Category → Writing
Faculty votes to cut its own wages by 10 percent
In a nearly split vote, about 8,800 California Faculty Association (CFA) members decided to cut their own wages by 10 percent this week.
The California State University (CSU) and the CFA finalized agreements Wednesday on two-day per month faculty furloughs — non-work days without compensation – in the vote that passed by 54 percent.
The CSU will save about half of the $584 million budget deficit through the furloughs. Of that total, Cal Poly will save approximately $16 million .
As a Cal Poly lecturer of 12 years, Sherrie Amido had to decide between the possibility of her job being cut or everyone’s salary being reduced.
“I couldn’t imagine myself standing up in front of the classroom and letting my students ask me why I couldn’t take a 10 percent pay cut, when they may have a 30 percent tuition increase,” she said. Continue reading →
Cal Poly on track for full Web accessibility by 2012
Looking into Laura Weiss’s piercing blue eyes, you’d never guess that she’s blind.
Although she sometimes returns the gaze — a habit she picked up from the first 30 years of her life when she still had vision — all Weiss can see now are faint blurs in her peripheral vision.
It’s this characteristic that places Weiss, a social sciences junior, among the 71 students at Cal Poly categorized as “disabilities students” who rely on compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to receive an education.
The law was passed in 1998 and outlaws discrimination against people with disabilities. Recent revisions involving electronic compatibility have forced the California State University to adopt a system-wide goal of achieving full ADA compliance for all digital information by 2012. Continue reading →
Cal Poly brings student portfolios into the 21st century
A rising trend among universities nationwide is a push for online portfolios, also known as e-folios or e-portfolios – and Cal Poly may begin exploring the concept on a university-wide scale.
The university sent a team to a statewide CSU meeting Wednesday at the San Francisco State University Downtown Center to specifically discuss how students and faculty can use e-portfolios. Continue reading →
“Power Wheels guy” takes senior project to the streets
A picture of a student sitting in what appeared to be a children’s Power Wheels vehicle being ticketed by three San Luis Obispo Police Department motorcycles and one University Police Department SUV gained viral popularity on Twitter last week and was plastered on the front page of the Mustang Daily with a headline that read “Little wheels cause a big deal.” Continue reading →
Cal Poly refrains from issuing online policies for athletes
With the rise of social networking Web sites like Facebook and MySpace, all it takes is one incriminating photo for a student athlete to potentially lose a scholarship or be kicked off a team. And it’s not just hypothetical. There are numerous examples of athletes being punished for pictures or words published on the Internet, depicting misdeeds ranging from hazing to underage drinking.
Because the risks are so high, athletic departments across the country are increasingly re-evaluating their policies.
Cal Poly, however, does not have an official policy and probably never will, athletics director Alison Cone said.
Just because the university hasn’t implemented a formal policy, though, doesn’t mean school officials aren’t concerned about the hazards.
Beginning with the recruiting process, Shannon Stephens, the athletics department director of Academic Services, warns athletes of the dangers in the evolving cyber world.
“You get into this kind of freedom-of-speech thing at a public university,” Stephens said. “Then, at the same time, you have the mission statement of the athletics department and the institution.”
Cases necessitating such warnings have taken on many forms. Continue reading →
Chain-stores and downloading threaten the future of the independent record store
Photo taken by Lauren Rabaino
When Morninglory Music, a record store in downtown Santa Barbara, recently closed its doors for good, owner Stan Bernstein attributed the decision to the growing number of people who download music illegally online. But in San Luis Obispo, independent record stores see another problem: commercial retailers. Continue reading →
Harsh economic times hit SLO
When local hotels didn’t sell out for graduation in June, the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce saw its first signs of an economic crisis.
“For the first time ever, we had hotels calling us with availability,” said Lindsey Miller, marketing director at the chamber of commerce. “Usually they sold out in January.”
According to Miller, occupancy was down six percent in June, and when tourism is down, locally-owned shops feel the impact.
“Traveling is the first thing you cut; it’s kind of a frivolous expenditure,” Miller said.
Tourism is what keeps some businesses – like downtown boutique French Quarter – thriving over the summer months when students are gone.
“I think it helps that it’s a tourist city,” said Brittney Durr, a sales associate at French Quarter. “If we didn’t have any tourism, we wouldn’t really have any income (in the summer).” Continue reading →
Students design high-tech desk of the future
Six years ago, before liberal arts engineering studies senior Bill Trammel became a Cal Poly student, he had an epiphany while sitting at his mahogany desk at home.
“What would this desk look like if Q from James Bond designed it?” he asked himself.
He pictured a desk with a sliding screen, a finger print recognition system and video conferencing – all from his single, sedentary unit of space.
“But the key point is that it would look like a completely ordinary desk,” Trammel said, and the idea for his senior project was born.
Now, years later, he’s finally turning his vision into a reality.
Although something as high-tech as finger print recognition isn’t in his plans yet, the concept of an electromechanical desk controlled by buttons has kept Trammel and three classmates spending all their free time working out of a garage in San Luis Obispo for the past two months. Continue reading →
This is the blog of Lauren Rabaino, a Los Angeles-based product designer who works at 
What They’re Saying