Among college students, the Bill of Rights has found its place in popular culture — like Second Amendment puns about arming bears and memorizations of the Miranda rights from countless episodes of crime TV shows.

But this October, the First Amendment should be the one on everyone’s lips: the right to free speech. If any of you check your email as manically as we do at The Aggie, you’ll have read (or at least noticed) the Oct. 4 email from Provost Ralph Hexter titled “UC Davis Freedom of Expression Draft Policy: Open Forums and Ways to Engage.”

The announcement concerns the Blue Ribbon Committee for Freedom of Expression, a group created in April 2013 by UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. The group’s inception was spurred by a report from the Academic Senate’s Freedom of Expression Committee addressing “Freedom of Speech and Protest Policies.”

The committee, made up of representatives from multiple groups on campus (such as the UC Davis police chief and ASUCD President Carly Sandstrom), is drafting a policy regarding freedom of expression at the university — and it needs your help. There will be four forums for discussion, as well as a call for written feedback via a web survey.

So why should you care? Consider recent incidents at other universities where free speech has been infringed upon. On Sept. 25, student activists at Modesto Junior College, Madison Area Technical College and the College of Central Florida were banned from handing out U.S. Constitutions on their campuses. Six days before that, a University of Cincinnati student was threatened by arrest and prevented from gathering signatures for an Ohio ballot initiative outside of the school’s designated “free speech zone.” He sued — and won.

If you don’t want these types of transgressions on your rights at UC Davis, speak up. Show up to the forums and take the opportunity to try and change any policies you feel doubtful about — perhaps from “Section III: Time, Place, and Manner Regulations,” which establishes that expression can only be exercised if it doesn’t interfere with “University operations.” (We know some student activists might especially take interest in point D5: “No person on University property or at official University functions may use university properties for overnight camping”).

The first forum is from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. on Oct. 14 in the Student Community Center Multipurpose Room, with three others following it in the subsequent weeks. If you can’t make it to the meetings, fill out the online survey, which can be accessed through the Provost’s email.

Rather than complaining retroactively, take the chance to make a change right now. Make your voice heard, be proactive and take advantage of your rights. If you don’t speak up for yourself, someone else will. And you might not like what they have to say.

While browsing my Facebook mini-feed on a typical day, I stumbled upon an article titled, “Foods that will fight the Fukushima Radiation.” I asked myself, what radiation am I supposed to be fighting?

Clicking on the link, I was reminded of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan in 2011. But this was old news, wasn’t it? Unsure, I decided to investigate.

Apparently, the situation is ongoing.

As recently as Oct. 5, the New York Times reported that Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority openly scolded the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) in a public hearing for its failure in the cleanup process. This week alone, TEPCO announced that 114 gallons of contaminated water spilled from an overflowing tank of radioactive material. Unfortunately these mistakes aren’t uncommon, as “one of the biggest recent spills came in August, when TEPCO discovered that 80,000 gallons of water laced with radioactive strontium and cesium had leaked out of one of the huge tanks, with some reaching the Pacific,” according to the Times. The meltdown occurred two years ago, and containment is still an issue.

So should we panic?

Officially, our government says no. In the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) September 2013 update on the Fukushima radiation, they’ve announced, “To date, FDA has no evidence that radionuclides from the Fukushima incident are present in the U.S. food supply at levels that would pose a public health concern.”

But somehow, this doesn’t seem satisfying. Why isn’t our government worried?

For instance, South Korea is concerned. It has banned all fish imports from Japan’s northeastern coast due to the lack of information surrounding the radiation’s effects. Fox News reports that scientists already believe that the ocean has been exposed to hazardous material, from increasing levels of radioactive cesium found in deep water fish.

So if radiation is clearly in our ocean, should we be concerned?

Thankfully, many experts say there is no need to freak out. In an article by Alicia Chang for the Huffington Post, she writes that we eat radioactive food all the time. Low levels of naturally occurring radiation are a part of many popular foods, like bananas, red meat and beer.

“Once you understand that we swim in this low-level sea of radiation, then it’s just a numbers game,” said Mike Payne, of UC Davis’ Western Institute for Food Safety and Security, in an interview with Chang.

Also, agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and FDA frequently test radiation levels. OK, it is true that milk in California and Washington state were found to have traces of radioactive iodine. Indeed, Fukushima radiation has reached California soil. Luckily, “the amount detected was 5,000 times below the federal recommended limit for exposure.”

Chang also quotes Christine Bruhn, a food safety student of UC Davis, as saying that “people shouldn’t be afraid to continue eating dairy products, vegetables, fish and other nutritious foods.”

On one hand, it’s fantastic that there is little need to fear radiation poisoning. On the other hand, it’s disconcerting that radioactive waters are still finding their way into the ocean.

In this sense, it drives home the fact that national decisions truly affect the entire world. Nation states hold powerful and dangerous technologies; a radiated ocean would certainly cause catastrophe for all humanity. Thus, ongoing leakage is a global concern.

So what should we do now? How many more Chernobyls and Fukushimas should happen before the international community decides that an individual’s decision to play with fire isn’t worth burning us all?

In the words of documentary filmmaker Sam Hyde, “We are all world citizens.” It is up to us, as world citizens, to be aware of these universally important issues. We only have one planet, and we have to keep each other in check.

To prepare for other apocalyptic crises, you can contact DANIEL HERMAN at dsherman@ucdavis.edu.

In 1996, Congress passed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,” which forbid a state to confer a benefit to an individual who was not in the United States legally, unless the state acted to affirmatively do so. In other words, Congress told individual states that they had to pass their own laws in order to allow unauthorized immigrants benefits, such as in-state college tuition, state-funded scholarship opportunities and the issuance of licenses of all sorts.

About a decade ago, California started to do just that, starting with AB 540. This landmark legislation is where we first started to recognize that it is irrational and counterproductive to penalize young students who were often brought here as small children, who had worked hard and simply wanted the opportunity to attend our public universities.

We began to know these kids as “Dreamers:” brave, dedicated young people who simply wanted to normalize their existence in the only country they had ever known as home.  Smartly, our state and federal government both began to confer additional opportunities to Dreamers, including the opportunity for financial aid, deferred action from deportation, work visas and drivers’ licenses.

Many Dreamers have absolutely thrived in the face of extreme challenges — they’ve graduated from high school, fought for our country, attended college, even graduated law school and passed the bar. Then in early September, we learned by way of oral arguments in front of the California Supreme Court, that unless the state Legislature acted, those Dreamers would not have the opportunity to actually practice law. In the case of Sergio Garcia, we met a Dreamer who was brought here at 17 months old and had been approved, but was waiting, for a green card for over 14 years. He worked his way through college and law school, passed the bar on the first attempt and was found to be morally fit to practice law. He was actually sworn in as an attorney before the state realized it had to rescind the license a few weeks later.

Assembly Bill 1024 seeks to fix this problem by allowing the State of California the ability to grant these Dreamers — who have graduated from law school, passed the moral character inspection and passed the bar exam — a license to practice law. The bill passed the Legislature in the final week of session with broad, bipartisan support, and now sits on the Governor’s desk.

Many of us would prefer Congress to act on Comprehensive Immigration Reform with a realistic path to citizenship for the 11 million-plus immigrants in this country. But that just doesn’t seem to be happening on the near horizon, and we have already been waiting too long for these hard-working young people, who just desperately want to pursue a career in their field of study so that they can earn a living and pay taxes.

For me, this is also personal. My father came to this country as a farmworker. But, for the grace of God, I was born in San Diego County, just a few dozen miles north of the US-Mexico border.  As a result, when I graduated from UCLA School of Law and passed the bar, I never once had to consider that the state would deny me a license to practice. I am not a better person and am no more deserving than Sergio Garcia and the other Dreamers in his position.

Without the federal government’s help in fixing a terribly broken immigration system, there are actions we can take in California to make life more equitable for folks who are caught in between. That’s why I hope you will join me in asking Governor Brown to sign AB 1024.

Lorena Gonzalez serves in the California State Assembly as the representative for the 80th District, which includes Chula Vista, San Diego and National City.

On move-in weekend, I found myself at Target just like every other frazzled freshman. Even though I really had nothing much to buy, it was refreshing not to be drenched from the rain that gave us such a warm welcoming transition into our new lives. With no focus, I sauntered around the store and I happened on the beauty aisle.

If you know me, I naturally gravitate towards that area of Target (mostly for the pretty colors from the nail polish display). On my typical adventure in department store land, I noticed two sets of racks with shaving products, one for men and one for women.

You could tell because most of the cream and razors on the women’s side was some shade of pink, and everything on the the men’s side was navy blue or black. But if that didn’t make it obvious enough, one had a poster with a woman on it, and the other, a man.

I went on to notice that the side with the woman on the poster had the title “Body Care” next to it, while the poster with the man on it said “Grooming.” When I think of body care, I think of eating an apple a day to keep the doctor away; when I think of grooming, I think of a day at the spa.

These are two very different things: one is something that is essential to your health, the other sounds like something you choose to do to pamper yourself. But if I don’t shave am I not taking good care of my body’s health? I know men shave too but has any guy ever gotten the stink-eye for having a little fuzz on his armpit?

This wild pursuit of physical perfection has been around since Shakespearian times, where the trait most valued in a woman was sprezzatura: “effortless grace.” It’s kind of sad that we haven’t progressed much since the Medieval ages, where cleanliness and body care really meant having the “decency” to never be caught off guard at our most human moments.

We still have to be insanely beautiful without ever revealing the amount of effort we put into it. It’s absurd that even our natural body functions are socialized to be hidden, such as satirized in the viral YouTube commercial “Hot Girls Don’t Poop.”

I feel like our fixation on beauty in this culture has made it impossible for us to take ourselves and our real feminine issues seriously. How many people watched that “Dove Real Beauty Sketches” video and thought it was beautiful and profound?

In the video, a few women are asked to describe themselves to a forensic artist, who draws two pictures: one based on the women’s self-perception, and the second based on descriptions made by a sample group of friendly strangers.

The faces in the first set of pictures were noticeably less attractive (by conventional standards) than the second set of pictures. I was surprised that so many people thought this was an enlightening study, because personally I was distressed with the whole premise of it.

One of the women in the study remarked, “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty. It impacts the choices and friends that we make, the jobs we apply for, how we treat our children. It impacts everything. It couldn’t be more critical to your happiness.”

Although, I fully support embracing your natural beauty I can’t help but disagree that our impression of our own beauty is the most powerful force behind every single decision we make in our lives. It’s disturbing to think that our quality of life depends on how beautiful society deems us to be; what’s more troubling is that a lot women are fully convinced that our beauty is the most important element of our identity.

I’m tired of girls tearing themselves apart over this. I’m tired of my friends saying they refuse to be in a picture because they are going to look ugly in it. I want more women to embrace their valuable personality traits such as being smart, funny and compassionate.

At the same time, I want woman to not feel ashamed for their interests in fashion and makeup and Seventeen magazine. The same society that forces us to obsess over our appearance shouldn’t shame us if we take a genuine interest in it.

If you’re sexy and you know it, and want to talk about it, email MONA SUNDARA at msundarav@ucdavis.edu