OPINION
| FEATURES
1 SPORTS
Mike Tyson
Echoes of war
Basketball
Convicted rapist forced to pay
for wrongdoings. Page 2
Counselor Harry Kawahara remembers his American prison.
Page 5
Men’s and women’s teams
continue to decline. Page 6
Pasadena City College
Pasadena, California
Vol. 73 No. 16
COURIER
Thursday
February 20, 1992
Community colleges
spared cuts in
1992/93
budget
By EDWIN FOLVEN
Editor-in-Chief
Community colleges were spared large
cuts in funding from the state as part of the
Governor’s proposed
1992/93
budget. At a
meeting at the end of the fall semester, Dr.
Jack Scott, superintendent and president, ex¬
plained that PCC was very fortunate com¬
pared to other state agencies. During the
meeting, held after Scott met with govern¬
ment officials in Sacramento, he discussed
specifically how the college would be af¬
fected.
“We were unusually fortunate in terms of
the governor’s budget. It wasn’t as bad as I
thought it might be,” said Scott. Other state
agencies were more seriously affected. As
part of the proposed budget Gov. Wilson
suggested a raise in the enrollment fees for
UC and Cal State universities but not for
community colleges. Scott said the commu¬
nity colleges were spared the raise in fees
because the governor feels they are the clos¬
est educational link to the general popula¬
tion. “Gov. Wilson believes the community
college education directly impacts the econ¬
omy of the state more so than university
education,” said Scott.
Scott expects officials from other gov¬
ernment agencies to try to even the funding
differences by trying to cut the funds pro¬
posed for community colleges. “We will be
spending time trying to hold onto what we
have. It will be six months of battling.”
Key points of the governors proposal for
community colleges include $37.5 million
for a 1.5 percent cost of living adjustment
and $ 1 55.5 million for a 6.9 percent increase
in enrollment growth. Scott thinks PCC will
receive only about 3 percent for growth
since the college is growing at a slower pace
than others. The budget would also provide
$50 million for program improvement funds.
A statewide bond measure was also pro¬
posed to fund 127 community college proj¬
ects. If passed, this measure would help
funding for a new site for the Community
Skills Center.
Scott assured staff members that no lay¬
offs were planned. He added that it is impor¬
tant that staff members work as a team “The
staff and personnel is the heart of our col¬
lege. We’re all in this boat together and were
not going to throw anyone out.” He also
made some suggestions about saving money.
Class schedules will no longer be mailed to
students at a savings of $100,000. He said a
committee will be formed to determine ways
to increase college revenues.
Scott added, “The college is not in bad
shape financially. We will not be taking
cuts. In these very tough times, the fact that
we were given this support in the start of
1992 is very encouraging.” He was enthusi¬
astic about the proposed budget and said
there will be a more definite picture of
specific funding after it is finalized in June.
Dr. Jack Scott,
Superintendent - President
Photo by Katrina Ten/The COURIER
The Campus parking iots were full of cars and water due to rainstorms when the semester began.
Rain causes inconvenience as
new semester begins at PCC
Suspects in series of
auto thefts captured
Science
department
chairperson
settles in
BY CHRIS CATHCART
Staff Writer
Pursuing an education in the life
sciences can be an overwhelming
endeavor for a student. With aca¬
demic pressures high, and social
pleasures at a minimum, a smile and
friendly concern are priceless when
creating a productive environment.
Since August 15, 1991, Dr. Jac¬
queline Jacobs has brought these
special gifts to her job as chairper¬
son of the life sciences department.
She said that she has been teach¬
ing “off and on” for 25 years. Be¬
tween teaching jobs, she has worked
for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena while they were working
on the Viking and Mars Rover space
projects. But teaching is definitely
her first love. “I always wanted to
become a teacher. My mother and
father were principals at schools in
Alabama. In those days, there were
not many jobs that an Afro-Ameri¬
can could have in the South. You
could be a preacher, an undertaker,
or since the schools were still segre¬
gated, a teacher. Very rarely did
someone get out of the state to be¬
come a doctor or nurse. So when I
was a child, I would gather all of the
other children in the neighborhood
and we would play school. Of course,
I was always the teacher,” she said.
Jacobs came to PCC after serving
as associate vice president of ac-
Please see Science: page 4
By ENRICO PIAZZA
Staff Writer
The large amount of rain that
fell on Los Angeles during the
last weeks took only a small toll
on the buildings on the PCC cam¬
pus. “We have small leaks all
over the place, but nothing ma¬
jor,” said John Lindemann, super¬
visor of building and trades, He
also said that no equipment was
damaged.
The rain did inconvenience stu¬
dents who where faced with finding
parking and classes during the first
week of the semester. Students were
forced into the shelter of the build¬
ings to escapetheram during breaks.
Most of the leaks in the buildings
occurred where new pipes connect
to the roofs. Such pipes, being inde¬
pendent from the building structure,
tend to sway after being hit by earth¬
quakes.
“Considering how hard these
building where hit in the last earth¬
quake, they performed pretty
well,” commented Lindemann,
who explained that the needed
patching will be done as soon as
the weather improves.
Last June the earthquake se¬
verely damaged the ceiling in
R416, where the school computer
network, the MIS Hewlett Pack¬
ard system, is located.
While none of the computer
Please see Rain: page four
By EDWIN FOLVEN
Editor-in-Chief
Campus police are filing charges
against a former PCC student and his
partner who allegedly burglarized
more than 20 cars on campus and
may be responsible for up to 60 oth¬
ers. Chris Valdez, 18, and Gary
Granados, 21, were arrested by the
West Covina police after allegedly
burglarizing cars in that city. Cam¬
pus police officers were notified alter
the two admitted during questioning
to committing crimes at PCC.
“They looked at our parking lots
as a big shopping area,” said John
Corrigan, campus police officer.
“They would just find what they
wanted and break in.” The two al¬
legedly began committing the thefts
in January of 1991 while Valdez was
a PCC student. The two admitted to
burglarizing cars at PCC as recently
as a month ago.
The two are in custody in West
Covina where they are being charged
with vehicle burglary. Campus po¬
lice officers will file charges of grand
theft auto and two charges of vehicle
burglary. After the confessions,
campus police officers were able to
close the investigation on 18 other
vehicle burglaries from information
given to them by the suspects. Offi¬
cers from West Covina arrested them
at a shopping mall after a security
guard he'd them for allegedly break¬
ing into a sports car.
Corrigan and officer Herman
Mitchell interviewed Valdez and
Grenados on Feb. 4. During the in¬
terview they confessed to burglariz¬
ing 50 to 60 cars at PCC, while
Grenados was a student in the nurs¬
ing department. They are also under
investigation by the Pasadena and
Montebello police departments for
thefts in those cities.
“Grenados knew which parking
lots had no cameras and poor light¬
ing. He knew when they were busy
and when people were in class,” said
Corrigan. Most of the thefts occurred
in the evening when the campus is
fullof nightclass students. “At times
(during the fall semester) we were
running two or three thefts a night,”
said officer Nick Hoekstra, campus
police.
Corrigan said Granados admitted
to making a list of items to steal after
asking other students what they
wanted. He would then team up with
Valdez to fill the orders. “He would
take orders from students at PCC
and then sell them to students who
knew the stuff was stolen.” Valdez
would break into the cars while
Granados would keep a lookout. They
would look for cars with expensive
stereo systems and valuable items
loose in the passenger compartment.
Valdez admitted to being an expert
at burglarizing Volkswagens and
Chevrolet IROC Camaros, said
Corrigan. “Valdez admitted to break¬
ing into cars in all of the campus
parking lots. He liked VWs but would
break into any car.” The pair said
they would often sell the stolen goods
to gang members near where they
lived in Montebello. Corrigan said
at times the gang members would
accompany them to PCC to burglar¬
ize cars. He said the gang members
would allegedly carry pistols for
security. “The gang members would
be armed because they knew we
were not. That’s why they weren’t
afraid.”
Please see Thefts: page 4
Renown Russian physicist lectures about laser technology
By CHRIS CATHCART
Staff Writer
With the first U.S. airlift of aid to
Russia in the sky, the Cold War
melted a little closer to home when
Professor Yuri Popov, a noted
physicist from the Lebedev Institute
in Moscow, spoke to a group of
faculty at PCC last Thursday. Popov
heads the optoelectronics department
of the Lebedev Institute, which is
one of 60 institutions that make up
what was once the USSR Academy
of Sciences. His lecture, titled
“Creativity and the Scientist,” fo¬
cused on the technological advances
made in the application of the laser
over the last 30 years, and its impli¬
cations for the future. Popov has
been a leading theoretician and re¬
searcher in the field of lasers since
1956 when he began working for
Academician Nikolai Basov, direc¬
tor of the Lebedev Institute. Basov
was the winner of the Nobel prize for
physics in 1964, for his theories
that established the basis for the maser
and the laser.
The lecture was jointly sponsored
by the physical sciences, and the
English and foreign languages de¬
partments. Dr. Jill Geare, assistant
professor of English and foreign
languages, emphasized that Popov’s
talk was, “ a remarkable event. We
need only look at the history of the
last 40 years to keep this in mind.”
Geare also prefaced the lecture by
pointing out the cultural barriers
that are now being broken down. “
World community and world peace
are only possible when we ac¬
knowledge the ‘otherness’ of the
other,” Geare said. Former PCC
student Michael Tiberi, president
of Principia Optics Inc., was respon¬
sible for bringing not only Profes¬
sor Popov, but also Professor Aleksan-
der Nasibov, and Dr. Vladimir
Koslovsky to America in order to
sell a new breakthrough in laser
technology to American corporations.
Tiberi introduced Popov by saying,
“ in order to understand the language
of Russia, you first have to under¬
stand the Russian heart.”
Popov spoke for 40 minutes on
the different applications for laser
technology in solving energy and
communication problems. He began
by saying how happy he was to be
back in “ such a beautiful country,
and famous city.” He had previously
been here 30 years ago to speak at
Cal Tech, and as recently as two
years ago to speak at USC. With a
smile on his face, he apologized for
his English saying, “It is very hard to
talk about physics, even at Cal Tech,”
he joked.
Popov explained the way that
laser technology can help solve
energy problems, especially with
the semi-conductor laser. The semi¬
conductor laser excites linear ac¬
celerated electrons to produce a
more powerful output. As Popov
was quick to point out, “ All discov¬
eries were made for military appli¬
cations. “ He noted that both the
USSR and the U.S. were developing
these lasers as a way to advance
what the U.S. called the Strategic
Defense Initiative, or SDL Popov
believes that these very powerful
lasers,” are still very far from the
goals,” set by the SDI program, but
they can help with the development
of alternative forms of energy.
In his lecture Popov pointed out
the dangers of energy systems em¬
ployed today. Oil and coal , he
said, contribute to the depletion of
the ozone, and the green house ef¬
fect. They also are resources that
will someday be gone. As alterna¬
tives to fossil fuels, Popov spoke
of solar and atomic energy. He called
solar energy,” very nice , because
ecologically it is the best source of
energy.” But there are problems
with the wide scale use of this
energy source. “You can only use
solar energy in a very restricted
place, like the desert,” he said. Making
reference to the recent rain storms,
Popov joked, “ Suppose you were
using solar power in Los Angeles,
and for one week you could not use
it?” The huge reflectors, and large
semi-conductors needed to make
solar energy efficient, would not be
cost effective, Popov said.
Atomic energy is another con¬
cern for Popov. “ More countries
are going to atomic energy, espe¬
cially if they do not have oil or coal,”
he said. He used what he called the
terrible catastrophe at Chernobyl,
as a grim reminder of the dangers
involved in atomic energy. Prag¬
matically he also stated that at the
current rate of use, the earth’s
uranium supply would be gone in
300 years.
The answer to these energy prob¬
lems? Popov believes they lie in
what is called laser controlled
thermo-nuclear fusion. This proc¬
ess involves a very small amount of
hydrogen isotopes encased in a small,
plastic ball. These small balls, (less
than one millimeter in diameter)
would be bombarded by the semi¬
conductor laser, greatly increasing
the pressure inside to produce the
same exact same energy emitted by
Please see Popov: page 4