On May 23, six UC Santa Barbara students were killed and 13 community members were injured after a Santa Barbara City College student went on a rampage.

Like the many mass shootings that have occurred within the last few years, this incident is tragic and horrifying. The occurrence of incidents like these have prompted discussions regarding what can be done to prevent them in the future.

Over the weekend, we all received emails from Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi and UC President Janet Napolitano expressing their sympathies to the UC community and the friends and families of the victims of the attack. Katehi said that it is our responsibility “to seek out those in need and to make our campus safer in thought and in deed.”

While we agree with these sentiments, we cannot help but feel that their words leave out many of the deeper issues raised in light of this tragedy. Although the assailant’s state of mental health was debatably at play in his actions, we cannot ignore that they follow a pattern of violence motivated at least in part by his hatred toward women.

The assailant’s violent acts reflect an extreme manifestation of the deep-seeded misogynistic mentalities prevalent in our culture. In his manifesto, he stated, “I will punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex.” We see this kind of mentality in less-extreme forms in our everyday lives — from issues ranging from microaggressions and party culture to sexual assault.

We agree with what Katehi said about being there for the UC community “in thought and in deed.” But a deed requires action. We hope for a concrete set of changes to be put in place that address these issues.

We ask the UC to reevaluate its general education requirements to add at least one class that tackles the issue of sexism (eg. women’s studies, sociology, cultural studies) so that our community can be educated on the dangers associated with trivializing and ignoring the symptoms of cultural misogyny. In conjunction, we think it’s important that the administration provide us with more accessible and effective emergency resources for victims of sexual abuse and assault.

For example, many victims of sexual assault, who are primarily women, struggle to find out what to do and who to talk to after the attack. Many don’t know how or where to get a rape kit, and many don’t even know what a rape kit is. We ask ourselves why the reported rape cases at UC Davis are back-logged, and why it’s so hard for victims of sexual abuse/assault to see justice served. The ineffective and difficult nature of receiving help reflects the UC’s inadequacy in addressing these issues for its students, and inevitably suggests a form of misogyny ingrained in the administrative system.

In this time of crisis, we hope that those in power may respond in a way that encourages critical thinking about the greater issues at hand. It is the responsibility of the University as an educational institution to prevent ignorance from perpetuating a cycle of discrimination and hatred.

We encourage students to attend the candlelight vigil on the Quad on May 29 as a way to not only express support for those most directly affected and to remember the victims of the attack, but also to go with the intention to educate yourself as well as others on ways to make safer communities.

I am an avid journaler. I have 29 journals that don’t shut all the way because they are packed with tickets and pressed flowers and receipts and cards and notes and fruit stickers. Okay, I’m a hoarder. I’m also a sentimental cheese-ball. How is this important? It means that I have a detailed record of my co-op life.

The first week of co-op life was a flurry of bike rides, dried lentils, cats and sitting on the porch confused about how to live with 14 people.

When I visited the co-ops as an applicant, it was a place to garden, dance and eat seitan. I hadn’t considered what living in that space actually entailed. In the first month or so the main things I learned were how to cook over-easy eggs and that Youth Lagoon somehow feels like a leather sofa, rooftop phone calls, nerve-wracking nights, fire alarm tests, cleaning for 12 hours and the “feelings” meeting agenda item.

Over the last nine months in the co-ops, I managed to find the “discover” feature on Spotify and also become a more motivated, dedicated, confident and responsible person. As I’m sitting in my dark room with my fan running on high because we don’t have an air conditioner, I’m thinking about what I’ll be taking with me and leaving behind when I leave for the summer.

I’ll probably leave my bamboo plant, since it dislikes the Davis tap water as much as the rest of us. I’ll probably leave a few books in my house library. Sorry Conrad, Douglas Adams will bring me a less fraught summer. I’ll be bringing home a few empty suitcases, because a year of learning to travel and swapping rooms every 10 weeks taught me to pare down. Don’t get me wrong, I still love all my floral dresses.

I’ll be taking a lot of lessons with me, ones that people tried to teach me pre-college. Before college, my teachers and parents tried to teach me responsibility and time management. Ha. Middle school was more about learning that Hot Topic neon pants are not a no-no and in high school I mastered the inaudible-to-adults quip. I didn’t think that hard work would get me to the acclaimed college student status. It wasn’t until I got out of the wonderful system of state education standards and started doing things for myself that I started caring about “life lessons.”

I can’t possibly separate my college lessons from my co-op ones, nor can I claim that I wouldn’t have learned these outside a co-op. I’m tentatively saying about myself now what I’ve heard co-op alumni say: In the co-op, I have learned how to communicate, live with people, live with myself, and, well, get shit done. I wrote about communication, which kind of relates to living with people. I feel that living with people and living with myself are linked. And, no, I don’t mean living with myself in an I-ran-over-my-childhood-cat-while-pretending-to-drive-my-mom’s-car-when-I-was-12-way. I mean that I learned to be alone and be with people and be okay with myself in pretty much any situation. Imagine me in frantic hamster form when I moved in. I am now a wise and collected owl. I eat hamsters for breakfast.

Not only have I become comfortable with myself and learned to turn my head all the way around, living in a co-op has taught me things that are highly applicable to an actual adult career. I could win a gold medal in spreadsheet use and rapidfire emailing. I can facilitate and participate in meetings. I can do adult things that are boring to list.

The downside of learning these things is that I journal less due to time constraints. But my house has become my journal. My fruit stickers now frame our kitchen door and the receipts are carefully labelled, sorted and stored. Bam. Adult points. (Because of the receipts, not the stickers.)

I’m trying to come to some sort of conclusion but, as I said in my first article, I don’t think I can. When interviewing applicants, my house likes to say that things in the co-op are “fluid” and I think that encompasses a lot. I, along with the people around me, are constantly changing, even outside of the co-op. I look forward to taking that, and all the other lessons, with me, even if I’m still unsure about our ownership model.

Make really pretty spreadsheets and always pack a towel with ISABEL MONIZ via irmoniz@ucdavis.edu. If you’re interested in hearing more about the co-ops, come by in the fall for garden parties on Fridays at 2 p.m. and dinners Sunday-Thursday at 7 p.m.

On my quest for answers to the age-old quandary of why social norms exist and how they came to be, I discovered not only that society implemented these standards long ago for arbitrary reasons, but also that they can easily be broken and repaired for kinks.

By this I mean that social norms are based off of what a society as a whole deems proper and acceptable — whether that concerns behavior, public decency or mannerisms — and it’s easy to deviate from those standards, but it comes at a cost. And that cost is the judgment that lingers in the air after one breaks social norms, which can also come in the form of weird looks from strangers, peeved responses from friends and an overall adaptation of how people view you.

Throughout Spring Quarter, I did some odd things that I’ve personally never witnessed before. I wanted to elicit responses from students on campus when I broke free from the constraints of the (technically unwritten) rules of social conduct.

I may have scared some people, evoked fear or awe in others, annoyed a few and made most people question what my intentions were. Some responses were very visible and others were more low-key and nonchalant. Some people verbalized their confusion about my actions, while others silently gawked in the corner.

This experience taught me that there’s a fine line between acceptable and unacceptable social behavior. Some actions may just be qualified as weird or abnormal, while others have been deemed inappropriate and unthinkable.

You can figure out the difference between these two types of situations by the types of responses that are fabricated.

If people stare, but continue on without much more than a second glance, then it’s most likely something that’s considered odd, but not totally absurd. If people stop what they’re doing to look at you, point to their friends, call their mom to tell them about it and then post something on Facebook, then it’s going to be an action that people in society don’t often witness.

The bulk of my actions were from the latter of the two categories. Many people participate in “weird” actions or tasks around campus, but not as many are out there breaking social norms.

I confirmed that people really appreciate their personal space, substantiated the norm concerning table manners, gave way to the expectations of gym-goers and validated that spontaneous movement is often unexpected and confusing when executed in a calm, public atmosphere of strangers.

I embarked on this tantalizing journey knowing full well that people would be surprised and confused by my actions, but what I wanted to find out was how far I’d have to go to really stun people.

Like I said before, there’s a line drawn in the sand somewhere.

With personal space, that line clearly lies at the mark of physical contact. With table manners, it’s a very jagged line that gets blurred by feisty children in the sandbox. For me, the line appeared as soon as I sat down at strangers’ tables. With gym etiquette, I’d say the line develops right when you pull the dress over your head and the pink pajama pants up your legs before a workout. And with spontaneous movement, I discovered the line lies right before you startle people with ninja-like parkour skills out of nowhere between classes.

Breaking these social norms was a blast and hopefully I’ve given someone out there a fun story to tell their friends about. And remember, norms are easy to break once you accept that people may respond differently to your apparently absurd actions.

However, we must also remember that it’s okay to give people a bit of entertainment. Like they say on Broadway, the show must go on.

SAVANNAH HOLMES can be contacted at skholmes@ucdavis.edu if you want to know why she’s a rebel without a cause, or even if you have your own story about breaking social norms to share with her.

Watching Mean Girls for the first time on Saturday was a bittersweet experience. Sweet in that this movie is just that — a cotton candy pink slide through the humors of adolescence. Bitter in that, once more, I had to accept that I will not be marrying Tina Fey, the one true love of my life, in the near future. But I’m not here to fanboy. This film has resonated with young adults, females in particular, for reasons beyond the clever one-liners so many associate with the movie. It seems to have a deeper, albeit comically exaggerated, understanding of what it means to be influenced by others and how the individual reacts in response.

The story revolves around Cady Heron, a girl entering high school after an extensive life of home-schooling in Africa. She falls in with ‘The Plastics,’ a popular clique. Through Cady’s eyes, we see why The Plastics are called such — they exhibit a remarkable ability to be fake, even around one another. Holden Caulfield’s head would explode at the sight of them.

Despite the saccharine plasticity of this clique, Cady seems to develop an affinity toward them, something that she recognizes and inherently dislikes. Here, we see the importance of self-confidence.

There is an interesting dichotomy in American culture. On one hand, we value and respect individualism, which raises self-made men, rebels and autonomous individuals onto a high pedestal. But these individuals often find themselves stifled at an early stage in their lives. Why are they stifled? Because on the other hand, going against the group is often seen as something undesirable. Self-confidence is, in a sense, a defense mechanism to shield the individual from an unforgiving mainstream.

I am not recommending that one should become a contrarian. I know that type of person, and they would probably best belong in the Burn Book. I am recommending introspection. Taking the time to develop values and personal philosophies is a task crucial to coming of age. Why? Well, let’s look at the consequences of such introspection.

In my first column, I described how themes are expressed by stories. Similarly, personal values are expressed by actions and words. A failure to introspect would therefore result in default actions. This default is, you guessed it, the mainstream. Simply because it is easy to go with the flow.

I would find it highly unlikely that introspection causes a total reversal in your thoughts and actions. When we introspect, we paint on a canvas that’s already been primed and splattered. To totally deviate from this design would require a blank canvas. What would a blank canvas look like? How about Cady? She does have a down-to-earth feel initially, but her personality is easily swayed by The Plastics. Only after having to confront her inner change does she seem to relax and “be human,” as she says toward the end of the movie.

Developing self-confidence is a difficult process, especially when the people around you may be pulling you in the opposite direction. Eventually, it may tear people apart. One of the things I thought truly fantastic about Mean Girls was that The Plastics didn’t necessarily find their happy ending in one another, but they found it more naturally, in people and pursuits more akin to their personalities.

Ultimately, people find comfort in others when they find comfort in themselves. And considering that adolescence is universally considered to be one of the most uncomfortable times in a person’s life, it may help to pursue inner happiness.

I would being doing Mean Girls an injustice if I did not make further reference to the fact that this is a comedy. It’s the main selling point of the entire movie, showing us that this process of self-development in the context of others is funny, once you take a moment to step back.

Everyone reading this deserves a piece of Cady’s homecoming crown. So get out there, have fun, have some me time and continue to amuse yours truly in the process.

To let ELI FLESCH know that this column was quite fetch, you can reach him at ekflesch@ucdavis.edu or tweet him @eliflesch.

“I was spending all my nights and days laid back day dreaming/Look at me — I’m a big girl now, said I’m gon’ do something/Told the world I would paint this town/Now betcha I run news.”

True to the lyrics from her song “Grown Woman,” Beyoncé has had great success.

Her musical ability is clear — just watch that video of her rehearsing in her dressing room filmed by Jay-Z. Seriously, go watch it, it’s great.

But Beyoncé’s success is more than just her talent. Her accomplishments as a businesswoman in the creative world has given women a strong female to look up to and emulate in the work place.

However, this success is not always obtainable for women in our society.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, a prominent feminist writer, explores the idea that women can only be successful if they have a room of their own — that is, they can only be successful if they have a certain level of money and time to begin with.

Beyoncé did start her career in music without family connections to the music world — her father was a businessman and her mother was a hairdresser. But they did have the money to move so Beyoncé could follow her career, and her father was able to resign from his job to manage Beyoncé’s music career.

Would Beyoncé continue to be successful without all of the resources that she had then, and has now? Probably not.

Which leaves one to wonder how many talented musicians (and painters and writers and artists) are out there who don’t have the time or money to be successful.

And as a graduating senior (hopefully) heading toward a career as a writer, it’s scary to watch the Beyoncés of the world succeed, while other women seem to be unsuccessful.

This is both a modern-day phenomenon and a societal problem that has carried over from Virginia Woolf’s time. Although her book was published more than 80 years ago, the ideas in it are still present, as it’s easy to see that women are at a disadvantage in the workplace.

According to the Pew Research Center, 33.3 percent of mothers in the United States are stay-at-home moms, while only 3.5 percent of fathers are stay-at-home dads. The idea that moms are staying at home to take care of their kids means they don’t have the time or space — mentally or physically — to explore their creative careers.

And according to the White House’s website, the women who do work make 77 cents to every dollar that men make, on average.

So if some girls really are running the world, I’d say it’s because they are lucky enough to have the time and money to do so, not necessarily because they are the most talented.

So what do we do with that?

We should continue to talk about the issues women face in the workplace, and work to alleviate the pressures working mothers feel — this is a class issue as well as a gender issue. If the media spent half the amount of time talking about equal pay and equality in the workplace that it does talking about the Solange vs. Jay-Z fight, I think serious changes could be made.

As always, I try not to get discouraged by successful women like Beyoncé. Rather, I see them as inspirations for myself and others to break through the challenges women face.

So if you need me, I’ll just be listening to “Grown Woman” and optimistically sending out my resume.

If you have any Beyoncé-themed job openings in mind, HANNAH STRUMWASSER can be reached at hstrumwasser@gmail.com.