Volume CXXVII, Issue vIIDecember 12, 2011

v

Women’s Soccer wins state championship p. 15

New culinary Arts building has a Queen Bee p. 5

Meet your newPresident, Dr. Chong p. 8

Why you still don’t have the Doyle; how the community college system could change; and you might lose the Pell Grant p. 3

Students march on Exchange Bank for the Doyle Scholarship

p. 2

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The Oak leafSRJC

2 December 12, 2011NEWS

The coping strategies class, a vital part of the Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) Program, will not be available for spring 2012. The SRJC program, which provides academ-ic support for students with brain injuries, serves more than 150 stu-dents each semester.

“It was a decision made after much discussion by the faculty in the Disability Resource De-partment,” said Dean of Disabled Students Programs and Services Patie Wegman, “They considered a number of factors including the low enrollment during the last sev-eral spring terms.”

The coping strategies class helps students learn how to work with the disabilities that their inju-ries may have caused. “I didn’t real-ize I had a brain injury. The coping skills class really opened my eyes to it,” said Brian Heauser SRJC student and member of the ABI program. “It taught me about how to make a schedule, and changed me from someone who has trouble doing the day-to-day to someone who is functional.”

Many of the students who en-rolled in the coping strategies class are members of the Acquired Brain Injury Student’s (ABIS) club. While unavailable this spring, the

class will return in fall 2012. “With-out the class, the club is responsible for course materials, as well as run-ning meetings. I feel the weight of the responsibilities,” said Julie Levine, ABIS club president.

ABIS was founded by a group of students who completed the coping strategies class and decided there should be more support from peers for those who have gone through the same experience.

The ABIS club provides a com-fortable atmosphere in which Ac-quired Brain Injury students are able to socialize, develop leader-ship skills and promote brain in-jury awareness for colleges and communities. The club offers opportunities for students to at-tend weekly meetings, participate in club-sponsored activities and hold elected positions. The club’s mission is to support and promote opportunities for socialization and to educate. The club’s motto is, “Be excellent to each other.”

The club ventures into under-standing not only how to cope with disabilities in a school set-ting but also how to face disabili-ties in everyday life. The student-run club allows for peer support and for a friendship that does not judge. “I made a lot of friends and they helped me with support,” Levine said.

Occupy Santa Rosa demonstra-tors, SRJC students and supportive citizens gathered at City Hall and marched to Exchange Bank’s Rose-land branch Dec. 3, demanding the renewal of the Doyle Trust Fund.

The crowd of roughly 40 started with a meeting from 11:30 a.m. to noon. Jay Scherf, SRJC student and writer of the recent Bohemian ar-ticle about the Doyle Trust Fund, shared his message with the crowd and his findings after researching the various elements involved with the Trust.

“We’re not attacking Exchange Bank, we’re bringing consciousness to the structure of the Doyle Trust,” Scherf said. “We want to explore how it could be modified to bring the Doyle back and to look out for its long-term viability.”

The protest gained momentum following Scherf ’s article, “Weak-ened Trust,” which points to the fact that Exchange Bank just had its 10th profitable quarter since the suspension of the Doyle Trust fund.

Exchange Bank President and CEO Bill Schrader made an unex-pected appearance, speaking to the protesters and saying he welcomes and supports the demonstration

and its message.“The community and its econ-

omy are still not healed,” Schrader said. “It’s not easy news to deliver but that’s what the truth is. I’m grateful for the support we’ve gotten from the community and we’re go-ing to honor that. We’re gonna get this back.”

After his speech to the crowd, demonstrators urged Schrader to join them in the march to Exchange Bank, but he chose to meet them at the Roseland branch on Dutton Av-enue instead.

“I’m disappointed that the presi-dent of Exchange Bank didn’t stand in solidarity with us,” said demon-strator and SRJC student Justine Johnson. “I think he put more en-ergy into saving face than support-ing us.”

The crowd’s displeasure stemmed primarily from Exchange Bank’s success over the past few years and the fact that the Doyle Trust Fund Trustees have been re-ceiving “sizable compensation” for managing the fund.

Scherf ’s article states that in 2007 the three Trustees earned $87,500 each for approximately 12 hours of work per week. Today the Trustees receive roughly half that amount.

Bill Reinking, chairman of the board of Exchange Bank and for-

mer president of the bank, was also present and shared his opin-ion about the movement, pointing to Exchange Bank’s rich history of contributions to SRJC.

“We’re doing what Doyle speci-fied and it’s been ratified by the courts,” he said. “Bringing the Doyle back is our number one objective; it’s not just the stu-dents. Also, we have supplied over 100,000 scholarships amounting to over $77 million, and every-body’s forgetting that.”

The group stood outside of Ex-change Bank, holding signs and chanting phrases like “They say cut back, we say fight back,” and “What do we want? The Doyle. When do we want it? Now,” for a few hours before returning to downtown Santa Rosa.

Jordan DeVito, SRJC student and member of the Associated Student Senate, thinks the Doyle Scholarship is more necessary than ever in these crippling eco-nomic times for the JC.

“I feel like it’s not only my duty as a student but also as a student senate member to bring attention to this, because it’s really impor-tant and needs more attention,” she said.

Editor’s note: Jay Scherf ’s article is reprinted on page 3.

David Anderson

News Editor

Domanique Crawford

Staff Writer

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Students demand change in the absence of the Doyle

ABI course to be cut for 2012 spring semester

3www.theoakleafnews.com NEWS

Editor’s note: this article was orig-inally published in the Bohemian.

Meet Frank Doyle. Many Santa Rosa residents point to him as the city’s best-remembered resident: the second president of Exchange Bank, the “Father of the Golden Gate Bridge” and the founder of Doyle Park. If Santa Rosa had a best hair award, Doyle probably would have claimed that title as well, with his curling faux-hawk.

Doyle’s life was a long list of civic achievements, crowned by the Santa Rosa Junior College scholarship he established in his will. Until its 2009 suspension, the Doyle Scholarship,

funded by dividends from Exchange Bank, was the largest scholarship in the California Community College system by a wide margin. The SRJC recognized Doyle’s contributions by naming its new library in his honor.

However, Doyle’s most famous gift is not operating smoothly in 2011. Though Exchange Bank has posted its 10th consecutive quarter of profit and is on pace to make $12 million in net profit this year, the bank’s dividends, the sole source of funding for the scholarship, remain suspended indefinitely without clear conditions for reinstatement. In the meantime, the Doyle Trust Fund trustees have received siz-able compensation, and according to some, may have breached their fiduciary duties; and the SRJC and

SRJC Foundation play a passive and uninformed role, despite represent-ing the beneficiaries of a multimil-lion-dollar fund.

Frank Doyle created the Doyle Trust Fund in his will, giving the fund 50.39 percent of the bank’s stock and the task of distributing dividends to the SRJC for scholar-ships. Though the prevailing com-munity view sees the Doyle Schol-arship as a benevolent gift from Exchange Bank, Bruce DeCrona, the bank’s chief operating officer, writes in an email interview that the Doyle Trust Fund is “a separate le-gal entity” from Exchange Bank. Ja-vier Rivera, a student adviser in the scholarship department at SRJC, confirms that the Doyle Scholar-ship is a gift to the community from

Doyle, not a gift from Exchange Bank.

Questions of entitlement arise as the bank enters its third year of dividend suspension. When the housing bubble burst in 2008, Ex-change Bank suffered huge losses, mostly as a “result of a risky bet on builders in the Sacramento region,” according to a 2008 front-page Press Democrat article. The losses sent Exchange Bank’s stock plum-meting. From 2007-09, the Doyle Trust Fund watched its net assets drop from $114 million to $33 mil-lion; they’ve grown relatively little since then. In 2008, the bank put dividend payments, the sole source of funding for the scholarship, into indefinite suspension.

Exchange Bank uses three crite-

ria to determine dividend reinstate-ment: a return to profitability; re-duction of nonperforming assets to $30 million; and confidence in the local economy. Exchange Bank has earned around $9 million after tax so far this year. According to De-Crona, the bank’s nonperforming assets stand at $52 million.

The confidence criterion, though, is “hard to quantify” and “nebulous,” says DeCrona, and as such, leaves dividend reinstate-ment subject to the directors’ dis-cretion. DeCrona cites high local unemployment, struggling local businesses and the possibility of a double-dip recession to indicate the bank is not yet confident, and says that dividend reinstatement “will

Pell Grants are on the chopping block with more than $127 million slated to get cut from California Community College students.

The U.S. House of Appro-priations Subcommittee on La-bor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) is proposing to cut the program and make changes to the eligibility requirements. The $5,500

maximum award is maintained only eligibility is affected.

In 2010-11, 491,447 Califor-nia Community College students received Pell Grants totaling $1.6 billion, according to an email in-terview with Rosa de Anda, gov-ernment relations policy expert at the California Community College Chancellor’s Office.

She said less than half-time stu-dents would be eliminated, more than 64,000 students (13 percent of current community college stu-

dents). This would cut the Pell Grant Program by approximately $67 million.

The change would also eliminate 19,000 students (4 percent of cur-rent students) without a GED or High School Diploma, she said. This would cut approximately $60 mil-lion from the Pell Grant Program.

Anda said the subcommittee would also reduce income ceil-ings for calculating the Pell Grant Award. This would reduce the size of the award for many students and

eliminate some students entirely.The subcommittee also pro-

poses reducing the number of years students are eligible for the Pell Grant from nine years to six, said Scott Lay, president and CEO of the Community College League of California.

Lay said the Pell Grant program got more expensive as unemploy-ment rates rose and family incomes declined. “We should be proud of that,” he said. “In this time of eco-nomic distress, citizens across the

country are returning to school to retrain to gain the ever-changing skills needed to be competitive in the workforce.”

The Pell Grant costs will go down as last years was a peak, Lay said.

Kris Shear, SRJC’s Director of Student Financial Services said that roughly 4,500 SRJC students re-ceived the Pell Grant last year. Their financial aid awards totaled about $15 million, she said.

Benjamin “Brutus” Gruey

Layout Editor

James Scherf

Contributing Writer

Many SRJC students could lose Pell Grant financial aid

Why the Doyle Scholarship remains inaccessible for all SRJC students

Recommendations from a Cali-fornia Community College Board of Governor’s task force that could drastically alter the way students at-tend community college in Califor-nia have employees deeply divided. On one side are the two big faculty unions and the coalition of indepen-dent unions. On the other side is the administration.

Following Senate Bill 1143, the Board of Governor’s (BOG) and the state California Community College Chancellor’s Office put together the Student Success Task Force (SSTF) to look at improving student success.

Mary Kay Rudolph, SRJC’s vice president of Academic Affairs, said the task force is focused on making classes more portable from college to college. Schools often have different course numbers, she said, and some have a different amount of units for the same course.

Under the current system each school has to contact each UC and CSU for every transfer major to come to an agreement on major require-ments. This creates a lot of adminis-trative tasks, she said. The California Community College (CCC) system has been moving away from that

model. Senate Bill 1440 mandated community colleges had to have two Transfer Model Curriculums, stan-dardized majors across the UC and CCC systems, by fall 2011. SRJC has three. “[That] was the first time we worked as a system,” Rudolph said.

In addition, each school currently can define its own assessment tests for math and English course placement. As-sessment is used to place students into appropriate classes. “[Some-one who] strug-gles in psychol-ogy class because they don’t have the English to get the papers done,” Rudolph said, “is more likely to drop out.” The SSTF is trying to remedy that.

Some assess-ments aren’t valid between schools in the same district, Rudolph said. “That’s redundant and stupid.”

The SSTF defines student success mainly as transfers, degrees and cer-tificates. “We looked at our numbers and we weren’t finishing,” Rudolph said. The recommendations in the

SSTF seek to improve those numbers. Under the recommendations, stu-

dents will take a mandatory orienta-tion, assessment and remedial classes for math and English to get them up to college level courses. In their third semester, students would have to de-clare an educational goal (transfer, degree or a certificate) and come up

with an educa-tion plan to get to that goal.

The most re-cent data SRJC has on student educational goals comes from a 2007 survey.

SRJC’s Vice President of Stu-dent Services Ri-cardo Navarrette said students whose goals are “undecided” or “personal inter-est” would be im-pacted the most

by the SSTF. In 2007 these groups made up 34.5 percent of students at SRJC, down from 37.1 percent in 2003. “Given the fee increases and re-duction of ‘personal’ interest courses there are far fewer students in these categories in 2011,” Navarrette said.

If a student deviates from his or

her educational plan, the student would lose priority registration, which is becoming more and more important as classes are being cut. However, Rudolph said students would retain the ability to change majors, so they would still be allowed to discover and explore academia at SRJC.

If the recommendations are put into place, they would change how Rudolph plans the course scheduling for each semester. “I used to go solely on historic enrollment,” she said. But with student education plans, “I would use them to figure out what classes students need.”

Rudolph and the SSTF agree schools need more counselors but Ru-dolph goes further by wanting more full-time faculty as well. “They con-nect directly to the students,” she said.

While Rudolph paints a more intuitive and less confusing college environment for students and em-ployees, many are unconvinced the SSTF is in the best interest of stu-dents or faculty.

The California Community Col-lege Independents (CCCI), a coali-tion of 13 independent faculty unions including SRJC’s All Faculty Associa-tion (AFA), stated in a resolution the front and center of all education re-form should be the need to increase investment in education. CCCI is

not opposed to improving the college system but finds the task force to be missing a recommendation for re-funding the CCC system.

The Community College Associa-tion (CCA), the California Teachers Association (CTA) for community colleges, stated in its feedback that the SSTF would give the Chancellor’s office and the BOG comparable pow-ers to the University of California Re-gents and the California State Univer-sity Chancellor’s Office. It then stated, “Both faculty and students are not supportive of the outcomes that have been secured with the CSU Chan-cellor’s Office.” The CSU and UC systems have both seen significant protest in the past two years ranging from student occupations of librar-ies and administration buildings to union-organized faculty walkouts, marches and rallies.

CCA also stated using Prop. 98 funds (which funds k-12 and the community college system) to fund the Chancellor’s Office would weaken education for students and that any additional fee-based funding would adversely hurt those students who can least afford college.

CCA also claims many imple-mentations in the SSTF would consti tute a change in working conditions for faculty, which would be subject to

Benjamin “Brutus” Gruey

Layout Editor

Faculty support California students, oppose drastic changes to community college system

“If you’re not sure what your calling

in life is, you’re going to be at a disadvantage”

-Warren Ruud, AFA President

Continued on page 4

Continued on page 7

4 December 12, 2011NEWS

SRJC Associated Student Presi-dent Jessica Jones encourages stu-dents to engage the Student Success Task Force and is waiting to see what happens with the Pell Grants. “For now it’s a waiting game to see what gets cut,” Jones said.

Jones said she “stated publicly” at the last SRJC Board of Trustees meeting that the Student Senate encourages the board to review the recommendations and “allow [the] campus constituents time to under-stand and discuss [the recommen-dations] before [the board] decides to endorse or speak out against it.”

The recommendation would require students to take basic skills courses before they can take other

courses, while not addressing the issues of social equity that need to be in the K-12 system, Jones said. Also, there isn’t funding to do most of the recommendations in the report, she said.

“We need to continue to have students read the recommenda-tions and post their comments on the website,” Jones said. The task force is officially dissolved and we must work with FACCC and lobby our legislators, she said.

Associated Students of SRJC will be taking a group of students to advocate for its stance on the recommendations at the Jan. 9 meeting in Sacramento. At the meeting, the California Commu-nity College Board of Governors will vote on whether to implement the recommendations.

SRJC art teacher and sculptor Mi-chael McGinnis has been nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in the toy industry.

McGinnis’ toy, the Perplexus, has been nominated for the Toy Awards in the educational category, the “Oscars” of the toy industry. The Perplexus is a truly unique inven-tion. It is a three-dimensional laby-rinth game, with a series of surfaces forming the labyrinth and a marble encased in a plastic sphere.

Not to be confused with a maze, a labyrinth is a continuous pathway with dangers, whereas a maze fea-tures many possible wrong paths. For McGinnis’ Perplexus, wrong paths would mean wasted space and defeat the purpose of the toy.

The toy was first designed with the intention of helping children improve hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness. It has been successful in these regards and has other educational benefits. Toys R Us stated the toy is a top consumer item for children with autism.

A professor of geography said it was the top game for geography, and the game helps people under-stand spaces and forms.

The game requires a tremen-dous amount of spatial reasoning and comprehension in three di-mensions. In the curving web, or plexus of the toy, every side of every

surface must be used. This means a sculpture with a 3-foot diameter has about 330 feet of labyrinthine track.

McGinnis first came up with the idea when he was in high school in 1979. He was in art class and the in-structor assigned them the task of designing a board game. “I was no good at board games, I drew maz-es,” McGinnis said.

His first idea was based on the labyrinth games with two knobs and an assortment of holes for the metal marble to fall through. Mc-Ginnis wanted to devise a way to make a three-dimensional version of that classic game. After many years of trial and error, he managed to do just that.

There are different versions of the Perplexus. There is the mass produced toy store model, and there are larger, custom models. The larger models are custom made by McGinnis in his shop. The smaller ones, when not mass produced, are “printed” three dimensionally by a company called Shapeways.com in the Netherlands. Using a three di-mensional design made in Comput-er Aided Design (CAD) or another program, it is then fabricated in plastic or metal. All bearings, pivot points and pipes are designed and printed in this fashion by McGinnis to give his sculptures the specific look and feel he desires.

McGinnis has seen a lot of suc-cess with his Perplexus. It is ranked number 12 on Amazon.com’s top

100 selling games and toys. Along with that success, McGinnis has been getting commissions across the world to build large diameter sculptures for different venues.

The Phaeno museum in Wolf-burg, Germany, the Questicon Aus-tralian National Science and Tech-nology Center and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry are some of the institutes with one of his sculptures. The Perplexus has a wide-ranging impact on re-cipients. One Chicago scientist told McGinnis that manipulating the Superplexus is a metaphor for how

you do that on the nano scale.McGinnis’ success has allowed

him to focus on sculptures in his studio. He feels the toy’s success has led to the success of his sculptures, calling it “one large related project focusing on designs.” He teaches sculpture here at SRJC and says his success, “hasn’t stopped me from teaching because that’s something I find to be meaningful.”

The Toy Awards are being voted on at Toyawards.org and the results are expected to be announced early January.

Benjamin “Brutus” Gruey

Layout Editor

Parris Mazer

Staff Writer

Stock ImageMichael McGinnis, SRJC professor and professional toy maker recieves a nomination for a prestigious award for his Perplexus toy , an intricate wooden marble maze.

collective bargaining (union nego-tiation) agreements.

The CCC system currently has 72 collective bargaining units while the CSU system has one.

The Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC), an advocacy group made up of individual faculty from across the state, claimed the over-all recommendations would harm students.

Much of the SSTF deals with streamlining the degree or transfer requirements by “incentivizing” education plans through priority registration. Not all students can get the classes they need due to budget cuts limiting the number of sections open, stated FACCC, and students should be free to deviate from education plans as they could in the first two years of a four-year institution. Under the current plan, such students would lose priority registration.

“My concern about forcing a student is that they may end up picking something because they ‘have’ to,” said Filomena Avila, Department Chair of Counseling. “If programs of study become ac-cessible only to those who declare them, then this will impact stu-dents who want to explore.”

SRJC Dean of Counseling and Support Martin Lee said, “It would be interesting if, as a community college, we ended up with ‘impacted’ majors much like universities in order to maintain a breadth of offerings.”

The SSTF specifically targets dis-

advantaged students said Karen Sagi-nor, the San Francisco City College Academic Senate President. The SSTF recommends “low income students be required to meet additional criteria for education goals and unit limits that will not be applied to those who can afford to pay,” she said.

By implementing the recom-mendations, the first draft of the proposal estimated the CCC sys-tem would save $89 million. That money would “be saved [by] ex-cluding indigent students,” Sagi-nor said. In the revised SSTF draft, the $89 million was replaced with “modest cost savings.”

Like the coalition of independent unions CCCI, FACCC stated the first priority should be to return funding to the CCC system. FACCC stated accountability is important, but steps should be taken to reduce paperwork, not increase it.

FACCC is concerned with direct-ing any money away from counselors or faculty, when those have already been cut.

FACCC states recommendation 3.2 overestimates the technological lit-eracy of community college students, who might not have access to phones and tablets. Recommendation 3.2 urges community colleges to develop centralized technology accessible via smart phones and tablets.

AFA President Warren Ruud said the recommendations don’t accu-rately describe students at the com-munity college. In the opening pages the SSTF posed a scenario with a new student. She uses her smart phone to schedule time with a counselor, goes to the financial aid office, takes

orientation and assessment, then de-velops an academic plan with a coun-selor. “That’s not happening on this planet,” Ruud said.

Considering the SSTF’s defini-tion of student success, Ruud said he would be a failure. “I went to commu-nity college, worked for a year then went to a UC.”

The SSTF’s educational plans are too narrow, Ruud said. “If you’re not sure what your calling in life is, you’re going to be at a disadvantage.” About 15-20 percent of students know what they want when they get to a commu-nity college and the average number of major changes is around two-and-a-half or three.

“Unless you restore funding to community colleges,” Ruud said, “it’s an empty exercise to talk about what we can do for student suc-cess.” California is at the bottom of the 40s out of the 50 states in terms of funding per student at all levels, he said.

A better plan would be to ad-dress the CCC system’s long-standing goal of 75/25 full-time faculty to adjunct ratio, Ruud said. Full-time faculty do extra college business in addition to teaching, like curriculum development and shared governance. “[Plus], you do better when you have office hours every day,” Ruud said.

Editor’s note: The organizations responded to the SSTF’s first draft on Sept. 30. The Oak Leaf went through the Dec. 1 revision to en-sure the responses still fit the lan-guage of the revision.

Police Blotter

The sleeping actor doesn’t fit the role

Nov. 20 – A homeless man was found sleeping in Burbank Audi-torium at 1:15 a.m. by members of the Theatre Arts department. The man claimed that he was part of the show “My Fair Lady,” but SRJC District Police officers had encountered him a week prior sleeping in the fire escape of a closed building on campus. The man was arrested and banned from returning.

Bush squatter caught with pocketful of paraphernalia

Nov. 28 – Officers approached a man sitting in bushes near Sa-lem Avenue and Richmond Drive and searched him because he was acting suspiciously. The man was carrying methamphetamines and a pipe, and was arrested for pos-session of a controlled substance and violation of probation.

Hungry? Grab a SnickersDec. 5 – The vending machines

at the west end of Shuhaw Hall were broken into for a second time, forcing SRJC Police to keep the gate locked for the remainder of the semester until the begin-ning of Spring 2012. The estimat-ed cost of damages and total losses isn’t yet known, and the police have leads in the case.

SRJC instructor nominated for prestigious toy maker award

A.S. president asks Board for more student consideration of task force recommendations

Student Success Task ForceTo comment on the task

force’s recommendations go here: http://tinyurl.com/czf-cvxo

Jessica Jones with Associ-ated Students

Pell Grants: http://www.savemypell-

grant.com/Doyle Scholarship:General Assemblies at

noon on the quad at SRJC every Monday and Wednes-day

Task ForceContinued from page 3

To get involved with advocacy:

David Anderson

News Editor

5www.theoakleafnews.com FEATURES

At 6:30 a.m., 18 student bakers-in-training busily blend, beat, and brew in SRJC’s student kitchen.

By 7:30 a.m., 24 student cooks-in-training peel, cut and chop fruits and vegetables to prepare 10 dif-ferent entrées for the day. Regulars swing by for a cup of Tailor Maid Farms coffee and a warm pastry.

By 9 a.m., 10 more students in the Front House Operations pro-gram meticulously prepare tables to welcome up to 60 lunch guests who will begin arriving at 11:30 a.m.

It’s a typical school day at the SRJC Culinary Café and Bakery in downtown Santa Rosa.

The Café has no “back of the house,” where the food is prepared; the performers – bakers, cooks, waiters and chefs – are all “down-stage,” up close and in plain sight of the audience. Classes are in session and the Brickyard Center is a hive of activity with dozens of students and instructors buzzing about.

The queen bee is the Front House instructor and café manager, Betsy Fischer, a highly acclaimed professional with 12 years of expe-rience in SRJC’s culinary program.

She speaks quickly, sometimes in bursts, yet has a down-to-earth de-meanor. Fischer spent her childhood in New York and New Jersey, and then moved to Kentucky where she attended high school. Her father’s work as an engineer dictated where Fischer and her family lived.

She worked part-time in Louisville’s “fine dine” restau-rants while in high school and college; after graduating, she became full time. The cultural and so-cial aspects of her day intrigued her and sparked a love for food, wine and hospi-tality work.

At college, she majored in piano and voice, but her on-the-job education in res-taurants earned her a degree in confidence. “I was very shy,” Fischer said, “and working front house, serving and sharing with guests helped me to blossom.”

At 24, she moved to the Bay Area, a food and wine mecca, planting herself in a great garden to grow her passion in the hospitality industry.

“I constantly counsel my students and grads when they

come to me for career advice: it’s al-ways about following your passion,” she said.

As an adjunct faculty member, Fischer wears three hats: instruc-tor, matchmaker and manager. She instructs her Front House Op-erations’ students in table service techniques, food operations, res-taurant maintenance, culinary su-pervision, food affinities and bev-erage-related services. Fischer calls it “performance art.” In one semes-ter, her full-time students can earn a certificate to work as wait-staff, hosts, wine servers or managers.

She matches students and grad-uates with employment opportuni-ties in wine country hotels, restau-rants and wineries. For 31 years, Fischer has networked extensively with the North Bay’s restaurateurs and agricultural community build-ing invaluable personal relation-ships that are a key component of SRJC’s cutting-edge culinary arts program. Those looking for or of-fering work can register on the cu-linary program’s website.

From Wednesday to Friday, Fischer manages the café operations with surgical precision, ever atten-tive to the needs of both students and guests. SRJC’s teaching restau-rant provides an authentic experi-

ence; students learn through read-ing material and hands-on work. Many other culinary programs don’t have a restaurant and instruct largely in a classroom.

“At the café, the guests are in

our classroom, first and foremost, and in a public restaurant, second. Our guests are our willing guinea pigs,” Fischer said. “I love teaching, being out with the guests, the orga-nizational and presentation aspects. What I do today is the best job I’ve ever had.”

In her first few years in Califor-nia, she worked with the Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers. She visited restaurants and taught the staff the subtleties of serving wine.

Working with the county’s agricul-tural community gave her an inti-mate understanding of the wine-making process from vine to bottle.

In the ‘80s, Fischer was the execu-tive director of both Sonoma County

Farm Trails and the Restaurant As-sociation of the Redwood Empire. Her work involved tourism, agri-culture, wine and food; it too pro-vided her with personal connec-tions throughout the North Bay.

This work also introduced her to Chef Michael Salinger, Chair of the SRJC Culinary Arts Depart-ment. In 1999, Salinger suggested she consider teaching.

In 2000, she accepted a part-time adjunct position with the SRJC Culinary Arts Program. She found that she loved teaching stu-dents and working in this depart-

ment. Teaching part time allowed her to continue providing her con-sulting services to the local hospi-tality industry.

When the culinary program wanted to add wine to the café menu, Fischer used her expertise and persistence to make it happen. Café customers now enjoy Wine Wednesdays.

Some of the Café’s wines come from the SRJC Agricultural Foun-dation’s Shone Farm. The 365 acres

of farmland, vineyards and gardens are 12 miles north of the Santa Rosa campus. The Café also buys much of its organic produce from the farm. “We’re constantly in talks with Shone to explore new ways to interface the culinary and agricultural programs,” she said. “Maybe we can identify new enterprises which will benefit the programs and the students.”

In 2005, Salinger and Fischer developed the Food and Wine Fri-days class at the Brickyard Center. The lunch-by-reservation is of-fered six to eight times a semester through the Community Education Department. At the class luncheon, 24 guests are regaled with informa-tion about food and wine pairing principles, while enjoying a four-course meal served with three dif-ferent wines.

Michael Salinger opened the Brickyard Café in 2003, and runs the enterprise with a collaborative management style.

“I’ve worked with many chefs over my lifetime and Michael is one of those quiet chefs who likes to create and then translate it to his students,” Fischer said. “He doesn’t have a big ego and is easy to work with.”

The department website lists 12 part-time adjunct faculty who teach

in the professional certificate programs, and the specialty and ethnic home cooking program.

“We’ve had bank-ers, real estate agents, physicians and police officers who are here on their second ca-reer,” she said. “That is almost like the re-birth of a person.”

Fischer was hon-ored in 2009 with the outstanding con-tribution by adjunct faculty award and was honored as the Vol-unteer of the Year for Meals on Wheels.

The Café will move to the Brickyard Center at the end of the fall semester and all culinary arts op-erations will relocate to the new Burdo Cu-linary Arts Center on Mendocino Avenue. The Café will reopen there on Jan. 17, 2012.

Of her colleague Betsy Fischer, Cathy Burgett said, “She is sincerely dedicated to our students. She is the glue that keeps the Culinary Arts Department together with her tireless ini-tiative, acceptance of projects and sheer hard work.”

Mischa Lopiano/ Oak Leaf

Betsy Fischer , the front house instructor and café manager for SRJC’s culinary arts program, matches students with restaurant jobs.

Dan Nuebel

Contributing Writer

Culinary Queen Bee: Culinary instructor Betsy Fischer runs the hive of students, activities and fine cuisine at SRJC’s Bakery and Café

“I love teaching, being out with the guests,

the organizational and presentation aspects.

What I do today is the best job I’ve ever had.”

-Betsy Fischer

6 December 12, 2011FEATURES

Google “Sonoma County” and “food & wine mecca.” It’s no surprise that there are thousands of results.

Ask the students of the SRJC Culinary Arts Department about job opportunities in the local food and wine industry and there’s likely some happy campers.

“I have many friends in the program that have gotten jobs, like within a week or two of ask-ing for help,” said Keegan McAu-liffe, a culinary student who will graduate this semester. “I think a lot of people would choose cook-ing if they knew it would give them an option, even though it might start at minimum wage. These days people have to do what they can to get [work].”

Students have many career op-portunities, such as restaurants, lodging facilities, wineries, bak-eries, assisted living facilities, re-tail stores, food markets, personal chefs, food trucks, coffee shops, camps and recreation facilities, ac-cording to Betsy Fischer, instructor of Front House Operations.

In 2002, the Culinary Arts De-partment, once part of the Con-sumer and Family Studies, opened the SRJC Café and Bakery at the Brickyard in downtown Santa Rosa.

Five certificates of achievement

are offered: Culinary (cooking), Baking & Pastry, Dining Room Service, Front House Operations and Restaurant Management. Stu-dents receive practical, hands-on experience working in a commer-cial kitchen, retail bakery and res-taurant.

The department’s reputation as a great source of career-oriented employees grew rapidly and after four years this success became a predicament.

The area’s employers were call-ing for references; they were look-ing for graduates to match their staff needs. Culinary students needed help with resumes, refer-ence letters and job leads.

The demands were seriously eating into teachers’ time.

In 2004, SRJC Computer Stud-ies students created the Culinary Department’s website, as part of a community service project for non-profits. In 2006, Fischer, then a part-time instructor, suggested adding a page to the existing site that would serve as a meeting place for employers and job seekers. The goal: a system that would save time and facilitate connections.

Fischer has worked with many businesses in the area’s food, wine and hospitality industries; she also interfaces with every new student at the Café & Bakery.

Funds to build the custom web

site came from a federal grant, part of a 27-year-old, bi-partisan-supported program thats purpose is to enhance “career and technical education.”

The “SRJC Culinary Career Center” was launched in 2007. Students also refer to it as the “job match.” Students who did their job-seeker interview with her at an off-campus location call it “Betsy’s laptop.”

First-time visitors to the site, employers, student job seekers and program alumni, complete forms online, and then get a call from Fischer who speaks with them about their needs, offers comments and consulting. Fischer then posts the job offer or the student resume. The Career Center’s database is now populated with records of more than 300 employers and more than 600 employees.

The design proposal specified it be independent of the operator. However, there is always going to be a need for a facilitator, some-one who knows both the seeker and the sought. “It’s never going to be a Craigslist where everybody is anonymous,” Fischer said. “What is hospitality about? People. The business is all about networking and connections.”

The culinary program offers five eight-week sessions in a year: two in the fall, two in the spring and one

in the summer. Graduat ions occur regu-larly. Fischer is therefore interviewing all year long and is con-stantly moni-toring the web activity. She estimates managing the “job match” takes about 20 percent of her time.

“ B e t s y knows each and every res-taurant per-sonally and knows what it’s like to work there. You know that if you get a job [through] her, it’s probably going to be at a pretty repu-table place,” M c A u l i f f e said.

M a r k Stark, own-er of Stark’s S t e a k h ou s e , Willi’s Wine Bar and Mon-ti’s Rotisserie, e n o u r a g e s his chefs and managers to contact Fisch-er about open positions. “I encourage the students who are seeking out

a job to stay aggressive--sometimes it’s first come, first serve. There are jobs out there,” Stark said.

“We can tell you Betsy’s insight has been invaluable many times in determining which job applicants might be the best fit for the open position,” said Scott Noll, director of Baking and Pastry at Jackson’s Bar and Oven.

The program’s Restaurant Man-agement certificate is unique be-cause it requires an internship. The “job match” helps these stu-dents identify those hard-to-find employers who will both teach and com-pensate. “Stu-dents need to be paid, just like everybody else,” Fischer said.

In addition to the graduates who are look-ing for full-time e mp l o y m e nt , many culinary students need part-time work. The website also has a very popular link that connects stu-dents with event employment.

The going rate is $15 to $20 per hour; students are paid directly by the employer. “Students make a little money and, most importantly, they get out in the world and learn the importance of professionalism,” Fischer said. “As of the first of De-cember we already had 17 events on the books and requests for 30 students. Many of the public have learned that when they need good help, they can call the culinary school.”

The events include holiday par-ties, wine-barrel tastings, harvest parties, dinner parties, wedding receptions, birthday parties, baby showers, food and wine festivals and personal chef opportunities. To serve wine, a student must be 21 or older.

An individual or organization can go on the website at any hour to offer an event job. Fischer vets each prospective employer and then re-leases the job announcement to students whose resumes and skills best fit the job description.

“I want employers to know that I’m working for them and that I’m working for our students as well. I try to make the best match as pos-sible so that both sides benefit,” Fischer said. “We have between 35 to 75 job offers and about 100 job seekers active.

“Good employers often say: just send me nice people. I’ll teach (the employee) how to sauté in three days. But the reverse doesn’t work,” Fischer said. The instructors dis-courage students from thinking too highly of themselves, telling them that the first several years of work-ing in the food service industry are all about saying, “yes chef.”

Some job seekers will “stage,” a French term; it’s like a short trial job, without pay to get a foot in the door. “My first commercial kitchen experience was a wide-awakening. What 30 were doing at the culinary school might be done by three in a

restaurant,” said Geoffrey Power , a 2004 graduate of the culinary pro-gram and employee of Community Market Natural Foods.

In the culinary world, entry-level jobs pay about $9 to $11 an hour and mid-level jobs are $11-15. Once you’ve got some good skills under your belt, get to a sous-chef position or become a supervi-sor, the pay increases $15 to $18 an hour. New graduates can’t expect

benefits, a 9-to-5 job or a Mon-day-to-Friday schedule.

“I think you really have to love cooking. The teachers will tell you the first day in class: if you’re here for the money, you should drop this class,” McAuliffe said. “The cooking certificate took me three and a

half semesters and as a resident program costs were about $3,500. A lot of people come in and want to be either a baker or a cook. But once you get the cooking [certifi-cate] it’s only another eight weeks to get the baking- or a really full semester to get both a baking and a front house certificate.”

Many of the culinary classes for next semester filled by Dec. 1.

The SRJC Foundation has be-gun a campaign to support culi-nary students with an endowment that will provide a permanent source of funding for scholarships and student training expenses. Do-nors will have naming opportuni-ties of the Center’s kitchens, rooms and select areas.

Until now, some culinary classes were taught at Garcia Hall on cam-pus. Moving to the new Mendocino Avenue facility consolidates every-thing into one place. The staff will be the same, but more classes can be conducted simultaneously. The Brickyard facility has one kitchen; the new building has four kitchens and three big classrooms.

The last lunch at the Brickyard’s Café & Bakery will be served on Dec. 16. Winter break is “moving time” for the Culinary Arts Depart-ment. On the first day of spring se-mester, Jan. 17, all Culinary classes will start at the new B. Robert Bur-do Culinary Arts Center on Men-docino Avenue, across the street from Burbank Circle.

“Betsy’s creation of the job match website filled a much-needed, missing piece in our pro-grams,” said Cathy Burgett, in-structor of Baking and Pastry. “In our classrooms and kitchens, we train students in skills that pre-pare them for work. The career center helps students get the jobs for which they have been trained by linking them to our industry and our community. Employers are thrilled to have a place where they can find and hire qualified, capable workers. It’s a win-win for students and employers.”

Culinary Arts center facilitates careers for student cooksDan Nuebel

Contributing Writer

“What is hospitality about?

People. The business is all

about networking and connections.”

Betsy Fischer

Mischa Lopiano/ Oak Leaf

The new SRJC culinary arts building on Mendocino Avenue is expected to open in 2012.

7www.theoakleafnews.com FEATURES

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Doyle ScholarshipContinued from page 3

www.theoakleafnews.com

certainly not be this year.”In the meantime, SRJC waits

submissively.“We don’t question anything.

We don’t know anything about what’s going on,” says Rivera in the SRJC scholarship department.

Indeed, at SRJC Doyle infor-mation is scarce. Doug Roberts, vice president of business services, referred this reporter to the schol-arship department for Doyle data. Rivera subsequently referred me to Kris Shear, director of student financial services. Shear then re-ferred me back to Roberts. Neither Shear nor Rivera knew whether or not a trust attorney represents the SRJC. The Bohemian reported in 2009 that this lack of legal repre-sentation is “unusual” for a fund of such magnitude.

“I have no idea,” Shear says. Shear has “never thought about” the SRJC’s representation in the trust fund, or if the fund is at all account-able to the SRJC.

“No idea,” Rivera says. To Rive-ra, it seems like the beneficiaries of the fund should have “more of a say in what’s going on.”

In a follow-up interview, Rob-erts confirmed SRJC remains un-represented by any trust attorneys. “We have really nothing to do with the trust, except thanking them,” Roberts says.

While the college is relegated

to soliciting donations from lo-cal businesses for the Bridging the Doyle scholarship—a fraction of the original Doyle—the trustees of the Doyle Trust Fund have fared better. In 2007, the three trustees received $87,500 each for their reported 12 hours of weekly work, according to the Doyle Trust Fund’s tax report.

Bill Reinking, chief executive of-ficer of Exchange Bank and a Doyle Trustee as of April 2010, writes in an email interview trustee duties in-clude meeting a minimum of once per month to monitor the bank’s direction and staying current on charitable trust legislation. Doyle’s will also allows trustees to appoint themselves to Exchange Bank’s board of directors to “ensure a con-servative management of affairs” of the bank. In addition to Reinking, the current trustees include Jim Ryan and Dan Benedetti.

In 2009, the latest year for which the nonprofit Guidestar posts the Doyle Trust Fund’s tax information, trustee compensation and legal fees alone amounted to $487,649. There were no dividends to distrib-ute to the SRJC that year, yet each trustee still received $45,000 from Exchange Bank for sitting on the bank’s board of directors.

Neither Shear, Rivera nor Rob-erts were aware of the trustees’ com-pensation rates.

In comparison, the Trust Fund’s total contributions to the SRJC Foundation the year prior were

$1.6 million, and the scholarship amount varied between $1,000 and $1,800 per student each year. The entire Bridging the Doyle scholar-ship—which Exchange Bank and the Doyle Trust take no part in or-ganizing—has averaged just under $200,000 per year in the last three years, and it’s quickly shrinking.

The terms of Doyle’s trust man-date that the Doyle Trust Fund hold only Exchange Bank stock; with-out the bank’s dividends, though, the Doyle Trust Fund is left with-out income. Investment portfolios with only one stock are “high-risk,” says Clark Matthiessen, a financial adviser at Redwood Credit Union. Matthiessen compares single-stock portfolios to putting all of one’s eggs in one basket; diversifying an investment portfolio leads to a “smoother ride” and a “more posi-tive investment experience,” he says.

Doyle was not necessarily against temporary suspensions of the scholarship—dividends were suspended during the Great De-pression for nearly 10 years. How-ever, diversifying the Doyle Trust Fund is more complicated. Doyle’s will prohibits the Doyle Trust Fund from selling its stock, which is a controlling interest in Exchange Bank. This was Doyle’s way of assur-ing that the bank would not be sold.

In a 2009 Bohemian article, trust attorney Kim Marois reiter-ated Doyle’s will forbids the sale of Exchange Bank stock, and there-

fore diversification. In an interview for this article, local trust attorney Charles Stark agreed. On a side note, Marois received $156,207 from the Doyle Trust Fund for legal services the year of her interview, and Stark is an acquaintance of Re-inking and attends Exchange Bank social functions.

In contacting legal counsel dis-tant from Exchange Bank, however, the conversation changes.

“What you are describing can well be considered a breach of fi-duciary duty,” writes Philadelphia estate attorney Dimitry Alexander Kaplun, in an email interview. Be-cause the trustees sitting on the bank’s board of directors may have failed to “ensure a conservative management of affairs” of Exchange Bank (as mandated by Doyle’s will), and their failure contributed to the drop of the Trust Fund’s assets, the affected beneficiaries “may seek a breach claim,” Kaplun says.

As for the terms forbidding di-versification, Kaplun says “such relaxation of clauses is fairly com-mon in charitable trusts” because acceptable administration practices change over time.

The Uniform Prudent Investor Act is an appropriate example. En-acted in the California Probate Code in 1995, it states “a trustee shall in-vest and manage trust assets as a prudent investor would” and “the trustee has a duty to diversify the investments of the trust.” Though

the UPIA allows the creator of the trust flexibility, the state of Califor-nia didn’t adopt its guidelines until nearly 50 years after Doyle’s death.

Santa Cruz attorney Tim Mor-gan confirms that the condition of the Doyle Trust Fund may merit amending the trust document.

Because “the underlying asset has radically lost value,” Morgan “could see a court striking that re-striction [against diversification] out of concern for the beneficiaries, who are now being harmed by that restriction,” he writes in an email interview.

Regardless, Exchange Bank’s lack of confidence in the local econ-omy will prevent the Doyle from returning anytime soon if it con-tinues to operate under its current provisions. With every class of SRJC students who transfer or finish cer-tificate programs, the name Doyle fades to letters on a placard, and administrators continue to think wishfully that the scholarship will return the next semester.

The question remains: Why hasn’t the community reacted to the stagnant status of the Doyle Schol-arship?

“Because Frank Doyle’s not here,” Rivera says. “He’d be taking care of this in a different manner.”

Note: This article has been cor-rected to reflect proper criteria Ex-change Bank uses to determine re-instatement of dividends.

8 December 12, 2011

Q & AQ & ACollege politics, life’s pleasures and the big move:

Q: How long has the idea of coming out west been on the ho-rizon for you? Is this job part of a long-term plan or was it only until recently that you thought of be-coming the president of a college in Northern California?

A: I’ve been living in the Bay Area since 1975. I had two presi-dencies, one at Mission and one at Laney, and then I got tapped to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary for community colleges. When the president wins an election he has about 3000 appointments, and I’m one of those, who come to Wash-ington, and many people uproot their families and move or leave their families and friends behind. They go to Washington and try to make a difference, which I tried to do and I’m really proud of what we tried to do at the Department of Education.

The Santa Rosa opportunity is one that comes around once every 20 years so when I was approached about whether I’d be interested I started doing some research and found out it’s a pretty amazing col-lege in terms of serving the commu-nity. It had a good solid board and a great beautiful campus and a pretty diverse student population and staff. So I was very attracted to San-ta Rosa. In my position you get ap-proached quite often because there are so many vacancies with college presidencies, but I was determined to come back to California, and de-termined to come back to Northern California, to the Bay Area.

Q: What kinds of activities and

recreation do you look forward to doing in Sonoma County?

A: Well, I’m a real foody so I love to eat. I understand there are some really good ethnic restaurants. And Guy Fieri from the Food Network is from Santa Rosa so I’d like to go to one of his restaurants; there’s one called La Texanita I want to try. I like to play golf, and I like to hike. If I have time I’ll try to enjoy some of the things the area has to offer – the wine tasting, the food and the great hiking trails.

Q: In all the community colleg-es you have traveled to, what com-mon thread have you discovered that weaves them all together?

A: I saw rural, suburban and ur-ban colleges. The wonderful thing about community colleges is they really reflect the specific needs of the communities. You’ll have com-munity colleges like the one I went to in Oregon that developed the wind turbine energy – they have windmills, hundreds of them and the community college trains the students to help maintain the wind turbines and the wind farm. Then you go to a place like Ivy Tech in Indiana, and they’re really trying to do a lot with manufacturing. So it’s been a really interesting experi-ence going to see so many different community colleges, and see how they’re serving the community. And I think quite honestly, Santa Rosa is doing a really good job in trying to serve the Sonoma County community. It has great transfer programs, and Sonoma has a large immigrant population with a large Spanish speaking population so I think the ESL department is trying to figure out a way to move students through. Part of what I’d like to do is share what I’ve learned over the past

After a long day of work in D.C.’s Education Department, Dr. Frank Chong talked over the phone with the Oak Leaf about his upcoming appointment as SRJC’s next president. Chong, who will be the fifth SRJC president after more than 90 years, will succeed Dr. Agrella who has held the position for the past 21 years.

During the phone conversation, Chong elaborated on how his experience working in local, state and federal positions with the community college education system can help preserve and build upon the legacy of SRJC’s community and campus culture.

School and work aside, Chong shared some of his past encoun-ters with Obama, what he’s learned throughout his many travels in the U.S. and how much he’s looking forward to trying a Guy Fieri taco among other things in Sonoma County.

-Michael Shufro, Co-Editor-in-Chief

Life in D.C.:Q: Once you move to the area,

how do you think your day-to-day experience will contrast with where you live now?

A: I’ve been primarily out in D.C. for the past two years. Wash-ington D.C. has been a very inter-esting, eye-opening experience for me. I’ve actually done a lot of travel because part of my job is to go around the country promoting community colleges and also sup-porting community colleges in dif-ferent states.

I’ve traveled to around 30-plus states and logged about 100,000 miles in two years. I’ve been fortu-nate to have gone to visit everything from a Pine Ridge Indian reserva-tion in South Dakota to community colleges in the “Yoopers” of North-ern Michigan to Florida. I’ve really gotten to see how community col-leges work and don’t work.

D.C. is 24 hours, people are re-ally focused on political and federal policy work, so it’s a lot of heavy lift-ing in terms of trying to move the education agenda forward in these difficult budget times in the federal government, but I’m real proud with what we’ve been able to accomplish.

Q: Working in the Department of Education, have you found it difficult to accomplish genuine change through the political pro-cess, or does the D.C. stigma of “politics as usual,” not take a toll on your work?

A: Through the leadership of

Arnie Duncan, our Secretary, he’s really been very bipartisan. I don’t really see a lot of Republicans and Democrats disagreeing about the need to improve our education sys-tem, and the need to invest in high-er education, because we know we need a better trained workforce to compete in a global economy.

We’ve been able to drive an agenda where we’re trying to re-form education so it becomes more relevant and more outcome-driven so that we can basically get more students to graduate, and that’s been my main thing. Community colleges have historically been great in access, but no so great on success. If the goal is to transfer; if the goal is to get an AA degree or to get a cer-tificate, we need to do a better job nationally to support students, fac-ulty and the institutions so they can better serve the community.

Q: As a key player in the U.S. Government, describe what an av-erage day of work is like? Do you pass the White House on your way to office, and lunch regularly with congressmen?

A: A lot of my work is inter-agency work to break down silos. So for example, in our service to veterans and returning war vets, we try to figure out how to get the De-partment of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Education, Health and Human Services to really coordinate sup-port services for veterans, such as housing. Part of my day is meet-ing with community college lead-

ers and presidents and faculty who are visiting Washington. President Obama wants to have America lead the world in college and degree ob-tainment by 2020. We’re currently ranked 15 or 16, and a generation ago we were number one. And while we haven’t really slipped, oth-er countries have hop scotched over us like Korea and Denmark. So I’ve been really trying to find ways to get students to the finish line quicker without losing quality.

Q: As the Secretary Deputy of the U.S. Department of Educa-tion, have you met or worked with Obama, and if so, can you describe what the man and the president are like?

A: I’ve had the occasion to meet him maybe a handful of times, pret-ty much greetings and he’s come into certain meetings I’ve been a part of. I just think he’s a very ear-nest, authentic person. He’s very positive and supportive, but also challenges you to do better. Often times the status quo is not accept-able, but he rarely blames anybody. We each have to take responsibility for what we’re doing in Washington because it’s on our watch now.

To me one of the great things about leadership is you don’t blame others for the challenges you cur-rently have. I respect him because he owns what he inherited, and he doesn’t displace or point fingers. He more just leads; you’re here, you have an once-in-a-lifetime opportu-nity to create some positive change, let’s get to work.

Meet Dr. Chong:

Q & A9www.theoakleafnews.com

Q & ASome of

Chong’s Favorites:Movie of all time: The Godfather – masterful piece of

movie making

Local movie of all time: Bottle Shock

Book: Good to Great by Jim Miller Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and

Sweet

Music: Tony Bennett, and all kinds of music

Vacation spot: Hawaii

Sports team: The Bear Cubs

couple years in Washington.Q: How far into your moving

plans are you? Will you go more toward the city or country – have you found a house or do you plan to rent first?

A: I’m going to find a home in Sonoma County. My home in Oak-land is too far to commute. I’m go-ing to start looking when I get back out there. People say Petaluma is a nice place. It’s got a nice little downtown area. I don’t need a fancy place.

Q: What is your take on the Oc-cupy Movement, and its place on college campuses like SRJC?

A: College campuses should be places where we can discuss social issues. The civil rights movement, antiwar movements and a lot of the social movements in the history of this country started at college cam-puses. I would encourage open and civil discourse about the motiva-tions and dialogue that the Occupy movement has arisen. I think we, as a college, would want to facilitate and discourse what some of those issues are.

Q: The California Commu-nity College Student Success Task Force is making plans to push for slashing a broad range of electives from community colleges, and penalizing students who don’t fit into the in-out two-year transfer plan. Do you agree or disagree with their efforts, and why?

A: I haven’t had a chance to real-ly thoroughly go through the plan. I think during times when there are shrinking resources, colleges and communities need to maybe examine and collectively decide if you can’t do everything you’ve been doing, what are some of the areas you’re going to focus on. I think

that this is a difficult conversation to have because community col-leges historically have been open-access, and also multiple missions, but what happens when you don’t have the adequate resources to sup-port all of those missions. Do you make priorities? Do certain things become more important than oth-ers? Where do you cut? What’s fair?

A professor at Harvard told me once, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” Nobody wants to be decreased or cut. I don’t have an easy answer. When appropriate I’ll weigh in. I’m not so invested in the outcome as I am in the nature of the process; that it’s fair and people have a say and input. We can dis-agree, but let’s not be disagreeable. I want to maintain civil discourse so people won’t be in a place where they fear that they can’t disagree. The spirit of a college campus is re-ally for us to have dialogue, conver-sation, discourse, but to keep it civil and keep it peaceful.

Q: I noticed you received a good deal of positive laughter from the crowd during the presi-dential forums. Do you have any favorite jokes or memories when your sense of humor has gotten you in trouble?

A: When you get to know me, I try to take issues seriously, but I try to not take myself too seriously. Hu-mor is a wonderful way to cut the edge out and humanize people. I love laughter; I love humor. I think when you’re working so closely with everybody in a community you got to have a good sense of humor. That’s just who I am, that’s just my style. Maybe in my next career I’ll become a comedian.

SRJC: The Chong Chapter

Q: Do you plan to attend sports games or arts and lectures events held on campus?

A: I like to watch hoops. I’m a big sports fan. I’ll be at a lot of the games. I’ll be rooting for the golf team, the water polo team and the volleyball team. I’ll try to make as many plays, galleries, poetry read-ings, forums and festivals. I love that stuff; that’s one of the reasons I wanted to get back on a college campus - for the cultural campus life. I can sense there’s a real active community life. I hope to bring speakers and people from places that I’ve been to, to come through the college and share their perspec-tives with students and faculty.

Q: What do you plan to do your first day on the job? What do you hope to accomplish in the next five years?

A: I’ll probably meet with Dr. Agrella and have him kind of give me a briefing and orientation on what some of the issues are, and I’ll meet my administrative team and my assistant, Maria. School doesn’t start ‘til the following week so I think I’ll have a little down time to try to find where the men’s room is and where the gymnasium is, be-cause I want to figure out a workout schedule. It’s pretty grueling hours – it’s not a 9 to 5 job, it’s pretty much 24/7 – so I want to maintain my physical and mental health so I can really be at my best when I’m serv-ing the college.

Q: What kind of philosophy – personal or political – do you plan to bring to the college?

A: What I’d like to bring is a kind of servant leadership, where I think that there’s a tremendous potential of leaders among students, faculty, classified staff and administrative teams. I think my challenge to the system is to really empower every-body to be a leader on campus. And for the good of the community and

to serve the community, the chal-lenge is really to develop student leadership, faculty leadership and classified leadership. My philoso-phy of leadership is very distribu-tive. I don’t believe in the Charles Atlas type of leadership where one person is holding up the whole col-lege. There’s an old Taoist saying, “to lead one must follow,” and I like to think that’s how I’ve always led.

Q: As the president, in what ways will your approach differ from Dr. Agrella and those who held the position before you?

A: I can’t really speak to his style of leadership; you’d have to ask the people who have worked for him. I don’t really know him all that well, but I know he’s accomplished a great deal in his time, and has a track record to be very proud of. I just want to go in there and honor the tradition and history of the col-lege, and also try to move the college forward because it’s a very challeng-ing time with the budget situation. I want to figure out collectively with the board and college community how we can bring more resources to the college besides state funding. I think we really need to try and di-versify our funding base and look more at things like federal grants and different types of partnerships.

Q: If, like Agrella, you make a home here for more than 20 years, what legacy do you hope to leave with the college?

A: What I would like to leave is a place that is going to be the next chapter of Santa Rosa Junior Col-lege’s history. The campus has had kind of four chapters and the next chapter is going to be, in part, the Chong chapter, and hopefully it will be a long one. I think it would be marked by words like “innovation” and “imagination,” and really try-ing to look at excellence, and ask what does excellence look like, what does success look like? And that’s not something I can define person-ally, but I would like to see if we can develop a collective vision for the

college and how we can better serve the community. That’s all commu-nity colleges are, community be-fore college. The great thing about community colleges is they usually reflect the needs, desires and aspira-tions of the local community, and I really want to embrace that. I’m re-ally excited about getting to know Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Cotati and Windsor. There are so many different little enclaves in So-noma County. On the face of it they all look very similar somehow, but if you really scratch the surface, those communities have very unique cul-tures, histories and demographics.

I think for me that’s one of the challenges: to really get to know those communities and how to put them together. It’s like a mosaic or tapestry, and you want to weave it into something that’s going to look real nice and feel good.

Q: Will you have an open-door policy? Can students and faculty just show up?

A: I’m going to try and meet with all the constituent groups in an organized manner just for ef-ficiency. Typically I have an open-door policy, but you also have to get work done so you can’t have people coming in all the time. I’m going to try to be proactive and get out and meet students and faculty. I’d like to try to organize different little teas or coffees; opportunities for us to have some listening sessions where I can really familiarize myself with the different programs, concerns and groups. I haven’t quite thought it all out yet, but I’m a pretty accessible person, and I think I’ll be pretty vis-ible on campus.

Q: If you had to choose just one, what would be your greatest concern for the college?

A: Right now is funding. I think the California budget being the way it is, and the federal budget being the way it is, I’m concerned about how we preserve and support all the different needs of our students and our community.

10 December 12, 2011ARTS &ENTERTAINMENT

SRJC’s timeless production of “My Fair Lady” filled with witty repartée and boisterous musical numbers that leave the audience’s stomachs aching from laughter.

“My Fair Lady,” the musical ad-aptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play “Pygmalion,” tells the story of flower girl Eliza Doolittle’s journey to become a high-class lady.

Directed by Laura Downing-Lee, SRJC’s actors blew the audi-ence away with their talent, main-taining accent throughout the play and mesmerizing the audience with near flawless musical num-bers. Although at some points in the play the chorus was hard to hear, the audience was never at a loss with understanding the dia-logue or enjoying the magic on stage.

Eliza Doolittle, played by Erin Ashe, overwhelmed many with her consistant ability to maintain her accents throughout the play. The actor had to learn two accents; the

crass and vulgar language of the lower class and the fully rounded, well-versed language of the upper class.

The play’s introduction set an atmosphere of warmth and hilarity and instantly transported the audi-ence into 1912 London. The chorus peasants wander through the cob-bled street of Covent Garden taking in the shops, watching a juggler or the Cockney Quartet play cards.

The ambience of the play was never overwhelming; the chorus never took attention away from the main characters, but enhanced the scene whether it was through a sub-tle act or dancing center stage. The play was perfectly cast and there were no small roles.

The actors portraying the up-per class characters were outfitted in lavish and vibrant clothes, which contrasted perfectly with the dull tones of the lower class. The transi-tions from set to set were fast paced and efficient. The transition from conversation to song was smooth.

In one particu-lar scene near the end of the play, Eliza is talking to Freddy Eynsford-Hill, played by Dominic Wil-liams, about how she wants men to not only say what they are feeling, but to physically show the emo-tions. The transi-tion between the conversation and the song was so effortless that the only indication that the song be-gan and the con-versation ended was the soft swell-ing tones of the orchestra.

The play was fun to watch and had the crowd locked in its seats from beginning to end. Even though “My Fair Lady” has been

done time and time again, it takes the right director and cast of char-acters to make the play truly spec-tacular and SRJC hit it right on the nose.

-Domanique Crawford

10/14Fall Cinema Series-

The Wizard of OzCarole L. Ellis Audito-

rium, Petaluma6 p.m. / $5 general, $4

Students and Seniors

10/15SRJC Symphonic Band

Santa Rosa Wind Sym-phony

Burbank Auditorium, Santa Rosa

7:30 p.m. / $10 general, $5 students and seniors

10/16SRJC Vocal Jazz Win-

ter ConcertNewman Auditorium,

Santa Rosa7:30 p.m. / $5

10/17Santa Rosa Chamber

Orchestra 31st “Sing-A-Long Messiah”

Santa Rosa High School Auditorium, Santa Rosa

7:30 p.m. / for tickets call (707) 506-8742

10/18SRJC Daytime & Eve-

ning Big Band Jazz En-sembles

Burbank Auditorium, Santa Rosa

4 p.m. / $10 general, $5 students and seniors

10/21Sanctuary Lost, the

Dehlingers, Absolute Zero, and Mirrors

Phoenix Theater, Peta-luma

8 p.m. / $8

10/22Annual Christmas

Party with Sweet Leaf, Seeds of Hate and Inner Edge

Last Day Saloon, Santa Rosa

8:30 p.m. / advanced tickets $8, $10 day of show/ 21+

10/237th Annual Ugly Xmas

Sweater PartyHopmonk Tavern, Se-

bastopol8:30 p.m. /$10/ 21+

In the know

My Fair Lady mesmerizes audiences

Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” is a fantastic, imaginative adventure that will likely stand out as one of the highlights of the legend-ary director’s career. “Hugo” is a magical journey that all can en-joy; an adventure of resolution, redemption, and a pure glimpse into the heart of one of cinema’s greatest directors.

“Hugo” is the story of a

young orphan, Hugo Cabret, who lives in the clocks of a train station in a highly styl-ized rendition of 1930s Paris. In addition to attending to the station’s clock system, he uses it to navigate around the sta-tion, and steals bits of machin-ery from a toymaker’s shop, in hopes of repairing an automa-ton left behind by his, in the slight hope it may contain a message from him.

At its core the movie con-tains a strong message about the power of film; it’s ability to both create and fulfill dreams. It’s Scorsese’s love letter to his medi-um, especially its early years. He uses a movie with a broad tar-

get audience to show us the birth of the art form, and to encourage tangental learning on the subject. But beyond teaching the audience film history, Scorsese uses “Hugo” to preach, in the best possible sense of the word, about film pres-ervation, a cause that Scorsese has mastheaded for much of his career.

Asa Butterfield takes on the

titular role of the film, a character that would prove challenging to a veteran actor, let alone a 14-year-old with only one notable role un-der his belt. But Butterfield encom-passes the role with a natural ease. Chloë Moretz, as always, plays her character with a startling level of maturity for someone her age, counter balanced with a wide eyed enthusiasm for everything she en-counters. Ben Kingsley brings his A-game to the aged toymaker Papa Georges. I am admittedly not a fan of Borat’s Sacha Baron Cohen, and at first his portrayal of the Station Inspector came off as a hammy knockoff of Inspector Clouseau, but it was only a matter of time un-til the heart of the character came through, and even I couldn’t help smiling at Cohen’s performance.

“Hugo” marks not only Scors-ese’s first foray into family-friendly films, but his first time behind a 3D camera. Scorsese’s signa-ture tracking shots excel in 3D, whether working its way through the bustling train station, or float-ing through the intricate machin-ery of the clocks or the streets of Paris, Scorsese and cinematog-

rapher Robert Richardson’s shots are some of the most beautiful images to grace a 3D movie screen. In particular, the sequences where the classic films are brought to life in 3D adds a whole new level to the magic to the piece.

Don’t think that because Scorsese has ventured into fam-ily friendly movies that this is a ‘kiddie movie.’ “Hugo” retains the depth and maturity present in any of Scorsese’s darker films. The story is heartfelt, with some truly touching, tragic and uplift-ing moments. The characters feel like real, fleshed out people from the first moment they appear on-screen. Everyone involved has approached every aspect of the film with genuine love and care, and it shows.

“Hugo” is a film everyone can and should enjoy. It has a great story and an important message that is brought to the screen by one of the greatest creative minds to work in the field.

-Noah Diamond-Stolzman

Sunny yellow walls and wooden tables gives Crepe Daze a cozy, homelike feeling from the moment you walk through the door. The shelves loaded with books and games in the corner as well as the wall full of coffee mugs give the place the feel of a café as opposed to a restaurant. The walls are decorated with lo-cal art that changes frequently, and the corner is adorned with kitsch; personalized, memeish decorations. All of this is not the star of the show, but instead

just the stage where the action takes place.

As the name suggests Crepe Daze serves crepes, both sweet and savory, as well as the occa-sional sandwich. The crepes are good, and more importantly ac-cessible to those without much crepe eating experience. The menu is simple, with no fancy names, just a direct statement of what is in the crepes; the least de-scriptive name on the menu is the Greek crepe, a mix of feta, spin-ach, black olive and tomato.

The Greek has a good bal-ance of flavor with the salty feta playing off the bitter spinach and the sweet tomato. The dish

also balanced of hot and cold as well, the tomatoes near the edges and the olives that garnished the top of the dish still held a bit of a chill, which added a nice com-plexity of texture.

The sweet crepes offer the same simplistic naming conven-tion and range from fruit and Nutella or almond joy to simple sugar and spice. This last one ar-rived at the table looking like a flattened slice of pumpkin pie, the spices and sugar glisten-ing across the top and crust of whipped cream around the back edge. The flavor was good, but not distracting.

That may be the worst thing

I can say about Crepe Daze, is the food is not so amazing that it distracts from the conversa-tion you’re having while you eat. This is not really a bad thing. If you want something to eat while studying this is a good choice or it is the perfect place to linger over coffee and crepes while you chat with friends.

If you want to sit around and talk about how good the food is go somewhere else. If you want good crepes at a good price then Crepe Daze is the place for you.

-Quinn Conklin

Critic’s Corner

Crepe Daze: great crepes at great prices

“Hugo” brings message, magic to 3D

11www.theoakleafnews.com ARTS &ENTERTAINMENT

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The SRJC community per-formed at Music as a Means on Dec. 1 in the Bertolini Student Ac-tivities Center as part of a musical memorial for Kory Kevin Ryan.

Music as a Means, created in 2008 by Amanda Swan, former Student Senate president, offers poetry, original and cover songs to be performed by SRJC students and faculty members.

This was the third and last Mu-sic as a Means event of the semester and the Associated Students decid-ed to dedicate it to Ryan who spent the semester directing the program before his untimely death.

“Kory was a pioneer on cam-pus, there to speak up for those

who cannot speak up for them-selves,” said President of Advocacy Jessica Jones.

For 2011 Ryan was in charge of contacting musicians for social jus-tice, according to Jones.

The first performer was Di-rector of Student Affairs Robert Ethington. “Kory arranged some way to do this,” Ethington said. He played guitar and sang with his wife Amy. They started off with an original song title, “Got it Com-ing,” which left the audience nod-ding in agreement and enthusiasti-cally tapping their toes.

“Kory was making the work a little bit better for everybody, not just a few,” Ethington said.

David Ryan, a Library Techni-cian for the Mahoney Library in Petaluma, performed three songs. He began with “Youngstown” by

Bruce Springsteen, followed by an original song, “Better Day” and ended with a Bob Dylan cover.

Gordon Yazmen, an auto tech-nology instructor, introduced political poetry to the crowd. The audience let out a few chuckles during Yazmen’s “Mega Corps” poem.

Instructors like Steve Morris of Counseling 53 rewarded ex-tra credit for attendance. Morris performed with Ethington more covers of the night’s favorite art-ist, Bob Dylan. There were four students from Morris’s class, with a full attendance of around 25 people.

The show ended early with Yazmen presenting a final poem. “It’s not a lullaby but it’s a good one to end with,” Yazmen said.

The holidays are quickly ap-proaching. That means family gatherings, Christmas lights, pres-ents, eggnog and peppermint ga-lore. What if you want to step out of winter wonderland for a few minutes and go back to summer? A long day at the beach, maybe getting a little sunburned, end-ing the night under the stars and a roaring bonfire with friends is what comes to mind.

Don’t worry if you are short on the sun, sand, bonfire or all of the above. All you need is an oven to make these s’more cupcakes and you’ll be tasting the salt of the ocean on your lips and smelling the aroma of the campfire before you know it.

Step one of a s’more is the gra-ham cracker. In this case we use a graham cracker cupcake.

For the cupcakes:

Ingredients:2 cups graham cracker crumbs2 tsp. baking powder¼ tsp. salt3 large eggs, separated8 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room

temperature1 cup sugar1 tsp. vanilla extract1 cup milk

Directions:Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line

24 muffin tins with paper liners. In a medium bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt; stir together and set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites on medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Transfer to a separate bowl and set aside. Replace the mixer bowl and fit with the paddle attachment. Cream together the butter, sugar and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy for about 2 minutes. Mix in the egg yolks until well com-bined. Stir in the vanilla extract.

Add in the dry ingredients alter-nately with the milk on low speed, mixing just until it’s smoothly blended. Using a spatula, fold in about a third of the egg whites to lighten the batter. Gently fold in the remaining egg whites until com-pletely blended.

Divide the batter evenly in tins, about 2/3 full. Bake the cupcakes for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool completely.

Once cool, cut divots into the middle of each cupcake (be sure not to cut all the way down to the bottom though). Fill with chocolate ganache.

Music as a Means eulogizes student through poem and song

Psychadelic art rocks SRJC Gallery

An experience of color fusion inhabited the SRJC Art Gallery Dec. 8 in new exhibit titled, “At the Edge of Experience: Psychedelic Rock Posters from the 1960s.”

Art students, faculty and SRJC President Dr. Robert Agrella made an appearance to check out the. Rock posters, while rock music played in the background.

The ‘60s rock movement was inspired by the freedom of individ-uals to express themselves through music. Bands like the Grate-ful Dead and Jefferson Airplane

played influential roles in allowing the freedom of self-expression that characterized the era.

The artists used colorful and warped images on rock posters to create a new kind of art. Not one poster in the exhibit has the same look to it, but some charac-teristics appear throughout. The San Francisco Bay Area was im-portant in developing the move-ment that brought rock n’ roll into prominence.

Most of the exhibit was geared around Wes Wilson, an artist who created posters for the Steve Miller Band and Buffalo Spring-field. Wilson’s talent and vision can be seen in the detail he used to create the images. Wilson used bright variations of color and images half-naked risqué women warped together.

Another artist, Stanley Mouse, who owns a studio in Sebastopol created the poster highlighted on the flyer for the exhibit and show-cased in the center of the exhibit.

Alton Kelly also created works along with Mouse’s and Wilson’s art. Kelly co-created a series of posters with Mouse titled the “Family Dog” series.

Mouse’s ventures into the art world began at a young age. “I got kicked out of high school for a bunch of mischievous pranks,”

Mouse said. Mouse started in a band in high school and got into the rock n’ roll scene in the ‘60s. Another “Family Dog” collabo-rator, Victor Moscoso also had work represented. All the works represented in the gallery are the set pieces for psychedelic art.

The collection was brought together by Greg Flood, curator of the exhibit who helped bring a sense of commonality among the posters on display. SRJC in-structors Stephanie Sanchez and Mike McGinnis were influential in bringing the exhibit together.

Each piece in the exhibit has a caption and was mounted by SRJC art instructor Carla Stone along with her art students.

Aspiring student artists could be seen sitting crossed-legged on the floor trying to capture the images to work into their own study. The exhibit runs through Dec. 15.

Grace Williamson

Staff Writer

Ken Kutska

Staff Writer

Ganache3/4 cup heavy cream 6 oz. bittersweet or semisweet

chocolate, finely chopped, or chocolate chips

In a small saucepan, heat the cream over medium heat, swirling the pan a few times, until bubbles start to form around the edge of the pan, but the cream is not yet

boiling, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat, add the chocolate and let sit for 30 seconds. Slowly whisk the mixture until the chocolate is completely melted and smooth. Let cool to room temperature before piping. You can stick it in the fridge to speed up the process if you’d like.

Marshmallow fluff buttercream

Ingredients1 cup (2 sticks) butter1 (7 oz) jar marshmallow creme3 cups confectioner’s sugar1 tbsp. milk

DirectionsBeat butter until fluffy. Beat in

marshmallow creme until incorpo-rated.

Add sugar and beat until fluffy (3-5 min). If needed, add milk to get desired consistency. Don’t

worry if this results in you adding more milk or sugar than the direc-tions call for in order to get the con-sistency you want.

Once the cupcakes are cool, cut out cones inside, just enough to fill with a bite of chocolate ganache. Pipe in the ganache and then frost.

To decorate, place a chocolate square in the frosting and sprinkle with graham cracker crumbs.

Who needs a campfire when you can make these cupcakes this winter to get your quick fix of summer and sugar, all in one?

Baking with Alex:Have s’more cupcakes-Alex Pozzi

12 December 12, 2011OPINIONS & EDITORIALS

There are some things you learn when you transfer to UC Berkeley in the fall of 2011. You learn the signs of a protest: chalk written calls to action on the pavement, the sound of hovering helicopters, police that grow in numbers the closer you get to Sproul Plaza. You learn the correct answer to “whose university?” is always a screamed back “our university.” It becomes clear UC Berkeley is a place where students don’t do anything by half, including protest signs, “I’m afraid for Virginia Woolf,” “We’ve got 99 problems, but the rich are 1%”

You become intimately acquainted with the body odor of the guy standing next to you when 5,000 people are crammed in Sproul Plaza, listening to economist Rob-ert Reich speak about the wealth gap. You learn how hard it is to concentrate on media theory when your TA holds class outside, in

solidarity with the Occupy Cal protest, with the overwhelming smell of sage filling the air and a gospel choir singing “Move Along Free-dom.”

You watch the violence creep down Tele-graph Avenue, from the police raid at Occupy Oakland to a sunny Wednesday afternoon when peaceful students are beat by UC cam-pus police; you learn the anger and outrage experienced when watching UC police beat your classmates doesn’t fade, even when you’ve watched the YouTube video half a doz-en times.

You learn the WarnMe campus alert sys-tem your parents made you sign up for in the beginning of the semester works. You learn this when you get a text from the school in-forming you that a student brought a gun to the same building where you had class two hours ago. The student will be shot by the po-lice, and die in the hospital. You learn how to use Twitter on this day, frantically refreshing and trying to figure out what’s going on. A few days later, a five-alarm fire will break out

on Telegraph Avenue. An apartment building will be destroyed, with dozens of students left homeless.

 Sometimes, it can all seem like too much. When a homeless man on the street makes fun of your sweater, when everyone in your section gets a better grade than you, when you feel, more than ever before, that you’re one of 25,000 students. You become acutely aware that you’re not at SRJC, where all your pro-fessors knew who you were, where two years flew by in the comforting embrace of Sonoma County.  It’s easy to walk around Berkeley and think that you don’t belong here, this strange place with the Nobel Laureate parking only spots and the endless hills, where everyone but you seems to have a double major and infinite, career-building extra curricular ac-tivities. Yet, time passes. The days tumble one after the other with unnerving speed. You make friends. You walk across campus, talk-ing about Marxism, and feel like a cliché. You go to parties. One day, you realize that you deserve to be there. You learn. 

I get dirty looks for having the temerity to hug my fiancé in public. A quick peck on

the lips is a cardinal sin to many members of the community. I see couples who can’t hang out as friends as well as lovers. They walk awkwardly, almost never holding hands; they disapprove of at least one of their significant other’s favorite hobbies; they think sex and emotional intimacy are bargaining chips.

My fiancé Sean is my best friend in the world. He thinks it’s adorable when he walks into the room, I’m in the middle of a boss fight and can’t pay him any attention until I win. I love to come home and see he’s watch-ing a “Let’s Play”, gameplay videos made by gamers who comment on the positives, nega-tives and absurdities presented to them. Our dates often involve playing a video game to-gether or trying samples at Costco instead of going to the movies or other “normal” date activities. I have a great time with him, no matter if we’re in a nice restaurant or wander-ing Trader Joe’s.

My advice to friends about relation-ships is always to be honest. When you’re not happy with your sex life, when you’re concerned about a habit or vice, when you want more attention, sit the hell down and talk about it. Don’t go into discussions thinking you need to win: if you turn ev-ery argument into a competition, you’re the one who’s going to lose.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing, but deciding something he likes is bad or not fun without ever trying it is immature and will hurt your relationship. Even if you try it and still don’t enjoy it yourself, if it isn’t hurt-ing, just let him be happy. Obviously, if he’s a crack head, you shouldn’t have to try drugs to make him happy. If your partner is more sexually adventurous than you, try expand-ing your limits a little at first, again without doing something that will hurt you or violate any real moral or emotional issues you have. If your partner feels neglected, actually think about whether you’ve been pushing them away, don’t just leap to your own defense.

I’m a mess of self-confidence problems and abandonment issues, and I need to hear the constant reaffirmations of his love that Sean gives me. I try to give him the same support because it ensures neither of us feels neglected or unwanted. It may seem over-board, but I don’t think you can ever tell somebody you love them too many times. There can never be a limit on how many times you can repeat reasons for loving and respecting your partner; as long as you be-lieve what you’re saying, there’s no harm in telling them they’re beautiful or wonderful or intelligent or the center of your world.

I never feel like I have to play mind games like Cosmo or other women’s magazines seem to think are necessary. Once, I read an article telling women all the best ways to get their guy to try something new, or do some-thing special, tactics such as leaving a website about it open in the browser or betting you could do it and they couldn’t. In the same issue, Cosmo interviewed a male actor who said women should always just say what they want in the relationship instead of hinting at it. People get relationship advice from maga-zines that can’t even keep the story straight within one issue, and we’re amazed at the divorce rate in this country? I’m in such a good place in my relationship because we’re both willing to admit when we’re wrong, to try new things, to shower each other in affec-tion and to focus on fixing problems instead of laying blame on each other.

Don’t get relationship advice from Cosmo

Isabel Johnson

Opinion Editor

The Oak leaf

EDITORSEditors-in-Chief: Spencer Harris and Michael Shufro oakleaf-editor@santarosa.eduA&E Editor: Keshia KnightFeatures Editor: Michael ShufroMulti-Media Editor: Noah DiamondNews Editor: David AndersonOpinion Editor: Isabel JohnsonSports Editor: Spencer HarrisSocial Media Editor: Keshia KnightCopy Editor: Isabel JohnsonPhoto Editor: Mischa LopianoLayout Editor: Brutus GrueyWeb Editor: Quinn ConklinAdvertising Manager: Brutus Gruey oakleaf-ads@santaro1sa.edu

CONTACT THE OAKLEAFAddress: 645B Analy VillageSanta Rosa Junior College1501 Mendocino Ave.Santa Rosa, CA 95401

Newsroom: (707) 527-4401Editor Line: (707) 527-4401Adviser, Anne Belden: (707) 527-4867abelden@santarosa.edu

STAFF WRITERSAlex Campbell, Domanique Crawford, Sean Dougherty, Ken Kutska, Grace Williamson, Chardé Wydermyer, Parris Mazer

LETTERSSend letters to the Editor to:oakleaf-editor@santarosa.edu or to the Oak Leaf office. They should include your first and last name and be limited to 300 words. Letters may be edited for style, length, clarity and taste. Libelous or obscene letters will not be printed.

The Oak Leaf is published seven times per se-mester by the Journalism 52 newspaper practice class at SRJC. Editorials do not necessarily re-flect the opinions of the students, staff, faculty or administration.

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Editorial

Aristotle would oppose the SSTF, and so do weThe following editorial was written in

solidarity with 10 sister community college newspapers denouncing the Student Success Task Force’s recommendations. The Oak Leaf did its own investigation and came to the same conclusions.

Aristotle said the best education comes from a mentor and a student sitting on a log engrossed in deep conversation. While that would be a great platform for school, it is entirely unfeasible in the modern world. However, Aristotle’s claim is backed up by study after study supporting smaller class sizes for better results. The Student Success Task Force completely ignores this. Instead, it suggests expanding and in-creasing funding to the statewide admin-istration and taking money away from the classroom to do it.

The Student Success Task Force was created by the California Community College Board of Governor’s to help stu-dents. The recommendations the task force released in September sparked a wide and vocal response from faculty or-ganizations that led to a revised draft in December. The revision fixed a few of the most loudly lambasted problems but the recommendations as a whole still pose a looming threat to California Community College students.

The Oak Leaf is appalled by the task force’s recommendation to increase the oversight of the Chancellor’s Office (and the Board of Governors) AND to fund the Chancellor’s Office out of the drastically cut Prop. 98 funds ear-marked for educa-tion (Recommendation 7.1). The whole point of the task force is to increase stu-dent success, yet it ignores the document-ed path to get that success.

As the Community College Association stated, the Chancellor’s Office would be-come a governoring body similar to the UC and CSU systems; two entities devastated by tuition hikes, lack of classes and a con-tinual increase of their administrations’ sal-

ary. How will this in any way help students succeed?

The task force’s recommendations are not all bad, but the language of their imple-mentation leaves much to be desired. Dr. Mary Kay Rudolph paints a beneficial pic-ture to students. It would assist students who move within the state to be able to transfer between community colleges without los-ing credits.

It would also help individual colleges to cut down on ad-ministrative costs if all colleges had the same transfer curric-ulum to the UC and CSU systems, but the implementation of a statewide assess-ment and placement system must not un-dermine a college’s standards.

If SRJC has high enough standards that a transfer stu-dent to UC Berkeley for mathematics finds his or her coursework easier (as was stated in an article posted in Shuhaw for a few months last semester), those standards should be celebrated, not hacked off at the knees. If anything, the Chancellor’s office should promote SRJC’s program to other colleges.

While planning courses around student educational goals is great for those students who know what they want to do, under the priority registration system the task force recommends, students will choose majors to not lose priority. This will make those numbers for anticipating courses inaccurate. Also, how is a student supposed to explore majors if he or she loses priority by doing so? How will there be classes for exploration if course selections are mandated by stu-

dents’ educational plans?The task force makes a big deal about

student support services and that is great news for students. Unfortunately, it para-doxically wants to baby students through the community college system by giving them a narrow pathway that they must fol-low; and at the same time asks to develop

cell phone apps to take the place of a person.

College is not high school. It is not mandated. It re-quires a great deal of self-motivation to succeed and should be kept that way. If a student’s hand is held through the entire community college process, how will that student be prepared for a uni-versity? How about the workforce?

But we should not forget the diver-

sity of needs students have at community colleges. Students come here with disabili-ties, with day jobs and children to feed, with deficiencies in English and Math from high school or from another country; and they all deserve access to the support services they need. That is why those services must be varied and filled with people who can help students figure out the best path to take. Support services offer advice and guidance; they do not mandate student progress.

The task force’s recommendations show a very clear inconsistency between theories and the community college real world. The recommendations do not promote student success. They promote a waste of our scant resources on administrators rather than our students.

Shelby Pope

Contributing Writer

Culture Shock for SRJC to Berkeley transfer student

The recommendations

as a whole still pose a looming

threat to California Community College

students.

13www.theoakleafnews.com OPINIONS & EDITORIALS

Staffers in the office

Why should you care about Greece’s debt is-sue? It’s simple really: Goldman Sachs bought up billions of dollars of Greece’s debt in a lot of small deals that paid derivatives, adding up to millions of dollars of profit. Goldman Sachs is one of America’s largest publicly traded in-vestment banks that was bailed out to prevent a meltdown of the United States’ financial eco-nomic system. If Greece is allowed to fail, Gold-man Sachs will lose billions, if not trillions of dollars, risking insolvency, thus resulting in the collapse of the banking system that finances the entire globe.

Now for the bad news: this is just the tip of the iceberg. Goldman Sachs has written more than $2 trillion in insurance to numer-ous banks around Europe and has an undis-closed amount of money invested in many other European countries.

Countries sell bonds to raise money to finance their policies. Bonds are simply a promise to the buyer that the country will tax its people to get the buyer its return on the in-vestment. In this way countries sell their sov-ereignty. Goldman Sachs mandates that prof-it must dictate all policies. European Union states are not allowed to monetize their debt, i.e. buy their own debt, because they are all working under the same currency.

Without this financial tool, states were des-perate to sell stocks to the highest bidder. With Goldman Sachs being deemed by the U.S. gov-ernment as “too big to fail,” they didn’t have to worry about any particular states default because they were already guaranteed by their own government not to sink. So, Goldman Sachs went around purchasing democracies on the open market like any other commodity such as corn, oil or lumber.

So what happens when countries like Greece and Italy fail to implement austerity programs and their countries can’t come to terms on their own? Simple, the current Prime ministers are required to step down, and technocrats, like Mario Monti and Lucas Papadermos are ap-pointed to the position of prime minister to dictate austerity reforms in their absence.

Lucas Papadermos was the chairman of Greece’s central bank and worked closely with many ex-Goldman Sachs employees to broker the sale of Greece’s debt and futures. He is now the appointed Prime minister of Greece. This would be the equivalent of having America go bankrupt, Obama being forced to resign and appointing Ben Bernanke, current chairman of The Federal Reserve Bank, president of the United States.

Mario Monti was Italy’s Secretary of Trea-sury and an international advisor to Goldman Sachs from 2005 until a couple of weeks ago when he was nominated to replace Silvio Ber-lusconi as Italy’s Prime Minister. This would be the first ex-Goldman Sachs Prime Minister, effectively allowing them to have an insider on Italian economic policy, monetary and fiscal. This would be similar to appointing Timothy Geithner president.

A Goldman Sachs connection is found within almost every European country’s finan-cial sector and as of Nov. 1 Mario Draghi, ex-director for Goldman Sachs International, is the president of Europe’s Central Bank.

Italy and Greece, which have seen their de-mocracies effectively hijacked by technocrats, are to be the world’s first official corporatoc-racies: corporations, government entities and other private components direct the coun-tries and set their economic policies. If strictly looked at from an economics standpoint we can justly discern the people in these countries will not be looked at as people or citizens any-more; they are simply human capitol.

Goldman’s commodity interests are among

the largest in the world and now they may add the citizens of Greece to the list of com-modities under Goldman control. Stephen Foley of The Independent writes that Gold-man’s plan is “to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is im-possible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs inter-est.”

Isn’t there something morally wrong with that? Do the people of Greece really owe Goldman Sachs a dime? The taxpayer financed bailout was the government action that enabled Goldman Sachs to go out and buy up debt from European countries in the first place. It was the 0.01 percent interest rate loans that the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank gave to Goldman Sachs in order to make the risky debt deals. Goldman Sachs did so with the premise already set by the American gov-ernment that they were too big to fail; that it would continue to be bailed out by the mid-dle and working classes of America if Greece and others did in fact default.

This is the same bank that has received more money in subsidies and tax dollar bail-outs than any other investment bank, which they used to exploit others’ plight around the globe. The same Goldman Sachs bankers who unloaded billions of dollars of “crappy” securities to their own clients, evaporating retirement plans, pensions and 401ks, all the while doubling down against those “crappy” securities to create personal fortunes for themselves. So we shouldn’t be surprised. If Goldman Sachs views people as a commod-ity, it is only natural that they would assume direct control of the political process as well.

Why is Greece important? I contend that globalization is an economic fact and with that acknowledgement comes the under-standing that America is not exempt from the power of global financiers; the interna-tional technocrats.

Alex PozziStaff Writer

Michael ShufroCo-Editor-in-Chief

Isabel JohnsonCopy and Opinion Editor

Domanique CrawfordStaff Writer

Keshia KnightA&E Editor

BrutusLayout Editor

Mischa Lopiano Photo Editor

Grace WilliamsonStaff Writer

What did you miss the most about life now that you slaving away at the Oak Leaf Offices every weekend?

“Reading, writing and dancing. I made up for it with blistering

hangovers.”

“The breezy life of a staff writer.” “My Sanity. And my anti-social lifestyle.”

“I miss my old self. The old me would have listened when

they said no dating on the Oak Leaf.”

“Nothing. I’m only the photographer!”

“I miss studying time, extra work hours and my social life. But

I honestly feel like I gained so much of it in return working on

the Oak Leaf.”

“Just hanging out with friends and visiting my sister. All the fun stuff

happened in my life during the times I chose to go to production

weekends.”

“By participating in the Oak Leaf I’ve missed out on my social life a lot. I miss my

weekends!”

Quinn Conklin

Web Editor

The future is happening around us every day. Think about this: five

years ago there was no iPhone, and the first Android phone just turned four years old a few months ago. Today smart phones can replace cameras, mobile broadcasting trucks, calendars, Game Boys, digital re-corders and to some extent our home com-puter.

These devices have impacted how we talk to each other. From a device consider-ably smaller than a paperback novel (an-other job this little device can do) we can send a letter, a short text, make a phone call or with the right device, talk to them face to face. This is the world we live in.

The most amazing thing about this world is that we take it for granted. We simply expect to have access to the data we want, when we want it.

Being the connected social networker that I am, I wanted to see if it was just me who felt this way, so I turned to Google+, a platform that is less than a year old but has fully integrated into my daily routine. In less than 10 minutes I had responses from a handful of people across the country. Just like that, they added to the list of things we take for granted: flight, the internet (this one is such a part of the landscape to me that I did not even think about it), Mp3s and Mp3 players.

Think about this: when the semester started we did not have Spotify in the Unit-ed States or an easy way to share music via Facebook.

But all of this pales in comparison to what is coming. A company called Exo-desk is coming out with a touch screen desk that you can set your computer up on. Think about this: rather than having a desk piled with papers to sort through, you can have the notes you’re typing spread out digitally on your desk. Your Twitter, Face-book and email can pop up as well and it supports 10-point, multi-touch gestures. To put it another way it knows what each of your fingers is doing.

That is just the start of the near future; there are chips in development that will give our mobile devices the computing power of our PCs, color e-ink displays that only use power when they refresh and affordable 3D printing technology for our homes.

We live in the future and while all this technology we access every day is wonder-ful, it is not the answer to every problem. It is just another tool, another pathway to making problems and solving them. It is a new way for us to connect with each other or to dis-tract ourselves from those around us.

Our phones, cameras and streaming data connections are not where our lives should be but are the tools that help us live. It is not the number of friends on our so-cial networks that matters but the interac-tions that we have with them. A thousand requests to play the latest ‘ville game is not as meaningful as the single note saying “I was thinking of you today and that made me happy.”

We live in the future and are surround-ed every day by the wonder that it brings. We need to be able to recognize and find amazement about things we as a species have accomplished and at the same time remember that compared to how awesome and cool those accomplishments are, it is the people who live in the future with us who are really amazing.

Take a moment to smell the apps

Drew Sheets

Contributing Writer

Why Greece Matters to all of us

The two photos in issue six, Nov. 21, in the article “Instructor’s book explores prolific architect” were taken by Joel Puliatti.

Correction:

14 December 12, 2011SPORTS

Entering the San Francisco City Classic Tournament Nov. 11 the SRJC men’s basketball team was ranked number nine in the state, but won the tournament in three straight games to grab the number one ranking. However, two early non-conference losses suffered against Yuba and Diablo Valley low-ered the Bear Cubs ranking to sev-enth in the state. The team’s current overall record is 8-3.

Last season, the Bear Cubs chased a state title only to be cut short by the San Francisco City Col-lege Rams in the third round of the playoffs. S.F. City went on to com-plete a Cinderella season winning its first state title in 49 years.

SRJC finished second last season in the Big 8 conference with an over-all record of 22-9. With key players returning and promising incom-ing freshmen, the Bear Cubs were matched against the Rams in the final game of the San Francisco City Classic and the squad was ready for a much-anticipated rematch against the defending state champs.

In the first round of the S.F. City Classic, SRJC defeated College of Marin 77-45 with strong play from freshman shooting guard Xavier McCall.

“He’s [McCall] improved a lot in the preseason. He’s a very good athlete and he’s a good penetra-tor. He made some big shots in our first game against College of Marin to break the game open. He played good against San Francisco as well,” head coach Craig McMillan said.

During the second round against Yuba College, the Bear Cub’s resiliency was tested. Despite falling behind 15 points in the second half, SRJC rallied to earn the victory, 70-68.

In the third and final round, the Bear Cubs seized the opportunity for payback against the Rams win-ning another close battle, 84-82, to become tournament champions. After beating the defending champs on their home court SRJC received all seven first place votes in the Nov. 14 CCCMBCA coaches poll. “We have to take it in stride. It’s just No-vember,” McMillan said.

During the tournament, the team played well as a group includ-ing freshmen who have not let the transition from high school to ju-nior college ball intimidate them.

“I was really impressed with how well our freshmen played. We had several freshmen that played quite a bit throughout the tourna-ment,” McMillan said.

With a team consisting of seven local players and six from outside Northern California, McMillan has

carefully stockpiled his roster with players new to the area that in-clude several players from South-ern California, one from Arizona and two from New Zealand.

Comprising the majority of the team are seven familiar faces from the North Bay. Bobby Sharp and McCall from Cardinal Newman, Henry Gill, Kevin Aronis and Max Fujii from Analy, Erik Hansen from Rincon Valley Christian and Tyler Imhoff from Napa.

“Max Fuji from Analy was All-Tournament in the San Francisco tournament and had 21 points against Yuba. He played very well the whole time. Bobby Sharp from Newman played very well also,” McMillan said.

Other players also contributed such as transfer students Myles Jerrett and Connor Gillet who red-shirted last year. “I was im-pressed with everyone. Everyone who played for us contributed and played well,” McMillan said.

Sama Taku, a 6-foot 1-inch, 185-pound point guard hailing from Tucson, Arizona is coming off a stellar 2010-11 season, mak-ing the Big 8 All-Conference first team. Taku is currently leading the team in scoring with 16.3 points per game, complimented by the ability to convert difficult shots and draw defensive fouls, going

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www.theoakleafnews.com

Mens basketball shoots from ninth to first place in the state

Women’s basketball gears up for a slam-dunk season

Alex Campbell

Staff Writer

Alex Campbell

Staff Writer

Mischa Lopiano/ Oak Leaf

Jenna Reed and the SRJC Bear Cubs win against the Ohlone Renegades 57-55 at the Caren Franci Invitational Tournament in their first game of the weekend.

After an historic season finish-ing 28-6 overall, winning the Big 8 conference championship for the second straight season and earning the first state title in women’s bas-ketball since 1988, the Bear Cubs are reloaded and poised to repeat.

The defending state champs traveled to Orange County dur-ing Thanksgiving week and won the Santa Ana College Thanks-

giving Tournament in three games to bring their overall record to 5-1. SRJC defeated the L.A. Val-ley Monarchs in game one 64-51, crushing the Mira Costa College Spartans 69-35 in game two and finished off the Riverside Commu-nity College Tigers in the champi-onship game 63-49.

Strong play by returning guards Jen Tsurumoto and Jenna Reed helped secure the victory and tour-nament championship for the Bear Cubs. Tsurumoto was named Tour-nament MVP and Reed earned an All-Tournament selection. Fresh-men forwards Anandi Jimenez and Arianna Hanson contributed by making key plays as well as fresh-man guard and co-captain Holly Cramer. Whitney Edens also pro-vided a spark at the guard position.

Entering the season, co-cap-tains Ashley Morgan and Cramer will be expected to provide leader-ship on top of a heavy workload. Many SRJC fans are familiar with sophomore guard Tsurumoto and her scoring ability. After her break-out performance last season, av-eraging 13.1 points per game and clutch play in the state champion-ship game, look for the co-captain to build on her past success. Along with Tsurumoto the 2011-12 team is stockpiled with talent.

Almost every player on the roster earned All-League or All-Empire honors during high school. What may be the “X” factor could be the combination of four former high school league MVPs in this year’s freshman class. Playing for Montgomery, Jimenez was the 2010 North Bay League MVP and while playing for Cloverdale Edens was

the 2010 North Central League I South MVP. Hannah Dolan and Hanson were North Central League II South MVPs while playing for Rincon Valley Christian. “We have some freshman that are stepping up,” head coach Lacey Campbell said.

The Bear Cubs former captain and last season’s Big 8 conference MVP Mia Greco was recruited and transferred to St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, however, look for Tsurumoto or Morgan to compete for Big 8 MVP this season.

Injuries have not been an issue so far this season with the exception of former Ursuline standout and starting center McKenzie Mangino, who suffered a dislocated finger. Mangino may be cleared to play in the Golden Gate Classic Tourna-ment Dec. 16-18.

“We lost Mangino and she was our starting post player. She went out with a dislocated finger and needed to have that reset,” Camp-bell said. “We’re hoping to get her back soon.”

The Caren Franci Invitational hosted by SRJC will be held at So-noma State University on Dec. 9-10 and the championship game will be played at SRJC on Dec. 11.

The Bear Cubs will compete in the Golden Gate Classic Tourna-ment hosted by the City College of San Francisco Rams. S.F. City will be out for revenge if matched up against SRJC after losing to the Bear Cubs in the state championship game 52-45 last season. The Ram’s star player and Northern California Player of The Year Janis Peterson was plagued by the airtight defense that held her to three points, mak-ing it her worst game of the year.

Reed is anxious for the upcom-ing competition after trouncing last year’s opposition. “I feel like Nor-Cal teams are a little harder. Our tournament next weekend we have a lot of tough NorCal teams in it,” Reed said. “We’re a defending state championship team and I hope a lot of people come out to support us. I think we’re going to be a really good team again this year.”

The players are not the only

Continued on page 16

Continued on page 16

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In a heart-stopping overtime thriller the SRJC women’s soccer team vanquished the Southern California No. 1 seed Santiago Canyon Hawks 4-3 to win the 2011 CCCAA state championship. It is the first-ever SRJC women’s soccer CCCAA state title.

The Big 8 Conference Out-standing Player of the Year Cara Curtin swarmed up and down the field throughout the championship match attacking Santiago Canyon relentlessly, scoring all four goals for the Bear Cubs.

SRJC won its fifth straight Big 8 conference title this season com-piling an overall record of 20-1-3 going 10-1-3 in conference play. During the semifinals on Dec. 3, the Bear Cubs defeated Cypress College 2-nil advancing SRJC to the state final.

This year was the fourth time SRJC has ever played in a game that would decide the state cham-pion. The Bear Cubs previously fell short in 1991, 2008 and 2010. After finishing last year’s regular season undefeated and cruising to the state final, SRJC lost to San Ber-nardino Valley 1-nil with the only goal coming off a penalty kick.

During the state champion-ship game, the Bear Cubs battled through seven lead changes sur-viving several momentum swings

and allowing a season high three goals. Refusing to lose and never quitting, SRJC endured multiple corner kicks, a successful penalty kick and two tough overtime pe-riods, displaying the team’s mental toughness on route to victory.

“That was easily the best game I have ever been a part of. The twist and turns in that game just made it an absolutely incredible game,” head coach Luke Oberkirch said.

During his first season with SRJC, Oberkirch navigated the team to a state championship to bring Northern California its first CCCAA state championship since American River College won it in 1996.

The Bear Cubs took the lead 12 minutes into the champion-ship game against the Hawks when Curtin handled a high pass from Alexis Johnson, but was able to slide the ball past the keeper. The Bear Cubs seemed to have control entering halftime leading 1-nil, however, the Hawks returned in the second half playing exception-ally aggressive.

Santiago Canyon scored 19 minutes into the second half af-ter SRJC defenders were caught off guard crowding the right side of the net. Six minutes later, the Hawks took the lead on a penalty kick after Cami James was whistled for pushing in the box.

SRJC was 2:15 away from elimi-nation when the officials called a hand violation in the box on

Santiago Can-yon providing an equalizing opportunity for Curtin. Curtin fooled the Hawk’s goaltender with a squib kick into the corner of the net sending the game into over-time, 2-2.

Two 15-min-ute periods of overtime play would decide the state champion-ship. With three and a half min-utes left on the clock in the first overtime period, Lauren Curtin spotted sister Cara near the Hawk’s net assisting Cara with her third score taking the lead 3-2 and com-pleting Cara Curtin’s hat trick.

With five minutes left in the second overtime period SRJC goal-keeper Tara Funk lost her footing and the Hawk’s midfielder Valerie Barrios fired a laser from 30 yards out tying the match 3-3.

After Barrios scored, it seemed this epic fight would never end, but as they have done numerous times before the Curtin twins were able to find one another and win the game. With the clock ticking down towards a penalty shootout,

Lauren managed to send a perfect pass to set Cara up from about 30 yards out. Cara charged full steam towards the Hawks goal and fired the ball straight past the goalie, putting the nail in the coffin. With the game-winning goal, Cara Cur-tin helped her teammates clinch the state championship and earned the game MVP.

Sophomore leadership and outstanding play from the Curtin twins and goalkeeper Funk were key in beating some of the tougher teams in the state throughout the playoffs. In the final 10 games Cara Curtin scored 17 goals while Lauren Curtin and Shelby Nieto

added four additional goals. Fresh-man Kareli Rodriguez along with Christina and Courtney Rebatta provided added firepower as well.

On many occasions Cara Cur-tin’s thirst for winning elevated herself and her teammates to cap-ture the state championship. Cara Curtin leaves her amazing career at SRJC as the fifth all-time goal scorer with 65 goals. She also finishes her illustrious career with 19 assists.

A new era has begun at SRJC and Oberkirch established that with a fifth consecutive Big 8 conference title, only one loss on the record, go-ing undefeated at home and accom-plishing a state championship.

Alex Campbell

Staff Writer

Mischa Lopiano/ Oak Leaf

The Bear Cubs along with Lauren Curtin take home first place at the 2011 CCCAA state championship.

Women’s soccer team brings home state title for SRJC

16 December 12, 2011SPORTS

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For the second straight year, the SRJC volleyball team cruised to the CCCAA state championship game to face the L.A. Pierce College Brah-mas and for the second straight year, SRJC lost. The Bear Cubs entered the playoffs as the second seed from Northern California behind the Ca-brillo College Seahawks, but SRJC was able to defeat the Seahawks during the third round of the state championship tournament.

The Bear Cubs compiled an in-credible overall record of 30-4 while going 14-1 in conference play. The squad also ended the season unde-feated at home.

Entering this year, SRJC was ranked third in the state behind eventual state champs L.A. Pierce and Cabrillo. The Bear Cubs began the season on a 24-1 winning streak dominating their opponents. Dur-ing that winning streak SRJC only dropped seven sets.

SRJC defeated No. 15 ranked Sis-kiyous in the first round of the play-offs in three straight sets. In the sec-ond round, the Bear Cubs beat No. 7

ranked Fresno in a five-set battle. During the third and final round of the playoffs against conference rival American River SRJC won in three sets. The Bear Cubs defeated Ameri-can River in the last match of the sea-son to grab the Big 8 conference title.

During the state champion-ship tournament, SRJC played four games in two days and lost two of those games to L.A. Pierce. On Dec. 3, the Bear Cubs played their first game of the championship tourna-ment when they lost to the Brahmas in five sets. However 30 minutes later, SRJC was able to defeat No. 1 seed Cabrillo in four sets proving the Bear Cubs were the best team in Northern California.

The next day on Dec. 4, SRJC beat El Camino in five sets ad-vancing to the state final against the Brahmas. Earlier that day L.A. Pierce also defeated El Camino in five sets.

Entering the state final, SRJC had just won a grueling five set game and the squad was just not ready for a rested L.A. Pierce squad. The Bear Cubs, who had 30 minutes to rest before the state champion-ship, lost to the Brahmas in three straight sets.

Because L.A. Pierce won its pre-

vious matches, under the double elimination format, SRJC would have had to beat the Brahmas twice to earn a state title. Last year, the scenario was the same.

Sophomores Sam Siebert,

Karimah Hay and freshman Olivia Urban all earned CCCAA All-Tour-nament team selections. Siebert and fellow sophomore Taylor Nelson also earned All-State team selections.

With many freshmen gaining ex-

perience from sophomores Siebert, Nelson and Hay along with a deep state title run, SRJC is aiming for another state championship appear-ance involving a different ending.

component of a rock solid pedigree the program has established. Camp-bell has been at the helm since the 2005-06 season and proved her suc-cess as a college player was not all she would receive from basketball. Campbell has begun to accumulate

strong praise as she builds her pro-gram to new heights.

Campbell has been named the Big 8 Conference Coach of the Year three consecutive years and named the Northern California Coach of the Year in back-to-back seasons.

Defense is Campell’s focus along with an emphasis on playing as group. “We’re a fun team and we

play a lot of team basketball,” Camp-bell said. “It’s a system that we have found works for us.”

Playing hard on defense while making sound decisions with pos-session on offense has brought the team success. “We stay with it. Play-ing defense and putting everyone in a comfortable position try-

ing to get them to take good shots,” Campbell said. “We’re not going to score 100 points a game because we’re trying to hold people down with defense.”

It is early in the season, however, between strong veteran leadership and new freshmen talent the squad should

be able to form team chemistry. If SRJC can use its speed to overcome any height advantage taller teams may have and spread the floor, back-to-back state titles may be in order.

“We’re young right now and the girls have a lot to learn. There’s always room for improvement,” Reed said.

Spencer Harris

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Mischa Lopiano/ Oak Leaf

While the SRJC Bear Cubs struggle against the L.A. Pierce College Brahmas, the team set an incredible record of 30-4 this season.

Volleyball team finishes second in state

Women’s Basketball Continued from page 14

Men’s BasketballContinued from page 14

19-22 from the free-throw line.Jerrett, a power-forward from

Chino Hills, has demonstrated early in the season his versatility. His abil-ity to shoot from behind the three-point arc has helped his statistics ranking him third on the team with 30 total points.

Jerrett can also rebound like a true power-forward, leading the team with 22 total rebounds with 13 of those defensive. Sophomore cen-ter Henry Gill at 6-feet 7-inches, 230 pounds is returning after re-ceiving an Honorable Mention in the Big 8 conference. He is expected

to have another strong season this year and will likely be an important part if the Bear Cubs’ success in fu-ture tournaments.

“Henry Gill was one of our top players last year. He had wrist sur-gery over the off-season and wasn’t cleared to play until October. Right after he started playing he hurt his knee and was out for a while, but he’s back. His knee’s a little sore still, but he’s making progress,” Mc-Millan said.

While it is still early in the season and it would be premature to anoint the Bear Cubs hands down the best team in the Big 8 conference, SRJC is the team to beat. By earning victo-ries over the number one and num-

ber sixth ranked teams in the state, the Bear Cubs proved to be a balanced squad with dangerous scoring power that can contend with any team on their schedule.

“We’re going to find out if this early season’s ranking is legit in the next few weeks,” McMil-lan said.