Chico State Archives - Page 3 of 5

Wrestling with the climate threat to human civilization "Maybe our purpose is not to go gently"

by Anna Blackmon Moore
commentary

When I was 16, I was watching a sitcom on my 8-inch black and white TV. Outside my bedroom window, the sun had set. At the start of a commercial, it occurred to me that I was wracked with fear and dread. By the commercial’s end, the dread had anchored itself inside my body— my chest, my limbs, my temples.

I wasn’t better the following day; I wasn’t better the following week. Anxiety became incapacitating. Two months later, I was taking a now ancient antidepressant, beginning what would become a lifelong path of medication and treatment. read more

Chico State takes the reins in regenerative agriculture Tiny microbes can help addresses climate change - if we stop killing them

courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Jefferson’s improved mouldboard plow.

by Richard Roth

When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they applied their mouldboard plows to the prairies, to soils that were rich, dark and black. That soil was steaming with mineral and organic carbon — with soil life so small it was invisible to the human naked (unmicroscoped) eye and, hence, to our consciousness. So we ripped into them with gusto, mining this flesh of earth.

The settler-farmers killed the microbes by exposing them to sunlight, erosion, heat and dryness, and they planted monocrops – a single crop like wheat. Or corn. Or walnuts. read more

Racist graffiti unsettles campus community Police investigating hate crime

by Leslie Layton

Racist, homophobic and sexist graffiti was used to deface faculty bulletin boards, photographs and office doors in Butte Hall during the April 6-7 weekend, according to police and faculty.

The Chico State University Police Department (UPD) released a brief statement that says it’s investigating the graffiti incident as a hate crime and “seeking to identify suspects.” UPD estimated the damage and clean-up cost at $400.

Police were contacted Sunday morning and the graffiti that had defaced the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice was promptly removed. read more

To people of color, Chico seems less friendly, more hostile Chico State promises "Safety Summit"

by Leslie Layton and Denise Minor

When Vickie Nailing first came to Chico to pursue a master’s degree in 2015, she was taken aback by how friendly people were. She loved the community’s “hippy vibe” that reminded her of the 1970s.

“When I would pass strangers they would look me in the eyes and smile,” said Nailing, a graduate student in the Teaching International Languages program. “I’m from L.A. I wasn’t used to that.”

Nailing left Chico one year later to train English teachers in Ukraine on a Peace Corps program. When she returned in January, she sensed that something in the city had changed. Nailing, an African-American re-entry student, says she sometimes found herself facing upfront hostility and defensiveness. read more

Real collaboration preferred over ‘Together we WASC’ Chico State's accreditation push ignores woes, distant administration

by Tony Waters

“Together we WASC” has been the tagline coming from the Chico State administration in recent months. It is even featured at the bottom of some emails.

This refers to the accreditation process of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, a private organization from Oakland, which is given the right to accredit all schools and colleges in the western United States by the U.S. Department of Education. Everything from Stanford University to universities in the South Pacific to secondary schools in Myanmar are reviewed. read more

U.S. Senate candidate Kevin de León calls for “debt-free” education Campaigning in Chico, de León says opponent Feinstein should have stopped Kavanaugh

photo by Karen Laslo

California Sen. Kevin de León at CSUC’s Trinity Commons.

by Leslie Layton

California Sen. Kevin de León, running an uphill battle to win a U.S. Senate seat, campaigned Thursday in Butte County, calling for debt-free higher education, immigration reform and Medicare-for-all.

De León also criticized his opponent, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for not acting sooner to stop Judge Brett Kavanaugh from becoming a U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee on the brink of confirmation. De León said Feinstein could have helped block the 2006 floor vote that confirmed Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. read more