How college campuses handle sexual assault cases, the impact of the drought on California's farmers, saving NorCal's General Grant tree.
College sexual assault: Campuses, students and tackling the pervasive problem
School is back in session for colleges across the country. Many students are experiencing freedom for the first time.
But from now until Thanksgiving, campuses will be on high alert as the period known as "the red zone" sets in. It's the time when reports of sexual assault spike.
This year might be different, though, as schools across the country devise new ways to prevent and respond to sexual violence.
In recent years, the Obama Administration expanded the federal civil rights law called Title IX, requiring schools to "respond promptly and effectively" to reports of sexual misconduct. This summer, the Senate expanded the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act.
As national attention to the problem continues to grow, Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women’s Law Center says more students are speaking out about their experiences.
“I think the number one factor has been the vibrant and survivor-led movement that has drawn attention to the problem … and that has happened at a time when there has been an administration that has been clear that it is open to hearing about these sorts of problems.”
She says media attention, combined with public campaign efforts have played an integral role in altering the conversation surrounding sexual violence on campus.
Though sexual assault education is now commonplace at many college and university campuses, Washington Post’s Nick Anderson says that schools face a constant challenge.
“Students graduate and new students come in. So every year, at least a quarter of your undergraduates are new. That has really important implications, because you can’t really solve the issue overnight and, even if you have a good year, well, you gotta do it again next year.”
He says educators hoping to change the campus culture face another substantial hurdle: teaching teenagers how to respect each other.
“A lot of them are arriving at a college with very dim notions about consent, so colleges are sort of forced into this situation where they have to do a crash-course in human relations, just as the students are entering. That’s tough.”
After an assault occurs, students must make a series of difficult decisions. Sofie Karasek, co-founder of End Rape on Campus says less-financially-stable students face a unique set of challenges.
“Income plays a huge role in not only how you approach the system of campus adjudication, but also whether you get involved in the movement to end campus sexual violence at all.”
Drawing on her own experiences at UC Berkeley, Sofie says advocating for campus-wide policy changes can be a time-consuming process. Often, minority students fall through the cracks.
“Low income folks are disproportionately likely to be students of color,” she explains.
And Karasek says the challenges don’t end there.
“Undocumented students might be fearful of coming forward because they don’t want to put themselves in jeopardy or their families in jeopardy of being deported.”
After the roundtable, Take Two spoke with Ruth Jones, Title IX coordinator for Occidental College in Eagle Rock for a first-hand look at how the campus handles reports of sexual misconduct. Occidental is currently one of 136 postsecondary institutions currently under investigation by the Department of Education for possible violations.
Jones says the institution’s peer-led education program is an important tool in the crusade to prevent sexual violence.
“[We] have other students interacting with leaders on campus to talk to them about what resources available -- but potentially, what might be most successful-- bystander intervention. What can they do both if they see a situation to intervene, and also to change the climate so that sexual violence and sexual discrimination is not acceptable.”
Press the play button above to hear Take Two’s campus sexual assault roundtable.
Click the link below that to hear Occidental College’s Ruth Jones the campus’ efforts to prevent and respond to sexual assault.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- , director of education & co-founder of End Rape on Campus.
- , senior vice president at the National Women's Law Center
- , higher education report for The Washington Post
- Ruth Jones, Title IX coordinator for Occidental College
Farmworkers face new challenges in California's fields of the future
As California's farms adjust to less water and more extreme weather, farmworkers could face challenges in an era of new technology and shrinking farmland.
The state has long been a top food producer for the nation and home to about a quarter of the country's agricultural workers, but projections of a changing climate and concern over long-term water sources are causing growers, economists and workers to rethink how the employment picture could shape up in the coming decades.
"Maybe [there will be] more permanent jobs, maybe longer jobs in some areas, but for less people," said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, project director at UCLA's Center for Labor Research and Education.
That presents a dilemma for farmworkers, said Rivera-Salgado.
"How do you transition from agriculture to other industries? I think that is the other big challenge," he said. "Sometimes, there is a misfit between jobs that are available and your local labor force."
A field in Oxnard, where concern is growing over rapid urbanization and loss of farmland. (Dorian Merina/KPCC)
Losing farmland, straining workers
On a recent afternoon just east of Oxnard, Javier Gonzalez stood at his fruit stand, waving to an empty field behind him.
It hasn't been sown in 10 months, he said, though it used to yield rows of green celery. When asked why, he put it bluntly: "No water."
It turns out more farmland, like the field in Oxnard, is being left idle: about half a million acres statewide due to the drought, according to a projection by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. That’s a risk for a place like Oxnard, where farmland has been lost at a fast rate to strip malls and housing tracts.
Recent laws in Oxnard have made it harder to do that, but all over, farmland is coming under pressure. Even before the drought, the state was losing more than 50,000 acres of farmland per year, or about one square mile every four days, according to California's Department of Conservation.
For workers, all of this may mean picking up and moving, or staying put and trying to learn new skills to compete.
This dry field, typically planted with celery, has been left idle for ten months, according to Javier Gonzalez who says the lack of water has kept the farm from planting. (Dorian Merina/KPCC)
Struggling to keep up
"Right now, there are lots of people out of work – those that are used to working in the fields – because there just isn’t water," said Alfreda Juarez, 45, in Spanish.
Juarez came from Oaxaca in Southern Mexico in the late 1990s, a time she said when work was easy to find in Oxnard. But now that’s changed. She said her hours cutting and packaging salad mixes of spinach, lettuce and radishes have been cut and shifts reduced.
"It’s tough to find work, but it’s also difficult because the economy: everything is still just as expensive," she said, noting that she and her family are struggling to cover house expenses, like a water bill that has risen past $170.
Juarez is one of an estimated 400,000 workers throughout the state, doing everything from planting and harvesting to irrigating and packaging. Many are undocumented and move from place to place to follow work, complicating the picture of just how many workers depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. A 2013 study by the Migration Policy Institute, for example, found that the number of workers may actually be double what is typically reported.
Recent data from the Department of Labor shows that these workers have been changing over the past decade: more likely to have young children, have lower levels of formal education and be less mobile.
Lost jobs, but also opportunities
California already is projected to lose 10,100 farm production jobs due to the drought, said Josué Medellín-Azuara, associate research engineer at the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, referring to the August study.
"At the same time, there will be some improvement in yields and more drought-tolerant varieties as we've seen," said Medellín-Azuara.
So the picture for workers may not be all bleak.
"Some of this may be more labor intensive, some of this may be less labor intensive," he said.
Despite the challenges, some growers still see a demand for skilled labor.
"There's going to be a need for irrigation technicians that can read the data and interpret that data for more precise water use – that would be the highest need,"said Scott Deardorff, a fourth-generation farmer in Ventura County. He pointed at workers packing boxes of cilantro and loading produce at his facility in Oxnard during a recent visit.
"On the flip side, if we get cut too much more on our water allocation, we won't be able to farm all the land we have, so we'll need less people to work the fields and harvest and cool and ship our product," he said, noting that he's already had to fallow about 100 acres this year.
In the end, it will take a special kind of labor, and creativity, to face the years ahead.
"We need smart people in the farming industry," said Deardoff. "We have lots of problems we need to figure out."
New music from Branko, Roman Gianarthur, Empress Of and SG Lewis
If you don't have time to keep up with what's new in music we've got the perfect thing for you. It's called Tuesday Reviewsday and every week our contributors come in to talk about what you should be listening to in one short segment. This week Music Supervisor Morgan Rhodes joins A Martinez to chat.
Artist: Branko
Album: "Atlas"
Songs: "Eventually"
Summary: Joao Barbosa traveled to five different cities over five weeks to create and record his latest album called "Atlas." It's appropriately named because showcases his own flavor and the best and brightest talents in the emerging global music scene. The result is a very sexy cosmopolitan thoroughly danceable mix of sounds and influences from Amsterdam, Lisbon, Sao Paolo, New York City and Capetown.
"Eventually" feat. Alex Rita & Bison is one of my favorite cuts from the project. The song has traces of South African house music combined with Portuguese Bass, which itself is a blend of styles (Bison is one of its biggest stars). It's also infused with the vocals of Alex Rita, a Danish singer.
The attention to multilayered genre detail shouldn't be surprising on this song or this album when you consider Branko heads up the Enchufada label, home to 40 plus artists from all over the globe, including his own band Buraka Som Sistema. They're well known for their blend of techno and a genre called Kuduro, dance music from Angola.
Artist: Roman GianArthur
Album: "Okay Lady"
Songs: "SEND:TON" and "PARANO:D"
Summary: Last time I was here I mentioned the Janelle Monae's collective Wondaland Arts society and their new project the "Epheus EP." Well, Roman GianArthur, guitarist and vocalist in the group released a free EP which features D'Angelo tunes mashup up with reinterpreted Radiohead tunes.
It is, in a word: COOL.
My favorite song? "SEND:TON" which blends, Radiohead's "Nude" from "In Rainbows" and "Send It On" from D'Angelo's "Voodoo."
I think the genius of this project is that it stretched beyond just covering Radiohead. This project showcases Roman GianArthur's ability to embody two distinctive and really inimitable vocal styles, insert his own phrasing and nothing gets lost in translation.
Artist: Empress Of
Album: "Me"
Song: "Icon"
Summary: Empress Of recorded this album during a month long stay in central Mexico, a self imposed getaway of sorts for thinking and creating. The result is her first full length album, "Me," a reflective, at times dreamy experimental pop album about self discovery, relationships, angst and her experiences after moving to NY.
If you hear a bit of Bjork in the sound of her voice, its because Bjork is one of her biggest influences. The production is big, sweeping, fantastical, quirky, personal.
Artist: SG Lewis
Album: "Shivers" EP
Song: "Shivers ft. JP Cooper"
Summary: SG Lewis is a young producer from Liverpool who's recently released an EP called "Shivers" which features vocals from JP Cooper, a singer with Manchester's finest gospel choir, The Manchester Sing Out Choir.
His stuff is very similar to a lot of the hybrid of soul/house music that we're hearing from groups like Disclosure and singers like Tom Misch, but this is burning its way through the blogosphere.
Give it a listen.
As Rough Fire threatens General Grant tree, a small army protects it
A grand sequoia named General Grant stands proudly in Kings Canyon National Park. It's believed General Grant is almost 2,000 years old, and the second largest tree in the world.
General Grant is under the gun, threatened by the Rough Fire that's burning through the area. But the general has an army protecting it: an army of just a handful of people.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Firefighter Luis Magana, one of the people protecting General Grant
Samantha Bee creates her own Vanity Fair cover photo
The magazine Vanity Fair released it's latest cover Monday with the headline, "Why Late-Night Television Is Better than Ever."
The accompany photo featured 10 late night show hosts, guys like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and John Oliver. All men, in fact.
They forgot about Samantha Bee. The former Daily Show correspondent's late night show debuts on TBS in January.
Not one to miss out on the humor of the situation, Bee added herself to the Vanity Fair cover, dressed as a centaur with the tweet "Better."
.@VanityFair href="https://twitter.com/VanityFair">@VanityFair