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Monday, April 3, 2000 -
Palomar College -
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Volume 53, Number 17
The Pavilion Cafe'
Comets baseball wins!
Trash on TV
Campus coffee shop offers mixture of food, art and performance.
Pitcher Nate Meza leads Palomar to victory over Mesa College, 9-8.
New shows aimed at college students insult our intelligence.
Entertainment, page 6
Focus, page 8
Sports, page 10
Palomar considers health benefits for domestic partners
Students volunteer to build home
Laura Mitchell Staff Writer
Palomar College's governing board on Tuesday looked at a proposed health care benefits policy for domestic partners of eligible employees. Approval of the policy may be controversial considering the overwhelming support for Proposition 22 in the recent primary election on March 7. Prop 22 added a provision to the Family Code provid·ing that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Although Paiomar's policy does not attempt to define marriage, the policy defines "domestic partner" as either two persons of the opposite sex or members of the same
Sean J. O'Connor Opinion Editor
It is on a small lot. It is on an ordinary street. It is also going to be somebody's first home. The street is Gamma Street, located on the south side of San Diego, a little distance from · the 28th Street exit off Interstate 5, a stone's throw away from the Navy Base. It is right next to National City. Six students from Palomar College's architectural and drafting program plus two staff members from counseling made their way to this address Friday, March 24. They were volunteers for Habitat for Humanity. The volunteers were building a new house on Gamma Street - foundation, roof, plumbing, and electricity. On March 24, the students were busy putting up drywall in different parts of the house. Some of the volunteers had been here before. For others, it was a first time experience. The purpose of Habitat is to help needy families own their home and to help them build better lives for themselves. Sometimes, Habitat volunteers rehab an existing structure from top to bottom. At other times, as is the . case on Gamma Street, they build a house "from the ground up." The entire construction of the house comes mostly from people who volunteer their time, work, money or materials. Former president, Jimmy Carter has been seen with a circular saw or a hammer in his hand on television. Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, are the best known volunteers for Habitat. These two have helped make Habitat a household word throughout the United States and the world. The six Palomar College students looked like pros but for the most part, this was their first try at building a house. Jan Kuzmich and Patricia Roberts, both from the.Palomar College counseling/articula- tion department, didn't come to the Habitat site as volunteers but to observe their students. "We are interested in seeing what the students are involved in," Kuzmich said. But it didn't take long for them to be put to work on the house.
Tom Chambers Editor in Chief
With enrollment down and a possible loss of up to $1 million in revenues and $2.3 million in growth funds, Palomar College is looking to compensate the budget shortfalls by leaving fulltime positions empty, said Jerry Patton, vice president of administrative services. Salaries and benefits make up 86 percent of the college's $61 million budget. As full-time positions become vacant, the college is leaving the spots empty or filling them with part-time ·employees to save money. The state requires community colleges to increase the number of full-time faculty positions at the same rate of student population. When the student population decreases, the required number of full-time faculty goes down as well. Patton said Palomar is also offering a supplekeota! early retirement program to encourage more staff members to retire early.
see Benefits, page 3
Seven students lobby ·in Washington, D.C. Kevan K. Wynn Staff Writer
Dustin J. Schwindt I The Telescope
Palomar student Dominic Chemello cuts a board down to size in National City on March 24. Chemello and five other Palomar st~:~dents spent the day volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Joe Carton, Habitat's on-the-scene carpenter, overheard Kuzmich and Roberts. That was all it took. A few moments later, Kuzmich and Roberts had a hammer .in their hands and were pounding nails. Tbey·started working in the closet. 1\vo hours later, after
they had finished putting drywall in the closet, Roberts said, "I only drove in one bad nail at the bottom." She thought the closet was a great training area because some of the mis-
see House, page 7
New vacancies used to save College trying to tompensate for enrollment drop
sex. The policy also covers legal dependents such as children of the employee's domestic partner. "What we have here, as a result of Prop 22, is we cannot call domestic partnerships marriage. So this is really a solution to Prop 22, an alternate way to be fair to people," said Michael Norton, Palomar College's public information officer. On October 2, 1999, Governor Gray Davis signed Assembly Bill 26, which extends domestic partner coverage to state employees for health care benefits. Domestic partnerships will be recognized by Palomar's governing board policy by meeting a number of criteria including filing a Declaration of
1/~nent
CRISIS "We're trying not to fill all the back-up positions," said Patton, whose office is dealing with the shortfalls. "We're hoping that will offset the reduction (in revenues)." Patton used a similar strategy to cut $1.5 million from Palomar's budget during fiscal year 1998-99. Palomar's head count is down 1.2 percent from last semester, and the number of units being taken may have dropped by 7 percent from last spring. State funding for community colleges is based on the number of Full Time Equivalent Students (FTES) enrolled. The state adds all the units taken at Palomar and divides that number by 12 the number of units considered a full-time load. That becomes the number of FTES. According to Joe Madrigal, vice president of student services and chair of the Emollment Management Task Force, Palomar has about 15,000 FTES. If the number of units being taken at Palomar has dropped 7 percent, the number of FTES has dropped by 1,050. Palomar receives $2,300 per FTES, Patton said. The state average is $3,400 per FTES. The enrollment drop could cost Palomar between
$750,000 to $1 million in revenues, Patton said. In addition to that, the college will also lose $2.3 million in growth funds included in the state budget because it did not grow. "For some reason there are plateaus," Patton said at a recent meeting of the Enrollment Management Task Force. "There are times when you have to reorganize- that's where we are. We need to re-allocate and re-align because we do not have a new revenue stteam right now." Patton said the chancellor has asked for an additional $300 million for community colleges, and that some of the state's budget surplus could go to community colleges as well. While Palomar officials did not expect enrollment to go down, they suspect the PeopleSoft software conversion and the ongoing infrastructure project are to blame for the drop. They also suspect the good economy is playing a factor as well, as more students take fewer units and work more. "We've gone through a tough two years with all the (construction and software) cnange::s," Patton said. "But everyone sees it coming to an end." Final enrollment numbers will be tabulated later in the semester to allow short-term and late-start classes to be figured in.
Coming April 10: Enrollment at other colleges in the area - is it up or down?
Seven members of the Palomar College Associated Student Government recently attended an advocacy conference m Washington, D.C. The 2000 National Advocacy Conference, sponsored by the American Student Association of Community Colleges (ASACC), took place this year March 18 - 21 at the Capitol Hill Holiday Inn in Washington, D.C. The conference is an annual event that rallies community college students from around the nation behind issues selected by ASACC. Students attended workshops and listened to speakers the fust three days of the conference. Activities culminated the fourth day with students lobbying their Congressional leaders about issues such as the Pell Grant, child care and work study. ASG Senator Brendan Fentiman, who did not attend the conference,
was concerned by the lack of effort by ASG officers to ask Palomar students what issues really mattered to them. "I think that the ASG should be at every one of the clubs," he said. "They should be out here in the front with a booth saying, 'What is important to you? What are some of the issues you have?' Every club has some kind of political agenda that they would like to see taken forward, and I think that message should be carried by the ASG since they are the student reps." Prior to the trip, ASG officers did not appear to have selected issues outside of those provided by ASACC. "I know that we're supposed to lobby for different things," said Alline Chan, ASG Treasurer, "but I'm not exactly sure what the agenda for Palomar is right at this moment." ASG President Diane Vasquez
see Trip, page 7
Comfort, health sought in campus work stations Jo Appleton Staff Writer
In an effort to increase comfort and thus productivity at work, Palomar's health and safety department is installing work stations that are ergonomically correct into its offices. Ergonomics is the science of fitting the job to the worker. According to the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), when there's a mismatch between the physical requirements of the job and the physical capacity of the worker, work-related musculoskeletal disorders like carpal tunnel, can result. Sixty percent of all reported work place illnesses are ergonomically related . The Bureau of National Affairs reported 302,000 cases of cumulated trauma disorders in 1993, according to a research summary done by Dr. Javid Noorollah, D.C. co-founder of Injury Prevention Specialist, an ergonomic consulting company in Sorrento Valley. "Blue Cross of California
reported that an average carpal tunnel surgery costs a company about $29,000. If attorneys' fees and settlement costs are included, this figure climbs to $50,000 per case," Noorollah said. When the health and safety department at Palomar was established in 1991, ergonomics was the first thing addressed, said Kelley Hudson-Maclsaac, manager of facilities planning/environmental health and safety at Palomar. "The problem was we had all these existing desks, then computers were plopped onto them without any modifications," Macisaac said. After evaluating the work space she and co-worker Don Thompson, who heads the departments maintenance and hazardous materials side, began to look for an effective system. They found a fully articulating keyboard arm and tray with slide out mouse and a shelf that attaches to the bottom of a desk and adjusts up and down to custom fit the needs of the worker. The arm can slide back under the desk for when
see Offices, page 3