Good turnout for CSU, Sacramento rally - despite the heat

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - A crowd of about 200 faculty, students at staff took part in a noontime rally at CSU, Sacramento today, the first of many such activities as the three groups get together to fight the fee increases visited on students and the furloughs (pay cuts) forced on employees.

Some of the student speakers were choked up as they tried to explain how much the fee increases (32 percent total for this year alone) were hurting their ability to even go to college. Several faculty gave fairly rousing speeches, despite a sound system that was below inadequate - a bullhorn with a microphone attached.


Student speaker at today's rally

The sound system - such as it was - was still considered illegal by campus police. The police had banned the use of any amplification and told the leaders of the CFA to simply raise their voices when they spoke. The bullhorns were used anyway, a protest themselves of the campus administration's attempt at keeping the rally from growing very large.

Had the flames been fanned sufficiently (and loud enough for people to hear), it's possible the group might have marched on the offices of CSU, Sacramento President Alexander Gonzalez.

That would have made for some good theatre, and perhaps grabbed more media attention.

Regardless, the 25 students enrolled in my Column Writing class attended and this week will be writing columns - their first attempts.


A 'loud' speaker


Sign in the crowd

Column writing students to cover noon rally at CSU

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - Students from the column writing class at CSU Sacramento are going to get to work with live ammunition right away.

Today, they will attend a rally on the CSU, Sacramento campus to protest the student fee hikes and the faculty furloughs (which are resulting in about a 10 percent pay cut for faculty).

They will also have a little extra to write about: The university, very quietly, is telling all faculty to fill up the rooms in which they teach, even if the classes have an agreed-upon limit. So students will be packed in tighter than sardines (and perhaps without chairs to sit upon) and their professors (getting paid less) will have more people to teach, papers to grade, and tests to review.

Oh boy!

Once the students write their columns, the columns will be linked to this page.

Sac Bee's Marcos Breton on tap for Column Writing class

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - This week the column-writing class at CSU, Sacramento is hoping to hear from Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Breton as a guest speaker in class. Breton, who in the past has written about and sports and other feature-type stories for the newspaper, now is a major city-side columnist.

In recent months, he has written a lot about the Kevin Johnson-Heather Fargo race for mayor of Sacramento.

And most recently (Sunday), he wrote about the controversial Proposition 8 which state voters just approved.

Tolerance or intolerance?

Marcos Breton

Breton was scheduled to speak in class a few weeks ago, but like so many other staff members at the Bee, has been busy doing his job - and a lot more - to help the newspaper with its struggles in the down economy and had to cancel.

AP's Chelsea Carter talks about heading to Baghdad

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - Sacramento State alum Chelsea Carter told an audience of about 50 students at CSU, Sacramento Monday that she would be required to wear body armor and a helmet - at least some of the time - when she is working for the Associated Press in Iraq, but that getting an overseas posting has been a dream of hers for years.

Carter, a former State Hornet newspaper reporter outlined her career that took her first to the Lodi News-Sentinel in Lodi, Calif. after graduation with a B.A. in Journalism in the mid 1990s. She then was hired by the Associated Press and worked in Charleston, W. Va. , New York and Southern California and has also worked as a national writer for the AP.

Later this week, she will be flying into Baghdad to be a foreign correspondent for AP.

Most recently she has been working as a military affairs reporter for the AP. She was on board the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in 2003 when President George W. Bush made his now-famous "Mission Accomplished" speech about the war in Iraq.

She also told the students about a very tense moment she had during a near-riot and fight in New York City while she was covering the Million Youth March. She watched the riot and fight take place and barely escaped.

She said that she learned that day she could put her fear of personal safety aside when pursuing a story.

"I can do anything for the job," she said.


Journalism Professor Sylvia Fox, left, and AP's Chelsea Carter

Chuck Yeager, 'The Right Stuff' on tap for Literary Journalists again

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - Tom Wolfe's classic book about the U.S. space program, The Right Stuff, will be up for discussion again Monday night in Literary Journalism class.

The book got generally good reviews in the first round of class chatter - I even got to tell my Chuck Yeager story.


Chuck Yeager about the time he broke the sound barrier


A much older Chuck Yeager

I had just taken over as editor of The Union newspaper in Grass Valley in 1980 - after a particularly bruising time in the newsroom with a rebellious staff. I came back from lunch to find a grinning Chuck Yeager, sitting in my editor's chair with his cowboy boots on the deck, heels digging into some papers I had left there.

I went straight for the desk and told Yeager to get his $^%&#&* boots off my desk, embarrassing the then-chair of the Nevada County Board of Supervisors, Eric Rood, who had brought Yeager in to show him off.

He and Yeager had served in the US Air Force together.

I had no idea who Yeager was, and in hindsight all these years later, I probably still would have told him to get his $^%&#&* boots off my desk had I known that the cocky guy sitting in my chair was the legendary Chuck Yeager.

Yeager and I met a few times after that at Nevada County social functions and laughed (sort of) at that incident.