Alexandra Mickle, a University of Oregon sophomore from California, lives three blocks from the beach. “It’s literally 72 degrees every day, and if the sun’s not out, then it’s still bright, even if it’s cloudy. It rains maybe three days a year.”

Every fall term since 2014, over 1,000 incoming UO freshman have come from California, and that number has increased every year. For many of them, Mickle’s home sounds like a description of their home, too.

For Mickle, who said she already suffers from depression, Eugene’s winter weather chipped away at her mental health even more. The change in temperature from a sunny 72 degrees to a rainy 43 was a shock for her. But her depression has led her to seek solutions like vitamin D lamps and spending time with dogs.

Mickle enjoys visiting the dogs at the Duck Nest, a student resource center for mental health. The office is located in the basement of the EMU.

“Dogs increase my mood a lot, like a ridiculous amount,” she said.

Mickle said another important thing she does to prevent her from losing control of her mental health is staying busy, especially doing things outdoors like going on walks.

“If I don’t have things to do, then I sit and wallow in my pity and thoughts,” said Mickle.

The counseling center offers a wellness workshop series through the Duck Nest. The first workshop is Monday, Jan. 8 at 2 p.m., specializing on homesickness.

Counseling Center Education and Prevention Outreach Coordinator, Suzie Stadelman, said winter term is tailored to some of the topics they hear more often in the colder, darker months, which include depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder, otherwise known as SAD. There are also more workshops offered on topics applicable to year-round struggles.

“Just to reach out to others is one of the first, more proactive things to do,” said Mariko Lin, a senior staff psychologist with the Counseling Center. “Most likely other people are struggling with the same thing.”

Vitamins are also an essential component of Mickle’s winter term routine, especially vitamin D.

Mickle uses a vitamin D lamp for an hour while doing her makeup and when she does her homework in the evenings. Vitamin D lamps help trigger the skin to produce more vitamin D using high-intensity ultraviolet B rays, according to Berkeley Wellness. The Duck Nest offers vitamin lamps for students’ use.

Fellow sophomore Nalani Ho-Watkins also said the vitamins help her a lot during winter, despite having lived in Eugene for seven years.

“Since there’s so little sunlight, I take vitamin D and a multivitamin,” said Ho-Watkins. “Especially in the winter, I’m really careful to take it every day.”

Ho-Watkins has an emotional support dog named Hapa, and she said the companionship he provides is a big part of her mental health.

According to Lin, companionship is a big part of staying healthy.

“It’s partly just connecting with others that are similar, like their peers that are going through the same thing so they don’t feel like they’re alone,” said Lin. “Attending something like [the wellness workshops] also provides accountability versus denying what’s happening or ignoring what’s happening.”

While each student has his or her own coping strategies, Lin said keeping a routine and staying busy are some of the most important things.

“It’s really going back to whatever they enjoy in their lives, and if they can identify what those are, they need to get back to that,” Lin said. “When they really had joy in their lives, they feel connected or have a community, so then they’re going to socialize more with their friends or find that one person they trust.”

A list of Counseling Center workshops can be found here, and groups offered by the Counseling Center can be found here.

Follow Becca Robbins on Twitter: @brobbinsuo

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“Math is not my friend, nor is science,” said second-year journalism student Maddy Henson.

Henson is not alone. Journalism is the only department that awards more Bachelor of Arts degrees than Bachelors of Science. In the SOJC, 282 journalism students received B.A.’s while 248 got B.S.’s in the 2016-2017 school year.

In the SOJC, advertising students are the exception: eight more students got B.S.’s than B.A.’s.

Henson said she felt the language requirement of a B.A. degree was more useful for her career.

“It’s about talking to people and not everyone speaks English,” Henson said.

In 2016-17, the University of Oregon gave out 3,061 B.S. degrees and just 1,553 B.A. degrees. Ten years ago the margin was much smaller, with 1,895 getting B.S.’s and 1,565 students receiving B.A.’s. 

In 2007-08, Architecture and Allied Arts was alongside journalism with the majority of students choosing arts over sciences. Since then, AAA has joined all other department categories in awarding more B.S.’s.

Business Administration students overwhelmingly favor B.S. degrees — 611 students graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration last year while just 111 opted for a B.A.

Sophomore Tamlyn Padilla-Grafilo is a part of the majority in her field. She is a business student working toward a B.S.

“I love language, but I don’t have the patience,” said Padilla-Grafilo.

While most mathematics majors pursue a B.S., three students received a B.A. last year.

Madeline LuBien is keeping with this trend and working toward a B.S. in math; however, she said she’s not surprised by those who worked through the language requirement of a B.A.

“It depends on the application,” LuBien said. “If you want to teach math, another language might help, especially if you want to teach in a place like San Diego or Texas where there are a lot of Spanish-speaking students.”

LuBien, who is in her second year, said the science requirement of the B.S. isn’t a problem for her because “I can do science because I’m good at math.”

Economics is another major where students predominantly receive B.S. degrees. The department awarded 343 B.S.’s and 34 B.A.’s.

A junior Economics major, Shilpa Vinod is one of those few students opting out of the extra math and science classes. She said she is hoping to go into international finance and the foreign language would benefit her.

“Economics is worldwide and has ties in politics,” said Vinod.

Vinod is also minoring in political science, business administration and potentially French. She said she finds the B.A. path easier because she has been speaking French since she was 11 years-old, and she doesn’t have to take additional math and science classes already covered in her major.

One major that’s split is Political Science — 93 students received a B.S. and 90 received a B.A..

Bill Braker, a freshman in the major, said he got into political science because he considers himself a social science person, so he decided to take Spanish toward a B.A. degree. He said “language is a pain in the butt,” but it’s more worth it to him than math or computer science classes.

Follow Becca Robbins on Twitter: @brobbinsuo

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The Organization Against Sexual Assault held its first coalition meeting Wednesday titled “Coalition for Consent.” This coalition focused on the #MeToo Twitter hashtag that swept social media earlier this year. #MeToo was a way for victims of sexual harassment to show solidarity.

Students sat in a semicircle in Friendly Hall Wednesday night and discussed their reactions to the hashtag and their thoughts surrounding society’s treatment of sexual assault and harassment recently, especially the cases of celebrities Harvey Weinstein and Louis C.K.

“I hope it transforms into actual change as opposed to just another awareness campaign,” said Megan Knox, an attendee of the Organization Against Sexual Assault’s first Coalition for Consent event this year.

OASA member and facilitator of this coalition, Sophie Bange, said she felt the relevance of these instances made good timing for their first event of the year.

“We wanted to use our position as a student group to facilitate discussions and let people talk about these things,” she said.

She recalled seeing a lot of #MeToo posts on her own timelines and the way they made her reflect on her own experiences.

“I feel like this is the first time in recent history sexual assault and harassment has been talked about so much in general culture,” she said. “It’s triggering for a lot of people.”

OASA was formed in 2012, according to Bange, and it used to hold a Coalition for Consent every month. Because of their smaller size this year, Bange said they’re hoping to do some collaboration events with groups like Students for Choice.

Members hope to have another coalition meeting in January.

Eighteen people attended this event, which was more than Bange and fellow OASA members expected. The turnout allowed students to break into groups of four and discuss the ideas on the slides in small groups instead of in front of the room.

Knox saw the smaller turnout as an advantage. She said she felt everyone who attended wanted to be there and that there were no pauses in her group’s discussion.

Bange said they positioned the chairs in the circle to make the space feel more open to discussion as opposed to a lecture.

Students’ talk about the power of social media and its recent use to raise awareness of sexual harassment drowned out the sound of the pouring rain outside.

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Ducks and Beavers fans across Oregon are feeling the buzz of the upcoming Civil War game, but they don’t have to be in a football uniform to participate.

The 16th annual Civil War Blood Drive kicked off Nov. 1 and continues until Nov. 19, allowing Oregonians to vote for either school when donating blood across the state. The blood drive will come to Lillis Business Complex and the EMU on Nov. 13-17, giving students a chance to help bring the trophy back to Eugene.

Last year, OSU beat UO by just 476 votes, one of the closer results, after the Ducks crushed the Beavers by 774 in 2015.

OSU has won eight times while UO has won seven.

Each person who donates will be entered into a raffle to win two tickets to the Civil War football game, and this year’s trophy will be awarded at the game.

In the past 15 years of the Civil War Blood Drive, Oregonians have donated 102,129 times in the name of the Ducks or the Beavers. The donations peaked in 2009-2012, seeing over 8,000 votes almost every year. Since then, the competition has been declining with just 4,782 votes last year.

“Students don’t tend to have a lot of financial resources, and a lot of campaigns are about donating money,” Lane Bloodworks Program Manager Casey Zerbe said. “Blood is something that we all have and most of us are able to donate, but most of us don’t donate. It’s a way for a student to really feel empowered and feel like they can make a difference in their community.”

With the arrival of the cold temperatures and winter rain, Zerbe said this is the time of year when it’s especially important to donate.

“Once the holidays hit, a lot of people start to travel,” she said. “People also get sick and then can’t donate. As the weather can get a little more hazardous, the need for blood can increase because people get into accidents. We want to have enough for everyone in case of emergencies.”

One donation can save up to three lives, according to Zerbe.

“If we hit our goal of 80 donors a day, that’s 240 lives that can be saved by UO students,” Zerbe said.

Zerbe also wants to remind those looking to donate blood to eat a protein-packed meal at least four hours in advance, drink a lot of water and bring identification.

“We look for ways to meet people where they’re passionate, and the Civil War is something Oregonians just go crazy for,” said Zerbe. “It can make blood donation fun to add some competition into the mix.”

Follow Becca Robbins on Twitter: @brobbinsuo

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Bikes line both sides of 13th Avenue. They race back and forth down the street, dodging students and faculty and weaving their way to classes and events. More bikes line the curb beyond campus for students to buy or rent throughout the year, and a bike lane dominates the roadway.

And yet, there are soon to be more.

The City of Eugene, in partnership with the University of Oregon and Lane Transit District, will launch the Eugene Bike Share system in spring 2018.

This will hopefully reduce traffic on campus parking lots and for buses like the EMX, according to Eugene Bike Share’s General Manager Lindsey Hayward.

With 300 bikes and 35 stations, the system was originally intended to be specific to the UO campus, said Hayward.

A lack of approval from Campus Risk Management took the project off the table in 2012, according to UO Bike Program Coordinator Kelsey Moore.

Due to interest from the rest of the community and a grant from the Oregon Transportation Commission, the project was opened again in 2015 but expanded to include downtown and the Whiteaker neighborhood.

After the gain of a title sponsor in September, the system was set for a spring opening. The sponsor will be revealed at an announcement event in January.

The $1.3 million project is largely funded by the grant; however, ASUO also contributed $197,311 in 2015. These funds were originally allocated by ASUO in 2012 but were not paid until the project restarted three years later. According to Moore, this contribution ensured the university would have four to six stations on or around campus.

“On campus it’s great,” Moore said. “We have a big campus, so there’s definitely a lot of people who will be using bike share to cross campus or run an errand, but I think a lot of people will also use it to go downtown and [to] the Whiteaker. I know a lot of students are really liking the businesses, the coffee shops [and] the different opportunities for retail that are in those two locations, so I definitely see people using the system.”

Moore also noted the high traffic times when people are visiting campus or just want to use a bike for the day or the weekend, so bike share would allow access without the commitment of buying or renting.

After the launch during spring term, students will get 15 minutes a day of free ride time, and after that will pay $1 for every 15 min with the bike. With a $5 monthly pass, students get an hour for free every day.

In its new location at the EMU, Moore said the Bike Program got much more traffic these past two summers with incoming freshmen and their parents wondering if bringing a bike would be worth it.

“They didn’t want the responsibility of if it got stolen, so they were really concerned about theft, about maintenance [and] about would they use it enough. So when they heard bike share would be launching this year, people were really excited, because it takes all of that ownership responsibility off of you, but you have all of the access.”

UO student Jennifer Sanchez echoed Moore’s thoughts. She left her bike at home in California but says she could definitely see herself using this system.

“I believe that would work really well for me; just to go back [and] forth instead of relying on the bus stations,” Sanchez said.

She said she could see other out-of-state students as well as international students taking advantage of the “quick and go” transportation.

The chosen bike share company, Social Bike, is the same one used by Biketown in Portland. According to Associate Transportation Planner Reed Dunbar, the systems will be similar and Social Bike members will be able to travel back and forth and take advantage of both projects.

While Hayward says the Eugene system will have updated bikes from Biketown, another key difference will be the color.

“We can’t have orange bikes on campus,” she said.

The bikes are in the branding and production phase, but, according to Harmon, the city is still open to public comment before finalizing the locations of the bike stations. A map of the proposed locations as well as a video that shows how bike share works can be found here.

Follow Becca Robbins on Twitter: @brobbinsuo

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Project design signs stood in the hallway of the EMU, displaying new ways to develop sports products such as snowboarding jackets, running leggings and adjustable kayak seats. Small, UO alumni-founded companies like ketchup company Red Duck Foods, showed off their products. Grad students displayed facial expression software and an eye-tracking program.

These are just a few examples of the displays at the Innovation Summit last Friday, Oct. 27. The student-facilitated event aimed to connect and engage UO students and groups from different departments around the university —  like science, communications, and performing arts.

It was a collection of interactive activities, events and lectures. These ranged from slideshows about environmentally efficient vehicles to pitching ideas while running around Hayward Field, all intended to connect students with innovative ideas and encourage their participation.  

The summit started as an assignment in Kate Harmon’s entrepreneurship class last winter term when they were assigned Phil Knight’s autobiography “Shoe Dog.” The team started by bouncing ideas around and made their final decision in the spring term.

According to Harmon, every college on campus participated in at least one of the 91 different activities or sessions because, “everyone’s doing something that’s innovative.”

“I think there’s a stereotype that entrepreneurship or innovation is something that’s only in a business school,” said Harmon. “But that’s something we don’t want to promote. It’s not true. It’s really about making people recognize that you can be innovative in whatever your passion is.”

Harmon also expressed the mission to make the Innovation Summit a staple of Homecoming Week. “The thought is that if this is successful this year we might be able to revisit doing this as an annual event around Homecoming to make it a tradition,” she said. They even received support from campus administration like UO President Michael Schill when he dedicated the day as “Innovator’s Day.”

Anna Mikula, one of the summit’s lead planners, said this was also a great opportunity for students to learn about additional resources on campus and network with the alumni and professionals visiting UO.

They also invited clubs to participate, which included No Lost Generation, a student group established to help refugees who want to attend college. The group set up a model refugee tent in the EMU Fishbowl to show what living like a refugee is like, and it included supplies like mats to sleep on, laundry and dishes.

Time and money were obstacles while planning this project. Over the summer, it was difficult to meet and discuss ideas for the summit, and their starting budget was only around $10,000. The exact amount spent is not known as of yet.

“We had so many ideas that we generated that we had to cut loose,” Shiroma said. “There were way more things that we wanted to do than we were able to do.”

According to Harmon, the speakers and participants in the events were all volunteers.

“They found that when they asked students do you self-identify as an entrepreneur most of them would say no, but if you said the term innovator they would self-identify,” Harmon said.

Organizers plan on making this an annual event, especially with the reception they received.

“We’re engaged in this because we believe in it,” said Vee Chan, another student organizer. “We believe that this can work.”

Follow Kylie Storm on Twitter: @kmstorm99

Follow Becca Robbins on Twitter: @brobbinsuo

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Students, faculty and alumni lined the walls and filled the aisles in Lillis 182 Thursday evening to hear speaker Walidah Imarisha’s talk titled “Why Aren’t There More Black People in Oregon?: A Hidden History.” Many people were turned away due to lack of seating and encouraged to watch the live stream provided by the university’s Center for the Study of Women in Society, the primary sponsor of the event.

Imarisha said she knew there was a lot of interest due to the Facebook event’s following. But she said this kind of attendance “speaks to the desire people have to have conversations like this.”

Imarisha encouraged everyone in attendance to meet someone next to him or her and discuss the slideshow. She emphasized that it didn’t matter if they read every word on the screen because the discussions they had were more important. The slideshow featured an Oregon Black history timeline.

The project came from something Imarisha asked herself and something she heard students ask after moving to Oregon. She spent most of her childhood living at various military bases, which she said are disproportionately home to people of color. She moved to Springfield for high school and “the first question I asked myself was [this]” she said, gesturing to the presentation title on the projector.

“Black history is Oregon history, just like people of color’s history is the history of the United States,” said Imarisha. Despite this, when she asked how many Oregonians who went to public schools learned about this, no hands went up.

Student Tyler Green, echoed that he never had a formal education on Black history in Oregon. He said he learned about much of this oppression through conversations with his family over the dinner table. He and Alli Lau, who sat by him, co-direct the Peer Exchange Program, where they attempt to create a supportive space for underrepresented and marginalized communities on campus.

“It’s refreshing to hear it out loud in front of like 200 people,” said Lau.

The Center for the Study of Women in Society invited Imarisha to give this presentation as part of their role as a “convener of community on campus for people on the margins,” said Operations Manager for the center Dena Frazier. They have events like these for “anyone who feels like a square peg in a round hole.”

Although Imarisha outlined the immense progress Oregon has made from the injustices on the slideshow, she expressed how far the state, and country as a whole, has to go. “We often think of history as a linear progression toward greatness,” she said, but it’s not: she cited modern examples how the current presidential administration treats them as proof that history is “cyclical” in nature instead.

Although this event was a huge success, Frazier said she hopes the talk about this subject doesn’t end with Imarisha’s departure. “At the end of the days she leaves and we’re left with each other. The goal was to come, think, engage and leave with the ability to continue the conversation outside of the room.”

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