UCSC farm presents 2^nd annual Queer Farmer Field Day on June 19
With the raucous annual Pride Parade just around the corner in San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz queer students are preparing for a very different celebration: the 2^nd annual Queer Farmer Field Day. Because while risqué costume parades and inebriated dance parties are all good and well, the Queer Farmer Field Day celebrates community in quite a different way.

The Del Mar hosts UCSC’s fourth annual social documentation student exhibit
The Del Mar Theatre will host UC Santa Cruz’s social documentation program’s annual exhibit of graduate student works for the first time on Thursday, June 10 at 7 p.m. The exhibit, now in its fourth year, is free and open to the public. This year, it features five different stories—stories often unexplored in mainstream media. The stories are culminations of the two years students spend in the program planning, filming, and editing.

Business is looking good for two UCSC students
Fingers were crossed, breaths held in, and nervous smiles exchanged in a silence that seemed to swallow the room. After months of rigorous preparation, seconds separated two UC Santa Cruz students from their $12,000 grand prize.

On Friday evening, May 21, students, faculty and community supporters congregated at Terra Fresca for the final round of UCSC's second annual Business Plan Competition. Founded last year by a group of students in collaboration with faculty members, the competition aims to promote and fund innovative entrepreneurship among UCSC students. This year, the competition began in March with more than 30 submissions of executive summaries.

Community Agroecology Network (CAN)’s week of events features Darling Betsabe Campos Rayo of Nicaragua

If you’re part of the 54 percent of the American population that drinks coffee, it’s likely you had a cup this morning. But how likely is it that you also pondered about the hands that produced your cup of coffee, and questioned how it came to end up in your hands?

Community Agroecology Network (CAN) is a Santa Cruz-based organization that encourages consumers not only to ask these questions, but also to answer them. They collaborate with small coffee farmers in Central American communities to research methods to grow sustainable coffee and create an alternative and more direct market in which producers receive a fairer share of the profits. To help jumpstart the dialogue between coffee consumers and coffee producers, CAN will be hosting a series of events this week, May 10 through 14, featuring Darling Betsabe Campos Rayo from their partner community in Matagalpa Nicaragua.

UCSC’s Digital Arts Research Center is off to a great start
I could almost feel the excitement in the air at the opening of UC Santa Cruz’s new Digital Arts Research Center. A huge crowd filled the parking lot, gazing up at the new $35 million building, enjoying live music from the UCSC Balinese Gamelan, and touring an outdoor exhibit—a 1950s-era camper van that had been turned into a representation of a small town in Nevada once home to nuclear testing. Read More In front of the building, nearly all of the chairs were filled (and many people stood in the back) as Chancellor George Blumenthal and Dean of the Arts Division David Yager gave their welcome remarks and thank yous. Once the chancellor and dean cut the ribbon and opened the doors, the crowd poured into the three-story building that is now home to UCSC’s Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) M.F.A. program, digital photography and printing studio, music research labs, drawing and photography classes, and faculty studios.