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SATURDAYHeight: 7-11 feetWind: 7-10 mph

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SUNDAYHeight: 10-11 feet

Wind: 2-9 mph Water Temp: 66 F

THURSDAYH 77 L 57

FRIDAYH 66 L 56

SATURDAYH 62 L 53

SUNDAYH 63 L 53

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DO YOU LISTEN TO KSDT RADIO?√ Yes√ No√ What’s KSDT?

THURSDAY FRIDAYTHURSDAY FRIDAY

5:47 A.M.

7:44 P.M. SUNDAYSATURDAY

WWW.UCSDGUARDIAN.ORGTHURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010VOLUME XLII, ISSUE LVI

By Nisha Kurani and Hayley MartinStaff Writers

Following a heated public clash between a prominent pro-Israel activist and a member

of the Muslim Student Association, representatives from Tritons for Israel began meeting with sponsors of the

annual Justice in Palestine Week — an MSA-sponsored event that pres-ents students with information about Israel’s alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories — to persuade them to rethink funding an event that they perceive as hurtful.

“It’s not necessarily discourage-ment as much as [telling depart-ments to] have a discussion with this organization before sponsoring these organizations, and asking them, ‘Well, what are you going to do at this event? What kind of speakers are you

bringing? What are their points of view?’” Tritons for Israel President Dafna Barzilay said. “They can have this week; it’s just that the way it’s done right now is hurting our com-munity.”

Newly elected MSA President Sarmad Bokhari said that such a retraction of funds would limit the organization’s free-speech rights.

“One of our biggest concerns is that there is big pressure on UCSD administration and the MSA to censor its discussion on conflict,”

Bokhari said. “Any discussion on the apartheid — on the uncondition-al support of the United States for the Israeli government — is literally being censored on university cam-puses, and being done so by lobby groups such as [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee].”

Tensions came to a head on May 10, when the Young Americans for Freedom invited radical pro-Israel commentator David Horowitz to

Pro-Israel students speak out against funding for Justice in Palestine Week.

Green CenterOpens Doors to Students

By Ayelet BittonAssociate News Editor

Members of the Student Sustainability Collective celebrated their official move-in to the new Sustainability Resource Center in Price Center on May 17, after finalizing the terms of a legal document that allows them to share space with university staff.

The SRC was designed to be an informational center where students can learn about sustain-ability careers and eco-friendly products. It was funded by the university and private donors, and opened its doors last November. However, after being verbally promised shared usage of the center by administrators, SSC members were initially denied open access when it opened last November.

They were mostly at odds with Campus Sustainability Coordinator Maggie Souder, whose office is housed in the center. The two parties could not agree on the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding, which would act as a legal document to officially establish the terms of the shared space. Without it, students were legally denied the ability to co-manage the SRC.

In a January 21 Guardian article, both Souder and one of the six SSC student directors, Rishi Ghosh, said the MOU drafting process was impeded because SSC members clashed with Souder over how much access each party would receive.

“In the details is where it falls through,” Souder told the Guardian reporter.

As a result, students and staff met throughout Winter and Spring Quarters to draft a MOU that served both their interests.

“With the MOU, we had a few rough spots, but we basically increased the frequency of our meetings to the point where we were meeting at one point 10 hours a week almost,” Ghosh said.

Members recruited the help of Vice Chancellor

See CENTER page 3

After months of negotiations, student advocates finally share control of space with admin.

See CONTROVERSY page 2

In ContextOn April 29, the A.S. Council debated a resolution to divest from U.S. companies invested in Israel.

OnlineRead full interviews with the leaders of the Muslim Student Association and the Young Americans for Freedom.www.ucsdguardian.org

The University of California will redirect $500 million from administrative services

into academic sectors within five years, finance experts announced dur-ing the May 19 UC Board of Regents meeting in UC San Francisco.

According to UC Chief Financial Officer Peter Taylor, the reallocation is part of an ongoing initiative to restructure the UC budget so that it reduces wasteful spending and puts emphasis on academics. Since 2008, the university has redi-rected $232 million from areas such as risk management and insurance into academic affairs.

Taylor said the changes are based on a series of UC Office of the President efficiency reports detailing how to streamline university spending. Currently, there is no set of standard crite-ria by which administrative sectors throughout the UC system will be restructured, but Taylor said he hopes to reduce “pro-curement,” or the acquisition of items such as office supplies.

“We spend $4 billion a year on everything from pens to calculators to fancy printer paper,” he said. “By deploying

See FUNDING page 2

BY ANGELA CHEN | News Editor

STEFANY CHEN/GUARDIAN

Filling the Gaps (2010-11)1,500

750

1,250

1,000

500

250

0

$1,223.40 $1,223.40

WHAT’S NEEDED HOW BUDGET GAP IS BEING FUNDED

218

368

637

305

330

211

75

218

65

($mm)

ADDITIONAL MANDATORY COSTSMANDATORY COSTSSTATE GENERAL FUND REDUCTION

REMAINING BUDGET GAPADDITIONAL STATE FUNDSSTATE GENERAL FUND RESTORATIONMIDYEAR FEE INCREASEFEE REVENUEDEBT RESTRUCTURING

Even if the state restores $305 million to the UC budget — as proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwar-zenegger — the system still faces a $1,223.40 million deficit. UC Chief Financial Officer Peter Taylor said he hopes that centralizing services and redirecting funds will reduce wasteful spending within the system.

CAROLINA DREAMIN’ PAGE 12

2 THE UCSD GUARDIAN THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010 NEWS

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resources from that area, a conservative estimate says that we can save $100 mil-lion without cutting jobs.”

Taylor said this kind of consolida-tion would preserve the academic inde-pendence of the campuses while reduc-ing the need for each campus to have an autonomous administrative sector.

“We’re a university that values autonomy and independence on the academic level, and the academics are what we’re known for,” Taylor said. “But we don’t necessarily need autonomy and independence in the administra-tive level. I have a definite bias for sys-tem administration to be centralized.”

Under the plan, the overall amount of campus funding allocated to each campus would not change. Taylor said that each campus has a block of fund-ing that remains constant; savings will be made by shifting funds from admin-istrative sectors into academic affairs instead.

“UCOP won’t be the command-and-control central of where this money goes,” Taylor said. “That’s the chancellor’s decision of which academ-ic sector to put the extra money, —whether it be another poli-sci instruc-tor or a biology researcher.”

Another reallocation effort will be consolidating human-resource centers. Although each campus will still have its own center, this plan would synchro-nize the various HR computer systems into a single database.

“If there’s someone in HR working at Berkeley and then goes down to UC San Diego, the different HR databases might not communicate, so he has to be added in as an employee again,” Taylor said. “That’s a waste of time and money, and the kind of thing we want to avoid. Same thing with payroll —

there’s no reason to have 11 when we can get the system down to one.”

According to UC Vice President of Business Operations Nathan Brostrom, the campuses are also considering shar-ing resources such as medical and data centers, as well as centralizing different library databases.

A.S. Vice President of External Affairs Michael Lam said it is impor-tant to centralize student resources rather than cut them completely.

“I haven’t looked fully into it, but from what I know, they should be care-ful,” Lam said. “Student centers are here for a reason, and students use these resources to help them with academics, so we shouldn’t be cutting.”

Taylor said he is unsure whether the restructuring effort would include lay-offs. He said there are currently 118,000 full-time administrative employees in the UC system — which includes a turnover of approximately 10,000 who leave each year, often due to retirement or transfer to other jobs.

“It’s hard to say if jobs will be cut, and we don’t have specific numbers yet,” Taylor said. ‘“We’re not embarking on this to whack jobs from the UC, but I can’t say that they won’t. But maybe if we redeploy these people, it’ll be a smarter use of the administration.”

Taylor’s proposal was well-received by UC Board of Regents Chair Russell Gould, who said the restructuring effort would be a high priority.

“We need [the regents’] support for this, and I think we got that today,” Taylor said.

Taylor will present a timeline for the implementation of these programs at the next regents meeting on July 13.

Readers can contact Angela Chen at shchen@ucsd.edu.

speak at Price Center. He arrived in the middle of the MSA’s Justice in Palestine Week — which included a Library Walk recreation of the Israeli security wall that separates Israel from the West Bank.

During Horowitz’ presentation, he began a rapid-fire debate with UCSD student and MSA member Jumanah Imad Albahri, who asked him to back up his claim that Muslim student organizations in the U.S. are funded by terrorists. The debate peaked when Horowitz asked Albahri to definitively condemn or support Hezbollah — a government that the U.S. classified as a terrorist organization in 1999.

“The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. [Are you] for it or against it?” Horowitz asked.

“For it,” Albahri said.Albahri declined to comment fur-

ther, but said in an online statement that she originally misunderstood the question.

“My answer, ‘for it,’ in the context in which it was said, does not mean ‘for’ genocide,” Albahri said in the state-ment. “I was referring to his initial question that asked me for my position on Hamas, a topic that — for his own political reasons — he was relentless in pursuing. ‘For it’ was not a legiti-mization of Hezbollah’s — or anyone else’s credo for that matter — that Jews should be exterminated.”

Hezbollah and Hamas are both

Palestinian paramilitary govern-ments within the disputed territo-ries of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, respectively. The organizations receive significant popular support from the Palestinian people, partly because they provide social services like schools and hospitals. However, their sponsorship

of violent attacks against Israeli citizens — as well as official statements they’ve released condemning Zionism and denying the Holocaust — have made them controversial.

Young Americans for Freedom chairwoman Gabriella Hoffman called Albahri’s comment threat-ening and anti-Semitic.

“Being Jewish, it’s hurt-ful that someone in my university would want to kill me, my friends that I associate with, the faculty — a lot of the community

[at UCSD] is Jewish,” Hoffman said.However, students on both sides

of the debate have said that, given the context of her debate with Horowitz, Albahri likely did not intend to con-done genocide.

“I don’t know her personally,” MSA member Leena Barakat said. “But as an active member of the MSA, I don’t actually believe that this is what she actually condoned... because it goes so far against the beliefs and practices and teachings of Islam. She’s anti-Zionist, she’s pro-Jewish. She isn’t anti-Jewish at all.”

Bokhari said that a video posted of Albahri’s comment was mislead-ing.

THE GRADISSUE

SUNNY-SIDE UP By Philip Rhie

▶ CONTROVERSY, from page 1 ▶ FUNDING, from page 1

“That video is being exploited or being used to manipulate her words.”SARMAD BOKHARI

PRESIDENT,MUSLIM STUDENT

ASSOCIATION

See CONFLICT page 3

NEWS THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010 THE UCSD GUARDIAN 3

of Resource Management and Planning Gary Matthews and Assistant Vice Chancellor Russell Thackston to help expedite the process.

“When we realized discussions weren’t going anywhere, we called in help,” SSC student director Elizabeth Elman said. “[Matthews and Thackston] were very willing to listen to our concerns and help us negotiate with the staff — which, in my opinion, was the critical concern holding us back.”

When discussions came to a halt in late January, SSC members threatened Souder that they would take the case to University Centers administrators — who have the power to alter the terms of the SRC — as a negotiating tool.

“None of those escalation tactics were necessary, because we were ulti-mately able to work it out among our-selves,” Ghosh said.

Staff and students finalized the MOU last week, then sent it to Thackston and A.S. President Wafa Ben Hassine for final approval. Ghosh said he expects the document to be approved within two weeks.

According to the drafted MOU, stu-dents will manage half the SRC’s floor space — including the lounge area, which will also function as student office space. SSC members will also now be allowed to use the center’s stor-age space for materials such as infor-mational pamphlets.

The six SSC student directors have additionally been granted full-time

access by way of a fingerprint scanner at the center’s entrance. Before, stu-dents were only permitted to enter the space when Souder was present.

Lastly, the MOU grants SSC mem-bers the ability to schedule projects and meetings in the SRC without request-ing approval from Souder in advance.

Ghosh and Souder both said sepa-rately that the agreement is a step for-ward for campus sustainability.

“It was great to see the happiness and enthusiasm that was apparent at Monday’s move-in celebration,” Souder said. “The collaboration occurring in the space continues to shape UC San Diego’s sustainability future.”

Readers can contact Ayelet Bitton at ayelet@ucsd.edu.

Tonight’s two-hour A.S. Council meeting kicked off with a short discussion about

the pros and cons of the various trolley lines proposed by the city of San Diego, planned for completion in 2016. A.S. Enterprises Advisory Intern and former Campuswide

Senator Tobias Haglund then presented a list of potential names for the newly approved A.S. Store, which will be located in Price Center and sell Greek merchandise. Suggestions included “Black Pearl” and “Maelstrom Dome,” although Haglund said he was unsure what “Maelstrom” meant (one council-member defined it for him as a “violent storm”). Haglund said that the store, which councilmembers originally hoped would open in Fall Quarter 2010, would more likely make its debut next Winter Quarter. 

During public input, Muslim Student Association President Sarmad Bokhari spoke about a recent incident in which a Muslim student — when prodded by pro-Israel speaker David Horowitz — implied that she supported a second Jewish genocide. According to Bokhari, the student, Jumanah Imad Albahri, is not and has never been an elected representative of the MSA, and her views do not represent that of the organization. 

Vice President of Finance and Resources Andrew Ang announced that he would be submitting associate vice president nominations to New Business next week.

Transfer Senator and Transportation Policy Committee member Adam Powers gave a

lengthy presentation recapping the Transportation Referendum — a fee that would go toward preserving buses and shuttles on campus that was proposed in Fall Quarter, then failed Winter Quarter on the recom-mendation of the A.S. Transportation Committee. 

“The options were ‘Pass this refer-endum or we’ll cut shuttles,’ and that

was a little too ‘A or B’ for us,” Powers said. “I think we need to cut ties to them.”

The next meeting of the Transportation

Policy Committee, who will ulti-mately decide the effect of the failed referendum on campus shuttles, will be Monday, May 24 from noon to 1 p.m. in the Price Center West Bear Room. 

The council then approved A.S. President Wafa Ben Hassine’s nomi-nation of Muir College freshman Elizabeth Garcia as her chief of staff. 

Sixth College Senator Parminder Sandhu said that further meetings of the Electronic Policy Committee had been cancelled, as “the university librarian says there’s not enough to discuss.” 

Ben Hassine reminded everyone that the official 2010-11 executive budget would be proposed at next week’s meeting.

“This will be a short meeting,” she said, amid skeptical laughter from councilmembers. She reminded them of a new process in which only the most pressing issues will be passed, and the rest of the budget will wait until Week Three of Fall Quarter.

“Take my personal guarantee that this will be a shorter meeting,” she said. “It’s the fall meeting that will be the longer meeting.”

“That video is being exploited or being used to manipulate her words, because she did not mean to say the words that she did,” Bokhari said.

TFI President Barzilay said she understands the pressure that Albahri was under during her debate with Horowitz, but that the statement was nonetheless unacceptable.

“[We are] understanding that she’s human, and that she was forced,” Barzilay said. “Based on the speech and how extreme he was, it wasn’t very effective the way he asked her. But it proves these views exist. It proves that racist views that happened during the ‘Compton Cookout’ still exist.”

The main focus of Justice in Palestine Week was the wall — repre-senting the 400-mile West Bank bar-rier — that stretched down Library Walk, displaying facts, maps and personal accounts supporting the Palestinian cause. MSA representa-tives said the wall was also meant to promote awareness of the Israeli

government’s alleged human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank.

Some pro-Israel students reacted negatively to the wall, which they said contained exaggerations and false information.

“The [West Bank barrier] is to bar-ricade any danger coming into those areas, so people can live peacefully,” Hoffman said. “To present it as apart-heid is just wrong and misconstrued — it’s not the truth.”

Students with TFI have met with Justice in Palestine Week sponsors to ask that they cease their support, on the grounds that it negatively targets their community.

The MSA received the majority of its funding for Justice in Palestine Week from the A.S. Council, with additional sources like Thurgood Marshall College, the ethnic-stud-ies department and the Black Staff Association.

“It’s just progressed; the level of feeling alienated and uncomfortable has increased,” Barzilay said. “I do

feel threatened in some respect on campus. I’m a Marshall College stu-dent; to know that they sponsored the events that for a whole week made me feel uncomfortable walking on Library Walk — it hurts me.”

Bokhari said the week-long event was not meant to target or alienate the pro-Israel students on campus; rather, he said, the goal was to raise aware-ness about the human rights violations the Israeli government has committed against the Palestinians living in the occupied territories.

“This week, this cause, is not Muslim versus Jews; it’s not anti-Sem-itism, but rather anti-Zionism — the idea of an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine,” Bokhari said. “The main purpose of the event is to raise aware-ness and to let college students know what the Palestinian narrative actu-ally is, because they won’t hear it from mainstream, regular media.”

Readers can contact Nisha Kurani at nkurani@ucsd.edu.

▶ STATEMENT, from page 2

▶ CONTROVERSY, from page 1

NewANGELA CHENshchen@ucsd.edu

Business

OPINIONCONTACT THE EDITOR: opinion@ucsdguardian.org

WEBPOLL

DID YOU GO TO CLASS

ON SUN GOD?

59% No.

34% 7%

I don’t know.

Out of 102 votes

Props to the Loft for its new “Be Lofty” initiative, which gives students the option to pay $25 for a yearlong all-access event pass. But flops for giving it a stupid name.

Flops to 2012 London Olympics organizing chief Sebastian Coe for signing off on a mascot that looks like a “Teletubby, but with more

of a cyclops influence,” in his own words.

Yes.

4 THE UCSD GUARDIAN WWW.UCSDGUARDIAN.ORG/OPINIONTHURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

In my 21-year career as a TV watcher, I can only vividly recall one commercial: the one where

Sarah McLachlan’s saintly “Angel” hymn pervades the room, and my glowing screen is filled with a scrunch of brown fuzz, complete with round eyes, a soft button snout and a floppy pink tongue. I love puppy.

But something’s wrong: It seems he’s lying on a vet’s icy examination table, looking sick and vulnerable as all hell. I wonder if he’s OK. He stares back helplessly as my heartstrings tighten. Just when they’ve wound so devastatingly tense that I’m beginning to emote out loud, the helpless McKitty FurFace takes the stage and the cycle starts all over again. It follows McLachlan’s somber piano until she asks me to donate to the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

I jump to find my phone and debit card — eager to rescue as many doe-eyed fur folk as my paycheck permits — but I abandon the mission when “America’s Next Top Model” returns from a commercial break, pushing the sad, snuggable stares out of my mind.

Almost gets me every time. BCSPCA sure knows how to make a tearjerker. But the organization’s key to my heart is neither its B-list celebrity rep nor its reminder that my helpless domestic companions are suffering everywhere. More than anything else, I am moved by cuteness.

It might just be the most powerful marketing tool since sex. The scientific side of our reaction to cute is that — as a species that births some of the most incapable, drooly infants on Earth — we are programmed to tend to anything that exemplifies even the most remote trace of babyish need. In fact, our Darwinian instinct runs so deep that some studies suggest cute things stimulate the same feelings of pleasure in the brain aroused by a delicious meal, sex or cocaine.

The ad-market translation: Consumers go crazy for adorable things. Like babies, we love to bring them home, hug and squeeze them and show them to all our friends.

I’m not talking about blatant-sucker buys like those of my stuffed animal-obsessed housemate, who returns with a new bright-pink, floppy-limbed friend each time she visits CVS for some toothpaste. I’m talking subtle qualities, things as unnoticeable as a shoe’s rounded toe or a car’s wide-eyed headlights.

If you want a corporate example, take the iPhone — a product many millions pine for. Its body is smooth, its corners rounded and its face covered in colorful, bouncy icons. It makes cute noises. You want it to have and to hold, to touch and to stroke — and that attraction has nothing to do with what it can actually do. If it did, then HTC’s very capable (but hopelessly banal) Droid might actually have an advantage over Apple’s iconic gadget.

Maybe we should all keep an eye out for this marketing ploy, avoiding the endearing gaze of the cuter candidate when we’re picking products. But then everyone would only own ugly things. And I don’t care how predictable my desire for the darling may be — sometimes it’s the superfluous pretty stuff that counts.

It appears one cage just wasn’t enough for the powers that be at this year’s Sun God Festival.

After confining the best day of the year to RIMAC Field last Friday, they decided to erect yet another barricade — this time around the Dance Tent, where DJ Z-Trip was laying down a set for the ages. Anyone catch that “Ring of Fire” mashup? Hot damn.

According to A.S. Associate Vice President of Concerts and Events Alex Bramwell, there were still 1,000 students who wanted to belly up to Z-Trip after the tent had reached its 3,000-person capacity. So he made the decision — along with his UC Police Department and University Events Office cohorts — to block out the remaining 1,000 so that the crowd wouldn’t become danger-ous. Then, when the blockade itself became dangerous (surprise, sur-prise), they shooed Z-Trip offstage an hour early. (Fat chance Z-Trip, or any artist in his circle, will bother showing up at our poopy party any-time in the near future.)

Basically, authorities made the only move that would ensure people got hurt. If you place all $550,000 worth of Sun God events in one small space and then tell everyone they have to stand idle on a cold, moonlit field — watching from the sidelines as the dance party of the year rages on without them — you’re going to have some broken ankles on your hands.

The Dance Tent is not the same as the Main Stage, where back-and-forth shoving can lead to lung-crushing quarters and the infamous domino effect. It’s the very same Dance Tent used at Coachella, where everyone walks away fine (or as fine as they can be after re-enacting “Flashdance” on MDMA). Hormonal chicks aren’t generally straining to reach the stage so they can kiss the feet of the main act; in fact, ravers tend to leave themselves some dancing room. And if stu-dents felt suffocated during Z-Trip, they could have woven their way out — that’s what the row of giant arc-openings along the sides of the

tent are for.The most ironic part is that, by

confining the festival in the first place, coordinators created the overcapacity problem themselves. Until 2008 — when, in response to the chaos of Sun God 2007, all booths and day stages were swept from around campus into the sti-fling RIMAC dustpan — wristbands didn’t even come close to selling out. Officials have cited the higher number of health emergencies in 2007 as the reason for the new caged format. However, we’d like to per-sonally deliver the breaking news that, despite all campaigns toward sobriety, the same stuff still goes on — just behind the closed doors of dorms, apartments and offices across campus.

From the administrative stand-point, another main drawback to the all-campus format was the mess it left behind. Maybe if the A.S. Council hadn’t blown $5,000 to $6,000 on a Sun God blowup doll (redesigned by A.S. graphic artists to resemble a disfigured sci-fi insect,

the perfect muse for their circle-jerk), and instead paid a janitorial staff to clean up after Friday’s cam-puswide debauchery, we could have let off some real steam.

It’s clear the force of youthful fun-bellion on campus is moot when the fearless assholes from student news-paper the Koala don’t even have the balls to set up their annual waterslide on Sun God Lawn — the only thing the rest of us can agree to like them for — due to a few official-looking e-mails threatening legal action. (Major flops there, gentlemen.) Or maybe they were just shamed by that

Just Add Air: Sun God in a Can

EDITOR IN CHIEF

MANAGING EDITORS

NEWS EDITORS

OPINION EDITOR

The UCSD Guardian is published twice a week at the University of California at San Diego. Contents

© 2010. Views expressed herein represent the majority vote of the editorial board and are not

necessarily those of the UC Board of Regents, the ASUCSD or the members of the Guardian staff.

See SUN GOD page 5

EDITORIALS

College radio stations — not unlike extremist newspapers and humanities professors —

are a more subversive trademark on any campus. They often lack adver-tisements. They’re populated by indie vinylphiles. They would rather face nuclear warfare than air the lat-est Miley Cyrus single.

On this campus, student radio is also a hidden Student Center niche. However, the managers of KSDT have recently expressed new interest in spreading their programming to a greater population.

UCSD’s “fiercely independent” station is currently only broadcast online, but co-manager Meredith Wong and executive at large Marcus Rosario want to invest in an on-campus radio tower to finally take them on air.

Due to San Diego’s overcrowded airwaves though, Wong said there are precious few FM radio frequen-cies available. Therefore, an AM radio station — which would prob-

ably only be broadcast on campus, so as to avoid Federal Communications Commission restrictions — would supposedly be the most feasible

avenue to get on air.

Even if we ignore the fact that the gathering ’round the AM radio for community entertainment is about as popular a col-lege pastime as a game of (non-strip) Candyland, it’s estimated

that an on-campus tower would require an initial investment of a whopping $100,000 — which would be entirely funded by student fees, if approved by the A.S. Council.

While every student org has a

right to its fair share of the A.S. Council’s annual $3 million, this is an unprecedented chunk of change to request. KSDT hasn’t even begun to investigate all the obstacles implicit in needing the adminis-tration to sign over a sizable plot of land for the tower. (Wong, for the record, said that the station is “really serious about it, but hasn’t started much of the research.” Go figure.)

Before pursuing a six-figure investment in antiquated technology, Wong and Rosario would be wise to look into more cost-effective ways to make a name for their station. Partnering with dining halls or on-campus coffee shops such as Perks and Cafe Roma — which could pos-sibly broadcast the station’s live radio stream — would be a much more affordable first step toward reaching out beyond KSDT’s Student Center speakers.

Though it may sacrifice some of the station’s hipster cred, it wouldn’t

hurt to add a KSDT feature to the existing UCSD iPhone application for greater visibility. The station could even approach our school’s own iPhone App Programming Club (or other likeminded student techies) to develop a live stream-ing application for mobile devices. Doing so could garner a fresh crop of listeners while maintaining the fierce independence that a govern-ment-sanctioned AM broadcast might compromise.

For Real Listners, Shoot for an Accessible Wavelength

Despite a budget that pushed the half-million mark, this year’s festival revealed a sad reality:Even our most resistant rabble-rousers are vulnerable to the administration’s threats.

While every student org has a right to its share of the A.S. Council’s annual $3 million, this is an unprecedented chunk of change to request.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEFANY CHEN/GUARDIAN

ALYSSA BEREZNAKaberezna@ucsd.edu

The Semi- ConsciousConsumer

OPINION THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010 THE UCSD GUARDIAN 5

YOU SHAPE-UP YOUR BODY...

Buffing Up Some of San Diego's Best Bodies!

WE’LL SHAPE-UP YOUR AUTO!!!

Your NeighborhoodHand Car Wash

Specialists

WE Y

(

STUDENT SPECIALS

Dear Editor,I am writing to express my con-

cern over the new weekly crossword puzzle that has been published in the Guardian the past two weeks. It does not match the high quality of the previously published crosswords that were probably from the Los Angeles Times. In fact, the current crossword could be from People magazine.

As co-creator and administra-tor of The Finer Things Club, an organization that sips tea while con-versing and doing the crossword, I ask that you please return to the previous crossword, as it is much classier. Thank you.

—Andrea VilleneuveCo-creator,

The Finer Things Club

Dear Editor,As a member of the Muslim

Student Association (MSA) and an attendee of the Horowitz event, I wanted to share my opinion regard-ing the controversial statements of another student attendee. Without question, the student’s “For it” state-ment is indubitably out of line with the core Islamic values on which the MSA stands (Quran 5:32). She makes that explicitly clear in her personal statement, which can be found on www.fortruthforjustice.wordpress.com.

Nonetheless, there is no place on this campus for anti-Semitism. As a member of the MSA, I feel the organization has taken a powerful stance against anti-Semitism dur-

ing our recent Justice in Palestine Week. This is evidenced by the numerous Jewish students work-ing alongside MSA members in condemning the unjust policies of the Israeli government and mili-tary. Our guests have included Dr. Norman Finkelstein and Hedy Epstein, both well-known Jewish speakers who have immediate con-nections to the Holocaust.

It is noteworthy to add that the next MSA student who asked Horowitz a question at the event readily condemned Hamas. The MSA itself is clear by condemning “all Palestinian factions that have rejoiced in the killing of innocent Israeli civilians” (www.ucsdmsa.org). Thus, to make an effort to cherry-pick facts so as to tie the MSA to anti-Semitism is entirely misleading and disingenuous.

It seems that the Glenn Becks and Sean Hannitys of the world are eager to paint the entire Muslim college population with a single brush, but this is obviously far from the facts, and entirely inaccurate.

These Glenns and Seans are making a strong effort to detract from the real message of the MSA, which is to shed light on the injus-tices taking place in Palestine and to encourage activism towards positive change.

—Adnan AkilJunior, Warren College

Crossword Has Gone Downhill

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

There Is No Place for Anti-Semitism on Campus

DRAWING FIRE By Johan DeLaTorre

mountainous, chest-pumping blowup slide the A.S. Council spent $1,000 to set up on Thursday in the Koala’s traditional spot. Student-run radio station KSDT, likewise, was coerced into holding its Student Center mini-fest the day prior. Once Friday came around, when students referred to “Sun God,” it was clear they meant the setup on RIMAC — not the entire awesome day in general. Unless we wanted to get creative, there was sim-ply nowhere else to go.

So you got us where you wanted us, dear student leaders. We showed up to your birthday party. And then you had the nerve to tell us that, in the interest of our own safety, the only

option at prime rage hour was to listen to some shitty Christian-rock band you booked on a self-suckling nostal-gia trip.

Don’t get us wrong: We had a fuck-ing blast on Friday. But that’s because the Student Center was our (desolate) jungle gym, and most of our friends without wristbands somehow man-aged to sneak in unpunished (to both the main cage and the mini one).

Even through the mind-altering haze, though, two things were glaring-ly clear: 1) The UCSD administration finally won the thumb war against the most resistant of its citizens, and 2) Our student government is isolated and ego-tripping — hard.

To all you Sun God virgins, the

festival may have looked like a slightly lamer — but at least seemingly free — version of Coachella. (That is, if the Coachella lineup had been reimagined by your little sister on a snickerdoodle high.) But think about it. Can you fathom the kind of fun we could have with half a million dollars?

Sun God tradition used to be that, for one day, through the unsuspect-ing canals of our very own eucalyptus grove, we the UCSD nerds could make it rain. Instead, last Friday, all we got was an elbow-wrestle with a Staff Pro perv for our deserved spot beneath the lasers, topped off by a sloppy pickup line from an ex-“Degrassi” cripple across the field. We want our money back.

▶ SUN GOD,

▶ The Guardian welcomes letters from its readers. All letters must be no longer than 500 words, typed, double-spaced and signed with a name and applicable title. Letters must also contain a phone number. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. Letters may be dropped off at the Guardian office on the second floor of the Student Center or e-mailed. Send all letters to:

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e-mail: opinion@ucsdguardian.org

6 THE UCSD GUARDIAN THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010 OPINION

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Choose from these courses and more. Visit extension.ucsd.edu for a complete listing.ARTS * Illustrating Books for Children * Travel Sketching * Nature Photography: From Vision to Print * Music: Singing, Piano, Guitar, & Harmonica * Figure Drawing I * Color Theory * FOREIGN LANGUAGES * Arabic * German * Spanish Language & Culture Through Film * Introduction to Translation and Interpretation

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HiATUS boss ditties

What would UCSD be without the Non-Sexist Dance? The LGBTQIA-friendly campus tradition is a crucial and familiar stress-reliever — but this time, for the last dance of the year, it’s being displaced from Porter’s Pub to Price Center Plaza due to growing popularity. The venue change is lame, but it does create some grand opportunities: The fountain awaits. So extend your Sun God another weekend with a second serving of public debauchery. And don’t forget to stick to the jungle theme. (AS)

NON-SEXIST DANCEPRICE CENTER PLAZA / MAY 22, 9 P.M. / FREE

When power-pop phenoms OK Go hit the House of Blues this Saturday, they probably won’t bring along any treadmills or Rube Goldberg machines. That doesn’t rule out all possibilities for weirdness — after all, the their latest was produced by the guy who mixes for the Flaming Lips. Even tracks with morose names like “This Too Shall Pass” have plenty of energy. And, of course, bouncy guitars and optimistic vocals on older hits like the feel-good “Here It Goes Again” are guaranteed to get you grinding. (MP)

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Give back to the community at Porter’s Pub this Thursday with Musicians for Monarch, a benefit show to raise money for Monarch — a school for underprivileged kids in downtown San Diego. Local act Mad Traffic will share the stage with student deejay David Navarro and Jacob Landman. And if a little philanthropy isn’t enough to clear your Week Eight fog, the noise might please you too; that is, if you’re down for a pseudo-ska horn section and the DVC’s signature untz, untz, untz. (AS)

HIATUS PICKS THE WEEK’S BEST BETSdruthers

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After Thursday’s episode, we know you can’t wait for the “Lost” finale. Get your fix big-screen at the AMC La Jolla at 8 p.m. The episode will be supplemented by an interview with the show’sexecutive producers. $12.50.

TONIGHT

B eing the ponderous artist that I am, I feel I possess a collection of deeply philosophical thoughts

that are in dire need of relinquish-ing. Though I usually try to express them through comics, sometimes the uneven balance of sparse words and heavy images just isn’t enough to do them justice. Good thing I have a column.

My most recent ponder takes me down memory lane — or, more specifically, to that corner of Library Walk where a little shack of Japanese knickknacks and cell phone acces-sories stands every other week. I don’t make a habit of visiting this shop, but sometimes, I find myself in a terrible bout of nostalgia that forces me to take a peek. You see, I — like a sizable handful of other nerds on this campus — was one of those kids who grew up most identifying with the weird Japanese action figures, comics and television shows that populated hobby shops and the Internet.

Luckily, these days, I’m strong enough to walk past a window display of action figures and not experience an overwhelming urge to buy them all — though all that restraint is probably what led me to take a look around the shack. What I found most interesting this time around weren’t the acces-sories, but the stacks of anime DVDs on display. To my surprise, I recog-nized every single one — some of them dating back two decades. What should have been a heartwarming observation — that the shows I adored growing up are still somehow relevant — actually struck me with a pang of sadness. I agree that these animes are classics to keep around, but where are all the new ones?

I grew up in a sort of golden age of anime. The shows that typi-fied my childhood were dense and highly sophisticated sociological and philosophical commentaries: romantic transvestite martial-arts comedies laced with bestiality and robot apoca-lypses, centered on religion, life and death. Today, the most popular animes are typified by conflicts between the same old badasses and newbie-with-hidden-potential protagonists — an tried-and-true conceit, but without any depth to keep my eyes open. What happened to the nuances? It’s as if all the new shows are mashups of old formulas.

Perhaps I’m just giving them a hard time, or becoming that old guy who doesn’t get it and has a hard time adapting to generational change. Perhaps anime has always been like this: every new show simply a revision of a previous one. Perhaps all media follows this pattern, and I’m in denial.

But come on — does it all have to be so terrible? I’m all for re-introduc-ing old concepts in new shells, but only when they’ve got some sort of fresh idea involved. I can’t be the only one moping over the complete rut of creativity and progress in which an industry I once adored has recently been stuck.

Guess I’ll just go take my place in the hall of purists, where hip-hop heads scowl at the new school of sameness and grandparents spit on anything fancier than the phonograph.

Sick of the Same Old Anime

BEST OF THE BASEMENT

When most of us think about student film, we can’t help but imag-

ine shaky camera work, middle-school dialogue and plotlines that shoot leagues too far into the deep end.

Tonight, though — beginning 8 p.m. at the Loft in Price Center East — a lineup of short films will attempt to disprove that stereotype. They’re roughly seven minutes each, and they’re all part of the Up&Coming film festival: a showcase of the best and brightest camera work with-in the UCSD community.

According to Sixth College senior Liz Hood, the energy and quality of the films at the festival always varies. The film-studies department tends to employ more guest lecturers than permanent professors, making it difficult to pre-dict the particular styles and influences likely to stand out each year.

This year, student direc-tors have been blessed with inspiration from spirited professors like Michael Trigilio and Babette Mangoldte, who have made it a point to promote col-laboration above individual isolation — ensuring diver-sity, if nothing else.

Established by Art Power three years ago as a way to celebrate innovation in the undergraduate circle, the festival consists of eight shorts in 2010, pre-selected by a jury of local film experts and critics. Each pick highlights student achievement in a specific area, including screenwrit-ing, experimentation and narrative development.

“The students are doing wildly different kinds of work,” Trigilio said. “It really spans the gamut.”

Members of the review committee included KPBS film critic Beth Accomando and New York Museum of Modern Art video curator

STAR STUDENTSHORTS GET A LEG UP — RISING FROMMANDEVILLE INTO THE LIGHTS OF THE LOFT. BY BRYAN KIM

Critical Hit!PHILIP RHIE

prhie@ucsd.edu

See UP&COMING, page 8

FESTIVALPREVIEW

THEATERREVIEW

Oedipus Takes Kentucky

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 20107 THE UCSD GUARDIAN WWW.UCSDGUARDIAN.ORG/HIATUS

D irector Charlie Oates’ version of “Seven Against Thebes” — based on the third play in Aeschylus’ Oedipus trilogy, and running

as the current headliner at the Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre — falls simplistic and hokey in its attempt to reimagine the famous drama about a divided Grecian family. In the original, Oedipus’ two sons’ fight for control of Thebes — told through a series of dramatic monologues, performed by Theban citizens and the city’s ruler, Eteocles. The drama is meant to culminate in an all-out brawl between Eteocles and his exiled brother Poly-nices, taking the piece on a thought-provoking foray into the morality of war.

For his rendition, how-ever, Oates uproots and replants the plot in Civil War-era Kentucky. To complicate things even further, the play was directly translated from the original Greek by theater professor Marianne McDonald — meaning the script brims with references to Greek gods and locations that have nothing to do with the American South.

While the brother-vs.-brother and divided-nation themes mesh well with the new setting, the play never justifies the random displacement of mythological heroes, polytheistic deities and a besieged ancient city. What’s more, a lack of sufficient plot buildup leaves the audience wondering why an exiled brother would even

want to fight for control of the gaunt, dirty and poverty-stricken people who live there in the first place. The play grows increasingly dis-jointed as actors in filthy rags and lean-tos rattle off lengthy speeches about their nonexistent “city” in twangy Southern accents.

That’s not to say that the rural setting isn’t compelling. Setting the stage with familiar bluegrass tune “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,”

the play’s soundtrack mimics that of another retelling of an ancient Greek saga: the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Still, while the gos-pel injects some much-needed energy into the drama, there remains a distinct undercur-rent of melancholy that keeps the action serious.

Sadly, the music is not enough to make “Thebes” come to life. Made up almost entirely of monologues, the play lacks any actual move-ment. Only the messenger — played by Chris-topher James Cortez with acrobatic gusto — breaks up the monotony of the stage directions.

Somewhere between ancient Greece, Ken-tucky and UCSD, “Thebes” lost the edge that makes it the quintessential depiction of power struggle to this day. Aeschylus’ meta-commen-tary on violence and the human condition may still ring true, but Oates abandons his audience in the Bluegrass State with nothing but straw to chew on.

Seven Against ThebesSTARRING CHRISTOPHER JAMES CORTEZDIRECTED BY CHARLIE OATESMANDELL WEISS FORUM THEATREMAY 20-22

Southern Spin on Greek Classic Takes Tragic LeapInto Unfamiliar Territory. By Gretchen Wegrich

8 THE UCSD GUARDIAN THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010 HIATUS

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druthers FILMREVIEW

By Jenna BroganHiatus Editor

T he “Shrek” franchise has been pumping out sequel after sequel for the last decade, on a dragon

wing and a prayer that Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy can still make the kids giggle. Hmm. How to break this to them gently?

In the latest and final chapter of the seemingly never-ending series — which has almost reached “Land Before Time” proportions — our jolly green anti-hero is stuck in a midlife crisis. With three wee ogies, an inex-haustible honey-do-this list from Fiona (Cameron Diaz) and a day-in day-out diaper routine, Shrek (Mike Myers) longs for the good ol’ days, when his sole responsibility was terrorizing the townsfolk. His frustration comes to a boiling point at the triplets’ birthday party, where he smashes their cake

before storming off into the woods.It’s here that the film begins to walk

the line of prequel and sequel. Turns out villainous ginger Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn) — who rivals Lord Farquaad in height and Pee Wee Herman in voice — was making a deal with Fiona’s parents just as Shrek was sav-ing her from the dragon’s keep in the 2001 original. Rumpelstiltskin agreed to free Fiona from her curse in exchange for the keys to the kingdom.

Seeing as his original plan was obviously thwarted, Shrek’s current predicament becomes the perfect opportunity for Rumpelstiltskin’s revenge. Blinded by frustration, Shrek

offers up any one day of his past in exchange for one day in the life of a carefree ogre. In a poof of evil green smoke, Rumpelstiltskin chooses the day Shrek was born, and the world’s most lovable monster is thrust into a

sad, dark world in which he never existed.

In this alter-nate reality, Rumpelstiltskin reigns as king with the help of his witch minions, and — get excited, feminists — Fiona

is the leader of the Resistance, an underground ogre movement deter-mined to overthrow the tyrant with pitchforks and chimichangas.

An obvious homage to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” this installment is a helluva lot weightier than the previ-

ous three. Sure, the burps, farts and snarky pop-culture references are all there, but only to cover up the fattest load of overlying adult existentialism we’ve seen so far in the series. More than ever, underlying messages are bound to get lost in translation to the rows of confused kindergarteners in the theater.

The “Shrek” series has never been entirely innocent — as per the infa-mous “Maybe he’s compensating for something” joke, in reference to the size of Farquaad’s castle — but the swamp humor used to be enough to keep the kiddies entertained while the more mature jokes flew stealthily over their heads.

Sadly, though, the innocent-slap-stick side of the scale is unbearably light this time around. Who goes to an animated comedy to be told that

Shrek Forever AfterSTARRING MIKE MYERS, EDDIE MURPHY & CAMERON DIAZDIRECTED BY MIKE MITCHELLRATED PG1:33

WHAT GREEN HELL IS THIS?Shrek’s Midlife Crisis Makes for One Depressing Ever-After to the Four-Part Dreamworks Dynasty

Rajendra Roy. But the true success of a festival will be measured by the caliber of its student entries.

“As the director, everything falls on you, so it’s really stressful,” senior Joanne Park — at the helm of “Just Curious” — said.

With a run time of 10 minutes, “Curious” is one of the longest pieces at the festival — a hefty undertak-ing that Park said required her to feed and pay actors from her own pocket, just so they’d sit through the end of grueling takes. Her dedication shows: Throughout the piece, Park’s HD camera captures her intricately control of color contrast and lighting, putting an eerily professional sheen on an otherwise familiar story about a student with a crush on his brilliant TA. Held up by Park’s clever script, the film is an arty look at a genuine, unpretentious slice of life at UCSD.

That same type of honesty char-acterizes Hood’s “Again Comes November” — a heartbreaking tribute to her departed friend Gho. Haunting narration explores a string of memo-ries, told through black-and-white stagings of the silly, the romantic and the tragic — divergent moments that defined their relationship.

“Black-and-white has a certain separation from reality, Hood said. “And while memories are based on reality, they just aren’t.”

Though far-off moments range from prom to running through a park in nothing but underwear, each is brutally candid, demonstrating Hood’s ability to move an her audi-ence by capturing head-on the type of yearning we often try to suppress.

“Nothing is worse than people who don’t understand you or [what] you’ve been through,” Hood said. “In sharing experiences, people learn that they’re not alone.”

Loft Gets Reelon Student Terms▶ UP&COMING,

See SHREK, page 9

HIATUS THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010 THE UCSD GUARDIAN 9

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I t appears Nas hasn’t writ-ten off hip-hop completely. Four years after he first

lamented the death of the genre, he’s going back to hip-hop’s roots to try and revive it from the ground up, collabo-rating with Damian Marley for an invigorating blend of rap and reggae on 13-track narrative Distant Relatives.

Mostly produced by Marley himself, Relatives meanders through a varied blend of laid-back rhythms and upbeat jams, live instru-mentation and looped-out samples, hand percussion and standard drum kits — keeping the project fresh from start to finish.

Together for their first full-length, the artists engage in a balanced game of give-and-take that never feels forced, their mutual maturity more evident than on any solo work either has produced since the last time they collaborated: on 2005 single “Road to Zion.”

The marriage between Nas’ strong, raspy raps and Jr. Gong’s rapid sing-song shines brightest on fast-paced opener “As We Enter.” As they pass the mic atop an old-school drum track and simple synth arpeggio, their divergent vocalizations merge in poetic perfection. Nas’ flow is as thick as ever, and he opts against record-ing doubles on his verses — instead turning up the reverb

to match Marley’s echoey dub vocals.

Marley plays with tricky melodies on “Patience,” at the same time providing his complex lyrical critique of Africa’s social turmoil. It’s given even more depth alongside a minimal, half-time beat held together by a stuttering hi-hat and quick acoustic downstrokes.

Socially conscious “My Generation” — featuring a cough-syrup cameo from jailbird Lil Wayne — samples a children’s choir on the hook, beginning to teeter on the brink of cheesy. But a heavy, trembling bassline thickened by Marley’s forceful delivery and Nas’ solid schemes bring it back to reality: “Can you blame my generation’s subjective gentrification/ Depicting their frustrations over ill instrumentation?”

Relatives rides a largely unexplored sound, tied down by unwavering lyrical focus on the connections between the artists’ musical and per-sonal backgrounds. As Nas puts it, the duo takes it back to “a world buried in time, uncovers it with rhymes” — giving us a modern-day classic while they’re at it.

Nas and Damian Marley will perform live at UCLA’s JazzReggae Festival on May 31.

— Janani Sridharansenior staff writer

I f Jack White is a lunatic (not entirely impossible), then supergroup the Dead

Weather is the hotwired Oldsmobile with which he runs down innocent bystand-ers while screaming insane one-liners about mayhem and destruction. Sophomore Dead Weather effort Sea of Cowards is Icky Thump on steroids: 35 minutes of vicious guitar solos and enough crazed screech sessions to make System of a Down blush crimson.

At its rollicking best, the chaos is cathartic, but too often the fury fails to instill in us anything beyond a fleeting, blood-pumping high. Luck-ily, band members Allison Mosshart and Dean Fertita are too talented to let the album dip below mediocrity. White ditches his trademark guitar for the drums, while Fertita (of Queens of the Stone Age fame) delivers a steady barrage of sufficiently disturbed lyrics. In fact, the drums are the only

tame aspect of Sea of Cowards, while both bass and guitar work to assault the listener like a sonic boom and White and Mosshart take turns pouring rage into the microphone.

And there are just enough twists in their ferocity to prevent either vocalist from becoming a mosquito in our ear. Likewise, the brevity of the album (all 11 songs come in at under four minutes) prevents its guitars from becoming grating. “Die by the Drop” is a highlight, with a gritty keyboard and guitar intro that segues into a massive hook — laying down the groundwork for a blistering vocal clash between White and Mosshart.

White’s lack of inhibition is always a pleasure, but this par-ticular project never achieves greatness — hampered by a shortage of catchy hooks or memorable guitar lines that no flurry of passion can rectify.

— Imran Manjistaff writer

Jack White Breaks Into Forgettable Rage

910

Hip-Hop Legend Calls on Reggae Roots

Nas & Damian MarleyDistant RelativesDEF JAM

“happily ever after” is just an illusion? We go because we want to see the Gingerbread Man squeal until his gumdrop buttons pop off.

Perhaps that’s the reason director Mike Mitchell opted for kid-friendly 3-D, send-ing broomsticks careening toward our faces and at least allowing us to laugh at how everyone looks in dorky spectacles.

But the franchise can no longer rely on cutting-edge technology for popularity (just compare its animation, which was revolutionary in the early 2000s, to Disney’s recent “How to Train Your Dragon”). Instead, the series, which averages about $341 million per installment, will continue to be critically acclaimed for its devotion to the formula: Woo children with furry woodland creatures and entertain their

parents with sly witticisms. But — while the fairytale mashup’s

hilarious voice-to-character juxtaposition and singing Donkey may have won us over 10 years ago — the comedic, visual and musical stalemate (yes, we’re forced to sit through “I’m a Believer” again) of “Shrek Forever After” makes it hard to remember why on Earth we loved it so much in the first place.

I t’s only been two years since blues-rock duo the Black Keys emerged with debut Attack

and Release — but that short period has seen an exhausting list of releases, including a hip-hop collaboration album with heavyweights like RZA and Mos Def, not to mention solo albums from both members.

It shouldn’t come as a sur-prise, then, that Brothers trades the energy of Attack for a more relaxed and immersive stoner vibe; there was only so long they could blaze such a fiery trail.

First single “Tighten Up” is the only track produced by Danger Mouse (one-half of both Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells, and the producer of all Attack). It’s sleek and poppy: Every instrument carefully fol-lows the melody, as echoed vocals and occasional keyboards are underlaid with the same ringtone-ready guitar riffs that defined their debut.

But the rest of Brothers is designed to suck us further in,

with buzzing-kazoo guitars and keyboards that split from the core melody — forcing us to pick through distorted layers if we wish to understand the entire track.

Everything about the album is geared toward a holistic listen-ing experience — even the way drummer Patrick Garney clicks away at the cymbals in “Sinister Kid” with Farmville intensity. It’s got the energy to immerse us, but won’t give us a reason to stand up and yell.

It’s a jarring change in character, though the Keys do politely pass on the opportu-nity to break out Floyd-esque intricacies that we’d need Bose headphones and Planet Earth on Blu-Ray to appreciate. But they end up lost somewhere in between, stripping away snappy riffs for muddy rhythms. Light up and lay back, ’cause Brothers will never bring you to the edge of your seat.

— Matthew Pecotassociate hiatus editor

The Black KeysBrothersNONESUCH

These Blues Brothers Need a Joint

510

610

The Dead WeatherSea of CowardsTHIRD MAN

Leave Your Little Sister at Home for Donkey Overdose▶ SHREK,

Guardian Classifieds are placed online and are FREE for UCSD. Low cost classified placements for our print edition are also available to the UCSD campus and the public at ucsdguardian.campusave.com

Guardian Classifieds are placed online and are FREE for UCSD. Low cost classified placements for our print edition are also available to the UCSD campus and the public at ucsdguardian.campusave.com

Find the Sudoku solutions in this Monday's Classifieds Page

Complete the grid soeach row, column and3-by-3 box (in boldborders) containsevery digit, 1 to 9. Forstrategies on how tosolve Sudoku, visitwww.sudoku.org.uk

SOLUTION TOSATURDAY’S PUZZLE

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Complete the grid so each row, column and 3-by-3 box (in bold borders) contains every digit, 1 to 9. For strategies

on how to solve Sudoku, visit www.sudoku.org.uk

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SPORTS THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010 THE UCSD GUARDIAN 11

about our lack of a football team, we fail to notice that our men’s baseball team is the country’s No. 1-ranked team in Division-II, and — in one week’s time — could very well be the D-II College World Series champions. Now that’s something worth cheering about.

On most other campuses, the baseball players would be celebrated as heroic student-athlete gods, negotiating crowds of adoring students everywhere they went. Here, senior first baseman Brandon Gregorich — who was recent-ly named the player of the year in the West Region by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association — is about as anonymous as the next pre-med major. Sure, sports aren’t for everyone, but it’s a shame that — now that we actually have some legit athletic talent — sports are still seemingly for no one.

For Triton athletes, all this means that their last two years of work — dur-ing which they’ve posted a jaw-drop-ping 92-22 overall record (averaging a staggering eight wins every 10 games), earned back-to-back regular-season, conference and regional championship titles and won countless individual and team honors — has gone completely unappreciated by the average UCSD student. The brilliant work they’ve put in on the playing field has garnered the praise of college baseball analysts perched in high media towers across the nation, but is unrecognized at a school where feats in a laboratory or lecture hall are far more worthy of mention.

Perhaps no better an indication of the general disregard for the team is its home-field location. The underwhelm-ing Triton Ballpark was plopped way out in the desolate concrete jungle of East campus, impossible not to over-look. There are a few bleachers, a regu-lation field and little else. No bright floodlights. No stately scoreboard. No proud Triton billboard — nothing even slightly resembling the sort of ameni-ties one would expect on the field of the nation’s finest D-II team.

Literally right across the street stands the unmistakable pride and joy of UCSD: Scripps Hospital. It’s tall, imposing and proud, with a multistory parking lot out-glowing the evening dusk. Apparently, it’s been deemed a more appropriate location for flood-lighting. In fact, when standing behind home plate at night, the light from the hospital illuminates the field better than anything actually inside the stadium.

The juxtaposition of the well-endowed hospital — home to a team of reputable medical practitioners — to Triton Ballpark — humble field home to equally surgical ballplayers — is a telltale symbol of our priorities. But we shouldn’t have to choose.

Last week, when the Tritons com-peted from May 13 to May 15 at the NCAA West Regional Championships for a spot in the NCAA D-II College World Series, they had earned the No. 1 seed’s right to home-field advantage But, in the end, they were denied the chance to claim that right. The regional tournament, which includes some night games, had to be moved from Triton Ballpark due to its lack of sufficient lighting. Because of this inadequacy, the Tritons were forced to claim regional honors in Compton, Calif., on a field closer in proximity to direct rivals Cal State Dominguez Hills and far less familiar than their La Jolla playing plot.

Still — despite being virtually neglected by what is supposed to be their fan base and sold short in home-field accommodations — this year’s baseball players cannot be stopped.

They have shrugged off waves of national recognition — in the form of polls, power rankings and individual/team awards — with exactly the same indifference that this campus shows toward their record accomplishments. Neither national recognition nor local neglect has affected their game.

Senior catcher Kellen Lee, who earned NCBWA honorable mention for his contribution to this year’s pitching staff, exemplifies this humble attitude.

“We are proud that the entire coun-try recognizes us as one of the premier teams at the Division-II level,” Lee said. “But we try not to get caught up in the rankings.”

It’s a wonder that the Tritons have made it so far, considering the constraints on the UCSD Athletic Department. Though he is not equipped with the ability to attract pre-mier baseball prospects with competi-tive athletic scholarships, head coach Dan O’Brien has built a winning pro-gram from the ground up, stressing the time-tested creed of good, hard work. O’Brien, in his 13th season, now heads a perennial powerhouse of a program, despite his sparse recruiting resources. For the second straight year, he is the CCAA Coach of The Year — an accomplishment this fan would argue is as exemplary as any medical honor received across the street (OK, different degrees of importance, but still).

To the people of UCSD: Get your heads out of your textbooks. You’ve wanted something to cheer about, something to pride yourself on — and now you’ve got no excuse not to cheer. Thirty-eight of your fellow students have handed you an opportunity for school spirit on a platter. The current baseball team is arguably the greatest in UCSD history. Even if you don’t like baseball in particular, take a second to recognize their feats. If you see a Triton player walking around campus in his warmups, wish him luck this weekend. If you do like baseball, tune in to the live stream on http://www.ncaa.com on Saturday, May 22 at 2:00 p.m. when they take on Georgia College & State.

When the College World Series kicks off this Saturday in Cary, N.C., the UCSD baseball team — whether it wins or loses — will be representing our school on a national stage. Even if you are the most indifferent, sports-apathetic student on campus, consider turning on the game in the background as you study or play video games. You might just get inspired.

▶ BASEBALL, Association, which includes all D-II public schools in California. Come May 22, senior right-hander Matt Rossman and junior righty Tim Shibuya will lead off the rota-tion. Rossman — a transfer from UC Riverside — has gone 9-0 with a 2.45 ERA in an impressive senior campaign, earning CCAA Pitcher of the Year honors for his efforts. Shibuya, a Wyoming native and Triton walk-on, has also put together an outstanding season, going 12-2 with a 1.95 ERA.

Having two aces like Shibuya and Rossman is a rare luxury for any team, but the Tritons’ real pitching strength lies in their depth at the position.

Rounding out the rotation are right-handers senior Kirby St. John and junior Guido Knudson. St. John is 11-1 on the year — compiling a 3.92 ERA — while Knudson is 9-3 with a 4.09 ERA. The bullpen is led by senior closer Daniel Simmons, who has given the Tritons a solid game-closing option this season with a 2.25 ERA and three saves.

The team’s pitchers have seen no lack of offensive support. Overall, the Triton offense has bat-ted .371, and leads the CCAA in hits, runs scored and nearly every other offensive category.

Their stacked lineup is headed by senior first baseman Brandon Gregorich, who has batted in 84 runs — a school record. He also led the team in average (.469) and hits (99), earning him the CCAA Player of the Year award.

Aaron Bauman, Evan Kehoe and junior catcher Kellen Lee

tied for a team best eight home runs, while senior shortstop Vance Albitz became the all-time Triton hits leader. Like the pitching staff, the UCSD offense is deep with tal-ent: Ten players racked up 30 RBIs throughout the season.

At the helm is head coach Dan O’Brien, who — in his 13th season — has turned the program into one of the nation’s best. For the second straight season, the Tritons earned a CCAA regular-season

title, a CCAA tourna-ment title and a trip College World Series. His efforts have not gone unnoticed: O’Brien snagged his second straight CCAA Coach of the Year award in 2010.

The Tritons will open champion-ship play in a double elimination tourna-ment against south-east region champion Georgia College & State University — which holds a record of 39-15 — beginning

at 5 p.m. EST on May 22. The tournament will be held at the USA Baseball National Training Complex.

“We are preparing by hav-ing solid and quality practices with a great focus and intensity,” Knudson said. “We are going to keep working hard in being fully prepared for that first pitch in Cary.”

Should UCSD win its opening game, they will face the winner of the Tampa and Central Missouri match-up. The Spartans and the Mules are ranked second and third in the nation respectively.

Readers can contact Cameron Tillisch at ctillisc@ucsd.edu.

▶ NATIONALS,

“We are preparing by having solid and quality practices with a great focus and intensity.”

GUIDO KNUDSONSTARTING PITCHER

TOBACCO ROADShowdown on

N

CAA DIVISION-II BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS PREVIEW

WWW.UCSDGUARDIAN.ORG/SPORTS

12THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2010

GAME ONE

LL CC

UC SAN DIEGO GEORGIA COLLEGE

GGAAME MEE OONENEE

UUCC SSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAN NN NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN DDIEGIEGO OO GE GEGEORORGIGIAA COCOLLEGELLEGEGE

Th e Tritons begin their quest for a national title at the College World Series on May 22 in Cary, N.C.

25 CatcherKELLEN LEE

.423 36 RBI 55 Hits

12 First BaseBRANDON GREGORICH

.469 84 RBI 99 Hits

8 Third BaseEVAN KEHOE

.356 59 RBI 84 Hits

6 Left FieldAARON BAUMAN.412 45 RBI 77 Hits

11 Right FieldKYLE SAUL

.415 50 RBI 90 Hits

41 Starting PitcherTIM SHIBUYA

12-2 1.95 ERA 73 SO

31 Starting PitcherMATT ROSSMAN9-0 2.45 ERA 70 SO

Photo Illustration by John Hanacek & Emily Ku

B Y C A M E R O N T I L L I S C H | S E N I O R S T A F F W R I T E R

KEY PLAYERS

THE GAME WILL BE STREAMING LIVE ON MAY 22 AT 2 P.M.Go to www.ncaa.com and click on the “Championships” tab.

T he most important week of the Triton baseball season has arrived. The No. 1-ranked team will head to Cary, N.C. this weekend for the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division-II championships. This is the second straight year the Tritons have earned a spot in the eight-team D-II College

World Series: Last year they bowed out in a heartbreaking loss to Emporia State in the semifinals.

The Tritons currently have a 51-7 win-loss record overall, and are 35-5 in conference play. Though the team was ranked No. 3 nationally in the preseason, it had moved into the top spot by mid-March. Following a stumble against conference rivals Cal State San Bernardino, the Tritons dropped to No. 4 on April 9, but regained the No. 1 spot on May 5, where they currently sit.

UCSD will enter the tournament on a hot streak, having just won the D-II west regional title and 18 of their last 19 games overall.

“We look forward to performing well there, and finishing what we started last year in Cary, North Carolina,” senior catcher Kellen Lee said.

The Triton pitching staff has stayed solid all year long, combining for a 3.17 earned run average — the lowest in California Collegiate Athletic

See NATIONALS , Page 11

BASEBALLVISHAL NATARAJAN

vntaraj@ucsd.edu

T he secret’s out: UCSD is no athlete’s paradise. Our school spirit is most apparent during team study sessions in Geisel,

not in the stadium cheering on our teams like most other cool college kids.

Most of us adopt a habit of bitching and moaning about how we lack school spirit — constantly complaining about how no one is as cool as they themselves are — but often do nothing to help the sit-uation. That’s why, while everyone bitches

See BASEBALL , Page 11