With UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef’s 15-year tenure coming to a close in June, the search is on for someone to take over the fifth floor of Mrak Hall.

A search committee made up of students, staff, faculty, alumni and UC regents is currently working to find a new chancellor. But what exactly does the chancellor do and should students even care?

Vanderhoef says his job is mostly about being a representative of UC Davis.

“The greatest share of my time is spent at the interface between the campus and the rest of the world,” he told The Aggie editorial board last fall.

The chancellor is also responsible for hiring all the vice chancellors (the executives who essentially run UC Davis) and the deans. The deans hire the department heads, and the department heads hire the faculty.

In other words, his actions have little direct impact on the day-to-day lives of students.

The chancellor has little influence over the campus budget beyond signing off on the final draft. He doesn’t have the power to raise or lower student fees. He doesn’t make decisions about whether to build new dormitories or to add wireless internet to, say, 1100 Social Sciences.

The chancellor is the person at the top of a vast and complex network of administrators and staff who make most of the decisions that students actually care about.

To that extent, students should care about who the next chancellor is. If all you want is more parking spaces, however, a better bet would be to politely harass the appropriate vice chancellor (ahem, Stan Nosek) until he gives in.

That’s not to say students shouldn’t care. The chancellor sets the tone for the university, helps guide long-term development and serves as an example of what UC Davis stands for.

For the past few weeks, this column has spent a great deal of time criticizing government institutions and officials that, in my opinion, seek to curb the presence of self-determination in our society. I have pointed the finger at over-regulation and forced altruism, stating that such forms of collectivism rob men of there right to self-governance.

However, this holiday break, as I witnessed a church full of Catholics uniformly regurgitating the Responsorial Psalm during Christmas Eve mass, I began thinking that there may be a far greater threat to the sovereignty of man’s ego – the threat of religion.

The faults of religion stem from the same erred belief that fuel the existing forms of collectivism in our society, meaning they seek to prescribe men with ways of living their lives rather than allowing them use of their own reason to determine what is just and right.

With regards to collectivism, the method for this prescription is law, presenting men with the option of either complying with the government’s wishes or committing a crime. Religion, however, determines what is right and good through means of dogma, Halakha, Sharia, or one of the hundreds of other way religions label their tenants of faith. These “laws from above” present men with the similar scenario of either falling in line or being guilty of sin. The central flaw with both of these systems is that the laws and dogmas are established by a small body of individuals and then forced upon the populace as a whole, regardless of their validity.

Perhaps the most well known example of faith versus reason came with the advent of modern science and its personified fountainhead, Galileo Galilei. In Galileo’s time, dogmatic law stated that man, and the planet he lived on, had been created by God as the absolute center of our solar system. Those of you who have successfully completed the eighth grade already know Galileo’s heliocentric (or “sun-centered” for those who may have struggled with elementary school) model of the solar system flipped the scientific world upside-down. You may also remember that as a result of using scientific reason to enlighten his peers, Galileo was charged with heresy and forced to publicly recant his theory under threat of torture.

While it may be true that humanity has progressed a great deal since the days of Galileo, glaring controversies between faith and reason are still present in our modern society. Desperately clutching their Bibles, American lawmakers have deemed intelligent design and evolution as equally valid theories of creation, hindered the progress of stem-cell research and placed statewide bans on same-sex marriage, which their traditional Christian values condemn as sinful and morally corrupt.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of religion hijacking man’s sense of reason can be seen through the current crisis in the Holy Land. Once again, the world community looks on as the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis yields consecutive days of bloodshed. It may be true that the fighting in Gaza has a more complex cause than simple religious differences, but the fact that both sides stand blinded by faith, and cling to divine claims of ownership, certainly doesn’t help matters along.

This column was in no way intended to universally condemn belief in a higher power or a sense of personal spirituality. As free-thinking individuals, you have the right to believe whatever makes you happy. However, I only hope that should you choose to embrace religion, you do not allow your faith to blindly guide you through the world, and resist the temptation to sacrifice your right to free and rational thought.

JAMES NOONAN finds it slightly ironic that such an enlightening discussion of religion would be published on the Catholic feast day of the Epiphany. As always, dissenting opinions can be sent to jjnoonan@ucdavis.edu.

Have you ever been dating someone and felt that all of a sudden, you’ve gone farther than you should have? Well I don’t really know what that feels like since I was taught to always put out on the first date and it’s been working fine for me so far (note to self: start the binge eating tomorrow). But for those who do have a problem with it, I heard it is quite a sticky situation.

I’m not just talking about the sexual aspect of a relationship, but the other sort of thing where you’re sitting there with your lady at dinner and she’s going on and on about your trip next weekend to her parents‘ timeshare and you’re wondering how the hell did this one-night stand manage to weasel her way in and transform into a full-fledged girlfriend overnight.

Or say you’re out bowling with the cute guy you met in English class (who two weeks into knowing him isn’t that cute anymore), and he gets upset that you don’t introduce him as your boyfriend when you run into your friends. Suddenly this guy becomes über clingy, but you do wonder if his anger is justified. Maybe you should have – I mean it’s been three years already and you did have his baby and all. But still, when did that make him more than a friend? According to his timetable it makes him your “boyfriend” (whatever that means). Man, what a creeper.

So if you want to hit the breaks with your relationship without ending it, follow my advice about slowing things down.

Degrade certain milestones to a point that it’s meaningless. Say instead of adopting a pet (which can eventually be exploited to keep people in relationships longer than they should) opt for adopting a highway first, just to get a feel for the responsibility. Of course, it might get a little awkward when you guys break up and both of you have to split the clean-up duties.

And knowing my luck, I’ll make my best efforts to take care of only the southbound area, but I’ll still manage to run into him, even though we both agreed he’d take northbound. And there he is with his old ex-girlfriend, holding hands and picking up trash together and I’m in my orange vest, alone, with an empty bottle of booze in my hand that I didn’t find on our once beloved Montague Expressway….

Anyway, how about instead of taking her to meet your parents, she can meet your second cousin twice removed and your adopted niece’s brother’s uncle, Peter. If you think about it, Peter and you are practically brothers (except the fact that he’s just your adopted niece’s brother’s uncle) and when you visit him, you have to talk through a phone on the other side of a two-inch plexiglass window. But other than that, it’s practically Thanksgiving at your folk’s house.

Give random/lame gifts to remind them that you don’t care. So your girl likes Cheese Nips? Then a box of Cheese Nips it is for your one-year anniversary. And don’t forget to say, “You’re welcome,” because she might forget to say “Thank you,” and punch you in the nuts instead (which just means that your plan of putting the relationship on hold proved successful, so… you’re welcome!). I remember my friend got a Louis Vuitton wallet from his girlfriend and he got her a grain of rice with her name on it, placed in a little glass vial. Mind you this wasn’t 1999 and neither of them were in the 7th grade.

Needless to say, it didn’t work out between them. She smashed the necklace, took the grain of rice, included it in a bowl of cooked rice, killed her boyfriend and ate them both in a nice “F-you” dinner.

With all your efforts though, remember to be careful. It’s rare to try to reverse a relationship without ending it. Think of all the couples you know who’ve broken up only to delude themselves into “dating” each other again. We all know what happens to them in the end – they die. That’s right, they become allergic to bananas and then keel over and die. Just like that. Don’t be like these couples and just end the relationship. Also, avoid bananas.

LYNN LA had a bad experience with food poisoning not so long ago and ended up throwing up in front of the Silo in broad daylight. She also knows what delicious fruit might have caused it. To give her your condolences, e-mail her at ldla@ucdavis.edu.

“[Expletive deleted]!” This basically sums up 2008. You don’t need to read this column to realize it was besmirched with hard times. It saw the tragic deaths of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (don’t worry, they’re banks). The housing bubble popped, destroying the national money market and creating a credit crunch.

Seriously, what was up with those gas prices? Like an unstable girlfriend they went from a record high during the summer to a 5-year low in the fall. It seemed almost random.

People lost their jobs. Lots of people lost their jobs. It was a tough year to be an investment banker. Hell, it was a tough year to be anyone. Job security was no longer offered in the benefits package.

The American Auto Industry was (and still is) in the gallows. Its collapse would create an unprecedented economic disaster.

The oppressive Chinese regime was allowed to hold the 2008 Summer Olympics (need I say more?). Oh wait, I do. They murdered over 400 Tibetans five months before the opening ceremonies (which most world leaders still attended). Way to go, China.

The Iraq War saw modest improvements overshadowed by increased violence in Afghanistan.

But some good things did happen in 2008.

Decisive victories in the battle for racial and gender equality; the first serious African-American presidential candidate (sorry, Al Sharpton) fought a brutal battle against the first serious female presidential candidate. We shook the world when we elected the first African-American to the presidency.

A new experiment that used the European Large Hadron Collider to slam protons into each other at 99.9% the speed of light did not create a massive black hole capable of consuming the earth (trust me, it didn’t).

Someone even threw their shoe (size 10) at George W. Bush. Well, we all wanted to give him the boot…

So, the question remains; what will happen in 2009?

The prison at Guantánamo Bay will finally close, putting an end to the nightmare that has stained America’s image abroad.

Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States at noon on Jan. 20 (and yours truly will be at his inauguration). And yes, the day most reliable polls say 70% of us have been waiting for will finally arrive; the day we send George W. Bush packing back to Texas. Or wherever it is Bushs come from (Massachusetts).

Maybe history will be kinder to him than the Gallup Polls. On second thought, I wouldn’t count on it.

President Obama will inherit one of the most troubled legacies since Harry Truman; two wars, a $10 trillion national debt, and of course, the shattered economy.

Even with Obama’s pledge to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office, everything depends on the conditions on the ground. A premature withdrawal would prove disastrous. But at least now we can work towards a gradual withdrawal. As we speak, more troops are being sent to Afghanistan to fight the resurgence of violence there. Iraqi troops were finally given control of the Green Zone in Baghdad, an unmistakable symbol of progress in the war effort. George Bush may have made our bed, but Obama is going to have to sleep in it.

As for the economy, Obama will need to balance propping up the ailing masses on Main Street with instilling investor confidence on Wall Street. This won’t be easy, as the government coffers are spewing moths (recall the $10 trillion dollar debt). In other words, don’t count on universal healthcare anytime soon. But you should expect more stimulus checks in your mailbox. The key to getting us out of this rut is to get Americans spending and investors… investing again. If only this were not easier said than done.

Now that I have either bored or scared you half to death, don’t despair (the world’s not supposed to end until 2012, anyway). But in all seriousness, the world is not on the verge of a Great Depression, at least not like our grandparents experienced. More hard times lay ahead, but we will soon have an intelligent and charismatic man in the White House to get us through it. In time we will overcome these challenges and become stronger for it. We’re Americans. It’s what we do.

MICHAEL HOWER wishes you luck in your pledges to visit the ARC more often and lay off the curly fries at Jack in the Box. You just might be able to reach him at mahower@ucdavis.edu.