If you’ve ever worn a skirt (or shorts, or a dress, or heels, etc.), chances are you’ve been catcalled by some random dude you never have, and probably never will, meet. It’s also highly probable that after said catcall, you felt exceedingly self-conscious about what you were wearing. Are my shorts too short? Is my top too low? Would creepy strangers leave me alone if I were wearing sweatpants?

The answers to these questions are clearly, emphatically, no. But sometimes, when you’re all alone on the street somewhere, it’s easy to question, or even blame yourself, for the offensive choices of others. Or maybe you’re the kind of person who has the guts to call these assholes out on their behavior — in which case, you’re awesome. Keep up the good work.

However, this type of self-blame happens far too often and it’s not necessarily just a case of being too intimidated to respond to the aggression of others. In fact, I would argue that this self-blame is the result of some much larger issues that revolve around the way we perceive and police women’s bodies — namely, the clothing they choose to wear.

Take, for example, the Steubenville rape case that happened in 2012, in which a girl was brutally raped by a group of boys from the local high school football team. Rather than condemning these boys for the heinous crime they committed, there was an overwhelming amount of support to protect their reputations as star football players. Furthermore, the victim was ostracized by her community and made out to be just as guilty as her rapists because of things like what she’d had to drink, and what kinds of clothes she’d been wearing, which are ridiculous attempts to justify the brutal crimes of actual criminals.

This is just one example of many. There are tons of similar cases out there that prove that the urge to justify criminal behavior is exceedingly common, and it comes at the expense of women’s bodies. It’s no wonder then, that there’s an urge to pull down our skirts at the sight of an ogling creep a few feet away. We want to protect ourselves, not just from physical violence, but fromthe common knowledge that if something were to happen to us, one of the first questions asked would be in regards to our wardrobe.

Sound crazy? Well, that’s because it is. But the lengths that we go to in order to police women’s bodies no doubt instills in us a kind of fear that makes these types of things legitimate concerns — things like school dress codes that train girls to cover up and keep from being punished, or the shaming of women who “show too much skin,” or who have the audacity to embrace their own sexuality.

Issues like these make it clear that perceptions about gendered clothing perpetuate rape culture with claims like “she was wearing a tight dress and therefore she was asking for it.” This type of rhetoric hurts survivors of sexual abuse and victimizes sexual abusers, the criminals. This is why, in 2014, the knee-jerk reaction to rape is to question the validity of the victim’s claims. It’s why we have women like Emma Sulkowicz, a Columbia University student, who has taken to carrying her mattress around campus as a statement against the school’s decision to not remove her rapist from the university. It’s why the clothing we choose to wear is indicative of our worth when it comes to the amount of support we get when crimes are committed against us.

This needs to change. Here are a few simple steps we can take to ensure that it does: Stop shaming people for wearing what they want. It’s not your body. Therefore, your opinion, like other people’s wardrobes, is totally irrelevant. Don’t blame the victim, because wearing a skirt is nowhere near as offensive as raping someone. Furthermore, don’t blame yourself if you ever are, or ever have been, a victim. I don’t care if you’re wearing a miniskirt or a parka because it is truly, without a doubt, not your fault.

And dudes, stop catcalling. That is seriously the worst.

If you want to join the fight to stop catcalls 2k14, contact ctspiller@ucdavis.edu.

I heard a song on the radio. I think it goes something like:

“Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ohhhh!”

It’s a really great, sticky melody and the production really makes the track shine. No, it isn’t “Good Time” by Owl City. No, I’m not talking about Sam Smith’s epic melisma showcase in “Stay With Me’s” bridge. No, the riff to “Seven Nation Army” isn’t even actually sung in The White Stripes’ original recording. People do that because, I don’t know, sports make them do it!

To be honest, what song it was is a riddle with no answer. Songwriters, from behind-the-scenes, filthy-rich hitmakers to the SoundCloud free music sharer, all have access to the holy grail of catchiness: the much sought-after long “O” sound. I think of it as the monosodium glutamate, or MSG, of the music world; sprinklings of it here and there might make food tasty, but overload will surely kill you. “Ohs,” just like MSG crystals, are shortcuts to adding real substance.

Let’s sample American Authors’ hit “The Best Day of My Life.” Besides the song’s basic two-chord formula, and the forced use of varied, but not necessarily creative, instrumentation, the song thrives on forcing two songwriting schemes together. About two-thirds of the song’s lyrics are hallucinogenic verses and a repetitive affirmation that, for frontman Zac Barnett, it will, indeed, be the best day of his life. The last third consists of “Whoa” and “Oh.” One-third. About every eight seconds you’re hearing “Whoa” and/or “Oh.” Out of 338 words, 114 of them are “Whoa,” “Oh,” or “Woo.” Despite these heinous songwriting crimes, “The Best Day of My Life” pierced the top 10 of Billboard’s many subcharts, and made 11th place on Billboard’s coveted Hot 100. A successful song ridden with all sorts of unoriginal aural cliches? Song authoring doesn’t get any more American than that.

New Zealander Lorde’s “Bravado” was the song that convinced me that her middle-finger-to-pop-culture way of thinking was completely genuine, and not a facade contrived by her co-writer and producer, Joel Little. In it, she sings about the fact that she sometimes resents being in the spotlight because of her introverted personality, and her voice springs to a tortured falsetto during its confessional verses. The chorus is a heartbreaking revelation that she would rather have a pleased, screaming audience than an empty room, singing to herself. Then she slugged me with this lyrical letdown:

“I want the applause, the approval, the things that make me go, ‘Oh, whoa-oh, whoa-oh-oh-oh…’”

What?! What things make someone go “Whoa-oh?” When someone makes a mindblowing connection in literature class, it makes me go, “Whoa!” Is Lorde singing about English majors wetting their pants in insightfulness? Who knows, with how vague she is being. All sorts of things make me, you, and Lorde go, “Whoa.”

And then I realized that Lorde singing those non-words and attaching them to a catchy melody is the key to gaining the applause and approval that she needs to survive in pop music.

What exactly is it about “Oh” that makes fans scream for more? Singing it makes belting easier, and in that syllable lies a communal energy that seems to transcend lyricism. In a large group, singing “Oh” at the top of your voice can provide a visceral thrill that singing words can’t match. The most magical concert moment I’ve had was singing the “Oh”-heavy refrain to Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” with hundreds of other fans. Even my friend who hardly knew Arcade Fire sang along; it was his first time hearing the song. The fearlessness involved with joining others in singing “Oh” can make you a part of something larger than yourself.

So naturally, transcendent experiences like those are bastardized in the name of pop music profit. “Oh,” something so potentially powerful and larger-than-life, is rendered cheap, catchiness bait. Don’t bite down so easily when there isn’t much to chew on. Demand something more substantial.

For oh oh oh oh whoa oh oh whoa-oh oh oh, contact STEVEN ILAGAN at smilagan@ucdavis.edu.

Watterson, Bill. There’s Treasure Everywhere: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1996. Print.

One reason Calvin and Hobbes has stayed relevant in our culture is the insight it is able to provide with humor. I started reading the comic when I was in second grade. Almost 11 years later, I still find it as fresh as ever. Similarly, it satirizes themes that have stayed significant for decades. In the comic strip above, we see Calvin arguing for learning by “factoid.” Since the strip’s publication over 20 years ago, the issue of how we learn has become even more relevant.

There seems to be a consensus across all disciplines that critical thinking is the best way to understand a given topic. But critical thinking is threatened in modern society by trends in technology. To understand why, we have to first examine exactly what critical thinking is and the process by which we derive knowledge from it. We will see that the rise of factoids creates a cog in the process, thus hindering knowledge.

At its core, critical thinking is an active process by which we use basic tools and mental faculties to make sense of more complex ideas. Also required are construction and internalization — internalization being an individual’s ability to retain information and construction being an ability to extrapolate insights from this information.

The question becomes: how do we apply our tools? It varies between disciplines. Foreign language classes are heavily based on classroom participation; math classes assign problem sets; English classes provide readings to analyze. In a way, these techniques all fall short of the critical thinking definition. They ignore construction in favor of internalization by sticking to a rigid curriculum.

Evidence of this comes after class is over, whereupon students often forget most of what they learned. Some forgetfulness is natural, but more often than not, the little amount that they remember indicates a failure to learn. I wonder, how many students would pass a class they took last spring if I handed out the same final tomorrow?

The issue seems to be in construction; they are not taught to retain the information. Students still remember the basics of a course and hopefully some of the more advanced material. Critical thinking says that this base would really be all one needs to build knowledge and learn. So, why the failure?

The reason construction falters is due to modern conditions. As information (once a form of currency in itself) becomes free, ubiquitous and essentially devalued, a new journalism is taking hold — one that values form over substance. And in this technology-driven society, that means America values information presented sensationally, simply and superficially. The phenomenon blocks construction: Learning by application, a slow and arduous process, is at odds with the modern promise of quick information presented in lists and marketed to personal devices.

If you have a Twitter, you’ve probably experienced the empty, hollow feeling after scrolling through your feed and finding nothing of interest. It’s the epicenter of playing fast and loose with material (like news) that should be a student’s greatest asset in constructing real world opinions based on their knowledge. In this way, construction is not only becoming culturally irrelevant, but functionally damaged as well.

It’s a dismal situation. The onus to fix the problem is on educational institutions, and especially college campuses. In addition to traditional approaches, professors can and should provide material on current trends that are written with substance, from insightful publications (not everything is BuzzFeed). Students should try to learn without the aid of phones and other devices. I’ve often had to physically remove my phone from the room to get work done. Sometimes, the old fashioned ways of doing things make a lot of sense.

Given that the problem of how to learn boils down to cultural phenomenon, there is no one easy solution. Culture vastly changes the psychology of people, and how they react. Ultimately, a cult of proper learning will need to come as a culture unto itself. College has always been “outside of the real world.” But with the growing problems students face at college, such as debt from student loans, the four years are starting to look more and more like post-graduate life. Solving exterior problems will help make college a place of pure academia and a better learning environment.

Don’t take it from Calvin. Factoid learning is bad. Although I will admit that television understands me.

       To make a critical assessment of ELI FLESCH, you can reach him at ekflesch@ucdavis.edu or tweet him @eliflesch

Crafting Gemeinschaft

Most of the time, when we hear the word sustainability, we think about our resources and the environment, but the word can provide some insight when you think about it in terms of yourself and your daily schedule. It is common for people our age to overschedule themselves, to pile a minimum-wage job on top of a minimum-wage job because it is better than feeling unproductive. But there has to be something wrong with overscheduling ourselves to the point where we are uncomfortable with doing nothing. There’s often this false notion that taking the time to do things that make us happy is unproductive. And if we give into this false notion, it is going to lead to pent-up aggression that is going to manifest itself down the road.

It does not help that companies are placing unrealistic demands on their employees, expecting them to carry their work home with them. The sad part is that the employees have to put up with a never-ending workload because they can easily be replaced. In this highly globalized, fast-paced economy, the notion that we need companies more than they need us is a fear in the back of all our minds. Research done by The Energy Project, a group that partners with existing companies to offer consulting work with the purpose of creating healthier workplaces, has revealed that 70 percent of employees feel disengaged. This disengagement can result from inadequate sleep, difficulty focusing or discontent between what they find meaningful and the work they do. What if The Energy Project conducted the same study on college students? I’m sure a similar, if not greater, percentage of college students would show symptoms of disengagement as well.

We work like robots. We enter studying with the mentality that we will not stop until we accomplish A, B and C. We are not meant to work like that; research reveals that studying intensively for four hours a day in periods of 90 minutes is more productive than just mindlessly studying for hours on end. Sometimes we go so far as to lock ourselves in cages in the library. Why do we attach this barbaric image to education, something we value and honor? I have always looked at education as a gift, but when we start treating it like a burden it becomes clear how we lose the motivation that brought us to college in the first place.

The way we work is not the only change that needs to be made; the duration of our work should also be called into question. A recent article in The Atlantictitled “Where the Five-Day Workweek Came From” questioned the possibility of “unmaking” the notion of the seven-day week since it is an entirely man-made concept in the first place. Research suggests that switching to a shorter workweek would lead to greater productivity, better health and greater employee retention.

Some companies, such as TreeHouse, a company that teaches coding, are adopting a four-day work week. Other companies are using other tactics to reduce worker stress, such as dividing the employees into two groups: One group works 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday to Thursday and the other group works the same hours, but from Tuesday to Friday. After every week, the two groups switch schedules so that they get a four-day weekend every other weekend. Think about that: That means those camping trips that you treasure so dearly as a once, maybe thrice-a-year occurrence, can become commonplace. A four-day workweek is something that many college students are accustomed to. If you ask anyone who is not a freshman if they have class on Friday, they’ll give you a sweet smile. It would be nice if this trend of clocking out on Thursday night for the weekend could carry on out into the workplace.

Now is the time to get it down: Don’t scarf down TV dinners with the promise of cooking for yourself “when you have time”; don’t postpone that Couch to 5K workout plan staring at you from behind your desk. When you go out into the “real world” I advise you not to sign your name on some contract and forsake your happiness because it means security. I leave you with these inspiring words from one of the best ’90s films:

“And they wonder why those of us in our 20s … refuse to work an 80-hour week, just so we can afford to buy their BMWs, why we aren’t interested in the counterculture that they invented, as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes.” — Reality Bites

If you want NICOLE NELSON to personally justify why you should start working less and start doing more yoga you can email her at nsnelson@ucdavis.edu.

When was the last time you read an opinion online?

It was probably a few minutes ago, when you saw your friend’s Facebook status, or my own Facebook status, recommending that you read this article from The Aggie because it provides such great wisdom and insight. (It’s true!)

You probably did read something that someone online thought of very recently, and whether you know it or not, it affected your thoughts in some way. Online opinions are here; they’ve been here; and they are just as valuable and important as those in print.

Journalism is changing. Newspapers are moving to the internet, sometimes because they want to and sometimes because they have to. But either way, they’re here. We have websites like Facebook, Buzzfeed and Tumblr. Basically, if someone has an idea, they can post it and get it seen. You can choose to agree or disagree with what they have to say, and then you can tell them what you think by posting it in the comments. Online posts give people more power. They give them the ability to reply with what they have to think, when they think it. In all honesty, that is a disadvantage of print media. With print media, we don’t really have the power to retort right when we want to.

That is not to say that print is, by any means, dead or obsolete. Holding something in your hand allows you to feel it, write on it and, in some ways, become more involved in it than when you stare at a computer screen. It can sometimes be even more satisfying to see your name in print than on a website. But the truth is, media is moving to the internet. It’s quicker, more up to date and it gives you (the reader) more power. Even though not printing is a loss in some ways, we can still embrace the gains and move forward.

The columns that you will see here in the coming days and weeks of Fall Quarter 2014, have all been read over. They will have been edited and discussed by a variety of different, qualified students at The Aggie. They will be worth reading, and they will be worth replying to. Speak out your opinion, just like these writers are! The power of the online comment or email allows you to.

Take advantage of the fact that thoughts worldwide are moving online! Move your thoughts there as well. Become more acquainted with telling people what you think, when you think it. As a warning: be polite and thoughtful, just like these published stories are. Do not say something purely to be mean, because where will that get you in the long run? Say something thought-provoking and help this digital world that we’re all living in progress.

So, take a study break, get excited about the start of the quarter, read a few columns and open your mind. Remember that change, like downloading free e-books instead of buying print textbooks, can be a good thing. You can learn just as much, if not more, from this digital copy than you could learn from what is in print. So, see what we have to offer, and then let us know what you think. Realize that online-only can mean more, not less.

Tell the new Opinion Editor MELISSA DITTRICH, what you think by using the internet and emailing her at medittrich@ucdavis.edu.