ASUCD to implement new mental health resources following resignations

It’s a rainy mid-afternoon in Davis when former ASUCD Vice President Robyn Huey walks into the Student Community Center. Her smile beams through as she holds open the door, ushering another student inside.

This image is starkly different from the Huey students saw 10 months ago, when the one-time leader of UC Davis’ student government resigned her post due to her struggle with depression.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one-in-four college students struggles with mental illness. While Huey doesn’t cite ASUCD as the cause of her depression, she does see her two terms in student government, one as a senator and the other briefly as vice president, as the final push she needed to get diagnosed and seek medical help.

“It was complicated because I knew that my depression [did]n’t come from ASUCD, but maybe some part of it was aggravated by it,” Huey said. “Being part of ASUCD was keeping me going, but at the same time, the amount of work that was required from me didn’t give me time to fully recover.”

For Huey, events such as the ASUCD Coffee House’s racially-charged Cinco de Drinko party, 2014’s massive unit budget cuts and two terms sitting on divestment meetings, where she voted on whether the UC Regents should divest from companies involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, were primary stressors on her psyche.

“I was thinking about the really traumatic Thursday night senate meetings,” Huey said. “There have been shouting matches moments where you just have to close for the night. I remember having multiple anxiety attacks. Reminding myself of that made me realize that I wasn’t ready to continue. It wasn’t worth it.”

Huey was clinically diagnosed with depression by UC Davis’ Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), now known as Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS), in August 2014, the summer after her term as a senator. Less than a year later, in April 2015, she formally resigned as vice president, only a few weeks into the job.

According to current ASUCD President Mariah Kala Watson, Huey’s running mate, the day of Huey’s resignation was the first time the executive duo had opened their office to the public.

“Everybody was so joyous before this meeting. I remember Robyn walking in and just looking miserable,” Watson said. “She handed me this letter and said, ‘When you get a chance, read this and let me know.’ I started looking at it, and I immediately knew what it was. It was a five-page handwritten letter and the last page just said, ‘I can’t do this. I’m sorry. This is my formal resignation.’”

Huey told classmates in her landscape architecture class before she notified anyone in ASUCD, including Watson, about her planned resignation.

“The people I talked to were people who didn’t know me as vice president or senator,” Huey said. “They knew me as something else. Like, ‘Oh, Robyn. She’s in my landscape architecture program’ or ‘Robyn, she designs stuff and I love talking about design stuff with her.’ Those are the people that I really went to first because they knew me outside of ASUCD and talking to them helped me remind me who I was when I was happiest.”

Huey’s decision to first notify non-ASUCD members followed a defining moment a few nights before, when she realized a majority of the people around her were only contacting her for ASUCD-related requests.

“There was this one night where everyone who wanted to get in contact with me was for something related to ASUCD,” Huey said. “That night I was so tired. That’s when I realized that everyone around me at that moment, they only knew me because of ASUCD or they wanted something from me because of ASUCD. It was sort of a defining moment. It wasn’t about time for myself; it was time for other people.”

However, Huey’s original resignation spoke nothing to her struggle with depression. It wasn’t until months later that Huey opened up about her battle, hoping that others would have the courage to do so as well.

“I think hiding for so long just continued the stigma,” Huey said. “To hide it [was] also to shame my existence because there’s nothing wrong with having a mental illness. I was like, ‘You know what? I’m done hiding. Maybe this will help me and maybe it will help other people.’”

Six months following Huey’s resignation, another member of ASUCD resigned due to mental health issues: former ASUCD Senator Anabiah Syed. While Syed noted that she had very minimal knowledge about Huey’s struggle with mental illness, the two share similar histories with depression, anxiety attacks and stressful divestment hearings, which both members said led to hate emails, including death threats.

For Syed, her reservations with ASUCD began when she was elected in the near-uncontested 2014 Fall Quarter election.

“I tend to give a lot of myself to any position I hold. That wasn’t the case with ASUCD or Senate, and I’ll be the first to admit that,” Syed said. “I did have my qualms about Senate, and ASUCD. To me, it felt like a fairly toxic environment — the type of environment I had done my best to avoid throughout my time at Davis.”

However, it wasn’t until months into her term that Syed found herself retreating from loved ones and becoming immobilized by her depression that she began contemplating resigning.

“Around May, it began to get worse. It felt like the biggest task was even getting out of bed in the morning, afternoon or however long I’d convince myself it was all right for me to stay there,” Syed said.

A few weeks into fall quarter last year, Syed announced her official resignation, but not without some hesitation on disappointing her constituents.

“I never wanted to disappoint all the students that put me there to begin with,” Syed said. “I didn’t want to just give up because that’s what resigning signified to me at that point — giving up.”

According to Watson, the overwhelming desire to please students is why many student leaders sacrifice their mental and physical health for the role they work in, and it is also one of the reasons she believes that more members within ASUCD struggle with mental health issues than expected.

“You’re working 40 hours a week sometimes, and you don’t stop because you’re not thinking about yourself,” Watson said. “It’s dangerous, and it’s definitely why a lot of us go through things. We have this mindset where if we take a break then we’re being selfish, but you cannot function if you’re not taking care of yourself.”

For this reason, Watson is planning to bring academic advisors and a CAPS counselor specialized in ASUCD to the Memorial Union, where a majority of ASUCD units are housed. This is in addition to ASUCD unofficially loosening its reins around missed senate meetings following Huey’s resignation. According to the current bylaws, senators are only permitted one unexcused senate meeting per quarter.

Following their resignations, Syed and Huey are taking different routes to recovery. Syed is currently taking the quarter off and spending time at home with her family following a bad turn in her depression. She plans to return in the spring.

In December, Huey graduated with a degree in landscape architecture and currently works full-time as a designer for Shields Library and strategic communications. Although Huey doesn’t keep up with ASUCD anymore, she affirmed that she doesn’t regret her time in the association.

“It was definitely eye-opening. It helped me grow,” Huey said. “My relationship was so complicated, but if I never went through all of that, I never would’ve been diagnosed. I learned so much. But with that, everything in moderation and eventually you have to move on.”

With regard to whom Huey is today compared to whom she was a year ago, she said that she has a better grasp on how she can make herself happy.

“The difference now with who I was a year ago is that I know myself a lot better. I know how to identify what’s good for me and what isn’t,” Huey said. “I know if something is actually aligned with what would actually make me happier or what is healthy for me.”

Written by: JASON PHAM – campus@theaggie.org

Initiative to add 14,000 beds to student housing across all UC’s

On Jan. 20, University of California (UC) President Janet Napolitano issued the UC’s new Student Housing Initiative with the intentions of accommodating the future enrollment influx, accelerating student housing development and keeping housing affordable.

Influenced by admission targets, Napolitano set to increase system-wide admission of 10,000 new in-state undergraduates within the coming three years, including 5,000 incoming freshmen and transfer students in the 2016-17 school year.

Napolitano plans on adding roughly 14,000 new beds in the next couple of years including more beds in the residence halls, increased graduate student housing and more university apartments for the general populace.

“I think it’s exciting,” said Emily Galindo, executive director of Student Housing. “I think that because we want to grow and be sure that we can accommodate as many California residents as possible […] then you need to have facilities to accommodate them and a key facility is student housing.”

Though Galindo believes that off-campus housing isn’t as large of a problem in Davis, she still sees this initiative as beneficial across the UC’s.

“So many of the campuses are located where [there’s] very expensive housing in the exterior of the campus. So students often look for a place on campus to find housing more affordable,” Galindo said. “In Davis, our situation is a little different, but it can also be applied.”

Alexis Quach, a first-year economics major, believes that a growing problem at UC Davis is many first-year students are forced to live off-campus because of a lack of space, despite being promised guaranteed housing as freshmen. The initiative is intended to help house more incoming freshmen.

“I know a number of freshman that have to live off-campus because they couldn’t get housing,” Quach said. “I think it’s kind of unfair because you want that experience as a first-year and you’re open to way more resources when you’re on campus.”

For the Davis campus, the initiative focuses on the increasing incoming freshmen and transfers, rather than the continuing student body. Steps taken to fix the first-year housing shortage include the termination of guaranteed second-year housing.

“Unfortunately we’re gonna have to suspend our second-year guarantee because we want to be sure that we can accommodate all the first-years,” Galindo said.

But Galindo does not rule out supporting the continuing student body.

“In terms of continuing students, I think the campus can be responsible in how it grows,” Galindo said. “What that means is, although many students will choose to live in the city of Davis […] depending on supply, it could mean we need to supply more student housing.”

However, some students do not share the same enthusiasm for the Student Housing Initiative. For Kayla Chen, a first-year managerial economics major, the increase in students would result in potential rise in tuition.

“Having more dorms and beds would mean more students, and that would mean they would [raise] the tuition,” Chen said.

These sentiments have been expressed since the launch of the 2020 Initiative, a campaign pioneered by Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi in November 2011 that intends to add 5,000 undergraduate students by 2020. However, since the initiative is not state-funded, a tuition hike is necessary to expand the physical capacity of the campus, including student housing.

Currently there are plans for the “Tercero Phase 4” residence halls to be completed by Fall 2017, adding four new buildings that will house 506 students total. Galindo mentions this future on-campus housing as part of the 2020 Initiative.

“We had already begun the process in figuring out how to accommodate the 2020 Initiative,” Galindo said. “What you see with Tercero is a part of what we needed for that.”

The new housing initiative, on the other hand, will assist the renovation and redevelopment of other projects on the UC Davis campus, with an emphasis on the Tercero dining commons and Cuarto residence halls.

“Right now, the next thing we would be looking at is additional dining, maybe a second dining facility in the Tercero area. It’s really packed,” Galindo said. “Out in the Cuarto area is another place where we have aging facilities. We have a plan now to redevelop Webster and Emerson and add about 300 additional beds.”

On Jan. 22, a team consisting of UC Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom and senior leaders under Brostrom and Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher visited all 10 UC campuses in hopes of accessing and expediting each campus’ housing objectives.

Written by: Yvonne Leong – campus@theaggie.org

Updated website adds information on admissions, educational programs, campus life to homepage

On Jan. 19, UC Davis launched its redesigned website, which provides easier navigation and more content for current and prospective students as well as parents and staff.

Staff from departments including strategic communications, information and educational technology, undergraduate admissions, student affairs marketing and communications spent 18 months working on the redesign. They asked prospective and current students what updates they would like to see to the website, and watched how students used the original site to determine what changes would be made.

The team working on the website reviewed the old site to see what was popular and looked at other universities’ websites and sites like The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed for ideas.

“We wanted something to serve the audience a little better, so we did a little research on what the audience looks for,” said Tom Watts, lead interactive web designer for UC Davis strategic communications. “The website is keyed for prospective and current students, so we aimed toward a younger audience.”

On the new site, students can find pages with information on admissions, educational programs and updates on campus life.

On the News & Information page, research news is now combined with university news. At the top of the page for each story are links to the UC Davis news site’s top stories and the UC Davis Facebook feed.

Andy Fell, associate director of news and media relations, believes the website has a more attractive and modern look that will now truly represent UC Davis and all that it has to offer.

“We wanted a better website, one in line with a modern look and attractive front door for the university,” Fell said. “The new website tells the story of UC Davis in a more engaging way. The school knows this is a great university, but now the world will know as well.”

The team will continue to add new features to the site, such as features catered toward prospective graduate students.

Angelica de Jesus, a second-year civil engineering major, feels that the website has captured the essence of UC Davis.

“The website is so unique and eye catching now, [and] it has a cool opening video that is inspiring and a true representation of what Davis is all about,” de Jesus said.

To explore the site, visit ucdavis.edu.

Written by: Demi Caceres – campus@theaggie.org

CFC halts ASUCD food catering, reduces annual club grants back to $2,000

In October 2015, former ASUCD Senator Alex Lee proposed Senate Bill 08, which allotted UC Davis clubs up to $2,500 annually and the option to have food catered by ASUCD services, specifically the ASUCD Coffee House (CoHo). Lee’s bill was unanimously passed by the senate.

However, ASUCD’s Club Finance Council (CFC) announced in late January 2016 that it repealed the bill, thus no longer providing ASUCD services and CoHo food catering for UC Davis clubs and organizations. CFC also clarified that it would bring annual club grants back down from $2,500 to $2,000 beginning in February.

CFC’s decision was based upon the concerns the council had shared with Lee before the bill was proposed to the senate last fall. CFC agreed to increasing annual club grants to $2,500, but not to ASUCD food catering.

Third-year international relations and economics double major and CFC board member Funke Aderonmu, explained in an email interview the reasoning behind the board’s concern over ASUCD food catering for UC Davis clubs and organizations in the bill.

“With the limited funding available to allocate to over 500 qualifying undergraduate student organizations, [CFC] felt funding food would further limit the amount of money available to students,” Aderonmu said.

Despite these concerns, Lee still wanted to provide clubs with the option of food catering by ASUCD services.

“Clubs will spend days or weeks figuring out how to cater their events with food. This bill would be helpful for those clubs, especially during long conferences where food and refreshments might be expected,” Lee said.

Lee is also confident that food catering will be financially beneficial for ASUCD in the long run.

“By opening up funding opportunities to our own services, we will redistribute money. This bill would unite UC Davis clubs and ASUCD services in working together,” Lee said.

The bill presented to the ASUCD senate was Lee’s original bill, proposing both an increase in club grants and ASUCD food catering. The CFC Board was surprised to learn that the original bill had passed through the senate without any of their suggestions amended. According to CFC bylaws, the council is not allowed to provide food catering to clubs and events.

“The bill that was passed was in conflict with the CFC bylaws,” Aderonmu said. “The CFC Board had to decide whether they would sign off on the un-amended bill or would return to the original guidelines.”

In January 2016, the CFC Board unanimously decided to return to the original bylaws, thus vetoing Lee’s bill.

Before the bill was reversed, some clubs had actually registered for ASUCD food catering services for upcoming events. These clubs were informed via email that beginning in February 2016, food catering would no longer be available. Clubs were also informed that annual grants were reduced from $2,500 to $2,000 — the original budget before Lee’s bill passed.

The Association of Body Image and Disordered Eating (ABIDE), one of the clubs that received the email, was disappointed in hearing this news. Yi Sum To, a fourth-year clinical nutrition major and ABIDE’s treasurer, discussed the stress involved in catering for club events.

“It can be difficult to find food sponsors for events,” To said. “When you need money for club T-shirts and other supplies, it’s harder for us to gather up the money for catering.”

Lee hopes to revisit this bill with CFC and further discuss potential options for club catering.

“I think it’s best to work with what we’re given and expand upon that,” Lee said. “I think it’s important to put a little more pressure into student government and express that people are using our services. It’s beneficial to clubs and the association.”

Written by: Emma Sadlowski – campus@theaggie.org

Davis Stands with Ferguson responds to UC Davis’ erasure of victims’ names last fall.

On Jan. 27, Davis Stands with Ferguson, an extension group of Black Lives Matter on the UC Davis campus, held a protest called “Say Their Name” at the Memorial Union (MU) in honor of the 1,200 people killed by police brutality in 2015. The students who participated wrote all 1,200 names on the patio of the MU in chalk and on a blanket in case the names were removed.

During Fall Quarter, a similar protest was held. However, due to a mistake by the university and some UC Davis employees, all of the names were erased.

After last quarter’s incident, Dave Lawlor, vice chancellor and chief financial officer of UC Davis, apologized on behalf of the university in an email sent to the entire student body. The email then went on to list the names and ages of every single person killed by police in 2015 if information was available.

“I am deeply sorry that university employees erased the names of more than 1,000 people who were killed by police,” Lawlor said in the email. “Please know that erasing the names was a mistake, and it was fundamentally wrong. As the lead for the university’s finances, operations and administration, I take full responsibility for these actions. I sign this letter in the spirit of respect and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which also has the full support of UC Davis leadership. We welcome an opportunity to meet with students and learn how we can be helpful in moving forward.”

The administration reached out to Davis Stands with Ferguson about this incident, and the students decided to rewrite the names at the original location and ensure the names would not be erased again.

Among the demonstrators was Alisha Rodriguez, a second-year psychology student, who was upset when she found out that the university erased the names of all the people that had been killed in 2015, partially due to the fact that one of the victims of police brutality last year was her cousin Ryan Rodriguez.

“We wanted to remember the people that left us,” Rodriguez said. “My cousin actually passed away. He got shot last year, and it was important for me to have his name written just to remember what happened and to have justice for him. And, to have his name erased just felt really bad.”

According to Kyla Burke, a fifth-year environmental science and management major and co-organizer of the “Say Their Name” protest, none of the students was particularly upset with the university for erasing the names. However, she was a bit skeptical of how much the university truly supports the Black Lives Matter movement.

“There is no animosity [toward the university], but in their apology, they said that they support Black Lives Matter, but to actually do that on campus would involve a lot of change, and we would like to see more of that support,” Burke said.

Burke went on to say that the protest was to commemorate the lives of the over 1,200 people who were killed in 2015 due to police violence. The larger goal for this group, according to Burke, is to end systemic racism and police brutality against people of color. She said that while this is the larger goal of the Black Lives Matter movement, Davis Stands with Ferguson focuses more on the UC Davis campus and has a particular set of demands to make UC Davis a more inclusive environment.

Some of those demands include the disarmament of campus police, an ethnic studies requirement for all students, the hiring of more black faculty members across all academic disciplines and a UC Davis Afro-House for black students who are in need of affordable housing or a safe space.

According to Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Milton Lang, UC Davis supports and continues to support Black Lives Matter and Davis Stands with Ferguson in creating a more inclusive and diverse community. Although several campuses across the country, like Purdue and Oberlin, have been more skeptical of supporting Black Lives Matter due to the recent events at the University of Missouri, Lang ensured that UC Davis will continue to give support to Black Lives Matter on campus and defend the students’ First Amendment right to free speech. He also said that UC Davis will continue to work with Davis Stands with Ferguson and their set of demands.

“If those (list of demands) are concerns of our students, I think we should sit down at the table and talk about those concerns and address them in ways that will allow us to move forward as a community […] and work in partnership with our students,” Lang said.

Written by: Sangeetha Ramamurthy – campus@theaggie.org

University Red Day campaign to raise awareness of heart disease, teach heart-healthy tips.

The third annual UC Davis Wears Red Day, which will be held throughout the day on Friday, Feb. 5 at Hutchison Field, will welcome all members of the UC Davis community to prove once again that UC Davis has the biggest hearts.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi launched Wear Red Day back in 2014 in collaboration with cardiologist Amparo Villablanca, director of the UC Davis Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine Program, as a way to promote heart health. This year, the Office of the Chancellor is hoping to raise awareness of heart disease and different ways that people can prevent it.

“Our number one goal is to make sure the UC Davis campus community (students, staff and faculty) becomes more aware that heart disease is a significant health threat in the U.S. and that they have the power to change that fact for themselves,” Villablanca said in an e-mail interview. “I want UC Davis to become even more of a leader in heart-health outreach and education by engaging our campus and the broader communities we serve in heart disease prevention in ways that are appealing, fun and engaging.”

This year’s event, which was organized by students from Aggie Heart Association, Alpha Pi Sigma and Phi Delta Epsilon, will feature two new activities that will be free to the public. These include an interactive and anatomically correct Mega Heart Exhibit that people can walk through, as well as hands-on CPR training sessions.

Additionally, attendees of the event will have the opportunity to learn a variety of heart-health information at the Battle Heart Disease Fair, which will feature over two-dozen organizations.

The event will also feature a Zumba class and a healthy food drive to support The ASUCD Pantry. As per Red Day tradition, participants are invited to gather at Hutchison Field to help form the world’s largest human heart formation — one that the Aggie Heart Association hopes will break the Guinness World Record.

UC Davis community members planning on attending UC Davis Wears Red Day can help promote the heart-health message and encourage participation in the event by wearing the “Wear Red Day” T-shirts that are currently available at all UC Davis Store locations.

“Don’t forget to wear your red,” Katehi said via email. “We are making a statement, as a community, for heart-health awareness.”

One of the organizations hoping to make an impact on Red Day is Chicanos/Latinos in Health Education (CHE), who encourage students to attend the event in order to learn more about health.

“We hope to establish a human connection with the students who choose to attend the event and encourage them to go about the change they wish to establish in the world,” Ana Skomal, CHE co-director said in an e-mail. “If you wish to enrich your UC Davis experience and overall perspective on health, I encourage you to attend.”

According to Villablanca, the creation of UC Davis Wears Red Day came after Chancellor Katehi visited a Picnic Day Fashion Show.

“The chancellor had the chance to see some of the dresses on the runway of the Picnic Day Fashion Show, and she approached me about doing more to promote heart-health throughout the UC Davis community,” Villablanca said. “As a result, Battle Heart Disease and UC Davis Wears Red Day were born.”

In addition to creating UC Davis Wears Red Day, Villablanca and the UC Davis Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine Program partnered with the department of design to create a collection of student-designed red dresses in order to help broaden heart-health outreach efforts to the student community at UC Davis.

Adele Zhang, a lecturer in the UC Davis Department of Design who has been overseeing The Red Dress project since 2009, said that this year’s collection of eleven dresses will become the seventh line of dresses added to the UC Davis Red Dress Collection.

“The red dress is a national symbol for women’s heart health,” Zhang said in an e-mail interview. “The UCD Red Dress Collection is a wonderful example of two disciplines: design and medicine coming together to inspire one another and in turn advocate for women’s cardiovascular health.”

This year, Villablanca said the goal for Red Day is to make sure that the UC Davis community becomes more aware of the fact that heart disease poses a big threat in the United States, while helping students understand that they have the power to change that for themselves.

“Heart disease develops over the course of decade well before symptoms become apparent. So the earlier that healthy habits are adopted, the better,” Villablanca said.

In addition, Villablanca hopes that young women at UC Davis leave the event with a greater awareness that heart disease is something that they are at risk for and that they should start taking preventative steps now.

“The UC Davis Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine Program has been a leader for more than two decades in educating women that heart disease is their leading killer, and that heart disease is for the most part preventable with a heart-healthy lifestyle,” Villablanca said.

To help students begin living a heart-healthy lifestyle, Villablanca put together a list of “7 Habits of Heart-Healthy Students” in collaboration with the UC Davis Student Health and Counseling Services.

“These are very do-able,” Katehi said via email. “Doing this now can help ensure your heart health in the future.”

For more information and a more detailed list of events, visit UC Davis Wears Red Day’s Facebook page.

Written by: JENNIFER PUZA – campus@thaaggie.org