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Fullerton equestrian team is giddy after its first season of success 8
Local residents draw thousands with extensive holiday decorations 5
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Titan’s dream made extreme Rodney Anderson wins home makeover, show visits campus By ANDREW STRETCH and DANNY CHENG Daily Titan Staff
Hoots and hollers echoed through the Titan Gym Wednesday night as “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” filmed a special ceremony to retire the No. 4 jersey of Cal State Fullerton senior Rodney Anderson. The former Titan basketball playerʼs career ended abruptly during his freshman year in 2000. While visit-
Boxes of Love relieve hunger
ing his parents at their Los Angeles home, he was shot three times in a mistaken drive-by shooting. As a result of the shooting, Anderson was paralyzed from the chest down. ABC surprised the Anderson family with its decision to feature their home on the hit television series last Saturday. “This certainly could have not come to a more deserving person or more of a deserving family,” President Milton A. Gordon said in a speech commemorating Anderson. After the accident, Anderson moved back into his parentsʼ house. “He was living in a house that was built in 1911,” the Rev. Karl
Washington said, a relative of Anderson. “There was just no way for him to get around.” Due to the narrow doorways in the familyʼs home, Anderson was confined to the front portion of the house, Washington said. The family recently planned on having the home renovated to suit Andersonʼs needs, but the contractor hired for the job allegedly left with the familyʼs money. Not long after, the family submitted their story to ABC. “There are thousands of applicants a week,” Trava Herra, a producer TV SHOW 3
TSU creates escape from studies, stress
Massages, midnight movies help reduce tension during finals
Cramming for exams has never been more rewarding than during finals week. With so many students requiring convenient places to study and eat, the Titan Student Union and ASI Productions offer plenty of solutions. The Pollak Library, which will maintain its regular hours during finals, closes at 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. For students who need a place to
study late into the night and early morning hours, the TSUʼs Food Court study area, main level lounges and the Mainframe Computer Lounge offer 24-hour operations until Dec. 17. The biannual All Night Study program was implemented back in the mid-1970s as a study option, said Sara Danner, a marketing manager for the TSU. “For the last 10 years it has evolved into the program it is now, with more options, [such as] extended hours for different areas,” she said. Games and Recreation offers free bowling and billiards. Information and Services and the lower level study lounges will also be open 24
pleted MicroMouse project to their Engineering 485 class. The MicroMouse is a complicated project designed on a computer program using a virtual maze and tweaked so a mouse would be able to sense where the walls were present and be able to complete the maze. Once the computer program was finished, it was applied using a real maze and a battery-operated mouse programmed to sense the same walls and complete the maze. While the finished product didnʼt perform exactly how they had planned, the four architects of the MicroMouse project said they couldnʼt help but feel a sense of relief once the presentation finished. “It feels great to be finished,” Kral said. “This was the most complicated
project weʼve done.” The construction of the MicroMouse took three months and the conception of it took longer. “Itʼs tough to gauge how long we have really [been] working on it because we all dream electronics,” Kral said. The MicroMouse idea is not a new one. The original MicroMouse project at Cal State Fullerton happened in 1990. That version was three times as big, which allowed it to have greater capability and required a much bigger maze than the current edition. CSUF isnʼt alone when it comes to an interest in projects like these, either. There are yearly MicroMouse competitions where schools throughout California compete to see whose
mouse is best. This team fell short in its only competition. “We didnʼt do well because the mouse broke the night before,” Tuason said. “With a better mouse we would have done well.” Whatever the FRANCIS SZYSKOWSKI/Daily Titan Asst. Photo Editor outcome of their A robotic mouse made by CSUF electrical engineering next competition, seniors Chris Tuason, Peter Kral, Sam Rokni and Tianthe students are Hwa Yang was a challenge during the semester. intent on improvEven with hope for better results ing their MicroMouse. “I am eager for the next time,” in the future, Yang said he looks Rokni said. “We are going to have a back on this MicroMouse project as newer mouse and a new processor.” a positive one.
million Americans try to quit unsuccessfully and over 90 percent of those who attempt to quit smoking fail, according to the document. Kicking the habit may seem impossible to some, but it is possible. Realizing that smoking is an addiction and knowing why one continues to smoke helps to begin the process. For some, smoking is a psychological addiction and for others itʼs purely physical. Either way, smokers who want to quit are going to have to make behavioral choices, said Mark Courtney, an American Lung Association call-center specialist.
A psychological need for smoking, Courtney said, is determined when a person smokes to fill a void. If “smoking has been their friend” through a turbulent point in the personʼs life, then that smoker continues to smoke to maintain a certain level of normalcy, Courtney said. According to the Missouri Partnership on Smoking or Health Web site. The first step to quit smoking is to set a quit date, Courtney said. “It adds validity to the whole process,” he said. “They can announce to their family and friends that they are
trying to quit and they can get support. If youʼre thinking about quitting and you havenʼt set a date, then youʼre not ready.” One way to help the process is to keep a smoking diary, Courtney said. The diary would document when and why a person smokes, as well as what a person feels when they light up. “This might be helpful because not only do they know how many cigarettes they smoke but why they smoke,” Courtney said. Jared Dannis, a junior finance major, has been smoking since he was 18. Dannis is part of the 31 per-
By LINDA HO Daily Titan Staff
Volunteer and Service Center helps to feed needy during holidays By ASHLEE ANDRIDGE Daily Titan Staff JAMES TU/Daily Titan
Love is coming in the shape of a box this holiday season. The Boxes of Love event on campus is an attempt to assist and resolve some of the hunger in the area. Students can pick up a box from the Volunteer and Service Center and fill it with select foods. The boxes are then donated to families throughout the community. “This is a very important event because there are many hungry families that count on institutions such as Cal State Fullerton to provide food for them during the holiday season,” said Veronica Ramos, the event coordinator for Boxes of Love. Ramos said the boxes are filled with foods like corn, green beans and rice, adding that each family receives one box, which feeds around six people. “I would estimate that is would take about $20 to $30 to fill one box,” she said. “I would encourage students to pick up a box and fill it as a group.” Ramos said students have shown their compassion for the hungry in other events and she knows they will come through again for this occasion. “Cal State Fullerton students have the gift of providing needy families with a holiday dinner and I have no doubt in my mind that together we can make it happen,” she said. “I canʼt imagine what it would be like not having a Christmas dinner with my family and I believe that no one should have to endure that.” The drive is running through Dec. 20 and Ramos said her “ultimate goal is that we will fill 75 boxes before the drive ends and Iʼll have to order more.” Greg Kelley of the Volunteer and BOXES 4
OANA PURCAR/Daily Titan Photo Editor
The mens basketball team cheered in front of the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” cameras on Wednesday night in the Titan Gym during a taping of the show for fellow Titan Rodney Anderson. Anderson played for the team in 2000 before he was shot and paralyzed from the chest down.
Andrew McEntyre, a criminal justice major, studies by the fireplace inside the Titan Student Union for his upcoming exam in his criminal justice class. The TSU is a second home to many students during finals week.
hours durStudents avoid ing finals exam anxiety News, page 3 w e e k . Round Table Pizza in the Pub will stay open until midnight on Dec. 13-14. The TSU Food Court Bakery will be open until 2 a.m., while Juice It Up! will be open until midnight during the last week of the semester. “We have been working hard to respond to student feedback that they want more food options late at night,” Danner said. Rec Sports will also be offering extended hours and late night activities from Dec. 13-16. Badminton, volleyball and basFINALS 3
Seniors complete mighty MicroMouse project Electrical engineering studentsʼ robot breaks day before competition By DENNIS OLSON For the Daily Titan
As finals week quickly approaches and the stress is relieved with each passing grade, most students can finally look back with a sense of accomplishment for making it through another grueling semester. For a group of electrical engineering students presenting their senior design projects on Wednesday, the feeling was no different. The day came for Chris Tuason, Sam Rokni, Peter Kral and TianHwa Yang to present their com-
Quitters battle smoking temptations, withdrawls Specialist says first step to kick habit is to choose start date By ERIC GOMEZ Daily Titan Staff
Itʼs no secret trying to quit smoking is hard. Sigmund Freud was able to stop his cocaine addiction but was never able to quit smoking, as described in a U.S. government document on quitting smoking entitled “Forever Free.” Perhaps itʼs no wonder why 17
cent of 15 million college students in America who smoke daily, according to the Campus Tobacco Coalition. Courtney said smokers need to find other ways to keep themselves occupied and keep their minds off cigarettes. Dannis said he finds himself smoking the most during breaks from studying. “I smoke when Iʼm studying to get my face out of the books,” he said. “I need to look at something different.” Fred Elbancol, a junior business SMOKING 4