Opinion

All quarter long I’ve been without a vehicle, and surprisingly, life’s not so bad. Unitrans gets me to class, the Yolobus gets me to work, and, since I don’t have a bike, I just walk everywhere else. Davis is pretty pedestrian-friendly, with plenty of bridges and bike paths and midnight joggers, but really it’s just […]

Contemporary discourse often emphasizes a life trajectory in which individuals are born queer, bullied as teens, then become same-sex married — resolving all past struggle. This view of a central queer narrative is problematic for many reasons. By saying that everyone is “born” with a certain sexuality, society is treating queerness as a biological certainty […]

Editor’s note: For an opposing opinion on this issue, see TRISTAN DE LIEGE’s column “Taxation.” The recent scandal, in which the IRS targeted Tea Party groups, has had the usual effect of creating a lot of wild and crazy talk from wild and crazy right-wing pundits. We have to stop this nonsense in its tracks. […]

Friends with benefits, friends with bens, bed buddies, or whatever you call it: this phrase has become quite the topic in popular culture these past few years. Did we not get two movies on the exploration of the topic a few summers ago? (One with the boldness to even use the now-popular phrase as a […]

The UC Office of the President (UCOP) sent out a press release on Monday boasting that 82 percent of current UC students are satisfied with their college education, despite the decline in state funding and rise in tuition costs. The number comes from the 2012 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey. We were surprised, and upon further […]

If we ask people what they think about political rhetoric, they will likely respond that it is baloney and that we shouldn’t buy it. But I think those same people do buy it very frequently. I want to dissect a few recent and pertinent examples. In dissecting them, I think patterns emerge that can inform […]

My name is Stephanie Lake and I’m the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug (ATOD) Intervention Services Coordinator at Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS) here on campus. I am responding to the article in the April 11, Aggie titled “Students seek Adderall for academic boost.” There were some good points made in this article and […]

Boiling down the college experience to a few words is hard to do. How does one capture the freedom and self-discovery? My “101 Greatest Movie Quotes” poster, as often is the case, has the answer: “Toga! Toga!” Movies like Animal House and Old School instill high school graduates with a picture of what college should […]

I think the Mondavi Center is one of the most beautiful buildings on campus. I love that it exists specifically as a venue for people to share their passion, whether that is dancing, music, singing or some other art form. Lately I realized that I have my own mini-Mondavi right in my apartment. I call […]

Each year, May brings us spring flowers, Whole Earth, Mother’s Day — and lots of self-love. National Masturbation Month was created by the San Francisco-based sex shop Good Vibrations, but their goal wasn’t merely to boost vibrator sales. In 1994, U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders attended a United Nations AIDS conference, where she suggested that […]

We as Student Assistants at Health Education and Promotion (HEP) at Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS) would like to address some of the concerns presented in the May 2 guest opinion piece regarding Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) testing accessibility and the climate of sex positivity on campus. Firstly, we would like to say that […]

Whole Earth Festival is coming up, and this is a good time to think about environmental issues. We frequently encounter people praising “sustainability,” “eco-friendliness,” and being “green.” But what do these terms really mean? Often these terms are associated with taking care of the environment or “minimizing our impact” on the environment. The environment is […]