San Francisco’s Toppled Statues

Published: San Francisco Weekly. July 4, 2020. View here.

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For over a century, a 30-foot bronze statue of Father Junípero Serra stood at the eastern end of Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse. He struck a triumphant pose — arms are raised in victorious praise as one hand clutches a towering cross.

Two weeks ago, on June 19, demonstrators tied a rope to the base of Serra’s cross. A video posted to Twitter and viewed by over 2.7 million people captured the moment when the statue began to wobble before it swiftly crashed down amid cheers from onlooking demonstrators.

The concrete base Serra stood atop for nearly 113 years was inscribed with a partial telling of his legacy: “Founder of the California Missions.”

In the aftermath of the statue’s toppling, the U.S. Embassy of Spain emphasized Serra’s “support of Indigenous communities” via Twitter, and San Francisco’s Catholic Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone voiced criticism of the act of civil disobedience — writing that Serra “made heroic sacrifices to protect the Indigenous people of California from their Spanish conquerors.”

Yet many historians paint a different picture, noting that Serra brutalized American Indians and acted as an agent of the Spanish Empire’s colonization efforts.

Nicole Meldahl, the executive director of the Western Neighborhoods Project, a non-profit organization founded to preserve the history and culture of western San Francisco, says that the statue of Serra was not only “deeply offensive to Indigenous groups,” the bronze memorial was a gift to the city from San Francisco’s former mayor, James D. Phelan, who, she noted, was “a notorious white supremacist.”

“These monuments say more about how specific groups choose to remember the past than they actually say about what has happened in the past,” Meldahl said.

Despite the complicated histories of statues like the one of Serra, President Donald Trump recently made a sweeping condemnation of individuals who topple or vandalize historical monuments, calling them “vandals,” “hoodlums,” “anarchists,” “agitators,” “left-wing extremists” and “bad people” who “don’t love our country.”

The White House recently released an executive order reinforcing existing punitive consequences for the destruction or vandalism of historical monuments, including up to 10 years in prison.

Meanwhile, the targeting and toppling of monuments, fueled by the immediacy of the Black Lives Matter movement, shows little sign of slowing down. In recent days and weeks, demonstrators have vandalized and toppled an estimated 150 statues emblematic of racism, conquest, colonialism, and white supremacy in and around San Francisco, in other parts of California, in cities in at least 22 other states, and even outside of the U.S.

The targeting of historic statues seems offers a window into the current cultural and historic reckoning taking place throughout the country. That reckoning looks different in California than in Southern or Northeastern states — as University of San Francisco Associate Professor of History James Zarsadiaz explained.

Whereas many of the statues being targeted in other states are symbols of the Confederacy, Zarsadiaz noted that, in California, the statues considered problematic are oftentimes figures seen as “reinforcing colonialism.”

“Our public imagination of California history starts not with the Indigenous populations, but with Spanish colonization,” Zarsadiaz says. “We may not have a statue of Robert E. Lee, but we have statues like Father Serra. When he was canonized a few years ago, that brought back feelings of anger [and] frustration and reignited this discussion around settler colonialism, colonization, European conquest, white supremacy, and the forced proselytization of Catholicism and Christinaity on Indigenous people.”

The viral video of the Serra statue’s toppling was taken during a June 19 demonstration in the park, which several hundred people attended, according to the Chronicle. Demonstrators also vandalized the statue of the 17th-Century Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, author of “Don Quixote,” damaged drinking fountains, pathways, and benches — and took down the statues of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and “Star Spangled Banner” lyricist and slave-owner Francis Scott Key.

Key worked actively for the anti-abolitionist cause, which “makes his patriotic ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ extolling the virtues of our republic as the land of the free, particularly hypocritical,” Meldahl says.

The take-down of Grant’s statue received a significant amount of condemnation, including from the White House, with defenders of his legacy pointing to his success as the leader of the Union Army during the Civil War.

“President Grant led the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the Civil War, enforced Reconstruction, fought the Ku Klux Klan, and advocated for the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed freed slaves the right to vote,” stated President Trump’s recent executive order.

Yet Meldahl notes that Grant did briefly own a slave and also led troops into battle during the Indian Wars, “a painful history for Indigenous groups.”

Notably, this is the second time Grant’s statue has been pulled down as an act of protest. The statue was first toppled in 1896 by members of the stonecutters’ union who objected to the use of prison labor to construct the base for Grant’s monument, believing this dishonored the former president’s legacy. In response, a new base was created.

The reasons for targeting the bust of Cervantes remain unclear. Cervantes himself was imprisoned and enslaved for five years. Despite this, demonstrators sprayed red paint on Cervantes’ eyes and tagged his statue with the word “Bastard.” Perhaps delirious demonstrators mistook the monument to the author of the world’s first modern novel as a memorial for a giant racist policeman.

In response to the demonstration at Golden Gate Park, Mayor London Breed released a critical press release, saying the damage done “went far beyond just the statues that were torn down.”

“Every dollar we spend cleaning up this vandalism takes funding away from actually supporting our community, including our African-American community,” Breed said in the release. “When people take action in the name of my community, they should actually involve us. And when they vandalize our public parks, that’s their agenda, not ours.”

Kristina Mays, a Black San Francisco-based artist, noted that she saw “very few faces of color actually tearing down monuments.”

“As Black individuals, we’re more concerned with caretaking for our communities, trying to find ways to stay safe in the midst of the coronavirus and trying to avoid being killed by the police,” Mays says. “Even though the catalyst for all of this has come up around Black Lives Matter, I think the pot has been boiling for a long time.”

The conversation over removing monuments that celebrate or honor figures with controversial legacies is, however, hotly debated.

The day after the demonstration in Golden Gate Park, the Western Neighborhoods Project — described by Meldahl as a “mild-mannered, friendly history group” — asked its Instagram followers how they felt about the previous day’s events.

“And whew! People told us how they felt about it,” Meldahl says.

The nearly 200 comments on the social media post ranged from sentiments of support (“Monuments reflect our values. We need updated monuments for updated values.”) to expressions of frustration (“What a terrible example of uneducated millennials. Sad. Sad. Sad.”)

For Meldahl, the conversation extends beyond the limits of the statues themselves.

“It’s a broader questioning of what’s appropriate for public art, what stories should be told [and] who should tell them,” she says.

A Long Time Coming

In late 2018, the “Early Days” statue, depicting a largely unclothed Native American lying on the ground, seemingly vanquished by an upright Spanish cowboy while a missionary attempts to convert him, was removed from the San Francisco Civic Center. This followed decades of public outcry, concerted efforts by a Facebook group organized specifically to see to the statue’s removal, an ensuing appeals process, and a formal approval process by The Historic Preservation Committee.

The meticulousness of this formal process might seem a stark contrast to the almost instantaneous take-down of statues in recent days by determined demonstrators.

Despite its quick toppling, however, the Serra statue, as well as the Christopher Columbus Statue at Coit Tower, were both statues of “conquest” that The San Francisco Human Rights Commission recommended be removed in a report from 2007. While demonstrators saw to Serra in recent weeks, Mayor London Breed ordered the Columbus statue be removed on June 18, one day before protestors planned to take it down themselves and 13 years after it was initially recommended for removal.

Around the U.S., four other statues of Serra and 25 other statues of Columbus have either been taken down, targeted, or planned for removal.

The destruction and vandalism of historic monuments has reignited a critical debate over whether removing these objects erases or otherwise edits history.

Zarsadiaz says it is often assumed historians want to protect historical monuments because they are relics of the past.

“These are just things,” Zarsadiaz says. “Americans will not forget figures like Robert E. Lee or Father Serra or Christopher Columbus because it’s ingrained in our curriculum. The logic that if we take down these statues that people are going to forget the past, I don’t know if that holds. We absorbed a way of thinking about American history and European conquest in ways that are inescapable.”

The conversation has also focused on whether it’s appropriate to judge historical figures using a framework of modern morality. Meldahl says she believes it is important not to assess historical figures or events out of context, but she also acknowledges that “history is always evolving.”

“Look at the thinking around the mission system and how that’s changed in just my lifetime — I’m 35 years old and what I was taught to begin with [versus] what we accept as the proper narrative now is totally different,” she says. “History is also incredibly nuanced, and there’s just no way to capture that nuance in stone.”

What we’re seeing now is also part of “a long-term movement questioning the use of public imagery and history,” Meldahl says. One of the most recent nationwide movements to remove Confederate monuments and flags and rename public schools and roads occurred in the aftermath of the 2015 killing of Black worshippers in South Carolina by a white supremacist.  And that was preceded by decades of debate over the symbolism of the Confederate flag.

The targeting of historical statues is also tied to a growing intolerance for partial narratives, says San Francisco State University Associate Professor of History Kym Morrison.

“The people who are vehemently opposed to these narratives are saying [the statues] represent a forced celebration of oppression and public funding of a narrative of oppression,” Morrison says. “The types of things we celebrate are war, […] colonialism and the conquering of a land, and we don’t talk about the human loss that has gone along with that. It’s been the partial telling of a story and forcing large segments of communities that have been hurt by those particular monuments to believe that they […] should participate in celebrating things that have harmed their communities.”

One supporter of the removal of these structures is Ramekon O’Arwisters, a Black artist who has lived and worked in San Francisco since 1991. O’Arwisters says he sees the statues that have been targeted, including the ones taken down in and around San Francisco, not so much as public art but as a kind of “propaganda,” serving as “very subtle reminders that colonialism founded the country” and that “colonialism through […] economic oppression still dominates the land.”

Moving Forward, Looking Back

San Francisco itself is named after a mission — the Mission San Francisco de Asís a la Laguna de los Dolores, named in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. There does not currently seem to be any serious conversation about renaming the city or the county, but several San Francisco schools, including one named for Francis Scott Key and another named for Junípero Serra, may now change their names.

Although there are no publicly displayed Confederate monuments in the Bay Area, Mays, a San Francisco native, still believes there is work to be done. She noted the irony in the dichotomy of San Francisco being a sanctuary city yet having a boulevard named for John Drake Sloat, credited for having “claimed California.”

Upon moving to San Francisco four years ago, Morrison remembers her disbelief upon seeing the since-removed “Early Days” statue in front of City Hall.

Morrison, who is the only Black person and one of only a few people of color in SFSU’s History Department, says the targeting of historical statues represent long-term projects and deep-seated concerns from people who have been “excluded from more formal political channels.”

“When people in power know there is a wrong that has generally always existed in their communities, then let’s not wait for the formal process,” she says. “Let’s let the leaders of the city, the leaders within the state say, ‘We just need to correct this now.’”

If the statues that have been removed, toppled or otherwise targeted in San Francisco are taken down for good, Morrison says replacement artwork could celebrate diverse communities, pointing to the mural on The Women’s Building as a point of inspiration. Meldahl said local artists and historians could be commissioned to install temporary, rotating pieces that spark dialogue on “our complicated and shared past.”

Mays admits that she isn’t sure what the right replacement would be, saying “we just need time to assess.”

“As a community here in the Bay Area, we need just pause for a moment and decide how we want to move forward and what it is we want to see,” Mays said. “It might just be that the bases of these monuments just sit there for a little while.”

Parents of UC Davis students who died by suicide turn to advocacy work

Published: The California Aggie. May 22, 2020. View here.

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Content Warning: Suicide. Resources for 24/7 national and local crisis phone lines and text lines are listed at the bottom of this piece.

This article is the third in a three-part investigation by The California Aggie looking at suicide in the UC system. Parts one and two are available at theaggie.org.

What is a public university’s obligation to the well-being of its students? Several of the nation’s leading mental health experts, including from the National Institute of Mental Health, said, in actuality, there is none.

Universities “are not required to provide any care,” said Dr. Victor Schwartz, the chief medical officer of The Jed Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on suicide prevention for the nation’s teenaged and young adult population. “It doesn’t have to be that everything is provided on campus.”

Victor Ojakian is quick to dismiss this notion.

“The general premise of what an educational institution should be doing […] is graduating their students, and one of the ways you do that is by making sure that they have mental health treatment if they need it,” Ojakian said.

Ojakian’s son, Adam, died by suicide in December 2004 when he was a senior at UC Davis. Adam had not shown suicidal tendencies, and he was never diagnosed with a mental illness. His death is what is referred to as an “out-of-the-blue” suicide, Ojakian said.

“You’re subjected to someone you love taking their life unexpectedly,” Ojakian said. “And there is a level of trauma around that. I’m not even sure if I’m capable of explaining it.”

Later, in conversations with his son’s peers, he heard “what a wonderful guy” Adam was.

“I think one called him a ‘gentle giant,’” Ojakian said.

In retrospect, Ojakian suspects his son was struggling with major depression.

Adam’s death was also part of what is referred to as a suicide cluster. He was the fifth of six UC Davis students who died by suicide that year. A cluster, according to Ojakian, is not stopped “by doing nothing,” so it upset him that the university had not informed families of the situation.

At the time of Adam’s death, Ojakian said he “didn’t know four students had killed themselves prior to my son taking his life.” In his eyes, “it might have been helpful to know that.”

UC Santa Barbara, unlike UC Davis, notifies its campus community when a student dies. UC Davis students who served on the chancellor’s mental health care task force, convened in 2018, “were asking for more communication” from the university, and brought up examples of emails sent by UCSB to its student body upon a death in the campus community, said Margaret Walter, UC Davis’ executive director of Student Health and Counseling Services.

Currently, no changes have been made to UC Davis’ policy.

In the decade between 2008 and 2018, an estimated one to two UC Davis students died by suicide each year. This is the case for every year except three: An estimated four students died by suicide in 2011, an estimated three students died by suicide in 2012 and an estimated five students died by suicide in 2013, according to data collected by The California Aggie.

The UC does not require its campuses to collect suicide-related data, nor does there exist a “systemwide UC policy or standard on collecting suicide data,” according to Andrew Gordon, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President (UCOP).

“There is no systemwide definiton of suicide nor policy thresholds at which suicides must be reported by a campus,” Gordon said via email. “Though campus counseling centers typically do collect this data and share with campus leadership locally.”

The Aggie submitted 20 California Public Records Act requests for the previous decade’s worth of student suicide statistics at each of the 10 UC campuses.

According to the responsive records, UC Davis, which saw 20 student deaths by suicide between 2008–2018, had the highest number of any UC campus. This number is based on deaths classified as a suicide by the county coroner, who then notified UC Davis Student Affairs. This data may not represent the actual number of student suicides at UC campuses over the previous decade. Because there is no system-wide definition or standard in use, it is difficult to accurately compare data on deaths by suicide across UC campuses.

UC Davis also showed the highest number of student deaths by suicide of any other UC campus between the years 2000–2005, the period of time during which Adam died. UC Davis saw nine out of the UC system’s total 29 student deaths by suicide during this time period, according to the 2006 “Report of the University of California Student Mental Health Committee.”

In 2006, Ojakian was asked to testify at a U.S. congressional hearing aimed at updating the National Mental Health Act. He recalled that an aide for former Congressman Patrick Kennedy approached him and remarked on the UC’s report from that year.

“He said that they had been touring in California, and they’d just been visiting UC Davis and they understood that it had the highest number of suicides of any of the campuses,” Ojakian said. “That’s not something to be proud of. If you’re in that situation, you should be doing more.”

As far as he knows, Ojakian said his son had not sought out counseling services beforehand — but, as Ojakian noted, “I don’t know how he would have.” Over the past 15 years, the mental health resources offered by UC Davis have drastically changed. In 2004, the year Adam died, the CAPS budget “had been cut eight consecutive years; they were operating on a shoestring,” according to Ojakian.

In 2004, the year Adam died, the CAPS budget “had been cut eight consecutive years; they were operating on a shoestring,” according to Ojakian.

“We knew that students who were in need had no idea about what was available, what to do,” Ojakian said.

That’s when he and his wife, Mary, became advocates for student mental health.

For over a decade, the Ojakians’ advocacy work has led to tangible changes at UC Davis (additional student services); changes at UCOP (the creation of a Suicide Prevention Website and the Red Folder Initiative, a reference guide to mental health resources used by campuses both inside and outside the UC system); changes at the state level (Assembly Bill 89, which requires that all psychologists in the state receive training in suicide prevention) and even changes at the federal level.

Both Ojakian and Lomax worked on getting AB 89 passed for over five years — as Ojakian noted, if you do work in suicide prevention, “you have to be persistent.”

Described by others as a “fountain of information” on student mental health and suicide prevention, Ojakian repeatedly clarified that none of this advocacy work was done alone. He is also adamant about the fact that his advocacy work, which has saved lives, is not enough.

“We still think suicide is not something we can do anything about”

Since 1999, the U.S. has seen a 33% increase in its national suicide rate, and that rate is expected to rise amid the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, a “statistically strong and reliable method” to identify those at high-risk of suicide “remains elusive,” according to a 2016 study in the journal PLOS One.

Dr. Jane Pearson, the special advisor to the director on suicide research at the National Institute of Mental Health, said identifying factors that explain the upward trajectory of the nation’s suicide rate over the past decade is “the big question we would love to answer.”

“To say what one thing is contributing to suicide risks is really hard,” Pearson said. “The field is struggling right now […] to understand what’s going to be the most effective type of intervention.”

A key factor identified by several suicide prevention advocates is awareness. According to Craig Lomax, when a group of individuals understands foundational information about suicide and mental health, relevant stigmas and fears associated with seeking help are “reduced dramatically.”

In June of 2012, Lomax’s daughter, Linnea, died by suicide when she was a 19-year-old freshman at UC Davis.

“People described her as being extremely positive, extremely generous and just very interactive and encouraging,” Lomax said.

She was also diligent, thorough and a perfectionist, he said.

In May of 2012, Linnea was severely underweight and engaging in other physically destructive behaviors — “I just didn’t understand that it [was] the size of something much deeper going on,” Lomax said.

He remembers apologizing to Linnea’s roommate about the stress of the situation, and he recalls that “the roommate’s response was one of, ‘Oh yeah, well this kind of thing happens when you don’t know how to handle stress. I handle it just fine.’”

“She was clueless,” Lomax said. “I’m really not irritated, but that echoes my point of: What if everybody in the room understands the foundation of this? She might have been able to help surface Linnea’s understanding of what was going on. [Linnea] might have been able to get help earlier.”

On her 19th birthday, Lomax tried to talk Linnea out of taking her upcoming finals and coming home. UC Davis was immediately cooperative to the idea, but because Linnea was over 18, it was her decision to make. She was “absolutely certain” UC Davis was not going to let her return because she felt her grades were so poor, Lomax said, noting that she had a 3.83 GPA.

“Our rights are wonderful, […] however, when a mental illness comes in, it starts representing the body and that isn’t reflective of who that person is or their values,” Lomax said. “People start listening to the mental illness while the person is dying, and the mental illness wants to be destructive to the body.”

Soon after her birthday, Lomax found his daughter in a suicide attempt and took her to UC Davis’ Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS).

“The clinician looked at her and […] said, ‘Yeah, I don’t think that she’s going to commit suicide.’ I just came from a suicide attempt 30 minutes ago,” Lomax said. “The clinician was a little bit impatient because she had other things to do, but I pressed for a letter because in order to get her out of finals, we needed a letter.

“So we got that, but we didn’t get any other direction,” Lomax said. “We didn’t get any other help. We have no [idea] what to do, where to go, what to learn. Now that I know a lot about suicide prevention, [that was] completely incompetent and wasn’t adequate at all.”

 “We didn’t get any other help. We have no [idea] what to do, where to go, what to learn. Now that I know a lot about suicide prevention, [that was] completely incompetent and wasn’t adequate at all.”

Lomax decided to write emails to a number of psychologists, one of whom recognized a dangerous combination in Linnea: that of suicidal ideations and perfectionist tendencies. The psychologist made an emergency appointment to see Linnea and recommended that she be admitted to an outpatient therapy center in Sacramento.

Linnea spent 10 days in a psychiatric hospital under a hold. On the eleventh day, she went to a voluntary outpatient program under the supervision of her hospital psychiatrist. On this day, she voluntarily left, three hours before her parents were scheduled to pick her up. She had not alerted anyone to her whereabouts.

“We were stupid, we didn’t think voluntary meant voluntary […] or I would have had a chair and waited and watched the building — that’s how concerned we were,” Lomax said.

Over the next 10 weeks, as Linnea’s story gained media coverage, over 1,300 people from Sacramento and the Lomax’s hometown of Placerville searched for her. Lomax said his family received over 300 phone calls reporting Linnea sightings, but only two of the 300 calls were actual sightings.

“Most parents can’t get it around their heads that their kid is suicidal, but even after you know that your kid is suicidal, it’s another thing to actually think they would do it,” Lomax said. “And that’s true of any human. We respect each other enough that we can’t fathom that that person that we know could actually do that, it just doesn’t make sense. So you have a hard time believing it. And we had 300 phone calls that said, ‘We’re seeing her in Sacramento.’ We would rather believe that.”

Ultimately, after a 10-week search, it was Linnea’s mother who found her body.

“It’s completely horrific and destroyed us in so many ways,” Lomax said. “It didn’t destroy us all the way, if I was still searching for my daughter, which I would be.”

The Lomaxes received hundreds of cards offering condolences for Linnea’s death, including one from UC Davis.

When Linnea died, Lomax said he was “totally uninformed about mental health and mental illness.” He has now educated himself and others on these topics.

“We do a lot of things nowadays to save a life,” Lomax said. “What degree will the campus go to save one of those lives? I suspect that they’d be willing to spend millions of dollars if they thought they could save a life. We still think suicide is not something we can do anything about.

How we talk about suicide

Patti Pape, an active member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is currently teaching classes aimed at de-stigmatizing mental illness. In these classes, she talks about suicide and addresses the “fact that bringing up suicide does not ‘plant a seed.’”

“It needs to be discussed and communicated,” Pape said.

Pape’s son, Eric, died by suicide in May of 2017 while attending UC Davis. Eric was a traveler, an anthropologist and someone who “worked hard” and “felt deeply,” Pape said. A psychology major, he entered UC Davis as a junior transfer and worked in a neuroscience lab.

According to Pape, Eric had not struggled with his mental health before transferring to UC Davis.

“The transition to Davis was more difficult than I had seen him experience before,” Pape said. “He had always had pretty stable relationships with friends and family, and not having that support system right at hand, right away, really took its toll on him.”

Eric began receiving support for anxiety and depression through drug therapy and through UC Davis counseling services. His first suicide attempt was in January of 2017, and he was checked into Sutter Davis Hospital and placed on a 72-hour 5150 hold. While there, an altercation occurred between Eric and a nurse at the hospital. After his release, and after he returned to school, Pape said Eric was doing better until he was charged with felony battery for the altercation.

“The trial was delayed and he felt more and more desperate,” Pape said. “He was still going and seeking services but he […] basically just decided there was no other way to solve the problems. His perception of himself was all based on what was going on with this trial and the outcome of that, because that was going to change his life irrevocably.”

In his last few weeks, Eric requested to see a specific UC Davis counselor, but there was a wait until he could see them. If Eric had been able to see the counselor, “I think that could have made a difference in the outcome,” Pape said. She believes the support UC Davis provided to Eric was “adequate,” but that “in a crisis, they let him down.”

After her son’s death, Pape received Eric’s diploma posthumously. She said she appreciated meeting the chancellor and being treated “in a nice way” by university officials, “but there was no acknowledgement of the fact that he killed himself.”

When a student dies by suicide, there is some level of fear held by a university that it will be blamed for the death, said Paul Gionfriddo, the president and CEO of Mental Health America.

Although UCOP does not require that campuses maintain student suicide statistics, Ojakian believes “they know who’s died on campus.”

“They try and hide it and mask it because they don’t want it reflecting on their service,” Ojakian said. “There’s a legitimate reason: They don’t want to create concern or consternation on a campus, but there’s also a level where they don’t want people to know students are dying on campus.

“My son died in the middle of December,” Ojakian said. “Then we got a call from the CAPS director — I think it was between Christmas and New Year’s. He’s calling for a reason. He knows my son is dead. They know. Regardless of what they say.”

In Ojakian’s mind, the UC president needs to be making sure that each campus has a plan and that these plans are being communicated between the campuses — “the fact of the matter is that the president’s office should be more involved.”

When it comes to work in suicide prevention, “you have to overcome things like being dismissed or avoiding dealing with suicide,” Ojakian said. “We think if we turn the other way, it won’t exist.”

But what happens when you lose someone to suicide?

“Other people talk with you, they ask you about what’s going on with their loved one or tell you about what happened to one of their children, so then you start seeing the bigger picture,” Ojakian said. “People started telling [me], ‘My son is at a community college and he has attempted to take his life.’ But it’s not just the campuses, it’s the whole culture that doesn’t want to talk about this. So, then you get to realize how big a problem that is. If you just sit back and do nothing, it’s not a solution.”

Ojakian’s home county of Santa Clara has a formalized suicide prevention plan, thanks to work done by Ojakian and others. His county is one of only seven out of the total 58 California counties that has a suicide prevention plan (Ojakian worked on a bill that would have required every California county to have a suicide prevention plan, but the bill was held by the appropriations committee without explanation).

Santa Clara has the lowest suicide rate in the state. Whereas the state of California has seen an increase in its suicide rates over the past several years, Santa Clara has seen a decrease from 150 down to the low 130s.

“I’m not a clinician, but it doesn’t prevent us from doing something,” Ojakian said. “I’ve educated myself on this topic, because my end goal is to save lives. In a sense, I’d rather not have people call me. I’d rather know that everyone’s loved one is safe and/or getting help because they need it.”

Suicide prevention at UC Davis

When the head of a university’s counseling department is asked about the work they do related to suicide prevention, they will say that all of their work is, in some form, related to it.

“All the work we were doing was effectively an attempt at suicide prevention in the same way providing medical care working in hospitals is working death prevention,” Schwartz, who was also the former medical director at New York University’s counseling services and current chief medical officer of The Jed Foundation, said.

The current work related to suicide prevention undertaken by UC Davis is vast and varied. After noticing an uptick in student suicides, UC Davis officials began a multi-year process guided and supported by The Jed Foundation. The process has consisted of the foundation providing the university with feedback aimed at improving its mental health care and suicide prevention efforts.

When schools provide more of these types of services, “suicide rates go down,” Schwartz said.

As part of a recommendation by the foundation, UC Davis has recently created and implemented a set of postvention guidelines used by the university in its response to traumatic events, including suicides. The guide is meant to ensure “a rapid and adaptable response aimed at preventing the trauma from growing,” according to the UC Davis website.

“Last year was about improving access,” Walter said. “We’re trying to open up the avenues where students can get support.”

And because universities provide some form of reliable community support, there is reason to believe that college is a safer place to be for individuals with mental health issues. In fact, the “actual rate of suicide is lower among college students than non-college-attending 18- to 25-year-olds,” Schwartz said.

Ojakian and other advocates, however, see college campuses as having a “captive audience” and, thus, an opportunity to reach out to students and let them know that “there are alternatives to taking your life.” There is a shared belief held by Ojakian, Lomax and Pape that universities can and should be doing everything in their power to prevent suicides from occurring.

“As parents, we send our children to an institution of higher learning assuming that these places are enlightened and open to research-based changes, and then when they seem to disregard that responsibility it’s disheartening,” Pape said. “What is the focus of the UC system? Is it research? Is it fundraising? Or is it our undergraduates and graduate students who need to get an education in a nurturing environment?”

This past May 4 marked the second anniversary of Eric’s death. In a recent email, Pape talked about the feelings that the anniversary prompted.

“Everyday is a bit easier to recognize the reality of our loss, but it certainly doesn’t keep us from missing his presence and wondering how he would be reacting to the craziness our world is in with this pandemic,” Pape said. “We all agree he probably would have backpacked up into the mountains and waited it out.”

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Chancellor Gary May has made it a point to highlight the mental health resources available to students. Those resources, as they appear on the SHCS website, include the following:

• Mental health visits: Counseling Services are available by phone or via secure video conferencing. Schedule an appointment through the Health-e-Messaging portal or by calling 530-752-0871. All Mental Health Crisis Consultation Services are offered via phone consultation or secure video conferencing. Call 530-752-0871 to access these services.

• COVID-19 Mental Health Resource Flyer (pdf download)
• LiveHealth Online: Have secure, online video visits with licensed mental health professionals and primary care providers; no referral is needed.
• Therapy Assistance Online: Use interactive tools and self-care exercises for mental health concerns.

The number for the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is (800) 273-8255; the number for the 24/7 Crisis Text Line is 741741; the number to speak with a trained counselor through The Trevor Project, available 24/7, is 1-866-488-7386 and the number for Yolo County’s 24-hour crisis line is (530) 756-5000 for Davis callers.

Yolo County issues mandatory shelter-in-place, fifth COVID-19 case confirmed in county

Published: The California Aggie. March 19, 2020. View here.

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Yolo County announced Wednesday that it would be instituting a mandatory shelter-in-place effective instantly through April 7 and applicable to all residents. The order restricts all non-essential activity in an effort to slow the transmission of the novel coronavirus COVID-19.

“You and those you live with should remain at home,” states a press release on the Yolo County website. “You are allowed to leave your home for specified reasons to make sure you have the necessities of life such as getting food and medical supplies. You are also allowed to go outside to take care of pets, go on a walk, exercise outside, and enjoy nearby parks, so long as you do not congregate in a group and maintain at least six feet of distance between you and other people.”

Hours after the shelter-in-place mandate was announced, a fifth county resident was confirmed to have tested positive for coronavirus. That person, “an elderly adult with chronic health problems,” acquired the disease through community transmission, according to The Davis Enterprise.

The announcement comes just one day after the city of Davis urged residents to shelter-in-place. Yolo County’s mandatory, county-wide directive is not a suggestion and violators may be penalized — the county, however, has said its intent is not to punish residents, “rather, the role of law enforcement is to educate and inform with legal action reserved for significant violations.”

Essential services that provide food, shelter and social services are allowed to operate. These include but are not limited to pharmacies, food and convenience stores, child-care facilities, gas stations, banks, laundromats and restaurants (for delivery or take-out only).

Included in the county’s list of non-essential businesses and services are religious institutions, gyms, large gatherings of people and nonessential medical care that should be postponed if possible.

UC Davis

As a result of advisory notices from both Yolo and Sacramento counties to shelter-in-place, UC Davis is moving to “suspended operations.” The status is enacted when “current conditions pose a safety risk or logistical challenges that are more severe and there is a substantial interest to having a limited number of individuals travel to, or remain at one or more campus locations,” according to university policy.

University employees are working remotely as much as possible. Students are encouraged to take their finals from their place of shelter, however, the library, computer labs, study spaces and classrooms remain open through Sunday, March 22 to ensure students are able to access computers and WiFi.

It was announced recently that both UC Irvine and UCLA had canceled their commencement ceremonies. In their most recent comment on the situation, UC Davis officials told The California Aggie that UC Davis is still planning to have commencement.

Other campus updates:

• Aggie Compass, located in the East Wing of the MU, will be distributing food tomorrow, March 20, from 9 a.m. to noon, and weekly grocery bag pickups will take place every Thursday.
• The Mondavi Center has canceled all remaining public events for its 2019–20 season. Those who have purchased tickets will be contacted.
• Unitrans has further scaled back operations, implementing Weekend Service today through at least March 27. The bus lines that are currently operational are the G, K, M P, Q, O and V-MU lines, beginning at 7 a.m.
• The CoHo remains closed until at least March 30. Dining commons remain open.

UC Davis officials address decision to make Spring Quarter instruction remote

Published: The California Aggie. March 14, 2020. View here. Co-written alongside Kenton Goldsby, Hanadi Jordan, Kaelyn Tuermer-Lee and Liz Jacobson.

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Editor-in-Chief Kaelyn Tuermer-Lee, Managing Editor Hannah Holzer, Campus News Editor Kenton Goldsby, Opinion Editor Hanadi Jordan and Arts and Culture Editor Liz Jacobson sat down with the following UC Davis administrators on Friday to talk about decisions concerning remote instruction due to the coronavirus. Below is a transcript of the meeting that has been edited for length and clarity.

Title and introduction:

Chancellor Gary May

“My style is collaborative, I expect all my colleagues to be subject matter experts in their particular role, and they are. We occasionally have missteps or fumble things, but that’s going to happen anywhere. My role is kind of just to frame the problem, ask a few questions. At the end, I have to make the final decision, but not always.”

Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Emily Galindo

“I’m thinking about, ‘What are the impacts going to be to our students, those that live on campus, those that live off campus.’ Also, we have 800 staff, so I’m also thinking about how these decisions will impact those individuals.”

Provost Ralph Hexter 

“All the deans report to me.” 

Psychology Professor Kristin Lagattuta, the chair of the Academic Senate

“I’m a mother of two college children, so I also very strongly empathize with the student perspective, and I am a mother of a college athlete, so I empathize with the absolute disruption to spring sports. I’m a faculty member, I also see it from the Senate chair perspective of trying to see the bird’s eye view of how this all goes together.”

Vice Chancellor of Finance, Operations and Administration Kelly Ratliff 

“For all the issues related to human resources and employment, but also everything related to facilities and custodial and those sorts of things, the folks that do campus event planning, that’s all with me. And there are aspects with travel — domestic travel, insurance — for this particular circumstance, those are issues my team is helping with.”

Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Dana Topousis

By “remote learning,” does that mean that students will be sent home and moved out of their dorms?

Emily Galindo: No, that’s not our intent. The campus is still open and we want to allow for that to continue. The situation is fluid though, and I think you have to appreciate that. We are planning to message our students who live in the residence halls now that when we get through with Spring Break we will remain open and that the services will be available to them.

Ralph Hexter: What we’re trying to emphasize is options. Students must have [the ability] to access the material remotely, likewise, individual faculty, given health status or risk, we want to make sure they have the option of delivering material remotely.

A lot of rumors were circulating about what would happen to Spring Quarter instruction. Why the delay on the message?

Ralph Hexter: When we do issue statements, we want them to be as complete and unambiguous as we can make them. That’s why partial information is so misunderstood and turns into rumors.

What has the decision-making process looked like up to this point? 

Emily Galindo: The first meeting was our phone call on Jan. 28. So it’s been since then, that on a weekly or every other week, there have been a number of us that have been on phone calls, beginning to talk about what the situation is. And our calls started primarily with our healthcare folks.

We have the Student Health and Wellness Center, and we have a medical director, and she is very much in alignment with Yolo County Public Health. We have been getting direction from there. The phone calls have increased as well as the amount of participants on the calls as it’s become a bigger situation. We had our weekly phone call this morning with Student Affairs, Student Housing and Dining, safety risk folks and communications folks. People report out on what’s the latest.

Then we have [an] emergency crisis management team. They’re more focused on policy than the practical logistical things that happen on a regular basis.

Kristin Lagattuta: I had 15 hours of meetings yesterday.

Ralph Hexter: For example, the Chancellor is on a call every morning with his opposite numbers at 7:30 a.m. and I’m on a call with the other executive vice chancellors for the system at 7 a.m. Part of our calls are trying to learn from one another, and to the extent that’s possible, figure out where we can be exactly in conformity. But there will be local variations — one obvious reason is we’ve got two campuses who are on semesters, and the rest are on quarters.

Kelly Ratliff: We had a system-wide call with my counterparts and had a group of folks on the phone about remote work. It all involves folks from other campuses. Some of the functions like human resources are both Sacramento and Davis. And if you’re a healthcare worker, it’s a very different circumstance. What does it mean to talk to our employees about people who can and might be able to work from home versus healthcare workers who can’t? Depending on these different scenarios, we bring in our own health experts. So we’re lucky we have the UC Davis Medical Center. They have an amazing infectious disease team. We have our own folks in occupational health, kind of like student health and wellness.

Kristin Lagattuta: And at the medical school, we have people who are expert epidemiologists and [ones on] coronaviruses, too, and they are working worldwide. So it’s incredible expertise we’re drawing from.

Kelly Ratliff: The formal decision structure relies on that emergency crisis management team. And then Gary [May] is the ultimate decision maker. There are some things where UC President Janet Napolitano has taken the lead — in terms of some of our employment practices and paid leave, Janet [Napolitano] set those policies, like the travel restrictions. The category two and three travel restrictions were set by the president. And then we’re implementing locally how it affects our systems and our language. [The decisions are] implemented by individual managers and supervisors because they know their own work best.

Kristin Lagattuta: The Academic Senate basically has authority over decisions involving courses and instruction and grading. We’ve been meeting regularly for several weeks now trying to figure out how to improve and basically lax some of the rules about how instruction goes. Normally, if a professor wanted to move some or all of their course material to remote instruction, they’d have to go through this lengthy approval process. And so suddenly, when you’re faced with this emergency situation, you can’t have these very strict rules. Everyone’s really trying their best to align with the guiding principle, which is really maximizing how many students could finish Winter Quarter. We’ve had a lot of emergency meetings where we discuss a lot of these issues. We want students to be successful. We fully recognize this is stressful.

As you likely know, we have a lot of professors who are over 60-65 years old and we want to give them control to make certain decisions so they can protect their health. It’s balancing all of these interests and really getting a lot of very dedicated faculty in the room to make very, very thoughtful decisions, and they’re not easy decisions to make. We’re really encouraging faculty to be as caring and flexible to their students as possible. We can’t police all that. We’re hoping that all faculty will have the best interest of students in mind when they’re making these decisions. But it’s challenging, it’s challenging for everyone.

Emily Galindo: On behalf of the chancellor, one of the things that he did when the fire situation happened, he did again this week: He called together student leaders from his Graduate Student Advisory Board, the Undergraduate Student Advisory Board [and] the ASUCD Executive Office. And he asked the question: ‘What do you think we should do? And what do you think would be most helpful?’

Given the decision to cancel all in-person finals, why did the university not cancel in-person instruction during Week 10?

Ralph Hexter: There’s sort of two horizons that are guiding our decisions: How do we protect — to the extent possible — the health of the people involved in the activity? And then, as we shift from containment to mitigation, how do we [decrease] the frequency of the number of peoples we bring together?

A week ago Friday, [and] a week ago Saturday, we weighed what would be realistically able to achieve [and] we chose to strongly encourage the making available of the opportunity to access the material remotely. We felt that we would, in reality, achieve the same thing [by] cutting down the number of classroom meetings and the number of people attending by strongly encouraging rather than simply mandating, which, personally, I think would have led to a feeling that we just kicked over an ant hill, and people would have thrown up their arms.

Ken Burtis, who’s the faculty advisor to chancellor and provost, has been going around this week and visiting some classrooms and he said that there’s so few students in the classes that are being held that we’re achieving that recommended social distancing and then some. And I will just comment that Berkeley faced a very different rhythm because they’re semester, so it was in the semester and not the last week of the quarter.

Kristin Lagattuta: And also emphasizing student choice — some students don’t learn as well remotely because there’s a lot of distractions going on, and we wanted to maximize student choice to be able to attend in the classroom. We imagined only about 30% of students would actually show up to classes, if not fewer, so you could spread out. But I think that again, in situations of uncertainty, giving a level of control and choice to people to make those decisions are really important. As students, that last week of the quarter — [when] people are giving the final midterm or you have class presentations — [it] can be overwhelming for students if all of the sudden you’re just like, ‘No more, you don’t get to do this anymore.’ And for faculty too, it’s very challenging.

I know students joke about how faculty can’t even work the technology in the classroom at the time of the lecture, how can they be expected to do all this stuff online? They were frantically trying to figure out, ‘How do I do Zoom lectures? How do I integrate these things into Canvas? How am I going to do these online quizzes?’ They’re working so many extra hours to make this happen for their students in order to maximize the quality of education they can provide to students.

With some professors giving out 100%s on finals, there’s been a discrepancy in terms of grading and examinations across classes. What is the university doing to ensure all students receive fair marks?

Kristin Lagattuta: Our major guiding principle [was] to maximize the opportunities for students to finish Winter Quarter by offering more flexibility to instructors to make those decisions — they’re the best authority of their class [and] of how much their students learn. I don’t think there can be a one-size-fits-all. I don’t think there is one fair approach, because someone could argue, although it’s nice to get 100% on the final for everyone, is that fair?

Ralph Hexter: We worked very closely with the Senate. So there was a whole range of possibilities — not to have a final, having the final remotely, [changing] the weighting of the final. One other thing was to have a take-home final or an alternative assignment. All of that is really built on what already exists.

I don’t think the university can guarantee, even in the regular operation, that everything is fair in the sense that everything is equal between one class or another. We certainly hope that within any framework people are working fairly and that there are opportunities for appeals. I will acknowledge clearly, that in this unique situation of sudden changes, there might be more opportunities for discrepancies.

Kristin Lagattuta: When we offer those additional flexibilities, we strongly encourage them to minimize the amount of change or disruption to what their stated grading practices were going to be [for] that course.

When did discussions with other UC campuses begin and when did discussions with UCOP begin regarding the situation? And when did UCOP issue its first directives around the coronavirus?

Kelly Ratliff: The first one I’m recalling had to do with travel and it’s [from] February. [For] the system-wide calls, in many ways, Davis was first. We had the first community transmission patient at our medical center, and then we had the situation with our students who were being tested. The system-wide interaction started before that, because as soon as folks knew about our coronavirus patient and students under isolation, my email was going crazy. Some of this was happening starting in late January, when we first had our case. And then every one of my system-wide groups moved to weekly calls starting then.

It looks like we’re making different decisions on different campuses. In some cases we are, but often that’s right now driven by the public health guidance. For example, when you read and see what’s happening with large events, mass gatherings, the original guidance that was coming out of Yolo County had to do with 150 people. So that’s how we start — at 150. Their public health advice in Santa Clara County was 50. We each have our own situations. UC Davis happens to sit in a couple counties. We have locations in Solano, Yolo and Sacramento counties. There are different reference points, different local circumstances, but we’re all again doing our best to share information about those things.

Ralph Hexter: Yolo County could not agree with Sacramento County on certain things.

Kelly Ratliff: Which also happened during the fires.

Ralph Hexter: We were waiting for Yolo County to come out with guidance. What finally came out was that Yolo and Placer County and Sacramento County had already done something different, which is extremely challenging for us. Our UC Davis Health has clinical operations in both of those counties, not to mention others.

Kristin Lagattuta: As the Senate chair, we also have a system-wide component. I meet regularly with the Senate chairs from the other divisions of all the other campuses. We’ve been sharing a lot of the decision-making regarding, ‘What are we doing about instructional practices? How are you handling remote instruction? How is that all working?’ We’ve been really drawing from each other in these uncertain times to try to figure out what the best practices would be.

What sort of issue areas does UC President Janet Napolitano have unilateral authority over and what directives has she given?

Kelly Ratliff: Our labor agreements are system-wide — so on some of the employment issues and issues around paid leave. And guidance [on] travel. We have a president with experience from Homeland Security, so some of these things are sort of more natural even in her own areas of subject matter expertise.

Possibility of a refund

Kelly Ratliff: As campuses are deploying their instructional model in similar but different ways for Spring Quarter, depending on local circumstance. How might we consider thinking about folks asking about refunds? There’s going to be [a] conversation and a standard approach about the mandatory system-wide fees and tuition, which will not be refunded because everything we’re doing is not closing the campus.

Kristin Lagattuta: It’s actually more expensive in many ways because we’ve had to get all the Zoom pro licenses for the instructors, the examity costs $20 a student for every student proctor and there’s thousands of students going to be proctored this way. The university is actually pouring a lot more resources into this to make this happen. I’m getting all these texts from [professors] talking about all the equipment that they’re buying just so they have things at home in order to deliver the kinds of instruction that they the students need.

What is the thinking right now in terms of commencement ceremonies?

Kelly Ratliff: The very clear message right now is that we’re still planning on commencements. That may change, but we want to lead with: ‘We’re still planning on commencements in this sea of uncertainty.’ We’re trying to do things in rolling time fields — that will make some folks uncomfortable, because it still won’t be certain. For now, that’s the decision framework, because so much is changing. Our messages last Saturday were the first of all the UC campuses, then all of a sudden we quickly became last. None of us ever imagined like what happened with the NBA and the NHL and the symphony and the opera and the Mondavi [Center].

Kristin Lagattuta: We fully recognize how absolutely crushing it would be to students and their families to cancel those really beloved and momentous events, especially graduation. We don’t want to take those decisions lightly, we really want students involved in that and whatever happens with graduation, right now it’s there. We don’t want to get rid of it. That’s such a time of celebration that to let go of that [would be] heartbreaking.

In terms of the implementation of “remote instruction,” what will happen to research laboratories?

Ralph Hexter: Our commitment is to have the university open and be in operation. We’re thinking of giving everyone, to the extent possible, the flexibility to work or study remotely. When it comes to research labs, each one is going to have to decide.

As you may or may not know, we have five million research animals, most of them are fish, but there are a lot of quadrupeds as well. Nothing against fish, but they all need to be taken care of. So we have critical operations, like the clinical operations at the medical center, [that] we would never shut down. We would [look] at the individual personnel in the lab — if anyone is immunocompromised or has a health need or a family need that requires them to be reassigned, we’ll figure out a way to cover it.

Kristin Lagattuta: My research lab is at the Center for Mind and Brain, and so what we’ve been talking about is really limiting, as much as possible, human subjects’ participation in studies too. And so most of us have sort of shut that down unless they’re really critical, longitudinal studies where you have to test a child at a certain age. But then actually making it completely voluntary for those families and letting them know, and increasing how much we’re cleaning everything and really trying to only have the lab personnel that really need to be there so we can have more social distancing too. It’s really, really challenging because graduate students are working on their dissertation research, and I have many undergrads who volunteer in my lab, so we’ve said that we’re not having them come in because they’re interns. But that’s missing out on educational experiences for them too. We have a Senate Committee — a Committee on Research — and they’ve been sort of informing some of these decisions too, but it’s really challenging.

What is the university planning to do in respect to in-person labs for course credit?

Ralph Hexter: That is one of the topics under most active discussion now. Yesterday morning, on our AVC call, we were hearing from Berkeley, where chemistry was videoing the processes, having either the TA or the TA plus a couple of student volunteers do the experiment, get the students to see what the meanings are, they remotely take it down, do the calculations. So when it starts to get down to labs, there’s no one-size-fits-all. I’m aware now that that was actually already ongoing here. So I think some of them will be handled that way in a very creative, remote fashion, and I think that’s interesting. I was talking to a graduate student who, himself, teaches a lab, and he was saying actually right now in lab, sometimes the technician does the literal experiment and the students just get the data and have to figure out the calculations.

This will require some work in the department and Senate level, [but] there may be some [where it] is utterly impossible, and perhaps other arrangements will have to be made. Students could potentially take a lab in another quarter, but if the student were to need to graduate, I’m hopeful that they would find ways to adapt. And advisors in the departments now can make adjustments.

Kristin Lagattuta: Outside of labs, you have the performing arts and studio arts, and that also provides a lot of challenge for students too. But yes, we would anticipate increasing flexibility.

Ralph Hexter: Because we’re not closing the campus, some of those activities may take place on a voluntary basis in the actual venues.

Kristin Lagattuta: The other thing we’ve also discussed is increasing Summer Sessions. So if the situation changes by summer, maybe some of the lab courses that would normally take place in spring, we would have a larger number of options for students to take in the summer. Of course, we can’t predict with certainty what’s going to be happening in the summer, but that’s also something that faculty and departments are thinking very strongly about — how to maximize how many students make that progress toward graduation and being mindful of that.

Given that the date to file for graduation was Friday, if students who were planning to file for graduation in Fall Quarter now want to rethink that decision and graduate this Spring Quarter, will the deadline be extended?

Kristin Lagattuta: That’s a good question, we will find that out.

Ralph Hexter: This is a really great example of why it’s wonderful to share these things, because new questions come up that we’ve never thought of.

Increasing Pass/No Pass registration

Kristin Lagattuta: During November 2018, when the campus was closed due to fire, several students signed this petition saying, ‘Can we extend the Pass/No Pass deadline?’ And we thought about that very thoroughly. What we decided — and I think it still holds in this case too — is that the Pass/No Pass, while even right now feels very good for students and very stress-relieving, it has a lot of future negative consequences that a lot of students might not think about in the here and now. You need a certain amount of graded units for graduation. A lot of graduate professional schools require certain classes to be graded. So what we decided in November of 2018 — and, again, still stands now — is that we’re requesting that advisors in colleges are flexible with this. If someone really wants to extend that Pass/No Pass, they would tell them, ‘This would be the consequences and things that could potentially happen, so you can really make an informed decision.’

Residence hall contracts

Ralph Hexter: One example of a deadline or of a date that I know that we’re changing […] is residence halls contracts.

Emily Galindo: If a student goes on Spring Break and then they decide that they don’t want to come back, then we’re going to increase the flexibility if they want to cancel their contract, understanding then that they would have to move all their belongings and move out.

You mentioned that students will not be getting a refund next quarter, but for students who have to enroll for an additional quarter who otherwise planned to graduate this quarter, is monetary compensation something that is being considered?

Kelly Ratliff: I think we’d have to think carefully about the scenario. We’re imagining that everyone will still have the ability to maintain the same level of progress toward their academic degree next quarter as they otherwise would. In all these things, it’s important for us to say we have case-by-case circumstances. People have unique circumstances related to housing or other things, so we always have places and processes for literal case-by-case, but sort of the overarching assumption for all these things is we’re still maintaining the order, it’s going to look different.

Is the university considering how it would retain on-campus and student jobs?

Emily Galindo: That’s our challenge. That’s part of why we continue to say that the campus is open, because we know that a lot of our students need their jobs. And for our revenue-producing units — in particular ASUCD [and] our housing and dining, which is self-supporting — if the revenue doesn’t come in, then it makes it very difficult for them to pay. We all know the hit that the Coffee House took with the [Camp] Fire, and so those are the kinds of things that we don’t want to see happen. I think we’ll have to continue to have conversations about that.

Kelly Ratliff: Fewer folks are riding Unitrans, fewer folks are going to the few venues, and so it’s very much on our mind. We have custodial staff — in some ways, their workload has gone up right now. But if we’re mostly not using classrooms in the spring, what does that look like? There’s a lot of issues and definitely a lot of thinking and planning and trying to find ways we can preserve. This is one of the things the federal government is talking a lot about and the state will as well in terms of different provisions for unemployment and those sorts of things.

[At] UC Davis, we won’t be able to backstop and be a full unemployment agency. That is one of the sort of the terrible real life impacts of these [mitigation measures], but we’re definitely going to look for all the ways we can help mitigate and leverage, including if there’s federal or state programs to make sure we’re maximizing everyone’s opportunity. Sometimes the way we make our decisions will make people more or less eligible for those sorts of programs, and so that’s something for us to also [consider]. Whatever we can’t manage ourselves, we want to make sure that how we implement creates maximum opportunity for folks to use other sorts of programs that are available.

The Sacramento Bee reported that UC hospitals will now be using their own screening tests for COVID-19. Will that apply to our on-campus health center?

Emily Galindo: We do have the test available. We are partnering with Quest Diagnostics. But we’ve got a criteria for who gets the test and there’s already been some friction with folks going in or calling in and saying ‘I need the test.’ The advice nurse goes through the questions and based on your responses, that determines whether you’re at priority for the test.

Kelly Ratliff: This will be something that’s evolving. The capacity at the [UC Davis] Med Center is brand new. We’re in two counties, and so there also will be guidelines about transporting samples. Over time, if we develop capacity and we have our own expertise, we’re going to want to make that available to our own students. It’s all quickly evolving.

If and when the Student Health and Wellness Center develops the capacity to administer screening tests for COVID-19, will students who aren’t covered by SHIP be given the test for free or at a discounted price?

Emily Galindo: I don’t have that answer.

Are there any major concerns about how a transition to remote instruction would impact the university’s finances?

Kelly Ratliff: There are a lot of concerns. There are concerns about the worldwide impact of this. There are also concerns about students’ own decision making about staying or showing up in the fall. There are a lot of places we’re experiencing higher costs to have tools to mitigate the risk from the virus. We just rented as many portable hand-washing stations as we could. We want to have those on hand and figure out how to deploy them. There’s many different examples of how the university’s finances will be affected by this situation.

Ralph Hexter: I think this will ripple for a number of years. I don’t even know. For example, those of us who are above 60 think, ‘What is this going to mean for the UC retirement fund?’

We’re absolutely wondering, ‘What are yields going to look like?’ We’re going out with our admissions decisions, and I’ve been in awe over many years [at] the skill of admissions professionals with knowing how to hit the right enrollment numbers, but that’s based on historic data, and the ability for prospective and admitted students to visit campus.

Not to mention, when we add the horizon of the international students, even if they wanted to come, will they be able to? We are in a maelstrom of uncertainty.

Kelly Ratliff: We’re doing the best contingency planning we can in many places. We have reserves. That’s an important part of anyone’s financial resiliency. But we just had an emergency not that long ago — [the Camp Fire]. And this one is really very hard to predict. So there’s thinking and planning, but there’s so much uncertainty around it. We have big estimates that have a lot of uncertainty on them. While they are helpful, they’re still not something you can easily see and go, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s write a check.’

Highlights from the last Democratic Debate of the year

Published: The California Aggie. Dec. 20, 2019. View here.

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The California Aggie attended the sixth Democratic Debate on Thursday, Dec. 19 at Loyola Marymount University. Seven candidates qualified for the last debate of the year: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and California billionaire Tom Steyer.

The most recent polls show Biden in the lead, with 27.8% support, followed by Sanders with 19.3%, Warren with 15.2% and Buttigieg with 8.3%. Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg — all of whom are polling ahead of Steyer — did not qualify for this debate. In order to qualify, candidates needed to meet polling and fundraising thresholds designated by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) by Dec. 12. Booker, Gabbard and Bloomberg did not meet these thresholds.

Also present at the debate was California Governor Gavin Newsom; following the debate, The Aggie asked Newsom about his thoughts on recent discussions about the possibility of removing SAT and ACT scores from the admissions process for UC schools.

“You may have seen in some of the work we did this year in the budget that we were leaning in that direction,” Newsom said. “I think the UC will not surprise you — I think they’re poised to make a bold announcement.”

During the debate, Yang — the only candidate of color on the debate stage — said it was “both an honor and a disappointment to be the lone candidate of color on the stage tonight.” The five current democratic frontrunners in the polls are all white.

“Fewer than 5% of Americans donate to political campaigns,” Yang said. “Do you know what you need to donate to political campaigns? Disposable income. The way we fix this is we take Martin Luther King’s message of a guaranteed minimum income, a freedom dividend of $1,000 a month for all Americans. I guarantee, if we had a freedom dividend of $1,000 a month, I would not be the only candidate of color on this stage tonight.”

There has also been discussion in recent weeks over whether the lack of diversity in Iowa and New Hampshire — two of the whitest states in the country — should disqualify these states from voting first. These concerns have been chiefly voiced by Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who is polling with 1.2% support.

At last night’s event, jabs between Warren and Buttigieg over recent weeks manifested on the debate stage. Warren criticized Buttigieg for a closed-door fundraiser he held in “a wine cave full of crystals.” In response, Buttigieg said he was “literally the only person on this stage who is not a millionaire or a billionaire,” adding, “this is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass.”

With the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary less than two months away, the debate, hosted by PBS NewsHour and Politico, was an important opportunity for candidates to reach additional voters; recent polls show that over 50% of voters have yet to decide on a top candidate for the primaries, according to Vox. An additional four debates are scheduled for January and February.

Labor disputes at UCLA and LMU

Questions relating to the two separate and ongoing labor disputes that impacted the debate were noticeably absent. The debate was originally slated to take place at UCLA, but it was relocated to LMU due to an ongoing labor dispute between the UC and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 3299. AFSCME officials asked candidates to honor its boycott of UC events.

Just days before the debate took place, a labor dispute between UNITE HERE Local 11, a union representing food service workers at LMU, and the food service company Sodexo, which employs the unionized workers and is also subcontracted by LMU, raised doubts about whether the debate would indeed take place. All of the candidates said via Twitter that they would not attend the debate if it meant crossing a picket line. Two days before the event, the DNC and its chair, Tom Perez, helped secure a tentative contract agreement between the two parties, according to a DNC press release.

Perez, who addressed the crowd before the debate began, did mention the agreement he helped facilitate.

“It’s more than just dollars, it’s about dignity,” Perez said. “When unions succeed, the middle class succeeds and America thrives.”

Education

The topic of education was brought up over halfway through the debate. Warren discussed her plans to implement a two-cent wealth tax, which, according to her estimations, would result in an $800 billion investment in K-12 public schools.

“That will permit us to offer technical school, two-year college, four-year college for every single person who wants an education, cancel student loan debt […] put a $50 billion investment in our historically black colleges and universities and cancel student loan debt for 43 million Americans,” Warren said.

Sanders also voiced support for taxing the wealthy and making all public colleges and universities tuition-free.

“What we need right now is a revolution in education,” Sanders said.

By comparison, Buttigieg’s proposed plan offers free college, or college at a discounted tuition rate, for those families making $150,000 a year or below.

Disability rights, a topic that had not previously received much airtime at prior debates, was addressed by the moderators in a question asking candidates how they would help disabled individuals become better integrated into the workforce and their local communities. Yang, who has a son with special needs, and Warren, who previously worked as a special education teacher, both gave strong responses to the question — Warren discussed plans to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides both a free, specialized education and services to children with disabilities, and Yang again brought up the idea of instituting a freedom dividend for every American.

Yang and Sanders were the only two candidates to bring up student debt. Both Sanders and Warren have said they will cancel all or some of the currently amassed student debt.

Climate change

Sanders was the first candidate to bring up climate change during the debate and repeatedly referenced the urgent need to combat climate change throughout the event. Given relatively recent scientific findings that certain parts of the U.S. will be unlivable by the year 2050 as a result of climate change, the candidates were asked whether they would support a new program that would relocate families and businesses away from areas such as Miami, Fla. and Paradise, Calif. In response, Klobuchar proposed re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement, Buttigieg proposed implementing a carbon tax and both Steyer and Sanders proposed declaring an immediate national emergency, if elected.

“Your question misses the mark — it is not an issue of relocating people in towns, the issue now is whether we save the planet for our children and our grandchildren,” Sanders said. “You’re talking about the Paris agreement, that’s fine. Ain’t enough. We have got to — and I’ve introduced legislation to do this — declare a national emergency.”

Protests in Hong Kong

Relations between the U.S. and China were one of the only topics relating to international relations brought up during the debate. Moderators asked about ongoing protests in Hong Kong sparked over a controversial extradition bill and relating to larger demands for full democracy, as well as recent human rights abuses by China — specifically the detention of over a million Muslim Uighurs, an ethnic minority in one of China’s regions.

Steyer said the U.S. needs to do more to “push back,” but he also said we should not be the “world’s policeman” — “if we are going to treat climate as the threat that it is, we are going to have to partner with the Chinese.” Biden, on the other hand, supported a more militarized approach.

“We should be moving 60% of our sea power to that area of the world to let […] the Chinese understand that they’re not going to go any further,” Biden said. “We are going to be there to protect other folks. We […] should make sure that we begin to rebuild our alliances, which Trump has demolished, with Japan and South Korea, Australia and Indonesia. We, in fact, need to have allies who understand that we’re going to stop the Chinese from their actions.”

Yang, who has family in Hong Kong, said China is “in the process of leapfrogging” the U.S. in terms of Artificial Intelligence “because they have more data than we do and their government is subsidizing it to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.” He proposed the implementation of an international coalition to set technology standards, stating that “this is where we need to outcompete them and win.”

Impeachment

The recent impeachment of President Donald Trump by the House of Representatives was the subject of the first question of the night posed to all of the candidates. According to the moderators, Congressional Democrats have not yet convinced a strong majority of Americans to support impeachment.

In response, Klobuchar called recent events concerning the president a “global Watergate” and said the American people need to hear testimony from top White House officials, including Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. In his response, Yang said “we have to stop being obsessed over impeachment.”

“[We need to] actually start digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place,” Yang said. “We have to take every opportunity to present a new positive vision for the country, a new way forward to help beat him in 2020 because, make no mistake, he’ll be there at the ballot box for us to defeat.”

Dreamers and reparation

With over 200,000 DACA recipients in the State of California alone — more than any other state — moderators asked candidates whether they would move to enforce a “permanent legislative fix for Dreamers” in their first 100 days in office.

“I believe everyone on this stage would do the right thing by Dreamers in the first 100 days,” Yang said. “I would make it a top priority. I’m the son of immigrants myself. The fact is, almost half of Fortune 500 companies were started by an immigrant or children of immigrants. Immigrants make our country stronger and more dynamic.”

Buttigieg, who previously said the U.S. owes compensation to children separated from their families at the Southern Border, also said at the debate that those children should have a “fast track to citizenship.” He also voiced support for giving reparations to the descendants of enslaved people.

“We’re not talking about a gift to anybody,” he said. “We’re talking about mending what was broken. We’re talking about the generational theft of the wealth of generations of African-Americans.”

“The United States must act immediately with investments in minority-owned businesses, with investments in health equity, with investments in HBCUs and on the longer term look at reparations so that we can mend what has been broken,” Buttigieg said.

LGBTQ issues

All of the candidates present have committed to supporting the passage of the Equality Act, a comprehensive civil rights bill.

Moderators addressed the 22 transgender individuals killed in the U.S. this year, that officials know of, who were mostly women of color. Candidates were asked how they would stop violence against transgender people.

Warren said she promises to visit the Rose Garden once a year to read the names of transgender individuals killed in the past year — “I will make sure that we read their names so that as a nation we are forced to address the particular vulnerability on homelessness.”

“The transgender community has been marginalized in every way possible,” Warren said. “And one thing that the president of the United States can do is lift up attention, lift up their voices, lift up their lives.”

In his response, Sanders brought up his support of a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program that would provide healthcare to every person in the country regardless of sexual orientation or need.

Final Question

In the final question of the night, PBS NewsHour Managing Editor Judy Woodruff asked the candidates whether they would ask for forgiveness from or give a gift to any of the other candidates. Following the responses, viewers and members of the press pointed out on social media that both of the candidates who asked for forgiveness — Klobuchar and Warren — were also the two women on the debate stage.

“We have to remember as Democrats — and if I get worked up about this, it’s because I believe it so much in my heart — that we have to bring people with us and not shut them out,” Klobuchar said. “That is the gift we can give America in this election.”

The next debate is scheduled to take place Jan. 14 in Des Moines, Iowa. So far, Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg and Klobuchar have qualified.

UC Davis has seen 20 deaths by suicide over the past decade, but that number doesn’t tell the whole story

Published: The California Aggie. Nov. 4, 2019. View here.

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This article is the second in a multi-part investigation by The California Aggie looking at suicide statistics in the UC system. As these statistics are not maintained by the UC Office of the President, The Aggie has compiled the previous decade’s worth of suicide statistics at each of the 10 UC campuses through public information requests.

Leading mental health experts say that collecting suicide data can be a critical tool in prevention efforts — UC Davis’ Executive Director of Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS) Margaret Walter agrees.

“Any sized college or institution of higher education would want to look at public health issues such as suicide with an eye for prevention opportunities or improving response,” Walter said when asked why a public university such as UC Davis would collect suicide data.

Yet the UC does not require its campuses to collect suicide-related data, nor does there exist a “systemwide UC policy or standard on collecting suicide data,” according to Andrew Gordon, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President (UCOP).

“There is no systemwide definiton of suicide nor policy thresholds at which suicides must be reported by a campus,” Gordon said via email. “Though campus counseling centers typically do collect this data and share with campus leadership locally.”

In order to gain insight into student suicides on UC campuses that UCOP was not able to provide, The California Aggie submitted 20 California Public Records Act requests for the previous decade’s worth of student suicide statistics at each of the 10 UC campuses.

As there is no systemwide standard for collecting suicide data, the data reported by each campus cannot directly be compared. Given the responsive records submitted to The Aggie by each of the campuses, however, UC Davis was reporting the highest number of student suicides over the past 11 years — a total of 20, just one death higher than deaths reported by UC Santa Barbara and two deaths higher than deaths reported by UC San Diego.

Some of the data provided by a few of the campuses were incomplete or insufficient, such as the data provided by UCLA that was inexplicably missing more than half of the 11 years of requested data.

The following data is an estimate provided by officials and may not represent the actual number of suicides at a given campus.

Student suicide data from each UC campus from 2008-2018:

• UC Davis: 20 deaths by suicide
• UC Santa Barbara: 19 deaths by suicide
• UC San Diego: 18 deaths by suicide
• UC Berkeley: 12 deaths by suicide
• UC Riverside: 11 deaths by suicide
• UC Irvine: Eight deaths by suicide
• UC Merced: Four deaths by suicide
• UC Santa Cruz: Three suicides between 2004-14. The Aggie requested data from 2008-18 and instead, a day after the print deadline for this article, UCSC officials provided data for the time period 2004-14. This was not the specific range of dates requested, and the responsive records were submitted by the university over a year after the CPRA request was officially submitted.
• UC San Francisco: Zero deaths by suicide — a UCSF spokesperson said this estimate is correct, adding via email that “unless a suicide happens on campus, it is not included in these statistics.”
• UC Los Angeles: University officials provided an incomplete data set, with the years 2008 through 2014 missing. There were 10 confirmed suicides from 2014 to 2018, with an additional six “possible suicides” reported during this same time period. Although numerous officials at the university were repeatedly asked to explain why the university did not provide six years of requested data, The Aggie did not receive a response by the deadline for this article.

Where is this data coming from?

As there is no systemwide standard for collecting suicide data, the data reported by each campus cannot be directly compared.

In view of the fact that the UC has no systemwide definition of “suicide,” The Aggie reached out to the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) directors at each campus to request their university’s operational definition.

Dr. Myrla Seibold, the associate CAPS director at UC Merced, sent the following response via email: “As Chair of the UC CAPS Directors I met with all the UC CAPS Directors this afternoon and everyone said that suicide is determined by a coroner.”

Once a death is classified as a suicide by a coroner, each campus has a different response protocol. At UC Davis, Student Affairs is the first campus body to receive notice from the coroner’s office and, from there, a group of campus officials is notified.

When asked whether Student Affairs keeps a record of previous student suicides in order to document and track this information, Student Affairs Vice Chancellor Emily Galindo said via email that it only keeps a copy of the letters sent out to the families of those students listing available resources. Student Affairs does not notify families in the case of a suicide, a coroner does.

Galindo was also asked whether information collected by Student Affairs related to student suicides is used in any decision-making processes, such as in the allocation of funds for mental health services. She did not directly answer the question.

In an interview, when discussing the estimated 20 student suicides that have occurred over the previous decade at UC Davis, Walter said she does not know whether that number “really reflects the experience of our campus” because it is “simply the number that Student Affairs knows about.”

At SHCS, once officials are notified of a student suicide, they look at whether the student received services there.

“If they were served by a counselor, we would reach out to that counselor to talk to them,” Walter said. “We also do a chart review if the student was served here to look and see [if] they followed up. We just want to know if there’s any opportunity to work on prevention.”

What does this data mean?

There are a number of reasons why the data reported by the campuses varies so widely.

“If one college was more diligent than another in tracking numbers, it could appear to have a crisis on its hands when, in reality, another institution could have equal or higher numbers,” said Chris Brownson, the associate vice president for student affairs and director of the counseling and mental health center at the University of Texas at Austin, in a 2018 article from Inside Higher Ed. 

Additionally, there is no standard detailing when a university should — or should not — count a student suicide as such. This means that there may be certain circumstances, such as a school break or a leave of absence, which might disqualify such a death from being recognized by a university.

“Not all suicides happen on site, so should they be counting that or not?” said Dr. Jane Pearson, the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) special advisor to the director on suicide research. “Do you want to count over the summer? How many months after somebody graduates? I don’t know if anybody has come to some consensus on how those should be counted.”

Officials from campuses including UC Davis and UC San Diego said that any death of a student by suicide, classified as such by a coroner, would be recognized, regardless of the circumstances. This was not the case, however, at UCSF which recognizes only deaths that have occurred on campus. In 2018, approximately 15% of UCSF’s total student population lived on campus, according to a university spokesperson.

Because there exists virtually no standards at any level regarding the collection and reporting of this data, it becomes challenging to accurately assess the importance of such information. Proponents of collecting this data, however, affirm and emphasize its importance.

“Something as simple as reporting [is] fundamental to […] understanding what happened at the end and being able to look back and figure out what happened over the rest of that time,” said Paul Gionfriddo, the president and CEO of Mental Health America, a long-standing mental health advocacy organization. “That’s how people need to look at this.”

Currently, though, if UC Davis wanted to assess the numbers it had on file, it would not be as easy as pulling up a spreadsheet.

If pressed, Walter said Student Affairs “could probably go back and look at all of the emails they’ve sent” to assess student suicide in recent years. Adding the SHCS could, if asked, look at their files as well, but “it’s something we’d do detective work to go back and find.”

The number for the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is (800) 273-8255.

Visiting scholar to UC Davis robbed at gunpoint, irreplaceable research data stolen

Published: The California Aggie. Sept. 30, 2019. Accessible here.

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Syed Fahad Shah, a visiting scholar to UC Davis, was robbed at gunpoint last Friday, Sept. 20, as he was walking home on Russell Boulevard. Shah, a lecturer in the Department of Entomology at the University of Agriculture in Peshawar, Pakistan, lost both personal and academic items in the event.

Shah had a hard drive containing important scientific research data and lecture slides stolen from him, in addition to his wallet — containing his rent money and credit cards — and a newly purchased laptop, according to a press release from the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

The academic, who is studying parasitoid wasps under the guidance of a UC Davis scientist at the university’s Bohart Museum of Entomology, had resorted to walking home because his bike had a flat tire. He was robbed on a bike path along Russell Boulevard, near Lake Boulevard.

The robber, aided by an accomplice, was parked on the opposite side of the road with the car’s emergency lights flashing.

“I was looking at the car and thought that maybe they have some kind of problem with the car,” Shah said, according to the press release. A man then leapt from behind a tree trunk, pointed his gun at Shah and demanded his wallet, cell phone and backpack before hurling Shah’s cell phone into a field and bolting into the waiting car, described as a dark sedan.

After finding his phone in the field, Shah called the police and described the suspect as around six-feet tall, curly-haired and between 20 and 30 years old.

“His most valuable possession […] was an external hard drive containing all his research data and lectures,” the press release states. “It is a Seagate 1 terabyte hard drive. Shah had not yet backed up the contents.”

Just weeks before the robbery, the scholar had his old laptop stolen as he was traveling through the Dubai airport. Then, the hard drive had served as a backup of his research data. Now, his only copy of the data has been lost.

Following the robbery last Friday, Director of the Bohart Museum Lynn Kimsey announced that the museum had started a GoFundMe page to raise funds to replace Shah’s belongings, even if the stolen scientific data on the hard drive cannot be replaced. The GoFundMe page has already exceeded its $2,000 goal, with $2,250 already raised.

Documents reveal 19 substantiated cases of employee sexual misconduct at UC Davis between 2016–18

Co-written with Campus News Editor Kenton Goldsby.

Published: The California Aggie. June 12, 2019. Accessible here.

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CW: Sexual assault, violence, harassment

Last fall, UC Davis officials from Strategic Communications sent The California Aggie a total of 19 cases representing all substantiated complaints of UC Davis employees found to be in violation of the Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment (SVSH) Policy between the time period of 2016–18. The case reports and summaries totalled just under 700 pages and each case report was heavily redacted. The Aggie spoke with university officials in the Strategic Communications and the Public Records Office as well as the university’s Title IX officer in relation to the cases and combed through each and every page to summarize the findings of each case.

These documents were released upon the submission of a public records request for Title IX documents from at least six news media outlets. Instead of releasing the documents publicly itself on the UC Davis website, for instance, the Director of News and Media Relations Melissa Blouin said the university decided to send the documents to The Aggie as a courtesy while also responding to the parties that submitted the initial request.

Each case includes a “respondent,” the accused, and either one or multiple “complainants,” the accuser(s). The names of the respondents in the initially-released 14 cases were redacted, but the names of the respondents in the last five cases were included. The university investigator assigned to each case also interviewed witnesses with relevant knowledge of the situations at hand.

Even in cases of misconduct substantiated by university findings, if the respondent is not a “high-level public official or does not hold a special position of trust in relation to the complainant,” disclosing their identity would “constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” according to the media response letter from the university sent alongside the cases.

In most, if not all, of these cases, the respondents repeatedly downplayed and defended their actions, sometimes claiming that cultural differences were an explanation for their behavior — such as in the case of former Food and Sensory Science Professor Michael O’Mahony who was found to have engaged in a pattern of misconduct and said Americans don’t “get” irony when asked about his actions, or in the case of current Symphony Conductor Christian Baldini who claimed his misconduct toward a student was the result of his Argentinian heritage or of an unnamed male professor who said his kiss on the cheek of a female student could be chalked up to custom.

Additionally, the complainants in these cases frequently expressed fear of retaliation if they reported. The timeframe of harassment reported by the complainants ranged from one incident to months or even years of misconduct.

Wendi Delmendo, the UC Davis chief compliance and Title IX officer, said the university is participating in outreach efforts and has the Center for Advocacy, Resources and Education as a means to help campus community members feel safe coming forward to talk about sexual harassment or assault. In the 2016–17 year, the university received 105 reports of sexual violence while in the 2017–18 year, there was a total of 344 complaints sexual harassment, sexual violence or other prohibited behavior resolved through informal resolutions or formal investigations.

Corrective action for each respondent was determined on a case-by-case basis. While some individuals who violated SVSH policy were terminated from their position or resigned in lieu of intended termination, others received lesser actions, such as in case 170215 in which a respondent who was found to have harassed a co-worker from 2013–17 received a 15-day suspension without pay.

Delmendo said corrective action is influenced by different policies that relate to staff members versus faculty members and whether the employees are union or non-union members. During this specific 2016–18 time period, there were also policy changes stemming from legal developments as well as a systemwide consultations.

When asked how she thought the release of these cases would impact the university’s image, Delmendo said she hoped the impact would be positive, “to show the university takes these things seriously, and when we receive these reports we look into them and when they are substantiated we take corrective action.”

The following are 19 different cases in which complaints brought against UC Davis employees between 2016–2018 concerning sexual harassment, assault and/or violence were found to be substantiated through a university investigation. The Aggie has summarized each report for length and clarity. All of the quotes are taken from official case documents.

Each case no. is hyperlinked with the entirety of the official case document as released by the university to The Aggie.

Professor’s 30-plus years of misconduct

Case No.: 160142

Respondent: Professor Michael O’Mahony

Outcome: Resigned in lieu of intended termination

Michael O’Mahony, a professor at UC Davis, was alleged of three violations of university policy, with the first allegation being substantiated as a violation of both SVSH policy and of the Faculty Code of Conduct. The university substantiated the allegation that O’Mahony had made “an unwelcome and demeaning comment of a sexual nature” to a graduate student in April of 2016.

According to several sources interviewed in relation to the investigation, O’Mahony had a well-known reputation and history of saying “politically incorrect” comments, “dating back to at least the late 1980s.One source stated that a female friend had requested their presence at a meeting with O’Mahony in the early 80s “because she was uncomfortable with things he had said to her.”

O’Mahony had a well-known reputation and history of saying “politically incorrect” comments, “dating back to at least the late 1980s.

“There is a long history of complaints regarding O’Mahony’s conduct and previous substantiated allegations of sexual harassment, indicating a pattern,” the university concluded. “His behavior demonstrates either an inability or unwillingness to cease introducing subjects of a sexual nature into his interactions with students.”

The earliest sexual harassment complaints filed against O’Mahony appear to be from 2007, during which time he reportedly passed around pornographic cartoons in a class he was teaching. In 2011, he made a comment alluding to students offering up sex in return for better grades.

In 2013, he was found to have sexually harassed a staff member, leading to a temporary reduction in his salary. That same year, he made a student uncomfortable after calling her “gorgeous” and “exotic.” Also in 2013, he made a comment insinuating that UC students “put out” for good grades.

He was counseled in 2016 after an allegation regarding inappropriate touching.

As a result of the investigation, O’Mahony resigned in lieu of termination on Feb. 28, 2017.

Professor sexually harassed student, later threatened her

Case No.: 160045

Respondent: Professor Nilesh Gaikwad

Outcome: Resigned in lieu of intended termination

The complainant in this case is a graduate student who received unwanted comments about her appearance, unwanted gifts and a hug and kiss on the cheek from Nilesh Gaikwad, a former UC Davis nutrition and environmental toxicology associate professor, whose lab she worked in. The student was retaliated against when she returned the gift to Gaikwad — she underwent private and public criticism, received threatening comments and had her projects assigned to other people.

The sexual harassment began in 2015 with an invasion of personal space — Gaikwad reached over the student and used her computer mouse with her hand still on it. Gaikwad disputed this account, instead saying it was the student who was inappropriately close to him on multiple occasions and who touched him inappropriately.

Gaikwad wrote in an unspecified letter that the student “is cute,” and later denied that he wrote this. The student said Gaikwad inappropriately hugged her, pressed his body against hers and held her for an extended period of time.

She was later gifted a purse containing chocolates from Gaikwad, which she later returned to him through a co-worker. The co-worker placed it on Gaikwad’s desk with a note saying the student “felt it was inappropriate” and requested that he “respect her personal space.” Gaikwad then crumpled the note and threw both it and the purse into the trash.

Gaikwad denied ever giving the student a gift, claiming that he bought the purse on clearance, had it lying around in his car and said the student misinterpreted the gesture as a gift.

After this, there was another incident in which the student described being forcefully hugged and restrained by Gaikwad while the two were both working on a piece of broken lab equipment.

“He held on to me, I put my arms down and I tried to get away but he would not let go, as I was trying to get away and pulling back, he pulled in and kissed my cheek,” the complainant said in the case report. “I felt disgusted, uncomfortable and realized that he was definitely not hugging me professionally.”

Gaikwad denied this account, saying he “was sweating and does not see how she could view the hug as romantic.” He wrote in a response to the complainant that it was customary to give someone you know well a kiss on the cheek when hugging them.

The student also described a final incident where Gaikwad showed her a PowerPoint slide which contained the word “CuTe.” He dismissed this, saying he was showing her an organization’s promotional material.

Gaikwad was found to have engaged in unwanted sexual conduct and it was found that the workplace became “intimidating and offensive as a result of” his actions. It was also found that Gaikwad’s actions after all of the alleged harassment took place constituted retaliation, such as when he publicly criticized her in a lab meeting.

Gaikwad was found to have violated the Faculty Code of Conduct and University Sexual Harassment policies. While what appears to be Gaikwad’s professional website claims that he “left his tenure track professor position at UC Davis to start worlds (sic) first steroidomics company,” he actually resigned from his position in lieu of intended termination.

Four employees report postdoc for unwelcome sexual misconduct

Case No.: 170080

Respondent: George Chenaux, former postdoctoral researcher

Outcome: Early termination

Four employees came forward in February of 2017 to report “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” from George Chenaux, a former postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis, occurring over the prior 18-month period.

The university substantiated allegations from three of the complainants, but one of the substantiated allegations was found not to be in violation of SVSH policy.

“Complainant 2” reported that Chenaux pushed the complainant against a wall and rubbed his body against hers. He only stopped once she elbowed him in the face. “Complainant 3,” a different individual in the case, described Chenaux as her superior, reported that he frequently touched her without her consent over a period of 18 months despite being told not to on numerous occasions.

He only stopped once she elbowed him in the face.

Complainant 2 also described Chenaux as more senior than her and a fellow colleague whom she has a strictly professional relationship with. In January of 2016, however, at a celebratory event, Chenaux was drinking in excess and began touching her inappropriately. A little while later, after the complainant purposefully evaded Chenaux, he found her, pressed her against a wall and grinded on her. She told him to stop, but eventually had to use force to get him to move away.

Complainant 3 said Chenaux would frequently place his hands on her hips and physically move her to the side instead of asking her to move. Though she asked him to stop, he would just laugh in response.

On one occasion, Chenaux requested to speak with Complainant 3 alone. Though she did not feel comfortable doing so, she felt she had to speak with him because he was her superior. Chenaux accused her of turning him in and became “very hostile” and “berated her.” She left this meeting in tears.

“It was an obvious and brazen move to intimidate me and make me feel silent,” she said in the report.

Ultimately, University Investigator Carl L. Reed concluded Chenaux committed sexual violence against Complainant 2 and sexually harassed Complainant 3. Chenaux was subject to a termination of his postdoc appointment earlier than the previously-intended termination of his position.

Six employees report colleague for misconduct at UC Davis hospital

Case No.: 170385

Respondent: Clinical Nurse Antonio Martinez

Outcome: Resigned in lieu of intended termination

This case involves six complainants who alleged their coworker, Antonio Martinez, a clinical nurse, engaged in unwelcome behavior while they worked together at UC Davis hospital.

In September of 2017, “Complainant 4” informed a manager that Martinez had touched her inappropriately on a number of occasions. After an official from Harassment & Discrimination Assistance and Prevention Program (HDAPP) followed up with the managers of the employees in this case, six complainants emerged.

All six of the complainant’s reports were substantiated and a university investigator determined that the reports given by Complainants 3, 4, 5 and 6 of Martinez’s behavior violated SVSH policy. Martinez engaged in inappropriate touching, unwelcome physical conduct, along with invading personal space and using inappropriate and unwelcome language of a sexual nature.

“Complainant 3” said at first she thought Martinez’s constant attention was nice — he walked her to her car, offered to pay for meals and brought her blankets so she could take a nap — but she soon became uncomfortable and began parking farther away so he wouldn’t follow her out to her car. She told Martinez to stop because it was making her uncomfortable, but he laughed in response as if “it was all a joke.” Between 2008–10, Complainant 3 said this behavior occurred on a daily basis.

“The more she told him to stop, the more [he] seemed to touch her,” the case states.

In 2012, Complainant 3 moved to a managerial position. Around 2016, Martinez was banned from working on the complainant’s unit “because of his conduct towards women co-workers.” She believed Martinez targeted a specific group of women — she, along with Complainant 1 and 2, are all young, married women. Complainant 3 also said Martinez is known as “the pervert” at work and is around 60 years old although he tells people he is 35.

Complainant 3 also said Martinez mentioned a previous sexual harassment case lodged against him which his lawyer took care of.

The university investigator asked Martinez about a previous sexual harassment case during the investigation. He denied anything of the sort, even after he was shown an official Letter of Counseling and Letter of Warning concerning his sexual harassment of another individual who was not one of the six complainants in this case. He denied ever being told “there is no touching in the workplace” and said he did not recall being told by the sexual harassment analyst not to engage in behaviors such as “tickling, massages and hugging.”

Complainant 4, 5 and 6 said after they began to fully rebuff Martinez’s advancements, he began completely ignoring them at work. Martinez, a senior nurse, would no longer offer either his expertise or help at work, and became hostile and aggressive and encouraged others to reprimand them.

Complainant 5 stated that Martinez cornered her in an unconscious patient’s room and slapped her butt.

After a complaint against Martinez was filed by the complainants in this case, he continued working during the investigation. This made many of the complainants uncomfortable to the point of missing work to avoid him.

“The fact that [he] is still working is preposterous,” Complainant 4 told university investigators. “I don’t know that I would have made the decision to come forward knowing what I know now.”

Complainant 5, also upset with the way the case had been handled — and the fact she still had to work with Martinez — said, “I will never come forward again.”

In response, Martinez told university investigators he believed that all of the individuals who came forward with allegations against him conspired together and “fabricated” the sexual harassment complaints.

In addition to the six complainants, a number of other witnesses interviewed as part of this investigation, including other nurses, said Martinez had, at one point, made them feel uncomfortable, touched them inappropriately or acknowledged that they had witnessed him touching others inappropriately.

Ultimately, Reed, the aforementioned university investigator, and the Chancellor’s Legal Fellow Sylvia E. Cunningham concluded Martinez created a hostile work environment for some of his colleagues, engaged in sexual harassment and made both the individuals he harassed uncomfortable as well as those who witnessed the harassment. As a result, Martinez resigned in lieu of intended termination.

Conductor who engaged in misconduct with student returns to position

Case No.: 170177

Respondent: Christian Baldini, symphony conductor

Outcome: Returned to position after quarter-long suspension

In place of attaching a case report, university officials sent The Aggie a link to The Sacramento Bee’s article detailing the decision by UC Davis officials to place Christian Baldini, who still serves as conductor of the university’s Symphony Orchestra, on unpaid administrative leave in late 2017.

Baldini was found to have engaged in misconduct of a sexual nature directed toward an undergraduate student who subsequently left the university because of the incident.

Baldini “engaged in conduct that included touching this student’s hands and shoulder, dancing with her alone (including touching her waist and spinning her, leading to her buttocks being held against [his] body), and kissing this student’s cheek,” according to the letter of censure which was sent to The Aggie by university officials in 2018.

At this time, The Aggie reported that the letter was not placed in Baldini’s academic review file.

In a prepared statement sent to The Aggie via email in 2018, Baldini said that although “nothing sexual was intended” he deeply regretted “that over time this was perceived by [the] student in such a way.” He also referenced his Argentinian heritage as justification for his actions.

“My faults are failing to recognize that my behavior could have a reaction in her that was unintended,” the statement read. “I feel contrite and remorseful that one of my students would have felt this way by something I did, and I deeply apologize for any stress and pain this may have caused.”

Baldini was placed on unpaid academic leave during Winter Quarter 2018 and has since returned to his position.

Employee found to be “stalking” student

Case No.: 170436

Respondent: University employee, name redacted

Outcome: Terminated from position

The complainant in this case is a student who moved into a dorm building in fall of 2017. The respondent in this case is a university employee who was lofting beds in student housing when he met the complainant. The complainant thanked him for lofting her bed, and he began to talk with her for half an hour, complimenting her smile.

The complainant would see the respondent around her dorm building and in the dining commons and say hello. In October of 2017, she received a Facebook friend request from him and was unsure how he found her, as he did not know her last name. He also messaged her and told her she could talk to him at any time.

In mid-October, the respondent began leaving post-it notes on the complainant’s bedroom door in her dorm. She reflected on their previous interactions and became uncomfortable with his prior actions. She told university officials she felt freaked out because she knew he had access to her dorm room.

The complainant reported his behavior to university officials and, in a meeting with his supervisors, the respondent said his behavior wasn’t meant to be predatory, and “he was just friendly.” In an interview related to the investigation, however, the respondent admitted he was not friends with any other students on Facebook and had not left notes for other students.

Video evidence shows the respondent visited the residence hall where the complainant lives “numerous times” — approximately seven of the 12 days during the two-and-a-half week period between move-in day and the day the respondent was ultimately placed on leave.

“Respondent acknowledged that he did not have work orders for projects in that building at that time,” the report states, adding that there was no work-related reason why he would go to the upstairs floor of the residence hall the complainant lives on, yet he did on at least five occasions during this time frame.

One of the witnesses interviewed by the university investigator said the respondent does occasionally check out young girls, and will sometimes follow them a short distance or start chatting with them and has made comments such as, “she’s hot.”

This university investigation found the respondent’s conduct met the definition of stalking, his conduct created an intimidating and offensive environment for the complainant, and he ultimately violated the university’s sexual harassment policy.

The investigation also concluded the respondent’s conduct was sexual or romantic in nature. When asked how he would feel if his daughter were in the complainant’s situation, the respondent said he would be upset.

When asked how he would feel if his daughter were in the complainant’s situation, the respondent said he would be upset.

“That statement supports that he understood his behavior reasonably appeared romantic of sexual in motivation,” the report states.

Although the university investigator explicitly stated it did not seem the respondent’s behavior was meant to hurt or frighten the complainant, because of his persistence in visiting her place of residence without any business being there, a “reasonable person” in the complainant’s position would fear for their safety and experience emotional distress.

Ultimately, the respondent was terminated from his position as a UC Davis staff member.

Volunteer coach assaulted student

Case No.: 150331

Respondent: Unnamed volunteer coach

Outcome: Terminated from position

This case, lodged by a UC Davis student against a volunteer coach for a club sports team, regards a series of incidents, including one in which the coach, the respondent in the case, had inappropriately touched the student, the complainant in the case, “by attempting to put his hand in her pants without her consent after he insisted on staying the night in her apartment” in May of 2014.

The incident was brought to Delmendo on Nov. 1, 2015. As part of the university’s investigation, 13 witnesses were interviewed over a three-month period.

In May of 2014, the complainant went out drinking with members of her sports club. After consuming several beers, the complainant became “relatively intoxicated,” and she and the respondent went to her home, where he asked to be let in to use her bathroom. He ended up staying and talking with the complaint about her past relationships.

He told her that she “shouldn’t be alone and he would stay over,” at which point the complainant retrieved a sleeping bag and told him he could sleep on the floor beside her bed. The respondent said he couldn’t sleep and said she should lay down beside him. Feeling intimidated and not knowing what do do, she joined him on the floor.

“Soon after she laid down next to [redacted], he began touching her,” according to the case report. “He groped her chest and then he put his hand down her pants and touched her vagina. At that point [redacted] said she pushed him away, got up from the floor and said, ‘Stop. Don’t touch me.’ […] He left when she left for class the next morning.”

There was an email exchange between the two soon after the incident. In one of the complainant’s emails to the respondent, she stated: “without my consent nor knowledge (you) decided to act upon that assumption […] I feel upset and uneasy. What happened was highly inappropriate because you are my [redacted] teacher […] I opened up because I believed to be safe with you.”

The complainant decided to leave the club after what happened, and then later left UC Davis entirely. In response, the respondent denied being able to even recognize the complainant, even “if she was in the room right now.” He denied ever touching her genitals and claimed he did not remember going to her apartment.

When shown the email exchange between the two of them, he said, “Wow. I do not recall having this conversation with her […] She’s saying I groped her? I don’t do anything like that. Not one kid in the club would say I groped them.”

Bruce H. Hupe, the investigations coordinator for this case, wrote in the report that “email exchanges with [redacted] the day after the alleged assault provides convincing evidence that what she alleges happened did in fact occur and serves to undermine his credibility.”

The university issued the respondent three violations of policy: his conduct “unreasonably interfered” with the complainant’s education and “created an intimidating, hostile, and offensive learning environment in violation of the University’s Sexual Harassment policy in place at the time”; his ‘couch-surfing’ at the complainant’s home was “unusual and inappropriate,” constituting a behavior that could be expected to “detract from the reputation of the University” and the respondent was found to have sexually harassed the complainant.

As a result of the investigation, the respondent was terminated from his position.

Six undergraduate student interns issue complaints of misconduct

Case No.: 160127

Respondent: Unnamed staff member

Outcome: Resigned from his position

This investigation, begun in May of 2016 and conducted by Ellis Buehler Makus LLP, regards six undergraduates students, all of whom were interns and all of whom filed complaints with the university alleging that the respondent in the case engaged in “conduct of a sexual nature with student interns.”

Zee Syed, who prepared the university’s report, affirmed that the respondent had engaged in “conduct of a sexual nature that interns, faculty, and staff members found offensive. He made sexual jokes and innuendo, watched videos containing sexual content, and organized performances on campus that were sexual in nature.”

Syed also affirmed that the respondent’s conduct violated university policies prohibiting sexual harassment, given that conduct included “making sexual jokes and comments, watching videos of a sexual nature, and arranging performances at UCD [redacted] Day that were laced with sexual innuendo. The conduct was offensive to reasonable people.”

As part of the investigation, 16 individuals were interviewed in May and June of 2016. According to one account, the source interviewed “found these [sexual] jokes embarrassing, but reluctantly participated in them because she did not know how to react.” The source also said that the interns favored by the respondent “were also the ones who made sexual jokes most frequently.”

“He was looking at the interns bodies and evaluating them,” one source said, adding that the respondent “often prefaced comments by saying ‘I don’t want to go to sexual harassment training again,’ implying that he had been to training because of the comments he made in the past.”

An eighth account from a source who also recounted inappropriate comments made by the respondent said she feared that if she reported the conduct, the contract for her position would not be renewed.

Ultimately, the university’s investigation substantiated the allegation that the respondent had made and encouraged interns to make sexual comments and jokes. The university did not substantiate the claim made by the respondent that the allegations made against him were an attempt to get him in trouble because they had a personal relationship with “a former intern who previously made a complaint against him.”

The respondent also allegedly put on “raunchy” videos and movies for the interns, which contained “sexual content.” The investigation substantiated the claim that the respondent played or allowed interns to play a video titled “[Redacted] Can’t Stop Thinking About Sex.” One intern, who felt uncomfortable watching one of these videos, continued watching “because it was the start of her internship and she did not feel comfortable making a scene.”

The investigation also found that the respondent had, on one occasion, given the complainant’s phone number out, leading to harassment.

A separate incident involves a “sexually-laced performance” that likely occurred at Picnic Day 2015, though the title of the event appears in the case documents as [Redacted] Day 2015. One intern said they saw the respondent ask another intern “to find some male friend who would conduct a strip show during the [redacted] demonstration.” According to the same account, “The men were reluctant to participate and [redacted] told them he would provide them with alcohol to boost their courage.”

Two additional allegations against the respondent are redacted in their entirety, as are six documents, included because they contained information relevant to the case. In the 64-page case document, pages 44 through 63 are entirely redacted — on page 64, the only non-redacted content is the conclusion which states, “This Report concludes the investigation,” and Syed’s signature.

The respondent was ultimately found to have “engaged in conduct that violated UCD’s Sexual Violence and exual Harassment policies.” Based on a on “preponderance of evidence,” the respondent engaged in unwelcome and offensive conduct of a sexual nature that impacted learning and work environments.

As a result of the investigation, the respondent resigned from his position.

Faculty member accused of misconduct retaliated after rejection

Case No.: 160131

Respondent: Unnamed faculty member

Outcome: Nine-month monetary sanction, not reappointed

The respondent in this case was found to have engaged in “unwanted touching” and told the complainant in this case he had “developed feelings for her.” After the complainant rejected his advances, the respondent “treated her differently, including denigrating her to others.”

The investigation began in June of 2016 and ended that September. The case’s complainant describes incidents that occured in June of 2015, including multiple embraces instigated by the respondent. At one work party, the respondent told the complainant he felt “really good with her” and, in response, she “managed to get out of the situation by indicating she felt a paternal connection to him.”

About two weeks later, another hugging incident occurred. The complainant “acted cold to stop the embrace.” The respondent apologized via text. With the help of a second party, the complainant drafted a response in which she stated that she thought of him “as a father-figure, and they needed to keep the relationship professional.” The second party told the complainant to report the behavior, but she did not want to.

The following Monday, the respondent told the complainant “he had feeling for her and wanted to treat her like a daughter, but couldn’t help but see her as attractive […] [and] that she needed to be careful around him because he would have trouble controlling his emotions.” This is when the witness first noticed the respondent “was treating her differently, and felt he was retaliating for her rejection of him.”

the respondent told the complainant “he had feeling for her and wanted to treat her like a daughter, but couldn’t help but see her as attractive […] [and] that she needed to be careful around him because he would have trouble controlling his emotions.”

The complainant found that this situation impacted the work environment, a lab, finding “it stressful to be there.”

One outside source interviewed as part of the investigation said the respondent treated

“women differently in general, as though they are below him.”

“It seems like if a women questions him or does something he doesn’t like, he will target them for poor treatment,” the source said.

A fourth source who, given her position, “was required by policy to report the behavior,” was unhappy with how the department handled the case initially, as the lab became a hostile workplace.

A fifth witness, who is unidentified but appears to be the respondent, denied that he shared romantic feelings, and said he never gave the complainant compliments on her appearance and said the complainant was resistant to criticism, which frustrated him.

The respondent was found to be in violation of the Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence policy and the Faculty Code of Conduct. As a result of the investigation, the respondent received a nine-month monetary sanction and did not receive a reappointment.

Supervisor terminated after sexually harassing employee

Case No.: 160405

Respondent: Unnamed supervisor

Outcome: Terminated from position

The respondent in this case, a supervisor of the complainant, “made inappropriate comments of [a] sexual and flirtatious nature,” including suggesting sexual favors in return for money, in October of 2016 and again that December, which were found to have violated the University’s Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy.

“Complainant stated [it is] uncomfortable for her at work because she does not want to say anything in front of Respondent that could possibly open up to a ‘joke’ turned sexual ‘insinuation,’” the case states. “Complainant stated she hopes the complaint results in her not feeling uncomfortable at work in the future.”

“Complainant stated she hopes the complaint results in her not feeling uncomfortable at work in the future.”

The complainant made a report to the assistant manager about the second incident, which the assistant manager was required to report. The respondent completely denied either incidents occurred, according to the report, calling it “a lie, a fabrication” and claiming the complainant wanted to get him in trouble. He also said he does “not have time for the stuff that I am being accused of saying.”

With regard to another incident where the respondent called another person in the workplace “baby girl,” he said that he had taken measures to learn to not repeat such behaviors, such as taking cultural awareness classes and online sexual harassment training. He used this as reasoning for why he would not have done what he was alleged to have done by the complainant.

The investigator ultimately concluded that “Respondent engaged in sexual harassment in violation of University of California’s Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy.”

As a result of the investigation, the respondent was terminated from his position.

Employee sexually harassed, verbally assaulted by faculty member

Case No.: 170024

Respondent: Unnamed faculty member

Outcome: One-month suspension without pay

The complainant in this case was touched inappropriately by the respondent in this case on multiple occasions, including a time in October of 2016, where he slapped her butt, and a second set of incidences between November and December of 2016, where he poked her in the ribs and in the stomach on more than one occasion.

The university found that the respondent engaged in sexual harassment in violation of the SVSH policy. This includes “unwelcome physical conduct [that] was sexual in nature,” which interfered with the complainant’s employment and “would be perceived as offensive or intimidating to a reasonable person.”

The complainant described verbal abuse from the respondent, including a time where “he grabbed a garbage can and told her that her research was trash.” The respondent threatened her termination in front of the lab manager and students. He “would say that she looked like a 5 year old girl” and “described the lab environment as ‘hostile.’”

On one occasion, when the complainant was bending over and reaching into a drawer, “out of nowhere” the respondent “hit her on the bottom […] pretty hard, enough to surprise her.” The complainant recalls telling him to stop and “described the event as emotionally painful.” She also “reported being ‘quiet from her husband and the whole world,’” following the incident. Witnesses were present when this occurred and a complaint was then lodged with HDAPP.

The complainant recalls telling him to stop and “described the event as emotionally painful.”

The respondent randomly poked the complainant’s ribs on multiple occasions. After he did this, the complainant would tell him ‘no’ and, in her interview, she said she stopped working with him because this behavior persisted.

As a result of these incidents, the complainant “reported ongoing physical symptoms, including gastrointestinal issues, nervousness and sleeplessness,” which were classified as potentially impeding or interfering with the complainant’s employment.

The respondent denied “engaging in any verbal berating,” denied or did not recall poking the complainant’s ribs and denied hitting the complainant on the buttocks, stating he may have brushed against her. The investigator did not find this excuse to be supported.

As a result of the investigation, the respondent received a one-month suspension without pay.

Employee fearful of retaliation after rejecting advances from colleague

Case No.: 170035

Respondent: Unnamed staff member externally contracted

Outcome: Referred to external contractor for discipline

This case regards a male employee at the UC Davis Medical Center who was “repeatedly and inappropriately touched” on his arm, back and shoulders, and had “inappropriate comments of a sexual nature [made] toward him” by a female respondent.

According to the preponderance of the evidence, it was substantiated that the respondent in this case engaged in sexual harassment in violation of the Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment policy. It was supported that the respondent “engaged in unwelcome physical conduct” when he touched the complainant inappropriately and engaged in “unwelcome verbal conduct,” which included insinuating that the complainant “had engaged in sexual conduct as an explanation for his ‘good mood.’”

It was concluded that this conduct was of a sexual nature, and that it “was sufficiently severe or pervasive to impede or interfere with [the complainant’s] employment.”

The complainant described how pervasive the inappropriate touching was, including how the respondent would say tell him to “work his magic” and how she would get extremely close to him, so close that “he could see the blackheads on her nose and smell her breath.” Her breasts were described as rubbing on people because of how close she would get to them. The respondent also “openly discussed details of her personal life” and made a comment about the complainant’s sex life.

The complainant became concerned about “possible retaliation for not returning or showing […] affection.” He also “described getting a ‘bad’ or ‘weird sick’ feeling in his stomach that he compared to being ‘pulled over by the police’ or ‘panic’ when he would see [the respondent].”

The complainant became concerned about “possible retaliation for not returning or showing […] affection.”

People referred to his harasser as “his girl” and would ask him where she was if she was not around him. The complainant initially wished to remain anonymous and not file a formal complaint. After the complainant reported the behavior to his union representative, he felt that he was treated differently. The respondent “stopped touching him, began giving him ‘stank eyes,’” and “stopped talking to him.”

The respondent, in her interview, asserted “she did not agree” with the allegations against her,” denied any inappropriate touching and alleged there was a conspiracy, with people “in ‘cahoots’ to get her out.” The respondent said that “if she is ‘guilty’” of anything it was “telling people to do their jobs” and said this is “character assassination.”

Accounts from witnesses contradict the respondent’s account. The investigator of this case found no motive for the complainant to lie about what he reported and found evidence to support the complainant’s late disclosure of the incidents after he was unhappy with the response from management.

As a result of this investigation, the respondent was referred to the external contractor for discipline.

Employee pursued sexual relationship with undergraduate researcher “against her wishes”

Case No.: 170047

Respondent: Unnamed staff member

Outcome: One-week suspension without pay, no reappointment

There are six allegations brought against one respondent in this case, three of which were substantiated in part and three of which were fully substantiated.

It was partly substantiated that the respondent had made unwelcome and sexually suggestive comments in 2015 to an Undergraduate Researcher (UR) A. A university investigator found this occurred once and was not a repeat incident. It was also partly substantiated that at a social event, the respondent “stood uncomfortably close to UR A” and “put his hands on her waist without consent.” A university investigator found the respondent did not persist when she told him to stop touching her.

The next day, the respondent wanted to talk to UR A alone.

“UR A did not want to be alone with Respondent and her ‘stomach dropped,’” she said in her interview. “UR A told Respondent that everything that went down at the party was really inappropriate and she was uncomfortable and did not want anything like that to happen again […] Respondent told UR A he did not mean to make her uncomfortable and he was sorry.”

After this happened, UR A described worsening working conditions, where the respondent would “single her out” and “make up rules that applied only to her.” She described him as “constantly ‘pissed off.’”

A fifth allegation asserts that the respondent pursued an intimate relationship with UR B, a separate undergraduate researcher, “against her wishes.” This allegation is supported by evidence and was substantiated in part. The university substantiated the fact that the respondent suggested UR B should “leave her position in the laboratory due to their conflict.”

UR B recounted that she had attended a party, to which other people had been invited, but only the respondent attended. She recalled kissing him, but texted him after clarifying that she had no intention of having any further sexual contact because of their working relationship.

“During that conversation, Respondent said, ‘you kissed me, so there must have been some sort of attraction,’” the report states. “Respondent did not accept her saying ‘no.’ He continued to ask her out on a date.”

UR B told him she was not interested in dating him. He implied that they could have sex together, which she also refused. After the two had a normal conversation, UR B “thought things would be fine and they would continue being friends.” As time passed, however, “things got progressively ‘weirder.’”

UR B began avoiding the lab in order to avoid the respondent. When she did go into the lab, the respondent asked her why she would not date him — according to the interview, “his voice was raised and he was very frustrated […] UR B described it as a draining three-hour-long conversation.”

In this conversation, UR B recalled the respondent insinuating that she should leave the lab.

“Respondent told her that he did not know if he wanted to keep her because he was not getting what he wanted,” the report states. “In her interview, UR B said she did not realize that this was ‘textbook sexual harassment.’ […] [He said] that it seemed like a one-way street where she was getting what she wanted, i.e. to stay in the lab and not sleep with him, but he was not getting what he wanted.”

UR B reported the respondent’s conduct to a faculty member who told her that this was the third complaint he had received about the respondent in the timespan of one week.

The university’s investigation concluded that the respondent engaged in unwelcome sexual conduct and created a hostile work environment.

As a result of the investigation, the respondent received a one-week suspension without pay, his appointment was ended and he was not reappointed.

Supervisor exposed himself to employee

Case No.: 170141

Respondent: Unnamed staff member

Outcome: Terminated from position

This case of a female employee filing an official complaint with her supervisor was brought to the attention of the UC Davis Harassment & Discrimination Assistance and Prevention Program. The male employer inappropriately touched her without her consent and exposed his penis in April of 2017.

Although the respondent denies these allegations, all of these complaints levied by the female employee were substantiated through interviews with five different individuals and available video footage.

On April 10, the respondent asked the complainant in the case to “hang out” in the designated supervisors’ office during the middle of her shift. She complied and, during the meeting, the respondent made the complainant aware that he was her new supervisor — a fact substantiated by a university investigation. He told her if she needed time off, he could work it out.

At this point in the conversation, the respondent touched her leg inappropriately. When the complainant attempted to leave, the respondent asked her why she was “acting so shy” and exposed himself.

“Following these incidents, complainant was visibly shaken, she missed work and her schedule was adjusted so she could work in another facility away from [the] Respondent because she was uncomfortable being around him and feared retaliation,” the report states.

Available video footage shows the complainant exiting the office before the respondent, appearing “visibly uncomfortable.”

The complainant in the case initially avoided explicitly naming the respondent, her supervisor, to avoid “getting him in trouble.” She “cited concerns about Respondent’s financial well-being” and “described fear of retaliation.”

“She is worried that if people find out she reported Respondent they will be angry with her because he has so many friends that work there,” the case reports. “At the same time, she couldn’t not say anything. She was too uncomfortable with the idea of being around Respondent. She was also worried about having him as her supervisor.”

“She is worried that if people find out she reported Respondent they will be angry with her because he has so many friends that work there,”

The complainant also addressed concerns about the respondent gaining access to her personal home address.

University officials concluded the respondent engaged in unwelcome sexual conduct, created a hostile work environment for the complainant and violated sexual harassment policy, resulting in his termination from the university.

Employee seeks mental health treatment after being sexually harassed by supervisor

Case No.: 170183

Respondent: Unnamed staff member

Outcome: Terminated from position

This case, filed May 9, 2017, regards a female employee who filed an official complaint against her male supervisor after she sought out anxiety medication from her doctor in order to cope with her uncomfortable work environment.

Three years before the male respondent in this case was hired as a supervisor, there was a complaint about him from another female employee who said he had “bothered her” and made her uncomfortable. He was subsequently moved to another area, but nothing ever came of it because, according to him, the woman “pulled the case because she didn’t want to pursue it.”

The female complainant in this case alleged the respondent, her supervisor, began visiting her at her work station numerous times a week after promoting her. Over a two-month period, he began referring to her as “cute girl” at work instead of by her name, would make comments about her appearance such as, “Why do you always look so good?” and “You’re so cute” and referred to employees he did not like as “bitch” and “fucking bitch.”

On one occasion, the respondent said “If you want a job at UC Davis, it’s called ‘no blow job, no job’” and “it’s not who you know, it’s who you blow” to another male supervisor in front of the complainant. After that conversation, she thought he might be insinuating that she perform a sexual favor for him.

After two months of this behavior, the complainant sought mental health help because she was having anxiety attacks at work, she could not sleep and her eating habits had changed. According to the report, she told her doctor that, at times, “she would get so emotional that her heart would be pounding, her hands would get sweaty and she had so much adrenaline she felt she was going to explode.”

She was also scared to be at work. The respondent had made it clear to the complainant who he did and did not like. On one occasion, when he saw her talking with someone he disliked, he got very angry and aggressive with her, demanding to know what they talked about.

“[In April], complainant lied to Respondent and told him she had a family emergency because he wanted to meet with her and she was really afraid of him and did not want to meet with him,” the report states. “There were times she got so scared of [the] respondent that she started shaking.”

On one occasion, the respondent grabbed her shoulders — “she was hoping the interaction would end, but she did not feel she could tell her supervisor to leave — and she feared retaliation if she reported him.

“she was hoping the interaction would end, but she did not feel she could tell her supervisor to leave — and she feared retaliation if she reported him.

“On the one hand, she felt she should have told him to leave her alone. But she did not want to upset him,” the report states. “She said she was worried if she told another supervisor, they would protect him. […] Complainant had not said something earlier because she felt Respondent had her job in his hands. She worried that the only way to get a job at UC Davis might be through him, and he had said he would do his best to get her in here. Eventually, though, she decided that her job was not that important and she ‘just can’t deal with it emotionally.’”

While some of the 16 witnesses interviewed by the university investigator said he is a hard worker and professional at work, others corroborated what the complainant alleged, one said “he is a perv,” another said they, too, were made uncomfortable by him and had asked not to be left alone with him, but she did not report his behavior because “she needed the job.”

While the respondent did acknowledge he made a comment about performing sexual favors to get promotions at the university, he denies much of what complainant alleged, claiming she might be making up these claims to get a promotion of her own.

At a meeting with management and the union, union organizers said they wanted the respondent placed on leave, insinuating they knew of at least five complaints against the respondent.

Following a university investigation, it was concluded the respondent in this case created an environment that was intimidating, offensive and hostile and engaged in unwanted sexual conduct. He was terminated by the university.

Employee subjected to misconduct from co-worker from 2013–17

Case No.: 170215

Respondent: Unnamed staff member

Outcome: 15-day suspension without pay

The complainant in this case reported her co-worker at UC Davis health after she was subjected to “inappropriate jokes” and “inappropriate remarks of a sexual nature” from 2013 to 2017. The respondent called the complainant “pretty” and “gorgeous,” made suggestive comments about her body and watched her in her home, accused her husband of cheating on her with another man and discussed his own sexual experiences in front of her.

In 2017, the complainant made the university aware of her co-worker’s harassment. The complainant had attempted to resolve the situation unsuccessfully in 2013 when she decided to meet with another employee and request sexual harassment training be given to the entire department.

In-person sexual harassment was given to the entire department. The complainant hoped the comments from the respondent would stop, “but it continued and it got worse and worse as the years went by.”

The complainant hoped the comments from the respondent would stop, “but it continued and it got worse and worse as the years went by.”

In 2016, the complainant said the comments became more sexually suggestive. He alluded to the fact there might be cameras in her office watching her, and from then on she became paranoid of the possibility of hidden cameras. She became afraid to go to her car.

“I don’t know if he told me this to intimidate me, harass me or bully me, […] I just know that I couldn’t protect myself against him and it made me afraid,” the complainant said in the report. “I just don’t want to have to deal with that anymore.”

The report states the complainant feared reporting the respondent because “she understood that it is hard to prove sexual harassment cases because respondent’s comments often occurred while they were alone.”

“I don’t understand why he tells me these things, I don’t know what to do,” the complainant said. “I don’t understand why I feel this way, I wish I was stronger but I get paralyzed.”

At the time of the investigation, the respondent disclosed that a former manager of his made accusations against him four years earlier but nothing came of it. During the investigation, two witnesses said the respondent frequently pulled up photos of 18 to 19-year-old girls and commented on their looks.

The university concluded the respondent accused created a hostile work environment for the complainant as well as those who overheard the comments he made to her. As a result of this investigation, the respondent was subject to a 15-day suspension without pay.

Employee bombards other employee with texts messages, shows up outside of her home

Case No.: 170421

Respondent: Unnamed staff member

Outcome: 10-day suspension without pay

The complainant in this case reported the respondent in this case to HDAPP in October of 2017 for continuous and unwanted flirtatious behavior occurring over a six-month period, the sending of unwanted text messages and gifts and requests to go out on a date. All of the allegations were substantiated by a university investigation.

“Between Complainant’s last message to Respondent and a March 2017 message where Complainant asked Respondent in writing to stop texting her, Respondent sent Complainant more than 100 unanswered text messages,” the report states. “He kept messaging her until she blocked him on text and Facebook.”

“He kept messaging her until she blocked him on text and Facebook.”

The text messages sent by the respondent asked the complainant to go out to eat or get coffee, referenced the complainant’s physical appearance and offered gifts or personal favors. The complainant had asked the respondent to stop messaging her.

“Complainant started her interview by saying that she didn’t really want to be here,” the report states. “Respondent had done a lot of things that she thought were inappropriate, but she had just hoped it would blow over.”

The complainant in the case began to fear for her safety after the respondent pulled up to her in his car when she was walking and, on a different occasion, when she saw him outside of work circling the block. She feared she was being followed. Once, she watched footage from cameras at her house that showed a car resembling the respondent’s pass by and brake in front of her house.

The university’s investigation concluded Respondent repeatedly flirted with the complainant over the timespan of approximately a year, and that the respondent sent unwanted text messages “even after Complainant sent Respondent a text reminding him that she wanted a strictly professional relationship and explicitly asking him to stop contacting her over text.”

The investigation also found the respondent gave unwanted gifts, asked the complainant out on a date and appeared at the complainant’s house.

Ultimately, the university found the respondent to have acted in a manner that could be qualified as stalking and in violation of the university’s sexual harassment policy.

The respondent was subject to a 10-day suspension without pay.

Professor sexually harassed student employee in his lab

Case No.: 170496

Respondent: Unnamed faculty member

Outcome: Four-month suspension without pay

In November of 2017, a graduate student employee, “Witness A,” emailed Delmendo to relay allegations made by a former student employee who they supervised. The student, an undergraduate and the complainant in this case, had made a number of allegations against her boss, a faculty advisor and professor at the university. The professor, the respondent in this case, supervised the complainant, an undergraduate researcher in his lab at UC Davis.

The complainant began working in the respondent’s lab to fulfill her research requirement. The complainant and respondent had a friendly relationship, occasionally getting food and drinks together, and the complainant would dogsit for her boss.

On more than one occasion, the respondent asked the complainant why she was so tense and if he made her uncomfortable. During her interview with a university official, the complainant said she was uncomfortable but didn’t feel comfortable with confrontation, though she did tell him she was tense on a number of these situations.

She told another student employee “she didn’t know what to do because Respondent was her boss.”

“she didn’t know what to do because Respondent was her boss.”

“Complainant […] thought that Respondent saw her as a daughter, so she did not see it coming when ‘things escalated and got creepy,’” the report states.

He complimented her smile and started telling her to smile when he walked into the lab while she was working.

“While working together in the lab, Respondent would ask her to smile and touch her hair,” the report states. “Respondent offered to increase Complainant’s pay […] in an effort to have her stay on an his employee. […] The Complainant noted that she doesn’t want to ruin Respondent’s life [and] doesn’t want him to lose his job.”

During his interview, the respondent said “most of this comes from misunderstandings, misinterpretations, some small lies and some truth.” He feels he’s being wrongly portrayed as a sexual predator when, in reality, he said that “he felt compassion and misplaced parenthood.”

Witnesses interviewed as part of this investigation noticed the inappropriate relationship that had formed between the complainant and the respondent.

Witness A told university officials during this investigation they had warned the respondent that the rumors that were being spread about his relationship with the complainant could be “life ruining” and told him to go to therapy.

“She told Respondent to get his priorities straight, everyone is upset partially because they care about him and the wellbeing of the lab,” the report states. “He was putting himself in emotional and professional danger.”

Once chatter began to increase in the lab, respondent brought the graduate students and postdocs into his office and drew an elephant “to represent the elephant in the room.” He said he had no sexual feelings for the complainant, that he knows others in the lab have been avoiding her and she is a sensitive person and said “he felt under attack.”

Witness G, who saw the complainant and respondent out getting drinks and cozying up to each other one night, said when she saw the other two, they were all embarrassed. Later, the respondent told the others in the lab not to trust what Witness G was saying.

The situation “got really bad” around August of 2017. At this time, the respondent gave the complainant a notebook. In the book, he had written that his happiest moment was kissing her on the cheek on his birthday, although that had never happened. The book disturbed the complainant, and she didn’t want to keep it but figured she might need it for proof as part of a process like this investigation.

The complainant began changing her work hours to avoid her boss and avoided cafes and restaurants he frequented. In September, the complainant called Witness H, a former student employee, crying and confided in them. That same month, the respondent sent the complainant an email in which he asked her not to leave the lab and said their relationship could be strictly professional.

“By the time you asked if you were making me uncomfortable I felt threatened and totally shut down,” the complainant wrote in an email.

A university investigation substantiated that the respondent invaded the complainant’s personal space, touched her on more than one occasion and put his hand under the back of her tank top and made comments about her, including calling her “the highlight of the lab.” In response, the respondent said at the times these situations occurred, his memory was “cloudy” and he was medicated.

The investigation found the respondent’s behavior could be constituted as of a sexual nature, that his sexual conduct was unwelcome, that he created a hostile work environment and, ultimately, that the respondent violated sexual harassment policy.
“Given the power differential between the parties and the fact that Respondent consistently asked Complainant if she was uncomfortable only after he already had started touching her, it is not surprising that Complainant would not speak out to tell him he was making her uncomfortable in the moment,” the report states.

The respondent was subject to a four-month suspension without pay.

Three employees complain of unwanted sexual advances from co-worker

Case No.: XXXXX

Respondent: Unnamed staff member

Outcome: Two-week suspension without pay

There are three complainants in this case: Complainant A, Complainant B and Complainant C. All three allege the respondent in this case, a female UC Davis staff member, acted inappropriately toward them. Complainant A charges the respondent with making unwelcome comments of a sexual nature to her and engaging in sexual advances. Complainant B says the respondent made offensive statements and verbally harassed her. And Complainant C says the respondent told her she could be her girlfriend or “girlfriend on the side.”

Complainant A alleges the respondent made sexual advances in January of 2015 in person and over text messages. She reported these advances to her supervisors and said the situation had caused her so much distress that she fell physically ill and missed work.

Complainant B said the respondent told her she was a closeted lesbian and needed therapy. After confronting the respondent about something work-related, the respondent said Complainant B was a bad person because of her religion, which is “anti-gay.” She also said the respondent “used her size and voice to intimidate her.”

But Complainant B stood her ground. She did not tell anyone what the respondent had said to her, but the respondent told other people.

“Complainant B did not report the incident at the time because she did not want Respondent to lose her job,” the report states.

Complainant C said in the fall of 2015, the respondent had put her arm around her while at work and said she could be her girlfriend.

After Complainant A reported the situation to her supervisor, her supervisors asked if she knew of any similar situations involving the respondent and said she was required to report these. Complainant A knew about the situation involving the respondent and Complainant B because the respondent had told her about it and she reported it to her supervisors.

After reporting, the respondent told others Complainant A was raising these concerns because she is homophobic.

“Complainant A expressed she is certain that if a male employee was hitting on Respondent even after she made it clear that she was a lesbian and was not interested, Respondent would see it as an assault on her rights and would be trying to get the person fired,” the report states.

During her interview with a university investigator, the respondent said “this smells like homophobia.”

“I don’t know if she would have responded this way if a man had made those comments,” the respondent said. “Maybe it triggered something in her that she hadn’t thought about with her sexuality; maybe the only thing she knew how to do was report and push me away.”

The investigation concluded the respondent created an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment for Complainant B. Her conduct toward Complainant A violates the university’s sexual harassment policy. But the evidence does not substantiate that the incident between the respondent and Complainant C could be concluded as having violated the sexual harassment policy.

As a result of these findings, the respondent was placed on a two-week suspension without pay.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter to talk Russian interference, Trump

Published: The California Aggie. March 14, 2019. Accessible here.

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Last April, memos written by former FBI Director James Comey, detailing his interactions with President Donald Trump, were released to Congressional committees and then obtained by the press. In one particular conversation mentioned in the memos, Trump expressed frustration over a story in The Washington Post about his fiery phone conversations with world leaders. He proposed putting reporters in jail.

“Reading this many months later, I cringed when I saw the references to Trump’s calls and realized that I was the reporter they were discussing,” wrote Greg Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, in his new book “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy.”

Miller, who authored several of the stories published by The Post that “got Trump really, really angry,” will speak at the Mondavi Center on the evening of March 19. Tickets are free for students and the talk will focus on Miller’s time covering the Trump presidency as well as “the assault on truth” and “the assault on institutions that fight for truth.”

Miller will also speak about his time at UC Davis. A class of 1990 graduate, Miller majored in agricultural economics. Although he never wrote for The California Aggie, Miller started working at his hometown paper, the Amador Ledger Dispatch, when he was 15, returning to write during summer breaks.

“Coming from UC Davis has always helped me move into amazing places in my career,” Miller said in an interview with The California Aggie. “I want to tell students at Davis to think big. You’re in a small college town, but you still should be […] very ambitious and very confident that you’re getting a first-rate education. You can do anything and have careers of high impact.”

Speaking to the college-aged generation, Miller said the spread of disinformation isn’t something “that came and went in 2016.”

“This is a real scourge that your generation is going to be confronting for decades,” he said. “This is an issue that you and your peers who are in college now are going to be facing for your early adult lives. I don’t think it’s really a terrible exaggeration to say that the fate of our democracy and its ability to function depends on the outcome here.”

The Post has a century-long tradition of vigorous political coverage of both sides of the aisle, Miller said. While “every president bends the truth,” Miller writes in “The Apprentice,” “under Trump it has been shattered.”

White House officials under the Trump presidency have frequently bent the truth and refused to answer or dodged questions from members of the press. “The Apprentice” mentions one occasion in which Trump himself pretended to be a man named “John Barron” in a phone call with a Forbes reporter in an attempt to convince the journalist that Trump is a billionaire — a ruse and a falsehood the publication saw through. Another passage makes note of Trump’s impersonation of “imaginary characters in phone calls to journalists, describing ‘Donald Trump’ with a cascade of superlatives and fabrications.”

Miller described how he and his colleagues — seasoned journalists — have been forced to change how they approach a story.

“We’ve had conversations here about, ‘Is it okay to say the president is lying? Is it okay for that to be the core assertion in a story?’” Miller said. “These are the kind of questions we didn’t have to contend with in the same way before Trump became president. How do we continue to maintain our balance as objective journalists when we’re reporting on somebody who’s calling us the enemy of the people all the time? And how far can you go in calling out these falsehoods is a hard question.”

In addition to conversations about rethinking reporting style and process, there have been deeper and darker implications for journalists because of the Trump presidency. Miller mentioned recent bomb scares at publications throughout the country and said he and his colleagues aren’t allowed to go into the mailroom anymore. The Post also no longer lets tour groups come through the building.

“We had a person who wrote columns for us, Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in a consulate in Turkey and the president of the United States refused to believe that the Saudi crown prince was behind that,” Miller said. “These are super uncertain and unnerving time for journalists all over the world. I really worry [about] sending this signal, not just in the United States, but more broadly — that we’re not institutions to be respected, let alone believe.”

Currently, reporters in Washington, D.C. are waiting with bated breath for the release of the Mueller Report — the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III and his team into Russia’s interference in the U.S. election. Miller said he isn’t sure when the report will be finished or how much of it will be shared with the public once it is, but he had some inclinations about the subject matter.

“If all of the indictments we’ve seen from Mueller already are any guide, the final report that he’s working on is going to be a comprehensive account of all of the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia [and] all of the president’s efforts to obstruct the investigation once it was underway,” Miller said. “I don’t know whether Mueller has found smoking gun evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, but I have a feeling that this is going to be a devastating document for the president.”

If released in the next week, the Mueller Report and much more will be addressed by Miller at his upcoming talk, where he’ll tie Russian hacking in the election and the Trump presidency together with his time at UC Davis.

“The speech is really about how endangered the ideas of truth and fact have become in this era,” Miller said. “And how concerning that is for not just for journalists, but for anyone whose careers or institutions are dependent on our society’s belief that there is an objective reality out there, and I put UC Davis in that category.”

With team names like ‘Ice Rinkles,’ area’s only senior hockey league will start in Roseville

Published: The Sacramento Bee. September 2, 2018. Viewable here.

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Brian Farley’s hockey career started when he was 5 years old. He began refereeing at the age of 12, learned how to drive the Zamboni, played competitively in his 20s and continues to play on a local team. But as a member of a mixed ages league, the 58-year-old Sacramento resident found himself playing with 18-year-olds.

“The youngest guy in our league a couple seasons ago was 18 or 19 years old and the oldest guy in the team was probably 62,” Farley said. “Us older guys are starting to realize we can’t keep up with the young kids anymore.”

Farley has been involved with Skatetown in Roseville for over 20 years, “since the day it broke ground.” And for several years, he’s asked employees at the skate rink to set up a senior league.

Now he’ll get his chance.

Skatetown’s new ice hockey league, exclusively for those 50 years or older, will start its inaugural season September 9 with four teams and 60 players. Team names include “Ice Rinkles,” “GeriHatTricks,” “Prune Juice” and the “Cardiac Kids.”

The business first tried to bring Farley’s request to fruition a couple years ago, but there wasn’t enough support, explained Brett Slavensky, the hockey director and pro shop manager at Skatetown, which has the only adult hockey league in the area.

Senior leagues are nothing new – there are similar leagues across North America.

In 1975, Peanuts cartoon creator Charles Schulz founded Snoopy’s Senior World Hockey Tournament exclusively for senior teams. The tournament in Santa Rosa has hosted teams from as far away as Europe and Japan.

So when Farley got the opportunity to play in the annual tournament in July, he returned “pumped up and excited” and decided to approach Slavensky again.

“I sent an email out, and that same day I had 30 or 40 responses saying, ‘Put me on the interested list,’ ” Slavensky said. “We went from there.”

The 60 players on the new over 50 league have hockey experience ranging from 2 to 52 years, according to a Skatetown press release. Aside from the age restriction, basic hockey and skating skills are the only requirement to play.

These players make up a diverse mix of backgrounds: there are firefighters, educators, senior managers, engineers, professors, business owners, CEOs and VPs. But they all have a shared love of hockey.

John Eadie is a biologist and professor at UC Davis. The 63-year-old was born in Canada and says Canadian citizenship, of course, “requires a love of hockey.”

Eadie describes himself as “too old to be playing hockey, but too dumb to know better.”

“It’s always been my passion,” he said. “I like that idea of providing as many venues as possible for people to continue pursuing their passions as long as they possibly can.”

Steve Berkson is also a Canadian-American who grew up playing hockey. As a kid, Berkson remembers using the city’s hose in the winter to convert a summertime tennis court into an ice rink.

“When I moved out to California, I realized, ‘Uh-oh, I’m never gonna play hockey again. There’s no ice here.’ And I realized the only way to get ice is to join a rink,” he said.

The 58-year-old settled on the town of Folsom because it fulfilled two key requirements: it had an airport within a 30-minute drive for work and it had a nearby ice rink and, he said, “I will not raise children that cannot ice skate and ski.”

Skatetown is unique, he said, because everybody knows everybody.

“When you play strangers, and somebody does something maybe by mistake — they hit you with a stick when they’re skating by — people get mad,” he said. “But at Skatetown, … you laugh things off and you know the other guys and the other teams. You’re gonna sit down with them and have beer and pretzels after the game. So it just makes for a very friendly, fun place to play.”

Skatetown’s Slavensky said about 200 players in the facilities’ adult league are 50 years or older; he projects that the senior league could grow from four to six or even eight teams next season.

Because many of the players entering the new senior league already play in adult leagues, some of them have known each other for a long time. Slavensky said, as a kid, Farley used to sharpen his skates and ref his games.

And many players have passed along their love of the game to their kids. Ken MacNeill, who coaches at Skatetown, stopped playing hockey for 37 years but picked it back up again when his kids expressed interest in the sport. His youngest son plays for a semi-professional team in Fresno.

When Berkson’s son came home from college for summer break, they played games in the same league.

It’s fun to play with a mixed age group, he said, but it would also be nice, on some nights, to play with guys closer in age “who realize how easy it is to get injured and how hard it is to recuperate when you’re over 40.”

“It’s a pleasure to go out and play with guys where all of us are in that category of wanting a fun game where no one gets injured and we’re all roughly the same pace because we’re a little older and a little slower,” Berkson said.

MacNeill, who also plays hockey in the adult league and serves as the team captain of the “GeriHatTricks,” said he’s excited to have fun with his friends in a more laid back environment.

He also mentioned the physical benefits of playing the sport. As a heavy equipment mechanic, MacNeill said he thought he was in pretty good shape until he started playing hockey.

“We’re not ready to sit on the couch all day and watch TV,” Farley said. “We want to stay active.”

And Farley has big plans for the future of the league.

“My hope for the league is to grow it to a regular night … with possibly six or eight teams,” he said. “And maybe put a team together and go to the Charles Schulz tournament or a tournament in Victoria, British Columbia or Florida or Boston.”

Other players also have their eye on Snoopy’s Senior World Hockey Tournament. Slavensky said playing in the tournament next year could be a very real possibility.

The senior league’s inaugural games will take place on September 9 at 8:45 a.m. and 10 a.m., and there is still time to sign up to play.

“If it turns out to be a balanced league with people going out and playing for fun and exercise rather than trying to make the NHL, I think that’ll be a measure of success,” Eadie said. “This is sort of the pilot season — the test run — and I think as more people hear about it and enjoy it, more people will engage.”