Students attend a presentation by guest speaker James Fadiman. Fadiman discussed the safe use and history of psychedelic drugs. Photo courtesy of Aviva Wolman.

Editor’s Note: As printed on Feb. 23, Samuel Montero is quoted as saying “There’s a lot of history that cultures have used [psychedelics] recreationally, for religious purposes.” The quote should read, “There’s a lot of history that shows that cultures have used [psychedelics] not simply recreationally, but for religious purposes.” Also, the quote that reads, “The rift between the social sciences is disgusting,” should read instead “The rift between the social sciences and hard sciences is unacceptable.” This piece was updated on Feb. 28 and Oct. 16 to reflect these changes.

The fire marshal would have been angry. With over 350 people at “Shattering Certainty: The Promise and Pitfalls of Psychedelics” Feb. 15, the Humanities Lecture Hall was bursting at the seams.

“How many of you have never taken a psychedelic?” researcher, professor and author James Fadiman asked the audience. A small fraction raised their hands.

Hosted and promoted by the student-led Brain Mind and Consciousness (BMC) Society at UC Santa Cruz, the event’s Facebook page encouraged people to wear “psychedelic attire.” Artwork adorned the walls, provided by Santa Cruz-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), also present.

“You takers are part of a worldwide research group,” Fadiman said. “[Psychedelics] used to be central to Greek culture, Siberia, the indigenous cultures of Latin America … they’ve been illegal in the U.S. for 40 years, but that’s a tiny dot in human history — and it looks like we are rejoining that history.”

Fourth-year Samuel Montero commented on the social relevance of the presentation.

“There’s a lot of history that shows that cultures have used [psychedelics] not simply recreationally, but for religious purposes,” Montero said. “If we had a regulated area where people could use it, I think it would make things safer and more successful all around.”

In 1970, the U.S. Controlled Substances Act classified psychotropic drugs as Schedule I: “No accepted medical use and high potential for abuse.” Alcohol and tobacco are not federally classified as Schedule I.

Fadiman’s book, “The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys,” has been reviewed by Jay Brown of MAPS as “the very best guide that exists on how to prepare for a safe and therapeutic psychedelic journey, with positive psychological transformation as one’s goal.” Copies were sold at the conference.

The presentation mirrored Fadiman’s book, with a history of different psychedelic drugs and their cultural uses, followed by a no-nonsense, straightforward guide to a good trip.

Using a PowerPoint presentation, Fadiman explained the “six critical conditions”: set (how you approach the experience), setting (where you are and what “sensory assists” you have nearby), substance (what you are ingesting and how much of it), sitter (who is with you), session (how much time you set aside for the trip), and situation (how you exit the trip and return to sobriety).

Fadiman also included a dosing guide in his presentation, listing 400 micrograms (mcg) of LSD as the dose required to elicit transcendental experiences, 50 mcg as a “disco-hit,” and 10 mcg a micro dose that “seems to enhance energy and awareness … except rocks don’t glitter and flowers don’t watch you.”

“On the scale of trips, you can have ones like ‘oh’, and you can have ones like ‘whoa!’” Fadiman said. “If you’re going to use these substances, you might as well go for the ‘whoa!’”

Additional topics included Portugal’s broad legalization of substances, potential drawbacks to approaching psychedelics use incorrectly, the American medical model, and the neuroplasticity theory, which hypothesizes that the brain continues to evolve throughout adulthood.

Founder and president of the BMC Andrew Kornfeld spoke to Fadiman at a recent MAPS conference and asked him to be a guest presenter at UCSC.

“We [at the BMC] are not just about psychotropic drugs — this is an aspect of consciousness,” Kornfeld said. “When I’m taking a psychology class, [the other students] don’t understand biology. When I’m taking a biology class, they don’t understand psychology. We’re sick of that. The rift between the social sciences and hard sciences is unacceptable.”

BMC vice president Jessica Heitel discussed the social intent of the presentation.

“We’re bringing together different kinds of people from all walks of study … everyone chipped in to this event,” Heitel said. “[We wanted] to create a community pride atmosphere instead of it being like a lecture.”

A Q&A session among the audience, Fadiman and his panel of colleagues from MAPS followed the presentation.

First-year Nic Zinter commented on the conference’s relevance in Santa Cruz.

“There’s an undeniably big drug culture at UCSC,” Zinter said, “and I think it’s really good to host forums like this to explore the potentials [of psychedelics] and prevent abuse.”

In 2011 protesters shut down Wall Street, on March 1 protesters will shut down the university, and on March 5 they will shut down the capitol. It is no surprise to the UC Santa Cruz student body that we are in a class struggle for social and economic equality.

Van Jones spoke on campus on Feb. 21 about the economic crisis and his reformation of the American dream.

Jones is a Yale Law School graduate, former advisor to the Obama administration, bestselling author of “The Green Collar Economy,” award-winning pioneer in human rights and clean energy economy, and was dubbed one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009 by TIME magazine.

Charismatic and humorous, Jones described the center of America’s struggle as an economic and cultural task. The notion of the American Dream, he said, is a confused and misinterpreted one that should be transformed to better reflect today’s society.

“There is a thing they call the American Dream,” he said. “This is the notion that everyone in American is going to get as rich as they possibly can. This is not the American dream, but it is the American dance. This dream is a dying dream. This dream is dying, and it should be dying.”

Jones is currently working on an organization called Rebuild the Dream, which focuses on community reformation through traditional techniques, like teach-ins and rallies, as well as digital services like online petitions and viral digital projects. The plan is to reestablish the American dream as something that protects and expands jobs for the middle and lower classes.

UCSC students are part of the new generation in this plan, Jones said.

“The diversity you have in your generation is a miracle in history,” he said. “You have every class, every faith, every race, every gender, and you’re even making new genders. You have all of these things, and you get along pretty well. This diversity, through your generation’s social and political movements, can and will restore prosperity.”

First-year Leilani Salvador is a member of the Cultural Arts and Diversity Program board of directors. Salvador helped organize and sponsor the event.

“One of our goals [with bringing Jones to speak] was to get a more politically diverse community,” Salvador said. “The majority of the politically active communities on campus are ethnically white students. For us to have Jones, who is a politically prominent figure, represented by so many ethnically-based groups really encourages ethnic students to participate in the campus’ political opportunities.”

Dr. Marla Wyche-Hall, director of the African American Resource and Cultural Center, one of the event’s sponsors, said Jones spoke well about the challenges and promises facing our diverse, multicultural generation.

“I think one of the purposes of his speech was to cross boundaries,” she said. “We have to acknowledge the differences between our social and ethnic groups, but, despite this ‘rainbow generation,’ we can still come together and make change.”

Read City on a Hill Press’ exclusive Q&A with Van Jones

Illustration by Louise Leong.

No matter who you are, you are born with the individual privilege of being yourself.

This is a privilege Nikki Giovanni — world-renowned poet and writer, storyteller, English professor, civil rights activist and commentator — feels is underestimated and misrepresented, and should be harnessed by contemporary American society, especially its youth. Giovanni will share these sentiments with the Santa Cruz community as keynote speaker at the 28th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation.

On Feb. 2 at 7 p.m. in the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Giovanni will speak on “The Privilege of Serving: Art and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.” The event is hosted by UC Santa Cruz each year as a part of the celebration of Black History Month, and as a way of remembering Martin Luther King Jr. and continuing to raise awareness about civil rights.

Giovanni was active in the civil rights movement after growing up in segregated eastern Tennessee. She said although she was only 12 years old at the time, watching Rosa Parks refuse to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery in 1955 was “a galvanizing moment for all of us.”

Rosa Parks, whom Giovanni grew to be very close friends with, took an initiative that had not been taken before and represented repressed Americans all over the United States.

“It’s so important young people recognize it’s your mind, and you should make it up for yourself,” Giovanni said. “In doing that, sometimes it’s going to be difficult, sometimes you’re going to find yourself standing there pretty much alone — that’s why I talk about the individual, because a crowd is no better than the individuals in it. It’s very important that if you are with a group, you be proud of the fact you’re there.”

David Anthony, associate history professor at UCSC and emcee of the event, discussed the importance of informing and inspiring students on this subject matter.

“Not everyone has had the opportunity to attend [a university], or even if attending, to complete [a degree],” Anthony said. “And yet, there are many ways to become educated through being observant and committed to building a better world for oneself and one’s fellow human beings, in all ways. Student awareness usually comes as a response to living in stimulating environments.”

Giovanni says she enjoys talking to young people because there is a future in it, an opportunity for even more change.

“Change is important for the self, for itself, change in every way,” Giovanni said. “That’s why you grow old. If you never changed, you’d be running around in diapers right now.”

She said she is amazed at the change that has already happened in her lifetime.

“What you youngsters will be doing is something we have not thought of,” she said. “It’s not beyond my imagination, but at this point it’s outside of my articulation.”

This event is a rare opportunity, as Nikki Giovanni will help us remember the great and inspirational man Martin Luther King Jr. was. She will, as he did, use the power of spoken word as a change agent.

“Human beings only have words — anything else, we are fooling ourselves,” Giovanni said. “The word among human beings is sacred and should be treated as that. Words determine who we are. We dream in words, so words are always important.”

A balance of the individual and the crowd is crucial. When asked what she means by “the privilege of serving,” Giovanni explained,

“The privilege of being yourself, the privilege of standing up.”

“It’s a privilege to be educated, to have First Amendment rights, to worship as you choose and to recognize that some people don’t worship as you do,” she said.

Joy L. Lei, assistant campus diversity officer, said Giovanni will be the perfect person to speak at the event in honor of Dr. King.

“She has an immense amount of energy— she is known to be such a dynamic speaker,” Lei said. “This is important, for Dr. King was such a wonderful orator. I’m hoping that [Giovanni] will speak to what civil rights and equality mean to us today.”

In addition to Giovanni’s talk and poetry reading, there will be several other performances including the African-American Theatre Arts Group (AATAG), Reverend Johnson’s reflection on faith, Chancellor George R. Blumenthal speaking, and the presentation of the fourth annual Tony Hill Memorial Award.

For the past four years, UCSC officials at the MLK Jr. Memorial Convocation have presented the award in memory of Tony Hill, a beloved community leader, mentor and volunteer that was a part of the convocation planning committee. The award will be presented to a community member who reflects Hill’s qualities: a mentor, inspirational leader, and bridge builder in the community. The recipient will be awarded $500 to donate to their charity of choice.

Nikki Giovanni said recognizing and remembering leaders is vital.

“I think for the sanity and the soul of America we have to recognize the wonderful contributions people have made for our freedom,” Giovanni said. “And it’s not just the freedom of black Americans, it’s all of us. Any time you can take a step away from hate, this is a good thing.”

In addition to the event at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium at 7 p.m. (free of cost), Nikki Giovanni will also lead a student panel in the Stevenson Event Center beforehand, on Feb. 2, at 3 p.m.

UCSC alumna Julia Sweig speaks for a crowd of community members on foreign policy between Latin America and the United States. Since graduating from Porter in 1986, Sweig has become a distinguished scholar and worked at the Council on Foreign Relations. Photo by Prescott Watson.

Julia Sweig was all smiles when Provost Helen Shapiro handed her a Colleges Nine and Ten mug at the end of her speech on Latin America and foreign policy. Sweig, a Porter graduate of 1986, visited campus to address students after having been honored as a UC Santa Cruz Distinguished Alumni of 2011.

After graduating as a Latin American studies student before the major was even in place at UCSC, Sweig became a senior fellow and task force director for the Council on Foreign Relations. She took time off from her post at the major Washington think-tank to share her expertise with the crowd of Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) and politics majors and faculty members crowded into the Namaste Lounge.

While she currently works at the Council on Foreign Relations, Sweig said she found “a different sort of activism” during her time at UCSC.

“When I was a student at UCSC, my focus was on using my scholarship to pursue policy-related activism,” Sweig said to the assembled crowd.

Sweig went on to crunch decades of Latin American history and U.S. foreign policy into her 45-minute speech and ensuing Q&A session.

“This was a period in history when Henry Kissinger said defying the American order was done at Latin America’s peril,” Sweig said, recounting the turbulent period in Latin American history that was the 1980s, characterized as it was by hyperinflation and military dictatorships.

Sweig interrupted her speech on occasion to offer brief personal stories. For example, when in Cuba in the mid-’80s, Sweig shared a hotel with revolutionaries.

“There was a lot of rum flowing. That was Havana in 1984,” said Sweig, to the amusement of those assembled.

On a more solemn note, Sweig described how her involvement with the Council on Foreign Relations helped change the language of U.S. foreign policy.

“Even as recently as 2004, a group of ‘elites,’ using that word to describe their obvious [Latin American] counterparts, was like shining a light on the elephant in the room,” Sweig said, describing how American politicians shied away from using the term to describe Latin American high-powered military and political personnel. “Now in today’s dialogues, we see that word all the time, and I know where they got it from.”

Sweig also spoke of the necessity to recognize the greater prominence of Latin American states in today’s world.

“The greater voice that Latin Americans have now would have been unrecognizable to my professors,” Sweig said. “The fundamental agenda for Latin Americans now is social inclusion. There’s still massive inequality, but there’s more democratic access as well.”

Sweig also took time to answer students’ questions, which ranged from queries on future U.S. foreign policy to how Brazil was going to handle hosting both the Olympics and the World Cup. After firing off answers on how the United States tended to “use Latin America as a proving ground for counterinsurgency tactics,” and that “the ball hasn’t rolled very far forward” with regard to U.S. attitudes towards Cuba, Sweig casually mentioned that she’d be taking her family to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Members of the Santa Cruz community gather to discuss the future of food with a panel of local foodies, including New Leaf owner Scott Roseman and Maureen Wilmot, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation. Photos by Molly Solomon.

Organic farming took the stage at Kuumbwa Jazz Center last week when locals came together to discuss “The Future of Food” on May 11. Sponsored by UC Santa Cruz’s College Eight, Santa Cruz County Bank and the city of Santa Cruz, the lecture was one of a monthly series that examines community and civic issues.

“In this lecture series, we’re trying to bring community leaders together to address local as well as global issues,” Santa Cruz mayor Ryan Coonerty said in a welcome address to the audience.

Four local agriculture specialists explained some trends in American food consumption and production. They spoke about recent horticulture technology and food movements that could change the way the world grows food.

Scott Roseman, UCSC alumnus and founder of New Leaf Community Markets, said the United States has a monopolized system of factory farming that provides food for most of the country. He said there is a small but growing organic farming movement.

“The current state of the food situation is pretty messed up,” he said. “We spend so much money on things we don’t need, but we won’t spend a little more money to eat organic.”

Films have been made about the horrors of conventional food production, like “Food, Inc.” and internet sensation “The Meatrix.” Books have been written about the moral implications of eating food produced in this environment, like Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” and Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation.”

Maureen Wilmot, UCSC alumna and executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation, said her biology background and work in ocean conservation made her skeptical of farming because of its negative environmental impacts.

“We in the ocean community always saw farming as part of the problem,” she said. “However, organic farming is part of the solution to save the ocean.”

Organic farms conserve water and soil while reducing pollution. They depend on natural fertilizers rather than chemical ones and pulling weeds rather than spraying them.

Runoff from factory farms can be harmful to the ocean and water sources for local communities. Some innovators of agriculture, like Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard, are trying new methods and substances to improve their products and the land they grow on.

One of the substances Grahm is testing, called biochar, could address global warming concerns and regenerate unusable soil.

“Biochar is a kind of charcoal that activates when mixed with soil,” he said. “It makes favorable minerals available to the plant while it increases the product’s shelf life and nutritional value. It’s like reverse coal mining.”

Another project Randall is working on is the creation of a “polyculture” breeding method. Rather than providing a farming environment with one type of grape, Randall hopes to increase diversity in his vineyard and create hybrids.

“We want to create a genetic range in our vineyards,” he said. “We’re going to see what wine tastes like from a diversity of hybrid types.”

Olivia Chiu, a third-year Oakes student, said she enjoyed the insights panelists brought to the discussion.

“I liked the message [the panelists] sent,” she said. “Farming affects not only local communities but globally too. It’s important to consider this right now because a lot of cities are working toward reducing their carbon footprint.”

The UCSC Farm has been threatened with cuts recently. Wilmot said it is crucial that steps be taken to preserve programs at the farm.

“One of [the Organic Farming Research Foundation’s] goals is to see organic farming at every land grant university in this country,” she said. “We see farming education as so important because places like the UCSC Farm teach students to feed the next generation.”

Dennis Donohue, a local radicchio grower and mayor of Salinas, was also on the panel. He described the Salinas Valley as a “patchwork of family farms.”

Wilmot said unregulated use of supermarket food lingo, like “natural,” “fresh” and “local,” makes it difficult for certified organic farms to compete.

“The term ‘organic’ is the only federally certified label,” Wilmot said. “Organic farming is one of the few industries asking for more regulation. They want the other labels to mean something.”

Roseman said “natural” as a descriptor for meat is abused and therefore meaningless to consumers. Of his own company, he said New Leaf is committed to selling meats that are not treated with hormones, antibiotics, nitrates or other chemical additives.

“It’s frustrating because we’re doing it right,” Roseman said. “But other companies are doing it halfway or not at all and putting the natural label on their meat.”

Wilmot said a combination of economic and political pressure is the best way for individuals to help further environmentally friendly farming practices.

“We need market forces and political forces,” Wilmot said. “You need to write your elected officials and agencies. Be politically active and be a smart consumer.”

Dr. Cornel West speaks at Classroom Unit 2 on Friday, May 6. SUA and E2 coordinated the event. Photo by Michael Mott.

The atmosphere inside Classroom Unit 2 was tense.

Opening remarks had been made at UC Santa Cruz’s Speaker Blowout, and the stage was set for the main attraction of the evening: Dr. Cornel West.

Suddenly, a hush fell over the room and the side door on stage right opened. In strolled West, and up shot the audience. Approximately 400 people were on their feet, clapping and cheering with the same enthusiasm college students usually reserve for movie stars and rappers.

But West is a different kind of celebrity. Holding degrees from both Harvard and Princeton, West is an internationally known philosopher, author, orator and civil rights activist. He is best known for his work in social justice related to race, gender and class in American society.

Speaker Blowout is an annual event that aims to provide a space for students to be educated and informed about issues directly affecting access to institutions of higher learning.

Taking the podium, West began his speech with a question.

“The most important question we can ask ourselves is, ‘What does it mean to be human?’”

This kind of Socratic questioning was a frequent theme in West’s speech. Touching on issues of race, class, the legacy of white supremacy, gender and modern politics, West’s speech highlight- ed the progress that still needs to be made for social justice in America, and the importance of critical inquiry.

“We must come to terms with all forms of suffering,” West said. He urged the audience not to be satisfied with the status quo, and to remove themselves from the pursuit of material happiness. “Become misfits maladjusted to the indifference of the main-

stream,” West said. “From ‘bling bling’ to ‘let freedom ring.’”

West drew upon elements of African American culture in his discourse about social justice, referring to himself as “a blues- man in the life of the mind” and to the true nature of human existence, complete with its beauty and atrocities, as “the funk.” West called those who work for social justice “participants in the funk.”

Before beginning his speech, West acknowledged SUA chair Tiffany Loftin in front of the crowd, calling her “the visionary leader.” Loftin, along with Engaging Education (E2) program coordinators Kalwis Lo and Sahira Barajas, were the driving forces behind booking West. Loftin

said securing such a high-profile speaker was not an easy task.

“There were a lot of hurdles we had to jump over,” Loftin said. “But it was something I had my heart set on.”

Loftin said the main obstacle to bringing West to UCSC was money. The total cost for the event was $30,000, and the SUA and E2 had to fundraise over half the cost after donating $12,000 out of their own operating budgets. E2 program coordinator Kalwis Lo described the trio’s fundraising strategy.

“We wrote a letter to every administrator and college provost, telling them about our event and what our intentions were,” Lo said.

While some people Lo, Barajas and Loftin reached out to did not provide financial support, others

offered use of facilities or moral support. Colleges Nine and Ten provost Helen Shapiro was one of the event’s biggest financial supporters, donating a total of $2,000.

“I think Cornel West is an important voice, and the timing was good given [issues with graffiti] that have happened on campus,” Shapiro said.

Lo said their selection of West was partly in response to the rash of discriminatory graffiti been found on UCSC’s campus this year. The organizers of Speaker Blowout were hoping to use West’s prestige as a professor of African American studies at Princeton to further the movement for the creation of an ethnic studies program at UCSC, Lo said.

West emphasized that no matter what major, issues of social justice affect all students.

“Everything is at stake,” West said. “This has to do with what type of person you want to be, what type of society you want to have, what type of university you want to have.”

In closing, West encouraged all those who work for social justice to retain hope.

“Blues is about hope because the evidence always looks overwhelmingly bad,” West said. “But when you are a participant in the funk, all you’re looking for is movement.”

Illustration by Bela Messex.

Assemblyman Bill Monning (D-Carmel) spoke and initiated an open discussion in the UC Santa Cruz Namaste Lounge last Thursday. Monning addressed how the state, the UC and students are all affected by the state budget crisis.

“I hope we can use this afternoon not just as a Q&A, but as a brainstorming session on how we might best continue to mobilize and work with students and the community, and not just in Santa Cruz, but in the state of California,” Monning said to the group at the beginning of the discussion.

Students, faculty, community members and executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway engaged in a lengthy discussion after the Q&A session.

Although she felt Monning answered some questions indirectly, “like a politician,” Tiffany Loftin, chair of the Student Union Assembly (SUA), said the meeting was informative and a beneficial venue for addressing budgetary concerns. Loftin also serves as the national people of color student coalition chair of the United States Student Association.

“All the questions we wanted to ask we got to ask, and it increases shared governance when assembly members come to us,” Loftin said. “When we come to them we have 15 minutes, when he comes to us we have two hours.”

Questions from the audience ranged from the possible but unlikely advantage of Democrats voting for an all-cuts budget to the social and economic benefits of criminal sentence reform.

The topic most frequently brought up was a need to secure the four assembly votes that would make an overall two-thirds vote, and the governor’s signature, which would pass the proposed budget.

The extent of the state budget’s implementation of cuts to higher education hinges on the passing of tax extensions at the state level. Without the tax extensions in the proposed budget, the UC system faces an all-cuts budget that could lead to a $1 billion cut instead of the proposed $500 million.

Monning chided the actions of Republicans who will not vote to pass the budget nor present a budget of their own.

“The main problem is not the legislation or the regents,” said Jeremy Wolff, immediate past president of the College Democrats at UCSC. “It’s the system itself, and as long as the officials we elect face roadblocks like the two-thirds vote, we will continue seeing the degradation of the UC system.”

President of the SUA Amanda Buchanan played an integral role in organizing the talk. Buchanan prefaced Monning’s talk with a speech.

“Students in this room are here to work,” she said to the group. “We are here to collaborate with faculty, staff, unions, community members and administration to produce an outcome that meets the educational, social and cultural goals of the UC. Give us something to fight for. Give us the issue that makes our power come to life.”

Buchanan said students have already begun to feel the cuts in larger class sizes, longer wait lists, and discontinued majors, and the impacts will only go deeper. Wolff addressed this trend, saying that long-term lack of revenue could take the form of lowered student admission, increased fees, cut classes, online classes and a physical deterioration of the campus that will become apparent in about five years.

“As long as we continue to lose funding because the system doesn’t allow [us] to get new revenue sources we will see the UC system get weaker and more privatized, and less accessible to the majority of California,” Wolff said.

Monning spoke of the importance of student activists teaming up with community members and more disenfranchised populations to get the proposed budget, which includes the $500 million cut rather than an all-cut budget, passed.

“I think our secret weapon is the activism on the campuses, from community colleges to California State Universities to UC all around the state,” Monning said.

Loftin said that Monning’s presence at UCSC was empowering to student activists who often feel unheard by elected officials.

“He came to us and said ‘I see what you’re doing and it’s important,’” Loftin said. “I feel like there were a lot of students there and I felt very empowered by that, because it’s not every day that an assembly member comes to UCSC.”

Though Loftin observed a large student presence, she said there was a lack of students of color in attendance.

Students present at the talk voiced their desire for action. College Nine SUA representative Sasha Muce said it is time to demand that elected officials “step up.”

April 11–15 is a week of action for Higher Education, which some UCSC student organizations will be observing. A rally will be held on April 14 in front of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Los Angeles office. UCSC’s SUA will be organizing buses to transport students who wish to attend.

Filmmaker Susanna Helke discusses her film “White Sky” and her latest project “Playground,” which were both shown on campus. A guest in the Film and Digital Media Visiting Artists series, Helke answered questions ranging from her inspirations and future projects to the technical aspects of how she produced the films. Photo by Molly Solomon.

This is the opening of Finnish director Susanna Helke’s film “White Sky,” a documentary that follows the story of a family in Northern Russia. The family is financially dependent on a local nickel factory that negatively impacts them physically and environmentally.

As the film shadows the family of three, it treats their lives with a tone of neutrality. Helke lets the individuals share their story through the slow unraveling of their daily lives — what Helke calls “the Slavic slowness” — rather than through abrupt scenes of intense action or unconcealed emotion. Within this apparent “slowness,” the focus on the “banal,” the barrenness of landscapes, the coiling smoke from the factory, and the narrator’s explanation of treatment to remove metal from her and her family’s bodies illustrate the situation and bring it to life.

For Porter fourth-year film student Ally Bobus, the visual of the films and their presentation were “really beautiful [and] really different from most documentaries we get to see.”

The change of pace in the film and the ways in which it diverges from traditional documentary film made the experience, for Bobus, “almost a cultural thing.”

Working between Helsinki, Finland and San Francisco, Helke is a documentary filmmaker who often focuses on disenfranchised youth, and is visiting as part of the Film and Digital Media Visiting Artist Series. Helke has a history with UC Santa Cruz, as she has worked and done research with the film and digital media department.

Associate professor in film and digital media Irene Gustafson explained that the draw to Helke’s films was the unique way they represented and told a story.

“[‘White Sky’ is] so dramatic, but it’s not dramatic in the way we usually think about film,” Gustafson said. “It’s about the drama of living in an area of environmental disaster. I think her films are incredibly curious and intensely visual.”

Helke said she does not want to portray the family of “White Sky” or any of other individuals in her films as victims.

“I don’t see these people as victims,” Helke said, “but I think in documentary tradition … films see some kind of social problem … something that is wrong that has to be corrected, and the strategy to do that is to find …victims and not really look at them, or look at how they are but [use] them as examples or [use] them to promote the agenda, the agenda of change. For me, it’s more about exploring how people survive.”

As Helke discusses her work, she makes clear that she is not interested in painting a specific social picture of the family, nor is she interested in delivering a neatly wrapped message. Instead, she wants viewers to infer the film’s message on their own by experiencing the film through the characters. By denying the viewer easily accessed ideas and leaving the films open-ended, Helke is opting to set herself apart from the tradition of documentary film making.

“[Viewer response is] something you don’t even want to control,” Helke said. “I feel like if you can [make the audience] feel the world through that mergence, that experience of kind of getting inside that [character’s] skin and see the world through that perspective, I think that’s really important.”

While Helke’s approach to story-telling is through the lens of documentary, she does not hold herself to the “classical, puritanical” tradition of documentary filmmaking, but she seeks out an “emotional element.” Helke’s divergence from the mode of traditional documentary filmmaking was recognized immediately by individuals within the audience.

Associate professor of film and digital media Gustavo Vazquez appreciated the ways in which Helke played with the boundaries of genre, specifically in her short film “Playground,” which was simultaneously a more structured narrative and a documentary.

“[Helke] likes to blur the notion of narrative with documentary,” Vazquez said. “[The characters] are social actors, playing themselves on different subjects.”

For Helke, an easily definable film — a film that fits neatly into one category — is unnatural and “paralyzing.”

“I was just never able to make documentaries any other way,” Helke said.

Currently, Helke is working on a new documentary discussing the large number of homeless queer youth within the United States. The film, similar to “White Sky” and “Playground,” focuses on “things that are in the shades of normal life” and “[gives] voice to people who don’t usually have it,” she said.

The experience of a film like Helke’s, for people like Gustafson, is an opportunity to see a new perspective on the ways individuals interact and behave.

“There’s a productive way where [Helke is] really interested in working with real people to create caricatured versions of themselves,” Gustafson said. “[She’s] interested in the way we’re always playing characters, performing roles.”

The Film and Digital Media Visiting Artists series continues throughout the 2010–2011 academic year. Other visiting filmmakers include Eric Stanley and Chris Vargas Jan. 24, Travis Wilkerson Feb. 7, Rebecca Baron April 4, and Wynne Greenwood April 25.

Vice Chancellor Barry Shiller explained the aims of the Halliday Lecture.

“The event is meant to bring the community together to share some of the achievements the university has made,” Shiller said. “One faculty member gives a talk. Tonight it is Greg Laughlin, who’s been using a very, very high power telescope to view planets that are like Earth.”

Stargazers and science fans of all ages and from all over Santa Cruz showed up to the free event. Sandra Faber, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, said the event was a huge success.

“This is the 10th Halliday Lecture, and the fourth since we moved downtown,” Faber said. “We once couldn’t fill our venue at UCSC, but tonight we turned away about 150 people.”

Laughlin, a young professor, walked to the stage to the applause of about 600 spectators in total. The lecture was very community-friendly, and he explained the complicated science so the whole audience was able to follow along. Hannah Denham, a first-year who is taking an astronomy course this quarter, attended.

“I think for the most part he did a good job of explaining everything very well,” Denahm said. “His models were good, and he interjected some humor in there to keep the audience’s attention.”

Before getting to the main purpose of the lecture, Laughlin provided historical information and discussed the modern astronomer’s struggle. The problem of studying planets in other systems, he explained, is much like the problem Galileo faced when trying to examine Venus through his small telescope.

“I took this photograph from my front yard,” Laughlin said. “In the lower right-hand corner of the picture, there you can see some power lines. And that small crescent-shaped dot up there — that’s Venus. This is the view of space we once had hundreds of years ago. It leaves a lot of mystery. This view of Venus is what we are faced with now with planets out in other solar systems.”

Laughlin also provided background scientific information for those unfamiliar with the subject matter at hand. In order to thoroughly explain how astronomers find other solar systems, he first explained how solar systems form. Before they are systems, Laughlin informed the audience, they are huge discs of gas and dust. They undergo an incredibly slow process of formation, one which reminded him of his own life.

“I don’t like to clean up. If you’re like me, and you don’t clean up under your bed, the dust builds up,” Laughlin said. “But, it doesn’t build up flat — it builds up into fractal shapes. It builds up into dust bunnies. If you didn’t clean up under your bed long enough, eventually you’ll get dust bunnies so large, they have their own gravitational pull.”

Over the course of extra-solar system exploration, astronomers have discovered information not only about other solar systems but our own solar system as well.

“The other planets in the same system are closer and denser which, is nothing like our solar system,” Laughlin said. “This turns out to be the dominant mode that solar systems form. Ours is relatively rare. It is actually rare to have a planet like Jupiter so far away from a sun.”

Laughlin’s information about Earth-like planets was very brief, and was mostly confined to graphs and charts, as technology does not yet allow much further information. The term “Earth-like planets,” Laughlin said, does not necessarily mean these planets have the ability to sustain life — just that the planets are similar in mass and size to Earth.

There may not be amazing photographs of these earth-like planets yet, Laughlin said, but hefinds the data very exciting. He made an example of the recently discovered planet found by fellow professor Steven Vogt.

“You see in the news media, you see artists renditions of this earth-like planet,” Laughlin said. “I see this tantalizing peak in the data.”

Despite the challenges and the slow process of discovery, Laughlin said that this is an exciting time for astronomers.

“We are right on where there are the most planets of our size and mass,” Laughlin said. “It is a unique point in human history.”