Vol. 90 Issue 14
September 26, 2011
School districts hosting food truck festivals to raise money The Chino Valley Unified School District raises more money by bringing popular OC and LA food trucks to their schools. Scan to view More info at:
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KNBC 4 Producer Scan to view Stephanie Miranda EXCLUSIVES visits students in the dailytitan.com Comm Department. More info at: dailytitan.com /KNBC2011
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The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton
CSUF athletics struggles to maintain Division I status
Titan sports in danger
MIKE WHITE Daily Titan
Budget cuts, tuition increases and insufficient revenues have left Cal State Fullerton athletics barely clinging on to Big West Division I status. The NCAA requires a university to maintain seven priority sports and fund them at 80 percent in scholarships in order to be considered Div. I. The seven sports that are considered priority by the Big West conference out of CSUF’s 15 are men and women’s basketball, men and women’s soccer, baseball, softball and women’s volleyball. CSUF is currently Div. I defending champions in both baseball and women’s volleyball. CSUF is now at the bare minimum seven priority sports and is in jeopardy of being bumped to Div. II if its expenditures continue to exceed the current budget. “We have some issues in terms of whether or not we can meet our minimum funding at the Div. I level,” said Steve DiTolla, associate senior athletics director. “In the NCAA, the Div. I level is defined, outside of men and women’s basketball, you need to have 50 scholarships, full scholarships, and we are dangerously close to not being that far.” See ATHLETICS, page 2
Daily Titan file photo Cal State Fullerton Division I sports, like baseball, may lose their Div. I title if they face any more drastic cuts. Sports such as men’s wrestling and women’s gymnastics were cut in the spring to meet budgetary obligations.
No more tuition hikes this year In the face of $100 million trigger cuts, Chancellor Charles B. Reed of the CSU Board of Trustees says he will not propose increases in student fees CAMYRON LEE Daily Titan
ANIBAL ORTIZ / Daily Titan Stephanie Ramirez, a volunteer at Pio Pico Elementary, assists one of her students. She is part of Think Together, an after-school program.
Future teachers get help CSUF program gets grant and assists students ANIBAL ORTIZ Daily Titan
Her face lit up as a single lace of her shoe dangled to the side and her heels lifted off the ground. As she propped her shoulders slightly upward, her eyes widened as she watched her classmate receive help from their new assistant. “Ms. Ramirez!” called one of the children from the back row. Only three days into her new job as a volunteer at Pio Pico Elementary in Santa Ana, Stephanie Ramirez, 21, from Santiago Canyon College, already seemed to be well known among the children in Nancy Chewy’s afterschool Think Together class in bungalow 8. Think Together and Ramirez are part of the Cal State Fullerton Teacher Pathway Partnership, a program designed to help low-income students living in areas at risk for gang activity. The program specifically targets students interested in pursuing careers in teaching by helping them get into universities, and find internships and employment opportunities. The program is moving forward after CSUF Auxiliary Services and its partners received nearly $500,000 in grant money last March to put toward programs like the Teacher Pathway
Partnership. The money came from the California Gang Reduction and Prevention Initiative, an initiative designed by the Employment Development Department and the Governor’s Office of Gang and Youth Violence Policy. They were awarded 10 grants within the state of California, nearly totaling $5 million for 2011, according to Colleen Curtin, chief deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Gang and Youth Violence. “Initially the program was designed for 60 students, but has been successful in attracting between 85 to 100 students, becoming one of the biggest of its kind,” said Daniel Choi, Ph.D., assistant professor of educational leadership and head of the CSUF program. The partnership is expected to last between two and four years and will help students get through classes, said Curtin. Of those students, Ramirez is one of them. She started taking a child development class after deciding her six-year career in the explorer program wasn’t for her. After the class, the program led her to volunteering at Pio Pico Elementary. See GANGS, page 5
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CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed will not propose additional tuition hikes this year, even with a pending state budget cut of up to $100 million. “In the last two or three years, it has been an enormous challenge to figure out how to keep the doors open, how to maintain quality, and how to serve as many students as we possibly can and give them an opportunity,” said Reed in his report to the CSU Board of Trustees in the Wednesday meeting in Long Beach. The board will reconvene in November to dis-
cuss the 2012-13 budget. Projected changes to the new budget will include a 3 percent salary increase for all CSU employees and a 5 percent enrollment increase. The projected revenue increase for 2011-13 has been estimated at $315 million. The updated budget proposal will be an action item at the next board meeting. “I sure hope that the state leadership makes a decision to start reinvesting in higher education, and that’s the community colleges and UC and CSU,” Reed said, looking forward to the 201213 budget. This year the CSUs faced a budget cut of $650 million, which equals a loss of 23 percent of state
funding to higher education in California. According to Reed’s report to the board, the CSUs could be facing an additional cut of $100 million to state funding. Tuition increases, like the 12 percent hike that was implemented this fall semester, are the result of a collaborative effort on behalf of the board and the chancellor. If the chancellor were to propose a tuition increase to compensate for decreased state funding, the board would then vote on the action. In this month’s board meeting, Reed stated that after meeting with many of the campus presidents he would not propose a mid-year hike for the 2011-12 school year.
Selection changes CSU Board of Trustees votes to modify process of picking campus presidents CAMYRON LEE Daily Titan
The CSU Board of Trustees voted to modify the presidential selection policy. These modifications include greater emphasis on internal candidate reviews, the elimination of a secondary selection committee and a higher level of confidentiality for presidential candidates through the elimination of public campus visits. The latter policy change has received backlash from various student and faculty organizations. This is the first time the policy has been changed since it has been put in place in 1997. The board accepted the policy changes that were put forth by the special committee on presidential selection and compensation. These changes will go into effect immediately, as the CSU begins its search for replacements for the four campus presidents who have announced their retirement. Presidents Jolene Koester of Northridge, Albert K. Karnig of San Bernadino, Robert A. Corrigan of San Francisco and Milton
Gordon of Cal State Fullerton will all be retiring as soon as their replacements have been chosen. “In the almost 14 years that I have been here, never have there been this many vacancies for presidents of the CSU. And the other day I took a look, and these vacancies represent the leadership on our campuses of more than 115,000 students and more than 8,000 faculty and staff. So, I would say that it marks the beginning of a major change in leadership in the CSU,” said Chancellor Charles B. Reed, addressing the board at a meeting held in Long Beach Wednesday. The policy modification was met with some resistance and was addressed multiple times in the meeting. Gregory Washington, California State Student Association (CSSA) president and CSUF student, also expressed his concern in his report to the board. “We do want to note that the ability for students to be engaged in these public forums has been stressed by our campuses as something that is very important,” said Washington. Washington went on to say that
WILLIAM CAMARGO / Daily Titan A search is underway for President Milton Gordon’s replacement.
after speaking with the student leadership of San Louis Obispo and San Diego, both of which have recently executed presidential selections, he had heard that the ability for students to ask questions of potential candidates through the campus visits were a vital part of selecting the best candidate, citing that President Elliot Hirshman, SDSU’s new president, was a clear favorite only after the campus visit. “We want to protect the anonymity of our candidates. A lot of other (non-CSU campuses) don’t even have the campus visit as part of their interview process. What
it does is it opens a larger pool to more candidates, because for example if there was a current CSU president who wanted to go for a another CSU campus position, it would basically compromise their current position,” said Stephanie Thara, a spokesperson for the CSU. Before the policy changes were voted on, Herbert C. Carter, chair of the board, offered these words to his fellow board members and colleagues: “I would suggest that See POLICY, page 3