Spartan Daily, November 19, 2013
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SPARTAN DAILY SPARTANDAILY.COM Volume 141 | Issue 35 Serving San José State University since 1934 Tuesday, November 19, 2013 DEVELOPING Academic Senate requests SJSU governance review By J. Bennett, J. Gonzalez, M. Lewelling, which was the last item addressed at the meet- The resolution follows a Nov. 6 meeting be- that it has attempted to serve those interests in C. Shyvers, A. Williams ing. tween college deans and three members of the the best way it knows how ... but at some point @JennyDaily, @JeffVGonzalez, “This is a difficult moment for San Jose SJSU administration regarding a last-minute we must admit that these efforts have failed.” @melissadanae91, @cshyvers, @all3ybobally State,” Peter said, “and a difficult moment for budget issue that would have resulted in cuts to Judith Lessow-Hurley, an elementary edu- each of us.” courses and faculty. cation professor, spoke in favor of the resolu- SJSU’s Academic Senate passed a resolution Peter spoke of “unpleasant truths” that In a statement released the following day, tion during the meeting and said it was about Monday to request a review of university gov- have caused “widespread concern” from facul- San Jose State University President Moham- a “confluence of events” that have led to an ernance by CSU Chancellor Timothy White. ty and students about budget efficacy and the mad Qayoumi said the school would reallocate “unprecedented” level of discomfort, dismay The Senate, comprising past and present direction of the campus. infrastructure funds to restore course sections and frustration. faculty, students and administration mem- While Peter said the resolution wasn’t di- originally planned for the Spring 2014 semes- While Lessow-Hurley said some SJSU fac- bers, passed AS 1531 by a confidential vote of rectly related to a specific event as cause for the ter. ulty have called for a vote of no confidence in 38 for, two against and five abstentions. review, he mentioned the recent “scheduling “Nearly everyone here knows we have a Qayoumi, she said the resolution is an effort to Kenneth Peter, a political science professor fiasco” and a “series of conflicts over the last problem,” Peter said. “I personally believe that “respectfully urge communication.” and chair of the professional standards policy year” that have “highlighted issues” involving the present administration does have the in- committee at SJSU, introduced the resolution, communication and transparency. terests of San Jose State University at heart and SEE RESOLUTION ON PAGE 6 CAMPUS COMMUNITY Students’ dreams become a form of art SJSU aids Typhoon Haiyan victims By Jamie Ramirez @jlreports Typhoon Haiyan destroyed part of the Philippines when it hit the islands on Nov. 7, but it also damaged the hearts of Americans, such as Gina Erfe of San Francisco. Erfe, who was born in the Philippines, said her three older sisters and six nieces and nephews live in Manila, the capital city of the country and home to more than 10 million citizens. “When I heard about it, I was nervous for them and called right away,” Erfe said. “My eldest sister, she did not pick up and I panicked. I could feel my heart, it would not stop pounding.” Efre said when she finally spoke to her eldest sister, Grace, she felt a sense of relief knowing Grace and her family were alive. “My sister told me about the winds and the rain pouring so hard that she could not see anything and could not hear because the winds were so loud,” Erfe said. Typhoon Haiyan, known as Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, reached winds of 195 mph at its peak, according to the AccuWeather website. The city of Tacloban, capital of the Leyte province located more than 350 miles southeast of Manila, was hit the Jenny Bennett | Spartan Daily hardest. Jonathan Fan, freshman digital media arts major, writes on a chalk wall to finish the sentence “Before I die…” Passersby wrote on the wall Local damage officials claimed the set up by Peer Health Education, Project Shine and TEDx San Jose State University on Monday. city was hit with 138 million pesos in damages, approximately 10.6 million By Jerry Salas Huynh said anyone can write a ed by Peer Health Education, TEDx- “I wrote that because I feel like U.S. dollars, according to the Philippine @popcrnchicken goal they want to achieve in chalk on San Jose State University and Project some people can get overlooked, and government’s official website. the “Before I Die” wall. Shine, they were able to bring this in high school I was one of them,” The death toll in Tacloban is more Kelly Huynh, a sophomore nu- “This is an adaptation of Candy concept to SJSU. Fan said. “It’s nice to be able to see ev- than 1,700 and expected to reach nearly tritional science major, and Andrew Chang’s original ‘Before I Die wall,’” Roselo wrote on the wall, “Take a eryone’s dreams on the wall.” 10,000, according to reports from dam- Roselo, a senior health science major, Huynh said. “Chang started this selfie with the new Seven Wonders The writing on the wall states age officials. helped create the “Before I Die” wall project on an empty building’s wall of the World,” and Huynh wrote, serious goals such as “I want to influ- Akbayan SJSU and other campus next to the ATM center on campus. in New Orleans in honor of someone “Dance with Ellen DeGeneres.” ence a generation,” but some more groups teamed up with nonprofit organi- “The goal of this project is to help she lost to help build better commu- Jonathan Fan, a freshman digital frivolous ones include goals of hav- zations, Project Pearls, the Philippine Red better understand ourselves and the nities.” media arts major, wrote, “I want to ing sex with certain celebrities. Cross and LBC Express cargo company to students around campus,” Huynh Huynh said people around the be remembered, I don’t want to be Huynh said she is aiming to have collect relief funds to send to victims of said. “A state school isn’t typically world are starting their own “Before forgotten.” the wall up until the end of the se- Typhoon Haiyan. known for its campus unity and I Die” walls. Fan said he had a certain mean- mester. The typhoon has affected more than that’s what we hope to bring forth Huynh said with the help of nine ing in mind behind the words he Jerry Salas is a Spartan Daily staff 35 provinces and 42 million people, ac- with this.” other students and funding provid- wrote. writer. SEE CATASTROPHE ON PAGE 6 INSIDE FORECAST Correction Showers In the Nov. 14 issue of the Spartan Daily, Michael Kaufman, P. 5 A&E: Eminem doesn’t hold back in latest album 61°F physics and astronomy P. 6 News: Moratorium relieves ethnic studies department chair, should have 52°F been listed as a member of the P. 7 Opinion: Does Thanksgiving even exist? Academic Senate. P. 8 News: Keep up with crime on campus Printed on recycled paper Th e Spartan Daily regrets the error. 2 | Spartan Daily NEWS Tuesday, November 19, 2013 SCIENCE MAVEN spacecraft to study solar erosion on Mars By Amina Khan along with clay minerals that must have been McClatchy Tribune formed by exposure to water. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, for many tens LOS ANGELES — Four billion years ago, of millions of years, Mars was a pretty friend- rivers and lakes dotted the surface of Mars, ly place with natural water, wind, waves and their waters reflecting puffy clouds drifting in rain,” said Paul Mahaffy, an atmospheric scien- a blue sky, scientist believe. tist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Now, it’s a dry, rusty rock that’s subject to Greenbelt, Md. who leads instruments on both fierce sandstorms, withering blasts of radia- MAVEN and the Curiosity rover. “But I think tion and freezing temperatures that have fro- we just don’t know.” zen carbon dioxide to the planet’s poles. Liquid water can’t exist on the Martian What happened? surface today — it would quickly freeze in the That’s the question NASA seeks to answer coldest spots and boil off elsewhere, because with the scheduled launch Monday of the MA- the low-pressure atmosphere is far too thin to VEN spacecraft. keep it in. Planetary scientists believe the answer lies Understanding why Mars’ atmosphere van- high in the Martian atmosphere. Today, it’s a ished and Earth’s did not is key to understand- thin layer of mostly carbon dioxide gas. But ing Earth’s ancient history. Someday, it may long ago, it may have been thick enough to host even help scientists study the atmospheres of a life-friendly, even Earth-like, environment. planets orbiting distant stars. If so, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolu- There are several theories about why the tion mission may reveal clues about where it all Martian atmosphere has been reduced to a went. wisp. Some researchers think a giant cata- Previous missions, from rovers to orbiters, strophic impact blew out much of the atmo- have tried to see into Mars’ past by examining sphere. Others suspect that much of the carbon the Red Planet’s surface. But that only tells part dioxide may have been sunk into Mars’ rocks of the story, said Bruce Jakosky, a planetary sci- in the form of carbonates. But neither of these entist at the University of Colorado Boulder explanations can fully account for the massive and principal investigator for the MAVEN loss of water vapor and gas. mission.