Given that California uses initiatives that allow citizens to directly vote on constitutional amendments, we have a greater responsibility to be informed about issues that may on the surface seem inconsequential.

An initiative on this year’s ballot, Proposition 15, called the California Fair Elections Act, deals with one such complex issue requiring more than a passing consideration.

Prop. 15 addresses campaign finance, and is yet another attempt to limit the impact of money and lobbyists in politics. It sets up funds for the California Secretary of State that could potentially decrease the time spent on fundraising as well as cut back on lobbyist influence. Having a well-funded campaign is often the key to victory for many political candidates, so any change to campaign finance laws can change whom we get as an elected representative. Well-connected incumbents have an edge, making re-election a common occurrence.

The influence of lobbyists over our representatives is troubling because it raises concerns over whom politicians serve. Efforts by lobbyists don’t discriminate based on party, and neither Democrats nor Republicans can claim to be free from blame.

So the potential payoff of Prop. 15 seems worthwhile. The most prominent features of the new law are: Placing a fine on lobbying and all registered lobbyists, allowing money raised from these fines to be given equally to qualified candidates running for Secretary of State and capping the amount of private funds that they can accept. According to one section of the bill these steps can be seen “to reduce the perception of influence of large contributions on the decisions made by state government.”

This is part of what makes this law and many others like it go astray.

For years the federal government has used campaign finance laws and public funding of campaigns in an attempt to make elections fairer, but this has been largely unsuccessful. After campaign finance laws were created in the mid 1970s, there was certainly a major shakeup in the composition of congress. Many incumbents lost, adding more fresh legislators to the mix of veterans. It appeared that the effort had succeeded.

This shakeup didn’t last, and a nasty lot of unintended consequences started to crop up. Clever politicians began finding ways to abuse and take advantage of the system. Special groups called “527s” were created through a loophole in the law, allowing unlimited amounts of money to be used indirectly to support a campaign.

One of the problems that campaign finance laws have created is the increased difficulty for an average citizen to observe just who is being funded and how it is being funded. The perception that campaign finance laws have truly freed up candidates from lobbyists and money raising is false and perhaps even more dangerous than simply allowing funding to occur directly.

Campaign finance laws continue to give the edge to insiders and people who know how to work the system. If there are loopholes in Prop. 15 politicians will find them.

For one, it’s voluntary, so must be agreed upon by all candidates. A candidate with a large advantage in private funds is less likely to agree to any measure that levels the playing field. Even though this might be met with public scorn, a large amount of cash can make up for a poor initial public perception. Having to fund financially similar campaigns might be worth the cost of eliminating lobbyist fueled earmarks, but given politician’s ability to skirt the rules it isn’t necessarily a burden that the public should have to accept.

There is also a provision that prevents candidates from using public money for things like legal fees and other personal expenses. This means that they can be privately funded, once again opening up a potentially large amount of financial disparity and reliance on lobbyists.

The last problem with this law is that publicly financing campaigns is illegal in California. Prop. 15 uses lobbyist money to finance campaigns, but what if there is a shortfall? That burden will fall on the taxpayers.

The bottom line is that while attempts to make access to political positions open for people who are neither rich nor well connected insiders is a worthy goal, they are often abused, undermined and produce whole new sets of complications and barriers. Given the limited scope of Prop. 15, it might not hurt to give a law like this a try, but those unintended consequences might just rear their ugly heads again.

JARRETT STEPMAN doesn’t want public service to be simply for the wealthy and well connected, but he also thinks well meaning efforts for reform can be twisted to serve those who are. You can contact him at jstepman@ucdavis.edu.

Two nights before I drove back up to Davis at the end of my one-week spring break, my parents sat me down in their last-ditch effort to convince me to study abroad and learn Chinese in Hong Kong instead of going to Turkey.

“Realistically, how do you see learning Turkish benefiting your future?” my dad asked, leaning over the kitchen table with eyes squinted.

I turned my head to the side and decided against coming up with a good enough reason.

“It won’t,” I confessed.

The real reason why I chose Turkey was that my housemate Nathan got me to go with reasons I can no longer remember. I initially chose Hong Kong; he chose Turkey. I tried convincing him to go with me to Hong Kong, but since he’s always been the better debater between the two of us, he managed to convince me.

I drafted a couple of reasons of my own so I could make it sound like an independent decision when I told people. I said things like “I could go to Hong Kong any summer, but Turkey is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.” But still, in the back of my head, I wondered if I’d still go if Nathan changed his mind.

I drove up from Diamond Bar the Sunday after spring break with my parents’ conversation in my mind. At that point, I was still planning to stay in Davis another year. I was going to find an apartment with Nathan for fall and winter quarters, then study abroad in Turkey. During that time, I was also spending several hours a day reading the Bible and thinking about seminary school. Since the options in California are slim and I was pretty much a card-carrying Calvinist like Nathan, the chances that we’d end up at the same seminary was likely.

That was a few weeks before Nathan called me from his home to tell me that his mother was diagnosed with Stage 3 stomach cancer. It was the night before Easter Sunday.

After I found out, I called several members from our Christian fellowship over to the house to pray and about 15 people came over. We went around in a circle to confess our misguided hopes, and when it came to my turn, I prayed for what I thought at the time was empathy.

I suppose I thought I’d known Nathan, his faith – or rather myself, and my faith – and I prayed for what would change about those things. But what happened afterward was against all my expectations of both of us.

That was nearly two months ago. He goes home every weekend to be with his sick mother. I spend the weekends indoors, listening to news podcasts and reading fiction about other countries. Once, I mentioned Turkey to him, and he said, “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to go anymore.” He didn’t explicitly say why, but it was assumed I knew the reason.

Since then, Nathan became everything I wanted to be but never could. He’s sure of himself, confident, able to see blessings in his suffering. He’s stronger in his faith than I’d ever been or hoped to be. He’s positive, funny in group settings, profound when he wants to be.

Since then, I became a lot of things I never wanted to be but inevitably grew into. I’m soft-spoken and argumentative. Easily-offended. While Nathan’s staying another year, I decided to graduate early, and I plan to move home after my lease here finishes in the summer. I no longer plan to go to seminary, but plan to apply for an MFA in creative writing instead.

Last week, I had dinner with one of the girls who was there praying with me the night I found out about Nathan’s mother. She asked if I considered myself a Christian and a Godly man. These days, I read the Bible for maybe a few seconds a week, and I only go to church if someone’s getting baptized. I said I couldn’t call myself a Godly man, but I still identified as a Christian. Recently, I’ve been questioning whether you can really have one without the other.

Nathan once said that I put myself and others in boxes with neatly defined labels, and that I should just let people exist as their unexplainable selves. I agree, but I have no idea how to change.

I thought about that when I turned in my study abroad application last Thursday to the EAP center. The guy at the desk reviewed my papers and put them all together in a green folder, and said, “You’re all set.”

The paper still said “Bilkent University, Turkey” on the top, right-hand corner.

GEOFF MAK invites you to read this article (and past and future articles) on his blog at inyourbookbag.wordpress.com. E-mail him at gemak@ucdavis.edu if you are also going to Turkey next spring.

A seemingly kind but shabby looking man offers you Seattle’s Best Coffee at Borders. The old man has been sitting across from you on a stool for at least an hour. He disappears for a few minutes and comes back to offer you a cup of coffee. What do you do?

Do you take the coffee and chat with him for hours on end? Do you pretend to take a sip? Do you simply deny the offer? Should you be impressed, suspicious or disgusted?

We get taught early on not to associate with strangers. Don’t take candy from a stranger. Don’t go looking for a lost, white kitten with a stranger. Don’t accept random rides from a stranger. Don’t do ANYTHING with a stranger.

These thoughts are indoctrinated in us, and they stick with many of us. We think, “See! I’ve survived 20 years without getting kidnapped so the ‘no stranger policy’ must work.”

This policy then gets applied to anyone who just isn’t the same as us. Anyone who looks “different” – doesn’t dress a certain way or is much older – is off-limits. It becomes difficult to tell when a person has good intentions without basing our perceptions upon their reputation.

It’s the feeling that if a younger, well-dressed guy offers you coffee, then he probably isn’t a creeper – he’s just being a gentleman. But really, even compared to a shabby old man, there’s the same amount of possibility that he can’t be trusted.

It might seem naïve for someone to trust a disheveled guy and accept coffee from him, but this is based on the assumption that he has some ulterior motive. Is this really fair or just? He should have just as much opportunity to commit to a random act of kindness without having someone react in disgust or suspicion.

We’re not used to these random acts of kindness, which is why we need national holidays and special school functions to remind us, “It’s okay to be nice. No one is going to frown upon you.” We assume that everyone hates each other and has some motive behind their actions – just look at all the “Hate Free Zone” posters plastered around campus. It becomes difficult to simply be nice to others.

Being thoughtful or kind to others has become out of the ordinary. We’re used to every man thinking only about himself instead of what others might want. Consideration toward others is clouded under suspicion.

My first reaction to being offered coffee was amazement and surprise. People don’t usually just buy coffee for strangers. When there are these rare, polite gestures, we can’t possibly accept them. Inevitably, a voice in the back of your head tells you that you can’t accept something from someone you don’t know. There has to be a reason this questionable guy is offering you coffee.

But does there really have to be a reason? Although out of haste and surprise, I didn’t accept the coffee. Maybe underlying all this is again that ingrained fear responding.

Surely the incident was atypical, but I didn’t think too much of it. It actually wasn’t until I talked to a few friends that I got a sense that many would find the guy to be a creeper. Their reactions said it all – distorted faces and the mouthing of “creeper.”

Ultimately, reputations don’t matter much. But they do matter when people react to you in a certain manner based on a misunderstood or misguided perception. It’s not fair to a well-intentioned person when you react with loath just because they look shady based on your image.

Despite the fear we’re ingrained with, not everyone is a hater.

TIFFANY LEW loves Matt Bellamy’s quote on Muse being ashamed to be a part of Twilight. Google it or e-mail her at tjlew@ucdavis.edu for the full quote.

I don’t like being sentimental, really. It’s in poor taste most of the time. I like to take the British stiff upper lip approach when it comes to socially-demanding displays of crocodile tears. So my last two columns will not be emotional, and I’m certainly not going to thank anyone. The trite phrase, “I couldn’t have done it without you” is absolute bullocks and I will not partake in such nonsense.

Okay, you should probably stop reading this column in an evil British accent. Honestly, writing a column is not that high on my list of life accomplishments though. I would say it hovers between getting circumcised and that $8 all-you-can-eat buffet I had in Vegas: They’re painful experiences that I don’t remember, but they’re … oh fuck it, I have no idea where I was going with that joke. If you really want to know where I was going with it, you should e-mail me. But we’ll get to e-mailing me soon. Hang tight.

To me, useless sentimentality is kind of like clapping. Have you ever stopped to think about what clapping is anyway? It’s making loud sounds with your hands to show someone your approval. It’s primitive … ape-like almost. Imagine if aliens were studying us like anthropologists. I’m sure they would be fucking blown away:

“Hey, Mr. Blonde, come look at the humans. They’re fuckin’ smacking their hands together violently for no reason again.”

Mr. Blonde responds with a blank stare: “Wow. And what’s with the nonsensical noises? We could totally just vaporize them right now, and they’d have no clue what hit them. Douchebags, the lot of them.” By the way, “Mr. Blonde” is a reference to the evil alien in Perfect Dark.

Apes beat their chests. Humans clap their hands. Simple as that. Also: your hands. Look at your hands. Yeah, you’re a fucking monkey. Don’t deny that shit. And they say evolution doesn’t exist. Balderdash! I’m not about to latch onto the idea of intelligent design. That’s just about as bad as intelligent falling: or as they say in more academic circles, “gravity.”

But G-d might have some trouble in the logic department, too. Can G-d microwave a burrito so hot that even He couldn’t eat it? What’s that? You need to see a doctor because your head just exploded? Let me clean that up for you.

I can’t understand why people remove the “o” in God like we can’t figure out what fucking letter is missing and that, more curiously, God will be more pleased if the “o” wasn’t there. I can imagine God up there shaking his head in disgust, “MEDAMNIT, WHY THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE NOT TAKING THE ‘O’ OUT IN MY NAME?! FOR ME SAKES! I’M JUST GONNA KNOCK OVER THIS FUCKING OIL RIG. THAT’LL SHOW ‘EM. AND I’M CANCELLING LOST. ”

It’s like Harry Potter. Only the most naïve characters in that book won’t say Voldemort’s name (and they’re invariably the characters that are afraid to face reality). It actually reminds me of religion as a whole. Maybe that’s why most scientists are atheists: Because if you believe that fairytale bullshit, then either you’re really dumb and can’t face plain-as-day facts or you need a crutch because you’re emotionally fragile.

I’ve noticed that many people (especially in institutions of higher learning) are religious because of said emotional frailty. They’re perfectly nice people – and they’re highly intelligent – but the vicissitudes of life are too much for them. They need order among the chaos. Well, to that I say there is no silver bullet. Shut up, be nice, pop a couple Xanax and move on. Learn to play an instrument, or do something else cool that people reference when they want you to do something fulfilling and productive in an emotionally non-threatening way in list-form.

Oh! I forgot about the funny e-mails. Well, I guess I’ll just have to save them for the next column. It’s worth the wait. Trust me. I’m sorry for being all Mr. Rogers-esque this week. I’m like talking to you but there’s nobody here.

Speaking of Mr. Rogers, does anyone remember “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” – and, in specific, the mailman named Mr. McFeely? He reminds me of Elton John but in mailman form.

Did you notice the title and how it made no sense? Well, it actually does make a lot of sense if you consider that it’s an opposite of a common dish found in many American restaurants. Think about it for a second before you read the answer. Did you try at least? If you guessed “chicken tenders” then you’re right. DAVE KARIMI would have also accepted “turkey breast,” because breasts are pretty soft. E-mail him at dkarimi@ucdavis.edu.

Beginning tomorrow, students will have the chance to make a strong and definitive statement to Mark Yudof and the UC Regents about whether or not they have confidence in the administration and its voting members.

If the two “no confidence” votes pass, potentially thousands of students will have democratically professed their dissent, sending the message that the path of the regents has led students to severely distrust their decisions.

There is certainly reason to lack confidence in Yudof and the regents. First and foremost, the 32 percent fee increase was entirely unexpected, sudden and overwhelming. The increase was unfair to say the least and completely devastating to many. We suspect that there were other, less dramatic options that regents simply overlooked in exchange for an easy way out of a budget crunch.

At the regents’ most recent meeting last week, a main item of discussion was to reduce administrative costs by centralizing departments such as human resources. This plan will save an estimated $500 million over five years. Student fee increases were expected to save a fixed amount of $505 million, some of which goes toward financial aid. We question whether the idea to save $500 million by combining a few departments simply required more time to configure, or if the regents really did turn their backs on students before looking at alternative measures.

These are some of the problems that might lead a student to understandably not have confidence in the regents. However, to say that we have absolutely no confidence in the regents would disregard any efforts made by Yudof and the regents, small as some believe they may be. These efforts may both improve the functionality of the university and sustain the quality of its education.

We therefore have “diminished” confidence in the leadership of the UC after this year. We haven’t lost hope, and believe that, soon, much of our confidence will be restored.

Several of the UC Commission on the Future’s recommendations actually benefit students. For instance, one step that the regents will most likely take is to encourage students to graduate in less time. Regents have admitted that if they do this, they will also most likely be forced to make classes more available.

The Access and Affordability Workgroup not only insisted that financial aid always be available for low-income families, but also suggested that middle-class families be given more aid.

Regents and Yudof have also made considerable advocacy efforts in Sacramento. This is perhaps one reason why Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s revised budget proposal restores $370 million in funding to UC, which will help to close next year’s budget gap significantly. This advocacy effort seemed wishy-washy at best before regents went through with it. However, their success is promising.

We strongly encourage students to vote in Wednesday’s special election. A student’s reasons for voting no confidence are personal – the ambiguity of the resolutions encourages these students to have their own reasons for voting. Though maintaining a “diminished” level of confidence doesn’t have a place on tomorrow’s ballot, we urge voters to consider its implications as a possible benefit to the future of their education.