Director Bob Wrenn leads the World Music Ensemble in a 21-song tribute to the music of Django Reinhardt Nov. 23 at the City College auditorium. Randy Briggs

People in attendance jingled their keys and any spare change to accompany a music ensemble as they played “Troubland Bolero;” everyone clapped while they played “HCQ Strut,” and they sat in awe as they played “Anouman” and the auditorium was engulfed in soft melodies as music professor Bob Wrenn wandered through the aisles with his violin.

The sounds of guitars, violins and saxophones filled the City College auditorium Nov. 23 while students and spectators young and old bobbed and clapped along to the upbeat jazz music.

Wrenn directed the performance titled, “An Evening of Django Reinhardt”.

“All of the songs are written by famous jazz artist Django Reinhardt,” Wrenn says. “There are not many famous jazz artists but there is a handful, and he is one of them.”

Reinhardt and his music have been portrayed in several films including The Matrix, Kate and Leopold and The Aviator. Many music legends including B.B. King, Chet Atkins and Jimi Hendrix have been influence by Reinhardt and his music.

A Music for Children class taught by Michelle Schultz made up a majority of the audience, which was approximately 50 people.

“I’m here to see different kinds of music actually being played,” City College student Andrea Griffey says. “It’s good examples of what we can do with the children.”

Audience participation was not hard to get as the World Music Ensemble of 14 strummed away and constantly rotated positions to change the sounds of the songs.

“It’s fun because it doesn’t have to stay in the standard jazz form of AABA that gets kind of formulated,” Wrenn says.

“I liked the harmonies and the background music,” says student Adrienne Hatchett.

The artists received a standing ovation at the end of their performance.

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3. a closer look

Photo Courtesy Francisco Dominguez

The Cultural Awareness Center was packed wall to wall as photos of oppressed Native Americans were beamed life-size on to the projector screen. Students sat back in awe of the heartbreaking struggles being depicted.

Students and faculty alike came to witness the “Indigenous People without Borders” photo presentation Nov. 4 by local activist and photographer Francisco Dominguez.

“I’ve never shown these pictures before,” Dominguez says. “This is history.”

The presentation was a service-learning project for a student in Tammy Cheshire’s Native American studies class. According to Cheshire, her student organized the entire event as a project to inform students of native issues.

Dominguez was a former City College student and president of the Native American Culture Club in 1984-85. He has been capturing the struggles of Native Americans through photographs for 21 years.

“We have taken our culture on the road,” Dominguez says. “We are saying we’ve had it, we’ve had enough of this.”

The students in attendance sat in silence while they were captivated by the fear and pain in the eyes of the subjects being photographed in candid action shots.

As a photo of little girls in a Guatemalan field appeared on the screen, a tragic tone overcame Dominguez as he recalled what he describes as “one of the saddest days of my life.

“They kept asking if they could go home with me to America because they had no parents and no family,” Dominguez says. “I had to say no.”

Dominguez passionately reiterated his message of fighting for Native American rights and causes throughout his presentation.

“We need to bring awareness to the sacred sites,” Dominguez says. “This land is only sacred to the native people and we need to make it known.”

At the end of his presentation, he pointed out his favorite photograph of a young indigenous girl at a Pasadena protest of Columbus Day.

“Her sign reads ‘Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 bringing slavery, hunger, and rape’, and she is right and this picture is so powerful,” Dominguez says.

The question-and-answer session brought light to options and opportunities that Native Americans have.

Emma Snuggs, public information officer for City College’s Indigenous Peoples club, pointed out the action the Obama administration is taking to further the rights of Natives across the country by addressing the issues of healthcare, crime, development, education and environmental problems.

“Anything Obama does for Natives is a step forward from Bush. He should be in jail for war crimes,” Domiguez says.

City College student Demond Richardson concluded the session with his thought-provoking question that inspired everyone in attendance and encouraged the members of the Indigenous People’s club that they are making a difference.

“What can someone like me do to help the Native people?” which was answered by Snuggs with “Join the Indigenous People’s club.”

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Emma Snuggs (pictured here with her son Michael) ran for Homecoming queen this fall. Kristen Stauss

Emma Snuggs is a 25-year-old Native American, single mother and City College student who puts all the stereotypes associated with each of those designations to rest.

Snuggs says she found out that she was pregnant during the summer after her junior year in high school. Though the pregnancy forced her to leave school, she tested out with a diploma.

“I never had what you would consider a normal high school experience,” Snuggs says. “But it’s sink or swim, and I guess I chose to swim.”

Snuggs juggles her 18-unit class load, her Indigenous Peoples Club membership, volunteering at the disability research center, Phi Theta Kappa, Honors Club and being a mother with what she humbly considers good time management.

“I just have a can-do attitude,” says Snuggs. “I have an excellent support system and I have my native brothers and sisters.”

Snuggs has a 7-year-old son, Michael, whom she lovingly calls her “lucky baby,” since he was born at 7:07 p.m. and weighed 7 pounds, although he suffers from severe asthma that hospitalizes him at least twice a year.

“For the past two years we have sat at the table and done our homework together,” Snuggs says. “He does his, and I do mine, it’s kind of fun.”

Snuggs has received straight A’s for the past three semesters and says that everything she does, from school to motherhood are interconnected and she couldn’t do one without the other.

“I couldn’t provide for my son if I didn’t do well in school and I can’t do well in school if I’m not providing for my son,” Snuggs says.

Snuggs also acts as the public relations officer for the Indigenous Peoples Club at City College and says she owes a lot to the club adviser, Tammy Cheshire.

“She’s amazing, she loves to bring people together,” says Indigenous Peoples adviser Tammy Cheshire. “She’s a great student, really motivated and very supportive of her fellow students; I’m really glad that she’s going to Sac City.”

Until this semester, Snuggs could not receive financial aid because of an outstanding student loan and has had to rely on the BOG Fee Waiver, which paid for her classes and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada in California that supplies $476 per month for books and expenses.

“I owe a lot to them,” Snuggs says. “They have helped me so much and I am very grateful.”

“She has gone to school and she has just rocked,” says Sakinah Bismillah, supervisor of the Tempory Assistane of Needy Families which cooperates with the Washoe Tribe of Nevada in California. “ She went from the person saying ‘I don’t know if I can do this’ to the person that calls me crying because she got an ‘A-’ in a class.”

“She’s truly dedicated and motivated to provide a better life for her son,” says Bismillah.”
Despite the struggles that Snuggs has endured she remains upbeat and hopeful about what her future holds. She hopes to transfer to Stanford with a major in law and minor in ethnic studies.

“I’m not fighting an uphill battle,” Snuggs says. “A teen mom can make it and make something of herself.”

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Goodshield Aguilar (left), Tony Longhair (middle) and Joe Perez relax after Aguilar’s performance in the Buffalo Campaign. Kristen Stauss

City College students gathered in front of the Student Center Oct. 8 to sup­port the Buffalo Field Cam­paign.

“This is to bring focus and attention to buffalo that once roamed the free land,” says Tony Longhair, student activist. “We can’t afford to kill buffalo.”

According to the Buffalo Campaign Web site, “Volun­teers from around the world de­fend buffalo on their traditional winter habitat and advocate for their protection.” The site states that daily patrols stand ground with the buffalo, and document every move made against them.

The group has been hold­ing demonstrations at City Col­lege for the past five years.

“The purpose behind the cause needs to keep being reiter­ated,” says City College President of Indigenous Peoples Club Joseph Perez. “The problem isn’t real for people. Ask half the people here and they won’t know anything about the buffalo.”

Longhair says the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Ser­vice, and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks have been systematically exterminating the last pure breed buffalo in Yellowstone National Park. Park services blame the buffalo for the spread of brucellosis, a highly contagious disease that is spread through cross breeding with cattle. A cow and a buffalo create a new breed called a beefalo.

Activist Goodshield Aguilar points out that elk are the only species that can spread brucellosis because buffalo are not af­fected by the disease.

The National Wildlife Federation states on its Web site: “There has never been a documented case of brucellosis trans­mission between free-ranging buffalo and range cattle.”

Aguilar blames the author­ity of the parks, which claim they have the power to man­age the population, for what Aguilar calls “the senseless and uneducated killing of the buffalo.”

This year, park authorities have shot five buffalo and last year an estimated 1,616 were killed, according to the Buffalo Field Campaign Web site.

The new breed of beefalo is also a problem because, ac­cording to Aguilar, it creates an inferior species with flat hooves that compress the land. Breeding for beefalo can also cause first calves to be stillborn, Aguilar said.

Aguilar blames the author­ity of the parks for the killing of the buffalo, pointing out that elk is the only species that can spread brucellosis because buffalo are not affected by the disease.

“Power is the tree giving oxygen or this bug flying around me but authority is brutality, that’s what’s happening to the buffalo,” said Aguilar.

According to Montana U.S. Senator Jon Tester’s spokes­person and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer they are in support of their state’s “buffalo population management effort.”

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Tina Armour | Staff Writer
armourtv@imail.losrios.edu

The legalization of marijuana for recreational use in California is not the answer to our problems.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has proposed that the California government “remove all penalties in California law on cultivation, transportation, sale, purchase, possession, or use of marijuana, natural THC, or paraphernalia for persons over the age of 21.”

Ammiano’s bill will allow a drug that alters a person’s state of consciousness to be readily available to all adults who want it.

Marijuana is a drug which alters the actions of its users, making it potentially dangerous. Law enforcement arrests users who drive while under the influence of marijuana, just as they do with alcohol, because judgment and perceptions are affected by its use.

According to the Department of Mental Health Division of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, “studies of marijuana’s mental effects show that the drug can impair or reduce short-term memory, alter sense of time, and reduce ability to do things which require concentration, swift reactions, and coordination, such as driving a car or operating machinery.”

The medical uses for the drug and its ability to relieve pain are potent and should be controlled as they are now. As with medications like Oxycontin or Vicodin, which also affect a user’s state of mind, marijuana should only be administered legally and under a doctor’s prescription.

Taxing the drug would briefly help California’s economic crisis by adding $1 billion a year to the state’s income, but the loss of functioning adults and students in the workplace would handicap us more than the lack of finances has. The effects of marijuana on productive Californians could even recreate the same sort of financial collapse.

Legalization would also affect schools, as the drug would become legally available to college students and the bill offers no control of its use.

“Young people who smoke marijuana heavily over long periods of time can become dull, slow moving, and inattentive,” according to the DMHDDAA.

I know I would not want to be in a classroom with a teacher or multiple students that have been smoking marijuana – would you?

California needs to consider the fact that a quick buck isn’t worth what could potentially be thousands of lives lost to drugs.

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Tina Armour | Staff Writer
armourtv@imail.losrios.edu

Fall semester has already started at City College and students must acclimate rapidly into daunting tasks such as waking up early and doing homework after a three-month summer vacation.

Summer vacation is undoubtedly the most highly antici­pated part of the school year for most students, but the return to early morning wake-up alarms and homework is also the hardest for most students.

Recent high school graduate and new sociology major Elizabeth Dotts acknowledges both the positive and negative effects of summer break.

“Right after high school it’s a nice break, but in between the spring and fall semesters, it makes me completely forget everything I’ve learned.”

Dotts says that she has already missed homework assign­ments in her English writing 302 class because she wasn’t focused on what was being taught during class.

“I pay attention less when school starts again. At least for a couple weeks, I’m still in summer mode,” Dotts says.

Dotts isn’t the only student who is suffering from the side effects of a summer vacation.

“I was kind of in summer mode still,” says City College student Gabe Gomez. “I work nights and I’m taking early classes so it was hard for me to pay attention in class. I kept looking around and stuff.”

According to City College psychology professor Chris Tromborg, there is a psychiatric explanation for this sort of back-to-school hangover.

“For students who have taken a full three months off,” says Tromborg, “it is a fight or flight reaction when they return to the classroom as cortisol [a stress hormone] and epinephrine [a hormone that effects the heart rate] kick in, causing physiological arousal creating a sort of panic attack.”

Tromborg says summer vacation is a tradition that began 100 years, when farming communities allowed students to take three months off to help with the harvests.

Nonetheless Tromborg proposes a change in tradition.

“I think that summer vacation should be done away with and the school year broken up into trimesters with two week breaks in between,” says Tromborg. “It would help students immensely and get them through college faster.”

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"Moon Walk" and "Industrial Revoluton" are two of six hand-signed and numbered copper relief panels by Hungarian artist Rudolf Haynal on display in Rodda Hall North, second floor.

Thanks to a kind donation, City College now displays a set of six copper relief panels in the Rodda-Hall North building.

“I am surprised that we received such a gift,” said art professor Gioia Fonda. “It’s hard to give art because you can’t ever satfisfy everyone’s taste and I am so curious to see where they will be installed in the new art department design plan.”

The set of panels, titled “American Glory,” was a gift from Atilla Kovacs, who bought the pieces specifically for City College.

The Hungarian repoussée artist Rudolf Haynal symbolizes segments of the history of America, portraying the settlers, the war for independence, the Civil War, the industrial revolution, World War II and the moonwalk.

Haynal’s work is a type of metalworking technique where metal is ornamented or shaped by hammering on the reverse side.

“The symbolism seems traditional and it’s interesting to see what current events in our history someone from another country chose to depict as the most important,” said Fonda.

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