OCgroups

Live Nude People: Improv Comedy Comes to UCI

2010-06-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

By Emily Gallagher

“Rule #1: Give us your suggestions: This is audience participation so you will speak loudly and arrive on time.”

“Rule #2: No bad suggestions: If you give bad suggestions, you will be publicly flogged. Examples of bad suggestions are: Teletubbies, Pokemon, Inanimate objects, and anything to do with Bill Clinton.”

“Rule #3: Give homage to the Spoon: When the spoon is presented, you will chant like this…(static vocal high pitch sound while waving one’s fingers in the air).”

“Rule #4: Judge fairly: Even if the player is your best friend and/or lover, you will not vote for them if their games sucked booty.”

“Rule #5: You will come every Friday: Even if your mother is tied up above a pit of lions with leaping doom flames of doom and you alone can save her, you will say, ‘Sorry Mom, it’s Friday.’”

“Rule #6: At the beginning of every show, you will count down like this. ‘Live Nude People will begin in 5-4-3-2-1-LIVE NUDE PEOPLE!!!”

Live Nude People (With Clothes On) is an improvisational comedy troupe at UC Irvine designed to tickle the anteaters’ funny bone. Improvisational comedy is a form a theater where the actors perform spontaneously.

Live Nude People (LNP) is run without a teacher or an expert; members select their own student leaders and everyone learns from one another. Three captains (three teams of four, twelve students total) compete for one thing: the Giant Spoon. Every other Friday night at 11pm on UCI campus, 200-300 people gather to watch two of the three teams battle it out for the spoon by playing improvisational (improv) games. The remaining team hosts the show. The audience sits back, relaxes and “laughs without holding back,” says devoted audience member, Ethan Nguyen. He describes LNP people as “cool and awesome people. They are my personal heroes.”

Live Nude People comedy troupe is not an original idea. In 1988, a program called Whose Line is it Anyway? brought improvisational comedy to television audiences. In the mid 1990’s, several colleges around the country took a hint from the hit television show and created improv comedy groups of their own. All around the country, several colleges compete in improv comedy tournaments. In 2008, Washington D.C.’s “D.C. Improv” hosted a “Funniest College Competition” where several colleges traveled to and competed in. While LNP has not done any formal competitions, several of their alumni have gone on to perform at the Maverick Theater in Fullerton, CA for a comedy troupe called “Improv Shmimprov.” Other LNP alumni have also gone on to other acting opportunities including theater productions and film.

A UCI grad actor, Eric Stein, created Live Nude People in 1997. Once Eric graduated in 2000, it was taken over by another student, Crystal Solomon, only for a mutiny to occur a year later in which three captains took control. Three captains has been the tradition ever since. The three captains are individually in charge of Advertising, Acquiring Venues, and Financing. They are also in charge of picking their four-person team with themselves included, running practices, and hosting a show every quarter. The captains remain captains until they graduate or are unable to participate, yet the rest of the team must prove their worth every quarter. Every quarter auditions are held to be a part of LNP, so the teams change every quarter to keep the group fresh and interesting.

Jose Cagigal, a current Live Nude People captain, looks back on his auditioning moments and described them as “excruciating.” Any UCI student is welcome to audition with no previous experience necessary. At the audition, they meet each other, warm up, and then play several improv games to see who is cut out to be a Live Nude Person and who is not. Auditions last several rounds of about five hours and then final decisions are made at around one or two in the morning according to Cagigal. The three teams meet up three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays for an hour and then three hours on Fridays. Improvise by definition means “to compose and perform or deliver without previous preparation.” Cagigal responds, “The reason we rehearse so much is because we build relationships. We do not practice what jokes we are going to say, we just practice being with these people and we hang out all the time after rehearsals. We spend at least five hours a week together and we get to know each other very well.”

April 16, 2010 around 10pm few people are scattered outside Crystal Cove Auditorium located in the Student Center at UCI. Live Nude performers push carts filled with audio equipment and props from the elevator to the theater door. Fans try to peek inside when the door cracks open for the performers to escape into, hoping to catch a glimpse of what is going on inside. A swooshing sound is heard from the staircase, as the footsteps grow louder, “Oscar the Grouch” appears. Well, a student dressed like “Oscar the Grouch” appears at the top of the stairs.

Tonight’s theme: “Tickle Me Emo.” Audience members are encouraged to dress up with each theme. Themes for Spring Quarter 2010 have included “Tickle Me Emo,” “That 1870’s Show,” “Cereal Killers,” and “ImPROM…Houston we have an PROMlem.” Traditionally those who dress up get inside first and get the best seats in the house, needless to say, the student “Oscar the Grouch” was let in first. Around 10:30pm, a Live Nudes performer came out with slips of paper and big poster paper. Some were asked to write a line for the show on the slips of paper, which could say anything the audience member wanted. The big poster papers were passed around and the audience was invited to draw anything on it. By the time the audience was done with the lines and posters, the lobby was packed with people some dressed up, some dancing independently with help of liquid courage, all eagerly waiting to be let inside. The mouths of the audience mirrored the slow opening motion of the door as they let out a cheer and quickly stormed their way inside on a mission for the best seat. Around 200 people filled the space, which is drastically larger from the 20 people that attended when the group first started in 1997. The audience excitedly twiddled their thumbs in their seats in anticipation for the show to begin.

The audience roared with enthusiasm as three people slowly and sadly made their way to the center of the stage. They were all dressed in black with dark makeup and their hair hanging over part of their face. These three guys were the definition of emo. They started the scene pretending to be waiting in line for a My Chemical Romance concert. While waiting in line they all started reading each other some of their dark emo poetry, to the delight of the audience.

Then they each grabbed a willing audience member, some made willing by their friend’s suggestion, and they were pulled onstage and were asked to give their best emo poetry. The audience decided which volunteer made the best emo poetry by cheering the loudest for their favorite contestant. Once the short introduction skit was over, Alexa Green, a small performer with short blonde hair took over the stage to talk to the audience à la Saturday Night Live style. Then they began to host the show starting off with reciting the rules, which all the performers and regular audience members knew by heart.

The host team, Team: Model Citizen, is comprised of Brandon Norris, Alexa Green, Soren Santos and Garrett Bales.

Throughout the show, Alexa Green was the main host who introduced all of the improv games for the night and explained how each game operated. The rest of the team members sat in the front row and watched their fellow Live Nude People perform.

The competing teams for the night were introduced as Team: The Mystery Machine Rides Again featuring Will Cranmer, Darren Peters Jose Cagigal, and Erin Suth.

Team: Bayside Medical featuring Alex Foster, Rob Salas, Katie Smith and Craig Fox.

These teams mesh well together -- in every game they are quick to respond to each other and support each other as if they are all thinking on the same wavelength. They are able to be on the same wavelength due to their constant practice of playing improv games and hanging out to see how they all think and work together.

Caution: Live Nude People are not perfect; they are not always on their game. During the show, they were playing a game where Craig Fox from team Bayside medical was sent outside and the audience had to come up with a phrase that Fox would eventually have to guess; the audience chose, “Putrid cactus that perspirates.” Fox was allowed back in and his teammates had to mime out the phrase without speaking to Fox while he desperately attempted to figure out what his teammates were miming. Fox and his teammates were both expressing sighs and moans of frustration that Fox did not understand what they were miming. The situation seemed hopeless. Then the other team stood up and cheered on Fox, then the host team stood and cheered on Fox. Fox’s fellow Live Nudes family was not going to let him hang there by himself. With their encouragement, Fox took a deep breath and said, “Putrid cactus that perspirates.” The audience replied with standing ovation and cheering. According to Jose Cagigal, they all have their bad nights, nights when everyone else is “connecting perfectly” while someone else cannot think of a good response. They all learn from those nights, Cagigal says, “My first show I was not funny at all. The second show I started to get the hang of it.” He recalls the night after his first show when a fan came up to his teammate and said, “OMG you are so funny!” and then turned to Cagigal and said, “Oh…you were good.” Jose mentions, “the best parts of improv come from those moments when one cannot think of anything to say, because then their brain takes over for them and does all the magic without even thinking.” Yes, Live Nude People are not perfect, but they learn from their bad nights and their teammates help pick themselves up and continue on with the night. The regulars in the audience understand because they have seen them good and bad, and it makes the performers human and relatable. There is a special bond between the performers and the audience, they all help each other out, and the night goes on.

Throughout the night, the two teams battle it out in improv games and each game has as aspect or rule to it that comes from the audiences’ suggestions. The Words of Wisdom game involves two members from each team who all have a handful of slips of paper, which happen to be the same ones that the audience members wrote before the show began and they begin a scene. When a performer decides that the moment calls for a word of wisdom, they take out a slip of paper from their pocket that they have never read before and read it as their line. The audience radiates the walls with laughter as they recognize their friends’ words being said onstage. For a moment, the audience members’ own words are the source of laughter, even from the performers. Ann Sbardellati, a regular audience member, stood up and cheered when her line was read.

After the show, Ann commented, “It is so cool when the audience is laughing so hard at something you wrote! I mean, I wrote that, and everyone laughed!” Then story time commences as two performers, one from each team, sit in chairs and hold the stack of poster boards that the audience drew before the show. The audience comes up with a story title, tonight’s being “The Night I Wet My Bed,” and the performers tell the story using the pictures as guidelines for the story. All of this involves quick, witty thinking and all the performers have to rely on is the drawings from the audience.

By the time midnight passes, the host team starts wrapping up the show, and the Giant Spoon is unveiled. An audience member is picked to hold the spoon; tonight’s member was none other than “Oscar the Grouch.” Oscar held the spoon upright while the two teams stood on either side, as the audience was asked to cheer for either team, Oscar tilted the spoon in the direction of the team. Whichever team had the loudest cheer, the spoon went completely to that side and the team won the night.

Cagigal says “there is no significance of the spoon, which gives it all the more significance. It has always been there and is a tradition.” The LNP performers do not really care who wins, because they are all excited for each other on their good night and funny moments. They may be on separate teams, but with their huge twelve-person group hug at the end, it is evident that they are, as Katie Smith says, “One big family.” Smith says that LNP is like any other family, “we fight, laugh, support, trust and love each other. We are all really close.”

Almost all of the Live Nude People are Drama majors and have been in a few shows outside of Live Nudes at UCI. During finals week, LNP put on a special show called “Quarter in Review,” where they write a script and make fun of all of the theater shows at UCI this quarter.

It is a quarterly tradition and most of the actors that were in those shows show up to see how they are being made fun of. Jose Cagigal mentioned that before the show the LNP were all “really nervous because they some of their jokes are really mean.” Cagigal goes on to explain that there is only a “grain of truth” in their parodies of the plays and that they even “talk shit about their own performers that were in shows.” During the show, Katie Smith was covered in a large blanket and started walking towards the audience. Yet she walked a little too far and fell off the stage, the audience was dead silent. Her Live Nude family rushed out to see if she was O.K., but she quickly picked herself off and smiled to the audience and then the audience stood and cheered for her. Katie Smith is a graduating captain and has done improv since high school and joined LNP her freshman year. Jose mentioned that there are a few seniors leaving this year and he is sad to see his “best friends and heroes” leave. Alexa Green and Jose both concurred that “it hasn’t hit them yet that they just had their last show as a family together.”

Jose Cagigal describes the feeling of being onstage performing improv comedy as “Unlike anything. Awesome. The best. It’s you out there. Everything you do has been created by you, it is your words, your actions, your persona and that feels really cool. And if people like you, that’s awesome!” Since its birth, Live Nude People has promised the bored and culturally deprived students of UCI a reprieve from their bland surroundings.

Live Nude People kept their promise.

Reporting Notes:

-1 hour interview with Jose Cagigal, Live Nude People captain

-1 interview with Alexa Green

-1 interview with Katie Smith

-1 interview with Ann Sbardellati

-1 interview with Ethan Nguyen

-2 Friday night shows
-1 Tuesday night show (the Quarter in Review show)

- Twentieth Century Acting Training. ed. Alison Hodge. New York: Routledge, 2001.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_line_is_it_anyway

- http://www.thedctraveler.com/2008/04/since-when-is-college-funny/

- http://www.improvshmimprov.com/

- http://www.livenudepeople.com/

- http://www.newuniversity.org/2007/03/features/introducing_ucis_improv_organizations29/

- http://www.newuniversity.org/2007/10/entertainment/uci_strips_for_students45/

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmAAI5xwPVw

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXoU1y5os1E

Do It Yourself at UCI by Martha Davis

2010-06-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

Today Alex, a second year Science and Engineering student at UCI, has traded in math equations and 4” textbooks, opting to turn his focus towards creating a piñata with balloons, newspaper, flour water, and colorful tissue paper. While Alex usually finds himself bogged down with grueling engineering homework where one problem can typically take over several hours and several pages, today he takes a break with the DIY (Do It Yourself) crafting club on campus where students from all different majors and creative backgrounds are welcome to try their hand at creativity. Sometimes, substituting a notebook for a balloon, and calculator for some tissue paper can be just the ticket for a stressful release. Co-Founded by UCI sophomores Hannah Hirsekorn, Tiger Souvannakoumane, and Melissa Maldonado, DIY is dedicated to the hand-made and spreading awareness towards a crafting revolution.

Hannah, Tiger, and Melissa recognize a handmade revolution emerging today, and actually the trend of “do it yourself” started in the 1950s when families started fixing houses themselves. With an increase of user friendly manuals available, people were more easily able to paint, install carpet, and put in lighting fixtures themselves. Then, the trend turned toward the Hippie revolution in the 1960s when people opted to make new clothes out of used ones to not only be unique, but also to defy mass-producing cooperations. Today, the “do it yourself” trend can be partially attributed to crafting icons like Martha Stuart who appeals to women looking to add personal touches of elegance into their home. Certainly, with the rise of television “how to” demonstrations and internet blogs crafting has become an increasingly popular pass time. In fact, Tiger, Hannah, and DIY member Hannah Avarquez all have their own Etsy account, a website that allows people to create their own online profile to sell vintage items and handmade creations. An online craft fair, if you will. Though the rise of crafting has been largely influenced by new technology, it has also seen a rise in popularity as young celebrities have turned to crafts such as knitting and crocheting during their time on set between filming. Big time stars like Cameron Diaz and Hilary Swank have all been noted to try their hand at knitting, influencing their young fans to do the same.

Hannah wants to bring “DIY” awareness to the UCI campus through her club. Hannah explains, “DIY is a craft revolution. It’s about the handmade and doing things for yourself, and going against and working with technology… it’s about bringing back the old sewing and all that kind of stuff. And also, incorporating it into the modern world.” Hannah, Tiger, and Melissa all agree that crafting brings them a creative outlet, as well as a sense of accomplishment when they finish a project. Since Hannah, Tiger, and Melissa are all art majors, crafting gives them a creative release that their school projects cannot fulfill.

During a typical meeting, Hannah, Tiger, and Melissa will first hold a craft-making demonstration for a project they all agreed to prior to the meeting day. Then, they will either get lost in their own crafting experience, or circulate around the room and help with other member’s projects. These projects have included the making and designing of hair barrettes, mother’s day cards and jars, t-shirts, quilts, cupcakes, charcoal drawings, fabric flowers, piñatas, and even pasta. The trick to coming up with an idea for meeting is by making sure the craft can be completed within two hours (time allotted per each meeting), that the project does not require complicated tools, and that the craft is relatively inexpensive since the DIY budget is based on $5/quarter dues from each member. Because the club’s attendance ranges anywhere from 5 to 25 people, money is tight and consequently so are supplies. However, a tight budget has not dampened their desire to come up with fun and unique ideas. If anything, it forces them to be more creative to use supplies they already have, like using an old t-shirt for fabric, using old photos for collages, or using sticks found on the ground for decoration.

Even though Hannah, Tiger, and Melissa’s major have them constantly around art, their club manages to bring together a diverse group in the means of study concentration. DIY contains members studying art, journalism, global cultures, urban design, and even engineering among others. Melissa explains “A lot of our members are really creative, but they’re not art majors, and they want a chance to just be creative, stress free, and relaxed. So, they come and make these crazy cards, sew crazy creatures, and make little hair barrettes. Everyone can be really creative, that’s the best part of our club.” Besides containing various concentrations of study, DIY also has a surprisingly consistent male membership, and let’s face it; the prospect of crafting does not ring the bells of interest in a lot of men, and finding gender-neutral crafts can be a bit strenuous. Therefore, the groups flower barrettes also functioned as flower pins.

During the piñata meeting, DIY member Alex paper maches a balloon that will later turn into a sturdy shell for candy, and muses about his big mechanical engineering project due on Wednesday that he has yet to finish. Though, dipping newspaper pieces into flour water and then meticulously placing them onto his orange balloon seem to sooth any anxiety he has about his upcoming school duties. Similarly, during the Mother’s day glass jar decorating and card making meeting, newcomer Charlie, a 2nd year science and engineering major, admits that rather than crafting right now, he should probably be writing his 8 page paper due the next morning, which he hasn’t started. Again, gluing delicate colorful pieces of paper to his glass jar seem to take his mind off of his paper topic. Charlie silently holds up several colored pieces of paper in blues and greens and places them against the jar and then puts them back down again. Though he is “in the zone”, all his creative efforts come to a sudden and blatant close with one rapid turn of his elbow, causing his mother’s day jar to fall of his desk and violently break onto the floor. “I guess this is a sign that I should be working on my paper.”

Breaking jars are not the only ailment challenging the smooth running of DIY. One challenge Hannah faces is the logistics of being recognized as an official UCI club. Though she wants to have school recognition, a lot of red tape is required to maintain club status. Hannah, Tiger, and Melissa all had to take a CORE test and go through a club organization orientation. There are a lot of rules they need to demonstrate proficiency in, and a lot of precautions they are advised to take but that are hard to accomplish. For instance, DIY has not been able to purchase the school’s club insurance because of the excessive cost. Hannah has enough trouble affording bi-monthly crafting supplies, and cannot afford to put money into insurance. So, should someone run a sewing needle through their finger, technically Hannah is responsible and has to pay for any repercussions. That just means their crafts not only have to be time-conscious, user-friendly, and inexpensive, but also insanely safety proof. No one better step on that glass!

Besides club logistics holding DIY back, the group attendance is almost impossible to predict. Though DIY has several consistent members that come to every meeting, there is no way to account for a big group of friends that shows up after seeing a DIY poster on campus. Hannah says, “Sometimes there are big groups of people that will come together, but then some meetings they just won’t come. It’s fine, but sometimes it makes it hard to plan crafts because it’s hard to know how many people are going to be there and how many supplies we’re going to need.”

Though DIY faces a few setbacks, there’s no doubt that they manage to have fun at every meeting. At their charcoal drawing meeting, Tiger has a hard time finding an inspiring object to draw, so he asks Corinne if he can draw her plushy sea otter backpack. After drawing the sea otter, Tiger asks Corinne to model in the middle of the room with one leg up in the air and one hand extending outward into a claw. It’s not long before the whole room starts drawing Corinne, and then drawing her without ever looking at the paper; a drawing technique Hannah shares with DIY that she learned in one of her art classes. Corinne’s blue pigtails and animated face offers a perfect template for a bold drawing, and good entertainment as well.

During the quilting meeting, Hannah shrieks, “Corinne, why do you think you’re so special that you don’t have to make your quilt square the same size as everyone else!?” Apparently, Corinne missed the memo that she was supposed to leave at lease a centimeter around her 12”x12” fabric square so Hannah could have room to sew all the squares together. Hannah slowly shakes her head back and forth with a faint smile on her face, perhaps musing how she might be able to work around this faux pas.

DIY meetings offer humorous moments, but they can also be eerily quiet too. Sometimes members get so wrapped up in their own creations that they forget to talk altogether. It’s fascinating how some meetings are especially social and full of laugher, while others are more peaceful and methodical. While the quilt-patch sewing meeting had members too entranced with the process of sewing buttons and fabric pieces to their quilt square to talk, the piñata meeting had people laughing, questioning each other’s forms, and sharing stories. These stories often fill the room with good moods, like when Hannah tells everyone about the time she made a stencil of her boyfriend holding a balloon, and attempted to sell it at a craft fair. Tiger pointed it out to an old woman who said “oh my gosh, I like this one” and bought it. “So, now some random lady has a stencil of my boyfriend.” Also entertaining is when people take supplies from the meeting’s official project and start making other creations, like when Corinne found a strip of lace, and a piece of fabric with a printed bird on it and started sewing them onto her jeans.

DIY members all consider crafting as a soothing means to relax and de-stress, but some also find motivation to craft as they consider the prospect of selling their creations. Along with his Etsy account, Tiger has sold some of his hand-screened t-shirts at various craft fairs in Orange County. Likewise, Hannah has set up several of her own booths at craft fairs, and at some school-sponsored events like UCI Wayzgoose where UCI clubs are welcomed to set up a table in Aldrich Park to entice prospective members to join. Unfortunately, DIY was not included in the Wayzgoose brochure this year, despite Hannah having signed up and paid for a reserved spot. DIY had been forgotten; just another bump in the road for first year clubs, but Hannah managed to set up a table anyways. Her table displayed hand-made headbands, barrettes, retro cards, t-shirts, and buttons that they were hoping to sell in order to put more money towards club supplies. They also put out manila envelopes, ribbon, old photos, buttons, glue, and scissors with hopes that students passing by would be inspired to make their own cards. At the end of the day, a hearty amount of the card-making supplies were gone, as well as a respectable amount of projects that were for sale. Overall, it was a successful craft day.

Though fun and entertainment is always welcome at DIY meetings and events, Hannah, Tiger, and Melissa take crafting very seriously. They want people to recognize the craft movement, and vision their club as an established art force. To them, crafting is more than a hobby, and one of Hannah’s biggest fears about the club is that people perceive them as a group that glues macaroni pieces to card stock. They want more people to regularly attend craft fairs, where they frequent their own craft booths, and appreciate people’s ability to make beautiful creations from scratch. Further, they do not recognize a distinguishing separation between arts and crafts. Melissa says, “Craft making is a kind of art form. We take it very seriously, and our projects are artsy. I mean, people make hair barrettes and get really into it like it’s their own piece of art they want to make perfect. Craft making is just a different way of making art.”

Hannah also gets irked by those who do not appreciate the hard work and skill that is put into making art. While some people switch their major to art with hopes for an easier work load, Hannah rebuts, “What, do they think art is going to be easier, NO!” She even wrote a paper in one of her art classes about UCI’s art buildings being completely separated from the rest of the school buildings. She finds it ironic that while all the other major’s buildings are linked by a circle, students must take a bridge to reach the art buildings all the way on the other side of campus. Is there a reason the art rooms are separated from all the others?

With their first year coming to a close Hannah, Tiger, and Melissa have new ideas for next year that are intended to make the club even more successful. Rather than planning meetings solely by themselves, they are holding club elections to vote for a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, history recorder (takes pictures at meetings and documents craft ideas), ideas person, and advertising liaison (someone to popularize DIY through posters). With all the position requests turned in, Tiger reveals that everyone will pretty much get the position they want, or at least be involved in the planning somehow. Along with DIY “officers”, Hannah has new event ideas to liven up the DIY club, like a 24 hour knit-a-thon where everyone is invited to watch movies and knit all day and all night. Is there a prize for the longest scarf? Maybe. In essence, Hannah works hard to ensure the survival of her club upon her graduation. She says, “My vision for this club is to just become an established art force. I just really want people to recognize this movement, this craft movement that’s going on right now, and participate in it.” after reminiscing about the first year of DIY under her belt, sometimes handmade.

Log:
8 hours of meeting observations
lengthy interview with the group founders
3 smeller interviews with group members
2 hours observation at craft fair
craft research through 3 UCI data basis'

*Photos by Tiger Souvannakoumane

Dorm Reeducation and the Green Campus program

2010-06-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

By Tristan Schlotz

At the UCI Vendor Faire, everyone's trying to sell something. A pack of ethnic clubs will try to sell you Korean barbecue or tasty boba drinks, a pod of Christian Crusaders can sell you peace of mind, frats and sororities set up camp on couches and blast music, trying to sell you a good time. Not many groups, however, can offer what Green Campus has for sale. The Green Campus Program is a statewide organization run under the Alliance to Save Energy (ASE), which maintains chapters in fourteen UC's and CSU's, as well as three community colleges. Doubtless more popular in cities not renowned as bastions of conservatism and comfort, Green Campus at UCI faces a number of unique challenges. Though the city of Irvine and the University are both extremely ecologically responsible as a result of the high property values and comfort and stability of the city, the people of Orange County and the students at UCI are some of the most indifferent towards green issues. Still, this determined cell, comprised of some 15 core members, perseveres. At a Green Campus booth open during Earth Week 2010, Green Campus sold sensible aluminum water bottles and gave away reusable canvas grocery bags in trade to anyone who brought to their booth 10 or more plastic grocery sacks. While other booths sold food or god or the promise of sin, Green Campus sold, simply, the future.

It’s Wednesday, April 21st, halfway through Week Four of Spring Quarter at UCI. Last week was Earth Week; a frenzy of organization, tabling, sign-making, and panel-holding. This week is the comedown, a brief respite before a return to normalcy. Typically, Green Campus works by speaking to students and administrators, working to keep UCI informed and up-to-date on the latest in Green Technology and energy-saving strategies. During Earth Week, though, Green Campus was aggressively active on Ring Road - distributing flyers, and holding daily green events. This week though, they're all tuckered out. The hung over do-gooders start to trickle in at around 6:05, coming in ones or twos until maybe nine people occupy the too-large classroom in SSLH. The room is almost entirely silent. A ceiling fan drones loudly, muffling the idle chatter diligently made by Henna Pithia, a paid intern of Green Campus and majordomo to the club’s Team Leader, Cynthia Leung. Henna sits at the front of the classroom, in one of the student desks, angled slightly so she can speak to the rest of the crowd scattered in the some 40 seats which the classroom accommodates. Henna asks a few of the club members, who she knows by name, about midterms and about parties scheduled later that week. She is killing time until the pizza arrives. When Kelly Li arrives, maybe 20 minutes late, carrying a stack of pizza boxes, she is met with a brief stir as her fellow students shuffle up and begin to pick at the pizzas, pulling away a couple of slices and, in the end, eating maybe half of the product. Kelly asks Henna to make sure Cynthia gets the receipt for their evening’s meal, and then rushes out.

When the meeting begins in earnest it is maybe 6:30. Henna apologizes that Cynthia can’t come this week, and that most of the other interns are busy today. She promises that tonight’s dorm education will go off without a hitch, and begins a brief lecture about the tools used in office audits before reminding her audience that, on May 8th, the group is going to visit Tanaka Farms; a local organic strawberry farm that offers tours and the opportunity for visitors to harvest their own fruit. Her audience desultorily voices interest, but she seems genuinely excited. She shows the club members a tool called a kill-a-watt which is used to gauge the energy consumed by any piece of electronics plugged into it. The kill-a-watt slots into the wall outlet like a surge protector would. It has a matching plug input on the front, along with a small LED screen which gives the readout. Simply plug an electronic device into the front of the kill-a-watt and it will give back to you the object's energy information. A hair blow-dryer uses 1.3 kilowatts of energy a second; your cell phone charger uses .4 kilowatts per second. The lesson of the kill-a-watt is that every object in your house uses energy, whether it's in use or not. Every object in your house which draws energy from the wall holds these charges, which are called Phantom Loads and amount to about 5% of your monthly energy bill.

Henna’s club members and the interns she directs will need to know how to operate this device and how to explain the lesson of phantom loads when she starts her office audits this summer. “It’s really fun to use,” Henna says, “I took it around my house last weekend.” Her club members believe it. Henna Pithia has worked very hard to integrate the teachings she took away from Green Campus into her everyday life. Her bedroom in the apartment in VDC she shares with her roommates provides a perfect example of how to "live" green. According to Pithia, her laptop and her speakers are both energy efficient. She relies mostly on natural light in her bedroom, so her desk lamp doesn't see much use. She's not sure about her printer, though. "It was a gift from my father," she explains. All her electronics are plugged into a single power strip beneath her desk. According to Pithia, she turns the strip off every time she leaves the apartment, in order to save energy. "In my bathroom, all my toiletries are eco-friendly. My face-wash, my deodorant, my toothpaste, and my makeup are all organic. The soap I use to wash my dishes with, I got it from Trader Joe’s. My laundry detergent is also eco-friendly."

After the meeting, when most of the group goes home, four volunteers stay behind. They are preparing for tonight's dorm education event. Together, they walk to the Greyhaven Study Lounge in Middle Earth. The group arrives a few minutes early. One of the interns, an energetic freshman named Kimi Le, runs to gather up any freshmen in the hall, while Dawny Kim, Henna Pithia, and Irene Long move the furniture so all the chairs and couches face to one side, converting the room into a makeshift classroom. They hold a few improvised props: a large piece of construction paper, a plastic water bottle, a sack full of tantalizing prizes.

Kimi returns, bringing with her ten freshmen, who colonize the couches and look expectantly towards the front, where Henna starts the ball rolling with an icebreaker. She introduces herself, states her major, and confesses her biggest Green sin: she likes to take long showers. One by one the people in the room introduce themselves, and then the show begins. Henna's interns cover water etiquette, ("Try to take the five-minute shower challenge. Each minute you spend in the shower uses four gallons of water and the average 20-minute shower wastes enough water for a person to live for a week"), recycling, ("Target and whole foods will give you a discount if you bring your own bag, this is important because plastic bags take oil to make, and we need to save oil"), and computers. ("You can set your computer homepage to blackle.com if you want to save a little energy; it's just like Google, only the black background uses less energy.")

According to Cynthia Leung, Green Campus paid intern and Team Leader, the club has three big focuses: "we save energy, we try to do education and raise awareness, and we do workforce engagement". Leung, a third-year Quantitative Economics major, lives to live green. She claims that she grew up saving energy and water, and has translated most of those childhood habits into her work for Green Campus."I grew up green – my stepfather would always be like ‘turn off that light’ and I’d be like ‘no I need it right now’ and he’d always be on my case about recycling. We started last year an at-home compost bin." She told me "I don’t think of Green Campus as a job. I’ve even made my boyfriend to go green." Programs like the dorm education events form the cornerstone of the education-awareness campaign, while quarterly projects for the Green Campus interns fulfill their more direct goals.

According to Leung, UCI Green Campus holds a somewhat federal structure. At the lowest level of integration are the club members, and people on the Green Campus listserv. These people attend meetings, and help out the interns. There are approximately 110 people on the Green Campus listserv, which sends out a monthly newsletter and club announcements. When asked how many "regular" club members attended Green Campus meetings, Henna replied, "around six." Green Campus maintains four for-credit interns, and four for-pay interns. The for-credit interns assist the for-pay interns, who each have their own Green projects to complete on a quarterly basis.

In the Fall, for example, Cynthia Leung conducted an extensive audit of all science labs in the Natural Science buildings in order to conduct a competition between all science schools, to monitor fume hood waste. With the data collected from those science labs, she was able to extrapolate energy consumption in science labs for all the physical and biological sciences, and chemical engineering labs. Each such lab contains several fume hoods, devices designed to draw from the air toxic chemicals released into the air from science experiments. When not in use, Fume Hoods are supposed to be closed, so they don't continue to draw air out of the room, wasting energy. Leung spoke to TA's of lab courses and raised awareness on Fume Hood waste, and conducted a competition where the school that had saved the most energy by changing their fume hood policies would win a pizza party. "Our goal was to normalize that behavior of shutting the sash." She said. At the end of the quarter she was able to collect new data in order to gauge the effectiveness of her hard work. When asked who had won the pizza party, she replied that the results were "still tabulating."

But Cynthia's work requires she speak to more than just chemistry students. "To save energy it’s less student outreach and more the administration. We talk a lot to Wendell Brase and his assistant Anne Kreighoff. They’re both huge advocates for going green; they’re always looking for the next step. Wendell will have ideas and he’ll come to us because we have the manpower. Like he’ll come up and say ‘I think we should stop selling water bottles on campus’ or ‘I think we should start a Styrofoam ban’ which we actually did there’s no Styrofoam in food sales anymore."

The administration of UC Irvine and Green Campus seem to be a perfect match. According to an April 2010 study by the Princeton Review, UCI is one of the top 286 "Green Colleges" in the nation. It claims about UCI that "As a member of the University of California system, UC Irvine adopted a Policy of Green Building Design and Clean Energy Standards back in 2003 in order to promote environmentally conscious construction and fixtures on campus." The document lists as some of UCI's accomplishments "In line with this, UC—Irvine has determined that all new construction on campus must seek LEED Silver certification at minimum. In fact, five buildings on campus have achieved LEED Gold." and that "UC Irvine is currently installing a 1.2 megawatt DC solar power system, which is 'expected to produce more than 24 million kilowatt hours (equivalent to offsetting 25.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide) over 20 years.'" The LEED certification system, (LEED standing for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design,) is designed to cut back on CO2 emissions and energy waste in building design and operation, and was established by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) to provide third-party verification that a building is eco-friendly.

Students at UCI work on a Green Campus, and the evidence of the Green ideology is all around us. Still, Green Campus faces challenges in making Irvine reach its conservationist potential. Dawny Kim, a second year computer science major, and for-credit intern at UCI, says that the biggest challenge facing Green Campus is not the administration, but Southern California culture. "Irvine was one of the first cities to hop on board the Green Movement in the 1980’s, but the culture is very much 'do what you want.'"

Green Campus tries a variety of strategies to burst the "Irvine bubble". In 2009, the group won the prestigious Anteater Award for "Best Educational Club on Campus". They operate a website updated monthly, and work on videos like the "Phantom Hunter". Produced in 2006, the video (available on Google Video), shows students in the Humboldt State branch of Green Campus, enter the house of a typical student and hunt for energy waste. The video is highly tongue in cheek; the plucky lead character, (doing a very bad Steve Irwin impression,) stalks the halls of her bemused subjects, aggressively monologuing about the "natural habitat" of an energy waster, and ways to improve the habitat to make it more responsible. She replaces light bulbs, unplugs the TV, and places a large jug full of sand in the bathroom toilet tank. She promises that you'll save "THIS MUCH water with each flush!" and gestures wildly. The video is designed to make learning about power saving fun, and is often incorporated into Green Campus lectures and club meetings. Their monthly newsletter, constructed by Green Campus interns and published on their website, is designed to keep the interested reader up-to-date and excited about Green goings-on around campus. Their April 2010 issue provides information about Green Campus events during Earth Week, in an article entitled "Let the Festivities Begin!" and publishes the names of the new interns selected for Green Campus staff. "For-Credit Interns Make the World go Round". The website, designed to inform, contains a detailed calendar of Green Campus events as well as an interactive guide to the "Green" dorm room, where organic bed sheets are neatly tucked onto twin-long mattresses, the thermostat is turned off, and all the appliances are energy*star certified.

As her Dorm Education session draws to a close, Henna Pithia gamely tries to get her pupils excited by engaging them with a pop quiz game. She asks the room at large an open question, and threatens them with prizes, if they guess correctly. "What are Phantom Loads?" She asks the crowd of maybe 10 students on chairs and couches who stare dumbly back at her. A student timidly raises her hand and replies "They're energy charges that are given by appliances that are not in use." The student wins a Smencil, a pencil that smells. Henna goes around the room, asking Green questions and getting Green answers. Once the quiz is over, and all her smencils and oversize green campus tees are distributed, she asks the students to sign a large piece of construction paper with My Green Promise written across the top. She wraps it up. "The Green movement requires a cultural change and the fight starts with all of you." She gestures to the crowd, who file out, looking relieved.

The grassroots politicians of Green Campus don't care about your roller derbies or about throwing wild parties. Their numbers are few and their methods are incremental, but they soldier on. The keystone of the Green movement is militant mobilization and strict economic hygiene. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, or like the grain of sand that one day becomes a pearl, Green Campus hopes someday to do with a lot with a little. Lifestyles must change, standards must be upheld. They can offer little in the way of tangible, immediate results; but it would be a mistake to assume these club members are helpless. On the contrary, they are empowered more than any other students. Through persistence, hard work, and a serious, calculating mind shall the Green inherit the Earth.

Reporting Log:
2 hours, Lengthy Interviews with Cynthia Leung and Henna Pithia
15 minutes Shorter interview with Dawnie Kim
3 hours of observation at club meetings
30 minutes observation of a Dorm Education event
Documentation:
Green Campus website
Green Campus Newsletter
Princeton Review document "Green Colleges"
Google Video: The Phantom Hunters
Green Campus Interactive Dorm Room
USGBC Website

POW WOW: The American Indian Student Association: A small club at UCI, with a big community across the country.

2010-06-11T16:46:00.000-07:00

It is 9:47 A.M. on a Saturday morning in late May. The Mesa parking lot is full of massive white trailers and trucks with a variety of license plates ranging from Arizona and New Mexico, to Washington State. The skies are partly cloudy with a humidity of 64% and the wind blowing southwest at 9 MPH at the Mesa field at the University of California Irvine. The POWWOW staff, vendors, drummers, and dancers are all done setting up their booths, hoping for the sun to chase the clouds away.

The UCI powwow is the largest in Orange County. People of all colors walked towards the sounds of heavily beaten drums. There was large dirt of hump that separated the Mesa Parking Lot from the Mesa Court Field, and ahead were red, white, and blue canopies on the crisply cut and freshly watered green grass that stretched 54,405.5 square feet. There was an outer and inner circle of canopies. The outer circle of 24 canopies was for the vendors, selling all types of traditional Indian items, such as, jewelry, clothing, dream catchers, music, books and food. The inner circle of 18 canopies consisted of the different groups and their stations, they were the drummers.

The term “powwow” is derived from the Narargansett word pauwau, which originally referred to curing ceremonies. The term soon passed into English as a word referring to any Indian gathering or as a verb meaning “to confer in council”. In Indian Country, it came to mean a “secular event featuring group singing and social dancing by men, women, and children.”

Powwows are not just inter-tribal social gatherings; powwows are a way of life that embraces diverse Native cultures and reaches across national borders, as well as political, social, cultural, spiritual, and ideological boundaries. At powwows, Native people pay homage to past, present, and future generations of Native Americans from all tribes through music, dance, giveaways, naming, and other ceremonies. In the past, powwows were hosted by a single community; now they create a physical and spiritual circle in which many tribes may share their traditions, languages, songs, dances, foods, jokes, and blessings. Perhaps most importantly, powwows represent cultural survival and the perseverance to celebrate and maintain Native identity into the 21st century.

The UCI American Indian Student Association is a cultural, social, community service, and political student organization. One of the original founding organizations of the UCI Cross-Cultural Center in 1974, AISA is still an active and outspoken student club on campus. Because Native students are a minority on the Irvine campus, it is AISA’s mission to give these students a voice and to educate UCI students about Native issues. There are 10 regular members, Phillip Yu is the treasurer of their organization. He says that AISA is “ a gathering place for Native Americans... for me I view it as a place for Native Americans to gather, a safe place so that they know that they have somewhere that they can go to if they want. We try to do outreach programs to make it aware to other Native American students who are not in college yet so that they know that if they go to college there are people to help take care of you and hang out with. Also to make other students on campus aware of Native American issues because a lot of that is hush hush and just to make the Native American presence bigger on campus. It says that there are 1% of Native Americans on campus, but there is really less and they just rounded up”.

Although Phillip is treasurer of AISA, he is not of Native American blood, along with 7 others. The President and Vice president are the only members who are Native American. The Non-Native Americans all joined the group for the same reason because as Phillip says, they “see a need for it, to get more Native Americans on campus to make it a more diverse campus. There tons of Asians, Caucasians, a few African Americans, and rarely do you see Native Americans because sometimes they look like Latinos and they usually associate themselves as Latinos. They’re more urbanized Native Americans because they view themselves more as Mexican, Hispanic, etc.”
Phillip is extremely enthusiastic about AISA, “we are like a big family, I’m so glad I joined this club, there is no drama everyone is amazing. Two of the members are dating, but that’s not even a problem, it was funny because we just had no idea about it until way after they were dating. We’re all really close, which is another good thing about the club because we want people to be part of our family! We’re so small compared to those clubs that are 200+, we would like to have more members so that it can keep going on”. He would love for more people to join, Native American or not. He comments on why the club would be interesting to someone who wasn’t Native American:

“I guess the interesting part is just to learn about these people that were here before anyone else came along and to find out about the situation they’re in and learn about their culture. Everyone, even me, think like ‘Oh they live in teepees, they smoke marijuana in the big pipes, they say hao and they have super red skin, and it turns out they don’t have red skin, and buffalo was just part of their daily diet like people eat beef. People should join the club to see the real Native Americans, there are way too many stereotypes. One thing I learned is that I thought that they were all rich from casinos, when in fact they actually aren’t because it’s really hard to prove that you have Native American blood, and 1/8th is the minimum. There’s a form you fill out, unless you were born into it, and it should show on your birth certificate to find out your ancestry. You have to be a part of that certain tribe. I found out that back in the day, the goal of the government was to kill off Native Americans. They had boarding schools specifically for native Americans, they took the kids away so that they couldn’t learn the language, hear the stories, so they were brought up to hate themselves for being native Americans. In California, they would pay people to bring in the scalp of Native Americans, it only stopped in the 1990s. This is only a little tiny bit of information that I learned from being in AISA, it’s not only for Native American blood to learn, but all other ethnicities to expand their learning”.

Even though AISA is a small group, they usually have about one event per quarter, but the powwow is by far the biggest event of the year. Phillip says that planning for the powwow is pretty much a 24/7 process. Throughout the year they have to stay in contact with performers, vendors, answering phone calls & e-mails, selecting out of a big pool of dancers to choose who the head staff is. They want people that help out in the community and are good examples of what a true Native American is, giving them a good image. During the year, AISA has to advertise to the community about the powwow through New U, OC weekly, and going around locally to hand out fliers. Gifts for the head staff (dancers, mc, drummers) are important to select. Raising money for the club is difficult since they are such a small club. “We try to sell cookies and do bake sales and we’re going to try to sell Boba too. We usually hit up places to get donated money; Albertsons donates food to us for our events. Last year we were all brand new at this, the Officers/Chair were first years, so we weren’t as organized for fundraising, but we still made money at the end just a little bit, so basically were going to make as much money as possible and to fund everything that were trying to do because we have to pay our performers and we have to pay the school for “renting the field” and not water the lawn”.

At every powwow, bird singing starts the day off. The phrase bird singing throws many people off. You would think that bird singing would just be a bunch of birds chirping away, it has more meaning than that. A line of semi-large dark skinned men began playing their small hand drums while singing to stylistically mimic bird singing, as well as singing about birds, while everyone gathered in front of them and danced.

After the bird singing, the endless drumming and dancing began.

The drum contest lasted both days of the powwow, it is one of the biggest events at every powwow, the winner of the contest would win $500. Before a performance by Sacred Wind, the drummers placed tobacco on top of their drums and closed their eyes.

“We must give an offering to our drum, tobacco is important to us and it is our sacrifice to her. We treat our drums like we would treat our ladies”, says Korey Curley, a Navajo from Arizona, cousin of a drummer on Sacred Wind.
“The drum is recognized as the ‘heartbeat of our people’, it is the central feature to the Pow Wow, or any other Native American Gathering. At Pow Wow, each drum comes prepared with a repertoire of as many as 200 songs. It is divided into Northern and Southern styles, the listener and judges will notice singing which differs in tempo, pitch, song, configuration, and style”.

There were over 20 vendors, one of most well-known, as well as oldest, is Juan Thornbush who sells silver and turquoise jewelry. When asked about how he started out doing business at powwows, he began his childhood story.

“I have been going to powwows since I was in the womb. My mother’s parents had been making jewelry since they were teenagers. As a toddler, I would travel all over the west coast with my family to powwows. I was constantly around them as they were making jewelry, when I was old enough, they allowed me to help them polish the jewelry before it was put out on display. I fell in love with the intricate designs my grandfather etched onto his silver jewelry and I asked if he could teach me. My grandfather complied and I started working as his apprentice, learning how to melt the silver at the ideal temperatures to mold and to etch, how to set the turquoise into the silver, how to cut the turquoise into flowers and other beautiful objects and designs”

As he grew older and older, he started doing more of the jewelry making and they switched roles as his grandfather started watching him, until it was completely 100% him making all of the jewelry.

Since he had been to over thousands of powwows, he explains how the powwow has changed throughout the decades.

“There are many slight differences, but the main change is the lack of respect for the regalia from the dancers who wear them. The regalia is a ceremonial clothing worn to honor the powwow. Nowadays, the people who wear them run around with them as if they were everyday clothing, which is not how they should be treated. They should wear them with honor.”

There were over 27 dancers, ages ranging from 2-72 years old, dressed in traditional Native American Regalia. Regalia is the traditional attire, it is not a costume because it has more meaning than a costume, it is a unique expression of spirit , often compromised of heirlooms and other articles handmade by family and friends, or even handed down generation to generation. The regalia consisted of breastplate chokers, war bonnets, dance bustles, ceremonial fans, and buckskin war shirts. These regalia are made out of leather, bone, horse hair, feathers, and other Native American natural materials, all genuine and home-made from scratch.

Seven-year-old Starr Begay, is a good example of what Juan said about respect. Starr is dancer, she was wearing a purple jingle dress with metal cones and a bright green and orange shall and a feather braided into her hair says “I love going to all the powwows with my mommy and grandma, they always tell me ‘stop running around in your regalia’”, she yells in her mimicking voice, “ I want to run around with the other little kids because while we don’t dance we want to do something.”

Along with traditional dancing, they had Azteca dancing, being the last performance of the powwow. Phillip says they “ bring out the cultural stuff, art jewelry and dance, this year we had azteca dance perfomers come. Aztecs are not exctinct! They are alive and living here. I was surprised, and theres still myans too! They dance with feathers”.

The Aztecs are native to mexico. Their dancing was different than the rest because they were very quick movements, fast drum beats, and the men they wore Lion cloths and very feathery headdresses. The women wear dresses along with even more spectacular headdresses.

There are powwows every weekend from November throughout May in the Southwest and all of Southern California. “You’ll see a lot of different cultural stuff there like bird singers to bless the field, drum competitions for northern and southern styles, the difference is that one is more high pitched than the others, vendors that sell native American handmade jewelry, clothes, beaded work”. Powwows are an “overall a great experience to have in your entire life, definitely put it on your bucket list to go to one”, suggests Phillip. “My favorite part of powwows are the basket weaving, it’s one of the arts and crafts that are available to children, but adults can do it too. American Indians make their baskets by hand and it’s fun learning how they do it.”

AISA is full of dedicated and hard working students. They put a lot of time and effort into everything they do. Although they only have ten members, they put in as much work as clubs that have hundreds of members. Being a small group could be an advantage, they all know each other so well and they are like a family. They love each other and are there for one another. All of their hard work and planning throughout the year was worth all of the hard work. Over 20 vendors, 80 drummers, 30 dancers, and about half a thousand people attended the powwow. A small group can do big things.

Reporting Log
Attended/Observed 3 Wednesday meetings at Cross Cultural Center
10 hour observation of Powwow
1.5 hour interview with Phillip Yu, AISA treasurer
30 minute interview with Juan Thornbush, attender/vendor at powwows
30 minute interview with Korey Curley, regular attender at powwows

Documentation
UCI AISA website
http://clubs.uci.edu/aisa/
UCI American Indian Resource Program
http://www.airp.uci.edu/
UCI AISA Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=57574543785
UCI 7th Annual Powwow Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTwuWMpB9M8

Black Student Union -- Standing in Solidarity

2010-06-11T03:52:00.000-07:00

by Justine Wang

It is May 19th, 12:00 pm—just a sunny Wednesday. It seems like another typical Wednesday—except it wasn’t. Gathered at the Student Terrace near the student center are fellow black students of UCI. Some of them come and go from 11-2 every Wednesday—Black Wednesdays—to represent the people of their ethnicity and show the rest of the school that there is a black presence on campus—just by sitting together in the student center. As I sit with four other black students at a table and watch one of the girls in a pink shirt hand out cupcakes to the other members, talking and laughing together, I am struck with admiration by the resolute way in which this group of people—the Black Student Union—has stuck together and stood strong in their identity to show the world who they are, the way they are. These students continue to still stand together as they face discrimination and injustice and they let those hurts fuel them rather than discourage them towards fighting for social justice.

The Black Student Union (made up of about 200 people with at least 50 active members) gather every Monday at 5:00 pm in the Cross-Cultural Center. The people come from different places—be it different homes, origins, or different emotional states—and they all have different personalities but they all have one thing in common to unite them all: their race. BSU has long been an uplifting support system for black students on campus and a place for them to discuss issues and events—past or present—that influence (or have influenced) the community. It officially started in 1971 due to the amount of racism experienced by black students, who ended up growing more passionate about getting their respect as they continued to face discrimination. BSU has brought awareness to black history and the hurts they have or are still going through and has also been a welcoming environment that some have come to call "home."

Throughout this school year, BSU has held many discussions about ongoing issues, such as what the prison industrial complex is or how changes to the Welfare Reform Act have affected the black community. The prison industrial complex involves the companies that donate to and fund UCI that are actually private companies that get contracts from the government to build more prisons—they are against the fact that some of our tuition fees goes towards supporting the prison industrial complex. The Welfare Reform Act had been modified in the 1990’s so that many welfare programs in the United States were cut down so that there were more requirements in order for people to be covered by welfare. Also, the black students on campus have been advocating a list of demands (http://democratizeeducation.wordpress.com/) for which they have been fighting for. The list entails the changes they believe are important to see on campus—all of them working towards bringing an end to racist, sexist, and other prejudiced practices.

Attending the meetings, I've found how different the environment is when I'm with these people. There are many deeper ways in which they have been hurt by people of different ethnicities and background—stereotypes and prejudging leaves a lasting impression and is difficult to forget. Being a black student on campus is “not really hostile...but there'll be instances where people will make a couple comments or remarks about something that they don't really think through” explains Charlene Kaloki, a freshman who currently lives in Mesa and was originally born in Kenya. “I've had someone in my hall ask me what a certain phrase meant and I said ‘I don’t know, why do you think I would know?’ and he said ‘Oh, because you're ghetto.’ And I was just like...you don't even know where I come from or know anything about me but you've already prejudged me and already put me in a certain category.”

As I walk into one of their Monday meetings on May 3, one of the members Jon Stephens, decked out in red basketball shorts, a white t-shirt, and a baseball cap worn backwards, sits down next to me and greets me, “Hey, it’s you again! The reporter girl.” I smile back at him and watch people trickle in.

There are six tables set up in a big rectangle and we all sat down, facing each other. Dr. James Cones from the UCI Counseling Center sat down, facing the rest of us. He conducts the “What’s Going On” for BSU, a space for the students to talk about what is going on in the community and to discuss any issues that may be around. These get-togethers happened twice a quarter this 2009-2010 school year. This time, they came to discuss racial issues regarding the conference of African Black Coalition that Yudof, president of the UCs, held in UC Riverside this year. The conference consisted of 600 students from all UCs, all with the goal of advocating success of black students on UC campuses, questioning Yudof about racial and diversity issues.

Once we all sat down, we got up again to recite “Standing in the River” – an African poem that focuses on the themes of community and wisdom. During the actual discussion, many students voiced their negative views on Yudof. “Moo” Malone feels that “he's running the UCs like a business, like, he's privatizing it – like it's not about being able to afford an education. Basically the master plan was to be able to have people be able to afford education and that's not the case anymore – it's just getting really expensive and I just don't feel like he cares about education. So...a lot of people just criticize him because he could probably be doing better and it doesn't seem like he really values the education of access for all.”

Also, it is remarkable the ways in which the black students who have a passion for the cause stand in solidarity with each other and continue to stand strong as they represent the black community to the rest of the population of UCI—especially seen on Black Wednesdays. Charlene also said that “being a black student here makes you wanna work even harder so you can increase the population of black students at UCI so people will be more exposed and more open to accepting people of a different race and not necessarily judge you by certain stereotypes.”

On February 17, during Black History Month, some fraternity students at UCSD threw a party off-campus to mock Black History Month. This event is known as the “Compton Cookout.” The students wore cheap clothes and chains and would “make up big words to say,” ‘Moo’ Malone explains. “They told the guys to make sure to sag their pants...It was super offensive.” They also mocked black women and wore gold on their teeth and some even donned a KKK mask. Many black students were aroused by this mocking and stood together resolutely.

Furthermore, the black students show their steadfast unity through all the protests and rallies during this 2009-2010 school year. ‘Moo’ Malone, a 3rd year black student (International Studies major) says the BSU played a huge role in gathering as many people to rally so that there could be a solid black presence. On Wednesday, February 24th, 17 students were arrested for gathering outside of the Chancellor’s office on the 5th floor of Aldrich Hall and chanting despite warnings from the police that they were engaging in an illegal activity. Their hearings are currently being held from May 26 - June 2 and to support one another, many students—black or not—gathered with the arrested in the waiting room of the 3rd floor Student of Dean’s office to show support and stand in solidarity with all of them. One of them thanked me as I sat down at 10 am for being there—“when we come out, it’d be nice to see a bunch of people who are supporting us and waiting for us outside here,” she said.

On top of the arrests and protests, the black students also set up a Town Hall meeting (March 1, at the HIB 100) to address the increasing racial tensions. They had Chancellor Drake and a few police there as well. Malone explains “We ended up talking just about how the police were treating the protestors at the UCLA rallies and how no one said anything about it, because I had friends who were getting tazed and beaten up just because they were on the front lines. We just wanted to ask what the administration is going to do for us because there's a lot of people who are hurting.” Two days after the meeting, about 50 students taped duct tape over their mouths with the words “Do UC U’s?” written on it and stood in front of the Student Center, linking arms, standing in a line and remained silent from 11:30 – 12:30 pm. The Compton Cookout was a huge reason for this protest and at 12:30 pm, they laid on the ground to play dead as an act of their protest, since it is symbolic of the sufferings they have gone through. BSU was present for the most part and spread awareness.

Going through and observing BSU meetings and events, the theme of standing in solidarity and showing the rest of the world that there is a black presence on campus was always present. What else can anyone do in the tough fight for social justice?

Reporting Log
- Attending all Monday meetings and observing
- Stopping by on Black Wednesday to hang out and chat with people
- Interview with Charlene Kaloki (freshmen) and Hiu-Ling (‘Moo’) Malone (3rd year)
- Attending hearings to show support and observing more of their standing in solidarity together
- Researching Compton Cookout, etc.

Korean Campus Crusade For Christ : The Light of Christ on UCI campus

2010-06-10T23:51:00.000-07:00

By Michael Kim

It is a warm sunny day and UC Irvine’s campus is full of activity. There are bake sales and barbeque sales occupying all over campus hoping to raise some money for their organization that they are part of. One of the stands represents KCCC, which stands for Korean Campus Crusade for Christ, who are hoping to make some money through their Korean barbeque sale to support their Christian club on UCI campus. Unlike any other clubs on campus, KCCC members have a dedicated and even hardcore mindset that tells them that their main objective and goal as a Christian student is to spread the message of the gospel throughout UCI campus. Hoon sung, one of the club members says “We want the students to know that God is not a made up fantasy. We want to reveal the existence of God through the message of the gospels and our prayers. Our ultimate goal is to create Christian revival on campus.”

Unique History
Korean Campus Crusade for Christ is a campus Christian club/organization that functions very similar to a regular Christian church that people go to on Sundays. KCCC has come a long way since the program started in 1958 by Joon Gon Kim. According to the www.kccc.usa.com and the staff members of the UCI KCCC members, Christian Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) was originally founded by Bill and Vonett Bright at University of California Los Angeles. A young man named Joon Gon Kim who was a UCLA student at the time, met Bill Bright and Joon was inspired by Bill Bright vision of training and sending college students to share Jesus Christ when they graduate from college. Eventually Joon goes back to South Korea and starts the first oversea branch of CCC.

Birth of KCCC.
America had a lot of Campus Crusade for Christ clubs working on college campuses in the 70s but back then it didn’t do well on reaching out to international students on their campuses. Therefore, In the 70s, the members of the CCC in South Korea saw the need on US campuses to reach the cross cultural group of Korean Americans and international students. In 1982, Yong Won Kang, a CCC member, starts a non-profit organization called Korean CCC in America. They held conferences which were attended by thousands of college students. However, KCCC in America was mostly happening in the Northeast of the United States. So thousands of miles away in California, another CCC member named Don Whan kim, started campus movements targeting Korean American students in California Universities. One by one Korean Campus Crusade for Christ members began to form Christian Clubs on College Campuses in California. Today, there are 25 colleges with KCCC in California but these are the UC schools with KCCC: UCLA, University of California San Diego, University of California Santa Barbara, University of California Davis, University of California Riverside, University of California Berkeley, and UC Irvine. Their mission and goal stated on Bill Brights Campus Crusade for Christ: The renewal of Evangelicalism and postwar America, on Academic Search Complete and also on www.kcccla.com

To introduce Jesus Christ to every tribe in every nation
To help Christians to mature into Christ-like lifestyle of faith, fruitfulness, and abundance
To equip Christians to witness in the Spirit and become multiplying disciplesSo that we can actively..Help fulfill the Great Commission by turning lost students into Christ-centerred laborers

Present day, KCCC at UCI welcomes everyone regardless of race. Although they are not one of the popular clubs on campus, the members are still determined to continue on Bill Bright’s vision which is to convince people to live a Christ centered lives.

I wanted to reveal KCCC because KCCC is not only a place to worship God but it is a place to experience Korean culture because more than half of the members are Korean immigrants. The food they serve, the language they speak, their sense of humor, hobbies they love to do, were all very Korean. One of their favorite dish that they like to make is called grilled Kimchi and sam gup sal. Sam gyup sal is Korean Bacon used mostly for Korean BBQ but is not widely known in America. They also grill Kimchi(red spicy cabbage) and serve it with sam gyup sal. This is the most favorite dish among the Koreans more than Kal-Bi (Korean short ribs commonly known in the US). According to KCCC, they get about 50 visitors each year and only a few remain as a member. But student come mostly to experience Korean culture. So next time you receive Kalbi from a KCCC Korean BBQ stand, remember that the KCCC members never sell sam gyup sal on campus because they want it for themselves.

Busy Schedule
Their schedule consists of daily morning prayers by the flag pole, two prayer meetings every Monday and Tuesday, Thursday, Church service also known as Open chapel every Thursday, group prayer meeting every Wednesday. And finally there is a Church service at LA called Gethsemane at 9 P.M to 1 A.M every friday. The Gethsemane service got its name because it is suppose to represent that the service is for spiritual recovery. Just like Jesus Christ went up to Gethsemane(garden where Jesus went to prayed to God a day before his cruxifiction) and prayed to God who communicated as well as relaxed Christ’s spiritual fatigue, Gethsemane service is for the members to come and relax by praying after a hard week of worship and their life activities.

Top of all that, they need to fulfill their daily events or they call it “duties”. Their job is to go out every Tuesday through Friday around 11 am to walk around campus to preach the gospel to any unoccupied students. Amazed and stunned by their weekly schedule, I begin to get curious about the source that fires up these Christians to participate in this crazy schedule. What is inspiring these students to be so passionate about carrying out their duties? My search for answers began in their open chapel services.

Open chapel:
As I walked into the ES3 building located next to the science library, I heard nothing but loud guitars, drums, and electric piano echoing, vibrating, and shaking the walls of the building. The music was praise songs that sounded soothing but loud at the same time. Entering through the entrance, I was greeted by Jenny Choi, the leader of the welcoming newcomer party. She is in charge of welcoming the new comers to the open chapel. “Hi, my name is Jenny, how did you find out about KCCC?” Jenny greeted. Jenny, who is shorter than a typical Asian girl, had a lot of confidence in her facial expression as well as in her voice. She directed me to the seat where I waited about 20 minutes then Open Chapel officially started. Everyone stood up from their seat as the band in the front of the lecture hall began to play and vibrate the walls of the class with their loud church praise-songs. The clear white projection screen located in front of the lecture hall showed the lyrics to the songs so that everyone could sing along. As the song started, people began to stand up and praise. There were approximately 50 people in the lecture hall and all of them made a very unique look on their faces that people do not see everyday. The look was a mixture of gentle, angry, heart-warming, happy, dreadful, exciting, cheerful, and hopeful expressions. Jenny Choi explains, “I believe that these expressions represent a sense of security as well as relief.” Some had tears rolling down from their eyes while some others were violently jumping up and down in place as if they were jumping on a trampoline. Everyone had their eyes closed and did not seem to talk, chat, or cared about what other people were doing. One of the members, Joon Choi, started to pray so loudly that the people near him glimpsed at him. After the praising session came to an end, which lasted about 30 minutes, everyone in the room turned back to their normal selves. It was almost as if somebody turned off the HOLY MODE OFF button. They were laughing, talking, and enjoying each others company, just like typical college students that we see everyday.

TESTIMONY
The chatter amongst the members continued until a member named Jason Chu took up the microphone for his scheduled testimony speech. His voice was shaky but his face expression was tensed and confident. His eye brows were tensed up and his eyes were sharply focused to the audience while he spoke diligently, generously, confidently, with his soothing voice. “A couple of months ago, my friend, who is also a faithful and honest Christian, was diagnosed with tumor. The surgery for his tumor cost about the same as the US president’s yearly income. Not only that, even with surgery, he had a slim chance of survival..,” Said Jason. Then he paused for a second to observe the reaction of the audience. But it was obvious that he couldn’t continue on with his testimony because something was making him very emotional. After a few seconds of silence he continued on with his testimony. “…my friend had nowhere to go.. so he prayed and I prayed as well. Then something unthinkable happened. One day, his gums of his front two teeth became bumpy as if something was injected into his gums. In an effort to find out the identity of the bumpy spots of his gums, he began to scrape the surface of his gums from top to bottom with his finger nails. To his surprise, three black pellet-like objects came out from his gums. When doctor examined those pellets as well as his brain by x-ray, MRI and CAT scans, they concluded that those pellets that came out from his gums were the tumors that he had in his brain.” Right when Jason said these words, people looked not too amazed but just smiled at Jason ever so gently.

I talked to the nearby members and asked "why the reaction of the people was so mild?" Scott Chang, a sophomore majoring in public health, smiles and says “ We are more emotional rather than amazed when we hear these kind of stories. This is because we already know and believe God’s miracles, but the point is not on God’s miracle but its on the fact that God cares and thinks so highly of such insignificant beings like us.” After Jason’s testimony, everyone congratulated him on his articulate and inspiring speech that he presented to the members.

Luckily for me, I had a chance to ask Jason "why he had to pause in the middle of his testimony?" Jason looks off to the distance like one of those poets that sits on the beach mourning because they are never satisfied with their lives. Then Jason says, “the story was way too long to be told in front of people. I needed to cut it down short. But the story made me think about the pain and suffering, and that sense of despair and loneliness that my friend went through. With a slim chance of survival, he still grabbed onto his faith and prayed to God for help. God is looking for this kind of faith, faith that never dies or washes away even in a life threatening situation.” Jason’s story would be hard to believe for any non-Chrisitans. Believing the miracle of God in Jason's testimony is up to people's faith in Jason.

WITNESSING
other than the Open Chapel there was another event that was catching my attention. “Let’s go Witnessing!” the members would often say. The members would walk around the campus and share the gospel with anyone that seems to be unoccupied. Jonathan Lee, one of the KCCC lecturers explains “We call this sharing of the gospel with total complete strangers, witnessing. It is difficult sometimes for us to reach out to strangers and talk about Jesus Christ but we still need to take the initiative to let people know about who Jesus Christ is.” At first, I didn’t get why the members had this desire to go and talk to complete strangers about religion. But I received the answers to that question when I joined Hoon sung and Andres Yu when they went out to witness. Clearly, this was my chance to get to know more about Hoon and Andres, but more importantly this was an opportunity where I can observe and ask questions about this activity. It wasn’t too long until Hoon and Andres reached their first stranger in Aldrich Park. To my surprise, the stranger named Tom was more than happy to talk about Jesus Christ. They were talking for a few minutes, but I realized something crucial about their conversations. Their conversation consisted of God’s plan for people’s lives, God’s salvation, and Jesus Christ but what was notably clear was that Hoon and Anders always talked about their little booklet called “Four Spiritual Laws” This tiny pamphlet explained 4 important laws that we need to know in order to accept Christ as our savior and become one of his children of God.

Law 1: God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for you life.
Law 2: Men is sinful and separated from God. Therefore we cannot know and experience God’s love and his plan for your life.
Law 3: Jesus Christ is man’s only provision for man’s sin. Through him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for you life.
Fact 4: We must individually receive Jesus Christ as savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.

Tom seemed to admire the fact that Andres and Hoon were sharing this wonderful message to him. However, Tom just wanted to talk about religion and was not interested in accepting Christ. Sadly, Tom refused to accept Christ because he was Catholic. Hoon and Andres believe that every rejection is disappointing; however, they have no regrets because they tried their best on sharing the gospel. WHen asked about the disappointment Hoon replies, “The goal is to make people accept Christ and join our KCCC. However the point of Witnessing heavily relies upon taking the initiative and obeying to Jesus Christ who in the bible, told his tweleve disciples to share the word of God to the world.” That day, Hoon and Andres witnessed to eight people who all rejected Christ. Most people would usually refuse to talk and walk away or they would just rejected Hoon and Andres right off the back saying “No, I’m catholic” or “Sorry, I’m not interested..” or “I don’t feel like there is a need for me to believe in Christ” After this experience, I asked “What is giving you this burden to go out and witness to people who clearly do not care about God? Hoon replied “This is something that God wants, and personally, I want the campus know how wonderful God is.” After a good forty minutes of talking to stranger at Aldrich Park, this session of gospel sharing came to an end.

Perhaps this Witnessing activity can be a practice for many of the members of KCCC for their missionary trips. These trips called Missionary trip, “Missions” by short, is basically traveling to foreign countries to share the gospel. I like to think of it as witnessing to foreign countries to spread Christianity. This summer, about 25 people from KCCC are traveling to all parts of the world such as South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Mongolia, Argentina, Turkey, Philippines, China, Japan, and parts of Africa.

Life away from KCCC
The members seem like hard working people who only know how to worship God. However this is totally not true. They are the most athletic and outgoing people just like you and me. My point is, they do not worship Jesus Christ like Mayans worshiped their Gods by worshipping them in a temple day and night. KCCC guys would play soccer and basketball at least twice at the arc. After a couple of fun games of soccer and basketball, they would usually go to an all you can eat Korean BBQ restaurant. KCCC girls would go shopping or go to the beach, or bowling. The guys and the girls would often go out together to a Christian band concert where famous Christian bands like Mercy me or Casting Crowns come. Sometime the concert doesn’t have to be Christian related. They have been to a concert to go see Bi aka Rain perform.(The most widely known and perhaps the most popular Asian Pop Singer in Asia). Sometimes the guys and the girls would go to San Francisco or six flags for a road trip. So many times they are misunderstood as the 24 hours worshipping machine. From What I've seen their motto seems to be “When it is time to worship and work hard, we work hard. But when it is time to relax and have some fun, then play like regular people”

One of the fun events KCCC held was called Project Acts. These are the clips that some of the members of KCCC at Project Acts made. Project Acts was a fun KCCC event that divided the KCCC members into 6 different groups and required them to create a video clip that represented what kccc is about and what God's love is all about. The first video clip got first place decided by the judges.

According to KCCC, this clip best represents God's love for us.

Now..this clip didn't even get third place, but what they did was very creative, funny, and gave all the members a good laugh.

Opening The Door:
After living the life with the KCCC members, I wanted to touch upon the questions that I stated in the beginning paragraph of this article. How do students have a relationship with God when they cannot see him? And what is creating the desire to work for God’s world? From my experience and observation, I felt that the KCCC members gave a chance for God to show himself to them. “People never give a chance for God to reveal himself to them. That is why they cannot experience or create this relationship that Christians have. All they have to do is give God a chance.” Says Joon Choi a KCCC member and an International Studies major. Other than their work in their club, they are regular college students, trying to have fun like regular college students, but they are always keeping in mind that they need to live Christ centered lives.

Reporting Log:
- Observation of Tuesday Prayer meeting
- Observation of Open Chapel on Thursday
- Observation of Sophomore Prayer meeting on Wednesday
- Interview with Jonathan Lee about 5 minutes
- Interview with Jenny Choi about 5 minutes
- Interview with Hoon Sung and Andres about 10 minutes
- Interview with Jason about 5 minutes
- Interview with Scott Chang about 5 minutes
- Interview with Haejin Choi about 10 minutes
- Interview with Joon Choi about 5 minutes
- www.kcccla.com website
- www.kcccusa.com website
- Documents: Academic Search Complete: Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America

All In The Line Of Duty

2010-06-10T23:12:00.000-07:00

By Carly Lanning

Scott Schweitzer saw a small lump in the shape of an almond on the side of his neck one morning while he was shaving.

Mike Dubron had blood in his stools which his doctors continued to brush off as hemorrhoids.

Steve Meilkus felt a pop in his neck while doing shoulder shrugs and a week later, noticed a lump in his neck which continued to grow.

All three men are local firefighters who believe there is a connection between their life's work and their illnesses.

The Firefighter’s Prayer- When I am called to duty,God, wherever flames may rage; Give me strength to save some life, whatever be its age. Help me embrace a little child before it is to late or save an older person from the horror of this fate.

A shift at the fire station starts at 7:30 am and last for 24 hours. As Scott walks into the station, turnouts in hand along with a cup of coffee, he passes by the fire engine starting up and leaving the station to go on a call. Throwing his newspaper down on the kitchen counter, he pours himself another cup, taking little notice to the fumes seeping in from the apparatus floor. The apparatus floor of the fire station is attached to most major rooms within the fire house, allowing the diesel exhaust of the truck to sift through the air of the kitchen, bathrooms, offices and bed rooms.

Steve’s first run comes in, jumping into his turnouts, he is off to a structure fire off of Burbank Boulevard. Opening the windows to let in some breeze to cool down the cab of the engine, the diesel exhaust sifts through the air, catching within the fabric of his bright yellow turnouts.

Enable me to be alert and hear the weakest shout, and quickly and efficiently to put the fire out. I want to fill my calling and to give the best in me, to guard my every neighbor and protect his property.

Reaching the building, Mikes’ is the first engine to arrive, meaning that his chief is in charge of coordinating the efforts of fighting and extinguishing this structure. He is the first one in, and by the unwritten rule within the service, he and his crew will be the last ones out. Though he will go in with his 20 pounds of turnouts and a 40 pound breathing apparatus on, the air tanks only last for 30 minutes and he does not have a back up. When the fire is out, everyone takes off their breathing apparatus, and puts on thin paper mesh respirator while they begin to clean around the burned material. These masks were made to filter out large particles but have Overturning the burned ground and looking for embers, the smoke and charred ground is saturated with carcinogens found from plastics and household products. Mike is inhaling all of this, realizing half way through that his throat is beginning to hurt, his eyes are beginning to burn. But he keeps on working because he is a firefighter, he is macho, he is invincible.

And if, according to my fate, I am to lose my life...

His fate was to be a hero. But for some men and women, often the bravest men, and the strongest women, their fate did not come in the form of being trapped in a burning building, their fate was slower, more gradual. Their fate came from the exhaust, from the chemicals, from the smoke. Their fate, like Scott and Steve and Mike, came in the form of cancer.

Scott Shweitzer had always been an athlete. Setting state records in track and cross country, Scott spent little of his 56 years sitting still. He has been a firefighter paramedic for 27 years, a husband for 34 years, a father for 30 years, and a cancer survivor for 2. Discovering that he had tongue cancer in 2008, he underwent surgery in October in which the oncologists at USC Norris center removed a 1cm tumor on the back on his throat, and a series of lymph nodes in the surrounding areas. His permanent side effects include his inability to swallow food, the restriction of how far he can open his mouth, the depletion of his salivary glands and his new addiction to avocados. “When they say you have cancer, you think you are going to be dead within a couple of days but everyone around me has been so positive and I’ve always thought of it as just a minor inconvenience,” recalls Schweitzer, as he continually sips his ice tea to moisten his mouth. A month later he began radiation, lasting from November 1st until January 11th of 2009. Though it is something Schweitzer says he can jokingly “live with,” the radiation took an incredible toll on his body, dropping him down from 170 pounds down to 120 pounds during his 10 weeks of treatment. This prompted doctors to insert of a feeding tube into his stomach to help stabilize his weight lose. With his recovery process being a grueling and exhausting journey, Scott rejoined his Burbank firefighting family after being off the force for 11 and a half months. “I was scared I wasn’t going to be able to do the job, so much of out job requires muscle and when you are down to 120, you don’t just lose the fat, you lose the muscle.” From barely being able to get up to take the trip to the bathroom, Schweitzer regained his normal pace of life, getting his weight up to 165, passing his physical reentry exam back onto the line. “So many people count on you and you hate to let anybody down, especially the chiefs and my co- workers, plus I didn’t want to drop someone down the stairs, that’s just bad form.” When asked if he believed his cancer was job related, he replied without any hesitation “Yes. In the old days we barely wore our breathing apparatus, we just dealt with it like “oh yeah, that does smell bad!” When asked if knowing what he knew now about the risks of cancer, would he still join the department, it took him less time to reply “Oh yeah! Te rewards outweigh everything. The Burbank Fire Department was my support group. During my recovery, there wasn’t a day in which I didn’t get at least a phone call from a friend or someone on the department.” Though three years short of reaching remission, Scott has tested cancer negative during his last 3 PET scans. Healthy, happy and strong, the only step left to achieving ultimate recovery is being able to again eat a pastrami sandwich.

Steve Meilkus, a firefighter for 20 years, was diagnosed with squamos cell carcinoma in November of 2001, after a lump in his neck began to develop. Three days after receiving the news that the lymph nodes in his neck were cancerous, Steve underwent surgery that removed 13 of his lymph nodes. In January of 2002 he began radiation, ending on Valentine’s Day of that same year. Due to the irritation caused by the radiation, he was unable to eat or drink because of the constriction of his throat. He lost 58 pounds during his 6 weeks of radiation, receiving no pain management advice or assistance. Despite being physically depleted during his treatment, Steve was determined not to stop doing things himself, as he continued to mow the lawn despite feeling horrible. “I think it was my positive attitude that got me through everything,” he recounts. He received much support from his family, family friends and through his religion. He believes, “There are so many contributing factors to my cancer . The type of cancer I had is known to be a cancer that is prevalent amongst oil workers, firemen and anybody around hydrocarbons a lot. It’s highly probably this is all connected because at the old stations, your bedding smelled like diesel smoke because the dorms were right off the garage. The diesel smoke would just go everywhere and stay low.” Making everyday worthwhile, Steve no longer sweats the small stuff in life. He says with a smile, “I could be gone but I’m still here so that’s a plus.”

In 2006, the University of Cincinnati began research on the links between cancer and the insufficiency of the firefighter’s personal protective equipment(PPE), most importantly their turnouts and breathing apparatuses. Grace LeMasters, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC, found that firefighters are at a significantly higher rate of developing Prostate cancer, testicular cancer, non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and Multiple Myeloma than the average American. Findings show the dangers of materials, such as “benzene, diesel engine exhaust, chloroform, soot, and styrene, can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin and occur both at the scene of a fire and in the firehouse, where idling diesel fire trucks produce diesel exhaust.” Establishing a direct correlation between chemical exposures in the fire department and the increase of cancer, there is a demand for an increase in the use of PPE among fire departments nationwide. Taking the first step towards ensuring the coverage of firefighter’s medical expenses should the event of cancer come upon them, the first national cancer presumptive act was passed in 1982. This act covered the medical costs of firefighters up to five years of after their retirement, assuming that any cancer developed during this time would be considered job related. Taking it down to a more local level, presumptive acts have been passed by 22 states. Currently in California, the California Professional Firefighters have introduced the William Dallas Jones Memorial Cancer Presumption Act of 2010 to further the cause of protecting their own brothers and sisters from this life altering illness. If passed the Dallas Jones Cancer Presumption Act “protects firefighters’ cancer presumption for up to 15 years after his or her retirement. This will still require employers provide appropriate disability and workers’ compensation benefits to first responders who become ill or die as a result of specified job- contracted illnesses or injuries.” Helping to build solid financial protection for its firefighters and their families, policies left open the emotional end of this illness. This is where Mike Dubron and his Cancer Support Network come in.

Mike Dubron, a firefighter for 28 years and crew chief for LA County fire helicopter services, was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in February of 2003 at the age of 39. After his first tests, he was diagnosed as stage three and given one to three years of survival. He received surgery at USC Norris in February of that year, removing a large mass and the lymph nodes in the surrounding abdominal regions. The surgery was a major success, and thus began the recovery period as Mike had to relearn how to go to the bathroom. During this same time he began to formulate ideas of how he could help others turn from cancer victims into cancer survivors. Tracing it back, Mike believes that his cancer was job related. “We are exposed to all these products of unknown combustions where they are complete and incomplete, creating tons of carcinogens.” Being in remission for 7 years, he is considered to be cured from his cancer, and now living his life in what he believes to be “bonus time.” “I always liked the line from the “Shawshank Redemption” which I think is so true in my case, they say “Get busy living or get busy dying.” I want to be busy living. I want to stay positive.” And living he did, as he thinks back to how far he has come since those dark days in February. “I remember when I was diagnosed I had ordered a new pair of boots online for my work, a particular pair that I liked. I had them ordered before I was diagnosed and they came after I was diagnosed. I remember telling my wife, “Well go ahead and ship those back because I am never going to wear them again.” And low and behold, I got to use them.” While sitting at home during his 9 months of recovery, Mike began to formulate the idea of organizing a cancer support group in which firefighters would be there to support other firefighters.

Starting locally, the Firefighter Cancer Support Network(FCSN) grew until it was officially established as a non- profit organization in 2006. This group, now a national organization with branches in 22 states, was created for two purpose: one, to build relationships in which firefighters help other firefighters deal the difficulties of cancer, and two, to educate firefighters about taking a proactive approach regarding cancer.

The Firefighter Cancer Support Network is based on the simple idea that firefighters can relate, no matter the distance, with other firefighters. As Jeff Howe, current treasurer for the Cancer Support Network, puts it, “different circus, same clowns.” When a person is diagnosed with cancer, they can either go online to the FCSN website and fill out a request form or call in to their toll free number. Then members of the organization will begin the search to pair this cancer victim with a mentor, or cancer survivor. All members of this organization are either firefighters or immediate family members. Coordinators go into the database and find another firefighter or family member that is a survivor of the same or a similar form of cancer. This begins the relationship between the survivor and victim. With this organization constantly growing, the pairing is done on the basis of similar diagnoses and treatment routes rather than geographical regions. Mentors and mentees can be as far away as California and New York, so the communication is done mostly through email or on the phone. Mike created this approach because he saw it as a “very positive way to help when people are initially diagnosed. They feel a lose of control,and this helps them regain that, get people back on the ground and get them focused and educated about their cancer.” Jeff Howe, firefighter for Burbank City for 30 years and strong advocate for cancer education, says that he has seen the changes that this program has brought to so many lives. “For me,” Jeff says, “with cancer, it is a lot less of if you are going to be exposed but when you are going to be exposed. I believe in Mike and the FCSN, we are helping our own. Some of the letters we get back make it incredibly rewarding. Some say, “I came home today and found my package from the FCSN and went through it all night and I got my life together. I am going to beat cancer.” The second part of his program, Mike takes on personally, traveling all around the country to educate fire departments about the preventative measures that need to be taken to ensure the health of their firefighters. During his presentations, he talks about the statistics surrounding firefighter cancer, his own personal story with the disease and the political propositions supporting firefighter health. “It’s a tough culture to educate,” Mike admits, “It is hard to walk in the door with an iron fist and force upon them the reasons why they should have a wellness exam and convince them to conduct their business a certain way.” Instead, Mike, along with other presenters for the FCSN, take a more positive advance and place a large emphasis on reminding the firefighters that these tests are not only to protect themselves but to protect their families. This is Mike’s best approach because, “this often leads to them taking a step back and thinking, yeah, it is important for me to see my daughter walk down the aisle and get married. If I can avoid being diagnosed with cancer by getting screened and avoiding all this tragedy, then maybe its worth it.”

And this is just what Mike Dubron has done, helped others avoid tragedy and get busy living. Though his fate may have included cancer, that was far from being his ending note.

Reporting Notes:
-1 lengthy interview with Mike Dubron, founder and president of FCSN
-1 lengthy interview with Jeff Howe, treasurer for FCSN
-1 hour interview with Scott Shweitzer, Burbank City firefighter and cancer survivor
-1 30 minute interview with Steve Meilkus
-Observation at Burbank Fire Station 13

Documentation:
-FCSN Educational slide shows
-FCSN website
-Healthnews- University of Cinncinati cancer findings
-California Professional Firefighters monthly news letter
-Various published articles features Mike Dubron

CALPIRG at UCI: Fighting for Your Interests and Your Attention

2010-06-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

By Alex Robles

Can one signature make a difference? CALPIRG seems to think so. CALPIRG is the California Public Interest Group, which campaigns for student-oriented initiatives like cheaper textbooks and Cal Grants. They are also those people who make it difficult for you to walk on Ring Road in peace -- they’re taught to.

CALPIRG has been described by Amanda Read, the CALPIRG campus organizer at U.C. Irvine, as “a statewide student-run and student funded organization that works on the most progressive public interest issues, those that are public interest issues and issues that affect students and that students care about.”

What can CALPIRG do for you?
Its midday, sunny and hectic on Ring Road as Diego stands with his script trying to get any busy student to make a call to Senator Boxer and leave a message. Most people don’t lose a stride as they pass by the eager interns or as Amanda puts it, “put up their blinders and walk straight through”.

Diego admits that it’s hard to get people involved on campus “but they usually come around…little by little”. Diego Del Campo is a student intern for CALPIRG’s Homelessness and Hunger Campaign trained in the art of ‘tabling’, a popular technique used by CALPIRG on Ring Road to try to illicit interest and garner support for CALPIRG and involves setting up a table and being constantly active.

“People are always more likely to stop and talk to you if you have a smile on your face, if you’re making eye contact, if you’re waving, be an active tabler, don’t stand behind the table, be out in the middle of ring road talking to people”. Tabling is one of the various techniques used by CALPIRG to try to get your attention, often with tiny scripts given to passer bys on what to say when they lobby officials to help achieve CALPIRG’s, and their own, goals.

The student body and CALPIRG have a very unique relationship in which they are ultimately working for each other. The student funded part of CALPRIG comes from a voluntary $5 given by students who choose to pledge CALPIRG. If 10% of the student body doesn’t pledge then, “We don’t charge anyone that $5, we want to make sure that this an organization that a large percentage of the student body supports and wants to have around,” Amanda explains. They are good for each other, though, even if it doesn’t always appear so.

CALPIRG understands the challenges they face as Amanda continues, "There’s definitely widespread apathy in terms of political involvement, I think, personally, a lot of it has to do with thinking that it doesn’t matter, that the legislator isn’t going to listen, the phone call doesn’t make a difference, that its not going to pass legislation, no you’re individual call isn’t going to make senator Feinstein make the right decision, when you partner that with hundreds of thousands of other calls it definitely makes a huge difference.”

She doesn’t think people’s attitude towards political activism is a problem though, “It’s like anything else, you join the soccer club if you’re interested in soccer, you join the political activism group if you are really interested in political activism.” Every year CALPIRG has campaigns for the issues they want to attack, along with one lead campaign that is the same at the other 9 CALPIRG campuses. CALPIRG even has its own set of student interns who organize and run the certain campaigns.

“The campaigns we run depend on what the students decide as a whole on the statewide level but also what the students at U.C. Irvine want to run so every spring students, faculty members, anyone who is interested can write a campaign proposal and have it presented to board members.”

Chancellor Michael Drake, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Manuel Gomez and Dean of Students and Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Rameen Talesh have all recently signed on to support no cuts to Cal Grants, part of a campaign to do just that.

This is Amanda Read’s first year at UCI but she has already seen development with her interns and volunteers, a broad smile takes over her face as she explains, “I’ve seen a lot of volunteers and interns come in and start working for CALPIRG just be planning events or planning tables and then the next quarter come back and run the whole campaign.”

The learning curve is high but the commitment is also demanding, interns participate in weekly planning meetings as well as their intern class and CALPIRG core meetings, earning 4 units of UCI credit. Amanda admits her job is difficult, working 60-80 hour weeks and often committing her weekends to CALPIRG-related activities.

The good, however, greatly outweighs the bad. “I like my job and I’ve really enjoyed my time here because of the students I work with and seeing them succeed and seeing them learn something or work on an issue they care about or get really excited about an event idea really makes it worth it.”

What’s your name again?
With administrative support, an office on campus complete with its own professional staff, at least 10% of the student body behind it and eager students ready to achieve its goals, CALPIRG appears to be a well-oiled machine of goodness. At their weekly core meetings, the bustling world of political activism I expected is absent, I had to look more into this machine. What I found was the heart of an organization happy about its place and indeed eager to achieve its goals, and talk about them as well.

In a trailer converted into a classroom , the attendance sits at the grand total of four. The weekly meeting proceeds anyway with students giving Campaign presentations and organizing times for each of them to speak in classrooms to push their issues further. One person reported that they emailed over 100 student groups to see if they will sign on support no cuts to Cal Grants yielding two replies, one yes and one “do you think this shit is actually going to work?” That struck a chord: “Who do they think they are to say that? Just tell me no. I don’t understand what is so negative about Cal Grants. There’s been vandalizing of building and properties and they think that’s the best way. If you simply go up to Chancellor Drake he will agree, he wants to work with us. The students think that violent ways are the best way to get what they want, but it’s bad. They want to know what one signature will do and think it won’t do anything but it does.”.

In traditionally conservative Irvine that is hardly known for its protests or political activism it is surprising that the U.C. Irvine CALPIRG chapter generated more petition signatures than any other PIRG chapter across the country during Earth Week, which petitioned for climate change. “People aren’t as receptive at UCI” Srishti Prasad, the Chapter Chair at U.C. Irvine proclaims then smiles as she explains the phenomenon of generating the most signatures, “Maybe they just don’t work as hard as us.”

The Chapter Chair is one of three board members elected by members of CALPIRG, the other two being Vice Chair and Social Chair. Midway through this week’s meeting, Srishti delegates roles to her other 3 companions. She stops and asks “What’s your name again?” to one of them as that detail seems to be the least of their concerns. Srishti seems to have a positive approach to the attendance problem, or lack of one.

“It trickles down, the spring quarter is the worst. We just need a few core people. In a way it has turned into a few people doing the work, there are a lot of flaky people. The way that it works, the results make you feel better about all the work.”

Unlike the sometimes contentious relationship with their fellow student, the dynamic within CALPIRG is anything but hostile. Amanda strives to make the groups members comfortable due to the group’s nature. “We like to do a really good job in welcoming people and making them feel comfortable, I know what we do is outside what other clubs are doing, there aren’t a lot of political activism clubs on campus, its not something that is standard to participate in, we want to make sure people are comfortable with the work we are doing, because people are initially stepping out of their comfort zone, but they are also comfortable in the group.”

The atmosphere in the room is casual, like a group of friends studying together for a final. They sit in their own desks covered with their own homework as well multiple binders and pamphlets for their CALPIRG campaigns. The meetings go at a slow but productive pace; groans about biology homework are quickly extinguished by politics.

The previously nameless intern shows signs of nervousness with her new routine for her campaign. “Do I just go up to the teacher and say this?” pointing to a paper with a ‘script’ on it. The members want to help and encourage her rehearse the liens in front of them. “You did really good” they reply cheerfully, “You’re a good teacher!”, and she is now ready to go. Cal Grants are back on their minds; they are focused on preventing the dissolution of a program that provides monetary aid to UC and Cal State students for college expenses like tuition and room and board. The tinge of genuine concern is hardly absent as they question it. “What about the people who don’t qualify?” one asks, “I know, my friend is like that, she is middle-class and her parents make too much to qualify, but she still doesn’t have a lot of money.”

The room slowly gets quieter as they seem to contemplate the reality of Cal Grant’s effects. CALPIRG members are encouraged to socialize in settings that are not political or have any mention of CALPIRG. One of their board members is indeed a Social Chair. These board members meet with other members from the other 9 CALPIRG campuses to decide and discuss different campaigns. As the meeting comes to an end, roles are delegated to interns in absentia, “Diego will take care of it”, in an assuring way.

As CALPIRG’s members await to see who their Campus Organizer will be for next year they can be comforted with the words that can be used to encompass Amanda. “Be friendly, be active, be confident”

CALPIRG hopes you will finally notice.

Reporting Notes:
-1 Lengthy Interview with CALPIRG Campus Organizer Amanda Read at the CALPIRG office on campus
-1 Interview with CALPIRG Student Intern Diego Del Campo
-1 Interview with CALPIRG Chapter Chair Srishti Prasad
-2 Hours of Observation of Weekly Core Meetings
-Observation of Campus Activities
Documentation:
-calpirgstudents.org/uci
-clubs.uci.edu/calpirg
-CALPIRG Pamphlets and Scripts

A Portrait of UCI's Photography Club--A Place to learn (and learn to love) one of the trendiest new hobbies

2010-06-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

by Marissa Guyton

Rain water is running down the brick walls and staining the concrete floor below it. It’s dripping from the gray stair railings and the waist-high metal gate that’s blocking the path of three members and of the Photography Club at UCI. “It’s locked…” one of them sighs disappointedly. They are still panting after walking up five flights of the outside staircase of the Engineering Hall only to find another roadblock in their search for a good rooftop to take pictures from. Defeated, they start mentioning other buildings throughout the UCI campus they think they could go to.

“Why don’t we just jump it,” one of them finally suggests. After all, the gate is only waist-high. The others look around hesitantly; stand there silently. But what about the other buildings? Or could they go around some other way?

Out of nowhere, Sir Abille , a fourth year who joined the club last fall, leans up toward the gate, pushes up with his hands and jumps his legs over. In a second he is over to the other side, looking as if nothing has happened. He has set the standard. East coast transplant and physics grad student Brian Smith takes on the gate second, hoisting, sitting, then swinging his legs over the top of it. That just leaves Adib Towfiq, president of the club, who hands off some of his stuff before following them up the last flight of stairs. Restricted roof access, here they come.

On top of the roof it’s a different world. The floor of the roof and walls around it are made of an unexpectedly bright white plastic which, when compared to the neutral brick-red, cream, and gray color of most other buildings at UCI, makes the rooftop look like a sterile, alien landscape. But the view is phenomenal and worth every effort of the three members of the photography club who chose to come out on this dreary, rainy day. It is UCI as you have never seen it; a Google earth view of the campus and its surroundings up close and personal, right before your very eyes. You could see the orange-red tops of the surrounding buildings, as well as the gorgeous rooftop terrace of Donald Bren Hall, complete with wooden chairs and tables. You could see the tops of the sky-high Eucalyptus trees surrounding Aldrich Park and the golden hills in the distance, decorated with lines of housing communities streaming down the hillsides like ribbons on a Christmas tree. Without uttering a world about the great find, or taking some time to soak in the views, all of the club members cluster instinctively in one corner of the building and quietly snap shot after shot, fitting for a group whose stated purpose on the UCI website “is to take photos, nothing more nothing less.”

This is a fairly typical meeting for the Photography Club, albeit with less people. On average, about 10 to 15 people show up per meeting—a group running the gamut of Computer Science and Engineering majors to Studio Art majors, novices to hobbyists with years of experience. On a good day, there can be as many as 40 or 50 people. Although they try to meet every week on a Tuesday or Wednesday, there is no actual set meeting time. It is more relaxed than your average club on campus, and if it weren’t for the word “club” in its title, one would probably use the term ‘spontaneous gathering’ to describe them better. When an idea comes or the mood strikes, Adib will send out a Facebook message, usually a day or two in advance, announcing where and when the meeting that he has just pulled together will be. If there is any theme, such as the rooftop picture-taking theme of this latest photo walk, it will more often than not have come up once the meeting was already in session. Meetings take on the direction of whatever people feel like doing at the moment, and that’s part of the fun.

That being said, enough planning goes into the club to offer members a variety of different kinds of events. Along with photo walks, the club has put on Photoshop tutorials and critique sessions, has invited guest lecturers, and has also hired models for portrait shoots. These are the average event types that you’ll find at the photography club. Together they offer advice on the whole photography process: from shot to editing to taking your photography to the next level.

Back at the photo walk on campus, the club members are mulling around the Humanities Gateway building. To many students this may be a familiar and looked over structure, but the photographers out today see something different in it. The unique angles offer great potential. A snap of the façade of the building and out comes an intriguing abstract picture with curving lines and indiscernible shapes.

At the other side of the building, the club members encounter more photo opportunities. “This hallway is great for portraits” Adib muses enthusiastically in a columned walkway at the back of the Humanities Gateway building. “Here, I’ll show you.” He grabs Sir and pulls him in front of the camera, with one side of his face towards the open side of the walkway. “You see how the light is coming in like this from the side?” He pulls his camera up with a focused look as Sir pulls a big, cheesy smile. Click. “It makes everything look really smooth,” he says. In the picture that pops up on Adib’s display screen, Sir’s skin looks extremely smooth and even; there is even a soft glow about him. It’s as if Adib had somehow managed to find an automatic airbrushing button on his camera. It’s in moments like these that members can learn in a matter of a minute, tricks that would otherwise take hours of pouring over photography books.

Those who are experienced enough to share their tips with other club members are often self-taught. Many of the club photographers have picked up a lot of what they know from the Internet. On websites like Flickr, there are thousands of forums, ranging from topics like black & white photography to depth of field shots. Looking through these, it’s easy to pick up on hints and gather bits and pieces of information.

But generally, it comes down to a matter of practice. Adib, who has been taking photos for 6 years, learned much of what he knows from friends and the Internet, but most from just putting in the hours. He tried reading a book here and there until he decided that they were “completely useless” when it came to learning the ropes. The real teacher has always been experience.

For this reason, members of the photography club make a point of sharing their experiences—of passing down information to each new generation of novices. When Sir Abille first joined the club, he had just bought a new camera and was pretty new to taking photos. Remembering his first club meeting, he said, “The awesome thing was that there were multiple people who shared tips and tricks…it wasn't just one person running the show.”

Teaching is a main feature at every meeting. At the Photoshop tutorial sessions, the club will reserve a room with a projector and connect to Photoshop. Members come in with whatever questions they have, and whoever can chip in an answer will answer. At the photo critique sessions, members can get advice on how to improve a particular photo. Club president Adib will usually ask anyone who wants to participate to send their photos in to him before hand, so that when the group meets up, everyone’s work is anonymous. They will go through each photo one at a time and discuss what they think could take it to the next level. Professors in the Art Department at UCI have been known to make an occasional appearance at these sessions. Rudy Vega, who teaches Digital Photography during the summer sessions and runs the photo lab on campus the rest of the year, has come a couple of times to offer his advice and give amateur photographers the rare opportunity to “get someone to critique their photos actually” as Adib says. There were also two guest speakers in the last school year, who came to talk about photography on the professional level. Erich Chen, a 25-year-old wedding photographer who has also shot for, among other things, AVEDA and URB Magazine, came to give a talk last February. And in December of 2009, Nick Merrick, a senior photographer and President of the Hedrich Blessing firm, gave a presentation on architecture photography.

At the model shoots, Adib and the other more savvy people in the club will set up the lighting in advance so that members can take advantage of their know-how first hand. By the time they are done putting everything together, the set will be completely camera-ready. Even if a photographer has almost no experience, “it’s kind of hard to take a really bad picture,” Adib says. “When they get the results they’re like…whoa this is like a professional portrait I just took! That’s awesome!” He helps out even further by covering a good amount of the finances to pay for the rented lights and professional models, who often cost $100 per hour.

Even the photo walks themselves, which are the most common event, are educational. “Usually I give some sort of assistance,” Adib says. “You know, like you wanna have your setting around here, you wanna shoot this or keep this in mind. It’s kind of like a tutorial session.” Others help out too. During a recent photo walk at Crystal Cove State Park, Sir Abille spontaneously took the lead and taught some novice photographers “some techniques, like how to shoot a panorama, how to get the right exposure…” Brian Smith also helped some amateur photographers out with “a bit of a casual crash course in manual camera operation,” where he taught “things like how aperture works and what kind of shutter speeds they might want use.”

Though there can be a lot of technical talk—conversations start with lines like, “That’s some good macro focus you’ve got on your camera” and are sprinkled with debates over the merits of Canon versus Nikon cameras and the highest temperature a digital camera can stand (104 degrees)—but the club is open to people of all levels of photography. There are some who come with “point-and shoots", your basic, compact camera that is usually is geared toward auto-focus use, and while they may feel a little out of place, and out of the loop during some conversations, the other club members will be more than willing to get them up to speed.

With such ready help available, it’s easy to develop your photography skills pretty quickly. Some of the more confident club members have gone on to do freelancing work, doing things like taking personal portraits, business portraits, and nightlife photos at local clubs. Even “small time” gigs, such as taking pictures at UCI fraternity and sorority events, can get you 100 to 150 dollars a night. Other club members have gotten internships with professional photographers as well.

In terms of showing their work, the club has never put on any exhibitions. But as they continue to work with Rudy Vega, they may end up showing some prints on campus in the future. For now, the group’s Facebook page acts as their own personal gallery. Anyone who is a member is free to post pictures the wall, whether the photos were taken during a club meeting or not. Other members post approving comments and give advice, making their Facebook page something like a virtual exhibit.

Back on campus, the drizzling rain is starting to pick up into a mild pour as the photography troupe heads down ring road. No one has brought an umbrella. But both Brian and Sir have carefully tied plastic grocery bags or Ziploc bags around their lenses in an effort to keep the water out. The water dripping down their faces and soaking their clothes does not seem to bother them; their eyes are too busy looking for that perfect shot.

Sir Abille is especially involved in these photo walks. He constantly trails off from the rest of the group, to be found 50 feet away, crouching over with his camera thrust inches away from the face of some beautiful flower. He’s in a world of his own. “You worry about nothing else,” he says, explaining why he loves these events. “You just take pictures.”

As fanatical and nerdy as the meetings can get, the Photography club members know how to have fun too. Sometimes meetings cross the border into just plain hangouts. Model shoots turn into parties, photo walks turn into dinner gatherings. For the latest event, Adib said he would be, “buying some good Mexican food catering so we can make this whole meeting into the best meeting EVER!!!” They know how to balance out the intensity of their borderline addiction to photography with a fun-loving, welcoming, laid back attitude. “People are friendly,” Brian says, “they’re enthusiastic about photography without being elitist.”

Reporting Notes:

One hour long interview and one 30 minute interview with Adib Towfiq

A lengthy interview with Sir Abille

A lengthy interview with Brian Smith

Two and half hours of observation

Documentation-

The Photography Club at UCI website

The UCI web page on campus organizations

Facebook messages from the Photography Club

Photographs from Adib, Brian, and Sir

Dodgeball is Not for Girls: Sorority Dodgeball

2010-06-08T21:28:00.000-07:00

Dodge

The volleyball courts of UC Irvine’s Anteater Recreational Center are unusually crowded for this late Tuesday evening. Buzzing college students gather in clumps, filling the spaces around the court sidelines. Every student in this noisy crowd seems to be wearing some combination of embroidered Greek letters. The echo of chatter and excitement reverberates through the gym as sorority girls warm up and the crowd of frat boys and supportive sisters impatiently wait for the sound of the first whistle.

Tonight, May 10^th, is the Annual Panhellenic UCI Sorority Dodgeball Tournament, usually bringing out at least 9 of the 10 sororities to play, drawing out 54 players in all.

The ARC’s three volleyball courts, set up next to each other in rows, have been turned into makeshift dodgeball grounds for the night. A set of five red rubber balls are set across the court’s center line, dividing two teams of ten girls down each court. The gym is scattered with a colorful collection of matching v-necks, jerseys, and spandex, all with sorority Greek letters printed across it (some team uniforms even sporting aggressive phrases like, “DG Domination,” or “Delta TRI till I DIE”).

While teams of girls stretch out their legs, other teams run through drills, bouncing balls back and forth to each other. Some teams gather around a fraternity member, strategizing before the game; and others teams simply group together laughing and cheering, and having a great time.

After the first whistle blows, six teams begin lining up at either ends of the dodgeball courts, while the other three wait on the sidelines for their round to play. The crowd lowers to a hush and each player’s stance becomes increasingly serious.

A blonde pony tail whips along as a player shifts her weight from right to left- knees down, palms open, and heart pumping. To her, the only sounds in the gym now is the heavy breathing of her barely whispered contemplation,

“Dodge…duck… dip…dive… dodge.”

Duck

Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge- these words come together to form dodge ball’s most valued set of advice.

Because of its lack of a true written historical account, the origins of dodgeball are somewhat uncertain, giving internet-users the freedom to make up their own humorous accounts. The University of Victoria’s Engineering Journal, Tubes and Wires, ties multiple made-up stories together into one humorous article, linking dodgeball from cavemen throwing rocks all the way to opium-addicted Chinamen throwing severed heads.

The rules of dodgeball are fundamentally simple, hit the other team with the ball and in turn, don’t get hit. Infamously associated with the awkward phase of middle school gym class, the game of dodge ball has become one of America’s either most loved or hated childhood pastimes.

UC Irvine’s Panhellenic community lists dodge ball as an optional sport on their spring quarter roster. Every year, UCI’s sororities face off for one night of one round elimination dodge ball. The rules of the Panhellenic tournament are similar to the original. Two teams of six players, split up on two sides of a court. The winning team will have eliminated as many players as possible from the opposite side by knocking players out with a rubber ball. The ball must be thrown over the court’s center line, which no one is allowed to cross. If a team member is hit by a ball or if someone throws a ball and an opposing player catches it, the thrower is automatically out.

In tonight’s tournament, nine sororities come out to play and support their teams: Alpha Chi Omega, Alpha Phi, Tri Delta, Delta Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Pi Beta Phi, and Sigma Kappa. Each sorority forms a team of ten members, with the option of appointing a fraternity member to act as their “coach."

Compared to the intensity of Panhellenic’s soccer or basketball season (where sororities hold weekly or biweekly practices for the five week span of multiple scheduled games), the optional dodgeball tournament adds a more upbeat and just-for-fun flavor to the sorority sports roster. But the one-night-only tournament does not take away any ounce of a sorority girl’s intense competitiveness; striving to win to prove themselves as Top House.

Colleen Lopez, a member of Tri Delta’s dodgeball team, shares in this intensity,

“Fun is always important, but who are we kidding? We want to win!!!”

(Colleen and her teammates)

Dip

At 9:30, the second whistle blows and a cloud of rubber screeches and cheering students echoes through the ARC. Girls make a dash towards the center line, trying to be the first to grab a ball, and the game begins.

Colors of pink and white jerseys blur around the court as sorority girls shuffle and swoop, just inches away from fast moving balls. High pitched grunts are heard as girls hurl rubber balls over their heads aiming for their opponents. Some girls jump, as balls shoot for the floor, while others dive left or right as balls are hurled straight towards them.

Colleen jumps high and keeps her eyes open for catchable balls. As one ball is chucked straight to her stomach, she clutches it, and then moves quickly to scan the court for moving targets.

Colleen attributes her swiftness to her participation during Panhellenic’s soccer season, but admits that without the drills she’s learned during practice, she wouldn’t be able to think as fast.

Over their years of participation in the dodgeball tournament, Colleen’s sorority has made up a few drills to bring to practice. They run drills such as the ‘Mad Dash,’ where they reenact the beginning part of the game when players sprint to center court to try and retrieve a ball, or ‘Rallies’, a mini-game the girls play where two girls stand on the inside of a circle, and the remaining players stand outside to try and hit them with the ball (once a girl is hit, she trades spots with the person who hit her).

For some dodgeball inspiration, Colleen and the other girls on her team head back to their sorority house after practice to watch “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story”. The movie features Vince Vaughn opposite Ben Stiller mocking the world of professional dodge ball. Ben Stiller plays Globo-Gym owner White Goodman and captain of his uber-professional dodgeball team, the Purple Cobras; complete with their own outrageous display of uniforms- full bodied, leather S&M style, purple and black spandex suits.

(Photo credits: http://www.screenrush.co.uk)

The movie offers the girls some unrealistic advice to channel their own inner champion-dodgeball player: practice by playing the game with wrenches (“If you can dodge a wrench, then you can dodge a ball”), or by thrusting yourself onto the freeway, (“If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball.”). As the girls watch two hours of satirical determination, over the top moves, and a mullet-clad Ben Stiller, they are unaware of the real world of professional dodgeball that the movie mocks.

Dive

According to USA Today, the revival of dodgeball began building momentum in Schaumburg, Illinois. In 1999, Bill DePue and the Schaumburg parks and recreational department began looking for a game to draw in family and residents to an outdoor city fair. Not too long after, the chosen game of dodgeball bore the start of the National Amateur Dodgeball Asociation- DePue as Vice President.

Today, there are a multitude of dodgeball leagues worldwide. Since 1999, more organizations have been started, such as The National Dodgeball Association, The International Dodgeball Federation, and The National Dodgeball League; allowing people of all ages to form teams and compete in this familiar, hit-or-be-hit game.

The National Dodgeball League has twelve official teams, holding aggressive names such as Los Angeles Chaos and the Houston Bounty Hunters. The basic rules of gym class dodge ball are complicated and broken down in the National Dodgeball League’s Official Rule Book.

The competitiveness of the NDL is as serious as their courtside regulations. Official rules calling for a 30’ x 30’ court is as far-from-familiar as professional P.E regulations go. They require a 4’ x 30’ neutral zone set in the center of the court where players are allowed to cross over and pick up stray balls. A 10’ attack line is also a requirement, set up parallel to the center line marking the end of the team’s territory. Neutral zones are also marked: the area of the court which is neither team’s territory but where players are allowed to cross into, throwing the ball at their opponents.

(A player in the neutral zone. Photo credit: TheNDL.com)

The professional feel of the courtside measurements are reiterated through the seriousness of the NDL’s uniform regulations. The rule book offers suggestions and a PDF file of uniform guidelines that each team is required to adhere to.

The NDL even boasts official names for all kinds of moves, tactics, and plays- all listed in their official rule book. “The Rush” takes place in the beginning of the game when the blow of a whistle signals players to rush to center court and try to retrieve as many balls as possible. They list terms such as “Head shot,” which prohibits players from throwing a ball at any players head (deeming the throwing player automatically out) and the complicated “Airborne Attack,” (the only time a player is permitted to touch the opposite side of the court) which allows airborne players to throw the ball while diving over the neutral zone and legally crossing the attack line, requiring that the ball “must leave the attacker’s hand before any part of the attacker’s body touches the opponent’s territory.”

(Photo credits: TheNDL.com)

The NDL’s sports an all-balls-out attitude, pushing an aggressive and full force demeanor that even restricts player substitutions at any point during a game. Calling for dedicated and determined players to this rubber ball war zone, the NDL seems to contain nothing but heavy enduring individuals. But for good reason, the official rule book does not show sympathy for tired players. Under the ruling for “Time Outs”, states one sentence: There are no team time outs.

Dodge

Back at the ARC, the same kill-or-be-killed attitude can be felt throughout the courts. One by one, girls are struck by the thud of a rubber ball. As eliminations grow bigger, teams become smaller and smaller, until a blast of cheers erupts from one side of the court and just a few minutes later the next round of games can begin.

On the sidelines, sorority members hold glittery posters in support of their own team. Colorful signs with, “Dodge that ball!” or “Let’s get ‘em girls!” are bent and creased as girls jump and scream with the energy of the game.

Frat boys cheer too, as a rowdy group of them jump around, rooting for the girls. Some boys admit that they don’t come to support a specific team. One fraternity member, who also acts as one of the sorority’s coach, says, “It’s girls getting hit, so it’s got to be funny. But seriously, all the girls that come out are good sports.”

After four rounds and ten games of rubber-bounce revenge, two sororities, Kappa Alpha Theta and Gamma Phi Beta, are left to duke it out in the center court. The whistle blows and the game begins, without missing any beat of intensity. Balls are thrown faster, jumps are pushed higher, and diving bodies hit the floor even harder. The court’s population lessens one, sometimes two, girls at a time. Pony tails swing while girls dive and duck, catch and throw, *thump* and “YOU’RE OUT!”

The players shuffle around while the crowd’s yells grow louder and eliminations drop girls one by one. Finally, the blow of the last whistle signals the end of the final round. Kappa Alpha Theta wins first place, while Gamma Phi Beta places second and Alpha Chi Omega takes third.

As the ARC empties and the Greek students take their excitement outside, Colleen Lopez reconnects with her sorority and receives the warmth of encouragement. Although her sorority didn’t place Colleen laughs with her teammate, Danielle Page, while they walk back down to their sorority house.

“It’s dodgeball, so it’s competitive,” Danielle snickers, “but it’s with sororities, so it’s also a joke.”

(Sorority members hold signs as they wait outside the ARC for their team)

Reporting Log

-Two hour observation of Panhellenic Dodgeball tournament
-5 minute interviews with members who came to watch
-Two hour observation of sorority dodgeball practice and after events
-Movie: Dodgeball: The True Underdog Story
- http://www.dodgeballusa.com
-http://www.internationaldodgeballfederation.com
-http://www.thendl.com
-The National Dodgeball League’s Official Rule Book
-Interviews with Colleen Lopez of the Tri Delta dodgeball team
-Interview with Kamrin Klauchie, UC Irvine’s Panhellenic Athletic Officer
-http://www.engr.uvic.ca/~tubewire/archive/2007s/2007-03-05.pdf
-http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-06-09-dodgeball-main_x.htm

La Familia de Ballet Folklorico de UCI: The Dancing Family of UCI

2010-06-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

By Chelsea Hegge

The sun shone brightly high above the flagpoles next the administration building at the University of California, Irvine. Down below approximately 50 spectators enjoyed the Cinco de Mayo festivities hosted by the MECHA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztla) group of UCI, which at the moment, consists of a Mariachi band. The group waves in time to the music and enjoys the food provided by Mecha nearby. There is a sense of anticipation in the crowd, the Mariachi band seems to have gone over their own time slot and to be now playing to fill in the time gap until the next round of entertainment has arrived. But the crowd continues to wait patiently. Many have come just to see the next performers, something that is revealed by their restless behavior of constantly adjusting themselves and checking their watches. Then all of the sudden a wave of red can be seen marching as a unit down ring road from past Social Sciences buildings towards the cultural celebration. As the group approaches, it is clear they would stand out on campus any other day than today. Their outfits are classic ballet folklorico costumes, representations of the cultural inheritance of Mexico.

Once in view, the dancers now quickly approach the performance area by the flagpoles. Now close up the details of their costumes can be seen. What seemed earlier to be a mass of red is revealed actually to be an array of various shades of red and pink with hints of blue, yellow and green throughout the mass of ruffles on both the men and the women who are both covered head to toe with pants or skirts and long sleeves. Many of the girls wear false hair to fill out their thick buns and layers of colorful heavy eye makeup accompanied by bright red lipstick. The men wear tight black jeans, white collared shirts, cowboy boots and sombreros to complete the look. Their appearance is more suited to a heavily lighted theater stage than a bright afternoon on campus. The brightly outfitted men and women arrange themselves to prepare to quickly start their first routine while their choreographer sets up the music from her ipod with the speakers. The other dancers wait anxiously to begin by reviewing steps, laughing, joking and the girls occasionally swishing their skirts playfully. The music seems to be sorted out quickly and one of the girls steps forward to announce not only the beginning of this performance but their upcoming performance later this month as well. Todays performance will include dances from the styles of Nayarit Costa, Guerrero, and Jalisco. They all then take their places to begin their performance as the first notes of the music waft over the audience.

Ballet folklorico (ballet referring the spanish word for dance in general not classical ballet) is a form of dance created by Amalia Hernandez in 1952 when she created her dance company the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico-originally named the Ballet Moderno de Mexico. The style is based on Hernandez’ study of the folk dances from across Mexico and the melding of them into a more theatrical form. Since the creation and immense popularity of Hernandez’s group, ballet folklorico groups have sprung up across Mexico and the US, just like the club here at UCI. The Ballet Folklorico de UCI has routines that focus on dances from various states of Mexico like many other dance groups. According to the former president of three years, Vanessa Corrales, the dance group has the costumes appropriate to dances from approximately 8 regions of Mexico.

The group has amassed their costumes over the 30 years of its existence, which until recently has been relatively unknown to the rest of the campus. Vanessa, a 4th year biomedical engineering major, recalls how the club was when she joined only three years ago, “It wasn't cohesive. They were just dancing and doing the bit they knew… There was one boy. He wasn't a student. There were a couple also that were just dancers we knew and I think there were maybe 6-8 girls… And we would all kind meet at practice and talk about what kind of things needed to get done but it wasn't like centralized or anything.” However, she and the other three remaining members did not want it to stay this way. Left with the club in their hands, Vanessa, the newly appointed president, and the other members set out about gaining more publicity on campus and involvement with ASUCI. Vanessa said of her goals for the group, “I just wanted to get in and up and running, get as many dancers as possible. I think that was pretty much it. I think performing is the biggest part of our group. I also wanted to start creating a little family of us. To start hanging out more and really be there for each other.” Now the group has grown to have 15 people, 10 girls and 5 boys. They range from first to fourth years and majors as diverse as Chicano/Latino Studies, Biomedical engineerings and studio art. Despite this diversity, they seem to have succeeded in creating this camaraderie. Whether it’s in practice or performance, the members have a comfortable relationship with each other full of support as they try to improve and learn new moves or joking around on breaks. There is a constant witty banter among the most regular members, which elicits laughter even from the shyer members. The choreographer, Daniela Castro, a fourth year Spanish major, agrees that the group has become closer as well. “Now we are all contributing to the strength of the group, its not just two people who are trying to make things work it’s the actual group itself that’s trying to make it work.”

They certainly make the performance work today. As the music plays the dancers move around the makeshift dance floor of the cement ground around the flagpoles. To the unexperienced eye, the moves appear deceptively easy, mere stepping around and swishing. It lacks the apparent difficulty of more acrobatic dances such as swing or break dancing. But the dancing, for the most part hidden under the depths of the female performers skirts, (the male performers have no such luck) is comprised of complicated foot movements and patterns that guide the dancers through the routine. While the women may be able to occasionally hide a misstep under their skirts, they have the additional difficulty of constantly moving their skirts around and having to pay constant attention to the movements of both their arms and legs and making sure they are on time. The skirt, while a blessing in hiding wrong footsteps, is almost a literal red flag indicating mistaken arm movement. The movements are also much more difficult on the body The crowd cheers joyfully as the group moves between the different routines in a smooth transition as if they were all a part of one large piece.

Soon the final piece draws to a close and the dancer take a bow. But they are not done. Many of the spectators were there just to watch them and now want to congratulate the performers on the success of their show. Their fans young and old flock around them giving out hugs and kissesand snapping pictures from this way and that. But soon they must say good-bye, in about 20 minutes they have another performance back in Middle Earth dorms. So with quick good byes the dancers begin the march back up the hill to the next show. The fatigue begins to show. It was almost a non-stop 15-20 minutes performance and they had to rush there to make just as they had to rush away. But they do not let their exhaustion get in the way of their fun. Their biggest concern about the next performance is whether or not they get a free lunch after (it takes place during Middle Earth’s Pippin Cafeteria’s Cinco de Mayo lunch celebration). They soon arrive at the back lunch room that has been reserved for them to use as a dressing room of sorts. It is slightly chaotic with ruffled skirts, tops and under clothing scattered around and falling out of their bins and spotted here and there with shoes and hats.

The group hasn’t had much time to prepare for this performance. May is their busiest month performance wise with Cinco de Mayo (May 5th), a popular holiday in the US that celebrates a victory of the Mexican army over the French in 1862 which is often confused with the Mexican Independence Day which is September 16. The dancers also have their own end of the year performance later in the month which will take place on May 29. Daniela describes some of the challenges for her working with an amateur group and getting them ready to perform, “It gets stressful and my work depends on everyone else’s. So it’s the effort they put that I have to base my work or like the people, if its new dancers and then we have all those dancers that have danced before I have to find a balance. And then since everyone’s a student they have other priorities so we are kinda like the hobby part so I always have to be fixing everything to them.” This isn’t just hard on her as a choreographer but as a person as well because ballet folklorico plays a very important role in her life. “What you see is the performance, that the part of ballet folklorico everyone’s sees so you see me and my work so I take it seriously. It is personal, sometimes I try to not put my whole heart into it because not everyone can commit to it 100% because of school and other priorities.”

With practiced skill the dancers swiftly change from their previous costumes to the next and are ready with even a few minutes to spare. The lineup will be mostly the same with a few exceptions. This round Daniela will be sitting out. Instead she again coordinates the music and watches everyone else perform with an intent eye, carefully cataloguing everything she sees to make notes for later. This performance stands out drastically from the one only shortly before at the flagpoles. There the dancers had everyone’s attention. Here, because of the additional chaos of people receiving and eating their lunches, people’s attention is divided at best. The ballet folklorico dancers in their costumes stand out in the sea of people of international ethnicities as decidedly Mexican. Just being Hispanic is enough to make someone stand out at UCI as only approximately 13% of undergraduates as of 2009 are Hispanic according to UCI Office of Institutional Research. This number is even lower in the surrounding community of the city of Irvine where only 7.4% of the population is Hispanic. This number compares with a whopping 32.4% of the California population that is identified as Hispanic shows the drastic difference from the rest of the state. The difference becomes even more dramatic when only across town in Santa Ana the number spikes to 76.1% of the population. So at this campus the students in this group do stand out. Not having to stand out from the crowd inside the dance group is one of the things Vanessa loves about the group. “I wanted it to be a safe haven for Latinos. I mean no one really understands unless you are a minority on campus exactly how hard it is to deal with cultural issues, especially when you are dealing with people who are completely different culturally. There's things being in this type of group where you don't have to explain the little things so its nice.” Chantal Rivas, a first year undecided major, also feels that the group has helped give her support at UCI. “Ballet Folklorico helped me incorporate into the UCI campus a little bit better. I came to find a bond with the students involved in the organization. Because most of them know how to speak Spanish, I became more at ease there were more students like me (who had some relevance to Mexico). I like dancing folklorico because I feel like there are many misconceptions about the Mexican Culture, and through dance and music, the culture seems a lot brighter.” Though their culture is a common bond among most of the members, there is one non-Hispanic member, they are all really there because of the dancing. At the end of the day, it is as Vanessa said a performance group. Daniela notes, “For me it is more meaningful in the artistic sense. In the cultural sense, I feel more comfortable in this group than others because we don't deal with politics, or ambiguous issues.”

The performers keep their heads up high. This performance continues fairly smoothly, only a few mishaps (The elastic on Vanessa’s top breaks so it falls down while she is dancing revealing her unclothes for a majority of the routine). Eventually it draws to a close. The dancers take their bows, thank the crowd, then march back to their dressing room once again. Finally, done for the afternoon but not for the day as there is yet another performance that evening, the dancers change back into their considerably lighter street clothes and commence with packing up their belongings. They do, indeed, get a free lunch and slip into the line with the other students to grab their food. After searching out their favorite treats, everyone gathers at one of the many plastic tables dotting the lawn outside of Pippin, Daniela, Vanessa and Chantal scattered among the group. The stress of the performance is gone, everyone seems to have a slight weight of relief off of them now. They are visibly more relaxed with the stress of the three performances removed and hours until the next. As the sun continues to beam down high overhead the dancers don’t look as if they are alone. They have each other.

Reporting Log:
4 hours of observation of practice
3 hours of observation of Cinco de Mayo performances
1 hour interview with Vanessa
30 minutes interview with Daniela in person and email
email correspondance with Chantal
research from Census Bureau
research from Office of Institutional Research of UCI

Project MotiVATe – Promoting Cultural, Social, and Academic Awareness

2010-06-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

By Lee Duong

It is 8:25 p.m. on Wednesday at the Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance second floor suite located on Garden Grove Blvd. Tonight is a workshop night in the light green and beige room where Project Motivate meets every week. The room is divided into two groups of fifteen of mentors, mentees, and volunteers.

The two groups anxiously listen and all eyes are on the guest speaker as he is to read a statement that the assigned groups are to either support or oppose. He states, “It is okay to legalize marijuana. Okay, you have a minute and a half to talk about it with your group.”

The groups hurriedly talk amongst one another trying to list reasons for their stand on the topic. All eyes are on the speaker from each group who bravely comes forward to voice his or her opinion to the rest.

“30 seconds!”

The room suddenly gets louder, as time is running out for the team members to come up with an answer that everyone agrees on.

“Time’s up! Who is the representative for the ‘for’ side?”

Everyone encourages Thomas who is donning a black messenger bag for he is the one who had the main ideas during the brainstorming. Thomas steps forward and explains, “It is already used for medicine. So, it can help with back problems and insomnia. It can also help with cancer patients. It is also a good stress reliever. If you legalize it, you can put a tax on it, so you make more money… with the already economic problems, you can help that go down.”

An applause fills the room, especially from Thomas’ team.

Now for the opposing side. Teresa, with a purple Volcom tee-shirt, confidently steps forward to face the side she is debating against. Without a doubt in her voice, she states, “It is already legal for those who need it, like cancer patients. But if we legalize it for everyone, it is going to get abused. It will lead to more death rates. They are going to take it all away so that people who have cancer and who really need it, they are going to suffer because of what YOU all choose.”

A wave of “Ohhhhhs” fill the room as the participants in the debate all clap for one another.

A mentee, Tim, from the side debating against the legalization of marijuana proudly exclaims, “Justin Beiber ain’t got nothing on us.”

The high school mentees in Project Motivate used this exercise as a means to promote debating skills along with becoming educated on the topic of substance abuse.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Project Motivate first started as Camp for Youth in 1996, a program that focused on kids who were involved in gangs and other at risk youth and served to take them to camp. In 2000, Project Motivate was created to help kids year-round. Project Motivate is a mentoring program based in Garden Grove, California designed to help Vietnamese-American youth. About 40 percent of all Vietnamese-Americans reside in California. According to the Orange County Health Needs Assessment Special Report 2010, there were an estimated 158,476 Vietnamese living in Orange County in 2008. The most highly populated Vietnamese areas are in the cities of Garden Grove and Westminster, which boasts its own “Little Saigon.” Although there are a large number of Vietnamese-Americans in Orange County, there are no other free mentoring services to help these youth exposed to the troubles of the community.

There are currently 15 mentees, 9 mentors, 20 volunteers, two coordinators and two program directors in Project Motivate. The mentees range in age from 13 to 18 years old and attend high schools such as Garden Grove, La Quinta, Santiago, Westminster, Fountain Valley, and Bolsa Grande. The mentees are referred to the program through different outlets. Project Motivate has appeared in local newspapers and television shows which parents are usually tuned into. Some students are also referred to the program by the Garden Grove Unified School District counselors. Marina High School senior Thu Nghiem states, “My mom heard about the program on the radio. She asked me, ‘Do you want to go?’ and I said ‘Sure.’ I was open to something new.”

Hubert Nguyen, volunteer and coordinator, explains that the goal of PM is “to mentor these kids in a holistic approach. That means, we develop them academically, culturally, familially, and socially. With this holistic approach, we can make them into better kids.”

Academically, Project Motivate seeks to help the mentees by holding study halls for about an hour and a half where they can gain help from the mentors or volunteers. Thu remembers, “I used to not be into school. I thought I was too cool. I started realizing that trying hard isn’t bad. Study hall gave me time to focus on homework, where at home, I usually can’t focus.”

With academics, comes the “model minority” idea that many people have towards Asian-Americans. Thu tells me how she believes Vietnamese-Americans are perceived, “We are smart and hard-working.” However, some people are not aware of the community problems that may affect the youth. Vietnamese gangs have been growing in Southern California since the 1970’s, around the time that immigrants first starting coming from Vietnam following the fall of Saigon. A study explained in a Los Angeles Times article states that Vietnamese–American youth may join a gang simply because they are surrounded by them and their friends are in them. This is where Project Motivate comes in. Internal program director Scott Iseri says, “A lot of the times, people turn to gangs or those kind of friends because they don’t have that support. Having an older mentor, where most have gone to college, at least have that influence on them, can show them better alternatives to the decisions they may be making.”

Along with academics, Project Motivate stresses the importance of culture, which is intertwined with family. Thu explains the struggle between the parents and their children, “The kids are losing touch with their parents which makes them lose touch with their culture. The generation of parents that came over from Vietnam have a language barrier with their kids. They believe that the values in Vietnam still apply to here and the kids don’t really understand.” The 2000 Census reports that 45 percent of Vietnamese households in the United States were “linguistically isolated” and no adult spoke English very well. Because generational differences, such as the ones that Thu explained, may occur, a mentor’s role is to help avoid that language barrier. One of them is to keep in communication with the parents to inform them of what is going on in the mentee’s life that he/she may not feel comfortable telling their parents about. I overheard a conversation in the hallway when the mother of a mentee meets up with a mentor to discuss the current events of her daughter. The mother tells the mentor in Vietnamese, “Thank you, miss. You can call at anytime.” In this case, the mentor serves as the mediator between the mentee and their parent.

Another responsibility that mentors have along with maintaining the relationship with the parent may be trying to make the connection with the mentee, or “finding a point where they could go in and actually talk to the mentee, instead of just small talk, being relatable to the mentee,” as Hubert explains. Mentor Jenny Long who has two mentees admits, “It certainly was not easy at first because I had to build the trust with them, but after I was able to do that, I see them as a little brother and sister… the biggest challenge is being patient and persistent when it comes to seeing progress in our mentees. We have to remind ourselves of our little accomplishments every week because we can easily forget what a difference we are truly making.” But that change is rewarding. Hubert explains, “The hugest indicator of having a positive influence is their attitudes at study hall and monthly events. Over time, many of these mentees have become comfortable to the point where they are outspoken after being reserved for so long. As a result of being comfortable with the staff, the mentees are more open and willing to receive help whether it be mentoring or tutoring.”

In building communication with the parent and the mentee, Project Motivate also seeks to close the culture gap and language barrier by educating the mentees about their heritage. 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of a date that all Vietnamese-Americans will never forget. April 30, 1975 is the day when the South Vietnamese were defeated by the North Vietnamese communists. The month of April, known as Black April, is to commemorate the fall of Saigon. For the occasion, Julie Vo, external program director, showcased a poster describing the four ‘waves’ in which immigrants came from Vietnam, explained the difference between a refugee and an immigrant, and posed the question to the group of what their families had to leave behind to come to America. Some answers in the audience included: photos, family, education, friends, businesses, and comfort zone. Those in the room shared their stories whether it was their family or them directly who arrived here. The mentees were asked to bring in a picture of their family when they first came to the United States.

A mentee, Annie, shared her story. With a photograph in hand of her family in their house just before they left for the United States, she remembers her life back in Vietnam. Her parents were doing well for themselves by owning businesses. They were offered the opportunity to come to the United States. Her dad was hesitant in leaving what they had accomplished in Vietnam, but Annie explains, “He wanted us to come over here for our future.” Annie’s family came in the fourth wave, which is from 1990 to present day. For these Vietnamese-American immigrants, many left behind familiarity for bigger opportunities in the United States.

Because some of the mentees have immigrated from Vietnam in the recent years, Project Motivate hopes to help them adapt socially to their peers and surroundings. In the social realm, Hubert states that they try to make the kids “more proactive and outgoing.” For the 2008 elections, the mentees went to the Little Saigon community to ask questions to the residents such as “What issues are you worried about? Why do you want to vote?” For those kids who are more shy than others, this was an opportunity to come out of their shells to promote an important issue and also learn a bit of the culture because of the commonalities that they may share with those they interviewed.

The substance abuse awareness workshop was used as a social and educational tool for the mentees. The workshop is one of many that Project Motivate holds to educate the mentees on issues that may affect them. In maintaining the holistic approach, the workshops can range from ones dealing with financial aid, self-esteem and self-awareness, stress management, peer pressure, and cultural ones, such as the Black April workshop mentioned.

In hand with these community building events and workshops, Project Motivate holds monthly activities to give the program participants an opportunity to come together to get to know one another outside of their Garden Grove location. Past events have included karaoke night, barbeques, taking public transportation to the Dodger game, volunteering at a food bank, a scavenger hunt at the Getty Museum, and most currently, the Orange County AIDS Walk 2010. Some events may be strictly for fun, but in the case of the walk, can also serve a purpose to help towards good causes and educate the Asian-American community about such as HIV/AIDS awareness, which is a taboo topic among the community.

The weekly meetings and outside events bring the members of the group close to one another. Project Motivate is a second family to many. Scott says “It’s pretty small, so it’s intimate. Everyone is pretty close… It’s more like a group mentorship. Everybody helps everybody else out. Everybody kind of mentors everybody… Everybody is pretty young, and like-minded people that want to help out in the community. With that said, the number of volunteers is growing with those who want to help the program. Sarah Han, a dedicated volunteer who drives to Orange County just for Project Motivate states, “Once you start to know the people, that’s what makes you keep coming back.”

Project Motivate has won the 2009 Golden Wave Award sponsored by a Vietnamese newspaper, the Viet Tide, for their contributions to the community. Members from the community called and voted for a community organization that they thought has done a good job.

What holds for the future of Project Motivate? Scott hopes, “We want it to be bigger, to have a bigger name in the community. If it helps more people, it would be awesome.” Jenny is confident, “As long as we have a strong supporting staff, this program can handle any curve ball.”

Project Motivate at the Orange County AIDS Walk 2010

[Photo courtesy of Project Motivate’s Facebook fan page]

Reporting Notes:

30 minute interview with Hubert Nguyen, volunteer and coordinator
30 minute interview with Scott Iseri, internal program director
30 minute interview with Thu Nghiem, mentee
15 minute interview with Sarah Han, volunteer
E-mail interview with Jenny Long, mentor
Six 3 hour observations during Wednesday meetings
Participation in Orange County AIDS Walk 2010

Documentation:

Vietnamese Americans: Lessons in American History – An Interdisciplinary Curriculum and Resource Guide
Orange County Health Needs Assessment Special Report 2010
Los Angeles Times article – New Study Disputes Reasons Vietnamese Youths Join Gangs
Orange County Register article – These Immigrants Are Grateful
Project Motivate’s YouTube page
Project Motivate’s Facebook fan page
Journey from the Fall film

BBoys Anonymous

2010-06-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

by: Linda Pham

photo credit: Melissa Lee

Ten years ago, second-year Michelle Nguyen sat in her fourth grade classroom, in awe of her friend and her friend’s brother, as they B-boyed on a piece of cardboard for show-and-tell with the stereo blasting nearby. B-boying is similar to break dancing, an acrobatic dance. (However, be careful not to call a true B-boy a break-dancer because they will take offense!) Michelle watched in amazement thinking, “I want to be able to do that!” She, herself, didn’t pursue the art of B-boying until her freshmen year at UCI.

B-boying is a misinterpreted dance, more than simply dancers spinning on their heads and rolling around the floor, it is a form of literature and self-expression. These dancers are telling their story on the dance floor in order to show the world who they are. B-boying is a way for dancers to express themselves, and each dancer has their own style. They visually express their story through a variety of unique moves –windmills, footwork, popping and locking, the list goes on. Windmills are when a dancer spins their body while on their hands, mimicking a moving fan. Footwork is the basic foundation every move starts with. Popping is a robotic dance comprised of moves where your muscles are contracting to the beat. Locking is a funk style dance, which is an up dance that was created during the 70’s funk era. B-boying started in the 70’s as a street dance style, while break dancing started as a fad in the ‘80s. Cultural outsiders who wanted to give B-boying a more broad appeal, coined the term break dancing. “A break dancer is a punch line that lingers, while B-boying is a spiritual discipline, as much as a dance, as much as a self-realization as a series of movement” (Schloss). A break-dancer learns their moves in a studio from someone else who taught them step-by step. They do not live the b-boy lifestyle: going to a club, practicing on a sticky-floor everyday, and hurting themselves in order to better themselves.

photo credit: Melissa Lee

Michelle started taking break dancing classes with Victor Kim, who was on the television shows, So You Think You Can Dance? and America’s Best Dance Crew. This was where she learned the basic foundations for B-boying. The foundation is the basic footwork that every dance move is based on. This is not what created her passion for B-boying; it was her first encounter with Bboys Anonymous that instilled in her a love for this dance. Bboys Anonymous (BBA) is a dance club at UCI that is open to everyone who wants to learn the foundations of street dancing.

BBA started off as a group of friends who wanted to practice and dance together. Mark Kamimoto started the club around summer to fall of 1999 and started practicing at Crawford Hall; around this time he began coming in to contact with many breakers through a break dancing class he was teaching. He wanted to start a club so they could have extra time to practice. Now this club has developed into a family with 80 people enrolled, and 30 people coming regularly to their sessions. Michelle explains, “These dancers are my family and together we are BBA. They are my family away from home, and friends to dance together with; I even spent my Thanksgiving break with these people.”

photo credit: Melissa Lee

BBA holds session every Monday and Tuesday at the Anteater Recreational Center in the Activity Annex from 10:30pm – 1:00am. A session is not a regular practice; BBA does not have a routine practice. Each dancer dances by themselves or in groups, and helps each other improve.

Eclectic music is blasting from the stereo. Eclectic music is a mix of songs that draw from a lot of different sources: funk music, instrumental break, popular songs, etc. Dancers with bright fitted colored shirts, matching shoes, and fitted jeans spread out throughout the room, find personal space and practice in front of the mirror. On the opposite end of the room, other dancers form a cypher. A cypher is when dancers form a circle and one dancer jumps in the middle then starts breaking. The others have fun messing around- shaking their booty to the beat of the music, dancing and making funny faces at each other. Sessions are about improving their dance skills, but also about having a great time.

BBA is different from other dance crews on campus, such as the well-known crew KABA modern. Almost everyone on campus knows their name because of their premier on Season One of MTV’s hit show-America’s Best Dance Crew. KABA is part of the Filipino- American club, Kababayan, which was founded in 1992 to participate in their annual Pilipino cultural night. The stark difference between the two is that a dance crew focuses on choreographed dancing and learning big block routines in unison, while BBA focuses on free-styling. A dance crew has people audition so they will devote their time to learning choreography; BBA however welcomes new comers who want to learn the art of B-boying.

photo credit: Melissa Lee

It was fall of her freshman year when Michelle and her friends decided to go to the ARC to run laps. It was in the Physical Forum where they first saw BBA sessioning. The current outgoing and welcoming President Vincent Ngo also known as “Prince Vince,” invited Michelle and her friends in to learn new moves, but she very was timid when she first started coming around, and did not really ask anyone for help since she was one of the few girls in the room. BBA is primarily male dominant, but loves new comers. Last year, a exceptionally tall basketball player, Justin Ho came in to BBA’s session and wanted to learn how to b-boy, but he had no dance experience. Vincent thought, “This was awesome! Even though he had no experience, I could see the determination and the motivation in this kid. To a lot of experienced B-boys, that’s the main thing we look for from people who want to start because you’ll never be the best in the world, but as long as you’re willing to commit the time, you’ll be a good B-boy regardless.” Vincent taught Justin the basics of B-boying and little by little he sessioned with him, so he could ease in to the dance scene. In order to become a B-boy, a dancer cannot learn everything quickly; they must take it step by step. Justin Ho is now one of the club’s best up-and-comers.

Next year’s Vice President, second year, Julius Villanueva describes Vince: “He is a very hardworking guy, ran the club on his own, takes care of public affairs, keeps track of every single member, and is always there to hang out.” Vincent started break-dancing his freshmen year of college. His interest in B-boying was sparked in high school when he started listening to hip-hop. However, he didn’t start B-boying until college because of his parents. He grew up with very traditional Asian parents who wanted him to concentrate on school instead of extra curricular activities, so he did not have time to really practice B-boying until college. Unlike Michelle, he wanted to be on a team that does choreographed dancing, but he took break dancing classes as a back up. Every choreographed dancer needs to be well-rounded dancer, but by his 3rd year here at UCI, he knew that B-boying was more then just a hobby. BBoys anonymous was in a bad position last year and needed to be restructured due to constant arguments and conflicts in personalities. Vincent was upset at a couple of people on the board because they were not doing their job. Vince describes his enragement, “Why was I mad at these people it was just a club after all? After I took over and the current president stepped down, I realized that B-boying was subconsciously in my heart and it was more than just something I do everyday. I put up with the turbulence because I wanted to make the club better.”

photo credit: Melissa Lee

“Real B-boys know the history of hip hop culture and they don’t just learn moves, they have history and symbolism in their dancing” (Schloss). To understand a B-boy a person must understand the history of hip-hop. There are three different concepts of hip-hop. The first concept refers to the related art forms of visual and sound movement, which were practiced in Afro-Carribean, African American, and Latin neighborhoods in New York City in the 1970s. It also, refers to the events, and people who practice them. The second concept is the popular music that was developed out of hip-hop culture, known as rap music. Hip-hop existed as a culture and performance context for five years (1974-1979) before it became a genre for popular music. The last concept is hip-hop attitude and the generation, loose demographics related to African-American youth. There is a lifestyle to B-boying and it shows when people are dancing because each person has their own story. “A break dancer is someone who learns moves so they can go to an audition and get a job based on it.” (Schloss). It is true that B-boys know the culture while learning and practicing because they are in love with this art.

BBA members do not dance for the competitions, but for their love of dancing. They do an exhibition piece for the annual Vibe competition every year. An exhibition piece is a routine they perform for the competition, but they are not competing. The fraternity Lambda Theta Delta puts on the competition every year and there were eleven competing teams for this year’s show. BBA was performed in the preshow. Before the show started the two directors, Vince and Julius set the dancers up on the wrong side of the stage. Because the dancers were facing the wrong side of the stage, they panicked. They had to reorient the dance and it was nerve-racking. Fourth year Alex Pham described the anticipation, “It was nerve-racking before doing it, but once it started I felt nothing but doing it.”

The dance opens with the song, Across 110th Street by JJ Johnson blaring across the brightly lit stage. Jay (several names have been changed to keep in accordance with the dancers) in a bright red jacket and red backwards cap, stands on stage with his arms crossed, while Joe in a blue puffy vest starts his breaking on the floor. Jay follows with his own move then stands up, fists are raised at one another, gesturing this is war. Dancers in white t-shirts come behind Jay and Joe breaking, mimicking a battle between the two colors. The song changes to a more robotic song for a popping piece; boys in white shirts are the only ones on stage doing robotic moves with tutting to the beat of the music, as the crowd goes crazy and cheers. Tutting consists of positions and movements using mostly right angles with the body to give the impression that the dancer is made out of geometric shapes. The song changes again to Against All Odds by Chase. Jim starts off this part by completing a daring flip without letting his hands touch the ground, to which the crowd goes wild. The dance ends with Daft Punk’s Aerodynamic, while every BBA dancer comes together to form a cypher, and a few jump in the middle to start letting their energy loose through their moves. Vince describes the experience, “Even though, we were panicking in the beginning, everything came together at the end and we can feel the energy coming from their group.”

For the first few sessions, Michelle sat in a corner and stretched by herself while observing everyone around her breaking. One day, she got over the intimidation, stood up from her corner, waltzed up to a member, and politely asked him to teach her some moves. He happily obliged, Michelle was ecstatic about meeting new people and learning new things, so she showed up to more BBA sessions. She is now BBA official “little sister.” They have exposed her to hip-hop culture, street dancing, and the dancing lifestyle. Now, she is not afraid to ask an experienced well-known B-boy for help. According to second-year Victor Truong, “Michelle was timid when she started, but she has improved a lot, her moves are getting bigger and she has become more aggressive. Her dancing has become more ‘in your face’.” Fourth-year Seton Chiang describes Michelle, “she is the most determined B-girl in BBA. She is always willing to learn new things and looking to go the extra mile. She puts herself out there 100%” BBA has helped her grow as a person and impacted her life. In the wise words of Michelle, “Being a part of BBA has been one of the best experiences I have had during college so far. I have made friends who became my family. I have learned how to express myself through dance and I am still learning. Through the art of break dancing, I have challenged myself, both mind and body in creative movements, moving in ways that I have never thought I would have been able to before. I like to break; I like to dance; I like to defy expectations and strive for individuality. Everyone is different. Everyone has something to offer. And everyone should embrace those differences and make something of it, whether it is dancing or just living your life. “

photo credit: Melissa Lee

Reporting Notes:
-Observation for approximately an hour every week at their sessions on Tuesday
-Lengthy interview with Michelle and Vincent
-Attended Vincent Ngo class on break dancing
-Other interviews with Julius Villanueva, Victor Truong, and Seton Chiang
-Observation live cypher at the art department
-Book: Foundation by Joseph G. Schloss
-Michelle’s Facebook note about BBA
-Youtube observation of Vibe performance
-KABA modern’s website
-VIBE webpage
-BBoys anonymous Facebook page

UCI Go and Chess Club: Your Second to Last Mistake?

2010-06-01T07:19:00.000-07:00

By Jeff Lien

It’s 10:20 at Pacific Ballroom rooms A and B at UC Irvine on a Saturday morning. “We’re starting in ten minutes!” Tiffany Valenton announces as she heads to the unofficial snack table at the head of the room, where there are donuts and various snacks for sale. A group of friends occupying the far left table in the back barely acknowledge her announcement as they chat and laugh over something interesting. Behind Tiffany, Adrian Galvan and Nestor Garcia huddled over a laptop, scramble to organize the roster for today’s event as they hear Tiffany’s announcement. The room is lined with fold out tables, and on each of these are two chess boards, each accompanied by a game clock. Each table is marked with a number 1-24 respectively, referring to the board number. Welcome to the First Annual UCI Chess Spring Classic, hosted by the Go and Chess Club! It’s a five-round tournament open to anyone looking to play chess, for a $15 entry fee that goes toward prize money for the top three players of each division. Each round is an hour long, 30 minutes for each player in a game. The tournament is separated into a lower division for beginners, and an upper division for experienced and/or ranked players. Rankings are based off of a simple point system, 1 point rewarded to winners, 0.5 point for ties, 0 for losers.

This is the first major event hosted by the club, organized by soon-to-be president of the Chess division of the club, Nestor Garcia a first-year Math major. A particularly passionate chess player himself, Nestor is excited for the tournament to begin, because he's going to be playing too. There are fourteen players who have shown up to participate in the event, and as the clock winds down, they make their way to the tables as the official roster is taped up.

10:40am- The tournament is officially about to begin, and after a brief speech by Nestor going over the rules, including the “touch-rule” which means that any time a player touches a piece on the board they must make a move with it, he takes his seat at one of the chess tables. Once situated, he shouts amidst the chatter, “Okay, everybody shake hands.” And the tournament begins! Within 20 seconds, a hush spreads like wildfire throughout the room as the atmosphere completely changes. A handful of friends and family members have come to watch and enjoy the games. As the first moves are made at each board, clocks are quickly clicked by the player indicating that the first move has been made, and just like that the room has become seven different battlefields. Smiles have all but disappeared, replaced by thin lines as players begin to strategize for victory. Laughter and chatter is replaced by cold, calculating silence. Friendship, age, gender, all but disappears as eyes become glued to the board, focused on finding the best maneuver to gain an advantage over the enemy pieces. It’s all out war, White versus Black.

Chess and Go are both games of strategy, both with a rich history, and popular worldwide.

In a nutshell, the Game of Go is similar to chess in terms of the strategy involved. Simply put, Go is played on a solid, 19x19 grid board. There are 181 black stones and 180 white stones. The Black player uses that extra stone to go first. Players can choose any of the 361 vacant intersections, that is any open spot that forms a “+” shape on the board to place a stone. The goal is to control a larger portion of the board at the end of the game.

Chess is played on an 8x8 grid, that is, there are 64 squares in a checkered-pattern on a standard board. Each player, Black and White, control sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. You win by “checkmate” when the opponent’s king is in a position where it can neither move away nor defend from an attack. In timed play, which is commonly used in serious matches, players play within time constraints, usually in 1-hour games or 3-hour games, in which a player can also win if their opponent runs out of clock time.

According to Tiffany and Go and Chess Club members, these games are enemies. “The only reason they’re together is because I took over the club” Tiffany states nonchalantly. It's true, because in the Go and Chess club both games are played under the same roof despite existing rivalries. The rivalry stems from an ongoing argument between which game is more complex, with the argument from chess players focused on the multiple pieces resulting in wide combinations and tactics. Go proponents state that not only is the board larger, but the sheer amount of variations per move outnumber the competition, and according to the Go and Chess Club website, Go players argue that “one can learn the rules in five minutes and spend a lifetime learning new skills.”

11:37am- With less than twenty seconds left on his clock, Scott Slupik is feeling the pressure at board three. Dressed in a white In-N-Out t-shirt and cargo shorts, his eyes dart around the board looking for a move to finish the game. The clock ticks as he scans the board for one last attack. His hand zooms to his queen, using her to pin his opponent’s king to the corner. He slams his clock with fourteen seconds left. His opponent, Erwin Urrutia, stares at the board eyes wide. He extends his hand out to Scott, and they shake hands. “Good game,” Erwin mumbles. Scott has won. With fourteen seconds left on his clock, Scott decided the game with his last move. And with that round one ends with an amazing last minute victory. As players and spectators leave their seats, most of the talk is chess. Exultations from the winners, conversations replaying epic moments, players going over notes with each other, and even those who have sat down again to play unofficial rematches.

The mood is light again, as if somebody lifted a transparent veil from the room, eliminating the tenseness. The mood in the room is similar to that of Humanities Hall Room 108 from 7-10pm every Wednesday, the meeting place of Go and Chess club for the Spring quarter. When they meet, the small classroom welcomes on average around fifteen members each night, some playing chess, others Go. “I’d probably say there’s a core of five or six people for Go, and probably like ten or so for chess on a weekly basis,” says An Do, a post-graduate med student and advisor for the club. He’s an avid Go player himself, busy with work, but making time in his busy schedule to support the club. Sitting in a dress shirt and khaki pants, An talks to me as he types up a medical report. Like the others who show up to the meetings, he loves the game. Whether it’s Go or chess, this forty member club is full of individuals who simply enjoy playing amongst like-minded individuals, whether their freshman physics majors or fourth year chemistry majors. It’s hard to believe a place like this didn’t exist a year ago.

On a sunny afternoon in front of Java City on campus, Tiffany Valenton, a bubbly and talkative fourth year chemistry major at UCI and the founder of the current Go and Chess Club sits down to talk about the club. The current GO and Chess Club? Tiffany explains that “back then people were bringing like, um, Chinese chess boards but it wasn’t officially a Chess club.” Before Tiffany, there was only Go Club. She recalls the first time she walked through the door into the Go Club meeting room, “I went to a meeting with my chessboard with three other friends and there were two people there, the president and the vice president. Yeah and I just started playing, it was Spring quarter of ’09.” And with her own chessboard, Tiffany and her friends integrated chess into the Go club on the same day she visited the Go Club. She was disappointed and shocked that there wasn’t a chess club on campus. She loved the game, and wanted to be responsible for creating a community where people could come together to play the game. Tiffany tells me with bright eyes and active hand gestures, that the Go and Chess club has a good distribution of members playing both Go and Chess every week.

In the beginning, merging chess into the former Go club was a challenge. “[The members] put the separation there jokingly” says Tiffany, as she recalls the initial stages of the clubs formation. The separation of chess versus Go refers to the rivalry between the games. At the meetings themselves, the room is split in half, with little movement between members there to play Go and members there to play chess. Adrian Galvan, a friendly and soft-spoken individual is the Go division president playfully states that “my VP would always be playing chess.” Adrian, a second year, along with his chess club counterpart Nestor, is taking over for Tiffany when she graduates this year. And he has noticed the separation. He recalls a person coming into a meeting one night who said “I really respect people who play Go because it’s a really hard game, as opposed to chess.” But he is optimistic, because “we are one club” he puts out bluntly. And that’s the truth. Through Tiffany’s self-driven efforts, she has created a social atmosphere where both Go and Chess players can play together under the same roof. During meetings, Tiffany is constantly bringing people together, striking conversation, introducing members to others, setting up social gatherings at Yogurtland, Boiling Crab, and the like. For Tiffany, the club has become a place where people can enjoy themselves, forcefully shoving any existing rivalry between the games behind her talkative and energetic demeanor. Members who were once divided by an invisible wall dividing Go from chess have found a special harmony in which laughter, strategy, good times, and the like are shared.

4:10pm- It’s finally time for the final round. After four competitive rounds, the tournament heads into the final stretch. In round two, Nestor corners his opponent Alfred Ong’s king with his rooks, with over double the clock time, forcing Alfred to surrender with twenty-five seconds left on his clock. In round three, we see intense defensive formations across the boards. Players are playing to win, fighting for rank, as the tournament heads into the second half. By the end of round four, stats are in. Those with a shot at 1^st-3^rd place have a shot at the prize money.

As the final round is about to begin, the room is cleaned up, snacks are put away, extra chess boards and clocks are gathered. Preparation for the end, the last stand for some of these players. Center stage becomes the seven chessboards, set up and ready for the final battle.

4:30- In a surprising upset, Ton Nguyen who was fourth place coming into the final round, beats Nestor, first place coming into the final round, with a “fork.” Not the utensil. A “fork” refers to a tactic used in chess, which is a 2-pronged attack on two of the opponent’s pieces at the same time, usually used with a knight. Ton used the “fork” to successfully eliminate Nestor’s queen, a critical piece in any game of chess. With that, Nestor had made a dire mistake which would cost him the game. As the game progressed toward the end, it was obvious that Ton had the advantage.Finally, when Nestor's king was trapped, Ton moved in for the kill, checkmate. "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake," a quote said by famous 20th century chess player, Savielly Tartakower. Nestor made the last mistake, costing him the game and the tournament. From that loss, Ton moves up to 2^nd place, while Nestor falls into 5^th place.

“What?! He forked my queen!” Nestor exclaims as Adrian teases him for his loss. They have become fast friends since the club started. From Wayzgoose to bowling, Tiffany has brought these two together, hand-picking them from amongst the club members. What they both have in common is an intense passion for their respective games. Throughout the tournament, Adrian was playing games of Go on his laptop as he recorded the wins and losses of players, while Nestor participated in his own tournament.

For Tiffany, this is a good sign. Throughout the year, Tiffany has worked hard to make sure Go and Chess club was a fun social gathering place for everyone to have enjoy the games. “I realized why I do make [the club] social is because I have a social personality, does that make sense?” Yes it does. Members of the club and participants in the chess tournament can attest to the fact that the chess clubs they have been a part of in the past have always been focused on the game. Through Tiffany, the Go and Chess club became something more than a room to play chess or Go, it became a haven for chess-and-Go lovers alike.

So where is the club headed when Tiffany hands it over to Nestor and Adrian? “Tournaments are going to keep us together” says Adrian. Both presidents have plans to take their games into competitive play. Adrian believes it will attract serious players to the club. But will the clubs be able to maintain their fragile balance between the two games. When asked if he would ever play Go, Nestor responds “It’s an interesting game, but I wouldn’t play it.” In the span of one school year, the Go and Chess club have gone from one member to over thirty. It’s become a place where people from all around can come in and have fun. Guys and girls(!) attend club meetings regularly, many with backgrounds in math and science. For both presidents, there is a definite move toward entering the realms of competition.

5:15- As the final round comes to an end, board two is the only table still in active battle. Evenly matched on both sides, the players are taking their time. By 4:50, those who had no chance to fall in the top 3 have all but left for home.

Above, the final minutes of the final round focus on the final few moves of the tournament! Alfred Ong beats Maarten Loffle in the final seconds, moving him up to first place, while Maarten goes down to third. With that, a grueling day of battle and the competition itself comes to an end! The winners are crowned, the atmosphere of competition has completely vanished, and finally the whole room lets out a sigh of relief. It is over.

(Pictured from Left to Right: Alfred Ong, Nestor Garcia, Tiffany Valenton, Ton Nguyen)

After prizes are distributed, pictures of the winners are taken, the Go and Chess Club members shake hands and smile. Above, Alfred Ong (left) and Ton Nguyen (right) tie with 4 points and each take half of the 1st place cash winnings. It’s been a long day, but the First Annual UCI Chess Spring Classic has come to a close! Look out for the First Annual Go Tournament next year. It'll be your second to last...what's the opposite of mistake?

Reporting Log:

Lengthy Interview with Tiffany Valenton, Nestor Garcia
Short interviews with other members, including An Do, Alfred Ong, Scott Slupik, Anthony Pereyda
3-hour observation of UCI Go and Chess Club Meeting
Go Club at UC Irvine website
Attended the First Annual UCI Spring Chess Classic
Information on Go from http://www.usgo.org/resources/gohistory.html

Musicians Find a Home Base in UCI’s Open Jam

2010-05-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

By Ashley Sioson

The cover of Boys Like Girls’ “Two Is Better Than One” fills the room as Grayson Villanueva and Kristine Hoang’s voices harmonize to the song’s acoustic melody. The duo’s performance is just as alluring as the version by Boys Like Girls, who originally recorded the song with country-pop star Taylor Swift. After 4 minutes of song, the two finish their performance and with just a click on her laptop, Charlyn Arellano is onto one of Grayson’s next covers to determine what she would like him to request for Open Jam’s next Open Mic Night.

“That’s one of the good things about YouTube, you get to enjoy a customized set list from the comfort of your own bedroom, and I’m glad some of our club’s members are into it” says Charlyn, who is currently Open Jam’s acting President. Open Jam at UC Irvine serves as a stage for UCI students who wish to share their passion for music with others, sponsoring live performances and in some cases promoting UCI musicians on YouTube. “I like to think of us as more of the middle ground—if you’re a local YouTube star and need a place to perform, that’s cool! If this is the first time you’re performing outside you’re bedroom, that’s cool too! It’s all about getting your music out there!”

And out it goes. At the club’s Open Mic Thursday nights, which normally take place at UC Irvine’s Phoenix Grill, you’ll find Grayson Villanueva at the corner of the room strumming his guitar and quietly singing sweet nothings that will soon be amplified once the next act walks off stage. Minutes later, the audience finds out that the sweet nothings they saw Grayson quietly lipping go a little something along the lines of “And when we dance, I stare into your eyes and I can’t, oh I can’t, I just can’t help but smile.” At that moment, the eyes of every second year girl were captivated as Grayson’s lullaby continued to fill the room. The atmosphere of Open Mic nights is more relaxed than not, making it easy for performers to feel comfortable in front of an audience, and allowing spectators to relax, and bask in the melodies of UC Irvine’s hidden talent. “I started attending Open Mic nights to see what kind of talent could come out of our campus. If I hear someone I like, I head straight to YouTube to see if they’ve got anything posted, or come back another time in hopes that they’ll have something new for me to hear” says Raiza Rivera, who some might call a “regular” when it comes to Open Jam’s Open Mic sessions.

“It’s always interesting to see what other musicians at our school have to offer,” says Kristine Huang, a singer and officer in Open Jam. As for Grayson, other than an Open Mic regular, he is also quite the familiar face among YouTube music scene. Controlling his own personal YouTube channel, Grayson has reached 481 subscribers and averages 4,222 views per video upload. He is also one of various UC Irvine based musicians on YouTube, others being Joseph Vincent, Jennifer Chung, and Kris Mark Cardenas, one of the founding members of Open Jam.

Open Jam doesn’t only house YouTube user Grayson Villanueva. Surprisingly enough, Open Jam also caters to a crowd of musicians who more shy than the YouTube crowd. “They just want a more intimate setting so they can feel comfortable sharing their music. And from there, they usually grow,” says Charlyn, who speaks of Open Jam’s musicians like a proud talent agent. Other UC Irvine based musicians such as The Ostentatious Gentlemen, or “The Gents” for short, Jared Fernandez, and Kristine Huang make up the organization as well. “I joined it because I thought it was awesome how they gave people opportunities to perform,” says Kristine, who like Grayson, is also part of Open Jam’s Board of Officers. Established as an official organization at UC Irvine by Dan Steinman in 2007, Open Jam has continued to make a name for itself at UCI by participating in various school-wide events such as the campuses annual Wayzgoose Festival, which is sponsored by the Associated Students of UC Irvine. Open Jam also has gained recognition through its participation in philanthropic events such as the Hearts of Haiti concert, a benefit show sponsored by both Open Jam and UNICEF at UCI to help with relief efforts going towards Haiti after its devastating earthquake in January 2010. As Charlyn took the reigns as President of Open Jam, she looked to further expand Open Jam’s network across the UC Irvine campus. “I also wanted Open Jam to be further integrated into the UCI community, not just a stand alone musicians club. Like now, we’ve worked with groups like UNICEF—we did a concert called Hearts for Haiti, we’ve worked with Circle K, and now we’re working with APSA for their talent show,” she says.

One such activity that Open Jam is known to put on every year is their Spring Concert. Aside from Open Mic Thursday nights, consider the Spring Concert Open Jam’s signature event. “We are doing the concert with the Uncultivated Rabbits,” says Charlyn. Uncultivated Rabbits is a spoken word poetry organization also located on the UC Irvine campus. Last year, the Open Jam Spring Concert donated its profit’s to VH1’s Save the Music Foundation. This year, they are currently in the process of deciding which foundation to donate to.

Open Jam combines music, philanthropy, and a bond founded upon one common passion for performing. For certain members who are new Open Jam however, the passion for performing may be disguised by nerves. This is where Open Jam strives to be the transitional point for UC Irvine musicians, bringing them out of their bedrooms or dorm halls and onto the stage. The YouTube medium serves to be helpful for musicians who would like to get their music out to the entire world. For musicians who are not so comfortable on stage, YouTube gives them the chance to feel like they’re performing in their own bedroom and in fact, they can do exactly that! “YouTube is just the newest thing—it’s instant “celebritydom”—it really is!,” says Charlyn. “People can promote you even through YouTube because it’s so easy to link people to stuff. Over the past few days I must’ve seen 50 different Joseph Vincent links on my Facebook—and it’s from people who don’t even know him!,” she adds.

The Gents, who strive to broaden their fan base outside of UC Irvine and into the Orange County music scene, prefer to perform their gigs at local bars such as Hogie Barmichaels. “Personally, I believe that their act is best viewed in person, a simple computer screen is unable to do their sound justice,” says Charlyn. Unlike Grayson’s R&B and acoustic covers that give off a more laid-back and relaxed vibe, The Gents’ performances are fast-paced and full of energy. However, just because The Gents don’t use YouTube as a performance medium doesn’t mean you can’t find them on the web. Search this band name on YouTube and you’ll find fan recordings of The Gents during their gigs – again, instant access to rock heavy music from your own own. Aside from local gigs and performances in front of Orange County’s rock loving community, the Gents have also made efforts to secure a spot in The Warped Tour and have participated in various “Battle of the Bands” type competitions, specifically Open Jam’s competition which took place in February.

So what makes Open Jam different from the cliché garage band jam session? Structure is the answer. Without the established organization and support from Open Jam’s Board of Officers, the members of this group would not be able to network and push their music to further extents. Anyone can play music with their friends in the living room, but Open Jam offers the opportunity to perform live in front of a campus with thousands of students. Whether a musician is stuck on the YouTube stage, or stuck in the bedroom, Open Jam is the middle ground where artists of all levels and experiences can come together to learn, interact, and share their passion for entertaining.

Article notes:
- 1 hour interview with Charlyn Arellano, Open Jam acting President
- Attended 1 Open Mic night at Phoenix Grill
- 1 interview with Open Jam officer Kristine Huang
- 1 interview with Raiza Rivera, regular Open Mic Night attendee

Documentation
- Grayson Villanueva’s YouTube channel
- Kris Cardenas’ YouTube channel
- New U Article: http://www.newuniversity.org/2010/01/news/haiti%E2%80%99s-effect-in-the-oc/

A Walk in the Dog Park of Promise: The Best Friend's Adoption Festival

2010-05-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

By Kristen Kochamba

It was a vibrant day, buzzing with glee and anticipation from people and pets alike. The noise of chattered excitement and clasping handlers to their dogs as the dogs barked vivaciously at one another filled the air with high spirits and hope. It was 11:15, on a Sunday “fun day” morning as I walked into the furry frenzy of the Best Friend’s Annual Spring Adoption Festival located at Westchester Park in Los Angeles, California. The banner that waved friendly in the sky was entitled “find your new best friend,” and people looked determined to do so.

The annual festival’s goal is to place hundreds of homeless animals in loving and caring homes. The animals range from dogs, cats, bunnies and birds with infinite numbers of shapes, sizes, and temperaments included. The shelters come from all over Los Angeles County and some shelters specialize in specific breeds such as the Westside German Sheppard Rescue and others compromise of a mix of animals such as the Pasadena Humane Society. The main advocacy of the shelters is to save animals by petitioning for the establishment of only no-kill shelters. No-kill shelters are defined as “a place where all adoptable and treatable animals are saved and where only unadoptable or non-rehabilitatable animals are euthanized”(Best Friends Animal Society). California has one of the most rigorous and animal-friendly shelter laws in the country. The California legislature passed the “Hayden Law” which states that only animals that are unadoptable or not capable of rehabilitation such as animals eight weeks or younger, animals that pose a health or safety risk which make it unsuitable as a pet, or animals that have manifested a lethal disease should be euthanized. But animal advocates are finding that hundreds of shelters across California are completely disregarding this law and getting away with it due to the lack of initiated regulatory agencies. They would rather euthanize the animals then board them due to expenses such as costs of medical attention, food, water and bathing supplies. This has resulted in one lawsuit so far filed by activists against Kern County, CA but there is still so much more to be done over the killings of an estimated 250,000,000 companions in the last decade in the United States. This event is about bringing shelters together who care about the welfare of homeless animals and reinstating the initial purpose of shelters as being a safe refuge for animals.

The dogs generously panted, with their tongues out and saliva slippery like syrup coming down from their mouths. Their tails wagged high to the sky as potential candidates threw tennis balls and scratched their furry behinds. I met a pooch named Sheba, who was a stray and found by a volunteer at the Pasadena Humane Society. The volunteer holding her, Ginny Mancini (Burbank, CA), said, “I nick named her Sheba because her face kind of looked like one,” referring to the Sheba Cavaliers. Sheba had warm brown eyes with feathered white ears and a beautiful silky hazel brown, black and white curly coat. Her fur coat shined with beauty in the sun and her relaxed manner displayed her calm disposition. She just sat in the volunteer’s arms with her head perched up, looking straight forward as though a performance by the philharmonic had her in deep concentration. “We are a no-kill shelter. We have a ranch where the dogs are kept until they are adopted and we also have foster homes for the dogs until they get adopted,” Ginny explained. She also mentioned that she found a lot of pet owners due to the economy and not being able to support their animal’s needs, such as paying medical bills, were giving their dogs up to shelters. I also found that to be a common theme amongst the stories of where the animals came from such as from my visit with Elena Felix, a board member of the Lange Foundation, a no-kill shelter, remarked, “We have a lot of animals from owners that are suffering from the economic crisis and can no longer support their dogs.” The festival also consisted of high-end boutiques offering samples of the latest pet owner’s flavors of the month. A vendor entitled “the Healthy Spot- for your dog’s mind, body and bowl,” was attended by smiling faces and helpful people as they offered samples of Ziwi Peak, which is a new dog diet that reportedly makes your pet’s poop firm and odorless. The festival was filling up as the day progressed and at around 12:30pm an announcement was made on the loud speaker that a CPR demonstration was being held on the front stage. The demonstration featured a health care expert, whom provided information on what to do if your dog stops breathing. She said to lay your dog on his right side, open his mouth and have his head and neck aligned so air is also going in a straight line and proceed by giving your pet mouth to mouth CPR. The performance was shocking due to the realness of a lady putting her mouth on a sloppy pooch even though the dog was just a stuffed animal.

The green grass was pervasive as people paraded around on it to different sections of the park. The wind fluttered the white tents while the dogs under them paced back and fourth in cages and others strutted around on leashes. A cage of small terrier looking dogs was positioned in the center of the park and contained a dog that would not stop barking. Although when it was given attention, it attracted the gang of puppies that accompanied it in the cage got up and they joined in it’s barking with fierce demand. The little dogs’ vivacious barks were more intimidating then the bigger dogs as they appeared in their formation as one giant creature. There was a friendly woman sitting by dogs in the cage and I stated, “Wow what energy these little dogs have.” And she replied, “You, know I’m sorry they have to be shown this way because I had all four of these guys in my house and they were terrible. And then I said I can’t have all four of these guys, so we took the boys elsewhere and the girls are much better at home. So I know when people see them all together they are really not like that.” The woman’s name is Barbra Saunders (Sherman Oaks, CA), and she said that a lot of the volunteers from the organizations and shelters actually board the dogs at their own homes. The volunteers were very generous in that they were people opening their private lives to animals who really have a shot in the dark at their own. Barbara’s organization is called Lhasa Apso Happy Homes, and they are a no boarding shelter, which means that unless the dogs need training or special assistance they stay with volunteers in their own home until they can find the dogs a home. This organization’s commitment to their animals by allowing them to stay at their home showed true dedication to saving the lives of deprived endangered dogs.

At around 1 the highlight of the event occurred when the Dancing with the Dogs Competition hosted by the Four Legged Friend Foundation was announced to begin. The Competition was located at the Northeast section of the park and the small arena was overrun with cheering fans. The “just for fun” competition is a celebration of dogs of all shapes, colors, sizes, ages and personalities showcasing their loving capabilities. The bright eyed and busy-tailed creatures smiled with glee as they pranced around proud and noble. The first group routine included Tillie and Linda Brown and they performed a “sport dance.” The sport dance is based on a type of free-style rendition where no treats or toys are used and only obedience is applied. The dog’s motivation and desire to dance showed true motivation and impressed the crowd greatly. The routine began with two trainers and two dogs, in opposite corners of the arena. As an upbeat folk tango music track began to blare from the loud speaker, the trainers signaled the dogs to sit and stay as they circled around them a few times. Then the dogs were given another signal to disperse into a starburst formation and they began to trot around the arena with their heads high and their trainer’s face engulfed with a smile. It made in turn the whole audience of people smile. All these dogs were representing a sad story that did not have to have a sad ending. Their hopes and dreams were resonating in this dance and they gained a sense of belonging and conviction that not even being homeless can take away from them. The question that remains to be answered by all the animal shelters out there that are completely disregarding the Hayden Law and killing perfectly adoptable pets, “Why put these animals down when they hold a type of unsurpassed hope that even we humans can even from?” There is one lesson that people took away from this event which is “every dog must have its day” and that day was the Best Friend’s Annual Spring Adoption Festival.

To follow up on the event, which placed close to 400 dogs, cats, bunnies and birds in safe homes over the course of five hours it was without doubt a huge success. Only two out of seventy dogs that were present at the event were adopted or placed in local rescue groups. The two that are still not rescued are at the Harbor Shelter because there simply was not enough room in recues but are on the radar of many rescues and should be taken care of very shortly. They were chosen because they are in the most stable condition and are most likely to be adopted soon. The outstanding shelters that took the most animals for the team, in which gave a chance to a lot of helpless animals were Karma Rescue, Nancy Heigl, Katherine Heigl’s mother who runs the Heigl’s Hound of Hope rescue and Pnina Gerston, a so called “local legend” in dog rescue. The Spring Adoption Festival was a hit and they could not be happier with the outcome, in which exceeded their goals of saving animal’s lives. The Hayden law remains below funds because although California is good at passing liberal laws there is not enough money to back them up. The key debate now lies in requiring people to spray and neuter their pets to prevent the epidemic of stray animals and save funds without resorting to euthanizing.

Reporting Log:

-Interview with board member of Lange Foundation

-Volunteered/observed for one hour twice a month

-Attended Annual Spring Adoption Festival in Westchester Park on May 23,1010 from 11am-4pm

Documentation:

--Pictures from the event

-Spring Adoption Festival Flyer

-PDF of Hayden Law

-PDF of lawsuit filed against Kern County, CA testing the Hayden Law and Vincent Law

Make it Happen. Only Then Will Your Dreams Come True

2010-05-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

They stood twelve feet apart from each other, looking down in despair. The yells of the students playing Frisbee and announcements about popcorn were drowned out by the whirring of their brains as they tried to confront this ridiculous situation. They had been told to hope for the best and expect the worst, but this predicament had left them dumbfounded. They stood twelve feet apart from each other, on opposite sides of their performance stage, looking down on the carpeted platform that rose two feet above the ground. It was 2pm on Saturday afternoon and the members of the Dreams Come True Crew had five hours to rework their debut routine to fit the tiny area they were given before they would perform at 7pm that same day. “Shit on my dick!” yelled Conrad De Claro, expressing his exasperation.

Today, April 24th, would be the day that the Dreams Come True Crew, established in October of 2009, would make their debut performance in front of their biggest crowd yet. The event, Relay for Life, was being hosted at Aldrich Park with a multitude of volunteers concerned about cancer walked laps around the park in order to raise money. Here, DCTC would be performing in their first big event, making it their debut into the dance community as an established crew. DCTC was composed of ten people. Seven of the members who were current UCI students had been practicing for this performance for a month. These seven representing members consisted of three of the original core six and four new recruits. The core six was Daniel Hua, Patrick Soriano, Saeko Oishi, Alex Le, Aaron Kobayashi and Daniel Kim; however the latter three were based in LA and could not come to practice often. The DCTC members who would be performing were Patrick Soriano, Saeko Oishi, Daniel Hua, Conrad De Claro, Ben Umali, Saharat Pinyo and Andy Ho. For this particular performance, there would also be four guests performing with them, friends of the crewmembers. In the fall quarter of the 2009-2010 academic year, Daniel Hua came up to Patrick Soriano with the idea to form a dance crew. Although it had been on his mind for a year or two now, he decided to pitch the idea to Patrick in September. “Daniel just wanted to do his own thing and decided to ask me to be a part of it because we had the same passions,” said Patrick. “In all honesty, it really is his crew.”

Daniel Hua had finished his last quarter at UCI after winter of 2009. As a Biological Sciences major, he plans on attending medical school after graduation. Because of his 10+ years of dancing experience, he was referred to by the freshmen as “Bboy God” and was strictly devoted to dance form of “bboying”. Patrick, a third year, on the other hand, focused more on hip hop choreography. Fusing jazz, hip-hop and popping, he can always be seen at the ARC improvising to the latest popular song. Often rushing to the ARC after a day of classes and work, he is usually seen in a dress shirt and tie, establishing his dominance as an upperclassman even more. Saeko Oishi, a literary journalism major, was the training partner of Daniel, learning to become a bgirl. With the stylish blonde patch in her black hair, 5’ petite figure, and sweet voice, Saeko was the combination of cool and adorable at the same time.

DCTC was originally formed with the intent to try out and possibly compete on the TV show America’s Best Dance Crew. “We formed DCTC to be a long-term goal and wanted to try out [for ABDC] in terms of determining our dancing level,” said Patrick. However, this goal would have to be pushed much farther in the future than they had anticipated. DCTC had taken in four new members, all first years, based on their dancing potential rather than dancing skill. Because they were young and inexperienced, it would take a lot of time and patience to train these new members up to the status that would allow DCTC to reach its original goal. This unconventional criterion for recruitment was part of DCTC’s philosophy: that hard work was the key to making dreams come true.

It would definitely take hard work to alter their rehearsed routine, or dance “set”, in order to fit onto the tiny stage they were given on the day of the performance. Although they had been told in advance the dimensions of the stage, it hadn’t really sunken in exactly how small it would be. Even with only eleven people, a 12 by 12 square foot stage just wasn’t enough.

For Andy, the stage didn’t look sturdy at all. It might even collapse when they did some of their tricks. “Dude. There’s no way we can launch Ben. He’d be thrown completely off the stage,” said Andy.

“Well, I mean, it’s grass, so it wouldn’t be too bad if I landed there….” said Ben.

“What if we launched him from off-stage in the back?” suggested Andy.

“Ohhh my gosh,” vents Patrick, pacing on the side of the stage, still incredulous that this would happen to them on the big day.

Although in reality, the small stage would serve as a problem for only once piece out of the entire set, the main issue was the lack of prestige this tiny platform had. For a debut, the crewmembers were hoping for stature and glamour. This was probably the biggest disappointment of the day. The gray, carpeted wooden platform that rose 2 feet off of the grass just did not give them the height that they had hoped for.

However, the crew had to get through many disappointments together before reaching this day. Because of their limited experience in both dancing and being on a team, the new recruits not only had to work on their skills, but also learn how to function as a group. “Sometimes people would skip practices for personal reasons and sometimes I don’t think these reasons were appropriate,” said Patrick. Another issue during practice times would be the loss of focus from one member that would spread to other members, making the entire group get off track.
“Conrad. Focus,” chided Ben again to Conrad who was busy pretending to beat up Saharat as the group got into their positions for the third piece. Because each of the pieces pertained to a specific style of dance, only a few of the performers would be onstage at a given time.
In correspondence to Relay for Life, Patrick decided to form the set to tie in with the theme of cancer. The performance would tell the story of a cancer patient who finds out he has cancer and how is life is affected by it. For the first piece, a slow Korean song, the main character that is played by Patrick receives his diagnosis. The depressing song shows the mood that comes over him and how he is treated in society, with pity and neglect. However, with the next song, “Magic” by Robin Thicke, six breakdancers come out to heal Patrick, making his “pain disappear”. The third song, a popping piece, portrays Patrick coming back to a normal life, with a transition from robotic-like movements to smooth ones. In the end, all of the dancers come onstage and freestyle to “Harder, Faster, Stronger” by Kanye West to show revival and survival.

At 5:00 PM, the crewmembers disperse to freshen up and change into their performance outfits. After a few hours of contemplation, they had decided that they would work with what they had and just try their best to not fall off the stage. Space would be used efficiently, with people starting from on the grass and going up only when necessary. “It’s okay. I have faith in our team. It’s gonna work. It’s gonna work. It’s gonna work,” said Andy. They would regroup again at 6:30 PM before the performance at 7:00 PM.

Although this would be DCTC’s first big performance, they have also done two small-scale performances in the past. At tailgate parties before a big basketball game at UCI, DCTC would come and do a short set, just to get a feel of performing in front of a crowd. For their first performance in February, rainy weather had a heavy impact for them. “There weren’t that many people and crowd was quiet, but honestly I could care less about what people think about this crew. As long as I know that everyone is working hard and showing that they’re dedicated, it doesn’t matter what happens,” said Patrick. “We kind of rushed them because we wanted to give the freshman a taste of what it was like to perform in front of a crowd,” Patrick adds, “because obviously dancing with your friends and crewmembers is a lot more comfortable.”

This comfort level sometimes got in the way of the crew as a structure as well. Because they had all been friends prior to the formation of DCTC, as well as the fact that they had become closer through all of the practices and weekly dance sessions, DCTC became an extended family for its members. “When Daniel and I started this thing, we both said there shouldn’t be coordinators or choreographers or whatnot. This crew was created in the fact that everyone had a fair say and everyone could put in their ideas. People are free to express themselves,” said Patrick. However, with Patrick, Daniel and Saeko being upperclassmen, the freshmen naturally looked up to them for advice and leading. Within the group, Patrick was known as “Boss”or “Dad” because of his more paternal role in caring for the crewmembers, while Daniel was referred to as “God” due to his dance skill that was held in awe by the newcomers.

Their friendship exceeded the bounds of dance, with Patrick, Daniel and Saeko often giving advice in outside matters, such as family and school. “Since we are older, we do have a responsibility to part onto the freshmen at least some sort of knowledge because when I came to this college, I didn’t have anyone to look up to. I understand exactly what the freshmen are going through so I just want to be there, not just for dancing but also for everything in general,” revealed Patrick. Besides advice on dance training, the freshman go to their upperclassmen for tips on which classes are easy, suggestions on what major they should change to, and to rant on family issues. He even goes as far as to calling the freshmen his children, teaching them Clubbing 101: what eye contact means in a club, when to approach a girl, etc., keeping their grades in check, and taking them to the mall to buy clothes for prom date with their high school girlfriends. “I felt that I was obligated to make sure I’m watching over them and making sure they’re taking care of their stuff. In that sense, it’s good because we’re a very close-knit group but at the same time, it gets kind of distracting because we’re so comfortable. We tend to do goof around but I think that Daniel and I are responsible for making sure everyone is on track,” said Patrick.

When 6:30 PM came around, everyone had already assembled by the tent that belonged to a friend who was participating in Relay for Life’s stay overnight event. With some people sitting on the grass, some in fold-up chairs, and some jamming to a guitar with some friends, everyone was trying their excitement and nervousness in check. For Ben however, his love for performing automatically gave him an adrenaline rush. “I’m getting really hyped up,” he said, “and I want to try to get everyone hyped up with me.” For the friends who had come out to support DCTC, girlfriends from other schools included, they also were really excited to see the debut. Diana Park, a hallmate of some of the performers, said, “I’m so proud to have these dancers as my friends and want to support them. Also, who doesn’t enjoy a good performance?” With twenty minutes left, most of the dancers started their warm-ups.

The group had come a long way from when they first started back in fall of 2009. Upon their arrival at college, UCI served as a center for expansion in dance. Prior to this opportunity, most of them didn’t really have a group of friends to dance with and learn from. “I felt that really was what dance was all about: to come together with a group of people and do what you love to do. I was so caught up in learning new things and bothering Daniel to teach me,” said Andy. Although the founders of DCTC didn’t intend on recruiting all freshmen until they saw the passion they had for dance.

The audition process for DCTC did not follow the conventional audition process for dance crews, which was coming up with an audition set and teaching it to those who were trying out and later would be judged by performance on this piece. “We felt that if we did give them an audition piece, it was easy for them to just audition and once they make it, oh, its no big deal because there were so many talented dancers at UCI already,” said Patrick. Instead, Patrick and Daniel observed Conrad, Ben, Andy and Saharat during dance sessions, often putting them in a line and having them freestyle to different songs, one by one. These songs could be anything from the Mulan soundtrack to Christmas music. “I wanted to see how they would respond to types of music and how they respond under pressure and their musicality. These were the things we would consider in recruiting people to be part of this crew,” said Patrick.

At 6:45 PM, the performers got together for a quick pep talk. Everyone was really starting to feel the excitement now. The other group of dancers who would be performing on the same stage had also just arrived. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a subgroup of one of UCI’s prominently established dance teams, the Moderately Crazy Insane Anteaters, would be representative of the UCI dance community tonight, witnessing DCTC’s debut. Because of the skill level and strength of this group, DCTC was feeling especially nervous, knowing fellow dancers would judge them.
“No matter what happens tonight, just know that we put in all this hard work and it’s our time to show it, okay guys? It doesn’t matter what they think; it’s about us. Let’s kill it out there!” encouraged Patrick.

Practice for this set had begun in March. With only one month, DCT went from sessioning together twice a week to practice 4-5 times a week. In the unseasonably cold April nights, the crew gathered at 10 PM in one of the most random places to dance. The average loading dock by day on the UCI campus turns into a makeshift studio by night. Despite the cold wind and rough concrete, the dancers are in their t-shirts and wife beaters sweating as they scrape their shoulders in attempt to compete a complicated power move. In an undiscovered, underappreciated corner of the campus, they are separated from the rest of society, doing what they love in the secret dead of the night. This environment of grey, black and white is urban dance at its greatest.

The first group, those dancing to the Korean sad song, run through their piece not once, not twice, but fifteen times. In the background, the breakdancers work on their mini subgroup sets, trying to come up with original choreography. On the stairs, Saeko can be seen with her laptop, trying to finish up a homework assignment. The dancers are tired, hungry, cold and terribly bored with the music, but with only two weeks left, they stick to it.

At 6:55 PM, the dancers take their places by the stage. In one last huddle, each performer sticks out his/her hand one by one.

“Everybody 1-2-3, DCT!” yelled Conrad.

“1-2-3, DEE CEE TEE!!”

The set begins with a scene at the waiting room of a doctor’s office, where Patrick would go for a checkup. When he is called in to see the doctor, played by Ben, he is confronted with the news that he has cancer. The short, pre-recorded dialogue is played on the track while the characters mouth their lines onstage. The music hits and the first set of dancers take their queue onstage. Dressed in all black, the dancers convey the sense of sadness and despair that has come over Patrick’s life. They exit offstage with looks of pity towards Patrick, who is on his knees at the front of the stage.

Queue breakdancers. In a bowling pin formation, they come onstage dressed in white. The song has drastically changed to an upbeat, inspirational tone. Everyone is pumped, and when it came time to throw Ben up in the air, the excess energy from Conrad and Andy shoot Ben straight up, giving him height that was never experienced during practice. The cheers and shouts from the friends in the crowd further fueled their energy, boosting their self-esteem along with it.
By the time the popping piece came along, the crowd was already impressed with what they had scene. However, DCTC wasn’t done yet. The quirky, original choreography combined with comical expressions from the robotic dancers appealed to the crowd’s sense of humor, adding laughter to the cheering. When it came time for the freestyling, the dancers themselves cheered on their teammates as they stood in a half-circle around whoever had the spotlight. In the last few counts of the song, Patrick reemerges dressed in white, symbolizing his survival and ends the performance with a set performed with Daniel. For the cherry on top, Daniel does his hollo back, a handstand that bends the body backwards about 75 degrees in a pose that leaves his hands onstage but his body offstage in midair. And the dancers go wild.

Exiting offstage was met by a bombardment of hugs from all around.

“You were amazing!”

“Great job!”

“Dude we killed it!”

“I’M SO HYPED!”

DCTC had really pulled it off. It was an astounding performance that was met with congratulatory remarks from not only the audience of friends, but also Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themselves. This was a huge ego boost for DCTC. “It felt really great because we just came out and there was another crew there to recognize and appreciate us,” said Saharat.

For the fanbase of supporters, they couldn’t have been more proud. “Fuck yeah! You guys killed it. You guys killed it. You guys KILLED IT!” said Joe Kang. Danielle Delos Reyes, Ben’s girlfriend who had come from Pomona to support him, also felt the same way. “It was a really great experience to watch him perform for the first time myself. It was awesome to see the passion in his eyes for his performance. It really shows that he loves what he does,” she said.
It was this passion that got them on that stage in the first place. They made it work, and the entire set went smoothly. It wasn’t until afterwards that they realized the DJ had sped up the entire set of songs.

“Did it feel kind of fast for you?” Andy reflected.

“Yeah. I didn’t even notice until the end. I was so pumped and had so much energy,” said Conrad.

“Dude, you guys hit everything on the right beat for the first time. Good job guys,” laughed Patrick. “You’re lucky the DJ sped it up for you.”

Despite the potential obstacles that presented themselves that day, DCTC was able to pull through. “I was really happy for my fellow crewmembers because they gained respect for themselves from their peers that day. Because they are freshman, their image really matters. They showed the world that they’re legitimate dancers and that they have a passion for dancing,” said Patrick.

Afterwards, the group moved base to the University Town Center for dinner with the team and some of the supporters, but energy was still running high. All throughout dinner, the video recording of the performance was played over and over, with the dancers still “oohing” and “aahhing” over the same parts.

With a bowl of Yogurtland in one hand, a camcorder in the other, and a crowd of people looking over his shoulder, Andy studied the performance again and again.

“Shiiiiit look how high we threw Ben!”

“Conrad your waves suck!”

“Helllll yeah!”

“I can’t believe we hit everything on time.”

“Hollo backkkkkkk!”

“Look at that bboy and his new move.”

“Dude did you see…..”

Observation:
Daily attendance of practice two weeks prior to event
Attendance of performance and after-performance get-together

Interviews:
Patrick Soriano - Main interview - 45 minutes
Andy Ho - Mini interview - 30 minutes
Various quotes from people during and after performance

Documentation:
Recordings of "audition" process
Recording of performance video
Facebook group for DCTC
www.bboy.org forum

I feel pretty, and witty, and...queer: UC Irvine's Irvine Queers

2010-05-28T11:22:00.001-07:00

by Rosa Vargas

“My hidden talent would be, I guess being a lesbian,” quips a female voice from the back of the room, the person the voice belongs to hidden behind the people sitting in front of her.
“Which means you can do what really well?” jokingly, suggestively, asks another girl to the amusement of everyone in the room.
Amid the laughs, Anabelle, who has been directing tonight’s meeting, yells out “This is not a dating service people!”
No, this is not a dating service, it is Irvine Queers. Irvine Queers, or IQ as its members call it, is an undergraduate student club at the University of California Irvine which caters to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and ally students of UCI. According to one of their pamphlets, the aim of IQ is “to provide a safe space for queer and ally students, education about queer issues, and opportunities for political participation.” For that purpose, Irvine Queers holds weekly meetings. This spring quarter, the meetings have been taking place on Tuesday nights at the Student Center on the UCI campus. These meetings are “a mixture of social, educational, and political activities.” On the agenda for tonight’s meeting? Project Rungay.
The last person in the room is done revealing her name, school year, major and hidden talent. Anabelle proceeds to move things on and asks that people divide into teams so Project Rungay can get started. Several of the members leave because they have things to prepare for the upcoming Drag Show that is being put up by IQ. After the commotion of hugs and farewells and see you’s there are only twelve of us left in the room, and somehow one group has only three members while the other has six. The three judges sit at the front of the room and give the group the task: design an outfit with newspapers and flyers. The groups are given tape, several copies of The New U, and flyers; some of which announce the OMG (Oh My Gender): a Drag Show event while others advertise the Queer Culture Festival. I am in the six-person group; we have chosen our model and proceed to dress him up. Turns out we are not a very coherent group: someone put a skirt on him; someone else put a peacock tail while I added epaulets and a long braided tail. Someone else puts two cones on his chest and we all laugh at his new, big, pointy boobs. Anabelle makes a pharaoh style headdress, complete with a snake rising from it. She crowns our model with it.
“What was that Egyptian queen’s name?” asks Anabelle
“Cleopatra?”
“Yes! You are Queerpatra!” Anabelle tells the model.

Anabelle Vo is a second-year undergraduate student at UCI and the Social Chair of Irvine Queers. As social chair, Anabelle gives herself the task of “mak[ing] everyone feel welcome when they first step foot inside IQ.” Her desire to run for social chair grew out of her own experience in joining IQ. “I am not the most social person,” she claims, “I felt very shy the first time I came here.” Now, as social chair, Anabelle tries to make IQ welcoming to people who might be as shy as she was, “most people […], they are not quiet by choice and they are not lonely by choice, you know. So I try making the breaking into the club a little bit easier.” As she speaks, Anabelle twists and arranges pipe cleaners into the outline of a cartoonish little chubby human body, with short arms and short legs, its head a perfect circle. She takes a pipe cleaner and loops it around a side of the circular head, leaving part of it extending outwards, the head is no longer an O, it is now a capital Q. Anabelle just made a Qu Person. Qu Person is something of the mascot of Irvine Queers. It appears on their website, and it is the Qu Person that you see on IQ’s Facebook profile picture. In fact, Qu Person has a Facebook page of its own: its activities? Irvine Queers, and one of its favorite movies is Zoolander. The people in the room tonight take a moment away from their own crafts to admire Anabelle’s Qu Person, then go back to their own Converse decorating, beading, coloring, and button making. There was a lot of arts-and-crafts material left over from the past Saturday’s Queer Culture Festival, so this Tuesday the week’s meeting was an arts-and-crafts night. Besides providing left over materials with which to make crafts with at tonight’s IQ meeting, the Queer Culture Festival, which took place on May 15th at UCI’s Phoenix Grill, also provided a day of socializing, fun, emotions, and community. In a flier that announces Irvine Queer’s events, the Queer Culture Festival is described as “activities and performances, arts and crafts and student art galleries, skill-sharing and ‘talentless’ shows.” The shows and performances, however, were far from “talentless.” Towards the end of the event, which was scheduled to end at 10pm, there was an open mic. Several people went on stage to read out their poetry, Anabelle did a monologue in which she talked about the women in her life throughout the years. At one point, a girl was playing the guitar, singing. The lighting was dim, blackness peeked in through the windows, the stage glowed yellow-orange. There were some couples in the audience holding hands or with their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. “Sophie and I are gay together…,” the lyrics filled the room with the tale of a girl who had hope for happiness now that she was announcing to the world that Sophie and she were gay together. All eyes were fixed on the siren with the guitar and the bright green tank top, when she finished her song, all hands clapped in unison; together.

It is now time for the judges to evaluate the impromptu outfits we have designed. The two models are standing next to each other ready to walk on the runway, which in this case is the open space in the middle of the room. The other group’s model goes first. He is wearing a dress made out entirely of OMG: A Drag Show posters that looks nothing at all like an impromptu dress. In fact “thought-out” would be the best word to describe it. To make matters more worrisome for our team, the model, Chris, can walk! He walks up to the judges and back with as much style as Tyra Banks. He even strikes a few poses, complete with a coquettish, dimpled smile. His name is Cristobal Escobar Marin; he is a fourth year undergraduate student and has been in Irvine Queers for almost two years. For him, IQ is a place that, particularly in a time when he was coming out, “help[ed] [him] be more comfortable with being gay.” Indeed, this comfort he has with himself is so palpable in him; he is standing there, wearing a paper dress that has been taped together over his bare torso and purple jeans, and he looks happy, and regal. For a moment I think that I would want to wear the dress he is wearing, I would buy it. So, he is a good model through and through: he has the walk, and he sells.
He can also work and audience. Chris was one of the performers in the OMG: A Drag Show that was put up by IQ on May 13th. The drag show took place in HIB 100, one of UCI’s Humanities lecture halls. The hall seats three-hundred and forty five; the night of the drag show about two thirds of the seats are filled. I overhear one of the performers and IQ member say that they weren’t expecting so many people. As people settled into their seats, pre-recorded voices, the kind one would expect to hear at a mall or airport or train station, chime in a monotone drone “please be on alert of suspicious looking men and women. For your safety, security measures have been taken…” Chris performed twice in the Drag Show. The first time he was wearing leopard print high heeled shoes and he stripped until he was left with nothing but the shoes and spandex short shorts. He danced around the stage, a strip tease. He brought out a whip and wielded it as the audience cheered and whistled. His second performance was less risqué. He was in drag, sporting a short white cocktail dress, still wearing the leopard print high heeled shoes. The lights were dimmed. “I was five and he was six, we rode on horses made of sticks, he wore black and I wore white…” Nancy Sinatra’s voice sang while Chris gracefully moved on the stage, his movement expressing sorrow. There was no coquetry in his face this time, no playfulness. He twists and turns and lies down on the stage floor. The audience is quiet. “…baby shot me down,” Chris lies still on the ground, shot down. The audience comes out of the trance and claps and cheers.
Anabelle also performed in the Show. She did a number in which she was in drag, wearing baggy jeans, a hoodie, and a baseball call in the fashion of any MTV worthy rapper; which is what she was, a rapper. After her rap and while the next performers were readying themselves, Anabelle appeared back on stage wearing a pink dress, her painted on mustache and beard still on her face. She walked about and twirled around as she sang out acapella “I feel pretty, I feel pretty and witty and…queer,” people laughed and clapped and cheered, “and I pity any girl who isn’t me this year.” The rest of the show continued on such note, fun. By the end however, the mood became serious. A slide show showing names and dates of individuals who had been victimized, some even murdered apparently for being transgender flashes on the screen. One of the performers reminds the audience that the profits from the night’s donations will be used to help the medical bill of a trans male student in California State University Long Beach who was attacked in a campus bathroom this past April 15th , his attacker had carved the word “it” on his chest. The victim had been hospitalized, however he didn’t have medical insurance and now had to pay the bill, the audience’s donations would help him pay.
This mixture of fun and seriousness of the Drag Show attests to the broad area that Irvine Queers encompasses as a club. “There’s not necessarily like a ton of groups [at UCI]. Like some schools that have […] larger involvement and bigger queer populations […] will have like really active groups; will have a political group, will have like an ally-focused group, will have the social group, you know. And each club will have that as its focus. IQ has tried to fulfill all of those things as best they can,” stated Emily Steelhammer, a fourth year student and Chair of the Board of IQ. However, Emily also declared that in IQ there is definitely a focus on being a social group, “it usually comes down to initially things social because that’s what brings people in and that’s the number one thing that people who know they are LGBT and are ready to be in the community need. They need the opportunity to be social.” Emily knows of this need to be social from personal experience. “I knew that of I was going to be […] gay, if I was going to be in the LGBT community, I had to go and be in the LGBT community.” for her, joining Irvine Queers offered her that opportunity to be in the queer community. And by community, Emily means “not just people around you but, like, cohesion and support.” Which is also what Anabelle has found in Irvine Queers, “a community to stand behind you because, you know, the world is a hateful place sometimes, you need to know that there are people out there who support you and are here for you if you need anything like emotional support.”

Now it is our model’s turn to walk the runway. He moves slowly, the skirt only allows him to take small steps. He moves carefully, the epaulets and his headdress could come off if his movements are too sudden, and the skirt could rip if his stride is too wide. He manages to strike a pose once he is directly in front of the judges. Finally both models have walked, now the groups have to explain their outfits. Our group tells them of Queerpatra, and that we aimed for an outfit that would show multiculturalism and was Lady Gaga inspired. Judging form their faces, the judges aren’t buying it. They deliberate. Meanwhile some of us seat on the tables or chairs, others stand or lean against walls. The two models are standing at what would be the foot of the runway. The judges arrive at a decision, they call the models forth. They say they like the concept of our outfit. They like that we incorporated the idea of multiculturalism into it. They like that it’s crazy and fun. One of the judges says the protruding boobs of our outfit disturb her. They like the other team’s outfit too. They like that it’s well put together. They like the detailing of it. It was a hard decision, they say. The other team wins. Everybody in the room claps. We are not disappointed that we lost, we had fun. Anabelle has made a halo out of newspaper pages, she takes one of the cones that would have been our model’s right boob had it been bigger and attaches it to her halo. She puts the concoction on her head, “I’m a unicorn!” She trots around, laughing, “I’m a unicorn!”

Irvine Queers is not just a social place. “Not just socializing for the sake of socializing. But people who share the same interests, wanna fight for the same rights, and yes, emotional support. So, that’s what I treasure the most about this club,” said Anabelle. “there are people here who are just good people, it’s nice to get to know them […] it’s an entire community that you never thought you would get.”

Reporting Log:

-Observation of all 6 meetings attended
-Observation of Drag Show and Queer Culture Fest
-Interview with Emily Steelhammer, about 20 minutes
-Interview with Cristobal Escobar, about 10 minutes
-Interview with Anabelle Vo, about 10 minutes
-Irvine Queers website
-Irvine Queers’ and Qu Person’s Facebook page
-three fliers handed out by IQ about IQ

Swinging It with the Rock'Its- 6 Weeks with UCI’s Swing Performance Team

2010-05-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

By: Erick Vallejos

“Stomp off, let’s go!” boomed a voice coming from the speakers connected to a white iPod Nano. As the sounds of a trombone and a jazz band beginning their song filled Donald Bren Hall 1500, eighteen pairs of feet began to hit the floor in (somewhat) unison. The seventy desks, typically in seven rows of ten, have been pushed back to the sides of the room to create space for these dancers. It is 7:14pm on April 9th, a Friday night, and these eighteen people have shown interest and enthusiasm in joining the (at the time unnamed) swing dance performance team. Well actually twenty. Tracy Wang, a forth-year graduate student in the neurobiology and behavior PhD program, is leading the choreography sessions for the try-out; and me, a literary journalism student, sitting in one of the seventy desks closest to the door watching the other nineteen. This was the first time I met the future members of the swing dance performance team. For the next six weeks, I would follow this community of dancers through all their ups and downs.

A History

You could compare swing dancing to improvisational jazz. In both there's no set "curriculum" or a set dance routine (or song in the jazz example) that one needs to memorize in order to be successful. You just need to know many of the basic steps (or melodies & chords) and then string them together adding a dash of your own personality to make the dance your own. Sometimes mistakes can lead to the coolest moves you've ever done. As well swing dancing advertises itself as a dance that almost anyone at any age can learn. You don't have to be dancing your whole life just to get into swing. Tracy started when she was eighteen and she's already competing; I started when I was twenty and I have a few of the moves committed to memory; there are 50+ year olds who are in the beginner's classes at Atomic Ballroom (a local swing and ballroom dance club) who have just started and are getting used to it. Ben Morris, one of the performance team's choreographers and a professional swing dancer (a national and international swing dance champion), summed up what swing is, it's "very relaxed and fun".

The term “swing dance” is actually the umbrella name of a group of dances that have all evolved from a dance called the Lindy Hop. On May 20, 1927 Charles Lindbergh successfully flew The Spirit of St. Louis over the Atlantic. Newspaper headlines read “Lindy Hops the Atlantic” which inspired Shorty Snowden, a well-known and popular dancer at the time, to coin the name Lindy Hop. The Lindy Hop, “America’s national dance” as Life magazine called it in 1943, is a social dance; it is done with many couples on the dance floor dancing to a big band playing jazz music.

Unlike other variations of swing dance, Lindy Hop is played to music with a fast beat, typically music that has more than 180 beats per minute (bpm). The fast music and dancing to that music just as fast is equivalent to an aerobic exercise. As Lindy spread throughout the nation, different variations of it sprouted up in different areas for example in California Lindy was slowed down considerably (to about 80-180 bpm) and became a new type of swing dance called West Coast Swing. West Coast evolved in the OC area and has ultimately become “the heart, the soul of West Coast swing.” West Coast is so ingrained in Californian culture that it became California’s state dance in 1988.

Unlike Lindy, which typically needs to be played to very fast and upbeat swing music, West Coast can be played to many contemporary songs and artists (like Lady Gaga or Kei$ha). As well unlike Lindy, which is typically danced in a circular style, West Coast is done in a linear style. Both of these styles are known as types of touch dancing, touch dancing is a type of dance where the partners touch each other. After World War II nontouch dancing became popular and big bands became expensive, both of which contributed to Lindy’s decline in popularity.

Swing received a boost in popularity in the 1980s-1990s when touch dancing came back into style. This revitalization of swing, called neo (or retro) swing, is now done by a generation of swing dancers who don’t really have any connections to it (since their parents may have been part of the 60s-70s when swing wasn’t as popular). It has now transitioned into the mainstream with big bands such as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy getting hits on the Billboard charts and playing in major venues (in this case the 1999 Super Bowl). According to the International Encyclopedia of Dance there are currently more than three hundred and fifty swing dance organizations in the US and Europe promoting swing dancing in this new generation. Out of many of these official organizations, there are also many smaller ones doing the same thing. One in particular is at UCI doing this exact thing, Swing Dance @ UCI.

A Club

Every Monday night Swing Dance @ UCI has a free beginner's class where the club brings in an instructor and for about ninety minutes everyone in the room learns the basics of swing. The club tries it's best to balance both Lindy and West Coast, promoting a healthy competition between both styles since the officers of the club came from different backgrounds in swing dancing. One way they do this is by alternating the beginner's classes by teach Lindy and West Coast every other week. "People try to advertise their styles and they try to do well in their styles...these people are open...to learn both," observed Tracy. When you go to one of their meetings, you'll be very surprised to find that there's not that many people in the dance major (nor people who have had a lot of dancing experience) at these meetings. Rather you'll meet people of various backgrounds that range from hard sciences (such as physics and biology), social sciences (like sociology and political science), and the arts (drama and photography).

Swing Dance @ UCI is a relatively new club on campus. The club “officially” started Winter 2010, but its roots can be traced at the Anteater Recreation Center (ARC) parking lot Fall 2009. Matt Hoss, second-year graduate in the chemistry PhD program, and Chloè-Agathe Azencott, a fifth-year graduate student in computer science, began as small group of Lindy Hoppers dancing at the ARC parking lot on Saturdays. According to Matt the reason they danced at the ARC parking lot rather than inside one of the dance rooms at the ARC was because 3-4 people had to pay $5 each time they wanted to get into the ARC since they weren’t UCI students (these people were either non-UCI student friends or . So they decided to go down the free route instead. Matt would bring his amplifier from his place in Verano to the ARC each time the group wanted to dance. They would plug in their iPods into the amps and start Lindy Hopping right there in the parking lot. At the same time they were dancing, another swinger was planning to do a swing dance club as well.

Ben approached Tracy in wanting to teach college students West Coast Swing to the swing or ballroom clubs on campus at that time (at which there were only two). However a majority of the seniors in these clubs graduated last year (in 2009), it was these seniors that made the club and when they left, the clubs disappeared as well. With no official clubs on campus, Tracy and Ben decided to create a one. When Tracy heard that there was an unofficial club meeting outside the ARC, she attended one of their Saturday meetings. At the end of that meeting Tracy told Matt, "I'm starting a club, do you wanna join?" Matt accepted and the club officially started up Winter 2010. With her connections, Tracy would bring in the instructors while Matt took care of the club's logistics (planning meetings, fundraising, ect.). It was during these club meetings/lessons that the idea of a performance team came about.

A Team

Tracy and Matt noticed that after the Monday night beginner’s lessons, about twelve to fourteen people would stay afterward and just continue dancing (regardless of whether they were dancing the steps they had learned that night). After receiving a few invitations from other clubs to perform, Tracy came up with the idea to create a swing dance performance team. After two to three weeks of try-outs and coaching sessions, the team was finalized with 12 performers and 4 alternates. The performers would be the first ones to perform a routine and had just their own steps to memorize. While the alternates learned almost all of the positions, being ready to become a substitute if a performer couldn’t make it to a choreography session. If a performer graduated or couldn’t be part of the team, Tracy and the choreographers would pick someone from the alternate pool to become a performer. According to Tracy every “member of the team [is a part] of one single large team”. Members of the team included (but not limited to):

Jenny Compton, second year Spanish, plays the trumpet and sings in an acapella group on campus called Clair de Lune.
Nate Directo, first year History and Engineering, also sings in a chamber choir.
Melanie Elvena, third year Art History, loves vintage clothes and can speak French.
Clint Foley, first year Drama, is part of the Rouge Artists Ensemble and is preparing to be in a show called Hyperbole: Origins.
Kevin Horan, first year International Studies and French, danced the Charleston (an early variation of Lindy) at a rave in Santa Barbra, the ravers left the dance floor.
Matt Hoss co-founded the club and was working on his PhD advancement while the team is preparing for their first public performance.
Melissa Matlock, third year Anthropology, has been a vegetarian for eleven years.
Michelle Mattson, first year graduate in Cellular Molecular Biology, is half Scandinavian & Japanese and hula danced throughout high school.
Colleen Moody, forth year graduate in Molecular Biology, is 5’11” and has played volleyball for ten years.
Sri Puranum, forth year graduate in Aerospace Engineering, is also part of the Salsa club on campus, UCI Salseros.
Philip Thomas, second year graduate in Bio-Med Engineering, is also 5’11” and loves research.
Justin Wang, UC San Diego graduate, is a competitive dancer and the only graduate not in school.
Julie West, third year Biology, has a yellow belt in karate. She started swing dancing and karate at the same time.
Rachelle Young, second year (who will go into) Psychology and Social Behavior, has played the piano for fourteen years and is also in Clair De Lune.

This eclectic group of people of different ages and different backgrounds, may have never have met in a college of 17,000 students. If anything they would have simply passed by each other on Ring Road or have the same general education class. No matter how different all of these people are, they are just “as passionate about being on the team as [the club’s officers and team’s choreographers are in] creating it.” They weren’t only just passionate about swing, but through that passion they began to develop fast friendships and companionships. One of the best examples of this passion from my own accounts happened during the choreography session that immediately followed Tracy’s announcement of who was on the performance team.

Now that the roster for who is on the performance team has been set, the performance team is now practicing half an hour after the beginner's classes. On most nights, the team has to be asked to leave the student center at midnight, so that the room can be reset for the next day. Tonight is no exception. It’s forty-five minutes before eleven on April 26th and the performance team has been working hard since eight thirty, learning West Coast in the beginner’s classes earlier. Three team members are lying on the wooden dance floor trying to catch their breath and for good reason. After about two hours of practicing West Coast moves, they then spent another hour doing the Lindy portion of their performance, which wore them out. As Tracy, Ben, and another choreographer, Malia San Nicolas (aside from Ben and Malia, there's also two other choreographers working with the team for a total of four), work out what the next set of steps for the performance are; the three lying on the floor find solace in relaxing from all that dancing. As those three are lying down, Rachelle and a few others are talking about how to celebrate her birthday. They agreed that they would go down to Atomic Ballroom, a local swing dance & ballroom club, to celebrate her birthday on Thursday. Since she and ten of her friends can get in there for free and also she got a free lesson and a free cake as well. As they planned, Tracy and the choreographers were finished and rushed everyone to get back to their spots. Just like clockwork, the people laying down jump back up ready to dance, the people planning Rachelle's party run to their spots. And for the next half hour they run through the whole Lindy routine of their dance.

It's the end of the coaching session, a quarter of an hour before the stroke of midnight. As everyone is getting ready to leave and (probably) immediately go to bed, the voices of three girls singing in unison can be heard:

"Happy Birthday to you..."

The doors swing open and the three girls continue singing while one of them holds a box of three small cakes. As they continue singing the whole room (including myself) disregard the fact that they've been dancing for nearly four hours and join the girls in another chorus:

"Happy Birthday dear Rachelle..."

As she blows out her candles everyone cheers and claps for in the next fifteen minutes it won't be Rachelle's birthday anymore, but will just become another run-of-the-mill Tuesday. However the cake will have to wait, as three student workers from the Student Center politely stand by the door, subtly letting on that they want to go home as well. Everyone thanks these three as they leave and rejoin the small group party out in the hall. Making use of a few tables set up previously that day for a conference, Rachelle, Melanie, and their friends lay out the small cakes still in the Wholesome Foods box and the 20 chocolate cupcakes Rachelle's been saving for the whole team (and me). Everyone is a little bit more upbeat now, wishing Rachelle a (at this point) happy belated birthday and continuing their different conversations from before (some talking about their weekends, others about the merits of re-purposing old running shoes as their new dance shoes). Somehow one always forgets how tired or what time it is or what they're doing tomorrow when around good friends. Also the cupcakes helped as well.
A Loss

The smell of incense fills Engineering Hall 1200 on April 30th seven minutes before the 4:30pm memorial began. There is a hectic rush to finish preparing as the organizers of the memorial continue to burn some more incense, place a few candles on the whiteboard railing and floor of the pit at the bottom of the room, and fix the laptop that will play the memorial videos. The memorial is for Mahesh Mahadevan, a 2nd year graduate in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and a member of the swing club and prospective performance team dancer. On April 10th, 2010 Mahesh went missing hours prior to his birthday. After being declared missing, his closest friends put up a website called findmahesh.com and started a Facebook group called “Missing Person—Please Help Find Mahesh Mahadevan”. Sadly his body was found near the UCI Observatory, five days later, on April 15th at 7:40pm. Police declared his death a suicide. His death sent shockwaves throughout the school, but his closest friends and colleges were affected most by it. The memorial that is happening is not to simply mourn Mahesh's loss but rather to celebrate his many accomplishments in his life.

There is a rare breed of genius who could socialize with others. Mahesh was a part of this breed. He was a foreign transfer student from Thrissur, India. According to Sri Puranum, one of Mahesh’s close friends and a member of the performance team, he loved wordplay. The word “sri” in all Indian dialects is used as a title for dignitaries or people of higher standing. Mahesh told Sri that he was respecting him just by saying his name. He could carry a conversation with just wordplay for half an hour, even though it would become “tedious”. Within their department, Sri recalled, that a question was only impossible if “Mahesh couldn’t solve it”. Within the first year of his graduate studies, Mahesh had published two papers. The astounding thing about this wasn’t the fact that he published two papers, but rather he was able to conduct two experiments and get through the six-to-eight month peer-review process all within a year. Sri recalled that Mahesh was “nice...that he never wanted to inconvenience others...that he thought of all of the consequences of his actions before doing them”. What was even more amazing about Mahesh was that amidst his research, he still embraced his creative side.

Mahesh could sing, act, and dance; the epitome the triple threat. He sang at his undergrad university, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and was part of an a cappella group on campus. His improvisational skills were top tier. When he was forced to change his lines at the ring of a bell in the middle of a skit (in an improvisational game called "change"), he came up with a line (in about 1-2 seconds) that still made the audience laugh. For Tracy, Sri, and the other members of the swing dance club & team; Mahesh will always be known for his dancing.

He first got involved with swing for the same reason many other single males might do something they haven't done before, to meet girls. Even though Mahesh may not have found a date at the club, he did find a new enthusiasm in swing. He was so enthusiastic about it that he started getting his friends into the club and he also wanted to be a part of the performance team. According to Sri, Mahesh if he couldn't do it perfectly, he wouldn't have tried out for the team. Mahesh was a key part in the early development of the swing dance club. Attendance is one of the key ingredients to having a new club on campus. Tracy noted that Mahesh was at every meeting. Mahesh also helped recruit a few members, including Sri. He brought in a few number of his friends into the club and got them interested in swing. Mahesh was a key person in helping the swing dance club become what it is today.
A Community
When you enter Atomic Ballroom, opened since 2004, the art deco décor of the place brings you back to the late 1930s. However there are also many anachronisms that show that you're still in the 21st century. When you enter, both people at the counter collecting names and money are on 20+ inch iMacs protruding from the top of the counter. To the far right of a refrigerator unit cooling and showing off bottles of soda, energy drinks, and various types of water almost all of them being sold for a dollar. Next to that is a large wood cabinet showing off a college of black & white photographs of swing dances past, modern day articles about a few charity benefits held at Atomic, and trophies. Tons of trophies from many of the instructors at Atomic. Across from the cabinets is a large Vizio LCD TV advertising events and classes happening in the next few months at Atomic. Upstairs is a single maroon room with a wood floor and mirrors covering one whole wall. This is the practice room that the performance team is using to practice the routine they've been doing for the last six weeks for their first public performance in front of the OC swing dance community.

The performance team still didn’t have a name. It is April 20th, 8:50pm, the performance team will be performing in eighty-five minutes and Ben doesn’t know how to introduce them. Clint had an idea, name the team after a group in a cartoon. Two days ago Clint and Nate did a quick introductory skit they wanted to do before the performance at the end of practice that they wanted to do for the performance. It was a swinger's twist to the introduction speech of Team Rocket, the antagonists of the anime series Pokèmon (which was popular in the US in the late 1990s). Nate and Clint stood back to back and alternated speaking the lines:
"Prepare for trouble," Clint begins as he crosses his arms.
"And make it double," Nate continues crossing his arms as well.

"To protect the world from devastation..."

"To unite all swingers within our nation..."

"To denounce the evil of truth and love," Clint says pointing up to the sky.

"To extend our reach to the stars above," Nate follows suit.

"West Coast"

"East Coast"

"UCI Swing blast off at the speed of light."

"Stomp off! Let's go!" Both say in unison.

It is 8:51pm and they are no longer a nameless UCI Swing performance team. They named themselves as a pun from the characters from Nate & Clint's speech, they became Swing Rock'It.

As Swing Rock'It practices their introduction and dance one final time, I wish them luck and walk downstairs to find a place to sit on the dance floor. When I got there, it was standing room only. As I wadded through the crowd of college students, young adults, middle-aged people, dating couples, married couples, single men trying to hit on single women, until I found a nice spot to stand. Ten minutes later Nate and Clint coolly walk out and begin their introduction, doing it the exact same way they did two days ago. As they introduced the team, the rest of the team came onto the dance floor and into dance formation. Nate and Clint finished and walked back to their respected partners. It was silent, but not for long a second later the speakers above the dance floor break the silence with three simple words, "Let's do it".

The song You Got It by Lucus Grabeel began to play. Five beats after those first three words, the West Coast portion of the dance begins. As they continue dancing in formation, everyone in the room was excited as they clapped their hands to the beat. The whoops and hollers of the college students seemed to energize the team. Many of the older people watching seemed entertained and fascinated that such a young group can dance so well. When the team's male members started showing off their fancy footwork while keeping the rest of their body in place, everyone cheered. As the song ended, everyone in the room cheered. But that was simply the midway point. Suddenly the song changed, it was no longer a modern day song sung by someone from High School Musical, it became classic big band.

The Lindy/Charleston part of the performance has just begun. The group was now in a V-shaped formation with the women in the front, while the men were behind them. The classic song Stomp Off! Let's Go! (a classic song for big bands to play, but made famous by Louis Armstrong) began to play as everyone began doing an organized Charleston performance. Again the crowd energized the team with cheers throughout the performance. Then came one of the biggest moments the team has been waiting for, the aerials. By this point of the performance, the team was in a circle, the two couples on the left and right side did the aerials while the couples at the direct front and back had the females fall into the arms of their male partners. In the aerial, the female is held by their male partner as they jump up. The male then directs the direction the female is going (in this case the females went to the right from the audience's point of view) only to be stopped in mid-air to then go back downwards. After this, the audience went crazy cheering and whooping. At the end of the performance all the members struck a pose and a few seconds later bowed towards the audience to the sound of applause.
At the end of the performance, as the night continued with everyone going on the dance floor, Team Rock'It is still being complimented by almost everyone in the audience on their performance. A few members go back on the dance floor dancing with a few friends and a few friendly strangers while others are huddled around their friends (who have never even tried swing dancing before) and a few are resting up on the cornucopia of seats now available. Michelle and I are talking while sitting in the most comfortable seats in Atomic, an ivory-colored leather couch in the northeast corner of the dance floor.

"Oh I better go interview a few of you guys and ask how you feel now that your first performance is over," I tell her as I get up with notepad in hand.

"Oh I can tell you what we'll all say. There's a universal sigh of relief," Michelle answered. I look over at a few of the members who just nod in agreement. I look at the far end of the dance floor and see a more set of relaxed members dancing or talking to their friends. Looks like Michelle was right on the money.

It's surprising how much a small group of people who may never have met can bond in the span of a month and a half. A lot has happened over Spring quarter 2010: a club still trying to find its feet, the creation of a brand new performance team, choir concerts for the singers, preparing to graduate (to either go into the world or into graduate school), the death of a close friend and fellow club member, and being hounded by an over-eager student journalist. For Team Rock'It they've been welcomed into the swing community with open arms and applause. Yet no matter how many troubles each individual member might face, somehow these problems are all left behind as they begin to dance and be together with a community of people just as enthusiastic in swing as they are.

Community, isn't it a wonderful thing?
Reporter’s Log

Interviews

75 minute group interview with Swing Dance @ UCI officers: Matt Hoss, Michelle Mattson, and Tracy Wang
30 minute interview with Swing Rock'It member Sri Puranum
Online survey and 3-5 minute interviews with Swing Rock'It members
10 minute interview with Frances Chance, Swing Dance @ UCI’s faculty advisor
Online interview with Ben Morris

Observation

11 hours, 35 minutes observing choreography, coaching, and try-out sessions
Participated in 5 Swing Dance @ UCI beginner’s lessons (2 hours per lesson)
5 hours, 30 minutes of observing Swing Rock'It members at Atomic Ballroom
Attended Swing Rock'It first public performance at Atomic Ballroom
Attended Mahesh Mahadevan’s memorial

Documentation

International Encyclopedia of Dance, Lindy Hop entry
"UCI Swing" Facebook Group
Video of Swing Rock'It first public performance at Atomic Ballroom
Findmahesh.com
"Missing Person—Please Help Find Mahesh Mahadevan” Facebook Group
New University article “Found Body Identified”, April 20th, 2010

Best Buddies: Bittersweet Friendships

2010-05-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

By Tracy Lim

The thud of bowling balls hitting wooden floors and crashing into pins is noisy tonight at the Irvine Lanes Bowling Alley. Equally loud are cheers of “Yes!” (after strikes) and constant laughter from bowling gutter balls. Luckily, the commotion doesn't faze Ricky Kim and Shahrzad Yavari, who are paired up as part of UCI's Best Buddy program.

“Ricky is really good at bowling, huh Ricky?” says Shahrzad Yavari. He immediately agrees and tells us to “watch.”

Ricky Kim, 27, stands at 5’5,” and has a rounder physique and flatter facial features compared to most young adults his age. He walks onto the glossy wooden floor with complete concentration and disregards all the noise and distractions around him. He focuses on one thing only: the ten pins placed at the opposite end of the lane, arranged in a perfect triangle. Ricky grabs the neon pink eight-pound ball with his shortened fingers and places the ball up to his face and slowly swings the ball down to the right his body. He gracefully releases the ball directly in the middle of the lane and slams eight out of the ten pins. Success! To show his accomplishment, Ricky positions his thumb and index finger of his right hand as a gun. He then holds the “gun” up to his lips and blows the top. As Ricky turns around and walks towards his seat, his Best Buddy Shahrzad cheerfully yells “Good Job” and gives him a high-five.

Bowling with Shahrzad is one Ricky’s favorite activities. Three days prior to their outing, Shahrzad called Ricky asking him if he wanted to hang out. He responded with “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” She then told him that they could do whatever he wants to do. He excitedly responded with “Okay, yeah let’s hang out, let’s go bowling.”

Best Buddies is a nonprofit organization created by Anthony Kennedy Shriver in 1989. This international organization integrates employment, focuses on leadership development and creates one-to-one relationships for people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). Best Buddies Jobs assist people with IDD to find and maintain jobs through ongoing support and training. They are then able to earn an income, pay taxes and work with others in the community. Best Buddies Leadership encourages and empowers people with IDD to become self-advocates and publicly speak to various institutions and communities. Best Buddies has expanded from a single chapter to a global organization involving six continents, 46 countries, and participants in all 50 U.S. states. Middle schools, high schools, and over 1,500 colleges around the world have joined this global movement. All schools focus on creating one-to-one relationships with students with IDD. There are 40 to 50 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States and close to 200 million worldwide. Although these are huge figures, Anthony Shriver and the rest of the Best Buddies members have impacted 700,000 people worldwide.

The UC Irvine Best Buddies club, led by second-year Psychology and Social Behavior student Jenny Dao, is one of the many chapters that encompass the Best Buddies organization. Jenny explains, “This club promotes the simple beauty of friendship and acceptance.” Each UC Irvine member becomes a ‘Peer Buddy’ and is paired up with a ‘Buddy’ who is either a student or alumni of the Irvine Valley College Transition Program for students with disabilities. The College Board Director (President), Jenny Dao and the Activities Coordinator, Shahrzad Yavari match the 12 pairs based on profile sheets that each member fills out during the start of the year. After the Buddy Pairs are formed, the Peer Buddy contacts their Buddy at least once a week as part of their responsibilities. The pairs also hang out at least twice a month, which can range from catching a flick, grabbing dinner, going bowling, or even just playing video games.

Shahrzad Yavari and Ricky Kim’s cherished friendship, began about two years ago thanks to Best Buddies.

“My Buddy is one of my best friends,” says Ricky. “She is nice and she’s cool!”

Shahrzad, Ricky’s Peer Buddy is a fourth year Public Health major from Irvine, California and is a three-year member of Best Buddies.

Shahrzad explains, “Ricky has been such an amazing friend to me. Even outside of Best Buddies I talk about him with my friends. My friends know him and he knows them. My family has met him and love him.”

Ricky, Shahrzad Buddy has Down Syndrome but still lives his everyday life just as any other individual. He is an Irvine Valley College alumnus, an employee of the Goodwill Store, a five-year member of the Best Buddies Club, and a social butterfly.

-----

On Wednesday May 26th about a week after Shahrzad and Ricky’s bowling night, UC Irvine’s Balboa Island B conference room glared vivid colors of blue, orange, green, red and yellow, which deviated from the normal bare blue walls in the room. The colors spilled onto the white walls of the hallways reflecting the hues onto the passer-byers. A metallic foil coral reef hung in the center of the room like a disco ball and strings of Hawaiian flowers and green and yellow streamers stretched across the room. A 5’x5’ Best Buddies banner bearing the official Keith Haring logo hung from the clips of the white board in front of the room. That particular room on that particular day was decorated so fittingly almost as if a group of elves snuck into the room the night before and left the beautiful decorations as a present. Those elves are the six Best buddies officers that decorated the room for the end of the year banquet: Jenny Dao, Shahrzad Yavari, Elsie Silva, Dawn Morris, Lea Lang, and Charlene Saddul all who have committed countless hours throughout the year to promote the beauty of friendship.

At 6:45pm the members entered the festive room, 15 minutes after the start time listed on the invitation. Each individual walked into the room with a smile; the colors in the room were symbiotic with the energy exerted from the members. The evening was full of contagious laughter and glittering smiles. The banquet started with four rounds of heads-up-three-up instead of the traditional heads-up-seven-up. Heads-up-three-up began with three (instead of seven) selected members that stood in front of the room. Then the remaining members sat at the table with their heads down, eyes closed, and a thumb sticking out. The chosen three walked around the room, secretly pressing down on someone’s thumb and then returning to the front of the room. From there everyone raised their heads and those that had their thumbs pressed stood up and guessed who tapped them. When they guessed correctly then the two switch roles and the game started again. Following Heads-Up-Three-Up was the game of Telephone. Telephone began with Dawn Morris whispering, “Panda bears eat peanut butter” to Lea Lang who was sitting next to her among 22 other members who were seated along the two rows of long tables. From there the message was whispered from one ear to another—all 24, until the message reached the final person, one of the Buddies Lauren. Lauren blurted “Thank you Ben.” Dawn announced the original message and the members could not help but laugh.

Aside from an evening filled with activities, the banquet was also a night of inspiration. 45-year-old David Gauthier who has Cerebral Palsy was a guest speaker at the banquet. He is an ambassador for Best Buddies Jobs and Leadership and speaks, “for Best Buddies everywhere and anywhere.” Gauthier explained to the 24 members in the room that because of Best Buddies he currently works for the Mayor of Long Beach. Best Buddies has “opened many doors” for him and he even worked as an intern for Arnold Schwarzenegger in Sacramento. Gauthier spread his optimism and reinforced the idea that “We need to show what a person with a disability can do! Not to be mediocre.” He constantly thanked the Best Buddies organization and stated, “they placed faith on me which is something I will never be able to repay. There is so much potential for anyone and we see that potential reached within.”

David Gauthier also praised the aspect of friendship in Best Buddies, “Friendship goes on and gives hope. Hope is the greatest thing because it gives us faith and love.” He speaks directly to the Buddies and tells them to never give up on their Peer buddies because they will never give up on them. He ends his speech with “What you do friendship wise, they will be there for life and no one will be as caring as them.”

Shahrzad and Ricky’s friendship clearly delineates love, faith and hope. Shahrzad reminisces about their many beach trips. “The most fun outgoing activity with him has always been going to the beach. He loves the waves and ocean. The way he appreciates the beauty of the beach, I have never seen it in anyone else. He makes me laugh so hard whenever we are at the beach because he always likes to chase me and throw me in the water and we have a blast just running and being silly.”

Ricky vocalizes, “I love my Buddy, she is always there for me you know? And she always talks to me and hangs out with me.”

Four pizzas later and two games later, the banquet comes to an end. It was a night packed with games, awards, dancing, thank yous, and a big family picture at the end. The end of the banquet marked the finish of a successful year filled with a Disneyland trip, a beach trip to Corona Del Mar, picnics at the park, bowling nights and other memories that will not be forgotten. It was another year where friendships that were planned out and forced transformed into magical relationships. Unfortunately, the end of the banquet also means the end of Best Buddies for the graduating seniors: Shahrzad Yavari and Tera Perry.

As a buddy pair you get so accustomed to hanging out and talking to your buddy. But once the Peer Buddies graduate, they move away, find a job, or go to graduate school; so the future of the Best Buddies friendships is always uncertain. The College Buddy Director Jenny Dao stated that,

“ The hardest thing to see is when the Peer Buddies have to leave because they are graduating from UCI. You don’t want your Buddy to think they had a fake relationship; you don’t want them to think that you are just their friends because of the club. You want to build lifelong friendships with them but at the same time it is hard to expect all paired up friendships to just bloom into real friendships. But in certain cases it does.” The main reason why all the Buddy Pairs worked out this past school year and why everyone was sad that the year was over is because of Jenny’s great leadership. Jenny’s contagious unconditional love, passion and commitment for Best Buddies led to the success of this organization.

Ricky Kim, Shahrzad’s Buddy expressed his sadness saying, “ I am hurt that she is going to leave me, she is my best friend you know?” Ricky discussed that this may be his last year in Best Buddies because he does not know who will be his Buddy next year. Before Shahrzad, he had two other buddies that graduated. Ricky gave the impression that he wasn’t ready to get attached to another person and eventually risk losing someone else he cares about. Shahrzad told Ricky not to be silly and told him that he will be paired up with another Buddy. She reassured him that just because she will no longer be in Best Buddies that doesn’t mean they would no longer hang out and be friends. Shahrzad knows that their friendship will definitely last and her graduation will not affect their powerful bond.

Shahrzad told Ricky, “I’ll see you on your birthday, August 15th right?”

Ricky’s frown turned into a huge smile and he replied, “You’re coming?”

Shahrzad responded back with a comforting smile, “Of course I would not miss it.”

Reporting Log:

-Observed the 45 min. meeting of Spring Quarter at Moss Cove B Student Center

-Observed a 30 minute officer meeting at Peet’s Coffee

-Observed 2 hr. bonding session with Shahrzad Yavari and Ricky Kim- bowling

-Observed/Interviewed 2.5 hr. End of the year banquet

-Interviewed Jenny Dao for 1.5 hrs.

Documentation:

Evite Beach Party Event

Evite End of the Year Banquet

UCI Best Buddies Facebook Group

Best Buddies Official Website

UCI Best Buddies officer agenda

Tacos and Co. Fundraiser flier

Ability Magazine article on Best Buddies