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Rogue films

Experimental films from Fresno’s eighth annual Rogue Festival explore loss, remembrance, growth and fear.

“The Rogue is a great opportunity to meet other people and see lots of art and performances,” said Susana Sosa, who is in charge of the experimental films section of the festival.

There are five filmmakers set for the show. Two films are from the same filmmaker; some films are narrative, some are non-narrative. Sosa said typical submissions are non-narrative.

“I have two films,” filmmaker Michele Ainz said. “’Perspective,’ an experimental dance piece focusing on different viewpoints and angles and ‘Pet Friendly,’ an experimental dance piece focusing on two young girls’ nostalgic memories of their first pet.”

The films are scheduled to show in succession and the whole show lasts about and hour. The films will be alternated so everyone’s film has a chance to be shown first and last.

Filmmaking free-for-all

Sosa is spending her fourth year as a Rogue Festival volunteer. She said the most difficult part is getting the filmmakers to get their films completed and get them in before the deadline.

“To tell you the truth there are three films that I haven’t yet seen because the filmmakers haven’t submitted them. I’m waiting to see those,” Sosa said.

There were no submissions from either Fresno State or Fresno City students this year, Sosa said, disappointed.

Unlike other shows, Sosa said, the films at the Rogue Festival are not juried and no one is turned away. “The only time you’d be turned away is if there wasn’t enough time to plot someone in,” she said.

Films’ topics include homelessness, inner cities

Sosa is excited about the 17-minute documentary “Grow,” from a returning presenter who grew up in Fresno. The film is about a young African-American kid growing up in Los Angeles and the garden he has.

“Grow” was created by Challengers Boys and Girls Club member Justin Fulcher, 14, and Kellen Prandini, a visual anthropology graduate student at San Francisco University.

“This documentary was made to show people that South Central Los Angeles does have a chance and its communities can make the world a better place,” Fulcher said.

Another video Sosa is looking forward to is “Homeless Dog” which chronicles the experience of homeless woman Pam Kincaid.

Filmmaker Teresa Flores said the film is based on a poem Kincaid wrote and is a real tribute to her life.

“It [‘Homeless Dog’] is a memorial to her life’s courage and struggle,” Flores said.

Anyone interested in attending The Rogue Festival should visit http://roguefestival.com for more information.

Smittcamp Honors college seeks new director for program

After 42 years as part of Fresno State faculty and 10 years as the director of the Smittcamp Honors College, Stephen Rodemeyer, Ph.D., announced his retirement earlier this semester.

Having only been in existence for 10 years, it seems that the Honors College couldn’t be what it is today without the hard work and dedication of Rodemeyer, or D-Rod, as students lovingly call him.

“As a faculty member and as director, I will miss the interaction with students,” Rodemeyer said.

“[But] I felt it was time.”

Although Rodemeyer will keep his position of director well into the summer, the spring semester will be dedicated to finding and training a new director for next year.

Search begins

On Feb. 6, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dennis Nef started calling for applicants for the directorship of the Honors College.

During this semester Nef will solicit applications, appoint a search committee and choose Rodemeyer’s successor.

“We anticipate applications due March 6 and then a selection made in late March,” Rodemeyer said.

The search committee will consist of faculty and staff from various departments who will review applications, decide which candidates to interview, conduct interviews and finally recommend to Nef which of the candidates they deem acceptable.

While there are many qualities that Nef and the committee will be looking for, some of the most important include: monitoring the budget of the Smittcamp Family Honors College, its facilities and staff members, as well as supervising the admission, advising and monitoring of Honors students.

The director is also in charge of building, overseeing and scheduling the Honors curriculum and coordinating articulation of courses and programs within the university and with other schools and universities.

“In addition to the managerial qualities, I will be looking for evidence of innovation, effective leadership and high quality teaching,” Nef said.

“Since the director is closely involved with the students on a daily basis and determines which faculty will be teaching the honors classes, he/she has the potential to make a significant difference, not only in their lives, but on the campus.”

The position of director is a 12-month position, that begins summer 2009, and provides from .5 to 1.0 FTE, or full time equivalent.

This FTE carries the expectation that the director will teach a course each semester in the Smittcamp Family Honors College or in his or her own department.

The director will also be evaluated annually and will hold that position at the pleasure of the provost.

Student opinions sought

Nef encourages honor students to get involved with the choosing of the new director and hopes that the experience may make the transition easier.

“We’re encouraging students to meet with candidates during their campus interviews and to provide their input to the search committee,” Nef said.

In his retirement message to students, Rodemeyer has also called for students to step up and be a part of the selection process.

“During the entire process we will need your help,” Rodemeyer said. “Encourage faculty to apply, participate in the process when asked, welcome the new person, help them with your names and do not compare them with me.”

Although Rodemeyer knows it may be a difficult transition for some students, especially those that have been in the honors program from the beginning, he feels that students should not compare the new director to him, but rather openly welcome whoever it is that takes his place.

“The new director will have different talents and a different background than I brought to the position,” Rodemeyer said.

“When a person has been the only one in a position, it is difficult to envision anyone else in that position — a person with great talent will be selected, not a D-Rod clone.”

Giving it the ‘old one-two’

Last weekend I saw my first Ultimate Fighting Championship bout on TV. Man, was that exciting! I haven’t seen a beat down that violent since the last time I searched for “Fresno Police” on YouTube.

It got me thinking, maybe I should learn some mixed martial arts myself, just in case the campus police pick up a few bad habits from their city brethren.

After thinking it over I decided against it, but in the spirit of UFC, I’m giving my column the “old one-two”:

1. A recent New York Times article cited new research which suggests that eating dirt (and even worms) is good for the immune system of babies.

2. Hmm, good economy in the late ’90s: Viagra is invented. Bad economy in the late 2000s: dirt is good for you. Conspiracy, anyone?

1. Barack Obama’s address to Congress on Tuesday night was followed by the GOP rebuttal from Bobby Jindal, who is an early hopeful for the 2012 Republican presidential ticket.

2. Did anybody else find this guy extremely creepy? His accent was strange, he had the smile of a serial killer, and it sounded like he was reading a bedtime story- from Hell. Let’s hope we never hear him say “stimulus” or “package” ever again.

1. Speaking of stimulus packages, I came up with my own, just for California. First, set up a Prop 8 runoff election. Then, once all the out-of-state millions in advertising start to stimulate the economy, call the whole thing off!

2. Before you call this idea unethical, try to name at least one bigger waste of money than Prop 8 advertising.

1. As it turns out, those mysterious, celebrity-filled “G” commercials which ran in January were all part of a rebranding effort by Gatorade.

2. Gatorade was one of the few winners the night of the presidential address. Gatorade’s campaign doesn’t seem nearly as ill-advised and disappointing in light of Jindal’s speech.

1. An editorial in last Sunday’s Fresno Bee blasted the new plan to revive the San Joaquin River. For those that don’t know, the San Joaquin Chinook (Salmon) went extinct in the 1950s after a dam was built to divert the river for irrigation. Among other things, the new plan will revive the river in an effort to save the endangered Sacramento Chinook from the same fate.

2. It seems the political bias against the central San Joaquin Valley extends all the way to the fish. I think the San Joaquin Chinook should have rebranded. The “Los Angeles Chinook of Anaheim” would never have gotten such a cold shoulder from the state.

1. Some of my Facebook friends have started announcing to the world that they are “attending” various events by watching them on TV.

2. I know this is America, but surely we haven’t crossed that threshold of laziness yet. The weather is nice, there are basketball games tonight and tomorrow, and those Peace Garden mounds are just screaming for a picnic.

Infiltrating the weight room

On any given afternoon, the Student Rec Center is filled with people of both sexes getting down with their sweaty selves. Yet the areas are as clearly divided by sex as if they were separated by walls.
Women stick to the aerobics equipment and the machines upstairs.

Men use almost exclusively the treadmills and take over the free weight area and downstairs machines.
The few women I’ve seen wander into the free weight area are nearly always accompanied by a man — usually, so it would appear, a boyfriend. Sometimes the woman leans against a wall, “out of the way,” waiting for the man to finish his routine. Sometimes the man shows the woman things she can do with the weights.

Only once have I seen any unaccompanied female other than myself in these male-dominated areas.

One reason for this might be that women still struggle with the notion of “bulking up” if they work with too much weight. According to current research, that’s not true. Women just aren’t built to look like men. Female bodybuilders have to work really hard and specialize their diets to look like they do.

Why any woman would do that to herself is another topic for another column.

Women also don’t seem to know what to do with free weights. Free weights aren’t that hard to use and, in my experience, can actually be easier than working with a machine because your body doesn’t have to fit a preformed bit of metal.

But that still doesn’t explain why women don’t populate the downstairs machines at the Rec Center. No, the answer must be a simpler one.

Men are intimidating, especially in groups.

One female staff member at The Collegian told me a few weeks ago that the Rec Center had a machine she really liked but hardly used. It happened to be located downstairs.

“There are always guys all over it,” she said with a grimace.

As a former student-athlete, I’m certainly used to jockeying with large men for gym space. A few years back, my slotted workout time in the student-athlete’s gym coincided with the time half the football team came in to work out. To give you an idea of size, the student-athlete gym is about half the size of the downstairs portion of the rec center. There I was, a single white female with usually only one or two teammates, lost in a sea of shouting, sweaty guys who would get Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” piped at them over and over through the PA system if they didn’t finish on time. I constantly had to remind myself that I had as much right to be there as they did.

Ladies, I know how intimidating guys in the gym can be, often through no fault of their own. They’re benching 150 pounds and you can hardly press the 40-pound bar by itself. They’re over there in groups, sweating and grunting and popping veins out of their necks. You feel like Sprout next to the Jolly Green Giant.

We won’t even get into the sexist remarks some of them make about girls they’ve seen working out.
We need to infiltrate those areas en masse. You don’t need to spend half an hour figuring out creative things to do with free weights. Just walk over and do a few bicep curls or bench presses. Who knows? Your presence might encourage another woman to try it, too.

And guys, don’t ogle.

The sky’s the limit

Former Bulldog Chris Berrian is hoping to finally break out in professional track

Chris Berrian isn’t the typical track star.

He has no sponsors, he works at Famous Dave’s, and, until recently, he didn’t even have an agent.

His constant battle to prove to the world that he is a high-caliber 200-meter runner has been nothing short of a struggle.

“I have always known I could do this,” said Berrian. “It’s always just been a matter of actually doing it.”

Currently, Berrian holds the world’s second fastest 200-meter time for the 2009 indoor season.

In a recent trip to France, he posted the world’s current third best time of 20.68.

The following weekend, on Feb. 13, he ran a 20.67 to rank as the world’s second fastest time. Berrian’s times rank behind Greg Nixon, who ran a 20.65 to beat Berrian in Eaubonne, France.

While the marks are impressive for indoor, there are still many world-class athletes — such as Usain Bolt, a triple-gold winner at the 2008 Olympics, and Shawn Crawford — that will most likely not even compete in the indoor track season.

Yet, despite the lack of competition, Berrian’s marks still place him in good standings heading into the outdoor season.

In the 2008 outdoor track season, he ran a personal best of 20.24 to rank as No. 12 in the world. His goal is to run under 20 seconds this season.

“Outdoor track is more important than indoor,” said Berrian. “That type of ranking makes me feel very good, but I think I’m capable of being top 10 in the world for outdoor.”

From walk-on to world-class

The road to becoming a professional athlete hasn’t always been that easy for Berrian, however.

He ran sprints for three years in high school and his father Joseph encouraged him to walk on and join his brother Bernard Berrian at Fresno State.

So, Berrian came to Fresno State and has since become one of the best runners to ever be a Bulldog.

In finishing his collegiate career with a personal best of 20.84, which he ran at the 2005 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, Berrian knew that he wanted to continue to run and make a career doing what he loved.

He began training on his own in the mornings so he could work in the afternoons, and that’s when he met Chris Baptista.

The spring of 2005, Baptista was hired as the new sprint coach for the Bulldogs and knew little of Berrian’s history.

Berrian started asking Baptista, who was training some of his own athletes in the mornings, for advice or for help with timing. Soon after, Baptista was at every practice with Berrian and has since become his coach.

“When I first met Chris I didn’t know much of his history and wasn’t even sure what he was capable of,” said Baptista. “After about four to five months, I began to realize he could be top 10 in the world.”

Sponsorless

In becoming a world-class athlete, Berrian has been frustrated in still not having a sponsor, despite his premier marks.

“I hate it,” said Berrian. “I see people out there and I’m like, ‘I’ve beat him every time and he’s making money and not having to work and I am.’”

Baptista said that having a sponsor is a huge plus for a track athlete, because they are able to focus on training. He believes that once Berrian obtains a sponsor, “it will help him accelerate to his goals.”

While he doesn’t have guaranteed money and must rely on 20 hours a week at Famous Dave’s and prize money from competitions to survive, he has recently signed with agent Jeff Hartwig, a former world-class pole-vaulter.

Olympic dream cut short in ‘08

And although things have been hard, Berrian’s goals have remained the same: the Olympics.

This past summer he made it to the Olympic trials and past the preliminaries, but when it came to the last day of competition he was unable to run.

Berrian had aggravated his hamstring and knee a few weeks prior to the trials and after barely being able to warm-up, he was forced to withdraw from the competition.

“I was pretty pissed,” said Berrian. “I really just didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

While he has to wait until 2012 to try for the next summer games, he is hoping to compete well at the World Championships in Berlin.

“Just being able to make it there goes to show the type of athlete you are,” said Berrian.

Until the championships in August he will continue to train with Baptista and work to survive like every other person in the dwindling economy.

“We’ve been working together for a while now and for someone to be able to work through the down times and still have that passion to run, that’s just amazing,” said Baptista.

Women’s hoops controls its own destiny

As the Fresno State women’s basketball team practiced Monday morning, a light mood filled the air.

Players smiled and even exchanged a few jokes with each other all while maintaining a high level of intensity. The atmosphere alone seemed to say, “first place.”

The team took the lead atop the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) on Feb. 8 when it routed San Jose State (SJSU) 76-47, and it clings to that position as the season winds to a close. The Bulldogs now begin a three-game home stand before ending the season on the road against Utah State.

After the win over SJSU the team’s next contest was a disappointing loss to Idaho on the road. But the ’Dogs bounced back with a big road win against Boise State in their latest game, snapping the Broncos’ 15-game home winning streak. It was the first time Fresno State had beaten Boise on the road in three years.

In addition to the usual standout players, new names contributed to the effort. Joh-Teena Filipe got her first start of the season in Boise and Ashley Walker came off the bench to score 10 points in the second half.

The team hopes a strong finish and a regular-season championship will catapult them to a victory in the WAC tournament in Reno, Nev., and another round of “March Madness” in the NCAA tournament.

Rallying fans for breast cancer awareness

The first game of the home stand is tonight against Nevada at 7 p.m.

Tonight’s game marks the end of a 12-day break between contests for the Bulldogs. They play four games in their final 10 days of the regular season and need strong support from the community for the final push.

“We need everybody,” said sophomore guard Taja Edwards, “Make that the headline: We need everybody there.”

Tonight’s game against Nevada also features several off-court promotions. It is Pink Zone Night, a fundraiser to raise awareness of breast cancer. Fans are encouraged to wear pink to support the Central Valley Affiliate for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

A ticket stub to yesterday’s men’s game is good for $1 admission tonight and, similar to last Thursday’s Wii promotion, two pink iPod Nanos and iTunes gift cards will be given to the craziest and loudest fans in the arena. The team will donate $1 from every ticket sold will also be donated to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Pink Night was first held in 2007, with 120 schools participating. Last year that number increased tenfold to 1,200 schools, who collectively raised almost one million dollars for breast cancer awareness and research.

“It’s a good cause,” Edwards said, “We’re going to represent for our family members who have dealt with breast cancer.”

Head coach Adrian Wiggins also expressed support for Pink Zone Night, saying, “It’s awesome. It’s something that has swept our country.”

Winning streak lends confidence

Wiggins said he likes how the team is playing, emphasizing mental toughness and how few mistakes the team made in their last few games.

The Bulldogs need to maintain that mental toughness if they expect to win the championship. Nevada is in fourth place and Monday night’s game showcases second-place Louisiana Tech. A loss against Louisiana Tech would put the team back in second place behind the “other” Bulldogs and possibly cost them the title.

Sophomore forward Hayley Munro feels optimistic about the team’s potential to win the games.

“We can still improve, which is a good sign. Whichever team hustles and gets those loose balls will win, and we need to make sure we get all four wins,” Munro said.

After winning six of their last seven games, it appears the Bulldogs have peaked at the perfect time of the year. They control their own destiny in the conference and in the nation.

“It will be nice to have [the conference tournament] in Reno, and it feels great to be playing so well here at the end,” Wiggins said.

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