Spartan Daily Vol. 160 No. 24

Mock Trial Team discusses adversity

By Jeremy Martin SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Editor’s note: Spartan Daily staff writer Alina Ta is a member of the SJSU Mock Trial Team.

They’re a team of lawyers and witnesses, who aren’t in the courtroom yet. Despite their position, they still manage to mock the competition.

The San Jose State Mock Trial Team is a club where students participate in a debate sport, creating a mock-up version of a court case.

Students act out their roles of both lawyers and witnesses.

Mary Ashley Fortuno, president and team captain of the club and sociology senior, said the club was

would say outside just on extracurriculars, and then we do internalize scrimmages.”

Fortuno said the program tries to “keep the theme of representation alive” and the program has a diverse board.

She said it could inspire others to feel like they belong in the group even though they may not feel like they match the typical mock trial crowd.

“I think the biggest thing is just representing our culture’s, our gender, because gender is one thing that is a disparity, but then you add color on to it,” Fortuno said. “It’s like a double whammy almost.”

founded in 2019.

She said the club focuses on a number of valuable skills within the sport.

“It mostly focuses on litigation, public speaking and critical thinking skills, as well as teamwork,” Fortuno said.

She said the student-run club receives aid from the philosophy department and from its club advisors, Rebecca Chan and Étienne Brown.

The team participates in various tournaments, starting at the regional level and advancing to the national level.

Fortuno said the team starts practice in August, when case packets are released, and continues to practice until February.

“We have all of that time to scrimmage schools, to prepare our case and go to regionals in February,” she said. “Every week, we work at least six to 10 hours, I

SJSU alumnus Leon Lam, who was the assistant coach for the Mock Trial Team, said he still remembers the discrimination the club faced.

Leon was a founding member of the club and went to many competitions with the group.

He said at competitions, the group was not safe from ridicule.

“One year, we had an all kind of Asian American team, at least the attorneys were, one of the attorneys had a cough, and this was during the height of the COVID pandemic,” Lam said. “Of course, one of the judges made a COVID joke.”

He also said the judges had criticized female members.

On another occasion, Lam said a judge made comments about female competitors needing to act

When they actually announced San Jose State, the room kind of went quiet and I heard a couple of chuckles, because no one was expecting San Jose State – little old San Jose State. Again, we’re looked down on because we are a CSU, because we’re a newfound program – no one really takes us seriously.

Mary Ashley Fortuno sociology senior Mock Trial Team president and captain

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARY ASHLEY FORTUNO

Mock Trial Team members (Top row; left to right) Alan Pompa Aguaya, Haiyen Nyugen, Margarita Mora, Adi Iyer (Bottom row; left t o right) Sophia Diaz, Mary Ashley Fortuno, and Harveen Kaur pose during the Rebel Trojan tournament in Las Vegas earlier this year.

MOCK TRIAL TEAM

Continued from page 1

sweet when interacting with witnesses in cases.

When talking about discrimination, he also said he encourages members to embrace their differences and become one with their own individuality.

Fortuno said the discrimination that the team gets thrown at them isn’t limited to race or gender, but it also covers the competitions themselves.

Fortuno said this definitely came into play during the announcement of the programs witness award at this year’s competition.

“When they actually announced San Jose State, the room kind of went quiet and I heard a couple of chuckles, because no one was expecting San Jose State – little old San Jose State,” Fortuno said. “Again, we’re looked down on because we are a CSU, because we’re a newfound program – no one really takes us seriously.”

She said Margarita Mora, who is in her first year as a member of the club, won the witness award.

Harveen Kaur, vice president of the Mock Trial Team and political science sophomore, said Mora had to work hard in preparation for the competition.

She said Mora had to train herself to cry on command, as she played the part of a victim, whose husband was killed in the trial.

“She would internalize the character, she’d be like, ‘I’m not Margarita anymore – I’m this character, my husband died in this crash,’ ” Kaur said. “ ‘I’m trying to get, you know, I’m trying to sue this company that killed my husband,’ and she was just kind of getting into the zone.”

She said she had to train herself to feel the same feelings as Mora and get into that same mindset.

“I was an attorney for Margarita and, you know, I have to feel for her,” Kaur said. “I have to feel for this character.”

Climate Science senior Mora said she had a lengthy preparation process for the competition.

“If you had seen me during that tournament, I would actually put myself in an isolated corner, put earbuds on, and I would get in character for like 30 minutes,” Mora said.

She said once she tapped into the

mindset, she let her human instincts take over from there.

“Once you kind of get into a crying mood, I’m sure everyone has felt this, it’s not too difficult to keep it going,” Mora said.

After winning the award, Mora said the surprised looks of the others in the competition was disappointing at first, but didn’t matter once they announced that the team had won.

She said this was a really good feeling for the team and made them realize that they just proved everyone wrong.

“I remember afterwards, my team was telling me that when they said San Jose State University, they actually heard some of the other teams laughing,” Mora said. “When they announced our team, and they announced my name, the scream that our entire team gave was just the most heartfelt scream you can imagine.”

She said the moment was surreal.

“It really is a feeling of just punching through what everyone expects,” Mora said

Fortuno said the club has struggled to receive funding and resources from SJSU, as the university doesn’t have a law school.

She said schools including University of California, Berkeley have a law school and access to lawyers and coaches.

Fortuno said spreading the word that the club exists and competes would help them receive more funding.

One of the ways the club receives funding is through a SJSU crowdfunding campaign.

Business administration freshman Shankhin Vijayakumar said the club does receive a small amount of additional funding.

“In addition to donations from our own families, and money out of our pockets, we do get an amount of A.S. funding,” Vijayakumar said. “And we use that to pay for our travel expenses, and our hotels, and registering for tournaments, it goes directly into the program – none of the money is wasted.”

Fortuno said she has future plans for tabling this year outside the student union.

She said, because the club has expanded in members since it was founded, they are in need of more funding to support its activities.

Mahan’s budget proposal passes

The meeting covered municipal bonds, houselessness encampments and the city budget

By Christine Tran STAFF WRITER

Mayor Matt Mahan, council members and the general public met at San Jose City Hall on Tuesday, where Mahan’s budget proposal passed unanimously.

The meeting discussed policies that represent San Jose’s City Service Areas for strategic planning, policy setting and investment decisions the city has for the community.

Some action items on Tuesday’s agenda included municipal bonds, houselessness encampments and Mahan’s city budget proposal.

Mahan called his budget proposal a “back to basics” approach, which focuses on public safety, reducing houselessness and economic recovery, according to a Tuesday San Jose Spotlight article.

In his plan, Mahan wants to build 500 temporary homes for the houseless community, hire 30 more police officers and fill job vacancies, especially for city staff, according to the same article.

A presentation was given at the council meeting by Julia Cooper, director of finance for the City of San Jose, and her colleagues about what municipal bonds are and why the city invests in them.

Cooper said municipal bonds are similar to loans, where investors lend money to government agencies to fund projects, including libraries and schools.

Government agencies are expected to pay off municipal bonds and the interest as it matures.

“We use a whole team of people across the entire city organization to help us

[develop the preliminary official statement],” Cooper said. “And that was the training that we did last week for the staff. And we go through the fact, finding the due diligence to ensure all the risks are identified. We also go and seek a rating from the rating agencies, and that involves a process of presenting their credit.”

Katie Dobson informed the council of the risks that can occur if San Jose goes against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s actions, as one of its responsibilities is to protect investors.

Dobson has been a shareholder at Jones Hall, a professional law corporation, for a decade.

She said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought its first case against Orange County in 1996 because of the county’s risky investment strategies to balance its budget.

“The SEC said that the Supervisory Board of Supervisors failed to take steps appropriate under the circumstances to assure that [Orange County]’s financial situation was being adequately disclosed to potential investors,” Dobson said.

She also said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation against San Diego in 2006 and found that in years prior, the city issued $260 million of bonds through five separate issuances.

“The SEC alleged that city officials had engaged in securities fraud for failing to disclose material information in its official statements, its audits and information provided to rating agencies,” Dobson said.

“It had adequately disclosed large unfunded liabilities for pensions and retiree health care obligations. The officials had falsely certified that there were no mysterious material misstatements or omissions in the documents and this is typical in every issuance of debt, which the city of San Jose does.”

A public comment forum during the meeting let public speakers express their concerns,

and many commented on Mahan’s budget proposal and how they believe it criminalizes houselessness.

To reduce houselessness, Mahan outlined in his plans that he will “move 1,000 unhoused residents out of encampments and into safe, managed environments this year,” according to the Monday San Jose Inside article.

Mahan said having a no encampment zone is not criminalizing houselessness.

“We have areas where we say it is not safe, it is not appropriate,” Mahan said. “It is so impactful in a negative way on the rest of the community that there are going to be some places where we don’t allow encampments, but if you read the message, you will see that as a very small note toward the bottom.”

Two San Jose State students spoke publicly to share their concerns about Mahan’s budget proposal aiming to “double the hiring rate for new police officers from the 15 approved last year to 30,” according to the same Monday San Jose Inside article.

Political science

sophomore

Anthony Medina-Alvarez said he didn’t have a plan to speak to Mahan and the council members.

He said he only came to observe the council meeting for an assignment in his local politics class, but he researched the San Jose Police Department’s budget on his own.

“What I really experienced . . . is that many communities are not given the funding they need and they are demonized and criminalized time and time again, and I don’t think that’s a very appropriate approach,” Medina-Alvarez said.

Political science senior Hazel Jacome said she noticed that no one at the council meeting was talking about the plan to

increase the number of police officers in the budget. She said it’s unsafe for Mahan to cut down on the requirements needed for someone to be a police officer when they need more training to deal with life and death situations.

“Doctors have to go through years of medical school, to get my degree I have to go through three, four years,” Jacome said. “So why do they only go to six months of training and then get handed a weapon? It doesn’t seem correct.”

Follow The Spartan Daily on Twitter @spartandaily

Correction

On Tuesday, March 21, the Spartan Daily published a photo collection titled, “SJSU groups put on talent show,” in which we misidentified the event being held. It was a cultural show.

The Spartan Daily regrets this error.

Follow The Spartan Daily on Twitter @spartandaily

CHRISTINE TRAN | SPARTAN DAILY City council members listen to public comments during Tuesday’s city council meeting at City Hall.

‘Eat Your Young’ doesn’t eat

By Vanessa Tran A&E EDITOR

Irish musician Hozier’s newest EP, “Eat Your Young,” released on Friday and was unfortunately a letdown I would’ve never expected from him.

Although the first two songs were released early to tease the EP, I never listened to them because I wanted to save all of the excitement, but was immediately disappointed.

The titular song “Eat Your Young” is the only song I saved to my music library because of how cinematic it sounds.

The track is anti-war and anticapitalist, as Hozier sings “Honey, I wanna race you to the table/ If you hesitate, the gettin’ is gone/ I won’t lie if there’s somethin’ to be gained/ There’s money to be made, whatever’s still to come.”

I love the way Hozier was able to discuss the gluttony of those in power, explaining how he feels the need to “race to the table” in order to avoid being controlled by those with authority.

Listeners are taken through a series of events in which he escalates from the thought of fighting for liberation to actually executing it in the lyrics, “Get some/ Pull up the ladder when the flood comes/ Throw enough rope until the legs have swung.”

This is a song I can imagine playing during the film credits of a western movie when the protagonist successfully escapes from the dangerous plot.

Hozier’s lyrical talent is displayed in “All Things End,” but the melody completely kills it for me.

GAME REVIEW

The slower tempo compared to the first track creates an odd shift when listening in chronological order, something I like to do when listening to new albums.

In the first verse, he sings “If there was anyone to ever get through this life/ With their heart still intact, they didn’t do it right.”

This has to be my favorite line in the song because Hozier’s not afraid to admit that life comes with pain and it’s something that should be expressed, instead of concealed.

The third and final track, “Through Me (The Flood),” was an OK song that touches on death and grief.

Despite the lyrics being very descriptive, the song has a slow buildup that didn’t have to be told in such a long-form way.

In the song, he tells listeners to imagine a scenario of a man looking back at his life and seeing the world in a whole new lens.

Hozier is amazing when it comes to storytelling, but this particular song could have been sung without being such a slow burner.

I wish he focused more on voicing his feelings, rather than telling listeners to picture the scenarios of death.

album review

“Eat Your Young”

Rating:

Artist: Hozier Release Date: March 17, 2023

Genre: Alternative

It was unlucky that each song started to get worse and worse as I listened to the album, but I have hopes that Hozier’s upcoming studio album will be better than this.

“Unreal Unearth” is set to release sometime this year and will include songs from this EP, according to a Saturday Evening Standard article.

I want to be proven wrong when “Unreal Unearth” comes out because this EP was a total

ILLUSTRATION BY JANANI JAGANNATHAN

miss, which is not common for an artist who I often enjoy listening to.

Since his last album in 2019, I was expecting “Eat Your Young” to be a refreshing comeback that was going to scratch the itch I’ve been having.

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WWE 2K23 is an upgrade from previous games

By Oscar Frias-Rivera SENIOR STAFF WRITER

March is not only WrestleMania season for wrestling fans, but it also means WWE 2K23 is upon us.

John Cena graces the cover this year for the first time since the 2K15 edition that came out in October 2014.

With three different editions released, presenting different arts and features, I ended up purchasing the Deluxe edition because of the nostalgic art featuring Cena in his Thuganomics persona with the U.S. Championship belt.

The other two editions, standard and Icon, caught my eye as well, but not as much as the Deluxe.

The standard edition didn’t appeal to me because it felt like a basic cover with no art to it compared to the Deluxe and Icon edition.

Both these latter editions include supplemental perks to the base video game, such as a season pass for unlockable characters and bonus packs to boost up wrestlers on the MyFaction mode.

In MyFaction, is a collection of cards you unlock on characters and each player is ranked differently.

You battle online with these characters to boost up your player and unlock more higher rank cards to possibly get legend cards. You can sell and trade among each other.

Both Deluxe and Icon editions also had three days early access ahead of the standard edition.

The Icon edition with Cena holding the original spinner WWE Championship belt was great and desirable, but it was also too expensive for me.

Eventually, the joy of seeing Cena in his old attire on the cover of the Deluxe edition brings back memories, so it was an easy decision for me to pick it over the other two editions.

Now onto the gameplay, the video game has many different game modes to play.

Per normal, it has your exhibition

play mode to play against the CPU or friends.

It also includes all several types of matches appearing in the famous WWE shows, such as the Steel Cage match, the Hell in a Cell match and the Backstage Brawl.

A new match-up fans have been anticipating to be put into WWE 2K23 is WarGames.

Watching the match live is already insane with two rings and a huge steel cage blocking out every participant. But now that it’s in WWE 2K23, it’s pure mayhem and a whole lot of fun to play.

The roster is huge, and characters vary from present Superstars to Hall of Famers, in which you have to play other game modes to unlock each character.

The entrances this year advanced so much, as they correlated well to almost every character.

Seth Rollins’s character in the game is translated perfectly as the crowd starts his “Ohhhhhh wooahhhhhh” chant during his entrance.

Unlike previous years, you would just hear the “yays” and “boos” during the wrestlers’s entrances, which made it very bland.

Moments like Rollins’s iconic dance to the ring is a huge addition I love instead of just a normal boring walk.

The best game mode they added was the showcase mode, which focuses on Cena’s career.

In this game mode, players have the opportunity to go over Cena’s 20-year career.

Whether it was his first ever match in the WWE against Kurt Angle or when he got to face the Undertaker at Wrestlemania, the showcase mode gives the players the chance to relive those moments.

Many of my favorite Cena’s matches are in this game mode displaying superstars I enjoyed growing up as well.

Before you get to play each match, Cena narrates and informs players on his opponent and the significance of why they’re fighting.

During the matches itself, not

only do you have to beat Cena, but you must recreate 10-15 significant moves that actually happened in the real match.

At a certain point in the match, the video game shows actual footage of the match, and players are able to continue fighting afterward.

I thought this was a great thing to showcase throughout each match because it gives players a better experience.

It’s awesome to see how the crowd reacts because it makes it feel as if you’re really there in the stadium.

Another great game mode they have is the Universe Mode, in which you choose to have their own battles each week on “Raw” or “SmackDown” leading up to Payper-views events.

Players are able to manage their own world of rivalries and storylines to crown champions and leaders of any superstars they want to shine in the WWE.

Each match is ranked up to five stars, depending on length of the match and the number of

move sets, combos, signatures and finishers performed.

It actually gives players a tough challenge to win against other superstars, which makes it better to have longer feuds with opponents.

Now of course, 2K added the Create a Superstar mode and can be played on any of the game modes, including the main one which is focused on MyRISE.

In the MyRISE game mode, players help build an incoming star shine in the WWE from the very beginning of their career.

It has a story for both the men and women, which is great because in previous entries there wasn’t much of a story for the women.

Whether you’re team “Raw” or team “SmackDown,” it’s still a fun game mode to showcase how you want your show to be.

As a kid growing up, I used to get every wrestling video game that came out and WWE 2K23 brings back that same nostalgic vibe that hasn’t occurred with me in previous 2K entries.

Follow Oscar Frias-Rivera on Twitter @oscar_frias408

game review

WWE 2K23

Rating: Release Date: March 14, 2023

Developer: Visual Concepts

Publisher: 2K Sports Genre: Sports

ILLUSTRATION BY MYENN RAHNOMA