Through comprehensive education, the Love Lab is advocating for sexual health on campus

By UMAIMA EJAZ — features@theaggie.org 

The UC Davis Love Lab, founded in 2007 and located on the third floor of the Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS) building, is a mobile cart that offers educational materials, provides information about birth control and other services offered by SHCS, and gives out free safe sex products such as condoms and free swag for students. They also collaborate with the LGBTQIARC to make rapid HIV testing kits available there. But the Love Lab does much more than supply students with condoms and coveted stickers, according to Blake Flaugher, a sexual well-being specialist in the Health Education and Promotion (HEP) Department at SHCS.

“Our work is about life and death and not just throwing condoms at people,” Flaugher said.

It’s true, Flaugher’s work is a lot more than just selling students commonly available products — it involves frequent collaboration with other student groups to create awareness around sexual health initiatives for students. This includes educating students about reproductive health, consent, communication, sexual violence prevention and safer sex.

Flaugher has been working at UC Davis SHCS for six years and said that he thinks sex education is “more important than ever” since Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide in the United States, was overturned in 2022, according to Planned Parenthood. But despite the importance of the topic, he thinks that because of the stigma surrounding sex, many people undermine the seriousness of sexual and reproductive health work. 

Stephanie Ha, a fourth-year human development major and student coordinator with the sexual well-being team of the HEP, said that while presenting at residence halls, the team sometimes faces behavior from students that is disrespectful or otherwise conveys a lack of interest in the presentation.

“Educating them is our goal,” Ha said. “If they ask us something that they think is funny or disrespectful, we answer it very seriously to give them the best care that we can provide. And that usually that kind of makes them and the people around them realize that we are a resource, and we are here to support them. [Student coordinators] make sure that, if anything does get a bit too out of hand at the forefront, they handle it, and we only deliver a presentation if we are comfortable.”

Allyson Kahn, who, like Ha, is a fourth-year human development major and student coordinator with the sexual well-being team, said that talking about sex can be difficult. She said that because sexual activity is such a personal matter, tackling a project centered around sexual health in a respectful way can be challenging. 

Every quarter, the students involved with the Love Lab read books and articles and discuss different aspects of sexual health in order to become better equipped to provide information to students.

“We are in charge of reading ‘Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus,’ [which is] a book by Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan,” Kahn said. “It’s a chapter a week. Then, we discuss it at the end of the week at our weekly meeting. In the past, […] we were each in charge of bringing in an article to the meeting […] It definitely changes quarter to quarter, but we’re making sure that we have some way of taking in material about sexual health while we’re doing the work.”

The Love Lab team also gets a lot of feedback and information from the students that they serve. 

“We’re always doing a survey, a focus group, putting polls on our Instagram stories,” Flaughter said. “We really try to get a lot of student feedback so that it is student-centered, and so that we can tailor information and resources that way.” 

But it isn’t all serious conversations. The Love Lab acknowledges that sex is supposed to be fun. They hold Kahoot game nights at residential halls to engage with students and educate them on sexual health and safety in fun ways as well. 

Flaughter said students are often so under-educated about sexual health on campus that they have no idea what is covered by their insurance and what is not. According to Kahn, this is when SCHS jumps in. 

“The services that the Student Health and Wellness Center provide are covered by UC SHIP for students who have it, so they don’t pay anything when they come to the Student Health Center,” Kahn said. “But then we have more than half of the students we see not having UC SHIP, and they have to pay a $15 visit fee, plus $10 per test. It’d be great to provide free testing.” 

Everyone has a different relationship with sex and approaches it in a different manner. Flaughter said that while some people will accept new information provided by sexual education organizations, others may outright reject the information based on their own views and beliefs or deflect from their own discomfort with humor and irreverence. The Love Lab tries to meet these students where they are in a respectful manner, toeing the line between providing serious information and having fun with the work they do. 

“I do think it is important for us to recognize no matter your beliefs, everyone needs sexual health support,” Flaugher said. “There are always going to be challenges in the work. I definitely think stigma is always going to exist in some form because everyone’s different — unanimous approval does not exist. That’s one reason why we try to focus so much on policy work, organizational development and campus-wide initiatives — we want to try to change the culture, not just educate stigma out of people. We want to really change policies, to make our work and discussions about sexual health more normal and approachable.”

Ha said it is vital to make sure you and your sexual partners are safe, but it can be a daunting task to learn how to acquire those skills. Thankfully, students don’t have to do this alone. Even when it may be uncomfortable to open up about specific concerns, the Love Lab is a safe place to do so. 

Written by: Umaima Ejaz — features@theaggie.org

Correction: A version of this article published in print incorrectly stated that the Love Lab provides birth control and rapid STI testing and sells products to students. The article has been updated to correct this error.

The UC Davis student behind popular weather Twitter account @US_Stormwatch discusses weather reporting, climate change concerns and family bonding

By UMAIMA EJAZ — features@theaggie.org 

For as long as he can remember, Colin McCarthy has been chasing thunderstorms. The UC Davis first-year atmospheric science major covers extreme weather all over the world on his Twitter page, @US_Stormwatch. He started the account when he was in eighth grade, looking to learn more about weather, and today, he has over 64,000 followers. Most recently, his coverage of Hurricane Ian attracted over 30 million views in a week on Twitter. 

“I knew there was a great presence of meteorologists and climatologists on Twitter that I could learn a lot more from,” Colin said. “But after joining Twitter, I started doing my own updates. I originally stuck to California, and then over the last couple years, I’ve expanded out to national and then international.”

From a very early age, Colin said he would backpack in mountain regions with his family and discuss weather conditions with his father, Kevin McCarthy, who is a UC Davis alumnus. In 1988, Kevin was in the first environmental policy and planning class that the university ever offered. 

Colin said that he and his father have developed a strong bond through their shared interest in weather. They’ve been through a lot together, from reading weather patterns on top of mountains to running away from a hail storm during their trip to Yosemite in 2015.

“I’d never seen such dark clouds in my life,” Colin said. “We’re all like, ‘We’ve got to outrun the storm,’ but just then, all of a sudden, this big piece of hail falls down on the back of my dad’s shirt. And after that, hail just starts pounding the ground. This didn’t stop for multiple hours. There was heavy rain, hail and lightning. And I still remember when there was one flash, one strike so close that it struck right behind me. My whole vision went white for half a second. I had never experienced something so wild.” 

The year after their Yosemite trip, Colin got a weather station for Christmas, which allowed him to stay up-to-date on the weather through his own observations. 

“After he got the weather station, he would track the data,” said Kathleen Gallagher, Colin’s mother. “He would watch highs and lows and study the wind patterns. As a mother, it was quite incredible to watch.”

Colin’s brother, Jack McCarthy, recalls that spending time together was always about “chasing storms.” He said his younger brother’s fame wasn’t unexpected. 

“As a brother, I’m so proud of him,” Jack said. “I knew this was his passion, and that he would do something great with it, but to experience all of this with him seems surreal.”

This year, weather conditions have been severe globally. In addition to Hurricane Ian, Colin has reported on floods in Pakistan, heatwaves in Europe and a record-breaking heatwave in China. These events and other weather-related crises have been linked to climate change and global warming, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Colin expressed his specific concerns for California as the world experiences severe weather.

“My biggest concern at the moment is ‘climate whiplash,’” Colin said. “It’s about average precipitation risk in the future in California. [Precipitation is] not really supposed to decrease or increase significantly, but we will have these huge periods of drought and floods — a huge kind of whiplash between these really wet years and then these really dry years. It’s very hard to tackle from a water storage standpoint.”

Water reservoirs like the Colorado River are suffering due to an ongoing drought, according to CalMatters.org. Floods may seem impossible when California is seeing so little rain and extreme water shortages, but historical patterns say otherwise. Colin said that, while the earthquakes predicted to occur at the San Andreas fault are concerning, he is more worried about a potential mega-flood in the future.

“We don’t exactly know when, but very likely, in the next several decades, we’ll see the biggest flood in centuries,” Colin said. “It’s happening every 150 to 200 years in California on average. But with climate change, there’s more water in the atmosphere. The last mega-flood that happened was around the 1860s, and it was such a severe flood that the Central Valley actually became an inland sea for a certain period of time.”

Colin said he never expected he would discover his career interests at a young age or find fame through social media reporting, but he said he hopes to continue on this path.

“I didn’t imagine getting verified or seeing this amazing, amazing growth,” Colin said. “It’s hard to know where I see myself in the future, but I’d like to think I could be anywhere across the world, honestly. Weather and climate applies to anyone on Earth, so I expect to be traveling a lot and hopefully have a job that I love.”

Written by: Umaima Ejaz — features@theaggie.org

Día de Los Muertos altars and celebrations on campus foster a home away from home for Latinx students 

By MARIA MARTINEZ CASTRO  — features@theaggie.org 

Nov. 1 and 2 mark a celebration of remembrance, community and love for many people of Mexican heritage all over the world and Latinx communities in the United States. Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is an opportunity for people to celebrate and honor the lives of loved ones who have passed. Many people celebrate by curating beautiful and colorful “altares” (altars) with “ofrendas” (offerings) in the form of a loved one’s photograph, favorite food or another representation of their character and lived experiences. 

This year, student resource centers on campus celebrated the holiday by organizing community altares.

The Center for Chicanx and Latinx Academic Student Success (CCLASS or El Centro) has continued its annual tradition of organizing a community altar since its opening in 2017. Roxanne Flores, Office Coordinator of El Centro, shares that the center’s altar is meant to garner a sense of community on campus and beyond. 

“We invite all,” Flores said. “It doesn’t matter [if it’s] students, faculty, staff, community members, people who live in Davis. We just want everyone to contribute to our altar to build a sense of community [and] belonging and help our students feel at home if this is something that they do in their homes too.” 

 In organizing culturally relevant programming for Latinx students, student centers allow students to thrive by creating safe spaces that recognize their identities and culture. Flores views the curating of the altar as an opportunity to connect with students and uplift them in their journey throughout higher education. 

“I think first and foremost it’s because [the altar] really helps us to retain our students,” Flores said. “So when our community has a sense of a home away from home, which is what we try to provide here at El Centro, they feel more empowered to do well. They feel more supported to reach out, to ask for help.” 

Karla Carranza and Penny Diaz, who are community leaders at the Women’s Resources and Research Center (WRRC), took the opportunity to celebrate community on campus and honor lives lost to gendered violence. Carranza, a second-year political science major, shared the importance of honoring and celebrating the lives of people who are not recognized properly. 

“We have all these different altares going on around campus, but one component we wanted to remember is that there are a lot of victims to gendered violence, and I feel like their stories often go unheard and untold,” Carranza said. “One of the big things of Día de Los Muertos is remembering all these people and their lives, and we wanted to make sure we’re keeping their memories alive, all while reminding people that there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done.” 

Diaz, a third-year English major, emphasized the importance of seeing victims of gendered violence through their humanity rather than through their suffering. 

“Unfortunately, a lot of victims of gender-based violence are just turned into statistics,” Diaz said. “They’re defined by the very gruesome aftermath of their death and are painted as victims and only remembered in the ways that they died or in the ways they suffered or [were] persecuted. But our focus for Día de Los Muertos is to remember that they were people first and not defined by what other people did to them.” 

Beyond honoring lives lost to gendered violence, Carranza and Diaz organized the Día de Los Muertos altar to create a sense of community and belonging for Chicanx and Latinx students on campus and in the WRRC. 

“With Día de Los Muertos, at least as a Latinx student, I feel like oftentimes it’s hard to find representation on campus,” Carranza said. “Like, I don’t want to say the altar is just meant for Latinx students, but it’s nice to see more of our culture be represented in these spaces. We’re trying to get more Latinx students to come into the center and interact with us and understand that these spaces are meant for you as well, not just for other people. It’s meant for everyone to enjoy and participate.” 

While UC Davis is a campus committed to diversity and inclusion according to its Principles of Community, Carranza explained that there are times when some students feel that they and their celebrations and traditions are not represented.

“I think also, at least I can speak from my experience, it is very hard to find community in college,” Carranza said. “It’s so hard to relate to other people because, regardless of anything, Davis is a predominantly white institution. It’s so hard to embrace your culture. I feel like I lose touch a lot. So, I think that’s why it’s important to have these culturally based programs so that students know that Davis can still be their home away from home. We need to make adequate steps for that.” 

Diaz commented on the importance for Chicanx and Latinx students to continue cultural celebrations beyond their home space. As people move away from home, they act as vessels of their culture and celebrations. 

“I think especially for Chicanx and Latinx students, so much of our cultural identity is family- and community-based,” Diaz said. “I remember I went to a Día de Los Muertos festival over the weekend in Woodland, and I was crying in the crowd because I miss that sense of community or being able to reminisce about the memories of my loved ones with my own family. I think part of the celebration of those that we have lost is held in the ritual of setting up the altar. We’re in communion with the people you are remembering and then also the people that are still with you.” 

Written by: Maria Martinez Castro — features@theaggie.org