Opinion

A veto is worth … ignoring 12 senatorial votes? Negating three hours of thoughtful discussion? Throwing five students into debt? Misrepresenting facts and manipulating the public? For ASUCD President Jack Zwald, the answer is all of the above.

I hope all of you had a pleasant Picnic Day. I was about as responsible as you might expect. I broke my friend's bike, misused my cell phone, fell into a rose bush and lost a pair of sunglasses. All in about a minute. (Just kidding. It took me nearly 15 minutes to get all that checked off the list.)

I know it's Wednesday, but I still have Picnic Day on my mind. Who doesn't? There are still traces of it left behind everywhere you look. The random red cups on lawns, the beer cans in the street and the guy who's still passed out in your bed. (You should check his pulse). I hope you enjoyed your day. And if it was your last as an undergrad, I'm right there with you. Don't worry - you can always come back when you're 40 and the beer bong will still be waiting.

So a week ago, I had the fortune and misfortune of going to the Passion Pit concert at Freeborn Hall. You're probably wondering how it's possible for something to be fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. To sum it up: The music was great, but I got stuck in front of the biggest asshole in all of UC Davis.

On Friday, the UC Davis athletics department announced the discontinuation of four teams - men's swimming and diving, men's indoor track and field, men's wrestling and women's rowing.

Picnic Day was routine for me. I woke up, took a shower, mixed orange juice and Southern Comfort into a mug, lit up a fat Churchill cigar and sat out on the lawn to watch friendly drunks walk by.

Editor, Picnic Day is progressively becoming more about binge drinking in public and less about the open house of UC Davis and its community that it was established to be.

Editor, Thanks for the article by Marcos Rodriguez in last week's Aggie on the Women's Alpine Ski & Snowboard club's national championship. It's great to see sport clubs get some love.

I urge you not to follow the recommendation of Athletics Director Greg Warzecka to cut the women's rowing and men's wrestling, swimming and indoor track teams. This is a shortsighted solution that will result in long-term problems for the athletic department and all of UC Davis.

There's North Davis. Then there's South Davis. You can tell how they see themselves by their Safeways.

Perhaps no other part of the Constitution is mentioned more than the first amendment. Most people can name free speech, but it isn't the only protected expression in the first amendment.

I had a lot of fun on Picnic Day - or so my friends tell me.

One is a lonely number. You can't talk on the phone to yourself. You can't play tennis without an opponent. You can't even walk the dog without a dog. It takes at least two to have fun in most activities. The only things you could really do alone are play Pokémon Soul Silver on your Nintendo DS or read manga in a dark corner of the room. Eating is no exception to the lonely number rule. If you go to a restaurant alone, the setting tends to magnify that you are, indeed, alone. At least at the movie theater, you can hide in the dark, behind your large popcorn.

Measure R would keep decisions on development and construction projects in the city of Davis in its residents' hands. If passed, the measure will extend an already-existing law - Measure J - until 2020. Measure J states projects on agricultural land surrounding the city must be approved by a majority of Davis citizens. It was originally passed in 2000 with a 53.6 percent vote.

For years, human rights advocates have been working to expose the horrific working conditions tomato pickers face in Florida. U.S. Attorney Doug Malloy labeled the situation on one farm as "slavery, plain and simple." In the past 15 years, seven labor operations have been prosecuted for involuntary servitude and other related offenses. Hoping to support the cause, the ASUCD Senate voted 8-4 last week to grant $580 to a group of six students to purchase plane tickets to a protest this weekend in Florida.