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Fresno State December music calendar

December’s music calendar at California State University, Fresno includes several student groups’ fall semester final performances, holiday-flavored jazz, gospel and a kickoff recital of student composers’ work.

All events are open to the public, with tickets available through the Box Office in the Music Building next to the Concert Hall. The Box Office is open 11 a.m.-1 p.m. weekdays and one hour prior to performance. Read more

Teacher chances 40 lashes after teddy bear lesson

A British teacher at an exclusive Sudanese school was sentenced to 15 days in prison after allowing her class to name the class’ communal teddy bear, “Muhammad.”

Charges against the 54-year-old educator could have earned her 40 lashes and up to six months in prison. Read more

Van Halen ‘jumps’ to Fresno

Performing for the first time at the Save Mart Center last night, the rock band Van Halen has been on a year-long tour now likely to extend into 2008. Eddie Van Halen (right), David Lee Roth (left), Alex Van Halen (center) and Wolfgang Van Halen are performing together for the first time in 22 years. Performing in cities across America, the 2007 tour has drawn more than 600,000 fans so far.

Tarnished glory

SITTING INDIAN-STYLE in front of my TV, I waited for my favorite tennis player, Martina Hingis, to start her match.

Excitement ran through me every time Hingis had a tennis match. I wanted to play like her, be like her and even be a role model, like she was to me. Being 11 years old, my attention span was short unless my favorite tennis player was on TV.

I was on the Internet and I read the headline “Tennis Star Tested Positive for Cocaine.” Out of curiosity, I went to the link to see who it was. Then I saw a picture of my role model.

Hingis tested positive for cocaine while at Wimbledon this year. Accusations began. Both sides have their stories.

Could it be? My jaw dropped. I was in shock. Is it true? Is there a mistake?

Questions ran through my mind quicker than I could think of an answer.

Hingis said she is not guilty. She said she couldn’t play a match if she was on cocaine. Her lawyers said the federation couldn’t prove it was her urine sample.

The same day the accusations were made public, Hingis decided to retire again. She had retired before, back in 2003, due to injuries. She came back to play in 2006.

I was upset that she would retire over this. I couldn’t understand why someone who loved playing could quit over something she was trying to prove she didn’t do.

It was too much to take in. My favorite tennis player since age 11 and her career seemed to crumble in front of my eyes within hours. I was saddened and disappointed all at once.

Why should I be surprised? I always seem to pick players who get in trouble. One of my favorite basketball players, Jason Kidd, has been in trouble for allegedly hitting his wife. My favorite baseball player, Alex Rodriguez, was seen around town with a woman who wasn’t his wife. The list goes on and on.

Was it in my fate to have another athlete I adore to fail in someway? It seemed that was how the cards were being dealt.

Hingis, a player who turned professional weeks after turning 14, had a bright future ahead of her. She had sponsors such as Yonex and Adidas. She won five grand slams in her career and held the number 1 ranking for a record 209 weeks.

When life is at a high point, it can still all come tumbling down in an instant. Things happen, people change and no explanation is given.

Retiring was a decision Hingis made hoping she could then skip out on any legal process that might take place. But it turns out the legal process doesn’t go away just because someone retires. Court dates may still loom in Hingis’s future.

Dreams of wanting to play like her have faded over the years, but my faithfulness to her hasn’t changed. People make mistakes. No one is perfect. Regardless of whether the allegations are true or not, I won’t turn my back on someone I grew up watching and looked up to.

Getting my first racquet is a memory I will never forget. I walked into Big 5, acting as though I knew what I wanted. I strutted to the tennis racquets and then realized how many different Yonex racquets there were. Staring at the wall that held the racquets, I wasn’t sure where to start. Buying a Yonex racquet was key for me — I could be just like Hingis. I finally found the racquet that looked just like my favorite player’s racquet. I imagined myself as Charlie when he found the golden ticket. It was one of the first moments where I couldn’t describe how I felt.

It was amazing.

Being 11 years old and thinking I could play as well as Hingis felt great. At that point I never thought I would choose someone who might use drugs.

I am 24 now, and I know anything can happen. Even someone who seems to be a goodie-two-shoes can mess up.

I have my thoughts about everything that has happened and as much as I want to believe the person I once looked up to, it is hard to deny a test that is rarely wrong.

Could someone play tennis after taking cocaine? Sure.

But just because the test showed she tested positive doesn’t mean she used cocaine on the day of her match.

It could have been done the day before or before that.

I am against the use of drugs, but I understand people do what they do for different reasons.

As I think about it now, disappointment is the only thing I feel.

Creativity ‘emerging’

Student choreographers Kensington Stettler and Anthony De La Paz tested lighting cues and directed dancers with the ease of professionals as they rehearsed their respective pieces for the theatre arts department’s show, “Emerging Choreographers 2007.”

But Stettler and De La Paz are not professionals, or even theatre arts majors. In fact, the two are both nursing students.

Fresno State’s University Dance Theatre (UDT) class gives students of all interests and majors a chance to pursue their passion for dance. In the fall semester, students created and perfected their own dances, some of which are being performed in “Emerging Choreographers 2007.”

The show opened Thursday night and runs through tomorrow evening.

Some students, like Stettler, 21, and De La Paz, 30, chose to choreograph pieces for their peers, which included everything from teaching the dance to, in Stettler’s case, making her own costumes.

“I just wanted [my dance] to be kind of fun and funky and different,” said Stettler, who has been in the class four semesters. “A lot of moves in the piece were just kind of random acts of silliness that I just threw in there.”

The 18 dances being performed in the show represent a variety of different dance styles, from ballet to hip hop and everything in between. Stettler’s carefree creation, “Toejam Football,” is contrasted by De La Paz’s traditional Polynesian hula dance.

De La Paz, who is part Hawaiian, thinks that “Emerging Choreographers” is a unique opportunity for the community to experience different types of dance.

“People that come from different places to Fresno State have different dance backgrounds,” he said. “It’s not just ballet, it’s not just modern. I’m including some cultural background to it.”

In his last of four semesters with UDT, De La Paz said that he kept coming back because he needed a release from everyday life.

“I’m doing UDT just for fun,” he said “It’s a stress reliever, cause when you’re in nursing school, you’re just stressed all the time.”

However, UDT is not just about fun. The students commit a lot of time outside of class to rehearsals and show preparations.

“The students really end up doing a lot of work,” professor and UDT artistic director Kenneth Balint said. “It’s a lot of fun, but it’s amazing the amount of time and effort, blood, sweat and tears that goes into a production.”

In addition to dancing in the show, UDT students are responsible for setting up the stage and running lights and sound.

“It’s not just a class where they dance, but they also get a lot of experience in the technical areas that usually they don’t have a lot of experience in,” Balint said. “The beauty of that is they get a better understanding of what it takes to put on a dance concert.”

Pick up your butts

Ciggy Buttz thinks that smoking on campus is out of control.

So does Kelly Miller, a senior biology student and president of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) campus chapter.

She and Ciggy, the anti-smoking cigarette butt mascot, along with representatives from a local health organization, are pitching that message this week in the form of a petition and clean-up drive on campus.

Their ultimate goal: Banning all smoking on campus.

“We are interested in health-related issues,” Miller said of the club. “Prevention is the big thing …. to keep healthy in mind, body and spirit.”

Fresno State’s AMSA chapter, which just started up this semester, is working in collaboration with the San Joaquin Valley Health Consortium on the campaign.

“You have to wear a gas mask just to get to class,” said Susan Pearson, who works with the San Joaqin Valley Health Consortium and also serves as the program manager of Fresno County IMPACT, a public health advocacy group.

AMSA’s proposed ban would extend to the 28 designated smoking areas currently available on campus.

Fresno State’s current smoking policy, which bans smoking outside of the designated areas, doesn’t work, said Justina Felix, a worker with the San Joaquin Valley Health Consortium.

“People haven’t been using the designated smoking areas,” Felix said, pointing to the expansive plastic bag on the group’s table containing hundreds of cigarette butts as evidence.

Volunteers can’t collect butts from the receptacles in the designated smoking areas, she said. Instead, all the butts gathered up come from elsewhere, such as off the ground.

The butts have been stacking up since Monday, when AMSA started its campaign. “Butt Bags,” or plastic bags, along with gloves, are handed out to those willing to participate in the butt clean-up.

Volunteers are awarded tickets that will go into a drawing for the chance to win a Nintendo Wii system. Today is the last day for the campaign.

Collection of cigarette butts will end at noon today, with the Nintendo Wii raffle taking place at 1 p.m.

In addition to Butt Bags and gloves, AMSA also offered candy, gum and anti-smoking literature at its table, which is located in the Free Speech Area in front of Roundtable Pizza, amid slogans such as “Help Kick Butts” and “Kissing a Smoker is like Licking an Ashtray.”

AMSA plans to present the petition signatures, along with the cigarette butts, to President John D. Welty upon the campaign’s conclusion. The group plans to call for a stricter no-smoking policy, while urging more enforcement of the current policy.

“[The university] claims students don’t know about the policy yet; that they need more time,” Felix said.

But the current smoking policy has been in effect for four years, which Felix said was plenty of time to make students aware of the policy, and that the university should subsequently step up enforcement against violators.

“They say no one smokes on campus,” Pearson said. “But they can’t ignore the evidence.”

Part of the smoking policy emphasizes building awareness of where people can and can’t smoke, said Amy Armstrong, public information officer for the University Police Department.

“We need to help each other out,” Armstrong said.

But if some people are violating the smoking policy, they need to be brought to the attention of the Environmental Health and Safety department, Armstrong said. For student violators, a judicial affairs coordinator can be assigned to deal with problem smokers and decide on a disciplinary action.

Despite disagreement over how widespread smoking problems are on campus, AMSA is hopeful its campaign will bring about positive change.

Students would be less inclined to smoke, and may be persuaded to quit the habit, “when it’s that much less convenient to smoke,” Felix said.

“We’ve even got some signatures from smokers,” Felix said.

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