The Brief

After a new law went into effect last year requiring public universities to provide medication abortions to students, UCLA student Winnie Xu wanted to help spread the word.

Xu, a statistics and political science major, co-founded Preserve Abortion Access: California Task Force. She and other students, along with professors on the Westwood campus, said they wanted to make sure people understood the medication was available to them, free of charge.

So several of them organized an abortion “teach-in” — held last April, billed as an interactive event during which the participants would learn about “the medical, legal, and social landscape of abortion care in the U.S.”

In the absence of more consistent messaging from campus administrators, students like Xu said they felt a need to step in to inform other students about their rights.

“We wanted to essentially remind individuals that abortion and reproductive health and sexual health is more than just something that is contentious with politics,” said Xu, now a sophomore at the university.

How abortion access has changed in recent years

About 80 students attended that April teach-in.

Paula Tavrow, an adjunct professor in UCLA’s School of Public Health who helped organize the event, had hoped for more turnout.

“I think that in part, in California we are a bit complacent,” Tavrow said. “After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, nothing happened.”

That decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 2022 Dobbs case, made abortion a state-by-state issue. Tavrow thinks many Californians didn’t feel they had to rally to protect access to abortion; California’s lawmakers were racing to pass laws protecting access, rather than limit it, as happened in other states’ legislatures.

Gov. Gavin Newsom had already signed Senate Bill 24 in 2019. The law requires all of the state’s 33 public universities to provide access to abortion pills to students who want them. The law took effect in 2023.

An LAist investigation, published in January, found that many University of California and California State University campuses had failed to notify students about the new law a year after it was implemented. The schools may have followed the letter of the law, but SB 24’s co-author, former state senator Connie Leyva, told LAist that implementation has been “falling short.”

What information is online?

Among the 10 University of California campuses, UCLA was one of eight that mentioned medication abortion on their health center websites as of January. UCLA’s website offers a comprehensive overview of the medication abortion process. It includes a statement about access to health services, a breakdown of what to expect, and resources, including how to address emotional support.

Xu said she wanted to see “how we can use UCLA as a blueprint to essentially set a standard of care for all UCs and CSUs.”

Other campuses that did provide information to students did so to varying degrees.

Cal State Fullerton’s website lists medication abortion as a service provided, and offers a process timeline, an FAQ, and links to additional information about abortion and abortion pills. Cal State Northridge lists medication abortion as a service provided and links to the law, but there are no additional resources or descriptions of the steps as other campuses did.

Until recently, nearly half of California State University campus clinics did not have any information about medication abortion on their clinic websites, nor did they list it as a service offered. Since LAist published its investigation, Cal State Long Beach, CSU Channel Islands, Sacramento State and Sonoma State updated their student health center websites. Cal State San Bernardino updated its website after LAist reached out in its initial reporting.

How are schools informing students offline?

UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz did not list medication abortion on their health center websites. Spokespersons for these two campuses said information about medication abortion is disseminated in other ways, such as fliers and in-person meetings. UC Santa Cruz also updated its website after LAist's investigation published.

Some students and faculty noted that static information on a website might not be enough to get the message across to students — particularly those who are dealing with the stress and fear that can come with an unwanted pregnancy.

“When you’re in a state of panic and anxiety and trauma, it’s incredibly hard to navigate a webpage, especially on your own,” said Shayda Kafai, a professor of ethnic and women’s studies at Cal Poly Pomona.

Kafai praised the faculty and cultural centers at the university for doing their part to get information to students. She said the campus newspaper, The Poly Post, did a good job of reporting on medication abortion when it was implemented.

“But if it’s shared minimally [by administration] and we don’t have access to the information, it creates a real challenge,” Kafai said.

Some student groups have been pushing administrators for months for more transparency regarding medication abortions. The nonprofit Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity (URGE) has chapters at many California campuses, said Faith Chinnapong, the organization’s senior California organizer.

Chinnapong credited chapter members with creating student advisory committees to better center the student voice, “as well as creating student spaces to learn about medication abortion and its availability on campus since campuses haven't been providing that information themselves.”

URGE doesn’t have chapters at every campus, and Chinnapong said progress depended on each administration. Some, like Cal Poly Humboldt, are open to student opinions, they said, while many are not.

Winnie Xu, outside of the UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health & Wellness Center.

(

Ashley Balderrama

/

LAist

)

Reflecting on the teach-in at UCLA, Xu said recently that she wanted to help “educate students on what Senate Bill 24 was, and what we were hoping to see in terms of Senate Bill 24's implementation.”

The event, held in an auditorium near student housing, featured presentations from the director of UCLA’s student health center, public health researchers, and students. They spoke on a range of topics including the basics of an abortion to “how monumental Senate Bill 24 was,” Xu said.

Organizers said the teach-in was a collaboration among several partners, including the Fielding School of Public Health, the law school’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy, UCLA Medical Students for Choice, and Preserve Abortion Access: California Task Force.

Xu said she is helping to plan another teach-in at UCLA this year, and hopes for higher attendance. She is considering partnering with another university and training students to get the information to students one on one instead of trying to bring students to one event.

What are the limits to student reach?

Tavrow, the UCLA public health professor, said there are limits to what student groups can do to disseminate information, compared to university administrators who have much greater reach. One example of that, she said, was the stream of emails sent from administrators to students at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Why couldn’t a similar email go out every year about sexual and reproductive health services?” Tavrow said.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block sent an all campus email about abortion access in June 2022 after the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Dobbs.

That message said UCLA would advocate to protect students’ access to affordable health care and that UCLA was working to begin offering medication abortion on campus.

However, during a visit to the public lobbies of UCLA’s student health center, the Ashe Center, LAist did not see any information posted about medication abortion and staff said they did not have any to hand out.

“[T]he Ashe Center is always looking for ways to enhance outreach to students about its services,” said UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez via email, “and welcomes feedback and input from individual students and student groups.”

Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Data shows illegal voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.

Earlier this month, the federal government targeted Los Angeles County and the California Secretary of State’s office in a lawsuit that aimed to block them from counting the votes of roughly 20,000 people who are “likely” noncitizen voters. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Tuesday.

The Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit court of appeals to rule on the lawsuit barring a decision from the district judge assigned to the case. They set a deadline for Saturday.

Now, according to the LA County registrar’s office, at least 18 counties across the state have received similar letters. They have been given a 48 hour deadline to provide identifying information corresponding with ballots that the federal government believes were sent to noncitizens illegally registered to vote. The letter requests that county officials also sequester any ballots where citizenship cannot be verified.

“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.

The Justice Department is asking counties to send information about the voters it suspects are noncitizens including social security numbers, ID information, a copy of their registration and more.

That information can help the government and state quickly assess each person suspected of illegally registering to vote, said the letter sent to San Bernardino County voting officials. The letter says the government’s list of suspected noncitizen voters includes 1,133 people from the inland Southern California county.

California’s secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar have opposed the federal government’s demands. In legal filings, lawyers for California say the request threatens to delay the certification of the vote and undermine the legitimacy of the November midterms. They have also argued that the federal government’s data is unreliable and that their demands risk disenfranchisement of citizens.

Voting is underway in California, with the state’s more than 23 million registered voters receiving ballots in the mail earlier this month. The state said in legal filings that over 330,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted.

The letters on Friday came on the heels of statewide sweep by federal authorities earlier in the week, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.

The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike, as negotiations with the California State University system remain stalled.

This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”

If a majority of members approve the strike authorization, voting from Oct. 26 through Nov. 19, CFA leadership would be authorized to call a strike.

The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.

In recent weeks, CSU has reached tentative agreements with three unions: the Statewide University Police Association, the United Auto Workers Local 4123 and Academic Professionals of California. Together, the agreements cover 14,000 university employees.

The tentative agreements, which must be approved by union members and CSU’s Board of Trustees, include an 8% salary increase over two years, along with one-time raises negotiated by each bargaining unit.

It can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.

And yes, complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly. But height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.

Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it’ll reach its 100th birthday is in question.

Tall Clubs International is an organization spanning more than a dozen states and several countries that offers tall adults a chance to connect and commiserate. The original chapter, founded in Los Angeles in 1938, is called the California Tip Toppers.

To get into the L.A. group, men have to be 6 feet 4 inches or taller, and women have to be at least 6 feet. One of the tallest members of the organization is 7 feet 2 inches, and honestly, I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to feel short for once in my life.

At 13, I was still growing at 5 feet 10, towering over almost every kid in my freshman high school class. One of the first questions people still ask me is whether I played volleyball or basketball, and I’ve learned to laugh at the look they get when I say I preferred theater.

“People see how tall you are, they expect ‘Oh, you're going to be great on the basketball court,’” said Michele Cripps, a 6-foot-1 member of the California Tip Toppers, who joined in 1996. She's married to William Walter Wiseman II, a fellow member. “Well, I'm sorry, white girls can't jump sometimes, and I'm one of them.”

Some of the tall club members are generational, encouraged to join by their parents or older relatives, which has started to pose its own problems as the chapters get older.

What’s the big deal anyways?

William Walter Wiseman II and Michele Cripps at the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in Hollywood.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

The chapters became a way for tall people to trade practical tips, like which stores sold pants that actually covered your ankles or shoes that didn’t need to be specially made.

“I was always being kidded about my pants being too short or my clothes not fitting correctly,” said Wiseman, who's nearly 6 feet 9 and also wasn’t much of a basketball player. “And as I grew as an adult, people are a little bit afraid to approach people that are tall.”

Wiseman has a good sense of humor about his height, cracking jokes that I’ve added to my arsenal when answering “how’s the weather up there?” But he doesn’t gloss over the pain points either — Wiseman can’t fit into cars or roller coasters, hotel beds are never long enough, and airplanes can be an expensive nightmare.

“It's not just the socialization of being tall, but it's also the physicality of it,” he said. “It's almost a handicap to be tall.”

Members of the Tall Club of Orange County at the 2026 convention.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

Cripps said she was a skinny kid, but she couldn’t help but feel “huge” growing up a head above everyone else, which hurt her young self-esteem and made dating more difficult.

The clubs gave them both a chance to see eye to eye with a room full of people for the first time, and potentially even find a partner. Wiseman’s parents met in the Dayton Altitudians tall club in Ohio, decades before Wiseman and Cripps met through their own California clubs.

“The people that married inside the club stayed married,” said Wiseman, who lives in Torrance with Cripps. “The people that married outside of the club got divorced.”

A Dayton Daily News clipping of William Walter Wiseman II's father measuring tall teens in the Dayton, Ohio area from November 19, 1958. 

(

Courtesy William Walter Wiseman II

)

Future of the club in question

But now, the California Tip Toppers is having trouble bringing in new, younger members — a recruitment crisis that’s essentially dissolved groups in other areas, Wiseman said.

Members of the California Tip Toppers at the 2026 convention.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

“We're facing the same challenges like all other clubs,” Cripps and Wiseman said, jumping in to finish each other’s thoughts. “Some of it could be generational. Some of it's that since COVID, the clubs have not been quite as active as they used to be. Some people [don’t have] homes to open up anymore … and we're all getting older.”

The club is at a crossroads: Get new members on board or fade away. The couple seems to have made it a mission to rejuvenate the California Tip Toppers, but Cripps was frank when she said they’re not sure how to get more people involved, whether it's fresh events or outreach opportunities.

At the end of the day, they’re hoping the club and the community it fosters can help others learn how to “stand tall” and be proud.

The clubs crown a new Miss Tall International at a formal pageant held during the annual convention. The former Miss Tall Clubs International that were at the 2026 convention from left to right: Susan Hopkins, 2019, from the Tall Club of Orange County, Martine Whitford, 1959, from the Los Angeles Higher Ups, Norma Forrest, 1996, from the Tall Club of Toronto and Mary Eleman, 2022, from the Central Arizona Tall Society.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

Members of the Tall Clubs International convention committee.  From left to right: Barry Umbs from Milwaukee, William Walter Wiseman II from the California Tip Toppers, Jim Nelson from the Paramount Tall Club-Chicago and Michele Cripps from the California Tip Toppers.

(

Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

)

“It’s a challenge, but it’s something that was given to us,” Cripps said. “I say as I've aged, I should have listened to my mother, I should have stood up tall.”

Moms everywhere, mine included, rejoice.

“Everybody wants to be something different than they have,” Cripps continued. “So, try and embrace what you have. Life is too short, and it goes too quick.”

Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.

For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.

He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.

David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.

(

Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer

)

“I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.

On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.

A city of ghost stories 

Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.

“The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.

He says theatergoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

Theatergoers over the years have described hearing voices and seeing apparitions at the Pasadena Playhouse.

(

Jeff Lorch

/

Courtesy of Pasadena Playhouse

)

“And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear like shadowy figures,” he said.

As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?

Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and his psychic friend Michael Kouri shared her name: Dolores.

“It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.

Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.

Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.

He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.

The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.

“Many people call it the occult," Kalbeitzer said. "I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there."

Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.

(

Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons

)

In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.

“It’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

A presence in the shop 

The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.

Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.

Tyke O'Brien opened her shop Mesmer Mesmer earlier this year to create a third space and offer books and esoterica alongside clothing.

(

Tyke O'Brien

)

At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.

“She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’ And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer,” O’Brien recounted. “I wish I could say yes."

The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.

Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.

“Everyone has the ability to have those experiences," he said. "But I do think how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences."