Street Beat

Advisor-Final words from the

The fight to teach freedom(Updated from a piece in the Turlock Journal)

O

‘Freedom is not a gift from

heaven; one must fight for it everyday’

-Simon Wiesenthal

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Community Colleges

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Pirates’ LogThe

2 VoicesVoices FRIDAY, MAR. 11, 2011WWW.PIRATESLOG.ORG

Richard Lopez, 21Major: Film“Yes. I think they suck. It leaves us[student with majors being cut] with nothing to turn to.”

Ashley Ledbetter, 20Major: Dental Assisting“Mine was. I don’t like it because I was planning on going into the dental field and now I can’t. I’ll have to pay $15,000 to go somewhere else.”

I am in danger. I am among the many in danger of losing something vital to the way we live in this supposed “free nation.” We are in danger of losing our free speech, and in that our freedom to express ourselves freely and follow our individual dreams. I was not a good High School student, I’ll admit, I slacked off considerably and barely squeezed by into graduation. However I decided that after I graduated that’d I’d do better for myself. That I would live the life every single adult had pushed down my throat growing up, that I would go to school so I could get into a career path that not only would make me a decent salary but that I would enjoy because as Confucius once said; “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” So I decided to start that life at MJC where I began as an English Major with the idea that I would be a teacher so that I would have time to be what I really wanted to be; a novelist. But one day when I was reading a copy of “The Rolling Stone” I started thinking about how horrible I am at teaching anything to anyone and that I actually really suck with children, and I wondered “Why the hell am I trying to be a teacher when I should be writing for a living?” So, in short, I joined the MJC newspaper staff, ‘The Pirates Log’, and though I have doubted myself time and again I know in my heart that one day I want to be a rock journalist doing what I do best every day of my life; writing. I still want to be a novelist eventually, but in the meantime I have found a new fire in my heart with Journalism fueling its flames. However someone is now threatening to douse that fire,

someone has the gall to tell me that my dream is not worth dreaming

about, that my head is full of nonsense and my words are not worth reading. Gather Lowenstein, our President, is telling us that our passion is garbage. Modesto Junior college has been asked to take an $8 million budget cut, and the

media has been targeted. “In the absence

of actual talent and fundamental training in these disciplines, the entertainment and information industries will be reduced to sophisticated mechanisms for delivering mediocre content,” said Lowenstein To that I say, how dare you Mr. Lowenstein, how dare you tell us that our hard work is “mediocre”, how dare you tell me that my writing is un-sophisticated, and how dare you cut our voices short because you don’t wish for us to speak. This is my voice, I am small but my pen is mighty and no matter what you cut from our budget you will not cut my dream or my will to complete it. The saddest thing of all is he is not the only one who threatens us; this country has been driving out the rights of the press and the people for quite a while now, but that should just give us more drive to make it certain that we are not going anywhere and we will let the peoples voices be heard. We are sirens and trumpets and cymbals crashing in a loud and thunderous melody and we are strong. I know now more than ever that this career is my passion realized, is my dream and my freedom, and I refuse to let any one person tell myself or any of us that our dream is able to be held hostage. Our voice is our freedom, and we will start a revolution with the pen.

You can’t silence the media

A journalist’s point of view on the budget

By Dani PorterStaff Reporterf all the jobs that American citizens

might do, and of all the careers for which they may train, only one pro-

fession is constitutionally protected. The First Amendment to the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and of the press; and by “the press”, they meant journalism. That is because these rights did not exist under British rule, yet because of the convic-tions of writers and printers who published under penalty of arrest, and worse, the idea of freedom spread among colonists and the American Revolution triumphed. More than 150 years later the Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal reminded us that “Freedom is not a gift from heaven; one must fight for it every day.” The practice of daily journalism is, at its best, a commit-ment to find, share and pro-tect the truth in the interests of democracy. I teach these elements of history, government, law and ethics in my journal-ism program at Modesto Junior College, a program that has been recommended for discontinuance due to the current budget crisis. Now that is has been approved by the Yosemite Community College Board of Trustees, we can only hope that students find some other way to discover the meaning and value of the First Amendment, and to gain the research, writing and communications skills required by this noble trade. Modesto Junior College was founded in 1921; since 1926 students have published a newspaper, the Pirates’ Log, with occasional changes of name. Countless student reporters and editors went on to earn bachelor’s de-grees in journalism and become professional journalists. Long before my tenure there, Mark Vasche, current Editor-in-Chief of the Modesto Bee, was a Pirates’ Log Sports Editor, as was Brian Vanderbeek on the Bee’s sports desk. MJC photojournalist Kim Komenich went on to earn a Pulitzer Prize at the San Francisco Examiner. Students of my own have also launched into the county’s journalism opportunities, including Turlock Journal sportswriter Chhun Sun, who came to me as a shy immigrant kid with a stutter, and proved himself as an award winning writer, editor and college graduate.

MJC journalism graduate Rebekah Remkie-wicz-McCurdy not only became the editor and publisher of the Delhi News-Express, she also married the Log Graphics Editor, Darrel McCurdy, or as he liked to be called, the Graphics “Samurai.” I warn my staff about things like that happening on the newspaper. My personal favorite story is that of Kristin Platts, a great girl with a passion for writing who had balanced her studies with a menial job at a pizza parlor since high school. I got her out of the pizza parlor and into the job of editor of the Stanislaus Farm News be-cause of her experiences as a student reporter. Now that the college has decided that proper training in journalism is no longer critical to

the college mission, whether in print, online, radio, television, or the new hybrids of contemporary news delivery, I won’t say oppor-tunities will entirely disappear for the current and future generations of local student journalists, but they’ll have to do it on their own. Ignoring wholesale the arguments presented by working media pro-fessionals, CSU faculty, and even a Pulitzer Prize-winning MJC

alumnus, the MJC administration dismissed a venerable profession that is flourishing on all kinds of news delivery platforms and contin-ues to display its vital role in current affairs. It has not gone unnoticed that of all the aca-demic programs they could have cut in this first round, the governing body of this college has eliminated the chief means of expression and public discussion on campus, while also handicapping student government with the dismissal of their adviser. In one stroke, an 85-year MJC legacy has been wiped from the record forever. Thomas Jefferson famously said that given a choice between a government without a newspaper, or a newspaper without a gov-ernment, he would easily favor the second option. Yet in these times when Californians worry about the functionality of government in Sacramento and indeed, in Washington, we also have reason to be concerned about whether this generation will be able to per-form the vital functions of a free press.

Laura Paull is the professor of journalism, film and mass commu-nication. She has been at MJC since 1997. Contact her at paulll@mjc.edu

By Laura Paull

Contact Dani at dani13@live.com

Q:

Bobby Woods, 19Major: Civil Engineering and Biological Science“Yeah, architecture. I think they’re pretty damn stupid. I can understand art, but engi-neering is a skill that’s needed [in a community]. They’re cutting the languages too and those are important.”

Daniel Flores, 23Major: Nursing“No. It’s really a problem more for the state than the schools. I understand the school has to pay its debts. You have to be happy with what you have. It’s a shame what’s go on with students [who are losing their majors] though.”

Jessica Esteves, 18Major: Biology“No. I’m not really affected by them but I don’t think it’s a good thing. It’s unfair to the students whose classes are being cut.”

Nicole Todd, 19Major: Art“I think some of the art classes, but hopefully not too many of photog-raphy. I think it’s going to reduce the amount of kids who come here. It’s really inconvenient. My major was fashion but that got cut, so I changed it to art.”

Is your major being cut? How do you feel about the cuts in general?

By Saramaria Rangel Managing Editor

Lately, I have heard the word “deci-sion” a lot. “It’s a decision that has to be made.” “It’s a decision that will affect the rest of your life.” Decisions are hard, yes, we all get it. So is change, though we never like it, we make it. Do we, however, under-stand the real impact of every decision that we make? For some, attending MJC wasn’t a hard decision, for others it was. We all, however, made the same de-cision. Attend MJC, become a part of a program and try to make the best out of the many things that may have came up in our lives, as well as cuts that we have all been faced with. Yesterday mass media, dental assist-ing, foreign language and child care, as well as other vocational programs were cut. The decision the board made was a hard one, I will give them credit for that. Was it the right one? No. Many seem to agree that the board had already made up their minds about the decision. Perhaps because their speeches were pre-typed and they were all in past tense before the vote. Personally, I feel they didn’t absorb the messages that the speakers were trying to get across to them through compel-ling stories, arguments on the relativity

of the programs, alternatives on what can be done. It was a slap in the face to those that did take the time to offer an alternative and weren’t even consid-ered. How can they be so heartless? Sam Pierstoff offered an amend-ment that gave hope to the hopeless by changing the language so that the removal of the programs was not permanent but rather “faculty be rein-stated based on college and community needs.” Doing so, as he pointed out, wouldn’t add costs but give us hope. He was immediately dismissed by the board chairwoman, Linda Flores and they went on to vote on the original resolution approving it so quickly that the crowd cheered, accidently think-ing Sam’s amendment was approved. It wasn’t. He had to clarify that to us because they didn’t even take the time to do so. Immediately the crowd was deflated, some yelled boos, others walked out in tears and silence. Now what will we do? Fight back and offer alternatives. We can’t give in and let them silence us. We have a voice and we must make it be heard, phone calls, as Adrian Mendoza said, need to be made. Phone calls to our rep-resentatives to have the tax extension on the ballot for the special election. Dani Porter spoke up to the board and asked: “Have you ever had a dream? What would you do if that was threatened?” Ours is being taken away. We all have a dream. To be dental assistants, journalists, chefs, radio broadcasters, graphic designers and so on; they became our plan and our future and we must not let it be invalidated.

A decision to fight back

Artwork/ Ric Feist