Dysfunctional, gridlocked and partisan are all common descriptions of the California State Legislature. The intense fight over the budget along with the dragged out battle over water reform just highlighted the problems of the legislative body.

What the California Legislature needs is reform that will improve its performance in the future. There is a way to do this while also cutting the costs of operation. California’s legislature should be a part time body.

The idea of having a part time body is not entirely radical – in fact, many states have part time legislative bodies. Many of these states have balanced budgets, effective state services and high quality public education.

California has had a “professional” legislature since the mid-1960s. The original change from part-time to full-time seemed reasonable. A state with a very large population might be better served by a legislative body that can focus on the job of governing all year round instead of having other responsibilities. The salary of each legislator would be drastically increased in order to limit the influence of lobbyists.

What citizens must ask is whether the change has actually improved the function of California’s legislature or fixed the problems it was intended to solve. Over time it has become quite clear that the answer is no.

Since the changes made in the 1960s, the legislature has become increasingly polarized. This has occurred to a far greater extent than in the population as a whole, suggesting that the full-time schedule has led to increased partisanship. While some polarization is normal, the extreme partisanship of the current legislative body often cripples the possibility for a much-needed bill to pass.

Even though one of the main goals of making the legislature professional was to decrease the power of lobbyists, there are still enormous numbers of them in Sacramento. Now these lobbyists have the attention of our elected officials all year round. Lobbyists and special interest groups can still greatly influence elections through campaign contributions. This is not just a problem in California, but has plagued national politics as well. Having a full time legislature has not stopped lobbyists from influencing the political process. A part time legislature will at least ensure that legislators can be somewhere other than where the greatest number of lobbyists is concentrated.

The size of the state of California does not necessitate having a full time legislature. Many large states, such as Virginia and Texas have part time legislatures. These states save an enormous amount of money on administrative costs because they don’t have to pay the legislature to work all year long. This money saved can either go into other parts of the budget-like education and infrastructure-or it can stay in the pockets of taxpayers.

A petition being circulated by Citizens for California Reform would limit the legislature’s time in Sacramento to about 90 days. During the rest of the year the candidates may return to their districts. This would give them more time to interact directly with constituents and would make them more responsive to the concerns and needs of the people.

The current dysfunction in the California State Legislature can’t be completely or immediately solved. Long-term structural reforms like a part-time legislature will, however, put this state on a path to future legislative success and a better functioning government.

The part time nature of the legislature will bring in a greater diversity of potential candidates who are not just career politicians. Our government needs to be shaken up, and bringing in people with different ideas and life experiences will make the legislature less partisan, more responsive and will cost us a lot less.

Our representatives will have to work harder and longer at their jobs when in Sacramento, but hard work should be expected from people who are trusted and chosen to serve us.

JARRETT STEPMAN works part time, goes to classes and writes for his school’s newspaper. He thinks that many of his elected officials should be expected to have other responsibilities and experiences besides working in Sacramento. You can send your comments to him at jstepman@ucdavis.edu.

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Thousands dead. One huge reality check for the rest of the world.

The earthquake in Haiti last week should have opened the eyes of the incredibly privileged people in modern countries around the world. New death toll estimates are as high at 200,000 people and one-third of the Haitian population is now homeless. It reminds us that although money, power and greed might keep us safe and sound in America, when Mother Nature hits, none of that will protect us.

Politicians, former presidents and humanitarians all around the world are coming together to send aid and relief to Haiti. Even former President Bush started a relief fund with former President Clinton. (The thought of Bush starting a relief fund for victims of a natural disaster is ironic and actually makes me chuckle.)

The fact that Haiti is an incredibly poor and unstable country doesn’t help. Even in a country like America, though, rebuilding after a natural disaster is not easy. New Orleans is still facing the lasting effects of Hurricane Katrina. That storm was predictable and projected to hit a specific region of the country. The Hurricane Katrina Relief website stated that 1,836 people died, 705 people are still declared missing and 400,000 jobs were lost due to the storm. Everyone remembers how sketch the help for New Orleans was. But I’m glad Bush figured it out in time for Haiti. (Wow, even as a former president I can’t stand him.)

The devastating earthquake in Haiti seems to have brought people closer and reminded them that country boarders are invisible. Unless your country boarder is beginning to have a wall built along it.

But the effects of these disasters are short-lived. In a few months, the local news will turn back to focusing on black-on-white crime and talking up the new national health threat we need to hide from. And while we sit on our thrones, the people of Haiti will slowly fade out of our consciousness and we can go back to hating the Muslims.

If Haiti had any kind of oil, land or natural mineral that the United States really wanted, we could kill the same 200,000 people in a month without losing sleep.

This disaster should not be thought of in a vacuum. The terror, the lost lives and living conditions that are shadowing the people of Haiti is shared with countries all over the world. Just because there is no country to blame for the killings doesn’t mean it’s the only occasion to help one another.

Had an earthquake hit Iraq and killed the hundreds of thousands of people, would we be more sympathetic toward their losses? What difference does it make that it is our bombs that are doing the killing rather some force of nature?

We need to connect the dots in the similarities of pain and suffering around the world. Collateral damage might sound okay by definition, but the politics affecting these lives are just as forceful as a 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

SARA KOHGADAI is hoping for the best for Haiti. Text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross for relief. She can be contacted at sbkohgadai@ucdavis.edu.

It’s the bathroom, the restroom, the water closet, the loo, the john and the lavatory. (But they only call it the lavatory on airplanes. Believe you me, I’ll tamper with whatever the fuck I want to … including the free tampons they offer.)

We have so many names for such a simple device: the shitter. It’s a toddler-sized receptacle that willingly receives all that is unholy, but it’s simultaneously the only place where we can drop all our roles and just be ourselves.

I once had a miracle-dream, a dream that can only be realized in our everyday lives if an angel were to descend from the heavens and will it to be.

A bright white light blinds my face. I’m flung into a massive row of creamy white stalls – around 300 neatly situated next to one another, all handicap sized. The perk: nobody is there. Nobody to judge my unusually gaseous explosions due to that Chipotle spree I had last week. Nobody is there to put you in that awkward situation where they kind of look at you in between the crack of the stall to double check if you’re in there, then kind of push the door to make you really nervous that it might open and they’ll see you doing Sudoku on your right thigh. The beauty lies in the vacancy.

I walk closer to the stalls, poised to select “the one.” I don’t want to be boxed into the middle ones that people can see via some MacGyver mirror-shit when they’re washing their hands. That’s bullshit. And I avoid the first stall at all costs because it offers entrants a full view of my sweatpants gently fallen at my ankles as I do the booty duty.

All preferences in mind, I run down the corridor of colossus shitters and choose the last one: the holy vault. As I close the door behind me, I notice the toilet is the size of a curled-up Ryan Seacrest. Thank god. I’m tired of shitting into toilets that have the circumference of my anus. It’s like sticking a pipe up your ass, like Schwinning yourself on a bike with a stolen seat. I slide my weighty backpack off my sweaty-ass shoulders and what’s this?! There’s actually a goddamn hook to hang it on! Fuck yeah. With everything perfectly in order, I let out a breathy “ooohhh” and gently lay my hairy butt-cheeks onto the porcelain-white bowl. The rest is history …

Whoa! I don’t know where the fuck this article just went. Let’s get back to some more coherent analysis on the status of shitting at UC Davis.

Unfortunately, UC Davis has an overabundance of poor crappers, what I like to call lo-fidelity shitting apparati. Here is my survey of these – the most important rooms on campus, based on three years, one quarter and two weeks of careful research:

MU: Horrible. Have you seen the holes in the stalls? No…not through them…look AT them? Shit’s creepy as fuck. And that middle stall is smaller than my shoulder width, so I have to shit sideways.

Olson: Always has what I like to call “leaky-ass floor syndrome” – if you enter that bathroom, you’re guaranteed to get wet. Every time I go there I’m like, “GODDAMN I SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT SOME OF MY FUCKING SCUBA GEAR UP IN THIS BITCH.” AKA you can’t shit and go to class right after with soaking pants, so you might as well just piss on the floor. Nobody will know the difference.

Haring: Everything in this building is normal except the bathrooms. It’s like you’ve walked into a horrible re-run of AirBud, complete with a locker room. It’s a motherfucking early 70s bathroom is what it is. However, it is the biggest HOTBED for Grout jokes on campus. Over and Grout.

Peety Jay Shields AKA La Lib: There are an insane number of bathrooms in PeeJays, so I’m going to focus on the men’s fourth floor north side bathroom. My friend Reid SWEARS the right hand urinal in this canary yellow bathroom has the unbelievable flush strength to handle one more than number one…if you catch his drift.

Sci Lec: Great bathrooms. There are two problems, however. One, the crack for the stall is about as big as my head, so you might as well leave the goddamn door open when you take a shit. Second, for some reason they never re-fucking-stock the goddamn toilet paper when they need to. And it doesn’t help that it’s 1/10 ply so it feels like wiping your ass with a bubble gum wrapper.

Dutton: The holy grail of toilets. The true room of rest. It’s as if you’ve walked into a Venetian paradise. Their lights are amazing: none of this fluorescent, bug-attracting bullshit. They went the extra mile here and bought the soft, gentle, daylight spectra that gives you that oh-so-natural touch that makes you feel as if you were doing your duty outdoors with the bears and butterflies. Plus, they have Hiny-Hiders. (The crack in the stall door is covered. AKA the clouds in the heavens are parted and Angels sing whenever I walk in there.)

Due to the tight constraints of the UC Davis sexual harassment policy, DAVE KARIMI was only able to conduct his research in male restrooms. If you’d like to share stories or comment on the supposed bed behind the sinks in the first-floor women’s bathroom in Haring, you should shit -err, shoot – him an e-mail at dkarimi@ucdavis.edu.

Last week, the Davis City Council voted to waive the overnight persons number cap on cold weather shelter facilities. The city set a capacity of the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter at 25 individuals, although it was increased to 30 during the extreme cold weather period.

Davis has three shelters of this kind. During cold temperatures in December, the shelters were crowded and two people were turned away from the IRWS. In such cold weather, shelters must be able to find a way to accommodate two more individuals.

The facilities should focus on health and safety, instead of the number of people in each shelter. Sheltering the homeless is more important than tacking on an occupancy limit.

Part of the problem comes from how the shelters did not have a clear procedure to follow during situations of high volume. The city staff has since taken steps to provide a clear procedure to take in case of overcrowding. Even though this occurred after the capacity issues during the cold weather, this is an especially positive change, considering the upcoming heavy rain and windy weather in the next two weeks.

The council’s decision to waive the capacity limit was an example of community residents coming together to express their feelings and communicate their needs effectively to officials. The city originally planned to continue to monitor shelter usage and return with an updated report. Community residents proactively took action. They attended the meeting and voiced their needs, ultimately persuading the council to waive the limits.

Certain costs will have to be taken from the General Fund, since the cold weather was not a declared emergency. An additional $861.49 went to opening a daytime warming shelter, helping the IRWS with capacity increases and distributing bus vouchers.

A total of $66,029 has been allocated to local shelter services this year, including the Wayfarer Center. The countywide shelter in Woodland has capacity of 50 individuals. Furthermore, this location is a clean and sober shelter, unlike the IRWS and Davis Community Meals, which do not require guests to be clean and sober.

There has been much tension and opposing viewpoints concerning the attitude toward Davis’ homeless population. The city should continue to discuss the policies regarding the shelters and work closely with the volunteers and community residents.

In his January State of the State address, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed legislation that would both require a minimum budget allocation of 10 percent for higher education and a ceiling of 7 percent on prison spending.

This proposal would essentially reverse the current budget allocation, which grants 7 percent of state funding for higher education and roughly 10 percent for prison spending.

With our state educational system in peril under fee hikes and budget cuts, Schwarzenegger’s proposal is undeniably appealing – the mismatch of funding between education and prison spending is a major problem. It addresses the longtime concern over the state budgets, which have long been criticized for their counter-intuitive priorities.

But the bill is neither flawless nor a tenable long-term solution. It doesn’t address larger underlying problems such as overcrowding and the three strikes law, as Tom Timar, professor and UC Davis Center for Applied Policy in Education director, said. The proposal will likely meet substantial opposition in the legislature as well.

Nonetheless, we see the proposal as a necessary step toward improvements in California’s dismal education system. Despite potential issues with contractor lobbyists and private interests in the prison system, increased support to our education system is nonetheless vital.

Students, in particular, should stand behind the bill. This is an issue beyond Mrak Hall or Sacramento itself – we need to pressure representatives to back the proposal, since bipartisan support will be needed for its passage.

As Rep. Mariko Yamada (D-Davis) said at last November’s Fall Dialogue with the Chancellor, students should contact their home legislators, no matter their political party or support for the bill. It is crucial that the proposal wins a wide support base, since many representatives will be reluctant to oppose influential lobbyists such as prison guard unions.

If all goes well, the proposal will move toward larger prison problems such as the three strikes law. This is the beginning of a positive movement toward budget reform, and if passed, we hope it is not the end.