Pepper is currently touring with fellow rockers 311 and The Offspring on The Unity Tour 2010. The Mid-State Fair marks the 16th of 25 scheduled dates across the United States. This is the third time Pepper has played with close friends 311. Courtesy photo.

Hawaiian-bred, reggae-rock trio Pepper will be playing at the California Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles Friday. The band is on tour with alternative rock group 311 and punk rock band The Offspring as a part of The Unity Tour 2010.

The band will play on the Grandstand as a special guest. This marks the third time Pepper has toured with 311.

The Unity Tour package was booked for the Mid-State Fair because there is “clearly an audience for great rock bands like 311 and Pepper. Unlike Aerosmith (who is also playing at the Mid-State Fair), they have a harder-edged, but still solid rock-n-roll sound,” concert promoter Ron Pateras of Jam Productions said.

Jam Productions, an independent concert and special events producer which operates in Chicago, was chosen to book the Mid-State Fair acts.

“We needed to book a diverse mix of genres. It’s a state-run fair so we needed to address the area’s tastes,” Pateras said.

Pateras said 311 and Pepper fit the mold of the laid-back rock-n-roll many people of the Central Coast admire.

“We didn’t have other bands that fit that style,” Pateras said.

Pepper, hailing from The Big Island of Hawaii, has been working on new material which is being released from their own label, LAW Records.  The label, which the band started in 2007, also manages popular Santa Barbara-based band Iration, who also hails from Hawaii. The band hopes to finish up building a studio for all of the bands to use once Pepper is done taking time off from touring. The label also wants to tour Hawaii in mid-December with Pepper as the headliner.

Pepper started playing its first shows in Santa Barbara while hanging out in Isla Vista with friends who lived there.

Now, whenever the members are in the area, they “hang out with their peeps.” Their good friends include guys from the reggae-rock bands Rebelution, Iration and the Mad Caddies, Williams said.

In addition to other past shows on the Central Coast, Pepper also played at the end of Week of Welcome in September 2008.

Wine and viticulture junior and fan Marissa Monarrez attended the show.

“People were crowd-surfing. It was pretty intense. It was packed, it was super hot and people were really into it so they were standing up and moshing,” Monarrez said. “Pepper was so full of energy. They had good crowd interaction.”

The fans give Pepper its constant on-stage energy, Pepper drummer, Yesod Williams, said.

“If it wasn’t for them giving us the energy, we wouldn’t have that energy. It’s an exchange,” Williams said.

Perhaps the energy of the Cal Poly audience was due to the popularity of reggae-infused bands.

Monarrez said the popularity of this genre with Cal Poly students is a part of the Californian coastal lifestyle.

“I think being close to the beach and that kind of scene helps a lot. It’s so laidback,” Monarrez said.

Fruit science sophomore Ewen Hungerford describes Pepper’s sound as similar to ska-punk-reggae band Sublime.

“They’re like non-roots reggae-rock,” Hungerford said. “It’s not true reggae, or roots reggae, but they do incorporate it into their music.”

Once in Paso Robles, the tour will wind down after a month-long run that took the bands through the states. The tour kicked off in Fairbanks, Alaska on June 18 and will come to an end on the West Coast.

“It’s been great. It’s a good way to get our feet wet because we haven’t toured in eight or nine months,” Williams said. Pepper plans on embarking on a longer tour later this year.

Even with all the traveling, the three bands find time to fire up their barbecues, light fireworks and hang out after a show before they visit a new city. Then they do the same thing all over again, Williams said.

Pepper is promoting two new singles just recently released on iTunes, called “Wake Up” and “Mirror.” The two songs are available in a one-package deal for 99 cents. The band is planning on releasing more songs in a month or so, Williams said.

Pepper will also release a new full-length album sometime next year, Williams said. This will mark a follow-up to 2008’s “Pink Crustaceans and Good Vibrations.”

“Our sound is more unified. It’s more collaborative,” Williams said. “There’s a better vibe all around.”

Besides the laidback grooves of Pepper, Mid-State Fair attendees can also expect performances by pop singer Justin Bieber, comedian and ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, alternative rock band Weezer, country artists Kenny Loggins, Keith Urban and Toby Keith, rocker Sammy Hagar, Aerosmith and more.

The Mid-State Fair ends Aug. 1. Tickets for the concert range from $25 to $70. The show begins at 7:30 p.m.

Stock image

Taking Cal Poly’s motto in a new direction, the campus Open House Committee is hosting a fundraiser, Learn By Dancing.

Learn By Dancing will showcase three different dance styles in a period of three hours, Open House coordinator and animal science freshman Lauren Szabo said.

“If you’re sitting in your dorm room, get up and bring a bill,” Szabo said.

The event initially began as a dance-off, campus and community director and biochemistry junior Lindsay Schulz said. The Open House Committee worked with Cal Poly’s Hip-Hop Congress, Country Line Dance Club and West Coast Swing Club for the dance lessons.

The first lesson will be taught by the Hip-Hop Congress, which teaches informal workshops on break dancing, disc jockeying, “MCing” and graffiti art, industrial engineering senior Eric Walker said. For Learn By Dancing, the Hip-Hop Congress will be teaching the basics of break dancing.

“(Learn By Dancing) is for beginners, but by the end you’ll know how to get down,” Walker said.

The Country Line Dance Club will teach the second lesson. The club was created to teach line dancing to interested students and has workshops every Friday, outside events co-chair and junior child development major Kristina Blackwood said.

“(At Learn By Dancing) we will be teaching the Honky Tonky by Trace Adkins, Men in Black and the Tush Push,” Blackwood said.

The West Coast Swing Club will teach the last lesson. West Coast Swing is a dance that originated from the Lindy Hop. The dance is characterized by its energy and unique bounce.

Tim Brown, a Cal Poly alumnus, will be the DJ.

Aside from dancing, information will be available about each club, as well as on how to become a Week of Welcome leader and a volunteer for Open House.

“We hope students just have fun,” Szabo said.

Learn By Dancing will begin at 7 p.m. on Friday Feb. 5. Presale tickets are available for $5 on Thursday outside Chumash Auditorium. Tickets will also be available at the door. All ticket proceeds go toward Open House and WOW.

Graphic by Kate McIntyre

Due to recent concerns that this past Week of Welcome (WOW) program was associated with an increase in alcohol consumption, citations and arrests, Vice President of Student Affairs Cornel Morton, who has been at Cal Poly for seven years, said the week before school this year was the worst in terms of alcohol use that he has seen. Morton is part of a committee recently formed to propose changes to WOW and the other orientation programs, some of which include a yearlong message campaign about the effects of alcohol abuse, notifying parents of underage drinking, keeping most returning students from moving on-campus during WOW and shortening WOW to three and a half days.

Morton wants to clarify that WOW is not responsible for the incidents that occurred during the week before school. In fact, WOW educates participants about alcohol abuse, encourages responsible community involvement and promotes drug-free activities, he said.

“WOW is not a bastion for alcohol abuse.”

Director of Student Life & Leadership Ken Barclay agreed, saying that WOW has a community service component, awareness programs and team building that mean a high retention rate of students returning for sophomore year.

“They also provide students with a big support group,” he said. “Many times it lasts throughout their years at Cal Poly.”

He added that they evaluate WOW and the other orientation programs annually, so having to make changes is not new.

Parental notification is another strategy being considered, not only during WOW but for the entire year, Morton said. It is permissible to notify parents when their underage student receives an alcohol violation under the 1998 Higher Education Act. Students will be told that their parents are being mailed a letter. The letter is not a judicial, simply a note of concern, Morton said.

Business junior Greg Hinchman said students should deal with legal consequences of alcohol and drug use on their own.

“Most of these kids are 18, so they (the school) should leave it up to the kid to tell their parent, because they’ll probably have to anyway,” he said.

This year, freshmen were on-campus 11 days before classes began. Barclay said they’re looking at how to best deliver the orientation programs next year without having so much time between move-in day and the start of classes.

“I think it’s a long time to be up here before classes begin; I think it’s problematic,” he said.

The three summer orientation programs, Student Orientation, Advising and Registration (SOAR), Fall Launch and WOW will be scheduled closer together and all three will address alcohol and abuse.

This September saw the first Fall Launch, a program hosted by University Housing Saturday to Monday to establish a community dynamic, educate students about Cal Poly’s Learning Objectives and on-campus resources and connect students and faculty.

Ninety-eight percent of the freshman class (3,815 students) participated in Fall Launch Class of 2013. Of those, 1,263 took a survey after the program concluded. The results were positive, Associate Director of Housing Carol Schaffer said. The survey said that an overwhelming majority of participants were more familiar with the campus and felt connected to Cal Poly (95 percent) and met people they felt comfortable hanging out with (96 percent) and understood community expectations of making choices that are mature, responsible and respectful (97 percent).

The program was successful in helping students learn community standards and offering drug-free activities that set the standard for the year. It also helped students establish a support structure, Schaffer said.

“The ability to meet with students and have their attention for those first days to build community roommate to roommate, floor to floor and building to building, what I saw by Sunday afternoon was impressive,” she said.

The decrease in community standards violations from 2008 to 2009 indicated a 25 percent decrease; there was also an 83 percent decrease in housing license revocations.

In addition, this year returning students were allowed to move into on-campus housing a week before the start of school, but Morton said that University Housing is considering letting only certain students like orientation leaders, athletes, student volunteers and employees move in that early next year.

WOW already addresses alcohol abuse and consequences, but Andrene Kaiwi-Lenting, assistant director of Student Life & Leadership, said the program is making changes for next fall, including shortening the program from the usual five days to three and a half days next fall.

“WOW is resolving what it can … You will see significant changes, but it won’t be foolproof,” she said.

Psychology sophomore Geneva Licht said WOW shouldn’t be associated with alcohol consumption. It’s normal for freshmen to want to go out when they get to college; people off campus are facilitating the issue of alcohol consumption with a ‘WOWies are welcome’ attitude. The program tries to counteract the issue by keeping students late at night, but it can’t do much more, she said.

“I think the WOW program does all it can,” she said.

Kinesiology junior Chad Crockett added that returning students come back early because they know it’s a big party time, but there isn’t a feasible way to prevent that.

“It’s a large contribution, but it’s out of anybody’s hands, including WOW,” he said.

Kaiwi-Lenting said that WOW already offers freshmen opportunities to have drug-free fun with activities on-campus and in the local community from early in the morning to late at night, but it can’t and won’t babysit participants, she said.

“I don’t think it’s WOW’s responsibility to keep people off the streets, but it is to give them options,” Kaiwi-Lenting said.

Recreation, parks and tourism administration junior and 2009 WOW leader Ryan Swearingen, said he talked about alcohol with his WOWies and advised them not to drink, but knows that students will choose to drink anyway.

“Knowing that some students will still choose to drink alcohol, no matter how much you encourage otherwise, I advised my WOWies that above all, they need to be responsible,” he said. “They need to think about how their choices can affect them, and how they can affect other people as well.”

Swearingen does not like the idea of shortening WOW to three and a half days. Some of the main purposes of WOW are to meet new people, establish friendships and connections, become familiar with the campus and community and become aware of issues students face everyday as a college community. All of these things are critical to student success, he said.

“Shortening WOW in order to limit the opportunities for freshmen to drink/party/get into trouble is a great idea at first glance,” he said. “But before we jump into this, look at other schools. These kinds of problems happen everywhere, whether it is during the weekends before school starts or during the first weeks of classes. Before we decide to shorten WOW, we need to remember how much good WOW does, and look at how shortening WOW could influence that.”

The committee includes representatives from Student Affairs, University Housing, Student Life and Leadership, Campus Dining, University Police Department, San Luis Obispo Police Department and the Health Center. They are meeting weekly with hopes of presenting a plan to President Warren Baker and Provost Robert Koob early November.

Most students want to start a new school year on a positive note, but that wasn’t the case for some students who attended parties during the Week of Welcome, Cal Poly’s orientation program.

The University Police Department (UPD) gave 42 citations and arrested 43 people between move-in day Sept. 12 and Sept. 21. Stock Photo

UPD Chief Bill Watton said almost all of the arrests and citations were for alcohol-related incidences.

Watton also said that UPD increased patrols for the Week of Welcome and the first few weeks of school.

The San Luis Obispo Police Department also issued more than 80 citations from Sept. 10 to Sept. 21, including 49 citations for open containers, 16 for noise violations and 12 for urinating in public. The San Luis Obispo Police Department also arrested more than 25 people for a variety of offenses, including public intoxication, driving under the influence, one case of driving under the influence that resulted in an injury, battery and resisting arrest.

There were also two Cal Poly students arrested for trespassing early Sunday and Monday mornings, according to a press release from the San Luis Obispo Police Department. Both students did not know where they were; the disorientation was the result of alcohol intoxication.

San Luis Obispo police Capt. Ian Parkenson said, despite the tone of the university that the amount of patrolling was about the same as in previous years. He added that while this year’s activity was about the same as in past years it began earlier.

“We noticed problems starting on Saturday this year after the end of the football game,” he said.

The San Luis Obispo Police Department and UPD did not have the total number of arrests and citations for the Week of Welcome last year.
Area hospitals saw an increase in traffic during Week of Welcome festivities. Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center spokesperson Ron Yukelson said that the hospital had seen a “sharp spike” in alcohol-related incidents since Week of Welcome began. It treated one individual who had a blood alcohol content of .38, extremely close to the .39 to .45 percent of recently deceased Cal Poly student Carson Starkey.

Yukelson said the hospital wants to combat the fear and anxiety some students might feel about seeking medical help for friends or loved ones. “It’s very important to bring in friends and loved ones who are severely intoxicated—don’t let them sleep or put them to bed—bring them in,” he said.

Furthermore, Yukelson stressed the hospital’s ‘safe zone’ policy, which protects underage drinkers from police intervention.

“We’re a safe zone, so you don’t need to worry about us calling your parents or the police,” he said.

The office of university president Warren Baker sent a campus-wide e-mail Wednesday informing students of acceptable partying practices, encouraging them to keep gatherings under control by calling campus police if they see illegal behavior.

The e-mail urged students to make “wise and responsible choices” including checking IDs at the door of parties to ensure no underage individuals are drinking alcohol.

Student Affairs also sent out an e-mail on Friday about a student who was kicked out of his dorm just a few hours after moving in when he was caught smoking marijuana.

The total number of residents evicted from the dorms was not provided by the time of publication.

For local students celebrating one final week of summer vacation with alcohol-filled events, police want to send the message that drunken behavior won’t be tolerated. Students should expect an increased police presence and DUI checkpoints both on-campus and around town for the next few weeks.

“Since Saturday, we’re up to 20 arrests for DUI and Drunk in Public,” said University Police Department Chief Bill Watton. “Most issues are with continuing students partying the week before school starts, although a few incidents involve freshmen.” Watton added that his department would work with San Luis Obispo Police Department to crack down on alcohol-related incidents by increasing police department throughout town.

While campus and local police step up patrols, area hospitals area also seeing an increase in traffic  during Cal Poly’s Week of Welcome (WOW)festivities. Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center spokesperson Ron Yukelson said that the hospital had seen a “sharp spike” in alcohol-related incidents since WOW began, even treating one individual who had a blood alcohol content of .38.

Yukelson said the hospital wants to combat the fear and anxiety some students might feel about seeking medical help for friends or loved ones. “It’s very important to bring in friends and loved ones who are severely intoxicated—don’t let them sleep or put them to bed—bring them in,” he said.

Furthermore, Yukelson stressed the hospital’s ‘safe zone’ policy, which protects underage drinkers from police intervention.

“We’re a safe zone, so you don’t need to worry about us calling your parents or the police,” he said.

The office of university president Warren Baker sent a campus-wide email Wednesday informing students of acceptable partying practices, encouraging them to keep gatherings under control by calling campus police if they see illegal behavior.

The e-mail urged students to make “wise and responsible choices” including checking IDs at the door of parties to ensure no underage individuals are drinking alcohol.

Now that new students have moved into San Luis Obispo, there’s a pitfall for them to avoid — looking like a tourist. While the older tourist is easy to spot with the fanny pack, hula shirt and visor, some behaviors are less black and white. This list explains some activities that new students won’t want to be caught doing to avoid the dreaded tourist appellation.

Mom, Dad, look the Apple store is just ahead! Photo by Tim Miller

Taking pictures in bubble gum alley.

Quite frankly this local oddity is gross and it’s best to avoid it. If being surrounded by that much commingled community waste is your kind of thing, a trip to the public pool would be more worthwhile ­— and less touristy ­— than visiting this eyesore.

Going into both bathrooms at Madonna Inn

There is a waterfall in the guys bathroom and the women’s bathroom does have holographic wallpaper and they are both worth seeing, just make sure you only do it once. You will be distracted enough by the giant dolls on swings and practically blinded by the overwhelming amount of pink.

Driving around Taco Bell five times, looking for the Drive-Thru

The city of San Luis Obispo outlawed drive-thrus nearly 30 years ago. While it might be inconvenient for some, it can make a normal jaunt to get a quesadilla much more interesting when someone doesn’t remember they can’t just pull up to the window.

Taking a wrong turn on a one-way street

The two main streets in downtown San Luis Obispo only go one way. It might seem silly to mention but you’d be surprised how many people turn the wrong way.

Cal Poly Downtown

This store, which specializes in ‘Cal Poly Mom’ and ‘Dad” T-shirts, is an easy spot to find tourists.

Cal Poly ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ apparel

In the same vein, parents walking around with ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ on their sweatshirt almost certainly are tourists.

Disgrunteled-looking teenager with parents

Even if their parents are wearing embarrassing sweatshirts, new freshmen should know it doesn’t look cool to walk five feet in front, looking angry. Instead of looking embarassed, they should be thankful they get to eat off campus and then try to convince their parents they need to listen to Mozart on a brand new streo system in order to properly prepare for midterms.

Camping out on highway one looking for zebra

Although it might seem super touristy, taking a trip to Hearst Castle is acutally quite an experience. The obnoxious tourists are the ones with the camera on the side of Highway 1 looking for zebra on the castle property. A better option would be to spot them on the bus on the way to the castle.

Going to the Rock in Morro Bay and not getting out of your car.

Even though it’s windy, the drive to Morro Bay wouldn’t be worth it without actually getting out of the car. Tourists sometimes make this mistake and miss the beauty of the rock up close as well as the great waves.