaccine has made it much easier to vaccinate many of our patients from vulnerable, marginalized, and minoritized communities given that it is only one shot,” Jarman said via email.

“This makes it easier for those that are unhoused, lack transportation, or who don’t have access to primary care to get vaccinated.”

As a result, when UC Davis Health recieved

shipments of the J&J vaccine, they donated the doses to a local community partnership in order to ensure that the homeless community could receive them. The community partnership

consisted of members of the Sacramento Fire Department, City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, Harm Reduction Services, Sacramento County Department of Public KAITYLYN PANG / AGGIE

Health, Sacramento Steps Forward, Loaves & Fishes and Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee.

Valenzuela said she got involved in the vaccination project through previous efforts to relocate those who were experiencing homelessness.

“We are involved in the relocation effort of the camps under the WX freeway in anticipation of the upcoming construction project,” Valenzuela said. “It was during that process that the idea of vaccinating folks came up, and my chief of staff worked with advocates to identify a way of making that happen.”

According to Valenzuela, people experiencing homelessness were a priority to vaccinate because “folks experiencing homelessness cannot shelter in place. They are out in the community all of the time, greatly increasing their [chances] of exposure—and, unfortunately, their chances of exposing others.”

Jarman decided to volunteer for the initiative because she saw it as the next step in battling the pandemic.

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As Derek Chauvin murder trial begins, UC Davis administration discusses mental health, racial trauma resources Ongoing efforts toward police accountability include a task force with student input

BY REBECCA BIHN-WALLACE campus@theaggie.org As the trial for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin began this week, Chancellor Gary May and Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Renetta Garrison Tull spoke to The California Aggie about UC Davis’ most recent anti-racism initiatives.

In May 2020, Chauvin was charged with the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, while on duty. The video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes even after Floyd expressed an inability to breathe went viral, sparking worldwide protests against racial injustice, police violence and corruption.

May’s letter to the university following Floyd’s death described the chancellor’s dismay with police violence against the Black community and exhaustion regarding his lived experiences as a Black man.

Following Floyd’s killing, UC Davis introduced several antiracism initiatives, including the Next Generation Reforms to Advance Campus Safety Task Force.

The task force’s first report was published in December 2020 and highlighted the ongoing controversy regarding the role of police on college campuses, particularly at student protests.

It also emphasized the importance of accountability in police behavior. Student members of the task force expressed concerns regarding a lack of connection and trust between police officers and members of the UC Davis community.

They also spoke about a general fear of police, particularly among immigrant students, and a lack of transparency on the part of police officers.

According to Tull, the task force’s final report will be published in June 2021.

“We made sure people knew that there was a listening session [for the task force] and that there were no right or wrong things to say,” Tull said. “It was a qualitative process of collecting data from the campus, which includes the Police Accountability Board (PAB).”

The PAB, established in 2014, allows students, professors and staff on UC Davis’ campus to file complaints on its website should they have a negative interaction with a campus police officer.

Any identifying information is voluntary, so there is limited data available about the racial, ethnic or gender identities of the complainants, according to the most recent PAB report.

In his interview with The Aggie, May spoke of concerns raised by students regarding police activity on campus and emphasized the importance of community-based policing.

“In my mind, we actually have a fairly progressive approach to campus safety at UC Davis,” May said. “I say that pretty confidently, and I’ve been attending the seminars held by UCOP [University of California Office of the President]. It seems to me that our sister campuses might not be as far along as we are in terms of progressive policing.”

Nevertheless, advocacy groups like Cops off Campus have pushed for police officers to be removed from the UC Davis campus entirely.

May has publicly disagreed with this stance, saying that he believes Cops off Campus does not offer a constructive solution to the issues at hand.

The annual UC Davis PAB Report from the 2019-2020 school year provided data regarding policing practices on the university’s campus.

The report addressed and closed four inquiries during that time frame. These inquiries involved allegations of improper use of force, improper police procedures, dishonesty, discourtesy and improper confiscation of property.

Black Lives Matter protestors march by Memorial Union at UC Davis towards Downtown Davis on Saturday, May 30, 2020. (Justin Han / Aggie) Notably, one 26-year-old woman made allegations regarding discourtesy, intimidation and improper use of force in an interaction with campus police. However, her complaint was characterized as outside of the PAB’s purview since it was made more than 180 days following the aforementioned incident.

The PAB findings recommended that campus police officers be better trained in de-escalating challenging situations rather than simply ignoring someone’s questions, as this can aggravate the problem at hand.

They also recommended that the police force encourage officers to clarify and provide legal justification for their actions when arresting someone.

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Shincheonji Church of Jesus, labeled as a cult by some, actively recruiting members at UC Davis through Newsong Fellowship, according to former affiliates The South Korean church accused of being responsible for massive COVID-19 outbreaks throughout South Korea has secretly recruited UC Davis students on campus for years, former members say

BY REBECCA GARDNER campus@theaggie.org When Individual A* was a second-year, a student approached her in the Memorial Union and asked her if she could spare a minute to help out with an assignment. Individual A pulled out her headphones and said, “Sure.” “Do you believe in God?” they asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “How would you rate your relationship with God?” they asked in response.

Individual A was intrigued. When the student invited her to a Bible study group with Newsong Fellowship, she shared her phone number. The student never mentioned the assignment again.

Throughout her years at UC Davis, Individual A was approached twice more by others who were completing this same assignment.

During summer session, when a student recruiting Individual A mentioned that they also attended her church, she said that she felt at ease and decided to give the Bible study a chance.

“At the time, I was curious,” she said. “Since I’m a believer, I thought to myself, ‘Is God trying to tell me something? Is God trying to tell me to go and study with this group?’”

For two years, Individual A intermittently attended these small Bible study groups. She recounts that initially the Bible study groups felt pretty standard—the attendees studied parables. The teacher mentioned that they were missionaries and not a student-run organization.

Then, Individual A said subtle, unsettling incidents started to occur that left her weary and confused. In her denomination, Saturday is a holy day. After a Bible study leader implied that Saturday isn’t a holy day, she texted the student who attended her church to ask how he accepted this discrepancy. He brushed it off

and promised that her concerns would be addressed: “Don’t worry.

I had the same questions that you have. It’s all going to be clarified.”

Eventually, Individual A attended larger meetings. The first one took place in a classroom on campus and later in the basement of Kobe Mini Mart downtown. The same teacher who instructed Individual A’s small group years prior stood in front of the group and explained that the Second Coming would be a silent event.

Individual A shared that when she confronted the teacher after Bible study and said this secretive Second Coming was contradictory to what is presented in the Bible, the teacher became aggressive, frantically pulling Bible verses and telling Individual A that she needs to look at the bigger picture when studying scripture.

“I remember I felt so guilty that day that I texted her and apologized to her,” Individual A said. “From then on, I kept attending the meetings, but I attended online because they had a Zoom option as well.”

On a walk in the Arboretum with the teacher who had snapped at her, Individual A said that she was pressed about her relationship with God; her teacher said that she should really be more serious about Bible study and discouraged her from watching a Christian YouTube channel that Individual A had been enjoying. She was constantly told to attend meetings in person and was berated with text messages whenever she was absent.

“In a sense, I didn’t want to go anymore, but I felt guilty about not going because I knew people now,” Individual A said. “I felt like they really wanted me to go, and I didn’t want to make them feel bad if I didn’t. I was also always really impressed by [how] they would recruit people and two days later those people who were just recruited would be going around campus recruiting others.”

At one meeting they were presented with the Parable of the

KATHERINE FRANKS/ AGGIE

Sower—the same parable that Individual A was presented with at her first Bible study session with the group. The parable explains that there are three seeds planted: one on pavement, the next in rocky soil and the third in healthy soil. The condition of the soil determines whether the seed flourishes into a strong tree or withers away.

“At the end of the meeting, the pastor that was presenting said, ‘Hey everyone, at the next meeting we are going to ask you about what we talked about and what each of these seeds represents,’” Individual A said. “‘If you don’t remember, we will know what kind of seed you are.’”

Individual A described feeling uncomfortable.

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City of Davis makes open-air tents in downtown Davis safer Even as vaccination distribution increases, Yolo County officials stress the importance of adhering to safety guidelines

BY SHRADDHA JHINGAN city@theaggie.org In an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 and limit large gatherings, the City of Davis released mandatory changes to the open-air tents in downtown Davis, according to a news release published on Feb. 24 from the city.

These changes include removing the large tents on E and G Streets, providing restaurants on G Street with smaller tents to replace the one large tent and confining open alcohol containers to restaurant spaces on G Street, rather than the entire street itself.

The news release explained that a large gathering in one of the tents prompted these changes.

“The City is aware of a large gathering that took place this past weekend at one of the downtown tent sites contrary to COVID-19 safety protocols,” the news release reads. “City staff met this week with the Davis Downtown Business Association leaders to address changes.”

Dr. Dean Blumberg, an associate professor at UC Davis and the chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Health, explained via email how measures such as outdoor tents—if unsealed and not airtight—can help curb the spread of COVID-19.

“More than 90% of transmission takes place indoors, so it’s much

Covered outdoor seating areas on G Street in Downtown Davis.

(Justin Han / Aggie) safer to get together outdoors where the air volume is much larger and the virus is diluted, thus decreasing transmission,” Blumberg said. “This is especially important when eating or drinking, since these are unmasked activities that will increase risk of transmission.

A tent outdoors is likely a safer environment than indoors as long as there is good ventilation. If the tent is sealed practically airtight, then it is likely similar to indoors and will not decrease transmission.”

It is still important to continue following health and safety guidelines as vaccinations ramp up, even for those who are fully vaccinated, Blumberg explained.

On-call Yolo County Public Information Officer Frank Schneegas said that as of March 22, about 18,159 first doses and 15,423 second doses have been administered in Yolo County.

Yolo County District 3 Supervisor Gary Sandy explained

that “a healthy percentage of the people 65 and over” have been vaccinated in Yolo County, and that county employees have done outreach to groups such as farmworkers and those who “suffer disproportionately from COVID.” Moving forward, Yolo County will focus on targeting specific ZIP codes and neighborhoods that may not have sufficient vaccine supply in order to vaccinate more people.

However, Sandy described that low supply has made it difficult to vaccinate everybody. “[We] continue to face an inadequate number of vaccine doses that we receive from the state of California, and so that’s one of the reasons why we continue to underserve our populations,” Sandy said. “We just don’t have sufficient vaccinations to meet the needs.

We place an order every week, and we rarely get our full order.”

Schneegas added that although Yolo County moved into the orange tier on March 24, meaning that businesses can operate at a greater capacity indoors, it is still important to continue adhering to health and safety guidelines to limit the spread of COVID-19.

“There are restrictions on how those tents can be set up, so they can’t be like a closed tent, for example,” Schneegas said. “We are still encouraging people to continue wearing face masks, social distancing and avoiding gatherings when possible even though people continue to be vaccinated. Again, most people in Yolo County haven’t had the opportunity to be vaccinated yet, which means that a lot of people still don’t have any protection from a vaccine yet.”

Sandy stated that another surge is possible, especially among younger age groups.

“We can’t let up now,” Sandy said. “There’s already evidence in other parts of the country that another surge may be coming, and the numbers appear to be among younger people.”

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UC Davis research shows seaweed reduces cow methane emissions by as much as 82% Research suggests that lemongrass may also be a successful feed additive to reduce cow methane emissions in the future

BY MADDIE DULEY campus@theaggie.org The lab of UC Davis Animal Science Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Ermias Kebreab has successfully identified seaweed as a feed additive that can reduce the enteric methane emissions of cows—methane released from cow burps—by as much as 82%. These findings were released March 17 in the journal PLOS ONE, and represent a viable opportunity for farmers to meet California methane standards and reduce the amount of short-lived climate pollutants in the atmosphere.

“I work with cattle, both beef and dairy, to find new feed additives that can increase the sustainability of livestock,” said Breanna Roque, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the animal biology department, who is working alongside Kebreab on the project. “One of the goals of the lab is to see if we can reduce methane production coming from cattle through the use of feed additives.”

Students working in Kebreab’s lab are testing the impacts of different feed additives on the enteric methane emissions of cows.

“About 95-98% of methane comes from the front of the animal,” Roque said. “A big myth is cow farts are contributing to climate change—it’s actually the burps.”

By reducing enteric methane emissions, Kebreab’s lab is focusing on reducing the methane emissions that are released through the cow’s mouth.

“Livestock contributes about 14.5% to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and about 4% in the U.S.,” Kebreab said. “About 5.7% of global greenhouse gases comes from enteric methane [released by ruminant animals].”

Kebreab hopes the discovery of seaweed as an effective feed additive will reduce the global enteric methane emissions from ruminant animals—typically farm animals like cows, sheep and goats—from 5.7% to 2.5-2.8%.

Roque ran the day-to-day operations of the study by implementing the seaweed into the cows’ diets and ensuring the animals’ safety throughout the 21-week project.

“With any new feed additive, it takes cows a little bit [of time] to get used to the smell and the flavor of something new into their diet,” Roque said. “The seaweed comes freeze-dried and ground so it’s more like a powder than strips of seaweed. I took this powder

Cows at the UC Davis Dairy Farm munching on hay during an afternoon. (Justin Han / Aggie) and mixed it with molasses, which has got a bit of a sweeter smell and taste that cows really enjoy.”

Roque added this mixture to the cows’ diets twice a day and encouraged cows to visit a GreenFeed machine in order to measure their methane emissions.

“The animal voluntarily walks up to the machine and eats [alfalfa pellets] from this tray,” Roque said. “While it’s [eating, it is] also undergoing other processes such as burping and regurgitating. While it’s doing this, the machine is able to capture the burps or the gasses that come from the mouth and measure them.”

By reducing livestock enteric methane pollution, the project strives to help farmers meet new California legislation regarding climate pollutants. “[In California], legislation has gone through that states that short-lived climate pollutants, such as methane, need to be reduced by 40% in the next 10 years,” Roque said. “If seaweed is reducing such a significant amount of methane, and we are able to get it to the market for these farmers, it provides them a viable way to meet these standards.”

Mallory Honan, a second-year Ph.D. student in the animal science department who is also working alongside Kebreab, studied

the effects of lemongrass as a feed additive to reduce enteric methane emissions. “[Lemongrass] has a lot of secondary compounds, such as tannins,” Honan said. “What we were hoping to see is that these secondary compounds would elicit a change in the rumen microbiome environment, thus reducing methane emissions.”

While Honan’s lemongrass study did not elicit a methane reduction as drastic as seaweed, Honan predicts it is due to the location of the lemongrass sourced for the project.

“The [lemongrass] that we had sourced wasn’t very concentrated in those secondary compounds [tannins], because it was grown in California and not in a tropical, native area,” Honan said.

While students in Kebreab’s lab continue to test the effectiveness of different feed additives, the success of seaweed has allowed Kebreab to explore ways to produce and distribute it. He is working with a couple of companies to do so as quickly and safely as possible.

“I feel very lucky to be a part of this and also very excited for the livestock industry to be able to provide research that contributes so greatly to more sustainable practices,” Roque said.

Healthy Davis Together compiles wastewater testing data for COVID-19 on website Graphs show trends in COVID-19 spread in Davis as experts explain how the data is analyzed

BY LYRA FARRELL features@theaggie.org Healthy Davis Together has been collecting data from municipal wastewater autosamplers to assess the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak in Davis since Sept. 2020, and recently compiled and analyzed the wastewater data on its website.

As of March 31, the website shows data from seven regions, plotted on graphs of normalized virus concentrations against sampling dates, accompanied by citywide trends.

There are no numbers on the y-axis, which is intentional, according to Hannah Safford, a fourth-year Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student and core member of the wastewater team.

“As the normalized values don’t tend to mean much to people it’s common practice in the wastewater-surveillance world to leave numbers off of the y-axis so people can focus on trends in the data,” Safford said via email.

The data is normalized against a pepper virus called Pepper Mild Mottle Virus (PMMoV), UC Davis Health Director of Business Development Tod Stoltz explained. PMMoV is a virus that infects pepper plants and is commonly found in human feces, which scientists can identify in sewage treatment plants.

“The way they calculate [COVID-19 levels in wastewater] is that

they compare the amount of DNA or RNA in the sample to what’s a fairly consistent amount of RNA from a pepper virus,” Stoltz said via email. “There’s a pepper virus that people generally consume and it’s at a fairly constant level in the wastewater, because people are always eating it and excreting it. So if you compare that COVID-19 RNA to how much pepper virus RNA is in the wastewater, then you can start to say whether there’s a higher amount than normal.

It’s that ratio which is being presented in the data.”

Safford elaborated that normalizing against the pepper virus reduces the impact of confounding data.

“Normalizing by PMMoV also helps us adjust for factors like rainfall that can dilute wastewater samples,” Safford said.

The graphs on the wastewater testing website show both lines and crossmarks. The crossmarks represent exact values from the samples, while the lines represent the two-week moving average, which is used to smooth out the noise in the data, according to Safford.

“It’s common to use a moving average to assess trends in noisy temporal data such as the data we collect from environmental monitoring or clinical testing,” Safford said.

“We’re using a two-week moving average for [wastewater] data right now in part because we’re getting limited data points (only two per site per week) and in part because there’s an epidemiological reason: because COVID-19 infections typically run for 2–3 weeks, it’s reasonable to expect that we might see trends manifest over a

two-week timeframe.”

UC Davis Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Heather Bischel elaborated via email that noise can be a considerable element in the data because toilets are flushed at all hours of the day.

“Some of the important sources of variability are the “fecal shedding rate” and the randomness of toilet flushing,” Bischel said. “An infected individual can shed a wide range of virus in their excrement… People will flush the toilet at different times of the day, creating mixtures of virus concentrations in the sewer system. To try to account for some of this variability in our sampling, we collect composite samples from the sewer system using automated samplers that draw a portion of the flow in the pipes every 15 minutes over a 24-hour period. The virus concentration we measure represents an averaged concentration from many people who flushed during the collection period.”

Bischel anticipated that the wastewater testing infrastructure could still be useful in the future, even after the COVID-19 pandemic has passed.

“Wastewater monitoring can continue to inform public health efforts in the future,” Bischel said. “While we are focused on supporting the pandemic response right now, my research group has been studying enteric viruses in wastewater and working to develop tools for more rapid virus detection and monitoring for our water systems.”

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Native American students share their experience combatting Indigenous erasure Three Native American students give insight into the ongoing struggle of amplifying Indigenous perspectives

BY LYRA FARRELL features@theaggie.org

Tori McConnell, a fourth-year Native American studies major from the Yurok and Karuk Tribes of Northern California is the student director of the American Indian Student Recruitment and Retention (AIRR) Center. In 2019, she helped to form the Native American and Indigenous Advisory Committee to the Chancellor and is currently serving in her second term.

In 2019, UC Davis released a land acknowledgement statement in which the university “pays homage to the indigenous people and land on which the Davis campus is located.” In McConnell’s opinion, however, not enough is done by the university to acknowledge the history of the land it occupies. “[There’s a] longstanding trope that Native American people are of the past and aren’t even here anymore,” McConnell said. “This university is here because of that, it sits on Native land and it barely does anything to actively make up for or pay any kind of reparation for sitting on this land.”

According to McConnell, UC Davis’ Native American community has been subjected to problematic instances overseen

by the university in the past. For example, in 2019, the Manetti Shrem museum held an exhibit that was “extremely offensive,” in McConnell’s words, to the Native American student community and to Native American elders and did not respond to the dismay expressed.

“They refused to take it down and they wouldn’t listen to the community, [...] they just left it up,” McConnell said. “To this day, they haven’t offered an apology and they haven’t done anything to try to make up for that terrible display and the harm that they did.”

In response to this event, McConnell took part in forming a committee that would aim to increase communication with the university and prevent similar issues from surfacing.

“Having an established committee [...] is a change within the institution, it’s hardly anything, but it’s a step in the right direction,” McConnell said. “All of that came about because our community was upset and traumatized about the [incidence] with the Manetti Shrem.”

Marialuisa Kemmerle, a fourth-year Native American studies major from the Cherokee Tribe of Mvskoke Creek, is the program director of the American Indian Recruitment & Retention (AIRR) project and helped petition for a space on campus to be devoted to Native crops and serve as a community area for Native students. For

about three years, Kemmerle said, Native students and the Native American Academic Student Success Center, also referred to as the “Native Nest,” advocated for this, but were met with little support from the university.

“It did make me discouraged about the university wanting to meet the needs of Native students,” Kemmerle said. “Being a Native student myself it just felt like it was my duty as a community leader and a student leader on campus to get the conversation going to start advocating for a space on campus, whether it be at the arboretum, at the student farm or somewhere else. It was up to the students to really make that happen with the support of other Native faculty and [...] the Native Nest.”

Annika Shije, a second-year biological systems engineering major and a member of the Santo Domingo and Santa Clara Pueblo Tribes, used to work at the Native American Academic Student Success Center. Shije remembers first finding a rare sense of community at the Native Nest among other Native American students.

“Inside the Nest, we were all really close,” Shije said. “We had a lot of the same experiences and that was really refreshing and nice, and I actually spent a lot of my time there, a lot more than I thought I would. I think it’s very good that I had that kind of connection because in classes and other areas, I did not have that at all.”

According to Kemmerle, after years of advocating for garden space, the university has recently granted a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to the Native American Student Union (NASU), stating that it will pay in perpetuity for five plots of land that the Native American community will use to plant traditional crops.

“In the MOU, the ASUCD say, ‘Oh, we acknowledge we’re on the land of the Wintun people,’ but instead of just doing land acknowledgments, they’re going beyond that,” Kemmerle said.

“They’re saying, ‘Okay, what do Native students need,’ or, ‘How can we better serve the Native community?’ And this is definitely [...] a positive thing that has come out of years of students wishing they had a space on campus.”

One of McConnell’s current endeavors is to disaggregate, or create an accurate breakdown, of data reflecting the population of Native American students at UC Davis.

“One of the things I’m working on on the Native and Indigenous Committee right now [is] I’m sharing a subcommittee for disaggregating Native student data, [...] which is crazy because it seems like that should already be something that’s worked out,” McConnell said.

When considering the broader UC system, the percentage of Native undergraduate students in the fall of 2011 was 0.67%, which is not reflective of the percentage of California’s population that identifies as Native American (1.94% as of this year). According to McConnell, the UC should be cognizant of this discrepancy.

“The proportion of Native people in California doesn’t match up with the proportion of Native students in the UC, so basically, Native students are underrepresented in UC, even compared to the population,” McConnell said. “So that’s something to keep in mind—what is the University of California doing such that the demographic of California isn’t even reflected in their student body?”

The Native American Academic Student Success Center at UC Davis. (Quinn Spooner / Aggie)

Yolo County Fire Safe Council members discuss year-round fire prevention efforts Organizations across Yolo County address seasonal increases in fires and continue to address fire prevention

BY RACHEL SHEY city@theaggie.org On March 24, the Yolo County Fire Safe Council had its second meeting, during which council members discussed fire preparedness and prevention with other community leaders.

The Fire Safe Council was formed under the Yolo County Resource Conservation District to provide support for wildfire prevention, wildfire response and post-fire recovery efforts by implementing projects in the Yolo County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP). The meeting and the formation of the Council mark Yolo County’s efforts to address fire safety issues in light of the recent increases in wildfires across California.

California Senator Bill Dodd talked about the importance of the Fire Safe Council at the Feb. 23 introductory Fire Safe Council meeting.

“There is an unfortunate reality of needing to have a Fire Safe Council and these councils can help prepare local communities for the wildfire season,” Dodd said. “These councils can do great work in fuel reduction projects and increasing the insurability of property which is incredibly important.”

In the same meeting, Executive Director of Yolo County Resource Conservation District Heather Nichols explained the importance for the creation of the Fire Safe Council.

“We knew there was a trend toward annual wildfire, particularly west of Winters,” Nichols said. “There was the Monticello fire in 2014, the Rag fire in 2015, the Cold fire in 2016 and then the Winter fire and the nearby catastrophic Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa in 2017.

That next year, the Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise.”

Nichols explained that to address these issues more directly, the Yolo County Resource Conservation District adapted their experiences and ongoing efforts in fire conservation efforts.

“We have over two decades of experience working with residents MARIO RODRIGUEZ / AGGIE

and landowners and leading stakeholder drive planning, which is what is needed here,” Nichols said. “We’ve done weed management plans for Putah-Cache Creek on farm and ranch technical assistance addressing issues like erosion and vegetation and habitat management. And in town, we do educational workshops with residents.”

The Fire Safe Council is projected to provide input on the draft of the Wildfire Risk Assessment, which is presented by the CWPP steering committee in fall of 2021, Nichols explained. “[The CWPP steering committee] will provide a draft of the wildfire risk assessment this fall,” Nichols said. “Once that is finalized, the RCD will hold a series of public meetings in Winters, Dunnigan and Esparto to identify projects for the CWPP.” More information about the Yolo County Fire Council and its mission can be found on its website, along with information on its upcoming meetings, which are open to the public.

In addition to fire prevention efforts at the county level, more localized year-round fire prevention efforts are being led by the UC Davis Fire Services.

Lead Deputy Campus Fire Marshal Jim Patterson explained via email how UC Davis Fire Prevention has been successfully continuing its mission of fire safety and prevention and education despite the mostly-remote nature of campus operations.

“During the fall we still worked with student housing to conduct in-person fire drills for all student resident halls while following all guidelines for face covering and physical distancing,” Patterson said via email. “We are currently working with Student Housing and West Village on a cooking safety campaign targeting unattending cooking. We use Zoom to continue getting the word out.”

In addition to the other fire prevention efforts UC Davis Fire Prevention heads, it works with other campus organizations to ensure fire safety as well, Patterson explained via email.

“Fire Prevention collaborates with the UC Davis Fire Department, Campus Planning and UC Davis Grounds and Landscape Services to identify and provide weed abatement around campus property,” Patterson said via email. “This helps to prevent fire hazards created by vegetative growth and combustible debris.”

Patterson offered up additional tips to use either on or off campus for individuals to stay fire safe.

“At home you should always make sure you have properly working smoke detectors and a fire extinguisher, never leave cooking unattended, and make sure you have an escape plan,” Patterson said via email. “At school or work, know two ways out of the building you are in, the location of fire extinguishers and fire alarm manual pull stations.”

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021 | 5

OPINION

THE

EDITO RIA L B OA RD ANJINI VENUGOPAL Editor-in-Chief

WHEN WILL LIVES BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GUN OWNERSHIP?

MARGO ROSENBAUM Managing Editor SABRINA HABCHI Campus News Editor EDEN WINNIFORD City News Editor

Our political leaders need to pass gun control laws that limit the access to and use of guns The members of this Editorial Board cannot remember a time before we were required to participate in school shooting drills or lockdowns due to a threat. We don’t know what it’s like to not always have an exit strategy when entering any public place—movie theaters, schools, malls, grocery stores and even on our own campus.

We have become so desensitized to gun violence in the U.S., we often wake up to the news reporting another mass shooting and we are horrified but not surprised.

Shootings have been so normalized that instead of trying to fight the disease, we’re trying to treat the symptoms (to put it in words familiar to those of us who thought we were escaping mass shootings in a COVID-19-stricken world). In fact, mass shootings have still been consistently occurring despite the fact that the world we currently live in presumably lacks crowds. A mass shooting is typically defined as an incident involving a firearm in which four or more people are wounded or killed. Only four months into this year, there have already been 125 mass shootings in the U.S.—that is a problem.

We do not believe there is a rational argument for owning assaultstyle weapons, like AR-15s, and we believe Americans should not be allowed to own them. A bill passed in 1994 that banned these weapons was associated with a reduction in mass shootings during the time the bill was in effect, but it was not renewed at its sunset date 10 years later. Since then, research has shown that mass shootings using assault-style weapons have dramatically increased. This seems like it should be obvious—easier access to guns means a higher likelihood that these guns will be used in gun violence incidents despite claims from the National Rifle Association (NRA) that the ban had no effect.

It is clear that when countries—including the U.S., as evidenced by the assault-rifle ban—take action to regulate guns, incidents of gun violence decrease. In 1987, 16 people died in a mass shooting in the U.K. A year later, legislation that outlawed semi-automatic weapons and restricted some shotgun sales was passed by a parliament overwhelmingly controlled by the right-wing Conservative Party at the time. When another mass shooting occurred in Scotland 10 years later, legislation was immediately passed to restrict the ownership of most handguns, many of which were bought back by the government at market value.

Not only could stricter regulations on guns decrease mass shootings, but also they could even decrease the number of individuals dying in police shootings, which disproportionately affect Black Americans, because police would no longer need to carry guns (more than 90% of British police do not carry guns).

Australia had a similar buyback program which was part of broader legislation to limit the ownership of automatic and semi-

C ALIFORNIA A GGIE

automatic weapons after a deadly mass shooting in 1996. This was also instituted under the governance of a center-right political party, the Liberal Party of Australia, led by then-Prime Minister John Howard. In fact, Howard called on former President Barack Obama to follow the country’s model after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.

After a horrific mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced temporary measures in less than 24 hours that came into effect just days later, including a buyback program and restrictions on semi-automatic weapons. These measures were formalized by the national parliament a month later and overwhelmingly supported by members of rightand left-leaning parties.

Despite the fact that this issue has had bipartisan support in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand—with the first two nations passing gun control legislation in legislatures held by right-wing or right-leaning parties—the Republican Party’s platform strongly opposes gun control measures. Furthermore, in 2020, a majority of Americans (57%) said they wanted stricter gun control laws. This shouldn’t be a political issue and it clearly has not been for other nations.

Understandably, there are many more barriers to effective gun control measures in the U.S. than there may be in other countries— notably, the Second Amendment of the Constitution and the nation’s extremely powerful gun lobby. As noted earlier, however, the U.S. has passed gun control legislation before and we believe in American political leaders’ ability to resist political pressure when countless lives are at stake unnecessarily.

We believe lawmakers have the capacity to enact comprehensive legislation that outlaws semi-automatic weapons; institutes universal background checks for prospective gun owners and red flag laws that allow people to report those not fit to carry guns; creates federal licensing programs; and closes loopholes that allow individuals prohibited from purchasing guns to do so through gun shows or private transactions.

If you own a gun, you are increasing the risk of accidentally injuring or killing yourself or using it to die by suicide. If you have children, you are increasing the risk they could die by an accidental shooting—the second leading cause of children’s death in the U.S. is gun injuries. If this information makes you uncomfortable, consider investing in an alarm system or pepper spray instead.

We want to live in a world in which we do not have to carry the mental load of being legitimately scared for our lives when we pick up food at the grocery store. We want to be able to enjoy our time at the movies without having to sit in an aisle seat so we can jump

CALVIN COFFEE Opinion Editor SOPHIE DEWEES Features Editor ALLIE BAILEY Arts & Culture Editor OMAR NAVARRO Sports Editor MADELEINE PAYNE Science & Tech Editor

CAMERON PERRY New Media Manager JUSTIN HAN Photo Director KATHERINE FRANKS Design Director JOELLE TAHTA Layout Director KAITLIN ARAGHI Copy Chief ALEX WEINSTEIN Copy Chief KESHAV AGRAWAL Website Manager BEN CHENG Social Media Manager JOSHUA GAZZANIGA Distribution Manager LAURIE PEDERSON Business Development Manager

up and run out at a moment’s notice. We want to be able to learn effectively, which will in turn help us to become more productive citizens, without constantly wondering whether we’ll have to duck under a table in the library.

These should not be outlandish desires. It is up to eligible voters to elect candidates who are determined to prioritize lives over unregulated gun ownership and it is up to those representatives to put lives over political gains or pressure from powerful organizations like the NRA. At the current rate, there will be 500 mass shootings before the year’s end. The Editorial Board wants to see a country in which most of those shootings are prevented with the passage of significant legislation.

To revolutionize social media activism we have to stop virtue signaling through infographics Bait-like infographics and posts don’t prove what they should

BY ISABELLA CHUECOS ifchuecos@ucdavis.edu Since the turn of the decade, we’ve learned through lifechanging events—such as the Black Lives Matter movement or the COVID-19 pandemic—that the internet is our most powerful tool for spreading information and sharing resources on a large scale.

We can now safely say that the 2020s are destined to be the age of bubblegum pink backgrounds, serif fonts and hand-drawn comics dominating social media.

The vast majority of accessible knowledge about both national and international current events is found on platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. A study conducted by the University of Oxford and the Reuters Institute revealed that 57% of Gen Z reported getting their news from social media and messaging apps. The fact that these platforms are used by so many individuals for the express purpose of news drives individuals to create informative posts that are compressed into simple, easy-toconsume media morsels, more commonly known as infographics.

These little tidbits of information can come in myriad sizes (180 characters, possibly), colors (rainbow gradient or millennial pink) and styles. Many are written in digestible language and peppered with charming graphics. They have the benefit of permeating several layers of humans online; a factually inaccurate infographic can only exist for so long until it is debunked by one of the millions of social media users that come across it.

Infographics are also useful in that they spread good oldfashioned awareness. Simply being in-the-know is half the battle of understanding and keeping up with current events; just 30 seconds of scrolling through Instagram stories can give you ample exposure to any given issue and varying perspectives regarding the situation.

When it comes to infographics, however, it’s incredibly important for users not only to be critical of the content presented in them, but also the ways in which content is presented and how the language can be seeking to appeal to their ego. Take, for example, the infographics which insinuate that a social media user doesn’t care about the issue if they don’t repost a picture or data chart. I’ve seen one that implored users to share if they were “against rape,”

Infographics often blur the lines between fake news and and facts. (Shutterstock) implying that if a user didn’t repost it, they were “pro-rape.”

When we bring a social media user’s perceived morality or ego into a seemingly benign infographic, it’s no longer a post that is bringing awareness to others, but something that implicates the sharer’s ego and pride. It’s a classic example of virtue signaling, which is defined by Oxford Languages as “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.”

Social media is all about perception, and if our cultivated persona is being challenged, we’ll do anything to defend it. That’s what’s so wrong about infographics that urge users to virtue signal.

Social media users are being coaxed into reposting more because of the potential attack on their egos, rather than reposting to actually highlight injustices, demand change and share resources. Deciding to not repost a harrowing image of a malnourished infant on one’s Instagram story shouldn’t be tied to a social media user’s morality.

It should be tied to the issue of world hunger or poverty—without any extra bells or whistles.

I understand the logic behind sharing one of these more baitlike infographics; I’ve fallen victim to the temptations of these sorts of posts myself. If I found that an Instagram story struck a chord with me emotionally, I’d be more tempted to share it. If someone were to tell me that I didn’t care about the issue for failing to repost an important current event, I would feel bad and then repost––it’s that simple. I’m only motivated because I want to prove that I am, in fact, a human.

I think the elimination of these types of posts is critical to revolutionizing social media activism as a whole. The influx of political postings and discussion on social media has to be one of the most important developments of our decade. The digital age is here to stay. In order to effectively seize the art of internet activism, we have to remove ourselves and our personal brands from the equation.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie

HUMOR

DOORDASH HAS SOME BOLD POST-PANDEMIC PLANS Going above and beyond normalcy

BY EAN KIMURA etkimura@ucdavis.edu COVID-19 has not been great. However, it does not mean that all have suffered. Many billionaires saw their wealth increase during the pandemic and saw suffering trickle down to the rest of the population. While many restaurants struggled, DoorDash has never been more profitable. As the vaccine rollout continues and some sort of pseudo-quasi-normalcy emerges, many have questioned the viability of DoorDash.

DoorDash foresees this problem and their new business strategy starts with industry-leading customer service practices for their employees independent contractors.

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu has provided the masses with an interesting look at how the food delivery app plans to remain

profitable. In the pandemic, DoorDash rolled out contact-free delivery. In order to overcorrect for such pandemic safety measures, DoorDash plans to roll out an array of post-pandemic unsafety measures. The most promising? Full-contact delivery.

Methods of full-contact delivery to start will likely include anything from tackling the recipient as their order is being delivered to spoon feeding them their orders “here comes the airplane” style.

Although Xu has expressed hope that Dashers (the term for their employees independent contractors) will be equipped to “baby bird” the customer their meal.

These plans have not been received well by many. Public health experts have already weighed in with worries about this practice being “unsanitary” and “a really good way to start an outbreak of something.” Labor rights activists have also called this proposed plan “degrading” and “unfair.” In more leaked memos, DoorDash

DoorDash drivers testing out new contact delivery service.

(DoorDash) responded that these critiques were “all we could hope for in a new program.”

DoorDash’s aggressive plans could put pressure on competitors such as GrubHub and UberEats to continue to innovate better methods of capitalizing on a nation trending further and further toward a sedentary, gluttonous and decadent lifestyle.

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

6 | THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

Workplace Reimagined workgroup plans to reinvent the office A diverse group of employees have come together to discuss how remote work may become a long-term solution for UC Davis staff

BY KATHLEEN QUINN campus@theaggie.org As COVID-19 has impacted the practices and places of work, UC Davis staff has responded by establishing a university working group to consider what work at the university could look like after the pandemic. The workgroup, Workplace Reimagined, aims to find solutions for employees who are looking to continue full remote or partial remote work environments after the pandemic ends, as well as develop new solutions to office spaces at the university.

Christine Lovely, the associate vice chancellor and chief human resources officer, said she’s excited to see what the workgroup comes up with.

“We’re really looking at how we can leverage what we’ve learned over the course of the past year,” Lovely said.

The Workplace Reimagined Workgroup, which began on Jan. 28, consists of a cross section of staff from around the Davis campus who are looking at ways that the university can develop more flexible working arrangements for staff.

The working group is still in its early stages, but Lovely said one potential benefit in the future could be saving the university money.

“In time, I could see us saving on leasing space,” Lovely said.

“Maybe even in time, [I could see us] eliminating the need to lease space, because if we have people kind of rotating in through space, we

don’t have one office or one desk for each person.”

Hamid Fonooni, the director of the ergonomics program on campus, has been working with the group since its inception as part of the Resources/Finances subgroup.

“I’m pretty confident that the return on investment would be substantial,” Fonooni said. “In monetary terms, but also employees’ job satisfaction, productivity, morale—a lot of soft measurements.”

Michael Gunnarson, a fourth-year aerospace science and engineering major, said having remote options for staff is important for staff to attend to sick children for example, but he simultaneously worries about the administration’s other motivations.

“That flexibility is important, but I think that if cutting costs is involved and if that’s the driving factor, they’ll use that as an excuse to give [students] worse service,” Gunnarson said.

Currently, the full remote positions that are being discussed would not be for positions that typically involve face-to-face interactions, such as student advising or faculty.

Lovely said that providing remote work options can be a positive tool for recruitment.

“I have had a couple of people in my own organization hired away by other universities that are willing to say now that they could

work 100% remote,” Lovely said.

One option presented would consist of a bullpen-style working area for employees that could be shared by anyone who needed a working space, but wouldn’t be assigned to a particular employee.

“A lot of people have individual offices, but maybe we need to be thinking about that in a different way, like having coworking spaces where different people can come in and work at different times using the same space,” Lovely said.

The workgroup has a deadline to present a big-picture plan by May. “Basically the group is supposed to come up with a high-level plan—we don’t get into the details,” Fonooni said. “Is it a good idea?

If it’s a good idea, what would be the scenarios?”

The workgroup has a suggestion form on its website that can be used by anyone interested in providing feedback to help inform the process.

“I suggested the name ‘Workplace Reimagined,’ because it would be helpful for the group to think of the whole way we work and how we work from a different lens,” Lovely said.

The Office of the Chancellor and Provost is located on the fifth floor of Mrak Hall at UC Davis. (Justin Han / Aggie)

Faculty spotlight: James Adams James Adams reflects on his research studying political hostility after 16 years of teaching at UC Davis

BY REBECCA GARDNER features@theaggie.org Professor James Adams, Ph.D., graduated from Princeton University with his bachelor’s in economics and went on to sell computers for Hewlett-Packard in the 1980s. After two years of working in the sales industry, he decided to change his trajectory and earned his doctorate in political science at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.

Having found his true calling in academia, Adams has taught political science at UC Davis for 16 years.

“You might almost say that I was raised to be a professor,” Adams said. “My father was a professor at UC Berkeley. My grandfather was a professor at UCLA. My great grandfather was a professor at Stanford. So, Adamses have been professors in California for close to 100 years now.”

Adams teaches undergraduate courses on the politics of France, Germany and Britain. He is also currently teaching graduate-level courses on political polarization, political representation in advanced industrial societies as well as political behavior in the same nations.

Adams recently published a book titled, “American Affective Polarization in Comparative Perspective,” in which he explores animosity and polarization between political parties in the U.S. “We seem to see so much distrust and hostility across party lines,” Adams said. “And not just between the politicians—but between rank-and-file voters—where Democrats and Republicans seem to not just disagree with each other, but they practically seem to think the other side is just evil.”

The project was in part motivated by Adams looking back to a time before modern political friction, in the 1970s, when Democrats and Republicans were able to respectfully disagree with one another, according to Adams.

Adams said “you might not believe this” when explaining that people across party lines cooperated and often agreed on issues.

Now the two dominant parties view the individuals within their opponents as morally corrupt.

“Both sides just have these terrible caricatures of the other side,” Adams said. “No matter what the other side does, each side thinks, ‘Well, whatever you are doing, you have bad motives.’”

His recent research found that income inequality contributes to political hostility across party lines. In terms of disagreement on policy, him and his coauthors found that so-called “cultural issues” such as gay marriage or immigration significantly gave rise to anger.

Adams said that opposing parties could fight about economics without impacting overall hostility toward one another.

“But these fights over race, immigration and the national way of life—which has really showed up in this country in the last four years—[...] seem to really make people angry,” Adams said.

In February 2020, Adams was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching from the

UC Davis Academic Senate.

Adams has also received awards for student mentorship, including the Outstanding Mentor Award from the Consortium for Women and Research from UC Davis. He credits his wife for reminding him that students may feel intimidated approaching professors with research proposals. “[My wife] said sometimes [for] students, and particularly women students, it can be hard for them to walk into your office and look into your eyes and say, ‘Professor Adams, I would like to write a paper with you,’” Adams said. “I always try to emphasize to all of my graduate students, don’t be afraid and don’t be bashful to come to me and suggest a project or ask for help. I always try to emphasize that I will do everything I can to help you. I will never make you feel bad for asking.”

Professor Erik Engstrom serves as the chair of the political science department and has worked with Adams for 13 years. He said that Adams spends an enormous amount of time and effort in the success of students. “[Adams] is just a very outgoing, exuberant person,” Engstrom said. “He’s very funny, which I think helps in the classroom, bringing students into the lectures.”

Timea Balogh, a second-year political science Ph.D. student, has taken graduate-level courses taught by Adams and served as his teaching assistant (TA) throughout the pandemic. She highlighted how humble and down-to-earth Adams is while showing an immense care for his students’ interests and wellbeing.

“Even with 120 students on Zoom, he still started each class making sure how people are hanging in there and how can he can make class better to accommodate the world that we’re living in,” Balogh said. “I would TA for him forever.”

“He’s the kind of person that, from the very first conversation with him, you know you only want good things for him: success, health and respect,” Balogh said.

Adams said that the best part of his job is interacting with students.

“Especially since I am in the later part of my career, when I tend to get tired more easily and get more worried about things, I always come away from being on campus, or even now when I do my Zoom lectures, feeling so good just from interacting with all of you,” Adams said.

Sara Kazemian is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate studying political science, and Adams serves as the chair of her dissertation committee.

His graduate-level course on polarization from a comparative lens inspired the topic of her dissertation.

“I think the thing that strikes me about Dr. Adams is that he’s equitable across the board and very approachable,” Kazemian said.

“If you look at his undergraduate classes, his office hours are usually

Dr. James Adams has been a professor in the political science department at UC Davis for the last 16 years. (Courtesy Photo) filled when normally students go to TAs.” Adams said that if he hadn’t been a professor, the only other job he would excel at is baseball broadcasting. Adams’ colleagues and students called up his love for baseball in every conversation.

“He’s a massive San Francisco Giants fan,” Engstrom said.

“When they won the world series, I’ve never seen him happier.”

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021 | 7

What will study abroad look like post pandemic?

Global Learning Hub discusses plans for study abroad programs in fall 2021

BY NORA FARAHDEL features@theaggie.org Among the many experiences lost as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has been studying abroad. Given the stay-at-home orders and health directives, the prospect of students traveling overseas became dangerous and study abroad programs have been canceled or moved online since March 2020. However, as vaccines begin to be distributed, hope for a travel-filled future lingers in the air and provides possibilities for students dreaming of a study abroad experience.

Zachary J. Frieders, the executive director of UC Davis’ Global Learning Hub and Global Affairs, shared that the Global Learning Hub is continuing to navigate the uncertainty of these times as they determine the best decision for student safety. Frieders said that a decision about in-person fall programs will likely be made in May. “Hopefully things will continue to evolve [and] we can send our students this fall,” Frieders said. “But if not, we want to get back out

there as soon as we possibly can, and so we’ll just keep looking at the evolving guidances, the vaccination program rollout and how the virus is impacting different parts of the world differently. But we certainly intend to send study abroad as soon as we feel like it’s safe to do so.”

Joanna Regulska, the vice provost and dean of Global Affairs, shared that the decision-making process involves a variety of careful considerations.

“As always, we will be following guidance from the CDC [Centers of Disease and Control and Prevention], public health officials and others to adjust logistics and/or accommodations as necessary and we will continue to plan programs that have high quality academic and experiential rigor,” Regulska said via email.

Regulska shared that beyond the in-person study abroad programs, the Global Learning Hub also offers remote opportunities

The UC Davis International Center. (Quinn Spooner / Aggie)

such as the Global Career Development series and the Global Ambassador Mentorship Program that provide students with experiences from their own homes.

“Study Abroad is an excellent way to gain global perspectives and experience the world, but it isn’t the only way,” Regulska said via email. “Global Affairs is here to help, especially our Global Learning Hub, which is linking students to existing global learning opportunities across campus and developing new ones.”

Additionally, many students choose a study abroad program outside of the selection UC Davis offers: University of California Education Abroad Program (UCEAP) provides UC students with study abroad opportunities across the globe and functions separately from the Global Learning Hub. Emma McNeilly, a second-year global disease biology major, is planning on studying abroad with UCEAP in Denmark during the fall semester of 2021.

McNeilly has always planned to study abroad and is choosing to do so during her junior year before she starts doing research or taking more complicated major requirements. While the program has not been fully confirmed due to COVID-19, McNeilly shared the factors she took into consideration when making the decision to apply for the program.

“I’m a global disease biology major, so traveling in a pandemic is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see health policies and practices in another country,” McNeilly said. “I wasn’t going to go if I wasn’t vaccinated, but I recently got vaccinated so that was a priority for me.”

While McNeilly is hesitant about potentially encountering new strains of the virus while overseas, she trusts the program directors to make a decision that is safe for all students. Overall, she looks forward to the potential experiences to come if the program is approved for this fall.

“I am just looking forward to going to another country; I’ve really never left the U.S.,” McNeilly said. “I’m just excited to see how different countries structure their education.”

Looking forward, Regulska encourages students to stay informed about study abroad opportunities and plan ahead by speaking to advisors.

“We look forward to having more opportunities for connecting with each other, learning and creating together in person, whether on campus or around the world, as soon as it’s safe to do so,” Regulska said via email. “I encourage students to reach out to advisors in our Global Learning Hub to ask questions and learn more about programs and opportunities that are best for them for both the short and long-term.”

Student and local business employees reflect on spring break grants Healthy Davis Together distributed $75 “staycation” grants to minimize travel and support local businesses during spring break

BY LIANA MAE ATIZADO features@theaggie.org Healthy Davis Together, a partnership between UC Davis and the City of Davis that works to prevent the spread of COVID-19, offered students $75 “staycation” grants for staying in Davis during spring break. Students could redeem the grants at one of four Davis businesses that sell products in different categories: Get Active, Get Artsy, Home Improvement and Let’s Stay In. The goal of this program was to minimize travel and support local businesses during the pandemic.

The grants were given on a first-come, first-served basis. While there were originally 500 grants to be distributed, the overwhelming response from students prompted Healthy Davis Together to increase this number to 2,000.

John Christian Aguas, a fourth-year managerial economics major, received one of the grants. He used the money to buy running shoes at Fleet Feet, a local athletic store.

“I just recently got into running, so it was very useful for me to get that grant,” Aguas said. “It’s good to know that UC Davis, as a whole, cares about their students and their community.”

Aguas stated that from his perspective, the grants effectively kept students in Davis during the break. One suggestion he had for improving the program is to decrease the amount of money per grant to $50 and increase the total number of grants distributed to allow more students to participate in the program. He also suggested expanding the categories so that there would be more options to choose from and more stores that could benefit.

“I think most people would appreciate the free money, no matter the amount,” Aguas said. “Another good part about this opportunity is that it’s supporting small businesses while keeping students safe.

Having another category, maybe food, could have incentivized more people to find out more about this grant.”

Michael Prather is the manager of Fleet Feet, one of the four stores that participated in the grant program. Prather stated that the grants were a great help to Fleet Feet, especially since the store was shut down in March 2020 and did not reopen for many weeks because of COVID-19.

“The financial benefits of the program were substantial to our store and are going to make a huge difference in how we can serve the Davis community,” Prather said. “The most exciting part of the week for us was feeling like we made so many new friends and got to help so many new people.”

Since the store reopened last spring, they have gradually built back their customer base and are seeking out new customers. This effort was aided by the grants, according to Prather.

“Many students had never visited our store and had no idea about the products we carry, services we provide and running groups that are part of our store,” Prather said. “The grants allowed us to reach this new audience.”

He described the grant program as a success, reporting that the store had consistent visits from students throughout the week.

“The entire Davis staff was so excited to work with students last week,” Prather said. “The students were respectful of our [COVID-19] policies and patient during a very busy week. The students brought great energy and excitement to the store.”

A row of business on F Street in Downtown Davis. (Quinn Spooner / Aggie)

Prather encouraged students to support local businesses during the pandemic, not only by shopping local, but also by understanding how local businesses can serve them. For example, Fleet Feet has regular running groups on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. and also offers training groups for people who are looking for direction in their running.

“Students can continue to support us through shopping with us, but we want them to be part of our community,” Prather said. “We would love more students to join our running groups, engage with us on social media or come experience our store.”

Jina Fahrni is the manager of The Avid Reader Bookstore, another store that participated in the program. Fahrni shared similar sentiments as Prather regarding supporting small businesses and encouraged students to take note of the unique services that local businesses have to offer. According to Fahrni, The Avid Reader established an effective online ordering system. If carried by their distributor, customers can receive most of the titles within a day or two.

“We can do just as well as Amazon, as far as speed of delivery,” Fahrni said. “It’s nice to support local businesses instead of going online and supporting Amazon, which doesn’t really get back to the community.”

Students were able to redeem the grant at either The Avid Reader or at its nearby sister toy store, Avid & Co. Fahrni stated that a total of 541 students visited the store to redeem their grants, while about 50-60 grant recipients did not redeem them.

“That’s a great increase in foot traffic for us and just business overall,” Fahrni said. “It was fun to see all the new faces coming into the store, and it was nice that they could be introduced to our establishment. It was a win-win situation.”

8 | THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

MINISERIES MAY BE SHORT, BUT THEY DELIVER IN BIG WAYS A look into why miniseries work so well and some UC Davis students’ favorite iterations of the limited series format

BY ANGIE CUMMINGS arts@theaggie.org They go by many names: miniseries, limited series or anthologies—but are universally understood to be multiple-episode series with a set end right off the bat (they are not good TV shows that were canceled too early, sorry “Freaks & Geeks” fans). It’s honestly hard to pinpoint exactly why these short-run TV shows are extremely successful and “bingeable”—you might expect people to prefer more of what they like, but I believe that the miniseries is a perfect example of quality over quantity.

The typical miniseries has a clear and concrete storyline and character development that we just don’t really see in TV anymore, as most series are drawn out far past their due dates or created with no real end goal from the get-go. Personally, my first introduction to the limited series was one that might not technically fit the definition.

However, as it was based on a play and was never intended to go past its 12 episodes, I consider “Fleabag” (2016) a miniseries. It is the perfect example of a show so well-made you might never want it to end, but when it does (on episode 6 of its second season) it makes perfect sense, and quite honestly, a season past this would feel quite forced.

Most of us are not used to the concept of a show ending when it should, since most studios will just continue to green-light season after season of a show as long as it keeps raking in money—and let’s face it, you’ll keep watching a show that you like even if it feels dead four or five seasons before it’s finally canceled because you’re loyal and might even have some hope it will get better (it won’t).

A miniseries is just like a movie, but one in

which you can get a bit more from through its exploration of multiple characters, its clearer scope of the story through time and its ability to set up more of a sense of mystery while still having the time to tie up all the loose ends. This is most likely why so many of the most popular and genuinely satisfying miniseries are based on books.

If you’re trying to retrain your tired little brain to read books again like me, I’d highly suggest finding a book through a miniseries (as I did with Showtime’s “Patrick Melrose” (2018), based on a book series of the same name). Some of the most successful miniseries of the past year have been based on books—“Queen’s Gambit,” “Normal People” and “The Undoing,” just to name a few—making it clear that these heavyhitting books are incredibly well-received as a limited series, and one film would most likely not even come close to capturing all that the novels have to offer.

Caroline Hopkins, a second-year computer science major, feels passionate about “Sharp Objects” (2018), an eerie mystery based on a novel of the same name written by Gillian Flynn (yes, the author of the infamous “Gone Girl”).

“There’s no way a movie could’ve gotten through the entire story while also maintaining all the mystery like the series did right up to the last episode,” Hopkins said.

In this instance, the miniseries format aided show-runners in cutting back and forth between present day and the main character’s childhood as she attempts to solve crimes of the past.

Creating a miniseries in place of a movie for a book is clearly the perfect solution to much of the backlash book-based films receive, as these adaptations are often accused of glazing over some incredibly important but perhaps nuanced

KATHERINE HUNG / AGGIE

aspects of the stories simply because they did not have the time.

As miniseries have been steadily gaining popularity, it is no surprise that streaming services and film franchises would jump at the chance to cash in as well. The perfect example of this comes from Marvel Studios’ current roll-out of limited series on Disney+. No matter your stance on the plethora of content that Marvel Studios churns out, there is no denying the immense success of their first miniseries “WandaVision” and the huge anticipation of all the rest of the upcoming series.

Sarah Gougeon, a second-year plant science major, is among those thoroughly satisfied with “WandaVision,” as six years was almost too long to wait for a deeper exploration of Elizabeth

Olsen’s incredibly complex and powerful character, Scarlet Witch. “[Marvel Studios] did such an amazing job of really doing a deep-dive into her trauma and backstory—something they probably would’ve messed up or glossed over in a movie,” Gougeon said.

Currently, Marvel is putting out their second series, “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and a series on the fan-favorite villain Loki is planned to come out just after this one ends. I can’t even count the rest of the miniseries Marvel has in store on one hand—all planned to set up the next onslaught of feature-length films beginning in Spring of 2022.

MINISERIES on 11

THE SNYDER CUT Zack Snyder’s cut of “Justice League” sparks more interest than the four-hour film itself

BY MUHAMMAD TARIQ arts@theaggie.org

Movie: “Crazy Stupid Love” dir. by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (2011) This 2011 classic comedy stars Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore and Emma Stone and is now streaming on Netflix. We are introduced to a dysfunctional family, who— despite being racked with cheating, divorce and betrayal—shows how familial ties often cannot be broken no matter how messy life gets. Steve Carell gives a daring and endearing performance as a wronged husband on the rebound, Emma Stone is witty and encompasses what being in your twenties is really like and Julianne Moore effortlessly plays a loving mother who screwed up at her family’s expense. As a pre-teen watching this movie, you might’ve missed the good one-liners, jokes and definitely the inappropriate innuendos that you’ll truly appreciate now as an adult and that will make you wonder how this movie is only rated PG-13. This is a must-see if you are currently an emotional college student living through a pandemic and would like to feel some childhood nostalgia.

TV Show: “Behind Her Eyes” (2021) In this six-episode Netflix series, viewers follow the lives of Louise, David and his wife Adele. Louise is a single mother who feels as if her life is passing her by and wants to reclaim a love she lost. David is a psychiatrist who seems far too keen on controlling the actions and mental state of his wife Adele. On the surface, Adele is the perfect wife but there seems to be something dark and broken hiding behind her beautiful face. When all three of their paths collide and interconnect, scenes of betrayal, forbidden love and secrets slowly unravel. There’s this gentle darkness about the show, like you are always waiting for the sinister truth to be revealed. There’s a blossoming relationship between two adulterers, an unexpected friendship between Louise and Adele and a twist that no one saw coming. It makes you really wonder what we all are trying to hide.

Album: “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” by Lana Del Rey (2021) The queen of alternative pop, blues, jazz and sad girl hours is back again, somehow, with her seventh studio album. It is definitely an acquired taste—I didn’t fall in love with her songs the first time I heard them. However, with the pandemic blues and life continuing to be a mess, I found myself pressing the replay button on Spotify. One of the songs I absolutely love is “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” which makes me feel like I am being transported into another era where our decisions are affected by our astrological signs, I am falling in love in a dead-beat town and there’s this lightness to life again. Another song that makes you want to just sway in the wind at a dimly-lit park on a spring night is “White Dress.” The feeling you get is that of being a waitress in a white dress during the summertime who managed to snag a rich man while also being “down at the Men in Music Business Conference.” Simply put, you don’t really know what she’s singing about but her voice, the melodies, the unexpected drops and the harmonies make it the signature Lana Del Rey experience.

Book: “Why Not Me?” by Mindy Kaling (2015) Mindy Kaling is simply quite talented. She created and starred in her hit show “The Mindy Project,” was a writer, executive producer and actor in the incredibly successful show “The Office” and has appeared in countless movies. On top of that, she is a comedian and New York Times bestselling author. In her collection of essays in “Why Not Me?” Kaling recalls her experiences growing up Indian in the very state of white Massachusetts, the cultural shock to her parents for her attending an Ivy League college for anything other than medicine or law and going on to pursue a male-dominated career as a show writer. Kaling recalls the seasons of her life, her many successes, the incomparable loss of her mother and what it feels like to be the actual representation in Hollywood that she always wanted as a child. This book is a vulnerable and witty perspective of an adult learning to adjust to her fame, discovering self-love in unexpected places and figuring out how to navigate the many messy and beautiful moments of life.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League, also referred to as the “Snyder Cut”, is the 2021 director’s cut of the 2017 American superhero film Justice League and is now streaming on HBO Max. (HBO Max)

BY JACOB ANDERSON arts@theaggie.org WarnerMedia Studios CEO Ann Sarnoff confirmed it: Zack Snyder’s cut of “Justice League” is the end of the DC’s fealty to Snyder’s drab, slo-mo-drenched, narcoleptic versions of Batman and Superman. In her words, “With [‘Justice League’] comes the completion of his trilogy.”

It’s a decision that’s hard to argue against, what with the studio nightmares of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Man of Steel” wrecking any chance the DC Universe might’ve had at living up to the colorful consistency of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Snyder’s interpretation of Superman is a monotonic Jesus-coded killer, and his interpretation of Batman is a similarly monotonic (but mercifully secular) killer. These movies did not offer exciting, heroic figures for wideeyed second-graders to worship in the way Marvel’s films so effortlessly have.

Though not the most embarrassing entry in the DC Cinematic Universe (an honor doubtlessly belonging to “Suicide Squad”), the original version of “Justice League” was an unpaced, tonally confused turd that established once and for all that no, there is no ultimate plan for the DC Cinematic Universe, and the “creative executives” steering the ship are just as, if not more, confused by what’s been happening on screen for the last 10 years than us viewers. The Snyder Cut is marginally better, at least providing a cohesively bad experience when compared to the version prostituted to Joss Whedon.

While the movie itself doesn’t merit more than a few sentences’ discussion (See if you can do it in a haiku!: need it be this long?/all is brown—hurts much to look/rather watch “The Raid”), the nature of its existence does; after taking advantage of a tragedy in the Snyder family to frankenstein Snyder’s existing film into something a bit more imitative of “The Avengers,” it appeared that WarnerMedia had locked Snyder out of the DC Universe entirely. They were (understandably) dissatisfied with the direction he’d been

taking their biggest names, and hoped to replace his approach with something a little (read: a lot) more Marvel-esque. While the broad strokes of their plan appear to be unchanged, it’s no small deviation from normalcy that the internet was somehow able to cyberbully boardrooms full of millionaires into releasing a monstrous four-hour cut of one of the least memorable films in recent history.

Sarnoff said that WarnerMedia “wanted to give Zack the opportunity to complete his vision in a four-hour movie,” and that “We’re always going to listen to our fans,” claims that appear to contradict the very move that inspired calls to “release the Snyder Cut” in the first place— the hijacking of Snyder’s original film.

Speculation abounded about whether the decision to release the Snyder Cut was a simple acquiescence to the desires of the internet, a perceived opportunity to double-dip on their investment in “Justice League,” a desire to prove that the Snyder Cut wasn’t that much better and thus that the “creative executives” at WarnerMedia had not made a gigantic mistake in butchering the version put into theaters or some combination thereof. In any case, it’s clear that WarnerMedia intends this to be a freak event, and one they don’t intend to repeat.

But the precedent set by the Snyder Cut finally seeing the light of day is one that’s far more interesting than the film itself—it seems that the internet has enabled fans to, in essence, organize and unionize against studios. Never before have fans been able to so efficiently and synchronously shout their desires into the ears of Hollywood money, and the effects make it seem likely that this model, established by the release of the Snyder Cut, is eligible for repetition. A very funny thing to consider indeed.

While the cut itself may be pointless and boring, its existence appears to hint at newfound power for legions of internet denizens. Sarnoff says she’s “very disappointed in the fans that have chosen to go to that negative place with regard to DC, with regard to some of our executives,” referring of course to certain pro-Snyder factions online. It seems her job may get much harder.

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021 | 9

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

Answer to previous puzzle 04/01/21

crossword

Answer to previous puzzle 04/01/21

10 | THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

IMMIGRANTS HELD IN ICE DETENTION CENTERS FACE HIGHER RISKS OF COMPLICATIONS DUE TO COVID-19 INFECTION Of the 529 individuals detained by ICE that participated in the study, 42.5% had at least one chronic health condition and 20.9% experienced a disruption in their healthcare

BY FRANCHESKA TORRES science@theaggie.org According to a recent study by UC Davis, immigrants detained in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities are at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 due to underlying health conditions. Dr. Caitlin Patler, an assistant professor of sociology at UC Davis, was the lead author of the study alongside Altaf Saadi, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

The motivation behind the study was the death of Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia on May 6, 2020. He was the first person in ICE custody to die from COVID-19, according to Patler. ICE reported that 4,444 detainees out of 22,580 in their detention facilities were infected with COVID-19 between February 2020 and August 2020, according to the study.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there is no information available to the public on clinical characteristics that could assist in detecting the health conditions of the detainees or if they are more prone to contract COVID-19.

To determine who will be most at risk, the researchers examined a systematic cross-sectional health survey from 2013-2014 of adult immigrants detained in California to collect information on any chronic conditions, lack of healthcare and sociodemographic characteristics that would cause major consequences when testing positive for COVID-19.

“Understanding detained immigrants’ health profiles is vital to decision-making on the part of policymakers, public health professionals, legal advocates and others seeking to stop the spread of COVID-19, reducing morbidity and mortality among detained immigrants and minimizing impact on local healthcare resources,” Patler said.

The results of the survey were that 42.5% of detained immigrants had at least one chronic health condition, 15.5% had multiple and 20.9% of the 529 detained experienced a disruption in their healthcare, according to Patler. This indicated that a large number of immigrants who were detained would be in danger of facing severe outcomes when exposed to the virus.

“I was alarmed to see the high prevalence of chronic health conditions in the study,” Palter said. “We know that prisons, jails and detention centers are bad for health. Our results, combined with that fact, raise serious questions about whether it is ethical or humane to detain people indefinitely under civil law.”

The survey also revealed that 95.6% of individuals in Patler’s study had access to stable housing in the U.S., which is critical for their chances to be released from detention centers. For immigrants that come to the U.S. without being detained by ICE, the health of their children is still affected. Erin Hamilton, an associate professor of sociology at UC Davis, studies immigrant health and commented on the differences in health between immigrants and U.S.-born citizens.

“So the big pattern of immigrant health that’s really interesting is immigrants on average in the U.S. tend to have better health outcomes than U.S.-born members of the same national background,” Hamilton said.

In her research on the U.S.-Mexico migration, there is a

CATHY TANG / AGGIE common pattern that children born in the U.S. often have worse health than their parents who were born in Mexico and migrated to the U.S. This has been seen in European, Caribbean and Asian immigrants as well and is often contradictory to popular belief because immigration is thought to be a difficult venture, according to Hamilton.

“Losing your comfort, language familiarity, networks, the place that you grew up… all of those things are really hard,” Hamilton said.

Despite that, Hamilton in her research continues to see worse health in the next generation of immigrants in comparison to their parents. One possible explanation for this is that individuals who decide to immigrate are different from those who do not.

Immigration is very difficult because of all the costs involved and is something that people tend to do proactively in order to improve their lives, according to Hamilton. People who are willing to take a risk and face hardship are more likely to be more motivated, ambitious and hopeful, and these qualities may indicate that they are in good mental and physical health, according to Hamiliton.

“Immigration is not randomly sampling from the population in Mexico, it is selecting a particular group of people [who] tend

to be healthy, and their children are not selected in the same way,” Hamilton said.

By the second generation of immigrants, the characteristics exhibited by their parents do not necessarily directly transfer.

Instead, some children are motivated and some are not. Other factors in reduced health are the culture of the U.S. which includes fast food, smoking, drugs, lack of exercise and discrimiantion against immigrants, according to Hamilton. There is also the possibility that immigrants are comparing the U.S. to where they immigrated from and know they are improving their life, while their children do not have a similar comparison for the U.S. While there is evidence of health differences between immigrants who are in detention centers and immigrants who are not, there is yet to be research done on how COVID-19 affects detained immigrants versus the children of immigrants. However, the primary concern is how ICE detention centers are jeopardizing the health of immigrants coming to the U.S., according to Palter.

“Our study makes clear how harmful detention can be for health and underscores [the] need to find alternatives to detention now, and keep it that way after the pandemic ends too,” Patler said.

IN ITS SIXTH YEAR, UC DAVIS GLOBAL TEA INITIATIVE CONTINUES SHARING TEA AND HISTORY The founding director and a panelist discuss holding annual colloquium online and the versatility of their research through tea

KIYOMI WATSON / AGGIE

BY KATIE DEBENEDETTI features@theaggie.org The Global Tea Initiative (GTI), the first broad-based program for tea research in the world, is now in its sixth year at UC Davis. Even through the pandemic, the initiative has found a way to continue hosting their annual colloquium and has even expanded to a two-part event with over 30 speakers in 2021.

In 2012, Katherine Burnett, the initiative’s founding director, became the chairperson of the Department of East Asian Studies at UC Davis.

After a somewhat unexpected conversation with a colleague, Burnett decided to pursue institutionalizing the study of tea to increase awareness of the East Asian studies department.

“One thing led to another, including a chance meeting with a collector in the area who collects Japanese art [...] over dim sum, at which I happened to bring a bunch of little teapots and things that look like teapots,” Burnett said. “In the middle of this lunch, the gentleman, Darrell

Corti, [...] picked up one of the little teapots, and he said, ‘Catherine, what I don’t understand is why does UC Davis not study tea?’”

Burnett saw UC Davis as the perfect place to pursue the study of tea because it is a channel to learning more about many other topics.

“You literally can study tea from almost any different perspective,” Burnett said. “You can study the science, you can study the plant, [...] you can study the literature in China, Japan, Korea, other places in India, literature and songs that are written that engage tea and talk about people’s lives. The list goes on and on.”

Once Burnett shared the idea to begin a tea research group at UC Davis with her provost at the time and the deans of the East Asian studies and art history departments, she was given seed grant funds and within six months of beginning her research, the initiative had gained a lot of attention. Burnett said that the new development officer, Assistant Dean Charlene Madison, approached her about how they could further the research in hopes of eventually institutionalizing GTI.

They began holding yearly colloquia to bring awareness to the initiative, with a different theme each year that allowed GTI to explore tea from a different perspective. Held on Jan. 21, 2021, this year’s colloquium was called “The Stories We Tell: Myths, Legends and Anecdotes about Tea.” Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced the colloquium to move completely online, GTI was able to have over 30 presenters on Zoom, making it a jam-packed day of panels and discussions.

Burnett said that while it was amazing to have so many participants, attendees missed the conversational aspect of past in-person colloquia.

“At least there’s time at the lunch break or between panels for people to chat with each other and comment and network and share ideas, learn from each other and get that kind of personal engagement that you can do onsite,” Burnett said. “What everybody always says is, ‘You know what I’d like the most: I’d love the opportunity to meet other people and talk about this.’ The students love the opportunity—and the industry members love the opportunity—to network.”

In response to this feedback, GTI decided to plan a second virtual event for this year, called “Talking about Tea: Myths, Legends and Anecdotes,” to allow for further discussion of the research presented at this year’s colloquium.

This event will be held over Zoom on April 23 from 3-5 p.m. and will be more of a casual, conversational event. Beforehand, various prerecorded presentations from the January event and newly recorded presentations will be posted on GTI’s website for attendees to pre-screen.

One of the January panels that will be available online is a roundtable about tea in 17th century British culture. Hosted by UC Davis English professor Frances Dolan, this panel includes four graduate students—Ben Fond, Grace Hayes, Mikhaila Redovian and Himali Thakur—who offer presentations on various topics, from poetry and early writing about tea to the creation of spaces for consuming tea and a comparison of tea plantations in Assam today to the tea gardens in London in the 17th and 18th centuries.

According to Dolan, she first became involved with GTI as a tea drinker and attendee of past colloquia, but when the colloquium went virtual this year, she saw an opportunity to involve the graduate students in her global consumption

seminar, which has a unit focused on tea.

“Once the seminar began, I asked students if they’d like to conduct some of their research on tea and present it for the symposium,” Dolan said via email. “We were able to film their presentations just after our seminar discussions about tea. Then they fielded questions ‘synchronously’ [during the colloquium in January]. As it turned out, doing it virtually was actually great for grad students early in their careers because we had a bit more control of the timing.”

According to Dolan, she knew she wanted to discuss 17th century British culture because that was when tea and coffee first came into the English diet, and many parts of British culture at the time could be explored through the consumption and discussion of tea.

“While coffeehouses excluded women, tea quickly became associated with women who presided over tea tables in their own homes,” Dolan said via email. “So you had, at first, gendered spheres: men drinking coffee in public coffeehouses, which were also hubs of news exchange and political intrigue, and women drinking tea at home with more intimate circles of friends.”

The beginning of trade relations between Britain, the East Indies and India were also traceable through studying tea, according to Dolan.

“One of the first references to tea in English texts is a poem dedicated to Queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of King Charles II, who supposedly brought a trunk of tea with her from Portugal and popularized tea drinking,” Dolan said via email. “As part of her marriage settlement, she also brought Great Britain trading rights in the East Indies and India—trade routes that would encourage the English production and consumption of tea (among other things).

I think that the [17th] century association of tea with women and private table talk haunts the use of the word ‘tea’ to mean gossip now.”

Presentations from Dolan’s students and their roundtable question-and-answer session can be found on the GTI website, as can many other panels that will be discussed at the upcoming event on April 23. To preregister for the event or view the panels from this year’s colloquium, visit GTI’s website.

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021 | 11

POLICESYMPOSIUM

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Citing the aftermaths of the 1965 Watts Rebellion and the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, Arasasingham mentioned how solutions to campus safety exist if a similar model to the solutions to both uprisings is followed. The solutions that resulted from both events called for an investment in basic needs instead of overpolicing, according to Arasasingham.

“By the end of these symposium discussions, we have either the opportunity to be a mirror reflecting the failed status quo policies and thinkings that have guided racialized overpolicing for decades, or [we have] a window into a new and transformative view of campus safety that breaks from our past and lights the way to our future,” Arasasingham said.

Chodur added how most of the student position is “overwhelmingly abolitionist.”

“This is not a radical position, this is not an uninformed position,” Chodur said. “Our stance is informed by the lived experiences of our community and by rigorous scholarship performed by faculty at our institution.”

She further mentioned how the UC system adopted a new framework which examined basic needs beyond food and housing for students to succeed academically. Chodur called for the UC to approach a similar idea to campus safety to see what needs to be changed so all students feel safe and secure.

Riley and Waters provided a list of student demands, which included policy changes regarding UCPD policing, and safety and budget reallocation to address student needs like combatting student homelessness, food security, mental health services and more.

They further cited how the UC campuses spent $136 million on policing alone in the 20192020 school year despite other programs going unfunded. They called for a reduction in the number of officers by at least 40%, the elimination of mutual aid between municipal and state police and shared governance over campus operations between faculty and students.

Riley mentioned how despite many attempts of state and local programs to reform the police department through body cameras, anti-bias training and more, none can get at the roots of policing as it is an “inherently oppressive institution that must be abolished.”

Riley referred to Graduate Center Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who has emphasized protection through life-affirming institutions.

“Building life-affirming institutions at the UC looks like investing in students’ basic needs: Providing housing for all students, creating institutions that believe and support survivors, increas[ing] recruitment and retention efforts for those most marginalized [and] challenging notions of criminality, power and justice,” Riley said. “In the upcoming months, the UC has a chance to put this theory into practice, to lead the nation in reimagining campus safety, to repair harm that silencing and systemic racism has inflicted on our communities of Black, Indigenous and people of color, and to build a university [that] truly allows its students, staff and faculty to thrive.”

Liz Halimah, the associate vice provost of Student and Equity Affairs at the UC Office of the President, shared prospective campus proposals to re-imagine campus safety and security. Some campuses are thinking of creating mental health police/crisis teams for wellness checks or crisis response, having students serve as community

service officers, introducing public safety officers, using data to better inform resource allocation and de-emphasizing enforcement of minor traffic violations.

The proposals have also included reconciliation methods, such as UCPD outreach to historically marginalized communities, acknowledging past harms and trauma and integrating campus anti-racism initiatives.

Halimah shared that there are undergraduate and graduate students who already serve on police advisory boards and campus safety task forces, but the hope is to further engage students through town halls, focus groups, personal security training and task forces.

Further faculty and student discussion touched on reconciliation, accountability and data transparency, as well as the current and future roles of police and non-police.

Jack Clarke Jr., the chair of the Task Force on Campus Safety at UC Riverside, commented on the re-examination and re-assigning roles of campus police.

“The concept of policing should be more [of] a movement of community and in this case, campus safety overall,” Clarke Jr. said. “That would require considering and implementing a series of campus elements that could address mental health concerns, address people who are simply in crisis [and] address situations where force is not being used. The [UC] Riverside Campus is considering and making efforts to create a department that reflects those concepts.”

Martin Reed, the assistant vice chancellor for Student Life and Residence Education at UC Merced addressed the UCMPD’s role in helping to address Title IX cases and helping to deal with students of concern, stating that the removal of the campus police could be harmful.

“They’re not perfect, but I prefer them over Merced City and Merced County police,” said Reed.

Nicole Green, the executive director of CARE and the director of Counseling and Psychological Services at UCLA, touched on stigmatization and criminalization of mental illness at the UC and the role the police play.

“What has happened is that police have been used in a lot of ways to sort of mitigate and respond to mental health crises,” Green said.

“When UCPD is often called, the assessment is rudimentary in a lot of ways, restricted to a few basic questions and officers can’t really go on in a more sophisticated way like a mental health clinician [could]. There is no real intervention being offered at the moment beyond just deescalating a crisis and maybe a referral.”

Kerby Lynch, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and the co-chair of the Independent Advisory Board, mentioned personal incidents with the UCPD and called attention to Black student lives lost due to hostile campus climate at Berkeley, specifically.

“The role of UCPD is that we have to invest in internal affairs, we have to invest in people in the department who have the actual skill-set in accountability,” Lynch said.

In the closing remarks, Drake thanked those in the discussion and highlighted how the UC is impacted by issues of our society.

“We know that [the issues discussed] also exist across the street from our campus and our broader cities and we have to work in ways to address these issues of oppression and systemic racism that exist throughout our society,” Drake said.

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“We were able to move to a 50% occupancy, so to make sure that we don’t go over it, tickets are only allowed to sell at 50%,” Muro said. “We’re also taking time after each movie to make sure everything is clean.”

Muro explained that reopening in general has been a welcome step forward.

“As far as getting the opportunity to reopen,

it’s great—not just for employees but for customers as well,” Muro said. “They’re able to get popcorn and have the experience of going to a movie theater. We have a lot of regulars and we appreciate them willing to come in, and we’re happy to be able to provide them with this experience.”

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“I am faculty in the Department of Emergency Medicine, so I have been working on the front lines of COVID since the beginning,” Jarman said. “My job is necessarily reactive and we treat sick patients, so the advent and approval of the vaccine has felt like the first proactive thing we can do to try [to] prevent covid infections, aside of course from masking and social distancing, so for me it was really gratifying to be a part of something that will help prevent patients from needing me. Thankfully our department has a diversity, inclusion, and equity committee that has been spearheading efforts to connect volunteers from our department with community vaccine efforts.”

Dr. James Chenoweth, assistant professor and director of toxicology research for the UC Davis Department of Emergency Medicine, was one of the doctors who volunteered their time to the initiative.

“I wanted to help with this project specifically because our homeless population is high risk and can have difficulty accessing medical care,” Chenoweth said via email. “I also know the great work that the outreach team has been doing including mobile clinics and wanted to be a part of it.”

Chenoweth explained the challenges the volunteers experienced while participating in the project.

“We ran into some people that were resistant

to getting the vaccine,” Chenoweth said. “In some of those cases it was simply that we woke them up asking if they wanted a vaccine. Some people were initially hesitant until they saw someone else getting it and then decided that they would get it too. Finally, there were plenty of people that were really excited to get the opportunity to get vaccinated. I think the greatest challenge was just seeing what these people were going through.”

Jarman faced similar challenges as Chenoweth when administering vaccinations.

“We have experienced a fair amount of vaccine hesitancy in this community, and that has been the biggest challenge to me,” Jarman said. “As a physician and a scientist it is always challenging when patients elect not to receive potentially life-saving vaccines, but this is something we encounter regularly in the hospital as well. It’s part of our job to ‘meet patients where they are’ and understand and address their concerns. We have found that doing outreach work in preparation of vaccination efforts is helpful so that patients have time to learn about the pros and cons of getting vaccinated without being put on the spot when a clinical team is there.”

Overall, Chenoweth said, “[The patients] are such wonderful people and were very kind to us.”

As production of COVID-19 vaccines continues to increase (including that of the J&J vaccine), the hope is to continue programs like these to protect and serve the local community.

The PAB requested further information about “updated policies and training” for deescalation techniques and cultural sensitivity.

In addition to the implementation of a task force and the continuation of the annual PAB report, the university has developed an antiracism syllabus and curriculum.

According to Tull, the term “syllabus” broadly refers to a number of diversity-related initiatives undertaken during the 10 months since Floyd’s death. These include seminars, workshops, racial healing services, town halls and resources for racial trauma and mental health.

Currently, incoming freshmen are required to complete diversity, equity and inclusion training when they arrive at UC Davis. However, there is no mandatory anti-racism curriculum for students at the moment, May clarified.

Tull said that the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion recently held a meeting about making mental health and racial trauma resources more available for students, professors and staff

members who may be struggling with Derek Chauvin’s trial. The trial has featured graphic cell phone footage of Floyd’s killing and eyewitness accounts from numerous people, several of whom are underage and many of whom broke down while relating their experiences.

The Black Student Union at UC Davis said in an email that their members were unable to comment on these events. After multiple emails to ASUCD’s Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission, there was no response for comment.

May indicated that the university was considering offering resources specifically tailored to the issues raised by the trial of Derek Chauvin this month.

“The measures can only be reactive, because I think if there’s something that triggers a particular reaction, I want to respond to it, but I don’t want to be the trigger and have people react in an unhealthy way. We will respond appropriately to situations [as they arise],” May said.

CULT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2

“I remember closing the Zoom and I googled Newsong fellowship,” Individual A said. “I wasn’t finding anything. I googled fellowships on campus. I was looking and looking. A Reddit post appeared that said, ‘Warning cult on campus.

They go by Newsong, but they also labeled themselves all of these other names. They’re Shincheonji.’”

The New York Times has deemed the Shincheonji Church of Jesus (SCJ) the “most vilified church in South Korea.” Others have classified the South Korean church as a cult. The church recently also received international news coverage for its disregard of COVID-19 safety regulations, which had resulted in the rapid spread of infections throughout South Korea.

The “shadowy” church has been recruiting UC Davis students for years, starting students in a small group Bible study examining parables then moving them into larger classes, according to the three students The California Aggie spoke to. For fourth-year undergraduate Individual B, the group was appealing for its logical and nondenominational analysis of the Bible.

Individual B was first recruited during his freshman year; he was approached by two girls in front of the Segundo Dining Commons and asked to attend Bible study. He went, and it was nothing out of the ordinary. Later, he was approached at the Memorial Union which resulted in him attending another unexceptional session at Wellman Hall. Eventually, Individual B was attending Bible study and a larger theological class made up of about 15 students for nine to 12 hours a week.

Individual B said he grew skeptical as he began to notice considerable red flags. The meetings were mandatory and his friend was prevented from attending after Individual B asked if he could bring him. Recording the Zoom meetings was forbidden. When he expressed being overwhelmed with school and proposed a lighter commitment, his mentor suggested that Individual B should follow in his footsteps and drop his course load and take a fifth year.

“Finally, [my mentor] said, ‘If you really believe in God and you truly want to be in heaven, then you’ll sacrifice some of your time in school,’” Individual B said.

Despite Individual B being heavily invested in the group, they didn’t explicitly reveal their affiliation with SCJ to him.

“They never mentioned [SCJ],” Individual B said. “They would refer to, ‘The Him Who Overcomes.’ That popped up a bunch throughout the Bible study. They derived it from the last book of the Bible, Revelation.”

To Individual B, the true biblical meaning of “The Him Who Overcomes” was anybody who perseveres through hardship, rather than representing a single person as presented in their Bible study. When he searched the phrase online, he discovered a blog post about SCJ and called a fellow group member who he considered a friend to share this revelation.

Followers of SCJ believe “The Him Who Overcomes’’ to be the group’s founder Lee Manhee, according to Individual B. Man-hee, who is also known as “Chairman Lee Man-hee” and “the Promised Pastor,” was acquitted of conspiracy charges for not cooperating with COVID-19 protocols in January 2021.

On the evening after he uncovered the blog post, Individual B was invited to dinner at Thai Canteen with his mentor and his teacher. His teacher confronted Individual B about the blog post (that he had only shared with a close friend in the group) and denied any affiliation with SCJ. Like Individual B, Individual C was also drawn to attend meetings for the fellowship’s “truth-seeking” textual analysis of the Bible.

When she was recruited on the Quad during

her senior year, the organization’s name wasn’t provided. Recruiters offered the explanation that they are a new group or that they’re missionaries from all different denominations, Individual C said. Individual C, who didn’t have many friends at UC Davis, was seeking in-depth Biblical analysis.

“I always had been critical with most Biblical teachings as they were vague and only feel-good, yet I was always seeking and driven by wanting to do the right thing, which was to pursue truth,” Individual C said. “I assumed [the truth] would be found within my Christian faith because I was raised in it and had convinced myself for it to be true. So this was the perfect Bible study for me, because they taught with so much detail, with logical reasoning that pieced all their interpretations together, everything cited with a Bible verse.”

Individual C had surpassed Individual B in his studies and was regarded as a high-level member. Once she obtained this status, she said that the group revealed themselves as SCJ. Individual C said that they used logic to rationalize previous lies and manipulation tactics, referencing Schindler’s List as an example of justified deceitfulness. Individual B and Individual C both came to the conclusion that fellow members that they were confiding in were not actually UC Davis students like they had claimed.

“People pretended to be new students with you at the small group Bible studies—later you find out that they were a ‘plant’ and it was their job to make you feel welcome, ask you questions about what you thought about the lesson,” Individual C said. “I felt betrayed when they revealed afterwards that they’ve been with SCJ for like one to three years. They made it seem like it was just a fun surprise, but I honestly felt lied to, because I was.”

Individual A and Individual B both said they were able to walk away from the group without significant psychological consequences. They remain connected to their previous churches and their experience didn’t alter their core spiritual or religious beliefs. In contrast, Individual C no longer identifies as a Christian.

“I wanted to see a counselor because my faith, which I had spent all my life trying to fit and build my worldview, was ruined,” Individual C said. “I had nightmares here and there for several months.”

Individual A said that she thinks college students are especially vulnerable to forms of manipulation and deceit as they are away from their homes, experiencing the many newfound freedoms of young adulthood for the first time. There have been reports of SCJ activity at other campuses across Northern California, according to a former member of an SCJ-affiliated fellowship.

Individual A suggested that the university administration take action to protect students from harmful groups by better vetting of classroom reservations.

“Because of the fact that they were having some of this stuff inside of classrooms, I really thought that it was affiliated with the university and that it was a safe community,” Individual A said. “It does get to a point where you start to question if this is mentally beneficial for the people that they are recruiting, because if they are dropping out of school—if they are being pulled away from their families—is this something [UC Davis administration] should act on? Something that could be done is to monitor a little bit more the way that the classrooms are being used.”

Students interviewed declined to share their contact info, citing fear of harassment; Individual C said that her driver’s license was photocopied by members of the church. The California Aggie

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In addition to using miniseries for cinematicuniverse building or adapting books, they have been extremely successful in the rollout of an almost entirely unique genre: the docu-series.

Out of all the streaming services, perhaps none has been as successful in producing internetbreaking, internationally successful miniseries on historical events, crimes and tiger wranglers as Netflix. With these new kinds of series, audiences are given extended looks into what are typically some extremely serious or hard to handle topics— similar to the reasons why a miniseries for books with hard-hitting themes works so much better than a movie.

Nushi Abdullah, a second-year mechanical engineering major, recently watched HBO’s most recent docu-series, “Allen v. Farrow,” which details the controversy and sexual abuse allegations against Woody Allen involving his children with the actress Mia Farrow.

“I had more time to deeply process the

information that was thrown at me [...] the miniseries format allowed for reflection at regular intervals,” Abdullah said.

While chunking these documentaries into multiple episodes allows for deeper insights into the events, whether purposeful or just a helpful coincidence, the ability to step away from some of these extremely heavy themes definitely lets everything sink in that much more. It would be hard to imagine some of these series as one movie—the first that comes to mind are the huge revelations and sensitive content in the series on Jeffery Epstein, “Filthy Rich.”

Whether the rise in popularity of miniseries can be attributed to a collectively shortened attention span developed over the past few years or a general impatience for drawn-out TV series, they are a great way to successfully tell a story with fully developed characters no matter the genre, form of source content or weight of the themes explored.

12 | THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021

THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE

SPORTS Aggies fall in ranked clash No. 9 Eastern Washington outlasts No. 11 UC Davis in a matchup with major playoff implications

BY OMAR NAVARRO sports@theaggie.org In a game that could be considered make it or break it in terms of the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs, the UC Davis Aggies fell to the Eastern Washington Eagles, 32-22. With the Eagles ranked No. 9 and the Aggies a bit behind at No.11, the winner of this matchup would be set up with a great opportunity to take one of the five at-large bids for this year’s playoffs.

In the first UC Davis Athletics game with fans allowed inside, a socially distanced crowd of 1720 people set foot in UC Davis Health Stadium for this prime FCS matchup. A clear and sunny day made it for a perfect football setting, as the Aggies felt refreshed to have fans back for the first time this spring season.

“It was so much better,” said redshirt freshman quarterback Trent Tompkins after the game. “Hearing people yell and stuff and boo, it was awesome. Versus Cal Poly and Idaho State, it got awkward sometimes just sitting on the sideline. I stood there in the first quarter just looking around and I was confused for a second. So yeah, it was awesome.”

With Eastern Washington receiving the ball to start the game, the Eagles had a chance to show their flexibility on offense, running a 13-play drive of both runs and passes. Led by senior quarterback Eric Barriere, who has received some National Football League (NFL) buzz, Eastern Washington drove the ball down to the UC Davis 10 yard line. A strong stop by the Aggie defense that has impressed thus far, however, held the Eagles to just a field goal, as they opened up the scoring of the day.

After a penalty by the Aggies on their offensive drive set them back, Eastern Washington took over once again on offense. Firing on all cylinders, Barriere completed consecutive 20-yard passes to wide receiver Freddie Roberson and eventually found Anthony Stell Jr. for a short touchdown after UC Davis’ Jaylin White was called for pass interference. With a 10-0 lead and back to back 10+ play drives, the Aggies knew they would have their hands full the rest of the game with the high powered Eagles offense.

Looking to respond before the game got out of hand, the Aggies found a bit of a groove on offense. A pass by junior starting quarterback Hunter Rodrigues to senior wide receiver Khris Vaughn for 39 yards gave them some life and they were knocking on the door of the endzone. After three plays in a goal situation, UC Davis was unable to punch it in, but got down to the one-yard line. With a decision to make, head coach Dan Hawkins elected to go for it on fourth down. In a huge play that would eventually loom large in the grand scheme of things, Eastern Washington got the stop and forced the turnover, leaving the Aggies empty handed after that impressive drive.

It was a big blow for UC Davis, as a touchdown would have put them right back in it. Instead, it was still 10-0 and Eastern Washington now had a chance to increase their lead heading into the second quarter. But, after a pass by Barriere across the middle came off of his receiver’s arms, the ball shot in the air and redshirt freshman Jehiel Budgett was able to make the diving play to get under it and secure the interception. The play was exactly what the Aggies needed. With great field position near midfield and the crowd active, UC Davis had an opportunity to respond. But, after gaining a first down on the first play of the drive, the Aggies were unable to get another, and punted the ball back to the Eagles. In a drive that took a total of 22 plays, more than nine minutes and almost the length of the field, Eastern Washington was able to convert two fourth down plays and three third-downs to punch in yet another touchdown. After a failed twopoint conversion, the game now stood at 16-0 Eagles.

Another three-and-out by UC Davis marked the end of the half, with a lot of ground to make up. With the ball back to start the

second half, they needed a big play to be the catalyst and avoid the game getting out of hand. They were able to get just that, as a 44-yard strike from Rodrigues to sophomore tight end McCallan Castles put them on the board for the first time all afternoon. A successful twopoint conversion by the Aggies now made it a one possession game, 16-8.

With the crowd of over 1700 getting loud, UC Davis was able to get a stop on defense and get the ball back in just 2 minutes and 29 seconds. They were feeling some momentum, but were unable to capitalize and punted it away. After two more punts by both sides— one for each—Eastern Washington got the ball back with their eight point lead still intact. All it took was one play to extend their lead, as Barriere fired a deep shot down the right sideline to redshirt senior Talolo Limu Jones for 77-yards and the touchdown. This was a huge blow for the Aggies, as they now faced a 22-8 deficit with 6 minutes and 40 seconds remaining in the third quarter.

A change at the quarterback slot saw Tompkins come in to add another dimension to the offense. With his ability to throw and run it himself, UC Davis was able to use his threat to an advantage. A 23yard rush by freshman receiver C.J. Hutton gave the Aggies some life, and Tompkins was able to find junior receiver Carson Crawford in the endzone for the score. With it being a one-possession game once again, they hoped for another stop and a chance to tie or possibly take the lead.

Entering the fourth quarter with the Eagles on top by a score of 22-15, they needed a response to the Aggie momentum. All it took was one play to start the fourth quarter, as Roberson was able to find some room and make a move to run in for a touchdown from 42 yards out. Now a 29-15 game, time was running thin for UC Davis.

Looking for something to happen, the Aggies hurried it up on offense

UC Davis wide receiver Khris Vaughn (9) carries the ball to reach the 1 yard line during the first home game of the season against LeHigh (Justin Han / Aggie)

and were able to put together an 11-play, 81 yard touchdown drive in just under four minutes. A Tompkins touchdown run now made it 29-22 with 11 minutes and 11 seconds remaining in the ballgame.

As Eastern Washington looked to burn out the clock, they were able to use their rhythm on offense to set up a nice offensive drive. Barriere had his offense rolling, but a nice third down stop by the Aggies set up the Eagles with a decision to make from the UC Davis 28 yard line. That was, until the referees decided to review the previous tackle made by senior linebacker Cole Hansen. The officials looked for targeting, a rule put in place to ensure the safety of the athletes and try to eliminate dangerous collisons. It was a hard play to call, but after a lengthy review that took a couple of minutes, the referees determined that it was in fact targeting, ejecting Hansen and giving the Eagles another 15 yards and an automatic first down. It was a huge blow to UC Davis’ chances as the penalty gave Eastern Washington the chance to kick a field goal and go up 10 points with about 5 minutes and 28 seconds remaining.

“Every time we tried to get a little momentum going in the second half, they countered. So give them a lot of credit. They did a nice job.” Hawkins said.

The Aggies needed something quick, but with multiple running plays and short passes, they were burning away crucial time. After getting down to the Eastern Washington eight-yard line, Hawkins elected to go for it and failed, effectively bringing an end to the game.

All it took was the Eagles to run one more first down, ending the game and leaving Davis, CA with a 32-22 win.

“They’re a good football team,” Hawkins said postgame. “They made plays when they had to and you got to give them a lot of credit for that. [They had] good quarterback play and were able to move it and convert and eat up clock, particularly in the first half.”

The UC Davis passing game never really got into a good flow, as they only attempted 225 passes and starter Rodgrigues only had 14 attempts himself. On the other hand, they were once again run heavy, running it 42 times for 218 yards, with freshman Lan Larison gaining a team-high 81. Larison was a nice replacement for junior star running back Ulonzo Gilliam, who missed the last two games for the Aggies and could be seen with a walking boot on the sideline.

In the end, the Aggies’ inability to score on two of their four redzone possessions ended up being a major factor in the game’s outcome.

On the Eastern Washington side, Barriere showed why he is an NFL prospect, throwing for 392 yards and three touchdowns while also running for 43 yards. He was not sacked once, as his mobility and elusiveness let him evade UC Davis rushers on multiple occasions. His receiver Limu-Jones had a game high 10 receptions for 154 yards and two touchdowns and caused problems for the Aggies all game long. Holding the ball for 36 minutes and 6 seconds, they were in control and negated UC Davis from getting anything going on offense.

After Cal Poly football decided to opt-out of the rest of their season, this game marked the end of the regular season for the Aggies.

With a record of 3-2 and close losses to two highly ranked teams— Eastern Washington and Weber State—the possibility of an at-large playoff berth is not over just yet. But, they must receive a lot of help from other scores for that to happen so for now, they must wait until April 18 to see if their season will continue. If this does in fact mark the end of the road for UC Davis, there were a lot of positives to take away from this very different year, as their difficult journey brought a lot of positives for the rising program.

“I thought we did a lot of positive things this year,” Hawkins said. “We came back against Idaho State, we came back against Idaho, won on the road. Battled Weber, came back even after they came back. There’s a lot of redeemable things there we just gotta continue to capture the details and raise our standards in everything we do.”

NFL offseason in full swing As the league prepares for the NFL draft, free agency marks the beginning of a new league year

BY OMAR NAVARRO sports@theaggie.org As the National Football League (NFL) enters the second month of the offseason, all teams have begun gearing up for next fall. With free agency starting on March 17, it marked the beginning of the next chapter, with a lot of teams looking much different than before.

Because COVID-19 prevented the majority of games from having fans in attendance, the league lost a lot of revenue. This was evident in the salary cap decreasing down to $182 million for 2021, and teams had interesting decisions to make when it came to key veterans making large amounts of money, like cornerback Malcolm Butler, offensive tackle Eric Fisher, linebacker Kwon Alexander and many more. As the salary cap will recover over time, this period of free agency saw a lot more short-term deals, as players hope they can cash in at a later date.

The reigning Super Bowl Champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers were a key storyline heading into this year’s free agency, as they were set to have key contributors hit the open market. As is with many Super Bowl winners, their starters would be a hot commodity, and it was unclear how many they would be able to keep. As a way to help with the money aspect of it, starting quarterback Tom Brady signed a one year extension with the team that allowed him to create salary cap space for the Buccaneers. With this, they were able to bring back wide receiver Chris Godwin, key linebacker Lavonte David, pass-rusher Shaquill Barrett, running back Leonard Fournette, tight end Rob Gronkowski and defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. This meant that all 22 starters from the previous year will be back this upcoming season, making it the first time since 1979 a Super Bowl winning team brought back all starters on offense and defense.

As Brady prepares to run it back with the same team, his former team—the New England Patriots—decided to take a different approach to this year’s free agency. Usually known as a team that drafts their talent, they came into free agency with over $56 million to spend—and they did just that. Aside from re-signing quarterback and former MVP Cam Newton, head coach and general manager Bill Belichick gave him the weapons he was missing last year, signing the top

two free agent tight ends available, Hunter Henry and Jonnu Smith. They also signed wide receivers Nelson Agholor and Kendrick Bourne, who will be an upgrade over last year’s frustrating core. To bolster their defense, they added former Baltimore Raven Matt Judon on a four-year $56 million deal, and brought back Kyle Van Noy after he spent the past season with the Miami Dolphins.

Overall, the Patriots decided to go all in and after their disappointing season last year, they have set themselves up for no excuses next season.

Teams in the NFL have the tendency to not let great players hit the open market, but players who can have an impact are always available. A pair of high round wide receivers—Corey Davis and Curtis Samuel—both landed with teams that are needing that extra boost. Davis is joining a young New York Jets team with a new head coach, hoping to find his consistent stride. After getting selected fifth overall in the 2017, Davis had his best season last year, and is hoping to give New York the potential he has shown at times. In Samuel’s case, he joined the Washington Football team and star wide receiver Terry McLaurin as another target for a team that lacked at the No. 2 receiver spot last season. Samuel is also coming off his best year, and can be used as both a catcher and runner, adding another element to a Washington Team that won the NFC East last year.

After much talk about the possibility of both Deshaun Watson and Russell Wilson being traded, it has become evident that those moves are unlikely. With the Seattle Seahawks turning down offers for Wilson and Watson for being involved in sexual assault allegations, both star quarterbacks seem like they will stay in place for the time being.

Because of this, the Chicago Bears signed Andy Dalton, who took over for the injured Dak Prescott last season and showed some flashes of good. The former longtime Cincinnati Bengal will have a fresh start in Chicago, where he is expected to start.

The Bears have struggled for a long time in finding a franchise quarterback, but with former No. 2 pick Mitch Trubisky not being brought back, they had to start fresh. What was seen as another possible destination, the Washington Football Team decided to bring in veteran journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick into the mix to hold the spot for the time being. While it is still an open quarterback competition, Fitzpatrick gives Washington some stability for at least next season as they defend their division crown.

With Mitchell Schwartz, Richard Sherman, Antonio Brown, Jadaveon Clowney and many more intriguing names still on the market, a lot of teams might wait until after the draft to assess other needs. Like with everything else, the pandemic has changed the way the draft process is working this year. In a normal season, the NFL combine would take place first in late February, and pro days would subsequently be held shortly after. That, however, has changed this year, as the combine list of 323 was still announced. The difference between this year and others is that this year players will workout at coordinated thirdparty pro days. Rather than the big public event, how a prospect will be promoted depends on how well they do at their respective pro day and visible they are to the media.

With Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence most likely being the No. 1 pick, the rest of the draft remains to be seen. But, there was a shake up in the draft order that gave more of an indication of what kind of draft it would be.

The San Francisco 49ers made a move into the top three, as they traded away this year’s No.

AGGIE FILE

12 pick, a first rounder in 2022 and 2023, and third-round pick in 2022 for the third pick held by the Miami Dolphins. As starting quarterback Jimmy Garropolo has struggled to stay healthy, the move almost assures that San Francisco is looking towards the future at the quarterback spot.

Almost immediately after the Dolphins acquired the No. 12 pick, they flipped it and traded back up to the No. 6 pick. In exchange, Miami sent the Philadelphia Eagles an additional first round pick next year, and the No. 123 pick this year. With a possible flurry of quarterbacks in the top five, Miami could be in prime position to acquire an elite prospect like offensive tackle Penei Sewell or tight end Kyle Pitts.

With so many questions remaining between now and the NFL Draft and many veterans still available, free agency is far from over. The league is entering uncharted territory when it comes to the draft process, but with so much uncertainty when it comes to who is going where in the draft, the interest remains high even two months after the Super Bowl.