Former chancellor gets a little “out of control” in what appears to be revenge act

It’s not easy to lose your job, especially when it means leaving a powerful and high-paying career at a prestigious institution for a different powerful and high-paying career at the exact same institution. Former Chancellor Linda Katehi found this out the hard way. Katehi is under fire once again at UC Davis, this time for stealing money directly out of the pockets of UC Davis students. The incident occurred during the first week of Fall Quarter 2016.

Katehi is said to have accumulated a little over $400,000 from almost 27,000 students before someone realized what she was doing and called campus police. Upon the arrival of the police, Chancellor Katehi told them that she was, in fact, not under arrest, despite their claims. They left shortly after.

One of the victims of Katehi’s actions was Samantha Reynolds, a third-year economics major, who caught Katehi in the act.

“I thought it was just some guy getting grabby, but it was actually Chancellor Katehi trying to steal my wallet! I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Reynolds said. “It brings up some serious concerns about who used to be in charge of this institution. At least the person in charge now was only pressured to resign from his former position at another college because of embezzlement accusations. At least some administrators still have morals!”

Katehi sent out a lengthy email regarding the scandal after seeing how many students were Yik Yak-ing and chalking the campus about her.

Here is part of the response crafted by her PR team:

“It hurts me greatly that I have been caught stealing money from you, the beloved students of this university. I can assure you that I will do everything in my power to make sure it looks like I have learned my lesson from this experience.”

Not satisfied with this response from the chancellor, a group of brave student activists began an occupation of Katehi’s house. Many are actually living in the chancellor’s home full-time, having food delivered and camping out overnight.

“We don’t plan to leave until she resigns and gives me my wallet back,” said Ryan Paul, occupier and hoverboard owner.

Katehi said she plans to keep the money, but she will use part of it to set up a $30 scholarship fund for five lucky undergraduates to split.

The former chancellor is expected to keep her job at UC Davis despite the incident, and might even get a raise.

Written by: Brian Landry –– bjlandry@ucdavis.edu

Solving UC Davis’ food insecurity problem

After having to strip a first-grader of his lunch this week, a cafeteria employee in the Canon McMillan School District has quit her job in protest of the district’s new ‘lunch shaming’ system.

The district, located just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has implemented new policies revoking students’ meals if they are over $25 in meal debt. As required by state law, indebted students from kindergarten to sixth grade are given a supplemental meal — a cheese sandwich — while older students receive nothing.

These actions by the Canon McMillan School District have left many young students teary-eyed and humiliated and have opened up a space for a greater dialogue on the matter of food insecurity, which should prompt UC Davis to take further measures to combat the issue..

The United States Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as “a state in which consistent access to adequate food is limited by a lack of money and other resources at times during the year.”

Results of a survey completed in 2015 showed that of the 9,000 students across the UC system who participated, 19 percent of them suffered from “very low” food security, while another 23 percent reported feeling “low” food security. UC Davis in particular has put great efforts into combating these numbers with initiatives that make food more accessible for its students and alleviate food insecurity.

The University of California Global Food Initiative, launched in 2014 to “sustainably and nutritiously” feed an ever-growing world population, utilizes the research-powerhouse capabilities of UC schools to “help individuals and communities access safe, affordable and nutritious food.”

UC Davis has received $375,000 in grants thus far through the initiative out of the total $3.3 million that UC President Janet Napolitano has pledged to the issue through 2018.

The initiative will deviate to pre-existing food access resources on campus like the ASUCD Pantry, located in Lower Freeborn, which offers all students free meals and grocery items on weekdays, and Fruit and Veggie Up!, a program that — through the Pantry and at the Student Health and Wellness Center — provides free produce to UC Davis students.

Budget allotment also allows for the revamping and wider publicizing of Aggie Food Connection (AFC), an “online access point for UC Davis information, resources and services pertaining to food security and nutrition.”

The Editorial Board would like to commend UC Davis for prioritizing and pushing for initiatives that combat food insecurity and promote food access for all its students.

While UC Davis does its part in alleviating this problem, students can also take action by donating to the Pantry and participating in the ASUCD Pay It Forward campaign spearheaded by ASUCD senator Adilla Jamaludin.

We hope UC Davis will continue to add to the nutrition resources on campus and  diminish the number of students that experience any level of food insecurity. Students should not have to compromise their academic performance because they’re worried about where their next meal is going to come from.

Eight years ago, California voters were asked to vote in Proposition 2. It asked if consumers would like their egg-laying hens to be able to “stand up, lie down, turn around, and fully extend their wings.” Consumers agreed with the proposition outline and the full effects of the law became apparent by 2015. Since then, various large producers like Foster Farms and Hickson Family Farms have changed to cage-free systems.

Chicken production has frequently been berated with negative images, especially for poultry raised in conventional cages. Pictures of birds missing large chunks of feathers and stuck in small cages have been spread over social media through groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), advocating that no animals should ever be used by humans for consumption or otherwise. Those who see these photos might cast the blame on the cages, but the ragged appearance of the birds cannot be blamed on husbandry alone, but on the animals themselves. Chickens are hierarchical and establish a “pecking order” in their cages, where they fight with other birds to gain dominance. These constant attacks cause the bald spots and injuries the hens suffer in their cages.

Besides the conventional system of raising chickens, there are several different methods of poultry husbandry. The system previously used by such big producers is called conventional cages (CC). Known to be very efficient, CC ensures manure is taken away from the cages and the eggs are removed before they can be exposed to disease from the feces. A second, more expensive method is called enriched cages (EC), in which chickens are housed in larger cages with nesting boxes and scratching area. Cage-free systems allow birds to roam freely in an enclosure where eggs are laid in manure. This was the system elected to be adopted in 2008 and is still used today.

Despite the overwhelming positive response from the public during this election, cage-free systems are not all positive. According to a study by Dr. Frank M. Mitloehner, UC Davis professor of animal science, the new egg-laying system could pose environmental, food safety, worker safety, animal welfare and affordability consequences.

Environmentally speaking, cage-free causes a higher daily concentration of ammonia and an increased concentration of particulate matter in the air than CC and EC methods. While ammonia is a naturally occurring chemical, it can still be detrimental in high concentrations, with the potential to erode the ozone layer that protects humans from harmful UV rays. Cage-free eggs also have higher risk of pathogen ingestion. All hens shed salmonella in manure and when eggs come in contact with the feces, this increases the rates of salmonella and decreases the food’s safety.

Prop 2 also had serious consequences for animal welfare. Hens in these systems have lower weekly egg counts, the highest death rates, cannibalism and high rates of pecking between the birds. When hens lose track of the birds they’ve established dominance over, the chickens constantly fight with one another because of the lack of separated flocks. And with single flocks that can range up to 200,000 chickens, this can cause a lot of damage. Cage-free birds were also seen to have prominent keel bone fractures (the large bone in their chests) due to the chicken’s unsuccessful flight abilities.

Imagine having another person thrown at you — that’s what these birds experience every time they’re landed on. Moreover, workers in these facilities are also exposed to health threats due to the high concentration of inhalable dust, which puts them at greater risk for lung disease.

While conventional cages might provide better food safety and worker safety, they do create a worse environment for the birds. When having to decide between cage-free and CC or EC, there will always be trade-offs. It’s important to be fully educated before voting on a proposition that could make as much of a difference as Prop 2. It’s also important to keep in mind that farmers raising these birds only receive seven cents for every twelve eggs sold, while retailers keep the rest of the average $2.94/dozen. And this cheap price applies only to conventional cage systems. By forcing producers to redesign their entire production systems, we are generating more expenses for them and creating a more expensive product most consumers are still reluctant to buy. Prices for cage-free eggs range from 5 to 9 dollars but few people willingly hash out the extra cash to pay for the eggs.

This is not to say cage-free is a terrible system. Everything has its pros and cons, and consumers must remain vigilant and educate themselves in order to make important decisions about the food they put on their tables. They must consider not only the impact of a law on the general population, but on the people who grow the food as well.

So what has Prop 2 actually done other than increase egg prices, increase health concerns for workers and decrease food safety in eggs? Only the future can tell.

Written by: Alice Rocha — asrocha@ucdavis.edu

Davis wouldn’t be Davis without a strong focus on agriculture. Alice Rocha, a third-year animal science major, will bring that focus to the Aggie with a column on sustainable animal agriculture and how it impacts the food system today. This paper ran a column last year on ethical consumption, which was partly concerned with the potential downsides of our eating habits. Rocha will expand upon those concerns, using her own experience working in a lab to inform her takes on some of the most pressing issues we need to start working through today, including how to feed nine billion people by 2050.

While younger voters tend to be reliably liberal, millennials identify more now with traditional Republican values than baby boomers and Gen X-ers did when they were at their age, according to a new study published this month in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

But it’s not clear that the growing number of students espousing conservatism (up eight percent since 1976) are necessarily doing so in support of Donald Trump, underscoring an ever-widening gap that threatens to tear the GOP apart for years to come.

Interviews with Republican leaders on three prominent and politically active campuses — Harvard, Yale and Cornell — show that some young conservatives have more than just reservations about their party’s nominee.

For the first time in its 128-year history, the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) announced August that it would refuse to endorse the GOP nominee in a statement that blasted Trump as racist, misogynistic and antithetical to the club’s values.

“There was no Trump as the first choice,” said Declan Garvey, a fourth-year student currently serving as president of the HRC. “And as the primary went on, it became clear that Trump was not anybody’s second, third, fourth, fifth — down to sixteenth choice.”

In the weeks following the GOP convention in Cleveland, a poll sent out to HRC members yielded only about 10 percent support for Trump, according to Garvey, prompting him and his executive board to come out with the announcement before school started. Their decision was met with national media coverage and general praise, putting pressure on other schools, including Yale and Cornell, to take a position on the Republican nominee.

Neither of these campuses enjoyed a similar harmony in coming out with their own endorsements.

Longtime members of the Yale College Republicans (YCR) broke from the organization after its co-chairs (who declined to comment for this article) decided to back Trump on party grounds. Leaders of the new group that formed in the shake-up, the Yale New Republicans, say that they’re going to focus on reelecting Republican candidates down-ballot, like Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

“Today, in general, people are so tied up on party label — Republican, Democrat — that they fail to look deeper into the candidates and really question: Do they really reaffirm my values?” said Ben Rasmussen, co-chair of the Yale New Republicans and the former Vice President of YCR.

And the Cornell Republicans were officially unrecognized by their overseeing body, the New York Federation of College Republicans, for endorsing Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate and former Republican governor of New Mexico.

“We’re really trying to show people that what’s really important in this election is fiscal conservatism,” said Olivia Corn, chairwoman of the of the Cornell Republicans. “And Gary Johnson is the candidate for fiscal conservatism.”

Cornell Republican’s endorsement points to a free-market and free-love direction that many young conservatives seem to be heading, and one that could have significant impact on the future of the Republican Party. The New York Federation failed to recognize this when it voted to revoke the Cornell organization’s credentials. Corn, who said she was blindsided by these actions, has consulted a lawyer and plans legal recourse.

That’s the strong and proper response required in an election where putting party over country could wind up fatally damaging both.

By affirmatively supporting Johnson — Cornell Republicans plan on helping him attain the 15 percent polling threshold required to make the debate stages — the organization is effectively saying that issues like same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization (Johnson supports both) are not as central to its conservative beliefs as his free-trade and supply-side economic agenda.

This has probably been the inner belief of Republicans in Congress for decades, but it’s not one on which they’ve staked their political fortunes. Republican constituencies constantly vote against their own economic interest because their leaders overstate the importance of social issues and exploit base fears about the moral decline of society. We see the consequence now in Trump.

That is why he must be defeated this November.

His loss could further signal to young Republicans that rooting a campaign in identity politics rather than ideology and policy actually doesn’t increase your odds of winning an election (or at least a national one with increasingly diverse demographics).

Harvard should be commended for helping starting the conversation on colleges on whether their Republican organizations should endorse Trump. The actions of the Yale College Republicans and the New York Federation showed an alarming short-sightedness when they chose to stay the course with a businessman with no relevant political experience.

But if the response from the majority of Republicans at these elite universities is any indication of the GOP’s future, disaster may be stalled out and a better, more tolerant party might emerge.

Of course, the word ‘elite’ should tip you off that these aren’t exactly the voters that have been propelling Trump to the nomination in the first place. The real-estate billionaire from New York is a champion of the common man — particularly the white common man without a college education.

But that doesn’t mean the actions of these young Republicans doesn’t count for nothing — clearly it does when they receive pushback from those supporting a demagogue.

Written by: Eli Flesh — ekflesch@ucdavis.edu