Dear UC Davis faculty members,

On Sept. 24, we began the year by walking out of our classes and workplaces in solidarity. Students, faculty, workers and staff who faced furloughs, layoffs, pay cuts and tuition hikes all left their buildings, classes and jobs to rally and march together against the privatization of education.

Workers and students showed overwhelming support for faculty grievances that day. We called attention to the lack of budget transparency and to faculty issues around self-governance. When the administration claimed the Sept. 24 walkout was led chie?y by faculty concerns, we refused to let that claim stand. We insisted we shared one struggle, and wouldn’t be divided by departments, titles, age or salary. We called ourselves equals and took the future of our education, workplace and university into our own hands. But since the walkout, the faculty voice has been almost entirely absent from the opposition to student fee increases and worker layoffs.

From Sept. 24 to November’s UC-wide Days of Action and strikes against the 32 percent fee hikes, the UC protests escalated and spread to include state colleges, junior and community colleges and K-12 public schools throughout California. What began in the fall is now the largest coordinated protest movement in UC history. While UC Davis students and workers continue to act, organize and protest, the UC Davis faculty has all but disappeared.

We want to know why.

All but a small, committed handful of you have been absent at rallies, assemblies, a three-day strike, three open occupations, bike protests, teach-ins and a recent weekend-long study-in at Shields Library.

As the Mar. 4 Statewide Call to Action to Defend Public Education approaches, we call again for your solidarity and participation. We invite you to join us to discuss the barriers to faculty participation at UC Davis in a public forum this Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Wellman 6.

Please join us in the conversation.

Natalie Yahr, Alicia Edelman, Alejandro Gonzalez, Brandon Sowers, Sharmi Basu, Kurt Vaughn, Sara-Juliet Lauro, Karl Frost, William Forkin, Katherine Meler, Magalie Rabasa, Lobna Darwish, Kristin Koster, Yoo-hyun Oak, Geoffrey Wildanger, Alison Tanner, Lauren Corcio and Brian Sparks contributed to this letter.

Ah, good ol’ ignorance. Still finding its way into every last niche of today’s society.

A lot of stupid things take place in our society. The people who commit these ignorant acts usually don’t know what they’re doing. They are typically uneducated and haven’t been exposed to the diversity needed to realize what they’re doing is going to really piss somebody off. Right?

Wrong.

This week’s winner of the Ignorance Award (which had been put on a slight hiatus since I’ve had an acute case of senioritis) somewhat contradicts the aforementioned example of your typical ignorant person in the sense that they are educated.

The award goes to UC San Diego’s Pi Kappa Alpha chapter, which hosted the “Compton Cookout” themed party to celebrate Black History Month.

The event was scheduled to come equipped with “chicken, Kool-aid and, of course, watermelon,” according to the Facebook invitation.

Chicken, Kool-aid and watermelon … to celebrate Black History Month? That’s what comes to mind when they think of black history?

Let’s explore more of the party that was meant “to celebrate … in hopes of showing respect [for Black History Month].”

Like any themed party, you dress up for it. The suggested outfits for boys and girls on the Facebook event page were beyond ignorant.

Observe. To respect Black History Month, guys were expected to “be rockin’ Jersey’s, stuntin’ up in ya white T (XXXL smallest size acceptable), anything FUBU … Tats, etc.”

The fraternity party had a particularly crude attitude toward women. A sexist fraternity? No way.

These UC-educated students said “ghetto chicks,” which they seem to use synonymously with black women, “usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes.”

They end that paragraph with, “The objective is for all you lovely ladies to look, act and essentially take on these ‘respectable’ qualities throughout the day.”

The lovely ladies were obviously not the ghetto chicks (remember: black women) who they were supposed to be mimicking.

I just feel the need to quote some more of this so people understand the absurdity: “They look and act similar to Shenaynay, and speak very loudly, while rolling their neck, and waving their finger in your face.”

What do you even say about something like this? These people go to a UC and are considered among the top percentage of students in the state.

Bullshit like this should remind us of some of the racism embedded into the different institutions in our society. The word “ignorant” wouldn’t be enough to describe UC students throwing a party with a theme like this. You’d really have to actively try to be a dumb ass.

This isn’t even about political incorrectness at this point. Even basic manners should have taught you not to mock people. Trying to mock the accomplishments that Black History Month is actually trying to celebrate with chicken and watermelon is just really uneducated.

They might as well have told people to come with nooses around their necks. That would have got the racism across much more clearly, though. I guess these guys were trying to be subtle.

SARA KOHGADAI just wrote the third to last column of her senior year. Wowzers. Send any goodbyes you have to her at sbkohgadai@ucdavis.edu.

For somebody like myself, it goes without saying that I’ve been obsessed with Chatroulette ever since I heard about it on the blogo-wiki-interweb-twatter-sphere. I spent the better part of Sunday splayed across my bed – in my underwear, with a full neck beard and my nuked leftover enchiladas from On the Border™ – chatting it up with freshmen across the U.S. who are pent up in bomb shelter rooms they call dorms.

If you haven’t heard by now, Chatroulette is essentially a website wherein you video chat with random people from around the world. And by “random people” I mean “strangers stroking their penises from all corners of the globe.” This may seem crazy – holding the sausage hostage, that is – but it’s the damned truth. I think I spent more time talking with penises than I did speaking with faces.

(For the record, speaking with penises loses its novelty after the 400th time. Except when there’s a particularly small one … in which case I’ll poke fun until they press F9. Or sometimes, I’ll get on a righteous “report” spree, but then realize that for every penis-stroker I squash, 10 more will pop up in its place.)

If only I were an attractive, female, college-aged student. I would have no trouble talking with people if that were the case. (I have done some extensive sociological research on this subject. Let me tell you there are like five women out of an average 30,000 users on Chatroulette at any given hour, and they’re all not interested in talking with ugly people.)

But simply being an attractive woman doesn’t mean the average male Chatrouletter doesn’t want you to yank out your titties. And they’re not shy about it either: one Chatrouletter emphatically pleaded “Tits for Haiti” (this is a true story, as tasteless as it may be) despite the fact that I couldn’t offer him – or Haiti – any tits without hair. You see, 99 percent of Chatrouletters are looking for love over the Internet. And by “love,” I don’t mean “Fiona rescues Shrek” love – I mean, “Love in this Club” kind of love.

It can get ugly, too. At approximately 6 a.m. yesterday morning, I was emotionally molested by a procession of Italians in the (what I now like to call) “roulette of pain.” The first guy asked me “did you know you are fat?” I decided to play along and feign excitement. I turned to my roommate and said, “Oh my god … Matthew, did you hear about this? I’m fat! How long has it been?” All I got was a blank stare, and then a well placed, “Fuck You! Stupid American! You elect George Bush … twice!”

Damn it, Emilio. You got me. But I didn’t vote for George Bush, not even once. Why do we have to be lumped together all the time? “Because he represents you people,” the Italian guy says. Fine. But seriously, George Bush has single-handedly fucked up my Chatroulette experience. Americans have zero credibility abroad. Not that having credibility in a chat room filled with penises matters or anything.

You’ll meet your fair share of imposters as well – remember, you are surfing the web and can be whoever you want. I met this one girl from New York City who told me she was fluent in sign language and had been speaking (?) it for 16 years. I asked for a quick run-through of the alphabet, and lo and behold, she forgot how to sign the letter “Q.” Fucking LIES. If you can’t spell out a specific letter in an alphabet, you are not fluent in that language. I don’t care how many deaf people you know, Ashley. If you’re reading this … you’re an asshole.

DAVE KARIMI needs a study-buddy for this Friday’s midterm in 118B O-chem with Sarah Lievens. (Questions, questions, questions?) He’s made note cards for all the reactions for this midterm, but they might as well be written in Chinese they’re so obscure. You can e-mail him at dkarimi@ucdavis.edu if you want to meet up.

The following is my reply to Zamir Thind’s response to Uri Fishelson’s letter. While this exchange might be seen as a lot of responding, I believe this is pivotal in having a civil, academic debate.

First of all, prefacing opinions with an apology not only diminishes the argument, but also does not make the issues less offensive. Secondly, taking a 10-week college course about a convoluted and controversial 100-plus-year-old issue does not legitimize Thind’s point.

In addition to comparing Judaic ideals to those of the Nazis, Thind calls for Jews to “get over” the Holocaust and stop using it as an excuse for “everything wrong with Israeli policies.” There is only one problem: we cannot get over it, nor should we get over it.

We “play” the “woe is me card” because we must inform people of what happened. We must ensure that those murdered during the Holocaust and World War II did not perish in vain. We are not complaining. We are educating.

If we get over it, should we also overlook Cambodia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Armenia, Darfur and the Sikh genocide? I hope that such atrocious events are never forgotten in history. And for that matter, why aren’t people complaining about the Sikh genocide? No awareness can be garnered if no attention is raised. Do people not care about the extermination of their own culture? I do. We do. That is why we talk about it, educate others about it and always remember it.

Thind argues that Nazis and Jews are similar because they want to preserve their race. But isn’t the goal of any group to try to preserve its culture, ideals and heritage? As far as I know, neither Jews (a religion) nor Nazis (a political party) were their own races. His linkage of the two puts them on the same scale, which is like saying that the unthinkable extermination of six million people is somehow equivalent to anything Israel has done.

Anti-Semitism is defined as a prejudice against or hostility toward Jews. I faced this here in Davis, as I was personally called a Nazi during the event mentioned in Fishelson’s letter. Besides being extremely hurt as I was equated to the murderer of my relatives, I was, quite frankly, disappointed that these views are still held in such an educated and progressive community.

No, I personally do not believe that being anti-Israel is the same as being anti-Semitic. There is a clear-cut distinction between being Jewish and agreeing with or opposing Israeli policies. Yes, I disagree with certain actions of the Israeli government, much like some people feel about the actions of their own countries. But if Thind wants to distinguish between anti-Israel and anti-Semitism, he should focus more on his primary thesis. He should avoid embarking on irrelevant tangents by comparing the Jews to the Nazis, the victims to the murderers.

Editor’s note: The following letter is in response to Zamir Thind’s letter to the editor that ran on Thursday’s opinion page. Miller taught at UC Davis from 1968 to 1971. He has lived in Contra Costa County since 2002.

I recognize that one should never judge the content of a course by the accounts of its students, but Mr. Thind’s recounting of the history of the Middle East is so confused that one has to wonder if he sleeps through class or if this is indeed the kind of drivel that is disseminated in POL 136 at UC Davis.

The assertion that the Jewish state was created out of fear of assimilation is as mindless as it is insipid. The Jewish state was the result of two imperatives: a 3,000-year affinity to the land, and a need for the Jewish people to find refuge in a world where the British Foreign Office and the American State Department preferred that Jews died in Hitler’s gas chambers rather than be rescued through emigration.

Contrary to Mr. Thind’s assertions, Britain actually hindered the creation of a Jewish State. As the British withdrew from the Mandate, they turned over strategic positions to the Arabs while disarming the Jews. Britain created the Arab Legion, staffed with British officers, that was the best trained and equipped and most capable fighting force during the Israeli War for Independence. At the UN, Britain actually abstained on the vote for partition and did not even recognize Israel until Jan. 29, 1949. A generation earlier, Britain arbitrarily created the “faux” state of Jordan, from which Jews were excluded.

As for the canards equating Judaism with Nazism, they are not worthy of a response.

Certainly, Mr. Thind must have learned in POL 136 that nearly one million Jews were expelled from Arab lands after 1948 and that for a Palestinian to sell land to a Jew is a capital crime.

In contrast, over a million Arabs live in Israel with equal political rights. Arabs serve in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and have represented Israel at the UN and in Israel’s diplomatic corps. In Arab and Muslim lands, where Jews lived for centuries before there was an Islam or an Arab nationalism, almost no Jews remain.

Mr. Thind needs to rethink which culture seeks exclusion.

In a shocking display of racism and ugly stereotyping last week, members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University of California, San Diego hosted a party dubbed the “Compton Cookout.”

Organizers encouraged women attending the event to dress and act like “ghetto chicks” with gold teeth and cheap clothes.

“They look and act similar to Shenaynay, and speak very loudly, while rolling their neck, and waving their finger in your face,” read the event description posted on Facebook. “Ghetto chicks have a very limited vocabulary, and attempt to make up for it by forming new words …”

The event description noted that this event was organized to celebrate and show respect for Black History Month.

Anyone with even an ounce of awareness should have been able to recognize this as an incredibly distasteful manifestation of racism and sexism, regardless of how innocent the organizers claim their intentions were.

Administrators and campus leaders at UCSD were right to condemn the events, and take proactive steps to improve the racial climate at the campus, where only 326 undergraduates identify as African American out of a total of 22,048.

At the same time however, we must recognize that this was an off-campus private party; it was not officially sponsored by the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. And as odious as the language in the event description was, it was constitutionally protected speech.

Around 30 state legislators neatly arranged themselves in front of TV cameras on the Capitol steps to denounce the party and demand action from UCSD leaders. It was slightly bewildering to see them make an issue out of something so far removed from the daily business of the legislature.

We can all agree that the party was inappropriate, but was condemning it on TV really more important than addressing the issue of middle-income students being priced out of higher education? Where was the fancy press conference about the conflicts of interest some of the UC Regents have? Where is the outrage over the ever-declining funding for students?

The press conference was designed to make legislators look good. What it really did was perpetuate the image of a legislature that is ignorant of the deeper issues UC is facing.