Serving San Jose City College
Vol. 42, No. 2
Thursday, September 22, 1988
Prerequisites can be bypassed By Gilbert Gardner Students who fail to meet pre. requisite requirements can now insist upon class enrollment. A new prerequisite override, unknown to most students, has been implemented at San Jose City College in response to a lawsuit filed in Southern California. The override can potentially affect hundreds of courses at City College. According to Jon Kangas, district dean of academic standards, the student insistence (SI) override was added partly in response to a suit filed against Fullerton Community College by the MexicanAmerican Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). However, no effort has been made to inform students of the policy change. "Counselors arc told the student has the right to insist on taking a different class," Kangas said. "I don ' t encourage them to encourage
the students to take that option because as a group more of those students will fail." Kangas is concerned that unqualified students entering advanced classes will fail, become discouraged, and drop out of college. "People fail their initial developmental class (and) four semesters later they ' re not even here," Kangas said. "It's devastating to be a failure when you're starting out at a low level to begin with." Pat Butler, City College counselor and instructor, has a different ppinion of the decision to withhold student notification. "This conspiracy of silence is really at best an injustice to the student, at best," slfltcd Butler. "I think you can call it a lot more. I think it's criminal." Butler has used a different computer code (ET-Iife experience) to misplace hundreds of students over
the past three years. "I misplaced about 220 people. They tracked me by the computer," Butler said. "You know how many people got a D or an F? One." Records indicate students using the ET override have a success rate (aclassgradeof A, B,orC)of60% opposed to a district-wide success rate of 65% for students meeting all prerequisites. · Butler feels a student "should be advised, carefully advised, that it may not be in their best interest, (but) I think that if the student wants to take the class they can." Chuck Southward, associate dean of student services/counseling at City College, says counselors are not encouraged to notify students about the S I code and that no effort has been made to transmit this information. "In certain classrooms there is a strong relationship between a stu.dent's abi.lity to read and write and their ability to pass (colle_gewor~),"
said Southward. "I don't think it's smart for a student, when the percentages show that he's going to fail, to go and take a class." Southward also denied any know ledge of a student using the new override code this semester. One student who has used the SI code, however, is Louis Collogne, 21, a City College sophomore. "I wasn't told by my counselor. I had to insist on getting the class," Collogne stated. "I feel you ' rc insulting the intelligence of the student by boring them with repetition of high school work." Collogne, a student helper for admission and records, received low placement test scores and was assigned to English 102. At City College a student can take up to seven English courses and labs before reaching English IA, a mandatory graduation class. Collogne, hearing about the new SI code through wQrk, bypassed Eng-
lish 92 after completing 120. "Placement testing should be viewed in the light of what this process represents," stated Butler. "(It is) an attempt by an organization to predict the future behavior of an individual without bothering to take the time to get to know them." In 1980 placement tests were used by 47% of the community colleges in California. The Seymor-Campbell Matriculation Act of 1986, passed to ensure equal education, states a college must provide "assistance to students in the identification of aptitudes, interests, and educational objectives.... Assessment instruments shall be used as an advisory tool to assist students in the selection of an educational program." This leg"islation is what MALDEF, a 20-year-old national organization with branches in San Francisco and Sacramento, contends Fullerton Community ColSee Prerequisites page 4
Memorial
The ups and downs
grov~
San Jose man uses a trampoline to promote .fitness
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proposed By Ellie Molloy Establishment of a memorial redwood grove east of the 300-wing at City College has been proposed. The proposal will be presented to the Facility Planning Committee at a 2:30 p.m. meeting in the President's Conference Room on Tuesday. The area, which is adjacent to the boiler plant, has been selected as the site of the grove, which will feature a circle of redwood trees planted as a memorial to the district's retired and deceased faculty, administrative and classifi'ed staff, said Phil Mowry, director of Plant Planning Operations and Maintenance for the San Jose/Evergreen Valley Community College District. Mowry said that that grounds department personnel were approached by faculty members at Evergreen to design a living tribute to "everyone who had left the district. " On campus, one-half to threequarters of an acre is presently available to accommodate 40 redWood trees, which would surround an ~ea contaming benches and a Partially ctrcular commemorative wall inscribed with names of those bemg honored-m the same way as the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. honors deceased veterans. The district's governing board has expressed no objections to the proposal, and work is expected to proceed simultaneously at City College and Evergreen, hopefully prior to the winter's rainy season.
"I'm exercising my right to exercise freely." -Bill Chew
By Karla Massera If you've ever driven past the comer of Moorpark and Bascom Avenues at rush hour, chances are pretty good that you ' ve passed a unique individual jumping on a trampoline or riding a stationary bike. "Jumping to the beat of a different drummer" certainly applies to Bill Chew, our friendly neighborhood trampoline artist. Chew claims that he is a fitness professional and a politician by trade, and that because this is an Olympic year as well as a presiden"
The ·next issue of the.Times will be available Oct. 6
tial election year, he has started his own campaign for maximum exposure. "I call it the Exercise America Fitness Campaign ' 88," he says. "I am exercising my right to exercise freely." Chew is concerned with. the fact that Americans are entirely too dependent upon their cars for transportation, and that this dependency results in a loss of personal freedom. Chew says he sees three to nine thousand cars drive through his particular intersection on a daily basis, whileheonlyseesanaverage of 14 pedestrians on the sidewalk. "There are 25 thousand miles of sidewalk that no one uses, and getting fit can be as simple as walking on one of these sidewalks," says Chew. , There are a lot of ways to get fit,
and Chew hopes to show others that Science. He was an athlete in college with you can even exercise on street an avid interest in health and fitness comers. Chew says he sees people in and was ~lso a champion pole vaultheir cars getting fatter and more ter. After graduation, when he was uptight by the minute. working full-time, he no longer had ''I'm not gomg to Jive my life time for exercise. He quit training, like that, " he says. and became fatter and fatter. Chew j umps on his trampoline " I went· from almost a worlddressed in a business suit, straw hat class athlete to the Pillsbury Dough and well-worn tennis shoes. Boy in one year." he says. He says that wearing the busiChew knew that he needed to get ness suit creates contrast, which his act together and get back in creates conflict. It is this conflict shape, so he made time in his busy that creates attention. schedule for exercise and changed Chew feels that, for the most his lifestyle from that of a couch part, the attention that he's been potato back to one of an athlete. Once he was back in shape, he getting has been favorable. "I get smiles, waves and thumbs- found two things very surprising. The first was that he was a better up gestures," he says. "Only one in twenty will give me 'the fmger' ." businessman. His concentration Chew graduated from Long was sharper, and he got things done Beach State with a B.S. in Political See Trampoline page 4.