Locals Remember Policeman, Seek Justice

By: Corinne Speckert, The Spartan Daily

Posted: 10/29/08

About 300 people met at Jeffrey Fontana Park during Tuesday night's candlelight vigil to listen to Fontana's parents and lead prosecutor speak about the ongoing case against his alleged killer.

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Seven years to the day after a policeman was shot in the head at Calle Almaden off of Almaden Expressway, 300 people gathered on Wednesday night to remember him and bring attention to his slaying.

Jeffrey Fontana, then 24 years old and an SJSU alumnus, was on patrol when he was killed only two weeks after he began patrolling on his own for the San Jose Police Department, said his mother Sally Fontana.

"I don't think I'll ever have closure, but I'll be able to move forward," Fontana said. "I want to be able to wake up in the morning and know that I don't have this hanging over my head."

DeShawn Campbell, now 29, awaits trial in the case, which has been held up because defense attorneys have said he is mentally retarded.

"Last year we were in court for six months, four days a week for the mental retardation hearing and that was only one motion," Fontana said.

Friends, family, police officers and supporters of Fontana's also gathered for an 8 a.m. rally at the Santa Clara Superior Courthouse to raise awareness that no one has been convicted of the murder. The day ended with a march from Calle Almaden to Jeffrey Fontana Park on McAbee Road, where speakers talked about the injustice in the case so far.

Rob Davis, San Jose chief of police, said he was notified of Jeffrey's death when his daughter was 3 years old and that she is now 10.

"There have been high-profile cases in this state that happened after this homicide and have been adjudicated since that homicide and we feel like enough's enough," he said. "Let's get this thing to trial. We're not asking for anything other than a fair trial for this individual."

Nick Barry, a San Jose police officer who attended SJSU and the police academy with Fontana, said the delay in the case makes him feel like the judicial system isn't behind him.

"Why this has taken so long I have no idea," he said. "Personally for me, being a friend of his, it's unnerving. It upsets my family along with his to know that it feels like we're not being backed up by the system."

Fontana said the court process makes her feel like a victim of the justice system.

"The justice system is obviously broken," she said. "Because if you can't get justice for a police officer killed in the line of duty, I don't know who we can get justice for."

Chi Pi Sigma, the SJSU student criminal justice fraternity that has offered support to Fontana's case in the past, decided to help out in a personal way this year.

"This year we wanted to take a different approach and personally get involved with Sandy so we helped get more participation for the rally, where around 60 people showed up," said Antonio Tovar of the fraternity Chi Pi Sigma. "The main slogan Sandy choose was 'Justice delayed is justice denied,' so we were chanting that."

Rebecca Marquez, a San Jose police officer who knew Fontana casually ended the memorial by telling the Fontanas that she hopes justice will be served.

"It's a history in legend that has us believe that the number seven beholds luck and I told Sandy and Tony (Jeffrey's father) that I hope that holds true for them this year," she said.

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© Copyright 2010 Spartan Daily

Looking Through the Eyes of Local Businessman

Art show 'neighbors' in Silicon Valley

By: Corinne Speckert, The Spartan Daily

Posted: 12/10/08

About 100 pictures of small business owners from Silicon Valley fill the second floor exhibit room of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, as part of a photographic exhibition titled "My Neighbors."

Joe Claus, an SJSU alumnus and exhibitor, photographed small businesses to show that Silicon Valley is not only a technology-based area as some may think, but also one with small businesses.

At the beginning of the exhibit is a quote by Claus on the wall that gives his view of how people perceive Silicon Valley.

"I live in the heart of Silicon Valley - a 10-minute walk from Adobe, an 8-minute drive from Apple's campus, 14 miles from Google headquarters. This is Silicon Valley business, as the world sees it."

Spectators can see endless portraits of people hanging on the wall, including David Anson, the owner of Stonelight Tile Designer Showroom, Josh McGhie of 4th Street Pizza, Vikki Graham of Antique Market, Allen "Hooty" Gibson of Cinnabar and Frank Annino of the Spartan Barber Shop.

Among the photographs is Eddie from Downtown Snack Bar, which reads "out of business" underneath.

Claus said Eddie was being pressured from redevelopment agencies to move his store and it was difficult shooting the business, knowing that its fate wasn't secure.

"I took a photo of the business before and after and even going back and looking at those two photographs and seeing all the surroundings being the same, but his place gone, it's a little saddening," he said.

The exhibit is an ongoing project, he said, and he plans to take pictures of the outside of the businesses and add a text element, in case some of them don't make it.

"I have some questions I want to ask them, and then somehow include it in these exhibitions," he said. "Then if they are feeling pressured by certain organizations they can voice that if they wanted to, and it would make it that much more relevant."

All pictures are in black and white, ranging from 30 inches by 30 inches to 5 inches by 5 inches. Claus said these pictures represent a growing monograph and he arranged them hanging on hooks and wire to appear as if they're floating.

Claus shot all of his photographs with a film camera, he said, because the aging of the pictures through film is like a throwback to older times.

"It's the contrast, too, everyone being so busy in Silicon Valley," he said. "Having to work with film, you have to slow down and kind of nurture it in a way to get an image out of it."

Gebru Gebrekidan, the owner of G G's Barber Shop, which is featured in the exhibit, said he appreciates what Claus has done for the small businesses in the community.

"I was a very small business," he said. "But now I've grown a little bit more. I (moved) to a bigger space, he encouraged me."

Claus said 60 percent of the people he asked to photograph for the exhibit said no because they were skeptical of his intentions, unlike Gebru whose response was the complete opposite.

"When I approached (Gebru), he was just really receiving and really willing to do it," Claus said. "As compared to some of the other ones that thought there was some kind of other agenda there or like I was trying to sell them something."

Nataly Valencia, a sophomore nursing major, said she felt a sense of community among the pictures.

"It's interesting to see how all these small business owners come into one community," she said. "They're all alike. It's a big connection that I see through the pictures, they all connect to one thing, one community."

Claus said he didn't pose the subjects in his photographs because he wanted to capture their personalities and emotions at that moment.

"I basically wanted to take a photograph of what they wanted to give me," he said. "So if they look nervous then that's how I took the photograph, and if they look comfortable that's just kind of how it comes out."

This project began a year ago, Claus said, in an advanced black and white photography class at SJSU, where students photograph what American means to them.

"I thought to be American is the small businesses of our community and then it kind of morphed into comparing those to the big businesses of Silicon Valley," he said. "I feel like the small business owners make up a lot of the character of the community, because there's so many and they offer so many different services."

Claus said he's donating a handmade book to SJSU Special Collections in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, as well as a smaller replica of his exhibit to History San Jose, a nonprofit organization operating both History Park and the Peralta Adobe-Fallon House Historic Site in downtown San Jose.

"It feels really good because that's part of the purpose too of this whole project, is to create an archive of the businesses that are here," he said.

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© Copyright 2010 Spartan Daily

Library Science School Goes Digital, Bringing Students Together from Across Country

By: Corinne Speckert, The Spartan Daily

Posted: 12/9/08

Students may not be familiar with SJSU's school of library and information science because there is no physical building.

There is, however, a virtual one.

Anthony Bernier, an assistant professor for the school, said students don't need to commute or move to receive the benefits of the program because all courses, lectures and seminars are available online through course management systems, where students can log in to watch videotaped lectures.

"We have students who are all over the country - in fact, all over the world," he said.

This school, which is primarily online, gives graduate students an American Librarian Association accredited degree in librarianship upon graduation.

Dale David, an instructional technology assistant for the library program, said the school is about 95 percent online, and is represented in at least 10 states and six to 10 countries. He said a lot of their students aren't based in San Jose, which is why they started working with online education in 2000.

"It's an online system, so it allows us to experiment and we kind of do everything in-house," he said. "We don't rely on a lot of the university-level services, so it's pretty much a home-grown and home-maintained program."

Jeremy Kemp, a lecturer of the school, said it has had students involved in distance education for about a decade and has multiple online resources to accommodate different students' learning preferences.

"We use all these different tools, and they all get mixed into the pot of distance education tools," he said. "Each one of these tools has different methods and a different set of people it serves."

Bernier said the school looks for new ways to technically reach students, which is why two years ago they used a $30,000 grant from the George Soros Foundation to create its own college on an island in Second Life. Second Life is a 3-D, virtual world used as a social network by its users.

"Most of us never see our students physically, face to face, except maybe at graduation. But otherwise, Second Life is an example of an immersive environment," he said.

Bernier said Second Life offers students the personal interaction absent in online courses because they can virtually attend seminars when the professors are actually giving them. Students create their own avatars, or virtual students, which attend classes and school functions in Second Life.

"We were the first library school in the country to have our own island on Second Life," Bernier said. "We had a Halloween party that drew 250 people."

Bernier said Second Life is increasingly being used as a form of instruction.

"I would appear on Second Life on a particular time and day and my students would show up on that day and I would deliver a lecture in Second Life, or we would do a group exercise or several," he said.

Kemp said Second Life is a good tool for students who do better in a class setting.

"There's a really rich community of people around us, so my students go out into the community and work with other people in Second Life," he said. "Having a place that you can go to is very helpful for some students. It has real teaching and learning benefits to feel like you're at a place, to feel like your present."

Kemp said there are about 150 universities and libraries on the island, which also has a theater, student union, info desk, tiki bar, stage and 11 faculty offices.

David said students' opinions on Second Life differ and it's hard to implement curriculum, he said, and it can't be managed or controlled when it's down.

"Some people like it, some people just really hate it," David said. "One of the things we emphasize is it's about finding who your users are and providing services, regardless of whether it's in a physical place or a virtual place."

The library school is broken down into two sessions: regular session for local students and special session for non-local students. David said their tuition, based on other library schools, is within the bottom 5 to 10 percent and is competitive because of its accessibility for students with families or careers.

"A lot of our students are working professionals," he said. "We have younger students, but also get a lot of older people in their second or third careers with families. It kind of gives them an opportunity so they don't have to move to a graduate school (and) allows students to work full-time, but also take care of their families and get an education in the comforts of wherever they live."

Along with lectures and seminars, the school also has a weekly colloquium series, where weekly interviews with professionals from the librarian field are videotaped and put on its Web site for students.

"(It's) put up on our Web site where our students from all over the country can look at the archive and at any point access our Web page and bring up the whole presentation," Bernier said.

Bernier said the popularity of the colloquium series, which started off averaging about 125 viewers, is growing - it now averages about 275 per presentation.

"If you can imagine 275 people in this room at different times, that's what would happen," he said. "So when you come expecting to see a big audience at the colloquium, it's a virtual audience."

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© Copyright 2010 Spartan Daily

A Cleaner Planet is Doubtful under the Obama Administration

By Corinne Speckert

Special to the Spartan Daily

By 2050, our over-populated planet is expected to continue this trend by reaching nine billion people, according to a recent New York Times article. This predicted increase is the equivalent of adding two populations the size of China's to our planet.


With an ever-increasing population soaking up our scarce natural resources, one may think, '”What's another 2.23 billion people?”


I'll tell you what a couple billion more people means. Not only does it ensure a constant depletion of natural resources, but it also guarantees more carbon footprints. That's right, the same footprints environmentalists have been working to decrease ever since the realization of global warming.


With numerous environmental protection laws such as the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, both implemented in the 1970s, you'd think we'd be on our way to a cleaner America – but that's not the case.


A recent New York Times article stated, “Since 1970, temperatures have gone up at nearly three times the average for the 20th century.” With overpopulation and glutenous consumerism, our country is a far cry from recovery.


A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that the global climate is likely to rise between 3.5 and eight degrees Fahrenheit if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reach twice the level of 1750, according to the New York Times Web site. The site further stated that the climate panel predicts a seven to 23 inch rise in our planet's sea levels by 2100, and that these changes will continue for centuries to come.


Fortunately for us, the White House was recently presented with the Montreal Protocol, a 21-year-old treaty developed to regulate ozone-depleting substances. The only problem is the Obama Administration declined to sign it, reasoning that immediate action could decrease their amount of negotiating room in future climate and environmental talks, according to the New York Times article.


These ozone-depleting chemicals – that could account for as much as 30 percent of all atmospheric warming by 2040 – have been renamed as super-greenhouse gases because they can be thousands of times more lethal than carbon dioxide in heating the atmosphere, the article stated.


Don't worry about Obama's refusal to sign this protocol, because there is now more room for negotiating down the line. Despite the 195 nations that did sign the treaty, our government is confident that securing negotiating room is what's going to restore our planet for future generations, not actual action through the regulation of harmful gases.


That's right everyone, Barack Obama pulled a George Bush, Jr. He refused to sign a treaty designed to phase-out hydrofluorocarbons – a potent group of climate-warming gases – just as Bush refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol – an international treaty developed to bring greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels, in 2005.


With the hype of a new president, expectations of actual “change”and “hope” were on the horizon and now it appears global warming may be the only thing we see.


With the expected nine billion mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, our government needs to think beyond the “negotiating” powers of today by taking measures to ensure a habitable world for future populations.


We need to take a step away from abundant trade and industrialization and prioritize the conservation of resources while reducing harmful gases if we want our planet to heal. Environmental protection is not only a matter of implementing bills designed to regulate environmental hazards, but it's also a matter of enforcing them.


If Obama's idea of “change” continues down this path, not only will our country's money trees fail to replenish, but we'll have a greater environmental debt that may never be balanced.

Source:
The New York Times, "Obama Not Seeking Quick Climate Action Under Ozone Treaty," by John Broder on May 4, 2009.

'Wacky Olympics' Celebrates End of Serious Summer School

Corinne speckert - Santa Cruz Sentinel corespondent

Article Launched: 07/19/2008 12:00:00 AM PDT

Students from Amesti and Ann Soldo Elementary schools celebrated the end of summer school Friday by participating in "Wacky Olympics."

The children were among 5,000 Pajaro Valley students who wrapped up summer classes at 17 schools. The elementary school summer program was designed to enable children with below-grade reading skills catch up.

At Amesti, where the Wacky Olympics took place, teachers added a little fun to the five hours per day students spent in class by centering the curriculum on the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Students were assigned a country to study during the summer session. As they worked on their reading skills they also learned about the world and its diverse cultures. Friday, they represented their nations in the Wacky Olympics, competing in games like chopstick chicken and Italian pasta relay.

Third-grade teacher Carmen Becerra said during the regular school year, teachers are focused on making sure students do well on the California Standards Test, which is used to determine pupils' and schools' success. So the summer school was a welcome break.

"You come in as a teacher because you have that creativity to be able to create lessons and have fun with them and be spontaneous," she said. "I think that has been taken away from us with all the demands from the state and with the kids, you don't allow them to be creative because you're on a schedule."

Mike Perez, the lead teacher at Amesti and Ann Soldo, came up with the idea for the Wacky Olympics.

"We just wanted to end the year in an upbeat fashion and instead of the traditional 'lets eat cake and ice cream,' this is a way to have structure for the kids, where they get to learn about what the Olympics are," Perez said.

Physical education teacher Christopher Harris said it was good way to teach about the Olympic spirit.

"We thought it would be a great representation for the kids on how we could come together, have a great time, show how the countries do it, and they may gain a greater appreciation for the Olympics and countries other than the U.S.," he said.

A staff of 23 teachers, parents, older siblings and high school students earning community service to graduate, all helped make this event possible in a year when money was short, Perez said.