On March 1, students and supporters of the Occupy Education movement gathered at universities across the nation to protest tuition hikes and call for state reform. On March 5, thousands of student protestors from higher education institutions in California gathered in Sacramento with a similar message.

Jeb Purucker, a UC Santa Cruz literature graduate student, emphasized the global nature of the movement.

“Protesters were gathering in London and people were getting tear-gassed in Quebec while we were out in the rain on Thursday,” Purucker said.

On March 1, the UCSC campus was shut down at 4:00 a.m. as close to 250 students gathered to listen to speakers and take part in a “Tent University” staffed by activists and faculty. A wide variety of issues were discussed and opinions expressed, but most protesters agreed on the basics.

“I’m here because the state of our education is currently in a crisis and I believe the people in power are not fit to address it,” said Chris Cuadrado, a fourth year Latin American and Latino studies major and emcee of the tarp-covered truck that served as a stage for student and faculty speakers. “I believe it is essential for us to come together and decide what our response is to that crisis.”

Protesters gathered peacefully for the majority of the day. At 8:30 a.m. a Ford Mustang attempted to breach the blockade at the base of campus, knocking over students. No one was seriously injured.

A larger protest occured in Sacramento on March 5. Four busloads of UCSC students took part. Activists, union representatives and students marched to the State Capitol, carrying signs and banners bearing slogans condemning recent budget cuts and actions of the UC regents.

Thousands of people gathered on the steps of the Capitol to listen to speakers including Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and civil rights activist Van Jones, as well as several student representatives. The speakers advocated new taxes and in favor of further budget cuts.

“We’re here today because the California dream is in danger. We’re here today because we have more than tripled the cost of higher education in this state in the last decade and more than doubled it in the last five years. We’re here today to say enough is enough,” said Newsom. “We built the envy of higher education for the world 50-plus years ago … It’s time to reconcile our proud past.”

After speakers left protesters entered the Capitol. Around 2 p.m., a general assembly was organized by several hundred protesters, as they discussed the changes they’d like to see. These were later formalized in a list of demands.

Most filtered slowly out of the building as the night went on, but 68 were arrested for refusing to leave after a dispersal order was issued. They were released later that night and slept in a Sacramento Church until morning, when buses from their respective cities and universities took them home.

John Kenny, a UC Berkeley environmental engineering grad student, was impressed with the turnout.

“I came to this General Assembly because I like how this is some kind of democratic process where we can come up with what we want to do,” said Kenny. “I was impressed by the number of people [who] were here earlier.”

Others like Mike Rotkin, UCSC Community Studies field study coordinator, said celebration was premature.

“All of your lives for the next few decades are going to be determined by a raging crisis at the world level in the economy,” said Rotkin as he stood in the rain and addressed the crowd from the truck on March 1. “There aren’t gonna be any rising wages and rising benefits for you. Your lives are gonna be about fighting for the scraps you have and trying to figure out a way to build some power in this country, so your children have a future.”

Photo by Sal Ingram

The aroma of local organic cuisine and sounds of classic tunes coming from the 11th annual Earth Summit drew many inside.

The Student Environmental Center (SEC) hosted the event on March 3 in UC Santa Cruz’s College Nine and Ten Multipurpose Room. The mission: to educate the UCSC community about sustainability by showcasing student sustainability projects and interactive workshops. The Earth Summit also featured live music and guest speakers including Santa Cruz Mayor Don Lane and Eric Holt-Gimenez, the Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy executive director.

Fourth-year Eliza Milio, who heads the SEC under the Chancellor’s Undergrad Internship Program (CUIP), played a central role in organizing the Earth Summit.

“We are providing a space for students to learn about sustainability through workshops,” she said. “We want to celebrate sustainability goals and give students a place to hang out, listen to music and learn.”

The summit began with words from Lane and a performance by the North Pacific String Band, before breaking off into the first of two rounds of student-led workshops.

Milio said the workshops, which ranged in topic from “Green Purchasing” to “Take Back the Tap,” were integral to raising awareness about sustainability.

“Workshops give the opportunity to get your hands dirty and to see what other students are doing to work towards sustainability,” Milio said.

A 2011 poll by Sierra Magazine ranked UCSC seventh in sustainability out of a poll of 120 campuses nationwide, citing “The eschewing of dining trays and bottled water, and the Banana Slugs’ fight against trash” as part of the reason behind the high ranking.

Third-year Goldie Mitton led a workshop titled “Five-Step Planning Process,” which focused on providing students with the necessary tools to begin sustainability projects.

“The process can be applied intuitively to anything and is a great foundation for starting sustainability projects,” Mitton said.

Mitton said the the workshop was inspired by the “Blueprint for a Sustainable Campus,” a document that focuses on enacting change in areas including transportation, water usage and environmental justice.

“If you want an effective sustainability project, you are going to need organization and a team, which people sometimes forget because they are so eager to start,” Mitton said.

Fourth-year Carrie McKee, who volunteered at the event, said student awareness and participation is something that will benefit future sustainability projects at UCSC.

“I think we are a leading school in sustainability and that there are really great sustainability organizations on campus that are not only engaging students but achieving goals,” McKee said.

One of the specific goals McKee pointed to is the sustainability plan UCSC plans to implement in the future, which aims to fully integrate sustainability into campus structure, planning and daily life by 2020. McKee also noted that continuing work with the UCSC farm is a result of efforts on behalf of students and the community to make UCSC more sustainable.

“Our sustainability organizations have never settled, and are always pushing the envelope to demand a greener campus,” McKee said.

The live launch party for Phren-Z, a new literary zine, was held at the Museum of Art and History on March 2. Photo by Marielena Verdugo.

No two writers were alike in content or form, yet they all shared one trait: They engaged both ethos and pathos.

This rang true to the name of the publication that brought them together this past First Friday — Phren-Z (pronounced “frenzy”). The Greek root “phren” refers to the heart and mind, and the Z stands for zine, short for magazine. Unlike what some might cynically expect of a zine, Phren-Z brings together established local writers for a polished professional publication.

Phren-Z’s live launch party at the Museum of Art and History (MAH) in downtown Santa Cruz was an emotional and intellectual experience that showcased a selection of works from the zine’s flagship issue, which launched this past Valentine’s Day.

The event began promptly at 5 p.m. at the MAH, where a predominantly older crowd packed the room. Guests trickling in late found there was only standing room in the crowd of around 70.

Through publishing work by Santa Cruz writers, the grassroots organization Phren-Z helps to enhance writing opportunities for local established and emerging artists.

Writers read their own work during the event. Their content ranged from poetry about angels, to fiction novels about love, to memoirs about first love, to essays about why they write.

The room was filled with laughter as Wallace Baine, an arts and entertainment writer from the Santa Cruz Sentinel, read his laundry list essay, “Why I Write.” The humorous and cynical yet extremely truthful essay began, “I write because painting involves clean-up … I write because sculptors always have bruised and cut-up hands, and stand-up comics rarely get to bed before 3 a.m.” He finished by sentimentally saying “writing is the only truly private art.”

Although Baine pokes fun at writing as a career, in the end it is what he and the other writers of the evening all have in common — a passion for writing.

Karen Tei Yamashita, a current UC Santa Cruz professor of literature and creative writing, read an excerpt from her novel “I-Hotel,” a National Book Award finalist. Poised and eloquent, Yamashita provided the audience with a glimpse into the struggle of the civil rights movement in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

The night ended on a heartfelt note by honoring recently deceased Santa Cruz writer Morton Marcus. His wife, Donna Mekis, read some of her favorite pieces Marcus wrote before he died. Phren-Z did a special “floodlight feature,” which illuminates an event, person or interest of the local literary community. Phren-Z gave away free copies of Marcus’ memoir, “Striking Through the Mask,” provided by the Capitola Book Company and Ow Family Properties.

Attending the Phren-Z event not only reaffirmed my passion for writing, but inspired me to continue to write and to never feel that writing is a lost art you can’t make a career out of. Phren-Z creates a support system for the local writing community. The frequent updates on their website will inspire you to get out your pen and paper and write down your thoughts.

UCSC’s Mardi Gras-themed queer prom held March 2, sold out, giving all students the prom experience they might not have had in high school. Photo by Sal Ingram.

In a transformed Porter/Kresge Dining Hall, under a glittering disco ball, students gathered for the second annual Queer Prom.

Bodies swayed to the music in a sold-out room where students attending the Mardi Gras-themed event danced on the floor, main stage, and on top of chairs and tables, until 1 a.m.

Queer Prom, held March 2, was hosted by the Queer Student Union (QSU) and Delta Lambda Psi (DLP). Nestor Rivera, QSU media coordinator, helped organize the event and discussed the purpose of the QSU.

“The QSU is here to build a better union with queer students on campus,” Rivera said. “We try to bring a safe environment to educate students with and around the queer movement.”

After last year’s large turnout, Rivera had high expectations for this year’s event.

“Queer Prom is a safe zone where students can be themselves, free of judgment,” Rivera said. “It’s a way to give students the prom experience they may have wanted but couldn’t receive in high school.”

Although the administration is helpful in providing the Cantú Queer Center at Merrill College, Rivera said, they can still meet the needs of queer students in other ways. For example, the university can push for queer studies, which he said was a course of study recently added by San Diego State University.

Along with QSU, Delta Lambda Psi helped coordinate the event. Delta Lambda Psi is a unique, all-inclusive queer Greek organization founded at UC Santa Cruz in 2005. It is the first queer, gender-neutral Greek organization in the nation.

Ryan Austin, a member of both QSU and Delta Lambda Psi, said the event was “absolutely successful.”

“Events like Queer Prom increase visibility for the queer student body,” Austin said. “And I think it’s representative of a larger notion that we shouldn’t deny the personal expression of others, whatever their form may be.”

Anna Sidorchuk spoke at the event about her experiences as a bisexual student.

“Being bisexual, I think it’s important for me to attend and represent my sexuality as well as that of others,” she said. “I’ve never been in a large participative queer community like this, so it’s cool for me to get involved.”

Many ally students also came out and enjoyed the night’s festivities.

“It’s going really well. There’s a lot of people and I’m having a good time,” said Patrick Davis, a chemistry major. “I came to the event because it was something to do, and I’m glad I came. There’s a very positive vibe.”

When the clock struck 1 a.m., students of all orientations and genders exited the dining hall with their fingers intertwined, heads on one another’s shoulders, and a quiet Saturday morning awaiting them after a long night of celebration.

Illustration by Jamie Morton

In the city of Santa Cruz, like other cities across the United States, times are tough. Unlike many places, however, we do have at least one advantage: People still want to visit. According to SantaCruzCA.org, tourism generates over $500 million for the county every year.

To capitalize on this happy circumstance, Mayor Don Lane and other city council members are working to get a measure on the November ballot that would raise hotel taxes from 10 percent to 12 percent.

While a 2 percent hotel tax increase is most likely a negligible expense to tourists, it could be a large gain for the Santa Cruz community.

In a recent press conference with student media (see p. 6), Lane said this could be especially beneficial because all tax money collected from hotels stays local.

In the past, the city has been forced to make many undesirable budget cuts. Local school districts have taken a hit close to $1 million already, and that will likely double this year. The Santa Cruz Metro has scaled back on its bus service since 2009. Not to mention the possibility of a desalination plant in our future — something that could potentially cost millions of dollars down the line.

That the Santa Cruz City Council is looking for creative ways to bring money into the community is commendable and comforting, given the precarious position the city finds itself in. That it would come from outside sources is an even bigger plus, and shows the council is looking out for Santa Cruzans first.

The only drawback is hotel owners might not be fond of having to drive their prices up even more, especially given that compared to other cities, our rates are already pretty high. However, the gains far outweigh the losses, especially when keeping in mind what’s good for Santa Cruz is ultimately good for the hotel industry — nobody wants to visit a run-down city.

To students who may not live in Santa Cruz for more than four or five years, voting on local issues may feel unimportant or arbitrary. Some abstain from voting on local issues because they have not done their research and do not want to harm the local vote with their uninformed ballot.

But getting something like the hotel tax increase on the ballot and voting yes would be a service to the community even the least informed voter can get behind.

Zachary Chipps and Thomas Brown talk with Santa Cruzans to promote suicide prevention resource awareness. Photo by Morgan Grana.

Hardly more than a year ago, Thomas Brown, 34, and Zachary Chipps, 31, quit their jobs and vowed to bike across the country by 2012 to raise awareness of suicide. Brown and Chipps both lost their brothers to suicide.

The bike team rode into Santa Cruz last Saturday on the third day of their 7,000-mile, 214-day bike tour.

The team called their pilgrimage Revolution Inspired by Self Evolution (RISE) Phoenix. It was created to spread awareness about resources available to people affected by suicide and to create a space for open dialogue on the topic of suicide.

“Creativity, compassion, community and collaboration will always rise above competition,” Chipps said. “By creatively expressing who you are within your community and supporting those around you, we hope that will bring about healing for those who have lost [someone] due to suicide, as well as prevent people from dying from suicide by getting rid of that isolation and forming a community.”

Brown and Chipps began the bike tour on March 1 in San Francisco and plan to finish in Wappingers Falls, N.Y. on Sept. 30. The team will stop in 100 cities in 21 states, where they will reach out to local suicide awareness agencies like the Suicide Prevention Service (SPS) in Santa Cruz County. The pair are also planning to make a documentary about the journey.

The two decided in August 2010 to make the journey across the United States in honor of their brothers. Six months later, Brown called Chipps and said, “OK, let’s organize this.”

“When I made that phone call, we knew we were going to do it in 2012,” Brown said. “It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s set up everything and see where we are at.’ It was, ‘We’re going to do it, so let’s get what we can.’”

They began a partnership with La Frontera Suicide Prevention Center in Arizona, and with the help of friends, reached out to other suicide prevention centers and bicycle shops for donations to fund their mission.

Stops on the bike tour include Arizona, where Brown’s brother was laid to rest, and Nebraska, where Chipps’ brother rests.

“Two suicide survivors decided to travel cross-country for suicide awareness,” Brown said. “We both like to call it a cosmic giggle. You couldn’t write a story as beautiful as that.”

When the team started the trip, they said they had no idea how much support would be awaiting them in Santa Cruz.

“[People] want to come in to join support groups — they are interested in becoming volunteers for our crisis line just because [Zachary and Thomas] came here,” said Bonnie Sultan, the assistant director for SPS. “[They] gave that inspiration to people.”

The team has been using social media outlets to spread awareness of their cause. Brown, a photographer and video artist, has been filming the beginning of the journey and posting video blogs following the team’s experience. RISE Phoenix also creates and sells necklaces that have bike chains hanging on them to symbolize unity for the cause. The money from the chains will help finance the tour and the documentary.

Photo by Morgan Grana.

Brown said he hoped people would walk away with at least one message from the bike tour.

“Realize that not only are you not alone, but you have beautiful potential to create whatever world you want for yourself,” Brown said. “Above all, [apart from] the outside criticism, don’t let that inner critic get in the way — because that’s going to be the most daunting.”

SPS and RISE Phoenix have been working together to spread suicide awareness throughout as many branches of the Santa Cruz community as possible, including the student population.

“For students, [suicide] is the third leading cause of death, which is very frightening for us and it’s something that doesn’t have to happen,” Sultan said. “We provide education and provide a safe space for people to come and get help.”

Sultan said she hopes movements like this will eliminate a stigma around
talking about suicide.

“We are really in awe of [Brown and Chipps],” Sultan said. “We don’t want them to leave Santa Cruz.”

RISE Phoenix raised only 5 percent of their budget before the start date. Many community members have volunteered to open their homes to the team. The San Francisco Coast Guard offered shelter for the team and Sultan said “perfect strangers” in Santa Cruz County welcomed Brown and Chipps into their homes.

The team left Santa Cruz for the next leg of their tour in Pacific Grove, Calif. on March 5.

“We have no idea what’s coming up next,” Chipps said, “but if it is anything like this, it far surpasses any expectations.”

To see Thomas and Zachary’s route, donate to the cause or follow them on Facebook or Twitter, go to risephoenix.org.

Illustration by Christine Hipp

I recently traveled to San Francisco in the vague hopes of getting a chance to interview, or at least the chance to meet, one of my idols. Somehow, she ended up interviewing me instead.

There’s no one noun that can qualify Miranda July. Writer, filmmaker, actress, performance artist, curator — hell, maybe even journalist — they all fit this UCSC dropout. Her work includes the two feature films, “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and “The Future,” the short story collection “No One Belongs Here More than You,” the nonfiction interview collection “It Chooses You,” the collaborative art project “Learning to Love You More,” and countless other written pieces, short films and performances.

Despite being multi-platform, July retains a distinct style in everything she does, and the best way I can think to explain it is that she manages to enter your brain through your heart. She is a master of fragile but powerful sentiment, like that expressed by Paw Paw, a soon-to-be adopted cat (voiced by July) who serves as both narrator and plot device in “The Future” — a creative move that got her a lot of criticism for being overly precious, yet the emotional impact touched at something I couldn’t ignore.

Anxious because of his previous life as a stray, Paw Paw hopes to never have to be alone outside at night again, for fear of what he refers to only as “the darkness” that occurs. It’s a metaphor for the crushing feelings of inadequacy and isolation that protagonists Sophie and Jason know but cannot articulate — and, yes, maybe it’s an obvious one. But it also got me in the gut somewhere I didn’t anticipate, as I realized that my entire life can be boiled down to not wanting to be a part of “the darkness.” It’s so ludicrously simple that it would be maddening, if it weren’t also true.

That’s what I tried to express to friends each time I was met with a “who?” when telling them about my plan to meet Miranda July.

Here’s how it all happened: A couple months ago, I came across an event at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco (JCCSF), titled “The Auction: An Evening of Performance and Conversation With Miranda July.” Too often I’ve been the miserable fan who hears about concerts and appearances a week too late, so I was quick to buy tickets for myself and a friend.

The best way to keep one’s life on track, I’ve found in all of my 20 years of living, is to always have something to look forward to. Miranda July was now my beacon, a way to project my hopes on bad days or gloomy hours. As sometimes happens with excitement, I got cocky. I started thinking maybe I would get a chance to interview her, and spin it into a brilliant, insightful profile, and maybe she’d read it and we’d become best friends who emailed drafts back and forth and slept on each other’s couches while visiting.

I didn’t actually put much effort forth into making this happen, because I knew that would jinx it. I’d been taught through falsified “overnight success” stories in the media that the less you actively work towards something, the more likely it is to happen. Nonchalance is my generation’s ambition.

Somehow, the day came that I was sitting in the lobby of the JCCSF, sipping tea before the show started and whispering to my friend that the woman behind him wearing green tights and a black tunic looked an awful lot like Miranda July from where I was sitting. Then the woman turned around, and it was her.

Not only was it her, but she was walking right toward me.

Shall we pause for a moment to talk about love? Because, in case this wasn’t already clear, I love Miranda July. I love her the way professors love supplemental reading, the way stoners love sneaking food into movie theaters, the way my sister loved the Spice Girls in 1996. I love her in that poster-on-my-bedroom-wall, following-a-tumblr-called-”fuckyeahmirandajuly,” drunkenly-loaning-her-book-to-a-stranger-then-immediately-asking-for-it-back-because-it’s-too-important-to-me-to-take-that-risk kind of way. I knew it my freshman year of college, as soon as I read her book of short stories “No One Belongs Here More than You,” starting with this exchange between two characters in the story “The Shared Patio”:

“Did you ever really love her?

Not really, no.

But me?

Yes.

Even though I have no pizazz?”

There it is, again — that stunning simplicity, the literary version of a child’s valentine, and it grabbed me the way no supposedly highbrow college reading could. I love July’s work — and therefore her, as she’s an auteur in everything she does — because she walks the very fine yet crucial line separating pure sentiment from unbearable twee, and manages never to cross it. It’s familiar but not, refreshing yet relatable.

Critics can easily mistake July’s quirkiness as being “hipster,” all an act designed to court those who self-identify as outside the mainstream. That’s understandable, given that in the current cultural climate, the natural response to anything that appeals to emotion is skepticism. What’s remarkable is how wrong they are — in fact, July is one of the few young artists who manages to be relevant today without resorting to irony, instead using creative and earnest realism, and at times magical realism.

Now here she was, crossing the threshold from daydream best friend to real-life stranger. I stumbled to my feet, less a conscious sign of respect than because suddenly there were more jitters running through my body than it could support sitting down.

“Hi,” she said, in the kind, slightly wavering voice I’d only ever heard coming through speakers before. “Are you here for tonight’s event?”

“Yes, and it’s very nice to meet you,” I half-shouted, as if volume was what would make this moment most real.

July’s calmness in the face of my abundant excitement wasn’t surprising — she wasn’t the one who was meeting her hero, and besides, one of the things I love about her work is that it cuts through unnecessary noise to get to the heart of things. Still, it was a bit disconcerting. Instead of her absorbing my energy, it just bounced off of her and back onto me, doubling my nerves.

“Where are you from?” she asked, as my wide eyes must have made it clear that I was not completely at home in San Francisco, as much as I loved being there.

“Santa Cruz,” I answered.

“So… you grew up in Santa Cruz?”

“No, I grew up in Sacramento and moved to Santa Cruz for college. I live there now.”

“What part of Sacramento? Like, just the greater area, or…”

“Just south of downtown and the Capitol,” I told her. How had it come to this? Why was I wasting my precious moments with Miranda July discussing Sacramento geography? Had she asked me that question to help me calm down, or because she was genuinely interested, or because she got a kick out of my nervous blurting-outs? This was real life, no luxurious fantasy, and I might have been ruining it.

She then asked if I had any objects that I wouldn’t mind talking about and giving away as part of the evening’s show. I cringed as I thought of all the wonderfully quirky and endearing stuff I had back in my hotel room — silly putty, a yellow coinpurse full of dimes, sour apple rolling papers — and asked meekly what kind of thing she was looking for.

“Oh, umm, just something that you carry around,” she said. “Like, Chapstick would work.”

“I’ve got some Chapstick!” said my friend Jesse, sensing my panic and wanting to help.

“No, it’s got to be hers,” Miranda said, gesturing toward me, like we were suddenly friends, on the same team, accustomed to gestures. “It’ll mess her up when she’s talking about it otherwise.”

She wanted to help me. She wanted me to be in her show. I’d admired this woman’s work so much the past two years, and now I had a chance to be a part of it.

I was not about to fuck this up.

I found a rental card from Cedar Street Video in my wallet and offered it to her.

“Yeah, this might work,” she said, her voice perking up a little. “Hold onto this and I’ll keep it in mind.”

And with that she was gone, leaving me to assail Jesse with “Oh, my god” and “Do you think she’ll pick me?!” on repeat for half an hour, until it was time to go in for the show.

The venue was full, around 200 seats altogether. We found our seats near the middle a few minutes before the show started. After an introduction, Miranda July took the stage, and as I clapped I felt the equilibrium returning — this was how it had always been, me admiring from her from afar, and maybe it was for the best.

That being said, I really, really wanted her to pick me.

She began the evening with an exercise to get the audience in the right mindset, to move us away from our outside lives and into a space of vulnerability and trust. Everyone had to grab hold of the nearest stranger’s arm while she read a list of possible fates — encountering our strangers at the table that is laughing too loudly while out to dinner next week, meeting our stranger’s offspring in a foreign country decades from now but never making the connection, or maybe even finding ourselves naked and alone with our stranger later that night, giving an ambiguous groan when asked if what our stranger is doing feels good, and realizing that we should have forcefully said yes — but is it too late to correct ourselves?

“From experience, I can tell you it is never too late,” she said, amid uncomfortable chuckles in the audience.

After that exercise — which ended in everybody giving their stranger’s arm an encouraging squeeze after being reminded that they will someday die — it was time to get down to business. The stage was set up much like a talk show, with two armchairs, two microphones, a table between them and a screen set up behind it. Holding one of the microphones, July said the words I’d been trying not to expect.

“First, I’m going to ask the woman from Santa Cruz who was willing to give away her video rental card to come to the stage.”

Making my way to the stage, I felt relaxed, even downright serene compared to when July had approached me less than an hour ago. I’d just been comforted by a stranger about my own mortality — surely I could handle anything now.

And then there we were, just me and Miranda, onstage, working together to provide entertainment — or at least some kind of memorable experience — for the audience. I put my rental card on the table, and it also appeared on the giant screen, giving a sort of QVC feel to it all. She asked me my name and I answered, and then we were off.

“So is it going to be okay, you giving this up? You won’t need it?”

“No. I haven’t used this much since summer, when I didn’t have Internet or TV for a while, so I would rent movies.”

“How was it not having Internet?”

“It was rough. I think it probably worsened my anxiety, because there were fewer distractions.”

“Right. So you’d just wake up in the morning and be like… now what do I look at?”

This is actually quite reminiscent of a scene in “The Future,” when protagonists Sophie and Jason decide to cancel their Internet for a month to better focus on achieving their creative dreams. They wake up the next morning, instinctively grab their laptops, and are met with the empty promise that is a computer without an Internet connection. Watching the film for the first time in October, I’d identified with that scene a lot, and I wanted to tell Miranda that — but we were already moving onto the next thing.

“So you go to UC Santa Cruz. I went there for a while, but I dropped out.”

“I know. It’s on your Wikipedia.”

This made everyone laugh, including her, and I wanted to exist in that moment forever — wanted to stop time, like Jason does in “The Future” when Sophie is about to leave him. I didn’t want to ever leave this place where I could be earnest and witty at the same time, where I could impress strangers and heroes with my enthusiasm.

Either July is an incredibly gifted interviewer or I was an all-too-eager subject as she used the remaining 10 minutes to easily segue from my relationship with my parents, to my romantic history, to what I wanted to do with my life. Her final question was — in classic Miranda July fashion — simple but affecting.

“What is your great hope?”

“My great hope is … I want to write something that people care about.”

“Hmm,” she said, and she paused for a moment and then nodded, as if something had come together for her. “I think you will.

After that she and I both signed a certificate saying I was handing over my rental card, then she auctioned it off to a member of the audience (some dude in a plaid shirt who I didn’t get a chance to talk to) and the money went to anonymous audience members in need. It was an interesting examination of how we assign worth to objects, and of the stories physical things can carry with them. She repeated the exercise with two other people, then did a Q&A session, and it was over. I felt more at ease during the rest of the show than I had in weeks.

Even though I’d already gotten my golden experience, there was no way I was leaving without getting my book signed, as proof that I hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing. When I got to the front of the line and exchanged awkward hello-agains, she seemed a bit distracted and tired — did I mention she was seven months pregnant? — but she thanked me for being brave. I had so much to say, like that she’s changed the way I think about art, and that I wish I could be as simple yet effective in my prose as she is, but all I could get out was a couple of thank yous. And then I finally left the venue, fielding compliments on the way from supportive audience members, and it was the end of something.

The show was inspired by July’s most recent book, “It Chooses You,” a series of interviews with people she found trying to sell things in the “PennySaver.” She wrote in the book that it was difficult not to fictionalize her subjects, and while I wouldn’t say she was fictionalizing me, that suspended moment on stage when we were talking about my life didn’t feel like anything I was used to. I’m accustomed to having to look over my shoulder while anxiously inching forward in life, to everyone being considered boring and useless until proven otherwise, to an eye roll being much more universal than squeezing a stranger’s arm. Miranda July rejects this world, and turns people into art.

This feeling reminded me of a passage from “No One Belongs Here More than You”:

“I laughed and said, ‘Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.’”

Except it wasn’t hard, because now I knew definitively that something else existed. I had jumped into where Miranda July lives, some sort of chasm between reality and fiction, but I felt more real than I had in a long time.

Santa Cruz Mayor Don Lane and Vice Mayor Hilary Bryant spoke to UCSC student media organizations Feb. 27th. They discussed issues like the state of public schools in Santa Cruz and the local economy.

Mayor Don Lane and Vice Mayor Hilary Bryant spoke with student media organizations at an on-campus press conference last Monday. The pair talked about their efforts to strengthen the local economy, as well as other issues of interest to students and Santa Cruzans.

CHP: What is the city council currently doing to build the local economy?

Bryant: We’ve been working on how to improve technology in the city. I was in a meeting the other day and they said just three doors down they could get fiber optic, but not right here. That’s a challenge — it’s a huge economic development challenge for us. The university has been helpful in that challenge with its ability to bring in educated individuals, but we have to get better at letting businesses know that.

There are actually a lot of smaller tech companies in the area, and these are the future of Santa Cruz. I don’t think we will get a significant number of large tech companies, so we have to build up these small companies and we have to start re-branding ourselves as a tech community. There are a lot of creative thinkers in the area and a lot of amazing projects underway right now. David Haussler is working on the genome project here at Santa Cruz and also has a group working out of the Silicon Valley. What we need to do is make businesses more interested in starting up in Santa Cruz.

Lane: Plantronics is our biggest high-tech employer in the region. UCSC serves as a big motivator for the company to be in the area, and they definitely recognize the school makes it easier for them to find the kind of talent they need. There are so many people that commute to big tech companies, and there is really no reason for them to leave Santa Cruz every day. I know there are dozens of people who live in Santa Cruz and go over to work at Google, and if we could just create a Google satellite office, it would really work for both the company and the community. That way, we are not competing with these big companies — something we simply cannot do — and we are instead bringing them to us.

CHP: Santa Cruz K-12 public schools have recently been dealt budget cuts. Has there been any consideration of privatizing them? 

Bryant: We’ve been having this whole charter school conversation lately, but I believe people really care about public education and there are amazing teachers in public education who really care about what they are doing. I don’t think we’re going to go to a system of private schools — just because so many people believe in public education — but to keep the quality of it up, everybody has to be engaged.

Lane: I think it is such a fundamental issue to our society. It is easy to just fall back on the private sector to fix issues, but doing so creates a society of winners and losers. A great public education system is the best barrier against that.

CHP: Amid education cuts, are you confident the upcoming local ballot measure intended to preserve funding for Santa Cruz city schools’ arts, music, and libraries will pass? 

Lane: The measure will only renew what is already in place as far as education goes, and
measures like that are easier to pass, so I believe it will go through.

CHP: Are there any local measures you are aware of right now you think would interest students, or the community in general?

Lane: I’m on a task force of the city council that’s looking at hotel taxes. We have been discussing raising the tax rate on hotels from 10 percent to 12 percent, but whether that goes on the ballot is a decision for the city council. It would be very beneficial for Santa Cruz, though, because all the tax money from hotels stays local, whereas everything else that is taxed is shared with the state and federal government.

The problem is national, statewide and local.

At the national level, women’s issues are the current political fixation, but women are not granted entry into the discourse. Programs geared toward women have seen an unprecedented year of attacks. Planned Parenthood was defunded in multiple states, and restrictions on abortion legislation are becoming more prevalent.

The phrase “war on women” to describe the current state of American politics has been thrown around recently, and in light of attacks not just on Planned Parenthood and abortion rights, but also on insurance-covered birth control and even the Girl Scouts, the description is apt.

The sexism embedded in American politics and national media is not limited to those arenas.

In the UC, the systemic attack on and sexism against women resides in the structure stipulated by Title IX for handling cases of sexual assault at higher institutions. The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) recently found the structure Title IX stipulates does not adequately handle sexual assault cases.

A report funded by the Department of Justice found roughly one in five college women will be the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates. A 12-month investigation by the CPI found the official numbers provided by schools did not nearly reflect the actual prevalence of sexual assault on campuses. Furthermore, the process of reporting and the implications of speaking out means the numbers are underrepresented.

“Student victims face a depressing litany of barriers that often either ensure their silence or leave them feeling victimized a second time,” according to the CPI report.

The investigation determined students found “responsible” for sexual assault received minimal punishment, and the student who reported faced more severe repercussions.

University of the Pacific (UOP) student Beckett Brennan suffered from this exact failing of the Title IX structure outlined in the CPI investigation. Brennan was a basketball player at UOP, and in May 2008 was raped by three men from UOP’s Division 1 basketball team at once.

Brennan kept quite about the incident, but when she finally reported the rape, her testimony was met with intense criticism, incessant harassment, and accusations that she made up the incident. Though the men were found guilty of violating the school’s sexual harassment policy, one student, Steffan Johnson, was expelled but received a full scholarship to the University of Idaho three months later. Michael Nunnally was suspended for a year and Michael Kirby was suspended for a semester. Brennan herself was driven out of the university.

Brennan said the board’s questions focused on her accountability for the incident, asking her the degree to which she was flirting with the men and how much she drank.

Incidents like this, sadly, are not rare. Many times women who report cases of sexual assault bear the most burden and are faced with the reality that reporting could actually make it worse.

UC Santa Cruz is no exception. The exact same structure is used on this campus and as such is open to the same failings. The structure that Title IX stipulates is not an isolated failure. It is a microcosm of the larger systemic sexism that permeates nationwide. We are  post-nothing.

(from left to right, top to bottom)

“Getting Lost in Pogonip, exploring what’s here in Santa Cruz. Nature Madness.”
Nestor Rivera
5th year, Kresge
Legal studies and psychology

“Musical Madness. Booking Shows & recording acoustic soul.”
Taj Smith
5th year, Merrill
Politics

“Occupy Madness.”
Ernesto Chavez
4th year, College Nine
Psychology

“Drake Madness, I’m seeing his show this month.”
Evelyn Almedia
3rd year, Cowell
Politics

“Academic Madness. I’m in finals mode.”
Andrea Stone
4th year, College Ten
Legal studies

Illustrations by Amanda Alten.

She giggled over Skype as she applied bright red lipstick in the mirror.

“Sorry, I’m listening! Just doing my makeup,” she said, laughing. “I gotta work later, you know.”

Josie Savage* is not a barista or waitress like many college students. Savage makes her living by webcamming — doing live online porn — under the porn name Josie Savage.

Savage, a sociology major with a concentration in queer theory at the University of North Carolina, believes in order to navigate the realm of online porn it is necessary to widen the scope in which it is viewed.

She said what is considered “normal” must be rethought, to adjust the institution of pornography itself.

A blonde size-zero with double-Ds, being mounted by a large, oily and muscled man — this is the mainstream, commercial porn experience.

“Straight people watch porn, gay people watch porn, queer people watch porn,” Savage said. “Everybody thinks it should be OK, to some degree, but we don’t know how to navigate that.”

The once-a-month rush of a Playboy magazine is fleeting, while the endless accessibility of online porn makes it everlasting. Every second, 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography, according to the internet pornography statistics on TopTenReviews.com.

Although there is no way to answer the question of whether online porn is good or bad, it is undeniable that its accessibility today has changed the way we act in our real-life sexual relationships. The question is: How do people feel about this?

Researchers Marnia Robinson and Gary Wilson co-wrote “Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow,” a book and online piece on PsychologyToday.com about the negative effects of online porn. They said online porn is the biggest trigger of erectile dysfunction’s serious interference with real-life relationships, citing that 70 percent of young men treated for sexual performance problems use Internet pornography heavily.

In Robinson and Wilson’s research, the sex workers themselves are rarely mentioned in the endless research conducted.

For Savage, working in the online porn industry is not only a reliable source of income, but also a way she can use her sexuality and her people skills. Savage said her job has allowed her to explore her own sexuality — she identifies as queer — and help others do so as well. Savage said she, like many sex workers, is a survivor of sexual abuse.

“I eventually want to do sex therapy, so I am finding a way to make sex OK for me, and others, outside of the context of the socially constructed loving relationship thing that I feel is blown out of proportion,” Savage said. “It’s not the only way to fulfill all of our sexual needs.”

Savage develops relationships and friendships with her customers, most of whom are regulars. On her website and over Skype, she tries to create a safe space for herself and her clients.

“[I’m] creating a space where someone can explore their sexuality in a healthy way without fear of me calling them gross or telling them it’s not OK,” Savage said. “I’m not in the business of telling someone that they are fucked up for feeling the way they feel. I think a lot of times people’s sexualities are influenced [negatively] by society.”

Natalie Purcell, a graduate from UCSC’s doctoral program in sociology whose book, “Pornography and Violence: The Politics of Sex, Gender, and Aggression in Pornographic Fantasy,” will be published next year, said porn is intimately entwined with our day-to-day relationships.

“Like other genres of our mainstream media and culture, pornography has a complex and multilateral relationship with our identities, relationships and practices,” Purcell said. “It can simultaneously reflect, reinforce and rebel against different aspects of our lives, attitude and behaviors.”

Purcell said mainstream porn reflects what is popularly desired, which in turn can lead to false definitions of normality.

“The content of mainstream pornography is shaped by popular demand — by what people already say, do and desire,” Purcell said. “What we see again and again in mainstream pornographies — and in any other part of our daily lives — helps define our sense of the ‘normal.’ On a societal level, pornography is one of many modes of cultural expression that can impact our sexual identities, relationships and practices.”

Porn star Tasha Reign, who has been in the adult entertainment industry for over a year and is a fourth-year student at UCLA majoring in women’s studies, said “normal” doesn’t necessarily play a part in mainstream pornography.

“When somebody watches porn they want to watch a fantasy,” Reign said. “They could be watching something that’s beautiful or they could be watching something that’s hardcore and rough — it depends on what that particular person likes. Mainstream media in general has definitely shaped what people view as ‘normal’ and ‘sexy,’ but in porn, because it’s so kinky there is not a ‘normal’ anymore.”

Beginning with a job at Hooters in high school that led to stripping, her career ultimately blossomed into an invitation to the Playboy Mansion, where Hugh Hefner reviewed her portfolio. Reign feels empowered by her sex work.

“The gender roles in porn are very different,” Reign said. “Women make more money than men, much more money. In regular society, the majority of men are the breadwinners. It definitely switches things up — the dynamics change. The women rule the show, in my opinion.”

Savage said gender roles in porn are the problem, and works to defy them. She said pornography is a way she expresses her sexuality and works to break the extreme gender roles present in American culture.

“I’m pansexual. I identify as queer,” Savage said. “I think the gender binary is a problem, and we need to be getting past it. I think every work in sexuality that I do that stresses that helps.”

Although the Internet has allowed her to liberate herself from gender constructs, Savage said the Internet has also changed how we “do sex” — in a negative way. This negative stigma is what Savage combats in her sex work.

“I didn’t have questions growing up because I had a computer in my room when I was 13,” Savage said. “I knew what sex was, at least this one kind of sex that you saw in mainstream porn. And I do think our preferences have been really informed by that. We look around us at what’s called ‘hot,’ at what we think as a society is sexy, and we internalize it.”

It’s not only porn-positive people who take issue with this kind of internalization. Luke Gilkerson, Internet community manager at Covenant Eyes — a website that offers education and software tools to encourage the fight against Internet temptation — said Internet porn drives users beyond their natural libido.

“Pornography essentially trains men and women to be sexual consumers, not lovers,” Gilkerson said. “To treat sex as a commodity, to think about sex as something on-tap and made-to-order, it trains … viewers to desire the cheap thrill of fantasy over a committed relationship. The real problem with pornography isn’t that it shows us too much sex, but that it doesn’t show us enough. [Pornography] cannot possibly give us an experience of real intimacy.”

Aside from the lack of intimacy, Gilkerson said online porn also sets unrealistic standards of beauty.
The negative effects of these skewed perceptions is something Gilkerson is intimately familiar with. Before he was the community manager at Covenant Eyes, Gilkerson was a porn addict. When he moved to Michigan to get married, he was introduced to the Covenant Eyes community. Here he found a way to heal, and help others who shared a similar struggle.

“Pornography is just the tip of a very ugly iceberg of unrealistic beauty standards imposed by mass media,” Gilkerson said. “If people are concerned about how the photoshopped models in standard advertising affect a girl’s self-worth, how much more should they be concerned about a highly-edited pornography film?”

Webcam model Savage said she is occasionally confronted with users who want unrealistic ideals, but that it is ultimately worth it.
“The Internet can be a really mean place, as is evidenced by every forum, ever,” Savage said. “I don’t need to sit here and have my body insulted. But then I think about it, and the people who aren’t saying that are looking at me and masturbating, which is probably one of the biggest compliments. Ultimately, it’s definitely given me more confidence.”

For third-year Evergreen College student Willy Johnson* — who humorously suggested he be called by that name for the purpose of this piece — webcamming is simply a way to make money. He said the question of whether or not this makes him happy is a complicated one to answer.
“There is a lot of intellectually masturbatory discussion around sex work,” Johnson said.

“[This ignores] the actual, lived realities of the people who engage in it. Personally — and I want to stress the ‘personally,’ because I think the answer to this question is going to vary wildly from person to person — I don’t find it empowering, in the same way I probably wouldn’t find working retail empowering. It’s a way to pay the rent.”

That Johnson is transgender complicates this further: He lives his day-to-day life as a man, but cams as a woman.

“It is exceedingly surreal, in a way that veers between being flattering and being absolutely horrible,” Johnson said, “to be desired for a body that I would do almost anything to be rid of.”

While webcamming has helped Savage explore her sexuality, Johnson said it has not left much room for his.

“It’s played a role in exploring sexuality in general, though not necessarily my own,” Johnson said. “The work requires I pretend to be both female and straight, when I am neither. For me, personally, it’s very, very fake. It’s a performance that panders to the male gaze in a way that doesn’t leave any room for my sexuality as someone who identifies as gay and [transgender].”

Jessica Drake, Wicked Pictures exclusive contract performer, writer, and director, has been in the adult industry for over 10 years. In addition to being the creator and host of “Jessica Drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex” — a series of sex education DVDs that aim to make sex education sexier — Drake holds sex workshops all over the world, and brings her real-life experience to the table.

Drake has been in a relationship with a partner, who also works in the industry, for eight years. She said they never have jealousy issues, because they can relate to each other and understand each other’s jobs.

Drake said she is not strictly “acting” when she has sex onscreen. For that reason, she keeps a list of onscreen partners she has chemistry with.

“Some people may have a hard time accepting the fact that I really get off with the people I work with,” Drake said. “But to me, sex is something I don’t want to have to fake. If you’re not enjoying sex, and you’re really just going through the motions, whether it’s on-camera or off-camera, it requires a disconnect. I’m not willing to turn off that part of my body, or my brain or my soul.”

As Savage pointed out earlier, and as evidenced by the wide variety of perspectives, an expansion of the way the pornographic realm is viewed is necessary. Savage said the denial of her right to be a porn star without being looked down upon is a problem.

“I don’t think [porn] should be something people are ashamed of, because I think that’s a larger problem of how we treat sexuality,” Savage said. “For me, it’s mostly an agency thing. The way culture, especially straight culture, sees porn as degrading to women — it really denies agency. I do porn because I enjoy it. Someone telling me I am being degraded, almost against my will, is truly insulting.”

Everyone has a different perspective on how porn affects his or her life, whether they are a porn star, a consumer of porn or an anti-porn activist. Sociologist Purcell said why each person feels the way they feel, and in what context, is the important part.

“Who feels degraded or empowered by which pornographies, within what contexts, and why?” Purcell said. “Certainly, there are many people who find the images, words and actions portrayed in mainstream heterosexual pornography to be hurtful and abusive, but you will also be able to find people — including women — who would shrug off the same content or find it titillating, empowering, even revolutionary.”

Ray Collett (courtesy photo)

Amid the bustle of campus, there lies an oasis of calm. For that, Santa Cruz has former arboretum director, biogeographer and professor Ray Collett to thank.

Collett died on Feb. 22 at the age of 79, leaving behind a 40-year legacy of exotic plants, memories and scientific research.

Everything in the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum was made possible by Collett, said friend and current director Brett Hall.

“Everything that we are doing here is a product of Ray’s vision for the arboretum,” Hall said. “When he came to Santa Cruz, he recognized the potential for an arboretum because of the marvelous site and opportunities that it afforded.”

Hall described Collett as someone who quietly inspired people.

“He was shy, he was brilliant, and he had an incredible power of concentration,” Hall said. “He could just get things done.”

Collett was born in Andersen, Calif., on May 18, 1932. While still working on his doctoral dissertation at UC Berkeley, Collett was asked to join the fledgling faculty at UCSC by founding chancellor Dean McHenry. Hall says that the decision was not arbitrary.

“McHenry was very careful of his selections of early faculty,” Hall said.

Collett quickly recognized the potential in the unique landscape around the UCSC campus.

“He wanted to develop a garden that would introduce people to these wonderful various forms of evolutionary experimentation,” Hall said. “Ray’s nature welcomed and inspired people to support the arboretum and get involved. It’s through their support that we’ve been able to survive.”

Collett’s friendship with now world-famous horticulturalists Rodger and Gwen Elliot proved to be another pivotal point for the arboretum’s collections. As Stephen McCabe, director of development and research and curator of succulents, proudly stated, “We have the largest collection of Australian plants outside of Australia.” The arboretum’s international notoriety is due in large part to this Australian collection, made possible by Collett’s travels to Melbourne, Australia, in 1976.

The Elliots went on to write encyclopedias on the cultivation of Australian plants, but it was their meeting with Collett, as Hall described, that “changed their lives forever.”

“Together Ray and Brett and all these students, staff and volunteers have [helped the arboretum] from a cow pasture to an internationally recognized botanic garden,” McCabe said. “The community loves the arboretum. Kids come here to get away from classes or the stresses of campus. Some students come to learn about horticulture, habitat restoration, plant evolution or science illustration.”

Collett’s passion made a profound impact on his students.

“A former student of his told me the other day that Ray was the first one that ever really got him to recognize the importance of genetic diversity and population,” Hall said.

A man of many talents and passions, Collett taught a range of courses, including cartooning, natural sciences, horticulture, and climatology.

“One of his other skills was getting volunteers and donors excited about the project,” McCabe said. “In his own low-key way, what he managed to do was bring together a community of people who really care about the arboretum and care about plants and want to keep the arboretum thriving and continuing for the rest of the century.”

His attention to detail was incredible, said Hall.

“We’d be out with Ray for a day, wandering through the bush and then suddenly Ray would stop and say, ‘You know, that [flower] there is the only one I’ve seen that has purple spots on the lower part of the petal.’ He was really able to clue into that diversity within a population or species. He was really tuned in.”

It was appropriate for Collett to pass away near the gardens he built, said Hall.

“Ray really gave us a wonderful gift [in] the collections and the place that he created” Hall said. “[It’s] pretty amazing and sad all at the same time.”

Over the years, thousands of students have contributed to the arboretum.

“We can go out there now and show you hundreds of things that have Ray written all over them, really rare, beautiful plants from all over the world,” Hall said.

Although Collett will no longer be a physical presence at the arboretum, his legacy lives on.