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CHARLES TUTTLEStaff writer

Ohlone College music instructor Tim Roberts last month unleashed an album featuring original rock compositions fused with international music.

The album, “Chinese Malibu,” was developed during a sabbatical in the fall. Roberts visited Northeast China, Cen-t r a l I re l a n d , G e o r g i a and South Carolina, and Southwest Michigan for

his inf luences on the album. The sounds and harmonies of “Chinese Malibu,” as with most fusion music, are unique due to the mixture of melodies.

Ra n g i n g f r o m m o re standard rock melodies on “Old Spanish Gypsy” to the Indian-flavored “Basically Bhairav,” the soup of sounds is as var-ied as the soup selection at this reporter’s favorite restaurant.

Each song seems to Continued on Page 2

!"#$%&'$(%)*%(+#)",-)./0&1)Forensics team winsbig at state

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MICHAEL FELBERBAUMAssociated Press

RICHMOND, Va. – The public’s right to see govern-ment records is coming at an ever-increasing price, as au-thorities set fees and hourly charges that often prevent information from flowing.

Though some states have taken steps to limit the fees, many have not:

In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback’s office told The Wichita Eagle that it would have to pay $1,235 to obtain records of email and phone conversations between his office and a former chief of staff who is now a prominent statehouse lobbyist.

Mississippi law allows the

state to charge hourly for re-search, redaction and labor, including $15 an hour simply to have a state employee watch a reporter or private citizen review documents.

The Associated Press dropped a records request after Oregon State Police demanded $4,000 for 25 hours of staff time to prepare, review and redact materials related to the investigation of the director of a boxing and martial arts regulatory commission.

Whether roadblocks are created by authorities to discourage those seeking information, or simply a byproduct of bureaucracy and tighter budgets, greater costs to fulfill freedom of

information requests ulti-mately can interfere with the public’s right to know. Such costs are a growing threat to expanding openness at all levels of government, a cornerstone of Sunshine Week. The weeklong open government initiative is cel-ebrating its 10th anniversary beginning March 15.

“It’s incredibly easy for an agency that doesn’t want cer-tain records to be exposed to impose fees in the hopes that the requester is dissuaded,” said Adam Marshall, a fellow with the Reporters Commit-tee for Freedom of the Press, which sponsors Sunshine Week with the American Society of News Editors. “If the people don’t know what’s

going on, either because they don’t have direct access to information or because the media isn’t able to provide them with access to informa-tion about what their govern-ment is doing, it’s impossible for the people to exercise any sense of informed self-governance.”

Fees can be charged for searching for records, mak-ing copies, paying a lawyer to redact certain parts of the information or hiring technical experts to analyze the data.

In most cases, the fees imposed are at the agency’s discretion; those agencies sometimes waive the costs or

Continued on Page 3

MARIA GARCIA-HERNANDEZSta! writer

Counselor Maria Ramirez will present the “Chicana Herstory” at the 43rd an-nual National Ethnic Studies Conference at Mississippi State University in Starkville on March 27.

Ramirez will present the same speech, organized by the Communication and Chicano Studies depart-ments, at Ohlone’s Jackson Theatre from noon to 1 p.m. March 31.

The presentation will cover the terrorizing events that took place during the Civil Rights Movement. This includes the story of assas-

have a dist inct s tor y, tell ing of lands and a world far away from the Bay Area. Roberts’ tunes seem to weave a tale of times long past, telling of dusty roads here in the West Coast long before the typical hustle and bustle of Californian traf-fic whisked it all away.

Each piece has a re-freshing breeze of a vi-sion of outdoors, allow-ing the listener to catch a moment of tranquility so as to focus upon the

next task at hand.It i sn’t common for

music to provide an im-age of places far away as the pieces in this album do. Roberts described his developing of the album as “his favorite thing in the world.”

Roberts posting of his music online reflects his views on music distribu-tion, which he regards a s “f re a k y, w i l d , a n d crazy and kind of fun.”

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Continued on Page 2

MONITOR STAFF

The Ohlone Forensics Team took home some big prizes from last weekend’s state championships.

The team competed March 11-15 at the California Com-munity College Forensics Association Tournament Invitation in Woodland Hills.

Kivraj Singh tied for the CCCFA State Championship Keeling-Fricker Award for Top Speaker of Oral Interpre-

!"# $ % " & NEWS!'&()*+,-*./+02NEWS BITES

Weekend concerts

The Mission Peak Brass Band and the Ohlone Wind Orchestra will perform over the weekend at the Smith Center on the Fremont campus.

The brass band’s “Out of this World” concert will begin at 8 p.m. Fri-day in the Jackson The-atre. Music will include Paul Lovatt-Cooper’s “Enter the Galaxies,” John Williams’ film mu-sic for “Superman,” and an arrangement of Queen’s classic rock song “Bohemian Rhap-sody.”

Then, on Sunday, the Ohlone Wind Orches-tra will present “Reflec-tions,” its first concert of the year.

Tunes will include “Ye Banks and Braes O’Bonnie Doon” by Al-dridge Grainger, “Blue Lake Overture” by John Barnes Chance, and Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Jesters.”

The performance will begin at 2 p.m. in the Jackson Theatre.

Tickets for both con-certs cost $15, or $10 for students, staff and chil-dren age 12 and young-er.

For more informa-tion, go to www.mpbb.org or www.OhloneWin-dOrchestra.org.

Chivers, Russo to give speechNick Chivers and Sage

Russo will give a speech Friday titled “I Wouldn’t Call This “Glee”: How The Media Fails at Trans 101” on the Fremont campus.

The event, which is part of the Speech Col-loquium Series, will be from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in Room 7101.

– Compiled by Monitor staff

Volunteers sought for graduation

Ohlone is seeking 25 volunteers to help with the graduation ceremo-ny from 6 to 8 p.m. Fri-day, May 22.

The volunteers will serve as ushers and tick-et-takers for the eve-ning.

Anyone who’s inter-ested can contact Stu-dent Activities Coor-dinator Renee Wong Gonzales at 510-659-7311 or rgonzales@ohlone.edu.

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MITCHELL WALTHEREditor-in-chief

President Barack Obama’s plan to bring free commu-nity college to American students is still in its early stages.

Michael Bowman, ex-ecutive dean of academic affairs, provided an update on the plan at last week’s Board of Trustees meeting.

When laid out on the floor, the figures come out to an almost $60 billion budget and 10-year plan, Bowman said.

Students who wish to use this program need to be enrolled at least half time in class. They also need to maintain a 2.5 GPA.

There is also a mention of making “steady prog-ress” toward a transferrable associate’s degree being a requirement, though those details are rather vague.

The state of Califor-nia would be required to cough up a quarter of the funds for this free commu-nity college system. Also, Ohlone would be required to offer plans and degrees for transferrable classes and associate’s degrees, which it already does.

Bowman said that de-spite all the regulations, “Ohlone is good to go.”

“It’s essentially another FAFSA,” he said.

MITCHELL WALTHEREditor-in-chief

Carmel Partners pulled out of the project to de-velop the bottom of the hill alongside Mission Boulevard on the Fre-mont campus.

The Board of Trust-ees in April had selected Carmel to develop 314 housing units and 25,000 square feet of retail space on 15 acres of surplus land.

The deal would have netted Ohlone $600,000 a year.

Ron Little, vice presi-dent of administrative services, announced Car-mel’s decision at a board meeting Jan. 14.

“We received notice last month that our frontage property partner, Carm-el Partners, has opted to pull out of our frontage property mixed-use proj-ect,” Little told the board.

Ohlone was able to hold onto the $80,000 good-faith deposit Car-mel had given the college in the planning stages.

Little said at last week’s Board of Trustees meeting that the administration plans to look at the prop-erty again later this year.

The college has been working on developing the property since 1989.

MITCHELL WALTHEREditor-in-chief

The 2015-2020 Educa-tional Master Plan had its first read-through at last week’s Board of Trustees meeting.

The 54-page college guidelines deal with issues ranging from declining programs and classes, to budget deficits, to how to foster enrollment.

The master plan “is a ho-listic document that iden-tifies student learning and achievement as the core purpose of Ohlone Col-lege,” it says in its introduc-tion. “As a learning-cen-tered college, all activity of faculty, staff and adminis-tration needs to be focused on this core purpose.”

Trustee Ishan Shah was excited over the information proposed in the papers.

“We’re seeing the sau-sage being made,” he said.

Some trustees were con-cerned, though, over which classes could be dropped, and why certain classes could be kept.

Trustee Rich Watters was skeptical over the financial feasibility of the master plan. “Are we trying to be everything for everyone?” he said.

Trustees will consider approving the master plan at their meeting April 8.

MITCHELL WALTHEREditor-in-chief

Ohlone is seeking to fill several full-time teaching positions.

The number of full-time faculty dropped from 151 to 115 in the past decade, due to budget cuts and other factors. Twelve depart-ments currently have no full-time faculty.

College officials say Ohlone needs at least 18 more full-time instruc-tors. However, it would be impossible to hire that many in one year, college officials said.

“We have worked hard just to ‘tread water’ and not backslide as FT fac-ulty continue to retire or otherwise leave the district,” according to the Educational Master Plan, which calls for a target of 141 full-timers by 2020.

Ohlone’s ratio of full-time equivalent stu-dents to full-time faculty is higher than the state average or the average for Bay Area community colleges.

The Board of Trustees will meet again in April with the prospect of dis-cussing bringing more teachers on staff full-time.

State would pay for 25% of Obama plan

Administration plans another look at frontage

College unveils educational master plan

Ohlone seeks new full-time instructors

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He is optimistic about the changes facing the music industry, believ-ing the Internet is “the wild, wild west of music distribution.”

Roberts used a “mu-sic aggregator” cal led Tunecore to help put the album online, cutting through the red tape of iTunes and Spotify where “zero (profit) is made.”

Roberts said the sab-batical and the lack of deadlines on the project gave him the ability to “to experiment a lot more, and (I) was given the luxury of throwing other ideas away.”

Roberts likes changing musical styles, saying if artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Taylor

Swift can cross over from one genre to another, then so can he.

“ C h a n g e i s g r e a t , change is fine,” Roberts said. “Maybe I’ll play … some American coun-try record, who knows what instrument or what style.” The musical pos-sbilities are endless for Roberts.

For now though, Rob-erts us a taste of instru-mental rock and roll. A good focus on riffs allows the composition of the album to shine thru.

Offering a diversity of styles, “Chinese Malibu” is a worthwhile listen for anyone who enjoys msuci and wants to here some-thing new and local.

“Chinese Malibu” is a v a i l a b l e o n Sp o t i f y, iTunes, and Amazon.

Continued from Page 1

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sinated NAACP leader Med-gar Evers, the murder of three civil rights activists, and the emergence of the inspiring Fannie Lou Hamer, who organized the Missis-sippi Freedom Summer.

“ ‘Chicana Herstory’ al-lows me the opportunity to share a ‘herstory’ of the Americans that has been denied, erased and untold for too long and needs to be

heard,” Ramirez said. Ramirez said it’s impor-

tant to bring out a part of history that has been over-written for many years now.

“Feminism, women’s rights were not imported here from Europe,” she said. “Time to honor the teach-ings of indigenous America that have relevance now and into the future.”

The two presentations coincide with Women’s His-tory Month.

Ramirez to speak about ‘herstory’ at national conference in MississippiContinued from Page 1

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tation of Literature. Singh also earned a silver

medal for prose and a bronze for poetry.

In addition, Singh and Sarah Goulart won a silver

medal in program oral in-terpretation, and Manveer Singh won a silver medal for IPDA debate and a bronze for extemporaneous speaking.

Next up is the national championships next month.

NEWS !"# $ % " &!'&()*+,-*./+03

")1"#2*("11232

MONITOR

Opinions expressed in the Monitor are those of the re-spective authors and are not necessarily those of the staff, the college or the Associated Students of Ohlone College.

STAFF:

Editor-in-Chief: Mitchell Walther

Sports editor: Albert Rebosura Photo editor:Laura Gonsalves

Online editor: Ivan Vargas

Staff writers: Maria Garcia-HernandezMartha NunezOden, D.Charles Tuttle

Ad manager: Ryan Parcher

Ad staff: Ricky Cardenas

Adviser: Rob Dennis

Printer: FP Press

CONTACT US:

Offices: Room 5310 Call: 510.659.6075 E-mail: monitor@ohlone.eduWebsite: www.ohlonemon-itor.comFacebook: www.facebook.com/OhloneCollegeMoni-torTwitter: @OhloneMonitor

California Newspaper Publishers Association

Journalism Association of Community Colleges

General Excellence

General Excellence1971

State NorCal1987 19841991 19881994 19941998 20002002 20032003 20042014 2005 2013 2014

Online: 2005, 2013

requesters can appeal them to an administrative board. But in other cases, Marshall said news organizations and private citizens are faced with the “ridiculous choice” of weighing the costs and benefits of being a respon-sible public steward.

In Florida, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office told Jason Parsley, executive edi-tor of the South Florida Gay News, last year that it would cost $399,000 and take four years to provide every email for a one-year period that contained certain derogato-ry words for gays. The reason, according to officials: The email sys-tem could not perform a keyword search of all accounts at once.

P a r s l e y says he has talked to computer experts who d i s a g r e e and say a modern email system could handle the request easily, but he doesn’t have the money or the time to take the matter to court.

“It would be their word against ours,” he said. “Even if we could pay that amount, it would be four years. What good would that do me at that point, anyway?”

If the goal was to keep him from learning that deputies used such terms, authorities won, Parsley said.

Broward County Sheriff’s Lt. Eric Caldwell said the department was not trying to be evasive. He said each employee’s email is stored on a tape and kept at a remote archive facility. It has to be retrieved physically and then converted into a Microsoft Outlook file, which can then be searched.

“If we have it, we have to provide it,” he said. “The reason this cost so much is that this person had a very vague request.”

Virginia law allows reason-able charges not to exceed the actual cost of accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for the requested records. But to get electronic copies of Virginia Gov. Terry

McAuliffe’s daily calendar for nearly 10 months, officials told the AP that it would need to pay about $500 upfront. That’s because McAuliffe’s counsel said staff would have had to search, review and possibly redact certain calendar entries. Meanwhile, in California, daily calendar entries for Gov. Jerry Brown are routinely provided at no cost to the AP.

Another example: Iowa’s newly created Public In-formation Board ruled in December that the state Department of Corrections could charge the Marshall Project, a nonprofit that reports on the criminal justice system, $2,020 for ac-

cess to its federally mandated reports

on sexual violence against inmates. Iowa officials said it would take an employee 108 hours at $15 per hour to review, redact and copy 2,672 records, plus a 15-cents-per-page charge for copies. Some larger states charge nothing or just a nominal fee for ac-cess to those reports.

“I think there’s a genuine effort to be responsive, but there is a higher cost to fulfill these requests,” said Dan Bevarly, acting execu-tive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, a nonprofit based at the University of Missouri-Columbia that works to protect the public’s right to open government. “There are other times where there’s a deliberate effort to circum-vent the system.”

Lawmakers in several states have proposed or passed laws seeking to ad-dress those fees.

Michigan lawmakers re-cently approved a law man-dating that agencies cannot charge more than 10 cents a page for documents. Further, people can file a lawsuit if they believe they are being overcharged and can try to get the amount reduced. If

a court agrees, it must assess $1,000 in punitive damages.

In February, Maryland lawmakers introduced a bill that would establish a compliance board to handle complaints and cap the fees agencies can charge for pub-lic documents.

Yet other states are con-sidering actions that could restrict access or deter those making requests.

Following complaints from Tennessee’s school boards association, a pro-posal in the state Legislature would allow agencies to charge for anything more than one hour of time fulfill-ing records requests. Current law allows them to charge for copies, but not for the time they spend collecting

and redacting documents. A legislative analysis of a similar proposal that failed in 2011 estimated that local governments would collect about $1.6 million in fees under the change.

“If someone can’t afford the fees, they can’t see the re-cords,” said Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Ten-nessee Coalition for Open Government. “There is noth-ing yet to safeguard against abuse by government offi-cials who may want to block access by inflating fees.”

An Indiana proposal would allow a searching fee for re-cord requests that take longer than two hours to fulfill. After that time, an agency could charge up to $20 an hour and require payment up front. The search time would not include time spent redacting confidential information, but opponents said the fee will discourage more in-depth records requests and give officials another tool to fight transparency.

Most agencies in Washing-ton state provide electronic records free by email, and state law caps charges for copies at 15 cents a page. But earlier this year, the

Legislature considered a bill that would allow agencies to charge for digital public records, raising concerns among good-government advocates. The bill passed one committee but failed to get a vote in another, mean-ing it is likely dead for the year.

Agencies can be allowed to levy charges, says Toby Nixon, president of the Washington Coalition for Open Govern-ment, “but they should not be making a profit off of it.”

Some government officials say they are unable to waive fees because their budgets are tight. Complicating mat-ters further is a larger number of records being generated and the inability of agencies to maintain and process

them, leading to more time and resources dedicated to researching re-quests.

In most in-stances, the price to fulfill requests comes down to what’s

being sought and the costs associated with responding to them, said Chuck Thomp-son, executive director of the International Municipal Lawyers Association, a non-profit group representing local government attorneys across North America.

“There’s probably a fairly low percentage of govern-ments that are attempting to provide barriers to the release of information,” Thompson said. “It’s really important that the public have the ability to find out what their government’s doing, but they can’t bring their government to their knees.”

Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Jackson, Mississippi; Curt Anderson in Miami; Jeff Barnard in Grants Pass, Oregon; David Eggert in Lan-sing, Michigan; Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; John D. Hannah in Topeka, Kansas; Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington; Judy Lin in Sacramento; Erik Schelzig in Nashville, Tennessee; Lauryn Schroeder in Indianapolis; and Meredith Somers in An-napolis, Maryland, contrib-uted to this report.

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!"# $ % " & FEATURES!'&()*+,-*./+04

San Franciscounder siege

The other day my friend and I were driv-ing to Redwood City. We paid the toll, gunned the motor, and headed across the Dumbarton Bridge.

As our vehicle soared across the water on our concrete magic carpet, I had a thought.

I live in the Bay Area. That’s kind of a big deal. The place I call home is known throughout the world.

We al l know what we mean when we say, “The Bay.”

I c a n w a l k i n t o a business meeting in Ne w Yo rk C i t y w i t h CEOs from all over the world, and if I say I’m from the “Bay Area,” they all know what I mean.

There’s a sense of pride to living here. We are at the forefront of so many industries I’m not even going to list them here.

As I watched “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” it was odd to see San Francisco in a disaster movie. I hadn’t seen Bay Area imagery in a blockbuster since “X-Men 3: United” or the last Planet of the Apes movie.

This is how it must feel for New Yorkers. Every summer they get to see their city blocks get destroyed again and again, and then they get to see some super-hero save it at the last second.

The Star Trek fran-chise has taken advan-tage of destroying San Francisco, too, with “Into Darkness” deci-mating the downtown area and the first reboot firing lasers just off the Golden Gate Bridge.

The destruction of our streets and land-marks helps us remem-ber just how much that would hurt us. This place around us is fi-nite, but built strong enough to last.

When it comes down to it, we live in an amaz-ing, beautiful area, and we need to remember that.

There’s so much we have been given and we need to cherish it.

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CHARLES TUTTLEStaff writer

Ohlone alumna and for-mer Monitor staffer Kathy Sung is now a partner at Modern Career Advice, a new firm that finds higher paying jobs for four-year college graduates.

“In a nutshell, we help working professionals land job offers, roles, companies, and pay pack-ages they deserve,” com-pany CEO Frank Song said.

Working one-on-one with clients, the company is able to find out if the clients “are being paid enough for or are in a role that reflects their value,” he said.

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“It’s been great, been busy,” Sung said. “Long hours, long days, but it’s really rewarding.”

Clients pay a $10,000 fee for Modern Career Advice’s services. The company touts a 23 percent rate of applications to interviews, a 64 percent rate of inter-views to offers – and an overall 100 percent suc-cess rate.

If a client isn’t satisfied with their current career situation, “we backwards engineer them in a way to get them to … other op-portunities they wouldn’t find online, understand companies, and land an offer.”

Song, who graduated from the University of

California, Davis, with a bachelor’s degree in economics, was an invest-ment banker and venture capitalist before launch-ing Modern Career Advice. The idea came after he helped a couple friends by offering free job con-sultations.

Before starting the new firm, Song was a private equity investor at Accel-KKR, and before that he worked as an investment banker at Stifel Nicolaus Weisel.

Sung majored in jour-nalism and social sciences at Ohlone before transfer-ring to UC Berkeley. She graduated in 2010 with a degree in media stud-ies. As an Ohlone and UC Berkeley alumna, Sung is this area’s representative for the firm.

“Ohlone was a great transitioning point for me,” she said.

For more information about Moder n Career Advice, go to www.mod-erncareeradvice.com.

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Filmmaker to speak at screeningMONITOR STAFF

Filmmaker Tyler Mea-som will attend a screen-ing of his award-winning documentary “An Honest Liar – the Amazing Randi Story” on April 3 at the Smith Center.

Measom and Justin Wein-stein followed magician James “The Amazing” Randi for two years, and also inter-viewed celebrities such as Bill Nye “The Science Guy,” Alice Cooper, Adam Savage of “Mythbusters,” and Penn and Teller, who discussed how Randi influenced their lives and careers.

The screening will be at 7 p.m. in the Smith Center’s Jackson Theatre.

Measom will introduce the film and answer questions after the screening, which is part of the Psychology Club’s Speaker Series.

To view a six-min-ute trailer, go to https://w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m /watch?v=MVMl36t2cLc.

To buy tickets, go to www.ohlone.edu/instr/psychol-ogy/speakerseries.

FEATURES !"# $ % " &!'&()*+,-*./+05

Spraying in the Spring!"#$%&'()'*+%",%-.'%/0123)4%5-06'1-%7++"843-4"1%316%"-.'*+%8'9')*3-'%-.'%:"94%,'+-4;39%<'61'+63=%3,-'*1""1%41%,*"1-%",%:=(31%:399%"1%-.'%>*'("1-%83(#0+?%:"94%4+%31%@16431%,'+-4;39A%39+"%B1"C1%3+%-.'%,'+-4;39%",%8"9"*+A%41%C.48.%#3*-484#31-+%-.*"C%)*4D.-9=%8"9"*'6%#"C6'*%"1%"1'%31"-.'*?%E',-$%7%+#*3=%",%C3-'*%83-8.'+%+';'*39%,'+-4;39FD"'*+?%G"--"(F9',-$%/0,,+%",%#"C6'*%,499%-.'%34*?%G'9"C%316%)"--"(F*4D.-$%/3*-484#31-+%89'31%-.'(+'9;'+%",,%3,-'*%-.'%,01%D'-+%('++=?%

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!"# $ % " & OPINIONS!'&()*+,-*./+06

CAMPUS COMMENT !"#$"%#&'()*#"%+#,"-.+)/.)&#(0#&+1)021+.)&#.)"%,'3ERICA GILBERTPsychology

“Not at all. If anyone wants answers they have to go out and get them”

JACOB ROJASKinesiology

“I think they feed us (what is) necessary to keep us calm”

MATTHEW BANWARTJournalism

“It could be more transpar-ent but ... transparency isn’t always a good thing”

SALIM KAJJAJBusiness Administration

“No, not really. With what is going on in Ferguson they’re really oblivious of minorities”

JENICA PUJOLSArt

“They don’t say everything that they should say – like all the 9/11 talks and who really killed JFK”

!"##$%&'()'($*$+,-.#./,

BRIAN HUNHOFFYankton County Observer

Don’t take it personally?That’s usually good advice,

but today we urge the op-posite reaction to all govern-ment bodies operating in the shadows, purposely avoiding public scrutiny and genuine transparency.

In other words, take closed government personally. Please!

Take it personally when a reporter is kicked out of a city council meeting so members can hold an illegal or unnecessary executive session.

Take it personally when public access to govern-ment records is refused, limited, or attached to ex-cessive fees.

Take it personally when a judge jails a reporter for refusing to reveal a confi-dential source.

Take it personally when government fails to limit political contributions, and ignores ties of mutual ben-efit between private busi-ness and elected officials.

Take it personally when a governor issues secretive pardons.

Take it personally when a presidential administra-tion works vigorously to identify and criminally prosecute government whistle-blowers.Take all of this personally

because it directly affects the quality and scope of govern-ment information you get from the press.

Wouldn’t it be great if more people understood a report-er’s exclusion from a meet-ing also excludes them, the general public, from learning details that are being hidden?

Wouldn’t it be great if every-one embraced the notion that government openness is an essential pillar of democracy?

Wouldn’t it be great if more people remembered the press serves as their eyes and ears

in the halls of government?Wouldn’t it be great if

more people became aware that jailing journalists not only intimidates the press, but also chills the public’s right to know?

Wouldn’t it be great to see thousands of citizens press Congress to pass a federal shield law protecting re-porters from being locked up for doing their job?

We love that scene in “Return of the King” when a resurgent monarch in-spires his small army to stand against overwhelm-

ing odds by delivering a stirring cry to arms.

Wouldn’t it be great to see people everywhere show that kind of passion and unity in the fight for freedom of information and the battle against government secrecy? With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, that speech might go something like this:

“A day may come when the courage of men fails and our freedoms die; when speech and religion are governed; when we forsake our reporters and break all bonds of fellowship with the

Fourth Estate … but it is not this day!

“There may come an hour of darkness, wolves and shattered shields that bring our First Amendment crashing down … but it is not this day!

“On this day, we battle for our Bill of Rights! This day, we join with journalists in the war against government se-crecy, corruption, and waste.

“This day, the press and public stand … together! This day, we fight … to-gether!”

Wouldn’t that be great?

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SOFTBALL

Today, 3 p.m. vs. West Val-ley College, Softball Field, Fremont campus.

April 4, noon vs. College of San Mateo, Softball Field, Fremont campus.

April 11, 10 a.m. vs. Napa Valley College, 2 p.m. vs. Merced College, Softball Field, Fremont campus.

April 14, 3 p.m. vs. Mission College, Softball Field, Fre-mont campus.

BASEBALL

Saturday, noon vs. Mon-terey Peninsula College, Renegade Field, Fremont campus.

Tuesday, 2:30 p.m. vs. Ca-brillo College, Renegade Field, Fremont campus.

April 4, noon vs. Gavilan College, Renegade Field, Fremont campus.

April 11, noon vs. Hartnell College, Renegade Field, Fremont campus.

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ALBERT REBOSURAMonitor Sports Guy

Heather Rygg is this week’s Player of the Week.

Rygg had 10 hits out of her 16 at-bats, a cool .625 aver-age, helping Ohlone win four of five games in the past week.

Two of her hits came in home-run fashion, helping the Lady Renegades to a 9-8 victory against Gavilan, their second meeting in the week.

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The leadoff hitter played her role to a tee – getting on base, stealing bases and set-ting up the hitters behind her.

She scored 10 runs and stole seven bases in the past week – five came against Gavilan on Tuesday, in their first matchup.

Rygg has 21 steals this season, which is the third most in the state. She also leads the team in that category, along with runs, doubles and triples.

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A smart moveChris Borland announced

his retirement on Tuesday because of his concerns about the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma.

Borland, 24, was in line to be a starting middle line-backer for the 49ers up-coming season after having an impressive rookie cam-paign. I respect Borland’s decision and hope that other NFL players consider their health after their foot-ball career is over.

Many players grew up with low-income economic situations and will rush their way to the NFL with-out completing their college education. Completing col-lege is important because of potential health risks, not to mention that the average NFL career is 3.3 years.

Borland, who has a de-gree, left behind a high-pay-ing job in the NFL – and it could’ve been even more af-ter his rookie deal. Still, what good is all the money you make in the NFL if your body is broken and your head is in shambles? He and a handful of other players decided to hang up the cleats and pro-tect their health.

Players are stronger and faster than ever. The col-lisions are brutal and un-watchable at times. But the hitting is one of the main reasons why football has be-come so popular in the past decade. The NFL should ditch helmets. It has become more of a weapon than an actual protection. Players would have to think twice about leading with their head for a hit if they didn’t have a helmet.

I’m not saying that there wouldn’t be any concussions if they didn’t wear helmets, but I think that the amount would be drastically lower. Perhaps they can wear a hel-met like Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech which is made out of foam cushion – not the hard plastic with metal bars in football.

The handful of players retiring this offseason isn’t going to ruin the NFL’s prod-uct. Football isn’t going any-where. My rule proposal will never happen too. There’s no reason to change the prod-uct because it’s the most profitable sport in the U.S. People will watch no matter what. Just watch, the retired players will be laughing at their ex-teammates with all the money and health prob-lems in 3.3 years.122*345678693-*3:;27<=2*567*4;2*

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KLEPTOMANIA

F57G*&26295723*86*9??7*H?3848?6*>84;*5*I?64;*=2@4*86*4;2*3253?6ALBERT REBOSURASports editor

Ohlone hosted their 23rd annual March Mad-ness Tournament over the weekend and played well – winning three of four games.

“We went 3-1 and I feel good about that” Coach Donna Runyon said. “I’m proud that we beat two quality teams: Feather Riv-er and Los Medanos.”

In previous seasons, the format of the tournament was conventional, with eliminations and winners, but this season was differ-ent.

“We changed the format this season. It’s all round robin,” Runyon said.

She added that playing six games over the week-end is rough on teams in terms of fatigue.

“It was just four games of softball all weekend,” she said.

Los Medanos was the first matchup for the Lady Renegades in the tourna-ment. Ohlone’s batters have been dialed in this month, and it continued against Los Medanos, as the Renegades won hand-ily, 12-4.

Cleanup hitter Haley Keahi went 3-of-4, scoring three runs and knocking in one RBI. Six other play-ers had RBIs as well – in-cluding Ariana Monges, who had a team high with two.

Jasaiah Gholston pitched a complete game in the win, allowing four runs and striking out five.

The Lady Renegades offensive prowess this month was silenced by So-lano in the second game, as Ohlone lost 10-1.

Solano pitcher Denali Smith kept Ohlone to three hits and allowed only one run – the team’s lowest of-fensive output since Feb. 28.

Ohlone’s Oceana Ornd-off had a rough outing on the mound, allowing 13 hits and eight runs. She did get the team’s lone RBI in the lopsided loss.

The bats that were si-lenced by Solano woke up again in their third matchup against Feather River. The Lady Renegades scored at least one run all six innings – getting 12 in the first three.

Everybody got a piece of the action on offense: Heather Rygg went 5-for-5 with three runs, Mckayla Saavendra had one hit, two walks, three runs and two RBIs, Keahi went 4-for-4

with four runs and three RBIs, Carrigan James had 3 RBIs on two hits, Morgan Meyer had three hits and two RBIs and Caressa DeR-ossett had two hits and two RBIs.

The offense bailed out Jasaiah Gholston, who had an inconsistent game. She allowed 10 hits, five runs and three walks.

Ohlone faced a familiar foe in the final game of the tournament. They played Gavilan who they beat 14-2 earlier in the week. It was much closer this time, but Ohlone came back from a 4-1 deficit, toughing out a 9-8 win.

Rygg had two home runs and three RBIs. Orndoff added two and Shelby Hodges had two.

“Rygg hit two (home runs in) back-to-back (plate ap-pearances)” Runyon said. “They intentionally walked her after that.”

Karissa Francis made her first start of the season, but didn’t get the win. She al-lowed eight hits, six runs and a homer. Orndoff got the win, pitching three in-nings and allowing one run.

Ohlone has a 15-10 re-cord and a 6-1 division re-cord. They’re currently in second place behind the top-ranked NorCal team: College of San Mateo,

which is 27-0.When asked how the

team can improve in the last month of the season, Runyon said: “first pitch strikes” for pitchers and “better team situational at-bats.”

The Lady Renegades play the first-place team in the Coast South division, West Valley, at 3 p.m. today at the Softball Field.

Runyon looks at the up-coming game against a first-place team as a good opportunity to see what her team has against a tough opponent.

“They (West Valley) beat

Foothill last week, but we also beat Foothill and scored more runs than they did,” Runyon said.

West Valley is 18-3 and is currently on a four-game win streak. They have a per-fect 8-0 record on the road.

West Valley’s success comes from their stel-lar pitching. They have a 1.59 team ERA, which is sixth best in the state. They’re also fourth in the state with eight shutouts.

When asked about Ohlone’s key to victory against West Valley Ru-nyon said: “timely hit-ting and good pitching.”