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NAMED NATIONAL FOUR-YEAR DAILY NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR FOR 2020-21 IN THE COLLEGE MEDIA ASSOCIATION’S PINNACLE AWARDS
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Volume 158 No. 33 SERVING SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
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Tower Foundation CEO resigns By Madilynne Medina & Christina Casillas EXECUTIVE EDITOR & MANAGING EDITOR
Theresa Davis, San an Jose State vice president for university advancement ment and Tower Foundation CEO, will leave her er university positions on May 31, SJSU Interim President Steve Perez stated in a Tuesday campuswide ide email. University advancement engages ancement alumni, raises public awareness and blic works with government officials and ment legislators to “achieve ve the university’s interests,” accordingg to the SJSU University Advancement ent webpage. Kenneth Mashinchi, chi, SJSU senior director of strategicc communications and media relations said The Tower Foundation is SJSU’s dation auxiliary philanthropyy organization that aids the Advancement Division with donation banking, development, investment and administration. istration. Davis assumed herr positions at SJSU on July 1, 2020, just a few months into nto the coronavirus pandemic.. “Theresa was persistent ersistent in navigating that ever-changing landscape dscape and has made major strides setting us up for success in the future,” Perez said. Under Davis’s s’s leadership, the university ity raised more than $52 million in philanthropic opic
dollars to-date during her almost two years at SJSU, he said. Davis also raised more philanthropic dollars during her first year than in the two years before she joined the university, Perez said. Before her appointment at SJSU, Davis had more than 25 years of experience in management m and fundraising work, accord according to a May 4, 2020 SJSU News article article. Davis was responsible ffor alumni relations and other p parent and family programs at the California Institute of Technology from Technolo June 2016 to July 2020, aaccording to the same article. Perez said her departu departure will add to her “impressive” lis list of senior leadership positions, which she held at institutions inc including but not limited to SJSU, California State University Fullerton and University of Unive California, Riverside. “Theresa shows “Theres the same drive now as she re re-joins her alma mater, the m University of Southern o California, this time as their Ass Associate Vice President o of Central Advancement, Advancemen ” he said. Perez said Davis was “persistent in navigating” the task of cultivating relationships on Zoom while the university was univ fully remote. remote PHOTO COURTESY OF SJSU
IN BRIEF Theresa Davis, SJSU vice president for university advancement and Tower Foundation CEO, will leave her university positions on May 31. Her last day on campus will be May 24. Members of the university advancement are responsible for engaging alumni and SJSU community members through fundraising and foundation partnerships. The Tower Foundation is SJSU’s auxiliary philanthropy organization that aids the university advancement division with fundraising. Under Davis’ leadership the university launched a “quiet phase” of SJSU’s next comprehensive campaign, raising more than $52 million to-date. “Although we’re proud their accomplishments attracted the interest of another university, we’re faced with the unenviable task of finding another unique talent to fill an important role,” he said. Davis’ last day on campus will be May 24.
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SPARTAN SUPERWAY
PHOTOS BY EVAN REINHARDT | SPARTAN DAILY
Left: Robert Skinner, SJSU mechanical engineering Spring 2020 alumnus, explains the function of the Spartan Superway team’s recently completed small scale track. Above: the model demonstrates collision avoidance.
Engineering research team shows newest model By Bryanna Bartlett PRODUCTION EDITOR
San Jose State’s Spartan Superway team, a group of researchers, alumni and students, showcased the newest small scale model of its fully automated solar powered transit network on the 7th Street Plaza Tuesday. The long term project is an above-ground transportation network connecting the main
campus to South Campus, which is about a mile from SJSU. The team has created several small to half scale models and one 10 meter track since its inception in 2012. The initiative is a solar powered network of elevated guideways that transports people in pods, or “bogeys,” that are programmed to destinations with sensors that dictate speed and distance between other pods. Robert Skinner, member of the
Spartan Superway core team, said the small scale model that the team showed on campus Tuesday demonstrates the network’s collision avoidance. The core team includes four members who are Spring 2020 alumni and work part time at the Spartan Superway site on St. James and Terrain streets, about
TRANSIT | Page 2
There’s no need to move to a larger scale until we prove the software is safe and reliable. Robert Skinner mechanical engineering alumnus
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NEWS
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2022
Community discusses proposed Google village By Hailey Fargo STAFF WRITER
Several San Jose community members and leaders expressed differing opinions about a proposed San Jose Google village campus, a multi-billion dollar development which is slated to be located by Diridon train station, a mile from San Jose State’s campus. San Jose city leaders and Google have been collaborating to make the Downtown West campus which could begin its construction in 2023, according to the city of San Jose website. The mixed-use neighborhood will accommodate up to 7.3 million square feet of offices, 4,000 residential units, 500,000 square feet for retail space, 300 hotel rooms, 15 acres of open space, according to a March 1 Mercury News article. The village will form a new district in an area currently filled with older buildings, homes, junkyards, former store sites, warehouses and empty lots, according to the plan laid out by the city of San Jose in collaboration with Google. Marshall Woodmansee, SJSU global studies junior who ran for the position of San Jose District 6 councilmember in 2020 at 19-yearsold, said he is concerned for community members who reside nearby the proposed campus. Woodmansee said he has already seen the value of his parent’s home go up an estimated 25% since Google first announced their plans for Downtown West. “You can imagine there is some San Jose State student out there whose home value has now gone up, you know, $300,000 in the past three years which is not typically how homes’ prices went up, so further inequality there,” Woodmansee said in a Zoom interview. According to a March 1 Mercury news article, Google’s village has the potential to reach a value of $19 billion, factoring in costs of development, construction, infrastructure and additional costs. “On Jan. 14, Google paid $2.8 million — 2.7 times what the seller had paid just over a year earlier, a 167% jump in the value of the property in about 13 months,” according to a January 15, 2020 Mercury News article. Woodmansee said he believes those who attend SJSU may also experience a decrease of resources as the village furthers its construction. “Any San Jose State student who lives outside of a three mile radius, they may suffer from depletion
INFOGRAPHIC BY LINDSAY VILLAMOR; SOURCES: SAN JOSE INSIDE AND MERCURY NEWS ARTICLES, CITY OF SAN JOSE WEBSITE
of resources because downtown is becoming hyper focused on [the] infrastructure,” he said. Some people, including Woodmansee said although the village will provide additional city housing, there are also concerns regarding the existing amount of
I see a huge opportunity for internships, cross-collaboration, research opportunities, it’s definitely good. Vicente Flores Prado Electrical engineering senior
homeless individuals in San Jose. “We need to pause the Google development until we have better solutions for how to affordably house the people currently living here,” Woodmansee said. There are over 7,000 residents in San Jose that are currently unhoused, according to Santa Clara
County’s “Point-in-time” count which has volunteers count homeless residents. Statistics have not been updated since 2019, according to a Feb. 19, 2021 Spotlight article. He said building the Google village may negatively affect those in “underserved San Jose areas.” “I could just imagine that the surrounding neighborhoods, not mine, would maybe become even further underserved because of the diversion of resources and effort toward the downtown core and we may forget places that are already suffering from disrepair,” Woodmansee said. San Jose is the second-most expensive place in the U.S. to rent a home, according to a March 24, KRON 4 article. Electrical engineering senior Vicente Flores Prado said he envisions the Google village to be beneficial for “downtown life” and students in San Jose. “I see a huge opportunity for internships, cross-collaboration, research opportunities, it’s definitely good,” Flores Prado said. “Especially for STEM students like myself, it’s like a gold mine.” According to a Feb. 28 Mercury News article, Google agreed to give the city of San Jose
up to $200 million in community benefits throughout its project to receive approval for the 80-acre mega-campus. The $200 million benefits package, called the Community Stabilization and Opportunity Pathways Fund, is to be spent on early childhood education, small business entrepreneurship, and displacement management, according to an April 6 news release from the Office of Mayor Sam Liccardo. Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association, said the village will also provide office spaces, which he believes will benefit the technology industries’ existing professionals. “Google’s village is poised to shift how people think of office buildings and how such employment hubs are woven into the fabric of urban centers,” according to the same Feb. 28 Mercury News article. Woodmansee also said he believes the proposed village will provide increased professional opportunities for students. “I think it’ll bring more recognition to the academic side of our community because it will, you know, turn what is a big spotlight on [SJSU]” he said. “This is going to be like the integration of
urban life and tech that I think is going to really spark a lot of discussions about ‘What does it mean to be highly educated?” The village is expected to bring 25,000 jobs to San Jose which could in turn increase the flow of traffic through downtown and the Bay Area, according to a Thursday ABC7 News article. “It’s a great opportunity for students maybe to network, collaborate and it’s literally a company right here [in our backyard],” Flores Prado said.
Bojana Cvijic this article.
TRANSIT Continued from page 1
EVAN REINHARDT | SPARTAN DAILY
Gregory White, engineering project manager for the Spartan Superway core team, talks with a San Jose State student about the team’s long-term automated solar powered transit network project, which began in 2012.
seven blocks west of SJSU. Skinner, who has a mechanical engineering bachelor’s degree, said the core team and some students, who are contributors for a year as part of their engineering senior projects, began the small scale model in January and will continue developing it to perfect the software and programming of the bogeys. “There’s no need to move to a larger scale until we prove the software is safe and reliable,” he said, adding the track is already very similar to that of the final, large scale project. At the Spartan Superway table, two bogeys moved along the small scale guideway in both directions and past each other. The team also had a spin wheel for university community members to participate and win either a $5 gift card or a 3D-printed part, as the team has multiple printers at its site.
contributed to
Follow Hailey on Twitter @haileyfargo
Ron Swenson, Spartan Superway co-creator and executive director of the Santa Cruz-based International Institute of Sustainable Transportation, said the next process for the small size model is “thorough testing.” Swenson said the team’s next showcase is May 5, which is an engineering project event in the Student Union Ballroom, and he hopes to gain support and possibly recruit more engineers for the core team. Skinner said the team plans to do more tabling events to engage with the community and recruit students from other disciplines including urban planning and business. “We need support,” Skinner said. “This is developed for the community and if the community doesn’t know what [Spartan Superway] is then they’re not going to be excited about it.”
Follow Bryanna on Twitter @brybartlett
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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2022
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‘Rickshaw’ drives Desi culture Bay Area filmmakers shine a light on South Asian stories in film
By Jennifer Schildge STAFF WRITER
The Rickshaw Film Foundation, founded in 2021 by Hari Ganesh and Neil Thekdi, aims to support South Asian filmmakers and their artistic endeavors. President Ganesh and vice president Thekdi founded Rickshaw because they were both “disappointed” there wasn’t enough financial support and original stories for South Asian filmmakers. Ganesh is an independent filmmaker from San Jose who met Thekdi through a noteworthy chance of fate.
It’s really about making sure that South Asian personnel who want to tell the stories from a South Asian perspective do not have to feel alone on their journey. Hari Ganesh Rickshaw Film Foundation president
Thekdi was brought on as a producer for a short film and was trying to cast a South Asian kid who would be good for a part in the movie. He posted on Nextdoor, an app for neighbors to communicate with one another, according to its website. “I was like, ‘Yo, does anyone know, like, a young cool South Asian kid that would be good for this part?’ And his mom actually saw that post and she put me in touch with Hari,” Thekdi said. Ganesh turned out to be too old for the role but the two found they shared a lot of the same filmmaking interests. In the summer of 2020, the pair said they had a conversation about the need for more support and funding for South Asian stories so they “can create the impact on the world that we hope that they can have.” That’s when the idea of the Rickshaw Film Foundation came to fruition, Ganesh said. A rickshaw is a vehicle used across South Asia that is classless, meaning that it is used by almost everyone regardless of their economic status, Thekdi said. “We found that to be a nice metaphor to create accessibility and more opportunities for South Asian stories to be told while bringing a unique cultural element,” he said. The aim of the Rickshaw Foundation was originally to provide grant programs but in order to fundraise for larger endowments, they needed to show the foundation’s value, Ganesh said. While talking with advisors, the pair pivoted to how the foundation could provide value to the community of filmmakers today with resources like funding and space available to them. Two program ideas were sought out to bring value to the foundation: the Writer’s Room and the Director’s Circle. The Writer’s Room was created to give writers a space to develop their work in a
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PHOTO COURTESY OF RICKSHAW FILM FOUNDATION
Hari Ganesh (right) Rickshaw Film Foundation president and vice president Neil Thekdito (left) support South Asian voices in media.
place surrounded by people that understand what they’re trying to communicate and answer questions about culture, people and experience. “It’s really about making sure that South Asian personnel who want to tell the stories from a South Asian perspective do not have to feel alone on their journey,” Ganesh said. The second part to show value in Rickshaw was the Director’s Circle which is a weekly roundtable program where applicants can learn from each other. Applicants of the Director’s Circle are not required to have any formal directing experience but are expected to have a deep passion for storytelling. Cinematographer and SJSU alumnus, Raghav Ravi, is a member of the Rickshaw Foundation and participated in the first Writer’s Room. He said it was his first time getting back into screenwriting in about five years. “Every week [Thekdi] and [Ganesh] give us assignments, reading and kind of directions on how we could think about shaping our screenplays.” Ravi said. “Then we would have to come each week with pitches or outlines and an updated draft of the script.” Ravi said he got a 20-page short film script out of the Writer’s Room, which he
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hopes to produce one day. “Oftentimes our culture was simplified and The organization was “very much needed” whitewashed to make it more palatable to the and very welcoming, Ravi said. general audience, I suppose,” Ganesh said.
The next step for us is to move past that limitation and look at these characters as characters who happen to be brown, or who happen to be women or different minorities, and that the conflict that they experienced in the conflict of them as flawed characters, not their identity as individuals. Neil Thekdi Vice president of Rickshaw Film Foundation
Ravi said the community’s numbers have “practically doubled.” “Now that we have the Writer’s Room and the Director’s Circle . . . it’s a rapidly growing community,” Ravi said. “I’m on the Discord we have and new people keep getting added about every month or so.” The Rickshaw Foundation hopes to be at a 501c3 pending status within the next month. 501c3 paperwork is a certification from the government claiming that an organization is tax-exempt and donations that come in are tax deductible, according to Investopedia. In current movies and television shows, Ganesh said that audiences rarely see South Asian representation on screen and when they are portrayed on screen, it’s oftentimes not in flattering ways. For South Asians, many on-screen portrayals have focused on specific character stereotypes, including nerds, cab drivers and convenience store managers, according to a Dec. 9, 2021 Nielsen article. Nielsen measures behavior across all channels and platforms to see what audiences like and dislike. It’s a global leader in audience insights, data and analytics according to its website.
The Rickshaw Foundation has also been able to create partnerships with production companies to allow the work that’s been developed in the Writer’s Room to receive visibility by other production companies. “I think we can expect to see some people’s screenplays that they wrote in Rickshaw be produced into shorts,” Ravi said. Both Ganesh and Thekdi said times are changing in little increments because stories are being produced with the main character’s conflict being about their identity. Ganesh said that in the past couple of years he has seen more uplifting stories about minorities. “I think this is kind of the natural progression that inclusive storytelling will take,” Thekdi said. “The next step for us is to move past that limitation and look at these characters as characters who happen to be brown, or who happen to be women or different minorities, and that the conflict that they experienced in the conflict of them as flawed characters, not their identity as individuals.”
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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2022
JENNIFER’S REEL REACTIONS
Apple TV gets weird with ‘Roar’ By Jennifer Schildge STAFF WRITER
Female power, sly and sharp metaphors and sex with a duck are all things an audience can find in Apple TV+’s series “Roar.” “Roar” is a star-studded anthology that follows eight eccentric women living in fables, based on the 2018 novel “Roar” by Cecelia Ahern. The series, created by 2017 series “GLOW’s” directors Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, features eight half-hour-long episodes that tell stories about what it’s like to be a woman in the weirdest way. The titles are so bizarre: “The Woman Who Ate Photographs,” (with lead actress Nicole Kidman) “The Woman Who Was Put On The Shelf,” (Betty Gilpin) and “The Woman Who Was Fed By a Duck,” (Merritt Wever). Take these titles seriously and literally because it’s exactly what happens. The audience sees Kidman shove photographs in her mouth to relive her
By a Duck.” The woman in the episode, Elisa, played by Merritt Wever, is constantly bombarded with questions from her sister about her dating life. One day Elisa is sitting on the park bench and hangs up the phone with her sister because the sister received a call from her children. Elisa tries to feed a duck bread and the duck makes a joke, speaking to her. They start to date, the duck becomes toxic and it’s one hell of a story about self-worth. Creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch were strongly committed to making the image simple, and the metaphors real and mystifying. I love that all of the themes tackled feelings of grief, guilt, beauty and love. It made me, as a woman, not feel alone. Yes, that’s cheesy but I’ve felt really weird and still struggle with the same problems depicted in the show such as being ignored and figuring out what I want in life.
This show is too stylized to be for everyone. An audience is either OK with having a duck orally please a woman or they’re not.
memories. There’s not a moment when you realize the metaphor, which is that “she desires the comfort from the past and misses when things were simple.” It’s clear to the audience that’s exactly what she’s doing. She just ate a photograph, of course that’s what she’s thinking. My favorite episode was by far the weirdest, “The Woman Who Was Fed
But I think some episodes turned out better than others. “The Woman Who Returned Her Husband” and “The Girl Who Loved Horses” for example were a bit boring. The ending to “The Woman Who Disappeared” was underwhelming. The promotion for this series was also disappointing. The cast and the stories are energetic and powerful but
show review Streaming service:
“Roar”
Apple TV+
Rating:
Release Date:
April 15, 2022 Genre: [ Anthology ]
ILLUSTRATION BY HANNAH GREGORIC
Apple TV+ dropped the ball on promoting it for reasons I can’t fathom. I could do promotion for this show better than Apple TV+ could. You have amazing writers whose show got canceled by Netf lix and you’re not promoting that they’re now working with you on their first show after COVID-19-related regulations began to lessen? Not to mention, the cast has Emmy and Oscar-nominated actresses including Betty Gilpin, who is a three-time Emmy nominee for her role as Debbie Eagan on “GLOW.” This show is too stylized to be for everyone. An audience is either OK with having a duck orally please a woman or they’re not. Overall, for the show itself, I’d rate it three and a half stars. It was strangely interesting but I found some of
the episodes to be empty. I thought the cast would carry the show but the themes and the weird vibes overpowered the amazing actresses. I didn’t say, “Look at Alison Brie solve her own murder,” in the episode about a woman who solved her own murder. I was more focused on how most men don’t listen to women when it doesn’t involve their own interests or benefits. If it’s not clear by now, this show is weird which is why I think people should support it because we’re all socially weird freaks that need something to watch and talk about.
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MULTIMEDIA
Video & reporting by Evan Reinhardt MULTIMEDIA EDITOR & ASST. NEWS EDITOR
Follow Evan on Twitter @ReinhardtEvan
Spartan Daily Executive Editor Madilynne Medina, Sports Editor Estevan Lopez and senior staff reporter Don Le review local “munchies” spots suggested by the San Jose State community in an Instagram poll. In order to properly review the food, the three got into the 4/20 “holiday spirit” before consuming food and drinks from Cali Spartan, Cinnaholic and Gong Cha. Though the locations are scattered around the SJSU main campus, they’re within walking distance from campus buildings.