Due to the implementation of furloughs, students may have to find another way home at night.

This is one possible solution Unitrans has suggested in response to their mechanics receiving furloughs.

“Our operations can get by with fewer days, but the maintenance affects the day to day operation of our service to students,” said Geoff Straw, Unitrans manager. “If we can’t manage it through overtime or request service from outside agencies, we’ll have to cut service.”

University of California implemented the furlough – and because it affects all departments on campus, Unitrans is not exempt. Unitrans has nine career employees who are subject to the UC furlough program.

When the furlough was first announced, Straw attempted to make an appeal and was denied exemption, but was granted the ability to choose furlough days.

“All the departments are hurting from furloughs,” Straw said. “We’re going to have to share the pain like everyone else.”

Many have an issue with this particular furlough since Unitrans does not cost the university itself any money. Students pay $42 every quarter to Unitrans as part of their ASUCD fees. These funds make up nearly half of Unitrans’ $4.8 million budget.

“Unitrans is solely funded through grants and student fees,” said ASUCD Controller Eli Yani, a junior political science and classics double major. “Furloughing the mechanics would be superfluous when we can support them ourselves.”

Straw agreed, noting that students will be paying Unitrans the same amount with their campus-based fees, but getting less service. Taxes from Davis residents also contribute funds to Unitrans.

Unitrans hopes to receive input from the community through a commission designed to present solutions for the cuts. The student government has already passed a resolution against the Unitrans furloughs.

“The amount [UC] is saving is negligible,” said ASUCD senator and coauthor of the resolution, Jack Zwald. “Regular Unitrans service is so great that we can’t afford to see it gone.”

The furloughs are expected to save Unitrans $48,000; however, officials are not yet sure where this money will go. This makes finding solutions to the cuts difficult, Straw said.

“The big issue is that we don’t know what the exact impacts will be because we haven’t heard enough information from the university,” he said.

Some possible cuts Unitrans may have to make are decreasing night hours of operation and reducing the number of “tripper buses,” or extra buses called on to pick up any overflowing passengers from overcrowded stops.

However, Unitrans officials say they understand the strain the cuts would put on students and are looking for options that have the smallest impact on students’ transportation needs.

“We will use our resources in the best possible way to obtain the maximum service possible,” Straw said.

LAUREN STEUSSY can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

Any lady squirrels out there not looking for anything serious? Keep your eyes peeled for males with ear tags and dyed fur.

Not only have these males adopted human fashion trends, but they are also among the 68 squirrels that have already been given hormone injections to stop them from reproducing as part of an experiment to control the population of Eastern Fox squirrels on campus.

“There has been no noticeable increase in the population of the Eastern Fox squirrel,” said Sal Genito, director of the Buildings and Grounds division of Facilities Management. “What I can tell from observing myself, I believe that the population is pretty much stabilized.”

Eastern Fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) are between 10 and 15 inches long and weigh between 1.5 and 2 pounds. They can be identified by their orange-brown colored coat and bushy tails with reddish-topped hair, according to Americazoo.com. Cute as they may be, they don’t belong here and are disrupting the ecosystem, said Sara Krause, the doctoral student from the Department of Ecology who is in charge of the program.

“They’re an invasive species in California,” she said. “They have no natural predators in the area, especially not on campus.”

Getting their population to “plateau” is the first step to the birth control research program, which began last November when Department of Ecology faculty and staff began laying traps. The wire mesh traps invite the squirrels to eat the acorn before the box shuts. The boxes are covered with canvas and feature plenty of room to move around.

Captured squirrels were examined, marked with a dye and freed throughout last fall and winter before they were administered the hormone shots this summer.

Once the population plateaus, the goal is to reduce it to a small, sustainable number in five to 10 years. In the meantime, the squirrels will continue to aggravate the grounds crew and tree lovers, said Genito.

“The damage they’re doing is of concern – because they use a lot of the large redwoods as nesting sites, and if you look closely, there are several ‘runways’ going up in to the trees,” he said.

Genito likened it to students strolling through grass as a shortcut in class, rather than taking a paved walkway.

“Damage just occurs as a result of frequent traffic. It’s especially harmful to the Redwood population.”

Other campus fixtures the squirrels have enjoyed include sprinkler heads – both for teething and relief on a hot summer day.

“They’ve been gnawing on sprinkler heads all over,” said Krause. “And they have to be replaced much more frequently because of it.”

But the main reason Krause and her team undertook this project is not to keep UC Davis grounds workers from becoming Bill Murray’s character in Caddyshack, but to restore the ecosystem to its original state – before the invasive species arrived.

The non-native squirrels create competition with plants and animals that are native to the area, said Krause.

“Eastern Fox squirrels eat the same foods as native gray squirrels and birds,” she said. “They have also been known to eat eggs and baby birds.”

Crops threatened by overpopulation include almonds and walnuts at campus research farms and orchards, as well as the bark of redwood trees in the arboretum.

Krause said that, should the experiment continue to go as planned, the next step is to gain EPA approval for commercial use.

“We’re pretty optimistic that it will continue to work similar experiments already have on other species,” she said. “With the conclusion of this study, we’ll have a model for how this can work in a community and specifically, how we can make it work for our campus in the long run.”

Genito said they’ve reached out to the city of Davis and found interest, but that current budget constraints may be a limiting factor in starting a project such as this one.

Eastern Fox squirrels taking up residence elsewhere is a concern though.

“Just because we’re doing what we can to do birth control here doesn’t mean the squirrels won’t move to a nearby location at some point,” Genito said.

MIKE DORSEY can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

Thousands of students and staff stood sweating in the heat at last Thursday’s faculty and student walkout rally, fanning themselves with picket signs and fliers.

By noon, when the rally began, temperatures had reached almost 95 degrees. But that wasn’t the only reason why students and faculty were sweating.

“We in the university community see the effects of these years of funding cuts – fee increases, fewer classes, larger classes, less access to professors,” said Markus Luty, a speaker at the rally and physics professor. “The UC system is at a tipping point between greatness and mediocrity.“

The next day in his physics class, Luty allegedly received a standing ovation from his students.

Several students, faculty and community members spoke at the rally, including a student from the Native American Student Association, CEO of Sacramento Central Labor Counsel Bill Camp and Gretchen Braun, lecturer of the Undergraduate Writing Program.

The walkout was initially organized by faculty upset by the recent furlough plan and increased student fees, but garnered student support through interest in the fee hike. The rally was part of the day-long walkout, and was joined by members of the University Professional and Technical Employees union.

The rally ended at approximately 1:30 p.m., with the crowd taking “the scenic route,” as one protestor called it, to Mrak Hall, circling around the center of the campus, acquiring support and attention from bystanders.

Following the Mrak Hall protest, participants marched to the Chancellor’s house off campus, carrying signs that read, “I’ve seen the best minds destroyed by Yudof,” and “Cut from the top, not student tuition!” There, they ate donated sandwiches and held an open-microphone session for protestors to tell the crowd why they attended the walkout.

After the rally, responses from those who attended were positive, with many impressed by the turnout and spirit of the day’s events.

“I was caught off-guard, not by the amount of students and faculty there, but that there were so many people going up to the microphone and voicing their opinions and being allies for the cause,” said Ozzy Arce, a junior community and regional development major who participated in the rally. “I was very impressed.“

In response to the walkouts held across all 10 UC campuses, the UC Office of the President released a statement in which they recognized the frustrations of those protesting, but pointed to the state’s diminished contribution to higher education as the reason behind most of the cuts.

“While we understand there’s some anger and angst spread across our campuses, our hope is that it will be directed more precisely toward Sacramento, where the heart of the problem lies in shifting political priorities and a dysfunctional system of governance,” said Leslie Sepuka, media specialist for UCOP, in a written statement. “It is a sad state of affairs indeed when a state spends more on prisons than it does on higher education.“

Although over 1,000 students attended the rally and nearly 200 faculty members signed a letter signifying their support for the walkout, the majority of the campus did not attend or did not support the walkout.

When Jacqueline Condliffe, a first-year music major learned that her professor might be walking out on Thursday, she expressed sympathy for the professor’s situation, but believed that the walkout might not be as effective for students in the classroom.

“[If my professor doesn’t show up today,] I feel like coming to class would have been a waste of my time,” she said. “I have other classes I could be studying for.“

Condliffe also heard that many of her peers were not showing up to class on Thursday, not in support of the walkout, but simply to get out of class.

“I know a lot of kids that are taking advantage of their professors not coming to class. It’s an excuse to ditch.“

In the following weeks, those at the rally hope to continue writing letters to local legislators, urging state lawmakers to apportion more funds to public universities.

LAUREN STEUSSY can be reached@theaggie.org.