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University of California leaders hope a large spike in fundraising could offset the dramatic 32 percent fee increase
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UC System Sets Ambitious Fundraising Goal
University of California leaders hope a large spike in fundraising could offset the dramatic 32 percent fee increaseIn response to the budget crunch at the University of California, UC President Mark G. Yudof and the 10 campus chancellors believe they have developed a solution—or at least a start.
The UC Office of the President (UCOP) is calling it “Project You Can.” On Oct. 23, President Yudof announced the plan, which should expand money for student scholarships. He hopes to raise $1 billion in private funding over the next four years, more than double the amount they have raised over the past five.
But is it possible?
CultureBeat
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Coming Soon?
Sacred Craft Expo may tap Santa Cruz as the next surfboard hub
Nothing is quite as thrilling in a surfer’s life as that first blush of romance with a new board. Within those mysterious curves lie the potential to escape the self-consciousness of the daily grind, to fly free, to walk on water. Coaxing performance out of the template, rocker, foils, rails and tails is the job of the shaper, and translating those raw elements into a final three-dimensional shape is part science, part art and more than a little alchemy. Shapers are the high priests of this addictive union of man and nature; masters of a craft—a sacred craft.
For the past few years, director Scott Bass has paid tribute to boards and their foam messiahs by organizing the Sacred Craft Expo, housing a transcendent display of board-building genius under one roof for thousands to enjoy twice a year—Ventura in the spring and Del Mar in the fall. The most recent festival of foam in Del Mar honored Dick Brewer, the principle driver behind the shortboard revolution and mentor to multiple world-class shapers in their own right. Given a voice, who might Santa Cruz nominate as their local shaping master?
The Ticker
A Whale of a Bone
A large humpback whale bone surfaces on Santa Cruz County beach
You never know what you will find in the sand at the beach--just ask Santa Cruz resident Jay Chartrand. On Nov. 30, Chartrand took a visiting Canadian friend on a stroll along the shoreline of Greyhound Beach, seven miles north of Davenport. The pair were scouring the sand for sea shells when they came across the top of something large and mysterious. “I said ‘Is that a pipe? No, it’s a whale bone!” she says. “We were looking for shells and stuff, and we found this huge bone.” She and her Canadian friend (quite the welcome to California, eh?) began digging around the whale bone, soon realizing just how large it was. They estimated it to be over 10 feet long. After snapping some pictures, they backed away from the bone and its far-reaching stench and called the authorities, who said the bone was the remnants of a humpback whale that washed ashore in 1993. Thanks to Jay for sending in these photos and sharing her story.
The Ticker
Dominican Shoos Away Swine
In desperate attempts to avoid coming down with the formidable H1N1 flu this winter, folks are slopping on hand sanitizer and avoiding anyone with the sniffles. To keep it from spreading like wildfire throughout their campus, Dominican Hospital has announced they will be screening “all who enter its facilities” for H1N1 starting this week, according to Communications and Marketing Director Mike Lee. In addition, they will be restricting visitors to 16 years of age and up (no germy kiddos allowed) and restricting access to two entry points.
The Ticker
Children’s Services Gets Stimulus Grant
Low-income children in Santa Cruz County received a gift from the feds this holiday season: a $2 million grant awarded to the Child and Family Development Programs (CFDP) through the American Recovery and Investment Act. The grant will be used to expand the CFDP’s Head Start and Early Head Start programs, which currently serve 451 low-income children in Santa Cruz and Watsonville. The grant will allow for 130 new service slots, starting February 2010. The CFDP is a component of Santa Cruz Community Counseling Center, and is a national, government-funded effort to provide early childhood education and family support services.
The Ticker
Lookin’ Good Fellas
There are two surprising new additions to the Nutcracker cast this year: Santa Cruz County District Attorney Bob Lee and Former Assemblyman and current Santa Cruz County Treasurer Fred Keeley. Santa Cruz Ballet Theater has welcomed the two local officials into their production, and the dancers, age eight to 20, are teaching them “about dignity, grace and discipline,” while the men show how important it is to get involved in programs that help empower our kids.
The Ticker
UC Regents Want to Raise $1 Billion
UCSC -After approving an ominous 32 percent student fee increase at their Nov. 18 meeting (see goodtimesantacruz.com’s Slug Report for more info), the UC Regents have announced that they are kicking off a massive system-wide private fundraising drive to give back to the students. Project You Can, as it is called, aims to raise $1 billion in donations—more than the 10 UC schools have raised over the last five years for undergraduate, graduate and professional student support. The regents hope the drive will help them make amends with the thousands of UC students and faculty that have been protesting their financial practices as of late.
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- Free Angela
- Poetic Cellars
- The Pleasure of Süda
- What do you know about Monsanto?
- Santa Cruz Movie Times
- No Big Surprises
- The Gypsy
- Transoceana
- Cruzin’ for Inspiration
- Growing Berries Without Bromide
- Town Hall with Assemblymember Mark Stone
- Santa Cruz Calendar
Free Angela
Political activist and UC Santa Cruz Professor Emerita Angela Davis commands the spotlight in a riveting new documentary. PLUS: UCSC’s Bettina Aptheker opens up about the political upheavals of the ’60s and ’70s—and today. Angela Davis is not a human being who can be easily summed up in several sentences or paragraphs—books maybe, but, even then, capturing the political activist, scholar and author in the most comprehensive light is downright complex. That’s because Davis is an undeniably unique political creature, one who should be seen and heard to be fully absorbed and downloaded. Which is what makes Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, the new documentary about Davis and the turbulent political upheavals she faced during the late-1960s and ’70s, so inviting. In it, filmmaker Shola Lynch marks the 40th anniversary of Davis’ acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy with a historical vérité style of filmmaking to illuminate a side of Davis few may have seen (or can recall), and captures the events that thrust the woman into one of the most fascinating orbits of notoriety and political intrigue of the 20th century.
No Big Surprises
The highly anticipated draft Environmental Impact Report for desal is finally out. Will it change anything? When scwd2, the group pursuing the proposed joint desalination plant for the Santa Cruz Water Department and Soquel Creek Water District, set up a booth at the Santa Cruz Earth Day festival in 2012, its reception was less than warm. Signature gathering for Measure P, the “right to vote” on desal ballot measure, was in full swing, as were tensions over the controversial project, which would produce up to 2.5 million gallons per day of desalinated water and cost an estimated $100 million. What were representatives of an energy-intensive desal plant doing among the recycling and conservation booths? That was the attitude Melanie Mow Schumacher, public outreach coordinator for scwd2 (pronounced “squid squared”), remembers sensing.
The Maya-Ixil Move Forward
Local nonprofit works to educate and create opportunity for indigenous communities in Guatemala In an isolated region of the Guatemala mountains called Ixil, the indigenous Maya population was devastated by a civil war between the government and leftist guerrilla factions that spanned 1960 to 1996. During that 36-year war, the Guatemalan military eradicated entire Mayan communities. In what amounted to genocide, soldiers burned Mayan farmlands and homes, raped and tortured the people, and scattered families. By the end of the war, 200,000 Mayans had been killed, 7,000 of whom were Maya-Ixil.
Public Thinking
Watsonville teens host TEDx event Santa Cruz County is no stranger to the TED brand. TED—which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design—talks have come to the area through independently organized events 10 times since 2011. This month, the gathering returns to the county with a new twist, thanks to the Watsonville Youth City Council. TEDxYouth@Watsonville, which will take place Sunday, May 19 at the Henry J. Mello Center for the Performing Arts in Watsonville, will feature only speakers younger than 19 years old and will traverse topics from racial stereotypes and renewable energy to traditional Mexican dance.
Transoceana
Danny Moriarty’s musical influences have been known to impact his life beyond his local rock band, Transoceana. “I went through two periods,” confesses the singer, guitarist and songwriter. “I borrowed Bono’s mullet look from the ’80s for a while, and then I dressed like I was from the ’70s and had big hair like Jimmy Page.” Bono and Page are also symbolic of Transoceana’s evolution as a band during their three years together.
Cruzin’ for Inspiration
Former resident pays homage to Santa Cruz with locally shot thesis film When he left Santa Cruz for the University of Southern California’s graduate film program in 2010, Christopher Guerrero had completed the film major at UC Santa Cruz in 2008 and worked on campus in the film and digital media department. It wasn’t until he headed south, that Guerrero began to reminisce about the coastal town. “It was really really hard when I moved to L.A., to acclimate and find friends,” he says, adding that—counter to the philosophical, conversational culture of Santa Cruz—he found nowhere in his new town where he could simply sit and talk about life with someone. “I didn’t really realize why I love [Santa Cruz] so much until it was gone.”
Beck to the Future
In celebration of Beck’s solo acoustic show at The Rio, GT explores Song Reader, the alternative rock icon’s most ambitious interactive art piece yet. Here’s an odd little paradox of the digital revolution: The more sophisticated our technology gets, the more our musical milieu begins to resemble that of a bygone era, when song ideas were passed around from musician to musician, perpetually taking on new twists. Dozens of different YouTube users might try their hand at setting somebody’s rant about cats or double rainbows to music, or you might hear the Belgian musician Gotye turning the many and varied covers of his song “Somebody That I Used to Know” into a virtual orchestra (see below).
Growing Berries Without Bromide
Researchers test a new alternative to a controversial chemical The scarecrows perched in Santa Cruz strawberry fields do little to scare away the birds, much less the insects and fungi harbored in the soil. Everything likes to eat strawberries, which makes growing them a risky business. This predicament led UC Santa Cruz professor Carol Shennan to take an unconventional approach to pest management. Nine years ago, the fatal plant disease Verticillium wilt was wiping out strawberry plants at the university farm. Chemicals hardly phase the pathogen, and Shennan saw little improvement with crop rotation, which is typically used to treat infested fields. A visiting plant pathologist from the Netherlands recommended a little-known organic technique called anaerobic soil disinfestation, and, with so few other options, Shennan decided to give it a try.
Uniting All That Has Been Separated
