10
Today’s weather A.M. fog High 60 Low 45 Forecast Yet again, dense fog will dampen you on your way to your morning class, before yielding to clearer skies. However, Thanksgiving will be another story. Good thing classes are out for the day! Nothing worse than sitting in class sopping wet from the rain. Alex Neigher, atmospheric science major Aggie Forecasting Team Chance of rain Rain likely Thursday High 57 Low 43 Wednesday High 58 Low 46 Ever heard of Buy Nothing Day? It is celebrated on “Black Friday” and is a day of protest against the consumerism observed by social activists. Instead of shopping, relax and do nothing for the economy and for yourself. Check out www. adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd to learn more. Amanda Nguyen SERVING THE UC DAVIS CAMPUS AND COMMUNITY SINCE 1915 www.theaggie.org VOLUME 130, NUMBER 119 TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2011 5 to 7 p.m. in Freeborn Hall. Doors open at 4:30pm. Email [email protected] more information. If you think you are a cultured, cerebral human being who has an opinion and a way with words, contact [email protected] to apply. TOWN HALL WITH KATEHI TONIGHT Call for columnist! Students take back the Quad ASUCD Chief Justice resigns during impeachment Occupy Davis has moved, but still standing in Central Park Stop Online Piracy Act is in amendment process Monday’s rally draws in thousands Chief Justice Rudy Ornelas finds allegations false, unsupported Bill eliminates foreign rogue websites By MAX RUSSER Aggie News Writer Current Chief Justice Rudy Ornelas is resigning from office in the midst of being indicted by members of the ASUCD Senate for allegations pertaining to remaining impartial in office. Ornelas gave his letter of resignation to ASUCD President Adam Thongsavat stating that he would resign by Nov. 23 or when Thongsavat had found a replacement Chief Justice. In his letter Ornelas stated that the current slate process politics is a major factor in his resignation. “The allegations against Rudy have nothing to do with the slate process or politics, instead I think it’s about his own actions,” said ASUCD President Adam Thongsavat. “Rudy came from a very slate oriented background as a former member of LEAD which is no longer a party.” By ANGELA SWARTZ Aggie City Editor The Occupy Davis movement is still active in Central Park, tents included, despite recent events on the UC Davis campus. Occupy did temporarily move to a different location in Central Park to comply with City of Davis’ demands. Occupy Davis originally set up tents in the park on Oct. 15 and have since continued camping. Last Thursday, city staff brought protesters a notice of changes to make to the encampment, including fire concerns due to dry grass underneath the tents, health permits for cooking, removing pets and signs on oak trees in the park and other stipulations. Initial reports said police came to take down Central Park’s tents Thursday morning, but city staff actually delivered the notice. Lieutenant Paul Doroshov of the Davis Police Department clarified that city police are not involved in any decisions made for the future of the encampment. According to Deputy City Manager Kelley Stachowicz, the most pressing issue for the city was that the group’s two tarps needed to be replaced with a fire-resistant one as soon as possible. The group deadline was set for Monday and it did buy a fire-marshal- approved fire retardant tarp last Friday. “It’s a balancing act between lawful assembly and public safety maintenance,” Stachowicz said. “We did need to do some maintenance on the grass [Monday], so Occupy Davis did agree to move their tents temporarily for this purpose.” The group said tents will be periodically moved around to avoid doing permanent damage to the grass. Occupy Davis participant and junior political science major Artem Raskin said the tarp did not have an official stamp of approval from the fire marshal, but is made of fire retardant vinyl. At a meeting Occupy Davis had with Councilmember Stephen Souza last Thursday night, several occupiers suggested that fire safety was being used by the city as an excuse to begin undermining the occupation. “Souza failed to promise that the city would allow the occupation to continue if the city demands were addressed,” Raskin said. “Nevertheless, Occupy Davis is moving to address the demands. Counting a 10 percent discount provided by the seller to help out the movement, the tarp cost $587.” Aaron Long, who graduated with a degree in sociology in 2011 and who has been visiting the occupation, said he found the Occupy Davis protest to be the most peaceful occupation he’s seen in the country. Councilmember Souza said he has been dropping in at Central Park everyday to reach out to the protesters and reach a collaborative solution. “We respect the right of free speech, but we also respect the laws on the books,” Souza said. “We are requiring that the Occupy protesters get a health permit for cooking and other stipulations. Unlike the university, Central Park is a public space, so protesters can By CLAIRE TAN Aggie Staff Writer On Oct. 26, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) proposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The bill has bipartisan support from 25 cosponsors and is supported by the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Pictures Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and others. “There are four tracks to the bill and not all four are controversial,” said a judicial aid for the House Judiciary Committee, in which Smith is chair. “In [1997], there was a bill called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was the first time Congress addressed the issue of infringing websites because the internet was relatively new at the time.” According to SOPA, the four tracks expand existing authority for law enforcement and provide a mechanism for rights holders to protect their internet protocol (IP) rights. One would need to take out a court order and have a judge determine whether the website is engaging in illegal activity. “But it didn’t touch any foreign websites,” the aid said. “Now we are in this global marketplace and there are foreign websites dedicated to stealing American intellectual property and selling it.” Foreign websites that steal intellectual property, sell it and profit off it are known as rogue websites because consumers come across them unassumingly. “The theft of America’s intellectual property costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs,” said Smith in a statement. “Rogue websites not only Irisa Tam / Aggie Madison Dunitz / Aggie Occupy Davis protesters, who have continued to occupy Central park despite recent events at Davis, temporarily moved their tents on Monday for requested city maintenance. City asks movement to comply with city codes Jasna Hodzic / Aggie Thousands filled the Quad Monday to rally against the use of pepper spray on student protesters. See OCCUPY, page 4 See ORNELAS, page 2 See PIRACY, page 4 by HANNAH STRUMWASSER, BECKY PETERSON, and ANGELA SWARTZ Aggie Editors The UC Davis Quad has been reoccupied following a rally of around 5,000 people on Monday at noon. The rally was held in solidarity with non-violent student protesters who were pepper sprayed during a protest on Friday. The East Quad was completely covered in students, alumni and community members listening to speeches made by students and faculty. News vans parked near the fountain, and media outlets rushed to broadcast. Slow internet stifled the KDVS 90.3 live stream. Twitter updates and text messages took minutes to load. “The whole world is watching Davis,” a speaker said during the General Assembly. Speeches were followed by a formal consensus-based meeting, in which participants voted in support of holding a general strike on Nov. 28. A second proposal, to “declare campus as an autonomous sanctuary space based on international historic model” and to disband campus police, did not pass. Monday evening, students joined together to build a 15 foot tall dome and reoccupy the Quad with tents. Student speakers described their personal feelings on Friday’s police actions and encouraged the audience to continue to be non- violent. “They started pulling my friends from the circle, and throwing them on the ground and putting them in handcuffs and dragging them away,” said senior mechanical engineering major David Buscho. “At that point, there was no more encampment, there was no more stuff there. We were just kids, sitting down in a circle singing.” First-hand experiences of being pepper sprayed garnered an See QUAD, page 2

November 22, 2011

Embed Size (px)

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Cal Aggie Newspaper

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Page 1: November 22, 2011

Today’s weatherA.M. fogHigh 60Low 45

ForecastYet again, dense fog will dampen you on your way to your morning class, before yielding to clearer skies. However, Thanksgiving will be another story. Good thing classes are out for the day! Nothing

worse than sitting in class sopping wet from the rain.Alex Neigher, atmospheric science major

Aggie Forecasting Team

Chance of rain Rain likely

Thursday

High 57Low 43

Wednesday

High 58Low 46

Ever heard of Buy Nothing Day? It is celebrated on “Black Friday” and is a day of protest against the consumerism observed by social activists. Instead of shopping, relax and do nothing for

the economy and for yourself. Check out www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd to learn more.

Amanda Nguyen

serving the uc davis campus and communit y since 1915

www.theaggie.orgvolume 130, number 119 tuesday, november 22, 2011

5 to 7 p.m. in Freeborn Hall. Doors open at 4:30pm.Email [email protected] more information.

If you think you are a cultured, cerebral human being who has an opinion and a way with words, contact [email protected] to apply.

TowN Hall wITH KaTEHI ToNIGHT

Call for columnist!

Students take back the Quad

ASUCD Chief Justice resigns during impeachment

Occupy Davis has moved, but still standing in Central Park

Stop Online Piracy Act is in amendment process

Monday’s rally draws in thousands

Chief Justice Rudy Ornelas finds allegations false, unsupported

Bill eliminates foreign rogue websites

By MAX RUSSERAggie News Writer

Current Chief Justice Rudy Ornelas is resigning from office in the midst of being indicted by members of the ASUCD Senate for allegations pertaining to remaining impartial in office. Ornelas gave his letter of resignation to ASUCD President Adam Thongsavat stating that he would resign by Nov. 23 or when Thongsavat had found a replacement

Chief Justice. In his letter Ornelas stated that the current slate process politics is a major factor in his resignation. “The allegations against Rudy have nothing to do with the slate process or politics, instead I think it’s about his own actions,” said ASUCD President Adam Thongsavat. “Rudy came from a very slate oriented background as a former member of LEAD which is no longer a party.”

By ANGELA SWARTZAggie City Editor

The Occupy Davis movement is still active in Central Park, tents included, despite recent events on the UC Davis campus. Occupy did temporarily move to a different location in Central Park to comply with City of Davis’ demands. Occupy Davis originally set up tents in the park on Oct. 15 and have since continued camping. Last Thursday, city staff brought protesters a notice of changes to make to the encampment, including fire concerns due to dry grass underneath the tents, health permits for cooking, removing pets and signs on oak trees in the park and other stipulations. Initial reports said police came to take down Central Park’s tents Thursday morning, but city staff actually delivered the notice. Lieutenant Paul Doroshov of the Davis Police Department clarified that city police are not involved in any decisions made for the future of the encampment. According to Deputy City

Manager Kelley Stachowicz, the most pressing issue for the city was that the group’s two tarps needed to be replaced with a fire-resistant one as soon as possible. The group deadline was set for Monday and it did buy a fire-marshal-approved fire retardant tarp last Friday. “It’s a balancing act between lawful assembly and public safety maintenance,” Stachowicz said. “We did need to do some maintenance on the grass [Monday], so Occupy Davis did agree to move their tents temporarily for this purpose.” The group said tents will be periodically moved around to avoid doing permanent damage to the grass. Occupy Davis participant and junior political science major Artem Raskin said the tarp did not have an official stamp of approval from the fire marshal, but is made of fire retardant vinyl. At a meeting Occupy Davis had with Councilmember Stephen Souza last Thursday night, several occupiers suggested that fire safety was being used by the city as an

excuse to begin undermining the occupation. “Souza failed to promise that the city would allow the occupation to continue if the city demands were addressed,” Raskin said. “Nevertheless, Occupy Davis is moving to address the demands. Counting a 10 percent discount provided by the seller to help out the movement, the tarp cost $587.” Aaron Long, who graduated with a degree in sociology in 2011 and who has been visiting the occupation, said he found the Occupy Davis protest to be the most peaceful occupation he’s seen in the country. Councilmember Souza said he has been dropping in at Central Park everyday to reach out to the protesters and reach a collaborative solution. “We respect the right of free speech, but we also respect the laws on the books,” Souza said. “We are requiring that the Occupy protesters get a health permit for cooking and other stipulations. Unlike the university, Central Park is a public space, so protesters can

By CLAIRE TANAggie Staff Writer

On Oct. 26, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) proposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The bill has bipartisan support from 25 cosponsors and is supported by the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Pictures A s s o c i a t i o n of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and others. “There are four tracks to the bill and not all four are controversial,” said a judicial aid for the House Judiciary Committee, in which Smith is chair. “In [1997], there was a bill called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was the first time Congress addressed the issue of infringing websites because the internet was relatively new at the time.” According to SOPA, the four tracks expand existing authority

for law enforcement and provide a mechanism for rights holders to protect their internet protocol (IP) rights. One would need to take out a court order and have a judge determine

whether the website is engaging in illegal activity.

“But it didn’t touch

any foreign w e b s i t e s ,” the aid said. “Now we are

i n this global marketplace and there are

foreign websites dedicated to stealing American

intellectual property and selling it.”

Foreign websites that steal intellectual property, sell it and profit off it are known as rogue websites because consumers come across them unassumingly. “The theft of America’s intellectual property costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs,” said Smith in a statement. “Rogue websites not only

Irisa Tam / aggie

Madison Dunitz / aggie

Occupy Davis protesters, who have continued to occupy Central park despite recent events at Davis, temporarily moved their tents on Monday for requested city maintenance.

City asks movement to comply with city codes

Jasna Hodzic / aggie

Thousands filled the Quad Monday to rally against the use of pepper spray on student protesters.

See OCCUPY, page 4

See ORNELAS, page 2

See PIRACY, page 4

by HANNAH STRUMWASSER, BECKY PETERSON, and

ANGELA SWARTZ Aggie Editors

The UC Davis Quad has been reoccupied following a rally of around 5,000 people on Monday at noon. The rally was held in solidarity with non-violent student protesters who were pepper sprayed during a protest on Friday. The East Quad was completely covered in students, alumni and community members listening to speeches made by students and faculty. News vans parked near the fountain, and media outlets rushed to broadcast. Slow internet stifled the KDVS 90.3 live stream. Twitter updates and text messages took minutes to load. “The whole world is watching Davis,” a speaker said during the General Assembly. Speeches were followed by a formal consensus-based meeting, in which participants voted in

support of holding a general strike on Nov. 28. A second proposal, to “declare campus as an autonomous sanctuary space based on international historic model” and to disband campus police, did not pass. Monday evening, students joined together to build a 15 foot tall dome and reoccupy the Quad with tents. Student speakers described their personal feelings on Friday’s police actions and encouraged the audience to continue to be non-violent. “They started pulling my friends from the circle, and throwing them on the ground and putting them in handcuffs and dragging them away,” said senior mechanical engineering major David Buscho. “At that point, there was no more encampment, there was no more stuff there. We were just kids, sitting down in a circle singing.” First-hand experiences of being pepper sprayed garnered an

See QUAD, page 2

Page 2: November 22, 2011

I messed up. I realized this when my phone be-gan to update me with

Facebook messages from people that I had never met saying that they thought my last column was rac-ist and ignorant, among other qualities. I’m going to be honest with you all: I burst into tears each time; it didn’t matter that I was in the library, in class or even at the CoHo. Each one made me re-alize how many people I had hurt through my col-umn. This was never my in-tention and the very least that I can do is apologize to those that were affected by my words and take it upon myself to learn from this experience. Obviously, word choice throughout the column was flawed, to say the least. While reading through the many responses to the col-umn, I decided to con-tact Dr. Halifu Osumare, an African American studies professor, and Lori Fuller at the Campus Unions center, who works closely with the Black Student Union, to bet-ter understand the implica-tions behind my words. The term “jungle fe-ver,” as I learned from Dr. Osumare, refers to a time in which African American men and women were killed for having inter-racial relationships. Dr. Osumare also mentioned Spike Lee’s movie of the same name, and the ra-cial stereotypes that have formed about what the black male represents. My understanding of the term prior to this was sole-ly in a colloquial sense be-cause I had heard peo-ple use it when referring to a general infatuation with African American men and women. In the same way, I used the word “ghetto” to describe certain rap music in a way that is sadly com-mon. Also, when I said that I “came out,” to my frater-nity, I did not think about the associations that were made with the struggles of coming out for the LGBT community. My use of

these phrases was sheer ig-norance on my part, and I apologize profusely. I also received e-mails and responses asking me how I would feel if some-one had written about the Indian community using such blatant stereotypes. I spoke to Lori Fuller at the Campus Unions cen-ter and when she asked me the same question, we discussed the portrayal of different cultures in the media. There has been such an obvious display of stereo-typing Indian culture that I, personally, had become somewhat desensitized to it. If someone assumed that my dad owns a Kwik-E Mart like Apu from “The Simpsons,” that all I eat is curry, or even that my en-tire life is like a Bollywood movie, I wouldn’t be too bothered by it because I

have be-come so used to it. As Ms. Fuller and I dis-cussed

this more, we talked about how there is more to Indian culture than con-venience stores and cur-ry and in the same way, African American culture is much more than rap music. The way that my column was written, asso-ciating culture with sole-ly one genre of music, was far more hurtful than my intention. My conversation with Dr. Osumare taught me that corporations utilize ste-reotypes about African American to sell prod-ucts, and even some rap-pers play into those stereo-types to make money. She went on to say that people, including myself, don’t real-ize the complex history be-hind such stereotypes and we are educated with omis-sion of so much informa-tion that we become cultur-ally illiterate. Dr. Osumare encour-aged me to continue my research, and I certainly plan on enrolling in African American studies courses in the near future. Words hurt. Whether they’re written by me or to me by someone else, they do. I never intended to hurt anyone through my words and I deeply regret doing so through my ignorance and lack of understanding. However, I am glad that this turned into an opportuni-ty to educate myself. Even though this is a work in progress, this is by far one of the best learning experi-ences I have had.

Contact MEDHA SRIDHAR at [email protected].

Every Thanksgiving I participate in my fam-ily’s tradition of writ-

ing down three things we are thankful for on a card. This is followed by passing the cards around, reading them aloud, and attempt-ing to guess who has writ-ten each card. Although my submission last year of “bitches, money and mo’ bitches” was partic-ularly pop-ular, espe-cially after it was mistak-enly attrib-uted to my grandma, I de-cided that this time around I might have to take the ac-tivity a little more seriously. Realistically, there are many things we can be thankful for at our school. Half-priced coffee at the CoHo during finals week, be-ing able to find a bike park-ing spot near the entrance to the library on a cold day and professors who cancel their class for no reason are all worthy of our appreciation. Unfortunately, I promised to take this a bit more seri-ously, which is why I’m go-ing to write about things ev-ery Davis student should ac-tually take a moment to give thanks for. I know you’re thinking that sounds pretty sappy, but hear me out and I think you’ll appreciate it. Or stop reading now, I probably won’t notice. Some people don’t think Davis is so great. If you end up downwind of Tercero, you’ll smell cows for hours on end or until you be-come immune to it. We don’t have any hills for admir-ing beautiful sunsets from. Our McDonald’s is one of those weird privately owned ones that doesn’t run all the promotions or even have a drive-thru. It may seem like I’ve just poked too many holes in my theory that Davis is worth being thankful for, but the redeeming factors lie in how well this location ca-ters to us college kids. While we don’t get to ap-preciate scenic vistas, we should be thankful Davis is flat. Being able to bike just about anywhere is a bless-ing few of us remember to appreciate. Try riding that

fixed gear up and down hills beside the trolleys in SF and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Davis is friendly to more than just our bikes, howev-er. Our taste buds and wal-lets are also thankful for the presence of the five dol-lar rolls of Oshio’s, the five dollar breakfast of Delta of Venus, and the five dollar footlong of Subway. There’s also our two dollar bowl-ing alley and five dollar Tuesday movies. Any way you look at it, Davis is one of the last real college towns in America, and that’s worth appreciating. Our campus is filled to the brim with under-appreciat-ed resources. The Internship and Career Center offers help on resumes, organizes career fairs, holds on-cam-pus interviews and will help individual students line up jobs specifically targeting

their ma-jor. I am also told that there is a program on campus where hy-

per-literate students will lit-erally edit your essay for you. Isn’t that against our honor pledge? While I would no doubt prefer to have an on-campus water slide park (We could call it the Aggie Aquarium you guys, it would be so cool!), I guess we should probably give thanks for these sort of campus re-sources who try to help the students be productive, even if they’re a little less fun. When making your thankfulness list, don’t lim-it yourself to the simple things. It’s easy to say I’m thankful for my bike, but that doesn’t mean it’s the thing that’s been most help-ful to me recently. At the risk of breaking my prom-ise against being sappy, I’m pretty damn thankful for the people around me, and you should be too. With the value of our degrees in question, the friends we make at school are likely the most worth-while thing we will come away with. I’m talking about the people who make beer runs because they’re sober for a test tomor-row, who went to that awk-ward faculty party with you so you wouldn’t feel weird, and who actively encourage and make acceptable the shenanigans we so regular-ly participate in. They are what we should be thank-ful for. Bitches, money, and mo’ bitches are great and all, but give me friends, hanging out, and mo’ friends any day.

AARON WEISS can be reached at [email protected].

page two The california aggie2 Tuesday, november 22, 2011

daily [email protected]

accuracyThe California Aggie strives to ensure that all of its facts and details are accurate. Please bring any corrections to our attention by calling (530) 752-0208.

Words hurt. Whether they’re written by me or to me by

someone else, they do

Davis is one of the last real college towns in America, and

that’s worth appreciating

police briefs

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The California Aggie is entered as first-class mail with the United States Post Office, Davis, Calif., 95616. Printed Monday through Thursday during the academic year and once a week during Summer Session II at The Davis Enterprise, Davis, Calif., 95616. Accounting services are provided by ASUCD. The Aggie is distributed free on the UC Davis campus and in the Davis community. Mail subscriptions are $100 per academic year, $35 per quarter and $25 for the summer. Views or opinions expressed in The Aggie by editors or columnists regarding legislation or candidates for political office or other matters are those of the editors or columnist alone. They are not those of the University of California or any department of UC. Advertisements appearing in The Aggie reflect the views of advertisers only; they are not an expression of editorial opinion by The Aggie. The Aggie shall not be liable for any error in published advertising unless an advertising proof is clearly marked for corrections by the advertiser. If the error is not corrected by The Aggie, its liability, if any, shall not exceed the value of the space occupied by the error. Further, The Aggie shall not be liable for any omission of an advertisement ordered published. All claims for adjustment must be made within 30 days of the date of publication. In no case shall The Aggie be liable for any general, special or consequential damages.© 2009 by The California Aggie. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form whatsoever is forbidden without the expressed written permission of the copyright owner.

The California Aggie is printed on

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Jason AlpertEditor in Chief

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Alex TervoBusiness Manager

Grace SpragueAdvertising Manager

Hannah StrumwasserCampus Editor

Angela SwartzCity Editor

Uyen CaoArts Editor

Erin MigdolFeatures Editor

Trevor CramerSports Editor

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Irisa TamArt Director

today

bicycling in davis: what lessons can we learn from europe?Noon to 1 p.m.The Barn Conference RoomSarah Underwood will discuss her UC Davis Master’s degree in public health research, in which she focused on exploring youth and adolescent attitudes toward bicycling, as seen in retrospect from adulthood. Included in the talk are her subsequent travels to Europe, where she presented her findings at international conferences and obtained feedback.

women’s basketball vs. san

francisco4:45 p.m.ARC Pavilion

Men’s basketball vs. sacramento state7 p.m.ARC Pavilion

To receive placement in the AGGIE DAILY CALENDAR, e-mail [email protected] or stop by 25 Lower Freeborn by noon the day prior to your event. Due to space constraints, all event descriptions are subject to editing, and priority will be given to events that are free of charge and geared toward the campus community.

AaronWeiss

Give thanks

MedhaSridhar

Lesson in progress

tHursday

fowl behaviorTurkeys were causing a traffic hazard on Loyola Drive.

friday

iphone 6?Someone ordered an iPhone on eBay and got a piece of paper instead, on Bueno Drive.

saturday

oh nutsA driver swerved to miss a squirrel and hit a stop sign on Lyndell Terrace.

fast foodThere was a picnic table on the freeway at Highway 113.

weasel their way outA rodent set off a burglar alarm on Fourth Street.

sunday

Move back a few feetA driver ran over someone’s foot outside Safeway on Cowell Boulevard.

Police Briefs are compiled by TRACY HARRIS from the city of Davis daily crime bulletins. Contact TRACY HARRIS at [email protected]

emotional response from the crowd. “My friends buried their faces into their chest and then it happened. At that point I entered a world of pain,” Buscho said. “It felt like hot glass was entering my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, I wanted to open my eyes but every time I did, the pain got worse. I wanted to breathe, but I couldn’t because my face was covered in pepper spray.” “I want us to take back this university brick by brick, and we will do it with dignity and respect!” Buscho said.“Should I talk about the fear that I felt when I saw my friends thrown to the ground by brutal police officers for standing, linking arms peacefully?” said Deanna Johnson, a sophomore environmental horticulture and urban forestry major, who was also pepper sprayed by UC Davis police. “Should I talk about the fear that I felt when I heard the crowd scream before the pepper spray hit my face? But what I decided to speak about today is not the horrible violence that I experienced, but the community that I felt when I stood in solidarity with my fellow students, supporting our university,” Johnson said. In lulls between speeches, the crowd chanted “Whose university? Our university!” Many held signs that read

“Katehi resign.” The controversy over police action against UC Davis students follows accounts of police brutality on the UC Berkeley campus, in which students were hit by police with batons. Videos of both incidents have gone viral online, reaching people all over the world and causing public outrage. “I’m from UC Berkeley and I just want to say we stand in solidarity with you. Rise up! We’re all in this together,” said a student speaker who identified himself as Joe Fenton from UC Berkeley. After his speech, the crowd broke out into the chant “UC, UC, UC solidarity.” Similar incidents have been reported at McGill University in Montreal. According to the McGill Daily and Le Délit, during a campus demonstration against tuition hikes in early November, students began throwing things at police officers and riot police were called in. The riot police then used pepper spray and tear gas on students. Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi followed through with her promise and attended the General Assembly. She was asked to wait in line like the other speakers. The crowd booed as she approached the stage, but many chanted “let her speak.” “I am here to apologize. I feel horrible for what happened on Friday. If you think you don’t want to be

students in a university like we had on Friday, I am just telling you, I don’t want to be the chancellor of the university we had on Friday,” Katehi said, fighting back tears. “Our university has to be better than it is, and it needs all of the communities to come together to do that. We need to work together,” Katehi said. “And I know that you may not believe anything that I am telling you today and you don’t have to. It is my responsibility to earn your trust.” After Katehi spoke, UC President Mark Yudof talked with all 10 UC chancellors via teleconference to discuss the rights of student protesters. The crowd dwindled as the afternoon went on. After Katehi left, many audience

members and media followed. By The General Assembly, there were 1,729 people voting. An open mic, to give more students the chance to speak, ended the rally. By nightfall, 30 tents had been pitched and volunteers worked to build a 15 feet-tall and 30 feet-wide dome structure. California State Assembly Speaker John Pérez visited the tent occupation to talk to students. Pérez is also an ex officio UC Regent. “As I told the students, I’m very impressed by their tenacity, their organization skills and the fact that they kept themselves focused on raising the issues they’ve been talking about,” Pérez said.

STRUMWASSER, PETERSON and SWARTZ can be reached at [email protected].

quaDcont. from front page

ASUCD will be giv-ing an official statement of their take on the pro-tests during a press con-ference at 2 p.m. today on the Memorial Union patio. The senators held an emergency meeting in King Lounge last night to formulate a statement. “ASUCD is demanding

answers and will help to facilitate a path forward to help our campus and students heal after the horrific incident last Friday where peaceful student protesters were pepper sprayed,” a press release said. — Becky Peterson

news in brief

ASUCD to hold press conference

Ornelas was appointed under the former ASUCD President Jack Zwald while working as an aid for the president. He was given the appointment on Zwald’s last day in office. “I don’t see a problem with it if people are ethical and they have a solid understanding about what the court does and what their role is,” Thongsavat said. The resignation comes after controversy related to the Chief Justice’s involvement in the recent senate campaign. “According to certain people, I was campaigning for a senator,” said Chief Justice Rudy Ornelas. “I’ve had no bearing at all in the last election.” According to Ornelas, the only connection that he had with the student that was running for office was that they were in the same club together. Ornelas stated that when he was working for former President Zwald there were certain senators in opposition to the executive branch and some of these senators took part in Ornelas’ current indictment. “I decided to resign after the impeachment attempt by the senate because I felt like I wasn’t getting anything done,” Ornelas said . “The Senate

completely ignored us on different rulings.” Senator Rebecca Sterling was one of the Senators who advocated for Ornelas’ impeachment. “There were a lot of concerns about the Chief Justice, if he was abiding by the rules, if he was remaining impartial and not taking a stance,” she said. “...There were also concerns that he did not properly understand the by-laws.” When a non-elected official is being impeached, first the Internal Affairs Commission has a closed session hearing, and then another closed session hearing comes before the Senate. “They had no proof of anything, it was all ‘he said, she said’,” Ornelas said. “They were dead set on removing me. I felt that if I wanted the court to advance in any way, shape or form that I would have to step down.” The Chief Justice position is appointed by the president and then confirmed by the Senate. “I have nothing against Rudy, I have no personal qualms. I think he works hard, but I think the resignation speaks for itself. I’m always sad when these things have to happen,” Thongsavat said.

MAX RUSSER can be reached at [email protected].

ORNELaScont. from front page

Page 3: November 22, 2011

Response to “Hors d’oeuvres” I am writing in response to the Nov. 14 column entitled “Hors d’oeuvres”. I understand that it was written at least in part to be hu-morous, but unfortunately it came across as a misrepresentation of both Veterans Day and Christmas. I have worked with veterans at a VA hospital and I do agree that Veterans Day is often overlooked by the civilian population. It should not be just a day to sleep in, but one to remember, honor and thank the veterans for their service. Much can and should be written about the sacrifices that they have made for our country. Yet, rather than focusing on the veterans, White tried to concoct a story about Veterans Day com-peting with Christmas. How sad that Christmas has become so commercialized that many peo-ple do not know the details of the Biblical story. A few points to clarify: One, Jesus did not come into the world to start a commer-cial holiday. He came for peo-ple to come to know God. Two, he was not born in a manger; giving birth in an animal feeding trough would have been pretty difficult for Mary. The manger was used as a bed for him. Three, The Da Vinci Code (a fictionalized book) is not an authoritative source of infor-mation about Jesus. Try the Bible. Four, Christmas commemorates the birth of Jesus. His death (and resurrection) are commemorat-ed at Easter (which is not really about the Easter bunny). Jesus and Santa should not be viewed as “partners in crime” who promote an obnoxious fantasy hol-iday at the expense of remember-ing veterans. For people around the world, Christmas is a holiday of deep spiritual significance. I invite White, as well as anyone else who is interested, to attend a Christmas service at any local church and bet-ter understand why this holiday is celebrated. Hopefully future Veterans Day columns will have a better focus on veterans, rather than offen-sive and misleading information about a day that many of us hold sacred.

Tara rogersPh.D. student in

nutritional biology

Concerns about education in Chile We are writing to you on be-half of the Chilean Cultural Association of Davis (ChileCAD) in regards to previous letters you have published, reflect-ing confusion between our as-sociation and the recently cre-ated Association of Chilean Students at UC Davis. ChileCAD was founded in 2003, also as a UC Davis student organization that soon grew to include non-student residents in the areas of Davis, Sacramento, Bay Area and even Chile. Even though today ChileCAD collaborates actively with the newly created Association of Chilean Students at UC Davis, these two organizations are sep-arate entities. ChileCAD has car-ried out extensive work in the re-gion to promote and keep Chile as a source of different cultur-al manifestations. ChileCAD also carries out fundraising activities to support the education of chil-dren living in isolated zones of Chile. As such, ChileCAD express-es concerns regarding the cur-rent Education Movement in Chile, which has become inter-nationally known and debat-ed. ChileCAD supports the ef-forts and the movement of the Chilean students to strive for a better and more inclusive edu-cation for everyone and hopes to continue to play a role from California. ChileCAD condemns the increasing abusive use of state dissuasive violence against stu-dents, which are the leading force of this movement. ChileCAD also condemns the violence and de-structive methods used by a few people that, with a separate agen-da, only damage the goals of the Student Education Movement supported by the majority of peaceful Chileans. ChileCAD will do its best to foster academic and social de-bate about the education, to continue to contribute to the improvement of education in Chile and to regard this as a long standing goal, a state-task, that must be part of the agenda of any government, regardless of its political affiliation. As we said earlier, our members

are Chileans, studying, living and working here in this region; how-ever we also count on the sup-port of many non-Chileans, close friends of Chile, that participate in-cessantly to achieve the ChileCAD goals. ChileCAD has much at stake in advancing the public policy agendas that will lead to a much stronger, openly accessible and more equitable public system of education in Chile.

ChileCaD BoarD of DireCTors

Response to UC Davis protest Like many, I was surprised and distressed by the images of UC Davis campus police dispassion-ately spraying pepper gas in the faces of obviously non-threatening protesters. As a UC Davis alumnus from a time when there was even more campus protest (1972), I was perhaps more surprised than oth-ers at the unwarranted and, frank-ly, counter-productive police re-sponse in this situation. One of the reasons that dur-ing the late ’60s and early ’70s the Davis campus avoided the violence that faced many cam-puses during that time — a vi-olence that reached its tragic height in the shooting deaths of four protesters at Kent State — was that the administration, led by Chancellor Meyer, declined to engage in strong-arm, repressive tactics in response to student protests. Instead, Chancellor Meyer met with protest leaders, engaging them in a serious ex-change about their grievances and demands, and set a tone of moderation that avoided aggra-vating the campus situation. In a later interview, Chancellor Meyer referred to the tear gassing of protesters at UC Berkeley as “one of the dumbest things that any-one ever could think of.” This approach was not limit-ed to the campus administrators and police, either. When more than a hundred people sat on the railroad tracks to stop the trans-portation of war supplies to the Oakland shipping yards, the city of Davis Police responded moder-ately and respectfully. Protesters were advised that they were on private property and that if they didn’t leave they would be sub-ject to arrest. Each was given a chance, before arrest, to leave vol-untarily. Everyone was instruct-ed about the difference in charg-es that would result if, instead of cooperating in their arrest, they were to “go limp”, which was con-sidered resisting arrest. Cooperating individuals were escorted one-by-one to the police cars; non-cooperating individu-als were carried by two or three officers to the police car. No one actively resisted arrest. The only violence that was even hinted at was when a Southern Pacific train

that was being blocked tried to advance toward the protesters on the tracks, forcing some protest-ers to scramble from the tracks to avoid being hit. The police quick-ly ordered the train to stop. The entire process of clearing the tracks took much longer than it would have had the police simply pepper sprayed the crowd. But, no one was injured and the police response didn’t provoke addition-al protests. I hope officials on the Davis campus and those in the larg-er community find the wisdom to avoid responding to protests in a way that endangers protesters, po-lice officers, media representatives and by-standers and serve only to encourage greater disruption.

Don huBinClass of 1972

As a UC Davis mechanical en-gineering alumnus and 2012 Presidential candidate, I am sad-dened by the disturbing images of Friday’s pepper spraying inci-dent. During the mid ’80s to ear-ly ’90s, students on campus rou-tinely expressed their discontent through peaceful demonstra-tions, protests and sit-ins. To my knowledge, none were greeted with close-range, facial aerosol sprays. Last Friday’s encounter is completely contrary to the UC Davis community of my memory and fondness.

Jeff lawman class of 1991

2012 Presidential candidate

I understand that Professor Brown is probably quite intel-ligent, but I would like unshak-able proof of police spraying into students’ mouths. Clear visu-al or audiovisual media content would be appreciated (not every-one has time to watch every clip on Youtube). In addition, it’s all very well and nice to have Chancellor Katehi leave but wouldn’t there be a replacement? As inade-quately qualified for the chan-cellor position as Katehi is, I consider people who are of her paygrade despite working in ed-ucation, a vocation in which most quality educators are un-derpaid, to be as corrupt as your friendly neighborhood politician. I must therefore conclude that her replacement would not be any better. Whereas if she stayed, she could be dealt a more ap-propriate punishment (such as a nice, large pay cut) and the stu-dents would have a chancellor who would know that her misde-meanors in leadership would be punished. Meanwhile, might I add that this hullabaloo about UC Davis is not only ludicrous when consid-ering the UC Berkeley incident in comparison, but it also distracts from the causes the students were

originally protesting for. It must be quite amusing for the “1%.” Speaking of the Occupy move-ment, I have a pet theory. If the people who help manage the as-sets of the 1% (whether by moni-toring their finances or by scrub-bing their floors, they all play their roles) collected their allot-ted salaries and quit, and no one else came to replace them, that would be much more efficient than protesting. For the mid-dle class, most of these tasks are DIYs, but the wealthy have too much to handle on their own. They would still be able to af-ford to continue their luxurious lifestyles, but if they were not al-lowed to, they simply wouldn’t be able to.

reBekah lee Animal biology major

It is regrettable that some stu-dents were pepper sprayed by a Police Officer last Friday November 18th during a protest regarding UC finances and bud-get cuts. However, it seems that pleas for her resignation are short sighted. UC budget cuts are more of a state legislative matter than a campus matter. Thus far, the issue has become a national news story and there are thousands of signa-tures supporting her resignation. Most likely a high ranking officer commanded the police to pep-per spray the students, not the Chancellor. The Chancellor has already demanded that the offi-cers be censured. There are so few women in Engineering, let alone wom-en chancellors in the U.S. who are also Engineers. Chancellor Katehi is a noted Engineer and seems to have overcome a great deal of adversity as a female to reach her position on cam-pus. Although not all of her pol-icies have been popular, she has carried out her position with marked professionalism. In light of current events, she seems to be in the cross-roads of a series of circumstances. We as UC Davis Scientists and Engineers support Chancellor Katehi and denounce her calls for resignation.

Dr. Boaz arzi DVM. Resident

kyriaCos a. aThanasiou, Ph.D., P.e.

Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering

(as himself and not representing the department as a whole)

Bess-Carolina Dolmo, MPP & PhD Candidate

Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Jerry hu

Dr. Angelique Y louieAssociate Professor, Biomedical

Engineering

Jeni lee

OPINIONtuesday, november 22, 2011 3the california aggie

I’m a hypocrite. For the past two years, various moments in my life have blurred the lines

between working for The System, working to change The System and working against The System. You know which System I’m talk-ing about; it’s the nameless, face-

less, domineering council of his-torically privileged institutional powers set to keep the masses in their place. If ever I felt like a double agent, this was the week. On Tuesday, I attended the rally on the Quad when my noon class was can-celled. Then I left the rally early to attend a class that wasn’t can-celled. Wednesday, I walked past students occupy-ing Mrak Hall to a practice inter-view for a schol-arship clad in a suit. Then I drove to the Capitol to join other UC students lobby-ing against spending cuts in ed-ucation. Later that day I headed to Central Park to attend the gen-eral assembly of Occupy Davis. On Thursday, I crossed the pick-

et line once more to make class while my peers were rallying on the Quad. If location is any guide to my politics, being in spaces of pro-test marks my support for radi-cal change, lobbying at the Capitol marks a willingness to work for change through the system, and at-tending classes while preparing for a fellowship interview marks my

complicity with the status quo. Then there was the schol-arship inter-view this week-end. While stu-

dents were facing police in riot gear on the Quad, I was schmoozing with other finalists and panelists at a cocktail party.

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editorials represent the collective opinions of the california aggie editorial board. the opinion page appears tuesdays and thursdays.

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see nayaRan, page 4

Page 4: November 22, 2011

The california aggie4 Tuesday, november 22, 2011

stay here.” He also said that representatives of the city of Davis work with the police collaboratively, in a different way than how the university operates, and commented on the pepper spraying of students that occurred Friday on campus. “The city’s methods are different from the university’s,” Souza said. “Although I’m not in law enforcement, there’s an easier way to arrest without use of force, at least to the degree of which it was used on Friday.” Raskin said the movement has been rejuvenated with the surge of student activity on campus last week. He also said that since the police crackdown last Friday, the two groups — Occupy Davis and Occupy UC Davis — have come together in solidarity. “Many students originally involved in Occupy Davis have joined Occupy UCD and shared

their experience in organizing an occupation,” Raskin said in an e-mail. “And for the time being, the two occupations jointly run the donations and support from the student body to Occupy Davis have skyrocketed in the past few days. Community members awoken by the crackdown have also come out to the occupation in Central Park in greater numbers.” Raskin said most events are planned on short notice. But many Occupy Davis members attended the rally on UC Davis Quad Monday at noon. A teach-in on cooperatives sponsored by the California Center for Cooperative Development is planned for Nov. 30. “In the long term, Occupy Davis hopes to work with other Occupy groups to provide regular people with a space to voice their concerns, challenge establishment discourse and engage in direct political action,” Raskin said.

ANGELA SWARTZ can be reached at [email protected].

OCCUPYCont. from front page

steal the profits and jobs that be-long to American innovators.” The main goals under SOPA are to shut off flow of money to rogue websites, prevent the websites from getting ad reve-nue from the U.S. and prevent U.S. consumers from being sent to these websites. “SOPA is a similar bill to the PROTECT IP Act,” the judicial aid said. “But SOPA took a step further and created a two-step process.” The aid said if a rights holder sees an infringing website and wants to take the site down, un-der SOPA the rights holder is re-quired to go a financial interme-diary or ad providers. Then the rights holder can tell them to take down the website because it is selling the rights holder’s products. “Rather than going to court, if they can work it out amongst

themselves, it saves time and money,” the judicial aid said. “It does what Congress wants by cutting flow of money to [rogue websites].” The aid said if Google or the ad company disagrees, the rights holder could then go to step two by going to court. The aid said the rights holder still has to prove to the federal judge the website is engaged in illegal activity for the judge to then give order to the companies to sever ties with the rogue websites. “You have to basically win the case for sites to be taken down,” the aid said. “The hyperlink for a free movie download would no longer exist because Google would take it down. There’d be no access in the U.S., although the website could still get reve-nue from other countries.” According to the aid, the bill is only dedicated to entire web-sites because, under the DMCA, websites are already required to take down pirated material. “We support the bills’ stat-

ed goals,” stated various on-line corporations in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. “Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abid-ing U.S. internet and technolo-gy companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of ac-tion and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites.” Likewise, Reporters Without Borders sent a statement to the House Judiciary Committee. “Through SOPA, the United States is attempting to dominate a shared global resource,” the letter stated. “Building a nation-al firewall and creating barriers for international website and service operators makes a pow-erful statement that the United States is not interested in partic-ipating in a global information infrastructure.” The bill will be amended next month in regards to the discus-sions with stakeholders.

CLAIRE TAN can be reached at [email protected].

PIRACYCont. from front page

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The last question I was asked during the interview was whether anything in the in-terview made me feel uncomfortable. It was an odd question to end an otherwise light-hearted conversation, so I said no. But perhaps an honest answer would have been that I was uncomfortable champi-oning social justice in a conference room while those fighting for it on the front lines were getting pepper sprayed. Finally, I woke up Sunday morning to a Facebook newsfeed of viral videos, peti-tions calling for Chancellor Katehi to re-sign, articles from the national press di-rected toward events on our campus this week and a private message from a high

school friend now at UC Berkeley. He knew that I worked with the chancellor on a cou-ple occasions and wondered if I was privy to her personal reaction. To his credit, he seemed to want more information about the behind-the-scenes before signing the petition. Though I wasn’t there to witness the scene, I get the sense that it was com-plicated. I think I’m not alone on the blurry side of things. To some extent, we all have a re-lationship to change and the status quo marked by inconsistencies, hypocrisy, complicity and radicalism. If you’re in col-lege, there’s a sense in which you have al-ready passed one threshold to greater privilege in this country, a sense in which you’re playing “the game” right, whatever that means. To speak from my own experience, what

this means is that you fight for change be-cause you can see social, economic and po-litical inequalities around you. But there’s also a kind of anxiety to overthrowing a sys-tem that is, in some measure, working in your favor. If we’re successful in bringing radical change, some of us stand to lose the favorable standing we have with privilege. Surprisingly, a cocktail conversation I had this weekend with a fellowship judge shed some light on the paradox here. The judge in question was Robert Reich, for-mer Secretary of Labor and current pro-fessor at UC Berkeley known for his cam-paign against massive inequality and sup-port for progressive change. I asked him how he simultaneously negotiated being a successful part of the system and an op-ponent to it. Reich paused for a moment and said, in his characteristically axiomat-

ic wisdom, that we’re all part of the system. One reason why it’s so hard to clearly bal-ance our allegiance to and antagonism of the system is because we assume there is a clean break between ourselves and the sys-tem. However, we don’t exist outside the system. If the system is indeed nameless and faceless, it’s because we’re all a part of it. If that sounds like an argument in favor of keeping things the way they are, it isn’t. Read this way, our incoherent role with-in and against the system is the stage in which we sort out what we want to keep and what we want to change. It’s precise-ly because we are the system that we have the power to recreate it from the inside out.

RAJIV NARAYAN thinks having an opinion column doesn’t give you a valid opinion, so he wants to hear yours at [email protected].

NARAYANCont. from page 3

By ChlOe SORvINOThe GW Hatchet

(George Washington University)

Five years after Twitter en-tered the social media scene, ma-jor news outlets have yet to adopt the site as a reporting or interac-tive tool, a study published this week found. The George Washington U. School of Media and Public Affairs and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reported in a Nov. 14 study that mainstream news or-ganizations primarily use Twitter

as a platform to promote already-published content. “It is not necessarily being used to gather new information or en-gage in a social relationship with readers,” Jesse Holcomb, co-au-thor of the study and research-er for the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said. “Some of the more social aspects of the tool are not being utilized.” The team of researchers ana-lyzed 3,600 tweets from 13 print, broadcast and online news sources over a one-week peri-od in February 2011. Their sam-ple included tweets from re-

porters and the news organiza-tions’ official and beat accounts. Media and Public Affairs profes-sors Kimberly Gross and Robert Entman worked with several dozen undergraduates to con-duct the research, coding each tweet based on date, source, number of re-tweets and the sto-ry’s topic. “Mainstream news organi-zations primarily use Twitter to move information and push con-tent to readers,” the report said.The study also found news or-ganizations rarely use Twitter’s hashtag component, which al-

lows users to mark keywords or topics searchable to other users. Holcomb compared this min-imal use of Twitter to “the early days of the web when there was an unwillingness of organiza-tions to pass along information from other sources.” On average, only 2 percent of tweets from the news outlets sought feedback from followers. Gross, co-author of the study, said that, to use Twitter as a so-cial news forum, journalists must fundamentally change how they view their jobs. “I think reporters are the place

where we’re going to see the most innovation with Twitter,” Gross said. Rachel Weisel, a GW graduate student and research assistant, said this study marks the first em-pirical analysis of how Twitter is used by journalists. “The results showed that there was the same news in Twitter and mainstream media. Even though some people think of Twitter as a medium for mundane events, journalists use it to reflect what is going on and it does mirror what is going on in their news organi-zations,” Weisel said.

Study: News outlets use Twitter to talk at, not with, their audience

Monday’s puzzle solved

Page 5: November 22, 2011

tuesday, november 22, 2011 5the california aggie

By MATTHEW YUENAggie Sports Writer

After beginning the sea-son on the road and taking down a Pac-12 opponent, the UC Davis women’s bas-ketball program came back home to host its first two home games of the season. They won by comfortable margins in both games and

emerged with a 4-0 season record. The victories mark the first of Jennifer Gross’ ca-reer at the Pavilion as head coach, but Gross takes more pride in the team’s growth and accomplishments other than her own achievements. “They’re quick learners and they’re very skilled,” she said. “We’re getting bet-ter day by day and their confidence is growing day by day.”

Wednesday - UC Davis 80, San Jose State 60In its first home game of the 2011-12 campaign, UC Davis made sure it didn’t disappoint Aggie fans. The Aggies built a lead early with a display of fast-paced offense and high-pressure defense, both of which have been focuses of the UC Davis team this year. After the first 20 minutes

of playing time, they walked off the court with a 42-29 lead, despite shooting be-low 30 percent. This was the product of going 16-16 from the free throw line as well as 18 forced turnovers compared to five UC Davis turnovers. “I think the turnovers are a result of playing hard and with a lot of energy. We’re looking to play at a high-er pace and with a lot more

aggression,” junior Hannah Stephens said. The Aggies eventually found their stroke and the shots started falling. In the second half they shot 35 percent from beyond the three point line as opposed to the 17 percent in the first half. UC Davis also drained 15 more free throws to total 31 on the game. Senior Samantha Meggison led the Aggies with 12 points, but three other UC Davis players had point totals in the double digits. Senior Hana Asano and junior Cortney French each had 11, and junior Blair Shinoda added 10 points, which included her six points from the line. Despite getting 39 re-bounds compared to the Spartan’s 60, UC Davis forced 30 turnovers by the end of the game, which more than made up for any deficiencies on the boards. “Stat-wise you can tell the other team has been out-rebounding us, but this year’s team is really relent-less,” Asano said. “We’re a lot quicker and we have to be because of our size.”

Sunday - UC Davis 62, Wichita State 47From the moment senior Kasey Riecks drained a three pointer not two minutes into the game the Aggies never looked back. UC Davis kept the momentum going to roll out to an 18-2 lead by the ninth minute. The first half closed with UC Davis leading by a much smaller margin with the score at 25-22, but the

Aggies had forced 15 turn-overs in comparison to their own four. Yet when it came out for the second half, UC Davis got right back to “being disciplined on offense and creating that frenzied at-mosphere on defense,” as Gross said. Asano and Stephens pestered the Shockers’ of-fense, making it quite the task for Wichita State to penetrate the UC Davis defense. The Aggies tal-lied 14 steals on the day, including three and four from Asano and Stephens, respectively. Meggison contributed five steals of her own and led the team in scoring, with 16 points. “To start the second half, we focused on keeping our energy high and the steals from Hanna [Asano] and Hannah [Stephens] gave us quick boosts of energy,” Meggison said. “It’s com-forting that you can rely on anybody, and it’s challeng-ing for the defense because we have so many people who score.” “Energy is contagious, we’re focusing on letting our defense create our of-fense rather than getting our energy from the offen-sive side of things,” Gross said. UC Davis will hope to continue its undefeat-ed season when it hosts University of San Francisco in its third straight home game today at 4:45 p.m.

MATTHEW YUEN can be reached at [email protected].

By KELLEY REESAggie News Writer

The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that proponents of Proposition 8 have legal standing to contest District Judge Vaughn Walker’s earlier decision overturn-ing the same-sex marriage ban. The official sponsor of Prop 8, ProtectMarriage.com, will now lead the charge in appealing Judge Walker’s resolution in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Due to both Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala D. Harris de-clining to defend the proposition, ProtectMarriage.com had to demonstrate a sufficient stake in the controversy to be granted standing. In explaining their reasoning behind the outcome of the case, the court underscored the importance of the original November 2008 vote on the proposition in which the initiative passed. “It would clearly constitute an abuse of

discretion for a court to deny the official proponents of an initiative the opportu-nity to participate as formal parties in the proceeding,” the court said. “…Either as interveners or as real parties in interest, in order to assert the people’s, and hence the state’s, interest in the validity of the mea-sure and to appeal a judgment invalidating the measure.” Lecturer at the UC Davis School of Law and supervising attorney of the School of Law’s Civil Rights Clinic, Carter White, fur-ther asserted that the court described the ac-tions proponents of Prop 8 had taken — pe-titioning, gathering signatures, putting the proposition on the ballot and then having it pass — as being the will of the people. “I think the court in this decision is try-ing to go to great lengths to say this de-cision isn’t about the merits of whether gay marriage is going to be allowed in the state,” White said. White explains that there may be many other situations where the governor and

attorney general may not want to defend a challenge against a properly passed initia-tive, thus causing a proponent of the issue to be its representative. Now with their legal standing grant-ed, ProtectMarriage.com will petition the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on Judge Walker’s prior decision, which de-clared Prop 8 unconstitutional under both Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and professor of law at King Hall, Vikram Amar, speculated that the appeals court would uphold Judge Walker’s ruling. However, Chief Deputy Clerk Recorder for Yolo County, Jeffrey Barry, said whether the court declares Prop 8 unconstitutional or legal, the opposing side of the decision will almost certainly appeal the case to the United States Supreme Court. Two distinct reasons indicate that this case will most likely be accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Ninth Circuit Court of

Appeals deals not only with California law but also with eight other western states. In addition, the case questions wheth-er a proposition is legal under the U.S. Constitution. “At some point the Supreme Court is go-ing to look at whether gay marriage is con-stitutional,” White said. “Conventional wisdom seems to think that this could very well be the case that goes up to the Supreme Court and is accepted.” Currently there is a stay inplace within California, suspending the rights of same-sex couples to marry. Barry asserts even if the court decides to uphold Judge Walker’s ruling a stay would remain pending fur-ther appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. With an almost definite appeal to follow the decision given by the Ninth Court of Appeals and a possible acceptance of the case by the U.S. Supreme Court, same-sex marriage could still be years away.

KELLEY REES can be reached at [email protected].

California court says Prop 8 proponents have legal standing

Proposition’s constitutionality to be decided by appeals court

Teams: UC Davis vs. Sacramento StateRecords: Aggies, 1-4; Hornets, 2-1Where: The PavilionWhen: Tonight at 7 p.m.Who to watch: Sophomore forward Josh Ritchart led all scorers last Friday against Stanford with 19 points. The 6’9” Auburn, Calif. native was three for five from behind the three-point arc and also grabbed four rebounds in the contest. Ritchart called the game against the Cardinal a learn-ing experience and stressed that UC Davis must contin-ue to develop as a defensive minded basketball team. “We have to be able to bring it on every possession,” he said. “We have to continue to bring it on defense [and] make sure we compete all the time.”Did you know? The Aggies beat Sacramento State 61-54 when they played last year in Sacramento.Preview: Tonight’s contest against the Hornets will give fans their first chance to see how the Aggies fare against similar level competition. In its two home games so far this year UC Davis has played Division III UC Santa Cruz and unbeaten Pac-12 oppo-nent Stanford. Tonight, Sacramento State will provide a level of play similar to what the Aggies will see in the Big West Conference later this year. Should they play as they did in last week’s four-point win over UC Santa Cruz, the Aggies will likely lose. On the other side, Sacramento State will not be able to dominate UC Davis physically as the Cardinal were able to do when they came to the Pavilion.

The Aggies this week will look to fur-ther integrate key players who are return-ing from injury. Sophomore forward Harrison DuPont missed the preseason due to a concus-sion but is now back to full health and was in the lineup for both games last week. Junior guard Ryan Sypkens sprained his knee in practice last week and did not

play in the last game. His status for tonight’s game is unknown. Senior guard Eddie Miller has yet to fully recover from a leg in-jury and has only started in one game this year, against UC Santa Cruz. The former California player would have liked to have an im-pact against Stanford, but tweaked his leg early in the game and was limited to four minutes. “There were some unique line-ups [against Stanford],” Ritchart said. “We haven’t been playing

with each other too long with the new guys coming back [from injury] so we have to keep working at that and keep gelling as a team.” As always, the key to the Aggies suc-cess will come on the defensive end of the floor. More than anything, coach Jim Les is challenging his players to play hard, physical and up-tempo basketball on ev-ery possession. “The way they go at each other [in prac-tice] and battle and dive on the floor and they’re physical, that’s what it takes at this level to have success,” Les said. “When you step between the lines you’ve got to change that ‘I’m a nice guy’ attitude. “We as a staff have to bring that out of them.”

— Caelum Shove

Josh Ritchartsophomore

MEN’S BASKETBALL PREVIEW

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

UC Davis protects home courtAggies extend undefeated season to 4-0

Melody Tan / Aggie

Senior Samantha Meggison led the Aggies in scoring against both San Jose State and Wichita State.

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SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES DO NOT WORK

Page 6: November 22, 2011

Recycle the Aggie.

The california aggie6 Tuesday, november 22, 2011

By MUNA SADEKAggie News Writer

With UC Davis’ rapidly mov-ing quarter system, students find little to no time to de-stress after midterms with finals week knock-ing soon after. The Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) Stress and Wellness Ambassador Program and Mind Spa aims to make testing season in the minds of students more bearable with their annual Therapy Fluffies De-Stress event, that took place Nov. 15 at the Memorial Union. The free event took place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and showcased a variety of breeds that were avail-

able for students to play with and pet. Junior psychology major and Stress and Wellness and Mind Spa Ambassador Christina Lee said, “Most of the dogs at the event are from the SPCA. We will have an-other Therapy Fluffies next quar-ter, and again in Spring quarter.” Most dogs at the event are up for adoption from the Yolo County SPCA and are trained therapy ani-mals by the Independent Therapy Dogs Inc., The dogs that will be at UC Davis come from both the Yolo County SPCA and Independent Therapy Dogs Inc., a registered therapy dog organization. “Therapy dogs can decrease

stress through providing uncon-ditional companionship, getting us out interacting with other peo-ple who like dogs, and being so affectionate that it’s nearly im-possible to stay in a bad mood,” said Dorje M. Jennette, a CAPS psychologist. Jennette said that accord-ing to a 2010 study done by the American College Health Association, more than 35 per-cent of students indicate that stress hurt their academics, and nearly all UC Davis students in-dicate they felt overwhelmed or exhausted at one point during the school year. The event idea was created by Dr. Sean Cook at UC San Diego

and was brought to UC Davis by him, during a brainstorming session after he came to work at CAPS. In an interview in a 2009 ar-ticle by R. Stickney in NBC San Diego, Jerry Phelphs Ph.D., di-rector of Wellness Initiatives for UC Student Wellness explained the effects of therapy animals on the body. Phelps said it has been proven that they reduce blood pressure and heart rate. “It allows the students to con-nect with another living being,” Phelps said. “A lot of students actually don’t have someone that they can touch. The phys-ical touch actually reduces the stress.”

Therapy animals have been used to foster motivation and to aid in educational learning, ac-cording to a statement released by CAPS. “The benefits of petting and interacting with an animal have been shown to improve commu-nication, elevate self-confidence and improve quality of life,” stat-ed the press release. For more information on next quarter’s Therapy Fluffies event or to get involved with Therapy Fluffies or the Mind Spa, visit the CAPS Clinic at the Student Health and Wellness Center.

MUNA SADEK can be reached at [email protected].

By LANI CHANAggie Features Writer

As winter falls upon Davis and students find themselves biking in the dark more of-ten than not, some may wonder why they even bother using certain models of bike lights. Can they really see anything with it that they couldn’t see without it? UC Davis Graduate School of Management alumni Jim Houk and Adam Pettler, in partnership with “mastermind” Kent Frankovich, who holds a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford, have addressed this issue by de-veloping a new type of bike light that pro-vides improved night visibility for bicy-clists and anyone else on the road. Called the Revolight, the design is a ring with small LED lights to attach to the spokes of both front and rear wheels, re-sulting in 360 degree visibility. “What’s different about the Revolight is the fact that it’s an all-in-one solution that provides both lighting and sighting,” Houk said. “‘Lighting’ is the traditional path-way illumination, and the ‘sighting’ part is making you visible to others that are shar-ing the road. The idea is that it’s the only bike light you’ll need to buy.” When it comes to shelves in March, the Revolight will cost approximately $220. It is meant to be purchased and installed only once. The batteries are USB charge-able, and the ring takes around 10 min-utes to affix to each wheel. Some may be concerned about theft, but the Revolight’s screw-in feature protects it from thieves, as long as the wheels are locked. “We’re looking for a fine balance of ease of installation and preventing theft,” Pettler said. “Our approach to that is a simple in-stallation that takes 10 minutes to install, with the idea that it should take 10 minutes to steal.” “Davis’ thriving bike culture would undoubtedly change at night with the Revolight rolling around,” Houk said. “When I was in college, I had your stan-

dard $15 bike light. It wasn’t anything that was cool, anything I was particularly stoked to have. I think the Revolights can potentially have that aesthetic appeal that would make you feel like you were not only riding safely but also making ‘safe’ cool,” Houk said. The product is currently in the final stag-es of development. Version Five was just unveiled to the public for the first time at the San Francisco Bike Expo on Nov. 12, and is currently on display at the WIRED store in New York’s Time Square. The team’s projected production date of March 2012 is only a year and a half after they came up with the idea in October 2010. “Kent had the idea riding home from work one day, while using a helmet-mount-ed headlight,” Houk said. “He figured, ‘I don’t really get it, I’m supposed to be light-

ing up the ground, but it’s so far from the ground. I can’t even see the ground. What if I put something on my wheel?’ He came up with this little hub-mounted design that he just ran out wires with LEDs on the end and hot glued them to his spokes.” Frankovich presented his idea to Pettler at a party via an iPhone video, and Pettler was immediately on board. “Adam got in touch with me — we were in business school together at Davis at the time — and asked me if I wanted to help him write a business plan for this guy,” Houk said. “We set up an independent study class, got an advisor and wrote up the business plan.” Since then, Frankovich, Houk and Pettler have formed a partnership and transformed Frankovich’s original proto-type into a high-profile business venture,

with an overwhelming amount of positive support and feedback. The environmen-tally-conscious mentality of UC Davis was a motivating factor in pushing the project forward as well. “The sustainability emphasis is the rea-son people want to ride bikes,” Pettler said. “In our MBA program, it was an ave-nue they tried to put entrepreneurs down. Without a doubt, we were thinking in that way when we went forward with this.” But the developers have been pleased to find just as much enthusiasm for the idea outside of Davis. “Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have helped this project take off on its own,” Houk said. “People blog and reblog, everyone thinks it’s cool. We’ve been getting calls from the Netherlands, Australia, Germany ... It has made the world feel really small.” Sabrina Swift, junior animal science and management double major and a member of UC Davis’ triathlon team, agreed that an added degree of safety while riding at night would provide some added flexibil-ity in her daily schedule. “I don’t bike at night because people can’t see me, it’s dangerous,” Swift said. “If I had a light like [the Revolight] I could stay on campus for longer, especially these days when it gets dark at five. The team also goes for rides every day — the ones who go at night would definitely benefit from hav-ing such bright lights, too.” Houk acknowledged that the $220 price point may be high for the average college stu-dent, which is why their target market right now is bike commuters, not just limited to those on campuses. However, they hope for future accessibility to the student market. “We were college students just six months ago, so we understand. College campuses were our initial thought — to have some-thing set up outside the bike store, or the bookstore,” Houk said. “Everyone’s gotta buy a light. It’s the law!”

LANI CHAN can be reached at [email protected].

Alumni to introduce the Revolight in March

New bike light offers 360 degree visibility, added safety

Therapy dogs assist students in de-stressing amidst testing season

CAPS organizes quarterly Therapy Fluffies event

By TREVOR CRAMERAggie Sports Editor

NBA stars put on a show at the Pavilion Sunday night in the Goon Squad Classic. Not surprisingly, the de-fenses took the night off, as fans were treated to a bar-rage of dunks and long range three-pointers. Oklahoma City forward Kevin Durant did not travel to Davis for the event, while Washington guard John Wall was on the bench, but did not play in the game. Even with the game’s big-gest stars not on the floor, a group of current and for-mer Sacramento Kings, in-cluding Tyreke Evans and Jimmer Fredette, did their part to ensure that the eve-ning was entertaining. The teams flew up and down the court, bringing the score to 44-41 at the end of the first quarter. The clock wound down with the score tied, and the game was ultimately re-solved in overtime with a 167-164 win for the black team. The atmosphere in the Pavilion was exciting, and was something that Kings

center DeMarcus Cousins picked up on. “It was a lot of fun to be here tonight,” Cousins said. “I really enjoyed the chance to play here.” The game also gave play-ers a chance to play com-petitive basketball during the current NBA lockout, which some believe may cost the players a full sea-son of action. This is especially true for Fredette, who has yet to play a game with the Kings, but was able to unite with many of his Sacramento team-mates on Sunday. “It’s good to be able to play with [my teammates] a little bit before the season starts,” Fredette said. “Getting to know their personalities is a good thing.” The proceeds of the eve-ning benefited multiple charities, including Circle of Success — the charity started by game organizer and Kings forward Donte Greene. “It’s good to be able to give back to these charities,” Fredette said . “It really helps the community.”

TREVOR CRAMER can be reached at [email protected].

Goon Squad Classic brings entertainment to the Pavilion

Dunks and threes for charity

Madison Dunitz / Aggie

Jimmer Fredette of the Sacramento Kings, made several long-range three-pointers in the Goon Squad Classic.

courtesyRevolights

Page 7: November 22, 2011

tuesday, november 22, 2011 7the california aggie

By PRISCILLA WONGAggie Features Writer

The process of getting into law school has a reputation for being difficult, to say the least. Just ask Elle Woods. But according to Sharon L. Pinkney, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Enrollment at UC Davis School of Law, law school remains a great educa-tional and professional option. “Coming into law school with ‘eyes open’ is very important,” Pinkney said in an e-mail interview. The Student Academic Success Center (SASC) offers pre-law ad-vising services to all UC Davis students and alumni. It can as-sist students in preparing for the LSAT, critiquing personal state-ments, choosing law schools and more. Pre-law advising is located in 111 South Hall. When students decide to apply to law school, there are many factors to consider in the application process. It is crucial that appli-cants put forth max-imum effort on all components of the ap-plication, such as writ-ing an informative per-sonal statement, thor-oughly preparing for the LSAT, choosing useful recom-mendations and doing well in their undergraduate education, Pinkney said. “Law students need to be dis-ciplined, secure in their deci-sion to study law and mature on many levels,” Pinkney said. Pinkney suggested that pre-law students go to the School of

Law Admission website to find preparation material prepared by the organization that cre-ates the LSAT. Workbooks, such as Princeton Review, Kaplan, and ARCO, are available for self-preparation. However, if more preparation is needed, the SASC website lists courses such as Kaplan at 753-4800 and Princeton Review at 447-4255 that are available. “When you register for the LSAT, always register for one that allows you a backup date just in case you need to repeat the exam at a later time,” Pinkney said. At Harvard University, the LSAT score for the 75th percen-tile is 176 and the 25th percentile is 171. At

U C Davis, the LSAT score for the 75th percentile is 165 and for the 25th percentile is 161. At UC Berkeley, the average LSAT score is 163. Ken Barnes, Program Coordinator at the Community Service Resource Center (CSRC), said internships with law firms always get attention because the

experience is relevant. Also, in-ternships with government agen-cies with the District Attorney’s office and the Federal Defender’s Office earn recognition as great internship experience for pre-law students. Barnes said that students at UC Davis are at an advantage be-cause they are so close to the cap-

itol where students can intern for assem-

bly members, senators or the

governor. “Anything that helps build skills pertinent to being a good lawyer such as communica-tion skills, research skills, and problem solving skills are ben-eficial activities for pre-law stu-dents,” Barnes said in an e-mail interview. “You can devel-

op those skills in a multitude of ways, such as volunteering for community service, taking a lead role in a club or organiza-tion, writing for local papers or even doing research with the UC Davis Undergraduate Research Center.” Harvard Law School received 6,364 applications and only ac-cepted 13 percent into the class of 2014. The annual cost of tu-ition is $47,600. At the UC Davis School of Law, 3,864 applied for admission for the 2010-11 school year and only 984 were offered admission. UC Berkeley

Law School received 7,253 applications and 254

were accepted into the

class of 2014. The annual cost of tu-ition is $41,763.30

at the UC Davis School of Law and is $50,164 at UC Berkeley. Pre-law students should pur-sue a major that they find in-teresting and enjoyable because liking what you are doing means performing better, Pinkney said. “A broad course of study de-signed to enhance writing skills

and analytical and logical rea-soning skills is the best prepara-tion,” Pinkney said. During law school and after, law school career centers can assist students in finding job placement by helping them be-come enticing competition in the job market. Craig Compton, assistant dean of Career Services at the UC Davis School of Law, said that the current econom-ic situation has also affected the legal job market as well, but he believes that UC Davis law school students are well posi-tioned to compete in the job market. Law students gain practical experience through numerous

clinical, extern-ship and sum-mer employ-ment opportu-nities, Compton said. “The law school works extremely hard

to help students find legal employ-

ment — both for summer opportunities and post-bar positions,” Compton said in

an e-mail interview. In reference specifically to UC Davis School of Law, Compton said that the school’s rise in the rankings, internationally-recog-nized faculty, small-sized class-es, outstanding students and supportive learning environ-ment make UC Davis a great place to get an outstanding le-gal education.

PRISCILLA WONG can be reached at [email protected].

By MICHELLE STAUFFERAggie Features Writer

On Thursday, some students will sit down to a turkey dinner, some to a ham, and some to none of the above. While Thanksgiving has received the reputation of being America’s “Turkey Day,” the student sitting next to you in or-ganic chemistry may be looking forward to something other than the traditional Thanksgiving Day bird. Midson Hay, who graduated in 2011 with degrees in Japanese and economics and identifies as Southeast Asian, said there was no sort of T h a n k s g i v i n g tradition in his house until he was a teenager. “ G r o w i n g up I didn’t re-ally celebrate Thanksgiving with my family un-til my older sis-ter and I reached high school. We were pretty much independent at this point and we agreed that we wanted a real Thanksgiving,” Hay said. When they were old enough, Hay and his sister tried to bring the tradition of Thanksgiving to his family. “We went out to get groceries to cook a Thanksgiving feast, which my parents weren’t really fond of. They thought it was too ‘American’ and they would have rather had Chinese food,” Hay said. Even if his attempt to create a tradi-tional Thanksgiving may have failed, Hay

said he definitely still gained something from the experience. “It was a day with ridiculous amounts of food and not enough people to eat it. Friends and family came to stuff their fac-es and watch the football game, and it was probably the first time in a long time I felt any kind of real family bonding,” Hay said. Hay does still have a love for

Thanksgiving, however, for

the same reason as

many other students. “Food!” Hay said. “It’s a socially accept-able ‘fat’ day. I love it.” There are some families, however, that have adopted a traditional American Thanksgiving into their lives and changed it to adhere more to their own cultures. For Mahshid Aimaq, senior psycholo-gy major with an emphasis in biology, the Thanksgiving lunch includes tradition-al American as well as traditional Afghani foods.

“We make all the traditional things like turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gra-vy, cranberry sauce and biscuits. We also make Afghani food like rice, spinach and kabob. For dessert we will make apple pie and firnee, which is an Afghani desert, kind of like pudding,” Aimaq said. For Aimaq, it wouldn’t matter what the

traditions were, as long as she would be with

family.

“My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is that I get to spend time with my family,” Aimaq said. Phaxi Yang, senior psychology ma-jor, also experiences fusions of American culture and her own culture, Hmong, on Thanksgiving. “We cook a big turkey and make all kinds of other dishes, from mashed pota-toes to eggrolls. For some reason, we al-ways get a pumpkin pie but no one ever eats it. When the turkey is cooked, my

brother-in-law will cut half of it and grind the meat up and make a Laotian dish called laab,” Yang said. Yang’s family also has another important tradition after the Thanksgiving lunch. “The ‘lunch’ usually last until almost 4 p.m. and afterward, we usually set up the Christmas tree and pick our Secret Santa. When everything is settled, we all usually sit around our TV and watch a

“Friends” episode, our favorite show,” Yang said. According to Yang, Thanksgiving a

few years ago was espe-cially memorable be-

cause the whole family sat down to tell stories. “My dad told the story of how he carried my old-est brother and sister through the jungles of Laos and crossed the Mekong River to get to Thailand during the Vietnam War. He also told a sto-ry about my past grandmother and he was laughing and crying,” Yang

said. For Yang, it isn’t the food or the Christmas tree that makes Thanksgiving Day so spe-cial — it’s being surrounded by her big family. “My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is the family gathering. We usually have about five families total over at my par-ents, including my siblings’ families,” Yang said.

MICHELLE STAUFFER can be reached at [email protected].

Students reflect on non-traditional Thanksgivings

Eggrolls, kabobs join turkey at some tables

Career SpotlightHow to get into law school

Irisa Tam / Aggie

Irisa Tam / Aggie

By JAMIE BLyNNThe GW Hatchet

(George Washington University)

Grace Warrick can’t justify stay-ing in college for another five months – not when it comes with George Washington U’s price tag.Warrick said she would rather jump-start her job search instead of continuing to pile on debt for another semester, noting that graduating early was a better op-tion than finishing an eighth se-mester, which would have forced her to take out a small loan. “Even though I have had a fan-tastic experience at GW and love being a student, I am more com-fortable supporting myself with the money I will save, rather than going into debt or job search-ing under immense pressure,” Warrick said. “It also means a lot to my family for me to finish my undergraduate degree within my budget.” Thinking of savings and debt,

she set herself on a track to grad-uate early during her sophomore year, a plan she formalized this semester. Although GW is no longer the most expensive university in the country, the cost of attend-ing has discouraged some stu-dents from staying for four years. Current seniors pay fixed tuition and fees of $40,437 yearly – a fig-ure that rose to $44,148 for the Class of 2015. Of students who entered the University since 2003, 520 stu-dents graduated early, internal data show. Seventy-five members of the Class of 2011, or 3.5 per-cent, completed requirements in three years or fewer – down from the year before, when 4.6 percent of students in the Class of 2010 graduated two or more semesters early. University statistics do not dis-tinguish between students who graduate in seven semesters from those who graduate in eight. Data

for three-and-a- half-year grad-uates of the current senior class, who entered college as the econ-omy slipped into recession, will be lumped with those who fin-ished in four years when data are released. Placing a national spotlight on student debt concerns, President Barack Obama launched the “We Can’t Wait” campaign to reduce student debt earlier this month, changes a University adminis-trator said would benefit few on campus. Students have expressed simi-lar concerns about college costs. Most adults ages 18 to 34 consid-er college harder to afford than it was five years ago, according to a report by The Institute for College Access and Success re-leased Nov. 9. Of those surveyed, 73 percent said graduates accrue more student debt than they can manage. “In general, factors such as tu-ition, availability of grant aid and

income background all influence the level of debt,” the institute’s program director Matthew Reed said. Senior Alex Pazuchanics also said he plans to graduate early to avoid debt and enter the job mar-ket as early as possible.He adjusted his class schedules to ensure he’d be able to graduate in less time, a choice that geared his courses to be more “vocation-al” and prevented him from tak-ing others that would “expand his horizons,” he said. “I think that there are opportu-nities that I probably would have taken advantage of had the cost structure been different,” he said. “Debt is scary for all of us,” he added. More than half of the District’s college students graduate with debt, according to 2011 data from the Project on Student Debt. Students in D.C. with loans have, on average, $24,191 in debt – the 17th highest figure in the nation.

While the University’s Office of Financial Aid tries to main-tain enrollment by meeting the needs of students, it must stay within its “federal and institu-tional guidelines, as well as the University’s aid allocation in granting assistance,” Dan Small, vice president of financial assis-tance, said. “We try our very best to bridge the gap in what the family can pay and the cost of education,” Small said. “It is an individual decision as to whether a student chooses to graduate early to save money or stays to receive the full college experience.” For Warrick, trading in a full college experience for a future without debt is worthwhile sacri-fice that will allow her to pursue a career on her own terms. “I think the decision is person-al and totally unique to each indi-vidual’s situation,” she said. “I’m much more comfortable in this situation.”

In tough economy, students graduate early to avoid debt

Page 8: November 22, 2011

The california aggie8 Tuesday, november 22, 2011

Jasna Hodzic / Aggie

Members of the crowd cheer during a speech given at the rally.

The People

Assemble

Aaron Juarez / Aggie

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi briefly addressed the crowd present on the Quad.

Jasna Hodzic / Aggie

Ian Lee, a first-year UC Davis student who was pepper sprayed, was the first speaker at the rally.

Evan Davis / Aggie

“We’re kids, we’re just kids,” said David Buscho, a senior mechanical engineering student who was pepper sprayed.

Shazib Haq / Aggie

Following the speeches groups of thirty were formed to vote on proposals.

Page 9: November 22, 2011

tuesday, november 22, 2011 9the california aggie

Jasna Hodzic / Aggie

Members of the English department appeared on stage to express solidarity with the Occupy UC Davis protesters.

Jasna Hodzic / Aggie

The rally on Monday drew thousands of Occupy UC Davis supporters to the Quad.

Evan Davis / Aggie

Chancellor Katehi left the Quad after apologizing to students.

Evan Davis / Aggie

Jeremiah Dawson, a student at Sacramento State student, sets up a tent on the quad following the rally on Monday.

Brian Nguyen / Aggie

Members of Occupy UC Davis work to put together a geodesic dome for their occupation of the UC Davis Quad.

Jasna Hodzic / Aggie

An art installation was present in the center of the Quad during the rally.

Page 10: November 22, 2011

The california aggie 10 Tuesday, november 22, 2011