the renegade rip vol. 84 no. 3

By Jon NelsonFeatures Editor

On the heels of Greg Cham-berlain’s surprise resignation as president of Bakersfield College comes the news that an interim president has been found to take his place.

As of Feb. 27, Robert Jensen has taken over duties as president until a permanent replacement can be found.

“People have been very warm, very hospitable,” said Dr. Jensen as he shook hands with students and staff in the Fireside Room.

Jensen is excited about coming

to Bakersfield and says that stu-dents can expect a “great advo-cate and an ‘open door’ policy” as well as his participation in the arts and athletics.

“Dr. Jens-en has come highly rec-ommended, and he has an excellent breadth of experience and an ex-ceptional reputation,” said Kern Community College District

chancellor Sandra Serrano in an email to BC staff.

Dr. Jens-en is no stranger to leadership at the com-munity col-lege level. He has held positions as both presi-dent and chancellor of several

community colleges totaling 19 years of service.

“I enjoy being in the college

environment and seeing students pursue their goals and aspira-tions,” said Dr. Jensen

Jensen has a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s degree in English literature.

He began his teaching career in 1962 and taught many subjects, including journalism. He then attended Washington State Uni-versity for his doctorate in com-munity college administration.

Jensen looks forward to work-ing at BC and “assisting a college with a long history of excellence in serving its students and com-munity with an outstanding fac-ulty, staff and leadership team.”

The Renegade Ripwww.therip.comVol. 84 ∙ No. 3 Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Bakersfield College

By Zak S. CowanEditor in Chief

Bakersfield College’s baseball has kicked off its

season with a strong start in non-conference play and is ready to compete for a Western State Con-ference title.

Conference play will commence for the Ren-egades on March 6 when they head to Valencia to play College of the Canyons.

BC’s record of 9-2 through the first three weeks of the season has the team in high spirits.

“I think, as we’ve gone out and played, this group has gained a little confidence,” said coach Tim Painton. “We’ve kind of gotten a feel of who we are and what we are capable of doing at this point. I feel really good with where we’re at [emo-tionally].”

At this point last year, the Renegades were 7-4 with conference play approaching. They won sev-en of their next eight games before finishing the season on a downslide, losing 12 of their last 17.

Painton is confident that this group will not have the same outcome.

According to Painton, the pitching staff has held the team up when their offense was struggling to

By Gregory D. CookPhotographer

On March 20-21, the students of Bakersfield College will once again have the opportunity to decide who will be the new officers of their Stu-dent Government Association by casting their votes in BC’s spring elections. But this year, the SGA is making a few changes in the process, hoping to improve voter turnout and streamline costs.

While voting will still take place online, in an effort to improve on the 941 voters that partici-pated in last year’s elections, the SGA plans on giving students the option of walk-up voting on campus as well.

“We’ll have booths set up in locations where students can actually walk up to the table and vote using laptops,” explained SGA general counsel Derrick Kenner, who is overseeing the elections. “And they can also receive prizes for voting.”

Currently, the SGA plans on raffling off an MP3 player, an E-reader and a tablet as prizes, with a student’s vote automatically entering them in the raffle.

“They can also receive walk-up prizes like t-shirts,” said Kenner. “It’s just something to

Inside

Page 7New bacon milkshake

hits the tastebuds with disappointment

Page 4: The Skabilly Rebels headline local show at B. Ryder’s

Page 9Women’s basketball

team snubbed in playoff selection

By Angie DelGadoReporter

Chevron announced a dona-

tion of $1.5 million to schools in Kern County at the Bakersfield College Science and Engineering quad during Engineer’s Week on Feb. 21.

“Chevron’s goal is to engage students, and have them under-stand that careers in engineering, science, and math are tangible and easy to get,” said Adam Al-

vidrez Government and Public Affairs representative of Chev-ron.

The $1.5 million donated by Chevron is going to help stu-dents by giving them the oppor-tunity to experience science and math hands-on.

Out of the $1.5 million being donated, BC is going to receive $100,000 to support the develop-ment of the STEM Education/Workforce Development Initia-

SGA seeks more turnout for elections

Unicycling up and down the BC campus

GREGORy D. COOK / THE RIP

Tim Ambrose makes adjustments to the programming of his team’s robotic pirate ship during a Feb. 21 demonstration in the Science and Engineering Building.

OMAR OSEGUERA / THE RIP

Renegades outfielder Jordan Turner slides into home under Condors catcher Daniel Lerma during a game on Feb. 17 at Bakersfield College. BC won the game 7-4.

Interim president arrives“I enjoy being in the college

environment and seeing students pursue their goals

and aspirations.”–Robert Jenson,

BC’s interim president


Interim Bakersfield College president Robert D. Jensen.

Please see BASEBALL, 1 Please see ELECTIONS, Page 5

By Nicholas SparlingReporter

Many students around Bakersfield College have seen a gentleman rid-ing around campus on his unicycle, dawned with a large afro and sporting his Bob Marley leather jacket.

Mike Taylor is a 21-year-old math-ematics major at BC. He has been using his unicycle as a form of trans-portation since around 2005.

“[It’s] something to get around and it fits in small places,” he said.

He doesn’t ride for the unique fac-tor. Though it is rare to see people riding around on unicycles, for him it is more something so he “wouldn’t have to ride a bike somewhere where it could get stolen.”

When he first started riding around seven years ago, it took him about a

week to pick it up without having to worry about falling.

“[It] requires forward and back-wards balance more than left to right,” he said.

Taylor likes to collect and find the most comfortable unicycle for him. Although he only has one that works right now, he has many pieces that he trades out. He gets his unicycles at Snyder’s Cyclery on Union Av-enue and rides back and forth from home to school.

Although Taylor seems to be a nor-mal BC student who likes to ride his unicycle to class, according to Taylor,

he has autism.“It’s like you can’t do everyday

normal activities like everyone else. [I] can’t do things without think-ing about them,” he said. “When you’re autistic, you’re conscious of every single move that you make. It makes it really stressful to make it through a normal day.”

Still, Taylor doesn’t let this discourage him from doing the things that he loves to do. He likes to build calculators for chess positions, which Taylor calls “bots,” where moves could be solved using math and pure calculation.

Taylor makes these bots for chess, he said, “but not regular chess. There [are] too many people that make those so [I] make bots for chess variants.”

He cites tempestchess.com as a place to test his bots.

“It’s chess without turns, like you don’t have to wait for your turn to play.”

Taylor wants to make bots for that form of chess because there hasn’t been bots made that can beat humans consistently.

The future holds more program-ming for Taylor as he continues with his study of mathematics.

“Like right now, [I] can’t program that much with the math that [I] know.”

He says by learning more math, he could probably build more powerful programs.

BC recipient of major Chevron donation

AnGIE DELGADO / THE RIP

Mike Taylor rides his unicycle on Feb. 23 down the stairs of the Math and Science Building. He has been riding for six years.

“When you’re autistic, you’re conscious of every

single move that you make. It makes it really stressful to

make it through a normal day.”–Mike Taylor,

BC student

Please see DONATION, Page 5

BC 9-2 with WSC play on horizon

FeaturesWednesday, February 29, 2012 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

Omar Oseguera / The rip

Yogurtland is just one of several new frozen yogurt places located in the Bakersfield area.

By Patricia RochaCopy Editor

Bakersfield residents have been known to get excited over new restaurant openings and the many new frozen yogurt places that have opened in the past few years are no exception.

Yogurtland, BurrBerry Frozen Yogurt, Daddy O’s Frozen Yo-gurt and galato and Tutti Frutti have all recently gotten the at-tention of Bakersfield College students as the newest places to get a cool snack.

The new locations have caught the attention of student amay-rany Claros, 18, who said she hasn’t gone yet, but the variety of colors and flavors make it look interesting.

“They look tasty,” she said.english major patrick reyes

said he’s been to Daddy O’s and BurrBerry Frozen Yogurt, the latter being his favorite.

“They have really good fla-vors,” he said. “i like French vanilla yogurt, and i like to put caramel on it.”

he says he thinks people get excited over new openings be-cause people just like eating a lot and BC student arelie paredos agrees.

“i guess they read reviews and are anxious to try it out,” paredos said.

she said she likes the new Yogurtland location for its tasty toppings.

“They have more choices like cookies and junk food and all that,” she said.

student Karla peck also agrees that Yogurtland is her new go-to place, admitting she’s slightly addicted to the frozen treat.

“i don’t feel extremely full like after i eat ice cream,” peck said. “it’s healthy and yummy.”

Though she said the location is a little too small and busy to hang out with friends and family in, she feels the yogurt is worth the hassle.

“i get the cheesecake yogurt or the passion fruit yogurt topped with pineapple and strawberries and animal cookies.”

peck said she likes the service and the outside of the location is perfect for hanging out as Yo-gurtland is only a short distance away from river Walk park.

“everyone is pretty friendly there,” she said.

“You can just take your yogurt and go.”

another selling point for the treat is the prices, which is said to be reasonably priced based on the overall weight of the final cup which many said was a good thing seeing as how there are hundreds of different flavor and topping combinations possible.

“You get a lot for really cheap, it’s not pricey at all,” said peck. “i like to get toasted coconut yo-gurt with sliced almonds and a bunch of fruit.

“it’s so good.”many students said they were

excited to see what other types of dining venues will open in town in the future.

Frozen yogurt trend excites Bakersfield residents

By Ruben PerezReporter

harlem & Beyond put on a gospel concert at the greater harvest Christian Center Feb. 25 to celebrate Black history month and to celebrate the birthday of Dr. martin Luther King Jr.

The theme of the concert was “embracing the past for a Better Future.” The master of Ceremo-ny, Brother Charles moore, said they put on the concert because “during the hard times, it was the music that brought people together.”

This is the third time that har-lem & Beyond put on the concert, but the first time at the greater harvest Christian Center.

The concert began with songs by the greater harvest praise Team and a discussion of the book and movie “The help.” They brought up “The help” as a reminder of the struggles people went through so that all people of color could eventually have the same rights and equality.

The concert then followed with the song “Walking in au-thority” by the Bakersfield Com-munity Children’s Choir. They

performed three songs through-out the evening. after the Chil-dren’s choir sang, the Bakersfield Community praise Dancers per-formed a dance to a song about asking Jesus to help through the tough times.

The concert also included po-etry from a local poet about the struggles she went through dur-ing the civil rights movement and when she was the help. she stressed the importance of peo-ple embracing their past to have a better future.

One Touch music ministry came from California City to perform a few songs.

The Children’s Choir per-formed again, but this time dressed as older women with large church hats and ran around the church in praise.

The older women they were imitating got a good laugh from the children’s choir’s perfor-mance.

The music got most of the people in attendance out of their seats and clapping their hands. after the concert everyone was in good spirits, and a few people suggested that they hold the con-cert more often.

Gospel concert celebrates Black History Month

New iPhone app provides info on cost of homesBy Crystal Sánchez

Reporter

many Bakersfield College stu-dents are wondering if the “Who Owns that home” app is really a great invention.

“Who Owns that home” is a free app for your iphone. With the click of a button, it provides information on who owns the home, how much they paid for it, and when the house was pur-chased.

The app uses public tax re-

cords to get the information. app creator, Chris Frank, said

in an interview with KgeT that the idea of ipointer is to change the way people learn about their surroundings.

The easy access to this infor-mation is leaving some Bakers-field College students uneasy.

“i think it’s creepy that people can have all that information,” said Katie Long, 27.

“my house no longer feels pri-vate because i am worried people will know my information.”

george gutierrez, 20, believes that the app would best serve its purpose if only used the right way.

“That’s crazy that people would come up with this app,” he said. “i am sure if you use it the right way, it would be great, but you know a crazy person is going to use this to stalk someone.”

Lucas alindajao, a realtor for Lenox realty, believes that this app is great for people wanting to get a better idea of a home be-fore they buy.

“it will help consumers gather information about what the pric-es ranges are in certain neighbor-hoods,” he said.

as for how it will affect the realty companies, alindajao says that it really won’t make a differ-ence.

“people will still need to see a realtor because they won’t know how to buy a house. There is a process to buying a house that needs to be followed,” he said. “This app can really help realtors with marketing and listing the

houses.” “i could understand the pur-

pose of this app for realtors. i personally don’t care to know how much my neighbor paid for their house,” said Lukah Castro, 31.

ashley Johnson, 57, thinks it is an unusual app, but she also believes it makes gathering in-formation too easy for people.

“i cannot understand why you would give everyone access to such private information or why you would even want others in-

formation,” she said.“Before, if you really wanted

to find this information, you had to go down to the hall of records. You had to work for that infor-mation, not just click a button on your iphone.”

sandra perez, 36, disagrees.“i really want this app. i think

it is great to be able to know ev-erything i can and have it at my fingertips,” she said.

“people just need to be re-sponsible with the information they are given.”


Bike Bakersfield held Pedalpalooza Feb. 25 at Yokuts Park. The event encouraged participation from all age groups and creative decoration of bikes. Competitions were held for Best Single Rider, Most Creative Bike Float, Best Family Presentation, Best Group Presentation and Best in Show.

Riding down the path together


Yogurtland offers an array of toppings for their frozen yogurts.


Depending on who you ask, past decades and eras can be defined by many things. Some people will say it’s all about the politics, wars and diplomatic re-lations. Others will go straight to saying that just the names Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix and Cyndi Lauper help define multiple gen-erations. But to me, when someone names a famous his-torical event or genre of music from a certain decade, the first thing I think of is the fashion.

Bring up the second World War and I think of the way women had to give up wearing their nylon stockings and went through fabric rationing.

Bring up the mid ’70s, and my mind races thinking of the birth of punk fashion. Just say-ing the word “grunge” makes me cringe for the fashion victims of the ’90s. Oversized flannel is a friend to no one.

Because I see history this way, it kind of makes me sad to think what my generation will be re-membered for in the future. Muf-fin-top inducing low-rise jeans? Uggs with mini skirts? Anything with the name Ed Hardy written on it?

However, I still have hope that at least one group of individuals is saving us from complete style loss, and those people are called hipsters.

I think hipsters get a bad rap. Yes, they steal all the good vinyl from Goodwill and annoyingly love putting mustaches and owls on everything, but they’ve done a lot for our generation in terms of fashion. They’ve taken some of the worst trends from the past and modified them to make them actually look good.

Women are wearing awe-somely patterned tights with ’50s and ’60s style dresses. Men are wearing ties and vests. Ev-eryone is wearing nerdy, thick-framed glasses. And seriously, who thought Bill Cosby sweaters were going to be at the forefront of style again?

Not to mention the shoes. Classic oxfords and saddle shoes in every color combination and pattern possible and ’90s style combat boots with dresses! It’s almost enough to make me for-give them for wearing Toms. (I said almost.)

Hipster fashion is all about being creative and resourceful. Wearing rings made out of an-tique spoons, making straw hats a statement piece, and scouring the Salvation Army for the per-fect Molly-Ringwald-in-Pretty-In-Pink-esque floral vest.

It kind of amazes me anyone would ever be insulted to be called a hipster.

They’re known for liking classic literature, lesser-known bands, and multiple mediums of art. Because of this, people think they’re snobby and stuck up, but I honestly don’t care about all of that.

If you go back in history, you’ll see the most notable fashions didn’t come from the mainstream, they came from the counterculture. Flappers of the ’20s, greasers of the ’50s, mods of the late ’60s, Madonna’s leath-er and lace ensembles, no one re-ally took their style seriously at the time, but their style is really what’s best remembered.

For our generation, I think hipsters’ fashion statement is what’s going to leave a lasting impression, and someday when everyone else jumps on the bandwagon and starts to realize how awesome they really are, I’m not ashamed to admit I’m kind of excited I get the chance to say I thought they were cool before everyone else.

Column

WORTHWHILE STYLE | The Rip’s copy editor and resi-dent shoe addict discusses the lost art of dressing for your own style.

Patricia Rocha

Hipstersadd to fashion

By Jon NelsonFeatures Editor

The once unused back bar of Riley’s Tavern downtown is now playing host to something darker once a month.

Heresy, the brainchild of Ba-kersfield native Mike Fowler, is Bakersfield’s new Goth Night.

“My wife and I couldn’t find anything like it going on in Ba-kersfield so we decided to get together with some friends and go for it,” said Fowler about starting the event.

Heresy has been running since December and has a new theme each month. The event features DJs, bands and a multimedia show projected on a large screen behind the dance floor.

Even the staff at Bakersfield College is getting in on the fes-tivities.

“For anyone with a history of being around goth clubs, there is

enough of the trappings to make it entertaining, although the mu-sic was a bit industrial for me. Certainly some colorful char-acters in attendance,” said John Davies, adjunct English profes-sor at BC.

Fowler is also happy with the event.

“I am happy with the events so far. The attendance has been great. The club goers are excit-ed. The bar owners are way cool and easy to work with. Also, I’m happy with the mix of people,” said Fowler.

The crowd at Heresy is an eclectic mix of the black lipstick set, weekend warriors and curi-ous on-lookers.

“I love the fact that they’re trying to do something darker for the alternative crowd,” said Katt Purdue, who attended Her-esy in February.

For Fowler, the central theme behind Heresy is the people and

By Crystal SánchezReporter

Social media sites like Face-book and Twitter are becoming prevalent in the lives of many Bakersfield College students.

BC students spoke about how social media sites affect their lives and how addiction may soon become a problem. They discuss how the 10 tips to help social media addiction can be effective for curing social media addiction.

“I have a Facebook, Twitter and Flickr account to stay in contact with friends and to dis-play my artwork,” said Henry Howard, 20.

Howard said that becoming addicted to social media is not difficult to do because most people do not keep track of how much time is spent online.

“I know for myself person-

ally, I can easily spend an hour to two hours on Facebook and not even notice.

“My studies have slipped a lit-tle bit because I spend too much time on Facebook or Twitter, but I am trying to keep my grades up and have Facebook and Twit-ter be less of a distraction.”

Dr. Rob Reiner, of Behavioral Associates in Manhattan, said in an interview with NBC New York that social media addiction could trigger anxiety, envy, and even depression.

“People are insecure and peo-ple think there is always some-thing better and now there are more tools to take advantage of it.”

“I feel disconnected from my friends if I’m not on Facebook reading their posts or sharing pictures,” said Gabrielle Tills, 22.

“I can’t imagine my life

w i t h o u t Facebook, much less my phone. I would die without my phone,” she said.

F rances Garcia, 48, believes her frequent use of social media has decreased her time spent with family.

“ S o m e -times I catch my-self paying more attention to my iPhone than I do my kids. It’s really sad to admit to yourself that you are addicted to social media,” she said.

Many stu-dents even believe that the 10 tips are applicable to their lives.

K e n n e t h Parker, 35, said that the apps on his phone are a distraction.

“The apps on my phone are an easier way for me to stay connected at all times, but they also cause me to waste my time,”

Parker said. “I use them just be-cause they are on my phone.”

“Sometimes you realize how much you miss hearing your friend’s voice rather than texting

them all the time,” said Anna Sheak, 44.

Sheak currently has a son at-tending Fresno State and said she often misses hearing her son’s voice over the telephone.

“I miss hearing my son’s voice and listening to him talk about his day,” she said.

“There is a human element to talking over the phone and hear-ing someone’s voice.”

Hannah Clark says she thinks limiting your memberships is the best way for avoiding social media addiction.

“I have so many member-ships that it is hard to keep track of them all,” she said. “Limiting my memberships would help me centralize my time and mind to just one site.

“My life would also be a lot less stressful with not having to check all of the sites for up-dates.”

A new club forgoths opens

TEELA WALKER / THE RIP

Adrian Rocha showing off his dance moves for Club Heresy on Feb. 4 backstage at Riley’s Tavern.

the sense of community it pro-vides. “People who go to goth clubs seem to be united around a lifestyle of self-expression with their outfits and music as opposed to just wanting to go

out and get drunk at a bar,” said Fowler.

For the foreseeable future, Fowler plans to concentrate on Heresy and make the event bet-ter.

“Heresy is once a month and that takes plenty of planning.

When you have to get things planned, that once a month comes fast. If demand grows, then I will plan it more often.”

Social networks become an addiction10 Steps to help

social media addiction

1. Admit you have a problem2. Track your time online3. Remember the telephone4. Go outside5. Limit your memberships6. Use your networks productively7. Prioritize8. Stop procrastinating9. Remove the cell phone apps10. Spend more time with

close family and friends


Dezi Von Dropya, Hooka Buzz-uka and Devious Darling, left to right, watch their fellow teammates play.


The Derby Revolution faces the Visalia V-Town Derby Dames on Feb. 25.

Local rollerderby bouts

By Omar OsegueraPhotographer

Sports are highly thought of as dominated by men, but that does not stop the ladies of Derby Revolution of Bakers-field from stepping into the rink and displaying their intensity in Roller Derby.

Roller derby bouts consist of five women from each team on the track at one time, and so 10 women at a time on the track. Two of them are jammers and wear helmet panties with a star on them. The goal of jammers is to score points. The rest of the skaters form a pack and try to let their respective jammer get in through a hole while attempting to block the other team’s jam-mer from scoring.

Tonya Warren, 41, also known as Tonka Toy, started the Derby Revolution of Bakersfield.

“I started Roller Derby six years ago, and had seen it on the

A&E TV show ‘Roller Girls,’ and was challenged by a friend to do it… so as soon as it came to town, I joined.”

Tonya, who has been an ath-lete her whole life, recognized that there aren’t many organized sports for women.

“Roller Derby isn’t just a sport. It’s almost like its own little entity.”

She acknowledges that, al-though Roller Derby is a physi-cal sport, you don’t necessarily have to be an athlete to join.

“Everybody has their role on the team. You have the people that are athletes and then you have the people who are just great organizers that want to be a part of something … there is a place for everyone.”

The current captain of the team, Christy Chanley, 43, also known as Chris T. McKnuckles, is a correctional counselor for the California Department of Corrections outside of the rink.

“I’ve been skating for three and a half years now. I started in July of 2008, I believe,” she said.

“I chose to do derby because I saw a photo on the paper, and it was a friend of mine. She had a black eye, Tonka Toy, our founder. I finally kept a sched-ule on my refrigerator and fi-nally made it to a bout. And as soon as I started watching it, I was like ‘oh heck, where do I sign up?’

“My skate name is Chris T. McKnuckles. The reason I chose that name is because as a kid I was always a tomboy. And when I was growing up, Christy McNichols was a pretty good actress, and she was a tomboy on ‘Family,’ so I went with that

because my friends use to call me Christy McNichols all the time.”

When asked about the nick-names, Chanley said, “Some girls go with tough nicknames. It’s just usually something to do with your personality.”

The Derby Revolution of Bakersfield practices twice a week at the Boys and Girls Club on Niles Street Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“We do about 45 minutes of endurance drills … and just drills that have to do with the skills that we use on the track when we play,” says Chanley.

The Derby Revolution of Ba-kersfield also has a junior team, called the Derby Revolution Brats.

The team ranges from ages 8-17. Practice sessions for the young team are just as intense as the adult league.

“They can probably outskate some of the adults to be honest with you, and their practices run the same as ours,” stated Chan-ley.

Chanley describes Roller Derby as a very intense sport.

“Derby is a very physical sport. I would say it’s a cross between Nascar, going around the track, and football … it can get violent sometimes. Roller Derby nowadays is not what you remember from the past … we have strict rules, not that we don’t break those rules. It’s not your grandmother’s roller derby. It’s real now.”



There was a good turn out on Feb. 25 to see Roddy Radiation of The Specials play with his American band, The Skabilly Rebels, at B. Ryder’s Sports Bar and Grill. The Specials have rocked the United Kingdom for over 30 years, and this was Roddy’s first time playing in Bakersfield.

Danny Dean, guitarist for the Skabilly Rebels, has been “wait-ing for eight to ten years for [Roddy] to tour in the US.” To him, it was well worth the wait despite his now-busy schedule. The band spent the previous night in San Jose and is soon off to Australia and Italy for their tour.

Roddy enjoyed the turn out. “I like a mixed crowd. It’s nice

having all ages in,” he said. Throughout the night, Roddy

was quite worried about the band’s tour manager, who when standing up caught her head on a table and may have been mildly concussed for the better half of the night, but she was still danc-ing and swinging to the music which was a nice mixture of rockabilly and ska genres.

From his younger days, Rod-dy told a story about when he injured his head.

“I tried to jump down a whole flight of stairs and knocked me head on an eighth story beam. I had to wear a Liverpool hat the whole tour,” he said.

He said they wouldn’t give him painkillers when they

stitched his head after shaving a horseshoe into it because of the fact that he had been drinking.

Roddy, who will be turning 57 in May, is not as young as he once was, but still knows how to rock ‘n’ roll. He does recognize the fact that he’s getting older, evidenced by the arthritis that has set into his shoulder from playing a Les Paul since he was 13 which has made him switch to a lighter guitar. Also, the fact that on his last tour one of his teeth just fell out when he was singing on stage and he just spit it into the crowd.

All Roddy could say about these facts was that, “some-one upstairs… he’s sure taking a piss. It’s like all you want to do is relive it, or do it all over again.”

By Angie DelGadoReporter

Bakersfield College professor of Animal Science Bill Barnes is the first to admit he may have an odd job.

Barnes uses artificial insemi-nation in livestock production, which is a very common job in the beef and swine industry. Af-ter all, it is an important aspect in producing milk and food for most of the country.

Swine production is mostly what Barnes focuses on, and while it may sound like an easy job, there are a lot of aspects to be aware of. First, you have to make sure that the female pig is in heat.

“Female pigs go through a cy-cle when she is in heat. It is called the estrous cycle. It happens ev-

ery 21 days,” said Barnes.When the female pig is ready,

a rod is inserted at a 45-degree angle, then it is turned to the left, and once it is in the cervix, it locks in.

Then a bottle of semen, which can cost upward of $150, is taken and put at the end of the rod.

Some pressure is applied slow-ly, and once it is empty, she’s done. Then the rod is turned to the right and it is removed. The same procedure is done again in 24 hours.

The way to tell if the procedure is successful is to wait another 21 days, and if she does not come into estrous cycle again, then the process does not need to be done again.

If she does come into the cycle, then the same procedure is fol-lowed again until it is successful.

“Once she is pregnant, it will last 114 days. That’s three months, three weeks, and three days. About 6 weeks into it, she’ll develop a tummy,” said Barnes about knowing when the pig is pregnant.

Some aspects of the process can be dangerous.

“When I was collecting from a boar one time, I was bitten by one. They get really aggressive,” said Barnes.

The boars are a little more ag-gressive than the female pigs; the female pigs are a little more stable.

“The females are normally not aggressive,” said Barnes.

Even though the job may sound a little bit different than most, it is a job that pays for itself. The average person may make up to $70,000-$75,000 a year for

beef production, while in swine production the average is about $50,000 a year. The beef industry is more popular in the West Coast while swine production is more in the Mid-West.

Barnes’ advice to someone who may want to get into the field is that he or she may want to major in animal science.

The courses can be taken at Bakersfield College, and then the student can transfer to a school like Fresno State, Chico State or Cal Poly.

While in a four-year university, a person interested in the major may want to do an internship with the large producers of pork or beef in the country.

Some people may want to be a part of the scientific aspect. They can also major in anatomy and work on new developments.

TEELA WALKER / THE RIP

Bill Barnes, professor of Animal Science, on Feb. 23 stands in front of his office. He is a professional artificial inseminator for swine and is not afraid to admit that he has a weird job.


Bakersfield College is bring-ing the ancient art of Tai Chi to its halls through the Levan Institute for Lifelong Learning. The class is taught by local martial arts in-structor David Woods and teaches students martial arts through slow, graceful, gentle movements.

“[Tai Chi is] most commonly practiced by older people who wish to improve their balance, coordination, joint mobility and blood circulation,” said Woods.

Woods is well qualified to be teaching Tai Chi as he has trained all over the world, including what he says was his most inspiring training at the Shaolin Temple in China. That is where he learned Tai Chi.

There, Woods learned the slow, graceful art and also the practical application of Tai Chi, a fighting style.

Woods also teaches Kung Foo San Soo where he holds an 8th de-gree black belt. He taught at Fight-ing Dragons, but soon outgrew that facility and moved to Bakers-field Elite Martial Arts where he teaches with two other people.

The Levan Institute for Lifelong

Learning sent out a survey to find out what classes would be popu-lar, and Tai Chi came back with a great report. It turns out that they were right.

“I wanted to do a Tai Chi class because it’s a popular topic,” said Robert Allison about catering es-pecially to their demographic of 55 and older. The class turned up full and even waitlisted. Allison became personally interested in Tai Chi when he was in China and saw mostly older people practic-ing it.

Woods is quite happy with how his class is progressing and the turnout.

“I am very pleased to have a big class with students that are very focused and dedicated. [It is] progressing better than expected,” Woods said. “Because my students are so intent on learning, they learn a little faster than the average Tai Chi student.”

Woods would like to see self-defense and Tai Chi as an actual class on the BC curriculum. He says that his biggest goal “is to kill people’s attitudes before it kills them. In other words, I teach a very violent form of martial arts in a way that teaches the student to be a more peaceful person.”

Weirdest job title may go to BC professor Bill Barnes

The Skabilly Rebels delight the crowd at B.Ryder’s

Show brings a different sound to Riley’s

Levan Institute brings art of Tai Chi to Bakersfield College

Andreotti plays the guitar during the Indie Mashup on Feb. 17, which was held at Riley’s Backstage. Joseph Andreotti founded the band Funeral Club with his wife in 2006. Funeral Club recorded their third full-length album in 2011. The event was presented by Loiter Productions. Funeral Club was just one of five bands that played at the event.

NATHAN WILSON / THE RIP

PHOTOS By OMAR OSEGUERA / THE RIP

Above: The Skabilly Rebels, fronted by former member of The Specials, Roddy Radiation, left, performs Feb. 25 at B. Ryder’s. The Skabilly Rebels are currently making their way through the United States

Left: Roddy Radiation of The Skabilly Rebels performs Feb. 25 at B. Ryder’s. The Skabilly Rebels were the headlining act for several bands at the show.

NewsWednesday, February 29, 2012 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

bring the people to the table to vote.”

Another change for this year will be that the voting will take place through the Inside BC portal in-stead of the Votenet.com

Web site that was used last year. In addi-tion to being more convenient for students, Kenner pointed out that the change will save money.

“We’re actually saving over $3,000 by going with the In-side BC portal,” he said. “So the only things we’re really paying money for are the in-centives.”

Kenner estimates this year’s election will cost the SGA under $800. “And most of the money that we spend is going back to the students in the incentives,” he said. “It’s a really good deal.”

Students will be asked to vote for their choice for the positions of the SGA’s ex-ecutive board. The offices of president, vice-president, sec-retary, activities liaison, legis-lative liaison, general counsel and treasurer are all up for grabs, and any student who meets the requirements can run for the office.

Candidates must have com-pleted at least 12 units at BC, and be enrolled in at least 6 units during their term in of-fice. Officers are also expect-ed to maintain at least a 2.0 overall GPA.

The first step in running for office is to pick up a can-didate packet from the SGA offices in CC4. The packets, which must be submitted by March 13, contain the forms needed to declare candidacy and a petition upon which the candidate must gather 70 sig-natures of fellow students in order to have his or her name placed on the ballot. Candi-dates who miss the March 13 deadline can still run as write-in candidates.

Officers serving on the ex-ecutive board of the SGA are paid $8 an hour up to a maxi-mum of 19 hours a week, with the money coming from the proceeds of the sale of the SGA discount cards.

Also on this year’s bal-lot will be a proposed rec-ommendation to amend the school’s smoking policy.

“The smoking policy will be on there as well,” said Kenner. “There’s 100 per-cent tobacco-free, designated smoking areas, or just the cur-rent policy we have now.”

Kenner stressed that what students will be voting on is a recommendation. The results of the voting will be present-ed to the College Counsel, a committee made up of de-partment heads, and finally the college president.

“And if they approve it,” said Kenner. “They will make it policy for the college.”

-tive. This money is also used for

scholarships that are designed to help students achieve their goals.

The donation will support aca-demic scholarships, Mesa Week Zero, Peer Mentoring, Electro-Mechanical Program support and help students achieve their goals in the careers they prepare for in Kern County area middle schools, high schools and com-munity colleges.

Travis Burns, 28, electrical en-gineer major, who received the Chevron scholarship last year, said it helped him reach his goal by helping him “pay for text-books, because textbooks are so expensive.”

Burns wants to be an electrical

engineer. Burn’s ultimate career would

be “to create more accessible means for electricity so people get more electricity and pay less,” he said.

Chevron is looking for people who have goals like this to invest in, and to also teach young stu-dents about careers that are avail-able to them.

There were many other speak-ers.

One of them was Horace Mitchell, president of Cal State Bakersfield, who feels that, re-garding math and science, “as a nation we are falling behind.In fact, we have fallen behind and now it’s catch up mode and Chevron is making it possible. The way that you learn science is not by reading, but by doing.”

Continued from Page 1


DONATION: Donation to help MESA with scholarships

ElEcTIONs: SGA to have online voting booths


The Student Government As-sociation and Houchin Commu-nity Blood Bank would like to invite students to “save a life” by taking part in the National Cesar E. Chavez Blood Drive Chal-lenge at Bakersfield College on March 7-8.

Hoping to build on the success of last year’s blood drive, this

year’s drive will be a two-day event, a first for BC.

“We’ve been doing a blood drive for years here and last year’s was the most successful year we’ve had,” said Will Chan-dler, SGA legislative liaison. “So we said ‘Why not do two days to have double the impact and save more lives?’”

This will be the first time Houchin has done a two-day blood drive, and Chandler says

that while they have lofty goals, he is confident that BC will come through.

“We’re hoping to get 200-plus donors a day over the two days,” he said. “It’s open to faculty as well as students, so we want teachers to donate. We want staff to donate. It’s a good opportunity to save a lot of lives.”

This year, the SGA wants to encourage BC’s clubs to turn out to donate.

“We want to get as much stu-dent involvement as possible,” said Chandler. “So we are going to have incentives for clubs that sign people up and get people to donate.”

Additionally, donors will re-ceive free T-shirts while supplies last, free pizza and water.

Staff members from Houchin will be in the Fireside Room of the Campus Center screening potential donors from 10 a.m. to

4 p.m. on March 7, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on March 8. After answer-ing some questions to ensure that they are eligible to donate, do-nors will board one of Houchin’s mobile collection buses.

Potential donors need to be at least 17 years old with photo identification and weigh at least 110 pounds. It is also recom-mended that donors eat a meal at least three hours before.

Chandler would like to en-

courage people that aren’t sure if they are eligible to give blood to at least ask.

“A lot of people think they can’t give blood because they are diabetic or whatever,” he said. “When oftentimes, they can.”

Information provided by Houchin states that persons with diabetes and high blood pressure are still eligible to donate as long as those conditions are under control.

By Jackie GibsonReporter

Amgen’s Tour of California is coming back to Bakersfield. This is one of the most recognized cycling events and one of the nation’s most popular sporting events and occurs on an annual basis. This year it will be held May 13-20.

The race is comprised of hill and valley routes that wind through our country and include a stop in Bakersfield.

In this scenic race of Califor-nia put on by AEG Sports, there are eight stages that the athletes will have to overcome in order to reach the finish line.

Stage one will start in Santa Rosa on May 13. Stage two will be taking off in San Francisco starting at Marina Boulevard. This will take the cyclists to stage three, taking place in San Jose, starting at Berryessa Com-munity Center and ending at Liv-ermore.

Stage four is the longest stage with 130 miles of ground to cover. With its starting point in Sonora and ending in Clovis, it is also quite possibly the hardest stage in the Tour of California.

To many, stage five is perhaps the most interesting, as it will be starting and finishing at Bakers-field College on May 17.

Stage five is an individual time trial that in past years has been a favorite on the tour. In Bakers-field, it will be an 18.4-mile trial

course.The cyclists will be going

down Alfred Harrell Highway to a turnaround point at Lake Ming on the China grade and then the finish. It is a fast and high-graded road for the cyclists and, as it is occurring in May, it may also be hot from the Bakersfield heat.

Palmdale is the starting point

for stage six and it ends at Big Bear Lake May 18. The seventh stage takes the riders to mount Baldy on May 19. On May 20, stage eight takes off in Beverley Hills.

The winner will be crowned in Los Angeles on a special stage at L.A. LIVE along with the team the rider rode with.

Blood drive to be held over two days to save lives

Amgen coming to campus

COuRTESy OF AMGEN TOuR OF CALIFORNIA


Adam Alvidrez, a representative from Chevron North America’s department of Policy, Government and Public Affairs, speaks at a presentation on Feb. 21 in the courtyard of BC’s Science and Engineering Building.

Derrick Kenner

Commentary The Renegade Rip www.therip.com Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Winner of the 2003 and 2008 JACC Pacesetter Award

The Renegade Rip is produced by Bakersfield College journalism classes, printed by Bakersfield Envelope & Printing Co. Inc., and circulated on Wednesdays during the fall and spring semesters.

The newspaper is published under the auspices of the Kern Community College District Board of Trustees, but sole responsibility for its content rests with student editors.

The Rip is a member of the Journalism Association of Community Colleges and the California Newspaper Publishers Association.

Editorial Board Staff

Write The RipLetters should not exceed 300 words, must be

accompanied by a signature and the letter writer’s identity must be verified.

The Rip reserves the right to edit letters, however, writers will be given the opportunity to revise lengthy or unacceptable submissions.

If an organization submits a letter as a group, it must be signed by only one person, either the leader of the organization or the letter writer. Pen names are not allowed and anonymous letters will not be published.

How to reach us-Address: Bakersfield College,

1801 Panorama Drive, Bakersfield, CA 93305-Phone: (661) 395-4324-Web site: www.therip.com-Email: [email protected] ......................................................Danny Edwards

Editor in Chief........................Zak S. CowanPhoto Editor...........................Megan LueckeFeatures Editor...............................Jon NelsonOpinions Editor........................Martin ChangSports Editor........................Esteban RamirezCopy Editor...............................Patricia Rocha

Reporters/Photographers: Hannah Breeland, Gregory D. Cook, Angie Delgado, Metiqua Eng, Nestor Fernandez, Breanna Fields, Jackie Gibson, Shaquiel Jones, Keith Kaczmarek, Meisha McMurray, Omar Oseguera, Nate Perez, Ruben Perez, Crystal Sanchez, Nicholas Sparling, Jerold Tanner, Teela Walker, Nathan Wilson

The Renegade Rip

City Lights enlightens your mind

Column

AS MY BRAIN EXPLODES | Martin Chang’s take on people and culture.

Martin Chang

When I visit City Lights, a bookstore and publisher located in the North Beach area of San Francisco opened by poet Law-rence Ferlinghetti in 1953, I feel a power. I feel the power of

the hundreds of ideas and words, the pow-er of the artistic dreams that fill the store.

This power is undeniable for me and many

of the people that visit. When I leave the store into the

bustling streets of San Francisco, I feel energized, ready to write, ready to tell the world what I feel, the way I see the world.

It is not only me that feels that there is something special at City Lights. It’s a place that when people enter the store, they re-spect the store.

People from all walks of life, from teenage girls, to middle-aged couples, talk in the store in hushed tones, as if at a library. At a chain bookstore people don’t act that way. When people en-ter this special place, they know it’s not just another Barnes and Noble.

These people can feel the undeniable something that de-mands quiet and respect, that something that makes the words jump out from the page and burn in your mind.

I call it a “something” because it’s hard to put it into words. Maybe it’s in the rhythm of the creaky floors. Maybe it’s in the history of the place.

Maybe it’s the plain way the books are presented, stacked on top of one another.

It could be that it just comes from a feeling, a feeling in the air.

So many wonderfully human stories get played out there. A mom reading to her daughter pa-tiently while her daughter hangs onto every word. Another mom discussing the philosophy of Kurt Vonnegut with her teenage daughter. Even my story, where a 19-year-old learns the power of art through the medium of comic art.

The lines and words of those graphic novels showed me a new way of looking at life. The quiet beauty of the stories seem ampli-fied at a such a special place.

As technology progresses, it becomes less and less clear what printed books are for, why they should even exist.

Places like City Lights are the strongest argument for them. What these places have is unique. Computer files simply do not de-mand the quiet respect that these places deserve.

The collection of written work, of human expression, that surrounds you, the peace that you get walking into this world of human thought from the bus-tling city, it can only be achieved at places like City Lights.

If the stories, the moments, that take place there everyday were to disappear, we would be losing something as a people and as a culture. It’s OK to own a Kindle. It’s OK to own an iPhone.

But let us not forget the value of these places.

By Keith KazmarekReporter

In the Republican Party, there is an idea popularized by Rea-gan known as “The Eleventh Commandment,” and it states “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

This is not a gentlemen’s agreement, but a simple market-ing strategy. Most importantly, this rule can be seen as a repre-sentative sample of the way that conservative thought works.

Conservative thought withers under discourse. Simply talking about the ideas, taking account of relevant data and viewpoints, and bringing light to flaws in the arguments for those posi-tions diminishes their power to

a great extent. The same tech-niques used to sell products on midnight infomercials form the basis of an entire wing of the American political system.

Conservatives know this on some level, so they work very hard to frame their arguments in ways that ignore the available data or employ other marketing tricks to fool the audience. Of course, liberals do this too, but it happens to such a huge degree among conservative thinkers that the public should take spe-cial note.

The current Republican pri-mary is a prime example of this effect. Politicians who were considered front-runners have been forced to drop out of the race by the simple act of being

forced to talk about their ideas and actions.

The propaganda is so weak that it cannot survive even the weakest challenge.

We never talk about “social programs” because the conser-vatives would rather talk about “entitlement programs.” The two things are the exact same, but one sounds terrible and the other sounds great. In fact, poll-ing suggests that the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of social programs and against entitlement programs, and the joke is on them because the two terms apply to the exact same thing.

Republicans refuse to ac-knowledge that the Democratic Party uses that name, instead

calling them “the Democrat Party” because it’s a way of iso-lating Democrats from the good press of being associated with democracy.

Leaked documents from the Heartland Institute, a libertarian organization, show a structured plan to blur the minds of young children on the basic facts of cli-mate science by presenting them as a controversy. Let’s be clear in stating that there is no contro-versy. The scientific community is overwhelmingly clear on the facts of climate science and in agreement that human activity is warming the world.

“Testimonials” are often trot-ted out to support the most bi-zarre positions on conservative publications, such Michelle

Bachmann’s “vaccines cause autism because someone told me” or the mythical “small busi-ness owner” who ends up being a millionaire owning dozens of businesses and thinks he should no longer be forced to adhere to local health and safety codes. I’d cite a single example, but the “small business owner” is such a staple of conservative thought that it needs no citation.

As the election nears, people should take note of the market-ing techniques that blur the facts. If a politician accuses someone of being a Nazi or a Communist, there is a good chance that the accuser is just using marketing tricks to hide the facts.

Look deeper and make your own choices.

By Nestor FernandezReporter

Something that I normally don’t do, but decided to give it a shot, is go watch a full-length animated fantasy at the Maya Theater in Downtown Bakers-

field. I had

heard some good stuff about this c a r t o o n , so I de-

cided, “Hey, why not give it a shot?” It is the highest gross-ing Japanese movie of 2010, and was released for American audiences on Feb. 17, the day I attended. The movie is called “The Secret World of Arrietty,” and was directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi and written by Hayao Miyazaki. It is based on the novel “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton.

The star of the movie, voiced by Bridgit Mendler, is Arrietty, a tiny 14-year-old that lives in

the crawl spaces below a subur-ban garden home with her par-ents, voiced by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler. The homeowner and her housekeeper, voiced by Carol Burnett, are unaware of their existence. Like all little people, Arrietty remains hid-den from view except during occasional covert ventures be-yond the floorboards to “bor-row” scrap supplies, like sugar cubes, from her human hosts. The little people describe them-selves as “borrowers.”

When 12-year-old Shawn (voice of David Henrie), a hu-man boy who comes to stay in the home, discovers his myste-rious housemate one evening, the beginnings of a friendship soon follows. If discovered, their relationship could drive Arrietty’s family from the home and into danger.

But once Arrietty begins to trust Shawn, their bond takes them through adventures to-gether, and when they have to part ways at the end, that bond

By Breanna FieldsReporter

Van Halen’s new album, “A Different Kind of Truth,” stirred up a number of reactions within the music industry after its in-

ternational release on Feb. 7.

This long-a w a i t e d reunion fea-turing the

original line-up, with the excep-tion of bassist Michael Anthony, has created an enormous amount of excitement and no doubt a bit of hype due to the fact that this is a group that at one point was considered the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band.

While electronic music cur-rently rules the airwaves, this album has made a consider-able attempt to bring back the essence of rock music that has been missing for quite some

time. For that fact alone, we must

salute their efforts. The single off of the album,

“Tattoo,” proved to be some-what of a disappointment. It was a lackluster piece that did little to show off the talents of these legendary hard rockers.

The standards of mediocrity were set early on as far as lyr-ics were concerned, when David Lee Roth belted out the first few lines singing, “I got Elvis on my elbow/ When I flex Elvis talks/ I got hula girls on the back of my leg/and she hula’s when I walk.”

A possible explanation for the lack of musical depth could be contributed to an inherent at-tempt at commercialism.

It would not be far-fetched to believe that a band would plan to reform and tour for the sake of selling records and merchan-dise. Take Aerosmith for ex-ample. Boston’s bad boys have

grown old and withered, but their ticket prices have only in-creased and their push for mer-chandise sales is enormous.

You can now purchase appar-el, jewelry, and become an of-ficial member of their fan club, for a fee, of course!

That isn’t to say that Aeros-mith or Van Halen couldn’t put on a thrilling live performance. It’s just a matter of maintaining dignity and having the ability to write new material and continu-ally progress beyond their hit songs released a few decades ago.

Sifting through the tracks, it was not difficult to identify the hidden gem that stood out as an original work. That track, “Chi-na Town,” is a fast-paced tune driven by Alex Van Halen’s im-pressive drum beats and Eddie’s intense riffs.

The song includes the core el-ements of classic rock while uti-lizing a more modern approach.

It also features a piercing solo that flaunts Eddie’s style and innate ability to play his instru-ment.

Another notable track off of the album is “Stay Frosty” which starts off with a calm and reserved blues melody and then builds and progresses into a dar-ing feat that sounds very similar to the song, “Ice Cream Man”

off of their self-titled album re-leased in 1978.

Recycling riffs can be risky business, but in this case they managed to pull it off well.

Van Halen has already em-barked on its 2012 tour and is currently making its way across the U.S. This includes six tour dates in California that are scheduled to take place in June.

Political truths shadowed by marketing

‘Arrietty’ impresses

is carried forever. I found the ani-mation to have the distinct sense of being able to transport me into their world and, in the process, made it seem real and genuine.

The quality of the animation was excellent, and the detail in it made it seem believable. I was

impressed not only with that, but also with the quality and nature of the story itself. Even though the film is based on make-be-lieve, for me it became real, and it took me to their world.

For me, this film is a beauti-fully crafted, intimate adventure

movie, and it got me thinking about a sequel. I really would like to see more. Whether you have kids or not doesn’t matter, go see it and you’ll probably en-joy it. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t watch car-toons.

PROVIDED BY FILMOFILIA.COM

This still from “The Secert World of Arrietty” shows the film’s keen attention to detail.

Movie Review

Van Halen album brings rock back to airwaves

PROVIDED BY ROLLINgSTONE..COM

Van Halen’s new album, “A Different Kind of Truth,” is their first album in 14 years and features David Lee Roth.

AlbuM Review

Commentary The Renegade Rip www.therip.com Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Bakersfield College will have a new president in the near fu-ture, and the Rip has decided to give the suits at the top our opin-ion on who should be selected for the much-esteemed position.

There is obviously an assort-ment of candidates to consider for the job, and it was mightily hard to narrow it down.

Let us start at the top of the to-tem pole.

Because of his position on the tips of everybody’s tongues, Rick Santorum was one of the first names to come up.

But, rest assured, he wasn’t

considered for very long.Poor Rick just couldn’t keep

a lid on his fear and hatred of the Prince of Darkness recently. This can’t be a characteristic of our next president.

Someone who isn’t tight with the man downstairs will have a hard time getting anything done at the top.

Next, Hugo Chavez was con-sidered, briefly.

But his unluckiness – you know, being on the brink of death and all – was his ultimate downfall.

So then we decided to move

on to Hollywood.Yes. BC is totally worthy of a

movie star making key adminis-trative choices for the collective student body.

Enter Brad Pitt.Great resume. Great face.

Everything you could want in a school president, right?

One problem: his significant other. Angelina Jolie can’t be trusted stalking the halls of the administrative building. It’ll be as if Hillary Clinton were elected president in 2008.

All right, enough negatives.After going through the muck

that was the list of candidates, we narrowed down our search to three reasonable persons.

Donald Trump. Nuff said.Yeah, he easily managed the

quickest ousting of all the ter-rible presidential candidates last year, and he may very well be the biggest jerk that ever existed, but he will always be the best at what we want our president to do the most: firing people!

Trump’s fire-red hair, and how it stands up ever so devilishly, is what we need sitting in the presi-dent’s office. That’s what bleed-ing BC red is all about.

Republican presidential candi-date Ron Paul also made the list, and not because of his desire to balance a budget – any budget. Neither was he considered be-cause he’ll restore student liberty to the BC campus. Paul made the list because of one attribute that will come in handy, especially for us.

Paul answers questions hon-estly and without fear of reproach (even if his answers are racist or condescending).

Call us homers, but that is ex-actly the kind of thing we want in a president.

The third and final candidate that made our final list is NBA commissioner David Stern.

Stern’s willingness to backstab anyone that stands in the way of his “duty” as commissioner makes him top-tier in our book.

Disregard the best team in the league wanting to get better if that makes our guy look bad. Have at ’em Stern.

In reality, these are all charac-teristics that the American peo-ple look for in their president, and we hope that the Kern Com-munity College District treats the search a little more seriously.


Hunter S. Thompson was once quoted as saying, “Some may never live, but the crazy never

die.” For him, this rings true. The recent re-lease of “The Rum Diary” on blue-ray and DVD

stands as the third movie adapta-tion of his work onto the silver screen, not to mention the count-less documentaries made about his life and madness.

I have been anticipating the re-lease of “The Rum Diary” movie adaptation since 2004 when I first saw Johnny Depp’s original por-trayal of Thompson in the crazy

ride that was “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” a movie based off of arguably Thompson’s most popular work.

In training for “Fear and Loath-ing,” Depp lived with Thomp-son, and being the method actor that he is, learned Hunter’s man-nerisms, everything down to the way he moved and spoke.

Thompson was much hap-pier with Depp’s portrayal of him than Bill Murray’s movie adaptation, “Where the Buffalo Rome,” based on Thompson’s journalistic coverage of the super bowl. Even though Murray and Thompson were good friends, Thompson was repelled by Mur-ray’s job in the film.

Depp did not receive full ad-miration, but got the closest he could to Thompson’s ideal.

It was because of his portray-al in “Fear and Loathing” that Thompson had Depp promise to portray him in his first and second personal favorite of his work, “The Rum Diary.”

“The Rum Diary” was writ-ten in 1961 when Hunter was no older than 22. It was based on his experience in San Juan as a writ-er for a failing newspaper. The story takes place in the late ’50s. The book was narrated through the eyes of a 30-something-year-old man expressing Hunter’s fear of growing old and having done nothing with his life.

There was a secondary charac-ter in the book that was Thomp-son’s character that never showed up in the movie.

A grand disappointment for those who were fans of the book

and looking for a strict transla-tion, as I was, was to find the character named Yemmon to be omitted from the movie.

Instead, the character was combined with another charac-ter named Sanderson. It was a monumental disappointment that the character that was supposed to be Thompson’s view of him-self in the time period was not included.

Other than being disappoint-ing in that respect, it is still truly entertaining.

As expected, the movie is filled with rum and even an am-biguous drug scene where Paul Kemp, Depp’s character, and his photographer and roommate try “the most powerful narcotic known to man,” a drug I can only assume as being LSD consider-

ing the time period in which the movie takes place.

Many of the inconsistencies in the translation could be attributed to the writer and director Bruce Robinson who, before taking on the project, was sober for 6 1/2 years. When he experienced writers block, he drank a bottle a day, then again sobered up when the script was finished.

Although Depp has obviously aged since his original portrayal of Thompson back in 1999, “The Rum Diary” seems to play out as a prequel to “Fear and Loathing.” The movie hardly follows the book, but tries to make a political statement of greed and the rape of our natural resources, and this point it gets across quite well.

If you’re a Thompson fan, it is a movie that must not be missed


Unless you actually have been living under a rock – a rock with-out television, newspaper or in-ternet service – you must know that later this year, the people of this great land will be asked to once again enter the election booths to make their choice for America’s front man. To that end, “Primary Fever” is also sweep-ing the land, as the Republican Party scrambles over itself to decide whose name it will place opposite Barack Obama’s on the ballot. The Democrats are also holding primaries, but with Pres-ident Obama’s main competition coming from the likes of Massa-chusetts’ Vermin Supreme, who campaigns on a platform of gov-ernment-enforced teeth brushing and Zombie-Apocalypse readi-ness, the Republican Party’s pri-maries are garnering the lion’s share of the media attention.

With the mud-slinging and “he said this, he didn’t say that” sensationalism only promising to intensify over the next months, one might be tempted to won-der if the primary system is re-ally necessary in today’s day and age or an unnecessary distraction and drain on the non-incumbent party.

The primary system doesn’t have its roots in the Constitution. In fact, until the early 1820s, that party’s congressmen nominated the candidates for each party. While the first primaries were held in 1910, it wasn’t until after the chaos of the 1968 Democratic National Convention that the pri-mary system became the nation’s standard method of thinning the presidential-wannabe herd, and choosing the Republican and Democratic candidates.

One of the main problems with the primary system, as it current-ly stands, is the fact that they are spread out over the better part of a year. At the time this is printed, only 11 of the 57 total primaries will have been held, and already there is talk of a front-runner. We

are barely into the first turn of this horse race and already Mitt Romney is being touted as the potential winner. In fact, all but four of the horses have already quit the race based on the way they came out of the gate. This can’t help but affect the way the rest of the country votes. When the California primary finally roles around in June, what choic-es will we have left?

Even though California con-trols the most delegates of any single state in the nation, the race will more than likely be all but over by the time we get around to voicing our opinions. Are we really being given a fair voice in the political process? It doesn’t seem like it. Also, the primaries seem like a tremendous waste of money and effort for the non-incumbent party.

According to a recent New York Times article, Republican front-runner Mitt Romney has already spent over $37 million in hopes of winning the race just to the starting line of the real race. In fact, the Republican candi-dates combined have raised over $100 million just to trash each other, while the Democrats are able to sit back and wait to un-load on the unlucky fellow that manages to climb out of the mud pit of the Republican National Convention in late August.

We can’t just get rid of prima-ries altogether. Not only do they serve to focus the financial and campaigning might of the major political parties, they also pre-vent the American public from being presented with a ballot containing so many choices that it dilutes the vote to a point where there can be no clear winner.

But a fairer, more sensible proposition would be to have for a nationwide primary that took place all on the same day. That would, at the very least, give ev-eryone, even the 53,000 people of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth that is last on the Republican primary list, a choice of the full field of candi-dates.

Martin ChangOpinions Editor

Ever have one of those days that started out okay, not great, just okay, but then it gradually gets worse and worse until you are having an undeniably awful

day? That is what drink-ing the Ba-con Shake from Jack in the Box is like.

Jack in the Box has recently launched the Marry Bacon ad-vertisement campaign with their trademark strange humor. The ads revolve around a char-acter named Neal who is liter-ally marrying bacon.

As a part of this campaign, they have released the Bacon Shake, the same sort of stunt that KFC pulled when they re-leased the Double-Down, an item so strange it seemed like a joke. Yet their Bacon Shake is even stranger since the shake has no real bacon. It simply has bacon-flavored syrup, an ingre-dient that could only be created by a fast-food restaurant.

Looking at the shake, it looks like any other shake you might have at Jack in the Box. This was disappointing. A joke item like the Bacon Shake should have a garishly fun look with bright colors, and so you feel like you’re having a weird food item. After all, anyone order-ing this item is doing so for the shock or strangeness of it, not to have an actually pleasant food experience.

It is actually really hard to mess up what a shake is. It’s ba-sically drinking ice cream with an added milky punch. It’s the perfect dessert. The shake part of the Bacon Shake is actually pretty good. Jack in the Box is proud to have real ice cream in their shakes and it shows.

But then that bacon-flavored syrup comes into to play. The syrup has a vague taste of a generic pork product. Not re-ally bacon, but a weird, sort of meaty, flavor. Yet it also has this really strong smoky taste that is very unpleasant. It’s hard to imagine the syrup tasting good on anything. It definitely doesn’t go good with what would other-wise be a pretty good shake.

Yet when I first started drink-

ing the shake, the syrup was easy to ignore. The taste of it was not that strong. It basically tasted like a smoky shake. The syrup wasn’t adding anything to the flavor, but it didn’t over-shadow the shake.

But as I kept drinking it, and as the shake melted, the bacon taste started to bother me more.

The smell and aftertaste of the syrup became more intolerable. The horrible syrup filled my

senses. I tasted it in my mouth, smelled it on my fingers and felt a rumbling in my stomach that I knew wasn’t right.

What started out as a good shake with a little weird taste became an all-out attack on my body, especially my stomach. Hours later, I still felt a sense of unease in my stomach.

The aftertaste of that weird, smoky flavor lingered and lin-gered much longer then anyone

would want. I wish I hadn’t or-dered the thing.

So what was once a delec-table, classic dessert is now a regretful decision with added flavor that not only doesn’t add to the item, but also actually de-stroys any appeal that the item once had.

A classic American milk-shake is now disgusting. That bacon-flavored syrup is really, really bad.

Staff Editorial

The Renegades rip you a new president

Divorce the Bacon Shake now

NATHAN WILSON / THE RIP

Jack in the Box’s new bacon milkshake ruins a great American classic.

Depp’s adaptation simply not as good as original

Reformed primary should become a nationwide day

COURTESY OF MOVIESPAD.COM

Movie Review

despite that it may not be what a fan of the book would be search-ing for.

Food Review

“One of our main goals is to make sure students don’t feel like being at Bakersfield Col-lege is just a pit stop. We want to bring a sense of purpose and direction to students,” said Amos Mbong.

InterVarsity also tries to spread the word through the club website where it indicates the awareness of Christian college com-munities and maturing Chris-tian faith.

The website also breaks down what the club is all about from beginning to end.

“The Purpose of InterVarsity Christian Fel-lowship/USA is to establish and advance at colleges and universi-ties witnessing communities of students and faculty who follow Jesus as Savior and Lord grow-ing in love for God, God’s Word, God’s people of every ethnicity and culture and God’s purposes

in the world,” the website stated in the Our Purpose section.

The InterVarsity Club isn’t just limited to the gatherings on campus. They also hold events off campus. The club attends seminars to learn more and gain more knowledge on the teach-ings of God.

At a Feb. 24-26 Winter Con-ference semi-nar held at the Olive Drive Church, first- time attend-ees discussed topics such as “Our Identity in Jesus.”

Re tu rn ing attendees dis-cussed sub-jects such as

“The Wonder and Power of the Word.”

The club strongly encourages others to join, and hopes to con-tinue to grow, and spread the word of the workings and fel-lowship of Jesus Christ to other interested students both on cam-pus and beyond.

CampusWednesday, February 29, 2012 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

’Gade Feedback What did you think of the Oscars?

Compiled by:Megan Luecke, photo editor

Editor’s note: ’Gade Feedback is a feature that asks students their opinion on various topics.

Holly Steele,Psychology“It was funny watching it, we sat around and drank beers. Talked about what everyone was wearing.”

Renzo Navarrete,Astronomy “Dull. I didn’t see any of the movies that were nominated except for one, ‘The Help.’”

Chelsea McNally,Undecided “I swore I saw Jennifer Lopez’s nipple. The silent film won too much.”

Alfred Cadena,Welding “The French won most of the awards. A lot of the awards I had never heard of the movies.”

Meagan Papasergia,Psychology “They made a big deal out of Angelina Jolie’s leg.”

By Ruben PerezReporter

Compact Fluorescent Lamp light bulbs are being pushed by our government onto consumers for their ability to save more en-ergy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Fox News and CNN have raised some concerns about the fact that these light bulbs contain the element mercury and emit ul-traviolet radiation.

Although the CFLs do contain mercury, it is about four or five milligrams whereas old ther-mometers contained about 500 milligrams of mercury. Though the bulbs do not pose a serious threat, special care needs to be taken when the bulbs go out or break.

When the bulb does go out, the Environmental Protection Agency says that it should be recycled. This prevents the bulb from being broken down and left

to sit in a landfill where the mer-cury could sit and accumulate. In addition to keeping the chemi-cals out of landfills, parts of the bulbs can be recycled.

In Bakersfield, you can recy-cle these bulbs at the Metro Kern County Special Waste Facility or at your nearest Home Depot or Lowe’s Home Improvement store. The website Earth911.com can help you find the nearest re-cycling center to you.

The EPA suggests that if the

CFL does break, special precau-tions need to be taken. When it first breaks, they suggest that you air out the room for 5-10 minutes to the outside environment and shut off any central air system you might have on so that it does not contaminate your house.

The EPA stressed that you should not vacuum the broken light bulb as it could spread the mercury into the air and to the rest of your house. They rec-ommend picking up the broken

pieces with sticky tape to keep your fingers safe and to put the broken pieces into a sealable container.

After the cleanup, you should place the container outside until they can be taken to the proper facility. The EPA suggests that after cleanup you continue to let the room air out for several hours.

The other important issue per-tains to the UV radiation from these bulbs. The Food and Drug

Administration has taken precau-tions to make sure that the levels of radiation within these bulbs are at safe levels. If CFLs do ex-ceed these levels, they are either not sold or sold with a warning. The Health Protection Agency, an independent organization in the United Kingdom, did a study on the UV radiation emitted and found that they can exceed safe levels if you are within 30 cen-timeters of the bulb for an hour or more.

By Metiqua EngReporter

Reaching out to help students

on a spiritual journey with Christ is just one of the many goals and aspirations for the InterVarsity Club at Bakersfield College.

InterVarsity is an interdenomi-national Christian fellowship club on campus that has been around on many college and uni-versity campuses in the United States for over 70 years.

The club is dedicated to help-ing college students develop God’s word through the love of Christ no matter what their color or background.

Students gather together every Monday and Wednesday to prac-tice fellowship, Bible studies, and overall share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with fellow Chris-tians and non-Christians.

Amos Mbong and wife Emily Mbong are both staff members for InterVarsity.

They help lead students through fellowship, identity and feeling the love and purpose of Jesus Christ.

“BC’s Got Talent” was Ba-kersfield College Student Gov-ernment Association’s Talent show held on Feb. 24.

The show highlighted the tal-ents of BC students of all ages from all walks of life and con-sisted of many acts, including dancers, singers, musicians, and poets.

Though the SGA was prepared

to give away cash prizes to first, second, and third place winners, a tie caused there to be two first place winners. These winners were a dance team called Team Dance Fever and inspirational singer Crismat Mateo. Accord-ing to SGA president and talent show host Tawntannisha Thomp-son, this will hopefully not be the last talent show BC hosts.

Students dance, sing and quote in SGA-sponsored Black History Month show

PHOTOS By NATE PEREz / THE RIP

Above: Crismat Mateo covers “Price Tag” by Jessie J on his ukulele Feb. 24 during the “BC’s Got Talent” show held in the Fine Arts Buliding.Left: Audraey Marie and Jotae Fraser perform a selection from “Sweeney Todd.”


Members of the Bakersfield College InterVarsity Club take time out of their Feb. 27 meeting to pose for a photo in the Fireside Room.

EPA recommends special handling for CFL bulbs

“One of our main goals is to make sure students don’t feel like being at Bakers-field College is just a pit

stop.”–Amos Mbong,

InterVarsity Club

BC club hopes to instill sense of purpose

SportSWednesday, February 29, 2012 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

By Esteban RamirezSports Editor

Bakersfield College women’s basketball team beat West Los Angeles on Feb. 18 to get its first Western State Conference title, but fell short of a playoff berth.

BC coach Paula Dahl com-mented that the reason why they missed out on the playoffs is be-cause Canyons had a better re-cord against Citrus College.

“Since we had the same re-cord, they looked at how we did against the third team in our con-ference, but we both split against L.A. Valley so they looked at our

records against Citrus,” she said. “We won one game and lost the other, and Canyons beat them twice, but one of the wins was one of the 16 games that Citrus had forfeited.

“We have no rule that ad-dresses forfeits, and this is both a conference-level and state-level problem.

“I think it’s something that needs to be addressed at the CCCWBCA (California Com-munity College Women Bas-ketball Coaches Association) executives and coaches meet-ing and I’ll definitely address it when we meet.”

BC beat West L.A. 67-56 in overtime. BC had good contri-butions from sophomore guard Jausecca Cockeral, who had 23 points, nine rebounds and five assists. Forward Brittany Smith also had 21 points and forward Gabi Morales had 11 points and nine rebounds.

BC had the lead throughout the game and were up by four points at the end of the second half, but then they turned it over two times and West L.A. tied up the game 51-51 to force overtime.

BC was able to outplay the Wildcats in overtime, outscoring them 16-5.

“I told them that we’ve given the crowd an exciting game, but now let’s get the win in over-time,” said Dahl.

Along with getting their first conference title, the Renegades also posted the first undefeated record at home and beat every conference opponent at least once.

“We have a special group of young women, and they all bought in before the season start-ed,” she said.

“One of our goals was to win the conference, so it felt good that we were able to accomplish that goal. The game was amaz-

ing and it was exciting to get the first conference title for BC. We had an amazing crowd over there, and it was special for me to have my family there.

“Since I lost my dad a year ago, this was a good way for us to honor our loved ones. There was a moment during the game when there was only 20 seconds left in overtime that I looked up and thanked my parents.

“It was one of the best mo-ments I’ve had as a coach.

“This year’s team was unique because from the start they were completely committed, so it’s not an accident.

“It was a lot of hard work and commitment to teamwork. It was great to be a part of the life of these special young women,” she said.

Dahl ended up getting the Coach of the Year in the con-ference, and she commented on what it meant to her.

“It’s definitely an honor, but it’s also interesting when you get it because it makes it easier when your whole team buys in and when you have a point guard like Jausecca,” she said.

“When you have that, it can make you look like the greatest coach.”


Blayne Ontiveros had been a huge part of Frontier High School’s success the past four years. A pitcher in high school, he is now the starting first base-man for the Bakersfield College Renegades baseball team in his first year at BC.

While at Frontier High, he had 317 at-bats, scored 90 runs, post-ed 106 hits, 117 RBIs, 30 dou-bles, 24 home runs and a ca-reer batting average of .353. While fielding in 88 games, he commit-ted only 11 errors. He pitched in 194 innings, while com-piling a 22-8 record with a 2.62 ERA, and threw for 189 strike-outs.

He currently holds Titan re-cords in many categories, in-cluding most complete games in a season, lowest ERA (2.47 in 2010), most at bats in a season, most hits, most RBIs.

He pitched the first shutout in Titan history (East 2009), hit the first single in Titan history

(Arvin 2008), has the first sac-rifice fly in Titan history (Arvin 2008), has the first RBI in Titan history (Arvin 08), is the all-time home run leader in Titan history.

He was the first Titan selected to the all-league team in 2009 and 2010, and was all area in 2010.

He also earned the first Valley Championship win as a Pitch-er in 2010. Since Ontiveros is slated to play first base for BC, and given his outstanding high

school career as a pitcher, BC coach Tim Painton commented if he had any intentions of having him pitch for the R e n e g a d e s this season.

“ B l a y n e and I sat down

as he came in this summer, and there’s a big transition from high school baseball to here,” he said.

“He felt like trying to handle one thing this year was going to be enough. He had some elbow problems in high school as well. It was his decision to play first base, and that’s what we’re go-ing to do with him.

“He won’t pitch at all for us this year. We’ll revisit that this

Women’s team falls short of playoff berth

Strong offense carries BC to seven straight wins

Renegades first baseman ready to add power to lineup

summer and see where it takes us next year.”

Painton talked about how On-tiveros started the season and played in his first game while not feeling well.

“He has been battling the flu, I don’t think we’ve seen him at full strength yet. He’s going through

some growing pains as all fresh-men do. He’s had some good spurts, and some bad at bats, but I think over time that’s all going to work itself out. He’ll figure the thing out and be a better pro-ductive player for us. I think any freshmen that walks in to this level of play goes through some

growing pains, and he’s going through that a little bit right now. He’s going to be a great player for us, and like I said, he’ll make adjustments and figure this thing out as we go along,” said Pain-ton.

Ontiveros also commented on the start of the season

“I had the flu. I thought it was food poisoning, but it ended up being the flu,” said Ontiveros.

“So it put me out a little bit, I was sick opening night, but I wanted to play Saturday. It was best that I didn’t play. I played the first game, and the second game I was worse than the day before, so I sat out the second game.

When referring back to the first game, Ontiveros recalled that at the beginning of the game he was OK, but it changed as the game progressed.

“I was fine at the start of the game ‘cause I had all the adrena-line going and everything, so I really didn’t feel anything, and about the sixth inning, I started having symptoms of wanting to like throw up and all that, but I played through it, didn’t think about it,” he said.

He also talked about his and the teams expectations this year.

“As a team, we have very high expectations, ‘cause we want to bring home conference that’s our

number one goal right now, and then go on with that and hopeful-ly win the final four if possible. So for me, it’s really not about me, it’s more about the team.”

“Whenever called upon to do a job, I want to hopefully suc-ceed in it. Right now I’m hitting fifth but I can see myself jump-ing third to fifth. We kind of have an alternating line-up where the line-up could change any day, so right about third or fifth.”

He also talked about what kind of player he is.

“Kind of like a mixture of like a power hitter and basically an average hitter,” he said. “I could hit for power, but I like hitting for a high average also. I try to limit my strikeouts. I don’t strike out a whole lot, and I’m also real aggressive at the plate, so I don’t really walk a whole lot.

“When I see a fastball, I pretty much get a little antsy and go af-ter it,” he said.

“I feel real confidence with our team, I think we all feel con-fidence with each other, and up and down the line-up, our pitch-ing, our defense is pretty top notch.

“What’s cool about playing this year is, I don’t think BC has ever won a final four champi-onship in all the years it’s been here, so we would like to be the first ones to bring that home.”

GREGORY D. COOK / THE RIP

Renegades freshman first baseman Blayne Ontiveros keeps his eye on the ball during an at bat against the San Diego Mesa Olympians on Feb. 18 at Bakersfield College.

By Meisha McMurrayReporter

The Bakersfield College soft-ball team hit seven home runs while winning seven games over the past two weeks.

The Renegades raised their re-cord to 11-4 by defeating Rancho Santiago 8-6, West Hills College 10-1, Taft College 9-1, Cuesta College 7-2, Cerritos College 6-5, Southwestern College 4-1 and Cypress College 1-0.

BC freshman infielder Sarah Smith hit a home run against Rancho Santiago and a two-run home run against West Hills in the third inning, bringing BC to a 5-1 lead.

In the same inning, sophomore catcher Kara Frankhouser also hit a two-run home run bringing BC to a lead 10-1 over the Lady Falcons.

In the bottom half of the sec-ond inning against Taft, BC freshman infielder Brittney Rob-erts hit a home run.

Smith also hit a home run in the bottom half of the fourth in-ning.

In the game against Cuesta College, BC freshman pitcher and third basemen Kaila Wil-liams hit another home run for BC.

“Everyone is always excited about their first home run in col-lege and their first home run of the year, so it was really excit-ing,” said Williams.

In the game against Cerritos, Smith hit a three-run home run.

In the game against Rancho Santiago, BC freshman pitcher Kelsey Best pitched two innings and finished with two hits, four runs scored and one walk.


Renegades infielder Sarah Smith follows through after connecting for a double against Cerritos College in the Bakersfield College Classic on Feb. 25 at the Dean and Adah Gay Sports Complex.

Relieving Best in the third in-ning was BC sophomore Julie Estep, who pitched the rest of the game.

She finished with five hits, two runs scored and three walks.

In the game against West Hills College, BC sophomore pitcher Jessica Simpson pitched five in-nings, had six hits with one run scored and no walks. Due to the run rule, the game ended in the fifth inning.

BC finished with 10 runs, 10 hits and one error.

Williams pitched five innings against Taft College and gave up

one run on six hits, two walks and seven strikeouts.

“With my pitching I did very well,” she said.

“I feel I helped my team out a lot, and they congratulated me.”

After taking a year and a half off of playing softball when she completed high school, she came back ready to enjoy softball again.

“I stayed home and hung out a little bit,” she said. “I was really burnt out playing a lot. It was a hard decision, it was hard to take a year and a half off then come back, but it’s been a lot of fun.

I really love my team and my coach.”

In the bottom of the first inning against Taft, BC sophomore out-fielder Brittany Messer brought in the first run of the game end-ing the first inning with one run on two hits and one player on base, putting BC in the lead 1-0.

In the bottom half of the sec-ond inning, sophomore Kaitlin Toerner had a base hit, which brought home sophomore Megan McCormick, making it the third run for BC. Kara Frankhouser hit a double which brought in sophomore Callie McRoberts

and Messer, bringing BC to a 5-0 lead over Taft.

BC and Taft picked up a run in the third inning.

In the bottom half of the fourth inning, Williams strikes out, but BC bounced back by picking up three runs on four hits and an er-ror.

Against Cuesta College, Julie Estep pitched for seven complete innings, gave up six hits, two runs, no walks, and six strike-outs.

In the bottom half of the sev-enth inning, BC finished with seven runs on eight hits and had

four errors.In the game against South-

western, Simpson pitched seven innings, giving off one run on seven hits, one walk and four strikeouts.

Estep pitched seven innings for BC against Cypress giving off no runs on three hits and one walk. In the bottom of the fourth inning, Messer hit a single fol-lowing her was Toerner with a bunt single.

Messer scored a run with the help of an error made by Smith.

BC will host Oxnard College on March 1.


Bakersfield College catcher Kara Frankhouser is struck by a pitch during a game against Cerritos College on Feb. 25 at the Dean and Adah Gay Sports Complex.

Ontiveros’ list of high school awards is a long one. It includes:

2008 SWYL Rookie of the Year2009 SWYL 1st Team Pitcher2009 2nd Team All-Area Utility2010 SWYL 1st Team Pitcher2010 1st Team All Area Pitcher2011 SWYL Player of the Year2011 All Area Player of the Year


By Esteban RamirezSports Editor

Many people at Bakersfield College know Ryan Beckwith as BC’s athletic director, but before that he was training in the de-cathlon for the Olym-pics.

“I always wanted to be an Olym-pian, and I think that’s what caught my eye be-cause it’s grueling and fun with all the events,” said Beck-with. “I grew up in a military family, so we moved around a lot. So sports were my outlet, a way to express myself and meet friends.”

He commented on how he first got into being a decathlete.

“I played football and track while I was at the University of Georgia, but it wasn’t until I got to UCLA that I started being a decathlete,” he said. “Coach Bart Goddell asked me what events I was doing (pole vault and sprint-ing) and asked me if I was inter-ested in the decathlon. I always wanted to do it, but I never had the right coach. All because of the luck of the draw of meeting the right guy that I became a de-cathlete.”

While at Georgia, Beckwith got his master’s, something that his grandmother, who was a big influence to him, wanted. He’s also a graduate from California State University, Northridge. Afterward, he started teaching at UCLA and met with Goddell, where he started training for de-cathlons until he was hired as BC’s new athletic director last year.

He added that the pole vault was his favorite event in the de-cathlon.

“I loved the 100-meter and the hurdles, but if I had to drop the decathlon and go with one it would probably have been the pole vault,” he said.

“I love that it’s got all the el-ements, speed, power and free-flight.

“You got to be extremely pre-

pared and that was the fun part of it. You won’t ever be perfect at everything and the pole vault extenuates that. I think it really helps me in this job because you have to work hard to achieve your goals.

“My least favorite has to be the 1500-meter, not exactly because of the event, but where it was placed.

“It was the last event on the last day, so by that time you’re phys ica l ly

drained.”The events that are in a decath-

lon are the 100, long jump, high jump, shot put, 400, 110 hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw and 1500.

He also added that he’s look-ing forward to watching some of the decathletes compete in June.

He’s looking forward to see-ing the defending gold medalist Bryan Clay, and Trey Hardy and Ashton Eaton.

“I think Eaton might break the record in a couple of years. I think he might be the guy to reckon with. I was looking for-ward to competing with him because he’s great and humble, and I think that makes him even better.”

He added that both him and Eaton have similar training styles because Eaton’s coach coached his coach.

“I’ve thought about going back to compete in the decathlon, but this job is something I always wanted,” he said. “I would like to say that I would want to go back, but I’m in a position where I can help the students with my experience as a college athlete and decathlete. That helps them out because I think I’m a good example of what athletics and a good education can do for you. I always wanted to be an ath-letic director, but I didn’t think I would enjoy it this much.”

Some of Beckwith’s best ef-forts were 17-8 in the pole vault. He also had 10.48 seconds in the 100-meter and 46.83 seconds in the 400-meter.

Sophomore guard Jausecca Cockeral was named the Western State Conference Most Valuable Player, and it was the first time since the 1996-97 season that a Bakers-field College women’s basketball player got MVP honors. She also made the all-state team averaging a team-leading 13.8 points,

eight rebounds and seven assists per game.

Three Bakersfield Col-lege women’s basketball players were named

to the WSC all-conference second team and they were freshman forward Brittany Smith, sophomore forward Gabi Morales and freshman center Madison Tarver. BC coach Paula Dahl was also named the WSC Coach of the Year.

Baseball collects scholar awardsThe California Community College Ath-

letic Association honored BC’s baseball program recently when they named the Renegades a Scholar Team for 2010-11.

The team had an overall GPA of 3.42 in the spring of 2011.

Former Renegade David Pennington was also named 2011 Male Scholar Athlete of the Year. Pennington finished at BC with a GPA of 3.83 and was also picked because of his off-the-field charity work.

Pennington was one of BC’s best players last year and finished with a batting average of .358.

The Renegades also landed three spots on the CCCBCA’s 2012 All-Academic Team. Phillip Valos, Elijah Trail and Stephen Ey-herabide were all selected with 3.76, 4.00 and 3.81 GPAs respectively.

Lester joins all-conference teamBC men’s basketball starting forward

Conroy Lester was named to the all-confer-ence team. He averaged 19 points and eight rebounds in conference play, including a season high of 30 points in the final game of the season. Freshman guard Duncan Sch-ramm also made the all-conference team as an honorable mention.

Golf team underperformsThe BC men’s golf team placed fifth

out of seven teams, because of some tough weather conditions, at Solvang on Feb. 13.

BC scored a 407, but they were only eight strokes away from second place. Santa Bar-bara City College took first place with 394. Canyons took second with 399 and Ventura just a little behind with 400.

BC got some good performances despite

the tough weather conditions. Jack Hen-neberry led the team scoring a 78. Max Schmidt had 79 and Travis Millwee had 81.

“I thought for the most part we played well, considering the conditions,” said BC coach Bill Kalivas. “The conditions made it tough for us to keep the ball in play and to consistently play our best. We needed to keep the ball in play and, maybe, if our two best golfers did four strokes better, we would’ve placed higher.”

He added that they still don’t know who their top six golfers are.

“We keep interchanging our lineup, so we haven’t built some consistency yet,” he said. “We have to improve on keeping the ball in play and controlling the placement of the ball. We also need to improve on hitting the fairways.”

He added that he thought Henneberry, Schmidt and Millwee performed well.

“I thought they did well because, usually

when you’re competing in tough conditions like they were, you have a tendency to get down on yourself after a few balls go out of play, but they were able to keep their com-posure,” he said.

BC’s next tournament will be the Pt. Con-Ception Tournament at Santa Barbara on March 5.

Slew of swim meets canceledThe BC swimming team meet on Friday,

Feb. 17 against College of Sequoias was canceled due to transportation issues. In its place, the team held an intra-squad meet at BC.

The purpose was to stay sharp and com-petitive in preparation for their meet on Feb 24-25 in the Mount San Antonio College Invitational.

Unfortunately for the BC squad, the meet at Mt. SAC was also canceled due to a lack of funds.


The Bakersfield College tennis team played Glendale College on Feb 23. The women played at BC and lost a tight match up 5-4, after being tied 4-4 going in to the last doubles match. The men’s squad did not fare as well and was defeated 8-1 at Glendale.

The only BC win came from the singles, with fifth- seeded Joseph Theisen winning 6-1,6-2 over Rick Ivynian.

The BC women posted wins by fourth-seeded Haleigh Dilbeck 6-2,2-6,6-3 over Phoebe Minette, fifth-seeded Kassandra Beadle 6-1,6-1 over Katherine Akmakji, sixth-seeded Morgan Frazier 6-1,6-2 over Brianna Hayes, and in the doubles, the third-seeded team of Kim Butler/Morgan Frazier defeated Brianna Hayes/Katherine Akmakji 8-6.

BC assistant coach Chuck Provencio, who presided over the women’s matches, discussed their matches.

“Glendale is traditionally one of the toughest schools in our conference,” he said.

“They really pushed us in the top three, and we pushed back in the bottom three in singles.

“Doubles, they showed more strength, they mixed in the one and three together, and the two and four, so they could keep a strong number two doubles. We pushed them, we just didn’t quite push hard enough in that number two doubles, so we had an 8-4 loss.

“It was a good showing from everybody, our girls showed a lot of heart, so I think we got some room to improve, but we’re definitely on the right track,” he said.

“The things we’re going to look at a little bit harder is serving.

“We’re on the right track with it, but we’re coming up a little bit short, so we’re going to work on the serves. I think we need to look a little bit more at playing

some extra doubles in practice. “I think we looked a little bit uncom-

fortable in some key moments in the doubles, and I would like to strengthen up those areas.

“Overall, I feel like we did a real good

job of rallying and really pushing the oth-er player to make a good move.”

Next up for the BC women is a road match against Allan Hancock College on Feb. 28, and the men’s squad plays against L.A. Pierce on March 1 at BC.

Spor tS roundup

Beckwith has track and field history

MEGAN LUECKE / THE RIP

Morgan Fraiser returns a volley back to her Glendale College opponent on Feb. 23 during a match at Bakersfield College.

BC tennis struggles to capture consistent victories

Cockeral named WSC MVP

MEGAN LUECKE / THE RIP

Kassie Beadle follows through after returning a volley from her opponent on Feb. 23 at Bakersfield College.


Sophomore guard Jausecca Cockeral, recently named Most Valuable Player of the Western State Conference, is the first Renegade to win the award since the 1996-97 season.

“I always wanted to be an Olympian,

and I think that’s what caught my eye because it’s grueling and fun with all the

events.”–Ryan Beckwith,Athletic director


By Zak S. CowanEditor in Chief

Bakersfield College alumnus and Texas Rangers pitcher Colby Lewis threw out the first pitch at the Renegades’ Feb. 18 game against San Diego Mesa Col-lege.

Lewis, one of the most suc-cessful baseball players to come out of BC, said that he takes pride in supporting the BC base-ball program.

“It’s definitely a pleasure to come back here and continue to support these guys and be a part of the program,” Lewis said. “That’s really all I want to do.”

Lewis’ success on the mound has garnered him two American League pennants with the Rang-ers. He was a major piece for both of the Texas teams that competed in the World Series in 2010 and 2011, winning two games.

Lewis, in 2010, was the first pitcher in Texas Ranger history

to win a postseason game when he defeated the New York Yan-kees on Oct. 16 in the American League Championship Series.

He also won game six of that series, pitching eight innings with one earned run on three hits, clinching the AL pennant.

Lewis’ jour-ney to Ma-jor League Baseball, that includes gradu-ating from North High School, has brought about some barriers, and he credits BC coach Tim Painton with get-ting him through a major one.

Lewis was unable to pitch during his senior year of high school, but he found a home at BC the next year.

“I was coming off of surgery … and coach Painton gave me the opportunity to come up here and pitch,” he said.

Lewis said that Painton put education first for him, and that was a major reason for his suc-cess at BC and after he moved on to the majors.

“[Painton] works really hard to get everybody to conitnue to go to school,” he said. “And

that’s all I really wanted to do. I was fortunate enough to throw hard and get drafted.”

Lewis said that he tries to stay humble about his success, es-

pecially when coming out to support the Renegades, which he plans to do for as long as he can.

“When I retire I’m going to continue to come here and watch them and continue to support them,” he said. “That stuff (suc-cess) comes and goes, and I just love coming out here and sup-porting these guys.”

In sports, a lot of the talk is usually what should be the criteria to make the playoffs, and if a certain team is even

worthy to be considered for a playoff spot.

I like how in most sports, if you win the d i v i s i o n ,

you can make the playoffs, but when two teams are bat-tling for the division and have identical division or confer-ence records, what do you look at next?

I would definitely look at how the teams played against each other and then how they played against the third place team.

What if each team beat each other once, and did the same against the other team?

Well, that’s the position the Bakersfield College women’s basketball team found itself in.

BC and Canyons had the same conference record and split the season series.

So, they looked at how they did against Los Angeles Val-ley, but they both beat L.A. Valley once.

Then they looked at how the teams did against a 7-20 Citrus College team that had forfeited 16 of their games, and one of those games was against Canyons.

I think that situation was handled poorly, and they could’ve looked at different things to decide who would get the playoff berth because it’s not BC’s fault that they had the bad luck that they ac-tually played them twice and split the season series. Can-yons beat Citrus once, and got another win because of the forfeit.

The California Community College Women Basketball Coaches Association cur-rently has no rule about for-feited games or a situation like this one, but I think that something needs to be put in, in case something crazy like this happens again.

BC had a better overall record and the same in con-ference; it’s just too bad that something crazy like a team having to forfeit 16 games happened.

I don’t really know what can be done to change this. Maybe they can make it so that forfeited games won’t count as wins, or just not count those games in tiebreakers for a playoff berth.

Another way they could’ve settled it is to make it like baseball; put in a tiebreaker to get the playoff spot.

There are not many things better in sports when two teams battle it out for a last spot in the playoffs. It’s as simple as this: you win, and you get in.

If you do that, there won’t be teams upset that they didn’t get a fair chance to get a playoff berth because every team will leave everything on the court, and there will be no doubt about who deserves the playoff spot.

I understand why there’s no rule, because who in their right mind would ever think that would happen, but what I don’t understand is how they didn’t look at the overall record instead of looking at how they did against a team that forfeited more than half of their scheduled games.

Whatever they decide on, I hope it’s something that is prepared for a situation like this.

be consistent.Starters Tyler Painton and

Brad Lindsley have solidified the top of the team’s rotation.

Painton, through his first four starts, is 3-0 with an ERA of 1.17 and 22 strikeouts.

The team’s bullpen has closed out the majority of their victories with ease to back up the strong performances by the starters.

“Our bullpen has been abso-lutely phenomenal in the early part of the season, and it has re-ally been a major shot in the arm to get us to where we are,” coach Painton said.

Freshman closer Ryan Stapp has four saves in seven appear-ances with an ERA of 1.64.

Painton said that, although the team’s rotation at the top is set, the coaching staff is still decid-ing on the third spot and will

make a decision before confer-ence play starts.

Establishing a third starter isn’t the only concern for the team.

“We haven’t been very con-sistent offensively from a team stand point, but fortunately we’ve had individuals step up and have good days at the right time,” Painton said. “We’re kind of searching a little bit right now to find that group of people that can give us the consistency we are looking for.”

BC is batting .281 as a team. Individually, third baseman Eli-jah Trail is hitting .372, and Tyler Painton is hitting .381 from the designated-hitter spot.

The Renegades’ success has come despite their inconsisten-cies on offense, and Painton and his coaching staff are working on getting all that worked out.

“We have [some time] to kind

of get stuff in order … before we start conference play, and hope-fully we can do that,” he said. “We’re spending a lot of time with individuals on swing me-chanics and trying to get some things ironed out. Hopefully that happens as we head into confer-ence.”

Once conference play starts, the team’s schedule gets much more structured. The team played five games in a six-day span between Feb. 14-19, and even though they went 4-1 in those games, the schedule took its toll.

“That just doesn’t happen in conference,” Painton said. “The focus is a little bit different as opposed to playing two or three games over the course of a week-end. So it allows you to get into a routine that is a little easier to manage and deal with.”

New playoff system needed

Column

Esteban Ramirez

RIPPING SPORTS | Taking on every sports issue.

By Nestor Fernandez Reporter

The Bakersfield College track team held a seven-school meet at BC on Feb. 17. The BC squad posted a total of eight first-place finishes that combined both the men and women. The Renegades also finished second in three oth-er categories.

On the men’s side, Justin Ev-ans won the 200-meter dash with a time of 22.64, Davis Loustalot won the 800 in 1:57.80, Chris Schwartz took the 1,500 in 3:58.98, and the 3000 in 8:45.50. Bevan Wemhoff took second in the high jump with 1.93 meters, and Ethan Horsey placed second in the long jump with a 6.75m jump.

On the women’s side, Tejera Dial won the 800-meter run in 2:25.26 and teammate Eliza-beth Sanchez placed second in 2:25.58. In the 3000-meter stee-plechase, Serraya Hermosilla won with a time of 13:57.87. In the pole vault, Sarena Under-wood won with a vault of 2.90m. In the hammer throw, Breann Goodman took first place with a toss of 39.26m.

The Western State Conference Relays on Feb. 24 at Citrus Col-lege produced many outstanding performances by the BC team.

“I thought this was a great meet for both the men and wom-en,” said BC coach Dave Frickel. “Both teams stepped up and had some great performances. We’re making dramatic improvements; we’re starting to show quality performances.

“The kids are starting to really understand the competition as a higher level than high school.”

Even though they placed sec-ond to West Los Angeles Col-lege, the BC men’s 4 x 100 meter relay team finished with a good time of 42.45. West L.A.’s win-ning time was 41.73. The BC team consisted of Michael Nor-wood, Myren Moore, Justin Ev-ans, and Walter Hunt.

In the men’s distance med-ley relay, the BC squad finished third and was highlighted by Schwartz, who ran the 1,600 an-

chor portion in 4:15.A BC school record was top-

pled in the women’s 4 X 800 me-ter relay, as the team of Danielle Tidahl, Tejera Dial, Elizabeth Sanchez, and Halle Meadows finished first with a time of 9:53.78.

The same BC men’s team that finished second to West L.A. in the 4 X 100, ended up beat-ing them in the 4 x 200, as they took first place with a time of 1:28.53.

A 43-second improvement from her previous best mark came from Natalie Fernandez, when she finished third in the women’s 3000 with a time of 11:10.15.

Schwartz won the men’s 3000 with a time of 8:49.49.

The field events saw personal bests for a couple of the BC ath-letes.

In the women’s hammer throw,

Breann Goodman took first place with a throw of 133-5 (her per-sonal best). Ethan Horsey also achieved a personal best mark in the men’s triple jump, winning the event with a jump of 46-0, while beating Masson Blow of Allan Hancock College. BC’s Bevan Wemhoff matched the winning mark of 6-4 3/4 in the men’s high jump, but it took an extra attempt. He also finished second to Jimmy Darling of San-ta Monica College.

BC has a meet March 2 at An-telope Valley College that also involves College of the Canyons, Saddleback, Antelope Valley College and San Bernardino Val-ley College.

“That should be a real good meet,” Frickel said. “There are some good schools that we haven’t seen. Saddleback and San Bernardino has some really good athletes.”

Lewis throws out first pitch to support BC

Renegades perform strong at home

BASEBALL: Pitching has carried lagging offense

GREGORY D. COOk / THE RIP

Renegades runner Chris Schwartz holds on to his lead in the men’s 1500-meter race on Feb. 17 at Memorial Stadium.


Renegades shortstop Brent Peterson dives for first base to avoid an Olympians pick-off attempt during Bakersfield College’s game against San Diego Mesa on Feb. 18 at BC.


BC’s Sarena Underwood vaults her way over the 2.9-meter bar to finish first in the women’s pole vault event on Feb. 17 at a track and field meet held in Memorial Stadium.


Professional baseball player, and Bakersfield College alumnus, Colby Lewis throws out the first pitch before BC’s Feb. 18 home game against San Diego Mesa.

“When I retire I’m going to continue to come here and

watch them and continue to support them.”

–Colby Lewis,Texas Rangers pitcher


Spotlight Wednesday, February 29, 2012 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

“I thought I was going to fall off!” said eight year-old Bessie Spielman after getting off the mechanical bull at Riverside Park during the Whiskey Flat Days festival.

An estimate of 50,000 people attended the annual Whiskey Flats festival in Kernville this year.

The festival consists of many thrills and exciting activities, and it is held on Presi-dent’s day weekend. On Saturday the town gets together to watch the Whiskey Flat parade down Kernville road.

The parade shows floats from all walks of life. Some are dressed like cowboys and others are Indians. Kern Valley High School and Cerro Coso Community College also enter the parade and promote their school spirit.

The festival also has square dancing, an Indian encampment, carnival rides, food vendors, a melodrama, live music, face painting, fishing for live trout for the little ones, a Whiskey Flat mayor election and even a mechanical bull.

The festival is held every year on President’s day weekend. It is a celebration of the old town of Whis-key Flat that existed under what is now Lake Isa-bella.

Many of the town folk dress up in old western attire, and participate in the different activities that are put together by members of the Kern-ville Chamber. The festival brings a lot of life into Kernville during the dead of winter months.

The Whiskey Flat celebration started in 1957.

“We still rely on this celebration 55 years later to help us survive through the winter months up here in a town of only 1,860 people,” said Cheryl Borthick, president of the Kernville Chamber of Commerce. “That’s why it’s in February, and we always pray we have decent weath-er for the festival.”

The name Whiskey Flat dates back to a couple of years ago. Some believe that the town acquired its name from all the saloons that were located within the town. Others date history back to the 1860’s when Adam Hamilton set a plank on top of two Whiskey Barrels and called it Whiskey Flat.

“Some of the folk, mainly the ladies, decided it was a very unbecoming name for their town and renamed it Kernville,” said Borthick.

A lot of people that visit the festival like to go for the food. There are many different food vendors; some of the most popular by the visitors are the Indian tacos, kettle corn, and the Sausage King.

Tanika Waye, a local of Kern-ville, commented on the event.

“This is my third year com-ing to this and I come here be-cause of the food,” Waye said. “It’s really good.”

Bessie Spielman, 8, tries to hold on for dear life on Feb. 19 at Whiskey Flat Days, Kernville’s annual festival that celebrates its tradition.

Django Stauffer plays the role of Billy Wigs, and Lauren Chaffe portrays a Mrs. Wiggs, at the Kernville Melodrama on Feb. 18 during Whiskey Flat Days.

Story and Photos by Angie DelGado

The crowd’s anticipation grows while waiting for the parade to start on Feb. 18 at Whiskey Flat Days.

FLAT Whiskey

DAYS50,000 flock to Kernville to attend the four-day annual festival to show appreciation of heritage and tradition

the renegade rip vol. 84 no. 3

Documents

college environment

bc staff

conference play approaching

pitching staff

robert jensen

leadership team

community colleges

bakersfield collegeby