Photo by Daniela Ruiz

On a bright Friday afternoon, a group of three sailboats waft over the sea, pushed by the breeze as the sun glints off the water. For the UC Santa Cruz sailing club, this vista is their playing field.

“This is where we do our sport,” said sailing club member Patrick Boyden as the boats skipped off the water out of the harbor.

Sailing is a sport with a vault of special sailing terms and involves navigating various elements, including the ocean, the wind, weight distribution and more. Experienced sailors have definite advantages as they familiarize themselves with the water, wind and boat.

“It’s also a much different sport than most others, it’s almost like a puzzle,” said team captain Emma Shaw. “You have the wind and the sea and your body and if you know how to put those things together the best way, that’s what makes a great sailor.”

Club member Tommy Pastalka said the sport can be difficult to learn at first.

“Sailing is an extremely fluid sport and as such, you can’t take something you learned in a text book or during practice and apply it on the water and get the same results,” Pastalka said.

A team is divided into two people per boat, the “crew” and “skipper.” These two-person boats are called Flying Juniors. The skipper controls direction and speed with a tiller, while the crew control and keep weight distribution even, with the jib and the shaping of the sails.

Each member of the team, skipper and crew, has specific responsibilities when it comes to sailing the boat. Communication between the two members is thought to be key by sailors.

“To be a good crew, you are constantly talking to your skipper and you make decisions together, like where you are going next when all the boats are around you,” said senior captain of the team Jean Rutledge.

Pastalka said winning any boating race is a result of teamwork, not leadership.

“A common misconception is that the skippers win races. If you’re sailing a single handed boat, that may be true, but in every other case, the crew work will win you races. For me, sailing is a process that I will always be learning,” Pastalka said.

The team has two captains, Emma Shaw and Jean Rutledge. Shaw is known for her fearlessness on the team. She has been sailing for 12 years and has received a fair share of injuries, including multiple concussions, bad cuts and other injuries.

In fact, she did not join the team until her second year after receiving a concussion the summer before her first year at UCSC, despite her enthusiasm for the sport. She is now currently out with a broken leg.

Shaw planned to compete in the JJ Giltinan Australian 18 Foot Skiff Championship of Australia this year, which takes place Feb. 14–24, but was sidelined a week before the competition with her latest injury. However, Shaw is already planning on sailing there next year.

The JJ Giltinan Australian Championship is a regatta involving Australian 18, an 18-foot, three-person boat said to be the craziest boat on water — a boat rarely sailed. Shaw spoke of the long hours she spent fundraising and training this summer to be one of the first all -female teams in the competition’s history.

“It takes a certain type of courage, determination and passion to want to sail these boats. Women in the fleet are extremely rare and in the history of the world championships there has never been an all-female boat to compete,” Shaw said. “I’m devastated I didn’t get to go.”

Shaw said her “need for speed” drives her when she is out on the ocean.

“I could be in last place as long as I’m going fast and having the time of my life,” Shaw said.

Shaw’s passion for and experience with the ocean gives her a profound respect for the powerful force of nature.

“You have to know that you’re playing with the elements and that ocean is a whole lot bigger than you,” Shaw said. “The ocean has and always will be my life.”

Illustration by Maren Slobody

Over the past several years, UC Santa Cruz has been recognized as a school that caters to both organic and vegetarian foods and diets. The campus won an award from the largest youth animal rights group in the world: Peta2’s Most Vegan Friendly College in the Large United States Schools Division in 2011. UCSC continues to be a competitor, ranking in the top 10 schools again in 2012. UCSC’s reputation as a bastion of sustainability is a reflection of the rest of the Santa Cruz community.

Don Lane, a member of Santa Cruz City Council and a UCSC alumnus, said interest in healthy foods has continued to grow around the country, but some of the movement’s deepest roots are in the Santa Cruz community. Lane has been a witness to the growth of those roots since 1979 when he co-founded Saturn Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant that uses local and organic ingredients.

“That mindset has been present but it has just continued to grow. Interest in healthy food and organic farming,” Lane said, “these are all things that have been around for a long time but they’re kind of at a peak now.”

Lane said Santa Cruz’s culture around food was similar in the 1970s to how it is now, but interest in vegetarian foods have continued to grow. Saturn Cafe did not start out as a vegetarian restaurant, but eventually became one as the menu changed.

“There still weren’t any vegetarian oriented restaurants,” Lane said. “We felt like there were a lot of younger people especially who were looking for good vegetarian food and we decided that was the way we should go.”

Today there are more students than ever looking for vegetarian food, but UCSC’s students need look no further than their own dining halls for Meatless Mondays — a tradition where the dining halls rotate so one dining hall per week removes all meat products from their menu and introduces students to vegetarian and vegan style meals. UCSC’s meat lovers say they dread Mondays at the dining halls.

“I am definitely not a fan of Meatless Monday,” said second-year Jonathan Ho. “The dining hall here at College Nine has three main entrée stations, and one or even two of those can be dedicated for ‘Meatless Monday’ food instead of having the entire dining hall go vegan.”

Meatless Mondays, which Banana Slugs for Animals (BSA) helped organize with the dining hall services, have been going on for four years now at UCSC. BSA is an animals activist club on campus that reaches out to students and teaches about the abuse inflicted by factory farms on animals.

Students like those in BSA are the driving forces behind dining hall events like Meatless Mondays. BSA president Virginia Hanrahan said Meatless Mondays allow the dining hall services to reduce their carbon footprint, which also led to the creation of Beefless Thursdays and Farm Fridays.

“Meatless Mondays was just kind of a stepping stone for what dining services has extended into in the last few years,” she said.

Hanrahan, who is a fourth-year environmental studies and business management economics major, chose a vegan lifestyle in her freshman year at Santa Cruz. While there are numerous reasons to choose a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, Hanrahan said she thought there are a few very important arguments.

Illustration by Maren Slobody

“There are three main reasons to choose a vegan or vegetarian diet: the animals and the abuse that goes into [the livestock] industry and [not] supporting an industry that profits off of the cruelty to other beings. [Also] the environmental impact — the livestock industry is worse for the environment than the entire transportation industry. The third thing is health and just the amount of antibiotics and hormones that go into animals these days that people consume. They’re having an effect on people,” Hanrahan said.

BSA has increased their presence on campus by organizing events outside the dining hall. In November, BSA invited Peta2, a youth-oriented version of PETA, to set up an exhibit called “Glass Walls.” The exhibit, located outside of the humanities building, was a blow-up model of a factory farm, which allowed students to walk inside and see pictures, facts and a video of animals’ lives inside the farm. At the end of the tour students were handed pamphlets that promoted vegan and vegetarian lifestyles.

While BSA and Peta2 promote a vegetarian diet based on animal rights, Hanrahan said UCSC’s dining hall services take part in Meatless Mondays for environmental reasons.

“They have these goals they want to reach to be more sustainable, and a huge one that makes them more sustainable is reducing meat, because it’s one of the top environmental pollution factors,” Hanrahan said.

Awareness of the link between food production and the environment has played a huge role in shaping Santa Cruz’s food movement since its inception. One program that reduces the carbon footprint of UCSC is the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS), which started throughout the UC system in 1986. CASFS works on developing sustainable food and agricultural systems for environmental, economical and social benefits. Undergraduate students often do research and fieldwork down on the farms and students can even apply for hands-on training at the garden through CASFS.

Tim Galarneau, the assistant specialist for Food Systems Education, said students are the driving force that keeps the garden and farm active, as they want more internships, externships and experience around food and gardening.

“It often has come from the students, from the historical founding of the Alan Chadwick Garden. Students wanted to garden on the campus,” he said. “They picked this unrighteous, duff ridden, rocky hillside below Merrill, cleaned it out and made one of the most beautiful intensive organic gardens I think we have in the area. It was from students’ passion.”

The passion of UCSC students is evident through the creation of new campus programs. CASFS also takes part in Farm Fridays, which first started a year ago, where dining halls feature produce from one of the many Santa Cruz local farms. Students who are working with CASFS have helped make it an influential force on campus. Farm Fridays began when a student intern took on the project as dining hall chefs showed interest in making specialized dishes.

UCSC’s farm, which is operated by CASFS, works with organic farms in the community,

many of which have been operating since the beginning of the organic movement. Soquel’s Everett Family Farm, run by Rich Everett, has been collaborating with the university for more than a decade. Everett, who lives on the farm, purchased the land around 10 years ago and began to convert the land for organic farming. He also uses their property for a program that teaches UCSC graduates how to farm by giving them a chance to run a portion of the Everett farm like it’s their own. They work on their plot for two years, learning how to use farm equipment and manage the infrastructure.

Everett started working with UCSC so students could get involved in learning how farming works and how food gets on the table.

“It’s so important for the [UCSC] student body up there, who come from such a diverse geographical and ethnic background, to learn as much as they can while they’re in school about organic farming and what goes into their bodies,” Everett said. “The more you learn the more you’re going to spread the word as you go back home.”

Everett said Santa Cruz may be one of the most supportive communities around for the organic farmer and small family farmers. He said the organic movement is still spreading, but Santa Cruz remains at the forefront of the movement.

“I think it’s really growing, but Santa Cruz is one of many little nucleus points where the whole organic movement is being taught in grammar schools, junior highs, high schools, and at UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo,” he said. “It’s a nucleus of teaching people not only that it’s good for you, but how to do it, and the community highly supports it.”

One of the ongoing struggles in the organic movement is making these foods accessible, which is a difficult task considering the prevalence of pesticide-grown food in many supermarkets and stores. Zane Griffin, the owner of Santa Cruz Local Foods (SCLF), which exclusively sells locally grown organic produce, said community support for the organic movement needs to expand to new levels, especially by making it accessible to those who buy groceries on a budget.

“I think one of the biggest missing links in the food movement is definitely food access,” he said. “Urban areas, especially low-income, underrepresented populations, have less access to healthy foods than more affluent communities and that helps the public health of that population. I think that’s something the organic movement needs to address and resolve.”

Griffin said more consumers will continue to learn about the health factors in conventional and industrial farming through education and word of mouth. According to Griffin, SCLF has customers who consistently buy produce and spread word about the market, creating more business every week.

“Consumers will become more and more aware of the health implications and economic implications of the food system,” Griffin said. “That’s definitely my hope and my prediction — more and more people will eventually be turned onto not just organic food but the locality of the food that they’re consuming.”

Griffin said this can happen by teaching about organic foods in schools and homeless shelters and allowing people to use food stamps at farmers markets.

“The community not only needs to open more farmers markets, making it easier for organic farmers to get the produce to … people,” Griffin said, “but they also need to incorporate education and outreach to [lower-income] populations, so everybody understands why people need to eat locally and organic and know what the health and economic implications are.”

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

The UC Santa Cruz mathematics department has been put on the map with recent recognition from the American Mathematical Society (AMS), an organization devoted to mathematical research and education across the nation.

Richard Montgomery and Maria Schonbek, mathematics professors at UCSC, and Harold Widom, professor emeritus of mathematics at UCSC, were named AMS Fellows on Nov. 1.

According to the AMS website, Fellows are chosen based on their “outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics.”

“Personally, I’m delighted to see my colleagues in the math department recognized for their great service to mathematics,” said Martin Weissman, the undergraduate vice-chair of the UCSC mathematics department.

Montgomery, Schonbek and Widom were recognized for their multiple contributions of research to the larger field of mathematics.

Montgomery, a UCSC faculty member since 1990, is most well-known for his work on the centuries-old Three Body Problem.

“The Three Body Problem is how three planets or three stars move,” Montgomery said. “If they’re pulling each other by their own gravitation, then they move in complicated ways.”

Montgomery’s work on the Three Body Problem has not only influenced the field of mathematics, but also physics and astronomy.

“If everything’s kind of close together, same distance apart and all the masses are the same, then you get very complicated motions,” Montgomery said. “And what myself and a collaborator found is motion ­— where all three masses chase each other around in a figure eight shape.”

A small, new field called “choreographies” sprung from Montgomery’s work with this problem, Montgomery said. This field focuses on the ways in which celestial bodies — like those studied by Montgomery in the Three Body Problem — physically interact with one another.

“They’ll be five masses chasing each other around kind of a four leaf clover,” Montgomery said. “And complicated flower shaped arrangements where you can have any number of masses moving around in complicated ways.”

Widom, a UCSC faculty member since 1968, is most well-known for his work on Random Matrix Theory.

The Random Matrix Theory has been used to help explain certain aspects of atomic theory. Widom’s work has contributed to research in physics as well as mathematical progress.

“It would take more than a moment, maybe a year, [to explain] since it’s very technical,” Widom said.

Schonbek has been a UCSC faculty member since 1986. Her work involves Navier-Stokes equations, which were introduced in 1934.

“This was an open problem for over a half century,” Schonbek said, “And I was able to solve it. For this I introduced a technique which I called ‘Fourier splitting’.”

“Fourier splitting” is a technique developed by Schonbek used to study equations that model the behavior of fluids, Schonbek said.

“[Navier-Stokes equations] are fundamental in fluid dynamics,” Schonbek said. “They are used to model blood flow, ocean currents, weather and other physical phenomena.”

Schonbek’s work has an interdisciplinary focus.

“I have been extending my research in other directions,” Schonbek said. “Recently I have started to work on problems related to neurobiology.”

Montgomery said having three AMS Fellows gives UCSC mathematics much needed publicity.

“You’ve got to toot your own horn,” Montgomery said. “Mathematicians, we’re not good at tooting our own horns. The stereotype of the nerdy mathematician has some truth to it, and we just … sit in our office and do our work. For me, it’s good just to have some presence because we have a very good and very small math department. It’s nice to be recognized.”

Photos courtesy of Ryan Moore

When you think eBay, you might just think of an online marketplace where you can bid and possibly win goods at cheaper prices. However, eBay has shown that it does much more than that.

On Nov. 12, Neel Sundaresan, the senior director and head of eBay research labs and creator of eBay’s Inspire! scholarship program, led a day-long event at eBay headquarters in Silicon Valley. The event featured special guests and speakers who talked to 14 women from Indiana University and UC Santa Cruz, who received the scholarship.

Officially launched in Feb. 2012, the Inspire! program’s goal is to provide young women with the tools and opportunities to succeed in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

“We chose women based on their financial background and their passion for science and engineering,” Sundaresan said.

Each student was selected based on financial need, SAT scores, an essay submission, school recommendations and overall passion for science and engineering. The scholarship provides $5,000 a year to each recipient for two years. During this time, the women are also given an opportunity for a summer internship at eBay, as well as mentorship by an eBay employee and a student mentor on campus. At the program on Monday, the women met their mentors for the first time.

“Mentoring is really a unique thing,” Sundaresan said. “When we started this idea there was so much interest that we had to hold a competition to choose who would become a mentor. We asked the mentors and the girls to take a survey and then we matched their profiles.”

Telle Whitney, the CEO and President of the Anita Borg foundation, spoke to the women on how to succeed as women in the technology industry. The Anita Borg foundation seeks to increase the impact of women in the field of technology. Whitney lined out five steps for the women that would help them throughout their careers.

“One, take risks. Two is to cultivate sponsors. Three, ask for what you want. Four, dream big and five, take visibility seriously,” Whitney said.

Enrica Beltran, a first-year computer science major from Crown College, is one of the recipients of the Inspire! scholarship. She said Whitney wanted them to focus not on the difficulties facing women entering STEM fields, but on their passions, futures and work in technology and engineering.

“What she was telling us is, that’s not what women should be talking about, instead we should be talking about our interest in technology, that what’s more important is our passion,” she said.

In addition to opportunities within eBay and mentorship, the recipients of the scholarship will be provided attendance at the Grace Hopper Celebration conference in October, 2013. According to the Anita Borg Foundation website, the Grace Hopper Celebration conference “is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.”

“From research I’ve seen, it looks like more women are going into science, but not enough are going into computing,” Beltran said. “Which is definitely a problem because that’s where all the jobs are evolving — everything is surrounded by computers. The best employers are looking for women, because they bring something different to the table. The best team you can have is creative, and how can you have creativity without diversity?”

Sundaresan said one of the reasons he created the program was because he wanted to do something for students that are disadvantaged.

“I was willing to take money out of my budget to create this program,” Sundaresan said. “We wanted to take someone that doesn’t have the benefits that someone else has, and see them succeed.”

Beltran said her family was hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis, and that the scholarship allowed her to attend UCSC as a freshman this quarter, as opposed to a community college.

“Whether or not I was attending UCSC was in question, just because it’s not the cheapest school to attend,” Beltran said. “This scholarship has definitely changed my path. I feel really lucky to be here.”

Gov. Jerry Brown speaks to students about voting in Quarry Plaza. Photo by Sal Ingram

Gov. Jerry Brown stopped at UC Santa Cruz, where he rallied students to vote in the upcoming election, and to vote “Yes” on Proposition 30.

This measure is a proposed tax increase to cover the rising cost of education, and prevent trigger cuts of $6 billion in 2012–13 from taking effect. The governor is on a tour of several state campuses to rally support for his measure, which will be voted on Nov. 6.

Around 300 students, faculty and other onlookers attended the event, held in Quarry Plaza and sponsored by the Student Alliance of North American Indians (SANAI). There were multiple people holding signs, most that read “Yes on 30” and some that read “Yes on 30, No on 32.”

Brown himself held a sign that read “Yes on 30” during parts of his speech. He said it was up to voters to increase taxes and create billions of dollars, or the schools in California will lose billions of dollars.

“It’s a stark choice,” Brown said. “There is no middle way. There is no compromise.”

Brown emphasized the impact that young voters would have on Prop 30.

Lydia Renteria, member of SANAI said it was important to her organization to get people to vote, because it is a cause that is vital to her community.

“After this [event] it’s just getting people to vote,” Renteria said. “We’re just trying our best to get people to vote.”

affect students today. Several speakers from SANAI and other campus organizations like the African-Black Student Union spoke at the rally about their personal experiences with student debt and worries about their economic stability in the future.

Melody Aguilar was one such student, who gave a speech in which she said, “now is not the time to be selfish. As a student, I personally cannot afford Proposition 30 failing. I just can’t. I have an eight-year-old brother who also deserves access to higher education.”

Aguilar stressed the importance of speaking out before the election.

“Now is the time to be vocal, and to be passionate about Proposition 30 because it recognizes the value of an educated public,” she said.

GOV. BROWN stressed Prop. 30 as an all-or-nothing measure that voters will decide on Nov. 6th. Photo by Sal Ingram

However, there were several students who were undecided in the crowd. This included Brandon Vi, undergraduate student at UCSC, who came to the rally to hear what the governor had to say about the benefits of Prop 30.

“If you were to talk to me right now about Prop 30, I would have to flip a coin,” Vi said.

“I know Prop 30 will in a way help fix higher education right now, but what I’m more curious about is how it will fix education in the long-term. That’s one of my main concerns about Prop 30.”

Vi went on to state that he wishes there were long term solutions built into the measure, like “future [incentives] to balance the budget and actually spend less” in Congress. If he could add anything to the discussion surrounding Prop 30, he said it would be to tell Gov. Brown that this proposal was insufficient, and that he should also balance the budget and stop needless spending at the state level.

Greg Careaga, University Library’s Head of Research, Outreach and Instruction, said he thought Proposition 30 was an incomplete solution to the budget and economic crises as well.

“This is a long-term problem,” he said. “Proposition 30 is part of the solution, but it really depends on other decisions by the governor and the legislature and decisions outside the state that are going to affect the rate at which the economy recovers — housing market, imports … I think it’s the best plan that we have.”

Careaga said he was in support of Proposition 30 because it might help alleviate some budget cuts at the libraries on campus.

“The library is looking at budget cuts regardless of whether measure 30 passes or fails, but the magnitude of the budget cuts are likely to be greater if Proposition 30 doesn’t pass,” Careaga said.

Although the proposition means more taxes, Careaga said it is a good idea.

“On some level I think it’s a bitter pill, but it’s a bitter pill for everybody,” he said. “That’s kind of the hallmark of good legislation is that it doesn’t favor one constituency over another. Everybody has to make a sacrifice for the common good.”

Governor Jerry Brown speaks to students about voting and Proposition 30. Photo by Sal Ingram.

This morning, around 9:30 a.m. in Quarry Plaza, the governor of California made a speech at UC Santa Cruz.

Gov. Jerry Brown rallied students to vote in the upcoming election, and to vote “Yes” on Proposition 30 — a proposition that would raise taxes on Californians to fund K-12 and community college education costs, and forestall further cuts. The governor is on a tour of several state campuses to rally support for his measure.

On his website, the governor states, “Proposition 30 will protect school and safety funding and help address the state’s chronic budget mess. It’s time to take a stand and get our state back on track.”

Around 300 students, faculty and other onlookers attended the event, sponsored by the Student Alliance of North American Indians (SANAI). There were multiple people holding signs, most that read, “Yes on 30” and some that read, “Yes on 30, No on 32.”

Gov. Brown began his speech by stressing the importance of Prop 30’s passage this November.

Photo by Sal Ingram.

“We must win Proposition 30 — put money into the University, not take it out,” Brown said. “It’s money into our schools and universities, or it’s money out. It’s just that simple.”

Lydia Renteria, a member of SANAI, said it was important for her group that the governor was at UC Santa Cruz, and considers higher education a priority.

“We need to all support education,” Renteria said. “We need to take a step in the right direction by voting ‘Yes’ on Proposition 30.”

The Committee for Justice in Palestine (CJP) at UC Santa Cruz was wrapping up its week-long awareness week on May 24 when its final event, Cultural Solidarity Night, was interrupted by a student who opposed the event’s content, CJP signer and fourth-year film and digital media major Rebecca Pierce said.

Cultural Solidarity Night served as the closing event for CJP’s annual Palestinian Awareness Week, which ran from May 21 to May 24.

The week featured day events held in Quarry Plaza that invited passersby to participate in interactive displays in addition to the Wall of Flags memorial, which was assembled in honor of Palestinian and Israeli children killed in the conflict since 2000.

Evening events featured lectures including “Trauma and Resilience in the Gaza Strip” by UCSC psychology professor Tony Hoffman and “But is it ‘Apartheid’?” by Stanford professor Khalil Barhoum. A multimedia teach-in and prisoner’s art show was also held in the College Nine and Ten Multipurpose Room on May 22.

Pierce said that although the disruption of the cultural show during Palestinian Awareness Week was a shock, contrasting views of the Israel-Palestine conflict were anticipated.

“Hosting an event that’s so controversial, there’s always a possibility that people who disagree will make their case known,” Pierce said, “but this was the first time I’ve ever seen a cultural event be disrupted in this way.”

Pierce said the student disrupted guest poet Remi Kanazi during a performance of a poem addressing the Iraq War. The student accused Kanazi of spreading “lies” and “propaganda,” she said.

Pierce said the student denounced the event for failing to provide a “fair dialogue performance.”

“I tried to explain to [the student] the free speech policy at UCSC, but [the student] wouldn’t stop shouting, even when [Kanazi] tried to reason with her,” Pierce said. “We were able to get it under control, though.”

However, Pierce said, the behavior that disrupted Kanazi’s performance represents an issue on campus that must be addressed.

“Some events on campus are going to be met with a hostile response. Others are not,” Pierce said. “Being aware of the campus free speech policy is an important thing to know when looking at ways to share your message. Making sure your actions are effectively saying whatever it is that you want to say is really important. You have to be aware of your rights and the rights of others.”

Despite the disruption that interrupted the week’s final event, Pierce said she believed Palestinian Awareness Week still fulfilled CJP’s goals.

“Overall, the event was successful,” Pierce said. “The message we were trying to get across still came through and a lot of people came out to learn about the message we were trying to spread.”