PCC Courier, February 24, 1994

FEATURES " Twelve Angry Jurors:'' the verdict is in. The play opens tonight in the Little Theater. PASADENA CITY COLLEGE Pasadena, California Vol. 78 No. 6 THE COURIER Serving the PCC Community for 76 years THURSDAY February 24, 1994 \ Street parking: residents want changes □ Resentment brews as students take over home owners’ spaces. By JOSE INOSTROZ and GUADALUPE BERGIN Staff Writers Rose Villaand Sierra Bonitastreet residents are feeling increasigly re¬ sentful of having to pay fees to park on their oun streets while students take those much needed spots away. Every school day from 7a.m. to 7p.m. streets are full of PCC stu¬ dents’ cars, says Victor Vener which poses a problem. “I can’t invite relatives or friends to my house be¬ cause there are no parking spaces,” said Venner who lives in the 200 block of Sierra Bonita Ave. “I have to compete with students to park in front of my house,” he added. The city of Pasadena charges resi¬ dents $15 for permits to park on Rose Villa and Sierra Bonita streets. These permits are in the form of stickers that can be placed in car windows. Some of the residents feel the permits are an inconvenience since the stickers cannot be used by visi¬ tors. “I did not vote to be charged $ 1 5 to park in front of my own house,” said Gregory Brown, who has lived in the 800 block of Rose Villa for 10 years. He did sign a petition to do something about the parking. He suggested the city should give resi¬ dents the permits. “We are taxpay¬ ers and we pay for street mainte¬ nance. We don’t deserve this,” said Brown. Students can purchase a $30 per¬ mit from the City of Pasadena that guarantees them a space on the streets that have been designated for park¬ ing. A regular campus parking per¬ mit costs $20. “This parking situation is a ter¬ rible inconvenience,” said Donna Brown who lives in the 400 block of Sierra Bonita. “I am not about to pay $15 of my money to get a sticker to park in front of my own house. It is a rip-off,” said Brown who has been a Sierra Bonita resident for 40 years. Vener said he and the elderly people he knows in his neighbor¬ hood do not like students because they are a nuisance to their every day tranquility. Every weekend during the winter when the school has football games, if not PCC’s students, high school students come to the games, park on these streets and get the streets dirty with “fast food, beer bottles and drugs,” they leave the mess which the college doesn’t come the nest day to clean up. “We pay taxes, we don’t get any¬ thing free from the city and now it charges us for parking in front of our own house?” said Vener. “I am furious, it is an absolutely inapropriate way of making money,” he added. Student trustee John Robinson, who has been working to resolve the parking issue said, “Residents have been complaining forever about park¬ ing, it’s nothing new to me.” Last year Robinson struck a deal between the City, the residents, and students wherein it was agreed 12 zones would be allocated to parking on streets south of the college. “The residents are the ones who wanted preferential parking last year,” said Robinson. “Residents who signed to pur¬ chase stickers should have thought before they agreed to the plan,” said Robinson responding to complaints that residents could not accommo¬ date visitors. “We’ve put in a lot of work, but residents are still unhappy ,” he added. The argument that taxpayers are unnecessarily burdened is a“copout” says Robinson. “The college con¬ tributes heavily to the city of Pasa¬ dena. It is a famous college and many famous people have gone through here. The college provides a large tax base to the city,” he said. The college does a lot of good for local businesses therefore it doesn’t mean anything to use the taxpayer excuse because everyone is a tazpayer, including the students. Robinson also said that he has driven around the areas where stu¬ dents park and has noticed that streets have been kept clean. “Students keep it pretty clean, but if residents sees one cup on the street, they think students leave a lot of trash,” he said. The current zones on streets in¬ cluding Sierra Bonita Avenue and Rose Villa can accommodate as many as 22 parking spaces each, one half of that numberr goes to resi¬ dents and the other half to students. Students can purchase permits for either morning parking from 8a.m. to 5p.m. or from 5p.m. to 8p.m. There are about 100 spaces left. Applications can be obtained from the Safety Office and turned in to Robinson in CC210. Only those carrying nine or more units can ap¬ ply on a first come, first served basis. Should students be ticketed, they can expect to pay a $20 fine which must be paid at Pasadena City Hall. Students with permits will not be ticketed unless they park where they shouldn. The money the college collects from the street permits will go to¬ ward the construction of the new parking structure being built on the southwest side of campus. Students ask a representative from a university about transfer procedures during College Information Night last week. ERWIN GOLDBERG/THE COURIER Enrollment decreases Anti-Semitic, racist posters and graffiti found on campus By DAVID MUSHEGAIN Staff Writer Statewide tuition fees are up and commu¬ nity college enrollment is down. PCC is no exception, with the 1993-94 census showing Pasadena’s enrollment to be slightly below the statewide average. The spring 1994 census, compiled by Dr. Stuart A. Wilcox and staff, estimate student enrollment at PCC as 26,332. Those taking classes for credit account for 21,956 of these students. That figure represents a two percent decrease from the fall semester census fig¬ ures. That is one percent below statewide statistics. Although enrollment dropped in the spring semester, the two percent figure is more stable and promising than the eight percent drop which occurred in the fall. Drops in enrollment can be attributed to a consistent increase in fees. Wilcox said com¬ munity colleges first began charging tuition in 1984 when the fee was set at $5 with a $50 cap. By the fall of 1991, the fee had increased to $6 with a $60 cap. The highest fee hike occurred in spring of 1993 when fees were raised to $10 a unit with no cap. Currently the fee stands at $13 a unit with no cap. Wilcox stated that there is about a one percent enrollment decrease for every dollar the fees increase. With Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal that unit fees be raised to $20 with no cap and assuming that figures follow previous trends, this $7 hike could result in further enrollment decreases. An increase to $20 a unit would be a large sum difference possibly encouraging those on the financial edge to not enroll, Nancy Ackley, spokesperson for the Chancellor’s office, said. Students should not let the fee hikes discour¬ age them from enrolling. While fee increase has been suggested, proposals for more liberal spending, regarding fee waivers, are also being considered, Ackley said. □ Local white supremacist group is the prime suspect in investigation. By ROBERT ARMIJO Staff Writer Anti-Semitic posters accompa¬ nied by swastikas, graffiti and racial epithets against African Americans and multattos were recently found through out the campus. The posters depicted an elderly man, supposedly aJew,with exaggerated ethnic char¬ acteristics. Campus police immediately dis¬ patched officers including seven undercover officers and cadets to investigate the reports, according to Sgt. Vince Palermo of campus po¬ lice. But despite their efforts, the campus police were unable to catch the suspect or suspects. The posters were removed and the graffiti erased. Although initially discovered by Dr. Bruce Carter, geology depart¬ ment chairperson, the posters and graffiti were reported to the campus police by Patricia A. Sea, a geology department lab technician. “Definitely anti-Semitic,” she said. “I took great offense because I am Jewish.” A telephone number on the back of one of the fliers led campus police investigator Nick Hoekstra to a re¬ corded message from a group iden¬ tifying itself as White Aryan Resis¬ tance or W.A.R. “They probably wouldn’t claim responsibility , but say that they can’t be held responsible for their mem¬ bers actions,” said Hoekstra, who is currently keeping tabs on the orga¬ nization. In a recorded message he listened to a few weeks ago, W.A.R. claimed responsibility for canvassing La ReinaHigh School in Thousand Oaks with derogatory posters of a preg¬ nant Chicana. Although the posters and graffiti are considered free speech, and thus protected by the Constitution, acts of vandalism to state property are not. The suspects, once caught, can be charged with defacing state prop¬ erty, Palermo said. Officer Eric McWilliams of the Pasadena Police Department will begin his investigation soon. In ad¬ dition Kay Schafer of the Los Ange¬ les District Attorney’s office has expressed an interest in the case and has requested all material and infor¬ mation be forwarded to her office for further investigation. Conceding that as Americans we all enjoy the freedom to express opin¬ ions, she points out that depending on the circumstances, an action can range from an act protected under the U.S. Constitution to a misde¬ meanor or felony hate crime. How¬ ever she cites citizen awareness as the fist line of defense against such acts. “The most important thing a vic¬ tim and witness can do is to report it to the police. That’s critical. If it doesn’tgetreported, thejudicial sys¬ tem can’t work,” Schafer said. Hoekstra also advises students to “get to a phone as quickly as possible and dial 911.” But he cautions stu¬ dents against confronting a suspects or getting into a shouting match with them. Sea, the lab technician, said, “It’s too bad people have to be such sepa¬ ratists.” The posters and graffiti were found in the Women’s Gym; men’s rest room on the third floor of the C building; the Shatford Library; and in U, E, and V buildings. The gift of life Student needs bone marrow □ The life of a leukemia patient depends on the generosity of others. By PATRIA G. ABELGAS Editor in Chief People are constantly looking for what they say is “their twin in this world,” someone who looks like them, acts like them, talks like them, and thinks like them. But for people like Eric Le Blanc, all they are look- _ ing for is somebody who matches their blood type. Le Blanc, a former PCC student, has been fighting leukemia since 1983 when he was diag¬ nosed with the disease at the age of 14. In order for him to have complete remission, he will have to un¬ dergo a bone marrow transplant. A possible donor has been matched to him already, but “it’s still not for sure,” said Le Blanc. So Kathleen Long, an Alpha Gamma Sigma (AGS) member and Le Blanc’s stepmother, invited the coordinator for the Bone Marrow Registry from the City of Hope to encourage more people to become bone marrow donors. Jean Blaylock will explain the procedures of be¬ coming a donor today at noon in R122. “We’re not desperately looking for a donor for Eric because we have one already, but it would be nice if more people would register to be donors,” said Long. If this donor doesn’t work, then Le Blanc’s doc¬ tors will tap possible donors from the registry. There are currently more than a million possible donors registered “For people to be able to sign up for the bone marrow registry is a gift. It’s giving life to somebody else.” Eric Le Blanc with the Bone Marrow Registry. Marrow transplantation, accord¬ ing to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), is a new medical therapy for patients with fatal blood diseases such as leukemia and aplastic anemia. According to NMDP, donors initially give two tablespoons of blood for testing. Their blood is tissue-typed and the lab result are stored in their computer database. Patients from all over the world refer to this database for a pos¬ sible match. Once a preliminary match is identified, additonal blood tests are taken to determine if the do¬ nor is a precise match for the specific patient. The donor then has to give a final consent. “Every little bit helps. Even if just one person came to get his blood typed and then saved another’s life, that would be great,” said Le Blanc. Le Blanc’s possible donor is waiting for more tests to make sure he’s healthy and that his blood won’t be rejected by Le Blanc’s antibodies. Once the tests are com¬ pleted, Le Blanc will un- dergo 10 days of chemo¬ therapy before the actual trans¬ plant can take place. “I’ll go in for 10 days and the doctors will kill everything ma¬ lignant in my body. I have to be isolated because my body won’t Please see MARROW, Page 3