Our teaching assistants are part of a union, and the University of California has to negotiate with the union to write up a contract that protects our TAs. The benefit of a union is that it ensures all TAs are paid fairly, that there is no discrimination in pay, and that grad students are given a voice on campus.

But the TAs have a problem. Their contract with the UC ran out last month, and the UC has not been negotiating in good faith with the union on the terms of a new contract. So the union agreed to temporarily extend the old contract and to keep negotiations going so they can reach some kind of agreement. But last week the negotiators representing the TAs went to meet the people representing the UC, and the university people didn’t even officially sit down with the TAs.

There are a lot of us out there who would like to go to grad school, and a lot of us will work as TAs. Our fear is that the UC is trying to break the union, and that by the time we get to grad school TAs will receive even less compensation, have fewer opportunities, and be less able to stand up for themselves. The University of California prides itself on being the best public university anywhere, but already the TAs and grad students are under-compensated when compared to other public university systems.

We are asking grad students to fight back now. We understand if you’re almost done with your degree and you don’t think it’s worth stirring things up – but please remember that you’re also representing the next wave of grad students and TAs, and if you don’t fight back now, we’re really going to be hurting later.

We are asking undergrads to talk to your TAs. Ask them about their contract. Ask them what they think of the negotiations. Ask them about how much work they do and for how little money. And most of all, we are asking you to let your TAs know that you support them.

If you’re reading this in discussion section, ask them right now.

We are asking undergrads to support grad students if they decide that a strike is necessary. Remember, they are fighting for those of us who want to be grad students later.

There is another negotiating session today (Tuesday), and we ask the university to negotiate with the TAs in good faith, because they deserve it.

BRIAN SPARKS

SELISA ROMERO

NNENNAYA AMUCHIE

KRISTINE JOY SUNGA LALIC

JOEL JUAREZ

FATIMA SBEIH

JONATHEN DURAN

TATIANA MOANA BUSH

ALISON TANNER

DANA FURUYAMA

SERGIO CANO

KASE WHEATLEY

BELEN XITALLI HERNANDEZ

HALEY DAVIS

ROSA FERNANDEZ

ADAM THONGSAVAT

RUDY ORNELAS

THERESA QUYEN THLANG

I would normally disregard anything that displeased me in any article of any newspaper, but I couldn’t let this pass.

I would like to say that I found the following comment from Jennifer Richwood’s Nov. 3 column extremely offensive: “Let me add that only a moron would be starving and unprepared in the middle of nowhere (like the moron from Into the Wild).”

I don’t know if you have read the book or watched the movie, but this is totally inappropriate. Maybe it was said lightly, but he was a person with a family that suffered very much because of his decisions. I sincerely believe that calling him a moron was uncalled for. I think the family Christopher McCandless would not appreciate this.

I might be exaggerating but I truly felt this was extremely inappropriate, since his death was not a joke but serious matter.

ILSE ARGUETA

Senior, biochemistry and molecular biology

Earlier this fall, UC Davis sent 134 administrators and supervisors to a two-day leadership seminar for a total cost of over $134,000.

Approximately half of this cost came from Staff Development and Professional Services while the other half came from each of the participants’ departments. Given the university’s ongoing budget crisis, we urge the university to focus on academic leadership and to consider cheaper options for staff leadership development.

The seminar was hosted by Sonoma Leadership Systems, a private company that focuses on developing leadership skills within companies and businesses, not academic institutions. Had the seminar been one that specialized in instructing university or academic staff and had tremendous reviews in doing so, a school sponsored seminar may have been appropriate. This, however, was not the case.

UC Davis is the only educational institution Sonoma Leadership Systems has worked with before, its past clients including Apple, Chevron and several banks. If UC Davis is looking to spend tens of thousands of dollars on staff leadership, let it at least be from a company with high reviews and years of experience in dealing with academic institutions. Considering the current budget situation, it is not in the university’s best interest to conduct $100,000 experiments.

Some who attended the seminar felt the spending was superfluous. A source that wished to remain anonymous said, “Most of the information about being a better leader was common sense. We could have just read the book they gave us and learned the same techniques for being a better leader without paying someone thousands of dollars.”

The book used in the course, The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, sells for less than $20 on Amazon.com. Supplying the attendees with the same amount of leadership material would cost approximately $2,680, saving UC Davis well over $100,000. With two more seminars on the horizon we urge UC Davis to consider cheaper options.

Starting in Fall 2011, the communication department will drop students from classes for which they have not completed the prerequisites. The policy was designed in response to increasing class sizes and is an attempt to ensure that students take introductory courses as building blocks for future classes.

This effort to emphasize the importance of prerequisite classes has its obvious benefits such as the ability to build on previous knowledge. However, dropping students from courses is an unrealistic avenue for creating a much-needed change to a previously non-existent policy.

Currently, communication majors are required to take five courses while minors take one class before moving to upper division units. If students are unable to get into these fundamental classes such as General Psychology or Introduction to Sociology, they opt for upper division courses instead. This increases class sizes. Under the new system, students will be dropped from these classes if they try to do this.

Our concern is how this will affect students. If the communication department doesn’t allow students to bypass prerequisite classes, it risks the timely graduation of a large population of students. However, if it doesn’t enforce the new policy, students take classes out of order.

While taking classes in succession isn’t as necessary for a major such as communication, the department’s desire to impose this policy is admirable and a positive step toward enabling students to fully succeed in courses by building on past classes.

However, just dropping students from classes and postponing graduation isn’t the right way to go about this problem. If classes are too large, the communication department should allow increased class sizes for a certain period of time. This will accommodate underclassmen that need to take their introductory courses and upperclassmen in their advanced courses.

After the window of time has closed, so will this policy. As a result, there will be fewer upperclassmen in introductory courses because they would have already taken them allowing first-years and sophomores to enroll in the prerequisites.

The communication department could also ease the process of registering for prerequisites by creating more choices. Other majors include more options for preparatory classes, making this less of a problem for students in other departments.

The department has the prerogative to require that students take introductory courses. And students will probably be better for it anyway. However, more has to be done than just dropping students who haven’t taken prerequisite courses. The department has to implement other systems to make sure students get the classes they need when they need them and that they graduate on time.

It is clear that post-midterm elections Washington will be such that President Obama has to move center of right. In the past six months, I have been toying with the idea of Clintonesque change in Obama’s governance pattern in the aftermath of last week’s elections. Yes, that’s ’cause I predicted (check my first Aggie column “1929 or 2009”) the outcome. Thinking long and hard about a pragmatic presidency engaging Newt Gingrich’s “Contract for America” in 1994, however, and substituting Obama and Tea Party activism, the picture just doest not frame well.

Before we go into the “why” I think this is not 1994, or Obama is not Clinton, let me do some small talk and house keeping here. I caught some flak from Davis College Democrats (DCD) for my “enthusiasm gap” claims about prospective Democratic voters. If the front page of last week’s Aggie, which led with the California elections results, is gospel, then you guys at DCD stand vindicated. My bad.

Let us first deal with the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the Clinton and Obama presidencies. Both presidencies inherited a recession of sorts and budget deficits, but Obama’s mantle came with the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Clinton is a politician who had gubernatorial experience dealing with conservatives in his home state of Arkansas before stepping into the White House. Clinton knew the art of compromise, and was able to walk across the aisle and work with Republicans in getting reforms, balancing the budget and leaving a surplus. Obama’s one term in the Senate does not leave an especially convincing record of aisle crossing, compromise, consensus building or deal making. Politics, unlike activism, is a game of compromise. Obama has to learn that, and pretty darn fast.

About acting like a politician and casting well in the accompanying role and theatrics, there is no gainsaying the fact that Clinton bests what we’ve seen of Obama so far. The former president knows when and how to act for the cameras. I watched him sound off, during the Clinton Global Initiative in September and on the campaign trail leading to the mid terms, closely. I saw a politician with enough fire in his belly to carry the courage of his convictions, very far. Even from within his party, Obama, since enterting the White House, seems very aloof and sedate. Consequently, he is not connecting with “Joe Six-Pack” and his ilk. During the Gulf Oil Spill there were loud yelps for Obama to bring some drama to the presidency. Perception, they say, goes a long way, especially in the current political climate.

Still, on political prowess (or lack thereof), let us look at loyalty and fixation on ideology as crucial indicators for whether a politician will acclimatize as the political tempo changes. We have yet to see that “nothing is off the table” or “all bets are off” moment from Obama.

Imagine in the heat of the midterm campaign, there was this misstep of going to Rhode Island and refusing to endorse the Democratic candidate Frank Caprio, apparently because of an enduring friendship with Republican opponent Lincoln Chafee. This brings up two things: First, there is no such thing as a “gentleman politician;” you are in it to win, Mr. President! Second? As Howard Dean and many others have said, heads need to roll at the White House and fresh hands brought on deck. Who is advising the president that did not tell him to stay clear of Rhode Island? There is a litany of such missteps. And you wonder why the Obama administration can’t market health care reform?

President Clinton had his own albatross around his neck in the infamous Monica Lewinsky probe, leading up to his impeachment, but Obama’s troubles are manifold. Obama’s election to the White House was supposed to be “historic,” “post-racial” and “post-partisan.” The reality bears otherwise.

On the partisan front, we hope that will change in the coming months, for our collective sakes as a nation. However, there is 800-pound gorilla in the room that we hardly want to talk about: The fact the not all the angst for Obama is entirely a repudiation of his policies. He is also “different” from the 43 presidents that preceded him. Remember when “Granny” asked Senator John McCain on the 2008 campaign trail to confirm if Obama was a Muslim and a foreigner? Well, I don’t think talks of “death panels” helped much, either. Fifty-nine percent of seniors voted Republican as opposed to 38 percent voting Democratic. Mitch McConnell takes “the president at his word” that he was born in Hawaii. Gingrich sees a “tribal Kenyan” with “anti-colonial” sentiment in the president. Clinton did not have to deal with that “otherness.”

This “unique” identity, in addition to the economy, questionable advisers and occasional inability to connect with the public, makes it harder for Obama to replicate Clinton’s success.

Reach FAYIA SELLU at fmsellu@ucdavis.edu.

Most college students have done this. It usually happens at night, which makes sense because that’s when we’re most vulnerable. With what few hours of sleep we manage, we wonder why we did it in the morning. What were we thinking? This is where the shame sets in. On our walk to class the following morning, we resolve, “never again.”

Of course, I’m writing about procrastination. If the above describes anything else, it’s probably better suited as material for the column to the left. Procrastination is frustrating. We’ve all had that paper that got pushed to four in the morning because reruns of “The Office,” our Facebook newsfeed (read: stalking), FailBlog, CollegeHumor and FML got in the way. Yeah, FML too. In the past 30 years, the amount of people who express difficulty with procrastination has increased fourfold as shown in a study by the University of Calgary.

Procrastination has existed for quite a long time. The Ancient Greeks had a word for it: akrasia, behaving counter to our best interest. Aristotle and Socrates could not understand why anyone would bypass good judgment to harm themselves for no reason. Why would anyone spend four hours listlessly flipping through the profile pictures of someone they see on a daily basis? One explanation furthered by the Greeks was that akrasia was a function of ignorance. I procrastinate simply because I don’t know any better. I know not that I have forsaken my midterm grade. But that doesn’t seem to capture the problem. Part of the stress from procrastination comes from knowing precisely that we are putting off something that needs to get done now. Somehow, I know my paper will take five hours to complete, that it can get done between the time I get home and midnight, giving me plenty of time for sleep. But I still end up working on it at 6:30 a.m. after getting two negligible, stress-ridden hours of sleep. If ignorance is not the cause, let me present two more schools of thought.

Some social scientists describe procrastination as a “planning fallacy.” To take the previous example, I know that my paper will only take five hours, so it’s okay to go on Facebook right when I get home. You know, just for a minute to check if I have any notifications. And heck, while I have my web browser open, I might as well get on e-mail too. This process takes about five minutes, and I should get back to my paper. But it’s only 7:05 p.m. now, and I can afford to wait a little longer to start. So I go do the dishes downstairs. Suddenly, it’s 6:30 in the morning, and I’ve been repeating the five-more-minutes like a broken record for several hours. In a sense, the first step to delaying the assignment opens a Pandora’s Box. Suddenly, we’re in a world of interruptions, each one chiseling five minutes away from the inevitable mad dash at five in the morning.

Another school of thought calls for a theory of “multiple selves.” In this theory, there are lots of “Me’s” fighting for attention in my head. One Me always wants to go on Facebook to be an attention whore. Another Me really just wants to get that paper done. A third Me feels like I should do my chores and clean the kitchen. What I end up doing is decided by which Me wins control. For the first couple hours, the first Me might drag me to my computer. After it is satisfied, the third Me will go downstairs to do the dishes. Once the other Me’s are all taken care of, only then will the responsible Me buckle down and work on the paper.

By now, you might be wondering what this has to do with your health, since that’s what I normally write about. Procrastination hits all aspects of our lives, and health choices are no different. Saying you’ll make better choices tomorrow is no different from putting the paper off until the morning it’s due. If there’s a solution to both, it’s likely to be similar. In both theories described above, procrastination comes down to present indulgences beating out future rewards. Both call for evening that balance by making future rewards seem more tangible. If the benefit of bypassing procrastination seems more real, you’ll think twice about instant gratification. You can wait to open that Pandora’s Box or answer your Facebook Me later.

RAJIV NARAYAN will answer your e-mails at rrnarayan@ucdavis.edu – cross your fingers he doesn’t procrastinate a reply.

Lots of idioms like to use parts of the body to express themselves: Wearing your heart on your sleeve, having one’s back, or being a kiss-ass, are just examples of a few. But wearing your vulva around your neck, ladies? Is that a thing?

Well, if you visit etsy.com, it literally can be. An online store for handmade or vintage items, the site contains a shopping page called “VulvaLoveLovely” that specializes in “feminist, body positive products” including vulva pendants, portraits, pillows, plushes, etc.

Now, the idea of wearing one’s genitals around his or her neck is not very enticing to most people. Why would any girl want her vagina hanging around her neck?

That’s not my name

First of all, therein that statement lies a common misconception: If any female were to rid herself of skirt and panties this instant, what we’d see would not be her vagina. Colloquially, we tend to mistakenly use the word “vagina” to identify lady-parts in general, when in fact the vagina is an internal structure – a muscular tract that leads from the uterus to the body’s exterior. So unless you’re planning a dissection, chances are you won’t be able to see a woman’s vagina.

What you would see, however, is actually called the “vulva,” the female’s external genital organ. So the next time your friend is worried about flashing her vajay in public because of that super-short skirt she’s wearing, you can correct her and let her know it’s called a vulva. She doesn’t want her vulva hanging out.

We aren’t hippies anymore

No matter what girls decide to call their nether regions – whether it be their vulva, vagina, vajayjay, kitty, beaver, cha-cha, or bluffin’ muffin – a lot of college-aged women enjoy them smooth and depilated, according to a recent article found in Psychology Today.

In the piece, sex therapist/psychiatrist Stephen Snyder comments on the current “bare” trend, stating that many of the young men he treats find a hairy woohoo “unsightly… or even disgusting.” Aww, c’mon now, guys. Don’t be so dramatic. Girls can’t always afford a Brazilian.

Even so, 58.6 percent of girls have made do, says a report by Dr. Debra Herbenick in The Journal of Sexual Medicine; a majority of women aged 18 to 24 had been completely hairless down there at some point throughout the study. And while some girls took to the hot wax for a quick rip off the old block, shaving was the more common approach to smoother lady business.

But is it because guys find it repulsive that girls have the urge to trim the hedges? I’d sure as hell hope not, honeybees – don’t let any man tell you how to work that body of yours. It’s yours, girl. Own it. Yard work for personal satisfaction, however, I’m okay with.

In fact, in her study, Herbenick discovered that plenty of females who kept their kitties bare “reported better genital self-image overall, and more sexual satisfaction.”

So what is it? Why exactly are all you girls shaving, trimming and waxing those bushes? My guess is that it’s just a fad, much like ripped jeans or Ke$ha. Back in the ’70s, hippies were all about the shag carpeting. Nowadays, we prefer a sleeker down-under. Who knows, in another 30 years, maybe we’ll enjoy pubes in the shape of lightning bolts or something. Times change, that’s all there is to it.

So close (oh, oh so close), but so far

While fads may come and go, some things just stick around forever.

The ability to orgasm is one of those things.

But some women, one in seven to be exact, find themselves unable to do so. A study conducted by Kim Wallen, professor of behavioral neuroendocrinology at Emory University, shows that while 98 percent of men boast they “always” orgasm during sex, only 11 percent of women had comparable sentiments. And interestingly enough, approximately the same number of women said the complete opposite: They had never climaxed during sex.

Wallen and his collaborator Elisabeth Lloyd, a professor at Indiana University, both suggest that reaching a climax from intercourse alone is a difficult feat. This is mostly because the clitoris, a female’s most sensitive erogenous zone, is usually not directly stimulated. Try having your partner use his or her hands or tongue for optimal pleasure if you’ve had some difficulties there, ladies.

And it’s also a great idea to get to know your kitties a little better. The more you know about how things work down there, the better sex you’ll have.

While they may be a little difficult to attain, female orgasms are definitely not impossible. In a recent study at Rutgers University, Professor Barry Komisaruk videoed the effects of orgasm on the female brain, finding that waves of pleasure and ecstasy achieved through orgasm are powerful enough to bar a woman from feeling pain.

Yes, sex is a powerful, pleasurable thing. But be educated about it, girls. And don’t be ashamed of your lady-parts. Even if you don’t want to wear your vulvas around your necks, you can still follow the site’s beautiful advice: “Love your vulva, love the vulvas you meet, foster understanding and appreciation of vagina, and be happy with your vagina.”

MARIO LUGO will return with a “Dear Mario” segment next week. If there’s a question you’ve been dying to have answered, e-mail him at mlugo@ucdavis.edu.