Spring 2019 Issue 6

THE STUDENT VOICE OF SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1927

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2019 RESIDENTIAL HOUSING

Town hall meeting addresses shooting CELINE HERRERA Xpress Reporter cherrer3@mail.sfsu.edu

JAMES CHAN/Golden Gate Xpress Eliseo Cañete, science teacher at Castlemont High School, waves a “Resist” flag over a city-wide rally in Downtown Oakland, California on the sixth day of the Oakland Teacher Strike Feb 28, 2019.

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TENTATIVE CONTRACT ENDS SEVEN-DAY TEACHER STRIKE AUDREY ESOMONU Xpress Reporter aesomonu@mail.sfsu.edu

OAKLAND — Teachers returned to their classrooms Monday after seven days of strikes resulted in the approval of a tentative contract between the school district and the Oakland Education Association.

Thousands of teachers and students filled the streets to demand smaller class sizes, additional school resources and a living wage for educators on Feb. 21.

The new contract reduces class sizes, provides an 11-percent ongoing salary increase with a one-time 3-percent bonus, according to an Oakland Unified School District press release.

“Our teachers are the core of everything we do as a school district, and we are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement that shows them how valuable they are,” OUSD Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammel said in a press statement. “The contract will help ensure more teachers stay in Oakland and that more come to teach in our classrooms and support our students” Service Employees International Union participated in a sympathy strike out of solidarity with Oakland teachers. The union includes a diverse group of members who work to make schools and cities better for the community.

Antonio Brooks is an instructional support specialist for SEIU as well as a teacher at Lafayette Elementary School. For Brooks, participating in the strike was monumental.

“I’m a part of history,” he said. “It’s an overwhelming feeling

NOISE POP SHOWCASES GLOBAL BANDS Page 5

of joy to see everybody here together.”

Teachers chose many different reasons to participate in the strike. OUSD experiences high teacher turnover each year. West Oakland middle school teacher Jazmine Njissang said she didn’t want to be part of that statistic.

According to a fact sheet by OUSD, there is a total of 2,319 teachers in the district, of that total 46.8 percent are white and 21.4 percent are African-American.

“I’m Black, 26, and I was a math major,” Njissang said. “I’m a teacher who is from here and I’m trying to stay where the kids need to see people who look like them and know what they’ve gone through.”

The labor agreement came after teachers and students spent a week gathering in front of picket lines, even in inclement weather, to support the strike.

For teachers such as Zach Bell, a sixth-grade math teacher at Oakland School of Language, choosing to strike meant sacrificing his paycheck.

The starting salary for teachers in Oakland is $46,570. This is around a $16,000 difference compared to the starting salaries for kindergarten teachers in Scarsdale, New York, who can earn $62,600.

And when compared to teachers in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where the starting salary is $73,000, the difference is around $27,000.

“We’re not making money,” Bell said. “I’ve probably lost around $1,000. It’s expensive to live in the Bay Area — $1,000 is

STRIKE CONTINUES ON PAGE 3

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Campus residents expressed outrage at a Feb. 26 town hall meeting hosted by the Residential Hall Association a day after they said SF State administrators failed to communicate effectively with the community in the aftermath of a nearby shooting and power outage that left students in the dark about their safety.

Users of the Wildfire and Citizen apps reported a suspect fleeing from a shooting at Serrano Drive and Cardenas Avenue, just a block from the J. Paul Leonard Library, shortly after 7 p.m. Feb. 25, and it took three hours for administrators to issue a statement. In the absence of official information, unofficial reports and rumors snowballed on both apps and on social media.

“We were advised not to pay attention to ‘fake news’ like the Citizen and Wildfire apps,” 19-year-old Mary Ward Hall resident Kristian Morgan said. “The University gave us no choice but to pay attention to those apps [though], we had nothing but radio silence from them. We were like sitting ducks.”

To make matters worse, just after 11 p.m.

MEETING CONTINUES ON PAGE 3

Emergency alerts fail to provide clarity amid chaos CODY MCFARLAND Xpress Reporter cmfarla@mail.sfsu.edu

Students are demanding the University re-evaluate its use of emergency notifications after a chaotic night where the campus community was left in the dark following a shooting, power outage and reports of fireworks.

The commotion began at approximately 7:11 p.m. on Feb. 25 when a shooting occurred at Serrano Drive and Cardenas Avenue in University Park South, a block from the J. Paul Leonard Library. The male non-student suspect in the ongoing investigation has yet to be apprehended, according to San Francisco Police. The woman he shot who is not a student either, sustained a CLERY ACT CONTINUES ON PAGE 3

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STRIKE: Community rallies to support educators, picket schools for livable wages in Bay Area FROM PAGE 1 no joke.”

The lack of a sustainable wage is also causing some teachers to live paycheck-to-paycheck, according to Brooks.

“If I were to miss $50 off my check, that would hurt me bad,” Brooks said. “We have people who are homeless and they’re still working. We have people that live in tents, trailers, living in rooms and they’re still working.

“It’s hard to find a place out here,” he added.

“Most of us have second jobs.”

Global Family Elementary School teacher Gretchen Bailey said the strike strengthened the bond between her and her co-workers.

“We’ve really bonded. While we were on the line, we’re sharing stories, talking about our families,” Bailey said. “I feel like I know [our] teachers better now than I did a week ago and I’ve been at that school site for 21 years.”

Bailey attended the last day of the strike and said she hopes some of the positive support the teachers received will generate even more change.

“I feel it, and I hope there’s change,” she said. “I really do, not just here in Oakland but across the country.”

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JAMES CHAN/Golden Gate Xpress

Protesters march into the Elihu M. Harris State Office Building at a city-wide rally in Downtown Oakland, California on the sixth day of the Oakland Teacher Strike Feb 28, 2019.

TOWN HALL: Students air concerns about security alerts to Residential Hall Association board members FROM PAGE 1 there was a power outage, followed by fireworks near the Towers that were at first rumored to be a second shooting incident.

The RHA town hall offered students a chance to voice their concerns with the way the University handled the incidents of the night before and many were frustrated, scared and confused.

Many students were particularly worried when they say they were told by the University Police Department that because the shooting was a block away from campus, the school was not legally required to issue warnings.

“Even if it was just a block away, that’s only a block!” University Park North resident Jorge Ruiz said. “I feel like we were lucky that that guy didn’t turn onto campus because he thought it would be the easiest getaway. The campus is pretty big, you can go a lot of places and hide pretty effectively.”

Vice President of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Luoluo Hong sent an email to the community around 3 p.m. the day after the series of incidents to assure students they were never at risk.

“Last evening three independent events near and on campus may have caused distress,” Hong said in the email. “We want to assure our students, faculty, staff and neighbors that the campus community was and is in no danger.

“We recognize that these events caused confusion and concern among the campus,” the email continued. “It is our practice to provide timely updates to the campus community in instances of imminent threat.”

But one student at the RHA town hall pointed out that the suspect who fled remained at large, and at some point they said they saw University police perform a security sweep of campus. They believe this suggested that there was a time during the three-hour window that UPD could not

confirm there was not an imminent threat.

“I believe that the University failed in their ability to communicate to students what was happening during the times there was an active crime scene,” Associated Students RHA Representative Joshua Ochoa said. “They failed to send any form of communication to students for three hours. Students in the residential communities, in the Library and elsewhere on campus weren’t sure if it was even safe to go outside.”

All six of the RHA board members present at the town hall commiserated with their peers.

“We’re just as scared as you,” Natalie Hartshorne, president of UPN hall government, told the assembled residents. “When I heard about that last night I was literally shaking [talking] to my mom because it’s not OK and SF State should take account of what did happen and try to make better decisions.”

RHA President Maya Maldonado noted

that the University seemed to treat power outages with greater gravity than the security concerns raised by a shooting only a block from campus.

“They’re very quick to announce power outages, like I got phone calls at like 5 a.m. the other week,” she said. “If only they had that same energy and receptivity to crime on our campus.”

Maldonado said RHA plans to meet with UPD and administrators to discuss what can be done differently in the future to provide students with more timely communications regarding security concerns.

“We should know what’s going on a block away from our campus,” Maldonado said.

“We should definitely look into having some kind of conversation with the University and UPD on setting up some lines of proximity, because simply just pushing it away and saying, ‘Well it wasn’t technically on campus’ — it’s obvious that’s not enough for us.”

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CLERY ACT: University decides shooting suspect did not pose threat despite proximity to campus FROM PAGE 1 gunshot wound to her upper torso and was taken to the hospital where she was listed in non-life threatening condition, Sgt. Michael Andraychak said.

Despite the suspect being at large, University Police sent out an email stating the campus was and is in no danger shortly after 10 p.m., but students were out of the loop for nearly three hours and left to rely on hearsay from apps like Wildfire and Citizen.

The fireworks, mistaken by many on social media for more gunshots, and the power outage only added to students’ fears and frustrations with the lack of immediate alerts from University officials.

“I believe that the University failed in their ability to communicate to students what was happening during the times there was an active crime scene,” Joshua Ochoa, Associated Students Residential Hall Association representative, said. “They failed to send any form of communication to students for three hours. Students in the residential communities, in the Library and elsewhere on campus weren’t sure if it was even safe to go outside.”

Questions have since come up about what

constitutes a timely warning, and whether SF State should issue any type of notice in the event of a crime occurring near campus where police determine there is no imminent threat, but students are in a panic and without the facts — just like the events of Feb. 25.

According to UPD Chief Jason Wu, issuing an emergency notification or timely warning was not legally required under the Clery Act of 1990 given the circumstances.

“The University Police Department is responsible for sending emergency notifications and security/safety alerts when there is a potential imminent threat to the campus community,” Wu said in an email. “Last night’s incident was assessed by SFPD and did not constitute such a threat and thus no message was sent out.”

As Laura Egan, senior director of programs for the Clery Center, points out, the Clery Act lays out minimum requirements for issuing timely warnings and emergency notifications, but there is room for interpretation and much is left to the discretion of campus officials. In SF State’s case, that responsibility falls on UPD, who in conjunction with SFPD determined there was no imminent threat.

As of press time Monday, Xpress was awaiting a copy of UPD’s official policies and procedures regarding how such threats are assessed and subsequently handled.

Egan said the Clery Act does not define timely. The term is used in relation to when a university receives its information, and it isn’t unheard of for Clery timely warnings to be issued between 24 and 72 hours after the occurrence of a crime, she said.

“There is no prescription in the law as to what timely means,” she said. “Clery does not prescribe who is to be in charge of issuing warnings or notifications.”

The day after the incident, Park Merced sent an email to its residents around 1 p.m.

An email from the Office of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management arrived shortly thereafter at 3:15 p.m.

Neither email was listed as an official Clery alert and neither addressed the status or the whereabouts of the shooter, but the bolded headline on the message from Vice President of SAEM Luoluo Hong read, “Campus community was and is in no danger from last night’s events.”

That consolation, however, came too late and failed to placate students — especially on the heels of a Valentine’s Day fiasco

where the University woke students up with a series of calls, texts and emails beginning around 5 a.m. to announce a campus-wide power outage that was resolved before 8 a.m.

Classes went on as scheduled and students begrudgingly attended, many arriving late or tired or both as a result of the alerts.

Since the events of Feb. 25, students and residents of Park Merced have met to discuss the discrepancies with how emergency notifications are handled.

“I think the University should’ve at least said, ‘Oh, please avoid this area because there’s a potential crime scene or threat,’ at least 15 minutes after it happened,” one student said during a town hall meeting hosted

by RHA. “I think that they really failed. At that point, they should have at least said [something] and not waited three hours.”

Despite all the outrage, SF State officials appear to have acted in compliance with the law.

Egan said that campus officials can still issue alerts regarding crimes that do not meet Clery criteria at their own discretion, as long as the notices aren’t mislabeled as ‘Clery.’

“Nothing in Clery prevents you from putting out a notice anyway,” she said. n

CITY 3 City plans to create support center for residents living out of vehicles GOLDENGATEXPRESS.ORG

CARLY WIPF Xpress Reporter cwipf@mail.sfsu.edu

Thirty four-year-old Mohamad Alajtal starts his day by working and taking classes for his master’s degree in mechanical engineering at SF State. After completing his undergraduate studies in Libya, he escaped the civil war in his home country by immigrating to the U.S., where he now lives out of a minivan.

“In order to get my degree, I had to go through this,” Alajtal said.

He supports himself by working part-time at a restaurant and said he cannot pay more than $500 in rent.

“I went through kind of a hard phase where I had to budget every little thing,” Alajtal said.

He opted to rent a van instead of leasing a costly San Francisco apartment.

Earlier this month, District 5 Supervisor Vallie Brown introduced San Francisco’s first ordinance aimed at helping people living in vehicles like Alajtal.

The legislation would make safe overnight parking accessible and supports a vehicular “triage” with food, bathroom, shower and laundry facilities. The program will ideally provide additional pathways into shelters, as well as interim and permanent housing, according to Brown’s aide Shakirah Simley.

Navigating the challenges of

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mobile living is something Brown knows intimately after facing years of housing instability. As a teenager, Brown lived in a vehicle while her mother worked, according to Simley.

Alajtal said life in a vehicle can be harsh, especially when the Mashouf Wellness Center is unavailable. He relies on the center to keep clean and work out, but when the facility closed for winter break, he paid for a YMCA pass to continue his hygiene and exercise routine. Alajtal said he would “absolutely” use the services provided under the new ordinance during campus closures, but other mobile home residents around SF State are uncertain.

Tiago Duel does not attend SF State, but parks nearby on Winston Drive and calls himself “motor-homeless.” He said his RV is his home by choice. His motor home facilities are powered by an $8,000 solar system, leaving him with little need for Brown’s proposed services.

He said even if he did need them, his motor home is bulky and moving it daily would be cumbersome. Duel said his use of the center would depend on its ease of access.

Duel said he avoids fines by moving his vehicle once a week for street cleaning.

However, people living in their vehicles can rack up costly tickets for violating various curb

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“Worst of all, someone’s home is gone. That is way out of proportion to whatever interest the city had in keeping the curb clear."

-Andy Thornley, SFMTA analyst

rules, such as 72-hour parking zones and oversized vehicle bans.

Oversized vehicle tickets are around $110, and since sleeping in a vehicle is illegal, people can be fined up to $1,000, according to San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency analyst Andy Thornley.

Once five or more tickets go unpaid, an individual risks getting towed, at which point people rarely get their vehicles back.

“Worst of all, someone’s home is gone,” Thornley said. “That is way out of proportion to whatever interest the city had in keeping the curb clear.”

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resident Andrew Kucharski parks his RV on an unmarked curb along Winston Drive. He said that since the area around SF State is safe and so close to the police and fire stations, he probably wouldn’t use Brown’s center either.

“I’m already comfortable [living on the street] so it doesn’t necessarily frighten me,” Kucharski said. “But I see how [the safe overnight parking] could be a benefit, especially to some of the students.”

He also stated his concern over the Wellness Center’s aesthetic in contrast to the RV community.

“I certainly don’t want anything to look like an RV site,” Kucharski said.

And neither do San Francisco neighborhoods, according to Thornley. He said his agency gets a lot of calls about the “wall of RVs” near the Sunset and Bayview-Hunters Point.

“The city knows it’s just a shuffleboard game where they are shuffling folks from one area to another, and they also know that we’re currently in a housing crisis,” Coalition on Homelessness organizer Kelley Cutler said.

Cutler said she has gone to numerous SFMTA meetings to advocate for RV residents be-

cause restrictions persist with no alternatives. At a Feb. 6, 2018 meeting, SFMTA said approximately 1,200 people in San Francisco are living in their cars, vans or RVs based on the 2017 Point in Time Count.

Cutler said these vulnerable people are being targeted for tickets.

“It’s a tough job,” Thornley said.

“Somebody has to be the referee for how we use the curb.”

SFMTA currently has a low-income payment program for qualified drivers who are backlogged on tickets, according to Thornley.

As Brown’s proposal moves forward, a strategy Thornley said he hopes people and organizations adopt is running license plates of potentially lived-in vehicles on the SFMTA website. Doing so will populate a list of how many unpaid tickets people accumulate.

Thornley said advocacy groups could reach out and warn someone before their vehicular home is towed.

Simley said Brown’s model is still in the works, but the parking and services center would include offices and places for people to sleep.

The city has three months to find city-owned land that would accommodate the project.

4 CITY

Russian River floods Sonoma JOSEPH HIGH Xpress Reporter jhigh@mail.sfsu.edu

GUERNEVILLE — Severe flooding from the Russian River forced residents from more than 20 Sonoma County communities to evacuate for four days, according to a press release by Sonoma County Sheriff ’s Office.

At the peak of the storm on Feb. 27, the Russian River rose above 43 feet in some areas in Sonoma County, according to a Facebook post by the Sheriff ’s Office.

About 2,600 properties were damaged by the severe flooding, according to a Sonoma County press release on Friday.

Forestville resident Nick Valadez lives across the street from Green Valley Creek, a tributary of the Russian River that runs South through the town, overflowed, submerging entire cars on Wednesday Feb. 27 Forestville is less than 10 miles

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West of Guerneville and North of Sebastopol. Valdez said this is the worst flood he’s seen in 12 years of living in this small, rural river community.

“We know what’s going to happen every year so we get prepared,” Valadez said. “It’s never happened this bad.”

Some residents resorted to using boats to get around the flooded streets.

Forestville resident Muffy Vasale said that it was so deep in parts that people were going over submerged fences in their boats and kayaks.

“Our drive is under six feet of water,” Forestville resident Muffy Vasale said. “It’s a lake.”

Vasale and her neighbor Anabella Hernandez said they felt trapped inside their homes and decided to paddle out into the flooded roads on their kayaks.

On Feb. 28, Hernandez said leaving the town would be pointless.

“I can’t get to work even if I escaped [the town],” Hernandez said. “I work in Sebastopol and it’s flooded there as well.”

Bob Pawlan, a Rohnert Park resident, said he helped organize an evacuation shelter at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts on South High Street.

Pawlan said the shelter had 38 people stay, but that number went down to 17 by Feb. 28. He said most of the people who stayed were already experiencing homelessness before the flood.

“There is a transient part of the population here,” Pawlan said.

“They come here to get a meal and a warm, safe, place to stay. They’re from living near the river. So we get a mixed group.”

Pawlan said many evacuees tried to go to their homes during the day on Wednesday only to find that they could not get back and needed to stay in the shelter another night.

He said shelter will be open until at least Friday, but it will remain open if needed.

Caltrans worker Jim Kracke said emergency repair crews will be slowed down if heavy storms keep dropping large amounts of rain in the area.

“We’ve been getting hammered with slides, flooding, trees down.

You name it, we’ve seen it,” Kracke

JOSEPH HIGH/Golden Gate Xpress

Neighbors Anabella Hernandez and Muffy Vasale, of Forestville, kayak through flooded roads and properties along Martinelli Road on Wednesday Feb. 27, 2019. said. “We’re trying to get routes open, pushing debris here. We’ve got a lot of cleanup to do in the

coming weeks.”

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Safety apps alert students to campus shooting CARLY WIPF JESSICA DELATORRE Xpress Reporters xpressnewsstaff@gmail.com

Crime alert apps notified SF State students of a shooting near campus on Feb. 25, informing users hours before the University released an official statement.

The incident occurred last Monday evening when one person was shot, followed by reports of fireworks mistaken for gunfire and a power outage a couple of hours later. The formal statement on the University website said the shooting victim received medical attention. University police reported there was no active shooter on campus and emphasized there is no current threat to the community.

Without an update from the administration, students turned to an app known as Wildfire for information.

Wildfire is growing in popularity with students as a social media platform that acts as an emergency alert system and an outlet for the latest campus events.

Wildfire co-founder Hriday Kemburu developed the app in 2015 after almost getting mugged near the UC Berkeley Library. He posted on Facebook to warn other students and noticed it got hundreds of views, even by complete strangers. Hriday saw the need for a more effective way to send alerts without being limited to immediate friends and family.

Nancy Nguyen, an SF State cinema major, was in the Humanities Building during the shooting and didn’t know what was going on until she returned to her dorm.

“I was actually really scared and I didn’t know that it was happening so close until my friend actually pulled out the Wildfire app,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen downloaded the app immediately after the shooting.

The University did not send out an alert when the shooting occurred and only sent a mass email to the campus community almost three hours later.

“I honestly felt really disappointed in the school system,” Nguyen said. “I don’t understand why they didn’t tell [us about the

shooting] right away.”

Kemburu told the Xpress via email that Wildfire is not affiliated or working with SF State, although its users must be college students in order to communicate through the app.

“The goal is that we can work with the campus as a more prompt alert system or an additional campus resource,” Kemburu said.

He said within minutes of the shooting, dozens of SF State students posted about the incident, which prompted Wildfire to send a mass notification to thousands of its users.

Kemburu compared the incident to a shooting three blocks from UC Berkeley during Wildfire’s infancy in 2016. When several users reported gunfire on the app, Wildfire sent a notification to 4,000 other people within 1 mile in a single minute. An additional 2,000 users joined within the hour.

According to Kenburu, the university did not send out any notification until the following day.

SF State biology major Montserrat Robles said, while she was shocked to hear about the shooting near SF State, she still feels safe on campus. She said she was unaware of Wildfire and probably wouldn’t download the app since she commutes from San Leandro.

“I’m rarely even here,” Robles said. “I feel like if I lived on campus I would have the app.”

SF State student Matt Ha said he heard about the shooting first from another crime alert app called Citizen. He said the feature he finds most useful about Citizen is its group notification system where you can alert a specific group of your friends when something happens locally.

Citizen received its first report of the shooting at 7:14 p.m. and within one minute posted three in-app updates to keep users informed.

SF State psychology major Elizabeth Alexeyev is an active Wildfire user and said the app reminds her of Citizen, Yik Yak and Facebook all rolled into one.

While both Wildfire and Citizen provide crime alerts, there are key differences between how the two apps distribute information.

INFOGRAPHIC BY PAUL EICHENHOLTZ AND CARLY WIPF/Golden Gate Xpress

According to Citizen spokesperson Peter Donald, app users cannot post about crimes directly into the app. The Citizen team monitors emergency calls and verifies them before notifying users. Users can then post about an issue once it is validated.

“These incidences have to begin with a 911 call and there have to be units from a first responder agency that are responding to that event,” Donald said.

Kemburu said via email that Wildfire allows users to post when they come across emergencies because vital information is often spread by word of mouth or through friends.

Both apps have moderation teams that mark posts with “confirmed” and “unconfirmed” labels to avoid misinformation.

“Just because a user posts something doesn’t mean it’s true,” Kemburu said. “What we do is use Wildfire push notifications as the moderated and filtered source of truth.”

Kemburu said Wildfire is not releasing the number of SF State users at this time.

“This app has literally helped me avoid bad situations on my way to class or on my way home,” political science major Yamiletzy Garcia said. “I think everyone should get the app.”

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CULTURE 5

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Alumnus dismantles patriarchy through art JULIAN MONCALEANO Xpress Reporter jmoncaleano@mail.sfsu.edu

T

he Bay Area is home to creativity, innovation, and thousands of young people with talent.

Twenty-four-year-old former SF State student Mike Texada is a thriving fashion designer, painter and writer. His multifaceted talents are rooted in his upbringing in Oakland and he’s constructed a world of his own, illustrated by life lessons and experiences.

Texada described his work as a reflection of Black men in America. He specifically hopes to redefine the patriarchal stereotypes surrounding Black men through his artwork.

Texada dropped out of SF State in 2014 after his freshman year to pursue his passion for the art and he said he didn’t look back. He perceived formal education unfit for him.

“Formal education just wasn’t working for me,” Texada said.

“When you have a plan, you have a plan. Early on I believed every step I took was a step toward the goal.”

From there, Texada ventured into the world of creativity.

In 2014, he launched his original cut and sew clothing brand, Matte By Mike Texada (MBMT).

The brand featured a mixture of casual drawstring pants, tailored two-button jackets made from custom fabrics, hand-treated denim and unconventional cuts of neutral colors.

Just two years after the culmination of his vision, Texada’s first collection made an appearance in the 2016 Los Angeles Fashion Week. He said he is finalizing his second collection of the clothing line, which is set to drop in June.

Tapping into another avenue of creativity, Texada wrote a book titled “Sinner’s Symphony.” In it he invited readers into the inner workings of his mind and introduced them to the captivating characters he created based on his own life experiences. Characters are not only key elements in his writing, but also in his painting and fashion.

Texada describes the characters he creates as reflections of people he knows in real life: “From the stories I write and the characters I create, I shape looks based on that,” he said. “[They are] inspired by real people, but there’s no concrete place or origin for inspiration. I just like exploring and creating.”

Texada’s Oakland art studio provides him with vital inspiration. He draws from the environment around him, including people and scenery. Texada’s colorful paintings are plastered on the walls and the studio’s bright windows open up onto a view of one of his many muses, the Oakland Hills.

While acknowledging the beauty of the city, Texada said he is aware that Oakland is plagued by issues like poverty and gender discrimination, but he hasn’t allowed them to distract him from his artwork.

Growing up he experienced obstacles of coming of age as a Black man and being raised by a single mother, but he used these obstacles as assets to his success as an artist.

One barrier Texada faced was the patriarchal oppression his mother endured. He admired his mother’s strength surviving in a world that places women second.

He said his mother influenced him most and caused him to see the value in women.

“I’d be a fool to be raised the way I was and say women are weaker,” Texada said. “Imagine waking up knowing that your opinion is undervalued or you’re always going to be heard second — it’s really mind blowing.”

His mother eventually helped him get his clothing brand off the ground, and he said he considers her a business partner.

In his art, he has a character dedicated to his mother.

One of his paintings features a man hanging on to a women’s dreadlocks for dear life, which he uses as a metaphor to convey how much men rely on women.

Texada also faced much sexism growing up in Oakland, often rooted in his appearance. Because he wore tight clothes, he was often belittled and called “gay” by his peers. Texada said he was never discouraged, though. He believes experimenting with his style at a young age fostered many of the visions and ideas that manifested into MBMT. While he didn’t necessarily look or speak the same way his peers did, he stayed true to himself and embraced the femininity others looked down upon.

Texada wants to influence others to embrace their femininity and rid themselves of toxic egos.

“I hate male egos, they’re so fragile,” Texada said. “Exploring the feminine side of life is

Mike Texada, 24, sits with his art in his Oakland studio on Thursday Feb. 28, 2019.

PHOTOS BY JULIAN MONCALEANO/Golden Gate Xpress

Mike Texada, 24, paints in his Oakland studio on Thursday Feb. 28, 2019.

glorious.”

He said he hopes his art universe and the message he wishes to convey influences the world.

“The world is known to be a ‘man’s world’, but my universe stems from the opposite of that — where women are known to be superior,” Texada said. “I want to form my world opposite of what I thought I lived in, something coming from a pure place, not a corrupted place, [...] but from a place of concepts and exploration.”

Texada exhibits his various works on a website through a Lookbook account that includes his most recent clothes, paintings and other art projects. He said his goal is to filter a sense of awareness and responsibility through the art he shares with the world.

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A painting made by Mike Texada presented on the wall of his studio on Thursday Feb. 28, 2019.

The world is known to be a ‘man’s world,’ but my universe stems from the opposite of that - where women are known to be superior.

- Mike Texada Fashion designer, painter, writer

6 OPINON

Xpress VOL. 109, ISSUE 6 Lorenzo Morotti Editor-in-Chief lmorotti@mail.sfsu.edu Monserrath Arreola Managing Editor marreola@mail.sfsu.edu Julie Parker Campus News Editor jparker1@mail.sfsu.edu Paul Eichenholtz City News Editor peichenh@mail.sfsu.edu Alexis Manzanilla Lifestyle & Culture Editor amanzanilla@mail.sfsu.edu Jailene Escutia Opinion Editor

jescutiachavez@mail.sfsu.edu

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TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2019

STAFF EDITORIAL

Golden Gate

EDITORIAL BOARD

GOLDENGATEXPRESS.ORG

No fond farewell for Giants CEO Larry Baer

yourself How should the University handle possible life-threatening situations similar to the Feb. 25 shooting?

Giants owner’s domestic violence assault on wife should spell end of era for San Francisco baseball

T

he San Francisco Giants, their fanbase and Major League Baseball have a lot to think about in the wake of a viral video featuring the Giants President and CEO Larry Baer pulling his wife Pam to the ground in front of a Hayes Valley coffee shop Friday.

The CEO was pictured standing over his wife in the video, grappling to pry a cellphone from her hands. Pam Baer cried out in terror, “Oh my god!

Oh my god! Help!” to onlookers, as Baer snatched at the phone, tumbling her and the chair she was seated in to the ground. A witness said a pair of men pushed Baer off his wife while others filmed the altercation on smartphones.

MLB announced the opening of an investigation within hours of the video’s release without mentioning the Baers by name.

“Major League Baseball is aware of the incident and, just like any other situation like this, will immediately begin to gather the facts,” the statement read. “We will have no further comment until this process is completed.”

In 1992 Baer helped form the ownership group that kept the Giants from moving to Florida.

Twenty years later he became the team’s CEO in 2012 and was at the helm for two of the team’s three recent parades down Market Street with World Series titles in 2012 and 2014.

Since the August 2015 implementation of MLB’s Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy, the league has investigated 11 players, but Baer will be just the third white man and the first major league executive to face investigation for domestic violence.

The policy puts him on equal footing with players when it comes to punishment, but it remains to be seen how MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred will apply the rules to him. Whether it’s the Giants organization or MLB, discipline for Baer should be swift, harsh and precedent-setting. Just as there is no room for domestic violence on the baseball field, it should have no home in the owner’s suite either.

A series of statements trickled out from the Baers in the hours that followed the assault in Hayes Valley Friday. Through press releases they expressed regret and embarrassment, assuring the public that Pam was not injured and that she simply lost her balance trying to stand up in the course of a dispute over the executive’s cell phone.

The viral video contradicts this characterization, however, as it appears she had no time to even stand before Baer lunged at her.

“Regrettably today we had a heated argument in public over a family matter,” an initial joint-statement from the couple read. “We are deeply embarrassed by the situation and have resolved the issue.”

Later Baer issued an individual statement apologizing to his wife of 29 years, their four adult children and the Giants organization, referring to his actions as “inappropriate” and vowing to never behave that way again.

Generally, players in violation of MLB’s domestic violence policy are disciplined in the form of suspended games. San Diego Padres pitcher José Torres was investigated in 2018 for allegedly knocking a door off its hinges and pointing a gun at a woman, and he was suspended a record 100

“Just as there is no room for domestic violence on the baseball field, it should have no home in the owner’s suite either.”

Alejandra Mendez-Ruiz, 19 She/Her/Hers Political Science

“I think [by] creating a better alert system. I didn’t know I was leaving class at the exact same time that they were around the area searching for the gunman and was in immediate danger.”

Herb Meiberger

Larry Baer (Drew Altizer/Creative Commons) games. Houston Astros pitcher Roberto Osuna was suspended 75 games last season for assaulting the mother of his 3-year-old. Colorado Rockies shortstop José Reyes allegedly grabbed his wife by the throat in a Maui hotel room and slammed her into a sliding glass door, earning him a 51-game suspension in 2016.

But Baer is different on three major accounts.

Unlike most others domestic violence incidents the league has investigated, his assault was caught on camera and occurred in public with witnesses, many of whom have been interviewed by San Francisco Police. He’s also an executive, the face of the ownership group since 2012. But most notably, when it comes to discipline, his work is measured in days not games.

Baer’s fellow executives likely spent much of the weekend coming up with a plan of action moving forward. The Giants sent out an early-morning press release Monday announcing that Baer had requested personal time away from the team, effective immediately. The organization framed it as though the leave of absence was at Baer’s discretion, but public opinion would’ve likely made any bid on his part to stay untenable anyway.

It’s been a difficult offseason for the Giants.

The team’s majority-stake owner Charles Johnson was found last fall to have donated to a Super PAC responsible for a Tennessee political ad that referenced lynching and was deemed racist by many. Former owner Peter Magowan and Giants legends Willie McCovey and Frank Robinson all died in the last four months. And with the hiring of a new president of baseball operations in Farhan Zaidi, and longtime manager Bruce Bochy in the last season of his contract, it seems the team is undergoing a changing of the guard.

The Giants should note the bearing of the wind and give Baer’s vile behavior the response it deserves by sending him on his way.

No honors, no farewells, no fanfare and no more parades. n - Golden Gate Xpress Editorial Board

He/Him/His Lecturer in Business School

“I did get a notice, so I think they did OK, but three hours was way too long.”

Ace Jimenez, 19 He/Him/His Kinesiology

“I think they should be more immediate on how fast they act.

There was a power outage like a few weeks ago and they did that [alerted students] like five times as opposed to recently, which was more threatening.”

Macey Lazuka, 19 She/Her/Hers Fashion

“I think they should have told us sooner so we would have been more aware and alert. I also live in Park Merced, so that is something I would have wanted to know.”

JAILENE ESCUTIA, ALEXIS MANZANILLA & SHAYLYN MARTOS /Golden Gate Xpress

SPORTS 7 Captain grapples national stage

GOLDENGATEXPRESS.ORG

ILDAR SABIROV Sports Editor isabirov@mail.sfsu.edu

Unlike the climate-controlled temperature halls of the Don Nasser Family Plaza on campus, the wrestling room is uncomfortably hot and unusually empty.

Six wrestlers are scattered about the room that usually houses five times that amount.

“There are usually around 30 people who practice in the room,” SF State wrestling coach Jason Welch said. He starts the postseason practice with some stretches, warmup and a light jog.

For all but two Gator wrestlers, the season is over.

After qualifying for the NCAA Division II Championships, redshirt senior Jordan Gurrola and redshirt sophomore Justin Pichedwatana continue their grind on the wrestling mat, along with a few stragglers.

For Gurrola, this is his second trip to the national tournament, but this season has been his first competing for the Gators since the beginning of his junior year, where he took time off from the school and the sport.

“I went home for a year,” Gurrola said. “I wasn’t doing anything at all, kinda just realized that I’m not doing anything with my life. I started working, but after a couple of months of doing literally nothing at all.”

The next year, Gurrola spent his senior year as a redshirt, practicing with the team, but unable to represent at competitions.

Assistant coach Ryan Loder was kicking a soccer ball around with some of the wrestlers. Coach Welch struck some casual conversations with others.

One of the wrestlers was mopping the mat around all the commotion.

Gurrola continued to jog, completing warmups he had been doing since he was a kid.

“I’ve been wrestling since I was like 4 years old,” Gurrola said. “My dad had his own kids’ [wrestling] club. He started with my older brothers before I was born. So basically I was born into the sport.”

Gurrola comes from a family of wrestlers. Both of his older brothers wrestled, while his youngest sister Grace is beginning to pick up the family sport. The 14-yearold has been wrestling for a few years now.

Only one sibling in the Gurrola household of five did not fall into wrestling his other sister Gemma.

Even with most of his family into wrestling, Gurrola found a way to distinguish himself on the mat. Gurrola developed a style he self-described as “funky.”

When tasked with imagining a typical wrestler, an image of a shorter, stockier figure comes up.

Gurrola represents one of the less typical body types tall, long limbs and skinny.

“I’ve always been kind of a weird wrestler,” Gurrola said. “Be-

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2019

Now he’s turned into a team leader and team captain.

- Ryan Loder Assistant wrestling coach

PHOTOS BY MADDISON OCTOBER/Special to Golden Gate

Jordan Gurrola prepares to compete in his second NCAA Division II Tournament after taking a year off from wrestling. Gurrola poses in a wrestling stance on Friday, March 1, 2019. ing so tall and lengthy, and just kind of wiry.”

The national tournament qualifier said, “We got Jason [Welch] coming in now. Jason just wrestles really weird, and he has a different style to everybody else.”

Gurrola pointed to the Bay Area Funk wrestling camp shirt Coach Loder donned. The camp is run by Welch and welcomes unorthodox wrestling styles.

Coach Welch’s outlandish style resonated with Gurrola more than the previous coach, Lars Jensen, and his old-school style.

“I had my first three years [at SF State] with Jensen,” Gurrola said. “He was older, he was more of a heavyweight wrestler. Jensen was a little more old-school. It was kind of a different style.”

No one is running anymore and the soccer ball lies forgotten in the corner.

As practice gets underway, the team starts light drilling.

Gurrola works on his singleleg takedowns at a brisk, leisurely pace. Fifteen minutes in, the pace picks up. Gurrola is no longer working on takedowns, but defense. Coach Loder is looking over his drilling. It was time to work on specifics.

“Stuff that we watched over the

Senior Jordan Gurrola and freshman Tony Margiotta run drills during practice in The Swamp on Friday, March 1, 2019. past year and over the last tournament… that’s what we’ve been working on,” Loder said. “I think we are having some … difficulty [with] mat management, which is when we’re up by a point, or maybe a small amount of points.

Getting the next takedown, coming through, and being aware of

more strategy-based stuff.”

This is Loder’s second year with the team, but he already sees a difference in Gurrola’s wrestling.

“It’s been huge,” Loder said.

“Now he’s turned into a team leader and team captain. We’re really happy that he came from … not going out and competing

for the school, to coming back and finishing his classes. Now he’s gonna graduate.”

Gurrola continues to drill, going through intense situational bouts with his teammates, while Loder is spitting out advice on the side. The session covered everything from takedown defense to bottom-position escapes.

With a little over a week left for the national tournament Friday, Gurrola is working on all the little details. The only other thing he needs to worry about is making weight, cue the hot wrestling room.

“Gurrola is probably sitting around at eight [pounds] over right now,” Welch said. “So make sure the room’s hot.”

Yet another appearance on the national stage seems like a fitting end to Gurrola’s Gator wrestling career. The former freshman Athlete of the Year will get another chance to place, after an almost two-year hiatus from competing for SF State.

Wrestling was the one thing that led Gurrola to the University.

“I had a scholarship from wrestling, that was the whole reason I got into college at all,” Gurrola said. “I was basically trying to continue on [wrestling]. I was the first in my family … two of my older brothers, neither one of them went to an actual [four-year] college or a university or anything like that.”

While Gurrola came with wrestling dominating his mind, he is still on track to graduate this spring with a degree in liberal arts, and a minor in criminal justice.

As for what Gurrola plans to do after graduating, the future is foggy.

“For the most part I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with it,” Gurrola said of his major.

“I don’t have a specific dream job.”

When asked about wrestling, Gurrola is quick to voice his want for a break, but will not shut the possibility down.

“It’s gonna be cool to kind of live life for a little, like a normal person for the most part, and figure out where I’m going from here,” Gurrola said. “It’s [wrestling] part of my life at this point.

Like I said, I’ve been doing it for 19 years. Almost my entire life I’ve been doing this, so there’s no way I’ll be able to fully step away from it, but I’m definitely looking to take a little time [off] after.”

A few days out from his last tournament as a Gator, albeit the most important one, Gurrola has a lot on his mind and an eye to another break from wrestling.

Placing in a national tournament would be a fitting send off to his Gator wrestling career.

The man who quit the team two years before comes back to be a team leader and is back on the national stage, though it’s to argue that Gurrola deserves his next break from the sport.

GOLDENGATEXPRESS.ORG

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2019

CULTURE 8

The crowd grows before the appearance of the headlining band, The Marías, after the performances of three opening artists, Derek Ted, Ginger Root and Katzu Oso at The Chapel for the Noise Pop Festival on Sun. March 3, 2019.

Noise Pop Festival highlights worldwide talents PHOTOS BY: LOLA CHASE/Golden Gate Xpress

Katzu Oso performs for the Noise Pop Festival at The Chapel in San Francisco on Sun. March 3, 2019.

María, lead vocalist and guitarist of The Marías, sings and closes the show at The Chapel for the Noise Pop Festival in San Francisco on Sun. March 3, 2019.

TOP: Ginger Root plays Noise Pop Festival at the Chapel in San Francisco on Sun. March 3, 2019.

BOTTOM: Audience members cheer and applaud Ginger Root at the end of a song during Noise Pop Festival at The Chapel in San Francisco on Sun. March 3, 2019.