NAMED NATIONAL FOUR-YEAR DAILY NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR FOR 2020-21 IN THE COLLEGE MEDIA ASSOCIATION’S PINNACLE AWARDS
Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022
Volume 158 No. 8 SERVING SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
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1 shot during party near SJSU By Madilynne Medina & Christina Casillas EXECUTIVE EDITOR & MANAGING EDITOR
A male victim was transported with life-threatening injuries but stabilized several hours after shots were fired less than a mile from San Jose State University, according to a San José Police Media Relations Sunday Twitter post. The incident occured at the 200 block of N. 6th St. Saturday where officers responded at 11:01 p.m., according to the Sunday tweet. A source who wished to remain anonymous for privacy concerns, said the gunshots occurred during a party with over 100 attendees. The source said a “normal” party accompanied by loud music became quiet when two to three gunshots were heard. They said the following seven or so shots caused hysteria and panic among party-goers. “All of a sudden hearing gunfire and what followed was quite mayhem . . . just hearing people panic and kind of run and gather together to try and get away from this area was quite scary in itself, let alone the gunshot,” the source said.
BRYANNA BARTLETT | SPARTAN DAILY
Above: Blood stains the driveway of 238 N. 6th St. about 7 hours after a shooting occurred at 11:55 p.m. Saturday, where more than 150 people including San Jose State students gathered for a party. Below: the house, three streets north of SJSU campus, was a crime scene from 12-5 a.m.
were fired, the source said. The suspect and motive are unknown, according to the Sunday SJPD tweet. Christian Camarillo, SJPD sergant and unit commander of the media relations unit, said
All of a sudden hearing gunfire and what followed was quite mayhem . . . just hearing people panic and kind of run and gather together to try and get away from this area was quite scary in itself, let alone the gunshot.
senior director of strategic communications and media Anonymous source relations, said university athletics are aware of the off-campus incident and People fleeing the party ran no arrests have been made as will investigate the incident. behind and from the house of Monday. “Violence of any type is not as soon as the first few shots Kenneth Mashinchi, SJSU condoned by SJSU,” he said.
“Regarding this incident, consistent with the provisions of the SJSU Student Code of Conduct, the university will initiate an investigation and will make a determination accordingly if there is evidence of responsibility by
an SJSU-affiliated student or student organization.”
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Students differ on return to in-person classes By Joaquin De La Torre STAFF WRITER
San Jose State University students have conflicting views about returning to campus after the university returned to in-person instruction Monday. SJSU officials made the decision while considering a decrease in reported coronavirus cases in Santa Clara County and the California State University vaccination policy, Interim President Steve Perez stated in a Feb. 8 campus wide email. Santa Clara County has a sevenday average of 1,145 positive COVID-19 cases, and 84% of county residents are vaccinated as of Monday, according to the Santa Clara County COVID-19 data and reports webpage.
Some students said they are ready for in-person instruction because they want to connect with their peers and understand information better in a physical classroom. “The thing I’m most excited about is being able to be around the other students again because especially for an art major, it takes a lot of your motivation away to be stuck in your room, by yourself, doing art,” said illustration junior Cole Proctor. Robin McElhatton, assistant director of media relations said students can enter buildings with their Tower Card. However, she said a Tower Card isn’t needed to enter buildings including the Student Union, Spartan Recreation and Aquatic Center, Student Wellness Center, Career Center and Martin Luther King Jr. Library. International business junior Christopher
TRAVIS WYNN | SPARTAN DAILY
San Jose State students walk through El Paseo De Cesar Chavez on Monday upon their first day of in-person classes since the university’s remote start on Jan. 26.
Rowland said he supports the opening of over food,” Rowland said. campus eateries in the Student Union because Although many students returned to campus, not all students are as optimistic it brings community members together. “When you want to hang out with about the transition back to in-person classes. your friends or talk to classmates or even work with people, it’s quite nice to do it RETURN | Page 2
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NEWS
TUESDAY, FEB. 15, 2022
PHOTOS BY EVAN REINHARDT
Top left: San Jose State freshman Luis Aquino, freshman Araiz Chavez, senior Arianna Gonzalez and junior Wendy Gomez pose for a photo with their protest signs during the demonstration on Monday at Plaza De Cesar Chavez Park. The students said they participated to represent their immigrant families and friends. Top right: Sharat Lin performs a “Dance of Peace.” Lin said he performs his dance of peace at many cultural events to inspire social change. Left: Patricia Vasquez contributes to an attendee-produced banner, which read “Enough. No more lies. Yabasta. No mas mentiras,” and is intended to be carried across the state in support of immigrant communities. Above: Miguel Vasquez plays the song “Poder del Pueblo.” Vasquez and his wife spoke at the event, expressing solidarity for all minority communities.
Groups push immigration reform By Amani Hamed & Evan Reinhardt
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER & ASST. NEWS EDITOR/ MULTIMEDIA EDITOR
San Jose community members gathered at Plaza De Cesar Chavez Park on Monday to participate in “A Day Without Immigrants”, hosted by non-profit group Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN). SIREN works to “empower low-income individuals and communities” through civic engagement, legal services and leadership development, according to its website. Jose Servin, SIREN advocacy and communications director, said the event aimed to convey solidarity with San Jose’s immigrant and undocumented population and gain support for the closure of immigrant detention centers. “There are only five detention facilities for immigrants in the state remaining, and we’re slowly shutting those down,” Servin said to the crowd. “We actually got to population zero at the nearest one in Yuba City. We got everybody out, there’s no more immigrants there.” The protest began, Servin said in an interview, when Carlos Eduardo Espina, 23, created a viral TikTok about being an undocumented immigrant in America. The Facebook group Espina created surrounding A Day Without Immigrants, or “Un Día Sin Inmigrantes” in Spanish has over 95 thousand followers, and has influenced hundreds of A Day Without Immigrants protests across the nation. Espina has 2.5 million followers on TikTok, and his
RETURN Continued from page 1 Several students published a petition on Jan. 27 calling for hybrid or HyFlex instruction. HyFlex, or hybrid and flexible instruction, is when classes offer both in-person and online learning formats, according to Cambridge Dictionary. “We call on ALL students, professors, faculty, staff and alumni to sign on this petition in support of safe and accessible remote learning in order to ensure the safety of public health at San José State University,” organizers stated in the petition. “It is our duty to slow down the spread of COVID-19 to protect our disabled and immunocompromised community members.”
My parents are immigrants and they come from an immigrant community, so this is something that’s close to my heart. Any way that I can support, I’ll show up. Luis Aquino SJSU political science and philosophy junior
He also said that the forced migration of millions of Mexican, Central and South American immigrants is largely due to policies created by the United States and other powerful countries, which affected the economies of nations like Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. “A lot of forced migration has happened because the regions where the people live, if you’re talking specifically about Latin America, their economies have been destroyed and a lot of it has to do with the intervention of countries like the U.S. or countries from Europe,” Servin said. He said these economic policies, combined with America’s immigration policies and a lack of immigration reform, have left millions of people in America undocumented. “The last time that we had major immigration reform was 36 years ago, and between that gap, there’s literally 11 million people who have been left out of any form of relief, and any form of ways to fix their status,” Servin said. “So they’re stuck in this legal limbo.” Luis Aquino, SJSU political science and philosophy junior, attended the event to achieve better representation for their families and community. “My parents are immigrants and they come from an immigrant community, so this is something that’s close to my heart,” Aquino said. “Any way that I can support, I’ll show up.”
videos have generated over 200 million views. Servin said that while SIREN has become part of the many protests, online organizing has made the protests more accessible.
Petition organizers, who preferred to go by Huang Ling and Truc Tran for privacy concerns, said they created the petition after concerns emerged about the return to in-person instruction. “The school isn’t really ensuring our safety in terms of what they’ve been doing,” Tran said. “I just feel like this is our way of taking the responsibility in our own hands, our own lives and health in our own hands.” The petition currently has over 3,000 signatures and received support from various campus groups including the Black, Indigenous, Latinx & Student Nurses Of Color SJSU, the student chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and Students for a Democratic Society. Ling said the petition signatures “show solidarity” among the campus community.
“A lot of policies have failed our communities to keep our families and our homes safe and I think a lot of folks are at a place where they realize at this point, as individuals, we can still protect each other,” Ling said. The concerned students said they met with SJSU administrators on Wednesday to advocate hybrid classes. Perez addressed student concerns in a Friday campuswide email. “Some have specifically asked to require that all classes be taught in a hyflex mode,” Perez stated. “While that may seem like a solution, it is not feasible to do so at this time.” In addition to stating the decline in COVID-19 cases , Perez said the virus is going to “continue for the foreseeable future” and the community needs to “move to
Follow the Spartan Daily on Twitter @SpartanDaily a place where we can still live, learn and work with that in mind.” Tran said the university needs to provide accessibility for those who may have difficulties returning to in-person instruction. “I feel like as much as we want to go back to the old normal, we can never go back and moving forward we should focus on what we can do to adapt to the future and the ongoing present,” Tran said. “Which is. . . incorporating more technology, incorporating more accessibility for those that won’t be able to [go back to fully in-person instruction]. ”
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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
TUESDAY, FEB. 15, 2022
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Futurefarmers event combines art forms By Eva Martin STAFF WRITER
If a student tried to park in the San Jose State Parking Lot 4 on Wednesday, they would have found the SJSU marching band, barefoot, dressed in farmers’ clothing, playing music and walking on 3,000 pounds of clay dispersed on a white canvas. This artistic event called “Phones, Tones and Bones” originated about one year ago when Shaun O’Dell, assistant professor and program coordinator of the pictorial art department, asked Futurefarmers to help create the project. Futurefarmers is an art collective founded in 1995 by designer Amy Franceschini in San Francisco. Futurefarmers includes artists, designers, architects, anthropologists, writers and farmers who collaborate to create work “relevant to the time and place surrounding us,” according to its website. “I’ve known Amy since such a long time, so I told her ‘you should come and do a project
[at SJSU],’ ” O’Dell said. He then introduced Franceschini to Alena Sauzade, gallery director and collections manager at SJSU’s Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery. “Their idea was ‘We would love to see the marching band stamp on clay,’ ” Sauzade said. “That was a pretty open ended situation.” Organizers said the event was the beginning of a much bigger art project. All the artistic components from the performance will be used for an exhibition at the gallery on March 1. “A lot of this is material being produced that would go into the gallery,” O’Dell said. “The sound will be in the gallery, the video [of the performance] will be in the gallery, the print too.” Ad am Sh ive rd e cke r, SJSU associate professor of spatial art said his ceramics students will collect the clay shaped by the band’s footprints, and transform it into hollow vessels. An independent sound artist, Chris Cooper, will add an electronic mechanism inside
EVAN REINHARDT | SPARTAN DAILY
The SJSU marching band stomps on clay from the San Joaquin Valley and another made from volcanic ash similar to lunar soil.
EVAN REINHARDT | SPARTAN DAILY
The SJSU marching band stomps across clay patterns during the Wednesday Futurefarmers art event.
the vessel and tap the inside to produce sounds. “So when you walk into the exhibition, I think there’s going to be different sounds happening from the different vessels that we’re making, ” Shiverdecker said. “I’m just thinking about how many layers are created [from the event].” The pictorial art department will create a limited edition vinyl recording along with a video produced at the performance. O’Dell said overhead shots of the clay might be used for the vinyl cover. “It’s a huge collaboration,” O’Dell said. Sauzade said it was challenging to organize an event with so many moving parts and university resources. She said she ensured the art department’s involvement in the project
and managed futurefarmers’ expectations in regards to what facilities SJSU would be able to offer. “And now, this is it,” O’Dell said, motioning to the ongoing event in front of him. The university marching band played their instruments and walked on clay carefully at first, laughing quietly about the unexpected situation. As the event progressed, the band started smashing and wedging the clay on the ground without hesitation. Two kinds of clay were spread out on the white canvas: one from the San Joaquin Valley, and the other was volcanic ash similar to soil from the moon. The first represents the Central Valley’s agricultural history and the “current reality”
of the California drought which affects 37.2 million people in the state, and the second form of clay represents the “possibility of life beyond earth,” according to the presentation of the project. “The idea is thinking about land use, our impact on the land, and so the clay is kind of representative of that,” Shiverdecker said. “Wedging the clay kind of records our impact on Earth.” Craig McKenzie, SJSU assistant director of bands and director of athletic bands, instructed the musicians through a microphone. “We’re gonna keep the tempo, even if it’s free improv,” McKenzie said to the marching band. “Some of the clay feels lonely here!” he added, pointing to PERFORMANCE | Page 4
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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
TUESDAY, FEB. 15, 2022
PERFORMANCE Continued from page 3 empty space on the canvas. The music played at the event was composed by McKenzie, who based his work on data points from the clay. Each of the notes the band played corresponded to a measurement taken from the clay on which they marched. “We play at basketball games, at football games usually, but we’re musicians and artists also,” McKenzie said. Lillian Escobar, music education freshmen, is a marching band member who played at the event. “Most people can find it a little bit weird, but I think it’s really cool and fascinating,” Escobar said after the event. “It’s nice to get so many people to come together to do one thing, it creates a sense of fellowship. ” At the end of the performance, the clay spread on the ground became flat as a result of the stomping, creating circles of different shades formed by the marching band’s footprints. The event was an artistic event and an in-site production process for the larger creative project. In line with Franceschini’s artistic approach, a full understanding of the event was not required to appreciate it. O’Dell said he didn’t know the whole meaning of the event, but it didn’t stop him from being fully involved in the project. “I think, for us, it’s always exciting as artists to kind of have a space of surprise, because if we know what we’re doing, we just become producers,” Franceschini said at the end of the event. Before creating a product,
EVAN REINHARDT | SPARTAN DAILY
Amy Franceschini, founder of Futurefarmers, takes a video of the marching band as they stomp on the clay during the Wednesday event.
the producer has to plan every detail of it. Before an artistic performance, space is given to the unknown, and to human interpretation and interaction with the environment. Rather
than churning out a product, planned and methodical, Franceschini was excited to give students a space to improvise. SJSU Interim President Steve Perez who also attended
the event said the students, faculty and staff ’s work was “unbelievably creative.” “We’re the university at the center of the innovation capital of the world, and this is it,
right here, innovating and making art just in front of us,” he said. Follow the Spartan Daily on Twitter @SpartanDaily
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SCIENCE & TECH
TUESDAY, FEB. 15, 2022
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ILLUSTRATION BY DAISHA SHERMAN
Experts emphasize sports science Winter Olympic athletes perform stunning feats using the laws of physics By Joaquin De La Torre STAFF WRITER
The Winter Olympics allows athletes to demonstrate their skills but many forget the role of science in athletic performance. Brian Holmes, an emeritus San Jose State physics and astronomy professor, said sports involve many different disciplines of science including physics, kinesiology, psychology and nutrition. “Physics is one way of understanding the [movements] you do with your body and there are some athletes who are totally aware of that,” he said in a phone call. “And there are trainers who will measure forces and will offer people advice based on their knowledge of physics.” Gunnar Cederberg, assistant Olympic sports performance coach and applied sports scientist at Stanford University, works with athletes and ensures they receive proper training to enhance their athletic skills. “Our main goal is we try to take whatever specific scientific methods [are] being implemented across any [sport] and we try to implement those methods into our training aspects to then help our athletes succeed,” Cederberg said.
Cederberg, who works primarily with Stanford’s Olympic baseball and water polo teams, conducts force plate jump testing to assess leg strength and jump height. A force plate is a small platform that measures variations in downward force between different points on its surface for stance stability and posture as someone stands, jumps or walks on the platform, according to Medical Dictionary. One assessment test for United States figure skaters is Standardized Testing of Athleticism to Recognize Skaters (S.T.A.R.S.). The method tests young skaters on three categories: balance and coordination, strength and power, and flexibility. Holmes said ice skaters must generate forward momentum using the force created from the push-off of their skate. “If ice skaters are at rest, they need to get the ice to make a force on them, so they make a force on the ice and the ice makes an equal and opposite force on them,” Holmes said. This describes Newton’s third law of motion: when one object exerts a force on another object, the other object returns an equal and opposite force, according to NASA’s Glenn Research Center webpage.
The dominant effect that contributes to [bobsledders] speed is the gravitational acceleration . . . which is why they can go on these runs that are a minute and a half, (at) 90 mph. Peter Beyersdorf
SJSU physics and astronomy professor
One way trainers do this is through data collection and implementation through assessment tests or other information collected from athletes during training, he said.
Peter Beyersdorf, SJSU physics and astronomy professor, said once a skater generates enough speed, they can transfer linear speed into vertical speed, which allows them to perform tricks.
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The Spartan Daily prides itself on being the San Jose State community’s top news source. New issues are published every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday throughout the academic year and online content updated daily.
EXECUTIVE EDITOR MADILYNNE MEDINA
The Spartan Daily is written and published by San Jose State students as an expression of their First Amendment rights.
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“They do that by swinging their arms forces are at play. and their legs just before they jump and “The dominant effect that contributes that causes them to spin,” Beyersdorf to [bobsledders] speed is the gravitational said in a Zoom call. “Then as they acceleration . . . which is why they can
Our main goal is we try to take whatever specific scientific methods [are] being implemented across any [sport] and we try to implement those methods into our training aspects to then help our athletes succeed. Gunnar Cederberg Stanford University assistant Olympic sports performance coach bring their arms and legs in close to their axis of rotation, the conservation of angular momentum causes their positive rotational velocity to increase. And that’s really the key to being able to do multiple spins while they’re in the air.” He said friction, or the lack of, plays a major role in ice skating and the sport of curling. “The blades [on ice skates] being very thin causes them to have a large pressure from the force to the weight of the person pushing down on them and that pressure is actually responsible for melting the ice,” Beyersdorf said. He said curling, which includes a curling stone – a large circular piece of granite – and using brooms to melt ice to change the stone’s trajectory, creates less friction between the ice and the stone. Cederberg said bobsledding is a push sport, in which athletes must focus a majority of their training on exercising both legs. “Bobsledding is all about how heavy you can be, how fast you can be and how explosive you can be in terms of force production when pushing off the ground,” Cederberg said. Beyersdorf said once the bobsledders are off the ground, gravity and velocity
go on these runs that are a minute and a half, (at) 90 mph,” Beyersdorf said. “What separates them at the end is a hundredth of a second because of the very minute differences in skill of the driver.” He said viewers should appreciate the “slim margins” of what’s physically possible and what the athletes are doing and understand the scientific limits and where those limits are placed. “There’s a limit to how well something can be performed based on physics . . . and athletes are trying to come as close as possible to that limit,” Beyersdorf said.
Science & Tech appears every Tuesday. Follow the Spartan Daily on Twitter @SpartanDaily
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