Mahdi Baharan, a transfer student from Iran, was living abroad when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11. Baharan, 26, was born in Dezful, Iran during the time Iran was at war with Iraq. After his birth, his family moved to Tehran. While living in Iran, Baharan witnessed the tragedy of Sept. 11 from a foreign country that does not have the best ties with the United States. He speaks of that dark afternoon as… Read more

For 20-year-old Vania Leon, her first semester at CSUN was the worst.  She started as an interior design major but her art classes weren’t of interest to her.  She soon felt that finding a job in interior design would be difficult because of the competitive nature of the business. Her plans had come into question, When applying for college, Leon wasn’t really interested in USC and UCLA because they didn’t provide programs in interior design. “I looked into those schools… Read more

CSUN has one of the most diverse university communities in the United States that includes 36,000 students and more than 4,000 faculty members.  Each one of the 36,000 students comes from a different walk of life.  Every student offers something different to the university that helps make the university a diverse community. The new feature “One in 36,000” will take a closer look at some of these students.  Every student took a different path to get here and will take… Read more

The arrest and imprisonment of Iranian-American graduate student Esha Momeni received national attention last semester when she was jailed while working on her thesis project in Iran.

Momeni, 28, was arrested and held without bail Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008 for allegedly passing another vehicle illegally on Moddaress highway.’ She was held in solitary confinement at Evin prison for roughly two and a half weeks before being released and the deed to her parents’ home taken as bail.
‘

Esha Momeni, a mass communications graduate student who was held in confinement in Iran last fall for 25 days while working on research for the women’s movement, received the first Academic Freedom Award Tuesday night almost seven months after she was apprehended.