10-6-09

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CA L I F O R N I A P O LY T E C H N I C S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y Photo exhibit depicts plight of migrant workers in Kennedy Library.

Secretary of Defense Gates says U.S. troops in Afghanistan will abide by Obama’s Plans

IN ARTS, 6

Kate McIntyre mustang daily

Cal Poly ASI President Kelly Griggs spent the summer dealing with a variety of issues affecting students, one of the most important being fee increases.

In August, she signed a declaration supporting California State University’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two San Francisco State University students. The students are protesting the 20 percent increase in state university fees imposed by the Board of Trustees in July. Without the increase Griggs said Cal Poly would have to reduce its operating budget by $18 million instead of the current $10 million, threatening class availability and putting faculty and staff jobs on the line.

“While I support the publicity the lawsuit has gathered to draw attention on the state’s lack of responsibility when it has come to funding higher education, a victorious lawsuit would mean nearly an additional $8 million cut to our campus,” Griggs said.

She also worked with President Baker to express support for the increase of College Based Fees to the chancellor. The student body overwhelmingly voted for the CBF increase in a referendum last March.

Affordability was just one aspect of Griggs’ election campaign; she also touted stainability, campus climate and diversity, student access to services and statewide representation. She has since added improving Cal Poly’s relationship with the community to the list, due to the friction between residents and students, evident at last week’s city council meeting.

“At the time my platform was developed, those were the issues that I had developed that I felt were key to student concerns of the time,” Griggs said.“At this time, many of those issues have not shifted, but there are many that have come to the forefront.”

Griggs will meet with Cuesta’s student government president, Josh Shepherd to discuss the direction of the Student Community Liaison Committee.

Materials engineering senior Craig Boyer appreciates ASI’s involvement in the Rec Center expansion, but see Griggs, page 2

IN NEWS, 3

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Volume LXXIV, Number 20

After busy summer, no breaks for Griggs

The Daily’s Tuesday morning quarterback talks about NFL trends.

IN SPORTS, 12

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Cal Poly clubs trying to get in Katie Koschalk mustang daily

About a dozen new clubs are expected to join the 286 current clubs on campus after ASI works to streamline the chartering process.

The yearly increase of campus clubs is attributed to both increased student interest in clubs and the enhanced application process, said Michelle Broom, the public relations coordinator for ASI. “We are seeing a trend of students becoming more involved in campus clubs and we are seeing larger campus support each year,” Broom said.

Jessica Twaddle, the club services assistant for ASI, attributes the trend towards larger student recognition of clubs on campus and students wanting to feel like they are a part of something.

“I think that students might be searching for others who have similar hobbies as them and being part of a club provides an outlet for those interests,”Twaddle said.

With the list of Cal Poly clubs expanding each year, an outlet for an increasingly wide range of different hobbies are available to students.

Clubs featuring sports or greek

associations such as the Cal Poly Men’s Soccer Club and the Sigma Kappa club, respectively, offer students an outlet for more traditional hobbies.

Other clubs, however, focus on more obscure hobbies such as the Scuba Club, the Salsa Club and the White Hat Club.

Dominic Camargo, a computer science senior, decided he wanted to start the White Hat Club last fall.

White hat is a reference to computer hackers that look for security faults in order to fix them.

“I noticed there were only like three classes, only one that is an (undergraduate) class, I think, offered at Cal Poly about computer security,” Camargo said. “I started it because I wanted to provide a place where we could learn more and spread what we know about computer security.”

Computer network security includes measures taken to protect computer networks and files from viruses, hackers and system failures, Camargo said.

Camargo and three friends became involved in the club application process as first-time club officers and were happy to find that the process was generally straightforward.

“You don’t know what to expect going in, but I found the process sursee Clubs, page 2

kevin black mustang daily graphic

Can Whitman’s business success translate to politics?

Ken McLaughlin and Pete Carey san jose mercury news

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Just a couple of weeks ago, Meg Whitman’s handlers had a tidy political narrative to present to Californians:

An amiable, ethical businesswoman almost single-handedly builds one of Silicon Valley’s most storied Internet companies, making her a billionaire and thousands of average folks successful business people. She retires from San Jose-based eBay and decides that this dysfunctional state needs her business acumen in the governor’s of-

mcclatchy-tribune

Former President and CEO of eBay and gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman speaks before the Republican National Convention.

fice.

But in recent days, the Republican hopeful and her team have been forced to play defense amid revelations that the 53-year-old former CEO supported liberal Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s re-election in 2004 and didn’t register to vote until she was 46. She offered no excuses for her poor voting record, but later explained: “I was focused on raising a family, on my husband’s career, and we moved many, many times.”

With Whitman’s glow tarnished, the scrutiny will only increase, political analysts say. And the likeliest target is her 10-year tenure at eBay, the online auction house she turned into a global brand name.

“For voters to buy her argument, they’re going to have to believe that her record in the private sector was exemplary,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.“A candidate’s biography is a three-legged stool: personal, professional and political experience. So if you take one leg away from the stool, voters will pay more attention to the

other two legs.”

In recent weeks, the San Jose Mercury News interviewed numerous current and former eBay employees, buyers and sellers, investors and stock analysts, asking them to judge her performance and predict how it might translate to running the state. The consensus: Whitman was a hands-on and savvy CEO whose reign was somewhat blemished by poor decisions and a series of ethically dubious stock deals.The first seven years of her leadership were generally brilliant, the last few years relatively lackluster.

While her corporate track record suggests that Whitman would bring a new brand of leadership to state government, it also makes clear she has never faced anything quite like the political dysfunction that grips the Golden State.

The numbers are hard for even her severest critics to argue with: When she was hired as eBay’s president and chief executive in February 1998, the company had about 30 workers, 500,000 users in the U.S. and revenues see Whitman, page 2

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News editor: Tim Miller mustangdailynews@gmail.com

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Clubs

Griggs

continued from page 1

continued from page 1

prisingly easy,” Camargo said.

Making it possible to be completed online and offering various options for guidance through the process both contributed to the newfound simplicity of applying and chartering a club, Broom said.

Three years ago, ASI conducted a series of surveys in which students were asked how ASI could ease the process of starting a club.

In response to student requests, all of the forms needed to apply for a club are now available online. In previous years, students had to fill out forms by hand and physically bring them into the Epicenter, making various trips back and forth to obtain signatures and Epicenter approval, Broom said.

In addition to the process becoming less laborious, ASI has enhanced their services within the past year to best help students through the application process.

“Years and years ago, students would come up to the desk and ask how to start a club and the employee wouldn’t know the answer. They’d have to say, ‘Let me go ask,’ and that isn’t very reassuring,” Broom said.

Camargo found that ASI services were a good resource in the club chartering process.

“Starting out as a new club, you don’t know what your club should be like or what it could become so it’s hard to write out all those details. All the official administrative business was the most difficult part,” Camargo said.

All new club charter must be submitted to the Epicenter in the University Union by Oct. 23.

would like to see it work on other areas of student life.

“I don’t think it does a good enough job in seeking to protect the students, for example, police dorm patrols watching for drunk kids walking home is something ASI should fight against,” he said.

If he wasn’t graduating in December, Boyer said he might consider joining student government if he had the time and felt he would “adequately benefit the student population.”

While not all students think ASI makes a difference in their lives, some recognize that student government does offer opportunities on campus.

Communications studies junior David Feder said he thinks ASI is valuable because it financially supports clubs that couldn’t otherwise host events, like his fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. “AEPi was (putting on a philanthropic event), and we looked into getting some ASI money to make our event even better,” he said. “I just think it’s worthwhile to help out various clubs and organizations put on their events.”

ASI benefits the student body by allowing clubs and organizations better events which the students then are able to take advantage of and enjoy, he said.

Griggs said she would probably take the blame for any student who doesn’t think ASI makes a difference.

News

Whitman ... police patrols watching for drunk kids walking home is something ASI should fight against.

—Craig Boyer

Materials engineering senior

“It is our responsibility as members of ASI student government to inform the student body of the issues, changes and student concerns that we are working on,” she said. “ASI influences each student’s daily life, so of course it makes a difference, it is just apparent that we need to hold ourselves as members of student government more accountable for letting the student population know what those differences are.”

Even with the hectic schedule and stress, being ASI President has been a rewarding experience, Griggs said.

“This is something that I would not trade for anything ... the opportunities associated with the position are priceless. It is very liberating to be in a position where you are able to make a difference on the campus for the students and to work with members of the Cal Poly community that I would have otherwise not had the opportunity to.”

continued from page 1

of $4.7 million. When she turned over the reins of the company to John Donahoe in March 2008, eBay had mushroomed worldwide, registered hundreds of millions of users and employed more than 15,000 people. Revenues in her last full year as CEO were $7.7 billion.

Whitman was lured to the startup from a middle-level management job at Hasbro, where among other things she was in charge of marketing Mr. Potato Head. At the time, eBay was operating out of a modest San Jose industrial building.

The black-and-white Web site, originally called AuctionWeb, had been designed by Pierre Omidyar, a 28-year-old software engineer, over a holiday weekend. One part of the site featured a tongue-and-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.

But Whitman was quick to see the scruffy site’s potential to connect buyers and sellers of Beanie Babies, baseball cards and just plain junk.

Job One was to become the company’s grown-up. She replaced the lawn chairs with corporate cubicles.

“She was focused and a very strategic thinker,” said Stephanie Tilenius, senior vice president for eBay North America. “She hires the best talent, people who fix things. I think she’ll also do that in government.”

Rajiv Dutta of Saratoga worked closely with Whitman for more than a decade. He was president of the online payment service PayPal, bought by eBay in 2002, and later president of Internet phone service Skype, purchased in 2005.

“I probably spent more time with Meg on a daily basis than with members of my family,” said Dutta, who retired from eBay last year. “I got to see her very up close.”

Whitman, he said, has some important attributes California needs desperately: “Meg never gives up believing in the future. Most people who are believers are dreamers, but Meg combines that with the nuts and bolts.”

The Great eBay Meltdown of 1999, when the overloaded site went offline repeatedly — at one point for 22 straight hours — showed Whitman at her best, Dutta said.

“She literally camped out, sleeping bag and toothbrush, for a couple of weeks,” he said. “She said if nobody else is going to go home, I’m not going to go home either. I’ll stay here until we figure this out.”

After the crisis was over, eBay executives debated whether sellers were owed money for their lost business while the site was dark.

Doling out the extra millions meant the young company would miss its financial targets.

“But Meg walked into the room and said, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’ She said, ‘We have to issue this refund, guys; get over it.’ And she walked out.”

Whitman certainly has her detractors, including many sellers who, ironically, complain that eBay during her reign erected a thicket of rules that were every bit as burdensome as the government regulations she now assails. Sellers also complain that, under pressure to meet Wall Street expectations, eBay under Whitman repeatedly jacked up fees, driving off many sellers and making the site far less profitable for others.

The annual eBay Live! conferences — once an almost-evangelical gathering of buyers and sellers — became “bitch fests,” said Andrew Bergman, operations manager of Al-

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 pha & Omega Antiques, which does about $120,000 worth of business on eBay each year. “eBay just got too big for its britches,” he said.

In 2005, longtime seller Randy Smythe of Orange County decided to quit selling CDs on eBay after finding he was paying a half-million dollars annually to the company and grossing only $400,000 for himself.

On a personal note, some fault Whitman for her ready acceptance of “friends and family” stock from Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs during the superheated dot-com era. Until the practice was banned in 2003, brokerage houses routinely allocated shares of hot stock offerings to top executives as a reward for giving the investment firms corporate business.

Whitman had hired Goldman to take eBay public in 1998. For the next four years, the investment bank allocated to her shares in more than 100 initial public offerings. All told,Whitman made a $1.78 million profit when she sold the stocks.

After being singled out in a congressional report that called the IPO system rigged and corrupt, Whitman issued an internal memo to eBay employees saying she got the shares because she was a personal client of Goldman Sachs. “There is nothing worse than having your integrity questioned under circumstances where you know that you did nothing wrong,” she wrote.

Yet two professors who focus on business ethics — David Shapiro at the City University of New York and William Black at the University of Missouri-Kansas City — predict the issue might prove troublesome for her on the campaign trail.

“The fact that she could say she could learn no ethical lesson is illustrative of moral blindness,” Black said.

What’s not in dispute is that as the traditional online business began slipping in 2005, Whitman began acquiring companies to boost growth.While PayPal — which currently contributes almost a third of eBay’s revenue — was a grand slam, other acquisitions didn’t work out so well. Clearly the worst decision was buying Skype for $3.1 billion, on the questionable theory that eBay buyers and sellers would flock to the service to talk to each other to close their deals. Whitman eventually admitted she paid too much for Skype, and the company took a $1.4 billion write-down.

“Meg was trying to paper over the cracks with acquisitions, and Skype was an unmitigated disaster,” said Jeff Lindsay, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein. “I think she did a good job of keeping the growth going for the first five to seven years.

But when the growth started to slow down, her record is a lot more mixed.”

California’s next governor will inherit a state that in many ways more closely resembles a midlife company struggling with financial challenges and a splintering culture than the promising startup Whitman brought to greatness.

Though she has pledged to create 2 million private-sector jobs while slashing the state’s payroll and fixing its “business model,” there’s no opportunity to rethink California with a clean white board: Entrenched employee unions, a fractious Legislature and a crumbling infrastructure help ensure that.

“The real trick for her is to show that the skill sets she picked up at eBay will apply in another setting,” said Larry Gerston, a political science professor at San Jose State University.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 www.mustangdaily.net

Wire Editor: Jennifer Titcomb

News

3

Military to respect Obama’s plans for Afghanistan, Gates says Nancy A. Youssef mcclatchy newspapers

WASHINGTON _ Amid tension between the military and President Barack Obama over military action in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told a gathering of Army officers Monday that the Pentagon would follow any strategy that Obama orders.

“Speaking for the Department of Defense, once the commander in chief makes his decisions, we will salute and execute those decisions faithfully and to the best of our ability,” Gates told the Association of the U.S. Army in Washington.

That the military would follow presidential orders is usually a given, but there’s been palpable friction during the past few weeks as the administration has engaged in a prolonged strategy debate. Those serving the country in the military feel adrift amid rising U.S. and Afghan troop deaths and public arguments at home about what to do in Afghanistan.

Last week, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, publicly appealed for

more troops. During a speech, McChrystal said he does not support sending a limited amount of troops to Afghanistan less than what he has asked for.He called a proposal,pushed

by Vice President Joe Biden, for reduced troop levels “short-sighted.”

On Monday, Gates seemed to rebuke him. In his speech, Gates said that military and civilian advisers should provide “our best advice to the president candidly but privately.”

The administration is now reconsidering its strategy just months after it named McChrystal as its commander there, calling him the best military mind the United States has to fight a counterinsurgency war. McChrystal has asked for as many as 45,000 troops, but the White House said it needs weeks to consider that request, with some suggesting the United States may redefine its goals there all together. Yet in an assessment submitted to the Pentagon, McChrystal found the effort there could fail without more troops.

The administration has said that the Afghan presidential election, which was sullied by charges of ballot stuffing by incumbent

mcclatchy-tribune

Updated figures showing death toll of NATO troops in Afghanistan; eight U.S. troops and two members of Afghan National Security Force killed in fighting during the weekend.

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Hamid Karzai, demands that it reconsider whether it wants to spend more money backing that government and helping create a 134,000strong army to serve Karzai.

Gates used the annual military conference to defend the president.

“I believe that the decisions that the president will make for the next stage of the Afghanistan campaign

will be among the most important of his presidency. So it is important that we take our time to do all we can to get this right,” Gates said.

Also Monday, Gen. George Casey, the Army’s chief of staff, said at a meeting with reporters that sending more troops could make it harder to give soldiers two years off for every year they serve in

combat by 2012, as the Army has planned. Currently, a soldier is supposed to get one year off for every year of combat he or she serves.

There are 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. So far this year, 239 have been killed. At least 16 troops have been killed this month, including eight killed Sunday in an ambush in Nuristan province.

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Briefs

News

Suspect thought video would go to bin Laden, International FBI agent says

State

National

SAN BERNARDINO, CA (MCT) — The Sheep Fire held at 7,500 acres and remained 20 percent contained this morning, but firefighters hope cooler temperatures and calmer winds will help them make more progress toward containing the blaze.

Firefighters lit back fires throughout Sunday to keep the fire from damaging homes in Wrightwood.

“We made a lot of headway yesterday,” said Carol Underhill, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service. “They were able to keep the fire from advancing into Wrightwood and today they’re still going to be protecting Wrightwood.”

Nearly 1,300 firefighters are battling the fire today.

They are using six helicopters, 11 air tankers, along with other equipment, Underhill said. .• • • SAN JOSE, CA (MCT) — Apple announced Monday that it is resigning from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because it objects to the chamber’s recent comments opposing federal efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

Apple is the fourth company, and the first tech company, to part ways with the powerful business federation because of global warming.

WASHINGTON (MCT) — llinois need not offer “Choose Life” license plates to motorists, under a ruling the Supreme Court let stand Monday.

The justices turned down a freespeech claim from Choose Life Illinois Inc., a group that supports adoption and opposes abortion.

It had gathered more than 25,000 signatures from persons who wanted a “Choose Life” plate, but the state refused to issue the specialty plate. State officials said Illinois did not want to appear to be taking a position on the abortion issue.

Choose Life Illinois sued the Secretary of State’s office in 2004 after twice failing to get the General Assembly to approve a specialty plate that would read “Choose Life.”

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (MCT) — The United Nations shut all its offices Monday in Pakistan after a suicide bomber managed to breach security at one of its buildings, killing five workers and wounding several others, officials and witnesses said.

The bomber was thought to be disguised as a paramilitary soldier.

The U.N. provides vital relief to Pakistanis who have fled their homes in areas where the army is fighting Islamic extremists.The blast was at the offices of the World Food Program in a residential area of Islamabad.

It punctured a period of relative calm in recent weeks in the capital, which has been rocked by a number of explosions over the last two years.

DETROIT (MCT) — Chrysler Group LLC is replacing two of its recently named brand CEOs, spinning off its Ram trucks as a separate brand, and asking its top designer to take on the added responsibility of CEO of the Dodge car brand.

Gone are Mike Accavitti, formerly president and CEO of the Dodge brand, and Peter Fong, who held the same titles for the Chrysler brand. Fond resigned for personal reasons and Accavitti is pursuing other interests, Chrysler said in a statement.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (MCT) — Three Costa Rican clinics have received certification that puts them on par with U.S. medical centers, a move that national competitiveness authorities hope will boost this country’s profile as a prime destination for medical tourism.

Following a six-month review process, the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Facilities (AAAASF) has certified the private surgical and ambulatory center Clinica UNIBE, the dental clinic Dental Sonrisa Para Todos and plastic surgery specialists Cirugia Plastica Pino.

•••

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

•••

Melody McDonald mcclatchy newspapers

DALLAS – The Jordanian teenager accused of trying to blow up a Dallas skyscraper created a sevenminute video that he believed would be given to 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, an FBI special agent testified during a probable cause hearing Monday.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19, is being held on a charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in connection with a planned Sept. 24 terror strike on the 60-story Fountain Place.

Federal Magistrate Irma C. Ramirez ruled after the 40-minute hearing that there was sufficient evidence to hold Smadi for further proceedings.

The lone witness was FBI Supervisory Special Agent Thomas D. Petrowski, who runs the counterterrorism squad at the Dallas office of the FBI.

Petrowski said the FBI first became aware of Smadi in January 2009 among a group of extremists online.

Smadi landed on the FBI’s radar, Petrowski testified, because “he was here on U.S. soil and wished to carry out an attack that lacked only the tools.”

Petrowski also told Assistant U.S. Attorney Dayle Elieson that Smadi was in a hotel room with an undercover FBI employee when he made the video, which he believed would be delivered to bin Laden. The agent did not discuss the contents of the video, but said the FBI had recorded the encounter.

Smadi’s attorney, Peter Fleury, a senior litigator at the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Fort Worth, asked Petrowski about the three undercover FBI employees who communicated with Smadi until Sept.

24, when he parked an SUV that he believed contained a bomb beneath Fountain Place.

Word on the Street

“What do you think of the changes to the Rec Center?”

Compiled and photographed by Jennifer Titcomb “I like the old (gym stepup) way better but it’s (still) under construction. It’s kind of weird being a big open space; it took a little bit to get used to.”

-Shane Smith, civil engineering sophomore

“I actually like it just fine.

It gets a little hot but it’s open more and has new machines.”

-Aly Cole, animal science junior

“It’s a little weird but I enjoy the music in the gym.

When you’re playing basketball you can rock out.”

-Brandon Weipert, kinesiology senior

“It’s better than I expected there are a few more machines. I haven’t gone much but it seems less crowded.”

-Amanda Sarley, graphic communications senior

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 www.mustangdaily.net

News

Sotomayor makes presence felt on first day of Supreme Court’s term

mcclatchy-tribune

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, pictured above August 12, 2009, dominated questioning during her first day in the position.

David G. Savage mcclatchy newspapers

WASHINGTON – By midmorning on the first day of the Supreme Court’s term, it was clear new Justice Sonia Sotomayor will fit right in – and in particular with her talkative fellow New Yorkers.

Sotomayor, a lifelong New Yorker, peppered the lawyers with

questions in a pair of cases, joining with her fellow New Yorkers, Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. None of the three is reluctant to speak up during the oral arguments, and together, they left the other justices sitting in silence for much of the time.

In the first hour alone, Sotomayor asked 36 questions, and Scalia followed with 30. Ginsburg

is particularly interested in legal procedures, and she and Sotomayor dominated the questioning for much of the second hour.

In the past, some rookie justices sat and listened for days before joining in the fast-paced arguments.

Justice David Souter, the reserved New Hampshire native whom Sotomayor replaced, said little during his first year. Justice Clarence Thomas has not asked a question for more than three years.

If anyone assumed Sotomayor would play the role of shy rookie, she dispelled that idea within the first minutes of the opening argument. She leaned forward and began questioning Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler about the Miranda rule that requires the police to warn a crime suspect that he has a right to remain silent and a right to lawyer. If a suspect says he wants a lawyer before he answers questions, the police must stop the questioning. The Miranda rule also bars the police from trying again a day or two later to persuade him to talk without a lawyer.

But how long does this prohibition on questioning last? A police investigator in Maryland decided to visit an inmate who was held on other charges and ask him about an

unresolved child abuse case. It was two years and seven months after the prisoner, Michael Shatzer, had refused to talk unless he had a lawyer.

Facing a new investigator, Shatzer talked and made incriminating comments. After Shatzer was convicted of child abuse, a Maryland appeals court ruled his rights were violated when he was questioned without a lawyer present.

The Supreme Court took up Maryland’s appeal, and the justices, Sotomayor included, sounded as though they were searching for a new rule that would allow new questioning of crime suspects after a long lapse of time.

A lawyer for the convicted child abuser insisted he should not have been questioned once he had said he would not talk without a lawyer.

“So there is no termination point? Really?” asked Sotomayor, sounding as skeptical as Scalia.

The possibility of a Scalia v. So-

tomayor rivalry has been the topic of speculation since her appointment. Scalia has been the court’s most outspoken conservative for more than 20 years, and Sotomayor had shown herself to be strong and assertive as a judge on the U.S. appeals court in Manhattan.

Outside the courtroom, she has already managed to upstage Scalia.

A lifelong Yankees fan, she was invited to throw out the first ball in a recent game at Yankee Stadium before the new term got under way.

Scalia, another lifelong Yankees fan, is awaiting his invitation.

Neither case heard on Monday made for a sharp, ideological clash.

There were no sharp exchanges among the justices.

And the questions in the court are not always a good indicator of what will be decided. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who usually holds the deciding vote in the biggest cases, asked only four questions during the first argument and none during the second.

tuesday, october 6, 2009

arts & Entertainment editor: cassandra keyse

Plight of migrant workers on display in library Colleges join together to bring diversity awareness to campus Nikol Schiller mustang daily

In response to the racist symbols displayed by the Cal Poly crops house last October, the Agribusiness and Social Sciences departments are putting on a series of diversity awareness campaigns, the first of which is a photo exhibit titled “The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers” on display on the second floor of the Robert E. Kennedy Library.

The exhibit was created by Los Angeles freelance photojournalist Rick Nahmias and documents the struggle of migrant farm workers and their families throughout California.

Last October, students living in on-campus subsidized housing for crop science students hosted a party that displayed a noose, confederate flag and a controversial sign.

The exhibit was one of the many diversity events and programs instituted in response to the incident.

Next to Julian’s on the library’s second floor, 40 black and white photos cover four walls illustrating Nahmias’ 4,000-mile photographic journey to 40 migrant farm communities across

the state. Next to each framed photo a caption in both English and Spanish details the struggles these communities face. A caption next to a picture of a worker’s dirt-stained, worn hands holding seven coins explains that migrant workers are given tokens in exchange for the number of buckets they fill with tomatoes.

The day Nahmias took the photo the coins were worth 95 cents. A large photo of a grave stands out above the rest against one wall of the library with cross has “no olvidado,” or “not forgotten” painted across it. The caption reads that more than 4,000 migrant farm workers die crossing the border, some bodies remaining unclaimed like the body that belonged to this grave.

One photo in particular resonated with Andrew Pierce, an electrical engineering junior.

Nahmias’ photo of a worker sitting in a shack pieced together by tarps and shower curtains reminded him of a companion he worked with over the summer who lived out of a garage. His friend, a 31-year-old immigrant from Mexico, sometimes worked 15-hour days.

“He’d say, ‘I’m a donkey.’ It was really sad hearing him say that,” Pierce said, referring to

the heavy workloads of the migrants.

Looking at the caption of the photo, Pierce was surprised and disgusted to see that the worker was living within minutes of the multimillion-dollar community of Rancho Santa Fe. Animal science sophomore Cecilia Nguyen was also surprised at the location of these marginalized communities.

“It’s eye-opening. It’s crazy that it’s so close,” she said.

Nahmias said she hoped the project would show students that these workers “are literally in their own backyards.”

When setting out to begin his project in the spring of 2002, he immersed himself in the communities, getting to know locals and having them take him around the farms so that he could take photos of their living conditions as migrant workers. Being around these poorer communities was an intense culture shock for Nahmias.

“I felt like I was reconnecting with something that was really real and really important but really outside my comfort zone,” he said.

Nahmias brought his experiences and his photos to Cal Poly through a work-

shop on Oct. 1, another part of this year’s diversity campaign. He and 31 other students worked on bridging the gap between the farm laboring community and the white-collared community.

“If you plant that little seed of compassion, anything’s possible,” Nahmias said.

Bringing Nahmias and his project to Cal Poly was a joint effort by social sciences assistant professor Dr. Stacey Rucas and agribusiness department chair Dr. Wayne Howard along with social science seniors Dana Clark, Alyssa Fantin, Wendy Kastner and Sonja Pearson.

Together, they

organized not only bringing the library’s photo exhibit and the student workshop but also fundraising for The Fund for Vineyard and Farm Workers, a migrant worker’s endowment raised by Brian and Johnine Talley of Talley Vineyards., a Central Coast winery. At the exhibit’s opening gala event on Oct. 2, $375 was raised in donations to support the Talley’s fund.

The College of Liberal Arts, the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, the social sciences department and the agribusiness department sponsored the diversity awareness campaign.

The exhibit will remain on display on display until Nov. 30.

photo courtesy rick nahmias

“Slanted Light”

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 www.mustangdaily.net

relationship column

Does your dating résumé make the cut?

Arts

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7

Spielberg’s lesser known work earns new recognition Carrie Rickey the philadelphia inquirer

Is it really just the one-night-stand goal that college-aged adults aim for or is it “The Notebook”-esque romance that we are really looking for when we agree to go on that blind date, or say yes to that dinner and a movie invitation from our lab partner? The majority of college students would probably say that we really only date for fun, but then why are our peers all around us getting engaged, or talking about the future, or thinking about what they’re going to do when they graduate?

Just the other day a girl in one of my classes announced that she had just gotten engaged to a soldier whom she had known for only four months.

So, I asked myself this question: do we really date just for fun, or are we subconsciously dating for the bigger picture?

Women have been stereotyped as

only dating to marry, but there are just as many girls out there sleeping around as there are men. Whatever the case, I would say that we have definitely adopted a lifestyle that is all about the opposite sex.

More often than not, we carry a mental checklist of the attributes we expect any prospective mate to possess.When he or she doesn’t meet this checklist or maybe they only meet one or two of the bullets, it’s then that we decide to just ‘have fun’ or get as much out of them as possible.

It’s as if in the dating world all you are is a résumé. There are times when I’ve been talking with friends and I nonchalantly imply that a certain boy might be a good match for one of them and they ask, ‘Oh, what’s his major?’ Or they respond: ‘No, he’s

This week acclaimed director Steven Spielberg, maker of “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List,” will return to Philadelphia, his boyhood playground, to collect another award for a crowded mantel.

This prize is not for his achievement as a movie storyteller. The Liberty Medal to be given him Thursday by former President Bill Clinton at the National Constitution Center honors the director’s less known, but no less sweeping, work as a story collector.

In 1994, Spielberg dedicated profits from “Schindler’s List” to create the Shoah Foundation, which has taken video testimony in 56 nations and 32 languages from survivors of the Nazi and Rwandan campaigns of genocide.

Spielberg’s initiative ensured that the six million European and one million African casualties of bigotry would not be statistics, but inspirations to defenders of liberty.

“To look in the eyes of a Holocaust survivor or a survivor of ...

Rwanda makes it immediate, personal and, above all, undeniable,”

see Dating, page 8

see Spielberg, page 8

mcclatchy-tribune

Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg will be honored this week for his philanthropic work benefiting survivors of both Nazi and Rwandan genocide.

8 www.mustangdaily.net

Dating

Spielberg

continued from page 7

continued from page 7

enough for me.’They have as many standards for him as they do a new bag — ‘No, the color isn’t quite right and the straps are a little too short.’

At a party the other night, I overheard a guy on the phone telling a gal pal that she and her friends could only come over if the friends were attractive. Now to think this is one thing, but to verbally announce it is quite another.

Back when the romantic meeting and fairytale endings occurred, these checklists did not exist because love used to be an adventure. When I sit and hear my grandpa tell his story about how he and my grandmother met, how he wined and dined her, it seems surreal because nowadays it’s much more difficult to be so open minded.

In those days, then everyone dated to marry. They dated people until they found the one that made them happy, kept them on their toes and took their breath away. It didn’t matter if they weren’t absolutely perfect for one another because they knew that no matter what happened or who they ended up with, marriage would take a lot of work.

Now we are all so aware that divorce is just around the corner that we have to use our checklist to protect us — if a person has all of the attributes on the checklist than there is no way it can go wrong, right?

We’ve created these barriers that have taken all the fun out of dating and have turned it more into a sleeping around game than what it’s supposed to be. I’m not saying that the next person who asks you out on a date should want to marry you, but isn’t the whole point to find someone you’re compatible to live with and someone who will love you no matter what?

College students shouldn’t be disappointed if a potential significant other doesn’t measure up to the checklist of goals and physical attributes they’ve put in place. And in the case that those students are the ones denied a date, they shouldn’t impose that mental list on themselves either.

The dating world has become one based on a list of standards rather than breathes taken away and adventure, and it is detracting from dating’s true purpose.

Spielberg, 62, said in an e-mail interview last week.

“These are the stories of terror that fill our hearts, with amazement that anyone could have survived, and with pride that the survivors are willing to share their experiences with the whole world,” he wrote.

Spielberg’s movies and the oral histories collected by the foundation “enlist our sympathy for people who are under some sort of moral pressure,” said movie critic Richard Schickel, who directed a documentary about the filmmaker and philanthropist.

“Spielberg is the first visual artist to join the ranks of the presidents, dissidents, and revolutionaries who have received the honor before him,” said Linda E. Johnson, chief executive officer of the Constitution Center. Winners of the medal, the American equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize, have included South African President Nelson Mandela, Polish dissident Lech Walesa, and U2 singer-activist Bono.

The most successful director in history — his movies have made more than $8.5 billion (not adjusted for inflation) — Spielberg invented the modern blockbuster with “Jaws” (1975) and reinvented the war movie with “Saving Private Ryan” (1998).

Roger Ebert has called him “the compleat filmmaker: He can go wide (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”), he can go deep (“Schindler’s List”), he can do both at once (“The Color Purple,” “Minority Report”).”

Still, nothing in Spielberg’s resume indicated that he could go wide and deep as a benefactor.

“Schindler’s List,” say his friends and associates, was in every way a conversion experience.

“It is not merely a great movie ... deserving of its critical, Academy, and box-office acclaim,” said Tom Pollock, then head of production at Universal Pictures, which financed the film. “But it clearly changed Steven as well. Both during and forever after making this movie, he clearly became proud of his Jewish heritage and spent a very large amount of his time and his fortune in this area.”

Cassondra Becking is a liberal studies junior and Mustang Daily relationship columnist.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

mustang daily

Arts

mcclatchy-tribune

Director Martin Scorsese (center) is congratulated by Steven Spielberg for his Best Director Oscar, as Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas look on, at the 79th Academy Awards, Sunday, February 25, 2007.

Spielberg,“Jurassic Park” novelist Michael Crichton said in 1995, “is arguably the most influential popular artist of the 20th century. And arguably the least understood.”

To better understand “the unpretentious guy in the baseball cap,” as Philadelphia lawyer Stephen A. Cozen described Spielberg, know that the filmmaker wears multiple hats. (Cozen’s family foundation works with Shoah in collecting testimony from Rwandan survivors.)

Spielberg is “a storyteller, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and social activist,” said film scholar Jeanine Basinger, who served with him on the board of the American Film Institute. She likened him to Benjamin Franklin.

Also like Franklin, Spielberg has ties to the region. He moved to South Jersey the year he turned 3, lived in Camden and Haddon Township, and was fascinated by the dinosaur skeleton at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

“My parents used to shop at Wanamaker’s in Philly and would leave me alone under the statue of the American eagle,” he said.

“I must have been 6 or 7 at the time, and I would be left sitting for hours with nothing but my imagination to keep me company.

A lot of stories started percolating at that department store.”

He cited the Franklin Institute as “one of my favorite haunts. My

interest in model trains can be traced to the full-scale steam engines on display there. The first movie I ever made on 8mm was about my model trains, so Philadelphia has always held a nice place in my heart.”

More dreamer than scholar, Spielberg described his teenage self as “a wimp in the world of jocks.”

His family moved from Philadelphia to Phoenix to Saratoga, Calif., where he often felt ostracized as the new kid. After rejection letters from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California because of a mediocre academic record, he matriculated briefly at what was then California State College at Long Beach. But his real film school was Universal Studios, where he interned as a high school junior and squatted in an empty office.

In 1968, he made the 26-minute “Amblin’” as a calling card. His boosters at Universal made sure that Sid Sheinberg, a studio executive, saw it. Sheinberg liked what he saw and offered the filmmaker, then 21, a contract. With misgivings — and alacrity — Spielberg accepted the offer and dropped out of school.

Over his four decades as a filmmaker, Spielberg has explored ways to engage the audience. His earliest films (“Duel,” “Jaws”) went for the gut, his next ones (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.: The Extraterrestrial”) the heart. In 1982, Sheinberg optioned Thomas Keneally’s “Schindler’s Ark” for Spielberg. But it would take the filmmaker until 1993 to prepare himself emotionally for the movie, which engaged both gut and heart.

“He basically felt he wasn’t ready,” said his spokesman Marvin Levy. Levy is one of many Spielberg intimates who suggest that Spielberg needed to make “The Color Purple” (1985) and “Empire of the Sun” (1987) — kindred stories of triumph over intolerance — before he could tackle Keneally’s account of the Nazi

who saved Jews.

“While filming ‘Schindler,’ many Holocaust survivors approached Steven and said, ‘I want my story told,’” Levy said. “He couldn’t tell all of their stories in a movie, but through the Shoah Foundation he hoped he could compile enough material so the Holocaust could never more be denied.”

“I determined almost from the outset that if ‘Schindler’s List’ made any money for me personally, I would return it to the Jewish community,” recalled Spielberg of the moment that filmmaker became philanthropist. (The testimonies of survivors are housed at USC; excerpts can be seen at http://college.usc.edu/vhi/otv/ otv.php.)

The Shoah Foundation and the Righteous Persons Foundation are the twin efforts born of “Schindler. RPF has funded documentaries relating to Jewish life, created a digital Yiddish Library, and, said Spielberg, helped young Jews help in the New Orleans recovery effort. RPF “has also helped seed and support local efforts throughout the country that bring Jewish, African-American, and now Latino students together for a year of learning,” said Spielberg, two of whose seven children are AfricanAmerican.

Much of Spielberg’s giving, which ranges from pediatric centers to tsunami relief to the National Museum of American Jewish History, is anonymous.

“My rule is that when I am part of a cause, kindness goes a lot further when we are more concerned about change than about taking credit for that change,” Spielberg said. “But if granting the use of my name will inspire others to follow suit, that’s the exception to the rule.”

As Cozen sees it: “Steven has used his philanthropic efforts to expose the issues of our time to public scrutiny and to teach the lessons of how to make the world a better place.”

opinion/editorial Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Editor in chief: Emilie Egger Managing Editor: Alex Kacik

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9

Outrageous bank fees should be outlawed mcclatchy-tribune news

by some of their customers into a lucrative sideline that, in effect, encourages overdrafts because the debit card never bounces.

The Financial Times reported that banks will raise $38.5 billion this year from overdrafts. Most of this comes from those who can least afford it — folks living from paycheck to paycheck.

The changes announced last week are smart moves by the banks and should be welcomed by consumers.

But they don’t preclude the need for a law to eliminate these widespread practices from the entire banking industry.

The banks are acting out of narrow self-interest.Voluntary policies can be unilaterally reversed when the coast is clear, but laws remain on the books.

Banks have a history of behaving badly when it comes to such promises. In 2007, as lawmakers were scrutinizing universal default clauses — the policy that triggers interest rate increases on bank credit cards when customers fall behind on payments elsewhere — Citigroup pledged to

end this practice.

Less than a year later, when attention shifted to other issues, the ban was quietly dropped.

Congress should keep that in mind when bank lobbyists show up, as they surely will, to argue t h a t there’s no need for legislation on overdraft f e e s .

Bank customers need to be protected from these abusive practices permanently.

barry maguire newsart

Having to pay a $35 bank fee for being overdrawn by a small amount, say $10 or less, has always seemed outrageous. Now, with the recession squeezing consumers’ wallets, the outcry over abusive bank practices has finally reached Washington and lawmakers are threatening to restrict overdraft fees by law. It’s about time.

Perhaps with a view toward heading off legislation, at least three banks have responded by voluntarily lowering or eliminating these unfair charges and instituting other consumerfriendly policies. Good, but not good enough.

The first to act were Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, which announced last week that they would alter policies involving excessive fees.

Beginning Oct. 19, Bank of America will stop charging any fees for customers who overdraw their accounts by less than $10 in a single day. It will also limit the number of overdraft fees to four a day, though the overdraft fee will remain $35.

Ouch.

Chase will cap the number of overdraft fees at three per day and stop imposing this penalty when accounts are overdrawn by less than $5. More important, it promises to end an unfair practice that times the processing of transactions to produce maximum overdrafts — processing the highest amount first, instead of chronologically.

Both banks will also make it easier for customers to opt out of overdraft protection, and Bank of America says it will warn customers before they hit their limit.That’s a step bank customers have been demanding for years.

The actions of the two banks proved contagious. The next day, Wells Fargo became the largest bank yet to announce similar customerfriendly moves regarding overdrafts, even though a spokesman had been quoted the day before as saying it had no plans to act.

There should be a penalty for writing rubber checks, but debit-card overdrafts shouldn’t have to happen.

Yet banks have turned this bad habit

New investigation reveals dairy’s disgraceful dark side Dan Paden

mcclatchey-tribune news

When people find out that I’m an animal rights activist and a vegan, they invariably have questions. “Are your shoes leather?” they often ask.

(Answer:“No.”) “Do you miss meat?” (“Not a bit.”) And, usually, “What’s wrong with eating dairy foods? Cows aren’t killed to make milk.”

I hope that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ new undercover investigation will put this last question to rest once and for all. Milk and cheese might seem harmless, but the dairy industry is responsible for often shocking cruelty to animals.

From birth to death, animals on today’s factory farms are treated like nothing more than machines. Cows are no exception. Farmed cows are artificially impregnated year after year to force their bodies to produce milk. Their calves are taken from them shortly after birth — sometimes literally dragged away by a chain wrapped around one leg. The traumatized mothers bellow for hours — sometimes days — searching for their newborns.

Cows have a natural life span of about 25 years, but the disease, lameness and reproductive problems rampant in the dairy industry render cows ‘useless’ by the time they are 4 or 5 years old. They are then turned into soup, dog food or low-grade hamburger meat. Their b o d i e s are too “spent” to b e used for anything else.

margaret scott newsart

PETA launched an undercover investigation of one such farm, a Pennsylvania facility that supplies milk to Fortune 250 company Land O’Lakes — the largest seller of name-brand butter in the United States — after we were contacted by a whistleblower earlier this year.

Our investigator documented deplorable conditions and routine neglect and abuse. Cows that had trouble standing and walking were kicked, electro-shocked or jabbed with a blade. After she was shocked with a high-voltage electric prod, one cow struggled and skidded on her knees, then hobbled in obvious pain through a slurry of manure and filth. She was hauled off to slaughter two days later.

One cow’s gangrenous, infected teat ruptured as she was milked by a machine.Workers were told to tightly wrap the teat with an elastic band in order to “amputate” it. The cow’s condition deteriorated over the next 11 days before she finally died.

Another cow collapsed in a deep pool of liquid manure. She struggled and flailed but could not get up. The cow was left to languish there for at least five hours as the pool of urine and manure covered her body and coated her eyes, nose and mouth.

Cows and calves were kept in pens and barns whose floors were filled with deep excrement, which caused foot and hoof problems and fostered disease. One steer was nearly blind, his eyes scar red from un-

treated pinkeye. Calves rescued from the facility had pneumonia, ringworm and parasites. Abscesses were common. As PETA’s video shows, some of them burst and oozed pus even as cows were being milked.

Land O’Lakes “inspected” the Pennsylvania farm as recently as June 2009 and merely noted that there were areas — including the milking parlor walls — in need of cleaning; it approved the facility nonetheless.

As a result of PETA’s investigation, the farm’s owner and his son have been charged with cruelty to animals. PETA is also calling on Land O’Lakes to implement and enforce a 12-point animal welfare plan that would eliminate some of the worst abuses to cows raised for their milk.

But it won’t eliminate all of them. As long as consumers continue to buy milk, butter, cheese and ice cream (even though supermarkets are full of delicious alternatives), animals will continue to suffer. Mother cows will continue to watch helplessly as their calves are taken from them again and again. They will continue to go lame from intense confinement amid waste and suffer from mastitis, an extremely painful udder infection caused by drugs and overmilking. And they will continue to be trucked to slaughter and ground up for burgers when their worn-out bodies are no longer of any use to farmers.

And that’s what’s wrong with dairy foods.

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write a letter Wow, what a mind-blowing and biased fabrication!When the head of the Congressional Budget office and US Senator, Diane Feinstein from California are quoted in the press that the proposed health care reforms are bad ideas and will cost taxpayers billions, suggesting that Republicans are at fault is not only an uninformed position is blatantly untrue.

—Robert Response to “Senate Democrats forgot constituents” Not only do they allocate our money to other campuses, they use them for public works projects and prisons. I voted against the fees because I saw them for what they really are, an illegal tax on students. But the Cal Poly administration ran a campaign to convince students to give up the our rights. The fees should not be allowed and President Baker should resign in disgrace.

—Chris Response to “Chancellor’s office gives ultimatum” Is it seriously legal that the Chancellor’s Office could take Poly student fees and allocate them to the whole system? The legality of the fee increase was sketchy in the first place, but the higher-ups shouldn’t be able to OK them for the sole purpose of using them at other campuses.

—Giana Response to “Chancellor’s office gives ultimatum

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SPORTS Quarterback

Niners continued from page 12

continued from page 12

with a message about the team’s identity and what it is trying to accomplish.

Something clicked. The 49ers found their groove in the second half when — get this — even the offense helped out with the scoring. Hill hit Vernon Davis for a 13-yard score, the third touchdown connection in two games for that duo.

Hill also connected with Josh Morgan on a 24-yard pass to give the 49ers a 28-0 lead with 14:14 to play.

It was the first touchdown this season by a 49ers wide receiver.

“It was?” Morgan said.

The 49ers insist that the offense will eventually have more to offer. For now, the rest of the team is carrying the load. The 49ers are 3-0 in the division for the first time since 2002.

“Let’s keep it going. That’s what we get paid for,” Morgan said. “We’re trying to be a great team, a Super Bowl team, a championship team. I think we’re working toward that.”

ground, holding Adrian Peterson to 2.2 yards per carry. But none of it mattered.

They couldn’t stop the geriatric wonder, that all-time waffler, Brett Favre.

Favre looked like he did in winning the title all those years ago, running and jumping like a schoolgirl in an anime movie after every touchdown or big play.

If the Vikings don’t go at least 14-2 this year and win the Superbowl, Brad Childress ought to be taken out back and put down. This team is more talented than the undefeated Patriots team of a few years ago.

They have it all, superstars on offense, a dominating defense with a front four that could only seemingly be that big through performance enhancers ... oh wait. But I digress.

Green Bay was supposed to be the big challenger to the Vikings for NFC North supremacy. I don’t see anyone competing with Minnesota when they play their best — and unfortunately, most teams won’t even beat them when they’re playing average at best.

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mustangdaily.net Tuesday, October 6, 2009

SPORTS

sports editor: Brian De Los Santos

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MUSTANG DAILY

Tuesday Morning Quarterback commentary

Are the Broncos for real?

Scott Silvey o n t h e n a t i o n a l fo o t b a l l l e a g u e

As this is my first football column, let me give you some background on my football knowledge. I’ve been watching the NFL since my uncle got me a “Chicago Bears rock” T-shirt and I was forever sold on my favorite football team by age 5.

Because of that, I’ll try to avoid putting my opinions on Chicago in this weekly column. After growing up watching Cade McNown, Jonathan Quinn and the immortal Henry Burris as Chicago’s starting quarterback, I could probably spend the next eight weeks filling up columns about how giddy I am every time I see Jay Cutler complete a pass.

What I will write about are a couple of things I notice after each week including teams or players that stick out for positive and negative reasons.

I’m not a trivia machine — I don’t know who won the rushing title in 1974 (Otis Armstrong, 1407 yards …

mcclatchy-tribune

Derek Anderson doesn’t seem to be the answer in Cleveland. Anderson has 50.7 passer rating this year.

OK, so I cheated and googled it), but I have strong opinions that you may or may not agree with.

So without further ado, here is what’s on my mind after week four.

Is Denver the real deal?

The Denver Broncos are the most improbable 4-0 team in NFL history.

As one ESPN analyst questioned after the Broncos dropped a preseason game to Chicago, “Does anyone else get the feeling that the Broncos just played their most important game of

the season?”

After watching the Broncos get a miracle play to win on opening day in Cincinnati, I thought I had seen the ugliest win in NFL history. I also thought either team would be lucky to win another game all season with how poorly they played. But one game does not make an NFL season and three weeks later, the Broncos have yet to taste defeat.

Denver fans are boldly proclaiming that they got the best of the Jay Cutler

trade as Kyle Orton has “managed” them to perfection.

But what happens when Kyle Orton is down by two scores in the second half? He’ll likely be forced to throw to receivers beyond ten yards and trust me, that’s not a pretty sight.

Don’t be surprised to see the Broncos and their fans plummet to earth when they host the Patriots this weekend.

Are the Browns this year’s Lions?

The Cleveland Browns stink. I think it’s safe to say after the first quarter of the season that they are the worst team in the NFL this year.

Things have gotten so bad that first-year head coach Eric Mangini’s job has been reported to be on the hot seat already.

Does anyone else remember when Brady Quinn was touted as a possible breakthrough player during the offseason? The supposed “savior” of Cleveland football was benched in the second half of the third game this season.

Derek Anderson is clearly not the answer. Say what you will about his average performance against the Bengals on Sunday, but you don’t bench the guy you hope to be your franchise after two bad games.

Most people don’t remember Peyton Manning’s rookie year in which he threw 28 interceptions and the team went 3-13. Sometimes you just have to accept that you’re rebuilding this year, just like most Browns fans are beginning to accept that they may not win a game this year.

Favrebowl I shows Minnesota as NFC frontrunner.

You know it’s bad when the coach challenges a play hoping it’s “just a safety” and your team will only trail by 16 points with seven minutes remaining.

Despite a late-game comeback attempt, Minnesota took Green Bay’s best shot and still won by a touchdown. The Packers outgained the Vikings through the air and on the see Quarterback, page 11

No Gore, no problem; Niners roll past Rams Daniel Brown san jose mercury news

SAN FRANCISCO — When teammate Ray McDonald grabbed a fumble and ran it in for a touchdown, 49ers linebacker Manny Lawson said he was thrilled and energized.

Oh, and a little jealous.

“My celebration would have been better than his,” Lawson said.

Maybe next week. On Sunday, there were only so many celebrations to be crammed into a 35-0 victory over the St. Louis Rams.

The 49ers hit for the touchdown cycle, reaching the end zone on offense, defense and special teams. It marked the first time the 49ers had pulled off that feat since doing it against the Philadelphia Eagles on Nov. 10, 1997.

More important, the 49ers’ victory capped a trifecta against NFC West teams, with the 49ers regis-

tering wins over the Cardinals, Seahawks and Rams to start 3-0 in the division (3-1 overall).

“Our first goal is to win the division, but that’s not our only goal,” coach Mike Singletary said. “As we go forward, we want to be one of the best teams in the NFL.” The 49ers get a more formidable opponent next week when the Atlanta Falcons visit Candlestick Park.

For now, they were happy simply to wash away the Brett Favre-induced haze of the previous week.

“I definitely feel that we are a force to be reckoned with,” rookie running back Glen Coffee said.

Coffee, filling in for injured Frank Gore, rushed 24 times for 74 yards. He was part of an offense that, as usual, played things close to the vest.

The 49ers don’t care about the yardage totals, as long as the highlights come from somewhere.

Against the Rams, they came from everywhere. They scored three non-offensive touchdowns in a game for the first time since Dec. 11, 1966.

Rookie linebacker Scot McKillop recovered a botched punt return in the end zone to provide the 49ers’ first score, with 5:27 to go in the first half.

Linebacker Patrick Willis later added a 23-yard interception return for a score, and McDonald added his 11-yard fumble return for a touchdown.

“It’s a total team win, without a doubt,” quarterback Shaun Hill

said. “Every unit is pitching in, even though offensively we didn’t do as good as we would have liked to have done. The team came away with a 35-0 win, and that’s all that matters.”

The 49ers won by their widest margin since they beat Arizona by 36 points on Dec. 7, 2003. This was their first shutout since beating New Orleans 38-0 in the 2001 season finale, a streak of 119 games.

It helped that they were playing a hapless Rams team that has scored only 24 points through its 0-4 start.

Quarterback Kyle Boller, the former Cal standout filling in for Marc Bulger, had just 108 passing yards and a 48.6 quarterback rating Sunday.

The defense was all over him, especially Willis, who had five tackles, 2.5 sacks and his second career interception return for a touchdown.

“Today was a day where you just say, ‘Wow,’ “ Willis said. “It was not just me, but it was our defense all together.”

One of St. Louis’ many miscues opened the door for the scoring, and the 49ers came barreling through. It started when Andy Lee’s punt clanked off the legs of the Rams’ Quincy Butler, who got in the way while trying to block for return man Danny Amendola.

The ball bounced off Butler’s ankle and squirted 14 yards backward and into the end zone. Butler briefly considered kicking it out of the end zone for a safety. “But it was too late,” he said. “Guys were

already on me.”

McKillop dived headlong into the avalanche of players and secured the ball. He kept hanging on tightly as he carried the ball to the sideline as a souvenir.

“It will be a good keepsake when I get older,” the rookie said.

The score gave the 49ers a 7-0 halftime lead, a margin that failed

to satisfy Singletary. He let loose during halftime with one of his trademark locker-room speeches.

“I reminded them that this is our house,” Singletary said. “We want to set the tempo. I felt like they were taking the fight to us.”

Hill addressed the team, too, see Niners, page 11

mcclatchy-tribune

Rookie Glen Coffee rushed for 74 yards over 23 carries while filling in for starting running back Frank Gore Sunday at Candlestick Park.