A group of unlikely friends joined together by a shared love of music 

By EMME DUNNING — features@theaggie.org

The Davis music scene is an undoubtedly unique community. On any given weekend in the bustling college town, UC Davis students from all walks of life can be found crowded into the backyards of unassuming houses, captivated by the performances of their peers. For many Davis students, live music — house shows in particular — is an integral part of the local nightlife. 

One such Davis backyard band, Big Fish, had rather unconventional beginnings. The group formed from two separate ventures and a common love of music. 

Angelina Cicchini, a fourth-year sociology major, and UC Davis alum Greta Foehr spearheaded the first endeavor. As a singer and a keyboard player, respectively, the two spent their time at UC Davis engaging in music casually with friends and the community but dreamed of something bigger. 

“We really wanted to start a band,” Cicchini said. “It was a pipe dream for like a year. We never really looked hard enough. We never really found anyone, but Greta [Foehr] and I would perform together sometimes.”

Cicchini and Foehr cultivated their shared interest in music through small performances at retirement homes and other venues. Sierra Lizerbram, Allie Riley and Brooke Tokushige — three UC Davis students at the time — had an idea of their own. 

The trio wanted to form a band with a simple goal: to play one show before their graduation in June of 2023. With a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer, the group was missing a lead singer and a keyboard player. 

When Foehr met the trio through a mutual friend, the missing pieces fell into place. Cicchini and Foehr joined Lizerbram, Riley and Tokushige in their dream of starting a band, and Big Fish was born. 

After getting acquainted, the new group set their sights on their goal of a single performance, with low expectations for the future of the group and a focus on having fun. Despite their low expectations, the show was a major hit. 

“We had our first show that was supposed to be our one show before we graduated,” Foehr said. “We actually sounded good, which we were kind of shocked at. Right after that show, we got a bunch of offers.”

Within 24 hours of their debut performance, Big Fish was fielding requests to perform at multiple other shows, and they decided to continue the band despite not knowing what the future might hold. The group committed themselves to developing their sound and image as a band and began writing original music and performing at venues across Davis, including a set at the annual Whole Earth Festival.

Last year, the band released their first album, titled “Up for Air” and consisting of seven original tracks. The five current band members — alongside Rhea Cosand, who played rhythm guitar with the band for a period of time — recorded the album together, though Cosand opted to leave the band to prioritize recovery from an injury. This past summer, they took their music on the road for their first tour, playing shows across California. 

The group describes their music as indie pop rock but asserts that their sound does not necessarily conform to a single genre.

“Nostalgic always comes to mind for me,” Cicchini said, adding that she believes Big Fish is moody, engaging and, overall, funky.

Katya Jane, a UC Davis alum, has seen the evolution of Big Fish first-hand. Jane has been involved in the Davis music scene for years and was a founding member of the popular student-formed band Cowboys After Dark. 

In this role, Jane quickly discovered just how much work goes into putting together a show and leaned into a logistical role for her own band. After graduating in 2023, Jane began Velvet Red Productions, a production company that plans live music events statewide. It was in this role that Jane connected with Big Fish. 

“After graduating college and spending some time living in [Los Angeles], I came across Big Fish on social media and saw videos of one of their shows in Davis,” Jane said in a written statement. “Even just from the videos, I could tell they had such an incredible vibe.”

Jane was so taken with Big Fish that she invited them to perform at a local Velvet Red Production event in the spring of 2023. 

“Shortly after discovering them, I reached out and invited Big Fish to perform at the Flower Power Festival,” Jane said. “I traveled all the way from L.A. to be there, and I finally got to experience their live performance in person. They completely captivated the crowd, leaving everyone wanting more.”

Through their collaboration, Jane has gotten to know the members of Big Fish as musicians and people and can attest to the band’s unique nature.

“They truly embody Davis culture,” Jane said. “They care about their community and they spread positivity through their art and through their friendships. Each member is incredibly gifted and they have this ability to put on an effortlessly entertaining and technically impressive performance.” 

Jane has continued to collaborate with Big Fish since the Flower Power Festival, putting together a show for them in Los Angeles during their tour last summer and planning a Picnic Day performance for this coming April. 

Though the group has certainly risen in popularity since their first performance, the band has remained committed to their original goal of making music and performing in a way that truly represents their dynamic. 

  “We’re very devoted to doing this because we love it — but at the same time we’re very unserious,” Cicchini said. “It’s just been so much fun.” 

Written by: Emme Dunning — features@theaggie.org

The history of hot chocolate, how students drink it and recommendations on consuming the beloved beverage more ethically

By AMBER WARNKE — features@theaggie.org

Hot chocolate has long comforted humankind, originating as far back as the ancient Olmec, Mayan and Aztec cultures of what is now Mexico and Central America. This early predecessor to hot chocolate, however, was vastly different from what we know and love today, with these cultures drinking their chocolate in an unsweetened and unheated form. It was consumed as far back as 3,500 years ago and was considered a form of medicine, as well as often being drunk during special occasions. 

In the 1500s, the drink was introduced to Spain during Spanish colonization. There, sugar and cinnamon were added to the drink, but it did not become widespread for over a hundred years due to the drink being restricted to the nobility. In 1828, Dutch scientist Coenraad Van Houten revolutionized the process of creating hot chocolate with the invention of the cocoa press. This removed most of the cocoa butter from the processed cacao, refining the drink and led to the modern form of hot chocolate we drink today. 

People all around the world love hot chocolate and find solace in the drink’s sweet and cozy taste. Hot chocolate is loved throughout Davis, both on and off the UC Davis campus. 

Grace Kasabula, a second-year plant sciences major, shared her love for hot chocolate, as well as her preferred method of consuming it. 

“It makes me feel warm and happy inside,” Kasabula said. “I like to make it with the dark Swiss Miss packets […] I make it with milk, not water. If you’re having hot chocolate, it better be with milk. I [also] like to spike hot chocolate [with] adult beverages.” 

Kasabula especially benefited from hot chocolate when she worked as a ski coach at Ski Bradford in Haverhill, Massachusetts. 

“I would come home from work all day in the snow, and I would just have some hot chocolate by the fire,” Kasabula said. “It was just a nice way to end my day.” 

Kasabula believes that chocolate is one of the best ways to deal with a difficult day, and recommends UC Davis students to drink hot chocolate when dealing with academic stress. 

“Froth that up [and] call it a night,” Kasabula said.

Kaitlyn Deem, a fourth-year cognitive science major, also said drinking hot chocolate is a way to manage college stress. She said that finding out what concentration of chocolate she likes best in the drink led her to realize that the beverage can be enjoyed in many forms. 

“It’s way more customizable than I thought,” Deem said.

Salina Kamburova, a fourth-year managerial economics major who works at a coffee shop, Pachamama, in Downtown Davis, is skilled at customizing hot chocolate. There, Kamburova serves a variety of drinks, including coffee, matcha, teas and hot chocolate. She enjoys making artistic drawings on top of the hot chocolate with milk foam in the shape of flowers, bears, hearts and snails.

Being a professional hot chocolate maker, Kamburova offered specific recommendations to students hoping to make high-quality hot chocolate at home. 

“Make sure whatever chocolate base you’re using is really well mixed before you add the milk,” Kamburova said. “I [also] like adding lavender simple syrup and peppermint.” 

However, her greatest joy in serving hot chocolate is how it enables her to connect with children who come into her work because they order hot chocolate frequently. 

“It’s fun to make the little bears on [the hot chocolate] for them and see their reaction,” Kamburova said.

While the drink has positive connotations with its drinkers, the ethics of the chocolate industry are another aspect to consider when buying cocoa products. Child and slave labor are major issues on cocoa plantations, according to the Food Empowerment Project. Most cocoa farmers earn less than one dollar a day, and about 2.1 million children in the Ivory Coast and Ghana are used for child labor on cocoa farms. Experts in these issues recommend not purchasing hot chocolate or other goods from companies including Nestlé, Cadbury, Lindt, Ghirardelli, See’s Candies or Hershey’s. Instead, they recommend shopping from more ethical brands like Tony’s Chocolonely, Divine and Vego.

So, top off your hot chocolate with whipped cream — or, as some students recommend, some lavender syrup — and have a cup of cheer. Regardless of your hot cocoa-based preferences, looking into where hot cocoa is sourced can assist those interested in buying both ethically and responsibly.

Written by: Amber Warnke — features@theaggie.org

Humanities departments struggle with digitized versions of texts as opposed to paper copies, which are not widely provided by the program 

To many students, Equitable Access (EA) is the program that provides access to textbooks and class reading materials without having to hunt to find them externally. Equitable Access provides undergraduate students access to required class materials for a fixed price of $169 per quarter. Students are automatically opted into the program but have the option of manually opting out, which can be done until the twentieth day of instruction each quarter.

Through the program, required texts appear neatly on Canvas’ digital bookshelves as soon as each quarter begins. No fuss, no stress and no heavy stack of books to carry from lecture to lecture. Equitable Access provides books in “traditional” form only when a digital option of the text is not available, according to the program’s website. 

For others, however, Equitable Access has presented significant challenges and disadvantages. In fields that emphasize textual analysis, such as languages and various humanities disciplines, many have found that exclusively digital access to texts is simply not sufficient for the kind of study required. 

Tobias Menely, a professor of English at UC Davis who also serves as chair of the department, explained how those in the English department struggle with lacking access to physical books. 

“The mandated use of digital textbooks undermines standard pedagogical practices in disciplines that teach textual analysis,” Menely said via email. “The methods of critical and interpretive reading we teach — including annotation, scanning, passage analysis and comparison — cannot always be practiced effectively with digital texts.” 

Menley is one of the instructors of ENL 122, which focuses on works by English poet John Milton. Menely explained that he has resorted to requiring students to purchase a paper copy of “Paradise Lost,” one of the primary texts the course covers. 

“They can’t take the course without a paper copy of the book because they can’t read the poem in the way I need them to — slowly, attentively, recursively, with quick access to notes, with a pen or pencil in hand — with a digital edition,” Menely wrote. “Many of them are signed up for EA, but for my course they still need to purchase the book. The course simply can’t be taught with the digital editions mandated by EA.”

Grace Delmolino, a professor of Italian at UC Davis who specializes in medieval literature, provided historical context regarding physical books. 

“The physical book is a very old technology and [it has] been perfected in a way that digital books have not been,” Delmolino said. “In the Middle Ages, people would read books in a format where they were presented with a physical page that had not just the main text they were studying but also a gloss, which is a commentary that explains what’s important in the text.” 

Delmolino said that digital texts hinders students’ abilities to easily transition between original texts and their “gloss.” 

“That is still the model we use to study great works of literature: You have your text and then you have a gloss,” Delmolino said. “The digital format makes it almost impossible to go back and forth between these two things in the way that you need to to understand these texts.” 

Madison Ford, a fourth-year comparative literature and Italian double major, has chosen to opt out of the Equitable Access program. Though she made use of the program in her lower-division courses that required expensive textbooks but didn’t necessarily indicate a close, interactive reading, Ford’s literature-based major courses often require a variety of books that she believes are studied best as paper texts.

“Having a physical copy makes it easier for me to keep track of my notes as I can easily bring it with me everywhere without having to worry about finding a charging outlet,” Ford said. “It’s easier to take notes since I can write in the margins and keep track of old annotations that I want to look back at and reference.” 

Tiffany Jo Werth, a professor of English at UC Davis, commented on the problem of lacking permanent access to annotations and notes within a physical text purchased through the program. 

“Student access to the books is limited to the quarter in which they’re taking the class,” Werth said. “So, after the class is finished, that virtual book is no longer available for you on your virtual bookshelf — any annotations or any kind of engagement that you had with that text is gone. There is no sense of it lasting beyond the duration of the quarter.” 

Professors have also noted that even when they order specific texts through the program, the copy that students receive on their digital bookshelves does not always match with the text they have selected to study. 

Delmolino noted that when she ordered a modern translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s “Decameron” for the course ITA 114, which is focused entirely on the work, the program incorrectly matched students with a translation different from what she requested.

“I ordered this particular translation after evaluating the options and determining this was the best one — it’s readable, it’s clear and it had good notes and commentary,” Delmolino said.  “Equitable Access ordered a random translation which was already free online since it was in the public domain. It had no notes and wasn’t viable for a course where we were going to be reading 1,000 pages of the text.”  

Werth experienced a similar error through the program, where the version of the text of “The Man in the Moone” for the ENL 189 seminar class was not granted to students. After a student shared that he had a difficult time reading the text, she examined the site and noticed the error. 

“I opened Equitable Access and it showed the cover of the edition of the version I ordered, which is a very nice edition — very clear, great introduction and great notes,” Werth said. “They had the cover image of the text I’d ordered and inside was a facsimile edition of the text from the 1700s. No page numbers, no notes, nothing.” 

As of this quarter, the Undergraduate Council and the Division of Student Affairs joined together to offer a pilot program to provide print copies of books through Equitable Access. The program will take place during spring quarter and will allow instructors to propose a rationale as to why a particular text needs to be available to students in print and offered through Equitable Access. If proven successful, the program could be implemented as a permanent option and will therefore allow some books to be granted in physical form. 

Despite issues that have arisen with the program, Equitable Access has been designed to benefit students and staff. In an ideal world for some at UC Davis, the program could be adapted slightly to host more print availability for students and staff. Until then, many students at UC Davis may choose to proceed with caution and research before selecting to opt in or out of the program.  

Written by: Rachel Gauer — features@theaggie.org

Walid Jailani launches the non-profit to provide education in support of over 1,200 students and empower local educators

Walid Jailani, a fourth-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major and education minor, founded the School of Freedom — a non-profit organization dedicated to providing education to young Afghan girls who have outgrown the limited schooling opportunities available to them in Afghanistan. 

Jailani shared that he was deeply moved to help young girls in Afghanistan after seeing their videos posted on TikTok. In these videos, they revealed that they were unable to continue their education beyond the seventh grade as a result of new bans implemented by the Taliban.

“I showed my brother and said, ‘This is making me very sad, I want to do something about it,’ and he joked and said, ‘Oh, just start a school,’” Jailani said.

The School of Freedom was originally the Women’s Education Movement (WEM), a UC Davis on-campus club that Jailani started as a second-year in 2023. Jailani and other undergraduate members began tutoring girls in Afghanistan, initially teaching only English-language courses to a classroom of 30 students. Eventually, they had 1,200 students sign up, allowing them to create separate English courses: Elementary English, Intermediate English and Advanced English.

“Depending on their level and proficiency, we placed them in those classes and UC Davis students were teaching them,” Jailani said. “They tutored these girls for about 13 to 14 months themselves and so did I. It was a good time.”

Jailani also said that the dedication of the School of Freedom volunteers helped to create an established program. 

“Props to my volunteers, they would be waking up at 8 a.m. every day — they don’t even wake up for their classes at 8 a.m. — and they were ready to teach,” Jailani said. “It was very interesting for me to see them wake up and be so excited to teach and give back to these girls and this community when they wouldn’t even want to wake up for their own 8 a.m. classes.”

Word quickly spread about their classes, and soon, Afghan teachers who had lost their jobs began reaching out to Jailani, eager to contribute. With their support, Jailani established the School of Freedom, creating a platform for Afghan educators to teach a variety of subjects to Afghan students, expanding the curriculum beyond just English.

“At that time it was two different branches,” Jailani said. “We had the Women’s Education Movement that was being run in the [United States] and the School of Freedom that was taught voluntarily by teachers that lost their jobs in Afghanistan.”

The Women’s Education Movement aimed to provide crucial financial support to Afghan teachers and students through fundraising and donations. To ensure the most efficient use of its limited budget, the organization developed a financial aid application system to assess and prioritize students with the greatest need.

“We paid for their internet and anything else we could help them out with,” Jailani said. “For students, we set up a financial aid system. We were getting donations from the Willow Way Tutoring Club. […] They would give us a budget every month to pay out 30 to 40 students for Wi-Fi money because some students couldn’t afford it and we wanted to accommodate them any way we could.” 

Eventually, the Women’s Education Movement and the School of Freedom united as one, with the School of Freedom being officially registered as a non-profit organization. The School of Freedom now serves approximately 1,200 students and has 35 teachers, including a principal and vice principal. The school follows the official Afghan curriculum, while UC Davis student members focus on management-related tasks, including fundraising and outreach efforts to enroll more students.

Robina Haqiqi, a fourth-year psychology major, serves as the vice president of the School of Freedom at UC Davis, leading projects and supporting Jailani in carrying out their mission to teach. She emphasized that the School of Freedom is not just about teaching a set curriculum but also about a larger social impact.

“This work has been deeply meaningful to me because it represents hope and resilience,” Haqiqi said. “Knowing that we’re making a huge difference in the lives of girls who are denied basic opportunities motivates me every day. It’s a reminder that even in the face of unimaginable challenges, education can still be a tool for freedom and change.”

The School of Freedom’s students have already been inspired to shape the future, according to Mariam Saleh, a fourth-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major. Acting as the organization’s social media coordinator, Saleh had the privilege of connecting with students one-on-one and sharing their stories with the rest of the world.

“One thing that inspired me from the interviews [with the students] is that a lot of the girls wanted to become journalists, which is very powerful because they want to use their voice to make a change as well,” Saleh said. “Overall, I am very excited for what [the] School of Freedom can do, and [I am] hoping it can create a bigger and more powerful change.”

Moving forward, UC Davis members of the School of Freedom club are working on launching a youth program for Middle Eastern and other refugee communities in California to provide mentorship, mental health resources and tutoring support for high school-aged students. 

“They come to this country and they might be good at science and math but struggle with the language barrier,” Jailani said. “As far as mentorship, most of the members here are refugees or immigrants and have gone through this process themselves and are now at UC Davis. We want these [high school] students to get connected with our undergrads so they can see and know, ‘If they did it, I can do it too.’ […] We want to introduce them to trade schools, community college[s] and four-year universities to get them thinking about continuing their education.”

The School of Freedom organization is eager to welcome new volunteers. Students who are interested in becoming members or donating to their cause can find information through their organization’s website or by emailing admin@schooloffreedom.org. 

“Mostly, we are looking for people who can help us with fundraisers, people who can [do] outreach [and] people who can help us get donations,” Jailani said, “Once our youth program starts, we are looking for people who can help us with presentations, help out with workshops and tutor students [who reside in California].”

Jailani emphasized that the School of Freedom would not exist without the help and support from his peers, saying that the collective strength of their teamwork and shared commitment to the cause was the foundation of its success.

“I want to thank Sadia Haidari, the principal and co-founder of the Afghanistan part of School of Freedom, Moheb Salemi, who helped me out to turn this entire thing to a non-profit, and Robina Haqiqi, Jasmine Alhuniti, Mariam Saleh and Ghezal Karim for being there since day one and now help me with the management on board,” Jailani said.

Written by: Jalan Tehranifar — features@theaggie.org