00-STUDENT

STAFF EDITORIAL

Sometimes being a student reporter feels a little like working for the CIA. 

We lead double lives.  During the day we suffer through astronomy and pre-calculus, living off a well-balanced diet from the food truck.  By night, we sit in our bungalow after the construction noise from the adjacent Child Development Center has died down. 

Hunched over our computers, a pot of coffee brewing in the corner, we put together The Guardsman, writing about our school, instructors and school board. We write about the college of which we are part, while also trying to maintain some sense of objectivity.

As confusing as it can be for us, administrators don’t always know how to deal with us either.  Sometimes they are really nice, almost too nice.  They seem eager for coverage and overly concerned with how we would portray them. 

Then there are those who seem to just wish we would stop calling.  They are difficult to reach, do not return phone calls and dance around our questions with the skill of a presidential candidate.

Late at night, we drag ourselves from The Guardsman office, walking through the eerily quiet campus, the air thick with fog.  We return to school the next morning, grabbing breakfast from the food truck and trying to stay awake through 8 a.m. classes.

As the day goes by, we all end up back in our bungalow.  Someone will brew another pot of coffee, we morph from students to reporters, and it all starts over again.

e-mail: editorial@theguardsman.com

BEFORE YOU PAY THE BOOKSTORE, CHECK THE INTERNET

BY MARTHA VALLEJO
EDITOR

MICHAEL MORGAN / GUARDSMAN

It seems that every year textbooks are getting more expensive.  If you are taking a full credit semester you might end up spending an average of $400 in textbooks and supplies. 

City College has the most affordable tuition rates but the textbooks bite your wallet with a vengeance.  It is no wonder students are looking at different ways to acquire books at lower prices.

One way to get the books - without hurting your finances too much - is through online sources.  You can purchase a new or used version at a much lower rate. 

Also, the best way to get books for free is online. Google allows you to read some books online. Through Google Book Search you can find books from authors and publishers in agreement with Google.  You might be able to browse a few sample pages or even an entire book, depending on the copyright status. 

Some books are public domain and consequently out of copyright, allowing you to download and read the entire book offline.  Other books are still under copyright and you might only be able to take a peek.  You can find books through Google by using the ISBN, subject, title, author and specific date range; with some luck, the one you are looking for is online for free.

Regardless of the alternatives of finding textbooks outside the college library, one wonders if book prices need be so high.  Sometimes books’ new editions have only minor changes and still their prices skyrocket.  It would be interesting to find out if such modifications are truly helpful to a student’s learning process or simply enhance the book’s resale value.

The beneficiaries of the textbooks are supposed to be the students, not the publishers.  But this is just  wishful thinking; in our capitalist society, profit rules.  There is always a chance that if we put our minds together we can find a way to lower textbook prices: perhaps City College can create policies that monitor publishing houses and the true needs of the students.

e-mail: opinions@theguardsman.com

YOU MATTER IN THE UPSWING OF INFORMATION AGE
BY ALEX MULLANEY
EDITOR

MAX TAPIA / GUARDSMAN

You probably belong to at least one of the following: MySpace, Facebook, Frienster, Second Life, Flickr, World of Warcraft, Livejournal, Blogger, Twitter, Wikipedia, Craigslist, YouTube and on.

Social networks — invisible, homeostatic communities comprised of far-ranging relationships connected by computer consoles and cell phones — vary like the species of birds. Wikipedia the owl, MySpace the peacock.

All social networks promote friendship and sharing, but now you must promote your identity. Your choice reveals your level of consciousness. It isn't absurd to consider the social networks you belong to with the same criticism as your political ideologies: directly or indirectly, you help a network subsist and tread the evolutionary track. If you invest your time, you might as well invest your mind.

Of all social-networking sites, those designed for the sake of social networking are the most popular. I often hear the largest network described as "mindless self-promotion" or "mass retardation" akin to television. Complaints against the social-networking pariah, MySpace, range from its format and security to creators (annoying Tom) and new ownership under the infamous NewsCorp.

Whether Rupert Murdoch will defile MySpace — if that's possible — as he will undoubtedly wreck his latest acquisition, The Wall Street Journal, remains to fate, but also to you. Traits inherent to the Web 2.0 phenomenon — the need for content to be added by users — places power in your hands.

In the upswing of the information age, you matter.

Hell, you were Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2006. You, an individual who shares and creates content in online communities, fuel the Web 2.0 phenomenon, the new engine of commerce.

e-mail: copy@theguardsman.com

INCOMING

Faculty Poll
Should teachers require students to buy textbooks they wrote for the course they teach?

Yes: 8 out of 9
No: 1 out of 9


“If the book is the required text for the course, then yes, I don't think it really matters who wrote it."
— Sara Peterson, Mathematics

ON THE RECORD

What do you think about social-network Web sites like MySpace?

Jason Ramil
“I keep in touch with old friends from middle school and high schoo, and relatives from out of state. You don't call your relatives all the time. A good way to keep in touch is to leave a comment on their page."

Michelle Cochran
“It started off as a good idea. It has blown up to an obsessive cult level. Over-hyphed. It is a violation of your rights if employers look at your pages. Parents should teach their kids self-restraint when on these sites."

Marri Gamare
“I have MySpace for myself and for my puppet-theater hobby. I think MySpace annoys me. It is an intense marketing aspect with ads everywhere. A lot of my friends are on MySpace and it is a way to keep in touch with them as they don't have traditional e-mail addresses. "

Jayson Arates
“Preteens who do online networking make unfamiliar friends and have mishaps you see on TV. I think if you know someone for fix or six months online, it's OK to talk to them on the phone. I let my parents talk to them so they can let me know what they think then meet them in person. A person should use common sense when meeting online."

Bridget Biggins
“I am not a big fan of MySpace, but I do have a MySpace page. It's a good way to keep in touch. Some people become too obsessed with it."

Brandon Mulhearn
“It's an overwhelming digital social area where the naive youth of America feel overprotected in telling the rest of the world their personal lives. It allows sexual predators to shop for children as easily as it would be to buy books on Amazon."

THE THROWBACK

BY ELIZABETH SKOW
Editor

An undisclosed number of years ago, I gave my suits away. Now I wear the same basic clothing every day, with few variations.

Today, for example, I have on a black hoodie over a long-sleeved T-shirt. The ridiculous statement, “Rock Monarchy,” is emblazoned in black-on-black velour across the front of the hoodie. The fact that I’m a nearly starving musician only enhances this poor fashion choice. I’m wearing low-waist, boot-cut jeans that show way too much butt crack when I bend over and slip-on sneakers with little skulls all over them.

I am 40. Other women my age see me in stores and ask me where I got my pants so they can buy crack-revealing jeans for their 15-year-old daughters. My mom never bought me any cool clothes, so here I am dressed like a hip 15-year-old for the first time ever.

The other night, I go to see “Repo Man” at midnight with my friend Nini. If you do not know what “Repo Man” is: Go. Rent it. Watch it immediately.

Nini is pushing 40, too, and despite two children and many PTA meetings, she sports bright blue and yellow hair. Nini picks me up in her white Mercedes wagon. She wants tapas beforehand, but I argue that popcorn is more appropriate for the genre of the film, and I don’t drive a Mercedes. Popcorn is the Honda Civic of tapas.

The movie rocked. We had a blast. The only problem: the soundtrack was drowned out by other wimpier 40-year-old geezers’ snoring.

Oh well, I pulled up my hood and ignored the noise.

e-mail: asstnewseditor@theguardsman.com