It’s a nightmare to have a loved one die on your birthday.  I never thought it would happen to me.

This past weekend, as we sat in the theater waiting for a movie to start, a commercial reminded the audience to silence our cell phones. The guy on the screen had to choose between answering an unknown number during a movie or pressing ignore. Because he was worried that it might be his doctor calling to tell him he had cancer, he decided to answer it.

It turned out to be his local drycleaners. The ending message read something like, “Your call’s not that important. Turn off your phone.”

Halfway through the movie, I felt my own phone vibrate and I saw that my auntie was calling. I contemplated walking out and answering, but assumed the family was just calling to say happy birthday. I hit ignore.

That moment keeps playing over and over in my mind.

It turns out my uncle, who had been struggling with the final stages of cancer, wanted to say goodbye. All of my relatives were gathered at the hospital in Vancouver to be with him, and they were all ready to sing me happy birthday over Skype.

By the time we returned their call, we had missed him by five minutes.

If there was ever a time to believe in a Heaven, this moment would be it.

Honestly, I’ve been a mess for the last week. I didn’t go to class, I couldn’t focus on assignments, I didn’t go out with my friends. I just didn’t want to do any of it because it all seemed so trivial next to a loved one’s death.

That’s why I think it’s crucial to believe in a Heaven, whatever that may mean for you.

It’s a comforting thought, the possibility of being reunited with loved ones in a realm where our new bodies are no longer subject to time or space — especially the being-reunited-with-loved-ones part.

In Life of Pi, the main character tells two versions of how he survived in the middle of the ocean after his family died in a shipwreck. One version is supposed to convince the listener of God’s existence. At the end he asks, which story do you want to believe — the hopeful, optimistic one, or the terrible, heartbreaking one?

I get this deep-pitted fear in my stomach, wondering what’s really out there. If God is real, what is he like? Do our deceased loved ones actually become guardian angels? What is the true standard of being allowed into Heaven?

These are questions that we can theorize all we want about, but the answers will always elude us.

What good is arguing over the existence of Heaven when no one can prove their opinion one way or the other? Would you really tell a recent widow that her husband’s cremated body is all she will ever have of him until the day it’s her turn to die and cease existing? Can you tell a parent that their child’s death has permanently severed their bond and that no amount of crying or wishing will ever convert memories into their tangible presence?

Heaven gives us hope, allows us to function in the midst of tragedy without going mental.

If I had just answered the call. If we had just eaten dinner first and then watched the movie later, like my dad suggested. If I had just read my auntie’s text instead of hitting “open” and not actually reading it.

I mean, when someone dies, everyone tells you, “they’re in a better place” or “they’re watching over us now.” But I wonder, where are they really? As a Catholic Christian, I believe in salvation and Heaven and all that, but I don’t think the human mind can even begin to fathom what’s truly out there after we die.

As much as someone’s faith may dictate what they’re supposed to believe regarding the afterlife, the details have yet to be clarified. What would existing in eternity be like? What do we occupy ourselves with when we have forever at our disposal?

It’s quite a jarring experience when you’re plucked out of your normal college routine and shoved into the bigger world — a place where studying and partying can no longer distract you and you’re forced to face real mortality.

JHUNEHL FORTALEZA is so grateful for all of your positive and encouraging emails. She can be reached at jtfortaleza@ucdavis.edu.

This month, the California State University (CSU) Board of Trustees was set to discuss a new plan to increase revenue by charging super seniors and those repeating courses extra fees.

Students who are enrolling in courses at a CSU after completing 160 units will receive a fee increase, referred to as a graduation incentive fee. This proposed hike is intended to encourage students to graduate within four years.

They will also be implementing a course repeat fee and a third-tier tuition fee, charging additional fees per unit taken over 18 units.

These fees overall would ideally allow for 18,000 more students to enroll in the CSUs and make more room in courses that are often over-enrolled, as students would have to be more careful when registering for class. Not only is this wishful thinking, but it also burdens current students with fees they could not have planned for.

It is already quite clear how we feel about fee hikes, not to mention the fact that this plan seems a bit unjust considering that many students take a fifth year at UC Davis because there is such difficulty getting into classes to complete major requirements. While none of our majors are officially impacted programs, there are still a lot of classes that only students with priority registration — such as athletes and honor students — and nearly graduated seniors can get into because of their high demand.

It is also unfair to charge students for taking more units. Students with double majors who aim to graduate in four years often have no choice but to load up on courses. These ambitious students shouldn’t be punished, and neither should those who need to repeat a course. Having to sit through the same class is painful enough without having to pay more for it.

While UC Davis is obviously not a part of the CSU system, this does not mean we are unaffected. If this plan goes through, and if it proves successful, it is likely that similar fees will be implemented in the UC system as well.

We don’t want that.

Last week, about 40 protesters occupied Dutton Hall in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

We fully support the students’ right to protest. However, four students who expressed dissenting views were forced to leave the building — one student was physically confronted while the others were screamed at and cussed out.

When our photographer followed those students outside for comments and contact information, protesters turned on him. Suddenly, The Aggie was the enemy, “against” their cause with no right to be present. Multiple protesters demanded to see our photos of the physical confrontation and told us to delete them. We refused, just as journalists are always supposed to refuse to show work before it’s published in order to remain unbiased.

They said we had to leave unless we were on their side — that there was no such thing as being objective journalists, that we were with them or against them. Rather than fight censorship, they wanted to perpetuate it.

We don’t think these actions accurately represent the mass of students who were present, and it’s a shame that a select few are tarnishing the movement’s image on campus. We witnessed many students who came to Dutton just to observe or learn who ended up leaving, disgusted, as soon as the bullying began.

Free speech is crucial. Ideally, our campus would be rife with protests, counter-protests and open dialogue regularly. But if students are scared to speak — scared of other students who resort to intimidation tactics — we have a serious problem.

By ARI POLSKY
Fourth-year, art studio major

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are rights that are supposedly God-given and also government-protected according to the Declaration of Independence. In America, we are granted a whole lot of rights, among them the freedom of speech, which the law holds is no longer guaranteed when it incites violence or prohibits the free speech of others.

Where am I going with all of this?

Based on the speech of certain members of the student body, Jewish students at UC Davis do not feel comfortable or safe. I have seen some of the comments, rhetoric and posts in the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Facebook group. On many occasions, their language strayed from relevant political conversation to flat out anti-Semitism.

I do not believe that all members of SJP are anti-Semitic, but I believe there are members of the group that ruin the reputation for the rest. However, this rhetoric, no matter how much of an outlier it may be, is nevertheless unacceptable and unforgivable.

At UC Berkeley a student sued the school for standing idly while anti-Semitism grew on campus. The student was a leader in a pro-Israel group on campus — and the head of the Berkeley’s SJP group physically attacked that student. In my four years at Davis, I have personally seen swastikas that were drawn on campus and an Occupy protester featuring a blatantly anti-Semitic placard equating Jews with the Devil.

If we look back to the on-campus Israel Soldiers Speak, we see clearly the anti-Semitism exhibited on campus. One student who was more radical than the rest (and later apologized in The Aggie) shouted phrases at the presenters such as, “Rapist! Molesters!” and other epithets. Those are reminiscent of things seen in 1940s Nazi propagandist tabloids like Der Sturmer.

Last March, another thread was started on the SJP Facebook group regarding the name of a Jewish professor who attended the StandWithUs event. Many of the comments about the last name were stereotypical, associated with bad Jewish jokes, even calling a professor “Shitstein.” Further, Jewish professors are linked to “the one percent.”

These are stereotypical Jews-running-the-world comments that are offensive and inaccurate. And now the latest — a rally yesterday that the Davis Enterprise describes as having started as a “one year since the pepper spray” event that evolved into an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic event.

In regards to a student filming and Israeli students, The Aggie reported, “Members of the crowd then confronted her and two neighboring Israeli students, yelling ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Fuck Israel’ until they left.”  The article also reports threats of violence to those dissenting with the protestors.  By chanting “Davis to Gaza long live the intifada” the protesters are inherently endorsing campaigns of violence and terror.

I wonder how the administration has continuously ignored Jewish students’ feelings of unease on campus when blatant anti-Semitism is alive on a UC campus in 2012. The motto of the University of California is “Fiat Lux,” the ancient Biblical line, “Let There Be Light,” as in Enlightenment.  It is a shame that a university these days — the university to which I paid thousands in tuition and fees every year — seems to be living in the same dark age as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

It is time the University administration do something, and do it quickly.  This is not an atmosphere that can continue, and Chancellor Katehi and her vice chancellors need to take notice of this problem and do something about it.

The tension is there, and the hate is boiling beneath the surface.  I fear one day, without it being kept in check by cooler heads, it will rise to the surface and create a huge divide on campus. The key to this issue is education and understanding. Through education and understanding we will all be able to live together, so that we all may enjoy our life, liberty and happiness.

Teach For America (TFA) is a nonprofit organization that sends recently graduated college students to rural and urban areas of the U.S., where they serve as teachers for a contracted period of two years. It’s essentially a Peace Corps for the country.

The theory is that TFA will recruit young, energetic, idealistic graduates and send them to low-income school areas, where they can change the lives of the students there.

The difference between TFA and most other teaching programs is that TFA is incredibly selective. They have an extensive hiring process that includes an online two-hour long activity, two interviews and a teaching demonstration. All these hurdles combine to become a barrier with which TFA maintains its selectivity by accepting approximately 12 to 15 percent of applicants. Not only that, but they screen their applicants for favorable qualities, weighing heavily towards leadership experience and excellence.

After the application process, the organization takes these graduates, some of the best and brightest of their class, and has them participate in a five-week crash course in teaching during the summer. After this, they are then put into an urban or rural school where they teach for two years.

So what’s not to like about this? TFA is taking some of the smartest and most motivated people and putting them in places where they are needed most: schools in low-income areas with low achievement and high dropout rates.

The problem with this is that it undermines many aspects of the teaching profession.

The TFA contract is for two years, after which the TFA member can move to another career using TFA as a powerful resume builder. The two-year mark is also conveniently before the teacher credential requirements kick in, which motivates a person to actually pursue a teaching career.

Also, teaching is a profession that requires experience. Teachers already following the primary path to teaching enter classrooms underprepared – especially in low-income areas. Putting a person with five weeks of training into a classroom does the children and the teaching profession as a whole, a serious disservice.

The students in the classroom will be taught by a person with five weeks of training in being a teacher. That’s five weeks the teacher has to be prepared for a classroom full of children that don’t want to be taught. And is two years enough time to make a truly positive effect on a life, when you probably need two years just to adjust to the career?

Five weeks of training is not long at all, for a career that people improve and grow in for their entire lives, and having such a short program is actually much more harm than good. Having these prospective teachers training for five weeks says to the public as a whole that an intelligent, capable person can learn the teaching career in a very short time.

This creates an image of teaching as something very simple and easy to do; the sort of thing that anybody can do. With this sort of image, the average undergraduate will look at the career and think to themselves, “who would want to become a teacher? The pay isn’t that great, and it’s very easy to be a teacher, which means it’s not very prestigious.”

Not only that, but — and this is especially true during recessions — frequently, schools will lay off higher-paid, experienced teachers in favor of TFA members who are paid entry-level salaries, leaving very little continuity and overall experience in schools.

In fact, by sending its members almost exclusively to low-income areas, TFA actually exacerbates the education system’s problems by putting inexperienced teachers into the places that most need experienced ones, while keeping the schools from training new teachers that will stay in the field for many years. A more cynical person might even think this to be an intentional side effect.

Teach For America’s stated goal is to give impoverished children an excellent education. While this is a noble goal, the way they go about doing this is not actually effective.

Is this solvable? Maybe, but not without changing TFA’s continuity aspect. Because of the fast rotation of TFA members, TFA doesn’t have an incentive, aside from principles, to train their members for extensive periods of time that will actually prepare them for teaching. If any overarching changes are to be made to the organization, it will have to begin there.

Discuss TFA with DERRICK LEU at derleu@ucdavis.edu.

By MATAN SHELOMI
Fourth-year graduate student, entomology

On Nov. 18, 2011, Louise Macabitas and Brian Nguyen shaped history. They took the iconic photographs of Lt. Pike pepper-spraying Davis students, which would become the face of the Occupy movement. Had Louise and Brian not been there taking pictures, the world would not have seen what had happened here.

Fast-forward a year and a day to Monday’s Quad rally allegedly memorializing the event. How times have changed. Rather than discussing campus issues, Occupy UC Davis sponsored a march about Gaza, carrying signs like “Long Live the Intifada” (the term for Palestinian violence against Israel, including suicide bombing).

Speakers like Abdul Amir-Ali — whose past speeches blamed the Jews for 9/11 and claimed the Matthew Shepard Act, named after a murdered gay youth, is a Zionist conspiracy — proudly railed against Israel, Obama, corporations, CNN, etc. Also in attendance were pro-Israel students, of every race and gender, carrying signs like “Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine, Pro-Peace” and “Save Gaza from Hamas,” standing in silence to let the Occupiers talk without interruption or censorship (which is more than what anti-Israel activists have ever done for them).

At the end, Occupy held a segregated teach-in at Dutton, refusing to let Israel-friendly students attend. The pro-Israel students formed a circle on the Quad and sang “Salaam al kolam” — a Hebrew and Arabic song meaning “Peace for everyone.”

To an outside observer of the event (of which there were few), who seems to embody the original spirit of Occupy?

The predictable event wasn’t as startling as what preceded it. On the Facebook page for the march, a photograph was posted of a smiling young man with a camera. It is the profile picture of Marley Windham-Herman, described by the poster as a “Davis Zionist.” Captions and comments urged those marching to “be aware” of him and “get in his way.” Why?

Because he might take photographs.

Apparently someone was afraid Marley would document the protest, showing the true face of anti-Zionism in Davis … exactly as Louise and Brian showed the face of police brutality last year. This horrifying post is both Orwellian and dangerous: it put Marley’s personal safety at risk, along with his free speech.

The post was eventually deleted, yet the question remains: Why is a group supposedly adamant about protecting freedom of speech actively suppressing it?

Unfortunately for Occupy, multiple photographers were there (including Marley, who would not be threatened). Fortunately for everyone, there wasn’t much to photograph. The general rally, which started at noon, was poorly attended. Only when the Gaza marchers showed up at 12:30 did the event pick up. This brings up another question: On the anniversary of the pepper-spray event, where was everyone?

In the past few months, the same campus administrators, politicians, corporations and citizens Monday’s rally demonized passed Proposition 30, a bill that prevented $6 billion in spending cuts that would have otherwise led to tuition hikes.

In the past year, Occupy evicted a bank, then patted themselves on the back while extracting payouts from the campus. They cared more about themselves and their image than the students they were supposed to represent, and often worked against us.

This combination of self-centeredness, ignorance and impotence has disillusioned many with Occupy, as has its speakers’ stereotypical rhetoric. Events like Monday’s Israel Hate-fest and the Lt. Pike-esque tactics of its organizers alienate many from the Occupy cause, which is not in principle anti-Zionist.

Occupy has lost its way, having become the very monster it once fought against. Whatever Occupy’s members see in a mirror, it’s not what this campus sees.