ellen creates twitter frenzy on campus

It was a Twitter Frenzy Thursday night as hundreds of students gathered at the Price Center to enter in Ellen DeGeneres’s Twitter Challenge contest. Five UC San Diego students won trips to Los Angeles and tickets to one of Ellen DeGeneres’s 12 Days of Giveaway tapings.

DeGeneres, who has more than 3.5 million followers on Twitter, started hinting to UC San Diego students Wednesday night that her show would come to campus.

Excitement started building in the Price Center about 4 p.m. Thursday when DeGeneres announced that the contest would soon begin. The crowd erupted at 5:45 p.m. when DeGeneres announced the challenge: “Students of UCSD: The first people to bring Aaron any kind of corn at the Price Center are in the running for an incredible prize.”

Winners were taken to the second floor of Price Center where the production crew was filming. DeGeneres gave the group of students the next challenge: have a picture taken of themselves wearing nothing but a red towel with someone in any kind of uniform in less than 15 minutes.

Austyn Gabig started calling her friends on campus to see if anyone could bring her towel and luckily a friend at Sixth College was doing laundry and rushed a sopping wet towel to Gabig. “I was full of adrenaline,” she said. “I found a community service officer when I walked into Price Center. My phone doesn’t have internet access, but a girl in the market took our picture and e-mailed it to The Ellen Show.”

Although she was supposed to give one prize away to the student with the best picture, Ellen decided to award all five for their efforts. Gabig is a long-time Ellen fan who went to an Ellen Show taping when she was in high school. “I really enjoy watching her show, I just think she is hilarious,” she said.

The competition airs Monday on KNSD at 3 p.m.

unbroken soldier

Justice Castaneda was 20 years old when he went to a military recruiting office. At the time, he had been involved in drugs and seen many of his close friends go off to prison.“I knew I had to get out,” he said. “I was making bad decisions, hanging out with a bad group. I was sitting inside of my friend’s car who was driving without a license when I saw the Military Recruiting Office — I knew that was where my future was headed.”

Castaneda has come a long way since then. Now a senior at Thurgood Marshall College, the 29-year-old serves as the president of the university’s Student Veteran Organization (SVO).

Castaneda grew up in a working class neighborhood in Madison, Wis. and got into the Marines “by the skin of his teeth,” he said. Castaneda spent the first year in sobriety, working as an information analyst, but quickly rose up the ranks to Sergeant in two years, and was promoted to Staff Sergeant three years later.

In 2004, Castaneda was deployed to Iraq, where he worked as a security team leader in the village of Fallujah. Now the honor student organizes events for his fellow vets on campus and also volunteers as a tutor and mentor to underprivileged youths at a local high school.

“As veterans, we’re dedicated students,” he said. “We’re older, we know what we want and we want to give back. We learned a lot from serving in the military. Now it’s our time to engage with the campus community and our fellow students.”

To read more about Justice, go here.

new mural to electify ucsd community

The campus at UCSD is brighter now that world-renowned artist Mario Torero has created the Chicano History Mural which can be found at Peterson Hall. The mural represents key elements of Mexican-American history and culture in California and feature iconic figures such as Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. "Torero’s images are at times considered provocative by non-Latino publics and always resonate positively for those familiar with the cultures of Spanish-speaking peoples in the Americas,” said Jorge Mariscal, UCSD professor of literature and director of the Chicano Studies program. The new mural will be celebrated on Wed., Oct. 14 where Mariscal, the Chancellor and Torrero will give remarks.

Senior is Washington D.C.’s First ‘Green’ Intern

What do you do when you've already built a 20-foot long, 200-pound concrete canoe and helped install photovoltaic solar panels on the roofs of several campus structures? Well, just ask Mark Galvan who has topped himself once again by landing a job as Washington D.C.'s first green intern. I've had the pleasure of meeting Mark on a number of occasions and he's genuinely one of those cool, hard-working, dedicated and humble students.

I'm not surprised that others, such as Congresswoman Susan Davis (CA-53) and the Capitol’s chief administrative officer, Dan Beard were also impressed with him when they came to visit to UCSD. The two have given Galvan the opportunity to work in a multi-faceted internship that is the first of its kind and a unique opportunity for Mark to do what he loves, help build a sustainable future :) Click here to get the full scoop on Mark and his new gig.

could a ucsd playwright be the next coppola?

UCSD theatre grad student Jennifer Barclay has joined the ranks of Francis Ford Coppola and Eric Roth. Roth and Coppola have both won the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards Competition and Barclay was recenlty named as one of the five finalists of the 2009 awards competition.

After receiving more than 150 submissions, the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation narrowed the field down to five feature-length screenplays from Barclay and four other students from UCLA.

As a finalists, Barclay will receive a cash prize. Winners will be selected by Hilary Swank, Colin Callender and Catherine Tarr, and awards will be presented Nov. 2at UCLA. To read the story in Variety.com click here.

To learn more about Jennifer click here.

the bicycle diaries

Two students came to UC San Diego from Lompoc by way of bike and surfboard last week. Muir College sophomores Perry Naughton and Casey Owen spent six days cycling along the coast towing their tent, wetsuit, surfboard and a week’s worth of food in a trailer behind their bikes.

“It was a lot of fun,” Naughton said. “The first day we road 73 miles and that was tough, but by the end of the trip we felt like we could keep on going.”

The two childhood friends were roommates last year at Muir College and were inspired to go on the journey after reading about similar trips in Surfer Magazine. “Neither of us applied to colleges that weren’t on the coast and Black's Beach was a big part of choosing UCSD for us,” Naughton said.

The students stopped at Leo Carrillo State Beach, Salt Creek and Trestles to surf along the way and they camped out at a State Beach every night of the journey.

The two are dedicated surfers who have made a pact to surf at Black’s beach everyday this quarter. “We have a lot of buddies at Muir College who surf so it’s easy to walk across the street every day with our surfboards.”

To read about UC San Diego's ranking as a top school for surfing go here.

students focus on future

Welcome Week at UCSD is in full swing. Last night internet pioneer Larry Smarr gave the key note speech at the Welcome Week Convocation. His message -- climate change is the biggest problem facing our society and it’s up to individuals to make a difference. “I wanted to make sure that the students knew from the first day they got here that they can be a part of finding the solution.”

Smarr said UCSD’s award winning student video, “A Living Laboratory For Real-World Solutions” changed his life and he encouraged new students to watch the film.

"After watching the film, I doubled my commitment to living more sustainably." For the full text of Smarr's speech click here.