November 2 2011

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OBAMA ADDRESSES STUDENT LOAN DEBT

Band Day to entertain at halftime of Saturday’s football game A&E Jalen Saunders brings electrifying threat to the Bulldog offense SPORTS Pap exam services to cut co-payment in August 2012 FEATURES

Page 2 — The United States president plans to alleviate debt worry for 1.6 million students

WEdnesday Issue November 2, 2011 FRESNO STATE

COLLEGIAN.CSUFRESNO.EDU

SERVING CAMPUS SINCE 1922

Students to attempt fruit salad world record Young adults By Ciara Norton The Collegian On Thursday, Nov. 3, Fresno State marketing students will attempt to break the world record for making the biggest fruit salad. The attempt will be held at 7 a.m. at P-R Farms, located at the corner of Willow and Shepard Avenues in Clovis. The fruit will be cut up and placed into a 2,500-gallon water tank where it will be weighed and recorded. The abundance of fruits and vegetables grown locally inspired students enrolled in the Marketing 158 course to make the world’s biggest fruit salad as part of their senior project. The current world record fruit salad was made on July 27, 2003 in Peru and contained 8,866 pounds of fruit. So far the Fresno State marketing students have collected 12,000 pounds of fresh fruit, including peaches, plums, nectarines, apples and Asian pears. Most of the fruit was donated by Kingsburg Orchards, Trinity Fruit Sales and other local growers. “This area is completely driven by agriculture,” Nick Morales, a Fresno State marketing student involved with the project, said. “Therefore it just makes sense to hold a record-breaking attempt that shows all that we have to offer.” Proof of the abundant of agricultural production in the San Joaquin Valley can be found in the Fresno County 2010

putting dreams aside By Alana Semuels McClatchy-Tribune

The US Department of Transportation found that more than 19 percent of drivers age 16 to 20 who died in motor vehicle accidents in 2006 were under the influence of alcohol. Thirty-one percent of college students met criteria to be diagnosed as alcohol abusers, according to a selfreport published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol. Statistics such as these led to the creation of an on-cam-

A Salvadoran flag wrapped around his neck to block out the sun, Geremias Romero hunches low to the ground alongside the other laborers, following the tractor along rows of cantaloupes. He reaches into the leafy green rows of fruit, touches a melon to gauge its ripeness, and then tosses it into a cart, where another laborer boxes it. Walk, pick, toss. The patter n goes on all morning. Harvesting cantaloupes for $8.25 an hour isn’t the job that Romero, 28, dreamed of as a child. Born in Newark, N.J., to immigrant parents from El Salvador, he graduated from high school and has taken classes at the Art Institute of Philadelphia and Merced Community College. He has experience as a special education teacher but, unable to find a teaching job, he’s started working in the fields. “I’d rather keep myself working than get in trouble,” he said, wiping his hands on his ripped jeans, stained with grass. “My dad started from nothing. He worked hard, so I don’t mind working hard too.” Many young Americans are finding themselves worse off than their parents were at their age, without jobs or working below their skill and education levels. The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is 17.4 percent, up from 10.6 percent in 2006. The situation is even tougher for children of immigrants, such as Romero. Their parents paved the way by working tough jobs so their children could get an education and secure their place in the middle class. Now, with middleclass jobs disappearing, many children of immigrants are settling for the jobs their parents did, even if they are better educated. “We’ve never had so many Americanborn working in the fields,” said Joe Del Bosque, the Central Valley farmer who hired Romero and other laborers like him to pick melons. “Farm work is usually the big step for some people to push their kids into the American Dream.” They include Raul Lopez, 23, who worked as a contractor for a utility company during the construction boom but is now back in the fields picking cantaloupes. “We’re still struggling, so we have to go where the work is,” said Lopez, whose mother, a Mexican immigrant, just passed her U.S. citizenship exam. Economists worry that this lack of mobility imperils the country’s productivity, especially since about a third of American adults ages 18 to 34 are foreign-born or children of immigrants. “It’s a great waste of talent and motivation,” said Alejandro Portes, a Princeton University sociologist who studies children of immigrants. “Since this is a growing population, the fact that they find so many obstacles to becoming productive citizens represents a significant waste for a knowledge-based economy.” Only 47 percent of Americans think their children will have a higher stan-

See FREAKS, Page x

See DREAMS, Page 3

Courtesy of Sam Mabanta

About 12,000 pounds of fresh fruit will be mixed in 2,500-gallon water tank (shown above). The container is eight feet in diameter and eight and-a-half-feet tall.

annual crop and livestock report. The report shows that in Fresno County the most common crops produced are grapes, almonds, tomatoes, poultry, milk, garlic, pistachios, oranges and cotton. The report also revealed that in 2010 the total gross production value of Fresno County agricultural commodi-

ties was just less than $6 million. Morales said that although the San Joaquin Valley is an agricultural mega-center, many people lack food. When the record-breaking attempt See RECORD, Page 3

FREAKS provide alchohol-free weekend entertainment Florida, where 100 percent of students who sporadically participated in FREAKS gaming graduated from college. In comparison, the general student population at Fresno State has a 51 percent graduation rate, according to KSEE News. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that 1,825 college students ages 18 to 24 died from alcohol-related unintentional injuries in 2009. Approximately 25 percent of college students report a negative impact on their academic work due to drinking, including missing class and receiving lower grades on exams, according to the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education.

“I Johnathan Wilbanks / The Collegian

Professor of public health William Thatcher (middle) enjoys a strategy board game during the FREAKS gaming program, which takes place every Friday night in the University Student Union.

By Johnathan Wilbanks The Collegian The negative effect of alcohol on student safety, health, academics and personal lives has led Dr. William Thatcher, assistant professor at the department of public health, to begin an alcohol-free, on-campus social event for Fresno State faculty and students. Recognizing the need to improve social weekend activities at Fresno State, Thatcher has created the program FREAKS (Finding Responsible a n d E n t e r t a i n i n g A c t iv i t i e s o n

KampuS). The program is intended to provide students a safe place to socialize on campus without the need for healthrisk behavior such as drinking. The program began January of this year. The program has grown from the usual 24 attendees to an average of 34 people every Friday night at the University Student Union. “This semester, more than 150 students, faculty, staff, their children and community members have participated in a weekend event,” Thatcher said. Thatcher started the event in West

t’s a good way to relax. My cognitive abilities didn’t really come into it, but it’s nice to have somewhere to go where drinking isn’t an issue.” — Aaron Sorensen, Fresno State student


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November 2 2011 by FresnoStateCollegian - Issuu