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THURSDAY JULY 30, 2015
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Housing adds third bed to rooms
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CHARITY SHOULD START AT HOME FOR CSUEB
Suites modified for more students
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By Bryan Cordova MANAGING EDITOR
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BART closed for city communters By Shannon Stroud EDITOR-IN-CHIEF BART will be closed this weekend to East Bay commuters trying to get into San Francisco. Tracks will be closed from the last BART ride on Friday night at midnight until the first ride at 4 a.m. Monday morning. BART will close the West Oakland Station and will not run trains between the West Oakland and Embarcadero stations. The tracks will be closed due to a repair needed near the Transbay Tube. Because of any inconveniences this may cause riders, BART will run a bus service from 19th Street in Oakland and the temporary Transbay Terminal in San Francisco, there will be accommodations for people with disabilities. The bus line will run all weekend during BART hours of operation of 6 a.m. to midnight on Saturday and 8 a.m. to midnight on Sunday over the weekend. The additional bus line is intended only for those who have no other options, according to a statement released from BART officials. According to the release, there will be no additional charges for the bus, but the bus will cause a one to two hour delay for some customers. BART will attempt to battle any inconveniences by providing a shuttle from West Oakland Station to 19th Street Station every 15 minutes for residents only. During this weekend’s shutdown, train services within the East Bay will be more frequent than normal and train times will be updated on the BART website. BART will also be closed during the upcoming Labor Day weekend, Sept. 5 through 7.
Cal State East Bay’s student apartments, Pioneer Heights, will expand this fall and a few rooms will be converted from double space bedrooms to triple space bedrooms, according to their website. Freshman suites previously consisted of four spaces with two bedrooms per space, a kitchenette, a living room, two bathrooms and two showers that accommodated eight total students. Some of the spaces will now have a bunk bed and a single bed to accommodate a third student and increase the suite capacity to 10 students. The plan was created earlier this summer as a temporary solution to the
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200 plus student wait list, while the development of the fourth apartment complex of housing is still in its approval process through the Chancellor’s Office with no date set. “The wait list for first year freshman was over 200 [students], with the addition of these bed spaces the waitlist will be brought down below 200 as of today, July 28,” said Mark Almeida, Associate Director of Housing and Dining Operations. Two years ago, Pioneer Heights converted 12 study lounges in the freshman halls into bedroom spaces that gave students access to the apartment from the hallway. According to housing, Hayward’s Fire Marshall required modifications to the rooms due to the lack of sufficient exits from the study lounges in case of emergency. The solution was
to convert the rooms into the apartments, eliminating the door and having two rooms connected with one door to enter both. That same year CSUEB Housing converted 48 of their double room suites into triples, which is the same model currently being used for the freshman halls. “We sent out a survey to the incoming freshman who applied for housing and the majority of them responded they are willing to live in a triple room,” said Kimberly Reyes, Pioneer Heights Housing Analyst. According to Reyes, students who have signed up for their housing portal after applying were given the survey prior to the contracts being sent out. Residents were able to log into the Housing Portal, the online communication service offered by Pioneer Heights, and switch
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CSUEB converts to By Brianna Leahy CONTRIBUTOR Beginning in Fall 2018, Cal State East Bay will be a semester system university. The transition from quarters to semesters is a process that takes about three years to implement and is currently underway, according to Eileen Barrett, co-director of the Semester Conversion Initiative. The primary reason to for “semester conversion, then, would be to smooth the transition for students, enabling them to transfer
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Summer 2015 Issue 6
Campus is all that jazz By Louis LaVenture SPORTS AND CAMPUS EDITOR The tunes will be plentiful on Saturday at Cal State East Bay’s Pioneer Amphitheater when several well-known musicians take the stage at the 5th annual Oakland Jazz Festival. Kem, Eric Benet, Lalah Hathaway, Euge Groove, Peter White and Pete Escovedo & The Family will play their classics, some covers and new music from recent projects at the East Bay festival. All of the featured artists receive regular radio play and in the last two years Hathaway has racked up two Grammy Awards. In 2014 she won the Best R&B Performance for “Something” with Snarky Puppy and this year she won the 2015 Best Traditional R&B Performance for “Jesus Children” with Robert Glasper Experiment and Malcolm-Jamal Warner who is best-known for his role as Theo Huxtable on the award-winning The Cosby Show. Benet is the former husband of actress Halle Berry and is best known for his 1999 hit “Spend My Life with You” featuring Tamia, that reached the number one spot on United States Billboard R&B chart. Kem is a soulful R&B crooner that has also found success in particular with his two singles “Why Would You Stay” and “Share My Life” off the “Intimacy: Album III” LP in 2010 which both reached the top 20 Billboard U.S. R&B charts. Pete Escovedo is a Bay Area native, born in Pittsburg, and will also have a celebration of sorts for his 80th birthday that passed on July 13. Escovedo is a true musician and along with his brother Coke played in the Carlos Santana Band for many years. His family has gotten in on the act as well, his daughter Sheila E., has topped the charts with many of her electronic freestyle R&B style songs. Shelia E. played with artists like George Duke, Lionel Richie, Marvin Gaye, Herbie Hancock, and Diana Ross before she was 30. The Oakland native also famously collaborated with Prince on many of the Purple Rain songs for the movie in 1984. His son Michael was also featured on The Wayne Brady Show and he has two other children and several siblings in the music industry. Michael Escovedo is the biological father of Nicole Richie who was raised by music icon R&B signer Lionel Richie. Steven Eugene Grove known as Euge Groove, a jazz saxophonist from Maryland, will also take the stage on Saturday. Groove has played saxophone for many well-known artists and is mostly known for his role in the band Tower of Power where he took over for longtime T.O.P. saxphone player Richard Elliot. There will also be food, drinks as well as games and activities for attendees to experience. The doors will open at 10 a.m. and tickets are still available online and by phone.
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