Monday, August 30, 2004

OSL fee defeated. Democracy safe...for now.

Good news, student groups. Through firm negotiation tactics from your ASUC Office of the President, the proposed mandatory OSL registration fee that would have been imposed on all students groups will not materialize this year. This would-be fee would have prevented any student groups who chose not to pay from tabling, reserving class rooms, or accessing ASUC money. Negotiations with OSL have proven successful for now, though the OSL might attempt yet again to impose this fee next year.

This happy turn of events can be attributed to massive student group outrage at the fee, the president's organized and mature campaign against OSL, and the threat of an Executive Order that would have eliminated the need for student groups to register with OSL in order to receive ASUC money and services. Many thanks to all of the active voices in this campaign. A semi-conclusion about this matter will be published in tomorrow's Daily Cal. If for some reason the OSL continues to make sweeping decisions about student groups without first consulting the groups it claims to serve, the ASUC will be ready to fight again.

More as it comes in.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 3:37 PM
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Smart Alec's adds beef to menu. Oh the betrayal.

As of Saturday, vegetarian/vegan/generally-food-conscious mainstay Smart Alec's now serves a beef patty in addition to their chicken breast patty and veggie burger. This bothers me for three reasons.

First, increasing the diversity of uncooked animal products in a restaurant increases the diversity of potential food-born diseases patrons can contract from eating there. Smart Alec's has already served a chicken breast patty for a few years; uncooked chicken meat can contain salmonella and other pathogens, some almost exclusive to chicken. By introducing cow to the menu, Smart Alec's also introduces a slew of additional pathogens that can potentially infect the restaurant's food. Like chicken, there are some bacteria and viruses specific to beef; unlike chicken, we know of certain diseases found in beef that cannot be eliminated through cooking (mad cow is a stunning example). Further, this menu addition increases the chances that vegetarian and vegan patrons might contract meat-born diseases. As much as employees may try to comply with meat/non-meat separation rules (which, by the way are not state law - each restaurant has its own policy, and Smart Alec's happens to cook meat and non-meat separately), there is always the chance that a worker may handle raw meat and then handle vegan food that will not be cooked above 180 degrees; even if this employee thoroughly washes his hands, unfortunatley many meat-born diseases are not wimpy enough to fall victim to antibacterial soap. Again, increasing the diversity of meat increases the diversity of potential disease that can be passed on to vegan and vegetarian customers.

Second, adding beef is a mockery of Smart Alec's claim to serve "intelligent fast food." Like chicken, the production of beef is responsible for massive groundwater pollution, air pollution, overuse of pesticides, inefficient use of water, and waste of plant resources. I'll say it again: it takes eleven times the natural resources to feed an omnivore as it does to feed a vegan. Intelligent indeed. While chicken production is a tax on our environment, per pound, beef production is an even more atrocious polluter and resource waster. It's just a matter of degrees. Pretending that chicken was and "intelligent" choice was bad enough; adding beef to the equation is inexcusable.

Along those lines, there are no provable health benefits of eating beef (or chicken, for that matter). Consuming animal protein inhibits calcium absorbtion, increases one's chance of acquiring certain cancers (especially colon and breast), exposes one's body to countless artifically added hormones and pesticides, and contains no fiber. C'mon folks. For the record, we vegans live a few years longer than regular people, even when you correct for variations in behavior like smoking, excercise, stress, and general quality of diet. Again, beef does not contribute to the intelligent ideal.

Third, killing cows is mean. Killing chickens is mean, too. But at the risk of saying that one species can comprehend death a little more acutely than another, I'm going to claim that cows can comprehend death a little more acutely than chickens. No offense, chickens. It was a tight race, but you the cows just barely edged you out.

So what to do? I honestly don't feel like eating there anymore. Maybe I'll get over it, maybe I won't. Not that they're going to miss my business.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 1:17 PM
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Sunday, August 29, 2004

Acting Affirmativley and You

This started out as a comment response but it got too big so I'm posting it on the main site.

1) I find you statement that “no correlation can be drawn a priori between outcomes and opportunities” to be a bit… loony.

On an individual case I would agree a host of other factors can intervene between opportunity and outcome, mostly I would expect luck, competence, and moral failure. But should we really expect consistently persistent inequality of outcome across racial lines? If people rise and fall on their merits (i.e. if America is fair) and we take a large enough sample size then luck is out of the question, and unless you want to argue that blacks are less moral or less competent than average, then competence and moral failure are out.

(You may argue that luck can effect racial groups as a whole. I suppose you'd ask them to "suck it up" and quit complaining. But then, why single out racial groups as having to live with thier lot? Why not shut down public schools and let poor children to fend for themselves?)

Obviously, most of the discrepancy can be accounted for by certain racial groups being poorer than others. If it explained all of it there would be no reason to bring race into it. The problem is when we find consistently persistent inequality of outcome in a statistically large enough group that can’t be accounted for by their disproportionate poverty.

2) Did I misunderstand what you said or just extended you logic farther than you wished or just mistyped? I don’t know and this whole slavery thing is a red herring so let’s move on.

3) “Newsflash: America is already fair, at least as far as race is concerned and as long as you exclude the case of whites screwed by preferences.” Yeah, I let the readers decide that one on their own.

4) "Wuh! "Poor children"? Hold it, I thought we were talking about ethnic groups, not social ones... "

No, that’s you listening to the liberal stereotype in your head again. If you had read what I wrote you would realize that I was explaining that the government’s responsibility to the poor (a group separate from any ethnic identification) parallel’s its responsibility to deserving truly underprivileged groups.

And just so I don’t have to trot out this definition again let’s define the deserving truly underprivileged group as follows:

deserving truly underprivileged group

Any group which through no moral or intellectual failing of their own, performs more poorly than average and whose underperformance cannot be explained by that group’s disproportionate representation in other, better defined group. This classification obviously relies on what other groups one can define. If the group in question is a racial group then the deserving part (that there is no collective moral or intellectual failing) is immediate. An undeserving group would be for example, convicted rapists. They probably don’t do as well average, but I’m not going to lose any sleep about that.

I will refer to these as DTUGs. Poor children form one DTUG (it is plausible that their parents find themselves poor through sloth or other moral failure so the group must be confined to children). Blacks, to a much lesser extent, form another since they do even more poorly than you would expect given their poverty. Obviously, if we had perfect information we could refine our understanding of blacks enough to see that really, their inequity arises from disproportionate membership in other non-racial groups.

For the next part of our intellectual journey, let’s define one more term:

fundamental deserving truly underprivileged group

A DTUG whose underperformance cannot be explained by disproportionate membership in any group, not just the ones we can define.

You are upset because you (and I and almost anyone who thinks about it) realize that blacks are not a FDTUG. Clearly there is some reason which explains their underperformance that does not depend on how much melanin is in the skin. If we had that information, we could define those groups and removes the DTUG status from blacks. We all wish for that day because that is the day we can stop looking at something as stupid as the color of someone’s skin to figure out government policy. However, if we stop collecting data in the first place as you suggest you can bet that we’re going to be having this argument for years and years and years.

To say that we must wait until we can define a FDTUG to start fixing a problem is a fancy way of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

5) “I don't even begin to understand what you mean here.”

Government has a responsibility to help poor children and does so by providing (for example) public education, Other DTUGs also deserve attention of some kind, be it some extra funding for schools they attend or recognition of the extra work a member probably had to go through to have the same results. I don't care to get into the specifics. How to execute public policy isn't exactly my strong suit. But I only wish to explain why race concious pulic policy isn't a priori wrong.

Since I'm leaving the country for a month tomorrow I won't be able to respond to the doubtless witty retorts and accusations of excessive verbosity. I do realize that there are several assumption in my argument that weren't made explicit but I believe that most of them lead us to a kind of crude social darwinism that we can all agree to shun.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 7:24 PM
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Missing the point.

For the last three months at my paying job I've been quantitatively coding qualitative data received within a survey sent out to thousands of former teaching consultants across America. As with most surveys that involve education or personal information, one of the qestions asks for the repondent's ethnicity. I've coded about 500 surveys at this point, and nearly one in fifty responds to this question with some degree of indignation. "I refuse to answer these stupid ethnicity questions," one person said. "Offensive" is a popular comment. More than a few people have checked "Other" and gone on to list three or four European nationalities. (No person yet has checked "Other" and then listed Asian or African or Latin American nationalities.) One person even thought she was being cute and filled in "Earthling" in this field, cloyingly poo-pooing the idea that a person's ethnicity influences her work.

These people have clearly missed the point of ethnicity data, especially in education.

This disgust at ethnicity data would be justified if in fact non-white students were performing at the same level as white students. This adorable attempt at color blindness would be useful if teachers, administrators, and parents actually were incapable of distinguishing white students from black students. This isn't-it-great-how-we're-all-the-same ideology would be laudable if we were in fact all the same when it came to academic acheivement. Unfortunatley, though, in spite of this insensate ideal, there is not equity in education, and pretending that race doesn't exist isn't going to fix anything.

For example, in these surveys, about 95% of the teachers who have indicated their ethnicity have indicated that they are white. If this is a fair representation of the ethnic proportions among teachers who take on leadership roles, then clearly there is some disparity of resources, access, or motivation between white and non-white teachers. Rather than ignore these disparities, the education industry should use ethinicy data as a springboard for institutional change.

As a sidenote, it should be noted that multiculturalism as it is commonly implemented is not the cure for inequity. Though seemingly contradictory ideologies, "color blindness" and multiculturalism have been the tools of people and institutions that want to minimize the visibility of inequity. Almost any student who grew up in a culturally diverse school district (Long Beach Unified being in the most diverse of the nation's largest cities) can remember a Multicultural Fair in which students were asked to display the foods and dances and ceremonies of their native culture to the rest of the school. These events are of course put on with the best intentions, and I believe the net effect of these multiculturalist celebrations is positive; I got to see in their own words and images what Cambodian American culture looks like, an experience that I would have not otherwise had. The unfortunate side effect, however, of multiculturalism is essentialism; cultures can be reduced to their food and clothing and architecture, or even assumed behavioral characteristics. (If I had a nickel for every time during this Olympic coverage that a Chinese athlete was revered for her "honor" and "tradition" I could buy and sell Bob Costas' ass.) Futher, multicultualism tends to disguise inequity and draw attention away from real problems. In short, it's a thin line between recognizing that cultural/ethnic difference results in different life experiences and attempting to reduce those differences into easily digestible and marketable characteristics.

To return to the impetus for this discussion, pretending that ethnicity does not exist or deeming the topic of ethnicity is offensive does nothing to ameliorate inequity, especially in the field of education. I respect people's right to omit their ethnic data from our survey, but please think beyond simpleminded we're-all-the-same doctrine before you assault the people who are gathering this data in pursuit of equity.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 1:20 PM
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Monday, August 23, 2004

Some ASUC plugs for you to put in your pocket.

HEY LOOK! It's Rebecca C. Brown shamelessly plugging some ASUC events, followed by a brief justification for her shamelessness!

Event:
ASUC BOOKSWAP
Friday, Aug 27-Tuesday, Aug 31. 10:00am-3:00pm. Upper Sproul.
Save money on books, and help your fellow students do the same.
Justification for plug:
What kind of person doesn't support students saving money? Seriously.

Event:
ASUC BOOKSTORE COUPONS
Want 10% off your next purchase at the ASUC bookstore (basement of MLK building)? Just walk by Ned's this Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday between 11:00am and 1:00pm and find an ASUC soldier to hand you a coupon. That's right, folks: guerrala marketing. Underhanded guerrala marketing.
Justification for plug:
Right now the bookstore is at $14 million per year, and as soon as it hits $16 million, the ASUC starts getting more money from eFollett. What's so cool about that? That money can go to publications and student groups, of course. Also, don't forget that Ned's is owned by Barnes and Noble. Also, on average, Ned's is over $2 more expensive per book. So there.

So has Rebecca gone soft since she joined the Office of the President staff? Will her blog deteriorate into an advertising vehicle for the ASUC? Has she become unwilling to criticize the ASUC due to her new-found loyalty to its president?

No times three. I can't actually say that I have any more loyalty than I ever did, nor will I plug stuff more than before, and for God's sake I will never go soft. I promise there will be plenty of times when the ASUC (including the Office of the President) is going to do something dumb and I'm going to complain about it.

As always, my behavior is completely self-serving. Why do I have this blog? So I can trick people into reading my words. Why did I run for ASUC office? To get my picture in the paper. Why did I join the ASUC staff? To help acheive goals that would ultimately benefit student groups and, more importantly, publications on campus. And because I just can't get enough team-building activities. Oh sweet mother do I love team-building.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 5:58 PM
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Saturday, August 21, 2004

$40 OSL student group fee

Those of you not privy to student group signatory emails may not already know that the Office of Student Life, a student service organization affiliated with the university, is planning to charge $40 for ASUC student groups to register with them. As it is currently written, student groups cannot get ASUC funding without registering with OSL. The OSL also offers outdoor reservation services, plus some student group advisement services.

The OSL's position on the potential mandatory fee:

We regret that it is necessary to initiate this charge at a time when
students are feeling increased financial constraints. However, due
to the significant budget crisis of a $72K cut to our permanent
budget, this fee is necessary in order to continue our services as
well as improve and develop quality programs for student groups at
CAL. We hope that you will take this opportunity to fully utilize our
services. This year, the office has implemented a variety of new
services including leadership workshops and on-line leadership
resources. During the coming year, groups will continue to have an
assigned staff advisor and can expect to see increased support on
event planning and group development from staff advisors and student
peer advisors. Over the past year, OSL has been committed to
developing additional resources and opportunities for student leaders,
all of which will be advertised in the Fall semester. In the absence
of the fee, the alternative would be to limit the number of groups
that the campus could recognize or limit the types of activities that
the groups could conduct and the imposition of this fee is
unavoidable.

Very simply, this fee disproportionately affects groups with less money. Groups with less than a grand or so in funding might simply not be able to afford the fee while simultaneously maintaining their services. The OSL is estimating that this fee would cover about a quarter of over seventy thousand dollars in budget cuts; this is based on the assumption that as many groups register this year as did in previous years and that no groups would be discouraged from OSL registration due to the fee.

I can attest as a Squelchee that we've not used OSL services extensively. Perhaps other groups have found them a more fruitful resource, especially for outdoor space reservation.

More as it develops...

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 11:44 PM
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Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Statistics for your school

In case I've never posted a link to the California Academic Performance Index (API) scores for K-12 schools, here they are. You can find all sorts of fascinating educational statistics for your and your friends' old schools. At my elementary school, for example, 100% of students in 2003 were "Economically Disadvantaged." At my boyfriend's elementary school, 17% earned this title in 2003. (Pleasanton is clearly going downhill.)

Hours of fun for the whole family!

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 2:02 PM
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Sunday, August 15, 2004

Tee hee.

In case you've missed it so far, here's the Americans Coming Together spot featuring Will Ferrell as W. Though my no means the most incisive GWB satire, it made me laugh.

Thanks to David's friend Randy Franks for sending the link. Thanks to Randy for also letting David and me sleep on the floor of his one-room apartment in Munich for nine nights free! Randy's the gift that keeps on giving.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 5:43 PM
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Thursday, August 12, 2004

Blog? What blog?

I got back from (an incredibly fun and interesting and relaxing trip to) Denver Monday at about 2:00am, and since then I've been working more or less non-stop at my office job, on the Squelch, on ASUC graphics/outreach activities, or in bed (asleep). Hence the no blogging since then. But no time for apologies.

So yeah. I'm working under the Leybovich administration in the ASUC as the president's graphic designer and "Deputy Chief of Staff of Outreach." (I bet you wish your title were that long.) While the former is self-explanatory, the latter is otherwise. In short, I help coordinate and oversee the Daily Cal page, the website, the "street team" (a PR posse), and the president's graphic designer (who, conveniently enough, is very sexy and easy to get along with). I applied for this job because I want to commit my skills to promote the ASUC and make it more accessible and visible to every student at Cal, not just those who want to be politically or socially active on campus. I am also very adament about working to improve revenue at the Cal Student Store, especially the bookstore wing. In the spirit of Jake Kloberdanz, if we run the ASUC as a successful business, we'll have more resources (namely money) available to serve students via student groups, publications, students' rights advocacy, and entertainment events.

Note that these goals are mine and not necessarily those of the president or ASUC in general. So before Prog Cal fires up his blogger page to contend that Student Action has no interest in diversity and thus must be comprised of card-carrying conservatives, understand the I Rebecca C. Brown and not SA am the one deprioritizing recruitment and retention centers. (That anyone could assert that SA representatives are "conservative" is laughable, by the way.)

This issue to me differentiates the two major ASUC parties. CalSERVE chose to prioritize student groups that performed minority outreach, which, while diversity is of course a desireable goal, was ultimately very exclusive. Certainly ethnic diversity on campus is an asset not only to those minority students who are recruited but also to white and Asian students; this much should be self-evident. The question for me is whether or not it's the ASUC's job to attain this diversity, to which I say no.

From my plebian observation, I also felt that during this past year the ASUC did little to promote itself to the average student. Many graduating seniors still haven't the faintest clue what the fuck their $55 each goes to every year. The ASUC student store would be a great place to hatch out a terrorist scheme because there's no one hanging around to discover your plot. The Cesar Chavez study room is only bustling about two weeks out of every semester. Almost nobody knows where the Squelch gets all the money it needs to be so damned funny all the time. (Actually, the funny is free; the paper the funny is printed on is not so free.)

Hopefully the preceding conditions can be remedied over the next nine months. The bookstore is a main focus because as soon as we raise volume over a certain amount, the ASUC starts getting additional profit dollars from eFollett. Look for more shrewd marketing and offers from the bookstore soon. Now I just need to get them to advertise in the Squelch.

P.S. If you're ever in Laramie, Wyoming during lunch time, head over to the Sweet Melissa Vegetarian Cafe. It's fantastic. The rest of the state is full of meth heads.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 11:25 PM
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Monday, August 02, 2004

Rocky Mountain Rad.

Tomorrow morning my boyfriend, two of his friends, and I are hitting the road to go see the 2004 Drum Corps International Division I championships live in Denver. (Drum corps, for those of you ignorant of the mobile music arts, is the football field-bound equivalent of marching band, with some color guard and a band pit thrown in. What's so cool about the pit? Well, good luck marching with a kettle drum.)

You're driving? you ask. Yes, I reply, in a car. How long will that take? you ask. Oh, I say with a tangible degree of masochism in my voice, about 20 hours each way, not including stops. And why are you doing this? you ask. Because I'm twenty years old, I reply, and I don't have any kids or pets who depend on me yet and I want to take a break from work and because I can so there.

We'll be taking the 80 to the 25, traveling through Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming before hitting the Centennial State on Wednesday. Tuesday night we're staying in a Motel 6 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, just in time to share the town with the Sweetwater County Fair (featuring the musical talents of none other than REO Speedwagon and oh so many motorcross events). God bless you, sort-of home state of Dick Cheney!

The repurcussion for you, my faithful reader, is that I won't be anywhere near the internet from tomorrow until next Monday. Until then, keep the west coast warm for me. I mean it. It's a serene 86 degrees in Denver right this minute. Stupid Bay Area microclimates! I'll get you if it's the last thing I do!

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 4:16 PM
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Sunday, August 01, 2004

Webmaster? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The Office of the President is still looking for someone talented and hopefully attractive (my criterium, not Misha's) to fill the position of OP Webmaster. The job includes managing www.asuc.org and being on the inter-office Graphic Design Committee and would require 10-15 hours of work per week, unless you're the Flash, in which case it would require 10-15 Flash hours of work per week. Not yet interested? How's about this: You'd get to work with me! I'm now the ASUC OP Graphic Designer. How'd I get that job? 'Cause I'm awesome. And 'cause no one else applied.

Here're the descriptions of the titles.

Here is the application.

Note how I'm using CalStuff's file links so I don't have to mess with html on my own accord.

I highly encourage interested parties to apply. The OP is hoping to introduce handsful of new ideas to the web and the entire office in general. And Misha is great to work with. And you can put it on your resume. And, again, you get to hang out with me. ME!

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 11:06 PM
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