Opinion

I’d like to wish everyone a happy hump day and a happy Cinco de Mayo! If you find me downtown, say hi. Margaritas will be gladly accepted.

As much as I hate to admit it, social networking sites are becoming an inevitable part of our social and working lives. Facebook messages are starting to replace friendly phone calls and certain jobs require workers to update their company’s Facebook or Twitter page.

In the next few weeks, UC Davis students may have the chance to vote on two referendums declaring no confidence in both UC President Mark Yudof’s leadership and the management of the UC Regents. This vote will more accurately reflect student sentiment on the issues, and will effectively utilize ASUCD’s decision-making ability.

To the UC Davis Community: It has been a little over two weeks since our campus announced what has truly been one of the most difficult and painful decisions of my short tenure at UC Davis – discontinuing four of UC Davis’ 27 intercollegiate sports as the campus continues to struggle through an unprecedented financial crisis.

Life is the dancer, and you are the dance. You make it up as you go along. Every step, every jump and every chassé is of your doing. But you cannot define yourself by any one movement. To do so would box you into an existence that is limited by the parameters of your own self-definition.

I don’t really get what’s going on in Arizona. The New York Times referred to the new law passed less than two weeks ago as the “U.S.’s Toughest Immigration Law,” which would give police broad rights to detain anyone who looks, dresses or acts like an illegal immigrant and doesn’t have the papers to show otherwise. President Obama gave us a wonderfully unjust picture of detained housewives last week when saying in reference to the law, “suddenly, if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed.”

Three supervisors in the county of Santa Clara have decided that food choices are too important to be left up to parents. Because average, adult citizens simply cannot see the insidious link between junk food, obesity and toys, a small group of enlightened supervisors have decided to protect and educate us by mandating the removal of toys from fast food meals.

We’ve all heard the song. You know, Madonna singing about making it through the wilderness and being touched for the very first time. Yeah, that’s the one.

Dr. Gary Chapman has counted the ways. Apparently, there are five of them. (He has not, to my knowledge, expressed them in iambic pentameter, but no one’s perfect.)

Most people anticipate major holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving and even Earth Day. There’s that long process of crossing each box off the calendar leading up to those large gatherings. There’s also the anticipation of who’s going to attend and where the attendance will be.

By now you’ve most certainly heard of SB 1070. This legislation, signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week, requires those suspected of being undocumented immigrants to provide proof of citizenship whenever state authorities require. Critics have compared the bill to apartheid and Arizona to a police state – and I don’t think either of these comparisons is at all hyperbolic.

Last week’s ASUCD senate meeting saw an urgent piece of legislation that will allocate $1,500 from senate reserves to the La Raza Cultural Days account. The allocation of this money, though vital to the week-long celebration of Chicana/o culture, was introduced and approved by the senate with minimal student input outside of ASUCD.