What does it mean to be inclusive?

UC Davis has been commended for its diversity and values of inclusion. With so many people on campus — 38,369, according to the most recent student profile —  it’s only natural that there should be a variance in students’ rhetoric as a result of varying experiences. 

We’re all different, and there are many ways that we can perceive these differences — from the clothes we wear, to the music we listen to. Superficially, we can tell who we would get along with and who we would avoid. These inward judgments aren’t anything personal, it’s just a matter of having shared interests. 

Our less superficial differences, however, are subtle and often overlooked. It makes complete sense that most aren’t experts at recognizing these nuances in such a sprawling campus. 

Take, for example, the Latitude dining commons. The mecca of food for first years serves international choices that are godly among our usual meals of pizza and Mongolian wok. It’s a lovely place to try different types of cuisines which we wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to.

This is why it was painful to overhear students say they wished there could be more “normal” food at Latitude just a few weeks after its opening. I’m not mad that they want a salad or sandwich bar at the place — it’s the use of the word “normal.” In this context, normal is being used to describe American food, thereby implying that anything outside of American cuisine is strange or unappetizing. 

This is not the only instance where I’ve heard other students unknowingly isolate their peers through their rhetoric. I’ve heard people call certain older residences and lecture halls “ghetto.” 

Then there’s the issue of apartment hunting. Yes, I would love to live in West Village. I know how nice it is. I know that it’s a super quick commute to campus, and I know that many students live there. I also know that (factoring in my roommates and our desired floor plan) the rent stacks up to over $1,000 per month. When other students ask me about my housing situation next year, it’s assumed that I have a substantial level of wealth.

Oftentimes, these little blips go unchecked because there was no malicious intent behind the comments, but people don’t realize how insensitive these comments can be. 

Here’s my frustration: On a campus-wide level, we’re all blanketed in inclusivity and respect, but just because you go to Davis doesn’t give you an automatic license to claim these attributes as your own. When we fail to educate ourselves about these particular issues, it’s a disservice to the inclusivity promoted throughout our campus. 

Davis is wonderful in that it provides plenty of introductory resources for new students. During our first-year orientation, for example, we were given presentations by organizations such as the LGBTQIA Resource Center and the Cross Cultural Center. All of these presentations were highly informative and set a standard for newcomers in Davis.

Why is it that there’s still inconsistency with the way we address each other? We were supposed to have that all covered with these presentations and supplementary resources. Aside from a small population, the intricacies of “woke” culture are largely ignored in favor of an apathetic “she, her, hers” during discussion section icebreakers. It’s infuriating.

A majority of individuals who go to Davis are from California. In our freshmen class, 64.4% of admitted students are California residents. I’m a Florida native, and I’ve noticed, since moving here, that there is a general sense of complacency about social justice education among Californians. As a notoriously blue state, we don’t feel that we need to amend our words and behaviors because we assume everyone shares the same values. 

Doing the bare minimum in terms of advancing social justice feels safer than fully committing yourself, because, as a whole, such efforts have largely faded. To be passionate enough to argue for your opinion opens the possibility of conflict and disagreement, which we often seek to avoid. 

Between mocking “SJWs” and “trigger warnings,” there’s a stigma around caring too much about these issues. This obsession with being “chill” is totally fine in other sects of our lives, but when it comes to ensuring that our spaces are inclusive of all bodies, it’s completely counterproductive.  

This complacency allows certain issues to slip through the cracks. It’s an injustice to those who are simply ill-informed to assume that they would know how to navigate such a liberal campus. 

What we want to avoid, however, is an erasure of other political viewpoints. I find that overhearing individuals call Republican students “idiots” is just as infuriating as when the right attacks the left. 

I am not arguing for all UC Davis students to conform to one particular ideology. What I want is space for dissent that allows for all views to be expressed in a way that is uniformly respectful of all individuals and their values.

Written by: Isabella Chuecos – ifchuecos@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie

We need the right balance between wide and narrow street lanes 

When I was 12, I went to England and noticed something about the design of the neighborhoods that began to irk me — the two-lane streets were so narrow that they were just about the same size as a single street lane in America. 

Transportation engineers and planners have long held that wider lanes are safer, and common sense would suggest that is correct. Wider lanes means cars have more space, and therefore the chances of scraping or scratching is going to be much smaller. But, as it turns out, that assertion isn’t correct. There are a number of reasons to narrow most street lanes and ironically, safety is the primary reason. 

“Policy on Geometric Design on Highways and Streets,” also referred to as the “Green Book,” is commonly referred to by traffic engineers to inform their projects. The “Green Book,” written by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), recommends constructing 12-foot lanes where there is a high speed of traffic, such as on freeways. Switching to a narrower lane is perfectly acceptable in other areas of traffic, however, and could even have some advantages. 

A report from the Transportation Research Board found that lanes with widths of 10 feet or more, as opposed to 12 feet, resulted in accident rates that were either reduced or unaffected. Turns out that narrowing lanes doesn’t intrinsically increase the likelihood of an accident and could actually be safer.

“The one way that narrower lanes are safer is because it tends to slow down drivers,” said Dr. Susan Handy, a UC Davis professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and director of the Sustainable Transportation Center. “Psychologically, their space is narrowed and they’re going to drive more slowly.”

A key component to making streets safer is paying attention to speed. When cars travel at high speeds on urban streets with pedestrians and cyclists, the likelihood of pedestrian accidents also increases.  

Research shows that pedestrian fatalities increase around wider lanes as a result of the psychological impact on drivers, which makes them feel they have more room to drive faster, according to Handy.

 “Twenty miles an hour, you’re going to get hurt, but you’re probably going to live,” Handy said. “But by the time you’re hitting 30, 40 miles an hour, if you’re a pedestrian and you’re hit by a car, you don’t have much chance at all, whereas the driver is going to be perfectly fine.”

Lane width doesn’t just affect road safety — it can also be better for the environment.  

“There’s a lot of rock that gets moved to pave our roads, so there’s huge environmental costs,” Handy said. “Then once you have pavement, there’s environmental impacts because that’s impervious cover, meaning [that] when it rains, the water doesn’t trickle down into the earth — it collects and runs off. And we have to collect the storm water from our streets, and that storm water picks up all kinds of pollutants from the pavement that the cars have left behind.”

Unnecessary pavement in wider lanes also contributes to the heat island effect. This phenomenon occurs when the lack of “open land and vegetation” in urban regions causes it to grow warmer, creating an “island” in which the temperature can increase more than in rural areas, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Using wider lanes means less space for grass and other forms of greenery, as well as less room to create wider biking lanes. 

“That’s space that we could be using for other purposes: housing, […] greenery,” Handy said. “I mean, wide streets make for unpleasant places.”

Yet, this isn’t a call to narrow all streets and roadways across the board. There’s a hierarchy of streets which roughly begins with local streets, then arterials and, eventually, freeways. Some of these roadways could benefit from narrower lanes, but others, like freeways, should be kept wide.

“The whole purpose of a freeway is to go fast, and we don’t have pedestrians —  we’ve kept them off freeways,” Handy said. “So if we’re going to have freeways, then, you know, it probably makes sense to have a little more space there.” 

Street width is one of many design solutions in addressing the safety and environmental concerns associated with automobiles and driving. Speed humps and other road designs can help in achieving this goal.

“There are things you can do — what we call traffic calming. Speed bumps are one part of that, but there are a lot of other techniques,” Handy said. “What we need to do if we want to make streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists is slow down the traffic. That’s the big thing. And again, that’s why lane widths matter.”

Written by: Simran Kalkat — skkalkat@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie