Vol. 90 Issue 16
September 28, 2011
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coverage on top campus news stories.
dailytitan.com The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton
Children’s Center hires new director ASI hiring panel chooses Jenny Taylor for her experience and compatible philosophy MARIBEL CASTAÑEDA Daily Titan
Cal State Fullerton’s Children’s Center is welcoming a new director, Jenny Taylor, into its fold and is saying goodbye to its longstanding director, Betsy Gibbs, who has been with the center since it began in 1974. Gibbs decided to step down as director last spring after accomplishing
It was a combination of her experience, her personality and her philosophy ... I think she is a collaborative person. Betsy Gibbs Former Director
her goal of building the new center. “Knowing that everything is going to be OK at the center–I mean we have a wonderful staff and I have been in charge of it for long enough,” said Gibbs. In order to choose the new director, a panel was established and made up of
various members from Associated Students Inc., including Laura Brown, the Human Resources director, staff from the Children’s Center, a master teacher, an education coordinator, office coordinator and another employee of ASI. Six candidates were picked to participate in an open forum on campus. It was a collaborative process composed of parents, teachers, committee members and ASI’s Executive Director Fred Sanchez. “Jenny possesses the experience we were looking for, which was a combination of teaching and administration. She has been the director of other children’s centers. We’re excited to have her with us,” said Sanchez. Taylor, an alumna of Cal State Dominguez Hills, has been a director of a children’s center and preschool for 16 years. She started in Parks Recreation and Marine at Long Beach, where she lives currently, and then moved to Wyoming, where she opened up a children’s center. Later, she returned to California and had been working as a director in Manhattan Beach. Taylor said she believes every child is capable and competent, and all children and staff deserve respect and to be listened to. That was a big reason behind her getting the job because it was compatible with the center, Gibbs and Beverly Vargish, assistant director, said. See DIRECTOR, page 3
CAMILLE TARAZON / Daily Titan Jenny Taylor reads The Hungry Caterpillar to children at the center just before lunch time. Taylor is the new director at Cal State Fullerton’s Children’s Center.
More students, more competition, higher GPAs Average GPA for incoming freshmen rises due to increased competition in application process SEAN VIELE Daily Titan
CAMILLE TARAZON / Daily Titan The average GPA for incoming freshmen has risen from 3.27 in 2010 to 3.37 in 2011.
The fall 2011 freshman class is said to have the highest-rated average high school GPA in the history of Cal State Fullerton. As a result of an increase in the number of students applying for enrollment to CSUF and program and campus impaction in the CSU, this year’s entering freshman class of just under 4,200 students has an average high school GPA of 3.37. This is a notable increase from a 3.27 GPA for the fall 2010 class, said Edward Sullivan, the vice president of the CSUF Department of Institutional Research and Analytical Studies. The 4,200 freshmen accepted this year is an increase from the fall 2010 first-time freshman class, which was 3,912 students, he said.
Sullivan said it is not surprising that the average GPA for the fall 2011 freshman class is the highest that it has ever been. There has been an increasing number of students applying to the university and since 2004 there has been a scarcity in the number of applicants who can be admitted in any given freshman class, Sullivan said. This means the university must pick the most qualified students. “This year we were shooting for a freshman class of about 3,900 students; that would have been in line with last year’s freshman class,” Sullivan said. “We received more applications and we ended up with an entering class of just under 4,200 students.” See GPA, page 2
Focusing on abilities, not disabilities
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The members of Students Navigating Accessibility are aiming at increasing the level of awareness for the disabled both on campus and in the community. dailytitan.com/students-withdisabilities/
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A labor of love: Student activism Nursing student stands up for human rights by attending and leading several protests
NURAN ALTEIR Daily Titan
Tamara Khoury, a second-year nursing major, is unlike any activist out there. Her Palestinian roots inspired her to look for what she believes in while questioning and reading taught her how to fight for it. Regardless of her demanding major, Khoury seems to find her way to the center of activist action defending what she believes is right, from Palestinian rights to police brutality. At 21 years old, she’s been to hundreds of protests and says she’s not stopping anytime soon.
Q: So tell me, why do you want to be a nurse? A: The summer going into my junior (year) I went
to Palestine, to the West Bank, for the first time in eight years. So when I went, I had more of a political understanding of what was going on. I visited a few refugee camps and I talked to some people there. I realized that I would be a better help to my people, my community, if I did something in the medical field.
Q: Is that also why you’ve become so active in protests? A: Regardless if I wanted to be interested in politics or not, I’ve been immersed in politics at a really, really young age. Even just watching TV with my parents, watching the news in Arabic, I would see these images of people being killed and that’s when I started to ask questions. I was in the fifth grade when the second Palestinian uprising started. I was 10 or 11 years old. It was at that age that I started attending protests regularly, and that’s when I really started reading–not just about Palestine, but from Palestine all the way to civil rights movements in Africa. In the U.S. I got really interested in Malcom X and the Black Panthers. I read up on Ghandi and Martin Luther King–all kinds of different ways of fighting oppression. Q: Do you speak Arabic? A: Yeah. Semi-fluently. I can understand way more than I can speak and then because I don’t live at home anymore I don’t really have anyone to practice with. Q: How do your parents feel about you being as involved as you are?
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A: My parents are Syrian, so I come from the same
kind of background as you and if I was telling them I was going to a protest almost every weekend, they would tell me to be careful. Well the nice thing about living away from home is that a lot of time when there are protests, if they’re not major protests, I don’t tell them about it–usually. My dad is really supportive. He thinks it’s good and he says I need to be careful. My mom, she’s proud, but she would rather me not do it.
Q: Are you ever scared that someone is going to see you? A: It does make me nervous a little bit, but I have never been arrested or got in any kind of serious trouble. The most that’s ever happened is news interviews or news articles or my picture in the paper, but that’s basically it. Before I got into the nursing program, there were all these protests on campus against budget cuts, which I was involved in. It would make me really nervous if the administration would see me here. What if they deny my applications because I was working so hard? See ACTIVISM, page 5
NURAN ALTEIR / Daily Titan Tamara Khoury, a second-year nursing major at CSUF, has become a strong leading voice in Fullerton after partaking in several protests.