Ah, here we go again. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the school year has started. The campus is packed, there are hesitant freshmen waiting at the roundabouts and oh man, is it hot outside.

I, for one, could not be happier. I spent my summer back in the Yay Area (represent!), chauffeuring my brother around and being subject to curfews (11 p.m., anyone?). Needless to say, it’s good to be back.

Now you might be wondering, who is this chick with that unpronounceable name writing about being back in Davis? (If you’re wondering how to pronounce it now, it’s “Made-uh”). Well, allow me to introduce myself.

I am a sophomore political science and international relations double major (which always elicits the “what do you plan on doing with that?” at Indian family parties). I could talk for hours about anything from Palestinian statehood to the shenanigans of Snooki and Deena on “Jersey Shore.”

I’m super tall (5’11″ish) and like blasting my ghetto rap music (my Dad calls it nonsense) while I attempt to run for more than a mile on the treadmill at the ARC. Also, I love sports; talk to me about the NFL and chances are I will yap your head off about my favorite teams and probably bash on yours. That’s just a little about me. Now, tell me about yourself!

Ha, just kidding, this isn’t speed dating. If you want to hear more from me or know when to avoid my column in the paper, I’ll be here every Tuesday, folks!

Although it’s good to be back in Davis, it certainly isn’t the same as it was last year. After two days of biking for what seems like forever from South Davis while Wiz Khalifa raps “Taylor Gang” in my ear buds, I long for the days of freshman year when the worst part of the bike ride was plugging my nose by the cows next to Kearney Hall (shout-out to my third floor kids!) in the Tercero area.

Transitioning from dorm life to apartment life is kind of a big deal, guys. Moving into my dorm last year was so incredibly easy compared to the pains and struggles of packing everything I could possibly think of into the family Honda. My daily trips to Target to pick up spatulas and closet organizers, among other things, certainly didn’t help the packing situation since there was too much to bring up in just one trip.

It’s only been several days since my second year started but I’m already missing those advantages of being a freshman. Gone are the times when I could hit the ARC late at night in the pouring rain before an econ midterm the next day. If I tried to do that now, I would have to fear being raped in the sketch, dimly lit bike path through the Arboretum. No thanks.

I could try working out at the gym in my apartment complex, which looked enormous at first, but only appeared that way due to the mirrors on the wall. Too bad the machines are old and semi-broken. It’s a good thing, then, that the daily bike ride to and from campus lugging my backpack and workout clothes is more than enough to get my heart racing.

Now, let’s talk about food. Who knew it would be so difficult to find the energy and time to cook after an exhausting day of classes? I can’t just walk the 30 feet over to the DC for dinner or even those delicious late night cookies that make me feel oh-so-guilty after stuffing my face full of them. My parents did offer to buy me a small meal plan, but I figured, hey, it can’t be that hard to throw some pasta in a pot, right? Psh, yeah right. I’ll just go back to nibbling on these baby carrots and eating my cereal.

Yes, there are perks to living in an apartment (no more quiet hours, among other things!), but freshmen, here’s some advice: enjoy this year in the dorms because pretty soon you’ll be fantasizing about ooey-gooey late night cookies and quick bike rides to class. Everyone else, I apologize in advance for getting the idea of late-night cookies in your heads. Sweet dreams … literally.

Reminiscing about freshman year? Looking forward to late night tonight? MEDHA SRIDHAR wants to know what you think. Look for that tall Indian girl on campus or contact her at mdsridhar@ucdavis.edu.

When I first arrived in Davis with a twinkle in my eye and still holding onto some semblance of innocence and my childhood, I always dreamed of the day when I would finally feel like I had a pulse on the school.

Several bike accidents, frat parties, and CoHo sandwiches later, I have found myself feeling probably as close as I ever will to that point. So now that I have reached this Pinnacle of Influence in my senior year, I will do my best to share with you all the irrelevant things that make Davis “Davis.”

When explaining where you go to school to your second cousin, your Dad’s boss, or whatever random person you are talking to about your college life, the first thing they’ll happen to know is that it is bicycle-centered.

While everyone and their uncle knows that Davis is about bikes, they don’t have any sort of grasp of the depths of the meaning one can bestow. These vehicles aren’t simply a means of conveyance, but an extension of our personalities and a friend with whom we will spend the majority of our time with here at UCD.

What kind of bike you ride says a lot about you – and not necessarily what you’d think.

Maybe that guy on that fixie isn’t a hipster and is actually an engineering student who realizes it provides the most efficient ratio of energy exerted to distance traveled. What matters is that every person here is unique and, similar to their owners, their bikes have a story to tell.

Let’s take my friend Robbie, for example. He ordered his fixed-gear online, custom made and built before it even shipped to his house. Featuring yellow handlebars and seat with purple rims, it truly deserves its title of “The Laker Bike.”

However it represents more than just the Los Angeles Lakers basketball franchise, it epitomizes the LA state of mind. It is clear that no expense was spared in assembling this bike. There is no messing around with this bike and, like Robbie, it is flashy, quick and even a bit chauvinistic.

So what does a mountain bike say about a person? What does a beach cruiser say? You could jump to the immediate conclusion that they are for sporty and casual people, respectively, but it runs a little deeper than that.

A mountain bike belongs to someone who wants a lot of utility in his life. A classmate of mine has been riding the same gigantic red mountain bike since he was a freshman, and has never had to repair it beyond pumping up a tire once or twice.

You also have to consider the practicality of their many uses. You want to ride on a mountain? No problem. You want to ride on a road? We got that too.

While a cruiser does emit the image of a laid-back life style, this doesn’t mean that’s all riding one of those heavy bikes can convey.

When I borrowed one of these bikes my freshman year, I took a blue Sun Cruiser bike from someone on my floor. Riding it to class pretty much felt like driving a truck in heavy traffic for the first time. While other bikes can make a statement about their owners, car-like cruisers are a plateau that makes the rider even more of a statement.

If you want to consider your own bike to review yourself, there are a few details you can check out.

What color is your bike? According to some chart I found on the internet, a green bike represents intelligence, while a red one could belong to someone who likes to be a little more loud and outrageous.

However, when we look at details like this it becomes obvious that much of the time people are just riding whatever bike they could find in their garage or on Craigslist for $60.

So for this reason I encourage you all to try and make a statement when picking your bike. Don’t settle for a run of the mill Mongoose. Go for something with a little more gusto or maybe even become Davis’ newest unicycle guy.

My point is that we would like to think ourselves to be the bike capital of America and we should probably start acting like it.

AARON WEISS thinks your bicycle totally sucks and can be reached at atweiss@ucdavis.edu.

While Lani Chan’s article was generally well written, she omitted two grocery stores within the city of Davis. Westlake Market is located in the Westlake Plaza in West Davis. It has been open now for a little over a year and a half and offers a 5 percent discount to all college students. It is small in size in comparison to Safeway and Nugget, but it has earned positive reviews for the quality of service there. Davis Wiki has an excellent article of Westlake Market that may be found online. The Grocery Outlet is just that – a grocery outlet! While many of the items are brands that very few have heard of, they do offer some name brands such as Ocean Spray and General Mills. This is the place to go for REALLY low grocery prices. However, since they purchase overstocked products from food warehouses you never know what will be offered from week to week. If you recognize that The Grocery Outlet is not a place for one-stop shopping, it is an excellent place to go to stock up on good deals and then, afterward, complete your shopping at one of the other stores. It’s a great way to save on your food bill!  Again, Davis Wiki has a good write-up of the store.

Matthew Higa

Library Assistant, Peter J. Shields Library

For many, school began on a somber note last week with news of Troy Davis’ execution the day prior. Wherever your opinion lies on the spectrum of state-sanctioned executions, death sentences are not cause for celebration.

For those who are against the death penalty, each lethal injection is a saddening reminder of the distance between your own view of morality and the reality of our punitive system. Even for those in favor of the death penalty, with each execution you are reminded of the irredeemable crime that necessitated that sentence.

So, too, was it with the case of Troy Davis. Late Wednesday night after the execution, the widow of Davis’ alleged murder victim Joan MacPhail-Harris told the Associated Press it was “nothing to rejoice.” On the other side, the groups and individuals who had hoped for the exoneration of Davis realized the battle for his individual justice was finally over.

Troy Davis was the 35th inmate on death row executed this year, and the 1269th since 1976. Of those, many executions have carried a measure of controversy. Even among those controversial death penalties, the case of Troy Davis rose to a notable height of public spectacle among politicians and political pundits, celebrities, activist groups and approximately 70 percent of my Facebook newsfeed. Could it be that the politicization of Troy Davis was an accomplice to his execution?

By politicization I mean the transformation of an individual case, with particular details and a specific history, into a public debate polarized along predictable political lines.

Applied to Troy Davis, this means transforming his 20-year journey to defend his own innocence into a mass debate about the racial inequities and legal inconsistencies of the death penalty. In that debate, Troy Davis the person nearly disappears behind the insurgence of well-worn liberal and conservative talking points about Troy Davis, the symbol.

On one side, liberal activists joined by the likes of Jimmy Carter, Alec Baldwin, Al Sharpton and Amnesty International fight for his clemency. They apply the details of his case to a much larger issue of a racialized penal system.

Conservative activists like Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Rick Perry, however, reject his plea for innocence. They use the case to remind folks that we cannot be “soft on crime,” especially when the victims are public safety officials and the alleged criminals are “cop-killers.”

This looks to me like a perversion of John Rawls’ philosophical concept of the Original Position. Rawls used this thought experiment to determine the morality of particular decisions on a principled basis.

It goes like this: Imagine you’re sitting somewhere outside society and all of its roles. You will eventually re-enter society, but first you need to decide what laws everyone will follow – but there’s a catch.

When you return to society, your role will be randomly determined. This way you’re deciding which moral principles and laws everyone will follow, but you could end up returning to society as a politician, a judge or a criminal on death row.

Rawls believed that people would fashion the fairest set of laws possible if they operate behind what he called the Veil of Ignorance. By creating a distance between yourself and moral questions, he argued, you can remove bias.

When an issue is politicized, it gives new meaning to the term Veil of Ignorance. This time, political groups operating outside the specific details of the case argue with the same diametrically opposed groups they always argue, but on a different battlefield.

Politicization inverts the Original Position. Rather than create a distance between yourself and the moral questions of the Troy Davis case to remove bias, you instead create a distance and layer bias on top. 

This came to head with the Twitter-war between liberal actor Alec Baldwin and conservative political personality Michele Malkin. Near the time of the execution, Baldwin tweeted: “When Do Cheney and Rumsfeld go on trial for murder? Will that trial be in Texas?”

To which Malkin responded, “Waiting for Hollyweird @alecbaldwin’s ‘I am Troy Davis’ tweet.”

And this goes on for longer than I’m willing to divert space in this column toward. Notice, though, that neither here, nor in later tweets, do they talk about the case. Both co-opt the case to reaffirm their political alignment.

The problem with politicizing issues is that it automatically cuts support for either side down to the predictable split between liberals and conservatives.

If public opinion has any place in judicial decisions, or in President Obama’s considerations for granting clemency, a 50-50 split automatically makes the politicized debate useless. No one with authority beholden to public opinion would risk losing half the population by intervening in the case.

As tragic as the execution of Troy Davis is for both sides, it is worth taking another moment of silence to consider other issues doomed to inaction by virtue of their misalignment in the realm of politics.

RAJIV NARAYAN recognizes the irony of using his first political column to write about what shouldn’t be political. But feel free to point this and other issues out to him, anyway at rrnarayan@ucdavis.edu.

Last Thursday was UC Berkeley’s Day of Action. Approximately 150 students came out to protest against UC fee hikes and spent the day of school occupying buildings and expressing their opinions. The day of protest ended in two arrests.

There was no protest at UC Davis, though the first day of school is usually a day of action. The UC Davis Day of Action held March 2, 2011 involved less than 70 students, and ended with zero arrests. There is a protest scheduled for October 27, though it has not been widely publicized.

While UC Berkeley is widely known as an activist campus, UC Davis protests still pale in comparison to UC Berkeley protests, at least when it comes to the amount of press it receives.

During the Day of Action on the Berkeley campus, protesters chanted, held signs, and handed out flyers detailing their opinions to passing students. This simple act of explaining to students what exactly they’re working for is vital to spread wider understanding.

In a time when UC Regents are threatening to raise UC fees to over $22,000 a year, all UC students should be expressing themselves and making their opinions known. UC Davis students should strive to get more students involved, informed and interested.

While UC Davis does have an activist presence on campus, many leaders within this group have graduated or will graduate in the next year. Numbers are already low, and with an increase in fees, we should be seeing an increase of student activists.

Last Wednesday, the UC Movement for Efficient Privatization (UC MeP), a satirical activist group, wrote a blog post that stated that angry students had occupied UC President Mark Yudof’s mansion. At the end of the article, however, they revealed that the headline had all been a ploy to get students’ attention. They then proceeded to inform the reader about the UC Berkeley Day of Action on Sept. 22.

This type of press, while somewhat lighthearted, is what our campus needs in order to catch people’s attention. With a bigger following, UC Davis protesters could have the potential to attract as much press as UC Berkeley protestors, thus giving students more of a chance to garner attention and influence decision making.

Protests can help inform students about the issues that are affecting them directly, specifically the current financial state of the UC system.

So, UC Davis students, pick up a copy of The Aggie, call your local representative or grab your megaphone. Just make sure you’re not pulling fire alarms.