In My Humble Opinion #2

In my last post, I discussed the California Bill 656 and how much it would be able to help California’s higher education system. Now I am truly angered by this whole situation, but on a more personal level, on a level that most people would not stop to think about. This past week, the University of California regents board voted to increase UC tuition 32 percent, much like the CSU board increased tuition 30 percent and made it effective this past fall semester. It was inevitable. What I am angry about though, is the amount of attention the UC hike is getting and how they held rallies against the tuition much like we, SJSU, did. Yet, when SJSU and other CSU schools held these rallies, it was not that big of a deal. The entire nation knows about the UC rallies, demonstrated by the Time Magazine article online yesterday.

It’s long been a standard that the University of California schools are “better” than the California State University schools. It is the stigma of being a state school that most students look down upon. I can remember being a junior in high school and all of the honors students bragging that they were going to apply to a UC because they did not think that a state school was good enough for them. I, on the other hand, knew that I would be going to a community college first, which was even lower than a state school. I was a smart high school student, and I could have gotten into a good number of good schools and gone. But I have frugal parents who believed that going to a community college was just as good. I thought so too. At 17, there was no way I was ready to go away to school and live on my own.

It makes me so angry when people STILL put down state schools. I truly believe that I am getting a fantastic education at San Jose State. From what I have heard from my friends who are at UC’s, the learning is more theoretical, less hands on. You cannot gain experience in a field unless you do it yourself. You can only learn so much from reading a book and writing papers. I’m not sure what it’s going to take for the students of California to realize that a state school education is just as good, if not better, than a UC education. Although with all of the budget woes of California, it is getting to the point that no one will be able to afford a higher education.

Fish out of Water

On April 2, 2009, I attended the MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana) Youth Poetry Slam. It was held in the gallery for MACLA on 2^nd Street in downtown San Jose. It was the top 12 competitors from the area and the winner would win a small cash prize and move on to the national competition. The ages of the group ranged from 13 to 19 years of age. I was attending as a part of my outreach project for one of my communication classes. I went with my friend Renae, who is Hispanic and had even participated in the poetry slams when she was in junior high and high school. She was working the lights and I was put in charge of the sound. It did not seem too complicated and the guy in charge was very nice and welcoming.

Once the first performer got on stage and started his piece, I knew that this would be something unlike anything I had ever been to before. The room was completely dark, except for the bright spotlight centered on the performer on stage. You could see the artwork on the wall behind them and the faces of the people in the first row and shadows of the rest of the audience in the background. All you could hear was the person onstage and the soft breathing of the audience. Each youth went up there and poured their heart out to complete strangers and friends alike.

I grew up with a near perfect family. I have a wonderful, loving set of parents and a younger sister who, although she can drive me nuts at time, loves me just as much as I love her. We live in a nice home in a nice neighborhood in a great town. I was surrounded by wonderful family friends growing up and never wanted for anything. I am worlds apart from the youths that performed that night. They spoke of growing up in broken homes and of wanting for the bare necessities. They spoke of heartbreak and of pain. The emotion that all of them evoked in me surprised me. I have never been one to get emotional while watching a show. I rarely cry during movies. But this was something different. It was watching a person who was around my age and should not have to face these kinds of challenges just yet.

Walking out of there that night, I felt like I should try to take more time out of my busy life to sit and reflect and get all of my thoughts down on paper. I also knew that nothing I wrote would be anything close to what these people had been through. I hate to admit it but most of the troubles were because I was not in the same ethnic group as them. Most of the youth were either Hispanic or black and had grown up in a world far different from mine.

Word of the Week #10

canonical

read in "We the Media" by Dan Gillmor (online version)

"The canonical example of Metcalfe’s Law is the growth of fax machines."

definition (adj.): 1. according to or ordered by canon law 2. included in the list of sacred books officially accepted as genuine, accepted as being accurate and authoritative, (of an artist or work) belonging to the literary or artistic canon, according to recognized rules or scientific laws 3. of or relating to a cathedral chapter or a member of it.

The SJSU chapter of PRSSA, Public Relations Student Society of America is a canonical chapter because it was one of the original 13 established by PRSA, Public Relations Society of America.

Japanese Internment Memorial

The Japanese internment was the forced relocation and internment of around 120,000 Japanese Americans by the US Government in 1942. This event happened because the government was suspicious of Japanese spies after the attack on Pearl Harbor and it was the peak of Japanese dislike in the United States after numerous amounts of immigrants arrived in the U.S. over the first half of the 20^th century and had taken what American’s felt was most of the jobs. On February 26, 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066. This order specifically allowed local military leaders to designate “military areas” as “exclusion zones”, from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” This caused all people of Japanese ancestry, U.S. citizens or not, to be excluded from the entire Pacific Coast because of its close proximity to Japan. They were only allowed to stay on the Pacific Coast if they were in internment camps.

Ruth Asawa is a Japanese American artist who is best known for her sculpture art. She started drawing and sketching when she was a young girl and it contined throughout her life. She is also a former internee. Born to Japanese immigrant parents, Ruth was a U.S. Citizen by birth but because of her family, was sent to the internment camp in 1942. She and her family lived in horse stables at the Santa Anita Race Track internment camp for six months before being moved to Rowher, Arkansas where another camp was. She graduated high school there and received a scholarship from the Quakers to study at Milwaukee State Teachers College. She eventually studied art at Black Mountain College and then moved to San Francisco with her white husband. There they raised six children and she continued to do her art.

In the early 1900’s Japanese male immigrants who had come to the area began to settle next to San Jose’s established Chinatown. By the time World War II came around, there were around 53 businesses up and running. However, the Executive Order 9066 put a stop to it and Japantown was essentially shut down. When the war ended and Executive Order 9066 was revoked, around 100 families came back and re-established themselves and re-opened their businesses. Japantown is located between Jackson St. and Taylor St. east of Sixth St. in downtown San Jose.

Yoshiro Uchida Hall on the San Jose State University campus was used as a transfer point to evacuate people of Japanese ancestry in San Jose and Santa Clara. There is a long-standing tale that because of this, Uchida Hall is haunted.

Ruth Asawa created the Japanese American Internment Memorial in front of the Federal Building on Second St. to commemorate those who went through internment in this area and to remind us all of what happened. It is a stunning display of the lives of Japanese immigrants in the area and how much their lives changed because of Executive Order 9066. The first panel on the side facing Paseo de San Antonio depicts the farming life that most Japanese immigrants knew when they first arrived. It shows them working the fields and in the stables tending to the horses. These people came to America looking for a better life for themselves and eventually for their families. Unfortunately what happened between the first panel and the last panel is a sad tale of betrayal by the very country that promised them a better life.

The very last panel of the memorial, on the opposite side, depicts Japanese American men sitting at a table with the Capitol building behind them. This is in memory of the legislation that Congress passed and President Reagan signed in 1988, formally apologizing for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation was worded as saying that the government’s actions during this time were based on “race prejudice, wary hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” Also, money was awarded to each surviving person who had been interned.

To me, this event should have never happened. Unfortunately, we cannot change the history of our country. However, we can learn from it and we should make sure that nothing remotely like this ever occurs again. We live in a completely different world from 1942.