The Renegade Ripwww.therip.comVol. 83 ∙ No. 7 Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Bakersfield College

Hands across california, news, Page 4 eve-lyne THomas, camPus, Page 5 drummer BroTHers, sPoTligHT, Page 8

By Michael WaffordEditor in Chief

After driving his car into a canal on April 13, former Ba-kersfield College president John Collins, 93, was hospitalized.

Since then, he has been re-covering in Mercy Hospital, and staff around BC have been wish-ing him well.

Dr. Robert Allison, a longtime friend of Collins, has been visit-ing Collins while he recovers.

“Yesterday, he was good. He was alert and sharp and lucid, and, as usual, full of wisdom and good advice,” said Allison. “As he has been for the last 48 years.” According to Allison, Collins is anxious to leave the hospital.

“He certainly loves to be busy. He’s a person who has always been busy.

“Anyone who knows John knows he has always been ac-tive.

“He never really retired until he was about 92, and he’s still involved in many, many activi-ties.”

Collins founded the BC Foun-dation and was the first president of Moorpark College, according to Allison.

He was also a founding mem-ber of the BC Archives and helped establish the Levan Insti-tute.

“John Collins is like the heart-beat of BC in general and the archives in particular,” said Jerry Ludeke, director of the BC Ar-chives.

“He has probably one of the best and longest institutional memories of anyone connected to Bakersfield College. His lead-ership and wisdom are invalu-able to us”

According to sources who wished to remain anonymous, Collins could leave Mercy South-west Hospital while recuperating from his surgeries.

He would be moved to a dif-ferent hospital for rehabilitation.

By Michael WaffordEditor in chief

Osama bin Laden is dead. On the evening of May 1, news of Osama bin Laden’s death spread throughout television, radio and the Internet.

On May 2, Bakersfield Col-lege students could be heard dis-cussing the news while walking through campus.

BC student Edith Jara, 18, was happy to hear the news.

“It’s cool – it’s not cool, I shouldn’t say that because someone died, but you actually feel like the terrorism is finally going to end. I was in fourth grade when 9/11 happened, and to see how everything started and how they were looking for them when Bush was out and they finally captured him when Obama’s president. It’s cool to see they finally grabbed him.”

Shirley Reeder, wife of a Vietnam War veteran and a BC

student, said, “I’m relieved. I’m joyful that people whose lives were destroyed by what he did are now getting justice.”

However, Reeder believes that the United States should “keep our guard up.”

Political science professor Ed Borgens believes that the death of bin Laden will cause unwant-ed ripples.

“There could be some concern that for those still in al Qaeda now look at this guy as a martyr

and the U.S. could be vulnerable to a backlash,” said Borgens. “Between this and the killing of some of Gaddafi’s family, I would think that some of the Libyans who support Gaddafi would strike back with that is-sue.

“This last weekend was a very busy weekend – we took out some of Gaddafi’s family and some of bin Laden’s family and he [Osama] himself. And it’s kind of a relief and sense of clo-

sure, but at the same time there could be concern about further terrorist attacks.”

While many were happy upon hearing the news other BC stu-dents felt apathetic toward the death of the al Qaeda leader.

Isaac Carrillo, 29, a former member of the U.S. Navy, said, “I didn’t know the guy. I don’t really have any feeling positive or negative.

“I was actually in the mili-tary, and I went to Afghanistan

back when all this was happen-ing. I was kind of pissed off at him. Not so much because of the stuff they were accusing him of. I was pissed off because of 9/11, I missed my trip to Australia. I had to go straight to war instead of Australia.”

“I don’t think someone’s death is good,” said Carrillo, who hopes that the death of bin Laden will mean U.S. troops will return home from Afghani-stan soon.

Osama’s death sparks discussion around BC

Former BC president in hospital

BC students follow NASA to MarsBy Brian N. Willhite

Reporter

Some students at Bakersfield College will soon be trading in their old desks for front row seats at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to lend their talents in a competition to design a Mars rover.

Travis Burns, Florencio Or-tiz, Kevin Galloway and Arturo Monzon were among the 80 stu-dents selected out of 280 appli-

cants from community colleges around the nation. These students will take part in a team compe-tition where they will create a fictitious company, design an efficient Mars rover that will be able to collect soil samples, fig-ure out how it will get there and back as well as how the project will be financed and budgeted.

According to Rageshwar Goldberg, the STEM program manager at BC (Science Tech-nology Engineering Mathemat-

ics), the applicants had to apply for the NASA project by Decem-ber of 2010 and then complete a three-month-long process where students would participate in online webinars and complete various writing and designing as-signments. The work completed by the students was also all ex-tra-curricular and had to be done by the individual alone outside of class time.

“I’m really proud and sur-prised because it just seems like

such an interesting thing, such a different thing, such a rare thing and we’ve got four students go-ing, which is more than any other colleges selected, so that’s really quite an accomplishment, and I think that says a lot about what our faculty and students do here,” Goldberg said.

She added that the process is not easy and that the students de-serve their recognition because the project is a lot of hard work

Renegades win eight heading into SoCal regionals

Above: Bakersfield College’s Danielle Ayler heads toward first base after sending the ball past Los Angeles Valley College’s Madison Urena during the first game of a doubleheader at BC on April 21.

Below: Renegades first baseman Brandi Church dives to tag out Monarchs pitcher Amber Cabada at first base. BC won the first game of its doubleheader against Los Angeles Valley College 9-0 and the second 10-2.

PHOTOS BY GREGORY D. COOK / THE RIP

By Michael MorrowReporter

After finishing the regular season on an eight-game win-ning streak and pulling away with the Western State Confer-ence championship, Bakers-field College softball garnered a No. 13 seed in the Southern California Regional playoffs.

BC finished the regular sea-son with a 26-14-1 overall record and a 15-3 conference record.

The Renegades will travel to No. 4 Cerritos for a best-of-three regional first round series May 7-8.

If they win, they continue on to the second round of region-als, which are May 14-15.

The State Finals could po-tentially be a home game for the Renegades if they advance in the Super Regionals. With a win or loss for BC, the Finals will be held at the Dean and Adah Gay Sports Complex May 20-22.

“The goal all year was to get in the final four and play at home. It would be awesome,” said softball head coach Sandi Taylor.

BC finished the season with wins against Sylmar (7-0), L.A. Valley (9-0, 10-2), Citrus (10-0, 7-3, 1-0), and Santa Monica (23-0, 19-0).

A month ago, April 1, the Renegades lost a doubleheader to Cerritos at BC, 7-1 and 8-4, and brought their record to a blundering 14-13 overall, 4-3 WSC.

“Those games were games eight and nine in a span of sev-en days.

“We definitely finished

strong and actually started play-ing really well after the games a month ago,” said Taylor.

Since that point, the Renegades have rattled off 12 wins in 13 games.

The Renegades have used a combination of good pitching and the fact that their bats woke up to get them in to position to make a playoff run. Taylor knew it was just a matter of time.

“I am not surprised by our suc-cess. This is a special group, and it’s exciting to have played so well and win the conference,” she said.

“If we can make a run for the state title it will be a total team ef-fort and very exciting to be a part of.”

Cerritos finished second in the South Coast Conference to Mt. San Antonio College, but still managed to win 22 of its last 25 games.

Cerritos also has its share of top quality players.

Pitcher Jessica Lozano went 15-2 and received Pitcher of the Year honors, while first team SCC honors went to catcher Jessica Roper, shortstop Brianna Quinta-na and outfielder Shawnee Kirk.

As for what the Renegades need to do well to beat Cerritos, Taylor believes there is just one thing.

“Our entire team has been hit-ting exceptionally well down the stretch, and we need to keep play-ing with confidence,” said Taylor.

Taylor received the WSC Coach

of the Year award for winning the conference crown while pitcher Julie Estep took home Pitcher of the Year honors.

First team All-Conference honors went to infielders Bobo Brown, Laura Fox, Brandi Church and catcher Kara Frank-houser.

“The awards are great, how-ever each of us realize that the honors are impossible without every member of our team and coaching staff,” said Taylor.

Please see Nasa, Page 4

COURTESY OF FLORENCIO ORTIz

An illustration drafted by Bakersfield College student Florencio Ortiz shows a Mars sample collector designed as part of his project for the NASA competition.

FeaturesWednesday, May 4, 2011Page 2 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

By Tawny JamisonReporter

Over 8,000 people gathered April 30 out on Old River Road for the annual Relay for Life. With over 6,000 participants and about 410 teams, the Relay was able to reach its goal by raising up to $2 million for cancer research, the total being $2,000,401.71, a world record.

This has provided a lot of hope, especially for those among the 2,000 that walked the sur-vivor lap this year, which beats last year’s number of a little over 1,000.

Among those survivors was Susan Spears, who is a survivor of Breast Cancer. She talked about her struggle with cancer and how she sees it as more of a blessing.

“I believe that it happened for a reason, it gave me an option to talk a little bit more about some-thing, now that I’ve really actu-ally gone through it and see if I can help women and encourage them to go in,” said Spears.

Also among those survivors is married couple Carolyn and Philip McCray. Carolyn was di-agnosed before her husband in 1995, and her husband in 2008. Carolyn has since started a sup-port group for women with the help of their church called Wom-en of Hope.

Carolyn commented on how her and her husband’s battle with cancer has encouraged them to help others through their cancer.

“We are taking our cancer and making something good out of it,” Carolyn said.

Carolyn also spoke of the impact that Relay has had on her life and others. “It means a lot, because you realize ‘oh my gosh look at all these people and they’re survivors,’ it really gives you a boost. I think Relay has changed a lot of people’s lives,” said Carolyn.

There were also many teams that participated this year. The goal was to get at least 400 teams to participate this year, and the total was about 410.

Among these teams was Sec-ond Star to the Right, a team dedicated to helping Cancer Re-

search and Cancer research for Children, including places like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

One of the team members, Tamera Griffith, who was also a founder of Second Star to the Right, was inspired to create the group after the death of her granddaughter Kayla Blair, who passed away Jan. 10, 2009, from a very aggressive form of brain cancer.

Blair was also a patient of St. Jude in Memphis Tennessee, which is why a lot of their dona-tions go toward St. Jude.

Griffith talked about how the death of her granddaughter has inspired her and Kayla’s family to keep fighting cancer.

“I didn’t want this to be my purpose, but it is. Kayla taught us a lot, we’re just going to continue our fight,” says Griffith.

Another team participating that day was McGraw’s Fight-ing Irish founded by Colleen McGraw, whose father passed away in 2009. Three of her dad’s siblings also passed away, all from lung cancer. This is her first year participating in Relay for Life, and she talked about how the support has helped her and her family.

“It’s inspirational to come out here because you see all the sur-vivors, all the love and support from family and friends is just amazing,” McGraw says.

But the most touching stories of the Relay weren’t just those who had already beaten cancer, but the ones who were still bat-tling it.

Among those people were Mil-lie Medina, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and went through various treatments and on Sept. 30, 2010, went through her last day of treatment and was announced cancer free.

Until Oct. 14, 2010 when she was diagnosed again, this time it had spread to her lymph nodes. Medina is currently in remission and is thankful for Relay and the money it raises to help find a cure.

Another person still battling cancer is Patsy Romero, who was diagnosed in November with breast cancer.

Romero has also been vol-unteering for Relay for Life for the past 19 years, and for the past six years, has been sitting on the board of directors for the California Division of American Cancer Society.

Being part of the California Division of American Cancer Society, Romero is trying to get a bill passed called the California Cancer Research Act that will be on the ballot during the next election.

It would add a dollar tax on every pack of cigarettes and 98 cents of that dollar would be spent on cancer research.

If passed, it will generate $600 million a year in the state of Cal-ifornia alone for cancer research. Romero talked about how this year is different now that she is battling cancer herself. “When I had to take the survivor walk it was totally different, it changes your outlook on everything,” Romero says.

One of the youngest among those still battling cancer was Lerone Whitfield who turned 10 on Feb. 1 of this year.

He was diagnosed with Hodg-kin’s Lymphoma just a few weeks shy of his 10th birthday. Whitfield just finished chemo-therapy and is getting ready to start radiation.

This year’s Relay for Life was a success, with Bakersfield hav-ing the largest participation in the country.

It was even better for this years Relay, but the hard work isn’t over yet. There are still many people still fighting cancer today, and there will continue to be more Relays until a cure is found.

Cancer survivors share their stories at Bakersfield’s Relay for Life

By James LiceaCopy Editor

Bill and Ginevra Packer met at Ba-kersfield College in 1960 while living in the dorms on campus. They reminisced of the time they shared at BC, attend-ing sports events, going on dates along with various activities they took part in. Today they are currently retired and liv-ing in Bakersfield after 48 years of mar-riage.

For most of their lives they were raised in completely different areas. Bill was born in Long Beach, but spent most of his life living in Mojave.

Ginevra’s family was originally from Hawaii, but was forced to evacuate dur-ing World War II. So instead of being born in Hawaii like her parents and five sisters, Ginevra was born in Pasadena, California. Her family moved back to Hawaii when she was around 2 years old. When she was 16, she moved to Modesto, California to live with her two older sisters, who are twins.

After high school, both Ginevra and Bill weren’t quite sure what to do. Bill knew he wanted to go into pre-med, but thought he should go to a junior college because it was more cost effective. Gi-nevra wasn’t sure what to major in. She thought BC would be a good idea to give her time to decide what she wanted to do. She ended up majoring in busi-ness.

When registering for BC, both ap-plied to live in the residence halls on campus. Bill started attending in 1959 and Ginevra started in 1960.

The dorms on campus, Ginevra ex-plained, were built for two, but they squeezed three people in each room. Students who lived nearby were encour-aged to bring as little as possible with them. “Being from Hawaii, I couldn’t just go home, so I had a whole footlock-er with me.”

Bill, a sophomore, was the first guy Ginevra saw when she came to the dorms with her two sisters. “I looked around but there was nobody at the desk, and I thought, ‘what’s going on? What do I do?’ I happened to look up into the little lounge, and there’s this guy sleep-ing in a chair.

“So I went up to him and I said ‘what’s a man doing in a women’s residence hall?’” Bill explained to her that he was resting in between football practices and that the women’s hall was a quieter place to sleep than the men’s dorms.

Bill remembered resting in the chair, then seeing three women who looked like triplets enter the room. He thought to himself, “oh my God, I’ve died and gone to heaven, triplets check-ing in.

“That picture is still there [in my memory] they were dressed like triplets, I swear. She says they weren’t, they all had their left foot back and were all tapping in unison,” Bill recalled.

He helped Ginevra check into her room, then saw her later that night at the Icebreaker dance. “He came up to me.” Ginevra re-membered, “I was so nervous, just moving in and the new experi-ence of going to col-lege and being left off there with no family. We started talking … then we started danc-ing, so he was asking me things like, do I smoke, or drink and what religion I was. I told him I had three religions because growing up I had three different denomina-tions. It so happened that one of those, the Congregatio, was the same one he grew up with. It just kind of blossomed from there.”

“I didn’t let her too far out of my sight after that,” Bill said. “Being a sophomore I made sure she knew where to go and what to do, I sort of guided her around.”

There were a lot of activities to take

part in during their time at BC, most of their dates, Bill said, were centered around campus.

They would go for walks on campus at night. Bill spoke of certain spots around campus that couples would go to make out. Students would go to places like the administration area, a bench out in

the middle of the quad, and some went by the outdoor theater. “Everybody had their little niche on campus. The guys knew not to go certain places because there might be a couple making out. In those days, it was just making out.”

Bill was involved with sports and band while Ginevra was involved with

Student Government, joined Lance and Shield, which consisted of putting on the homecoming dance and was the so-cial chairman in the dorms. On Friday nights, she would organize the dances.

“She would make me dance with other people who were kind of wallflowers,” Bill said, “because she was the social

chairman.” Their meals they ate

together in the cafeteria. Ginevra said all meals were provided to students living in the dorms. On Sundays, however, only breakfast and lunch were served, so when dinner came around they needed to find food elsewhere.

There were only three people on campus with cars, Bill recalled, so when they needed to go into town, they would take the bus or borrow a car. On Sundays, they would usually get a car, take orders from every-body, and then go down to the Foster Freeze on Niles Street to get every-one food.

On other occasions, Bill and Ginevra would catch a bus downtown to go get haircuts or go on dates at the Fox Theater. They would also go to the Kern County Fair and on trips to the mountains.

One of their favorite things to do was attend sporting events. “They had busses that came and picked kids up to go to away football games. So I always went down on the bus and went to Long

Beach, Santa Monica, whatever. That was fun,” Ginevra said.

In those days, Ginevra explained, the seating for the basketball and football games were always full. “We had so many people going football games that they had to extend the seating. BC just seemed like they were known for hav-

ing good teams,” Ginevra said, “We had kids coming from New York to play bas-ketball, Pennsylvania for football, even Hawaii. A lot of those people stayed in Bakersfield and have been big contribu-tors to its growth.”

After Bill’s sophomore year at BC, Ginevra went to spend the summer in Fort Lewis, Washington.

Bill’s family moved to Santa Monica where he spent another year pre-med at Santa Monica City College before join-ing the Navy.

“Our courtship continued, from Santa Monica. I’d drive down for the week-ends. She didn’t like me the whole sum-mer,” Bill recalled. “She said, ‘you need to date others and see what’s going on.’ So I finally gave up and the end of Sep-tember I gave her a note. It said ‘I’d re-ally like to be a part of your life again.’ After that we continued our relation-ship, got engaged in June and married in October of 1962.”

Since then, they have had two daugh-ters and two grandchildren. They are still happily married and celebrate their marriage every 6th of the month by go-ing out to eat. This is a tradition they have maintained even through the rough times in their life.

Now retired, they still attend BC games semi-regularly, mostly just bas-ketball and volleyball. Not football so much because, Bill explained, “going up and down the bleachers is too much of a hassle.” They also have a lifetime membership with the BC Alumni As-sociation, which gives them discounts for games and gives them access to the commodities on campus.

Though they remain loyal to BC, they also hold season tickets to Cal State Ba-kersfield and have even followed them to their away games in the past. They’ve traveled to Seattle, Baltimore, Hawaii, Las Vegas and Columbia.

“We try to support them both,” Gi-nevra said, “but BC has a special place in our heart because if it weren’t for BC, we probably never would’ve met … 48 wonderful years.”

“In spite of being a two year school,” Ginevra stated, “it was more like being on a four year campus. It was a good ex-perience.”

JAMES LICEA / THE RIP

Bill and Ginevra Packer, BC alumni, pose together April 2.

Couple reminisces about their time at BC

MEGAN LUECKE / THE RIP

The Wall of Life showcases the names of survivors who have won the battle against cancer, and was displayed at the Bakersfield 2011 Relay for Life on April 30.Bakersfield’s record-breaking attendance helped to raise over $2 million for cancer research.

ONLINE

For Delano Relay For Life coverage, visit

www.therip.com

FeaturesWednesday, May 4, 2011Page 3 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

Ryan GeorgePhotographer

Students at Bakersfield Col-lege may not know his name, but they know him as “the can guy.” Enrique Angeles, a legal immi-grant from the Philippines, had big dreams and hopes awaiting him as he left his family behind in search of a prospering future in America.

From Manila he traveled to the United States in 1992, had found a part-time job working a side business with his brother at a bakery in the Golden State Mall, and was able to send ap-proximately $5,000 to $10,000, which is about 20,000 to 40,000 pesos a year back to his family to pay for his daughter’s pri-vate-school education and other necessities.

Then, in about 2008, as An-geles estimated, the economic downfalls led him into home-lessness and unemployment.

Collecting cans around town,

including BC and Cal State Bakersfield, only earns him a weekly income of an estimated $20 to $40, and during the sum-mer there is even less money coming in since the colleges and universities around town are pretty much empty, Angeles noted.

Angeles now resides at a fam-ily-members’ home and pitches in helping around the house to pay back for staying there.

With such a small amount of income, Angeles says he can still call and text his two daugh-ters, Erian who just graduated from high school and Erica who just finished the first grade, on a daily basis thanks to a MetroPCS phone.

He mentioned that texting costs his daughters around 5 pesos per text, which would be about ten cents in America.

After his last month-long visit with them in the Philippines, he returned to the US to continue working. “[I] miss seeing them.

[I] have not been back since March 27, 2009,” he said. “Rich families there have no problems paying bills, but poor families [like mine] need to work.”

This summer Angeles ecstati-cally mentioned a work trip he’s taking, [“This summer I will be] salmon fishing in Alaska.” He said that for 4 to 5 days work, that would easily cover his $130 Greyhound ticket there and back.

Angeles says that it’s fine collecting recyclables at both BC and CSUB because “as long as you follow [their] rules, [they don’t mind] you [making] mon-ey.” Even the dorms at CSUB have their recyclables set aside for him to pick up during the weekends, thus his presence at BC is rare on those days.

Angeles said that he “thanks God for being here [at BC], for forgetting the loneliness [from missing my family].” Seeing students at BC remind him of his daughters learning as well.

By Chrystal ForttReporter

Bakersfield’s summers are two degrees away from hell, and it’s hard to stay fashionable when your tempted to skip out on clothes all together.

Luckily, the 2011 resort wear collections take a new direction that sets cooling fashion and makeup trends for this summer’s heat wave.

When you think of summer clothes, you think of classic floral-sundresses and a garden hat. The classic frock has been pushed aside for a sexier and edgier dress.

It’s been replaced with maxi dresses, long-flowing dresses that almost touch the floor.

Maxi dresses are the “it” item for women this summer and can be found in almost any clothing store.

The ultimate maxi dress for Bakersfield heat is one with sheer material with a cooling long v-neck.

Almost any dress that has chif-fon material is instantly a sum-mer hit.

The 1970s style crochet and macrame dresses that have loose, open knots and a lot of fringes are another style that’s trending and has the same cooling effect by showing a lot of skin.

Dresses aren’t the only hot items that are crochet and mac-rame; purses, shoes, hats, and bathing suits are also trending.

Although the crochet and mac-rame are new for the summer, the typical colors of the dresses are not so new.

The same sand and creme col-ors are transferring over from the fall collections.

However, if neutral colors are too bland for certain tastes, a new way of coloring a neutral col-ored outfit for summer is “color punching,” adding a bright color to an outfit of neutral colors.

For instance, wearing a sand color macrame dress with sand color shoes and adding a bright red purse.

“Color punching” can be add-ed with anything from a jewelry piece to shoes.

The trendiest way to “color punch” is not just on clothes, but with makeup.

Wearing electric pink lipstick with neutral clothes is the trendi-est way to “color punch.”

Emma Stone owned this look at the Conde Nast Traveler An-nual Hot List Party, and recently appeared on the cover of Glam-our magazine with a multi-col-ored summer dress, perfect for the summer.

“Color punching” isn’t the only way to add color to summer clothing.

Bright-colored native and tribal prints that reflect the ’90s are in style for crop tops, brace-lets, Mary Jane wedge heels, and bathing suits.

The ’90s style has been mak-ing its way back to fashion lately, and it’s no surprise the hair is coming back with it.

The slicked-back and wet-hair look is here for the summer.

The most common way to style the wet hair look in the ’90s is just straight, shoulder-length hair with a lot of gel at the top of the mane.

Today, the slicked-back hair is being mixed with a French braid that starts at one side of the head and comes diagonally down across to end in a bun.

Some people are reluctantly taking in the ’90s style, but it’s coming strong and some will be surprised how good it might ac-tually look once it’s here.

By Amber T. TroupeReporter

With age comes wisdom and experience, and at 71, Nat Dove has plenty of both. Originally from Bryan, Texas, Dove’s first memories of hearing the blues was at age 3, when he could hear the music from next door at the club through his bedroom walls. He smiles as he began to remember.

“I could hear the music, and I would listen, thinking, ‘what was it.’ Not quite knowing what blues was yet,” Dove said.

Having always had a musical background with his mother be-ing a music teacher, he would learn to harmonize with his six other siblings. For Dove, one of the things that really pushed him toward a musical career was seeing his first moving picture.

“I went to the theater with my father and family after he came home from work saying we were going to a show. When I walked in I saw a lot of people sitting around looking at the big white screen and I started see-ing horses coming straight for

us! I’m thinking the people in the front row should be running. Then Two Gun Louie [Jordan], a real popular saxophonist, comes on the screen,” Dove recalled.

Dove has traveled all over the world from Paris, where he lived for several years to Tokyo, where he resided as well. In To-kyo, he taught students to play and learn music in classrooms and during a live broadcast.

While in Europe, he was in-terviewed extensively by Blues Unlimited magazine, giving him yet another chance to speak about his cause and reason for playing the piano to blues. He wants to make sure that its ori-gin and true meaning doesn’t get lost to African American youth as well as America as a whole. It is a part of America’s history and the beginning basis for a lot of music today.

Dove has an extensive list of musical and educational cre-dentials, including training stu-dents in musical composition to blues lectures for colleges and universities. He is a known and respected lecturer at Bakersfield College for the African Ameri-

By Sandra G. WardReporter

At a petite stature of no more

than five-feet tall, Sunny Ken-nedy happens to be a dedicated senior league bowler competing in three separate senior leagues three days a week at the Regency Bowling Lanes in Bakersfield.

There is something quite unique about this particular senior bowler that may just surprise and inspire those begin-ners and all bowling enthusiasts alike.

She is 94 years old, and holds a bowling average that some might consider decent enough to brag about.

In her graceful style, Ken-nedy’s bowling average on one league is a 138, and she bowls with a 12-pound ball. But she spoke of the time when she bowled a 299 game about five years ago in her late ’80s.

Kennedy has bowled at Re-gency for a long time and won’t bowl anywhere else. “The bowl-ers are such good people,” she said, and she loves the game. When approaching the subject

of her age, Kennedy stated with a little chuckle in her voice, “I’m older than anybody here.” She always expresses a happy demeanor and energetic enthusi-asm for the game. “It’s so much easier to smile than to frown,” she said.

Yet, she also expresses her disappointment whenever she bowls a frame that’s not quite up to her standards.

Kennedy started bowling in 1962 when she decided golf was not the game for her. She has been a widow and her only daughter has been passed on for some time now.

Now living in a retirement community, she still has her grandchildren that she raised af-ter her daughter passed and her popularity has proven that she has plenty of fans among her teammates and opponents at the bowling alley.

Jill Varner, a close friend of Kennedy, said Kennedy abso-lutely loves to bowl. “Let me tell you she bowls so darn good, she beats me every time,” said Varner.

Other activities that Kennedy

Man collects cans toprovide for family

Hottest fashionfor hotweatherSummer fashions | Even when it’s unbearably hot outside you can still look unbelievably hot with these tips.

RYAN GEORGE / THE RIP

Enrique Angeles, also known as “The Can Guy,” crushes cans and bottles outside the bookstore April 27.

COURTESY OF NAT DOVE

Award winning bluesman and Bakersfield College lecturer Nat Dove has been a Bakersfield resident since 2003.

Man shares his lifelong love of the blues

GREGORY D. COOK / THE RIP

Sunny Kennedy, 94, sends her bowling ball down the alley during senior’s league play at the Regency Bowling Center on April 22. Kennedy started bowling in 1962.

Fit 94-year-old bowling hot for half a century

can Literature Department as well as a guest speaking in other classes from literature to music.

Locally, Dove is a monu-mental figure to the arts as an educator as well as composer in the community after becoming a resident of Bakersfield since 2003. Dove founded the Bakers-field Blues Preservation Society,

which was somewhat foretold by the young blues enthusiasts in 1978 and was recorded by a European magazine titled, Blues Unlimited.

“My idea is when I get back to the states, is to try and get together an organization for the preservation of Blues Arts. I plan to set it up more as an education-

al program and get a syndicated radio show,” Dove stated.

That same radio show he spoke of actually won the Media Award for Outstanding Accom-plishments and Contribution to Bakersfield Kern County Community for the radio show “Blues Alive” in 2007 as well as the blues non-profit of the year for the Bakersfield Blues Pres-ervation Society the same year.

Dove remembered when he first came to Bakersfield in the 1960s, and he came to perform at the Elks Lounge, which is still open to this day.

He has performed a jam ses-sion at Fishlip’s Bar and Grill for two years and also has a workshop named the ‘Blues Harp Workshop’, in which high schools around the nation learn to play instruments. Dove gives the students harmonicas to play which for some, is their first in-strument.

Recently inducted into the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame, Dove has also published literary works on blues and is currently working on “The Blues and I (Memoir of a Bluesman).”

Column

enjoys are playing bingo, being on the computer, and up until about a year and a half ago, she liked to drive and show off her brand new bright red Cadillac, added Varner.

But bowling is what she really likes to do. Kennedy has lots of friends, and bowling not only gives her something to do but also allows her a chance to be among her friends.

Her bowling teammates say she is a pretty good bowler and some admit that she bowls better than they do at times. She’s even won a few league games.

If you have ever seen Ken-nedy bowl in her delicate man-ner, she makes it look so easy that you almost forget that it’s a 12-pound ball that she’s deliver-ing each time she bowls a frame. Making a spare satisfies her and

her teammates as they slap each others’ hands as if to say, “good job on that frame” and showing that when it comes to bowling, Kennedy does have a competi-tive side about her.

Elwood Elliot, another senior league bowler, said about Ken-nedy, “she is such a gracious lady and just so nice. Win or lose, she’s always got a smile on her face.”

beginning that it would pay off.“I must have had an inflated

self-esteem when I applied, be-cause that was the only point at which I thought I had a chance at winning,” he said.

Ortiz said that the assignment given to them “was simple and explicitly set up, yet still vague and ambitious” meaning all they had to do was design a rover, send it and bring it back – a simple procedure that is at the forefront of scientific thinking and analy-sis which consumes millions of dollars in research.

He admits that at times, the process was overwhelming and that he had to persevere through many hardships, balancing his home, school and work lives.

“There were times when I wanted to quit. I work 50 to 60 hours a week as an industrial maintenance technician,” he said. “I go to school, I have family I want to spend my time with, my health is falling apart and then to take on this NASA assignment for which I get no pay nor school credit. I constantly asked, ‘why am I killing myself?’”

He credits much of his success to the support from his family.

“My wife helped push me through. The vast interest my 7-year old-son has for space ex-ploration also helped me push through,” Ortiz said, adding that the experience was a ride he will always remember.

“When I turned in the last as-signment, a simple line drawing of the Mars vehicles I had been obsessing over for a couple of months, my body wept with joy. ‘It’s over. Wow.’ I felt like I had been to Mars myself. I was fly-ing to Mars’s thin atmosphere – still am. I feel like I own a part of it,” said a very relieved Ortiz.

Burns felt the process was not as difficult except that “the need for independent motivation and out of the box thinking was the hardest part.”

Interested in the field of elec-trical engineering, he wanted to expand his outlook and dive into a project that included other in-teresting elements he was inter-ested in working with.

He also said that the reward

NewsWednesday, May 4, 2011Page 4 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

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By Brian N. WillhiteReporter

The identity of the new management firm for the Bakersfield College book-store has been released. The Barnes & Noble College Bookstore Division will soon begin managing the daily opera-tions at all three of BC’s campuses, ac-cording to a statement made by LaMont Schiers, director of administrative ser-vices at BC.

Both organizations will be going through a transitioning period within the next several weeks as they prepare to set up the bookstore’s operating changes.

“[Barnes & Noble] is planning on making modest changes to start. But lat-er this year, after the fall semester is well under way, they have plans to remodel the interior of the bookstore in prepara-tion for a grand opening,” Schiers said.

Some of the changes set to occur in the new store will include a used book/

rental program for books in general classes most filled by students. Another new element will be the addition of a more sophisticated online and electron-ic tracking presence that is propesed to help students and faculty receive better service.

These features will offer students the option to order their books via the Web, as well as offering some books as eBooks. Schiers also said that checking out during peak times will be a lot faster,

too.“We are excited for the new and im-

proved services we will be able to pro-vide our students, which will ultimately enhance their experience here at Bakers-field College,” Schiers said.

One distinction stressed about the new changes, according to Schiers, is that the new bookstore will not be a Barnes & Noble similar to the public retail stores. The firm is a subsidiary organization of Barnes & Noble that operates with a

more specific purpose.“They are different because they

specialize in higher educational needs, verses a general public marketing opera-tion,” said Schiers, who assures that the new bookstore will only change man-agement and that “it will continue to be the Bakersfield College Bookstore and not a Barnes & Noble store.”

The new bookstore is scheduled to be fully operational by the start of the fall semester.

Barnes & Noble to take over operation of bookstore

By Mateo M. MeleroReporter

On the corner of Mt. Ver-non and University Avenues, Bakersfield College students, faculty members and school supporters joined hands April 17 in the charity event, Hands Across California, to raise scholarship money for Cali-fornia’s Community College System.

Assembling at 2 p.m. the at-tempt failed to link Bakersfield to the other colleges, as well as its closest participating neigh-bor in the proposed route, An-telope Valley College. “It was a very, very poor turnout,” said Lynda Hernandez, a BC gradu-ate and supporter of HAC.

Informed by her sister of the event, Hernandez said, “I’m re-ally disappointed that BC didn’t put it out there for anybody. I would have never known about it. My son who is a student here didn’t even know about.”

Hernandez, in communica-tion with participators in the Los Angeles, reported that the turnout was far more than that in Bakersfield.

“I am really surprised be-cause I know Bakersfield is a very giving community, and I know that if it was [publicized better] people would have showed up and supported the

college,” said Hernandez.According to Hernandez,

around 40 people were present on the corner at 2 p.m., and that the majority of the participators consisted of school administra-tors and, “friends of friends.”

Sylvia Martinez, a friend of Hernandez, came out to support the event and said, “[Lynda] in-vited me yesterday, so I wanted to come because I’m a college graduate and I got full-ride scholarships,” said Martinez. “I would support no matter what, my children are going to go to college and hopefully they’ll get scholarships.”In light of the event’s outcome, BC Stu-dent Government Association’s Liaison to the Dean and HAC organizer for BC, Roger San-chez, commented on the over-all turnout of the event.

“The number was around 80 people because we did have more people down on Oswell Street,” said Sanchez. “It was kind of hard for me, just seeing the turnout.”

Relying on fliers, emails, and Facebook messages for event promotion, Sanchez said concerning the advertising, “I think people ignore fliers, you try your best to put it out there, but I think sometimes the majority of people can just be apathetic.” Concerning the pro-motion for the fundraiser, San-

chez said, “We could of worked with more people to get the community involved.”

“The good thing is, that the closer we were getting to 2 p.m. people started to pull over. A good 15 to 20 people were pulling over and holding hands,” said Martinez.

Proposed in October of 2010, HAC was an attempt to secure as much of that endowment as possible. Originating from $25 million donation made two and half years ago by the Bernard Osher Foundation to Califor-nia’s Community College sys-tem, HAC was an attempt to inform the general public, in efforts to acquire another $25 million from the organization.

Community Colleges throughout the state were each designated with raising a spe-cific amount toward the $100 million endowment. BC ac-quired its amount through a pri-vate donation, but other schools have decided not to attempt to acquire the funds or not to in-volve themselves in the event at all, and the deadline for the promised match draws near.

But though BC has obtained its funds, it still continues to contribute to the eventual goal until the deadline in June.

“Bakersfield is secure, we’re good. We’ve met our match,” said Sanchez.

KAyLA BROADHAG / THe RIP

Participants in Hands Across California join hands together in support of the fundraising event along Haley Street next to Bakersfield College on April 17.

to complete in addition to every-thing else the students are doing at home and school.

“It’s a project that allows stu-dents to be creative, implement their engineering skills, design skills, math skills and their exist-ing knowledge and interests in aerospace engineering,” Gold-berg said, noting that it’s a great all around STeM project.

Galloway was drawn to the project because he is majoring in aerospace engineering and felt that the project was a perfect chance for an aerospace engineer to show what he can do.

“I really did enjoy the whole experience, but it did become a little hectic and stressful, what with having a full schedule with my classes this semester,” Gallo-way said, admitting that the sci-ence portion of the project wasn’t too difficult but that creating the budget was more troubling.

“I’d say the thing that chal-lenged me most was the assign-ment that asked for a budget,” he said. “Although I researched the cost of materials and supplies, I found it to be a somewhat har-rowing task as we had to explain how NASA would obtain these funds with a very specific break-down of where we would receive the money from.”

Galloway was very relieved that he had been selected because he said at times he was unsure if he would make the deadlines for projects, but that he did every-thing he could to stay on top of the work because he knew how competitive it was and he wanted to succeed.

“When I found out I was cho-sen, a wave of elation swept over me. I honestly didn’t think I was going to be accepted. I do believe the reward was worth the effort I put into it,” Galloway said. “Get-ting an all expenses paid trip to Johnson Space Center is like a dream come true. What’s more, is the fact that we’ll be getting advice from and working with actual NASA engineers and technicians.”

Ortiz had a similar reaction to being chosen for his work, though he wasn’t so sure at the

Nasa: Four BC students to work with NASA

BC does its part for Hands Across California and raises its funds

for being selected is a prestigious honor and worth the effort.

“The competition was steep, but at the same time it was against ourselves alone,” he said. “I was unaware of any of the oth-ers’ progress as I turned things in. All I could do is the best I could and hope that was all the edge I needed. The reward is by far worth the effort. The prestige and honor that comes along with being selected is great.”

Burns is looking forward to competing and hopeful that his experiences with NASA will further both his educational and career related goals.

Monzon admits that he didn’t understand at first the gravity of his accomplishments.

“Honestly, I didn’t even real-ize how big of an accomplish-ment it was until random faculty started congratulating me,” he said. “I was proud that I got in, and I hope that when next year’s applications go out, BC will again have the most students at-tending.”

He also said that “the only dif-ficult part about the assignments was having to come up with an idea that had not been done al-ready by NASA and then trying balance the rover’s budget.”

Among the 80 students select-ed, 40 will go to NASA’s space center in Houston, while the other 40 will go to Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, Cali-fornia. This is another location of NASA’s science and engineering scientists who specialize in space exploration technology.

Goldberg, however, is excited that the students will get the chance to go to Houston and be surrounded by such a historical atmosphere.

“I just think that that’s a re-ally special place to be. It’s one of those facilities in the United States that is iconic and they’re very lucky to be able to go there,” she said.

The STeM program that the students participate in is part of a collaborative grant shared by Cal State Bakersfield that is de-signed to promote the advance-ment of science and technology in student learning.

By Amber T. TroupeReporter

College is expensive, and that is why scholarships are offered and provided to students to be able to afford to attend, but some students don’t even know how they work.

Students had different reasons as to why they have or have not applied to scholarships.

Naomi Ream, 18, and a nurs-ing major, explained what she knows about scholarships and why they are offered. “I know that they are there to help with college finances and help for those less fortunate,” Ream said. “I did hear about that guy that donated $14 million to the school for scholarships.”

Ream was a recipient of a teaching scholarship in Tehacha-pi at her high school for a total of $1,000, but has not applied for any since then.

“I haven’t applied recently but since I found out about the do-nations yes, I will be applying,” said Ream. “It’s like an opportu-nity for students.”

Joan Wegner is the director of Financial Aid at Bakersfield Col-lege and she explained what she believes is the reason a majority

of students don’t apply, usually because they believe that the ap-plication process is too long.

Wegner explained how BC re-ceives between 600 and 700 ap-plications each year and a total of about 500 awards are given.

“The majority of BC scholar-ships are awarded based on the students major and grade point average. Some scholarships require full time enrollment,” Wegner said.

Celia Tapia, 19 and a history major, told why she has never ap-plied for a scholarship and what she knows regarding them.

“I have never applied for a scholarship but I should. I haven’t looked into the specific ones because there’s a lot. The requirements are more specific and most students aren’t qualify-ing and don’t take advantage of it.”

Wegner gives students more information on how and where to apply for scholarships. “The Bakersfield College Scholarship application is available online on our website and in our office from August through the last day of fall semester each year. There is also a list of free scholarship searches available on the finan-cial aid website,” Wegner stated.

Some students have been able to win scholarships that most don’t qualify for by just taking the extra steps and filling in the specifications like Jared Vander-pool, 21, art major.

“I applied for six when I first started and I only got one. es-pecially when they require three page essays and six recommen-dations. I won the award for the city since I live in Shafter, it was $100,000 and it didn’t cover art school,” Vanderpool said.

Vanderpool ran out of the money from his scholarship award this year. He says that he’s taking a break from applying for scholarships because he said it was a little hard for him. He has a rare form of dyslexia and it makes it harder to apply for more scholarships.

Vanderpool is one of the stu-dents that went the extra mile to make sure he had a fair chance at winning a scholarship, similar to what Wegner would advise stu-dents to do.

Wegner says that if there was one thing she would want stu-dents to know about applying for scholarships, it would to explore all options, read all the instruc-tions and meet the established deadlines.

Scholarships aren’t taken advantage of by many students

Continued from Page 1

By James LiceaCopy Editor

Bakersfield College’s transfer students were honored on April 25 with a reception that was held in the cafeteria. The food department catered the event and prepared meatballs with peppercorn sauce and a fruit and crudites platter.

Along with refreshments, speeches were given by trans-ferring counselor Sue Granger-Dickson, BC president Greg Chamberlin, Nan Gomez-Heit-zeberg and future Student Gov-ernment Association president Tawntannisha Thompson.

“I thought it would be a good idea to have something that hon-ors all the hard work that our transfer students do,” Granger-Dickson said, “so I approached the SGA, and they very gener-ously said they’d co-sponsor it with me.”

Over 300 invitations were sent out to BC students who are transferring after the semester. Only about 100 of those con-tacted sent a response confirm-ing their appearance. Several of the other students, Granger-Dickson explained, could not attend because of conflicting school or work schedules.

The event will be put on annu-ally as long as she is in this po-sition. Several faculty members, Granger-Dickson explained,

CampusWednesday, May 4, 2011Page 5 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

By Michael WaffordEditor in chief

Eve-Lyne Thomas has spent the last 29 years dancing with students at Bakersfield College. The dance instructor recently found out the amount of time she spends at BC will be reduced to one class in the fall semester.

“The thing that I’m going to miss the most is seeing these beginner-adult students who’ve never stepped into a pair of dance shoes … and seeing the end result,” said Thomas who gave examples of her ballet stu-dents, who must choreograph a one-minute solo for themselves by the end of the semester, and her jazz dancers, who perform a routine in the Free Speech Area toward the end of the semester.

“It blows me away. I’m sit-ting there, and they’re actually doing this whole thing all by themselves. Technically they sometimes don’t look like ballet dancers – but who cares. The ac-complishment is a reward in it-self for me. And I know that they take great pride.

“They feel good about them-selves. They develop a good self-

esteem.”Originally from Kigali, Rwan-

da, then a part of the former Bel-gium Congo, she began studying ballet at the age of 7. Thomas moved to America when her fa-ther bought a Canada Dry Bot-tling Company in Fresno when she was 9.

After moving to the States, Thomas began instructing ballet when she was 12, giving private lessons in her home. Thomas ac-quired her BFA from Cal Arts.

Thomas recalls that she got her job in a slightly unorthodox way. “I simply marched over, unan-nounced, to the dean’s office at Bakersfield College three days after I arrived in Bakersfield,” said Thomas while laughing. “I applied for a dance teaching position, and this was 29 years ago.”

Since settling in at BC, Thom-as has made her classroom a second-home.

Thomas described her dance room as “BC’s little secret.” The room overlooks the swimming pool and has 18 mirrors along the three windowless walls.

“I have several homes. I have my home, my dance studio and

I have the dance room, Gym 202.”

Thomas will miss seeing dancers develop in the den she delights in.

“Being that I work with begin-ners a lot I love the process. I like to challenge my students and see how far I can take them because I know that if I can make them be-lieve in themselves, I know they can go far.”

Although Thomas enjoys working with beginners she also enjoys working with trained dancers, although it doesn’t hap-pen often. “It’s a rarity in Ba-kersfield to have a trained dancer because if they’re trained they’re going to get out of here and go to L.A. and dance professionally,” said Thomas.

Although L.A. is where many dancers take their talent, Thomas wants to stay in Kern County.

“I love Bakersfield, but Ba-kersfield doesn’t like me – I’ve had a chronic cough for almost two years,” said Thomas. “So I’m ready to move on someday because of the air. Tehachapi is sounding good to me.”

Although she is an instructor, Thomas has another tie to BC.

By James LiceaCopy editor

During the last weeks of the spring semester, many students at Bakersfield College are pre-paring for finals. As they get ready for their tests, students shared their experiences.

Anna Agenjo, chair of the li-brary, said that the amount of stu-dents studying in the library does not increase, but the amount of work being done is more visible. “[Students] are more diligent. They’re quieter. They’re studying for finals rather than just visiting with their friends,” she said. “We have a more motivated group of people during finals.”

Several students said this se-mester went very smoothly for them.

Some even explained that a few of their finals were given to them early, making finals week a lot less stressful.

Ashley Cabbab, an English major who is taking three class-es, said that this semester went very well for her.

For her finals, she said, “one of them is an essay, one is mul-

tiple choice and for ASL, it’s an interview, one on one with the teacher. We have to sign with them for 15 minutes.”

Naydith Perez, a child devel-opment major taking two classes, said, “It wasn’t my best [semes-ter], but I think I did good.” She already took her English final, which only leaves her art final where she will have to draw a portrait of herself.

Biology major Lionel Torres plans to go to medical school and only took one class this semester. He is currently taking calculus 1. About his final, he said, “I have to do more homework, catch up, and I’ll be all right. Hopefully.”

While some students only took on a few classes at a time, Nyshika Dixon, accounting ma-jor, took on a full load. Already completing one of her finals, she said that for the rest of her tests she feels very prepared.

Tutoring coordinator Midge Ladd explained that the amount of drop-ins for math and English increases during the week before finals. This semester, approxi-mately 1,035 students have been served at the tutoring center.

Finals cast a shadow on social lives of students

By James LiceaCopy Editor

Bakersfield College Repub-licans is a club that has been around in the past at BC, but hasn’t been active for some years.

Kaitlin Hulsy, a student work-ing toward her teaching creden-tials, felt the need to reinstate the club this semester to gain conservative representation on campus.

Hulsy described the liberal presence at BC that consists of clubs like MEChA and Campus Democrats and said that Ba-kersfield College Republicans would create a needed balance on campus.

“There’s a tendency to have a heavier liberal sway [on college campuses],” Hulsy said. Creat-ing a Republicans club would give students an alternative.

They have been holding meet-ings at Rusty’s Pizza on Friday’s at 2 p.m. off Bernard Street and Union Avenue.

According to Hulsy, their meetings allow people of any political party to sit in, discuss politics and see what the club is about.

To join, she explained, stu-dents need to be Republican, Libertarian or undecided. “We have a set of ideals that’s repre-sented by the Kern County and California Republican Party.”

Hulsy stated, “We want this

club to get students involved, to get them excited. It’s a fun club, a great way to meet people and a great way to network.”

Along with holding meetings that involve political debate, club members attended the Cali-fornia College Republican Con-ference in Sacramento April 30 through May 1.

Hulsy spoke of goals the club will try to accomplish, “There’s going to be a lot of charity work. We’re actually organiz-ing a bake sale with half of the proceeds going toward the Red Cross relief in Japan.” The other half will go toward funding the club.

The bake sale will have cook-ies from Cookie Couture and

is expected to go on sometime during the first week of May.

The club currently has five board members and a faculty adviser, BC communication instructor Dustin Dodgin. They have set a goal to expand to 35 to 40 members by the end of this semester, according to Joshua Foster, club chairman.

Student Government Associ-ation President Lisa English at-tended a meeting and approved their board. The Bakersfield College Republicans was rec-ognized as a club on April 29.

The main purpose of the club is to get people involved in poli-tics because, Foster explained, “Lack of political involvement is a major plague in America.”

BC Republicans breathe fresh life into old club

Dance instructor feels the effect of budget cuts

ANNIE STOCKMAN / THE RIP

Eve-Lyne Thomas’ jazz dance class performs in the Free Speech Area on April 13.

KAyLA BROADHAG / THE RIP

Above: Transfer students, friends and family all join together for a reception held in the Bakersfield College Cafeteria April 25. Below: Transfer student, Alyce Kayes, speaks at the Transfer Reception about how much she enjoyed Bakersfield College.

Transfer students get sent off in style

support this event and will con-tinue to be involved with it.

Students will now have the option on the graduation pro-gram to distinguish if they have achieved transfer, Granger-Dickson explained.

This is something that Grang-er-Dickson thought would help promote transfer at BC. Many California community col-leges, she explained, have very low transfer rates. It is her goal to increase the amount of stu-dent transfers. Currently, BC has a transfer rate of about 9 or 10 percent. “I’d like to see it double or even triple,” she expressed.

One of the ways to do this, Granger-Dickson said, is to honor the rate of transfers. An-other way is to get faculty and students involved with transfer awareness week, to share their own college experiences in hopes of sparking motivation in students who are working toward transferring.

Students in attendance were accepted into a wide range of different schools, including CSU’s, UC’s, private universi-ties, out of state universities in New york and Utah, and one

was accepted to a university in Italy. Several of the students ex-pressed their gratitude for the education they received at BC and being invited to the event.

Bethany Richmond, a psy-chology major, said “I’m really grateful for the education BC has given me, especially my psych teachers. They’ve taught me a lot.”

Business administration ma-jor, Jason Thompson, who is transferring to Cal State Bakers-field, said, “I liked coming here. I’ve really gotten to learn a lot. I’ll miss it as soon as I leave.”

The liaison to the dean of stu-dents and communication major, Jose Rodger Sanchez, will be transferring to Brigham young University, a private school in Utah.

Sanchez was the first of three transfer students at the event to give a speech. He spoke of the opportunities BC has provided him and said, “[BC] set me up for greatness.”

BC President Greg Chamber-lin said, “It just goes to show that we’re preparing students here at Bakersfield College to go anywhere.”

She met her current husband, Larry Thomas, while involved with the BC theater department.

“We met in a musical; it was called “The Soldier’s Tale,” where he was the lead role. I was his choreographer, and we became best friends for six years before we got married,” said

Thomas. “I loved his energy. I loved his voice, and I loved the fact that he was so genuine. We had so much in common.”

When not spending time with her husband or at BC, Thomas is often at her private dance studio on Truxtun Avenue where she will be spending her time after

her classes are cut back. She plans to work in the mornings and early afternoons.

However, even her dance stu-dio can’t replace Gym 202.

“I already miss it in my head – I really don’t want to go,” said Thomas. “Even keeping that one ballet class would be a joy.”

OpiniOns Wednesday, May 4, 2011Page 6 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

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1801 Panorama Drive, Bakersfield, CA 93305-Phone: (661) 395-4324-Web site: www.therip.com-Email: ripmail@bakersfieldcollege.eduAdviser ......................................................Danny Edwards

Editor in Chief..........................Michael WaffordOpinions Editor..............................Julian MooreSports Editor......................................Zak S. CowanCopy Editor ...........................................James LiceaOnline Editor................................Annie StockmanFeatures Editor............................Gregory D. Cook

Reporters: Monica Bolger, Martin Chang, Chrystal Fortt, Kevin Foster, Tawny Jamison, Keith Kaczmarek, Tyler McGinty, Mateo M. Melero, Michael Morrow, Esteban Ramirez, Cristal Rodriguez, James Timothy, Amber T. Troupe, Brian N. Willhite, Sandra Ward

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The Renegade Rip

’Gade Feedback “How do you feel about people coming onto the BC campus to collect the recycling?”

Compiled by:The Rip Staff

Editor’s note: ’Gade Feedback is a feature that asks students their opinion on various topics.

Jess Garcia,liberal sutdies:“It’s important to recycle but BC students should use the recycle bins.”

Jonathen Alfaro,mathematics:“I can care less.”

Mary Long,undeclared: “They scare me!”

Ramon Irynundeclared:“It really doesn’t matter, they just want the money.”

Tania Tena,child development:“It’s good for them because they are making money and the school isn’t using them.”

Staff Editorial Community colleges should not be on the chopping block

By James LiceaCopy Editor

With the state of California’s cur-rent economy, many people are talk-ing about what will be cut next. In times like these, many have different ideas of where the money should be taken from and what should be done with it. Recently, the most popular cut has been in education.

John and Ken, two popular AM radio talk show hosts, have recently been blasting California’s Com-munity Colleges. In their program, they briefly discussed Community Colleges, and said they’re “the first thing you should cut.” They then go on to say that there aren’t many jobs you could get out of it and call com-munity college students “parasites.”

Although I do not think that fund-ing for community colleges should be cut, I do understand what John and Ken’s reasoning is behind why they think it should be.

One reason they said, was that “so many people are wandering around with useless degrees; they’re not getting jobs because these de-grees don’t represent any particular skills.” They used a liberal arts de-gree as an example.

This I feel is true; many students that I know attending community colleges are doing so because they don’t know what they want to do. At Bakersfield College, the most popular major is undeclared. Other students simply pick majors be-cause they think they’ll make a lot of money in the particular field, or think it is easily obtainable, not be-cause they enjoy the profession.

What they end up with is a de-gree in something that either has no demand for, or is difficult and time

consuming to get into. Although a lot of students who

attend community colleges are do-ing so to better themselves, there are probably more who only attend school for the money they get from Financial Aid or other programs.

The two talk show hosts spark up all kinds of political conversations on their show daily, to create con-troversy. Like all radio talk shows, especially one of a political nature, ratings are important.

The John and Ken show is one of the most listened to radio talk show in America. John and Ken’s charm or lack of charm in no way corre-sponds with these ratings.

Conversation topics are most likely the reason people tune in. Creating arguments is their job; people shouldn’t take it so seriously. They’re just entertainers.

California Community Colleges have already suffered drastic cuts, totaling in $1.4 billion, according to the California Community College Chancellor’s office website. If poli-cymakers pass an “all-cuts” budget, more money could be cut from these schools.

I cannot even slightly compre-hend how anyone could believe that cutting money from education, in any area, will help us get out of the recession. Money should be cut elsewhere.

Instead of taking money from community colleges, I think funds should be cut from state prisons in-stead, as John and Ken also recom-mended.

With more money being cut from education than state prisons and penitentiaries, I can see our state getting even more criminal and dimwitted in the future.

By Keith KaczmarekReporter

You probably don’t care about politics. Should you?

Apathy toward politics is at a record high, even among young people who are notoriously dis-enchanted with politics. In many ways, America is becoming the democracy that chooses to not vote, but is anyone really sur-prised?

Let’s face it, we aren’t allowed to vote for anything truly impor-tant. We were not allowed to vote on the Iraq war, our local or fed-

eral budget, or even social issues like privacy laws, abortion or corporate corruption. The great issues of our day are being de-cided (or avoided) by our elected representatives, and the vote we are given is often between the Coke and Pepsi of political par-ties.

“But we can vote them out!” you say. “We can elect someone who will represent our inter-ests!”

Can we? We can surely elect new people, but is that going to actually create change? I mean, it’s not like they are obligated to

actually vote on the issues they ran on. In fact, the only conse-quences they face for their voting is that their party can perform to-ken wrist-slaps like giving them the worst office in whatever government building they work in, meaning that the actual con-sequences for bad politicians is that they might not be reelected after several years of betraying the trust of the people that voted for them. In fact, they might still get reelected since being an in-cumbent is such an advantage in politics that often candidates can die and still win elections.

If dead men can beat the living in elections purely because they held office previously, I think it’s fair to say that something as hard to track as voting records won’t be enough to get the bad eggs out.

And that’s just for the officials we are allowed to vote for. For example, federal judges are ap-pointed by the current president and serve indefinitely. If you don’t like it, even voting out the president won’t get rid of those individuals.

“But we can form a third par-ty!” you say. To that I can only

laugh for the simple reason that the stunning failures of third par-ties in the last century has proven that a third party vote is worse than no vote at all.

Even protests are ineffective. Recently, voters in Wisconsin laid siege to the state capital for weeks in an effort to protest the governor and state senate from removing the rights of govern-ment workers to have a union, and it absolutely did not stop the passage of the bill.

Left with these options, are we powerless?

No. If you want a vote that

matters, you need to run for of-fice. Luckily, you don’t even have to vote for any issue you run on, so feel free to take crazy positions like pretending that President Obama is not a citizen or that trickle-down economics is not a discredited and disprov-en economic theory. After taking office, your tiny vote can actu-ally be cast on important issues, and it will even matter.

I’m often told, “If you don’t vote in elections, you don’t have a right to complain.” My only reply is, “when I’m given a vote that matters, I’ll use it.”

By Zak S. CowanSports Editor

Today’s entertainment land-scape is completely different than it was in Hollywood’s Gold-en Age of the ’30s and ’50s.

Nowadays film is just one competitor in the ocean of enter-tainment.

Although it is the biggest there is, a dark shadow hanging over the Hollywoodland sign: the vid-eo game industry.

Video gaming is quickly be-coming the biggest market in terms of entertainment around

the world, and there is good rea-son.

With a common video game, which will run you around $60, you can get anywhere from six to 20 hours of playtime and can often play with more than one person at any given time.

In contrast, going to the theater to watch a film is a completely different situation.

To see the hottest new flick with your significant other, it will most likely cost you more than $20 without any popcorn or snacks, which are a must for any moviegoer, for just two hours of

usually dull entertainment. This is the biggest advantage

gaming has over movies, but not the only one.

Want to go to the movies? Check the list. Does “Scream 4” sound appealing? How about “Hop?” Yeah, I didn’t think so.

In the gaming market at the moment, there are plenty of titles to look forward to, and ones that you’ll for sure get everything you want out of them.

Games like “Mortal Kombat” and “Portal 2” will keep you go-ing for months, and that’s just the upper echelon of the market.

New releases are commonly good in the industry, at least the bigger ones.

But there are always games out there that if you haven’t played already you can pick up and en-joy more than any movie that has been out for a while.

Although there are great mov-ies that are being pumped out yearly, they just don’t provide the content that I’m looking for.

This past year, great films came out. “Social Network” was great, “The King’s Speech” was mag-nificent, “127 Hours” impressed. But at the same time, I was con-

stantly left wanting more. and that’s when Hollywood

brings sequels to the table and completely ruin the first.

I don’t know the solution to the film industry’s problems, I only know what will be the downfall: high expenses to watch espe-cially compared to the competi-tion, and cheesy fads like 3D that make the industry look like they don’t take the important parts se-riously, such as plot progression and acting.

Video games also have the benefit of finishing their stories, and even telling multiple stories

within a single game. With movies it often takes two

or three to tell a complete story, which didn’t use to be the case, but this changed dramatically when special effects evolved (Hint: “Terminator”).

Video games will often consist of so much more progression in plot than in your everyday mov-ie.

The moment video game pro-ducers started taking voice acting seriously the quality of the prod-uct jumped way past any film of the day, and if it continues film will be overcame.

Politics viewed as an afterthought in student lives for excellent reasons

COuRTESY OF INDIATALKIES.COM

Video games look to dethrone film as the ultimate entertainment

One man’s death isn’t as influential as it may seem

The King is dead. Long live the King.

This 15th century saying is used in Europe when a king dies to illustrate how the power passes instantaneously from one mon-arch to the next. But in a chilling way, it also fits for the death of a terrorist leader.

“Tonight I can report to the American people and to the world, that the united States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden.” With-in minutes of President Barack Obama’s words, celebrations sprang up across the nation, as thousands of Americans took to the streets, celebrating “the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.”

Ride that euphoric wave, America. Ride it all the way until it breaks upon the rocky shores of reality.

First things first, bin Laden was a bad man. There is no sane argument against this, and in a perfect world he would never have existed, and the brave ac-tions of the men and women who rid the world of him are to be commended. However, in the flawed world in which we live, the united States was better off with bin Laden alive because for all the celebrating, all that has really been accomplished is the death of the body of one man. It still remains to be seen how

wounded the ideals and resolve of al Qaeda will be. A body is an easy thing to kill, but ideals are not. In fact, ideals often gain strength with the deaths of their inspirations, and as we celebrate the death of a man, there are those who undoubtedly are wel-coming the birth of a symbol.

With this perceived victory in the war on terror, public support for our continued involvement in Afghanistan is likely to erode further. After all, we got the guy we were after didn’t we?

Hopefully, the 1,448 u.S. mil-itary personal that have paid the ultimate price in Operation En-during Freedom did not do so just to kill one man. The job is much deeper than that, and if we let up before the people of Afghanistan realize there are choices besides the Taliban and al Qaeda, history will repeat itself.

Osama bin Laden may have been the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, but he did not carry them out himself. He had a large following of people de-voted enough to willingly die without a second thought for what they believed. People with the resolve to fly airliners into buildings are not likely to just “walk away” because we killed their spiritual leader.

Their resolve will more than likely increase now that the per-son they idolized has not only died, but died in battle against

his mortal foes, cementing his martyrdom among his followers.

Those followers are now watching Americans dance in the streets, celebrating the death of their martyred leader. It is doubtful that bin Laden himself could have planned a more meaningful death in the eyes of his fol-lowers.

Anyone that feels we have cut off the head of the proverbial snake needs to be sternly reminded that terror-

ism is not a snake. Terror-ism is the result of a set of ideals fueled by hatred and desperation, and carried out by people who would love nothing better than to hold up the head of a snake as their symbol.

Celebrate America, for our foe lies at our feet. But we must remember to keep one wary eye on the hori-zon, because the war isn’t over, the job isn’t done and the stakes may have just gone up.

Reviews Wednesday, May 4, 2011Page 7 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

BC Brains

Correct answer: Another name for a Green Woodpecker.

“What does the word ‘yaffle’ mean?”

Editor’s note: BC Brains is a feature that asks students a question to test their knowledge of all things trivial.

Alexis Lyons, philosophy: “I think of a German yelling something.”

Christina Wileyhistory:“A young waffle.”

Niome Vick,engimeering:“An obnoxious individual.”

Ociel Arias, undeclared: “To yell.”

Tayci Stallings,liberal studies:“Yellow waffle.”

Compiled by: The Rip Staff

By Zak S. CowanSports editor

The sequel to the most sci-entific and m e n t a l l y -challenging game ever is nothing less than a tri-umph.

“ P o r t a l 2,” released April 19, is

the perfect full-length follow-up to the mini game that swept the video game community in 2007.

Arguably the most anticipated game of 2011 among video game aficionados, “Portal 2” provides everything a fan of the first could

want. With perfect dialogue, or monologue (the main character is mute), that keeps the come-dic theme of the first, Valve has made a masterpiece.

With a massive amount of levels that come in two different campaigns, a solo and a co-op, with each having a different story all together, there are hours upon hours of gameplay to be had.

“Portal 2” is a first-person-shooter puzzle game. One of the first of its kind, Portal reinvented the way we look at games and showed that video games do not have to be violent to be fun and entertaining, something the in-dustry has had issues with since the early ’90s.

The presentation on the puz-

zles are what makes the game, and after being stuck on a level for 45 minutes then completing it, the genius showed. This was the case over and over through-out the entire game, and it never let up. I was in awe of the phys-ics and mechanics of the game, and that is something that I’m sure will never be matched.

The story at its core is fairly dark and eerie, with the premise that an artificial intelligence has taken over a scientific research center, Aperture Laboratories, where human clones are used to test various inventions, like the portal gun. The portal gun, in case you don’t already know, is a gun that shoots out two por-tals that connect to each other,

and you use these portals to get through the various levels.

It doesn’t give you much time to catch up if you missed the first game and moves quickly.

The solo campaign goes deep-er into the lore of Aperture Sci-ence, uncovering secrets of what went on in the underground coal mine turned research center long before your time. As the story progresses new gadgets and el-ements are provided to add to the fun and complexity—all of which are presented perfectly throughout, especially how they coincide with the portal gun.

I beat the game in roughly eight hours, so it’s far and away longer than the first, which was a sigh of relief with the price tag.

Video Game reView

‘Portal 2’ is a gateway to a world of fun

By Michael WaffordEditor in chief

“Mortal Kombat” takes a worn-out franchise and returns it to its glory days—literally and figuratively.

The ninth game in the main franchise, (counting spin-offs and updated releases, there are over 14 games in the franchise) “Mortal Kombat” drops the numbers and subtitles, along

with a lot of extra bag-gage it has gained over the years.

It did this by getting rid of almost every char-acter created

after “Mortal Kombat 3” and introducing no new fighters to the cast. MK 2011 also returns the gameplay to its one-on-one two-dimensional fighting roots.

“Mortal Kombat” returns MK to its more serious origins. The series became sillier as time went on, sometimes stepping into the realm of self-parody in latter titles, and that is just what

the series needed.Fighting will be familiar to

anyone who has played the series before. You have two punches, two kicks and a block button and use them to beat your opponent into submission.

When a match is won, the phrase “Finish Him/Her” ap-pears on the screen and you can unleash a Fatality on your op-ponent. They are all gruesome, ranging from simple decapita-tion to intricate combinations of moves ending in vital organs exploding. Missing from “Mor-tal Kombat” are Animalities, where your character turns into some kind of animal to finish an opponent off and Friendships where instead of killing the op-ponent the fighters skip rope together, which were added in later titles.

The fighting in this game is great. Hits disfigure opponents to just the right amount and see-ing a fatality is always amus-ing.

The story revolves around the thunder god Raiden in the mid-dle of a losing battle with all of his allies dead or dying, sending a message to his past self saying,

“he must win” without indicat-ing who “he” is. The message is interpreted during the events of 1992’s original “Mortal Kombat” and Raiden decides to make changes to events that are unfolding to change the future.

This storytelling device al-lows the game to explore what is widely regarded as the best time in franchise, MK 1 through 3, while offering enough differ-ence for those familiar with the story to have fun.

The story mode will take about 8 hours to finish on nor-mal difficulty, and provides a satisfying challenge that puts “Mortal Kombat’s” story mode head and shoulders above every other game in the fighting game genre. While not a groundbreak-ing story the amount of effort and content packed into MK’s story blows its competitors like “Super Street Fighter IV” and “Tekken 6” out of the water.

Outside of story mode those interested in single-player game-play can also take on the Chal-lenge Tower. Designed to give even the best brawler out there a workout, the 300 challenges located within the tower are –

well challenging – asking the player to become familiar with every mechanic of the game to succeed. There’s also a standard one-player ladder mode where you can play against the com-puter in one-on-one or tag-team matches.

During the story mode, Chal-lenge Tower and ladder matches you earn “Koins” that are used to unlock “Kollectibles” in the “Krypt.” These items range from “koncept” art to additional Fatalities for “kharacters” to use during kombat.

“Mortal Kombat” also has a robust multi-player mode. Local multi-player supports up to four people playing at one time and online players can step into lob-bies with up to 100 kombatants facing off with each other. The multi-player makes the game infinitely replay-able.

“MK” is the best game the series has seen in years. It’s en-gaging story mode, hundreds of unlockable “Kollectibles” and secrets and deep multi-player make it a title worth owning if you’ve ever had any interest in Mortal Kombat and maybe even if you haven’t.

COuRTeSY OF PCgAMeR.COM

New to Portal 2 is a co-op mode. Atlas (right) and P-body are the two test subjects that the players assume.

Video Game reView

Great food and service are found at Sea Breeze

By Michael WaffordEditor in chief

Sea Breeze, located on 2500 New Stine Road, serves deli-cious seafood in a discreet envi-ronment.

Originally opened in 1947, Sea Breeze closed its original

d o w n t o w n location.

S e a Breeze’s ex-terior is a simple blue and white b u i l d i n g

down the street from Snyder’s Cyclery. It’s easy to drive by without noticing it. The interior is simple: booths, white walls, a counter and a kitchen you can look into while your food is pre-pared. The restaurant was clean and, for a seafood restaurant, did not have a bad smell of fish.

The staff was also friendly, with the cook taking a break from his duties to wave to the customers. During my visits to the restaurant the only problem seemed to be that Sea Breeze only has one person working the register, so sometimes service takes a little while.

Sea Breeze offers every popu-lar fish you could want: cod, red snapper, orange roughy, salmon and tilapia along with crusta-ceans such as shrimp.

The restaurant also offers more exotic dishes like frog legs or calamari, although I wasn’t feel-

ing up to trying them out during my visits.

I purchased an order of fish and chips for about $10, with most fried meals costing between $10 and $13 and charbroiled dishes being in-between $13 and $16. Finished about twenty-minutes after I ordered, the meal, served with french fries and shrimp with lots of sauces, was great.

Four pieces of crisp and flaky cod, six large shrimp and a ton of fried potatoes sat before me, and I was ready. Cooked fresh, the fish was breaded in corn meal, the exterior was crisp while the inside was moist and flaky. While I am not a big fan of seafood, I thoroughly enjoyed the fish.

The shrimp was plump and juicy with a crunchy skin. The only downside to the meal was the potatoes. Served crinkle-cut style the fries were bland and lacked any kind of flavor.

The meal satisfied me com-pletely. After I was full, I looked down at my tray and saw more fish and shrimp waiting for me.

Sea Breeze also sells fresh fish. Having one of the best selections of seafood in town, Sea Breeze is also a place worth checking out if you prefer to cook for yourself.

The delicious food coupled with the variety and quality of service make Sea Breeze a great place to eat. While other restaurants draw in customers with offers of entertainment, Sea Breeze’s only attractions are its good food and service.

‘MK’ will test your might and your skill

COuRTSeY OF gAMeRANT.COM

resturant reView

Fire Gone extinguisher not so hot

NATHAN WILSON / THe RIP

James Licea puts out a contained fire with Fire Gone at the Olive Drive Training facility April 29. The product worked on this fire, but its ability to handle large fires is doubtful.

ProduC t reView

James LiceaCopy editor

Fire gone is a product that is intended to diminish any type of fire, from an engine fire to a

candle. The product is said to even be able to put out a Christ-mas tree fire, but in reality, Fire gone

should not be trusted unless sev-eral cans are available.

The commercial for this prod-uct shows people in various pre-dicaments where a fire ignites and they quickly put it out using Fire gone. It describes the prod-uct as more effective and easier to use than fire extinguishers, however the warning label on the back of the can reads that it is “not intended to replace an NFPA 10 compliant fire extin-guisher.”

I purchased my 16-ounce can of Fire gone on Amazon.com for a total of $15.44 including shipping and handling.

To test this product out safely, I had the help of Tim Capehart,

the fire technology coordina-tor at the Olive Drive Training Facility. We started the fire in a little tin that we found outside the training facility. We put in some cardboard, a couple pieces of wood and some paper. After lighting the fire I waited for it to grow to be able to accurately test this product. After about a minute it seemed big enough and I started the steps. The simple instructions read: “call 911, hold can upright, break off tab, hold can 3 to 4 feet away from fire and spray across base of fire us-ing gentle sweeping motion.”

When testing Fire gone, I fol-lowed each direction carefully, excluding the first step. After about four or five sprays of Fire gone’s foamy white contents, the fire was almost gone.

For the most part, the fire did go out, but a lot of smoke was still emerging from the tin. I stayed, staring at the smoke con-cerned the fire would reignite. It stayed out, but I’m not sure it would have if it had it been in a less contained environment — a Christmas tree for instance.

After those four or five sprays, I also noticed that the can had

completely emptied. Trying to spray more of it onto the smoky remains, it dispersed out little droplets of foam like an empty can of silly string.

This made me certain that Fire gone is not a safe product. If this were to have been an actual fire, in a real location, I’m ter-rified to think what might have happened. This, Capehard said, is a problem with all products similar to Fire gone. They con-tain minimal liquid to adequately put out fires.

He said normally fire extin-guishers work better because they are usually serviced once a year, contain enough powder to put out almost any size fire, can be used standing further than three to four feet away from a fire and have pressure meters to show how much remains.

This is one of those products that should be tried at your own risk. I’m sure this product holds some use —very little, but some. In case you do want to try it out, I recommend you read and take the advice of the can very literal-ly, “ensure a safe path of escape in the event of a failure to stop the fire.”

The ending can only be mea-sured to movies like “Planet of the Apes” or “Fight Club.” It is the best ending to a video game I have ever experienced and is proof that games can be on the same artistic level as movies or novels.

“Portal 2” will no doubt chal-lenge your mind, which is lost in most of today’s run-n-gun video game culture. If you want a mindless game like the others, then don’t buy this game.

Clearly, it’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

By Michael WaffordEditor in chief

For some people, a name says a lot about them. For brothers Steven and Christopher Drum-mer, their name says almost ev-erything.

“I didn’t even realize our last name until people started telling me ‘you play the drums and your last name is Drummer,’” said Christopher, 19, while laughing. “Some people just call us Drum-mer, they don’t even know our first name.”

Since the two began playing drums in their mid-teens, they’ve gone on to become part of a world-class drum corps and cul-tivate talent in their community.

“Music is just the thing we love. It’s in our DNA. We do it while we sleep pretty much. We do it naturally. We can just stand there and beat on our chest,” said Steven, 20.

Originally from Los Angeles, the brothers moved to Bakers-field in 1996 when their family’s church relocated.

Christopher, who plays the tenor drums, goes to Cal State Bakersfield, and is majoring in music, but is in the drumline class at Bakersfield College. Ste-ven is a full-time student at BC and is also in the drumline at BC. He plays the snare drum.

Both brothers are members of the Blue Devil Drum and Bugle Corps whose A Corp, their high-est division, won the world title and B Corps, the second high-est, are the Drum Corps Inter-national Open Class champions. Both corps competed with teams from across the United States and world.

Christopher became a member of the Blue Devil Drum Corps A this year while Steven is part of the Blue Devil Drum Corps B.

“It’s hard looking at my little brother and seeing that he’s in a better group than I am, but I love him so I’m proud of him,” said Steven.

While the brothers are proud to be part of a championship win-ning organization, they haven’t let their status go to their heads.

“I don’t even talk about it any-more because it’s in the past. Plus, there are always new things to accomplish. It’s like, we won last year but it’s already time we start working on this year,” said Christopher. “We’re about to start competing in a month or two so you kind of can’t reflect too much on the past.”

Both began playing drums a little over six years ago. The two played horns when they were younger, but upon entering high school Steven decided to take up drums because he looked up to his older brother, Michael Drum-mer, who played the drums. Christopher did the same.

“I started them over at BHS when they were freshman. I had their older brother, Michael

Drummer, in my line and when Steven Drummer came in he played baritone, as a horn player, and asked if he could crossover to become a drummer. I had his brother so I gave him a chance – extremely talented – right out I knew he was going to be good,” said David Ellis, the brothers’ percussion instructor since they began playing at Bakersfield High School.

“Then a year later Chris came in, and he played trumpet. He asked if he could play quads. I told him, ‘I already had too many and I couldn’t take him.’ So he asked if he could practice, and I watched him practice – I turned around and went back and said, ‘yeah, you’re in,’” said Ellis who sees the two as some of the best to come out of Bakersfield.

Ellis believes their experience with the Blue Devil group helped the brothers grow as both musi-cians and leaders, appointing Steven as leader of BC’s drum-line this year and Christopher as leader of his section.

Ellis said, “We weren’t sure if he’d [Steven] ever become a leader type, but we always knew he was very talented. Now, he’s taken that role and done a great job with it.

“When you’re a really good player and there’s not many peo-ple at your level, it’s kind of hard to put yourself on a scale and see where you’re really at. When he went out to the Blue Devil orga-nization, everybody was good. It helped mature him and realize that he had to work hard,” said Ellis.

Being members of the BC drumline and The Blue Devils, the two love the competitive as-pect of drumline. “If you think about it, drumline is a sport also. It’s a sport of the arts,” said Ste-ven.

Although both Drummers enjoy competing, they’ve also developed a passion for helping others develop.

Both brothers teach drumline to high school students in town. Christopher works at Stockdale High School as an assistant drumline coach, while Steven is the head drumline instructor at East Bakersfield High School.

Both Drummers see being paid to play drums as their dream job and a goal for the year.

“It sometimes doesn’t feel like it’s a job because it’s what I love to do,” said Steven.

“Like, I want to teach other kids the same way I was taught, and I want them to be as good as I am one day even though in their heads right now they aren’t thinking about that.

“You have so much fun with the kids, just joking around and stuff, but you get things done so it’s a lot more fun than it is work,” said Steven.

The younger sibling also finds joy in teaching others how to play the drums.

“If anything, I’m just a role model to the kids because they see us perform and stuff all the time in the different groups that we do. I just give the kids inspi-ration,” Christopher said.

“Most people in Bakersfield don’t like to practice that much. The level of striving for excel-lence in this town is way less than every other town there is, and I just try to get it going here.

“As an example, whenever the new freshman come to the school, I always make sure that at sometime in the year I go off and play and make sure that they’re watching so that they get inspired. So they say, I want to be good.”

The Drummers believe that Bakersfield’s potential in drum-line is untapped. The two blame the “scattered” nature of Bakers-field’s school districts for the problem.

“We’re trying to show the kids how fun it can be instead of how much work it can be,” said Ste-ven.

Spotlight Wednesday, May 4, 2011Page 8 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

Drummer brothers’ dreams are in sync

By Kevin FosterReporter

Bakersfield College first-year student Connor Carroll always knew he wanted to be on the stage.

“In a way I knew I wanted to act, I just didn’t start until ju-nior year at Centennial [High School],” said Carroll, 18.

It was some of the classic movies that got him interested in the work.

“Mainly the Star Wars and the Indiana Jones series that made me want to pursue the art,” he said. “The fact that they were my favorite movies, to create that magic on stage or a screen brings a joy to me.”

Like every actor, Carroll has his main idol.

“John Cleese is a huge idol of mine. No matter what happens in a scene, no matter how funny, he can keep a straight face,” he said.

Cleese, an actor since 1961, was a writer and had various roles in the Monty Python series

Above: Steven Drummer plays the snare drum for the BC drumline April 29.

Below Left: Christopher Drummer plays the tenor drum for the BC drumline April 29.

Below: Steven Drummer (left) and Christopher Drummer (second from right), both part of the Bakersfield College drumline, practice with their teammates for their upcoming finals performance April 29.

PHOTOS BY KAYLA BrOADHAg / THE rIP

BC’s Connor Carroll is aspires to work with George Lucas

rYAN gEOrgE / THE rIP

Actor and pianist Connor Carroll practices the piano in the Fireside Room on April 28.

and films such as “A Fish Called Wanda,” “Time Bandits” and “The great Muppet Caper.”

Cleese has also done some recent voice over work for Harry Potter, as Nearly-Headless Nick, Shrek, as King Harold and the

narrator in Disney’s upcoming “Winnine The Pooh” film.

He also has his ideal direc-tor that he would want to work with.

“george Lucas and Michael Bay would be fun to work with

because their combined ideas would make for an epic movie,” he added.

Carroll was born in New Or-leans. His mother’s work as a doctor brought him to Bakers-field in 2003.

While in Bakersfield he has achieved an internship at the Spotlight Theater downtown on 19th street.

“I’ve been there since the summer of 2010, and I’m pretty much the errand boy.

“Transport documents and in-formation between directors,” he said.

He also has been in a few plays at the Spotlight Theater since then as well.

“I was in the shows: ‘rock and roll Part V: Pop rock,’ ‘Maggie,’ which was performed at the Fox, and ‘Zanna Don’t!’ ” he said.

Carroll talked about “Zanna Don’t!,” which was his favorite show to work on so far.

“It shows such an upbeat show with a serious message,” he said.

“I played the character Steve. Steve was gay and as the show

progresses he discovers he has feelings for a girl in the homo-sexual world.

The cast made this role my fa-vorite as well as the message the show tells the audience.”

As if the acting wasn’t enough, Carroll also plays the piano, which he started playing four years ago.

“It may sound cliché but ever since I heard Bohemian rhap-sody from Queen I’ve wanted to play,” he said.

Carroll added some words of wisdom to people who wanted to act in the future.

“You have to give it your all because if you don’t then you might as well not even try,” he said.

Carroll will be in the upcom-ing show at the Spotlight Theater called “The Producers,” which will be playing until May, 28. Tickets can be purchased online or through the Spotlight’s box office.

Linds panther / mLg

Two teams of four have come today to battle against one another.

each team has made it through three gruel-

ing days of non-stop carnage to get to this stage.

as the match commences and the two teams start to close in on one another, the crowd starts to come alive. the first bullets are fired and this convention center full of video game aficionados turns into a mad house for the next fifteen minutes.

this is the world of profession-al gaming, and at the end of this major League gaming match a champion will be crowned.

the majority of peo-ple that compete in mLg’s tournaments are not considered pro-fessionals, but they

all have a chance to achieve that recognition.

alex Chavez, a sophomore at Bakersfield College, competed in mLg’s pro circuit for three years until deciding to focus on getting his associate’s degree in culinary arts.

Chavez got his foot in the com-petitive gaming door through games like “street Fighter” and “halo,” and it wasn’t until he was noticed during an online session with other players from mLg that he got his first invita-

tion to play on the pro circuit.

“they asked me to play with them in these tournaments, and i was like, ‘what tournaments? You can get paid for this shit?’”

For the next six months fol-lowing his introduction to professional gaming Chavez pre-pared for his first appearance at an mLg event.

“it was just hours upon hours of non-stop playing,” he said. “i remember playing 15 hours straight seven days a week. it’s just tiring, your eyes get tired and start to strain, your hands get cramped up, you want to sleep but you know you can’t because you have to be ready.”

after months of pushing his mind and body to the limit, Chavez was finally ready to take on the world’s best in a game he

had spent more time playing than he had been outside:

“halo 3.”“at times there was [a celebrity] mentality.

When you’re up there you’re like, ‘every-body’s watching me play right now,’” he said. “You get a little nervous, but you’ve also got that adrenaline pumping t h r o u g h y o u r b l o o d , y o u ’ r e l i k e , ‘ i ’ v e got to perform,

i’ve got to show them,

t h a t ’s why they are looking at me and that’s why my teammates wanted me here.’”

as Chavez’s career in the pro circuit progressed, and the tour-naments piled up, he started to notice something about what goes on behind the curtains at the events.

the underbelly of the mLg beast started to show its scales, and Chavez wasn’t sure how to take it.

“i’d say at least half of the players use adderall during the events in some way.

“they just get focused, you can see them just get in the zone immediately and block everything out,” Chavez said of how adderall can affect

a player’s skills.

“my teammates were on it constantly, and for the majority of the time i had no idea it was going on.”

One incident in particular, that took place during mLg’s dal-las tournament in 2008, opened Chavez’s eyes to the underworld of professional gaming.

One of Chavez’s teammates had been using adderall, known as addys among gamers, along with energy drinks that their sponsor had provided for them. While the team was competing on stage Chavez’s teammate fainted and was rushed to the hospital where his stomach was pumped. the team was forced to bow out of the competition.

adderall is a drug used to treat attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

it is abused by gamers to slow down everything that is going on, and lets them focus on one thing without having to worry about the constant pressure and distractions they can face during the competition.

“When you’re up there [on stage], you just got to really fo-cus,” Chavez said. “if you can get any leg up in terms of focus-ing you can ride it forever, espe-cially in the amateur’s bracket where everyone’s not on it—so there isn’t really a balance in competition.”

mLg has done little to prevent the use of adderall. a spokes-person for mLg also declined to comment on the issue.

“they should at least test the top players, since they’re under contract with them,” Chavez said. “Other than that it’d be hard for them to test 800 gamers at each tournament, and a lot of them are minors.”

it’s things like this that could hamper the progress that mLg has made, as it has been seen with so many leagues so many times before.

Like steroids in baseball, adderall has the po-tential to seriously damage the popularity that so many people have worked to build for profes-sional gaming. the video game culture is exploding with today’s youth, and that can often be at-tributed to the constant outflow of new products to the market.

a total of 635 new video games were released in 2010, compared to more than 1,500 films being

released in the same year, but the gaming industry surpassed hollywood in revenue some time ago.

the industry has grown sub-stantially compared to where it was 20 years ago.

there are obvious contributors to the industry—from the com-panies who create the games, to the companies that distribute the games to the masses, everyone is working together to build the industry.

One contributor often cred-ited with building respect around the entertainment industry for games are the leagues that play host to thousands of gamers ea-ger to compete with the best of the best.

around the globe there are various professional leagues that the world’s top players can com-pete with one another.

in Korea they play starCraft, in europe it’s FiFa, and here in america, first-person shooters are the standard.

major League gaming is one of the biggest professional leagues in the world, and is the only credible league in america.

“since its inception in 2002, mLg has helped spearhead mas-sive growth in competitive gam-ing,” adam apicella, senior Vice president of League Operations and production at mLg said. “We have created a global busi-ness working with the world’s best game developers and pub-lishers, as well as establishing partnerships with some of the most world renown brands.

“Over the last eight years, i have had the opportunity to wit-ness the evolution and growth of mLg and one thing has remained constant, our fans are passionate and extremely dedicated,” api-cella said.

along with fans that rival that of other sporting leagues, apicella credits mLg’s “atmo-sphere and energy” as being a

big

contributor to the league’s popularity.

“as a spectator the one key difference is if you purchase tickets to a professional sporting event like an nFL or nBa game, you are spending a lot of money to watch that one game for a few hours,” he said. “as a spectator at mLg, live or online, you get the chance to watch hundreds of games over the course of the weekend.”

another attribute of the mLg system is the open-play style that they use for new players that want to give professional

gaming a try.“as a competitor, any player

new to our event can sign, per-form well, and eventually end up going toe to toe with profession-al players,” said apicella. “the aspirational quality of being able to step on the court and play the equivalent of LeBron James is a huge part of why our events are great: anyone can compete and anyone can win.”

the competitors in mLg have a dedication that can be com-pared to any of the world’s top athletes.

“When comparing profes-sional gaming to other sports, i think people initially recognize the lack of physical exertion that it takes to be a professional gamer,” said mike rufail, a pro-fessional gamer for the Call of duty: Black Ops section of the pro circuit, new to mLg this year.

“although three-day tourna-ments can be a bit tiring, we definitely don’t have to put on as much wear and tear on our bodies as other professional athletes.

however, there are many simi-lar reasons why an athlete or gamer are labeled as a profes-sional.

“the amount of training, the formulation of strategy, team-work, communication, the travel. really, the whole rou-tine is very similar to what other

athletes go through on a profes-sional level outside of the physical training.”

rufail attended his first mLg event in 2007, and has been in-volved with mLg since.

“there are so many moments that i have enjoyed, but playing on [the] main stage for the na-tional Championship at mLg anaheim in 2009 was probably my favorite moment as a pro player.

“i also had the chance to co-mC the “Call of duty: Black Ops” launch party with ryan “Fwiz” Wyatt, Zach Braff, Kobe Bryant and metallica headlin-ing.”

the atmosphere around mLg

can be compared to other major sports around the world as well, and the demands that is put on competitors and their bodies is comparable also.

“there is a lot of pressure to win. We really rely on prize money and sponsorships to have a successful career. Winning is a major fuel for that success,” ru-fail said.

the political landscape of pro-fessional gaming, where agents, contracts and sponsorships are concerned, is, in actuality, a lot different in professional gaming than other professional sporting leagues according to rufail.

“i think [mLg] has done a great job of focusing on the skill and teamwork that players use to obtain [popularity],” said rufail. “in my opinion, winning or placing well is [crucial], but you definitely need to act like a professional alongside playing like a professional to obtain the bigger sponsorships. as far as agents are concerned, i know a few players who have manage-ment, but most big name play-ers are managed by the leagues or larger organizations that fund their travel and fees.

“We are starting to see some really established franchises and organizations appearing who ne-gotiate contracts with players to

h a v e them play for their team.”

time will tell if mLg has enough on their side to get through—not only drug scan-dals—but a crippling economy that has taken out far bigger companies.

they have the backing of their fans, their players and their spon-sors, but if they don’t stop some-thing they have the power to, like the adderall use in the sport, then the future looks grim.

“i don’t think they encourage us-ing [adderall], but they are for sure turning their heads when it’s being done,” Chavez said.

the fourth installment of our dissenter magazine is presented here in a brief form to offer you, the readers, a glimpse into the mind behind our eyes as we explore the world around us and the souls within us. Originally scheduled as an online magazine, the process had unforeseen interruptions and delays hindering the production. Because of this, we chose to share our stories of backstage underhandedness, our gripping tales of wondrous encounters and personal triumphs as well as our exploration into the life of a professional dJ, all within the pages of the renegade rip. so please, sit back and enjoy the treasured files of what we affectionately refer to as, the dissenteruption. Brian n. Willhite - editor

may 4, 2011

The Captain

The Adventures of

It was like God was contem-plating the flood again, during those strange days in Decem-ber when the rain beat down with merciless tenacity and all the bums came stinking out of their asylums like worms from the mud, hoping for mercy, but knowing the rain had too, washed all hope of that away. I stayed inside.

Divorced from the machine, I grew stale smoking and strung-out from strenuous thought, I began to mutate. Feeding off the madness in the streets below, inventing enemies and bedding with misery. The world became a great life-sucking ghoul and it was my mission to slay it before it consumed me. My blood be-came mercury, my lungs gulped poison, my skin cold lead and my heart beat discontent and loathing. In this I was secure.

I pitied no one during these days. Watching from my win-dow all I see is all the sad hope-less creatures below huddled and humbled in that purging rain, I felt nothing. “Too long I have played the saint,” I thought. “To hell with all these leeches and blood suckers, void of life and

desire, too scared to dare for any-thing better they seek out hearts so that they can forget that they have lost theirs.”

I had grown tired of charity. The world was strictly Darwin-ian and I intended to survive. The professional world was no better, merely cutthroat self-serving predators. They greeted with one hand and gutted you with the other. Perhaps this is how it al-ways has been and the delusion of childhood serenity was fad-ing away and the cold reality of adulthood setting in. So I board-ed up my heart with no intent of ever opening it again. It was all a chess game now.

It was in a moment of curios-ity that I dared from the security of my cave. Creeping down the stairs with a ghoulish disposi-tion like some sort of nosferatu, I brought my nicotine love af-fair out to the haze of the day to observe the strange weather. It wasn’t long before Bliss came

strolling my way.Bundled, I noticed

her head bob in my direction. Scoping me out, I knew I was once again going to be wormed for some-

thing. With wide eyes, she neared my stoop.

“Can I have a drag of your cig-arette?” Saying nothing, I began to pick her apart. Loose drabs for clothes, bloated backpack, burnt leather skin, coarse voice, illu-sion-loving lips – street child!

“I can go get you one.”“No, I’m trying to quit. I don’t

want a full one.”Another long stare, “OK” I

say. She smokes the rest of it.She breaks the silence as she

indulges. Like instantaneity of creation all the elements of this character burst out in one long decree. I listen.

“My name is Bliss, I’m twenty years old, I smoke heroin, my boyfriend is an asshole, he says I’m fat and ugly. He doesn’t have sex with me. I want a new boy-friend. I’m a good cook. I live with him behind BHS …”

“Are you hungry?” I say.She shakes her head.

“Do you want some tea?” “Yes.”We make the climb and upon

entry into my apartment I apolo-gize for the mess. She doesn’t mind. She tells me she is good at keeping up a home. I put the pot on the stove and try to make conversation. There is a $10 bill lying on my desk.

“Would you like to see some pictures I have taken?” We flip through the albums on my com-puter. She likes the nudes I’ve taken and tells me that she can do that. She tells me she has a curvy body and lifts up her shirt to prove the statement. She does.

I prepare the tea and we con-verse in my kitchen casually. The whole time she is pitching her interest and aspirations. It is strange to me, to see someone so chained and bound to misery – defeated – but yet they rise and rattle the chains in excitement. I sense no anger in her.

“I’m a writer, or at least I try to be,” I say.

“Really, whom do you write for?” She asks.

“Everyone and anything.” We chat leisurely for a

few hours about aspirations

and dreams. She shows her bones and I am not thwarted by it at all. I show her mine. “I’m trying to get some money to move out,” she says. “I just been roaming around bumming. I ran into this guy the other day and he said he’d give me $60 bucks if I fooled around with him in his car. He kicked me out afterwards and didn’t fucking pay me.”

It is strange to me now, how secure people claim to be in any position or outlook. How abso-lute their opinion is. How and why it should be seen as pure truth. How much energy people put into to convincing others. Why this is and why it was born with Bliss I feel I can never ade-quately explain but it always ap-pears when I think of her. Maybe it’s because I listen too much. Nothing is definite because ev-erything is fluid, constant and subjective.

My kitchen sink has been long clogged and the one in my bath-room has taken its place. It is chalked full of food bits and hair doodles from shaving. I explain this to her as she asks to use the bathroom. It wasn’t until after she left that I saw that she had

cleaned it. “It’s cool how you just have $10 dollars chilling on your desk. Most people would hide it when a stranger is in their home.”

“You’ve given me no reason to believe that you would take it.”

“Thank you,” she says. Around 4:30 p.m. she says, “I

have to go. My boyfriend will be home soon and I have to let him in.”

“OK. Let me walk you out.”We end where we started. As

we smoke a parting cigarette there on my stoop, I am not sure if I will ever see her again. I say goodbye and she clenches my torso firmly, sliding away from it hesitantly as she disappeared back into the street.

The irony of all this is clear to me now. How powerful we are. How strange this downtown is. How hard I fight at times to distance and deify myself above them all. I now know the word for it all, it rises out of my lungs like the creation of some primor-dial god …

am waiting for the nocturne to start down on the streets below. All the machines and animals that operate them have gone to

sleep and now only a faint rushing sound reso-nates through the hollow streets.

It acts as a strange adagio for all the creatures that inhabit this cor-ner of downtown. They creep from the Greyhound station. They crawl from behind the Mason building. They ooze from the alleyways and burst from the corners and crevices to make their mad decree.

Howling a hymn of aberration, they come from their holes to claim the night and take heed of the silence in the hopes that their song could be heard while the machine sleeps. They bellow from the side-walk in incomprehensible consonants and vowels entangled in their insanity. And this lunacy always has a source, packaged neatly in some sort of consumer product. Some sip it from brown bags, some suck it from glass pipes, and others have been consumed by it long ago, but no matter the terms of their neurosis, they all seek some sort of buoy in the storm.

My stoop is a soapbox here in downtown Bakersfield on F Street, nestled between 20th and 21st. There is always some deranged fool looking for an even bigger one to bum, leech or just rant to. Some-times, it’s not always the street creatures looking for some sort of interaction.

Night after night I have been pulled into some unforeseen adven-ture. Whether it was merely a decadent night of regrettable inebriation or some long drawn descent into oblivion. They all share a similarity in that some souls seek a shut mouth and open ears. I am usually this voiceless recording device. I listen intently to them … in a bar sip-ping Tappist beers, on the corner chain-smoking cigarettes … lost, in some brick labyrinth smoking sorrow and wishing for a woman. No matter the situation, there is something about the gravity of this place that always draws out the suffering human inside us.

But after a while, when all you have done is play the confessional booth, your soul begins to beg for some kind of release other than that of the blank page. You crave an interpersonal divulgence, someone to rap madly about the entire spectrum that is the human condition. You become one of them.

The problem with this condition is that it releases its self in strange ways. You recruit people for a moment of unrestrained, severely per-sonal divulgence who are left shaken and too un-stirred to ever want to talk to you again. I’ve absorbed too much of the crazies and have been irresponsible in releasing it properly. But nonetheless, I persist.

There is no hiding here in the downertowner. In living here, you will eventually find yourself in some act of personal decadence. And though you can hide yourself away, there is no escaping it. You can hide during the day as the great traffic leviathan roars all the folks with suburban symptoms to their place in the hamster wheel. But during the night the rhythm that echoes through the streets will even-tually grasp you.

There are a thousand stories here, a million strange occurrences. I find that it is best that you listen to it all, and hold as tight as you can when it engulfs you – downtown, the bleeding heart of Bakersfield.

TheDowner TownerTales and trappings of the grimy underbelly in downtown Bakersfield from the mind of one of its dirtbag dwellers

Stories and photograph by Mateo M. Melero

Phot

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I

Like the center of the galaxy, downtown too, acts likes an infinite void that holds every-thing else in place, but if you get too close you run the risk of spiraling downward into oblivion. I have seen the effects of this first hand.

The Captain and Hawkboy are two individuals I know very well. They are both mirror ani-mals, The Captain sails a ship across the divide of morality and madness and Hawkboy is always in constant flight, rarely landing – motion is his life force. One night, they ventured too close to the center of the universe.

“What is it?” said The Captain as he stared at the green pill in Hawkboy’s hand.

“Just take it,” Hawkboy said.“Ehhh … I don’t know man.

What is it?” says The Captain.“Just take it.”“Alright.” “So where do you want to go,

man?” says Hawkboy.And with a sure gruff about his

face he replied with one word, “Everywhere.”

Grinning with a sly look in his eye, Hawkboy apporovinglynod-ded and said, “Alright. Let’s do it.”

So from 20th St. the pair ven-tured deeper into the bowels of downtown, unknowing headed into the hazards of the void.

“I’m getting mad stares from these cops,” says Hawkboy as the meat-headed, red necked, liberal eating cops that make up the bulk of the Bakersfield Police Department streaked by in their street sharks, giving the duo hard glares and bad vibes.

“Well, look at us man. I got a

purple bandana on, butt tight jeans and a far-out looking al-paca sweater,” said the Captain in a tone that sparked some kind of insane confidence.”

“I really like this sweater man, did I tell you that?” said the Cap-tain, “By the way, how long does it take for this to kick in?”

“It is a sweet sweater, and it takes about 30-45 minutes,” says the avian.

“Awesome.”So, after a visit to a Mediter-

ranean dive where the pair were denied a handout of hummus and pita bread from an employed friend, the two headed out to Mill Creek Park where the sailor and the bird decided to warp into other dimensions.

Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a naturally occurring psychedelic that puts the user in a dream-like state. In order to ingest the drug properly, the user must sprinkle the yellow powder down into the sphere of a crack pipe, rolling the pipe gently back and forth as he inhales.

Behind a tree at the park, Hawkboy says, “Can you help me out?”

“Why surely I can, good sir,” so The Captain cups his hands while Hawkboy inhales.

“Anything?” asks The Cap-tain.

“Ehh … no. A little buzz, but no tamale.”

“Damn. Let me try,” says Cap-tain, but after a fiendish attempt, he finds himself unsuccessful. So they migrate across the street and

try their luck behind a dumpster to avoid the wind and the pass-ing cars.

“Oh shit, wait … damn, noth-ing.”

“Let me try.”As The Captain ingests he is

suddenly hit with a moral epiph-any. He felt that they’ve gone too far down the rabbit hole – possi-bly to hell – and in this he hands the pipe back to the Hawk, say-ing, “I’m done with that.”

With an eyebrow inquisition Hawkboy says, “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m not digging the crack pipe man, and the dump-ster, and the fiend like attempt it requires. Let’s bail.”

Walking back to the center, H a w k b o y

feeds off

T h e C a p -tain’s de-cision and tosses the pipe in a trashcan. They stop for beers and search for something to do. The green pill is in full

HAWKBOYand

BLISS

“Human.”effect now and they bleed psy-chedelic bliss to total strang-ers beating booze in their chest. Strange conversations and di-

lated dialogues, inside the bar, receiving a text message the pair are told of a party somewhere far to the east and they ditch down-town.

They pick up a vagabond and his guitar on the way and when they arrive, they receive some gruff for their gypsy-like nature. For it was a metal-head gathering and with The Captain and the bird came changing winds. The vagabond was silenced for his songs, The Captain was criticized

for his friends

a n d t h e bird

was just generally annoyed with the atmosphere. But in light of the storm, The Captain found peace in listening to an original

pressing of Van Halen’s first album. They grow bored and rocket back downtown.

Inside a small apart-ment in a backstreet

downtown alley, The Captain starts to take notice of his mo-rality compass. The crack-pipe behind the dumpster had been bothering him all night, and now he finds himself twisted on four different substances in front of a

seven-year-old. He tried at first to just ingest

more to fall away from the harsh real-ity, but no matter how mind-al-tering madness he consumed he just couldn’t reach oblivion – it was time to revaluate the situa-tion.

“You want another one?” says the birdman.

“No. I’ve gone as far as I want to go tonight.”

“Come on man?”“I’m going to bed,” says The

Captain.“Yeah … well ok Mateo. You

sleep well.”“I will.”Nestled in my bed in a moment

of clarity, I chuckled at the mat-ters of the night and the strange delusional downtown dance that

was the night.

May 4, 2011

Most people listen to radio of some sort, whether it be for musical pleasure or informa-tional, but a lot of people don’t think about how or who it is that makes it all come together.

The radio disc jockey is the person whose voice you hear over the airwaves as well as part of the team that creates content and plans what goes on the air. Bakersfield’s Groove 99.3 is a local oldies radio station hosted by a small but exceptional team ran by Louie Cruz, the Pro-gram Director and weekday DJ.

Cruz has been a part of Groove 99.3 for the last five-and-a-half-years and has brought with him an almost uncanny sense for old school mu-sic with 20 years of radio experience. But Cruz is more than just a DJ, too, he grew up on his parent’s music listening to Motown artists and hanging with his friends jamming to low-rider oldies. Cruz is originally from Northern Califor-nia and was given the opportunity at the age of 16 to attend the Columbia School of Broadcast.

But Cruz’s real spark of interest in radio start-ed when he was 10 years old. He used to watch a show called WKARP with Dr. Don Rose, which Cruz credits to how he got into radio. Once Cruz began attending college, he interned with KSFM radio in Sacramento for about three months in which he had to commute from San Francisco to Sacramento. He was hired permanently as a mixer for the station where he had interned and worked for five years. As Cruz climbed the lad-der, he worked his job to the point where he had his own full time show before he left.

Around 1999, Cruz was contacted by a sta-tion in Portland, Oregon about a new position with a start-up radio station, and was offered a job at KXJM to work full time. Cruz looks up to the ceiling as he reminisces on the job he took outside of California.

“I got a job in Portland, Oregon as a DJ at the only station in town at that time, and I was play-ing Hip-Hop and these guys had never heard West Coast Rappers like Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg yet, so it was unique to them. I used an innovative approach,” Cruz said.

Cruz spent a large amount of time in Portland until he was contacted by someone in Bakers-

field regard-ing a new radio station coming to town. He began tell-ing his true reason for this career move to Ba-kersfield in 2005.

“I was contacted by s o m e b o d y here and they had just put on this new radio station, The Groove, which was old school, and I had been doing old school already a few years up North for Clear Channel [Radio]. So, by the time they called me here, I just had a baby, she was brand new and I was ready to concrete things. They gave me complete control here, which I didn’t have before, I had like 85% and I wanted total control.”

Although Cruz is a DJ, he says that there’s way more to it than what meets the eye. He explained how the shows have to be prepped, which each DJ is responsible for presenting.

“I program the show and let them know what the overall focus is going to be,” he said.

Cruz explains that, “Sometimes, people think that continuously talking is hard, which it is, if you’re not prepared. You never want it to get quiet. I write liners, you know like talking points to give them something to go on.”

Another thing he said that people misconceive is the money that radio disc jockey’s make.

“It’s way less than what people think,” Cruz said with a smile.

Contrary to what listeners may believe, being a DJ is not in the field of journalism and people interested in music or engineering can become one. Cruz is technically a recording engineer by trade but he is mostly known as a local radio disk jockey in Bakersfield.

Spinning to the groove with those oldschooljams Photographs by Joseph Cota

To those who knew my secret, after this, it is no longer one.

To my dear friends that encouraged me through the hardest times of my life, and to my dear family who never knew at all, here I am exposed and ready to tell you the whole story.

Finally, the therapy has begun on my path to so-berness.

To begin, first things first: public admittance of a problem. So, with that stated, to my Mom, Dad, Grams and Gramps, and all of those who never knew, including you, the reader, whom I will more than likely never meet or hear from, I am an ad-dict.

I’m sorry I hid the fact that I was having prob-lems, but this is my self-help therapy: writing out my confession for the world to see – including the lies I’ve kept hidden within. I’ll start by saying I’m sorry I disappointed you all. The repercussions of my actions may be dire, but I have to get this off my chest. Whatever consequences may happen in the end, I’ll accept.

At this point, celebrating nine months clean and sober, I never thought I would be sharing my story with you, my family whom I love, and anyone else I come across on my path as I traverse in this life.

I was 17 and stupid, and for a night of fun I smoked weed for the first time. I figured, “ah, no big deal, I won’t be an addict, you can’t, “it’s pot!” I thought it would be a one-time thing, not like I would use it regularly or anything. So I lit up, took a deep breath, filled my lungs with the smoke from a flavored cigar blunt and lost all control for a few hours.

Wow, I sure was misguided in that thought. Next thing I knew, an ice cold aluminum can was

in the palm of my hand – a Four Loko – an energy

drink with 12 percent alcohol volume was slowly being sipped down the same tube the smoke did. From then on, I wasn’t sure what was next for me.

Getting cross-faded (which is being high and drunk at the same time, for those readers who have no idea what the slang terms of the unfortunate street users are) was absolutely amazing. Sitting there in my friend’s living room without a care in the world and not even sure if I could walk a straight line – let alone walk at all – wasn’t crossing my mind. But the next memory of that first night’s high wasn’t the most pleasant one. My head hover-ing over the toilet as I spewed my guts upon her bathroom floor, leaving the mess for her and her family to clean up. Mom, you should remember this night, picking me up at around 11 p.m., saying I ate a bad orange. You saw through that lie, but never did anything about it.

After that night, the next year and a half is mostly a blur.

I remember using on and off, but when I real-ized I went without ganja or booze for nearly two months, I needed to end the habit for good. I burned so many bridges doing this, after burning so many blunts and cigarettes and chugging endless bottles of booze with those very same people.

All I know now, after nine months of slow and pain-staking sobriety, after two close call relapses, one of those times going as far as buying a “dime sack” (approximately $10 worth of weed) and another Four Loko, which became my drink of choice, awaiting my opportunity to screw my life back over. One phone call encouraged me enough to not smoke or drink anymore.

This short recognition is to those who were will-ing to help me through the hardest moments of my life, specifically Felycya and her fiance Sean

(congratulations, by the way you two), being one of the strongest supporters of my sobriety, my dearest “Seester”.

To Erinn and her young daughters Ashlyn and Chloe, a close friend who even physically slapped me around, brought me back to church and to the program I stood by for prayer and encouragement, and all the others I don’t have space to mention. Everything you ever did for me, I love you all for putting up with me. I’m sorry for the bullshit I was putting myself through, and thanks for telling me no when I needed it most.

I sit back now, trying to remember those endless nights, but I can’t recall much. In an ironic manner, I thank God I don’t remember. I don’t want to know what I did for that kind of money to support that kind of habit. For all I know, there are crimes with my fingerprints at crime scenes I don’t remember ever being at.

That thought scares me much, but it is one I am debating on searching out more information.

My Seester, Felycya, wrote me several letters of encouragement, which I hope she continues to do; it was one of the only things I hold so close to my heart, besides my sobriety coins. Those letters show her heart and what she saw in me through all of this: “…I just wanted to tell you that I’m so proud of you, Ryan. Six whole months clean and sober! I knew you could do it. You are such a strong person whether you choose to believe it or not.” I never truly did, not until my last near relapse, which I described earlier.

I know some of you reading this are wondering why it became a one-time thing to a year and a half long addiction. Well, in short, it was depression. Weed took my mind to a new place, one I thought it would never see without a drug circulating my

///////////// ////////////// ////// ////////////////// // ////////////// ///////// ///////// ///// ///// //// ////////////////

The Long Road HomeOne student’s personal and emotional confession as a recovering addict

Photograph by Joseph Cota

“To My ‘Brudder’:He’s at the end of his rope,Hanging by the thinnest thread.Choking back the tears,remembering all they said.He’s lost all hope,not knowing what to do.Slowly he’s giving up,without even wanting to.He tries to ease the painbut nothing seems to get better,It always ends with a fall.Falling down farther and farther,so far, so fast.He wonders when it started,how long will it last?He tries out new things,drugs and alcohol are key.He’ll get his payback,one day they’ll all see.But something isn’t right.nothing changes for him.He still hurts.

He knows the trouble he’s gotten in.This isn’t what he wants.He knows what this means.He wants to stop it all.He wants to come clean.He smiles to himself,and throws it all out,and with all the pain and trash,he throws away all doubt.He’s a new soul.He’s a new spirit.His life will change,He knows. He feels it.He’s got the hope he lost.He’s looking toward a happy ending.His broken heart, is slowly mending.

I love you, Ryan,

Your Lil’ Sis,Felycya

system. It became my anti-depressant, just like beer and alcohol did.

In the end, I wanted to say this for two reasons.One is obvious, to finally admit I am an addict. Even though I was only an addict to such a minor drug, it is still an issue to so many across Bakers-field – let alone the world. If you’re disappointed that I wasn’t a cocaine or meth addict, then that’s on you for putting your hopes up and tearing apart others that are. I have been praying for all of those who need help, with anything from weed to meth, from booze to sex, there is one person that cares and hopes you come out strong-willed, not only for yourself, but for others as well.

I am not a Martin Luther King, Jr. trying to in-spire a nation under one cause, but if I can inspire one person to make that very difficult decision to sober up once and for all, then my work here is done. If you’re searching for a place to start, find a local chapter of Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, or whatever addiction anonymous you may need to be apart of, or simply do what I did, find a church that offers drug counseling of some kind.

In closing, this is what finally made me real-ize what I was doing for myself, an untitled poem written by my Seester said it all and more. I hope you may find that final push to get the help you need.

Written by

Ryan George

Photograph by Joseph Cota

Story by Amber T. Troupe

May 4, 2011

SportSWednesday, May 4, 2011Page 12 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

By Tyler McGintyReporter

Bakersfield College’s wom-en’s tennis team may be done with their season, but some of the individual members are still in the running.

On April 15 and 16, BC sent eight members of its team to the Western State Conference Indi-vidual Tournament to compete. The eight players played in sin-gles rounds as well as part of a doubles team, giving BC a total of 16 chances to make it to the regional tournament. In order to make it to the regional tourna-ment, a player or doubles team must make it to the quarterfi-nals.

Out of these 16 chances, three of them made it.

Denisa Hromadkova got to the quarterfinals in the singles com-petitions, as well as in the dou-bles competitions with Stevie

Lincoln. BC’s other representa-tive at the regional tournament is the doubles team Katja Thacker and Kasandra Beadle.

Hromadkova took a bye in the first round, and played against Anna Slyutova of Santa Barbara City College in the second round. Hromadkova defeated Slyutova 7-5, 6-3.

Hromadkova made her way to the quarterfinals by defeating Hanna Satcher of Santa Monica College 6-2, 6-3. This was her last match, and guaranteed Hro-madkova a spot at the regional tournament.

Hromadkova earned another spot at the regional tournament with her doubles partner, Lin-coln.

Hromadkova and Lincoln also had a first round bye, and played their only match against Katy Carlson and Victoria Ramirez from Allan Hancock, defeating them 6-0, 6-1.

Thacker and Beadle, like all of the BC representatives at the regional tournament, had a first round bye, and played their only match against Jessica Hinds and Katie Power of Ventura College. Thacker and Beadle won their sets 7-5, 6-2.

The other BC representatives at the tournament were not quite able to make their way into the quarterfinals.

Jaylene Chan lost her second round match against Criss Rodri-guez from Santa Monica, one of the top seeds of the conference, 6-1, 6-0. Her sister, Jennifer Chan lost her first round match against Carolyn Morris from Ventura 6-1, 6-0.

Lincoln, although making her way into the regional tournament as a doubles team with Hromad-kova, lost her third singles match against Katerina Mozolyuk from Santa Monica 6-0, 6-0.

Thacker and Beadle also didn’t

make their way into the regional tournament on their own in sin-gles matches, even though as a team they were able to enter the regional tournament.

Thacker lost in her second round against Jutta Collet from Santa Monica 6-2, 6-3 and Bea-dle was defeated in her second round by Niccolette Yvanovich of Santa Barbara 6-0, 6-0.

Jacquelinee Prieto was defeat-ed in her second round by Layne Gallimore of Ventura, 6-0, 6-0.

Katheryn Burford was also defeated in the second round by Sevana Zargarian of Glendale College 6-1, 6-1.

Even though all four singles matches got a first round bye, two of the doubles teams lost on their second round.

The team of Chan and Chan lost against Gallimore and Ariel Bergthold of Ventura 6-0, 6-0 and Burford and Prieto lost against Zargarian and Samantha

Sismundo of Glendale 6-1, 6-1.Since everyone who makes it

to the quarterfinals advances to the regional tournament, they do not play the quarterfinal matches. This is done in order to prevent any chance of injuries and to conserve energy for the regional tournament, according to Coach Gene Lundquist.

The Southern California Re-gional Tournament will be held May 5-7 at Grossmont College in Le Mesa.

In addition to the Western State Conference Individual Tournament, the team also sent three representatives to the 111th Ojai Tournament, which was held April 28 to May 1.

The Ojai Tournament has 128 contestants and has players from schools all across the state.

BC sent Hromadkova, Beadle and Lincoln to represent them in the tournament.

Beadle lost in her first round

against Tori Bohart from Palo-mar College 6-3, 6-1.

Lincoln was defeated her sec-ond round by Lauren Shafer of American River College 3-6, 6-2, with a 10-6 tiebreaker.

Hromdakova once again had a bye in her first round of the tour-nament, and faced off against Jordan Belisle from Mission College in the second round. Hromdakova won her first match of the tournament 6-0, 6-1. Hromdakova played her third match against Gabby Fortunata from San Diego Mesa, beating her 6-2, 6-2.

Hromadkova got her last vic-tory against Tina Voung of Irvine Valley College, the fith ranked player in Southern California. Hromadkova defeated her 7-6 (with a 7-1 in the tiebreaker), 6-0. Hromdakova was able to make it to the quarterfinals, but lost in the fifth round against Kelsey Chrisco 7-6, 7-4, 6-3.

By Esteban RamirezReporter

Bakersfield College hosted the Western State Conference finals in track and field on April 29.

Citrus College, Glendale College, College of the Canyons, Ventura, Allan Hancock, Moorpark, Santa Barbara, West L.A., Cues-ta, L.A. Valley and BC were the schools that participated. The BC men’s team ended up placing fifth with the women placing eighth.

The meet was split into two weeks. The first week was mostly field events and the event on April 29 was mostly track events.

BC has 18 individuals that are going on to the Southern California Meet. The men that have qualified are Robby Harris, the confer-ence champion in the high jump; Craig Fer-ris, who got third in the conference in the 400-meter hurdles; and Darien Moore, who got first in both the hammer throw and the shot put.

Some notables for the women’s team are Serena Underwood, who got second in the pole vault and Breann Goodman who got second in the hammer throw.

Myren Moore, freshmen, said, “I thought I did good seeing how I missed the first six weeks of track and to be running at this level right now. I missed those six weeks because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come out. It was a tough decision because the track and field team is different in college than it is in high school. I thought I was really prepared be-cause the coaches were working with me.”

Dave Frickel, head coach of the men’s track and field team, said, “As Myren was making his last turn on the 400-meter he ended up getting a blister on the side of his foot because he runs so hard on the turns, so he got a blister or a heat spot, but he is such

a good competitor, doesn’t accept losing and that’s what helped him get fourth.”

Craig Ferris, a freshmen, said, “I thought I could’ve done better by staying in better form at the end of the last turn. For some reason it just got messed up.” He ended up getting third in the 400-meter hurdles on Friday and ended up in third for the conference.

Harris, a sophomore, said, “It felt good be-cause it was my goal to get first place in the high jump as a sophomore and what made it even more special was that I was one of the only sophomores out there. Since it was

mostly freshmen out there I just felt since I was a sophomore I deserved it more.”

Harris also said that he wants to keep do-ing the high jump when he transfers to either Fresno Pacific, Northridge or some of the other choices that are close to home.

“I want to do well in the Southern Cali-fornia Meet and to jump 6-10 to 7 feet,” said Harris.

Moore, a sophomore, said, “I wasn’t hap-py with my technique I just think these past two weeks my technique has been off. Get-ting first place in the hammer throw and shot put and hopefully I can do it in the Southern California Meet.”

“If I actually get first in that meet it means my training paid off, but not just that, it also means that it would be great. Not just for me but for everyone that has supported me. I really want to continue doing this when I choose to transfer to a different college and hopefully I can compete in the NCAA.”

“This meet there weren’t many competi-tors competing in races and in some events none at all,” Frickel said. “But the reason for that was we didn’t have anyone who can compete in certain events because they are not able to adjust from high school to col-lege. I haven’t had the luck to have a lot of athletes that can handle that change.

“The reason for having two weeks for this conference final is to help the athletes who do more than one event so they don’t destroy the athlete, I think it’s a great idea,” said Frickel. “This year has been full of surprises and this meet was no different. I expected it from Darien, but Myren surprised me. Serena and Breann also surprised me. I was hoping more individuals could qualify and hopefully they can survive. Track and field is like the show Survivor: you got to see what you got from week to week.”

By Brian N. WillhiteReporter

The Bakersfield College Sports Club will be beating the summer swelter with a white-water-rafting trip on the Kern River May 8.

The adrenaline-pumping, wave-crashing event will serve as the club’s annual outing for its members, and it will also be free.

The complimentary cruise down the river was made pos-sible by Eagle Rafting in Kern-ville, which donated two rafting trips – with 40 seats – to the BC sports club.

Dominic Kirkendall, secre-tary of the sports club, is excited about the donation and feels that it’s a great opportunity for students to get outdoors and experience something different while enjoying what nature has to offer.

Kirkendall and members of the sports club were figuring out what to do for their group out-ing this year.

Last year the club went hik-ing and was looking for fresh ideas when Kirkendall brought

up the river-rafting idea. Kirk-endall was familiar with the company because of his friend, Andrew Wood, who works as a river guide for the company.

“We started talking about do-ing a rafting trip and everybody was interested so we decided to ask [Eagle Rafting] if they would comp us, and they said they would,” Kirkendall said.

Wood, who is also a student at BC, likes the outdoors and thinks that the trip is a perfect way to get to know the sur-rounding Lake Isabella areas.

“What I started to realize is that we have such an available recreation area up here, and I actually got involved with raft-ing through a friend of mine. He got me into it and then I just got addicted to it,” Wood said about passion for rafting and the out-doors.

His favorite aspect of the job and what he does is helping people experience the joys of white water rafting.

“Being able to go out on the river and attack those big, gi-gantic waves and guide a whole group of people safely down the river is thrilling ... you make

peoples’ memories daily, some-thing that they won’t forget,” said Wood.

Eagle Rafting’s manager, Ja-net Sharpe, was on campus for the “Fit and Fun” event hosted by the BC sports club and said that they wanted to get involved with the club as well as show students how rafting can be a fun and thrilling way to stay ac-tive no matter who you are.

“Not only is it an adrenaline rush and an adrenaline thrill, but it’s also fun for families and younger kids,” Sharpe said.

The adventurous members of the club will traverse through a mild portion of the Kern River that is appropriate for beginners without any prior experience. They will also be provided with proper safety gear, according to Sharpe who added that the sec-tion they’ll be rafting through is referred to as the “lickity split.”

During the “Fit and Fun” event, Eagle Rafting also gave away free rafting trips to stu-dents who competed in a con-test to see who could blow up an inflatable kayak the fastest.

Moore’s shot puts him atop meet

MEGAN LUECKE / THE RIP

Manual Vargas attempts to make a 13-foot vault in the men’s pole vault during the WSC Finals on April 29.

MEGAN LUECKE / THE RIP

Blanca Perez competes in the women’s 1,500-meter dash during the WSC Finals on April 29.

JOSEPH COTA / THE RIP

Bakersfield College student Mayra Villegas, 22, airs up a raft in an attempt to win a free rafting trip April 27.

Club receives a free rafting trip

Three Renegades make their way to regionals

Fit and Fun day held to spread awareness

By Kevin FosterReporter

On April 26 and 27 the Ba-kersfield College Sports Club put on a Fit and Fun day on the BC campus

The members of the club are: President Elizabeth Samaniego, Vice-President Sarah Elliot, Sec-retary Dominic Kirkendall, and Treasurer Riki Suzuki and two other people.

“Fit and Fun day was to en-courage students to get healthy and active by having some fun,” Elliot said.

“The sports club is about cre-ating friendships by enjoying healthy activities.”

There were pineapple and tam-arindo slushies on sale for two dollars as well as corn on the cob for two dollars with toppings and condiments such as: butter, may-onnaise, Pico de Gallo, and salt. The food was sold both days.

There was volleyball and a couple games of flag football go-ing on simultaneously during the event.

On April 26 there was a six-on-six volleyball game with the winners receiving free slushies. On that same day there was two different games of flag football

where the sports club was cre-ative and used strips of toilet pa-per for flags.

On April 27 the net was up around 10:30 a.m. and wasn’t taken down until 5 p.m. There was only one game of football that day but there were two of the six on six volleyball games with the free slushies being offered to the winner.

During the events, the club also had a kayak on display from a local rafting company.

Anyone who could use a hand pump and pump up the raft with out stopping would get a free rafting trip for one on the Kern River.

The club made more money that day making $39.

“The money will go toward future Fit and Fun days we have to plan.

“The extra expenses … bought around $150 worth of stuff, was worth raising awareness about having fun to get healthy,” Elliot added.

Elliot had some words for the people who don’t know about the sports club.

“They should catch a game with us in the free speech area and find out how much fun and great times we have,” she said.

By Mateo M. MeleroReporter

Returning from the state meet with an overall placement of 14th in the men’s and eighth in the woman’s, the Bakersfield College Swim Team has shown a substantial improvement over last year’s state meet.

“That’s our highest finishing since I’ve been here,” said BC swim coach Charlie Pike.

Held at East L.A. College from April 28-30, Pike explained the overall feeling felt by the team at the meet.

“They were pretty nervous, but it was a big indoor venue, and it had the whole champion-ship deal to it which was really nice,” he said.

BC’s Franchesca Wyatt took home four medals for the wom-en’s team, including placing six in state in the women’s 1,650 freestyle with a time of 18:13:41 seconds.

Women’s captain Brigette Alexander took sixth in the 100-yard butterfly at 1:00.24, sev-enth in the 50-yard butterfly at 27.36, and eighth in the 50-yard freestyle at 25.24.

Alexander also placed in the top eight in the 400-yard free-style relay with Wyatt, Katie Lopes and Brandelyn Storms.

Alexander said concerning the meet, “It was a huge deal to

do even better at state than we did at conference.”

The men’s results ranked them 14th at the meet, with Brian Collier placing fourth in the men’s 200-yard breaststroke at 2:04.54, and 1:51.31 in the men’s 200-yard individual med-ley, which placed him third in the race.

BC swimmer Matt McDon-nell said concerning the meet, “It was an indoor pool which always has its problems with ventilation, but it’s still a pretty good pool.

“State was a little lackluster, I was a little tired,” said Mcdon-nell about his conditioning, “I guess my taper didn’t hold on as long as I wanted it to.

“I held right around my best times,” said Mcdonnell.

Orange Coast College took first in both the men and wom-en’s meets.

Pike commented on the Or-ange Coast team.

“They have a pretty big crew there,” he said. “They’re tra-ditionally one of the stronger teams, they came through again. They got a lot of kids coming from all over the place there. I think they have a lot of four-year transfers that were coming to JC this year. It was good for our kids to see that, too.”

At the Western State Confer-ence meet April 21-23 at LA

Valley College, BC placed sec-ond in the men’s competition and the women finished fourth. During the state swim, BC beat all of its conference teams.

In the men’s 200-yard in-dividual medley, Collier set a new school record with a time of 1:52, and a new school and conference record in the men’s 100-yard breaststroke.

“The kids swam awesome. I have no complaints. We had huge time drops,” said Pike.

“Every single one of our kids scored a point at conference. Every one of them made it back in at least one event at night.”

In its fourth year since re-instatement by Jan Stuebbe and Charlie Pike, the BC team consists of local Kern County swimmers.

Pike has refrained from the type of recruiting seen at some of the larger schools, and con-centrates on finding local talent.

“To me this whole thing has

been more about coaching than recruiting, and that’s the way I’m trying to view it. If I wanted to be a recruiter I’d go look for a Division 1 job somewhere,” said Pike.

“The kids in the community are starting to figure out what we got going on up here,” con-tinued Pike.

“I am really trying to build on just the local high school kids and not going out of the area to recruit.”

By Julian MooreOpinions Editor

The Bakersfield College baseball team lost back-to-back games to Glendale College, bumping the Renegades out of the playoffs.

BC came into the final two games of the season tied with Glendale for one of the two playoff spots available in Western State Conference. Coming into the game, five WSC teams all had viable playoff hopes with four of the five playing each other in season-ending series.

With both teams needing to sweep the two games to lock down a spot, Glendale won the first game 1-0 behind the arm of Ryan Sherriff who pitched a complete game shutout. Sherriff had 12 strikeouts in the game as well.

Head coach Tim Painton summed up the opposing left-hander Sherriff’s per-formance as “outstanding.”

After the first loss to Glendale, the Renegades still had a chance for postsea-son after LA Pierce College lost 5-2 to Citrus College.

Heading onto the final game on April, BC was now in a three-way tie for second in conference with Canyons and Citrus.

The Renegades scored two runs in the second game and looked to have a chance, although they were still down a run. But in the bottom of the eighth, Glendale secured its own postseason plans with a grand slam by Sako Chapjian off of freshman relief pitcher Phillip Valos.

“Woodward did enough to keep them in the game and they have probably the best bullpen guy in the conference; they brought him in and shut the game down once they got a lead,” said Painton.

“Offensively, they did a great job at their place to break the game open with a grand slam late. And they’re deserving to be where they’re at,” he said.

Sophomore David Pennington felt the team still had a chance.

“Well the grand slam was just a small part of the game and I believe they hit it in the seventh so that put them up five so we still had two more at-bats, so all hope wasn’t lost yet. Even though it seemed like a big deal it was only one play and

that kind of stuff is a part of the game,” he said.

That loss dropped the Renegades to 11-10 in WSC play, as Citrus, LA Pierce and Canyons all finished tied with a 12-9 record and will be three of the four teams in a play-in game for the final two spots in the SoCal Regional.

Pennington said the team knew the situation they were in going down the stretch. “We knew what we had got our-selves into going into the last week of the season and we knew that if we wanted a for sure spot in the playoffs we had to win both games,” he said.

“The last two weeks of the season is a grind and all the teams are tired mentally and physically, so we tried to keep each other to try and get the best result pos-sible.”

He went on to discuss the season as a whole, “From a baseball standpoint we didn’t quite accomplish what we wanted to, but our team chemistry was higher than you could ever ask for.

“I loved being around every single one of those guys out there every single day

and we are together so much we are just a big family. We may have lost a couple games, but what I gained from this season is so much more than playing a game.”

Painton said of the season that it was an overall positive experience throughout.

“It wasn’t a disappointment. I think anytime you go into a season and you go down to the last day of the season and you have an opportunity for a playoff spot you’ve done a pretty good job,” he said. “We ended up short of where we wanted to be. That last week kind of did us in, but Glendale was playing very well at the time.”

He also felt it was a positive learning experience for the freshman.

“I think going into this season we knew pitching was going to be our strength. We knew offense was something we had to try and develop as the season went along. We showed flashes of not having any of-fense.

“All in all, we had the opportunity to put some freshman on the field that gained some valuable experience. Hope-fully, that bodes well for the future.”

SportSWednesday, May 4, 2011Page 13 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

Stay out of football’s business America

Column

Open Mike | A column about the everyday happenings in sports.

Michael Morrow

Swim teams finish season strong

Baseball team whiffs chance for playoffs

During a time where country-men are shouting “USA, USA, USA,” with patriotism flowing through the vein of the nation and most are rejoicing at the kill-ing of Osama bin Laden, I start-

ed thinking of an American institution that has its own turmoil going on right now.

The Na-tional Football League and its

Players Association or the decer-tified version of what’s left of it, has its share of problems.

The lockout was over. Every-one rejoiced.

Or so we thought. Until the U.S. government got involved. Sure, it was because the players asked for mediation, but you and I both know that the government was just waiting for a chance to stick its nose in someone else’s business.

Players went in to workout and were sent back home, and before we could even finish the first round of the draft, the lock-out wasn’t over.

Then the players were told it was OK to go back, so they did and again, the lockout was over.

But after an Eighth District Court makes a decision on up-holding or repealing the ruling made by U.S. District Judge Su-san Nelson, the season could be on hold again and again.

Now I won’t side with the players or the league, but the most normal of American things makes me think, what really is American about a business not being able to operate under its own merit?

The most successful American sport is being told how to run its own business. That, to me, makes no sense.

Obviously, they’ve been do-ing it right for several years now. American government, they don’t need your help.

Whether or not the players chose to decertify just to take their fight to the court is irrel-evant.

As fans, we want to see week one through the Super Bowl, but as an American, it just seems a bit ridiculous that a business lockout will be determined by the court system.

The NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the team owners have some ridiculous demands without a lot of gain for the players, and I understand their gripes.

For starters, the league wants to add two games to the sched-ule while taking an extra $2 bil-lion away from the amount that would be revenue shared.

They also want to pay incom-ing rookies on a much cheaper scale, and also take away retired players benefits.

I get all of that, I really do. But what the players and court systems aren’t understanding is the fact that they make enough money to save for their own ben-efit packages, rookies shouldn’t be paid as much as experienced veterans, and if I were an owner, I would want the extra money to cover my butt just in case they didn’t earn as much in revenue as they usually do.

Who are they to tell me how to run a business?

If Anheuser-Busch decided it wanted to lockout employees until they came to an agreement about a pay scale and retirement benefits, would the government step in and force the company to allow employees back to work?

No, the government wouldn’t tell them to keep making beer.

Besides, it would just be un-American to try to control an al-coholic beverage company, just like it’s un-American to try to control the NFL.

PHOTO COURTESy OF JARED P. MEyER

Bakersfield College’s Brian Collier breaks the WSC 100-yard breaststroke record with a time of 56.99 at the conference finals at East L.A. College on April 22.

EyEs of thE RipWednesday, May 4, 2011Page 14 The Renegade Rip www.therip.com

Spring brings wonderful things

gregory d. cook / The rip

Young Monarch butterflies perch on a girl’s hands at Delano’s Relay for Life on April 16.

Megan Luecke / The rip

A spring sunset turns the western sky into a majestic display of color.

Brandon Barraza / The rip

A red house finch perches on a limb near the Student Services Building on May 2.

kayLa Broadhag / The rip

BC’s second baseman Enrique Meza attempts to make a double play by tagging out Saddleback’s Jeff Butler, and then firing to first April 21.

Student government positions open for

2011-12 school yearApply for :** Vice President** Activities Liaison** Legislative Liaison

For more information, check out the SGA on Facebook on the college’s websiteand/or contact Toccara Byrd, SGA secretary at 395-4568 or sgasec@bakersfieldcollege.edu

Deadline to apply: May 10, 2011

Inquire in Student Activities in Campus Center 4

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