PCC Courier, March 21, 2002

V ‘Death to Smoochy’ Parodies Barney Check out the • Events Calendar SEE PAGE 5 see PAGE 5 Lancers Spear Panthers, 6-4 see PAGE 7 News % - in brief Stem Cell And Cloning. Is stem cell research ethical? How about cloning? On Wednesday, March 27 at 7p.m. in Sexson Auditroium, experts Dr. Barbara Wold, a professor of Biology, hnd Dr. Alexander Capron, a professor of Law and Medicine at USC and the head of Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics, will speak out on the pros and cons of stem cell research as part of the Natural Science Seminars on Science and Ethics. The speakers will be followed by a question and answer session led by Dr. H. Rex Greene, Dr. Cornish Rogers and Dr. Robert Doud. Admission is free. 20th Annual 5K RunAValk. Pasadena City College ‘s Community Education Center is sponsoring a 5K run on May 4 at the Rose Bowl area at 8 a.m. Over the past 19 years, the 5K run has raised funds for a variety of student projects and has had vast community involvement. Race coordina¬ tors Robert Adanto and Glen Wilkerson can be contacted at Race Central (626) 585-3003. Graduation Speaker Selected. Dr. Charles D. Reed, Chancellor of the CSU system has been selected as this year’s commencement speaker. The chancellor will address gradu¬ ates at the ceremony on May 24 at 6 p.m. in Robinson Stadium. The deadline for ordering caps and gowns is 2 p.m. on Tuesday April 9. Children’s Spring Celebration. Sponsors include AGS and OMD Honor Societies and Club MESA. The event will be held Saturday March 30 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. at PCC’s Boone Sculpture Garden. Donations of large toys, arts and crafts supplies and Easter egg hunt parapher¬ nalia are welcome. Volunteers are also needed; if interested please contact AGS via e-mail at ask_ags@hotmail.com Staff parking spaces recently purloined from the student lot remain empty while cars wait for spaces in the student lot. As early as 7 a.m. students fought for spaces. Staff Snatches Student Spaces Mikyl Nutter/Courier By Latoya Sturge Senior Editor The parking advisory commit¬ tee voted Monday to reserve two rows of student parking in Lot 1 for faculty and staff. After the vote of 4-3 in favor of the change, cam¬ pus police pushed barricades in Lot 1 back, blocking student access to 61 spaces in this student- labeled parking lot. Since the change, more than 30 spaces have regularly stood vacant in the staff section of Lot 1 while the student parking spaces are almost continu¬ ously filled. At Monday’s meeting there was noticeably divided tenor. The pro¬ faculty faction squared off against the two student advocates and the discussion deteriorated into a squabble over whether staff or stu¬ dents were more deserving of the parking spaces. Peter Hardash, PCC’s vice president of adminis¬ trative services said, “People were arguing over which was more important, staff or student parking. It’s ridiculous, both staff and stu¬ dents need parking; it was like the chicken or the egg discussion.” Hardash was the only commit¬ tee member who did not vote along partisan lines. “It’s a bad idea to take parking away from the students; I’m disappointed by the committee’s decision,” said Hardash. Later in the meeting Caroline Bordinaro, a faculty representa¬ tive, also complained about stu¬ dents who block the turnaround in Lot 1 1 by stopping and talking. m see PARKING, page 4 Free Shuttle To Service PCC Area Can’t find a parking spot? That seems to be a big problem around here these days now that another 61 spots were stolen away from the students. One answer to the problem may be a free bus that allows students and staff to ride free. The Arts No. 10 bus a free bus line in Pasadena, has now extended its service to go past PCC. The No.*10 bus runs north on Hill, turns left on Colorado and goes all the way through Old Town. It then pro¬ ceeds back to PCC via Green Street. The bus runs about every 15 minutes. Buses start at 11a.m. and run until 8p.m. Students and staff could park their cars somewhere along the route in a free parking spot and then hop aboard the free bus and get dropped off here at PCC. There are also two other lines that cross the No. 10 route. The No. 20 runs service between northern and southern Pasadena in a loop on Fair Oaks and Lake Avenues, and the No. 40, which runs East Foothill, and Raymond Avenue in Old Town. These lines are also free. Schedule informa¬ tion for these bus lines and other forms of public transportation can be picked up at the Transportation Trolley in the quad. Policy Gives College Right to Read E-mail By Angela Faranda Staff Writer Many students, staff and faculty members are being monitored and they do not even know it. The college has a privacy policy in place that not everyone knows even exists. PCC’s privacy policy, approved in March of 2000, states that all users of computers and voice communica¬ tions can be monitored, and the person being monitored only has to be notified 72 hours after the fact. But how can anyone be sure that people are being notified of their being monitored? When initially setting out to draft this policy many staff members wanted a guarantee that communication would be completely private, according to Alan Lamson, president of the Academic Senate, which was involved with the development of the policy. But according to drafters of the policy who did not want to be identified, the administration didn’t want to tell people they were being monitored at all. One member of the privacy committee said that if someone wants to keep a call private, don’t use a campus phone. Lamson commented, “Yes, that’s right, definite¬ ly” The committee was formed in 1 999 to outline an offi¬ cial policy. Two years after two classified employees were terminated for using e-mail for personal uses, when human resources were able to obtain their personal mes¬ sages. According to drafters of the policy the teachers union became enraged at this action because there was no official policy in place at the time. The monitoring of computer usage and telephone activity is to ensure that staff and students are not abusing the resources on campus. For example “to make sure peo¬ ple are not calling long distance everyday, or surfing the Internet all day,” said Lamson. California law says people have the legal right to pri¬ vacy, but that does not extend to the workplace. PCC’s own policy on privacy, security and acceptable use of electronic resources, policy 5350, states, “The College does not however guarantee that these communications are completely private.” # see E-MAIL page 4 Classified Senate Votes in Favor of 18-week Calendar By Joseph Narvaez Copy Editor The Academic Senate’s proposal to compress the current academic calendar into two 16-week semes¬ ters may have hit a roadblock. The results of the recent survey handed out to classified staff members show that 63 percent would rather keep the current 1 8-week semesters than change to the proposed com¬ pressed schedule. Although the voting resulted in a nearly 2-to-l margin to maintain the current calendar, only 35 of those contacted responded. Ofthe4ll surveys origi¬ nally distributed by the Classified Senate, only 144 were returned. This has come as a shock to some because the orig¬ inal survey sent out in mid-December resulted in more people voting for a compressed schedule over the current one. However, the first survey contained three options: two compressed schedules and the reg¬ ular one. “The original survey gave us two choices for short¬ er semesters,” said Susan Talbot, member of the clas¬ sified staff union. “It doesn’t surprise me that people voted to keep the current academic schedule since they eliminated the more desirable of the two com¬ pressed schedules and it had a minimized impact on classified staff.” The proposed compressed calendar consists of two 16-week semesters, a 10-week summer session and a six-week winter session. “A change to the current calendar would be bene¬ ficial to everyone,” claims Academic Senate president Alan Lamson. “The faculty would be able to choose between teaching during the winter or taking it off. It’s also beneficial to the students who fail classes in the fall. With the new calendar, they will be able to retake the same class in winter and move on in spring.” Ш see CALENDAR, page 4 COURIER Since 1915 MARCH 21,2002 VOL. 87 NO. 21 www.pcc-courieronline.com