Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio
02.15.2011 Vol. 45 Issue 6
The
Paisano
Professor’s theft leads to concern Dan Rossiter
P10: Baseball preview
See THEFT, Page 4
Students have trouble affording college tuition Dyan Lofton
paisanonews@sbcglobal.net Tuition seems to be spiraling upward yearly at The University of Texas at San Antonio since spring of 2008 and college affordability is a major concern for students. As tuition continues to increase, students are frantically looking for avenues to keep their tuition covered. In spring of 2008, a Texas resident or military person paid approximately $3,338.45 as a 15-hour full-time student, while non-residents paid $7,508.45 for the same amount of hours. As for the 12-hour part-time student, he or she paid $2,843.45 as a Texas resident or military person, and a non-resident paid $6,179. For spring of 2011, a Texas resident or military person paid approximately $3,951 as a 15-hour full-time student, while nonresidents paid $8,601. As for the 12-hour part-time student, he or she paid $3,361.75 as a Texas resident or military person, and a non-resident paid $7,083.75. Junior accounting major Jacory Brasfield says, “I’m not too fond of the increase in tuition, but I do understand that it’s something that needs to happen. As the university grows and expands, funds are needed for that expansion” Brasfield said. “I’m glad I get to be apart of something epic here at UTSA.” The biggest fees and charges that students pay each semester are the student service fee, athletics fee, university center fee, medical services fee, recreation center fee, undergrad advising fee, tuition as a Texas resident or a non-resident, automated services charge, and the library resource charge. See AFFORDABILITY, Page 4
Egyptian professor and student discuss events at home Ramsey Rodriguez Dan Rossiter
paisanonews@sbcglobal.net “The source of their pain is in unemployment, poor services making a graft in the city and money,” says Dr. Mansour ElKikhia about the thousands of Egyptian protestors fighting for a better way of life. “Forty percent make less than two dollars a day while one percent makes 50 million.” Fatimah Aboueisha, a junior studying biology, who lived in Egypt up to the age of 12, says that “[Egyptians] have been living under emergency law,”
something that is generally reserved, in other countries, for times of extreme national danger, namely being under attack by another country. Prior to the 18-day riot, emergency law allowed for police to search a person’s home without a warrant or reason. “You couldn’t visit a neighbor after eight o’clock,” Aboueisha adds. “Everything the government did, you could not question.” Factors such as these led to the massive demonstrations that ended in President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation this past
Mansour El-Kikhia and Fatimah Aboueisha. Friday. After nearly 30 years in power, Mubarak relinquished control of the country to the armed forces. Eighteen days of consistent protesting against the government paid off as the Egyptian activists got what many have waited for.
See EGYPT, Page 4
Routes 93 and 94 no longer free Angela Marin
paisanonews@sbcglobal.net As of June 1 UTSA students, faculty and staff will be required to pay to ride VIA bus routes 93 and 94 to commute between the main and downtown campuses. Students, faculty and staff will have the option of paying regular fare or purchasing a discounted VIA pass. UTSA previously had a contract with VIA where commuters could ride these routes by simply presenting a UTSA ID card. Costs associated with this contract were paid for with student transportation fees.
Via will discontinue free services after June 1. “Because of economic conditions, most public transit sys-
tems are being forced to cut services or raise rates, or a com-
bination of both,” Transportation Services Manager James Strahan said. “When VIA indicated a need to raise rates, UTSA evaluated the cost effectiveness of the existing contract with them and determined that it would be too expensive to continue.” VIA was unable to provide the university with an exact figure of how many individuals used routes 93 and 94 to travel between main and downtown campuses, but estimated that several hundred UTSA students and employees use the service. See VIA, Page 3
Happy big three-oh, Paisano! Sergio Rios
paisanofeatures@sbcglobal.net
T
he first office - a gutted bakery - resembled an abandoned warehouse more than a newsroom, but it was an upgrade from the last place: a sparely furnished trailer home around a deserted strip of Babcock Road. That new office, the remains of the American European bakery, was a shell of a building with only a few rough (but solid), wooden benches too heavy to carry out when the site was cleaned out overnight. But in a short time this small space in the Campus South Shopping Center quickly became home to a proudly independent student newspaper, The Paisano. This is its story: its volunteer staff, its humble beginnings and its remarkable trajectory. It is
also a story of perseverance, dedication and most importantly, a voice. In the summer of 1973, four years after the Texas Legislature authorized the development of an upper level university in San Antonio as a part of the University of Texas System, UTSA held its first set of classes at the Koger Executive Center for 670 students. Sometime after UTSA’s seven original buildings were completed in 1975, a series of governing polices, the Memoranda Series, established the university’s policies and operational procedures. The series, now known as the HOP (Handbook of Operation Procedures), included Memorandum 66, which stated that the university would not support, or fund, any student publication. “It was a mutual thing, the administration did not want to support the student newspaper
and the students didn’t want to have those strings attached,” said Steven G. Kellman, English professor and 30-year member of The Paisano’s Advisory Board. In the latter part of the ’70s, however, two independent publications sprouted but were short lived. Mother Earth, UTSA’s first independent publication, lasted a semester; the second, The University Times, published for three. In the fall of 1980, a new English professor spotted a flyer posted on a bulletin board that read: “A university should not be without a student newspaper.” There, in that moment, the seed of a successful independent student newspaper had finally found its soil. Very soon after, as the idea gained momentum, a small group began to gather regularly at the home of who would become the newspaper’s first ad-
paisano-online.com
File Issue
P6: ‘Fuzzy Valentine’
Egyptians protesting in Cairo for the removal of president.
Mark Muniz\ The Paisano
P7: A Vampire Musical
On Jan. 24, Michael Burns, a graduate student and business instructor at UTSA since 2005, reportedly stole close to $3,000 worth of audio equipment from the Business Building’s Liu Auditorium. According to officials, Burns admitted to the theft after being caught on a campus video camera. This is only one example of the thefts committed recently by university faculty and staff, both at UTSA and across the nation. Only a month prior to the Liu incident, a tenured professor at University of Maryland – Baltimore County, Francis NunooQuarcoo, confessed to staling $10,000 from the university. A similar theft was also uncovered at Purdue University only a week ago. Two tenured faculty members were discovered to have been misappropriating funds during a 2010 university audit. Though specific amounts were not disclosed by university officials, they did admit that at least one of the professors involved had been siphoning university funds for 10 years prior, at the time of discovery.
AP Photo
paisanonews@sbcglobal.net
First issue of The Paisano 1981. vertising manager, Glenda Marcus. By then, the former advisor to the University Times, Sydney Plotkin, had agreed to participate as the group’s co-advisor, a title he held until his departure from UTSA in 1982. See ANNIVERSARY Page 9