The walk along the north side of the Quad can be like a game of dodgeball as you avoid various people asking you to sign this petition or register for that service. Everyone has their own way to skirt past these pesky individuals, but here are some tips we think can be foolproof tactics.

1. Headphones. Whether it is Taylor Swift or Kanye West or Taylor Swift you’re pretending is actually Kanye West, listening to music is the best deterrent when it comes to the walk. Potential botherers will not want to intrude on your intense music-listening experience.

2. Walk through the CoHo. Rarely, if ever, do the solicitors on the outside venture in to bother people eating in the ASUCD Coffee House. The CoHo will let you out right next to Wellman to avoid all traffic on the outside walk.

3. Claim membership. Drop that little nugget of information, whether it be real or fake, and they will let you continue with your day.

4. Read something. If you have mastered the skill of reading and walking at the same time, do it. The solicitors won’t want to interrupt you if you’re in deep thought in a book. Even better, read something on a clipboard so it looks like you’re one of the petitioners you’re trying to avoid.

5. Ignore them. When the botherers ask you a really direct, sometimes too personal-of-a-question, simply return the inquiry with a stoic face of ignorance and continue with your walk.

6. Fake a phone call. Along the same lines of tip one and four, the solicitors won’t want to interrupt a potentially important phone call. If you don’t want to fake a call, fake a text, although statistics show this seem to be less effective.

7. Zipline. Yes, zipline. Set up a line on top of the MU that travels down to the top of Wellman. That way you can simply fly over the petioners without having to try steps one through six. Obviously, you would have to avoid some trees and low flying birds, but it would be fun and effective. To get down from the top of Wellman, simply rappel down the side. Because if you’re skilled enough to construct a zipline across campus, you’re talented enough to do some simple rappelling.

8. Pick up an Aggie. Roll it up, and smack the pests.

A new Starbucks coffee location is set to open this week in the North Silo, furthering the corporation’s grip on our impressionable eating habits. This is the second Starbucks on campus, both of which are run by the also national Sodexo, Inc., a self described “world leader” in food service.

While UC Davis is under contract with Sodexo until at least 2014, it is tempting to imagine the business and ethical improvements that could be made if the campus committed itself to local, student-organized food services, rather than the exponentially increasing corporations that we see today.

According to Brett Burns, executive director of Campus Unions, Sodexo has had a presence on campus for the last 30 years. In addition to the North Silo, they manage the campus dining commons, Cargo Coffee, concession stands at sports games and the various food carts across campus. UC Davis collects eight percent commission on regular sales and 20 percent on concessions.

This money is put toward funding campus facilities, such as the Memorial Union. The ASUCD Coffee House (CoHo) also pays into this fund, though at a commission of two percent. According to Burns, the non-student run businesses are more profitable and essentially end up subsidizing things like the CoHo.

While money is an inescapable factor, it seems questionable whether a national chain will really pull in more profits than a CoHo model or a local coffee shop, given the same location and resources. Will anybody really run from the MU to the Silo, just for a brand? Students are busy and choices are made on convenience.

That said, the Silo location more of less guarantees sales. There does not seem to be any ‘risk’ factor for Sodexo in choosing a smaller coffee shop. The only competition is other Sodexo businesses. Why, then, has a local, Davis-tailored business not been a priority?

Assuming consistent foot traffic, both Sodexo and Campus Unions missed a big chance to support local business. Local ownership would ensure that student dollars would stay in the Davis economy. Similarly, a CoHo model, which requires student employees, means the money goes directly into students’ pockets.

This is a lot to take in, but here are the basics.

The truth is, Sodexo is contracted for the long haul and all efforts against them are futile. In addition, Campus Unions works with Sodexo to choose which companies are brought in, but there was no obvious student or faculty involvement in the Starbucks decision. It would have been nice to see the issue as a ballot measure.

The good news is, as evidenced by the ongoing renovations, the Silo is always changing. With enough of a reaction, the campus might actually influence what businesses are brought in.

Mayor Joe Krovoza and The Aggie (see editorial 9/29/11) are urging students to support The Davis-Woodland Water project estimated cost $325 million, plus $89 million for water rights. I urge students not to support the present project and to sign a petition that would put this proposal to a vote of the whole Davis electorate next year.

Yes, ultimately, Davis will need to address its water quantity and quality issues via a surface water project. But this is not the project we need or the time for it. There is no evidence that Davis is about to run out of water in the near future and, according to the city’s own data, the quality of Davis water quality falls comfortably within state and federally mandated standards. The Aggie editorial cites a city engineer as saying that hexavalent chromium may fail to meet safety standards in two years. No such specific category exists in the latest official Davis quality water report, but with respect to the Total Chromium the limit is 50 per mcls, and the weighted average for Davis is 14.5 and for UCD water 9.5.

Most importantly, this project will be the most expensive infrastructural project in Davis’s history, and yet Mayor Krovoza and a majority of the council are opposed to allowing the city to vote on it!!!

The project could, by some estimates, triple to quintuple Davis water rates in the future. Inevitably landlords will pass on their increased costs meaning that the average Davis household will likely pay more than $2,000 annually for water in a few years. The mayor states that this project will only cost students an extra $1.50 a month in rent. This is preposterous, and yet again reveals the fuzzy math of the mayor and his staff that has already been exposed in at least a couple of articles in the Davis Enterprise. It is safe to say that the rent increases will be in the tens of dollars.

There are alternatives and the city and its students need to embrace them at a time when their costs and fees are skyrocketing. Please sign (by the Oct. 23 deadline) the petition to put the measure to all voters. You may do so at the Saturday Farmers Market, the Davis Food Co-op at weekends, or e-mail me at dcornford@comcast.net.

Dan Cornford

Retired history professor, San Jose State University

“My girlfriend got cancer at 22. She spent everything she had and worked two jobs, 80 to 90 hours a week to pay for chemotherapy. She kept working even during treatment. We still live paycheck to paycheck one year later. I am the 99 percent.”

“My daddy passed away last month at 45. He could not afford to miss work so he held off seeing a doctor for months, working in pain. He had a 98 percent blockage to his heart and died. The last two weeks of his life were spent cutting copper pipe and wire to get money for rent. He was planning on starting his own business — an American dream — but no one helped him in his time of need and now he is gone. My children will never know their grandfather. He was the 99 percent, and so are we.”

These excerpts are taken from the website wearethe99percent.tumblr.com. The site is made up of pictures that Americans submit of themselves or their family members holding up a sign with passages like the ones above. Most of the signs end with references to websites such as occupywallst.org or occupytogether.org, whose goals are to “take action against the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.” The common message is that many people in the world’s wealthiest country are struggling to get by physically, mentally and financially.

Though eye opening, the 99 percent website has a few flaws. For instance, it’s possible that some of the people who are unable to pay for health insurance are instead spending their money paying for the three deadly sins: drugs, alcohol and Xbox live. The website also implies that this problem is unique to modern day America. It’s not as if, all of a sudden, every non-CEO in the country is living on the street.

However, despite its flaws, the website has tremendous value because it reminds us of how we get wrapped up in our trivial day-to-day problems.

Sure, it sucks that your bus arrived late and it can be really frustrating when people use an Oxford comma, or serve you a one percent latte when you ordered two percent. The message that we should take away is not necessarily that America is corrupt or that Wall Street is driven by greed. Instead, what I take away from websites and organizations like these is something a lot of Americans lack: perspective.

Another similar website sarcastically shines a light on this lack of perspective. The concept has many incarnations, but Googling “first world problems” will take you to the right place.

A few of the better lines include:

“I accidentally cut myself with my Macbook Air.”

“Some kid knocked the hood ornament off my Mercedes and now it looks like a fucking Hyundai.”

“iPhones are too expensive so I have to carry around a phone and an iPod touch like some sort of pack mule.”

And, my personal favorite, “I ripped the bag down the front and now my cereal won’t pour right.”

Despite their divergent methods, the two websites make the same point: be grateful for what you have. Whether you come from a family of millionaires or you’re working two jobs to put yourself through college, you’re an extremely lucky person. You’re going to a first-class university in a country where even those who are struggling have food on their plate. You have the luxury of taking time out of your day to do things like read The California Aggie or study for your midterm.

Despite the incredibly heartbreaking situations described by the 99 percent, one of the site’s submissions takes things to a whole new level.

The picture is of impoverished third-world children. The caption says, “In America, you are the 99 percent. But to the rest of the world, you are still the 1 percent. When you win your battle, please remember that the war is not over.”

Don’t be the person who walks around thinking, “The new iPhone looks the same as my old one so no one will be able to tell that I upgraded!”

No matter how crappy your life can get, always remember this: you’re one of the lucky ones.

MARK LING must now pause Madden ’12 and mend his cereal bag. Send him your condolences at mdling@ucdavis.edu.

If there is a place where any comment can and will be construed as having the most offensive meaning possible given its limited length and wording, that place is every comment forum on the internet.

On YouTube, the comment section underneath each video — regardless of the video’s content — is a virtual Wild West, occupied by an infinite herd of heavily-opinionated web users. It doesn’t make a difference if the video in question is a cat swatting at a printer or an amateur dancer’s choreography to Katy Perry’s “Firework;” just south of the clip, you can count on finding a maelstrom of syntactically broken attempts at defending and attacking opinions that couldn’t possibly be changed, particularly via the comment section underneath a video.

One of the most common disputes I’ve witnessed is that of gay rights — maybe the most prevalent type of discussion thread on the internet when Rebecca Black hasn’t recently dropped a single or Lady Gaga hasn’t shown up in public wearing a frock made of flank steak. Never do these chats lead to any sort of mutual understanding — “You know, I see what you’re saying about Leviticus now. What a refreshing perspective even if I don’t necessarily agree!” — nor do they lead to any sort of conclusion. More often than not (read: every time without fail), one person goes to sleep that night reminded about how much they disagree with homosexuality, while the other goes to sleep fuming about the fact that homophobia is just plain hateful. It’s the perpetual battle of moral vs. immoral, Pepsi vs. Coke, Twilight vs. Harry Potter — pure subjectivity.

If only the divide could be that simple though; as sure as the clash of the cyber trolls will never actually be resolved, there will always be the anonymous user who swoops in with their good-intentioned, over generalized rebuttal: I love the gays. The gays are beautiful human beings. The gays are people just like you and me. Placing aside the outstanding observation that homosexuals are, in fact, also Homo sapiens, these comments are silly for various other reasons. Good intentions or not, they are formed from the same oblivion that births the idea that all gay men find every straight man automatically and magnetically attractive and all lesbians want to ride motorcycles and rock boyish coifs.

Maybe you love the gays that you’ve seen on television, with their swishy wrist movements and eyes for fashion; perhaps you love the “Hollywood Gays” of “progressive” 21st century rom-coms, perpetually awaiting their girlfriends with a fruity cocktail and piece of seasoned lover’s advice. It may even be the case that the gay you love the most is the Sassy Gay Friend of YouTube fame, spewing razor sharp dialogue before tossing his diaphanous scarf and delivering the punch line “you stupid bitch.” But rest assured: these gays — in addition to the handful of gays you know in real life — do not constitute “the gays”.

Even with my homosexual tendencies, I don’t claim to love all the people clustered underneath the umbrella term “gays.” In fact, most of the gay people who I’ve associated myself with have rarely ended up being good friends, let alone someone close enough to claim to love. I’ve encountered gays who I downright dislike — two of them I’ve blocked on Facebook. This leads me to another substantive claim to the discredit of anyone who purports to love all of the gays: I’m kind of an asshole.

It’s not so much that there’s anything particularly wrong with claiming to love an entire demographic — it’s just wildly incorrect. It’s a very troubling thing to see a person openly declare hatred for any general group of people, especially if the vessel for doing so is as chintzy as the comment section underneath a video. Even more frustrating, though, may be how perfectly aware the rest of us are that such a declaration couldn’t realistically be so utterly all encompassing.

The generality of the emotion is entirely unjust, as it never allots for possible outliers — exceptions to the pre-established sentiment, be it of hatred or love. I have no problem admitting that, while I may like some gays, I certainly don’t like all the gays. Hell, they probably aren’t the biggest fans of me either (definitely not anymore). But I’m content to amass a few enemies if it means abstaining from fighting verbal fire with fire — and so long as I’ll never see them in person.

DYLAN GALLAGHER’s blog, cleverblog.tumblr.com, now accepts and burns all fan mail on the spot, but he can also occasionally be reached at dylaaaaan@gmail.com.

I never feel more American than when I’m drinking water.

Here’s some context: Before leaving for Brussels, I was handed multiple orientation packets and books to help me mentally adjust to life abroad. In these packets and books, I learned to expect that Brussels is a very eco-friendly city, and that Belgians are miles ahead of Americans in terms of sustainability.

Thus, when I took out my Klean Kanteen in class for the first time, I was stunned to see plastic all around me. Europeans are always drinking water, but it’s always out of a recently purchased bottle, and it’s always thrown out after.

I asked a Belgian classmate about this the other day. If Belgians are so environmentally conscious, why don’t you start using reusable water bottles?

He smiled, bemused.

“I don’t know. We just don’t. Is that big in the States or something?”

I explained the silliness I was seeing. Since you can’t get free tap water at restaurants, you often have to decide between ordering bottled water for 4 euros or beer for 3 euros. You order beer because it’s the most economical decision, and then you get further dehydrated. Then you need water.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a reusable water bottle with you? And not have to buy water at the nearest express mart? And, you know, not expel more waste than necessary?

He said Belgians recycle, though, and that alone makes all the difference. Every household has three colored bags of blue, yellow and white to separate their recyclables, and everyone expectedly does so.

Perhaps that’s true for homeowners, but in the public sphere, it’s not so simple. Walking through my college campus, there isn’t a single recycling bin to be found. Students throw their soda cans into trash bins like it’s nothing, but I can’t blame them when there’s no convenient alternative.

After my communication class last week, I babbled to a classmate from Poland about the odd paradox I was seeing. Having lived in Brussels for a few years already, he bragged about the intensity of the city’s trifecta of recycling bags. I asked if there was anywhere to recycle a can on campus, and he said he had no idea. He’d never even thought about it.

Downtown Brussels is worse. Even though there is the occasional bulky recycling center in the middle of a square, it’s not exactly practical for the casual stroller. In turn, garbage and recyclables alike overflow onto the streets.

This is compounded in the evenings. Partygoers, students, homeless people, and all of Brussels in general, consume tall cans of beer before hitting the town. Liquid courage is often finished off in metros where there is nowhere to recycle those empty vessels. Instead, countless cans and bottles lie in disarray by metro entrances. Broken glass glistens against cobblestones. At 5 a.m. on a Saturday, the whole city looks like a frat house post-rager.

Somehow Brussels manages to look a bit more presentable by the time tourists arrive for weekend sightseeing.

Coming from UC Davis and a Bay Area home that collects food scraps, this simple water bottle thing baffles me. Compost bins? Compostable spoons? Forget about it. Ice cream cups are plastic, as are to-go boxes for fries, as are to-go boxes for everything.

These seem like simple things to change. Say, as simple as banning plastic bags, right?

Okay, easier said than done.

Of course, Brussels totally owns most American cities in most environmental endeavors. Plastic bags, for instance, are a rare sight. Grocery stores charge for bags – usually around 50 cents – so Belgians always know to bring their own.

The city’s public transportation is fantastic, with subway, tram, bus and bike sharing systems. Short showers and general water conservation is the norm. Toilets usually have two buttons, depending on how much water you need. The city finds intriguingly simple ways to save energy, too. The escalators going down to every metro station, for example, only start moving when someone steps onto them.

As a nation, Belgium is certainly impressive in their eco-friendly endeavors. But as individuals, it seems like they aren’t much further along than many Americans. They don’t care about the greater implications of bringing a bag to the supermarket or recycling something – they do what’s necessary or what’s easiest. They’re just following along like everyone else.

JANELLE BITKER doesn’t mind looking American if it means avoiding bottled water all year. Tell her she’s over generalizing at jlbitker@ucdavis.edu.