Spartan Daily Vol. 160 No. 32

New A.S. board of directors elected

By Enrique Gutierrez-Sevilla STAFF WRITER

The Associated Students election commission held the 2023 A.S. election results party on Thursday at the Student Union.

The new A.S. elected members’ term begins June 1, 2023.

Sarab Multani, public health sophomore and the newly elected A.S. president, currently serves as the mental health chairman for Delta Sigma Phi, a fraternity at San Jose State.

“It is not only an honor but a huge responsibility,” Multani said.

“I look forward to hearing out many communities around campus in ways we can integrate cultural awareness and increase our sense of belonging.”

Multani said he decided to run for president because of his experience in team satisfaction and public health.

“My perspective allows for a person who prioritizes student wellbeing and representation,” he said. “I aim to make A.S. more integrated with every student’s input so the people on campus feel part of our transformative culture.”

SJSU academic senate passes resolution in solidarity with Florida

By Rainier de Fort-Menares NEWS EDITOR

The Academic Senate passed multiple resolutions at a meeting in the Engineering Building 285 on Monday afternoon.

Other agenda items during the meeting included a resolution that aims to modify the Academic Senate’s Constitution, increasing the level of clarity once a resolution has passed through the senate.

the president decides to veto a policy, it includes a rationale that is reported back to the senate and campus community.

The final recommendation is that if the president takes no action following the 60 day deadline, then the policy would be considered inactive.

Another proposal that passed through the senate on Monday, gave emeritus faculty access to buildings on campus.

San Jose community reflects on gun violence

By Dominique Huber STAFF WRITER

Pierre Dixon said during her time at the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, she established a domestic violence unit after noticing a lack of any strong support for victims.

Rachael French department chair of biological sciences academic senate member

The resolution passed through the senate with a nearly unanimous vote in favor.

This resolution was made in response to a policy that was passed in the California State University’s Academic Senate in January that made three recommendations for each senate in the school system.

The recommendations include a deadline of 60 calendar days for a campus president to review and sign policies passed by the senate.

It also recommends that when

Emeritus faculty are faculty members who have retired and choose to stay at the university following retirement. Because of the implementation of tower ID cards to access buildings on campus, emeritus faculty lost access to most buildings.

The Academic Senate also unanimously approved a resolution in support of academic freedom and solidarity with faculty at public Florida universities and other

| Page 4

San Jose State students, faculty and staff gathered in front of the Olympic Black Power Statue on Monday to attend the SJSU Day of Action Against Gun Violence event.

San Jose City Councilmember Omar Torres, who represents District 3, was one of the speakers for the event.

He said he supports stricter gun laws in light of the countless shootings he has been aware of since his childhood, especially those in schools.

“[Kids] shouldn’t be worried about a crazy person with an AR-15 coming into their school and shooting them up. They should be worried about their homework,” Torres said.

Torres ended his speech with a call for legislators to prioritize the end of gun violence.

“Let’s ban guns, not books. Let’s ban guns, not drag queens. That’s it,” Torres said.

Former assistant district attorney Rolanda Pierre Dixon highlighted another perspective on guns- domestic violence.

She also said there is a strong connection between guns and domestic violence.

“Nearly 1 million women alive today have reported being shot or shot at by their intimate partner,” Pierre Dixon said. “If you know someone who is suffering from domestic violence . . . ask them ‘Is there a gun in that house?’ Let them know that their danger has now increased significantly.”

Jessica Blitchok, California Deputy chapter leader for Moms Demand Action, delivered a speech urging people to take matters into their own hands to reduce gun violence.

Moms Demand Action is a grassroots movement which gathers community members to collectively act in support of stronger gun laws and responsible gun ownership, according to its website.

Blitchok said students could start by joining

ALINA TA SPARTAN DAILY

Associated Students Board president-elect Sarab Multani goes to shake A.S. Board director of legislative affairs, and opponent, Dominic Treseler’s hand during Thursday’s A.S. election results party in the Student Union.

MAT BEJARANO | SPARTAN DAILY

San Jose City Councilmember Omar Torres gives a speech during the SJSU Day of Action Against Gun Violence event in front of the Olympic Black Power Statue on Monday.

This is, simply put, a breathtaking attempt to seize control of the curriculum and research at all of Florida’s public institutes of higher learning. The Governor of Florida intends to destroy academic freedom, tenure and shared governance.

Mahan talks city issues at SJSU

Mayor Mahan discussed housing, policing and mental health with SJSU students

By Alina Ta STAFF WRITER

San Jose City Mayor Matt Mahan gathered with San Jose State students at lecture hall 109 in Washington Square Hall at SJSU on Thursday to discuss multiple topics related to the city’s adopted operating budget plans for 2022 and 2023.

“The thing we’re all talking about is how we’re going to spend your tax dollars to provide better services to our residents,” he said.

The city’s budget is around $6 billion, according to the city’s budget plans.

Mahan said the money from the budget will be used for supporting multiple services and issues, including bonds to improve and support the city’s airport, its wastewater treatment facility, the police and fire departments, community centers, parks and more.

He said the city began to organize more of the budget toward housing because of the housing crisis, which includes more funding being directed toward solutions to decrease houselessness.

Mahan said, however, because California’s government is very decentralized, the city’s budget does not include funding for education, prisons and the medical system.

He said funding for these services come from either the federal government, the state government or local counties.

“I know that $6 billion sounds like a lot of money, but when you divide it out on a per person basis, we actually have significantly less revenue per capita,” Mahan said. “I like to say, ‘We’re a big city, but with a small budget.’ ”

Mahan said the revenue supporting the city’s budget comes from property and sales taxes.

He said other cities including Cupertino have a larger budget because they have large tech companies, like Apple and Google, located in the city.

“We’re the housing provider for Silicon Valley, which is great,” Mahan said. “But from a tax perspective, we’re actually the only big city in America where the

ELECTION

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Multani said his three goals are to increase the sense of belonging for students, improve academic resources and raise awareness of ways students can get involved on campus.

He said he plans to make an annual calendar with important registration dates, job fairs, student involvement opportunities and cultural events around campus.

“We can highlight our diverse campus and learn more about peers through celebrating each other’s culture together,” Multani said. “The integration and perspective of all the different cultures on our campus would be a beautiful experience for all our students.”

Multani said he plans to work with the new A.S. Board by ensuring everyone has an equal voice.

“I would like the community to know I will be easy to communicate with and will work my absolute hardest to make SJSU memorable and transformational for all.” Multani said. “I genuinely look forward to hearing as many students’ input as possible.”

Sidhant Sadawarti, computer engineering junior and newly

daytime population shrinks.”

He said the population shrinks during daytime because the majority of San Jose’s residents commute to neighboring cities to work for companies and businesses, creating tax revenue for other cities.

Mahan said the city has $4 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and obligations to workers who are now retired.

These unfunded pension liabilities are putting an increasing burden on the city’s finances, making it more difficult for the city to provide essential services to its residents, according to a Nov 9, 2020 presentation from the Retirement Stakeholder Solutions Working Group.

The Retirement Stakeholder Solutions Working Group is a group of individuals who represent active and retired stakeholder groups, according to the city’s webpage.

These groups represent active bargaining groups in the city, including community groups, City Council, staff from city government, and retirees from the fire and police departments, according to the city’s webpage.

He said as a result of these liabilities and obligations, the city has to take 15 cents out of every dollar the city receives to pay retired workers back.

Mahan said as a result of these financial issues, San Jose’s city government is understaffed with a ratio of seven employees working for every 10,000 residents.

He said the city needs a strong economic development strategy to continue serving the community with high quality services.

“We have to focus, we can’t be everything to everyone,” Mahan said. “We can’t deliver all the services we’d like [to] at a high level of quality.”

Sociology senior Katherine Adamson, who is the lead organizer for Students Against Mass Incarceration, said she thinks it’s great that part of the city’s budget is being directed toward housing.

Students Against Mass Incarcerations is an SJSU student group pushing against mass incarceration in Santa Clara county and pushing to stop the new Santa Clara County jail, according to a petition linked to its Instagram account.

“I love to see that he is building more temporary housing. That’s amazing, that’s great, but we need more of it,” she said.

Adamson said she noticed most of the city’s budget was directed toward policing.

elected A.S. director of communications, will manage the A.S. social media accounts.

“I’m too excited, I’m out of words right now,” said Sadawarti said.

Sadawarti said his role will be to engage students at A.S. events.

He said he’s passionate for photography and videography, which led to his decision to run for director of communications.

Sadawarti said he wants students to attend A.S. events to meet more people.

“You go to high school for studies but in college you go for exposure and get to know people’s cultures,” Sadawarti said. “Our lives are based upon experiences and interactions we share with each other, if you don’t do that then how are we different from animals?”

Business administration sophomore Nicholas Koprowski was the chief elections officer for this current election cycle.

“My job this year as chief elections officer was to run a fair and ethical election that attracts as much of the student population as possible,” Koprowski said.

Koprowski said this year’s election was advertised through flyers throughout campus, events on campus and videos on social media.

She also said she is still concerned about the increasing number of sweeps the mayor is proposing because she is worried that the city is further criminalizing houselessness.

“I’m seeing that the mayor does not prioritize housing and homelessness the way he prioritizes policing and criminalization,” Adamson said. “He doesn’t think the streets look nice when there are homeless people there.”

She said she thinks this is why the city is increasing the number of sweeps and increasing the police’s budget to “deal with this issue in a very punitive kind of way.”

“That’s not how we need to go about it,” Adamson said.

Sociology sophomore Cole Mitchell, who is a member of Students for Police Accountability, said he thinks it’s really important to put pressure on elected officials.

Students for Police Accountability is a student-run organization demanding accountability from San Jose’s Police Department, according to a post from its Instagram account.

“I think it’s really important to make sure that our politicians and our elected officials are aware of these [issues] and [are] actually listening to community members rather than who they receive money from,” he said.

Mitchell said he is not satisfied with how Mahan appeared to use his language to try and separate different social issues from one another.

“We had QR codes posted all over campus that students could scan and it takes them directly to the voting app,” Koprowski said. “I can’t name the exact number but it was roughly about 2600 students who voted.”

Kingson Leung, interim senior associate director for A.S., supports the student government department, including the board of directors and student election commission.

“Associate students have been around for 125 years and we are the voice, the student body population, and all of our elected appointed members,” Leung said. “Our board is made up of 13 students that vote on various policy legislation and advocate for resources that are serving our larger SJSU committee.”

He said there were double the number of candidates this year compared to last year.

“We have many students interested in serving and being of a higher responsibility as a leader to help support what our student needs,” Leung said. “Especially coming out of hybrid and remote, we’re really trying to create a better community for our students now who are eager to get the resources and support they need to graduate.”

He said issues with policing, houselessness and other social issues are deeply interconnected.

“[Mahan] really tried to separate the [policing and homelessness], but you really can’t,” Mitchell said.

Joseph Namba, sociology junior and Students for Police Accountability member, said he was a little upset because he wanted to hear more support for the city’s independent police auditor to do an external investigation on San Jose’s Police Officers Association.

San Jose’s Police Officers Association is a union that represents its members to sustain and enhance wages, benefits and working conditions, according to a webpage from its website.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a federal criminal complaint against Joanne Marian Segovia, the then executive director of San Jose’s Police Officers Association, for attempting to illegally import and distribute opioids and other drugs, according to a webpage from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Segovia was apprehended by Homeland Security, according to the same webpage.

Mitchell said he can see how it was maddening to see Mahan attempt to separate issues related to Segovia’s case.

“He doesn’t want to come out and say that our police can be corrupt and it’s just infuriating,” he said.

Mitchell said no one wants to talk about how the city can add more money to the police budget.

“We want to talk about how we can actually provide meaningful change for people in the community,” he said.

Namba said Students for Police Accountability will continue to take action.

He said Students for Police Accountability has already met with Vice Mayor Rosemary Kamei and will soon meet with Sergio Jimenez and Arjun Batra, the representatives for District 2 and District 10 in San Jose, on Wednesday.

“Maybe it’s just people like us that need to give him a more clear perspective on the potential that the [San Jose’s Independent Police Auditor] could be,” Namba said.

Katherine Adamson said she would like more transparency from the mayor.

“I feel like he brushed some of these issues under the rug,” she said. “He was very charismatic in his responses, but he fundamentally tried to separate a lot of issues that were interconnected.”

Adamson also said she is kind of done with his flowery responses.

“He was here to, you know, get more votes for him for the next time he [runs for election],” she said. “He was in PR mode.”

ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY

San Jose City Mayor Matt Mahan speaks to San Jose State University students in Washington Square Hall on Thursday night. Mahan discussed multiple aspects of his recently approved city budget.

True crime sparks ethics discussion

By Christine Tran STAFF WRITER

Rachel Monroe, contributing writer at the New Yorker and book author discussed true crime stories on Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Center on Ethics and the Department of Philosophy.

Monroe, who is the author of the book “Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession,” addressed the ethical attraction that people have for the true crime genre.

In her book, she explores the thesis of why women are big consumers of true crime stories.

She said as long as the genre has existed, it has always drawn in a female audience, which is often said by people who make true crime podcasts or books.

“It can be a way of engaging with [coping,] kind of wrestling with maybe trauma or victimization in their own background in some ways, just a way of working through what happened to you through the prism of somebody else’s story,” Monroe said.

She said, when working as a journalist, she encounters people who have had terrible experiences, and they are drawn to true crime.

Monroe said women can consume something as scary as true crime from a safe place.

“I think there’s certainly maybe an aspect of that is the desire to kind of master fear through information or knowledge,” she said. “I mean, this is certainly a big thing for me. Like, this is how I deal with everything that scares me as I’ve tried to intellectualize it or read a bunch of books about it.”

Monroe said the genre is a marketing category that dehumanizes perpetrators and makes them out to be superhuman.

She said Ted Bundy’s representation is an example that explains the concept.

“[Ted Bundy] gets described as this incredibly brilliant charismatic,” Monroe said. “You know, just like a strategic figure . . . the more you look at him, how he actually was, [he] was not that good looking. Certainly not that smart, you know, like malicious, deeply harmful, but not some sort of like, super or subhuman.”

Monroe mentioned in her book how a Tumblr fandom rose up around the Columbine killers and they called themselves “Columbiners.”

In 1999, seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot and killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. before killing themselves according to an April 20, 2004 Slate article.

Monroe said it’s interesting that the “Columbiners” were made up of young girls.

ACADEMIC SENATE

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higher education institutions.

The resolution is in response to Florida House Bill 999, a pending legislation revising academic and research excellence standards for preeminent state research universities, according to a Florida Senate webpage.

“This is, simply put, a breathtaking attempt to seize control of the curriculum and research at all of Florida’s public institutes of higher learning,” said Rachael French, member of Academic Senate and department chair of biological sciences. “The Governor of Florida intends to destroy academic freedom, tenure and shared governance.”

During the meeting, a proposal was made for the creation of an Academic Freedom Committee that is separate from the Board

DAY OF ACTION

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a text chain for updates from the local chapter of Students

Demand Action, Moms Demand Action’s student-led counterpart.

“It is really important that you stay involved and continue to take action because all of our voices matter,” Blitchok said. “The louder our voices get, the more people will pay attention and by people I mean lawmakers.”

Iris Schmidt, SJSU Students

Demand Action president, said one of the biggest ways students

of Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility.

The goal of the proposed committee is to have a smaller board with easier access to membership in charge of monitoring academic freedom and education. It would also advise the SJSU community on policies that protect their academic freedom.

Another policy recommendation proposed during the meeting was an amendment to the criteria to promote faculty.

The amendment would require a formal performance review before any candidate can request consideration for tenure. It would also limit early tenure to two years.

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can help reduce gun violence in the U.S. is by educating themselves and voting.

“When students are educated on what gun policies can do, they can make the best informed decision to protect the community,” Schmidt said.

The event also featured a number of opportunities for student engagement, including interactive murals, crafting activities and informational booths.

The murals, created by SJSU Master of Fine Arts alum John Contreras, was a set of two blank canvases with the questions

“What are the solutions to gun violence?” and “What are the causes of gun violence?” painted

“If you look at the more famous serial killer groupies up there, [serial killers] are often sort of looked at as these objects [where] people kind of gawk at them as these curiosities but they often have backgrounds of like being victimized themselves,” Monroe said. “You know, this is some sort of trauma response.”

Monroe said there is a part of human life that finds pleasure in exploring something scary, especially when the bad guy gets locked up as a villain.

“I think it’s pleasurable,” she said. “I think there is something that there’s like a dark pleasure to the human psyche that wants to know about deviance and taboo.”

Monroe said guilt can come out of getting pleasure from somebody else’s pain but it’s okay that there is discomfort.

She said the downside of true crime

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in bold, black letters. Markers were set out for attendees to write their answers in the blank spaces.

“Promoting this conversation and actually seeing peoples’ handwriting… it’s very humanizing and everyone deserves to be heard,” Contreras said.

Some common attendees’ responses for solutions included background checks, gun control and education.

On the canvas representing the causes, attendees wrote answers including racism, mental health, pigs with guns and gun culture. The ‘Soul Boxes’ table provided another opportunity

communities is that they forget the real people who are involved and talk about cases as if it’s a television show.

“They just spin out these theories or accuse people or intervene in kind of shocking ways, as if they don’t recognize that this is happening to real people,” she said.

Monroe said some people treat real cases like an episode of “Law and Order” where people meet all of the suspects and decide who the bad guy is.

She said the Delphi murders were two young girls, Abigail Williams and Libby German, who were murdered in Delphi, Ind. in 2017.

The case was relevant on social media because the killer was captured in a photo on the girls’ Snapchat story and there was an audio recording of him speaking.

Monroe said people get identified by the internet as suspects and picked apart, and then, when the investigation ends, it’s someone the internet has never heard of before.

“These people who have kind of been seized on as suspects have really gone through it and [true crime consumers] will often focus on like, often completely irrationally based on no evidence at all,” she said.

Monroe said it’s dangerous to interact with true crime as entertainment because it’s heavily consumed.

She said it shapes what a lot of people think is true and people’s attitudes about crime.

“There are some indications that people who watch more crime programming tend to assume that crime is going up in their area, even when that is not actually true,” she said.

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for people to be hands-on.

At the table, attendees were provided with a piece of paper and instructions on how to fold it into a box in 15 minutes.

“The idea is, like, every 15 minutes someone dies as a victim of gun violence,” Schmidt said. “In the 15 minutes it takes you to make that box, you’re honoring an individual whose life has been lost.”

The task was inspired by the Soul Box Project, a non-profit organization based in Oregon which encourages the use of art to bring awareness to deaths by gun violence in the U.S., according to its website.

Justice studies junior Vanessa Martinez said she attended

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the event because she is very aware of the prevalent mass and school shootings in the U.S.

“I’m a justice studies major so it’s something that we talk about a lot,” Martinez said. “I think it’s really important for people to get educated about it and I just think that it should be spoken of more.”

RAINIER DE FORT-MENARES | SPARTAN DAILY San Jose State political science professor and Academic Senate member Kenneth

Peter addresses the A.S. President Nina Chuang’s sense of senate resolution.

SCREENSHOT BY CHRISTINE TRAN

Author and journalist Rachel Monroe speaks to “The Ethical Dimensions of Our Engagement with ‘True Crime’” webinar participants on Thursday.

Mahan breaks ground on new site

EDITOR

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan addressed the city’s houselessness issue, announcing the groundbreaking construction of the Monterey/Branham emergency interim housing site on Thursday in south San Jose.

The project, a three-story prefabricated building located at the corner of Branham Lane and Monterey Road, is the largest interim housing site with 204 rooms, providing shelter for 612 people annually.

Mahan said the project, costing about $70 million, will be finished and scheduled to open in April 2024.

“This is not a one-off site,” he said. “This is part of a strategy that Mayor Liccardo really brought forward in partnership with the council and the housing department in great operators,”

Former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who planned the Branham/ Monterey site for District 2 in 2021, said this is the first time the city works on a multi-level project to address the houselessness issue.

“It is gonna enable us to use our land more efficiently to help more people, to bring more people off the street and provide more of

our unsheltered residents, a pathway of permanent housing, which we know is the ultimate goal,” he said.

Liccardo also said when he started planning on the site, the then-councilmember Mahan supported the project from its very beginning.

“It’s really important that these sites be integrated into the fabric of the neighborhood,” Mahan said. “We don’t want these to just be closed off walled gardens. We want these interim housing sites to be part of the neighborhood, part of the community.”

The Monterey/Branham emergency interim housing site is the sixth project the city developed to address the unhoused resident crisis.

Mahan said during the first two years of the pandemic, the city built five sites: Mabury Road, Felipe Avenue, Monterey/Bernal and Rue Ferrari, providing over 400 individual units, some of which serve entire families.

He also said 72% of the people who entered one of those five sites remained in stable housing after one year.

Jacky Morales-Ferrand, the director of the housing department for San Jose, said 15,124 people have been placed in temporary interim shelters since 2020.

“We’ve created a system here in the county where

we are all working together to leverage our resources to expand and improve the overall system that is responding to our homeless crisis,” she said.

However, the San Jose houselessness issue is far from being addressed.

Morales-Ferrand said it is important to keep working on housing because, for every person the city houses, 1.7 people become houseless.

This means that for every unhoused person receiving a shelter, almost two people enter in houselessness.

“We need to continue to support people who are already living in housing and

apartments, strong tenant protections, prevention and eviction programs to keep people housed,” she said. “So that we can continue to reduce the number of people who are falling into homelessness.”

Sergio Jimenez, San Jose councilmember for District 2, said he is proud of how his district and his team have taken a leadership role in helping solve the housing crisis for the unhoused.

“Today there are no protests. Today you don’t see people here complaining with signs saying they don’t want this to happen. I think largely because they’ve discovered

what we’ve discovered at the city,” he said. “We’re at a crisis level here. We need to do something and doing nothing just isn’t an option anymore.”

The new site will be the third one opening in District 2.

Jimenez said the other two emergency interim housing sites opened in 2020, Rue Ferrari and Bernal/ Monterey, have a total of 196 units to provide shelter to unhoused residents.

Once the site will open in April 2024, LifeMoves, an organization offering support to interim housing programs, will provide

support services and case management.

LifeMoves CEO Aubrey Merriman said the Monterey/Branham housing community will provide resources and services to move unhoused neighbors to permanent housing.

“We know that we have the ultimate privilege and responsibility to ensure that the streets no longer continue to be the waiting room for our unhoused neighbors,” he said. “And this is something that we take seriously.”

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Author turns anxiety into success

By Christine Tran STAFF WRITER

Morra Aarons-Mele, author of “The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower,” discussed how understanding mental health can be a strength for success on Thursday during a webinar.

She is the host of the “Anxious Achiever” podcast for LinkedIn Presents, LinkedIn’s podcast network, and was named one of Linkedin’s top 10 voices in mental health in 2022, according to the SJSU Alumni webinar.

Aarons-Mele said the first thing she wanted participants to look at the mental health challenge they may have from a different perspective.

“Often we think about mental health in a really, really stigmatized and scary and

negative way,” she said. “And mental health is scary, I know this myself but when we look our scary fears in the face then we manage it.”

Aarons-Mele also said she wanted webinar participants to learn sitting in discomfort because it’s an essential leadership skill today.

“It takes courage to face our demons…unless we talk about anxiety, depression, OCD, bipolar disorder, even ADHD and how it shows up for us, we will not move through,” she said.

Aarons-Mele said anxiety is a powerful contributor to how people act and how they work, but it isn’t talked about enough because of shame.

“Even though my podcast is really successful and it has a big audience, it’s hard for me to get executives to come on the

record with me and talk about their mental illness,” she said. “I think they worry their stock price might tank if they expose the vulnerability. And all of this happens because successful people typically hide how they feel.”

Aarons-Mele said this is because old models of leadership taught that when people appear anxious and need help, it’s a sign of weakness and others will view them differently.

“We’re all feeling vulnerable and so we need new models of leadership and new models of talking about it,” she said.

Aarons-Mele brought up Abraham Lincoln as an example of a powerful leader who struggled with his mental health. She said it was a wellknown fact that Lincoln had depression and anxiety.

“You know, Lincoln from a very young age, asked for help.

He had friends who took him in,” she said. “He had people that he could lean on. He had friends and colleagues later when he was in the White House, who would hide razors from him because he had suicidal ideation.”

Aarons-Mele continued by saying the former U.S. President was one of the greatest leaders because his anxiety made him an empathetic leader.

This empathy allowed him to connect with people in the Civil War including widows, grieving parents and soldiers.

“Great leaders know themselves. What do I have to do with Lincoln? Not much . . . But when you understand your anxiety, and what it’s telling you, when you learn to leverage it, I do believe that it can be a leadership superpower. It may not feel like it now but anxiety can enhance those leadership skills,” she said.

Aarons-Mele said she thinks very few clinicians would ever call anxiety a superpower and she is not calling it a superpower by itself.

“We don’t feel in control so anxiety is kind of everywhere. How could it not be? And anxiety is a stress response, it’s a response to a perceived threat. It’s an ancient emotion,” she said.

Aarons-Mele said anxiety has kept people alive because it teaches them about threats to avoid.

“And that’s why you can think of a moment when you’re about to do something you really care about or you’re on a deadline or you’re about to give a talk or something that matters to you is about to happen and you feel that rush of anxiety,” she said.

Alessio Cavalca MANAGING

NATHAN CANILAO | SPARTAN DAILY

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan talks at a press conference about a new construction project to combat houselessness in San Jose.

GRAPHIC BY CAROLYN BROWN

Academic senate talks new policies

By Vanessa Tran A&E EDITOR

San Jose State’s Academic Senate held a meeting Monday afternoon in room 285 of the engineering building, where it unanimously passed a resolution to honor and recognize a day of remembrance.

The sense of senate resolution would also have the university build a mural outside Yoshihiro Uchida Hall as a memoriam to the Japanese American citizens affected by SJSU, where they were incarcerated in the hall named after Uchida.

The third part of the resolution includes the creation of a statue on campus dedicated to the incarceration of Japanese American students.

The resolution passing means San Jose State will officially recognize its involvement in the forced removal and incarceration of local Japanese Americans during Executive Order 9066. Associate Students. President Nina Chuang introduced the idea of having an annual day of remembrance, a constructed mural in front of Yoshihiro Uchida Hall and a statue that honors Japanese Americans affected by the university.

“In this resolution, not only do we document this history, we also highlight individuals, individuals who were incarcerated, processed and returned back to San Jose State to serve our students,” Chuang said. She said the resolution recognizes how important it is as an institution to move forward and promote change in a system that wasn’t designed for everyone.

Kenneth Peter, member of the Academic Senate and political science professor, said he recognizes all of the good work SJSU has done for over 100 years, but he wants to acknowledge some of the wrongs

they have done.

“This is the first opportunity that I think we have had here to acknowledge this university’s role and one of the greatest violations of civil rights in our community,” Peter said. “And it has relevance not only to apologize and atone for the bad things that were involved with that violation, but to remind us that this is continuing work.”

He said the first step toward reconciliation is telling the truth.

“Not only is it one of the most important resolutions that I’ve ever seen, a student senator breathing, it’s one of the most important resolutions that has ever come before this academic center,” Peter said.

Victoria Taketa, SJSU alumna and former Japantown Neighborhood Association president, was one of the community members invited to the Academic Senate meeting.

“I look at the courageous stand that the Academic Senate will take in supporting this proclamation today,” Taketa said. “Because it’s about taking a look at responsibility and our culpability in terms of silencing, omitting, marginalizing communities from participating.”

She said while she was a student at SJSU, she took a Black studies class that helped her learn about a history that was kept from her education.

Taketa said the class inspired her to document the lost history of Asian Americans in the U.S.

“I came to San Jose to fight for redress and reparations for my parents and for all Japanese Americans,” she said. “This resolution will bring a measure of healing that the Japanese Americans deserve and which the broader community can also benefit.”

Chuang said the document holds SJSU accountable in taking the proper steps to repair the lost history

and voices of Japanese Americans.

“This resolution recognizes how important it is for us as an institution to move forward in our change in the system that wasn’t designed for us,” she said.

She thanked the Japantown community members who visited the meeting and assisted in writing the resolution.

Peter said this solution is the first he’s ever seen that has been so thoroughly researched, presented and important.

“I think it’s really a historic day that the official voice of faculty and students of San Jose State University acknowledged the horrors of what happened here in 1942,” he said. “If 10 and 15 years from now, I walked by Yoshida Hall and I see a mural at

a memorial that reminds everybody of one of the worst chapters in the history of San Jose State – and I see that this is still a university that practices academic freedom and protects the voices of everybody, then I’ll be happy.”

La Donna Yumori-Kaku, SJSU alumna and Sequoia Japanese American Citizens League member, said it was nice to see the university make the movement forward toward the right direction. She said other educational systems might recognize what SJSU is doing and teach their own institutions.

“I want to say maybe San Jose State is setting the precedent because there are other schools and university that don’t recognize a day

of remembrance,” she said.

Yumori-Kaku said there needs to be an active Asian community to realize that our history needs to be corrected because it wasn’t written.

Chuang said one of the points of the resolution is the creation of an educational day of remembrance to educate the SJSU community.

“So this resolution not only documents that history, it puts it at the forefront of what we do,” Chuang said. “At the end of the day, any student of this university has the right to know what happened at this system – who walked on these streets before we did.”

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Santa Clara county awarded $11 million grant

By Nathan Canilao EXECUTIVE EDITOR

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced on Monday that a $11,109,104 grant will be awarded to the Santa Clara County Continuum of Care coalition.

The Continuum of Care coalition is a broad group of shareholders that include local government boards along with private shareholders tasked to tackle the issue of houselessness in Santa Clara County.

During an official announcement at the County of Santa Clara Department of Planning and Development building, HUD regional administrator Jason Pu said the grant will help combating houselessness in Santa Clara County.

“This funding initiative is a first of its kind package of resources that includes both grants and special housing vouchers to help communities provide both housing and supportive services to people experiencing homelessness in unsheltered and rural settings,” Pu said.

Santa Clara County is one of 75 communities in the U.S. receiving a federal grant since the launch of the program in February.

The number of houseless individuals in the county was 10,028, and 6,739 of those individuals claimed San Jose as their residing city, according to a report from Santa Clara County, Pu said over $5.4 million of the grant will be used to combat houselessness in San Jose over the next three years.

Among the speakers in

attendance was San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

Mahan said housing the unhoused is bigger than providing affordable housing.

“We know that the longer that we allow people to languish in homelessness, the worse their outcomes are, and the harder it is to get treatment,” he said.

“For chronic illness, to get job training to hold down a job, It’s nearly impossible to do any of the things that most of us take for granted.”

Pu said the grant is a big part of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s initiative to decrease houselessness by 25% by 2025.

Susan Ellenberg, Santa Clara County board president, said $3.1 million of the grant will go to the Rapid Rehousing program.

Rapid Rehousing is a program for individuals looking for housing who recently became houseless because of unfavorable circumstances.

“Through an innovative partnership between the office of supportive housing and affordable housing developers, the project has access to a pipeline of rapid rehousing units at newly constructed affordable housing developments,” Ellenberg said. “Participants who choose to live in one of these newly developed sites will have the ability to transition in place and retain their housing once the project assistance ends.”

One of the biggest supporters of the grant is Preston Prince, the executive director of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority.

Prince said one of the backbones that have been key in solving the houselessness crisis has been having people with lived experiences come back to work in programs focused on addressing the issue.

“Our communities have been really strong leading with lived experience,” Prince said. “There are groups of people who are formally and currently homeless who are out in the encampments every single week, engaging in alongside more traditional outreach teams and helping people to get off the streets to have the basic essentials that they need to survive while they’re outdoors.”

Pu said these resources will ultimately help the county address houselessness, while also giving the unhoused the resources

they need to get back on their feet.

“These funds will enable San Jose and Santa Clara County to advance the goals of the community’s plan to end homelessness,” Pu said. “It will help to expand the supportive housing system to provide more housing resources to have shelter tools and to reduce the length of time needed to resolve their homelessness. This award will therefore complement and enhance the city and counties existing and ongoing efforts to address and solve homelessness throughout the community.”

RAINIER DE FORT-MENARES | SPARTAN DAILY

RAINIER DE FORT-MENARES | SPARTAN DAILY

Executive director of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority Preston Prince (left), HUD regional administrator Jason Pu (center) and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan speak to the media about an $11 million dollar grant awarded to Santa Clara County on Monday morning at the county office.

Victoria Taketa, SJSU alumna and former Japantown Neighborhood Association president speaks at the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering Building on Monday.

Spartans sweep UNLV at home

By Nathan Canilao EXECUTIVE EDITOR

The San Jose State baseball team swept University of Nevada, Las Vegas in a three-game series over the weekend at home at Excite Ballpark.

The Spartans defeated the Rebels by an average margin of 5 runs per game.

SJSU took the first game of the series on Friday 6-2 bolstered by a big performance from outfielder Jeriah Lewis.

Lewis finished the game going 2 for 4 while recording a three-run homer in the second inning.

Spartans’ senior pitcher Jonathan Clark pitched 6 ⅔ innings and allowed just two runs while striking out three batters.

Senior pitchers Jack White and Darren Jansen closed the game out and combined to allow no runs while striking out five total batters.

After Lewis’ homer in the second inning, SJSU brought in two runners in the third inning to take a 5-1 lead. The Rebels didn’t recover and the Spartans came away with a firstgame win.

After the game, SJSU head coach Brad Sanfilippo said pitching from the bullpen was the reason the Spartans took the game.

“Jonathan Clark gave us a great start,” Sanfilippo said. “Jack White was handed the ball for two [innings] and Darren Jansen finished it. I think our pitching really led the way.”

Similar to Friday’s game, SJSU’s solid pitching along with constant at-bats led to a 7-3 win over UNLV.

Junior third baseman Dalton Bowling batted 3 for 5 and recorded

3 RBIs. Junior outfielder Robert Hamchuk batted 2 for 5 while recording 3 RBIs.

Junior pitcher Micky Thompson pitched 6 innings and gave 4 hits and 3 earned runs.

The Spartans put themselves in a 3-0 hole early in the game as the Rebels took a three-run lead in the second inning.

SJSU fought its way back and cut the UNLV deficit to just a run in the fifth inning after Bowling knocked in Hamchuk on an RBI single.

The Spartans took the lead after Hamchuk scored junior catcher

Matt Spear on an RBI single to take a 4-3 lead in the eighth inning. This was the start of a 5-run eighth inning for the Spartans that led to the win. Sanfilippo said that he was proud of how the team responded after going down 2-0 early.

“I was really proud of our guys not to give in and to just find a way to win,” he said.

To close out the series, the Spartans pounced on the Rebels to seal the series with a 10-3 win.

Senior outfielder Jack Colette batted 3 for 5 while recording 3 RBIs and a triple.

Four different pitchers entered the contest for the Spartans. Pitchers Keaton Chase, Jesse Gutierrez, Joey Cammarata and Jack White combined for 9 strikeouts, 3 earned runs and a walk.

UNLV took the lead in the top of the first inning, scoring 2 runs to take a 2-0 lead. The Spartans quickly tied the game in the bottom of the inning after Charles McAdoo hit a solo homer to center field.

SJSU took control in the fourth

inning as it scored four consecutive runs to take a commanding 6-2 lead which let the Spartans cruise the rest of the game.

The Spartans are scheduled to play in a doubleheader at 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday against Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. These games are a makeup from a postponed game on Feb. 20.

COURTESY OF SJSU ATHLETICS

SJSU Pitcher Micky Thompson celebrates with catcher Matt Spears after a scored run during Saturday’s game against UNLV.

Follow Nathan Canilao on Twitter @nathancanilao

Luna y Sol brings light to SJ

#1: B. Mao, the owner for Toasty Tailor, runs a small clothing shop in his 1951 Chevy Kurbside van at Luna y Sol on Friday.

#2: Fremont native Francine-Teresa Capati looks through a rack of clothes at one of the tents.

#3: Watsonville Mexican singer Gabi Bravo sings in Spanish and English at the pop up.

#4: Steven Alcantara, the owner and a San Jose State alumnus from 2009, exchanges clothes and cash with customers.

PHOTOS BY ALINA

TA | SPARTAN DAILY

Waterparks dive into sensitive topics

By Jillian Darnell OPINION EDITOR

Listening to Waterparks’s new album, “Intellectual Property,” exploded my ears and expanded my mind.

Indie rock trio Waterparks dropped their fifth studio album on Friday, containing 11 tracks that drip with aggression and intensity.

Lead singer Awsten Knight crafted the concept based on his battles with religious guilt and hypersexual themes, according to a Thursday interview with the Zach Sang Show.

Although they’re two contrasting ideas, he manages to mesh them together well in this album.

In his interview with Sang, Knight said his relationship with religion has been confusing and changing over time, but he explores methods of coping and spirituality in this album.

Knight’s complex lyrics paired with insane production offers a punk-introspective take.

The album starts off with “ST*RFUCKER,” which references Waterpark’s 2019 album “FANDOM” that talked about fans who want to sleep with their favorite artists, but forget they’re actual people.

In the first verse of the song, listeners are introduced to Knight’s difficult journey with religion.

“Jesus Christ won’t text me back …/ It’s been a pleasure, It’s nice to meet you/ Maybe I’m a soul-sucker/ But you’re just a starfucker.”

Each song dives deeper into a spiraling mentality and uses crazy instrumentals to evoke the feeling of his messy mental state.

The fourth song, “BRAINWASHED,” is about being so obsessed with a lover, to the point where they’re stuck in your brain all the time.

Knight goes into “simp” culture in the lyrics, “I’m see-through, need you/ Why do I think you’re so cool/

Rating:

Everything’s clean except for my thoughts/ Thinkin’ about me gettin’ you off/ It’s been a week, I’m still at your house.”

According to Dictionary. com, simp is “a slang insult for men who are seen as too attentive and submissive to women, especially out of a failed hope of winning some entitled sexual attention or activity from them.”

I appreciate Knight’s vulnerability and transparency

Artist: Waterparks Release Date: April 14, 2023

Genre: Alternative

about his intrusive thoughts. Although he dresses it up with soft acoustics, he admits to being overly obsessed with a person.

On the other hand, “RITUAL,” is a song that’ll stick with me forever.

Knight took me by surprise with the introduction, “What if I want to have sex before I get married?/ Well, I guess you just have to be prepared to die.”

In the first verse, “Build a bomb shelter, bite a belt for the stress/ Never knowin’ what’s next, next,” Knight portrayed the weight of religious guilt compelling young adults to anticipate the worst to come.

As someone with religious generational trauma, this verse was heavily relatable. Organized church and religion has the ability to traumatize children with regret for

acting outside secular beliefs.

The lyrics that haunt me the most are, “My inner child needs a bulletproof vest and a phone that can’t text/ And twenty years rest/ Build a bomb shelter, bite a belt for the stress/ Never knowin’ what’s next, next/ Sleepin’ with my clothes on in case shit goes wrong.”

With these lyrics, it’s evident Knight wants to heal his inner child that has been affected deeply by the sins and repentance of religion.

Although there were some very intuitive and thoughtprovoking tracks on the album, some fell flat and I feel inclined to skip them every time.

“FUCK ABOUT IT,” featuring blackbear, doesn’t match the overall theme of the album. His uninspiring lyrics didn’t move me like the other songs did.

This song reminded me of an

ILLUSTRATION BY HANNAH GREGORIC

immature teenager who can’t establish boundaries and ends up using sex to cope instead of communicating their feelings.

While this album tackles sensitive issues, I wish there was more nuance throughout it like the album “FANDOM.”

Waterparks has a history of stepping out of their audience’s comfort zone and pushing the boundaries of their music.

I’d like to see more variety of music in their records as they’ve promised beforehand.

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