Thursday, September 29, 2011 Vol xci No ii
Pan Am Flies!
NFL Superstar
New show soars above the rest
Ronnie Lott gives inspirational speech to student athletes
SCENE, PAGE 7
SPORTS, PAGE 12
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Daniel Strickland Mourned on Campus
ANDERS RODIN — THE SANTA CLARA
Photo courtesy of Kerry Strickland
Daniel Strickland (left) died last week when his car was rear ended on I-280. (Right) Fr. James Reites, S.J., speaks at memorial services held last Wednesday in the Mission Church for the Santa Clara professor’s memory.
Engineering Professor, 27, dies in car accident Kurt Wagner
The Santa Clara One of Kerry Strickland’s favorite motherly duties was sending her son, Daniel, McDonald’s gift cards throughout his collegiate career, first while he was at Seattle University, then later during his graduate schooling at Stanford. She wanted to make sure that her son was always eating. And like any concerned mother, the gift card would always be followed up by a phone call a week or so later just to check in on her only child — and always, she got the same response: yes mom, I bought a meal or two, but then I found someone on the street who needed the card a lot more than I did and I gave it to them. That was the way Daniel Strickland lived life. “He was always giving something to somebody else, whether it was his heart, his knowledge, his ear for listening,” said Kerry. “The most that I want people to remember about my son was not only the academics,
but the heart that he had and the person that he was is what made me the proudest.” Daniel Strickland, an associate professor of Engineering at Santa Clara, died last Friday due to extensive brain damage suffered in an auto accident the night before on I-280 S. Daniel hit a deer on the road, stalling his car in the lane and was rear ended moments later by another vehicle. He died less than 24 hours later at Stanford Hospital. He was 27 years old. Daniel came to Santa Clara in the fall of 2010, just a few months removed from Stanford University where he graduated with a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. In his short time at Santa Clara, Daniel was a favorite among students because of his ability to relate to them in ways that were deeper than just academics, said senior Mike Sizemore, one of Daniel’s research assistants, who described him as just “one of the guys.” Teaching at a Jesuit university was always a dream of Daniel’s, according to his parents. Ever since his undergraduate days at Seattle University, Daniel had been inspired by the Jesuit education and way of teaching. See REMEMBERED, Page 3
Facebook Addiction Persists Students trade productivity for narcissism
Calliopi Hadjepeteras Contributing Writer
Facebook this, Facebook that. Whether or not you call yourself an avid Facebook user or just someone with an account, chances are you have one. There are more than 500 million active users on ‘the book.’ If Facebook were a country, it would rank third, just behind the People’s Republic of China and India — roughly 190 million ahead of the U.S., over 200 million greater than Indonesia and 300 million greater than Brazil. Sitting in my environmental communication class, I can’t help but be distracted by the girl to my left who is Facebook creeping. Oh, and the guy to my right. And the girl two seats in front of me. Ally’s* perusing the latest pictures from the weekend. Ryan* is FB chatting.
What do all these famous faces have in common? (Hint: They’re all read a lot of Shakespear) For more see: OPINION, PAGE 5
Meanwhile, Professor Rafael goes on about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repositories. Poor guy doesn’t know that half the class is more interested in the latest FB status updates than hearing what he has to say about the U.S. losing the equivalent of two Rhode Islands every year due to development. Facebook is entertaining. Class is boring. Especially Tuesdays and Thursdays, when class is nearly twice as long, and Facebook makes the time pass a bit faster. No rocket scientist needed there. And it isn’t just at Santa Clara either. The world spends over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages). That’s a lot of zeroes. Not to mention the fact that “Facebooking” and “Facebook creeping” have become near epidemic in college and college classrooms—ironically the place that is meant to prepare us for that crazy thing called ‘reality.’ Perhaps the most disturbing part of it all is that while we recognize that the Facebook obsession is there, we can’t control it.
A stroke of the ‘Refresh’ button on your Facebook page and you may feel like a celeb in seconds. Three photo “likes,” two comments on your status update, one wall post and two pokes. Voila. Soon you will be getting chased down by the paparazzi. Let’s get real. “What’s changed here is the reach and the speed and the intensity,” said Buford Barr, a Marketing and Communications lecturer with decades of experience in communicating with and within Corporate America. Facebook creates an instant form of communication. The speed of Facebook gets us into trouble faster, but it also allows us to make corrections and fixes faster. In terms of how you depict yourself on Facebook, in one moment, you can have total control, but at another moment – boom – you can have none. Thomas Plante, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University as well as an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, See SOCIAL, Page 4