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The Diversity Calendar

Student Housing maintains a Diversity Calendar that lists holidays and celebrations that are associated with many different religions and cultures and are celebrated by the diverse UC Davis student boy.

Access the Calendar

One may access the Diversity Calendar online.

About The Diversity Calendar

Summary

The following calendar lists holidays and celebrations that are not traditionally celebrated in American culture, but that many of our students celebrate. As leaders and programmers, we can recognize some of these days to celebrate the diversity of our students and educate each other. This calendar may require that you research a day of interest in order to write a newsletter article, have a special monotony breaker, or plan an educational program. We have included many holidays for which we have incomplete descriptions and encourage you and our residents to help us improve next year’s calendar by submitting more complete descriptions for any observance. Because this calendar is just a beginning, the Residential Education staff would be extremely grateful if you forwarded the results of your research and the dates of any additional holidays to our office. Please call (530) 752-1736 or e-mail studenthousing@ucdavis.edu with any updates or suggestions.

Different cultures define the beginning of the year in various ways. The Gregorian calendar, with which many of us are familiar, starts the year with the month of January and defines a year as twelve months, or 365 days, with a day added in February every fourth year. Other cultures begin the year at other times. For example, Tishri is the first month of the Jewish Calendar. The number naming the year also differs. The Gregorian calendar defines years beginning with the birth of Jesus. However, the Jewish calendar counts years from the time established in the fourth century as the date of the creation of the world. Muslims count years from the flight of the Prophet Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. Hindus count years from the Saka era of Emperor Salivahana. Many other cultures use a lunar calendar, with dates of religious observance varying from year to year on the Gregorian calendar

Legend - The Calendar Categories

Events included in the Diversity Calendar are divided into 14 categories plus a 15th category for UC Davis dates, which are displayed in the Diversity Calendar as 15 individual calendars. Any of these individual calendars may be turned on or off (viewable or hidden) via a drop-down checkbox available at the top-right of the calendar interface. The default view for all 14 calendars is "on" (viewable).

The categories are:

  • Awareness
  • Cultural
  • Firsts
  • General Knowledge
  • Historic Moments
  • In Memory Of...
  • Independence/National Days
  • Language of the Month
  • Legislative Action
  • Memorial
  • New Year Celebrations
  • Peace
  • People
  • Spritual
  • UC Davis Academic & Administrative

Language of the Month

Each month of the Diversity Calendar celebrates a different language: September: Spanish; October: Cherokee; November: Swahili; December: Farsi; January: German; February: Mandarin; March: Hawaiian; April: Russian; May: Norwegian; June: Indonesian; July: Greek; and August: French.

In honor of each language, during each month, the current date (weekday, month and date) will be listed immediately above the calendar in that month's celebrated language.

Acknowledgements

The Office of Student Development acknowledges the efforts of many staff and students for their valuable contribution in making this publication:

Daniel Bayless, Shaundra Brown, Katelynn Burmark, Alexandra Catron, Sui-Lin Cheong, Rose Cholewinski, Chris Fallon, Sue Franck, Lynn Fowler-Huneke, Lyre Halprin, Stacy Harriman, Emily Hollisten, Stephanie Hubbard, Chuck Huneke, Fary Koh, Josh Lee, Mimi Lee, Barry Myles, Anna Ortiz, Lisa Papagni, Marciano Perez, Donelle Perkins, Rich Rocheleau, Linda Rodden, Richard Ronquillo, Emily Rostel, Karen Roth, Lauren Roth, Nina Suzuki, Tonia Teresh, Mary Vasquez, Catrina Wagner, Jennifer Weller

The Office of Student Development, Student Housing, University California, Davis thanks all staff for their contribution in revising this publication. Their research and assistance have been invaluable. © 2009-2010

References

Many resources were used in the compilation of the Diversity Calendar; their websites are listed on the Resources webpage.

How-To... Information

Refer to the following resources to learn how to perform various functions with the Diversity Calendar:

Sync The Diversity Calendar

The Diversity Calendar is built using the Google Calendar application. It may be synced with other calendars. To learn how to sync the Diversity Calendar with another calendar application, refer to the following resources:

Turn Calendar Categories On and Off

The default view for all 15 calendars is "on" (all calendars in the Diversity Calendar are visible).

  • To turn off a calendar, select the triangle pop-up menu handle in the top-right corner of the calendar and uncheck the box next to the calendar to be hidden
  • To turn turn a calendar back on, select the triangle pop-up menu handle in the top-right corner and check the box next to the calendar to be shown

Change Calendar Layout

The default layout for the Diversity Calendar is "Month" where events for the entire month are displayed in a month-style layout. The calendar may also be viewed in "Week" view, where only the events for a given week are displayed. The calendar may also be displayed in "Agenda" view, where every event is displayed in order by day in a list format that may be scrolled through.

  • To view the calendar in "Week" format, click on the "Week" tab
  • To view the calendar in "Agenda" format, click on the "Agenda" tab
  • To return to the "Month" format, click on the "Month" tab