On the corner of Sierra Walk and Etiwanda Avenue, lying on a bicycle rack is a blue and white skeleton of a bicycle that has been stripped of its’ tires, lights and everything else valuable. The problem of bike theft is unfortunately an all too common crime on campus, said Anne P. Glavin, CSUN chief of police. This is why the police department and a CSUN transportation group teamed up to build a fully-enclosed bicycle complex, Glavin said. “We’ve had this… Read more

Just outside the front walls and lining the outer windows of CSUN’s Hillel Center on Plummer Street, there is a small, unobtrusive garden, which demonstrates student’s efforts towards environmentalism. The Hillel Center, or the Hillel Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, has a mission to inspire Jewish students to improve their community and follow tikkun olam, which means repair the world, according to the CSUN Hillel web site. Renee L. Goodwin, director for the Hillel Center, said the garden was started… Read more

The science of predicting earthquakes is still in diapers, according to experts from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). While there is enough understanding to estimate where major earthquakes are most likely to occur, it remains impossible to detect when the next one will happen. “This was asked of me today,” said Dr. Amalie Jo Orme, professor of geography. “I had a student ask ‘are we going to have the big one in September?’ And the answer is we can’t… Read more

Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist and actor Common alongside other music and entertainment industry professionals will be present at CSUN for the 11th Annual African American Music Festival next week. The festival, from March 22 to 27, is organized by the student group African American Music Association (A2MA) and supported by various organizations, including the Pan African Studies Department and the Entertainment Educational Foundation. The six-day festival, which is aimed at high school and college students, will include music workshops, educational… Read more

When Diane Davis had trouble breathing and the ambulance was called, there was a problem that the paramedics were unprepared for. The oxygenated blood that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) helps provide to the heart and brain did not work on Davis because her larynx had been removed, making standard CPR difficult to aid her breathe. Another paramedic truck was called with special equipment that provided Davis with oxygen and helped her take in air. It was because of this incident that… Read more

Beginning next semester, CSUN will entirely switch from WebCT to Moodle as the school’s virtual learning system for online classes. The change comes about because the company that owns and updates WebCT, Blackboard, will discontinue supporting WebCT, according to Senior Director of Academic Technology, David Levin. “WebCt is an older technology that’s actually been discontinued,” said Levin. “So we spent about a year looking at whether we wanted to look for another tool and we decided that we would go… Read more

    “Have a nice day and thanks for the CD,” reads a piece of crinkling lined paper taped to the back wall of Ramon Garcia’s office. Garcia was recently chosen for a fellowship program to write a monograph on a Los Angeles artist. The thank you letter from one of Garcia’s students includes a small sketch of what is unmistakably Garcia’s head, wearing a beret slightly tilted to one side and with an expression of intellectual hipness. “He’s different… Read more

CSUN’s Theatre Department has added a new upper division course which aims to help graduating students enter the industry by coaching them with auditions and helping them participate in theatre programs and festivals. Peter Grego, chair for the department, said adding the class was not difficult even with university budget cuts. “We’re offering less sections for non-majors and it’s only one unit so it wasn’t expensive,” Grego said. Theater 449, Tutorial and Performance Skill was created in order to better… Read more

Local volunteers and students gathered near the Chicano House to celebrate the opening of “Jardín Tonatiuh,” a garden meant to promote healthy living and sustainability among students and the community. Students signed up for their personal plot as soon as the announcement was made that a space behind the Chicano House on North University Drive was to be reserved for a garden in which students could plant and grow whatever they wanted, said sophomore, Alex Hernandez, 19, a Chicano studies… Read more