PCC Courier, June 11, 1992

OPINION | FEATURES I NEWS Women What would the US. be like if women were in power? Page 2 The COURIER will be back July 23, 1992 Tuition Possible tuition hike considered by state legislature. Page 4 Pasadena City College Pasadena, California Vol. 75 No. 31 T COURIER Thursday June 11, 1992 Voters pass important bond issue By Al SANTANA Staff Writer When California voters approved Propo¬ sition 153 last week, they authorized $900 million in bonds for construction projects at the state’s public universities and communi¬ ties colleges. But for PCC, the votes mean the approval for site acquisition and engi¬ neering drawings for a new Community Skills Center. The recently passed measure will pro¬ vide funds needed to purchase land and to support building expenditures for the new facility. “That’s just what we needed,” said Dr. William Goldmann, dean of educational services, who strongly supported the meas¬ ure. “Now we can officially say that the Community Skills Center will be built in the best interest of students at the college.” The money allocated will be available by July 1. Goldmann mentioned that $750,000 will be spent on engineering and blueprints for the facility. College officials have yet to decide where the new building site will be located, but, ac¬ cording to Goldmann, they expect to find a new site by the end of the year. Statewide, Goldmann said, the money allocated to California’s higher educational institutions will create 13,000 new jobs. This will create a state payroll of about $500 million. “The passage of this measure will gener¬ ate economic growth in California. It will boost the ailing economy of the state and at Please see Proposition 153: Page 4 Record summer session enrollment creates lines Hundreds of students wait in a line to register for summer session classes. The number of classes was reduced by 200 from last summer because of budgetary constraints. More than 10,000 people are competing for the 8,250 openings. Election cancelled; petition falls short By EDWIN FOLVEN Editor-in-Chief An election to determine whether the Associated Students constitution should be modified will not take place this week as planned, said Alvar Kauti, associate dean of student activities. The special election, which was tentatively scheduled for yesterday and today, was canceled because a petition for constitutional ratification apparently did not meet the requirements set forth by the cur¬ rent constitution. Members of a group called Students For Constitutional Reform (SFCR) had been collecting the signatures since mid-April on a petition needed to call a special election. According to Kauti, members of the group came to him on April 2 1 and the petition was approved for circulation by his office. Members of the SFCR then had exactly 30 calendar days to obtain signatures from 1,333 students, which is five percent of the general student population. The current AS constitution states that all initiative, referendum and recall petitions automatically become invalid 30 days after the form is approved for circulation by the AS adviser. SFCR member Rick Vera be¬ lieves the problem lies in the way that part of the constitution was written. “It does not mention amendment petitions and it is un¬ fair to group the petition under those rules,” he said. According to Kauti, the petition with approximately 1,160 signatures was returned to his office on May 27, exactly 30 days after it was approved. The general AS elections were also scheduled for May 27, creating a conflict because the petition called for a special election before the general election. Kauti and his assistants were also required to check each signature, which SFCR mem¬ bers supplemented with a Social Security number for accuracy, with a list from the office of admissions. Kauti said the special election was tentatively agreed upon, taking for granted all signatures would be valid. After more than 10 hours of verifying the signatures, Kauti and his assistant deter¬ mined that only 1 103 names on the petition were valid, that is 30 fewer than required, number. “If the names and the Social Secu¬ rity numbers didn’t match, we wouldn’t validate it,” said Kauti. He added that many names appeared with misinformation and were corrected and validated . “Names need¬ ing small changes were corrected and counted. We spent 10 hours processing the petition and they were way under the number that the rule allowed.” Two additional forms with signatures were also submitted after the deadline and were not counted. “We would have had the election before finals, based on good faith the signatures would be there, but they weren’t,” said Kauti. Vera said the procedure student activities used to verify signatures is questionable because Social Security numbers are not re¬ quired by the constitution. “They are sup¬ posed to check the signatures, but they didn ’ t use all of the information that’s available to the college. They can be checked by many different methods but as far as we’ve been told they only went by Social Security num¬ bers, which aren’t required.” He added, “That is one of the problems with the constitution. It doesn’t deal with specifics.” Undocumented aliens required to pay higher enrollment expenses Graduation honors students By AL SANTANA Staff Writer For many of California’s high school seniors, the end of the current school year marks the beginning of enrollmentprocedures for attending the most accessible of the three seg¬ ments of public higher education: the community colleges. One of these students is Liliana, who has a solid A average and a very strong determination to better her¬ self. But for Liliana, who came to this country three years ago and is currently taking classes at Franklin High School in Los Angeles, high school graduation represents the beginning of a bleak future because she has lost her hopes of transferring to an institution of higher learning. Liliana is an undocumented immigrant, and a new fees policy adopted by California community colleges has put the community college out of her reach. Prompted by a court decision ruling against the University of California, this semester California’s 107 com¬ munity colleges began imposing on undocumented students the same fees charged to those students who are not California residents. Full-time students who are residents pay $ 60 per semester, but out-of-state full¬ time students are charged enroll¬ ment fees that average $1,300 per semester. A student taking more than 12 college units per semester is considered full-time. The decision stirred angry reac¬ tions by college and high school officials over whether students who are undocumented immigrants should be required to pay the higher rates. “It’s not fair,” said Dr. Jack Scott, superintendent-president. “This de¬ cision makes a highly marked dis¬ tinction between students. We shouldn’t place impediments on people who are trying to get an education. We were happy to accept undocumented immigrants and charge them the lower fees before the deci¬ sion was implemented,” he said. “Now, the college has to charge them the new fee.” Jack Wright, college counselor at Franklin High School, said that the new ruling is both shortsighted and discriminatory. “This ruling fails to understand the economic benefit that people get from education,” he said. “Our kids are still unable to under¬ stand what motivated [the court] to adopt this decision.” It all started when David Bradford, a former UCLA employee, challenged the 1985 UC policy of granting resi¬ dence status to undocumented im¬ migrants who could demonstrate they have lived in California for at least one year and intended to stay perma¬ nently. The ruling was based on an Alameda County Superior Court decision in a case known as “Leticia A,” which involved the 20-campus California State University . After the court ordered CSU to charge the lower admission fees to non-legal immigrants, UCs and the commu¬ nity colleges followed suit. Bradford, who was at that time responsible for determining student eligibility to enter UCLA, filed a lawsuit expressing his deep disagree¬ ment with the ruling. In May 1990, a Please see Fees: Page 4 PCC will put the finishing touches on the 1991-92 school year with the 67th annual com¬ mencement ceremony on Friday, June 19 at 6:30 p.m. in the mirror pool area. During the graduation cere¬ mony, 1082 students will re¬ ceive degrees for academic achievement. 769 students will be recipients of associate in arts degrees and 3 1 3 more will gradu¬ ate with associate in science de¬ grees. Alvar Kauti, dean of student By ANISSA VICENTE Features Editor The 14-year-old amputee learned English in Indonesia by listening to rock ‘n’ roll broad¬ casts from Australia and New Zealand. She read Sears catalogs and old magazines, all in an ef¬ fort to learn English. Today, Joyce Kennard, associate justice of the California Supreme Court since 1989, writes eloquently, brandish¬ ing English as a tool to express her wide-ranging views. Kennard, a 1970 PCC gradu¬ ate, will speak to this year’s gradu¬ ates from an enviable viewpoint. She left PCC as a sophomore and returned as the second woman ever to serve on California’s high¬ est court. Bom in Indonesia of a Dutch father and a Chinese-Indonesian mother, Kennard was imprisoned in a World War II internment camp by the Japanese. Her father died when she was 10. At 14, she lost a leg to a life-threatening illness. In 1961, at age 20, Ken- activities said 543 students will be present at the commencement cere¬ mony this year. “Unfortunately, not everybody who receives a degree marches in the ceremony,” he said. “Students who ordered caps and gowns are the ones who will actually march.” Kauti said that most of this year ’ s graduating class will receive trans¬ ferable degrees in applied and lib¬ eral arts such as English, mathemat¬ ics and physical science. This reflects the students’ preferences toward academic fields traditionally seen nard immigrated to the United States alone. With a $5,000 inheritance from her late mother and money from part-time jobs, Kennard enrolled at PCC in 1968. She finished in a year and a half, earning a scholarship for excellence in German. She was an elected member of the Alpha Mu Gamma national honorary society and the Alpha Gamma Sigma state scholarship society. She made the dean’s list every semester, graduat¬ ing with honors extraordinary in German. On a scholarship, Kennard earned a law degree from USC in 1974. She joined the state attorney general’s office and then the State Court of Appeals before. Gov. George Deukmejian named her to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1986. After brief stints on the Superior Court and the State Court of Appeal, she was elevated to the state Su¬ preme Court. “Justice Joyce Kennard has proved that hard work, skill and intelligence, combined with the promise of the American dream, can lead one to by some as “difficult,” he said. According to college officials, 295 students from the business department will receive degrees in business management The nurs¬ ing department is graduating 8 1 students and the English depart¬ ment will award 67 degrees. The majority of the graduates are women, totaling 300. Only 233 male graduates will receive degrees. Official records state that the oldest graduate this year is a 68-year-old student from the engineering department. great achievements,” Deukmejian said. Since her appointment, Ken¬ nard has shown a streak of inde¬ pendence within the court. She is known as a “judge’s judge,” an apolitical purist. She will have willing listeners about her views on graduation day. There she will look back into her past, assess her present success and give advice for the graduates’ future. Justice Joyce Kennard Future of AS board decided by voters By WES KAWANO Staff Writer During an election year when po¬ litical outsiders seem to be popular, one such candidate has already emerged victorious after the AS elections on May 27 and 28. In one of the two contested AS positions, Tammy Ortega, a relatively unknown who was part of the “Leadership and Diversity” ticket, surprised many people by defeating Maggie Tracey, former AS president, for position of student trustee. Ortega won 229 of the 322 votes tallied by the Pasadena chapter of the League of Women Voters. “I was surprised at the outcome for the student trustee position. She (Ortega) won it by a landslide con¬ sidering she has not had much expe¬ rience,” said Karen Koch, who also shared the ticket. Koch, who ran uncontested (263 votes), was elected to her first full term as AS president. She finished the remainder of Tracey’s term after her resignation in April. “An elected official must be reli¬ able and be held accountable for his or her actions,” said Ortega, a busi¬ ness major who plans to go into law. “I think PCC is a fine school. It has given me a lot and I want to give something back.” The “Leadership with Diversity” ticket was mostly comprised of cur¬ rent AS officers who were seeking a second term. “It was a cohesive ef¬ fort by all of us. I’m really glad to Please see AS: Page 4 Kennard to speak at ceremony