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SJSU ranked for engaged voters
By Sofia Hill STAFF WRITER
Last month, San José State University was recognized by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge as one of the Most Engaged Campuses for College Student Voting of 2024, according to a post on SJSU’s Instagram page.
Colleges and universities can be get recognized with this title by making deliberate nonpartisan endeavors to grow the number of students voting and increase political engagement on their campuses, according to the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge’s webpage.
Dr. Mary Currin-Percival, Ph.D., a political science professor at SJSU, worked directly on the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge and wrote the report for SJSU in an effort to get the school to gain this recognition.
The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge webpage states that colleges and universities must also take four actions to meet ALL IN’s recognition criteria.
The first action to gain recognition is for a campus to join the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.
“I enrolled SJSU in the ALL IN Challenge and, through my role as the Campus Civic and Voter Empowerment Coordinator (CVEC) and the Director of SJSU Votes, helped to organize efforts to meet the ALL In Campus Democracy Challenge,” Currin-Percival said.
The second requirement was for campuses to share information from SJSU’s 2022 National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) Reports.
Currin-Percival said she shared SJSU’s 2022 NSLVE report with ALL IN, which fulfilled the second requirement.
According to the 2022 NSLVE, SJSU had a higher voting rate than the average of all institutions in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
involvement and democratic engagement to ALL IN.
“This plan included civic engagement efforts on campus, as reported by the SCVEA Committee (Student Civic and Voter Empowerment Action Plan), as well as voting engagement plans for 20242026. It also summarized the extensive voter registration, mobilization, and education efforts in fall 2024 led primarily by SJSU Votes and the amazing
Currin-Percival said that SJSU met the final requirements in September of 2024, after getting SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson to successfully sign the commitment.
“It is an honor to achieve this and I know we are all proud of the work we did to earn this. It is accurate to say that SJSU is a Most Engaged Campus and we look forward to continuing this effort in the future,” Currin-Percival said.
It was so great to see that so many people showed up to vote on campus despite the time that it took because it showed that people truly cared about their vote and this democracy. I think it’s very well deserved.
Audreena Javid Third-year SJSU business management student
Currin-Percival said she’s eager to see the data that comes out of the 2024 NSLVE.
In 2020 during the last presidential election, SJSU’s voting rate was 76% compared to the 66% institutional average according to the 2022 NSLVE.
The third action to be taken was to create and turn in a plan of nonpartisan voter
students working on the SJSU Votes initiative,” CurrinPercival said.
The fourth and final requirement was for campuses to get the signatures of their presidents on ALL IN’s Higher Education Presidents’ Commitment to Full Student Voter Participation to complete the criteria and gain recognition.
Audreena Javid a third-year business management student who is on SJSU’s mock trial executive board.
“As somebody who is interested in law I think it is a really good thing that younger generations are becoming more involved in politics and that Gen Z in general is making the effort to show up and turn out,”
Javid said.
In 2020, according to the NSLVE, it said that 76% out of the 33,611 students enrolled at SJSU cast a vote. According to this data, this means that around 25,544 SJSU students voted that year.
“It was so great to see that so many people showed up to vote on campus despite the time that it took because it showed that people truly cared about their vote and this democracy. I think it’s very well deserved,” Javid said.
Melinda Jackson, a political science professor at SJSU for nearly 20 years, said that this is the most involvement she’s ever seen.
“The Most Engaged Campus designation from the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge is a well-deserved recognition of our commitment to democratic participation at SJSU,” Jackson said.
In 2022, SJSU’s voting rate was 35% compared to the institutional average of 30.6%, with the lowest campuses having a voting rate of 4%, according to the NSLVE.
“As a campus community, we come from a wide range of backgrounds, life experiences, and political perspectives, but learning how to talk and listen to each other with patience and respect is one of the most important aspects of our educational mission,” said Jackson.
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City council talks transportation
By Israel Archie STAFF WRITER
San José Mayor Matt Mahan offered some insight on the current condition of the city’s public transportation services during a city council meeting on Tuesday.
Mahan mainly addressed transportation issues centered around the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
“We are all marching as fast as possible to secure a full funding grant agreement by the end of next year which is a very involved process and is a lot of good work being done by VTA staff,” Mahan said.
VTA is an independent special district that provides sustainable means of transportation and is exclusive to Santa Clara County, according to its web page.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is a
government agency that plans, finances and coordinates transportation throughout the nine counties in the Bay Area, according to the agency’s web page.
“The highest priority for VTA is the delivery of the second phase of the BART to Silicon Valley extension which will be a transformative project for our city,” Mahan said.
Mahan said VTA’s plan to continue to work on an extension between Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Silicon Valley will include three new underground stations at Little Portugal, Downtown San José and the San José Diridon Station.
BART is a public transit system that connects the city of San Francisco to other parts of the Bay Area, according to its web page.
Mahan said while there are some challenges concerning the completion of this project, he still remains optimistic about seeing it be finished in the future.
“We have a
significant change in the administration in Washington (D.C.) and a substantial funding gap of about $700 million that still needs to be filled, but I am very optimistic given the level of creativity and collaboration from VTA staff, city staff and other key partners that we are going to
Bay Area’s transportation system, including BART and Caltrain, are still struggling with ridership recovery.
“We’re facing a really significant fiscal cliff for many of our transit agencies in the coming years,” Mahan said.
transit transformation to increase ridership and sustain the system,” he said.
Mahan, VTA board supervisor Cindy Chavez, supervisor-elect Margaret Abe-Koga and general manager Carolyn Gonot wrote a letter to Metro Transportation Commission.
an amount that the board deems fair and reasonable within the Metro Transportation Commission’s action plan “Transit Transformation.”
being mayor, Mahan
The Metro Transportation Commission is working on resolving this issue looking for voter approval on a
In the letter, Mahan,
close that gap,” Mahan said. In addition to Mahan also currently serves on the VTA board of directors
as the vice chairperson, according to the board’s web page.
Mahan said federal relief funding will soon expire and public transit agencies that are critical parts of the
region-wide revenue measure. Mahan said this will provide relief from the fiscal cliff and fund regional transit in turn increasing ridership.
,, Chavez,
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“The intent would be to provide fiscal cliff relief as well as fund regional
He said the VTA board has been engaging with different state legislators, including California State Senators Scott Wiener, Aisha Wahab and Dave Cortese, because revenue measures need state legislative authorization.
Senator Cortese was present at City Hall and explained more details on what the revenue measure can mean for transportation in the Bay Area.
Abe-Ko ga and Gonot
Abe-Koga and Gonot stated that Santa Clara County would opt into a regional measure process by having their own separate revenue measure.
The revenue measure would contribute
“Our ability to stand together (and) my ability to raise these issues ultimately in the committee and on the floor helped slow down last year’s measure,” Cortese said. “But you can tell I’m nervous about our ability to do that again without really taking on the fight.”
San José Mayor Matt Mahan and City Councilmembers discuss issues of public transportation services during the monthly City Hall meeting on Tuesday afternoon.
ISRAEL ARCHIE | SPARTAN DAILY
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Students slurp ramen noodles at SU
By Sofia Hill STAFF WRITER
Students wound down and warmed up for finals week with free ramen and a festive virtual fire.
San José State students gathered in the Student Union on Tuesday afternoon in meeting rooms 4A and 4B for a free instant ramen station and school supplies while listening to Christmas music.
The Student Union staff
Cali Tran, a third-year senior design studies student, said she was stressed out, tired and hungry prior to the event.
“I’m glad that I was able to catch a breath and take a moment,” Tran said.
This Friday on Dec. 6 is the final day of instruction until finals start to begin on the upcoming Monday.
The ramen station included hot water dispensers, a seasoning bar and a variety of instant ramen cups separated by spice level; extra spicy, spicy
preparing for finals week, according to a Nov. 20 post on Instagram.
Many students appear to enjoy both the event and the ramen. Some came in and out, just grabbing a bowl to-go, and others sat down and took their time to decompress.
The meeting room also projected a video of a festive Christmas fireplace, while light instrumental Christmas music played in the background to help create a peaceful atmosphere.
Alondra Diaz, a fourth-year international business student, went to the event and had ramen
Diaz said the event helped them both de-stress and cure their hunger together.
“We were passing by and we saw the poster of it (the ramen station), and then we were like, ‘Oh, well, we have time. Let’s go eat,’ ” Diaz said.
Chicken, shrimp, tonkatsu and vegetarian ramen options were available for students to enjoy.
Yuti Laturkar, a engineering management grad student and student assistant for the Student Union, helped students
check-in for the event.
College students who
meals and failing to remember to eat, according
A lot of students, including me, we are too busy with our schedules, our projects, exams and all of that. It’s not very time-friendly to cook at your place and come back and eat.
Yuti Laturkar Engineering management graduate student
are stressed and busy are susceptible to skipping
to an April 19, 2023 article by the Washburn Review.
“A lot of students, including me, we are too busy with our schedules, our projects, submissions, exams and all of that,” Laturkar said.
“It’s not very time-friendly to cook at your place and come back and eat.”
On top of the food offered were supplies for finals week such as greenbooks, bluebooks, scantrons, pencils and erasers.
Around 35% of surveyed students across UCs and CSUs said they could not afford textbooks and school supplies, according
to a Sept. 12, 2019 article from CalMatters.
“You need events in your university as well because, you know, you (students) always hang out with your friends outside of the university,” Laturkar said.
“If there’s something inside the university, you could get your project mates or you could come with anyone who studies with you in the university to bond more with them.”
Father John Misty misses the mark
By Anahi Herrera Villanueva STAFF WRITER
When it was first announced that Father John Misty would be dropping his sixth studio album “Mahashmashana” I was excited to dive into the new songs but I am left wanting more.
Josh Tillman, most commonly known as Father John Misty and a previous drummer of the music band Fleet Foxes, released “Mahashmashana” on Nov. 22, according to a Nov. 23 KAXE article.
Mahashmashana translates to “great cremation ground” in Sanskrit, according to a Nov. 23 NPR article.
He revealed that it may be his last album in spirit, which I interpreted as a change of style that I felt was present throughout this entire album, according to the same NPR article..
For an album with only eight songs and lasting around 50 minutes, this felt like an eternity and it did
includes a soft melody showcasing guitar and piano notes throughout the entirety of this song.
The calm tone with a hint of a theatrical feel took me back to previous work like “Nancy from Now On” from his 2012 “Fear From” album, which was the first song that I listened to from this artist.
attention during my drive and helped me not snooze while I was surrounded by dirt fields was “She Cleans Up.”
With an upbeat and rock tempo following the entirety of this song, it jolted me up from my hyperfocus on the road and was a sure contrast to “Mahashmashana."
There is no doubt to me that Father John Misty is a talented artist. However, the songs that didn’t stand out to me just outweighed the songs which made it hard for me to like this album as a whole.
not help that I listened to it during a long and boring drive.
Starting off the album with the title, “Mahashmashana”
“Mahashmashana” was a good introduction to this album but only a few other songs stood out to me.
A song that caught my
The songs in between were not memorable, mostly having a slowtempo feel that I listened to on the fifth track in this
album, “Screamland.”
It started like the previous songs with a slow soft tempo with mostly piano and violin focus in the beginning.
Then, the song transitioned to early 2000s dad rock like what you would see straight out of the movie “Transformers” in 2007 during the refrain part of the lyrics.
I remember spewing out “What is going on?” when I realized the switch-up of melody followed the rest of the song which to me didn’t fit well with the tune the song held in the beginning.
Following the track “Screamland,” the next song “Being You” was another one of the few songs in this album that I enjoyed.
With lyrics like “And I wonder what it’s like, I wonder what it’s like to be you,” paired with a jazzy tone of a saxophone and violin created the perfect palette cleanser. This song also reminded
me of his previous song “Buddy’s Rendezvous" from the 2022 album “Chloë and
“Mahashmashana” and the other was “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All.” With a little bit of a disco feel, “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All.” had a nice change in the beginning of the song.
The majority of the songs held slow string instruments while this one focused on the use of drums and saxophone.
“I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All.” had a storytelling aspect that kept me captivated in the song and made those nine minutes fly by.
The album concluded with “Summer’s Gone” and the soft tone came back adding this song to the pile that just did not intrigue me. There is no doubt to me that Father John Misty is a talented artist. However, the songs that didn’t stand out
the Next 20th Century.”
The perfect mix of the saxophone and his voice throughout “Being You” can also be heard in “Buddy’s Rendezvous”.
Out of these eight songs, two songs in this album were beyond the nine-minute mark.
Initially, I just stared at the length thinking what song would need to be that long but after hearing both, I understood. One of those songs was
to me just outweighed the songs which made it hard for me to like this album as a whole.
Even though the album “Mahashmashana” is not one of my favorite album releases this year, Father John Misty is still an artist I will continue to listen to and tune into new albums he may release in the future.
SOFIA HILL | SPARTAN DAILY
SJSU students sit at tables and consume their individual bowls of instant noodles, such as Maruchan and tonkotsu, which were provided by the Student Union during its ramen station event for “Finals Fair” on Tuesday.
PHOTO BY FLICKR
Josh Tillman, better known as Father John Misty, drops his album
“Mahashmashana” on
GRAPHIC FROM CANVA
Watch out for the social media monster
By Saturn Williams STAFF WRITER
Frutiger Aero is a fascinating aesthetic to reflect on as a portrait of technological idealism in the early aughts.
Often splashed across Apple Mac desktops in the early 2000s with its aquatic and grassy motifs, this style envisioned harmony between nature and human machines.
On the horizon of a technological revolution, tech developers conjured images of the Internet as the ultimate democratization of knowledge with platforms to connect people from all over the world leading us to an altruistic and utopian future.
Almost a quarter of a century after programmers worried that computers worldwide would not process the turn of the millennium and decades after online social platforms were put forth by techno-utopianists such as Mark Zuckerberg, the optimistic visions feel quaint, to say the least.
There are a variety of emerging and buzzwordy explanations for why the Internet sucks now, such as the Dead Internet Theory. It suggests that the majority of Internet traffic is initiated by bots,
according to a January 16 Forbes article.
“Splinternet,” the idea that information and users online are sorted into isolated factions is another supposed existential threat to the integrity of the Internet, according to a June 14, 2023 MIT Sloan article.
But none of these theories quite get to the true problem at the center of it all – unchecked capitalism.
While all the world’s information is hypothetically a click away, the search engines that provide the gateway to such information have hampered the visibility of relevant and informative search results, according to a March 2024 Advances in Information Retrieval research article.
The Internet provides an avenue to connect with a diverse array of people in an unprecedented way, accumulating knowledge we otherwise never would have known.
One would think having access to a wider palette of experiences would make us more nuanced in how we approach others, but it feels like conversations have only gotten more polarized and antagonistic online.
This can be in part attributed to social media algorithms sorting people into “filter bubbles” where they are only fed content that aligns with their values, a 2022 Reuters Institute study describes.
How often have you found yourself endlessly scrolling through social
media, snapping out of it with the depressing realization that you just invested hours of your time into an activity that is wholly unproductive and leaves you feeling more and more unsatisfied with the dopamine hit you’re chasing?
This is a common experience for me, along with the 53% of Generation Z who said they “doom scroll” in a March 20 Morning Consult study.
Digital media companies design algorithms to maximize the amount of time a user spends on their platform, which generates revenue for the company through feeding users targeted ads and data broking, according to an April 20, 2023 Psychology Today article.
These algorithms unveil the ways the Internet has
transformed into a sinister landscape of surveillance capitalism.
Companies collect vast amounts of users’ personal information to observe, predict and manipulate human behavior in the pursuit of profit.
All of this data is funneled into the proverbial hands of a select few corporations such as Google, which controls around a quarter of all Internet traffic in North America, according to a 2013 Wired article.
This monopolization of information exchange and access by Google and other tech companies runs counter to the democratic ideals of the early Internet.
Google’s new “Generative AI Overview” search engine feature is powered by “Google Gemini,” the tech giant’s proprietary generative chatbot, according to a
May 24 The New York Times article.
The chatbot provides the immediate result of a search query in the form of a summary created by “AI” despite the tool’s storied propensity to confidently reply with inaccurate and biased results, according to the same article.
Among its litany of functional and ethical issues, calling these tools “AI” is a misnomer fueled by overzealous tech marketing pushes, as it anthropomorphizes and misrepresents what they actually are, machine learning algorithms.
The proliferation of these machine-learning algorithms have led to an increase in low-quality, machine-generated content from bot accounts on sites such as X (formerly Twitter).
In a July 30, 2023
Indiana University study identified over 1,000 bot accounts on X using stolen images and generative content to impersonate a human profile.
Millions of users are flocking to Bluesky, a social media site offering similar features to X in search of a better online experience free from X’s bot problems and polarization, according to a Nov. 16 The Guardian article.
Witnessing X’s exodus and the hope people are placing in its successor, I can’t help but reflect on the idealism of the early Internet and fear it’s another social media platform doomed to give in to seductive surveillance capitalist pitfalls.
Follow Saturn on X (formerly Twitter) @saturnwillorbit
GRAPHIC BY ANAHI HERRERA VILLANUEVA | SPARTAN DAILY
Instagram’s algorithm scares me
By Anfisa Pitchkhadze STAFF WRITER
The popular social media app Instagram is frequently used and often leaves individuals hooked to scrolling through their feed, reels, and explore page while also creating unsettling feelings about how the app tracks users interests.
Studies have shown that Instagram is considered the top invasive social media that after finding out the app collects 79% of its users personal data, according to an Mar. 18, 2021 Independent article.
For Instagram users, it may not come across their minds that their personal data is being kept for records as the social app is essentially spying on your interests.
A main factor why the social platform satisfies your interests is setting up algorithms, according to a June 8, 2021 Instagram article.
The app also uses the algorithms to rank different areas of the app you use depending on the usage, according to the same Instagram article.
This helps users like myself be attracted to scrolling the feed the social app provides.
Whenever I open up my Instagram app, I am always pleased by the content I see about the several topics that I am fond of such as football and basketball.
The explore page on Instagram examines the posts and videos a user would be drawn into based on viewing the posts a user hearted or saved, according to the same June 8, 2021 Instagram article.
My explore page stays consistent in returning the same content including stumbling upon the same accounts.
I noticed that the app also keeps track of not only the content you like, but the accounts a user has frequently viewed.
The history of interacting with a public accounts post such as liking their posts will return for the app to get a sense of the content the user is interested in, according to a May 31, 2023 Instagram article.
This helps the app know a wider range of content and that I want similar posts related to my interests to return, which it often does.
It’s fulfilling to see the app have my interests suggested, but it’s also creepy how it knows well about the content I monitor.
I have also seen some Instagram posts have a “Suggested for You” feature.
The reason behind the feature popping up on posts is not only tracking your likes or saves of a certain account but also past interactions of similar accounts posting the same content, according to an Instagram Help Center page.
It intrigues me how once a user clicks on the feature, it has a tag that says “Why you’re seeing this post” to see the reasons listed on why the
post is appearing on the feed.
Once clicking on the tag, my soul left my body when the reasons mentioned of a post popping up is due to me saving or liking a reel or post previously of that account.
Shivers travel down my spine knowing that the app is aware of my past interactions with a certain account.
It does not get better to know that the app also views the connections with accounts associated with the same content.
Instagram keeping track of my actions on my interests of content feels the same as if a drone is flying over my head to spy on me without me knowing.
However, another factor that freaks me out about the app is how certain topics I had conversations with my friends before eventually
popped up all over on my Instagram account.
For example, my friend and I had face-to-face discussions and even messaged each other on iMessage about the popular Japanese manga series, “My Hero Academia.”
She chatted about some of the characters and suddenly eyes were viewing those specific characters she mentioned and the general content of the anime in different areas on my Instagram pages.
I switched back from my feed, reels and explore page and could not escape from it.
I am not complaining about it but I still solely blame my friend for having her interests projected onto my account.
It was baffling and hard for my brain to process that my
Instagram feed is influenced from past conversations I had.
Coincidentally enough, my feed started to add new content around the time I was messaging my friend about the topic.
My friend was also left speechless once I mentioned the anime she is a fan of was appearing on my account.
As an avid Instagram user, I am convinced that Instagram is secretly hovering around the topics I discuss.
I find it unsettling of the actions of the app but also I am satisfied to see the content anyway.
My friend and I have cracked jokes about it in the past and we do at times send each other reels or posts about the anime through the app.
There is no evidence that Instagram is listening to one’s conversations and stalking iMessages, but my mind is telling me otherwise.
However, I have been recently getting less content such as reels relating to “My Hero Academia” since we have dialed down conversations about it.
The anime is not something that is completely up my radar to view, but I miss seeing it more often.
The social platform is addictive and entertaining, yet it is terrifying to see all your interests getting tracked and later see it spreading across your feed.
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