Students

Violet Barton remembers her teenage years doing quadratic equations by candlelight to a soundtrack of bombs and bullets as the Salvadoran Civil War raged around her.

She was forced to migrate to the United States 36 years ago but will go back to El Salvador later this year as a UC Merced graduate student and a Fulbright scholar.

“April ... hath put a spirit of youth in everything,” Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 98. He might as well have been writing about this year’s Shakespeare in Yosemite production.

With Friday’s premiere — attended by high school students from Mariposa and several children of park employees and El Portal residents and performed by a troupe of players ranging from those experienced and trained in Shakespeare to brand-new actors — the 420-year-old “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” seemed new again.

Desperate lovers, a fairy king and queen, a woman with a donkey’s head and a scamp with Cupid’s arrow in flower form are taking over Yosemite National Park on Earth Day weekend.
Highlighting UC Merced’s special partnership with Yosemite, Shakespeare in Yosemite enters its second year with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” adapted and directed by UC Merced Professor Katherine Steele Brokaw and Professor Paul Prescott from the University of Warwick in Coventry, U.K.

Working in education over the years, I have learned to never let inhospitable and toxic circumstances destroy one’s soul, but to use education as a way to empower, transform, radically heal and cultivate seeds of hope.

People on college campuses hold a wide range of views, and the First Amendment gives everyone the right to express their opinions. But restricting speech at a public institution — even when what’s said is unpopular, offensive or even hateful — is against the law.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, shared that and other messages with students, faculty, staff and administrators at UC Merced this week as part of the Chancellor’s Dialogue on Diversity and Interdisciplinarity lecture series.

UC Merced has a new Sustainability Strategic Plan to help the campus further advance its sustainability goals.

If this year’s Giving Tuesday was a success — and by every measure, it was — that success was due in large part to the generosity of UC Merced students.

The day-long fundraiser surpassed its goal of 1,000 donors in a day, with $280,000 contributed in just 24 hours. Over its four-year history, Giving Tuesday has helped UC Merced raise more than $1.3 million. For those familiar with UC Merced’s engaged student body, it’s no surprise that students were instrumental in making it all happen.

With race, immigration, rising inequality, gender discrimination and collective mobilization grabbing current headlines, the work of the UC Merced sociology unit — always relevant locally — is gaining wider recognition across the country.

For the past three years, members of the UC Merced community and friends have made the Tuesday after Thanksgiving a showstopper for our campus.

Gustine’s Veterans Day parade has a been a Westside tradition for as long as most people in the area can remember. It’s also been a tradition for the brothers of Omega Delta Phi for as long as the UC Merced chapter has been chartered. Eight years might not seem like a lot in the grand history of a 50-year-old annual event, but for founding member Ivan Prado, it’s a big deal.