A variety of chocolates was available to taste from the 28 vendors during the Chocolate Festival held on Jan. 22. Photo by Morgan Grana.

For Jeffrey B., UC Santa Cruz alumnus and former university employee associated with the Office of the Registrar, there was always something about the local charm of Santa Cruz that kept him coming back — and for the past five years, his visits have only gotten sweeter.

Jeffrey was among a bustling crowd of chocolate lovers last Sunday, including locals, newcomers and diehards strolling through the aromatic aisles of Santa Cruz’s fifth annual Chocolate Festival. The festival featured 28 vendors from as far away as Seattle, and ran from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk’s Cocoanut Grove.

“It’s a tradition,” Jeffrey said. “I miss Santa Cruz, so it’s nice to come back, and I love chocolate and sweets. I also love being back in Santa Cruz and seeing former colleagues from when I worked at UC Santa Cruz.”

Organized by the UCSC Women’s Club, the Santa Cruz Chocolate Festival serves as a fundraiser for re-entry students, or students who have left college for a period of years, to receive scholarships at UCSC. To date, the festival has raised over $50,000 in support of this cause. Tickets for the festival were made available to the public in mid-December through local businesses like Whole Foods, Bay Tree Bookstore and Bookshop Santa Cruz, and cost $12 for six tastings.

“[The festival] is the Women’s Club’s largest fundraiser, and I believe approximately $13,000 went to the scholarship fund last year,” said festival coordinator Ann Berry-Kline. “We typically are able to give away somewhere around $20,000 in scholarships.”

Current scholarship recipients who attended the festival include Merrill third-year Yuliana Vasquez and Stevenson fourth-year Jesse Avila. Vasquez and Avila are both among a group of UCSC re-entry students who have been awarded scholarships funded in part by past festivals.

The festival was first hosted by downtown Santa Cruz’s former Attic Café and Art Gallery in 2008, and was relocated to the Beach Boardwalk’s Cocoanut Grove in 2009. New additions to this year’s festival included a larger venue space and a cupcake decorating station for kids.

Organizers also brought back the silent auction after a two-year absence due to overcrowding and space limitations within the Cocoanut Grove venue. The addition of the Cocoanut Grove sun room this year allowed for a much more relaxed atmosphere, while accommodating the growth of the festival over the years.

“It started out as an idea to fundraise amongst a couple of the Women’s Club members, and they didn’t think anybody would really show up at the Attic,” Berry-Kline said. “It was pouring rain that day… [and] you couldn’t move in there one bit.”

Alongside tables lined with gourmet chocolate cupcakes were savory dishes, like chicken mole with chocolate mole sauce, served up by local Santa Cruz restaurant Chocolate. Featured vendors included healthy chocolate pioneers and three-year festival veterans Xoçai, who shifted the event’s guilt-ridden focus toward revealing the health benefits of the antioxidants found in raw dark chocolate.

The festival also hosted many new vendors, like Soquel-based day spa Sudzz, which offers chocolate spa treatments and products. Regardless of how long each vendor had been attending the festival, a common trend of chocolate entrepreneurship and local support served as one of the festival’s major themes.

“There are so many great things about chocolate — not just to eat, but for your skin,” said Sudzz representative Sarai Thomas. “I sponsored the festival in its first year and opened up Sudzz last August, and signing up to be a vendor seemed like a great way to showcase my business to people who love chocolate and are open to experiencing it in a different way.”

As the festival has continued to grow, the event has become an experience that keeps people coming back year after year.

“I heard about it from a friend and it seemed like a cool thing to do,” said Stevenson third-year Jeff Davis. “This [was] my first time and it’s really cool. There are a lot of local people around here and it’s cool to support your local businesses. [I’m] definitely coming back next year.”

With another successful year added to its budding reputation, the Santa Cruz Chocolate Festival has become a tradition for both the Santa Cruz community and tourists alike. As the event’s audience continues to grow, organizers hope to expand next year’s festival into a two-day event.

“I hope to make it a destination kind of thing in the future, and get the local hotels involved in a chocolate getaway weekend,” Berry-Kline said. “Hopefully we can raise more funds and be able to touch more scholarship recipients.”

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

Following UC-wide attempts to diversify the undergraduate population, business and management school deans and executives gathered to announce the unveiling of a fellowship for students from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on Tuesday.

Together, Robert S. Sullivan of the Rady School of Management and Rich Lyons, dean of UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, announced the fellowship’s inauguration. The fellowship will seek to introduce “business curriculum in an exciting format,” to first-year students who have never been exposed to business and management studies, Lyons said.

Over time, Lyons hopes this fellowship will “bring the kind of diversity, creativity, and innovation our programs are built on and that California is built on.”

By bringing students from HBCUs, which are primarily located in the southeastern United States, Lyons and his fellow administrators hope to “attract as diverse as a population as we possibly can.”

The fellowship is geared toward students from HBCUs outside of California in efforts to entice them to join the UC student body.

“HBCUs are a terrific pool of talent,” Lyons said of the decision to focus on HBCUs in the first stages of the fellowship.

The goal of the HBCU fellowship, said Lyons, is to get first-year students to begin thinking about their futures.

“We want to excite them about the world of business and their potential, their role as leaders,” Lyons said.

The program itself will be offered to 25 recipients who will be awarded an all-expenses-paid two week Summer Institute for Emerging Managers and Leaders session at one of the six UC business schools. The six schools include the UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC Riverside business and management schools.

This year the inaugural session will be held at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Berkeley has been a hub for start-up companies and focal point for recruiting new talent, making it an apt location for the fellowship.

“You’ve never seen anything like this — it’s a kind of a beehive for enterprise,” Lyons said. “Why not give them a taste of what we’re best at?”

Anthem Blue Cross and Wells Fargo are funding the fellowship. They will cover the roughly $100,000 a year required for the two-week sessions.

“We have been very excited about how much support we’re getting from the private sector — we know we need it because it’s not coming from the public sector,” Lyons said, predicting a trend in increased university donations from non-federal monies.

Erika Walker, executive director of Undergraduate Program Haas School of Business, has been working with a similar program for business training, the Business for Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (BASE) program. BASE has been running every summer for the past 15 years, and served as a template for the HBCU fellowship.

Walker will be implementing the inaugural program at Haas-Berkeley this summer. She hopes the program will spur students into eventually pursuing an MBA at one of the UC campuses.

“We’re looking for that kind of transformative change,” Walker said. “We’re just trying to excite them and energize them about what these various opportunities [in business] are.”

Jacqui Smollett, a first-year global economics major and SUA representative for African/Black Student Alliance, said while the program is a step in the right direction, diversity among UC faculty needs to be addressed.

“There are currently very few faculty of color at UC Santa Cruz,” Smollett said. “It is nice to be taught by a diverse community.”

At UC business schools, the major itself is also highly impacted. Of HBCU graduates, 49-64 percent are business majors, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

With classes filled to the brim, Smollett says it is important to have “different viewpoints from different people on how we do business.”

Less than 10 years ago, campus email was handled in-house with the school’s own servers and IT infrastructure, which was called CruzMail. But as the campus population expanded, the home-grown system groaned underneath the added e-traffic.

Lisa Bono, communications manager at Information Technology Services, said that the pathway to using Google as a vendor has been long and complex one.

“A few years ago, we needed $1 million for the handling of CruzMail. We did do a lot of upgrades to keep up [with the increasing traffic], but really, it was very clogged,” Bono said. “Then a few years ago, Davis moved its students to Gmail. That move of some 18,000 accounts really relieved their servers … CruzMail was just getting old. We couldn’t keep up with the new technology.”

To relieve their traffic, the school created a Gmail account and called it SlugMail, which all student accounts were migrated onto. Faculty and staff remained on the CruzMail server.

“Last year, we surveyed the faculty and staff and they voted to switch to Gmail,” Bono said. “There was no way [CruzMail] could compete with all the capabilities Gmail has.”

Faculty and staff migrated onto a new UCSC Gmail domain last November.

“Those were two separate domains [for students and faculty/staff] … it caused a lot of buildup,” Bono said. “Having one domain is more reliable … just better infrastructure all around, and Google prefers [it].”

Rather than switching the smaller population of faculty and staff to the SlugMail domain, ITS decided to switch students onto the UCSC Gmail domain.

“Faculty did not want to jump onto the student email system,” Bono said. “We talked about that … we emailed the professors and asked them what they thought we should do. Overall, leadership wanted to move the students rather than the faculty and staff. It would have confused a lot of staff.”

Because SlugMail is a Gmail account, switching students to the UCSC Google domain is expected to be much simpler than the earlier switch from CruzMail (in-house) to SlugMail (Google).

Google offers their Gmail service to the school, with support, free of charge and advertisements. Bono spoke about the alternative rewards Google stands to gain from UCSC’s use of Gmail.

“What they get out of it is they get you for life,” Bono said. “I think they really want us to be loyal Gmail users. And the more people, the better for them.”

As per negotiations between UC Office of the President and Google, a contract signed in June of last year commits the entire UC system to an eventual transition to Gmail.

Google has the final rights to this service, but they do not own the data, and usernames and passwords of UCSC accounts are encrypted.

“Overall, its a win-win … Gmail is more efficient, more modern, more cost-effective,” Bono said. “We’re giving up some control. Everything has to follow their policy. But how likely is an email outage beyond one or two hours? That would be a global problem.”

With the free service, the multi-million dollar funding model once devoted to email infrastructure across the university is no longer needed.

“It does help us out financially,” Bono said. “Those funds can be allocated elsewhere and more efficiently.”

All positions at ITS are being re-evaluated. Certain staff members may not be replaced when they leave.

“We still have an email infrastructure crew, but they’re more in the networking field … and we still manage email traffic through the servers, but we don’t house the software,” Bono said.

UCSC is the first UC to switch its faculty and staff to Gmail, and will be the second to switch its students, after Davis.

Come Feb. 22, students will need to log into the Gmail domain. As this is a new account, previous mail stored in SlugMail will not be there.

“We have a tool to migrate it which we will link [students] to,” Bono said. “It’s a super easy tool that works very quickly. Mobile devices will also need to be updated.”

(from left to right)

“I don’t think it should be a factor, because it doesn’t tell how they’ll lead or how they’ll run a city, or country or whatever. So it doesn’t really make sense to judge them by it.”
Zach Simon
Third-year, Porter
Biochemistry, Molecular biology & Theater arts

“Yeah, I think it is important, because someone’s personal life says a lot about their ethics and their moral values when it comes to something like that. So if they’re not morally ethical in their personal life, I wouldn’t trust someone to run my country.”
Silvia Sanchez
Fifth-year, Stevenson
Anthropology

“Yes I do — I think it should be. I mean, if they’re a politician, they’re going to be working with things. Personal life always does end up affecting things in the long run, and it’s an important part of a person.”
Maureen Argo
First-year, Stevenson
Psychology & Linguistics

“Definitely not. Unless, so long as it’s legal and lawful, but I mean, not like the moral aspects of their private life — that should not affect anything.”
Johan Brandter
Graduate exchange student from Sweden
Linguistics researcher

Jacob Rosen, UCSC computer engineering professor and chief investigator of the project, said the Raven II will follow an “open source” model, which enables the sharing of robotic software among the various robotics research institutions and will result in higher frequencies of communication during experiments.

“We are collaborating with our peers to create a common platform,” Rosen said.

Ji Ma, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSC who assisted Rosen on the project, also acknowledged the significance of using an “open source” model.

“When all these leading labs have a common research platform for doing robotic surgery, the whole field will be able to advance more quickly,” Ma said in an email.

Robotic surgery is a commonly utilized tool in procedures such as prostate surgery.

Rosen, who has directed the bionics lab at UCSC since 2008, was assisted by Blake Hannaford of the University of Washington bio-robotics department in creating the Raven II, which was funded with a grant from the National Science Fund.

Raven II is equipped with two robotic arms and a camera for viewing the operational field. This also allows for the possibility of online telesurgery, an advanced process which enables doctors to conduct surgical procedures utilizing robotic technology while in remote locations.

Rosen thinks collaboration among research institutions is integral to the development of advanced research mechanisms like Raven II.

“Sometimes we need to collaborate in order to survive — even though this isn’t a matter of survival, we can still progress science.” Rosen said. “This [collaboration] is not just with the University of Washington, but all in our field. We are creating new knowledge that will allow us to move forward.”

Photo by Auralee Walmer.

Dr. Marla Wyche-Hall is the new director of the African-American Resource and Cultural Center (AARCC). She stepped into the position a year after the previous AARCC director and founder, Sister Paula Powell, left UC Santa Cruz after a career of over two decades. The center focuses on retention of African-American students by creating a community hub, providing students with mentors, workshops, educational programming and peer groups.

Young inmates at the Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall exercise outside at the Felton facility. Photos by Toby Silverman

The inside of what a tour guide called an ‘average’ cell at the Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall

For the second time in two years, Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing the closure of all state Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) facilities, beginning this year, in light of California’s budget deficit.

With an annual cost of about $200,000-$250,000 per child, “California can no longer afford to operate dual state and county juvenile justice systems,” said Daniel Macallair, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice executive director. This means the Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall in Felton could soon receive more inhabitants.

The current California system has been running since 1859, when the first juvenile correctional facility opened. It still stands “as a 19th-century relic,” Macallair said.

In addition to county facilities, California has five state detention centers across the state, each making up a part of the total 1,118 DJJ population. To adequately make the transition from state to county facilities, Brown has proposed giving each county $10 million.

Until 2007, when the Major Juvenile Justice Reform Bill was signed, the population was nearly twice as high. The bill filtered out non-serious offenders and kept less-serious juveniles at the county level. Since then, counties have sent only homicide or assault cases to DJJ, and have equipped themselves to meet the needs of the remaining offenders. With the possibility of the state system’s closure, the counties may also have to meet the needs of those more serious and long-term offenders.

“[The Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall] was not meant to hold people for long periods of time,” said Scott MacDonald, Santa Cruz County chief probation officer.

Regardless, county probation officials are confident DJJ closure will not affect the overall operation of their facility.

“[DJJ Closure] will affect everyone,” said Robert Igarta, associate director of Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall. As three Santa Cruz juveniles are currently in DJJ, the county would have to find a way to accommodate those individuals.

However, “the impact won’t be as severe as it will in some counties where there are a lot of kids in DJJ,” Igarta said.

Dealing with the cuts would not be too much of an issue, he said, as only three juveniles would have to be removed from DJJ, and one is moving to an adult prison.

“I think we could do a better job if the kids came back home,” MacDonald said.

Santa Cruz has set a precedent for creating innovative methods of accomodating juvenile offenders. In 1992 it was one of the first counties in the nation to establish the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), which cut juvenile hall population by about 50 percent. The initiative took individuals who were not serious offenders out of juvenile hall, and placed them in community-based programs designed to help integrate them into society. Today, the initiative has spread nationwide and is even being used in adult prisons.

“Our philosophy is a lot different from other counties,” Igarta said. “Ours is very restorative and compassionate.”

Igarta said by fostering a warm environment and encouraging staff interaction the needs of the children will be identified and more easily attended to. That means participating in recreational games, sitting down with the kids for dinner, and even playing a game or two of chess.

“The showers are warm,” said one of the juveniles of the Santa Cruz system. “It’s one of the best programs.”

Classes are held at the facilities Monday through Friday.

“If you provide one kid with hope, it’s contagious,” teacher Bonnie Dankert said.

Officials are optimistic about the DJJ closure, saying it will just be a minor setback to deal with. For now, they plan to run things as they always have. Although the notion of housing juveniles long-term is not one Santa Cruz Juvenile Hall is familiar with, MacDonald said he doesn’t foresee the closure as one they can’t tackle.

“I’m going to make it work, one way or another,” he said. “Quite frankly, I think we could do a better job than the state.”

Photo by Auralee Walmer

With only seconds remaining on the clock, the Slugs held their breath as the Chapman team approached the free throw line with a chance to tie the score. As the ball hit the rim and ricocheted away from the basket, the Slugs clinched the win, prevailing in a low-scoring battle.

On Jan. 20, the UCSC men’s basketball team edged out a win in a 44-43 nail-biter against rival Chapman University, supported by a packed crowd. The win improved the Slugs’ record to nine wins and nine losses for the year, with a 4-4 record versus Division III teams.

Senior UCSC guard Sam Allen said the key to the win was a group effort, with everyone fighting for their teammates.

“This was a great team win,” Allen said. “Everyone did their part. There was no selfishness, there were no egos. We were playing as a team.”

Head coach Gordon Johnson said he was pleased with the win.

“Overall, we did a great job,” Johnson said. “I’m elated right now. This is a great win. Chapman is our nemesis, so it feels good to come away with a victory.”

This is a significant upset, as Chapman finished last year at No. 4 in the west region. The Slugs ended Chapman’s six-game winning streak on Friday. Chapman University had not lost since Dec. 10.

Though the team won, Coach Johnson still sees room for improvement.

“There are still things we need to get much better at, particularly our shooting,” he said.

Senior forward Brent Jacobs led the team with 11 points total, shooting only four for 11 from the field. Together, the two teams made only 31 shots of 89 attempts.

The Slugs are looking to qualify for the NCAA Division III National Championships, which begins on March 1. The tournament culminates in the Final Four held in Virginia, from March 16-17.

Senior guard Nathan Mohri said confidence will be a key factor in the team’s success.

“We have to go through the rest of the season believing we can win every game,” he said.

Senior guard Sam Allen said the Slugs need to carry the momentum of their win over Chapman into their final seven games of the season.

“From here on, we need to build on this win to push us through the year,” he said. “We need to put together a winning streak to have a shot at getting into Nationals.”

The Slugs will play Pacifica College on Jan. 27 at 6 p.m., and UC Merced at home on Jan. 28 at 7 p.m.

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.

Illustration by Christine Hipp

Between the 32 percent fee hike in 2009 and the annual ritual of slashing curricula, there’s been plenty for UC students to be upset about. What does it mean when every UC Board of Regents meeting for the last decade has been met with the hoarse cries of an ignored student body?

The Occupy movement that swept the the nation last fall was a similar catalyst for mobilization. An uproarious — and more importantly, awakened — student body discovered just how far the UC administration was willing to go to keep its status quo in check. Helping hands were cuffed, defiant faces were pepper-sprayed, and a number of students were hospitalized. The administration’s message was clear: Where there’s a will, there won’t be any way but theirs.

But the attempts of the UC to regulate students who would defy them are patently inane. We cannot be rounded up and pushed along like rats in a maze.

The most recent effort to suppress student voice manifested itself at the UC Riverside campus in December. In response to student protests, the dean of UCR handed down guidelines for demonstration. This slap to the collective student face was met with outrage.  Overlooking clear violations of First Amendment rights, the protocol was demeaning to students, and treated them like children.

To be in compliance with those guidelines, UCR student demonstrators would need faculty chaperones, they could not carry stick-borne signs, and designated protesting areas were strictly enforced. While the UCR dean was swift in removing these guidelines in response to public outcry, the post in its original form is still available for view on a Say No to UCR Protest Guidelines online petition.

The dean’s response has been to form a task force on assembly guidelines. Yet the task force, composed mostly of administration officials, has proven to be a less-than-welcome response. In their first meeting, task force member Stephen Lee’s comments belittled student protesters.

“In a sense, administrators closely resemble the role of parents while students closely resemble the role of children,” Lee said.

UCR is not alone. UCLA, UC Berkeley and other UC campuses have similar policies in place barring students from disrupting the day-to-day affairs of their respective campuses. While one UC Davis fact sheet on protests refers to such activity as “the lifeblood of a successful university community,” the strict enforcement of UC policies has made it clear that business-as-usual comes first.

UC students are not children. They are old enough to choose to bury themselves in student loan debt, and they are old enough to express their opinions without hand-holding guidelines. In fact, there is one childhood lesson administrators themselves could stand to learn: Treat others as you wish to be treated. In the future, administrators should show students the same respect they demand of us.

Illustration by Amanda Alten

As students and their families struggle to pay ever-increasing tuition costs, UC executives watch their wallets bloat. While university executives are granting themselves and their peers larger paychecks, students are pouring money into a system that cannot even guarantee them access to classes, professors and teaching assistants.

But a new piece of legislation, authored by California State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), aims to address such financial irresponsibility by restricting UC and CSU executives from receiving pay increases in years of tuition hikes or state budget cuts.

Such legislation could not have come at a more appropriate time — 12 UC administrators and attorneys received salary increases in December, ranging from 6.4 percent to 23 percent — but it is only a glimmer of hope.

While CSU executives would legally be bound by the bill if it passed, the UC would not be forced to comply, according to reports from The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s student-run paper. The UC is outside the control of the state legislator, so the bill serves as more of a suggestion than a rule.

Respecting the UC’s autonomy — because this isn’t a question of whether or not the UC should be autonomous, though Yee has previously attempted to bring the system under the state legislature — it is nonetheless important that the UC follow the guidelines laid out by the bill if it is passed into law.

This is a question of fairness: Is it fair that students watch the accessibility and diversity of their education dwindle while executives grant themselves unnecessary (and arguably undeserved) compensation?

December’s salary increases have been justified by the regents.

“UC President Mark G. Yudof and other UC leaders defended the raises, saying even during an economic crisis the 10-campus university system with 180,000 employees needs to retain and recruit top staff and faculty,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

But such an argument seems arbitrary when students do not even have access to such “top staff and faculty” because they cannot enroll in their already overcrowded classes. Furthermore, when UC representatives necessitate pay increases to continue recruiting such grade-A faculty and staff, they indirectly spin such decisions as ones made for the good of the student body.

It is hard to understand how executives’ already engorged pay will benefit the students, many of whom work multiple jobs just to scrape by while attending university.

If Leland’s bill passes, executives at the UC should adhere to its guidelines and prioritize students — and prioritize them in a way that doesn’t manifest itself in growing six-figure salaries.

Illustration by Jamie Morton

In this issue’s column, I really wanted to try and write a piece critical of UC student activism— and then the regents went and did something stupid again.

It’s gotten to the point where you can set your calendars by campus protests — there are always a big showings in September, November and March. Recent campus graffiti (the “FUCK TUITION” on the side of McHenry Library and “OCCUPY MY SCHOOL” on the side of the freshly painted Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) seems to be regressing the movement almost to a state of self-parody. Spray paint against a wall, see what sticks.

Activism on campus never felt more like a well-executed play without a climax than during the Hahn Student Services occupation in November. Early in the day, students listened to the teleconferenced regents’ meeting on a laptop. Applause broke out periodically during the public comment portion, but as soon as the regents started speaking, someone snapped the laptop shut — a gesture full of great theatricality, but a disappointment to anyone hoping to learn something about the UC’s future.

How surely history repeats itself. In her 1979 book “The White Album,” essayist Joan Didion writes about her impressions of student activism at San Francisco State University in the 1960s:

“As I walked across the campus that day and on later days the entire San Francisco State dilemma — the gradual politicization, the ‘issues’ here and there, the obligatory ‘Fifteen Demands,’ the continual arousal of the police and the outraged citizenry — seemed increasingly off-key, an instance of the enfants terribles and the Board of Trustees unconsciously collaborating on a wishful fantasy (Revolution on Campus) and playing it out for the six o’clock news.”

That “unconscious collaboration” Didion writes of has been palpable in the UC system for quite a while now. The regents have scheduled and canceled and rescheduled meetings and visits, playing the part of tone-deaf
bureaucrats. Students responded in kind. As appalling as the now-infamous footage of a campus police officer pepper-spraying UC Davis students last year is, it ultimately proved to be a favor to the student activist movement, fueling its fire and lending it many new supporters, at least temporarily. At the end of the day, none of this amounted to much. Until now.

In a cringe-worthy twist, the regents are organizing their own rally. The May regents’ meeting will be held in Sacramento, with one full day dedicated to rallying at the Capitol in an attempt to pressure the California government into giving the UC more money. Never mind that the growth in tuition does not at all mirror the decline in public funding, nor that there are over 3,000 people in the UC system who make over $200,000, nor that the UC chooses to keep spending money on construction projects over education — UC president Yudof and his cohorts are mad as hell, and apparently they’re not going to take it anymore.

The UC student regents are already trying to involve students in this rally, and it will be interesting, to say the least, to see who shows up. What’s even more interesting at this point is the farcical nature the UC’s decline has taken on. The May rally is a brilliant piece of political theater — deflect, deflect, deflect — but it also symbolizes a sort of throwing in the towel on the regents’ part. Anything they do is going to infuriate the student body at this point, so why not go out on a limb and try to redirect our wrath?

Which brings us back to “FUCK TUITION.” As much as I want to reprimand our more activism-inclined peers for their sloppiness, I cannot in good faith write a piece putting them in the same category as the regents.The UC student movement is flawed and often too predictable, but they have something the regents do not — the best interest of the students at heart. I hope there’s a huge turnout out in Sacramento in May, and that they’re all carrying signs that say “FUCK THE REGENTS.”

City on a Hill Press: Is being a student athlete a big commitment for you?

Contreras: Yeah, it’s a big commitment. Being a college athlete is very demanding. But in the end, if it’s your passion, it’s all worth it. It’s fun being surrounded by people who share similar goals and interests with you. I love all my teammates and coaches. We all support each other. We train hard and race hard. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

CHP: How do you balance your team and school?

Contreras: Runners are athletes, even when not at practice. We have to sleep early, wake up early, do school, practice, race, every day until the season is over. Even when the season is over, we have to train. I think being an athlete makes me more disciplined as a student. We race almost every weekend and have to get our stuff done. There is a lot of sacrifice involved. We can’t always go out and do things normal college students would do.

CHP: Did any of your fellow runners surprise you with their performance?

Contreras: I’m not surprised with what my teammates can do. They run hard and run well. I’m particularly proud of the freshmen on the team. They did very well and had a good season, and can only improve from here. Two of our runners, Mimi Petersen and Lauren Carlton, had spectacular performances at regionals and placed top 35 in the west region. As for the guys, I think they really showed other teams they are serious and ready to compete … They will only continue to show the competition what they’ve got.

CHP: What are you doing to prepare for next season?

Contreras: I want a faster time. To get faster next year, I will have to allow myself to save my mental energy for the race and not spend it all at practice. Most importantly, I need to stay confident and rest more. I will be a senior next year and I will train my best to make my season count, and hopefully make it to regionals with the top seven girls.

CHP: How much do you train per week?

Contreras: I train 12-15 hours a week. One or two hours, six days each week.

CHP: Does UCSC support the team?

Contreras: UCSC tries its best to support us, but since we don’t have as many resources as Division I schools, we have to just do the best we can with fundraising, and use the voices of our athlete representatives [to] push for more resources and opportunities. I think the student body is becoming more aware of the sports teams UCSC has. Everybody can always use some more school spirit.

Photo by Morgan Grana.

UC President Mark Yudof has announced that all UC campuses will become smoke-free by January 2014. In a letter released Jan. 9 to all UC chancellors, Yudof outlined a plan giving each campus two years to enact a strategy to ensure a smoke-free environment by the 2014 deadline.

According to a press release from the UC Office of the President (UCOP), the ban will prohibit the use of tobacco products on campus, which will include parking lots. The ban will also prohibit the sale and advertisement of tobacco products by campus vendors.

“Smoking is the leading cause of preventable and premature death,” said Grace Crickette, UC chief risk officer in the UCOP press release. “Making all of our campuses smoke-free provides a healthy environment for our students, faculty, staff, patients and visitors. It is the right thing to do.”

In the letter released to UC chancellors, Yudof said individual campus committees would be responsible for implementing the smoking ban. UC Santa Cruz has yet to determine its course of action.

“At this point in time, we have not yet developed a process for implementing this by the January 2014 deadline,” said Jim Burns, UCSC public affairs correspondent. “But we expect to do so soon.”

UCSC implemented smoking restrictions in 1997, but their current scope is minimal compared to the proposed 2014 ban.

“This is obviously more rigid than our current policies,” Burns said.

Under the smoking regulations in effect at UCSC since 1990, the sale of tobacco products by campus vending machines or establishments is banned. Smoking is also banned in all buildings on campus, within 25 feet of windows and doorways, and on all campus shuttles and transportation.

A 1996 status report from the university called compliance with the regulations “sporadic,” and noted a student with multiple chemical sensitivities had filed an informal grievance against the campus under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“The student was suffering serious physical effects from walking through groups of smokers to get to classes,” according to the 1996 report, signed by ADA compliance officer Susan Willats. “The basis of the grievance was that UCSC is not enforcing its own smoking policy.”

The ban has been met with mixed reviews. The 2010 proposal cites several studies finding university students largely in support of similar bans, while other individuals and some publications say the new policy oversteps boundaries.

“You’d have to take a bus [to smoke off-campus],” said third-year Sean McGowen when asked for the previous issue of City on a Hill Press what he thinks of the ban. “I don’t think it’s fair. It’s an imposition on our liberties and freedoms … it won’t stop smoking on campus. Especially for the students who live on campus — they’re 18, they have rights.”

Nearly 585 colleges and universities nationwide have active campus smoking bans. Studies cited in the 2011 Smoke-Free Policy Proposal find the number of students and UC employees below national averages, at 8 and 10 percent, respectively. Still, tension remains while some students — like McGowen — oppose an all-out ban.

“It all comes down to liberties,” McGowen said. “We pay to come to this school. I’m a 27-year-old student and I deserve freedom of choice at the very least.”