On July 24, the University of California announced that it would implement its final wage and benefit offer after more than a year of negotiations with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

AFSCME held a two-day strike in May, calling for the capping of UC executive pensions as well as safe-staffing committees and job limits for temporary workers and volunteers.

UC is going forward with a package that includes a step increase of 2 percent as well as a 1.5 percent wage increase on Oct. 1, affecting more than 12,000 union workers, with about 2,655 at UC Davis.

According to the press release, Dwaine Duckett, the UC’s vice president for systemwide human resources and programs, “fair contract proposals with wage increases, excellent benefits and responsible pension reform” were offered, and “AFSCME repeatedly objected.”

“Having completed all stages of the bargaining process, including state-assisted mediation and fact finding, the university is legally entitled to implement its last proposal. We would have preferred to reach a settlement, but this implementation provides our patient care staff with fair wage increases and good benefits now, rather than forcing them to continue waiting through stalled negotiations,” Duckett said, according to the press release.

— Elizabeth Orpina

Former campus police lieutenant John Pike is appealing for worker’s compensation, claiming psychiatric injury caused by the Nov. 18, 2011 pepper spray incident.

According to the State Department of Industrial Relations website, his claim states “nervous system – psychiatric” damage. The case is scheduled for a mandatory settlement conference in Sacramento on Aug. 13.

In July 2012, Pike was fired as a UC Davis employee, but remains entitled to retirement credit for his years of service according to a spokesperson at the time. If he receives disability benefits, his income, health and other benefits will be covered until he turns 65.

“The university is required to follow the worker’s compensation process. We are not in agreement with the benefits being claimed,” said Andy Fell, a university spokesman, according to ABC News.

— Elizabeth Orpina

A state appellate court ruled that the University of California release the names of UC Davis police officers involved in the Nov. 18 pepper spray incident.

The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the Los Angeles Times and The Sacramento Bee, marking the third time a court has said names should be released. An agreement between the UC Board of Regents and the FUPOA keeps the names confidential due to concerns over the police officers’ safety. The previous rulings have given the officers’ union and the Federated University Police Officers Association (FUPOA) time to appeal.

The appeals court ordered that the names be withheld for 40 days, so that the FUPOA can decide whether or not to appeal the decision.

— Elizabeth Orpina

Since August 2012, Adele de la Torre has served on an interim basis as the vice chancellor for Student Affairs ever since Fred Wood left in June 2012. De la Torre is an agricultural and health economist and internationally recognized expert on social determinants of Latino and Chicano health.

She joined UC Davis faculty in 2002, formerly chairing the Department of Chicana/o Studies and since 2004, directing the Center for Transnational Health. As the vice chancellor for Student Affairs, she will also continue her position as a faculty member in the Department of Chicana/o Studies.

In this position, she will receive a base annual salary of $235,998, according to The Davis Enterprise. Overseeing 750 staff and 3,000 student employees, de la Torre will also monitor a $400 million budget that includes enrollment, academic support, financial aid, student housing and food service, student health and psychological services and career services.

De la Torre officially assumes the position on August 1.

— Elizabeth Orpina

A Yolo County Superior Court judge set Sept. 13 as the preliminary hearing date for the suspect in the double homicide case. Daniel William Marsh, 16, will stand trial for the April 13 murders of Oliver Northup and Claudia Maupin. Marsh will be tried as an adult.

According to the Davis Enterprise, Yolo County prosecutors have about 175 police reports related to the case.

Marsh pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, and special circumstance courts regarding multiple murders, heinous and depraved murder, lying in wait and torture. He is being held without bail at Yolo County Juvenile Hall.

— Paayal Zaveri

The UC Davis all-time leader in gross punting average is packing his bags and heading to San Francisco. Aggie alum Colton Schmidt has just signed a three-year deal with the San Francisco 49ers. He becomes the 16th UC Davis alum to be signed by an NFL team.

Schmidt was one of the best punters and kickoff specialists in UC Davis history. Last season, the 5-foot-11 punter from Bakersfield averaged a school record 44.5 yards per punt. This included a monster 68-yard punt against Portland State. His 44.5 yards per punt average was sixth in the nation.

Besides being the Aggies star punter, Schmidt also was their kickoff specialist. He kicked an impressive 34 of his 62 kickoffs for touchbacks. His 54.83 touchback percentage would have been sixth in the NFL this season.

Schmidt was not drafted in this year’s NFL Draft. However, this was not surprising as most kickers are not drafted or are drafted late in the draft. However, the 49ers clearly admired his abilities and offered him a three-year deal. The 49ers have looked to upgrade and provide depth for their special teams unit this offseason as they have also signed veteran kicker Phil Dawson.

According to ESPN.com, “Schmidt will compete against punter Andy Lee and kicker Phil Dawson, likely serving as backup and providing breaks for each during training camp.”

Schmidt will also most likely take the role of kickoff specialist, as he has had great success in his collegiate career. The 49ers cut tight end Kyle Nelson to make room for Schmidt. Hopefully this means that he will have a spot on the roster throughout the season.

— Kenneth Ling

Janet Napolitano, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and former Arizona governor, has been nominated for the position of 20th president of the University of California. If elected, Napolitano would become the first female president to lead the UC as well as the first leading political figure to take the helm in a position traditionally filled by academics.

According to the Daily Bruin, Napolitano received a unanimous vote from the special UC search committee designated to appoint the next president.

Napolitano will succeed former UC president  Mark G. Yudof, who announced his resignation last August.

According to the LA Times, President Barack Obama wishes Napolatino well on her new position, as well as thanked her for many years of service, including  helping secure U.S. borders and “taking steps to make our immigration system fairer and more consistent with our values.”

Kathryn Lybarger, president of the UC’s largest union, AFSCME 3299, is hopeful that the former governor will be able to tackle the many problems facing the UC today.

“While UC staff, students and patients were largely excluded from the secretive process that led to Secretary Janet Napolitano’s appointment, we appreciate her years of public service and congratulate her on becoming the next President of the University of California,” Lybarger said in a statement.

— Adam Khan

Students participating in a UC Davis Summer Abroad program in Cairo were evacuated on July 4 due to concerns about the rising political tension in the country after Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was overthrown by the Egyptian Military on July 3. The resulting violence led to around 50 civilian deaths and many more injured.

The group includes eight UC Davis students, one student from UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz and the instructor’s son. Noha Radwan, UC Davis professor of Comparative Literature and a Cairo native, led the program. They arrived on June 18 to study the works of Egyptian authors and filmmakers. They were scheduled to leave July 16.

Nine students and the instructor’s son were flown to Paris on July 4; eight returned to the U.S. and one student opted to remain in Paris. The other student flew to Istanbul. Professor Radwan opted to remain in her native Cairo. All students reached their destinations safely by July 5, according to a press release by the UC Davis News Service.

Zachary Frieders, associate director at the UC Davis Education Abroad Center, said they made the descison to evacuate students following consultation with State Department travel advisories, risk and safety leadership on campus and at the UC Office of the President. Students were not in immediate danger but Frieders said they were exercising caution in regard to how further developments would affect infrastructure and transportation. Students were staying about two miles from Tahrir Square.

“Our primary concern is the safety of students and ensuring safe passage out of the country,” Frieders said.

This is the second year the UC Davis summer abroad program was offered in Cairo. During the unrest in 2011, the University of California Education Abroad Center brought students back from programs in Cairo, Frieders said.

Each year about 1100 UC Davis students participate in study abroad programs in over 40 countries.

— Paayal Zaveri

The search for the Dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences began late last year; both the Recruitment Advisory Committee and External Advisory Committee have regular meetings while search consultant Alberto Pimentel recruits candidates.

In order to allow for student, faculty, staff and community participation, the decision of delaying formal campus visits until September or early October was made. The search process continues, and the Recruitment Advisory Committee plans on holding Skype interviews in early September in order to narrow the group of candidates. Round-one interviews will be conducted for ten to twelve candidates, and then the search committee will invite three to four finalists for campus visits.

A series of town hall sessions held on campus, Sacramento, Salinas, Parlier and Irvine gathered feedback and prolonged the search in March and April. Public forums will be held for the final candidates in late September/early October.

For the latest information on the search, visit http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/initiatives/dean-college-of-ag/. To send in feedback or input, email caesdeansearch@ucdavis.edu.

— Elizabeth Orpina

Daniel William Marsh, 16, pleaded not guilty on June 19 in Yolo County Superior Court to charges that he killed elderly Davis residents Oliver Northup and Claudia Maupin on April 13. He will continue to be held without bail.

Due to his age, Marsh is not legally elegible for the death penalty or life imprisonment without possibility of parole, according to the Yolo District Attorney’s office. The Public Defender’s Office has been appointed to his case. Marsh faces two counts of first degree murder and special circumstances including torture, lying in wait and heinous and depraved murder.

His pre-hearing conference is scheduled for July 2.

— Paayal Zaveri

On June 18, Daniel William Marsh, 16, was charged for the double homicide of Davis residents Oliver Northup and Claudia Maupin. Marsh was arrested on June 17 and is currently being held at the Yolo County Juvenile Detention Facility without bail. Yolo County officials said Marsh will be tried as an adult.

Marsh faces first degree murder charges and is up against several special circumstances including committing multiple murders, heinous and depraved murder, lying in wait and torture. Marsh was 15 at the time of the homicides and there are no other suspects in the case.

Documents from the Yolo County District Attorney’s office said the murder was, “willful, premeditated and deliberate,” and Marsh used a “deadly or dangerous weapon…a knife.”

Northup and Maupin, longtime Davis residents, were discovered stabbed to death in their South Davis residence at 4006 Cowell Blvd on April 14. Police arrived on the scene because a family member had requested a welfare check after she had not heard from her parents all day.

According to the Sacramento Bee, the Davis Police Department served several search warrants on June 17. Two of the locations were 3306 Lillard Drive, where Marsh’s mother resides and 4018 Cowell Blvd, where Marsh’s father lived.

Marsh’s arraignment is set for June 19 at 1:30 p.m.

— Paayal Zaveri

On June 17 the Davis Police Department (DPD) arrested a 16 year old male on charges for the double homicide of  longtime Davis residents Oliver Northup and Claudia Maupin. He is currently in custody and there are no other suspects in the case.

The DPD discovered the two deceased, Northup, 87, and Maupin, 76, on April 14 at 9:20 p.m. while responding to a welfare check at 4006 Cowell Blvd in South Davis.

DPD has been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the California Department of Justice, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office, the West Sacramento Police Department and the Dixon Police Department and have served many search warrants in regards to the case said Darren Pytel, DPD Assistant Police Chief in a press release.

No further information has been released because the investigation is ongoing and it involves a minor. Anyone with information related to the case should contact the DPD at 530-747-5400.

— Paayal Zaveri

In upcoming months, psychedelic rock band MGMT and singer-songwriter Andrew Bird are to perform at the Mondavi Center.

On August 29, MGMT will make a stop in Davis during their 2013 tour. Widely popular around the world, MGMT hit top-selling charts in 2008 with their songs “Electric Feel,” “Kids” and “Time to Pretend,” and was Grammy-nominated in 2010 for Best New Artist.

Tickets will become available for purchase on songkick.com on June 14, starting at $35. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Andrew Bird will be stopping in Davis on November 14 for his California solo tour, traveling across the state from Arcata to Santa Barbara. Joining him on tour will be the alternative country duo, The Handsome Family.

For more information, visit mondaviarts.org.

This summer, Davis Shakespeare Ensemble (DSE) will be taking a trip into the enchanted Forest of Arden in their production of Shakespeare’s timeless comedy As You Like It. Incorporating live bluegrass music, this modernized Shakespeare play is set to premiere on June 13 at 8 p.m. and will run until June 30 at the UC Davis Arboretum Gazebo.

Every summer, DSE puts on a production of one of Shakespeare’s famous works. Having presented the historic Henry V last season for their annual summer production, the company decided to take a comedic route this time around.

The play features a series of short songs to carry the plot through the natural landscape of the play. Returning director Rob Salas, a graduate of UC Irvine’s MFA Directing program, saw the potential in the play’s songs to enhance the audience’s experience of the setting. He decided that incorporating actual music to accompany the lyrics of the songs would help to give the play a distinctive edge.

“Our take on it was to take the music and really blow it up so that it kicks off the show, but is still a recurring theme throughout,” Salas said. “The music ties into the forest setting because it’s very earthy and a kind of mountain music. It’s this kind of mystical presence that pulls everyone into the Forest of Arden.”

Richard Chowenhill, alum of the UC Davis Music Department and the company’s associate artistic director, composed the music to accompany the song lyrics. Salas hopes the music will stay true to the natural mountainous feel of his vision for the production.

“The style of the music is inspired by Appalachian music. It has a bluegrass, Ozark feel. We’ll be using banjo, dulcimer, mandolin, kind of unusual instruments,” Salas said.

This production is set to incorporate a live band consisting of multiple musicians from the cast. The vocalist and head of the band is the play’s musician, Lord Amiens, played by DSE founder Gia Battista.
Members of the cast have worked in theatre from Sacramento to New York to the UC Davis Department of Theatre, and all have acted in both classic and modern works of theater.

Acting veteran Casey Worthington portrays the brave, love-stricken Orlando, whom he describes as “a bad poet” who writes poetry anyway. Having played the title role in the ensemble’s last annual summer production of Henry V, Worthington has had his fair share of the professional and passionate atmosphere the ensemble has brought to fans of modern theatre.

“Everybody is just jazzed to be doing this play, no matter how many times they’ve performed before,” Worthington said. “The company is a really impressive thing. They have a really good community support. They have all the mixes of a good regional theatre. They’re young and I have a good outlook for them.”

Hayley Palmer, who will receive her MFA in acting from UC Irvine in 2014, portrays Rosalind, the play’s witty, love-drunk heroine.

“It’s been so much fun. Rob is just so encouraging when it comes to [actor] creativity, but he also has a specific idea in mind and is very passionate about fulfilling his vision of the play,” Palmer said. “It’s just such a great balance between work and play. I hope this company continues to be supported by the community and grow in the future.”

The play will run from Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 6:30 p.m from June 13 to June 30. Tickets are $15 for Adults, $12 for Students/Seniors, and $10 for 12 and under. June 13 is a preview performance, and that day only all ticket prices will be $5 off. To purchase tickets visit www.shakespearedavis.com or call (530) 802 – 0998.

AKIRA OLIVIA KUMAMOTO can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

Capitalist coercion of information leads to the destruction of values. We have natural values. If we were to implement these values, it would undermine capitalist hierarchies. Elite institutions destroy the values, thereby destroying the threat.

Since elite groups can no longer use violence upon the population at any whim, they have evolved other mechanisms to stop us from achieving the society that we want and that we know is right. They must. We live in a world of institutions. Institutions run the society, and institutions are operating to maintain themselves.

There is a great analogy between natural selection in biology and selective forces upon institutions. Those institutions that took certain actions persisted more, so then all of them became that way. Then, as time went by, they became more and more crafted.

By this point, institutions are so well-evolved that they fiercely compete with each other for survival in a highly complex and direct manner. So, when one group of people does something that increases their collective power, other groups must do that same thing or something better. Otherwise, the first group will perpetually dominate them.

Then, after many iterations of adaptation, all of the groups have taken on many new characteristics to help them dominate. By this point, the institutions are primarily shaped by their power struggle, and they are so well-adapted at this task that human beings, if they ever even could, have extraordinary difficulty in decoding and diffusing these mechanisms.

Since public institutions are mildly accountable via the vote, people might take actions which would undermine the power that these institutions have evolved to have. Naturally, they counter-evolve, and they do it very quickly. Organisms take many generations to evolve; human institutions can do it overnight.

So the information that we all receive, that we base our lives upon, it is channeled through these institutions. In order to mitigate the threat of our vote, it filters the information in whatever way it can. Now, notice that I never talked about people doing anything in the institution, only the institution itself. People actually perform the actions of the institutions, but clearly, no single person is aware of the totality of what a major corporation actually does.

That is, the actual causes and effects of a company, they are far too complicated to know. Economists try to scientifically measure what the collective set of them do, which is far easier than analyzing what one in isolation does. Even economists admit that there are massive gaps in our knowledge and massive gaps in what we could know even in principle.

Institutional coercion of thought pops up in every one of our concepts. This leads to my favorite game, the point of this column. Take any thought, then ask yourself — how has this been poisoned by power? The simplest method is to look at how powerful groups use the concept. Then look at how it was used in the past. How has it changed? The gap between the two reveals the ideological interests of elite institutions.

What about the term “conservative”? That is a fun one. Long ago, it meant someone who wanted to uphold traditional values or traditional ways of life. Now it means something like radical upholder of elite ideology. We could get into the precise meaning of conservatism now, but a much more interesting question arises. If the concept is poisoned by power, how would the proper, non-poisoned concept apply?

Surely there is something good about conserving traditional ideologies. The imposition of new ideologies comes from the elites. So proper conservatism actually hampers the coercion of our thoughts and values. But it is a very, wildly different concept of conservatism than the one that drives the Republican Party. We should replace theirs with that earlier conception. That would be one step toward liberation by wiping out one instance of a power-infected concept.

BRIAN MOEN can be reached at bkmoen@ucdavis.edu. xxx