Students discuss how they alter their celebrations to cater to the quarter system

Each year, students plan trips home and family vacations to coincide with religious holidays that fall during quarter breaks. Many, however, do not consider other students whose religious holidays fall on school days. Imagine having a midterm during Christmas. While it may be hard to picture, this is the reality for students from underrepresented religious groups.

First-year environmental science and management major Yonim Schweig is a Modern Orthodox Jew who has struggled with practicing his religion since coming to college. Having grown up attending Jewish day school, he has been adjusting to the reality of having to balance school with religious practice.

“So far, several of the Jewish holidays have fallen during midterms or finals, so I have really had to advocate for myself to get them moved,” Schweig said. “Luckily, I have been able to, but you just can’t always count on that.”

Connecting with other religious students on campus has allowed Schweig to feel a stronger sense of community and understanding on campus.

“Living with five Muslim students in a multi-faith living community, I feel a level of solidarity surrounding observance, which I have really appreciated and have been able to learn a lot [from],” Schweig said.

Alumni Neil Singh practices Sikhism and has found it quite difficult to be apart from his family during significant holidays. Hailing from outside of California, Singh is rarely able to celebrate holidays with his family during the school year.

“I sacrificed a lot in terms of my family life and getting in touch with my roots throughout my entire time in college,” Singh said. “I think I would have been a much happier student had I had the opportunity to connect to my heritage.”

Regardless of the many obstacles Singh has faced while practicing his religion in college, he has found joy in sharing his heritage with other students. Holi, an ancient religious festival, fell during Winter Quarter finals week this year, so Singh took this opportunity to share his practice with friends. He celebrated the tradition of throwing pigmented powder and taught the meaning of the holiday. He was not only given the opportunity to celebrate this holiday, but he offered others the opportunity to take a break from studying and learn about another culture.

“The fact that everyone had so much fun and got a break from finals was great,” Singh said. “It showed me that there is a way I could be better about bringing these things to my friends, in order to feel like I have some sense of home.”

First-year undeclared major Danyal Ghori also acknowledges the challenge of being away from his family during holidays but believes it is even more rewarding to practice when it may not be convenient. As a Muslim, Ghori will be celebrating Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr — two significant Muslim holidays — in the upcoming months.

“The inability to be with my family during Ramadan and Eid will be a challenge, but it will also be a new experience,” Ghori said.

Ghori grew up in a predominantly Muslim country and therefore will be celebrating these holidays outside of a Muslim community for the first time this year. This, Ghori believes, will be an opportunity for self-reflection in regards to his religious practice.

“I value my religious community both at home and away because community is an important concept in Islam,” Ghori said. “Being away from home will encourage me to think about what these holidays and religion means to me.”

Ghori has found that the teachings of Islam have been central in his ability to maintain balance between religion and academic success.

“Islam as a religion is not supposed to be a burden on its people and encourages focus on all aspects of life, especially encouraging gaining knowledge,” Ghori said.

Both Schweig and Ghori believe it is the responsibility of professors to enable students to accomplish both their religious and academic goals. Schweig believes it is important for professors to educate themselves on different religious practices in order to better understand the needs of their students.

“I think if all professors are really clear about what exactly Jewish observance entails, they will understand just how limiting having a test or project on the same day as a holiday might be,” Schweig says. “In Judaism there really is no flexibility or leeway.”

Similarly, Ghori believes that professors should be willing to accommodate the needs of religious students.

Singh, on the other hand, feels that it is students who have the power to establish change on a larger scale. He believes that through coming together, different religious organizations can alter the status quo by encouraging professors to be cognizant of their academic schedules.

“I think the student body needs to speak up about their needs,” Singh said. “If there were a way students could come together, they may be able to create accommodations for themselves.”

Written by: MIKI WAYNE — features@theaggie.org

Professors Ari Kelman and Elizabeth Miller two of 173 American and Canadian winners

On April 10, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the 2019 recipients of the Guggenheim Fellowship. Of the 173 American and Canadian winners, two were from UC Davis: Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Academic Programs and history professor Ari Kelman and English professor Elizabeth Miller. The foundation receives around 3,000 applications annually and tends to pick around 175 recipients for the fellowship.

Both Kelman and Miller have received other fellowships, but the Guggenheim Fellowship stands out in multiple ways. They both mentioned the fact that the award can be given to artists or scholars from a number of different disciplines.

“The thing that makes the Guggenheim unusual is that it’s available to people from a variety of different fields, some academic, some not, as long as they’re engaged in creative activities,” said Kelman, who has also been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Huntington Library. “There are artists, […] there are all different kinds of scholars, novelists, etcetera so to be selected for something like this honestly feels surreal. I’m not quite sure how it happened, it hasn’t really sunk in yet. But at some point I imagine it’ll sink in, and I’ll probably feel really good.”

Miller added to Kelman’s sentiment, mentioning that Debbie Niemeier, a professor from the department of civil and environmental engineering, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015. Miller also noted some differences between this and other fellowships she has received, which include the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, the Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, the Curran Fellowship and the Joseph R. Dunlap Memorial Fellowship.

“I think the thing that’s different about the Guggenheim compared to any other thing that’s happened to me in my career is that it’s such a known fellowship,” Miller said. “I’ve even had neighbors on my street who aren’t in academia congratulating me about it. People just have a sense of what it is, in a way that goes beyond the academy. So that’s been really cool and exciting, and definitely a new experience for me.”

About a month before the official announcement, Kelman and Miller were told that they were finalists. One day before the official announcement they were informed that they had received the award. Kelman was sitting in his office when he received the email while Miller was volunteering at her children’s school.

“I always make a point not to have my phone out when I’m volunteering there, but as soon as I’m done with my shift, I always check my email,” Miller said. “And that was when I found out. I just sat down on a bench in the playground and took it in for a minute before I went on with my day. It was quite a shock and a surprise, and obviously, I was really delighted.”

Both Kelman and Miller spoke to the amount of rejection that precedes an honor like this. For many academics, there are far more denials than acceptances.

“I applied more than once,” Kelman said. “I fail at everything that I try and do many times before I succeed. And this was no different. I applied a total of two other times.”

Miller elaborated on how to handle the amount of rejection that comes with applications of this caliber.

“I’ve applied for lots and lots of things that haven’t worked out,” Miller said. “You just always have to assume that you’re not going to get it, but at the same time, put in the application. And then when it does work out, it’s an amazingly wonderful surprise.”

Currently, Kelman is working on three books that will be supported by the award — “Liberty and Empire: How the Civil War Bled into the Indian Wars,” a book for the Oxford University Press’ Very Short Introductions series on Indian Wars from the colonial period through the end of the nineteenth century and a graphic history of the Northern Cheyenne people that he’s working on with two colleagues.  

“One of the major projects that this is supporting is a revisionist history of the United States Civil War,” Kelman said. “[It focuses] on the experiences of indigenous nations, the ways in which federal soldiers during the era of the Civil War, in part prompted by the United States Civil War, engaged in violent encounters, in practices of conquest and imperialism against indigenous nations or native nations, American Indians in the West.”

Miller will be using the award toward a book that she’s been working on for about five years on extractivism and mining in the Industrial Era. She is looking at literature, and using it as an archive to consider how ideas of the world changed alongside the industrialization of mining.

For the Guggenheim Fellowship, applicants must complete a career narrative. In it, Miller talked about the continuity of her two published books and the one she is working on. She described “the attempt to understand literature within a historical context, within an economic context” and the ways in which literature reflects and also changes political ideas.

“Even though I’m looking at the 19th century, the project is really also engaged with discussions around climate change today and trying to think about the origins of environmental crisis and how they can be traced back to the beginnings of a coal fired economy with the Industrial Era,” Miller said.

Last year, three faculty members from the College of Letters and Science — Mika Pelo, associate professor in the department of music, Annabeth Rosen, Robert Arneson Endowed Chair in the department of art and art history, and Archana Venkatesan, associate professor in the department of religious studies and the department of comparative literature — were awarded with Guggenheim Fellowships. There are now 39 Guggenheim Fellows from the college.

“I think it’s unusual for a single campus to have multiple recipients in two years running. And I think it just speaks to the incredibly high quality of the work that’s being done on this campus,” Kelman said, “[…] and you know, this just feels like a pretty lucky thing.”

Written by: ANJINI VENUGOPAL — features@theaggie.org

A glimpse into secret societies in universities

Since the founding and rise to infamy of Yale’s secret society Skull and Bones in 1832, college students across the nation have followed suit, creating their own secret societies. Most secret societies on college campuses prioritize keeping secret not their existence but what happens in them. This includes their members, rituals, initiations and events.

Little is known about these organizations and what happens behind closed doors. Because they are so secretive, not many people know about secret societies in general.

“I don’t know anything,” said Katie Smith, a first-year evolution, ecology and biodiversity major.

Wei-Lung Ho, an electrical engineering major, claims to know theses socities exist on the UC Davis campus but doesn’t know much else.

More prominently, here on campus, we have our own secret society: Sword and Sandals. Founded in December of 1921, Sword and Sandals was based on UC Berkeley’s secret society, Order of the Golden Bear. The goal of the society was to improve the university, though it isn’t known to what extent the university has changed because of them due to their secrecy.

Sword and Sandals was created as a medium for those involved in the UC Davis community to express their thoughts and concerns about the morals, politics and philosophy of the school, according to LocalWiki. The meetings and discussions of the organization are not available to the public. Before the development of social media, the location and times of the meetings would be discreetly placed into The California Aggie newspapers as a secret code for members to decipher.

Their members consist of UC Davis students, faculty, staff and alumni. Membership into Sword and Sandals is selected primarily on display of leadership, along with other values, hence previous members include (but are not limited to) past chancellors and high ranking officers of ASUCD. Notable members include Gordon Sproul (for whom Sproul Hall was named after), E.C. Voorhies (for whom Voorhies Hall was named after) and S.B. Freeborn (for whom Freeborn Hall was named after). In order to become a member, two of the members in Sword and Sandals must nominate you. The council must then take a vote, and you can only join the society if two-thirds of the council votes in favor of you.

“They are selective,” said Ho in response to this information. “They’re probably like any other club.”

The presence of secret societies on college campuses has been controversial. For example, George W. Bush’s membership in Skull and Bones when he was a student at Yale has led some people to believe that the organization was somehow involved in the war on Iraq.

“I don’t know, I don’t think there are any problems so far,” said Love Chien, a first-year cell biology major, in response to whether or not she believes there is controversy and scandals in Sword and Sandals. “I mean, I guess they sound sketchy and suspicious.”

Based on students’ knowledge about Sword and Sandals and other secret societies lurking in the nation, these organizations have stuck to their nature of being secretive. There is far more information than what is presented and it may never be known to the public. Those secrets remain with the members of these secret societies.

Written by: LINH NGUYEN –– features@theaggie.org