Men’s Basketball
JIMI HENDRIX New album from deceased guitar king released
After up-and-down season, SJSU prepares for WAC Tournament
SEE PAGE 5
SEE PAGE 4
Serving San José State University since 1934 Wednesday, March 10, 2010
www.TheSpartanDaily.com
Volume 134, Issue 22
Health center offers services for students Amaris Dominguez, Melissa Sabile Staff Writers
The Student Health Center offers a wide variety of services to students, most of which are available for no additional charge. But there can be extra fees for specialty services, said Paula Hernandez, senior operations officer for the health center. Many of the charges are paid for by the mandatory health fee, Hernandez said, but students pay on their own for prescriptions and labs. “We get athletes in here,” she said. “They get hurt while playing. We get students that you see across campus on their skateboards and they flip and they hurt. If they’ve been in auto accidents, we get them in here for that too.” The health center’s regular services include a pharmacy, a lab, physical therapy, X-rays, physicals and immunizations. Additional specialty care services are dermatology, sports medicine, podiatry, psychiatry and travel care, according to the Health Center Web site. “About 8,500 students make about 25,000 combined Student Health Center visits each year,” said Roger Elrod, director of the Student Health Center. “Each and every regularly enrolled SJSU student can come to the Student
Health Center for as many basic medical appointments as they’d like at no cost.” Elrod said a general office visit off campus can have a $20 co-pay or a $200 charge, and that seeing a health center provider for free is a significant benefit of being an SJSU student. “This is especially true in difficult financial times, when even more students are making difficult choices between health visits and other basic needs,” Elrod said. “Right on the campus with a relatively short wait, students can be seen for aches, pains, injuries and illnesses at no cost by a doctor or nurse practitioner.” Elrod emphasizes that 50 to 60 percent of the SJSU student body is served in one way or another by health center staff and programming, even though many of those students haven’t had a medical visit with one of the clinicians. The health center cares for students who need stitches or bones put in casts and also sees students who don’t have a specific concern other than just not feeling quite OK, he said. Elrod also said the health center sees lots of students regarding reproductive health concerns, which include sexually transmitted infections, annual exams, information regarding contra-
See HEALTH, Page 3
Jeff Lee, a designer and tester at Halo Guitars, works on a guitar in his shop in Cupertino. Salman Haqqi / Spartan Daily
Student helps string together guitar company Salman Haqqi Staff Writer
At the heart of what drove Jeff Lee into the guitar making was a passion for making music, he said. Established in 2004, Halo Guitars was his and his mother’s idea, said Lee, a senior finance major. Having already been involved in manufacturing professional studio microphones, Lee, a guitar player himself,
Alum to address graduates Donovan Farnham Staff Writer
An SJSU alumnus has been chosen to give the commencement address at the Spring 2010 graduation. This announcement came as a surprising honor to Jon Iwata, and he said that he never would have imagined that he would be giving the commencement address 26 years later. “He (SJSU President Jon Whitmore) invited me to give the commencement address, and I couldn’t have been more surprised or happy about it,” Iwata said. “It’s an honor that very few people have the privi-
Weather
Jon Iwata
lege of accepting and I was very happy to do so.” Iwata is the vice president of marketing and communications for IBM, and he said he
was part of the 1984 graduating class. He said he has started thinking about the speech that he’ll be giving at the commencement ceremony ever since he was informed by Whitmore that he’ll be speaking, but Iwata admits not remembering what was said or who exactly gave the address at his graduation. Iwata said not remembering his commencement address along with other speeches has influenced what he plans to say on May 29. “You think about what would be helpful if you were
See IWATA, Page 3
THESPARTANDAILY.COM Writer laments lack of respect for diverse accents.
TH
F
Hi: 63° Lo: 45°
Hi: 63° Lo: 45°
Read about what a group of Campus Village Building B residents are cooking.
the market to find the direction he wanted to take his designs. “I tried to really think about the designs and the physics behind the instrument,” Lee said. “I wanted to take an independent approach from what the larger manufacturers were doing.” Lee said that, because his musical leanings were on the heavy metal side of the musical spectrum, the designs he came up with were initially metal oriented.
“Our designs are really radical,” Lee said. “There are a lot of Flying V shape, and just pointy objects. But over the years, we’ve started to create our own versions of more traditional shapes.” What was most important to Lee when building the guitars was playability, he said. “A lot of the heavy metal guys want to play drop tunings, basically low-pitched
See GUITARS, Page 2
San Jose to offer taste of Italy Kristen Pearson Staff Writer
Placing Little Italy between the HP Pavilion and San Pedro Square in downtown San Jose may preserve the culture of Italians in San Jose, said Joshua DeVincenzi Melander, the chairman of Little Italy. When thinking of Italians, Jose Calderon, a junior radio, television and film major, said he envisions pizza, spaghetti, “The Godfather” and the troubles Italian immigrants had when they came to America. The stereotypes of Italians can be good or bad, said Melander, an SJSU alumnus.
“The younger people don’t get involved as much with Italian activities as the older Italians,” Melander said. “They think of the Italian mafia movies when they think of Italian culture.” Building Little Italy is an ongoing process, Melander said. “The area we are building Little Italy goes back to 1880 through the 1900’s,” Melander said. “Near the Guadalupe River is where immigrants from Italy originally settled in San Jose.” Christina Cornell, a graduate student in nutrition, said she does not live here and she’s
not Italian, but said she thinks it would be awesome to see a new culture in San Jose. “I only go to school here, but it’d be cool to see what Italy has to offer,” Cornell said. “There are places like Japantown, Chinatown and Little Mexico, but it’d be nice to see some differences.” Melander said there will be some new places to eat in Little Italy. “There will be great Italian restaurants, some delis and a few bakeries,” Melander said. “I think it’ll be good to have the delis and bakeries, especially
See ITALY, Page 3
OPPOSING VIEWS
Follow us at @spartandaily for headlines straight to your phone.
Stefan Armijo / Spartan Daily
Hi: 57° Lo: 41°
said he broached the idea of creating an electric guitar tailored to his own personal preferences. “As a guitar player, I was always interested in designing cool shapes, initially,” Lee said. “I was interested in shapes that weren’t really available in the market.” Before diving into the process of designing guitars, Lee said he looked into the most popular and most successful guitars that were available in
Transgender Week: a documentary about the impact of Gender Identity Disorder.
SPARTAN DAILY BLOGS What’s your favorite student discount in San Jose? Leave your feedback at spartandailynews.wordpress.com
FACEBOOK Become a fan and get the latest headlines straight to you facebook.com/ spartandaily
SEE PAGE 7