May 26, 2015

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Golf teams receive $1.1 million gift from Pineau family Stephan Teodosescu The Cal Poly men’s and women’s golf teams don’t receive the notoriety of other sports on campus, let alone the same type of funding. But the programs are one step closer to being on par with other sports after recently receiving a $1.1 million gift from local golf enthusiasts Michael and Sammy Pineau. The golf programs currently have a fundraising campaign in place to raise a $5-7 million endowment, in perpetuity, over the next five years. To reach that goal, gifts from donors such as the Pineaus are needed in the meantime to support current student-athletes while campaign efforts raise the money over the long term. “Michael and Sammy’s gift is going to provide current cash today so that we can go ahead and raise the money for the endowment so that when (their) gift runs out of current cash, we’ll have the endowment at the point where it’s kicking in at least that much, if not more, so that it can continue in perpetuity,” Associate Athletic Director for Development Ashley Offermann said. In other words, their gift is making sure that for the next few years, Cal Poly golfers get the benefit of a fully funded program — even though that goal will take years to accomplish. Specifically, along with others’ gifts, it will help

@steodosescu

fund more scholarships and boost the programs’ operating budget. To date, community members, golf team alumni and parents of former athletes have committed almost $3 million to the endowment effort. “While Michael and Sammy’s gift is the gift that we’re celebrating right now, there’s probably a core of 12 people that have really helped launch the endowment,” Offermann said. “It’s not a traditional way you see monies raised for athletic programs.” The golf program has seemingly always endured budgetary adversity. It was discontinued in 1975 when Loren Roberts, a professional golfer and Cal Poly’s most notable player was a sophomore. It wasn’t reinstated until 2000, right around the time current men’s golf head coach Scott Cartwright became involved.

see GOLF, pg 8.

CAL POLY ATHLETICS | COURTESY PHOTO ON PAR | Local golf enthusiasts Michael and Sammy Pineau have given Cal Poly’s men’s and women’s golf teams a $1.1 million gift, which will help fund more scholarships and boost the teams’ operating budget.

President Armstrong responds to salary disputes: ‘You have a right to be angry’

IAN BILLINGS | MUSTANG NE WS T WO WORLDS

| Varsha Ravi Kumar’s family supported her through her journey in Carnatic music.

One foot in lab, another in temple: Computer science student juggles Carnatic singing career Frances Griffey @CPMustangArts

Computers and music are different worlds, but they collide for one 19-year-old Cal Poly student. One hour, she’s hard at work in the computer lab, and the next she’s in the music building, singing her heart out. As a computer science sophomore and professional singer of Southern Indian music, Varsha Ravi Kumar is a diverse individual with a broad range of skills and interests. Each day, she dedicates at least one or two hours to practicing and perfecting her voice. She was born in India and moved to the U.S. at age four, but one particular aspect of her Indian culture

never left her — music. As a child, Ravi Kumar loved to dance, and her background music of choice was either Southern Indian classical music or Carnatic music. At age 7, she transitioned from dancing with Carnatic music to singing it — and her family supported her every step of the way. “They were very encouraging,” she said. “They’ve always been very encouraging about all my interests and they saw that I had a passion for it, they saw that I had a talent, so they just guided me and pushed me in the right direction.”

see VARSHA, pg 4.

ANDREW EPPERSON | MUSTANG NE WS DIALOGUE

| An advisory council will help inform Armstrong on major decisions in the future.

Brenna Swanston @Brenna_Swanston

The past few months have seen rising tensions surrounding Cal Poly faculty and staff pay. On May 21, Armstrong held a listening session in Chumash Auditorium to discuss the issues at hand. “Until we get some game-changing money, it is very difficult,” Armstrong said at the session. “And it is extremely difficult and you have a right to be angry over what’s happened over the last few years.” The listening session went on longer than the originally planned hour, packed with emotion-

ally charged questions and comments by faculty, staff and students. “When we followed the money, we can see where the true priorities are,” said Graham Archer, president of the San Luis Obispo chapter of the California Faculty administration. “It’s gone too far. I think bold moves are needed. The faculty love a good debate, but what’s needed now is action.” After the listening session, Armstrong spoke with Mustang News about his responses to the faculty pay debate.

News... 1-3 | Arts... 4-5 | Opinion... 6 | Classifieds... 7 | Sports... 8

see ARMSTRONG, pg 2.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

NEWS | 2

ANDREW EPPERSON | MUSTANG NE WS UNCOUTH

| Armstrong said some members of campus, including staff members, have become overly emotional and displayed a “lack of civility” in talks with the administration about faculty salaries.

ARMSTRONG continued from pg 1. Advisory council to inform the president on planning, process and budget Armstrong helped create a 12-person council consisting of four staff members, four faculty members and four students. Its members were chosen with the help of the Academic Senate, the Labor Council, college deans and vice presidents. Armstrong had originally planned to form the council next fall, but recent discussion among staff and faculty called for him to expedite the process. Armstrong provided a document listing the advisory council members: • •

•

•

•

• • • • •

Graham Archer (faculty): President, California Faculty Association (CFA) Nicole Billington (student): Chair, Board of Directors, Associated Students Inc. (ASI) Ken Brown (faculty): Chair, Faculty Affairs Committee, Academic Senate Vera Flores (staff ): Administrative Support Coordinator, College of Engineering Sean Hurley (faculty): Chair, Budget and Long Range Planning Committee, Academic Senate Joan Kennedy (staff ): Labor Council Representative Gar y Laver (faculty): Chair, Academic Senate Lori Serna (staff ): Manager of Payroll Services, Administration and Finance Joi Sullivan (student): President, ASI Owen Schwaegerle (stu-

dent): President-Elect, ASI Jerry White (staff ): Lead Custodian, Facilities Services, Administration and Finance

on everybody in the neighborhood knowing what so-and-so makes,” he said. “That’s not the purpose. The purpose is transparency here at Cal Poly.”

just want people to look at the whole picture, not pick out certain sections and take things out of context, in order just to make a point.”

“Our plan is to share major decisions, major budget transactions, process planning, keep them informed on a regular basis and seek their approval before decisions are made,” Armstrong said. “I shouldn’t say so much ‘approval’ — it’s really advisory. There are certain things that are the responsibility of the administration and president, but we want to be more aggressive in shared governance. We’ve always consulted, we’ve always had interactions with the students, faculty and staff, but we want to take it up another level.” Though lecturers have played a large role in the recent faculty pay issues, the advisory board’s faculty representatives include professors and associate professors — no lecturers.

Correcting the ‘loss of respect and lack of civility’ on campus “I’ve been here for a little over four years,” Armstrong said. “These past few weeks, I’ve experienced some examples of a lack of respect and what I would consider a lack of civility on many more occasions than I’d experienced since I’d been here.” He said Thursday’s listening session made some staff uncomfortable. “There were some staff members that said they frankly didn’t feel comfortable speaking yesterday because of some of the tone of the questions and how things were handled,” he said. “That’s other people raising that point, not me. I thought it was a good discussion yesterday and people had some emotion and I understand that. But I think we need to step back, and let’s not put people in a feeling of being disrespected simply because they’re in an MPP (Management Personnel Program) position, that they’re not a faculty or staff member.” Armstrong iterated that faculty pay protesters should remember some administrators were previously faculty or staff members. “Many of the people that are in the MPP classification, managerial classification, most of the new positions that have occurred are transfers and promotions from faculty and staff,” he said. “They’re still being involved with students, they’re still being involved with part of the learning process. I

Im p r o v i n g u n d e r s t a n d ing between faculty, staff and administration “We’re putting together some programs related to the workplace,” Armstrong said. “We’re going to provide an avenue for any employee at Cal Poly to be able to speak to someone about concerns they have. We’re going to look at including diversity in these evaluations and the RPT (retention, promotion and tenure) process.” He noted the listening sessions over the past year as part of his efforts to ease tension on campus. “It’s important for me to get out and do as much face-to-face as I can. So I’m going to continue to reach out to individuals and groups over the next few weeks as we complete our quarter, because it’s important that I know how particular people feel,” he said. “That’s going to include some lecturers, some department chairs and other individuals.”

•

A list of Cal Poly faculty salaries Armstrong said he plans to provide a list of all state-supported salaries in the next week with the intention to promote transparency. The list will be available either on the Cal Poly website or on the portal for anyone who’s a student, faculty or staff. It will provide three years of data with no significant analysis. An “indepth database” for 2013 will accompany the salary list to show faculty and staff ’s total compensation, meaning their Cal Poly salaries in addition to any outside income they earn. “I want our Cal Poly community to see what people make, but I’m not necessarily keen

Discussion about the Master Plan Though the current Master Plan maps are largely conceptual, some aspects of them are fairly concrete. “If you see some things that are proposed and they show up the same on every map, then that’s getting there,” Armstrong said. Though Armstrong will not present a precise, decided Master Plan to the Board of Trustees until 2016, the final plan will most likely include the

equine pavilion, agriculture pavilion and some additional freshman housing. Some of the plan’s tentative features include replacing agriculture land with housing. Armstrong emphasized that those aspects are not yet concrete. “That doesn’t mean that every one of those fields will be removed from agriculture,” he said. “That just means that in putting together this jigsaw puzzle, there are parts that are in play, and we don’t know. It is inevitable that it will get down to some difficult choices.” The final Master Plan will hinge on collecting as much information as possible, he said. “We have a principle to do the best we can for student learning,” Armstrong said. “We have a principle that has to do with preserving ag lands. Well, those may sometimes be opposing, and that’s what we have to look at and that’s how we have to evaluate it. And we have to collect all the information, all the facts, before we make the decision on what the Master Plan will look like.” Finalizing the Master Plan will inevitably spark disagreement from some. For example, the plan’s potential hotel conference center is shaping up to be a subject of debate. Armstrong said people have a wide range of views about where the center should be located and whether Cal Poly should even have one, so it’s especially important to ensure the potential center contributes to academics and makes financial sense. Armstrong said those who resist the idea of a hotel conference center often have misconceptions about it. “Sometimes when people say

they’re not sure that we should do it, they don’t have all the information because they think that a hotel conference center or student housing, that money spent there is going to take away from operation of the university,” he said. “It’s going to come from public-private partnerships or some other source of revenue that’s not the same bucket of money.” Considering agriculture students’ land loss concerns The Master Plan proposes the option of replacing some agriculture land with housing, which has met resistance from students who worry those lands will not be replaced elsewhere. Armstrong said he’d ensure the agriculture lands’ learning value would be maintained even if the lands themselves were ultimately developed. He compared the problem to a hypothetical situation in which replacing the aero hanger with another building would offer more educational opportunities. “Let’s say for example we tear down the aero hangar in order to build something there,” he said. “Then we need to make sure the functions and what’s going on in the aerohanger have been replaced before we tear it down. That’s not going to be fair to the engineering students. The aero hangar is important to engineering and other students just as ag land is important to agricultural students. So an additional point I want to make is, just because we’re moving something and changing something doesn’t mean the function of Learn By Doing is going to be destroyed.” Tara Kaveh contributed to this report.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

NEWS | 3

Recent study proves Cal Poly work in Peru a success Lindsy Mobley @lindsy_mobley

Cal Poly’s Learn By Doing philosophy stretches farther than just the San Luis Obispo campus. Every summer, it’s practiced by students in Peru. A Cal Poly study abroad program sends approximately 25 students to Peru every summer to take classes and partake in community-based volunteer work in Indigenous communities around the city Cusco. “Part of that is installing clean-burning or improved stoves that have chimneys that go out and burn fuel more efficiently,” geography professor Jim Keese said. “Cal Poly has been installing these stoves every summer for eight years, but we wanted to know do they work, do people actually use them and do they continue to use them.” Approximately 3 billion people still rely on traditional wood-burning stoves in their homes. This can result in indoor air pollution, which can cause respiratory and eye problems and is known to especially affect women and children. Approximately 2 million households in Peru use wood-burning stoves, Keese said. The stoves often don’t burn wood efficiently, which creates deforestation problems. For this reason, Cal Poly students are installing improved stoves for families in these Indigenous communities. Keese wanted to find out if their efforts had a lasting impact. He took a two-quarter sabbatical to do a followup study on the clean-burning stoves. He recruited anthropology and geography junior Alex Camacho and political science sophomore Aurora Chavez to participate in the research this past March. “I went down for three weeks;

they went down for two weeks,” Keese said. “We collected data from 43 households in three communities, communities students had installed stoves in for the past four years using a household survey.” Their data was collected through a survey that focused on different aspects of the stove and to see if the families were using them, what they liked about it and if it fit their cultural context. They also collected data on demographics, but aren’t sure if they are going to use it for the study, Camacho said. Keese said they also looked at fuel savings and perception of health impacts. “We were expecting that maybe the stoves weren’t going to be used and that the work from Cal Poly students wasn’t having a big impact,” Keese said. “But we got out there and saw that the stoves actually do work as expected and the people really were using them and really liked them, which was very rewarding.” According to Chavez, they found “exciting” results. There was a 70 percent adoption rate of the stoves. “We found that the stove is very effective and that it cooks all the foods that they cook, uses all the fuel that they use, and it also removes smoke from the household, and there was widespread acknowledgement that smoke was bad for your health,” Keese said. “So it’s meeting a need that people clearly need and want.” Camacho and Chavez presented the results at the annual California Geographical Society meeting at Humboldt State University approximately three weeks ago, Keese said. The California Geographical Society represents geographers, professionals, faculty and students in California. There were approximately 300 participants

JIM KEESE | COURTESY PHOTO L ASTING IMPACT

| Camacho (far left) and Chavez (far right) said many Cusco residents use the stoves installed by Cal Poly students years ago.

at the academic conference, he said. Camacho said the conference was a good experience because they got to see a lot of other undergraduate students presenting their research as well. It helped open her eyes to the possibilities of what she can do with her major, she said. “The research we did, it wasn’t like a literature review where we were looking at someone else’s

JIM KEESE | COURTESY PHOTO

numbers,” Camacho said. Camacho had also gone on the four-week study abroad program. It was interesting for her to go back and see the impact her work had on the communities. She enjoyed getting to know the families directly, she said. Chavez enjoyed the Learn By Doing component because she got to see things she learned in class proved out in real life, she said.

“I’m a political science student; I never imagined myself doing research like this,” Chavez said. “It was just really exciting for me because just the nature of my major is not Learn By Doing at all, and I know that’s Cal Poly’s motto. But this really was Learn By Doing. It was just such a great opportunity to experience everything I’ve learned in class out in the field.” Keese is proud of the work

Camacho and Chavez did, he said. He plans to continue to do further research in this area. “The work they did was really graduate-level research,” Keese said. “They did literature review, they developed a survey, administered the survey, processed the results and presented the results at a professional conference. And now we’re in the process of writing a journal article to actually publish the results.”

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

ARTS | 4 VARSHA continued from pg 1. Ravi Kumar said singing brings her a unique sense of empowerment. “(With) singing, it just comes from within you and you can actually feel all those tones, and when you’re aligned with the pitch it sort of vibrates,” she said. “It’s this really cool feeling. You’re just more one with your music.” But her love of music can

be hindering to her schoolwork, so she tries to keep the two separate. “It can be so distracting,” Ravi Kumar said. “I can’t listen to music when I study because I’d rather just sit there and focus on it and analyze it or start singing,” To add to her already diverse repertoire, Ravi Kumar is also a lead vocalist in Cal Poly’s Arab Music Ensemble. With school, studying, singing practices and a social life, Ravi Kumar is one

busy woman. “It’s really about writing down everything that comes up and every single small meeting, allocating practice time,” she said. Economics senior Peter Sumic plays the oud in the Arab Music Ensemble and is a friend of Ravi Kumar’s. “She has a pretty strong work ethic,” Sumic said. “I think she’s pretty good at prioritizing because obviously when you’re balancing that much stuff, you

have to make some decisions.” But music is never far from her mind. As a Hindu, singing is strongly tied to her religion. “It’s like a direct connection to God,” she said. “That’s what really inspires me.” One of Ravi Kumar’s favorite singing experiences is when she gets to connect with her spirituality in temples. In Indian culture, music is highly revered, which means when Ravi Kumar goes to a temple and sings, she gets

She’s a South Indian classical musician — that’s not something that you just turn off. We are who we are. KEN HABIB ARAB MUSIC ENSEMBLE DIRECTOR

IAN BILLINGS | MUSTANG NE WS CARNATIC

| Varsha Ravi Kumar juggles her computer science studies with a professional career as a singer of Southern Indian music.

special attention. “Sometimes when you go to certain temples it’s very, very crowded, but the second you tell them that you want to sing, they take you all the way up to the front where no one else can go and you get to sit there and sing in front of God,” she said. “It’s amazing; you just get to connect on a completely different level.” Not only does her vocal talent connect her to God, but it also strengthens ties to her Indian cultural heritage. “When I go to India and meet relatives and people there, they usually look at me a little differently because I grew up (in the U.S.),” she said. “So they’re not sure how much I understand of the culture. But if they hear my singing, it’s usually a great ice breaker because they’re like, ‘Oh, she knows so much about (our) culture,’ or, ‘Oh, she actually cares.’” Before performances, Ravi Kumar said she still gets nervous, though you’d never know based on her composure on stage. “She’s very composed — it’s professional that way,” Arab Music Ensemble Director Ken Habib said. “She’s poised.” Sumic agreed, describing her as calm and collected. He said her ethereal voice is always confident and strong and that she has extreme control over pitch and embellishment in her music. That type of control is integral in Carnatic music because of the improvisation aspect so prevalent throughout the style. Habib said improvisation requires a type of advanced skill, one Ravi Kumar continues to cultivate through practicing

both Southern Indian and Arabic music. “It’s really scary because I’m always like, ‘Oh my God, what if I mess up?’” Ravi Kumar said. “But it also comes down to this wonderful feeling where you just create things on the spot. It’s very exhilarating.” Her passion for Carnatic music has permeated and shaped her entire life. “She’s a South Indian classical musician — that’s not something that you just turn off,” Habib said. “We are who we are.” Habib said there have been connections between Arabic and Indian music historically, and Ravi Kumar’s mastery of Carnatic music has helped her grasp Arabic music stylings and sometimes even fuse them together. It may seem strange for someone so passionate and involved in the world of music to be studying computer science in school. But Ravi Kumar wants to foster singing as a hobby, to make it a personal passion rather than a financial mean. “A career in music is very difficult to plan, and I feel like once it’s a career, you do things just for the commercial aspect and it takes away from the artistic quality sometimes,” she said. “And I’d rather preserve that and not have to rely on it as a way to make money.” Habib doesn’t doubt for a moment that Ravi Kumar will continue singing her entire life. Her relentless passion and incredible vocal qualities will simply continue to grow as she does. “For the rest of her life, I bet she’ll be doing music,” Habib said. “I certainly hope so.”

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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

ARTS | 5

‘Whose Live Anyway?’ to return for third round of laughs THE GREAT THING ABOUT IMPROVISATION IS THAT THE SHOW IS NEVER THE SAME. IT’S NOT LIKE BRINGING THE SAME MUSIC ACT. STEVE LERIAN CAL POLY ARTS DIRECTOR

LISA WOSKE | COURTESY PHOTO G U T- BU S T IN G

| “Whose Live Anyway?” has performed at Cal Poly twice, each time with massive success. On Thursday, the show will return for a third time to crack up the Performing Arts Center audience.

Frances Griffey @CPMustangArts

We’ve all seen the show and laughed until our stomachs ached. Now, instead of watching

through a TV screen, the show is coming to you. “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” star Ryan Stiles — along with notable guest stars of the show — are set to shake the Christopher Cohan

Performing Arts Center with laughter on Thursday, May 28, at 7:30 p.m. “(The audience) will laugh enough to basically lose some weight from laughing so hard,”

LISA WOSKE | COURTESY PHOTO

Cal Poly Arts Director Steve Lerian said. The group is returning to Cal Poly for the third time. Its first two shows were sold out and extremely successful. “Each time, the audience has come out crying,” Lerian said of the improv group’s previous Cal Poly performances. The event will play out much like the television show, Lerian said, with the comedians playing a few improvisation games. Many of the games will require audience participation. “The great thing about improvisation is that the show is never the same,” Lerian said. “It’s not like bringing the same music act.” He pointed out these last few weeks of the quarter are stressful and students should consider taking a break from studying to see the show. Tickets are available at pacslo. org, and Lerian said there will likely be $10 student rush tickets at the door.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

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“What are the chances I’m at work right now? 100 percent.”

Feeding an uncertain future Garrett Ahern @CPMustangNews

Garrett Ahern is a biological sciences junior and Mustang News liberal columnist. These views do not necessarily reflect the opinion or editorial coverage of Mustang News. This past year has brought a good deal of change to my life, everything from exploring new hobbies to gaining new knowledge. At the top of this list are the changes I’ve made to the food I eat, changes that have by far made the largest impact on my life. Not too long ago, I ate what I craved without considering its origins. My former diet could be summed up to three things: meat, processed snacks and packaged fruits and vegetables. This unearthly diet of mine stemmed from a curiosity I developed as a freshman at Cal Poly. Having grown up in a family in which my mother prepared everything I ate — most often from scratch — I took the value of good food for granted and believed the lack of junk food in my life meant I was “missing out.” By the time I started school at Cal Poly in Fall 2012, I was ready to eat all the processed food I could get my hands on. Cheez-Its, Hot Pockets, fruit snacks, you name it. The more of this food I ate, the farther down I went into the pit of convenience. By the time I moved off campus, the lack of fresh food in my diet had become clear. Soon after moving into an apartment where I had to cook all my meals on my own, I realized how little of my fare was once alive and actually needed to be cooked. I began to think of ways to change this, not realizing that a return to the food of my childhood was all I needed. It took some time, but eventually, one by

one, I began replacing my processed favorites with once-familiar whole foods. In the beginning, the most challenging aspect of this change was the increased preparation time. Eventually, though, this perceived inconvenience morphed into daily routine, and my desire for the fresh, wholesome meals of my youth began to grow. My plan for this piece was not to simply share the story of my dietary rebirth, but to shed light on the larger food-based issues at hand. I can speak from experience when I say many of us do not know where the food we eat comes from. Naturally, we enjoy the convenience and bargain of buying food from one place, often a supermarket or chain grocery store, and enjoying a wide array of options at a moment’s notice. When we choose to dig deeper, however, and discover the source of our food, we begin to realize the hidden costs such luxuries produce. Modern industrialized agriculture, the answer we have demanded through our desire for convenient food at all times, is among the greatest contributors to climate change — emitting more greenhouse gases than all our cars, trucks, trains and airplanes combined. The problem and the solution lie not in the hands of the producers, but rather in those of the consumers. It is those of us buying the food produced en masse that wield the greatest power. The potential for positive change through revolutionizing what we eat is tremendous. As we steadily approach the middle of the century, when the world population is projected to reach 9 billion, the need for a change in the way we grow and consume our food is becoming greater each day. Luckily, we already know the threats we have produced

The conscience of a progressive by our need for industrialized food production, so focusing on solutions to these problems must be our foremost effort. Obstacles to overcoming agriculturally related environmental challenges have mostly stemmed from a longstanding dichotomy between those favoring modern mechanized agriculture and proponents of local and organic farms. However, there need not be such an either/or perspective. In fact, both of these views offer realistic solutions to obvious problems and through the balance of the approaches they take, a stable future for both hungry humans and a fragile planet is in reach. We must begin by halting the growth of agriculture’s current footprint. Historically, when new land was needed to grow food, it was made. This often was accomplished by destroying forests, grasslands and wetlands. Entire ecosystems, including the prairies of North America, have been eliminated by the need for mass agriculture. However, we can no longer afford to con-

tinue down this path. Few things surpass the environmental impact of clearing a forest for land and often times the land created does not go toward feeding the nearly 1 billion people on this planet who are currently malnourished. Instead, this land goes toward the production of more livestock to feed the growing demand for meat in developed countries. Our next step is to produce more food on the land we already have. Practices brought about by the so-called “Green Revolution” increased crop yields throughout the developed world. It should be our focus to bridge the production gaps that persist in developing nations by introducing updated, yet sustainable, production practices to places still producing food with large yield inefficiencies. After addressing production gaps abroad, we must focus our efforts back at home, where water has become increasingly scarce and its use has been slow to adapt. California in particular has represented the needed changes effectively. Many farmers in our golden state

have converted fields once using flood irrigation to fields using drip irrigation. If similarly arid regions follow suit, shortages in water supply will have a lessened impact on agricultural production elsewhere. Lastly, consumers must drive changes in what foods are produced by reducing their consumption of red meats and limiting waste through overproduction and overconsumption. If we begin to demand the changes we wish to realize through revisions in our diet, the industries that feed us will be forced to change as well. By buying more local, in-season foods, we can alleviate some of the environmental pressure produced by long-distance food transport ­— not to mention fresh food tastes amazing. We are living in a pivotal time in human history. We face unprecedented challenges to our food security and the preservation of Earth’s environment. We know what changes we must make, but we now must commit ourselves to their realization.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

SPORTS | 8

We’ll be able to recruit better players. It’s a beautiful school; we just need the money to actually get the people here. JUSTIN DE LOS SANTOS SOPHOMORE GOLFER

STEVE CHEN | BIG WEST UPGRADES | Junior Madison Hirsch (above) and the rest of the Cal Poly golf program will benefit from the donation received from the Pineaus.

GOLF continued from pg 1. The endowment is aimed at helping the teams overcome budgetary obstacles the programs have been faced with. “When we travel, we pack into one vehicle and it’s three to a room and it’s no frills and things like that,” Cartwright said. “So it’s certainly going to bolster that to make travel a little easier. (Regarding) our operating budget, maybe we can play another tournament or two, maybe we can get a second pair of shoes. Things like that.” Cal Poly currently funds 3.5 of the 10.5 scholarships allowed by the NCAA and operates at approximately half of the average Big West Conference golf program. Of those 3.5 scholarships, 2.5 are allocated for the women’s team, and the remaining scholarship is given to the

men’s squad. Of those, scholarship money is divided between multiple players on each team — no single player holds a full scholarship. “To get the top players, you need some money, certainly,” Cartwright said. “It is difficult to get the top-echelon players up and down the lineup. We can get one or two, but it’s not like Stanford where they can get six or seven.” The Pineaus’ gift came in two parts: the first was a $100,000 donation approx. a year ago to fund another four-year scholarship. The second part, which was given recently, was $1 million to further support the endowment efforts. According to Offermann, Cartwright and Cal Poly Director of Athletics Don Oberhelman will work together to decide where the funds should be allocated on a yearly basis. Over the next four years, it will fund two more full-

ride scholarships worth approximately $25,000 per year (around $100,000 total). In the next two years, the programs are expected to double the amount of scholarships in general. Approximately $50,000-60,000 per year will go to operating expenses for both programs, and the rest will go toward “contingency funds,” according to Offermann. If there is money left over each year, it will roll over into the actual endowment. “If there is need for it in the current years, (the Pineaus’) would rather see the money be spent to make the current program as good as possible, but if you have $10,000, left don’t just go spend it frivolously at the end of the year,” Offermann said. The goal of the programs is to be fully funded in four to five years, Offermann said. Today, the teams participate in

the minimum number of tournaments possible to save money. As another cost measure, Cartwright is the coach of both the men’s and women’s teams at Cal Poly — most other programs have individual coaches for both squads. Offermann noted with the help of the Pineaus’ donation, the goal is to have another coach in place to take over one of the teams for Cartwright by the fall season. “Scott is the only coach for two programs and is hobbled by lack of scholarship and budgetary support,” Michael Pineau said in a press release. “We understand that, to be competitive and successful, Scott needed our support. We are very happy to be in a position to help today’s student-athletes while efforts are underway to endow the program.” Despite the hindrances, the men’s golf team has seen its share of suc-

cess recently. Sophomore Justin De Los Santos became just the second player to win the Big West golf title with a one-stroke victory at the 2015 Big West Conference Men’s Golf Championship this year. “I feel like the program is going in the right direction, and this will definitely boost us,” said De Los Santos, the team’s top individual in terms of scoring average this season. “We’ll be able to recruit better players. It’s a beautiful school; we just need the money to actually get the people here.” In addition to short-term needs, discussion has taken place for larger projects. There have been talks about building a golf facility on campus, perhaps complete with a driving range and other amenities that cater to Cal Poly golfers. However, those talks are in their infancy, and there are no such plans reflected in Cal Poly’s Master Plan

released several weeks ago. The Pineaus are friends of Cartwright. They met him when he was the club professional at San Luis Obispo Country Club and have remained close since he left the club to take over the reigns of the men’s and women’s teams at Cal Poly. Michael even caddied for Cartwright on several occasions in U.S. Open qualifier tournaments, according to the coach. Neither Michael nor Sammy are Cal Poly alumni or affiliated with the university in a significant way other than through their connection to Cartwright. The Pineaus moved to San Luis Obispo in the 1970s. Michael graduated from the University of North Dakota, while Sammy graduated from the University of Georgia. Michael was a real estate developer and Sammy was a realtor in her professional career.