Opinion

Today's approval of the proposal proves to us that the UC Board of Regents will stop at nothing to achieve their desired diversity quota, even if it comes at the cost of the entire California education system. When you guarantee admittance to a higher proportion of the lowest performing high schools, and lower the proportion of the top students in the state, it is absurd to think that the quality of students will do anything but go down.

I've always been jealous of those who rant. It may seem a strange thing to envy, but people who get passionate about a topic and then get annoyed, angry, and just lay into someone seem so emotionally free. Granted, they may also be criminally unbalanced, but that's a topic for another day. There've been times in my life I wish I had yelled or screamed; sometimes I wish I could be a royal bitch who just calls it like I see it. Alas, that's not me. But as I began to work on this week's column, I was determined that I too could be an effective ranter.

Low voter turnout for ASUCD elections has been a conversation topic among student government types for a long time. It gets talked about each election season and is the reason nearly every senatorial candidate feels obligated to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about outreach.

This past Tuesday, January 20th the ASUCD Academic Affairs commission reviewed ASUCD Senator Jack Zwald's resolution to uphold UC admissions Standards.  For those of you who have not heard of the issue facing the UC system today here is some background.  The UC Regents have proposed to lower UC admission standards across the board.  The proposition up for a vote in early February threatens to eliminate the SAT Subject Tests as a requirement and bring down the number of top high school students guaranteed admission to at least one UC from 12 percent to 9 percent.

I'm nearing the end of my time here at UC Davis, and I realized this weekend while playing sloshball in Slide Hill Park that no one ever told me what to expect of this humble township when I first began this four five year adventure.

The stimulus package laboriously working its way through Congress has huge implications, both politically and economically, for our generation and for students especially.

Andrew Hufferd was a friend of mine I've known since our high school days, so sitting down with the returning GI for an interview was difficult. I'd always called him 'AJ.' While I drafted interview questions, I found myself stricken with what I reflect on now as one of the greatest quandaries of modern warfare. What do you ask a soldier anymore?

Apparently, being an intelligent species in a vast empty universe just doesn't make people feel special anymore. On the other hand, nipple piercings and Bob Marley posters seem to do the trick. Marketers have been exploiting our desire to be "individuals" for decades. For all I know, the individualist movement, like Valentine's Day, has been a marketing scheme for all these years. There is, however, a very good reason why everyone strives to be an individual, but many don't realize the struggle requires more than a credit card.

Let's be theoretical and say, theoretically (insert annoying air quotes), that you sit down for some precious Facebook time despite having a midterm in half an hour in a class whose name you can hardly even remember. Oh well, that's what curves are for, right? You have a friend request. Warm, fuzzy feelings arise because you feel loved.

ASUCD President Ivan Carrillo recently raised the topic that UC Davis and U.S. Bank are in negotiations for a branch on campus. This U.S. Bank would be located in the East Conference Room on the first floor of the Memorial Union. U.S. Bank would enter in to a 10-year lease, paying $140,000 per year and a $3,000 signing bonus according to Carrillo's information.

Several Yolo County politicians are promoting the idea of making the county a testing ground for voting entirely by mail. The idea would save the county time and money as well as increase voter turnout.

So, I've avoided the whole Palestine-Israel thing for a while now. The entire Middle East thing seems a mess. He said, she said, America took this, England gave away that. With all the biased media its hard for some uninformed people to figure out how everything got to this point, and more importantly, why the United States and so much of the world is essentially ignoring the deaths of over 1,000 people in Gaza.

There comes a time in most conversations that I have when a certain topic arises. It could come about because of a slip of the tongue (usually a "that's not diverse") or due to an unusual story ("This one time I was talking to the police at two in the morning … "), but at some point I have to explain myself.