Music, tours, tacos and ... cockroach races? Something for everyone at UC Davis’ 110th Picnic Day
“I am fascinated by the kiln gods,” Maria Tuccori said as she worked with small green and brown pieces of shiny glass in her glass fusing demonstration at the UC Davis Craft Center on Saturday afternoon.
“Every time I put something in,” she said, ”I never know how it’s going to come out.”
Tuccori was leading a workshop for curious onlookers celebrating the 110th annual UC Davis Picnic Day, a campus-wide open house and festival that takes place every April.
Thousands of Davis students, alumni and community members flock to the campus for demonstrations like Tucorri’s.
It’s one of Tucorri’s favorite days. She works in the university’s Department of Plant Pathology, and teaches one glass-based art class at the nearby Craft Center each quarter. Being at the Craft Center on Picnic Day meant she missed out on the exciting events of her department, like the plant diagnosis clinic, where people can take their “sick plants” for student and professor inspection.
She was also bummed to miss the cockroach races, where professor Jessica Draughon Moret and educational program designer Kate Turpin from the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing brought their children to participate.
“I always bring my kids, and this is what we specifically want to do,” said Turpin, whose 10-year-old-son’s cockroach had just leaped out of its race cylinder and made a daring escape.
Turpin went to a small college for her undergraduate degree and loves bringing her three kids to Picnic Day to show them how the university helps shape and foster the community.
“To come here is really neat, just to see the layers of community that UC Davis has,” said Turpin, who teaches from the school’s campus near UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. “And my kids get to see that and think about higher education, too. It’s very inclusive, very accepting, there’s something for all ages. That’s what I love about Picnic Day, it’s so accessible for everybody.”
Draughon Moret, who attended the Davis campus as an undergrad more than 20 years ago, looked on as her 6-year-old daughter gently pet her race-winning cockroach.
Some things are different than they were two decades ago, she said — like the shiny new buildings and increasing number of Picnic Day attendees — but the important things haven’t changed.
“Being here in the community, with my kids, that’s the best part,” especially because the day’s events made Draughon Moret’s daughter want to become a future Aggie.
Attendance at the on-campus cockroach races were eclipsed by the ever-popular Doxie Derby, where hundreds of ticket holders gather at University Credit Union Center to watch dachshunds “stretch their little legs and compete for first place.”
Beyond cockroaches and wiener dogs, people visited the horse barn, checked out the orphan kitten project or looked over the butterflies at the Bohart Museum of Etymology — that is, if they weren’t waiting for the Battle of Bands, lining up for tacos or lemonade in the quad, watching artists like Tuccori teach a class, or staying downtown for the Picnic Day Parade led by the Aggie Marching Band.
Picnic Day typically accommodates more than 50,000 attendees, a far cry from the first Picnic Day in 1909, where ag students invited community members to see their new dairy barn. In 2020 and 2021, Picnic Day was canceled in favor of a virtual festival due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s been back in-person since 2022.
