A Guide to the Student Groups on Campus.

Despite the rainy weather, Iranian students gathered on March 13 to celebrate Chaharshanben Soori, the Persian New Year celebration.

As the number of self-identified multiracial people and racial lines blur, communities are being forced to reevaluate how they define race. Despite increased visibility, multiethnic individuals are asking: what do you do when you can’t check one racial box?

Live-action role-playing, or LARPing, has been around for years, yet the general public either hasn’t heard of it or considers it a turbo geek game. LARPing lets players seek out alternate worlds and identities. Some consider it to be a form of art, while others consider it escapism. Where does this desire to role-play come from?

The phenomenon of lip dubbing, a continuous shot of hundreds of people lip-syncing to a selected song, has been planned by UC Santa Cruz Weekend Activities club to occur at the beginning of spring quarter. The finished product will be posted on YouTube.

Unofficial student organizing group OUT gathered UC Santa Cruz students in a peaceful and creative demonstration as an alternative way to protest.

Free education and a call for awareness on March 1 and March 2 advocate for a space of open discussion for future strategic planning on UC education. The Open University Together has been organizing since the start of the quarter to make the March protests a peaceful, fun and informative demonstration.

Third-year Sophia Petraki, along with 34 other UCSC students, is creating a mobile clinic to provide the homeless of Santa Cruz with free care services. The project is being sponsored by the Homeless Health Project and the Homeless Service Center of Santa Cruz, and hopes to help fulfill the needs of the homeless.

Student organization STAND is hosting STAND Up for Burma. Burmese human rights activist Myra Dahgaypaw will provide her story as an internally displaced person and a refugee. A screening of the film “Crossing Midnight” will also be shown.

STAND, a student led organization at UCSC, spreads awareness about the southern Sudanese independence referendum on January 9th. The referendum will either bring peace or political unrest and civil war to southern Sudan.