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U N I V E RS I T Y ,
F U L L E R T O N Elementary school students tour the Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary
INSIDE
—see News page 3
n detour: The Brewery Artwalk in 6 Los Angeles offers Orange County residents a chance to get past the Orange Curtain
7 n sports: Titan women’s tennis nabs first
Big West Conference win of season at UCR
T h u r s d ay
Vo l u m e 7 4 , I s s u e 3 0
A p r i l 18, 2002
Panelists discuss barri-
nEVENT: Town Hall emphasizes controversial issues like culture, gender and sexual orientation By Afni Adnan
Daily Titan Staff Writer
Jae Byun/ Special to the Titan
The panelists answer audiences’ questions during the discussion.
Students and faculty members gathered in the Portola Pavilion of the Titan Student Union Tuesday night to take part in the Town Hall “Voices from the Sidelines: Issues of Culture, Gender and Sexual Orientation.” The event, which was sponsored by the Center for Community Dialogue and the Faculty Development Center, was organized to open the lines of communication and facilitate dialogue about issues that affect many people. Archana Bhatt, professor of speech communications at Cal State Fullerton, was the moderator. The guest panelists were asked different questions. One topic
was about the greatest barrier to full participation in American society. “I don’t believe there is one greatest obstacle,” said Toni Nielson, a speech communications major at CSUF. “There are many hurdles, and that’s how oppression usually works.” Tina Pham, an attorney and CSUF alumna, works closely with immigrants and saw the assimilation process they go through. She said that immigrants lack proficiency in the language and the understanding of the culture. “You must understand the customs, the traditions and the things that make up the social fabric of American society,” Pham said. “Not being able to speak the language will not allow you to fully par-
ticipate in society.” Pham also emphasized that immigrants should feel comfortable maintaining their identity even though they have to adjust to a new culture. “You need to look inside you,” she said. “Some people are afraid that if they’re truly Americanized, they lose their identity. But you have to be comfortable with yourself and who you want to be.” Other guest panelists said the greatest barrier is the issue of the “us vs. them” mentality Americans are so accustomed to. Cheryl E. Williams, assistant professor at Concordia University in Irvine, talked about Americans being too rooted in the ethnocentric state of mind. She said being
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Delving into psychology
Comm Week comes to camnEDUCATION: The five-day event will feature a variety of speakers and a job fair for all students
nCAMPUS: CSUF’s all-day event provides students with information and tools for searching for a career By Ryan Hoppe
Daily Titan Staff Writer
By Shannon Gladys
Daily Titan Staff Writer The amount of work accomplished by one classroom’s efforts during Communications Week 2002 could fetch a hefty fee from any public relations firm. An entire semester is devoted to the preparation of one week in April. For Comm 497 students, the sole purpose of the class is to ensure that Communications Week goes off without a hitch. “We eat, sleep and breath Comm Week during the semester, especially when it gets closer to the week,” said Richard Favela, 24, executive director of the Comm Week Task Force. Communications Week, April 22 through 27, is a school-wide event designed to heighten the awareness of the College of Communications programs. It spotlights students, faculty and guest speakers while promoting the communications field, not only within the college but to the outside community as well. The goal of Comm Week is to provide a fun, interactive learning environment that exposes students to the professional world, internship opportunities and hands-on planning experience. “I want people to get an understanding of what the school of communications and the professional world is like through the eyes of our speakers,” Favela said. “I want our students to be
culturally aware might not necessarily mean being culturally competent. “In order to be culturally competent, you need to be able to step into a world of uncomfortableness to appreciate differences and newness,” Williams said. Julia Johnson, a lecturer at Cal State Long Beach, identified four ideologies of systematic oppression for a variety of people: • Straight supremacy • White supremacy • Male supremacy • Class supremacy “Those of us who represent privilege assume that privilege is natural and it is a
Chris Tennyson/ Special to the Titan
Cathlyn Fabuman, a public relations major, passes out information about the upcoming Comm Week to Alex Aguiluz. better informed. I want them to than 80 guest speakers from alumni baseball game through- tasks for students. be glad they chose their major the fields of radio, television, out the entire week. “Since 9/11 people aren’t in communications.” newspaper, advertising, pubStudents in the class are willing to donate as much. It’s Students in the class, which lic relations, photography and graded on involvement, lead- been a struggle,” said Jennifer are divided into three commit- more. They also interspersed ership and speakers placed, Gonzalez, 22, Task Force tees, spent a large amount of events, such as a poetry com- among many other things. Member. “We find a way to time organizing the event. petition, a barbecue, a job fair, Getting donations was one of EDUCATION/ 5 This year they booked more several get-togethers and the the most important and difficult
The eighth annual Cal State Fullerton Psychology Day offers an opportunity to better understand those mysterious mindbenders known as psychologists. Psychology Day gives students from CSUF and local junior colleges the chance to learn more about their potential majors. According to information published by the Psychology department, the all-day event starts this morning at 9 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m. in the Titan Student Union Pavilion. Students who register at 9 a.m. will receive a free continental breakfast and a free lunch. A student versus faculty Jeopardy competition also will occur. “Students always get a kick out of that,” said Dr. Jennifer Devenport, Psychology Day committee member. The featured speakers are USC professor Dr. Adrian Raine and UCLA professor Dr. Matthew Lieberman. Raine will lecture on “The Biosocial Basis of Antisocial Behavior.” “That’s a study of what physical characteristics contribute to antisocial behavior,” said Chet Oshiro, staff assistant at the psychology department. Lieberman is giving a lecture on “Cognitive Social Neuroscience.” “Researchers use brain scan devices to look at areas of the brain that are functioning when we are engaging in social or cognitive behavior such as memory or interacting with other people,” Devenport said. “It’s like a black box. We know information goes in and we know information goes out, but we don’t know what happens to it.” There will also be lectures on strategies for taking the Graduate Record Exam. Oshiro said there will be a seminar on how to get a job in the psychology industry. The seminar will be at 3 p.m. in Ontiveros A. He said that there would also be a presentation on preparing an application packet for graduate school. “Psychology Day is organized by a committee of faculty,” Oshiro said. The committee uses clubs to help organize the event, he said. The event was designed to educate psychology majors, help them decide on an emphasis and give potential majors a taste of the profession. “It’s mostly geared toward potential psych majors. We focused on the local JCs (junior colleges),” Oshiro said.
Art professor leaves legacy of creativity nRETIREMENT: George Raymond Kerciu says goodbye to students and faculty in his department By Matthew Sedlar
Daily Titan Copy Editor It has been a long and exciting journey for George Raymond Kerciu. Known by his students as G. Ray, Kerciu has been teaching higher education since 1961. At the close of this semester, he bids farewell to an art department he helped build and the students he taught. “I can’t think of a greater job than this teaching gig that I have had for 40 years,” Kerciu said. “I’m really going to miss the students because they have been an important part of my life.” After graduating with an master’s degree in fine arts from Cranbrook Academy of the Arts in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Kerciu began teaching at Sam Houston State College “in the
deep south of Texas.” Unhappy with his surroundings, he moved to the University of Mississippi the next year. “I arrived on campus, checked into faculty housing, and all of the sudden I realized there were riots going on,” he said. Kerciu began teaching at Ole Miss just as the all-white university became desegregated. “I was somewhat of an abstract landscape painter, but with all the things going on I became an immediate over-night social commentator,” Kerciu said. He started a series of paintings depicting vandalized Confederate flags entitled “America the Beautiful.” The paintings eventually led to his arrest. “All of this was building work for a show, which the faculty members
have every year at the University Art Gallery,” he said. “Eventually, a law student on campus brought charges against me for desecrating the Confederate flag.” The police arrested Kerciu in the middle of one of his classes. The charges were eventually dropped and Kerciu received large amounts of publicity from the arrest. “I was the talk of the town because I was the only artist that had ever done anything like that at that particular time,” he said. “Everybody in the art world was fussing over me and that was my 15 minutes of fame.” Kerciu finally moved out to California in 1963 and began teaching at a small school named Orange State College. The school consisted of temporary buildings surrounded by nothing but orange groves. In the
future, the college would be called Cal State Fullerton. “When I arrived, the conservative newspaper, then called the Santa Ana Register, was pressing for a news conference because of this radical professor that was coming to teach for the art department,” Kerciu said. The paper had written an article on the “nationally known race riot artist teaching” at CSUF. “[He has had] lots of influence on the department,” said Vincent Suez, CSUF art professor. Suez, who graduated with a B.A. from CSUF, has known Kerciu since the 60s. Since 1963, Kerciu has created several areas of concentration within the CSUF art department including print making and glass art. He has even served for the visual arts
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MAtt Sedlar/ Daily Titan
George Ray Kerciu helps student Crystal De La Torre find perspective.