March 15, 2012
Vol. 91 Issue 25
AIDS Awareness Day at CSUF The WoMen’s Center at Cal State Fullerton has their second Annual National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Students received information, listened to guest speakers and could even get tested for free.
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REMEMBERING ULTIMATE SACRIFICES
CAMPUS | Elections approaching
ASI candidates announced Six hopefuls running for president and vice president positions ANDERS HOWMANN Daily Titan
ANDERS HOWMANN / Daily Titan
ANDERS HOWMANN Daily Titan
About 200 people from Placentia, Fullerton and Yorba Linda attended the opening ceremony of the Wall That Heals, a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., at Placentia’s Tri-City Park Wednesday morning. The wall is a traveling exhibit that is meant to help troubled veterans make peace
with their experiences overseas. According to officials from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the organization that manages the wall and its exhibition, the wall brings communities across the country and gives veterans, who may not be able to see the monument in Washington, D.C., a chance do so in their own community. Many prominent city officials were in attendance, including Fullerton Mayor Pro Tem Pat McKinley and Placentia Mayor
Jeremy Yamaguchi. The ceremony described the purpose of the wall, its effect on veterans across the country and recognized those who organized the presentation. Veterans and their families also attended the event. Many took the opportunity to pay their respects to their friends who passed away by looking for their names on the wall. The ceremony ended with a 21-gun salute conducted by members of the Fullerton Police Department.
See ASI, page 2
INTERNET | Megaupload fights back
FEATURES | Adult reentry
US senators accused of illegal downloading
Sometimes life gets in the way of plans
Site founder claims some users were US government officials
Not all students at Cal State Fullerton follow a traditional path when pursuing their degree
JUSTIN ENRIQUEZ Daily Titan
NURAN ALTEIR Daily Titan
Catherine VanRiette decided to go back to school immediately after her son turned his tassel at his UCLA graduation ceremony. She was 42 years old. “Going back to school expanded my knowledge base,” said VanRiette, Adult Reentry Center coordinator. “It’s stimulating and it opens many opportunities. It led me to do what I wanted to do and be well paid for it.” VanRiette was considered a reentry student — someone who doesn’t go straight to college from high school, making them older than a traditional college student. While there are currently no statistics regarding reentry students, VanRiette estimates that there are about 5,000 undergraduate students and 3,000 graduate students who are nontraditional. These students come from different backgrounds.
In early April, Associated Student Inc. will be holding their annual elections for student positions on the Board of Directors and Executive Staff. Starting next week with a hot dog cookout Monday, ASI will be promoting the elections in order to increase student awareness of the candidates and voting participation. A debate between the candidates will be held April 3, the day before voting begins. All 19 candidates for the positions on the ASI Board of Directors and the Executive Staff were officially announced Wednesday and are cleared to begin campaigning. Three pairs of running mates have announced their candidacy for the positions of president and vice president and 13 candidates are running for positions on the Board of Directors. No current executive staff members or six current members of the board of directors will be running again. Also, the amount of candidates running for board positions is sparse. Five colleges only have one candidate running and the College of Education is unrepresented. “This year it’s going to be a brand new wave of candidates. It’s going to be a brand new turning point for ASI,” said Samuel Morales, 21, a political science major and ASI election commissioner. While many of the candidates have already started their campaigns on Facebook, ASI will give all of the candidates an opportunity to interact with students at the ASI cookout. Everyone in the running will be allowed to set up booths at the event. “This is going to be an opportunity for them to go out and about and spread their (platform),” Morales said. The debate will also be an excellent opportunity for students to get to know the candidates and find out what their goals are for the semester. There will be five locations where
students can cast their vote this year. Morales confirmed four of the sites — outside McCarthy Hall facing the Quad, outside Mihaylo Hall, the east library walkway and a new location in the piazza of the new student housing complex. Morales said he hopes the polling site near the dorms will result in a larger turnout of freshman voters. “I really want to get the students involved. Last year was such a close election; it was down to six votes,” he said. “Right now I want to spread that gap more from the winner, and the way we are going to do that is we are trying to get the new population of freshmen in the dorms heavily involved.” Morales is currently working with a group of volunteers in order to reach out to student leaders on campus in order to encourage more student involvement in the election. “Right now I am using some volunteers to spread the word but mainly what I am doing is myself and my assistant are … going out there to various groups and spreading the word to get involved,” he said. “We have been doing that for the past three weeks.” Morales is also working with current ASI leaders to promote the election. “Giving students as many opportunities as possible to really engage the candidates and really get a feel for who these people are and let them know who they are voting for — I think that’s what is really going to make the difference,” said Jay Jefferson, a business major and current ASI executive vice president. Jefferson said ASI will accomplish this by working with groups within ASI, such as ASI Productions, to promote the event. He said all parts of the student government will be involved in the weeks ramping up to the election. ASI President Eric Niu is continuing to try to change the image of Cal State Fullerton as a commuter campus by getting students involved in campus politics and student government.
CAMILLE TARAZON / Daily Titan Students who are older than the traditional 18-to-23-year age range are not a rare sight at Cal State Fullerton. The campus’ Adult Reentry Center is a helpful resource for these particular students.
They generally have more life experience and additional responsibilities — that could be a family, taking care of kids or kids taking care of parents, grandparents or a job,” VanRiette said. In VanRiette’s case, she was working to make sure her son could graduate from UCLA. She took community college classes from time to time, but wasn’t able to really get into it until her son finished college. VanRiette’s drive to return and finish school sprouted from the consistent setbacks she received in her youth.
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“When I was in elementary school, I remember learning math and the teachers gave more attention to the boys,” said VanRiette. “They told me, ‘It’s OK. You only need to know cups and ounces,’ so I can cook. But I knew I wanted to do more.” She also wanted the degree to get the job and pay she always wanted. She once asked for a raise while working but was denied because of her sex. See OLDER, page 6
Kim Dotcom (born Schmitz) of the download site Megaupload, which was recently seized by the U.S. Department of Justice, is claiming the site was popular among U.S. government leaders. According to The Register, Dotcom told the Torrentfreak blog, “Guess what — we found a large number of Mega accounts from U.S. government officials, including the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate,” said Dotcom. “I hope we will soon have permission to give them and the rest of our users access to their files,” he added. Dotcom is fighting extradition from U.S. authorities in the New Zealand court and is currently out on bail. His main concern is making sure the users of the site get their data
back. The Megaupload legal team is negotiating with the U.S Department of Justice to make that happen. Kevin Wortman, assistant professor in computer science, said it’s a complex issue because the current state of the intellectual property law is that there are copyrighted works considered the property of the people who created them. Thus, the government has an obligation to enforce laws that protect those rights. However, that can also be squared against the freedom of speech and the presumed right to privacy that individuals have. “It is a complicated issue and can quickly become somewhat philosophical getting into the nature of what property is, what intellectual property is and whether that should exist, what privacy is and whether that should exist, and what contracts are. It gets somewhat philosophical and complicated quickly,” said Wortman. See PIRACY, page 3