Campus News

Student-led construction is ongoing for a new community center for the UC Davis Domes community.

Construction of the new community center started approximately two months ago, and the builders anticipate the structure will be finished during the summer.

The Domes is a cooperative living community located on the west side of campus. There are 28 students residing in the Domes, which was built in the 1970s.

Currently, the builders are nearly finished with the floor and heating system. Today will mark a new stage in the project, as concrete will be poured over the existing structure.

Student Affairs Research & Information (SARI) released the results to a February survey that asked students how they prefer to be contacted in case of an emergency in March.

According to the SARI survey results, the top three ways students prefer to be notified of an emergency are through a public announcement (PA) system, siren or text message.

The survey was conducted from Feb. 20 to 28 via the MyUCDavis portal by a team of junior students in Davis Honors Challenge. The team was sponsored by Valerie Lucas of the UC Davis Campus Emergency.

A total of 4,630 students, or 16 percent of all undergraduate and graduate students, responded to the Quick Survey. Quick Survey is an application in the MyUCDavis portal controlled by SARI that allows it to conduct student center research.

This month's "Sexual Assault Awareness" theme is designed to open the eyes of many students with events around campus to raise awareness. Many organizations, such as Students Against Sexual Violence, the Campus Violence Prevention Program (CVPP) and the Women's Resources and Research Center (WRRC), will be sponsoring the month's events.

A viewing of the film Searching for Angela Shelton will be shown today at 8 p.m. in 123 Science Lecture. The film reveals the journey of a filmmaker named Angela Shelton who travels the United States in search of other Angela Sheltons and discovers that 24 out of the 40 Sheltons had been raped, beaten or molested.

"It's really important for women to watch this film and that we create a community of women on campus where they feel comfortable enough to talk about these issues, like Angela Shelton did in the film," said Courtney Laliberte, a volunteer for CVPP who helped organize the event.

Though having a full course load and a job is daunting for most people, three UC Davis students have taken the challenge in stride. In fact, their supervisors say these students have excelled.
Jacob Mauney, Huy Nguyen and Melisa De Leon each received the “Student Employee of the Year Award” at a ceremony Friday afternoon at the Memorial Union.
Last month, a committee of two employers, two UC Davis Student Employment Center staff members and one student chose the winners from a pool of 37 students nominated by their employers.
Each winner was recognized for a specific achievement: Mauney, who works UC Davis Distribution Services & Material Management (the Mail Division), for exemplifying the Principles of Community; Nguyen, a business systems analyst for UC Davis InnovationAccess, for contributing to UC Davis; and De Leon, a site coordinator for Davis Bridge, for contributing to the community.

La Raza Law Students Association sponsored events throughout the week in honor of César Chávez. Monday through Friday, events were held on campus under the theme "Progress and Prosperity for our Community."

Monday's breakfast kicked off the week's festivities while Tuesday, Cara Jobson - a partner of Wiley & Jobson San Francisco immigration law firm - led a discussion on people persecuted on account of sexual orientation and identity.

Wednesday's events caused people to ask questions.

The Native American Student Union (NASU) held the 36th annual Davis Powwow on Saturday in the ARC Pavilion to kick off Native American Culture Week.

"A powwow is a social gathering of the tribes," explained April Negrette, co-chair of the event and a first-year undeclared major. Powwows are seasonal events beginning in March and ending in October, taking place across the nation.

The festivities began at 10 a.m. with the Pomo dancers and ended shortly after 11 p.m. following the switch dancers.

The Powwow, which has been absent from Davis for two yearsdue to an unusually low Native American population in the student body, was made possible thanks to the efforts of the Powwow Committee, chaired by members of NASU, and a rise in Native American population.

"There was a big boom in the Native American student population this year," said DJ Worley, a Davis graduate and current graduate student in Native American studies, and long standing member of NASU.

Elected officials' attendance

ASUCD Senate meetings are scheduled to begin Thursdays at 6:10 p.m. Times listed are according to the clock at the Apr. 3 meeting location, the Memorial Union's Mee Room.

With tuition fees expected to double in the next five years for California schools, students wonder if the rise will ever simply stop.

Hope comes from state Assembly Bill 2372, or the College Affordability Act, which would "freeze" the tuition amount at University of California and California State University schools for the next five years.

Revenue for such a bill would draw from a 1 percent income tax from millionaires, raising $2 billion a year. Funds would be monitored by an accountability panel, and after five years, tuition would not be allowed to increase more than inflation.

"It should be a right for students to have access to public higher action," said Valeria Fike-Rosales, lead organizer of Tuition Relief Now's statewide ballot initiative. "The fees keep increasing and the fact that students don't have the political power to do anything isn't fair for them."

The UC Davis Arboretum is hosting a guided tour titled Improve your container gardening this Saturday in the Arboretum Terrace Garden located next to the Davis Commons retail center on First Street.

The free tour will be led by arboretum docent Mary Horton and start at 11 a.m.

Container gardening can range from a simple indoor plant to the floral and foliage arrangements in the Arboretum Terrace.

The tour will instruct participants on how to improve their container gardening, which can be a challenge in Davis in the summer months because of watering issues, said Holly Crosson, interpretation coordinator at the arboretum.

If your female coworkers have a tendency to disappear throughout the day, they may be secretly shedding tears behind closed doors, according to an ongoing UC Davis study.

Kimberly Elsbach, a professor in the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, has studied a group of more than a dozen women and has found that many of them have gone to great pains to hide their tears on the job.

Women may cry in a restroom, abruptly leave a meeting or take refuge in an office - a burden that men don't have, said Elsbach in a UC Davis news release.

team of UC Davis researchers has found that there is no evidence to support any correlation between farm subsidies and obesity in the United States. Their findings appear in the December 2007 issue ofAgricultural and Resource Economics Update published by the University of California's Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.

A government subsidy is paid to farmers and agricultural businesses with the intention of supplementing their income and maintaining a necessary supply of goods. The extra money ensures that farmers are able to meet quota and guarantees a price floor - a designated minimum that can be charged on a product.

But the system of U.S. Farm subsidies has many critics - some of whom believe that subsidies are a key contributor to America's obesity epidemic.

The UC Davis' Agricultural Issues Center (AIC) has posted an unpublished report titled Agriculture's Role in the Economy on their website so data analysts and researchers can begin to utilize the information.

The report includes information on agriculture in California, particularly its impact on California's economy. It shows that California farming employs 7.3 percent of the state's private sector labor force and accounts for 5.6 percent of the state labor income.

California agriculture is a significant part of the overall economy and, of course, a vital source for many food products, said Daniel Sumner, a professor of agriculture and resource economics and the AIC's director. California places in the top 10 of the world's agriculture rankings, ahead of countries such as Canada, Mexico, Germany and Spain.

The University of California tested a new Google software that allows users to gain greater access to millions of books and records from UC and other libraries throughout the nation Mar. 13.

Through a partnership between the UC and Google in August 2006, books from the UC libraries were scanned and made available to the public through Google Book Search. Users can view and download entire non-copyrighted books online at no cost. For copyrighted books, users are given background information on the book, are shown ideas of where to buy or borrow and can search within the book to evaluate its content.

According to the California Digital Library (CDL), the UC has one of the largest research libraries in the world.

Detect earthquakes with your laptop

An assistant professor at UC Riverside has developed an intriguing new way to detect earthquakes.

Elizabeth Cochran, part of the department of earth sciences, proposed that a network of personal computers be used to help detect oncoming seismic disturbances in real time, according to a press release from UC Riverside.

Currently, there is a slight gap between earthquake detecting equipment gathering information and the information being received, Cochran said.