NO MORE BEER
WHAT IF?
IN HER OWN WORDS
Kate Sessions Park in Pacific Beach faces a possible alcohol ban. page 3
The Missouri Tigers pose the first big threat to the SDSU football team. page 5
Emma Stone of “Easy A” talks about improv and her future page 6 co-star
dailyaztec the
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Vol. 96, Issue 11
San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1913
w w w. T h e D a i l y A z t e c . c o m
INDEX:
calendar ... 2
Tw i t t e r : T h e D a i l y A z t e c
food & drink ... 3
sports ... 5
entertainment ... 6
TODAY @ STATE Last day to add classes Women’s Studies Colloquium, 12 p.m. Faculty Recital: Jeremy Kurtz, bass, 12 p.m.
classifieds / backpage ... 8
Electronic reserves Disability course cut from library earns its keep ‘Disability and Society’ was slated to be cut, but students fought to keep it. ASHLEY MORGAN S TA F F W R I T E R
From parking structures to the interior of bathroom stalls, fliers could be found around campus reading, “We want this class!!!!!!!!” Instructor Mendy McClure, her class of 137 students and her teaching assistants have spent the first part of this semester campaigning through letter writing, word-of-mouth and posters to prevent their class from being cut and to lift the enrollment cap off of the upper division General Studies 420 course known as “Disability and Society.” The class focuses on the human experience of individuals with disabilities, such as the attitudes toward individuals and interrelationships between societal institutions and needs of people with disabilities, according to the San Diego State General Catalog. Last Friday, McClure was ecstatic as the College of Education decided to open enrollment of the class to a total of 300 students, she said.
Audrey Rynberg / Staff Photographer
Electronic Reserves were used by 10 percent of classes per semester. Budget constraints caused the cancelation.
ROBERT MORENO S TA F F W R I T E R
The budget cuts at San Diego State have claimed another victim, as the library has had to eliminate its Electronic Course Reserves system. The elimination of ECR is expected to save the library about $50,000 a year, according to Mark Stover, interim associate dean of Library and Information Access. Stover said the cost to keep ECR included paying for two full-time staff members, new software and copyright costs, which was the most expensive. The $50,000 the library saved from eliminating ECR will now be primarily spent on the library’s electronic databases and electronic journals. Stover estimated that 10 percent of the classes taught every semester used the ECR system. The decision to eliminate ECR was made by Jon Cawthorne, dean of Library and Information Access. The decision was made after a year of consulting with many people around campus. “The idea grew out of severe budget cuts and really looking at services we could no longer support,” Cawthorne said in an e-mail. History professor Kathryn EdgertonTarpley had been using the ECR system for her students for six years. She would use ECR for her graduate seminar about Chinese history and for an upper division writing class
through the history department. She said she is disappointed the ECR system will no longer be available to her students but understands the library’s budgetary decisions. “I’m certainly not blaming the library. It’s the budget cuts. I understand that the library cannot afford it,” Edgerton-Tarpley said. She said with the elimination of ECR, her students must now either buy an expensive course reader or get the readings on paper reserve in the library. Stover said although ECR is no more, faculty members still have resources for their students to read materials electronically. “We realized that the same kind of service that we were providing through ECR could be managed by individual faculty members themselves through their Blackboard sites,” Stover said. He also said Montezuma Publishing and Instructional Technology Services can help in aiding the faculty with publishing and electronic material. Stover said the elimination of ECR is a sad loss for the library. “We were actually one of the pioneers in using electronic reserves,” Stover said. “I believe we were, if not the first, one of the very first university libraries to use ECR. So it’s a loss. It’s a sad thing in a way that we can’t provide this anymore. We were sort of like a trendsetter or pacesetter in that area.” Before its elimination the library used the ECR system for about 15 years.
“Of course I started to cry, I was ecstatic. I sent out a thank-you to my students, my 137 troops I call them, because I really feel, I deeply feel, that if it wasn’t for their effort, I don’t think on my own this would have ever been possible” — Mendy McClure, “Disability and Society” professor “As it worked out, this fall GS420 was offered (and) there were students that registered for it,” Dean of the College of Education, Dr. Ric A. Hovda, said. “We did have to cap it until we could see how the rest of our numbers looked … and we have some room so we will open that section up to more students. I’m impressed that so many students cared so much and helped a whole campus see how important this course is, so I have great admiration for seeing the posters up and people advocating.”
“Of course I started to cry, I was ecstatic,” McClure said. “I sent out a thank-you to my class, my 137 troops I call them, because I really feel, I deeply feel, that if it wasn’t for their effort, I don’t think on my own this would have ever been possible.” The enrollment cap was placed on the class because of a change in the target number of full time equivalent students given by the Cal State University system to SDSU, giving each college within the university new FTES targets as well, Hovda said. McClure said the reason why the class was still offered this semester was because students signed up for the class in early enrollment, before the decision to discontinue the class was made, and this could have possibly put students’ graduation in jeopardy. “This summer I was told the class was cut one day after the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, one day before The San Diego Union-Tribune came out with an article about how friendly the San Diego State University campus was toward students who were in the gay and lesbian minority groups,” McClure said. “And the school is going to go out and celebrate the fact that they have all of this diversity, and all this excitement about this particular minority group while they just cut the only class (about disability); it was unconscionable and it was morally wrong.” People with disabilities represent the largest minority group in the country, McClure said. “It’s most definitely an important class,” Director of Diversity in the Office of the President, Aaron Bruce, said. “One of the reasons it’s important is this is one group that crosses so many different types of diversity, whether it’s sexual orientation or age or ethnicity or religion, gender, all of those groups potentially have people who have disabilities, so therefore it is everyone’s concern and it is a part of humanity to address.” “I don’t think people should feel sorry or pity disabled people because that doesn’t really help anybody, but instead learn how to treat them like you would normally treat someone; I think that’s what is really important about this class,” finance senior Justin Wei said. “Students who are going to be graduating from here are going to be going into fields where they are going to be dealing with people with disabilities,” GS420 student and psychology junior Angela Van Ostran said. “I think it would do a disservice to the students who are graduating from here and entering the workforce if this class is not here.” The College of Education does not currently know if it will be offering this course in the spring or placing an enrollment cap on the current number of students, but will be re-evaluating the situation before then, Hovda said.