Life or Death: Mental Health and CAPS in the Time of the Coronavirus
Content warning: This piece contains reference to suicide and mental health struggles. The first time I called UC Santa Cruz Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) crisis line with the intent to kill myself, they dropped the call. It was around 10 a.m. on an empty,…
Santa Cruz Community Fridges Multiply Across Santa Cruz: My Experience With Mutual Aid
The first time I volunteered with the Santa Cruz chapter of Food Not Bombs three years ago, we scrutinized each piece of donated produce to make sure it was clean and unspoiled, before preparing all-vegan meals for the hungry. The amount of care put into…
Scrolling Around Campus: A Survey of Zoom University
Before freshman year, Santa Cruz was the “Murder Capital of the World” to me. Tucked in the upper corner of the Monterey Bay, its redwoods are foreboding, its boardwalk dense with character. My first impressions of Santa Cruz, influenced by movies and TV shows like…
On The Inside: Life Inside the UCSC Bubble
Arriving at UC Santa Cruz for the first time in September 2019, I still remember my university starter pack from move-in: an academic advising folder with my schedule of events, a UCSC key chain I still use today, and a blue UCSC tote bag for…
Uncelebrated Wins
Finding a sense of belonging in ourselves
Have you ever felt like all your hard work isn’t good enough? I’m a first-generation student, and my parents constantly ask me about my future. To them, it’s important that I keep working hard to get a degree. It’s easy to gloss over our success…
How Diet Culture Ruined Self-Care
Self-care is fundamentally about supplying our minds and bodies with food, water, sleep, connection and movement. Self-care is not what diet culture has turned it into. For some of us self-care is waking up on a set schedule, for others it’s just getting out of…
Leverage Left Unused
House Democrats are blind to their own power
As COVID-19 continues to sweep through the U.S., President Donald Trump’s once strong economy has been shattered by the virus. House Democrats can use that to their advantage. Prior to the past few months, Trump’s reelection strategy was simple — tout the humming economy, low…
Bernie Sanders: What Went Wrong for the Former Frontrunner?
On April 8, Senator Bernie Sanders ended his 2020 presidential campaign. The announcement came almost five years after the start of his 2016 run. In those five years, despite never ascending to the presidency or even clinching the Democratic nomination, Sanders transformed the American political…
Abolish the Two-Party System
The lesser of two evils. Anyone but _____. These disaffected refrains are common in our current political climate. Despite warnings of partisan polarization from George Washington and John Adams, electoral politics in this country have been governed by a two-party system since the beginning. Centuries-old…
Time to Shred the Blank Check
In the days following 9/11, Congress voted to approve 60 words that would fuel the American war machine for years to come. The Office of the President has used these 60 words to justify drone strikes, black site detention and military occupation of other countries….