As a fellow Davis student and reader of The Aggie, I would just like to thank you for your column published last Wednesday on “the crowning achievement of the human race.” As a heterosexual, 6’5”, well-built male, I agree with Mr. Verderosa 100 percent on the musicality and overall brilliance of Carly Rae Jepsen’s breakout hit, “Call Me Maybe.” I spend a great deal of time finding obscure artists and new music genres for my own enjoyment as it seems Mr. Verderosa does, but I believe he was correct in saying that this song “transcends pop, music and mainstream culture.” I think his column did the song justice and set the record clear for the Davis community on where this song stands in the music world. I will now become a weekly reader of Mr. Verderosa’s column until forever and will be cutting out the masterpiece to post in a public place somewhere in my home.

Ben Molinari
Sophomore year, materials science and engineering

Last week, ASUCD held its annual budget hearings, which ran for a total of 33 hours. The $10.7 million budget is up for contention and debate on where money should be allocated. However, only 20 percent of the budget is really maneuverable, as the other 80 percent is locked into Unitrans, Cal Aggie Camp and the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP). Unfortunately, due to an operational change in the UC President’s office, there is now an operational tax of 0.5 percent on UC Davis and ASUCD which will increase to 1.5 percent in 2014-2015. In order to find the necessary cuts and revenue sources to fulfill that tax obligation, senators debated, name-called and yelled over their philosophical and political opinions.

As a dedicated servant of ASUCD, having served unpaid since the first quarter of my freshman year, my perspective on the budget is that it should be one that benefits the student body and makes effective and efficient use of every dollar. It is saddening to see senators, the management and the public have to use low tactics against each other. While many advocate self-respect and mutual understanding of each other, as said in the Principles of Community, those ideals were hypocritically not put into practice at the budget hearings.

My understanding of the arguments presented was that they all revolved around fairness. Some senators believed fairness to be an equal distribution of funding for every unit and service, because that allows a diverse, wide-ranging impact of ASUCD on students. Some senators believed that fairness meant supporting services that did not have the corporate sponsors or established foundations to take a cut. While both sides had valid arguments with purposes for benefiting large constituencies, it is best that a compromise be resolved.

Regrettably, “compromise” was another word that was thrown around and not taken seriously. Compromise to a few senators meant “meet me halfway.” Compromise to another few senators was “my way or the highway.” This conflict is absolutely ridiculous and embarrassing when more important student issues are on the line, like soaring student fees or soaring student debt. A few senators couldn’t reach a compromise because they had prioritized their own agenda over the rest of the student body. While their agendas are sincerely valid and heartbreaking, it is important to remember that the budget is not about emotions and politics should not be about pride, or else the person with the loudest and most aggressive argument would win every time.

ASUCD, do not get distracted and do not waste any more time from the most important student issues at hand, which are the skyrocketing tuition hikes and the decreasing higher education opportunities for all students, especially those from marginalized communities. Students, we have been bickering among ourselves when the real enemies are the ones with budgets thousands of times ours and have been making handsome profits off of our sweat and labor. Our opposition is the administration, UC regents and state government. We should not be blaming our woes on each other when we did not cause these problems.

It was a sad day for Aggie employees when Woodstock’s Pizza announced it would be segregating Thursday trivia night. Like many regular participants of the trivia night, we developed a routine of showing up early and quickly pooling our knowledge of possible trivia categories.

Some of us bought soda, some of us bought beer. But whether or not our drinking options were limited by the law, we all consumed massive quantities of pizza. Yes, some might say we were the perfect trivia team: a group of students of many ages and disciplines, hungry for knowledge and hungry for Woodstock’s.

Well, that’s all over now. Since Woodstock’s has gotten a full liquor license, those under 21 can only participate in trivia from an isolated loft. Questions are delivered through a speaker.

Like many places in Davis, Woodstock’s has opted to stratify its customer base. You either go out to the bars, or you go to bed by 10 p.m. But Woodstock’s is not a bar. It is a college town staple, invited into cities like Davis in order to draw people together. While alcohol licenses bring in profits, and profits are tempting, local business should never fail to remember the community they are serving. It is disappointing that what is essentially the pizza joint of UC Davis (have you ever been to a department event that wasn’t serving Woodstock’s?) would choose exclusivity over community.

(Not to mention, the drinking age in the United States is ageist and arbitrarily discriminatory.)

College towns contain a great deal of people of many ages, and there is a decreasing amount of places opting to host heterogeneous social groups. And while there are some options, with all due respect, we do not want to host late-night staff bonding at the Taco Bell.

It should be acknowledged that de Vere’s Irish Pub has an all-ages round of trivia at 7 p.m. on Mondays. Additionally, The Graduate hosts their all-ages Pub Quiz at 7 p.m. on Sundays. And KetMoRee has all-ages trivia on Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. We mixed-aged teams do have options, albeit early ones.

Nonetheless, the local night scene is limited and exclusive. So open your doors, Davis businesses. Sometimes we just don’t want to bother with the fake IDs.

Dear Professor Celestia: Today, I learned that, despite the depictions of academics as introverts who labor alone in the lab or library, real research is a team sport. For a grad student to succeed, they must make use of the many mentors available to them. From the advisor who signs your papers and keeps you on track, to the collaborators who trade you bench space for a co-authorship, to your labmates who keep you sane, and the many others who will review your manuscripts and write you letters of recommendation — the list is long, and there is never enough room on the Acknowledgements section of your thesis for everypony.

In short, please send more money to cater the grad student happy hour. We need sweet potato fries for Science. Your faithful student, me.

There, I made a damn Pony column. Are you happy now?

Fan service aside, friendships are quite important for effective graduate studies. The Ph.D. is a long process with many potential pitfalls, both research-related and personal. It’s helpful to have a strong social network to unwind or commiserate with as the case may be, beyond your advisers. Also, research is inherently a collaborative effort strengthened with each person involved. Someone might know something you don’t, or be familiar with a technique or resource that hadn’t crossed your mind. You’ll never know if you spend all hours alone in a windowless room.

It is with the heartless goal of improving efficiency that the campus provides resources for graduate students to interact with each other. For example, there is a Graduate Students Association, which is like ASUCD — only nobody cares about it. There’s also the free Coffee, Bagels and Donuts day at a time and location I will not share with you thieving undergrads. My free food, mine!

Individual departments also provide avenues for talking to other humans, though the extent of these opportunities depends on size and funding. Most departments have seminars. Boring, foodless seminars. Others have events ranging from department-wide barbecues to nothing at all. I’m lucky to be in entomology, which is small enough that everyone knows everyone else but big enough to justify large social gatherings, and even a separate Entomology Grad Student Association that provides further chances to relax with your peers over snacks and beer … I mean, science and books. It really makes a difference to be in a highly social department, which is something to consider if you’re applying to grad school in the future.

While some professors insist on being called “Professor Last Name” when talking with their students, these are rare. Professor-to-grad-student relationships tend to be more informal, with many on a first-name basis. Some professors invite students to their homes for parties or celebrations, and vice versa. It all depends on how social and outgoing everyone involved is, and how nice their place is.

Whether grad students spend their free time with undergrads is also dependent on personality, not to mention age. The range of grad student ages varies wildly. Some are 20-somethings fresh out of college, some are planning their weddings, and others already have grandchildren. The student writing a history paper about WWI who uses her own diary as a “primary source” is no myth.

I happen to be among the younger end of the spectrum: Several undergrads in my department are older than me, which would make establishing a hierarchy difficult. Do I respect my elders, or do I outrank them? Are you my senpai or kohai? Since we’re not in Japan, I find it easier to be informal with everyone. I spend more time with undergrads than grads, actually, because they’re closer to my age and run most of the campus clubs. I’ve got a few more years before I have to put up a professorship or marriage-shaped boundary between myself and the undergrads, so I will enjoy their company and make the most of being in college again.

MATAN SHELOMI is aware of all internet traditions. Reach him at mshelomi@ucdavis.edu.

Everyone knows that politics is an ugly business. Vicious barbs, blatant distortions and character attacks are almost expected, part of the game in the same way that taxes are a part of life. Civil, cooperative politics is an ideal from another era, a golden age that may or may not have existed but is held on a pedestal and longed for by many in the middle of the political spectrum.

Yet the news that a billionaire from Wyoming apparently commissioned an attack campaign directly tying President Obama to Reverend Jeremiah Wright in the most blatant way possible raised eyebrows even among those who make a living in this nasty art.

For those who may have forgotten, Reverend Wright was President Obama’s former pastor and was an incredibly polarizing figure during the last presidential campaign. He made derogatory, race-charged comments about his country and was suitably denounced by figures on all sides of the political establishment.

An effort to tie Obama to Wright was considered off-limits by the McCain campaign during the 2008 election simply because Wright was considered to be too far out there. Any linkage between Obama and his old pastor is certainly a negative one, however, and might cause many voters to question Obama’s judgment for being a member of his church. Obama says that he was never in the audience when Wright was making his incendiary comments, which I can believe given the President’s decidedly low-key religiosity.

The man who commissioned and funded the campaign is a billionaire named Joe Ricketts, a conservative connoisseur who has donated over $3 million to right-wing causes and politicians in the past. Joe Ricketts says that he never intended for the attack campaign to be used and that it was “dead on arrival.”

That excuse is rather hard to believe and appears to be little more than a desperate effort to save face. The author of the attack campaign is famous for his viscous, below-the-belt work. It should have been no surprise that the final product would be less than pretty.

There are a few issues that are really striking about all this. The first is the fact that one man can and still plans on funding an entire campaign against the President. That is a disturbing notion — if you have enough money, you can saturate the airways with negative messaging and potentially sway an election if the voting is close (and most pundits and political experts say that it will be). Imagine that you could live in a country where a single man has the power to decide who your next president will be.

Or, rather, a group of men could possibly determine the outcome. There have been several rich conservative figures who have donated millions of dollars over the last few months to entities known as “Super PACs” that are little more than marketing shops churning out partisan messaging to a living room near you. Thanks to our lovely, conservative Supreme Court, individuals and corporations can pour unlimited sums of money into these PACs.

Democrats and the President’s campaign are running scared at the reality these PACs present. They readily acknowledge that conservative interests could outspend them this election and make it that much harder for Obama to get reelected. It’s a good feeling to know I live in a country where the most important election in the world is decided by a handful of old conservative men. Go, America.

The second issue is the very nature of the ad campaign. It is absolutely nasty. The memorandum introducing the campaign talks about finding an “extremely literate conservative African-American” who would be the spokesman and face of the campaign and thus inoculate against charges that the campaign is engaging in dirty, racial tactics.

Can we just ban contributions that are higher than, say, five grand or so? Oh, wait, we had laws like that on the books up until a few years ago. The Supreme Court made a big mistake in striking campaign finance and political contribution laws off the books in their sweeping Citizen’s United verdict, a law that established limits on the amount of financial influence individuals and businesses can have in the political realm, back in 2010. This law needs to be restored, or else our country will end up being run by a handful of rich old right-wingers — not exactly a vision of the democratic ideal our country is supposed to represent.

Democracy? A civil, serious and respectable dialogue about the issues in this election? Good one.

You can contact JONATHAN NELSON at jdnelson@ucdavis.edu. So go do it.

May is the worst time of the year. School’s ending, so that means more finals and parties and less studying and sleep than there should be. Season finales do terrible things like kill off my favorite characters (Lexie!) and keep me emotionally unhinged for three months. For as long as I can remember, my life devolves into tears, implodes with drama and includes devastating, life-altering changes. Or, I’m being dramatic and it’s all made up in my head and blown out of proportion — but I’m pretty sure it’s still happening.

I just began working as a production assistant for a prestigious company in L.A. By “just began,” I mean it’s been only two days. But for a dramatic art major waiting on tables, this is the reason I moved here. Rubbing elbows with real movers and shakers in the entertainment industry and having my face, name and qualifications recognized has the potential to open up doors for the career I’ve been working toward. Let the games begin, bitch!

After landing the job you’ve been waiting and waiting for, do everything you can to keep it. If they need milk by noon, I will be there 15 minutes early (of course, this could lead to potential car accidents in an attempt to get the sandwiches delivered, but they’ll get there, nonetheless). The slick outfit and at-ease demeanor is nothing if the charm is lacking. My mind was clouded with nervousness on day one and made me forget to do human things like talk and smile. Tip: Make every person at a new job fall in love with you, even if they hate you already.

Spring also brings the close of track season, creating an overload of competitiveness in me that would flow beyond my athletic endeavors. I do everything I can now to recreate this feeling. Giving yourself an opponent or obstacle to overcome, be it co-workers, a set time limit on tasks or your own weaknesses, unleashes this crazy-useful energy that keeps us on our toes. I’ll do my damnedest to overcome any challenge.

So even though running around L.A. picking up buckets of soup for 30 or so film editors is nowhere on my resume, I treat it like a game that I need to win. Clean some dishes? Done in record time. Wipe down chairs? Cake. Work with the other PAs? Wait, I didn’t know there were other PAs. I’m not special? I’m assuming this is some sort of Battle Royale where a few eager, qualified, recent college grads are pushed to their limits where one will get a coveted spot with the company. How could I fuck this up?

I fucked it up. Not entirely “fucked up,” but enough to inspire that May panic-attack I was hinting at earlier. I got behind on a computer software task I had to do for the day and I had no idea what I was doing. It felt like being punched in the gut when I was told I wasn’t needed the following day. That could not have been a test I just failed. Cue me organizing the crap out of everything I could get my hands on and smiling through the pain of my stupidity. Just like that, a small mistake could keep me waiting on tables and scanning patient charts longer than I’d like to be.

There are things you’re told when you fail at something you’ve been desperately wanting. “It’s better to have had the experience than to not have had it at all.” Bullshit it is! I don’t want a taste of the pie, I want all of it!

I eventually got asked to come back to the studio and had some tough decisions to make. My financial stability relied on a strict schedule of working all the time. Quitting a job is difficult. Especially if the new one you’re leaving it for is sporadic, pays less and has you doing more things you didn’t major in. Do I leave the place with a set schedule and pay periods for the unpredictability of a freelance position that’s already making me break out from the stress?

Of course I do. If you don’t go all in, then what’s the point of spending all that time in class learning and then not committing? The other job you leave behind will be fine. There’s no place for pleasantries and being considerate of every party’s feelings. The chance that they have your best interests in mind is rare. And our best interests should lie on nothing but the prize. It’s hard enough to get a first chance these days. Better not drop the ball.

Share the insane scenarios you’ve created in your mind, regardless if they happened or not, with JAZZ TRICE at jazztrice526@gmail.com or twitter.com/Jazz_Trice.

At the 2012-13 ASUCD budget hearings, senators agreed to give $500 to fund Safe Boats, a houseboat that provides first aid and contraceptives during the annual Memorial Day weekend celebration on Lake Shasta known as Houseboats. Three hundred seventy dollars will go towards Safe Boats itself and $130 will fund Safe Boats education, down from an original proposal of $1,120.

There are certainly valid reasons for ASUCD to not fund Safe Boats. It seems unfair for ASUCD, which is funded by all UC Davis students, to pay for a service that only a few thousand of those students will actually use. Houseboats primarily attracts those involved in the greek system, meaning that ASUCD is essentially funding an organization that many students have, for financial or personal reasons, made a conscious choice not to participate in.

Safe Boats may also unintentionally promote unsafe partying by providing an easy refuge for the reckless and irresponsible. Distributing condoms, granola bars and water bottles will not necessarily discourage attendees from making the decision to participate in unsafe sex, drinking and boat-hopping. The money spent providing these basic items would be better spent on services that will help improve students’ education, not their partying.

Rather than ask ASUCD to donate student fees to Safe Boats, it would be more fair for those who actually attend Houseboats to each donate a small amount, thereby eliminating the need for students who don’t even attend to pay, via ASUCD.

However, by funding other special-interest events such as ethnic graduations, ASUCD has set the precedent that it will not limit its funding to only services that all students participate in. If ASUCD is willing to donate money to small groups that do not necessarily service all students, then it naturally follows that it would fund an initiative like Safe Boats.

Ultimately, ASUCD opted to allot Safe Boats less than half the amount originally proposed, making it more of a symbolic support of safe partying than a burden on the ASUCD budget. If Safe Boats does prevent students from returning to Davis pregnant and suffering from alcohol poisoning, then it has proven itself useful.

Students will rush to Houseboats this weekend regardless of the safety procedures in place. They might as well be able to enjoy a free snack and condom during the festivities.