Streak ends
Tuu-or-war
Comets lose to Cuyamaca after six straight wins.
~It's
time for Elian Gonzalez to go home. Opinion, page S
Sports, page S
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Monday,. Feb. 7,. 2000
Volunte 53,. Nuntber 12
Palontar College- San Marcos,. Calif.
Students push for more library hours
;Freshmen say they skated through high school
Tom Chambers Editor in Clue[
~
Christine Tatum
Palomar College's library will be open for two extra hours a day during finals week if members of the Associated Student Government get their way. In the middle of last October, ASG senator Shalina Mahendra collected more than 160 signatures on petitions asking the library to be open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. "We had to have at least 30 signatures on the petition," Mahendra said. "I gathered more than 100 on the first petition." The biggest roadblock to extending the hours is funding, Mahendra said. It will cost about $800 to extend the hours for one week, according to Dr. George Mozes, director of the library. That does not include the first floor computer lab, he said. "It would cost a couple hundred more dollars to extend the hours of the lab," Mozes said. When the petitions were first pre-
College Press
CHICAGO - This year's college freshmen said they spent their last year of high school strolling in late for class and dodging homework -- and still managed to maintain an A average. Don't be too impressed, say researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, whose annual survey of college first-years is designed to show how students' attitudes and goals change over time. The resulting study, released this week and now in its 34th year, is conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Institute and based on responses from 261,217 students at 462 two and four-year institutions. Students' answers reflect their last year of high school and their expectations of college. 1 The rigors of college study must have been a shocker to many firstyears. who reported what researchers called more 11 disengagement" from academics than ever. A record 40 percent of students reported frequently feeling bored in class, up from 38 percent last year and from a low of 26 percent in 1985. A whopping 63 percent of students, the most ever, also said they showed up late for class frequently or occasionally, compared with 49 percent in 1966. Signs of the students' disinterest in academics showed in their study habits, too. Thirty-two percent of freshmen said they spent six or more hours a week studying or doing homework during their last year of high school -- down from 44 percent of students when the question first was asked. Forty percent of students said they studied !Jess than three hours a week, and 17 percent said they studied less than one hour a week. Despite their aversion to studying, many students reported they managed to hold on to an A average in high school. A record 34 percent of students said they 'scored the top grade, compared with an all-time low of 13 percent in 1969. Conversely, only 12 percent of last year's high school seniors said they earned a C, down from a record high of 33 percent in 1969. So, what's up with the good grades? Two words, researchers said: "grade inflation. 11 In other words, giving students higher grades for average work. And for many students, schoolwork is focused very much on the basics. Researchers found that more students are taking remedial courses than ever -- particularly in mathematics and foreign languages (13 percent and 5 percent respectively). Overall, 18 percent of firstyear college students took a remedial course in high school, up from a low of 12 percent in 1982. "Although these percentages are relatively small, they represent hundreds of thousands of students nationwide, thus emphasizing the need for colleges and universities to accommodate growi numbers of students who may u..: academically under-prepared," the report states.
sented, Mozes tried to get funding to extend the hours. "We could not secure the monies to keep the library open," Mozes said. "It's not on the budget- we are strictly budgeted." Mozes said the library has an annual budget of $1.5 million, $200,000 of which is used for materials (books, journals, videos, etc.). At that point, it was too late to get the money from ASG, Mahendra said. "It was two weeks before finals - there was no way we could do it," she said. "It takes at least three weeks to get money approved through ASG." Mahendra now feels the money should not come from the ASG budget, but from somewhere else at the college. "Why should the students have to pay more money to keep the library open so they can study?" Mahendra said. Mozes said the library hours will remain the same until a source of funds is found. "Until we find a way to pay for it, we can't do it," he said. "It's just not budgeted."
Witches use campus to gain meeting attendance Nancy Seuschek Se>m Colburn I The Telescope
The new security tower is in parking lot 12, but can be moved to other lots.
Security tower •
arr1ves on campus Tom Chambers Editor in Chief
Students parking in lot 12 will find company in the air. A new security tower, that raises 20 feet with hydraulics, has been placed in the lot to help campus police fight crime. "If you're a burglar trying to take a stereo out of a car, you'll think twice with the tower there," said Tom Plotts, Chief of the Palomar College Police Department. A campus police officer will be stationed in the tower and connected by radio to officers on the ground. "It's the same as having four additional officers on foot in the lot," Plotts said. The $35,000 tower was purchased last fall, and arrived on campus during the winter break. It is air conditioned, fitted with halogen lights, can run on solar power or gas, and can be hitched to a truck to move it around campus. Palomar first heard about the towers from Cerritos College in Norwalk, which already has three of the towers. With the towers, Cerritos has decreased vehicle thefts and bmglaries by 80 percent, Plotts said. "We (at Palomar) have had no vehicle burglaries since we've
Tom
Ch~mbers
I The Telescope
Looking out of the tower toward the campus shows how much the officers can see from inside. had the tower," said Bruce Bishop, director of student activities. Plotts said the college will test the tower in different parking lots to see where it is the most effective. "At this point, we're experimenting with it," he said. "If we purchase another one or move it, it will probably go in lot 9." Palomar College Police Field Supervisor Gerard Perez said the tower has already been handy. He was in the tower during the
first week of classes when two women started to put fliers on cars. "I poked my head out the window and shouted to them," he said. "They turned around and didn't see me at first, then they looked up." He told the women they needed to get permission to put fliers on cars. The tower was purchased with funds from a grant the college received from the conservation corps.
Staff Writer
A pagan priest and priestess strolled the Palomar campus last semester and tacked brightly colored fliers to the bulletin boards. The posters were invitations to an open discussion group called Circle by the Sea, which meets Friday nights in Vista. Dylan Pendragon and his partner Freewo/man (the slash is to signify both male and female aspects of herself) are working professionals in their 40s. Pendragon has a Ph.D. in philosophy. They don't use their real names when discussing witchcraft publicly because they say they would be fired from their jobs for their beliefs. They have attracted Palomar students in the past with fliers, and do not consider it recruitment. "We don ' t proselytize," said Freewo/man, who wears several long, symbolic necklaces with her conservative blouse. "It's against our fundamental beliefs." She said they simply seek like-minded people to talk with about spiritual issues. Pcndragon wears a metal pentagram on a chain. "Sometimes new people turn up around Halloween," he said. "They're usually disap-
pointed." "They're expecting some ~ort of cross between a seance and a black mass," Freewo/man said. "We're pretty norn1al." According to several Web sites and a pamphlet written by Freewo/man, witches are practitioners of a nature-based belief system . They may perform rituals according to the turning of the seasons or the phases of the moon. Most witches believe in God, but also in different expressions of God, such as the Goddess and other deities. They believe in cosmic justice, or karma, as well as in reincarnation and do not believe in the concept of sin. They believe people are capable of performing magic through the use of natural psychic power. A magical spell is a series of steps to direct the will to a desired end. Energy is drawn from the Earth, concentrated, and sent out to the world. Freewo/man's pamphlet says the roots of witchcraft precede recorded history, involving ritual and ceremony to achieve harmony with the Earth and various gods. Some old traditions were lost when indigenous religions met with militant Christianity, and were forced under-
see WITCHES, page 3
\Nhere vve transfer The number of Palomar students who transferred UC system and the CSU system. to the • ..0 ()o.
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136
==]l]E~~~~-
76 59
624
Source: Palomar College Institutional Research & Planning