Thursday May 7, 2015 by Daily Titan

Council approves funds for homeless shelter News Thursday May 7, 2015

Council OKs shelter funding

Baseball to host UCSB for key Big West series

The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton

‘Die in’ highlights social justice issues

Sports

Volume 97 Issue 52

Cox speaks in Titan Gym

City of Fullerton to give $500,000 for homeless shelter

Transgender activist discusses gender issues

KLARISSA ALCALA Daily Titan

CECILY MEZA Daily Titan

The Fullerton City Council approved a cooperative funding agreement with the County of Orange and City of Anaheim to facilitate a year-round homeless and multi-service center in Anaheim during its meeting Tuesday. The agreement requires Fullerton to put down $50,000 for a nonrefundable deposit as a limited due diligence cost. The proposed location for the center is located at 1000 N. Kraemer Place, Anaheim. During public comment, concerns about what services would be provided were once again brought up. As part of that concern, an indexing system was proposed that would identify the types of individuals using the center, including mentally disabled individuals or those with a criminal record. The funding agreement for this project is a total of $1 million, $500,000 from Fullerton and $500,000 from Anaheim. Even if the purchase of the center does not go through, Fullerton would still be required to pay $50,000 for pre-acquisition costs, including testing the proposed site. Councilwoman Jan Flory took issue with that cost. “If the county is asking Fullerton city to contribute a half million dollars to the ultimate construction and acquisition of the property, why are they asking us for $50,000 now?” Flory said. SEE SHELTER 3

MARIAH CARRILLO / DAILY TITAN

Students laid in a large group on the cement ground Wednesday, some covered with signs reading “Black Lives Matter,” and “CSUF stands with Baltimore.” The mass of students, faculty and staff took activism to the area outside the Humanities and Social Sciences building during a “die in,” in which participants pretend to be dead to bring attention to social justice issues. The event, which lasted 15 minutes, was organized by Alexandro José Gradilla, Ph.D., chair of the chicana and chicano studies department, to draw attention to the events in Baltimore and

issues surrounding police violence. “I selected die-in because it is such a spectacle and important visual representation of the violence facing communities of color,” Gradilla said. More than 100 people attended the event, which aimed to show solidarity between students and faculty and staff, Gradilla said. “The students were greatly impacted by the show of strength from the faculty. The big take home message today—we are community,” Gradilla wrote on the event’s Facebook page.

Crowds erupted in applause as actress and transgender activist Laverne Cox made her way Wednesday to the Titan Gym to discuss issues facing the transgender community and relate her own personal struggles as part of her “Ain’t I a Woman?” talk series. Laverne Cox is the first transgender woman of color to have a leading role in a scripted show and is known for her role as Sophia Burset, an incarcerated, African-American transgender woman, on the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. Cox is also well-known for being a transgender activist and the issues faced by the transgender community were heavily addressed throughout the course of her speech. She shared statistics about the difficulties the transgender community experiences with homicide, unemployment, incarceration, bullying and harassment and said such things have culminated in a state of emergency for transgender people across the nation. The actress discussed discrimination, something she said she has been at the receiving end of. She discussed a moment in third grade where her teacher confronted her in class for fanning herself in a glamourous manner. SEE COX

Not just a pile of burning leaves Biology student explores palm frond possibilities MARCIELA GOMEZ Daily Titan Research projects didn’t intrigue Jarrett Jones much in the past. But, that all changed when the 23-yearold, senior biology major discovered Cal State Fullerton’s Urban Agriculture Community-based Research Experience program, created to improve urban food systems. His attention shifted to the agricultural aspect of research to improve the human lifestyle. Since fall 2013, Jones has been working on his first research project to create and evaluate the effectiveness of burning palm fronds into charcoal (known as biochar) and how it reacts with plants and comparing it to commercial biochar and soil that’s left alone. Despite Southern California’s adornment of elongated palm trees, its stocky

and green fiber leaves are impossible to be recycled or shredded, Jones said. Therefore, Jones steered his focus on utilizing the leaves in the research project. More than a year ago, a palm tree once swayed in the heavy winds at the Fullerton Arboretum, until it collapsed onto the floor, shedding its leaves. With Arboretum staff approval, Jones was able to obtain the leaves for his project. After shredding the enormous palm fronds, Jones was ready to char them into a potential soil amendment for plants. Jones burned the palm fronds in his backyard using two cylinder shaped acetylene tanks. The tanks were stacked upon each other and topped with a thin chimney. Fresh air comes from the bottom tank, while fire descends from the top, creating a flowing connection that burns the palm fronds, dissolving the leafy texture and converting it to moist and soft charcoal, Jones said. The lengthened fronds

MARCIELA GOMEZ / DAILY TITAN

Jarrett Jones (above) inspects his test plants to research how the abundance of Southern California palm fronds can be made into biochar and used as a potential soil amendment for plants.

that once filled two 32-gallon trash bins, dissolved into a average-sized bucket. Jones is currently

growing basil, spinach and radishes to examine how the plants react to the palm frond biochar compared to commercial biochar.

The plants reside in a rectangular shaped room at the corner of the greenhouse complex, where Jones supervises and drizzles the

plants with water as the sun softly radiates through the crystal clear windows. SEE PALM 4 VISIT US AT: DAILYTITAN.COM