"Side Show" is a musical about conjoined twins who become stage performers. Photo Courtesy Ashley dePencier Photography

From the eerie start, “Side Show,” a four-time Tony nominated musical opening tonight at Cal Poly, is disturbingly intimate as the lights gradually illuminate a stoic crowd of carnies staring at the audience, inviting them to “come look at the freaks.”

Set around a circus company — including the familiar acts of fortuneteller, bearded lady, contortionist and even a fat lady — the show explores the true story of conjoined sisters, Daisy and Violet Hilton, who struggle to identify themselves apart from ‘circus freaks’ and transform into vaudeville superstars during the 1930s.

“Side Show” examines how society exploits people for the wrong reasons.

“I have always been very sensitive to people with disabilities, the struggles they are faced with, the amazing things they are capable of,” said Raquel Jarman, a theater senior who is directing the show for her senior project.

But the process for the Hilton sisters doesn’t develop in Rogers and Hammerstein fashion, Jarman said, as it was originally written in 1997 by Henry Krieger (music) and Bill Russell (book and lyrics).

A couple of entrepreneurs rescue the sisters from an abusive, drunk boss and make them famous, but at a cost more than the group bargains for — a theme Jarman has seen in her own life.

“Nobody in their right mind would direct a musical (as a senior project),” said Jarman. “I haven’t slept more than four hours in weeks.”

Jarman, music senior Morgan Hurd, along with choreographer, theater junior Natalie Roy, have been working with the cast of 16 and a small orchestra since December. Complicating the process, the group held rehearsals in the computer science building while the Cal Poly Black Box theatre — The Davidson Music Center, room 212, where the show will take place through Sunday — was occupied by “Julius Caesar” rehearsal and class lectures.

Moving into the actual performance space was critical to bring all the elements together in front of an audience — an opportunity the actors benefited from at Monday evening’s ‘dressed-pre-dress’ rehearsal, Jarman said.

The creative team had to go through the appropriate channels for department approval and pay a high price for royalties. Just for permission, they had to pay $11,000, but they had help from the department and family members.

All in all, the senior project is more than some expected it to be.

“It’s much better than it seemed it would be during the first several weeks,” said biochemistry and chemistry senior Victoria Doroski, who plays Violet. “The cast is extremely talented and the show has taken shape the way it needed to.”

For the audience, there is a heavy pull into the world of the freaks. There is a natural, obvious connection to Daisy (theater senior Ashley Merchak) and Violet, two sympathetic but outlandish characters who leave the audience distant but concerned.

“The show shuffles between turmoil and tranquility, constantly in contrast,” Doroski said.

The love interest, Buddy Foster (theater junior Max Sopkin), falls for Violet, but is determined to believe that he can love her as she loves him, again a feat more than what he bargains for. The writer toys with the audience, asking them to connect with Foster’s quirky, humorous charm, only to later disregard his own struggle to accept Violet and her other half. Daisy’s interest, Terry Connor (music graduate Rory Fratkin), finds himself in the same predicament.

“Daisy and Violet are very two-dimensional. You see the girls in black and white, but it’s the witnessing of the gray — the struggle, the hope that is in these two,” Merchak said.

But the show is more about what the audience sees in itself by looking through the lens of the characters.

“There is this great invisible device in the show that gets (the audience) to realize they are looking at themselves. Its like a mirror-effect on the audience,” Jarman said. “Very powerful.”

“Side Show” opens tonight at 7 p.m. in the Black Box theatre and runs through Sunday, Mar. 14. Show times are Thursday through Saturday at 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.

For tickets, contact Christina Venezia, 415.672.0780 or cmvenezia@gmail.com. Tickets may also be available at the door before each performance for $8.

Journalism senior Niki Burns spent $28 on food for the entire month of February and is posting her experience on her blog for her senior project. Mustang Daily - Leticia Rodriguez

When it came time for Niki Burns to decide on a senior project this quarter, she knew she wanted to do something about eating on a budget. What she didn’t anticipate was was having to feed herself for the entire month of February on $28.

“At first I didn’t think that was really possible, to only eat $1 of food each day but then once I started thinking about it more and more I realized there are ways to eat for free in San Luis Obispo,” Burns said. “Also I realized people are forced to have to live this way and if they can do it, then I hoped that I could.”

Burns, a Cal Poly journalism senior spent $28 on groceries at the beginning of the month and is documenting her experience for her senior project on a blog, located at www.eatonedollaraday.blogspot.com.

Burns hopes that by posting her happenings, others will see how it is possible to live on a small budget and want to challenge themselves.

The uniqueness of her own challenge and the “out of the box” idea is what excites her adviser, journalism professor John Soares. Soares said that as Burns documents the entire month of February, eating only food that she had bought at the beginning of the month with $28, or was free or that she traded or bartered from someone else, she is learning how to generate interest in an era when news is becoming more technologically based. Documenting her experience and her work with the Internet and social media such as Facebook is what makes her project relevant, Soares said.

“She’s doing a story, and it’s going to be newsworthy to a particular audience and that’s part of her senior project: to figure out who it’s going to be newsworthy to and putting it on the Web,” Soares said. “It’s going to give her an opportunity to figure out how many hits is she getting and kind of extrapolate who are those people that are actually going to the Web site.”

Creating her own blog is also giving Burns the opportunity to participate in a new realm of journalism.

“Blogging is a great venue just because it’s free,” Burns said. “It’s time efficient; it doesn’t take me very much time to type up everything each night and just let everyone know how each day is going, and how I eat. It’s just easy and it’s just a way to share your story with the community as a whole.”

Sharing her story and having everything online for people to see is what could land her a job against a competitor with just a résumé because she will be able to show her project and explain the problems or challenges she faced in the process, Soares said.

“The more that you can do, and in this instance, Niki’s project on doing this blog, synthesizing video skills, writing skills, new media skills, working with the web, working with traditional media outlets to gain popularity for a Web site and then all the problems that come along with that and how she solved all those problems within a compressed amount of time, well that just makes her look so good when she goes out there,” Soares said.

Initially, the idea of Burns doing the project to challenge herself wasn’t what worried her family and boyfriend. When Burns first approached her mom, Jennifer Burns, about the concept, Jennifer said she didn’t know whether or not to take her seriously. When she finally realized her daughter wasn’t joking around, Jennifer got concerned.

“I was really concerned about her nutrition, I didn’t like the whole idea. I was hoping she could think of something else to do,” Jennifer said. “I was just like, ‘Niki, you can’t live on a dollar a day,’ and she insisted that it could be done.”

Burns found out that convincing her mom she could do it was easier than the experience itself. By the second day, Burns admitted on her blog that she was “feeling less energetic” and by the fourth day was tired of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, one of the only food items from her bundle of groceries purchased at the beginning that could be mass produced.

“I just really want nice salad,” Burns said. “I know that sounds like a lame answer, but I’ve really been craving veggies and I really like salads.”

She also came to the realization of just how fortunate she was to be able to eat out when she wanted and to not have to worry about hunger. Burns said the project has made her want to help out others whose reality is her month-long project, something her mom wanted her to walk away with at the end of the month.

“I hope that what she does learn out of it is the value of food and how blessed we are to have an abundance of it, that we don’t have to think about every dollar we spend on food so carefully, because so many people do,” Jennifer Burns said.

Knowing that she would have to make a relatively small amount of food last her for three meals a day for 28 days, Burns set up a list of guidelines on food that was considered free or food that she could accept before starting her project. During the month, Burns babysat a younger cousin for salami, taken fruit from a friend’s tree, traded a potato for an avocado and eaten at IHOP and Denny’s during their free breakfast days.

“I’ll cook my friend a meal if they cook me a meal or something like that, so I’ve done that a couple of times, and I’ve found different events where I’ve been able to eat for free,” Burns said. “Like Denny’s’ Free Grand Slam, IHOP and I ate at Woodstock’s I think, twice last week for free, just by writing a review about them.”

She wants people to challenge themselves and see that free food is available.

“I want people that can’t afford to eat out to see that there are free ways to eat out. Like there’s a lot for coupons out there on Web sites local restaurants,” Burns said. “I just want people to see there are cheaper ways to eat, maybe not eating a $1 a day but do something that would challenge them for the year because I think it’s important to experience different aspects of life and to always be challenging ones self otherwise you could get bored and get stuck in the same routine every day.”

Stock photo

Nearly 1,000 students from the San Luis Obispo area joined about 87,000 other participants across California in simultaneously jumping rope in an effort to break the world record for “Most People Jumping/Skipping at the Same Time” on Feb. 1. Two Cal Poly seniors organized four schools from the San Luis Obispo area as part of their honors senior project.

Iliana Pruneda and Meghan Lord, both kinesiology seniors, helped the American Heart Association (AHA) and California Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (CAHPERD) to promote healthy lifestyles in children while trying to break the Guinness World Record. The previous record was set in Australia in May 2008 with 59,000 jumpers. On top of that, participants had to complete three minutes of “solid jumping” between 9 and 9:10 a.m.

At this time, the record has unofficially been broken (the Guinness Book of World Records staff will review the event through video, photo and written records to confirm), with roughly 88,000 students, parents and teachers jumping rope across California. Each jumper paid one dollar to participate, resulting in about $88,000 going to the research branch of American Heart Association. The schools in San Luis Obispo that participated were El Camino Junior High, Fesler Junior High, Pacheco Elementary and Los Osos Middle School.

“Everyone was happy and having a great time,” Pruneda said, who was at Pacheco Elementary (about 200 participants) in San Luis Obispo. “They were all so excited to be part of this big event to potentially break a world record.”

Lord, who ran the jump at El Camino Junior High in Santa Maria (614 jumpers, the largest jumping site in Southern California), said that it was exciting, but very stressful. Participants could not stop jumping for more than 10 seconds at a time or they would be disqualified.

“It all happened very fast,” Lord said. “People were saying the three minutes of required jumping went by without them realizing. It was the longest three minutes of my life. Anything could go wrong. Keeping the kids motivated and on task, that was kind of hard.”

Pruneda and Lord started working on the project during finals week of fall quarter but said they didn’t get into full swing until after winter break because all the schools were closed.

“We literally had six weeks to get the Central Coast started and on board,” Pruneda said. “It was quite a fiasco.”

Under the guidance of CAHPERD, the American Heart Association and their senior project adviser, Kevin Taylor, a kinesiology professor, the students made phone calls, sent e-mails and secured sponsors. Jamba Juice was the corporate sponsor for the event and donated a free smoothie to every participant in the area. This was about a $3,000 donation, Pruneda said.

Taylor, as part of his advising role, dressed up in a Jamba Juice promotional banana suit at Pacheco and demonstrated jump-roping technique for participants who hadn’t jumped rope before. He said that the girls have worked hard and met expectations for their project so far.

“They’re not quite finished yet,” he said. “One (component) of the (senior project) is to reflect upon the experience. We’re looking into possibilities for a public presentation. But once they’re done with that, I will be enthusiastically saying that they have fully met my expectations.”

Mark Grosz, a physical education teacher at El Camino and previously a part-time lecturer at Cal Poly, worked with Pruneda and Lord to get El Camino on board.

“They were very professional and did a great job of working with the community,” Grosz said. “It was really neat for me because of the fact that my whole school bought in. The principal, the vice principal and 30 of the faculty participated. The mayor (of Santa Maria) was even here.”

The mayor of Santa Maria was not the only outsider t0 participate. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped with students in Sacramento, troops jumped in Iraq as did units from the National Guard and Coast Guard, Pruneda said.

Pruneda said that the record will be a good memory for the students and that it hopefully directs them toward a healthy lifestyle in the future.

“For us as kinesiologists, it’s super important to get these kids learning and experiencing physical activity and fun at the same time and draw the connection,” she said. “It’s fun to be healthy. That’s what we want to show them.”

Graphic by Kasey Reed- Mustang Daily

When biological sciences senior Rachel Hornstein asked Cal Poly students what they knew about health care reform recently, she was shocked to find that the overall answer was “not much.” This led to the idea for her senior project, an event aimed at educating students, faculty and the community about the ins and outs of reform. The event, being held next Monday at the Alex and Faye Spanos Theatre, features three hand-picked speakers.

“It is really complicated,” Hornstein said. “I don’t know everything and I have been working on it for over a year.”

The different options presented in the bill are the main source of confusion for people. From the “virtual marketplace” to single-payer, the health care reform debate has many complex topics. According to Hornstein, the three big issues surrounding this topic are accessibility, affordability and availability, she added.

“A lot of people have been concerned about how it will affect their personal insurance,” Hornstein said. “It is a huge money issue as well and it is good to have a discussion.”

Cost is one of the factors people are most worried about when discussing health care.

The controversial parts of the proposed bill include the public option, cost and the use of rationing health care. The new proposed program raises question of how much the government should control, Hortenstein added. These concerns affect the debate, its outcome and college students, because they are directly affected by the reform.

College students might not be paying for their health care now, but when they graduate many will be.

When Hornstein visited classrooms and asked students who knew about the health care reform, she only saw a few hands go up in the air.

“I hear a lot about the negatives about (the bill), but not about exactly what it’s going to do,” English junior Nick Georgoff said.

Hornstein stressed that undergraduates need to understand that they will have to buy into health care at some point.

“I am just used to being insured,” English junior Elizabeth Blaine said. “I guess you don’t really think about it.”

Hornstein’s background in this topic began in childhood with a family of health care professions and then pursuing the career herself. It was also fueled by her work this summer.

After working in Washington D.C. with a few organizations working toward health care reform, Hornstein knew she wanted to create an accessible event that would educate college students.

“I know what students want: free, food and fun,” Hornstein said.

The event will be held Nov. 23 as one of a three-part series (one per quarter). The presentation will help students to formulate an opinion on health issues. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided at 4:30 p.m. and the event will begin at 5 p.m. This event will also be live-streamed at mustangdaily.net/live with a live chat available.

For this event Hornstein coordinated a diverse panel of experts, which included a doctor, a lawyer and the dean of admissions at USC Medical School.

“I was researching a lot of similar programs and I wanted it to come from all different sides,” Hornstein said. “I also found it to be more comprehensive.”

Health policy advocate and attorney Dr. Joel Diringer was chosen as a panelist because he has worked with farm workers in San Luis Obispo for nearly three decades, Hornstein said. He said that Congress is not really debating “health reform” but rather medical insurance reform.

The “real” cost of medical care is a viewpoint that is not widely discussed, Diringer added.

“It (the bill) does little to address the real costs of medical care which are driven by preventable chronic diseases related to diet, exercise, personal habits such as smoking and environment,” he said.

Diringer has been consulting independently since 1991. As one of the original senior staff of the California Endowment (the state’s largest health foundation), Diringer worked to get over $50 million in 150 grants, which helped to “improve health of low-income Californians.”

“Most of the money was geared toward the under-served and the uninsured,” Diringer said.

Dr. James Hornstein, Rachel Hornstein’s father, has been practicing family medicine for 25 years and is currently the director of ethics and palliative care for Community Health Systems in Ventura. He has taught bioethics classes at University of California, Los Angeles and University of Southern California. Rachel Hornstein said that his background made him an obvious choice for the panel.

The health care reform will have its effects on the health care professionals as well. This includes students going into the health care profession. Dr. Erin Quinn, dean of admission for the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, will provide a look into enrollment and admissions to medical school and how the reform could affect this.

Hornstein said the goal of the panel is to address many of the overarching questions that students have about health care.

“This is something we need to be a part of,” Rachel Hornstein said. It’s me, it’s you. It starts with our meeting, our words.”

The Robert E. Kennedy Library implemented a new policy this September that senior projects may now only be submitted to the library electronically through DigitalCommons, a new software that serves as a digital catalog for student projects. After having their work published through DigitalCommons, students will be able to search and find their project through any online search engine. The library will no longer be creating a microfiche catalog of senior projects. They were stored on a small card with micro images and text.

Before DigitalCommons was implemented, the old procedure began with students filling out a senior project requirement form and paying a $12 senior project fee to the cashier’s office. Each department collected the senior projects and sent them to the library to be cataloged. The senior projects  were then sent to get microfiched. Two to four weeks later, the senior project returned to the library in its original form with two copies of the microfiche. After librarians filed one copy of the microfiche in the library’s senior project collection, they sent the original project along with the second copy of the microfiche back to the department. The department then had the responsibility of recording the senior projects and finding a place to store them.

Now the process is completely digital. After students pay their senior project fee and turn in a senior project requirement form to their department, they may upload their senior projects to DigitalCommons on the library’s Web site. The department then forwards a copy of the requirement form to Beaton, who makes the senior project public on DigitalCommons, allowing anyone searching for the project to find it through any web search engine

As the third California State University to implement a university-wide digital catalog, Cal Poly follows Humbolt State University and Cal Poly Pomona in creating electronic databases for graduate theses. With more than 170 electronic theses available on DigitalCommons, the university’s cyber storehouse software, Cal Poly has the second-largest collection of theses available online, second to Humbolt. Because Humbolt and Pomona do not require senior projects from their students they only store graduate theses while Cal Poly plans on storing both theses and senior projects. Digital repository librarian Marisa Ramirez hopes that Cal Poly will surpass all the CSUs in terms of having the most student projects digitally stored.

“We’re hoping to eclipse them,” she said.

Ramirez and senior project coordinator librarian Karen Beaton provided training sessions over summer to teach faculty and staff how to submit senior projects to the library. Since September, the library will no longer be accepting any form of senior projects besides those submitted electronically through DigitalCommons.

The Digital Commons software that the university is using to store the projects is a hosted system, meaning that the staff working to maintain the site at Cal Poly is small because most of the system maintenance is outsourced. The system is backed up every six hours and backed up again every week.

“We take digital access very seriously, but we also take digital preservation very seriously. Again, this is the record of scholarship that the students are doing. We find it very important to preserve it. That’s our role as librarians,” Ramirez said.

The librarians wanted to consider how this would disrupt each department’s procedures for submitting senior projects. Beaton and Ramirez were conscious of not disturbing each department’s current senior project policies and procedures.

“We did not want this to impact negatively the department workflow because we know every department is different and they know how to do their work the best,” said Ramirez. She said that during her training sessions to teach departments about the new process faculty and staff have been very positive about the change.

A few glitches that Ramirez and Beaton ran into while researching and implementing this project was the issue of copyright. If students do not want their work visible to anyone on the Web because their work is copyrighted, there are two levels of viewing access that the library permits students to choose from. The first level allows completely open access to the world. The second access lets students restrict access for a certain period of time due to patenting or propriety reasons.

Another issue of concern is submitting past students’ work. Ramirez expects that many graduates from last year will want to upload their senior projects to DigitalCommons. Alumni are allowed to submit their senior projects to the library using the new senior project submission process to have their project online.

Training sessions for student and faculty are continuing throughout the school year to teach students, faculty and staff the policies of submitting senior projects.

A picture of a student sitting in what appeared to be a children’s Power Wheels vehicle being ticketed by three San Luis Obispo Police Department motorcycles and one University Police Department SUV gained viral popularity on Twitter last week and was plastered on the front page of the Mustang Daily with a headline that read “Little wheels cause a big deal.”

So what’s the real story behind this four-wheeled spectacle?

It’s more than just a toy. Rashed Talukder, a computer engineering junior, revamped a Power Wheels car as part of the first stages of his senior project.

Talukder was ticketed the afternoon of May 19 at South Perimeter Street for violation of Vehicle Code 21716: Golf Cart Operation.

The state motor vehicle code states that “No person shall operate a golf cart on any highway except in a speed zone of 25 miles per hour or less.”

University Police Chief Bill Watton said Talukder was ticketed for riding on California Boulevard’s bike lane, causing numerous complaints from drivers who couldn’t see the car, which is low to the ground.

“It would scare the hell out of me to be in that thing in a traffic lane,” Watton said. “There’s no way in the world I’d do that with the drivers and the cell phones and all the things going on.”

The California Department of Motor Vehicles Web site defines a golf cart as a “motor vehicle having not less than three wheels in contact with the ground, having an unladen weight less than 1,300 pounds, which is designed to be and is operated at not more than 15 miles per hour and designed to carry golf equipment and not more than two persons, including the driver.”

Although Talukder’s vehicle wasn’t designed to carry golf equipment, San Luis Obispo Police Department and University Police Department officials say the real issue deals with the student’s safety.

“SLOPD was just doing its job,” Talukder said. “They got a lot of calls so they had to respond.”

Computer engineering senior Rashed Talukder was ticketed on campus May 19 for driving a modified Power Wheels vehicle in the bike lane.

Taluker said he had no ill intent for his revamped Power Wheels.

Standing at about three feet above the ground, Talukder modified the plastic vehicle to include a solid frame, headlights and taillights, a horn, iPod connection and speakers, 500-watt motor, rubber wheels and an ignition.

In addition to creating an autonomous vehicle for his senior project — which will implement safety sensors for children’s vehicles and potentially full-sized cars — the car is a cheap and green way of getting to school.

“I made this thing for really two reasons. It costs me like 10 cents each day that I drive it,” Talukder said. “And there’s no maintenance. I don’t have to drive my car around, it’s green, I can park it wherever really, it’s really convenient for me, especially with my chronic asthma,” Talukder said.

Another reason Talukder enjoys riding in the car is the response he gets from the campus community.

“It puts smiles on people’s faces. It literally does,” Talukder said. “I go around and I think that’s one of the best things — one of the highs in life where you can do something for someone and not really expect something back in return.”

Before Tuesday’s incident, Talukder was pulled over twice — once by the San Luis Obispo Police Department and once by the California Highway Patrol — and was warned by University Police. He said he was advised to stay on the sidewalk, instead of in the bike lane when driving the vehicle.

“They couldn’t find anything at the time, law and restriction wise, to keep me from driving around, so they said I should stay on the sidewalk and possibly wear a helmet,” he said about the initial pull-over by the San Luis Obispo Police.

The day he was ticketed, Talukder wandered from the sidewalk to the bike lane for the duration of a block because he couldn’t find a disability ramp to get on the curb.

“If you were completely immobilized just with a man-powered wheelchair, you’d have to roll back down the hill or go back down the hill or go a block over and all the way around,” Talukder said. “That’s completely unacceptable in my opinion.”

Political science senior Tai Dang said the sidewalk isn’t the best place for a motor-powered vehicle to be.

“He shouldn’t be on the sidewalk, that’s for pedestrians,” Dang said. “I have the same problem with skateboarders, but at least (Talukder) has brakes.”

Talukder had been using the vehicle — weather permitting — for the past four months on his three-and-a-half mile journey from his home to Cal Poly’s campus. At the advice of University Police Department’s Associate Director Cindy Campbell, Talukder chained the Power Wheels car to a bike rack on campus.

One student, agriculture systems sophomore Stephen Abertolle, said he’d seen Talukder outside Kennedy Library and he was never disrupting the peace.

“He was just cruising,” Abertolle said. “It’s kind of messed up that he got a ticket. He can’t go that fast.”

“I think it’s ridiculous he got a ticket for it,” said electrical engineering senior Myles Still. “I mean, it’s a Power Wheels car.”

Talukder wouldn’t say whether he plans to fight the ticket, but he researched vehicle codes before building the car to try to protect himself from receiving one.

“I tried to be civil about it, to be safe about it,” Talukder said. “When they say that it’s for my own safety, I find that a little hard to swallow … I told them that I ordered a flag for it and I was going to put it on as soon as it came in.”

However the flag is not needed anymore.

Talukder said that the police told him that his car would be impounded if he drives it again. Although he doesn’t intend to ride his Power Wheels again on campus, the image of possible impoundment is comical to Talukder.

“I actually want to see the tow truck driver as he tows it away,” Talukder said, laughing. “I think it’d be the funniest thing in the world, but at the same time not funny because I don’t want it impounded.”

Watton verified the possibility of impoundments.

“If he drives it in traffic, that’s probably exactly the case (that the car will be impounded),” Watton said. “On campus, as long as he stays on the sidewalk, we’re not going to bother him, as long as he’s not blocking the sidewalk or anything like that.”

Lt. Tom DePriest of the San Luis Obispo Police Department also said impoundment was a possibility.

“You can’t modify and drive vehicles on  the road that you can’t register,” DePriest said. He said that some motor-powered bicycles and scooters are registerable, but that plastic, off-the-shelf toys aren’t — even with a motor. 

Watton said he has never seen Power Wheels being driven on campus before, but has seen other vehicles that are sometimes hard to regulate, like power scooters and motor bicycles.

“There are so many of them out there now,” Watton said. “The laws are real strange in that you have to really look closely to see how it fits and what it fits.”

Updated at 9:03 a.m. on May 26, 2009 with new information from SLOPD.