Golden Gate Xpress Spring 2013 Issue 5

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SEE BIKE ON PAGE

6 I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE

GOLDEN GATE XPRESS//

STUDENT-RUN NEWSPAPER PROUDLY SERVING THE SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY SINCE 1927.

PHOTO BY GABRIELLA GAMBOA

// 02.27.13

VOLUME LXXXXVI ISSUE 5

‘SFSU Confessions’ reveals dirty details BY JOE FITZGERALD | jfitzger@mail.sfsu.edu

SHOOT OUT: Andy Navarro, 23, San Jose resident and NRA member shoots his AR-15-style rifle, which he built himself, at the Coyote Point shooting range in San Mateo, Calif. Photo by Andy Sweet

GUN BAN TARGETS FIREARM OWNERS

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BY BRIAN RINKER | brinker@mail.sfsu.edu

HE RED LIGHT CAME on at the Coyote Point Shooting Range in San Mateo, Calif. signaling the shooting area was now “hot.” Andy Navarro stepped over the red line, placed his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle on the table next to a tiny pillow and perch, sat on a small stool and began thumbing 5.56 mm caliber bullets into the rifle’s five-round magazine clip. That night at the range, Navarro shot his AR-15-style rifle for the first time, a gun he built himself. Navarro’s semi-automatic rifle is very similar to the infamous AR-15 Bushmaster that police say Adam Lanza used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The tragedy reignited the national gun debate, an issue that has divided Amer-

CALLING ALL SF STATE STUDENTS

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

icans. On one side, people are calling for greater gun control laws that ban military style weapons and for more background checks, while others fear more gun restrictions could infringe upon their Second Amendment rights. Fearing a ban on AR-15 style guns, 23-year-old San Jose resident Navarro went to a local gun store to buy the semi-automatic rifle before it was too late. It was a week after the Sandy Hook shooting, and people were flocking to gun stores to get the rifle. He paid $300 for just the lower receiver, the part that houses the actual firing mechanisms and the only part requiring a background check. He bought the rest of the gun off the internet, spending a little more than $1,000. He assembled the gun in an hour after learning how from a YouTube video. Navarro said it would’ve taken SEE GUN BAN ON PAGE 8

The Golden Gate Xpress will feature a photo every week in print and online from SF State students — and it could be yours! xpressnewsstaff@gmail.com

Due to the possible punitive action SF State could take against the administrator of the “SFSU Confessions” page were his/her identity revealed, we have kept the administrator’s identity anonymous. We will hereinafter refer to them as “The Admin,” and use a “he” pronoun, though the Admin’s gender is not necessarily male.

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VERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE: a crush, a silent grudge or a secret so scintillating they'd dare not share it with even their closest friends. Now students can anonymously share their hidden thoughts with the entire SF State community through a Facebook page that has exploded in popularity called “SFSU Confessions.” SFSU Confessions gained over 3,000 “likes” in the past few weeks, but its success is sparking debates in the campus dorms over free speech, privacy, stalking and the power of anonymity. The page is simple enough to access. Jump on Facebook, enter “SFSU Confessions” into the search field, and you’ll be brought to a page with over 2,000 anonymous student thoughts posted for the world to see, like this one: “Confession #1711: I’m gay and so is one of my roommates. Another one of my roommates is not gay, however he acts more flamboyant than the two of us combined.” The confessions are submitted via a website named SurveyMonkey, where they can be given without showing your Facebook information. The administrator of the page, “The Admin,” then chooses the best submissions and posts them to the page with a number in front. These pages have sprung up at colleges around the country, and even all around the Bay Area. The confessions themselves range from the tame, like crushes on classmates, to the explicit. Many students agree that the page isn’t just fun, it’s damned addictive. SEE POSTS ON PAGE 3


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