Daily Titan: Thursday, October 29, 2009

Page 1

Since 1960 Volume 85, Issue 29

Thursday October 29, 2009

The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton

Dia de los Muertos celebrated across Southern California, Page 3

Photos By Shruti Patel/Daily Titan Photo Editor

Voting for ASI underway By Nicole Park

Daily Titan Staff Writer news@dailytitan.com

Voting for the Board of Directors of Associated Students Inc. began yesterday at 8 a.m. and ends today at 8 p.m. There are four voting sites on campus, with online voting available from any computer with access to the Cal State Fullerton network. This is also how all votes are submitted by CSUF students at the Irvine campus. Online voting is available at Vote.Fullerton. edu upon sign-in with a valid CSUF campus-wide ID number. Individual candidate profiles are also available to view on the site. Votes may be submitted on campus at marked ASI polling tents at Mihaylo Hall, McCarthy Hall and the entrances of Pollak Library and the Titan Student Union. The board for ASI sits at the top of the student government’s hierarchy alongside ASI President Juliana Santos.

The board is comprised of 16 students, two each from the eight academic colleges on campus. Board members are elected to allocate funds and vote on outcomes within the board, their respective colleges and the university. Board members are only permitted to serve for the college in which they major. The same rule applies for any voting student. Students may only vote for one of their own college’s candidates. In the event that a student is a double-major, the student is only permitted to vote for the first major they declared. Undeclared students may choose any one of the eight colleges to submit their vote for. Senior business major Nick Klaiber, 22, cast his ballot Wednesday morning. “As a student, I feel that we need good leadership and that it should come from other students. We need more leadership in the university and in my college. It is important to vote for leaders who will enunciate our stu-

dent needs, especially within our colleges,” he said. As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, the unofficial polling tally, reported by ASI Elections Commissioner Genevieve Aldred, reached 446 student votes. “It has been my goal this semester to make elections more visible and accessible to CSUF students,” Aldred said.

She stressed the importance of voting: “The board is the voice of the students.” Tuesday, Aldred hosted “Coffee with the Candidates,” an event featuring a panel of 12 of the 14 candidates,

an open round of questions from the student body and unlimited free Starbucks coffee. Sophomore theater major Amanda Petrocelly attended the event to learn more about her college’s potential representatives. “The free coffee sparked my interest, but I’m glad to be here. I didn’t vote last year because I didn’t really know what was going on and didn’t want to just pick a name off the list. Now I’m going to know who is the best vote for me,” Petrocelly said. “Now that we’re broke, it’s even more important to pick someone who knows where to put our money,” she said after Tuesday’s informational forum. To add incentive to voting, after casting their ballots on campus, students will be treated to Halloween candy, “I Voted” stickers and pens, along with the chance to win one of three $25 gift cards to Yard House in a drawing sponsored by Communica-

By Laura Barron-Lopez

ing new ways of cataloging data around the same time. Edwards came up with an idea of tracking gun-related crimes through firearm cartridge cases and bullets. Simultaneously, Centanni was beginning to experiment as well. “I started working on creating a database to track all of the hits that (Edwards) kept stacking on my desk. I needed something to organize in my mind all of the ballistically linked cases because there are so many of them,” Centanni said. Since then, it has been four and a half years and the program is still going through the patent process. Continual problems with programmers arose, causing setbacks in its development. Currently, the pieces seem to be falling into place for these co-inventors, who have finally found the right programmers for ShieldOps. Steve Flores, one of ShieldOps’ programmers/developers, discussed his experience with

working on this advanced program. “It’s very exciting working on these programs. I am working on programs that will actually help (Edwards and Centanni) solve crimes. It’s completely different than anything I have done. It’s nothing like financial programming. This is a challenge. The Web stuff is completely new to me and working with the mapping is difficult. This was a big turn around for me,” Flores said. Presently, GunOps is 70 percent complete, Centanni and Edwards said. Already many law enforcement agencies are interested in their software. Their proof of concept is verifying that the program works. “Right now the strength of GunOps allows us to monitor every gunrelated incident, every firearm, every bullet, every cartridge case seized in the city through topographical charting and artificial intelligence, which helps us track the different shootings,” Edwards said.

MULTIMEDIA

For comments from the candidates, visit: Dailytitan.com/ coffeewithcandidates09

Photo By ROn fu/Daily Titan Staff Photographer Candidates running for the Board of Directors position answer questions by fellow students at a “Coffee with the Candidates” event at the Becker Amphitheatre on Tuesday, Oct. 27. Elections began Wednesday and continue today.

tions 451-C’s advertisement campaign with Honda Insight. The newly-elected board members will be announced at 9 p.m. in the TSU Legislative Chambers Thursday,

and the official announcement will be posted on the door of TSU 207 on Friday. The newly appointed board members will take office on Jan. 1, 2010.

Alumnus helps develop crime-fighting software For the Daily Titan

news@dailytitan.com

Courtesy Shieldops ShieldOps, a program designed by Cal State Fullerton alumnus Jon Centanni, helps law enforcement stay organized.

T D E D I he t o S t INtay connecteTidtan S

ShieldOps is the name of the company. GunOps and Gang Injunction are the names of the programs that could help improve the investigation and completion of gun and gangrelated crimes. The inventors of the company’s programs are Jon Centanni, a Cal State Fullerton alumnus and detective sergeant, and Rocky Edwards, a firearms examiner. Both work for a large municipal law enforcement agency in Southern California. It began with an idea; ShieldOps was created due to the demand. As Edwards quoted from a wellknown Aesop fable, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” The overwhelming amount of case data they go through daily needed some form of organization. By chance, Centanni and Edwards were attempt-

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States could decide the fate of their citizens’ health coverage, Page 8

The Walk-Off: Time to look to the future for the Angels, Page 9

What will you be for Halloween? Dailytitan.com/halloweencostumes09

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Currently, their Gang Injunction program, which monitors gangs being served with civil suits for criminal acts by police, is a prototype. Local law enforcement departments in the Orange County area are already using this prototype. In order to build upon the development of GunOps, the more powerful of the two programs, Centanni and Edwards work with universities to conduct studies that ensure the program’s capabilities. GunOps, the central program of the ShieldOps Corporation, essentially merges existing information on local gun crimes and ballistic evidence in order to improve crime analysis, the processing of evidence and the art of conducting investigations. “What I hope to see for the future of ShieldOps is very similar to what was shown on the TV show ‘CSI: Las Vegas.’ It basically showed a vision of where we are headed with this

program. It not only showed us gun related instances but how it interacts with gang-related crime as well,” Edwards said. On Oct. 15 “CSI: Las Vegas” aired an episode titled “Coup De Grace,” which featured Centanni and Edwards’ program. The show depicted an improved version of their concept. “Eventually Gang Injunction will merge with GunOps, which is in the works right now,” Centanni said. In the case of Centanni and Edwards, it was apparent that the need to improve the method of monitoring ballistic evidence and gang violence was in such high demand that it gave way to an invention, an invention which has in a short amount of time made vast advancements in their field. Centanni and Edwards hope their creation will only continue to expand, eventually being made available to law enforcement departments nationally and possibly worldwide.

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Due to technical problems at our printer, the Wednesday, Oct. 28 issue of the Daily Titan was not available in newsstands. We apologize if this has caused an inconvenience.

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