“The Weight of the Nation” fell on the Valley Performing Arts Center at CSUN Thursday night, with a free public screening of the final part of the four-part HBO documentary series. The series addresses the underlying causes of the obesity epidemic, from human biology to inactivity to government policy. Hundreds turned out for the screening of “Challenges,” part four of the series. Beginning with a brief look at the history of the human-food relationship, the film illustrated the culmination of… Read more

Political reporter, television pundit, and author Eleanor Clift gave a talk on the history of women in politics to a nearly full auditorium at CSUN Tuesday. In “Women in Washington: From the Past to the Present,” Clift offered a history lesson on the suffrage movement and her observations about the current election and political climate. Clift highlighted Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as suffrage movement’s pioneers and their dogged persistence in winning women the right to vote. Moving… Read more

CSUN visual arts students will have the opportunity to showcase their work at the upcoming Annual Juried Art Student Exhibition, which will run from April 20 to May 12 in CSUN’s Main Gallery. An average of 200 students typically submit around 400 pieces for consideration.  A panel of three new jurors is selected every year to judge the submissions.  This year the panel consists of an artist, a graphic designer, and a museum curator, who will choose approximately 60 to… Read more

Representatives of CSU and the California State Student Association discussed what will happen if the CSU receives an additional $200 million budget cut during a media teleconference involving more than a dozen California universities and newspapers Wednesday. The teleconference followed a CSU board of trustees meeting on Tuesday during which officials announced an enrollment freeze at all but eight CSU campuses for Spring 2013. “It’s a pretty grim situation, and our students anticipated a grim situation,” said Miles Nevin, CSSA… Read more

Matador Nights, the popular late night student event, is coming back to CSUN on April 27 with increased security after it was cancelled in Spring 2011 due to an altercation between two students. The event, which is designed to be created, themed and implemented by students, has entertained students with everything from inflatable bounce houses to carnival games and rides, and has had themes such as Hawaiian, Western and extra-terrestrials, according the University Student Union website. The Spring 2011 Matador… Read more

After a semester-long hiatus, CSUN’s news and public affairs program, On Point, is back on the air. Taped every Tuesday, the 30-minute program offers more in-depth coverage of individual topics than the average news program allows. “Normally, in local news, you have a minute or two to cover a story,” said CSUN journalism professor Sally Turner, who oversees the production of the program. “What we do that’s a little different is take one story for a half hour and try… Read more

CSUN’s information technology department is in a constant battle to prevent fraudulent messages from reaching the university’s email users. Among the most recently reported phishing scams is an email that appears to come from CSUN’s information technology department cautioning the recipient that failure to provide his/her user name and password will result in deactivation of the email account, said Chris Olsen, information security officer in CSUN’s information technology department. Though the email looks official and urgent, containing the Cal State… Read more

A professor of CSUN’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences has been awarded a grant of just under $1.2 million for a program to help mothers and fathers improve their parenting skills. The grant was given to Susan Love by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help her create an interactive online community for parents, based on the Triple P Positive Parenting Program developed in Australia by Matt Sanders, a psychology professor at the University of Queensland. Both Sanders and… Read more