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Editorial: Let it die

Opinion

Opinion

March 15, 2012

On March 6 the Davis City Council voted unanimously to postpone the Davis City Minor Alcohol Preclusion Ordinance. If passed, the legislation would have given police the ability to cite those under-21 who were intoxicated in public beyond a Blood Alcohol Content of .01.

We are glad that the ordinance will not be going into effect anytime soon, and we commend the UC Davis students who fought hard to oppose the measure. We are frustrated that the ordinance was proposed in the first place and can be reintroduced at a later date.

Furthermore, it is troubling that the city council did not vote to scrap the measure altogether, instead opting to open the ordinance for revision. This legislation has already been revised twice and there is no amount of alteration that will alleviate the frustration felt by the UC Davis students on this matter. After the amount of student involvement surrounding this ordinance, the city council should realize the measure is both unwarranted and unwanted.

The measure is both unenforceable and inconvenient, as we have noted in the past. But more than anything, it is frustrating that the ordinance attempts to solve a problem that simply does not exist. There are already laws in place that prevent anyone from being drunk and disorderly in public, which already limits anyone from disturbing citizens while drunk in town.

This additional proposed ordinance is nothing more than an attack on UC Davis students. Drinking is part of college culture, and by attempting to pass this type of puritanical statute, certain members of the Davis community are trying to impose their own moral views regarding alcohol on the students. UC Davis students are residents of this town and should be given the same respect and courtesy afforded to other citizens.

The City of Davis should focus its attention on solving more pertinent city problems, such as the Fifth Street Corridor, and spend less time on restricting students from engaging in long-accepted recreational practices.

Column: Future ad society

Opinion

Opinion

March 15, 2012

The year is 2054. John Anderton, played by a sunken-eyed Tom Cruise, walks into the Gap. His eyes flash as an automatic sensor scans his retinas, and a woman shows up on a screen in front of him.

“Hello, Mr. Yakamoto!” she says cheerfully. “Welcome back to the Gap. How’d those assorted tank tops work out for you?”

This may look a bit confusing if you haven’t seen Minority Report. Don’t panic. Reading further won’t spoil any crucial plot points, but let me quickly dispel the notion that Cruise (clearly a white man) portrays a disguised Japanese man with serious identity issues in the film. All you need to know is that for reasons unimportant to this column, Tommy C’s character has had new eye transplants prior to the Gap scene. Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about tank tops.

When the scanner identifies Mr. Yakamoto’s eyes, the computer controlling it generates a personalized greeting based on his previous purchase of some sexy tanks. Uber-futuristic and highly sophisticated, this “interactive advertising” seems implausible — definitely not a technology that will be possible in our lifetime. Or so we think.

Before production on his sci-fi epic began, Minority Report director Steven Spielberg invited 15 scientific experts from various fields to a three-day “think tank” at a hotel in Santa Monica, California. There, he consulted with the group to imagine a realistic future society based on current socio-economical, political and technological trends. At the end of the meetings, an 80-page “future bible” emerged, which became the basis of the 2054 society depicted in the film.

Jeff Boortz, who was in charge of ads in Minority Report, said that “the whole idea, from a script point of view, was that the advertisements would recognize you — not only recognize you, but recognize your state of mind. It’s the kind of stuff that’s going on now with digital set-top boxes and the internet.”

Boortz’s comment was made in 2002, the same year Minority Report was released. Since then, it has become increasingly more relevant in terms of the internet. In an earlier column, I discussed the ad targeting of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Users of these pages experience advertisements catered specifically to their characteristics and interests — people who post frequently about clothes on their profiles may be subject to Gap ads, for example. INTERESTING, NO?

In one scene of the film, John Anderton walks at a brisk pace through a busy shopping mall. Despite how fast he’s moving, eye scanners pick up his identity (this is pre-eye transplant) and throw a multitude of ads in his face. All at once, Lexus tells him that the road he’s on is the one “less traveled,” American Express informs him of his loyalty as a customer since 2037 and Guinness gets straight to the point, shouting, “John Anderton! You could use a Guinness right about now!”

As he experiences his own wave of personal ads, so too do the people walking all around him. Eventually the ads get so jumbled up that any single one is difficult to pay attention to. By walking in a completely commercialized area in 2054, Anderton loses all sense of privacy.

Yeah. We’re fucked.

Although my intent with this column is not to terrify you, it’s important to discuss the fact that our world may one day resemble the one depicted in Minority Report. Even now, billboards capable of facial recognition are being developed by businesses such as IBM and NEC (a Japanese company). Technology is advancing, and it’s not slowing down any time soon.

The society that Steven Spielberg presented to the world in Minority Report is one that integrates people into the media, but takes away a certain measure of individuality. Although not convinced we’re headed down a path to completely restrained privacy, John Underkoffer, the science and technology advisor for the film, warned in an interview that “if we, as an ostensibly democratic society, don’t make some choices, [this society] will just happen automatically.”

Unless these choices have to do with illegal eye-transplant surgeries, I think it’s inevitable that all of us will slowly start losing our privacy. We can’t fight it. The future is coming.VICTOR BEIGELMAN loves ending on an absurdly ominous note. Tell him how much you enjoyed reading his columns on a scale of “so much” to “get this guy a Pulitzer” at vbeigelman@ucdavis.edu.

Review: The House of Bernarda Alba

Arts & Culture

Arts Editor

March 15, 2012

The curtain rises to reveal a sparse set up of the Wright Theatre stage. With a thrust in the middle, the floor floats atop the stage without banisters, free of form or boundaries. The House of Bernarda Alba, performed by the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance, acts out on stage the quiet drama of the matriarch Bernarda Alba and her five daughters.

At times the plays feels complete, as sound, direction, acting, and costume gather to create a full effect. There are moments, however, when the sparseness of Bernarda Alba works against the production. The scene never settles, the stage becomes a ring where the setting, so constrained and familiar, seems to limit the range of the actors.

Through the course of the play, the slow progression reveals the hilarity of Bernarda Alba. Whether intentional or not, one cannot deny the black humor in the dialogue. Delivered dry, the dialogue often brings the audience to laughter, funny even if the subject is macabre.

Part of the funniness is due to the actors’ strong performances, particularly the dichotomy between Susan-Jane Harrison and Maria Candelaria as Bernarda and Poncia. On stage, the two complement each other, especially when the two characters clash. In the end, they appear as mirror images of another. Anchored by these performances, the other actors have freedom to create for themselves their own character interpretation. By taking liberties with the original play, the adaptation has Adela, played by Malia Abayon, garbed in gothic clothing. And she wears it well, not only with the costumes, but also with the atmosphere Bernarda Alba affords.

The stage again remains a marvel, but perhaps only for those expecting a play on a grand scale, the limitations serve to force creativity out of the production. Characters never leave the stage; they simply phase in and out by facing away or to the audience. It’s hard to forget the characters when they’re within the field of vision leading to a build-up of tension.

One thing Bernarda Alba handles well is its lighting design; for that it deserves full accolades. At times, the light works its way into the very characterization of the actors. Fitted with silhouettes and a changing color palette, Bernarda Alba’s light show fits the production well.

In all, The House of Bernarda Alba is a very professional, very deliberate production put on by the Department of Theatre and Dance. With a natural chorus featuring a live guitar and backed by strong performances from all of the actors, Bernarda Alba will leave you to marvel in the quiet humor of the play.

The House of Bernarda Alba closes this weekend, with shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. $19 for general admission, $14 for students, children and seniors. Tickets can be found at the Freeborn Ticket Office.

PETER AN can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

Getting to know ‘Anarchist Handbook’

Arts & Culture

Arts Editor

March 15, 2012

Among the slew of offerings KDVS puts forth each week, month, and year is a politically named and relatively new talk show hosted by Clay Norris and Brian Moen. Together they compose “Anarchist Handbook,” a weekly forum with a taste for – let’s not simply say “anarchy” – challenging the institutional framework of the everyday.

Or as their website reads, Anarchist Handbook is about “political discussion and applying the anarchist ideology to modern society.”

Before you scoff or raise eyebrows at the lofty and, to some, radical notion, know their tenets as explained in a phone interview by Moen, a co-host and senior philosophy major on the show:

“Anarchist ideology is simply two points,” said Moen. “One, we should be extremely skeptical of all authority and skeptical of any information that they create or disseminate. And two, any institution of power, any authority that does not justify its own existence in terms of justice or fairness, should be taken down or dismantled and either replaced by one which does represent justice and fairness or not replaced at all in case whatever function it has serves no purpose in society toward justice and fairness.”

Hardly the society-burning and city-sacking some might think of. More like a dose of reason, if anything.

“We try to make [our tenets] very clear so it’s not some very authorial political speech that people can interpret in many ways,” Moen said. “Our objective on the show is to take contemporary political dialogue and evade the framework of discourse which is imposed by the prevailing institutions of society.”

In quasi-conjunction with the anti-corporate sentiment of something like Occupy, Anarchist Handbook takes on the stylization of something going against the grain. That is, one might call it an alternative of sorts with the label of constructive contrarianism.

“I think the objective of the show is to give people another voice that isn’t sponsored,” Norris, the other host and a 2009 Davis graduate, said over the phone. “A show that doesn’t have any real financial agenda other than that we want people to be more aware of their surroundings. I think most news media is just entertainment and doesn’t serve to benefit anyone’s mind or attitude. I guess our objective is to give people an alternative.”

Moen and Norris’ show was born from what they described as a natural passion for political discourse. As friends outside the show, it is not surprising that they engaged regularly in politically themed conversation. Conversations that, apparently and inevitably, led them to form Anarchist Handbook, the formal product of their genuine interest.

“I do this in my free time, too,” Norris said. “I like to have conversations with people.”

One of the reactions he looks for, he went on to note, is hearing someone learn. That “I’ve never really heard that before” moment that is so rare and satisfying.

In Moen’s case, when asked what led him to an “Anarchist”-themed show on KDVS, a far cry from what might be considered normal, he described it as a long-festering suspicion and disbelief.

“I remember even as a teenager feeling like the messages I was getting from the mainstream media had assumptions built in that I thought were wrong and represented certain interests. And then reading people who wrote about it,” Moen said, citing authors like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Authors who, in his opinion, sought to assess society outside the framework of categorization given to people by the dominant institution.

I guess one could say, then, to propose a perhaps lofty comparison, that like Chomsky and Zinn, Moen and Norris are attempting the same on the local, Davis level. That is, seeking to assess our society, both locally and globally, outside the standardized framework of the everyday.

It wasn’t always Moen’s objective, though. At first he came into KDVS, like so many, looking for a music show.

“I got involved in KDVS last year volunteering, trying to get a music show,” Moen said. “Then I decided to do a public affairs show. It was my co-host Clay’s idea … We came in and made a demo and [KDVS] accepted it. Not that KDVS advocates our views,” he added carefully. “They just thought our show was up to par.”

Anarchist Handbook has been on the air for some months now, and “it’s just getting going,” Coen said.

“We’re hoping to get really involved with local political movement,” he said. “We talk about Occupy a lot on the show. We care a lot about society being organized on the local level, so we want to try to create a discourse for the local community.”

When asked if they’ve received any backlash, Moen said “not yet,” but they hope to soon.

You can tune into Anarchist Handbook at 9 a.m. on Fridays, or pull it up on the KDVS website anytime.

JAMES O’HARA can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

Campus Judicial Affairs

Campus News

Campus Editor

March 15, 2012

Plagiarism

A sophomore was referred to Student Judicial Affairs (SJA) for plagiarizing a paper in an anthropology course. The TA who was grading the student’s paper noticed that some paragraphs were written better and more accurately than other paragraphs within the paper. The TA proceeded to look up a couple of phrases via Google and found that some sentences were taken word for word from an online source. This particular online source was not cited in the student’s paper. When the student met with a Judicial Officer, he confessed that he did not know how to cite sources properly and thus admitted to having plagiarized parts of his paper. The student accepted the sanction of Disciplinary Probation until Fall 2012 and agreed to complete community service hours. He also agreed to read a plagiarism pamphlet and to sign a contract afterwards confirming that he understands what plagiarism is. Lastly, he agreed to meet with a Student Academic Success Center writing specialist to go over his paper and how to cite sources.

Theft

A student was referred to SJA for stealing clothing from the UC Davis Bookstore. When she met with a Judicial Officer concerning the theft, she admitted to having stolen the piece of clothing and stated that she was dealing with a lot of stress. As a disciplinary sanction for the theft, she accepted Deferred Separation status. She also agreed to meet with a counselor at CAPS for help in dealing with the stress. Lastly, she agreed to write a reflection paper about her experiences with SJA and CAPS and submit it to SJA during Spring 2012.

Unauthorized Assistance

A student was referred to SJA for receiving unauthorized assistance on an assignment in an engineering course. The professor noticed that this student’s work was very similar to another student’s. When the student met with a Judicial Officer, he admitted that he had struggled with the homework assignment and had thus sought help from someone who had taken the same course before. The student also acknowledged that the TA, rather than another student, could have been his source for help on the assignment. The student agreed to be put on Disciplinary Probation until Fall 2012 as a result of his academic misconduct.

CD Review: Young Empires

Arts & Culture

Arts Editor

March 15, 2012

Artist: Young Empires
Album: Wake All My Youth
Label: Pirates Blend Records

Rating: 3

Young Empires is a Toronto-based band that released its first album Wake All My Youth only a month ago. Since then, the band – comprised of bassist Jake Palahnuk, guitarist Robert Aaron Ellingson, vocalist and keyboardist Matthew Vlahovich and drummer Taylor Hill – has been busy promoting its album throughout the United States and Canada.

With good reason — the band’s inherent talent necessitates the touring. The band combines both instruments and genres seamlessly.

The song “Rain of Gold” begins with a flute sequence and quickly evolves into a dance number that evokes the spirit of summer, a dance number with an anthemic chorus: “Wake all my youth,” sings Vlahovich as the flute plays on in the midst of modern electronica.

The electronic beat itself is playful in its enticing cadence even as it contrasts sharply with the retrospective lyrics.

In “White Doves,” the band furnishes a beat that tempts indulgence even as the lyrics encourage the listeners to labor relentlessly towards their dreams. “It takes a thousand miles to reach the stars tonight, and you will find your dreams they come alive.”

Young Empires’ Wake All My Youth is the 2012 album that will command consistent replays throughout summer.

Give these tracks a listen: “Rain of Gold,” “White Doves”
For Fans Of: Yeasayer, U.S. Royalty, MGMT, Phoenix

Arts Week

Arts & Culture

Arts Editor

March 15, 2012

MUSIC
Poetry Night Reading Series presents the Science Singers at the John Natsoulas Gallery
Thursday, March 15, 8 p.m., free
John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 First St.
A group formed as a result of the UC Davis arts and science fusion program, which created the course “Science and Society 42: Earth, Water, Science and Song,” Wendy Silk and the Science Singers perform alongside musician and doctoral candidate Tony Dumas. Exploring a variety of musical genres, the class showcases music that conveys the understanding of the class material and lyrics about everything from the scientific method to spatial and temporal variation.

2012 Community Concert Series: High Drama on the Keyboard
Sunday, March 18, 4 p.m.
Davis Commnunity Church, 412 C St.
$10 suggested donation
David Deffner, the director of music at Davis Community Church and an accomplished organist with a doctorate in church music from Northwestern University, plays in an organ recital this weekend as part of Davis Community Church’s 2012 Community Concert Series. Deffner has performed with the Sacramento Symphony Orchestra, the Camelia Symphony, the Sacramento Area Bach Festival and the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra.

THEATRE/MONDAVI
Focus on Indian Dance
Wednesday, March 21, 8 p.m.
Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center
$20/$10 (student)
This evening event features acclaimed Kathak master Rachana Yadav and students of the Kalanjali Dancers of India schools in Berkeley, Lafayette and Sacramento. Yadav will perform a new solo work, “Samvet,” which expresses the maturation of a typical Indian through the lens of the five elements of nature. The Kalanjali dancers will perform excerpts from their full-length “Osiris and Isis,” a folk dance and a classical Indian piece.

Alexander String Quartet
Sunday, March 18, 2 p.m. (sold out) & 7 p.m.
Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center
$49/$24.50 (student)

ART/GALLERY
The Real and The Imagined: Prints and Sculpture
March 9 to April 3, Monday to Saturday 10 to 6 p.m., Sunday 12 to 5 p.m.
The Artery, 207 G St.
Artists Christopher Dewees and Shannon Marie Moore play off each other’s styles to provoke audiences. Moore’s sculptures showcase fantasy and myths while Dewee’s artwork uses real-life organisms and objects as “printing blocks” for his images.

Seeing Sound
March 9 to April 15, Tuesday to Sunday, 11:30 – 5 p.m.
Pence Gallery, 212 D St.
Offering a highly interactive experience, this exhibit features work by seven artists and musicians from the Sacramento area. This experience requires visitors to look, play and listen, all while blurring the line between sound and visual art.

MU Art Lounge showcases student abuse

Arts & Culture

Arts Editor

March 15, 2012

Starting with a reception yesterday, the Art History 401 Curatorial Principles class taught by Professor Susette Min began curating an exhibit held in the Memorial Union (MU) Art Lounge.

The exhibit itself is about a timely and controversial topic and is part of a collaboration process involving 16 undergraduate students. Regarding recent events detailing student protests and police response to such protests, the class hopes to raise awareness about issues of privatization and over-reaction by campus police.

The exhibit has been in the planning stages since January and was decided by vote in the class.

“We wanted to do something that could relate to people, and we had the intention of creating an exhibit that could provoke some kind of thought,” said senior environmental policy analysis and planning major Jennifer Urrutia.

The exhibit consists of large photographs of three events, detailing police presence and response to student protests at UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and UC Davis. There are texts corresponding to each photograph display that provide information and context for the event as well as provide the reports regarding decisions after the event. There is also a large photograph display showcasing the typical arsenal used by campus police at such protests as well as text that explains the use and effects on the body such weapons can induce.

“The MU Art Lounge is a commonly used student space, so what we’re trying to do is to just present the information in a concise and straightforward way and to raise questions,” said senior art history major Megan Friel. “We’re giving students the images and the information to be able to ask those questions for themselves.”

Despite dealing and presenting a heavy subject matter, especially one that stirs up many opinions and emotions, the class and Min want to make clear that the exhibit itself is not a protest, nor is it associated with the Occupy movement on campus. The display is simply meant to be as informative as possible without shoving opinions in the faces of students.

“We really want to make sure people who come to the show understand what’s happening in the images,” said Mazie Enck, a junior art history major. “It would be too easy to look at these images without text and come up with a biased conclusion. With the texts, we’re trying to give both sides of the story. We focused on the reports that came later and then the facts. We’re hoping to present a non-partisan view on these events.”

“The idea is for the students to experience curating a show and to offer something the UC Davis community. We have a show that makes them think, raise questions, and engage in dialogue,” said Min. “They’ve all been really good about working on this even though for some, this might have not been their first choice. They’re great; they work together really well. I’ve taught this class about five times; this class has been great especially for the number of people working on the same exhibition. They are a good group of students.”

Recent events have caused the project problems with the Reynoso Task Force Report. The report that was to be part of the exhibit itself is likely to included in the display if released sometime in the next two weeks. The exhibit will run at the MU Art Lounge until March 23.

RUDY SANCHEZ can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

Column: China wants more

Opinion

Opinion

March 15, 2012

We are nearing a time when “Made in China” will no longer be discreetly etched under our plastic tchotchkes or sewn through the backs of our labels. Because of increasing blue-collar labor costs this past decade in Guangdong and other coastal hubs, China is at the bottom of any manufacturer’s list for super-cheap hands.

This change doesn’t necessarily mean that the United States should avert its stare from a familiar lender and competitor. Rather, we should continue to keep our eyes peeled, for while China may be focusing less on mass production, it is revving up R&D (research and development) to accommodate an influx of innovative products.

It has always been widely acknowledged (maybe even become somewhat of a global joke) how tremendously economical and productive China keeps its supply chain. The bargain it offers makes many companies come back for more, constantly and exclusively contracting with Chinese suppliers. Much of the southern part of the country is basically a workshop for the world, whose mantra can be read on an enormous billboard in the industrial city of Shenzen: “Time is Money, Efficiency is Life.”

This too-good-to-be-true trend in China is certainly veering off its current trajectory. Costs for production are soaring every which way. Land, environmental concerns and tax increases pose problems for coastal trade provinces.

Most troublesome to the global market now dependent on the Chinese, however, are surging salaries. Every year for the past four years, migrant workers’ wages (including benefits) have jumped 20 percent. Local Chinese governments, and other Asian governments alike, are finally siding with their people and hiking minimum-wage rates in response to labor unrest.

I keep pinching myself. We have come upon an age where it is actually too expensive to do business in China. (Then again, see our $1.2 trillion — and counting — debt to the country.) As thoughts of cheap China get left behind, the Eastern country and all others must gain inspiration from bigger and better ideas.

If China wishes to continue to prosper, its manufacturers must put more emphasis on quality than quantity, on the value chain over the supply one. Rather than bolting together sophisticated products designed elsewhere, it needs to do more actual inventing themselves.

A few Chinese firms have started to do this already. For example, a company called Huawei filed for more international patents than any other firm. Earlier this year, it unveiled the world’s thinnest and fastest smartphone.

China does not yet have enough Huaweis, but it attracts plenty of bright young people who would like to build one. Every year another wave of “sea turtles” — Chinese who have studied or worked abroad — return home.

The pace of transformation in China has been so startling that it is hard to keep up with. At once, we can be celebrating or fretting its demise and its ascent. Without question, though, the esoteric stereotypes about low-wage sweatshops are as out of date as Mao suits.

The world’s immediate response to these fiscal, political and social revisions across the Pacific has been to pull out. Manufacturers have found some relief by moving production to new areas, such as western China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India. But all of these places rely on the same increasingly expensive pool of commodities. The price of aluminium or silicon isn’t, for example, less expensive for one country than another.

For the long-term, then, America especially needs to follow and exceed China’s example. Not only will China make it harder to purchase more with less, but it will also begin to intrude on the spheres of other countries’ fortes. President Obama would argue that investing in innovation should be America’s, not China’s, “Sputnik moment,” as he made clear during his 2011 State of the Union address.

America cannot afford to skimp on entrepreneurial ventures, if only for the progress of humanity. The moment any country becomes complacent, the rest of us get strung through the wake. By peeling off from the arguably less-challenging task of factory work, China is motivating all to take the path of most resistance and difficulty. This next decade will prove to be quite interesting — China and the world must innovate, or slow down.

It has been a pleasure writing for you this quarter. If you think I deserve a spring column, contact CHELSEA MEHRA at cmehra@ucdavis.edu with topic ideas.

News-in-Brief: Study hours extended on campus during finals week

Campus News

Campus Editor

March 15, 2012

Study hours at many different study spots on campus will be extended throughout finals week.

ASUCD Academic Affairs Commission and Campus Recreation have collaborated to extend study hours in order to provide students with more options when studying for their finals. Griffin Lounge and The Wedge will be open 24 hours. Study hours have been extended at ARC Meeting Rooms, Starbucks at the ARC, Student Community Center Meeting Rooms and other locations on campus.

For a full list of the extended study hours, visit sa.ucdavis.edu/finals_study_hours.cfm.

— Hannah Strumwasser

In review: 21 Jump Street

Arts & Culture

Arts Editor

March 15, 2012

Judging by the audience reaction at last week’s early screening of 21 Jump Street, I can say with some certainty that your enjoyment of the film will be directly proportional to your enjoyment of dick jokes.

Because there are a lot of them. A whole lot. Too many to count, actually. And with a story by frat boy d’jour Jonah Hill, you can’t really expect anything else. But can I tell you something? Despite the fact that I have a relatively low tolerance for crude humor of any kind, I had a big stupid grin on my face for most of this movie.

HOW CAN THAT BE?

For starters, it’s hard not to go into 21 Jump Street with low expectations. The film draws its inspiration from the 1980s television show of the same name, which even then, despite the presence of an up-and-coming Johnny Depp, wasn’t exactly highly reviewed. Its premise feels implausible at best: two buddy cops (played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum) are assigned to work for a program called 21 Jump Street, which places young-looking police officers undercover in high schools. And seriously, Channing Tatum? Since when is he supposed to be a comedian?

But when the film wants to be smart, it succeeds admirably. When Hill’s smart-but-awkward Schmidt and Tatum’s dumb-jock Jenko are enrolled in a local high school to bust a suspected drug ring, both see the assignment as a chance to relive their own high school days — painful for Schmidt, of course, and awesome for Jenko.

But high school has changed. The smart kids are actually cool and the jocks who “don’t try at anything” (as Jenko puts it?) — yeah, they’re just laughed at. Suddenly high school doesn’t seem so bad for Schmidt, and what could have been yet another clichéd portrayal of high school becomes a sly commentary on today’s environment-loving, UC Berkeley-bound teenagers.

Hill, fresh off a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for Moneyball, has a clever, honest chemistry with Tatum, who brings a surprising amount of heart to the outcasted Jenko. There’s something undeniably sweet about the way Jenko befriends a group of science nerds, playing with throwing stars and doing chemistry experiments while Schmidt hangs out with cool guy Eric (played by Dave Franco, James’ little brother) and love interest Molly (Brie Larson).

And then come the car chases, guns and crude sex jokes. Why? The film doesn’t need them. In fact, they take the momentum away from some truly funny moments at the high school and at Schmidt’s parents’ house (where he and Jenko live while undercover). You get the sense while watching Schmidt and Jenko race down the highway, shooting at the bad guys, that you’ve seen this all before. Which, honestly, you have.

Working with a script by Michael Bacall (writer of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (co-directors of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) keep the plot and jokes moving quickly, stopping only for the action sequences. Look, I understand what the target demographic for this movie is. Yes, I fully accept that they want to see guys shooting big guns and gosh darn it, they’re going to get it. But can Hollywood ever stop for one second and recognize a good thing when they have it and NOT ruin it with yet another car chase?

Fans of the original television show will find the film’s crude tone and winking self-awareness a far cry from the PG-rated exploits of Officers Penhall, Hanson, Hoffs and Ioki. But as a fellow Jump Street-er, it thrilled me just to see the words “21 Jump Street” fill the screen during the opening credits. And that cameo you’ve been hearing about? It’s exactly what you’re hoping for.

Even if it does include a dick joke.

ERIN MIGDOL can be reached at features@theaggie.org.

Women’s Water Polo Preview

Sports Editor

March 15, 2012

Teams: UC Davis vs. Maryland; vs. Fresno Pacific
Records: Aggies, 8-11; Terrapins, 10-3; Sunbirds, 4-15
Where: Schaal Aquatics Center
When: Saturday at 1 p.m.; at 2:30 p.m.
Who to watch: Senior center Dakotah Mohr scored a hat trick last week against Sonoma State.
Did you know? The Aggie defense has allowed just 60 goals in 169 6-on-5 opportunities for a conversion rate of .355.
Preview: After dominating Santa Clara and Sonoma State by a combined score of 26-3 this past weekend, the UC Davis women’s water polo team is set to face off against two more opponents this upcoming weekend.

The Aggies will first square off against some stiff competition in No. 11 Maryland.

Maryland is currently riding a five-game winning streak and has claimed victories over tough competition this season, including No. 12 Indiana.

“They are a pretty mobile, fast team,” said Coach Jamey Wright. “Usually an east coast team will come to the west and suffer due to the lack of competition in the east, but not anymore with schools like Maryland.”

“We’re not going to do anything differently from what we usually do,” Wright said. “We are going to try and execute the same as when we play anyone else.”

Shortly after that game, the Aggies will face off against Fresno Pacific at 2:30.

The Sunbirds will be trying to upset the Aggies to end their own three-game losing streak. Fresno Pacific is still an NAIA team on the verge of becoming a Division I program, but Wright is not taking it lightly.

“Although they are not an experienced team, each game provides different obstacles for us to overcome,” he said. “Hopefully our depth can overpower them.”

— Jason Min

Women’s Basketball Preview

Sports Editor

March 15, 2012

Teams: UC Davis at Oregon State
Records: Aggies (17-12); Beavers 18-12 (9-8)
Where: Gill Coliseum — Corvallis, Ore.
When: Thursday at 7 p.m.
Who to Watch: After the pain the UC Davis seniors felt following last week’s loss to Pacific, you can expect senior Samantha Meggison to come out firing on Thursday.

Meggison earned first team All-Big West honors after leading the Aggies in scoring and rebounds. The Orange, Calif. native will be a considerable threat to opposing teams, as she and the other seniors lead the charge in the last push of their careers.

Did you know? The Aggies have been in this situation before. Of course, an NCAA Tournament appearance for the second year in a row would have been nice, but the Women’s National Invitation Tournament is the next best thing.

UC Davis has been in the WNIT for three of the past five years, including 2008 and 2010.

Preview: “We’re hopeful — we’ll wait to see. If we do [get selected for the WNIT], watch out because we’ve got some seniors who aren’t done playing yet.”

These were the words head coach Jennifer Gross had to say after the Aggies’ heartbreaking loss at the hands of Pacific that knocked UC Davis out of the Big West Conference Tournament.

After receiving an at-large bid into the WNIT, the Aggies will indeed continue into postseason play.

The selection is a product of a tough preseason schedule that brought some early success, which gave the Aggies the best national RPI ranking in the Big West at the close of the regular season.

Gross and the rest of the team, who cited the season highlights as the relationships they developed, are just glad to be playing together again.

“I am really excited for our team — we have a wonderful group of student-athletes who have worked hard all year long and stayed together through it all,” she said. “We are thankful for the opportunity to be playing together again.”

The WNIT may be a sort of step down from the NCAA Tournament, but this will be all about vindication for the Aggies. UC Davis will be looking to redeem themselves after a showing last week against the Tigers that almost ended the Aggies’ season.

This year, UC Davis and the Beavers yielded similar results against teams they both matched up with, including Stanford, Washington, Saint Mary’s and Cal State Northridge.

— Matthew Yuen

Column: Whose library?

Opinion

Opinion

March 15, 2012

Until last month, the website library.nu acted as the Pirate Bay of academia, offering users free downloads of hundreds of thousands of scholarly books. But, like so many file-sharing servers before it, library.nu attracted the ire of some powerful enemies: An international group of publishers ranging from Cambridge University Press to Elsevier banded together to stop the site, serving it a cease-and-desist order.

It’s true that publishing companies perform a vital role in academia. In addition to editing, producing and distributing works, academic publishers provide an important quality-control function, helping to decide which scholarship is accurate, informed and worthwhile enough to publish through a rigorous selection process.

At the same time, however, as Christopher Kelty has pointed out, the library.nu takedown has revealed a bottleneck in academic production. In recent years, publishers have decided to sell scholarly books at very high prices for a select audience of university libraries and a handful of professors, often printing less than a hundred copies per book. Amateur scholars and even some libraries are now unable to afford many scholarly publications which, according to YBP Library Services, now cost an average of over $80 per copy.

The same thing is happening in academic journals, only worse. According to Glenn S. McGuigan, yearly subscription rates for journals have tripled since the mid-‘80s, with scientific research journals now averaging in the thousands of dollars.

So, even as the circulation of digital media becomes faster, cheaper and increasingly globalized, the circulation of print academic works becomes slower, more expensive and increasingly limited.

Authors don’t win here, either. With the exception of a few blockbuster textbooks, royalties for academic books are notoriously low, sometimes nonexistent. One blogger in the industry writes that a successful academic work, which might take years to write, is likely to fetch its author around the equivalent of “a nice night out on the town.” Scholarly journals, on the other hand, typically pay bupkis. Most professors only publish for the purposes of tenure, promotion and prestige.

Indeed, with this in mind, some scholars have endeavored to make their publications available for free online. The Open Access research movement has experimented with a variety of models for doing this, including journals which make their work freely available after an embargo period, journals which operate using author submission fees and scholarly self-archiving, when authors re-post their published material online.

But some of these scholarly practices have come under fire. Recently, philosopher and cultural theorist Steven Shaviro publicly announced a boycott of Oxford University Press after they asked him to sign away all of his rights to an essay in a “work for hire” contract, one which suggested that he had never owned his work in the first place. Much like their counterparts in music and software, publishing companies are turning to restrictive intellectual property laws to maintain their hold on creative production.

But this isn’t just another story about how the digital era has rendered yet another print or content industry obsolete. There is a direct parallel between the struggles against higher tuition and what we might call the privatization of academic publishing.

Just as the cost of university education increases, shutting out those who can’t pay, university presses and commercial academic publishers are raising their prices faster than the rate of inflation and thereby restricting scholarly knowledge to a small minority of affluent, professional, first-world researchers. Under this regime, knowledge ceases to be a common good, produced through free, public discourse, and becomes instead just another source of meager private profit.

But the ideal of the internet — and the public university — is that information wants to be free. That does not mean that we shouldn’t give material support to content providers or some kind of editing and peer review apparatus. It does, however, suggest that access to scholarly work, like education, should be as open as possible. If our work is genuinely meaningful, we as academics should do everything we can to disseminate our writing gratis to anyone who might be interested.

Contrary to the statement released by Jens Bammel of the International Publisher’s Association condemning library.nu, there are no “freeloaders” in the intellectual sphere. By propagating information through scholarly texts, we allow others to critique, respond to and build upon what we have thought, thereby increasing our own store of knowledge. Therefore, in the academy, we would do better to take up the example of Libertalia, the 17th century pirate utopia, making our scholarship a “common treasury” with “no hedge bounding any particular man’s property.”

JORDAN S. CARROLL is a Ph.D. student in English who can be reached at jscarroll@ucdavis.edu.

Dept. of State releases new travel warning for Mexico

City Editor

March 15, 2012

Students might want to think twice before heading to Mexico this spring break. On Feb. 8, the Bureau of Consular Affairs (BCA) of the United States Department of State issued an updated travel warning detailing the security conditions in Mexico.

Due to the ongoing drug trafficking and violence in Mexico, the bureau recommends U.S. citizens to defer non-essential travel.

“Every six months or so, we update the travel warnings, so the update we just did [for Mexico] was redesigned for clarity,” said Elizabeth Finan, spokesperson for the BCA. “It has a state-by-state assessment that has information on security conditions in each region. We also added a map to the warning to help travelers locate where they’re going to be going.”

Finan advises travelers to avoid the border states. In addition, she said there are currently 14 Mexican states that require citizens to be more vigilant.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) strongly advises spring breakers not to travel to Mexico. In a press release, the department stated rape and sexual assault continue to be serious issues in resorts, and the number of Mexican states to avoid increased by four since 2011.

“The Mexican government has made great strides battling the cartels, and we commend their continued commitment to making Mexico a safer place to live and visit,” said Steven C. McCraw, director of DPS. “However, drug cartel violence and other criminal activity represent a significant safety threat, even in some resort areas.”

The travel warning gives advice on each state in Mexico, although there are also states with no travel advisories.

“Generally, the resort areas and tourist destinations in Mexico don’t see the levels of drug-related violence and crime that are reported in the border region,” Finan said.

Travel.state.gov states that the crime and violence occurring throughout the country have led to U.S. citizens falling victim to Transnational Criminal Organization activities such as homicide, gun battles, kidnapping, carjacking and highway robbery.

“The number of U.S. citizens reported to the Department of State as murdered in Mexico increased from 35 in 2007 to 120 in 2011,” the BCA stated on travel.state.gov.

The travel warning for Mexico is a reflection of the travel policy that has been in effect since July 15, 2010 for official U.S. government employees and their families, Finan said. They are prohibited from personal travel to places designated as “defer non-essential travel.”

As of now, there are travel warnings for 31 countries. Finan said depending on the school, some schools won’t have study abroad programs in places the Department of State has warnings.

According to University of California (UC) spokesperson Brooke Converse, students who are traveling out of the country for UC matters – business, research or community service – are typically notified beforehand of any risks in the countries they will be visiting.

“Travel warnings are a reflection of a security assessment made overall in a country,” Finan said. “They can be issued for civil war, an unstable government, frequent attacks, as well as intense crime and violence.”

Finan said the number-one thing the BCA recommends is enrolling in a program called the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, or STEP.

“We always encourage students and regular travelers alike, when you do go to Mexico, there are certain steps you can take to stay safe while you’re there,” Finan said. “STEP is one component: what this does is helps us get in touch with you in case of an emergency.”

U.S. citizens enrolled in the program with an e-mail address will occasionally receive messages from their respective embassies or consulates regarding information about security.

“We recommend that students enroll themselves and they can receive the information directly from us,” Finan said. “I just want to emphasize that if you travel to Mexico, to please read the travel warning carefully, locate the state you will be traveling in, educate yourself on the security situation in that state and then additionally, educate yourself on the laws and regulations in Mexico or any country.”

CLAIRE TAN can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

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