Photo by - Danny Holland Sue Carr-Hovotny from Breckenridge screams at the Anti-War Auraria rally on the Lawrence Street Mall near the flagpole Jan. 27. Carr-Hovonty believes there are other alternatives than going to war with Iraq.

On Jan. 27, at 10 a.m., an anti-war rally was held at the flagpole on Auraria campus, and was sponsored by Anti-war Auraria, a coalition of 17 different student organizations from all three Auraria schools.

Anti-war Auraria had nine different students speak at the rally and said its mission was to set and achieve attainable goals to help prevent a war with Iraq.

Metro student and sponsor of the rally, Erin Durban, said that the main focus of the rally was to educate and inform students about how their coalition feels about war.

“I come from a human rights perspective,” Durban said. “I think the most powerful movements right now are grass roots movements, connecting communities to other communities around the world.”Durban said she does not feel war is the right answer, and she doesn’t like that the government is proposing war in the name of self-defense.

“I really think that if there were a way to sit down and get people to talk to each other, then that would be the most effective way to start coming up with real solutions,” Durban said.Kate Goodspeed, English teacher at Emily

Griffith Opportunity School, joined anti-war protesters and said that she was one of the people who were going to be arrested that day.“I’m appalled by our government’s acts of aggression and I have a lot of compassion towards Iraqi people,” Goodspeed said.Goodspeed was a part of a gorilla theater and played the part of Dick Cheney. “I’m willing to put my body on the line to stop the war,” Goodspeed said.

Community College of Denver student Melvin Burris is in the military and said he was just observing the rally to see why the majority of people are angry about the war. He also said that he has been notified to be on alert for possible duty in Iraq, and is just waiting to hear when he might go.During the rally many protesters held signs that said “Peace is Patriotic” and “Drop Bush not Bombs.”

Zoe Williams, Metro student, spoke at the rally, leading the crowd in a chant that said, “I say money forjobs, not war.”She also said, “We’re going to make it clear that we are stronger than them.”Metro student Zach Ross had a different view andsaid, “I feel like people who went into the war are doing their job, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.” He said that the United States has some extremely good forces and he is undecided on whether the United States should go to war.Chief Justice for the Student Government Assembly Felicia Woodson was one of the speakers at the rallyand she said that she believes in giving peace a chance.“Bullying countries is not the way to go,” Woodsonsaid.

“Showing muscle is not the way to go.” She suggested that the U.S. government try to find other avenues, such as a peace talk.Woodson said that the United States should look atother ways of sustaining resources besides oil. “Environmentalists here in America have a full understanding besides oil that will help sustain America’s way of life besides oil,” Woodson said.

“Why Bush and others are not taking advantage of that, I don’t know.”The last rally Anti-war Auraria held was on Nov. 4, 2002, and was led by a campus-wide walkout, encouraging students to make a statement against the war, a press release from Anti-war Auraria said.Durban said Anti-war Auraria plans to build a jail cell where certain students will be detained for 24 hours to make  a statement regarding the effect foreign students have had to undergo due to homeland security. She said the jail cell is an education and fundraising tool.

Photo by - Danny Holland Demonstrators gather in the Lawrence Street Mall Jan. 27 during the Anti-War Peace Rally organized by Anti-War Auraria. The rally offered protestors, student speakers and a peace choir followed with an optional civil disobedience march into downtown.

Photo by - Will Moore An unidentified woman is arrested by Denver Police officer Andrew Ramirez, center, and a Denver County Sherriff’s Deputy during the anti-war protest in downtown. The woman was one of 20 protesters arrested for blocking the doors of Halliburton Co., 410 17th St., one of the world's largest providers of oil field services.

\ Photo by - Will Moore In an act of civil disobidience, Paula Preston sits in meditation blocking the south entrance of a Denver office tower that houses civil defense contractor’s offices as well as the Halliburton Co., whose former CEO is now Vice President Dick Cheney.

Photo by - Danny Holland Metro freshman Zoe Williams arouses an estimated crowd of 300 demonstrators by the flagpole Jan. 27 before the march to the downtown area.

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As the new semester starts, students are again faced with the high cost of textbooks, and some are seeking alternatives to the campus bookstore. Metro is not the only school where book prices have risen. The inflation of books has been going on for a long time at many colleges and universities.Auraria student Steve Taylor has been attending college off and on for 15 years and believes the book prices will continue to rise.

Photo by - Joshua Lawton University of Colorado at Denver student Apolo Sevilla looks for books for a finance class at Big Dog Textbooks at 1331 15th St. in downtown Denver. Sevilla said, "The bookstore on campus needs to buy more used books." It was his first visit to the store.

“If the school is going to charge this outrageous amount of money for books, then I will just find another option,” he said.This semester, his other option was going to www.half.com, where he said most books can be purchased at half the shelf price. Taylor said all of the books he ordered online arrived within five days.

“The only pain is finding the book identification numbers,” he said. “But I am certainly able to put up with that rather than emptying my wallet for the school.”The school is not the one setting the prices, however, according to the Auraria Book Center. When textbook prices go up, it is the publishers who are raising the prices. They sell books at a set cost and also establish the selling price for the bookstore to follow. The soaring cost of books leaves students with the choice of tightening their budget or searching elsewhere for more reasonable prices.Other websites such as Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and ecampus.com give great discounts for new and used textbooks, but the delivery can take up to 10 days. 

Those who can wait for the delivery are likely to save $5 to $10 per book. The other option is to buy used books, which can save a decent amount of money, given that the buyer does not mind the previous owner’s doodles and highlights.Most students end up buying their books on campus simply because it is moreconvenient and easy to do.“It’s highway robbery,” said Brandon Brown, a senior at Metro.

“You pay this incredible amount of money for books, and then get hardly anything back for them at the end of the semester.”Brown was among a number of students who purchased books from an off-campus bookstore.

“I went to Big Dog Textbooks,” he said. “It’s a cheaper price per book, there’s no lines, and overall it’s just a better experience.”Big Dog Textbooks, located at 1331 15th St., is an independently-owned company that offers lower prices and more flexible hours than most bookstores.

Although they have only been open for six months, the word is already getting around about this lower-cost alternative. Stephanie Duncan, co-owner of Big Dog, said her business strongly believes in good, old-fashioned customer service. Duncan, who has been working at off-campus bookstores for seven years, said Big Dog buys its books from students and book wholesale companies and sells them for cheap.“Students have brought me their receipts from the campus bookstore and I have seen as much as a $60 difference per book when comparing to our prices,” Duncan said.Big Dog does not guarantee the books you need to be in stock but can order and hold books if necessary. That news can be quite a relief for students, especially for those who are faced  with buying books for $200 each.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Ryan Siemer, a recent graduate of Regis University. “It’s getting to the point where the cost of books will eventually match the cost of tuition.”Siemer said that while he attended the University of Colorado at Denver for a semester, one of his classes required the students to buy a book that the professor authored himself.“It’s not right. What if professors operated like doctors do with drug companies,” he said. 

“Drug companies give doctors special incentives to prescribe their drugs, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see publishers doing the same to professors.”It is not just prices that students are complaining about, but rather how the entire system is organized.  Some question why new editions for books are made almost every year when the content remains the same. The new editions render the older editions unsellable at the end of the semester.“It’s exactly the same, they just switch a few words around so that we are forced to buy the new edition,” Siemer said.  “What they are doing should be illegal.”

At most colleges all required course books are chosen by the professors. Since they are the ones teaching the course, it is assumed that they know what titles best explain the material for the classes. But some students believe that the simple business of selling textbooks has turned into a lucrative and deceiving practice that takes pride in playing the fool.
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Metro is taking steps to becoming a more traditional college by having its first Homecoming in 10 years, celebrating with a week of activities aimed at unifying students, staff and alumni.In order to find a better way to bring together the many diverse communities that make up the unique Metro family, a committee was formed and included many of Metro’s different departments and organizations.

“What we decided as a college was we don’t do a very good job of tying together faculty, staff, students and alumni in any one event that bring people together,” said Kristin Magill, assistant director for alumni programs and services.  “In fact, most students don’t even know that there is an alumni association.”Student unfamiliarity with campus offices and activities is likely the result of Metro being a modern commuter campus, where a majority of the students have the difficult task of balancing families and jobs along with their academic workload.

“The feedback that we got from extensive research with outside consultants, and even internally, is that there is a sense of many of our students wanting to find community,” said Interim Assistant Dean of Student Life Joanna Duenas.  “I think what we have to do is offer a plethora of opportunities to engage with community.

This is a start.  Research tells us that students who are engaged, who are connected, are more likely to be successful and to graduate,” she said.It is important to build on the traditions that Metro already has and to create new traditions, Magill said.  So the committee decided to set the Homecoming activities around Metro’s NCAA Division II Basketball champions.

“Each year [the Roadrunners] play our cross-town rival, Regis University, and it’s a big game,” Magill said.  “But, unfortunately, because we are a commuter campus, we don’t pack the stands.  We have a National Championship team and we can pack the event center,” Magill said.  “We said, ‘Well, a lot of it is because people don’t know we have a basketball team. 

Alumni don’t know they can go to games.  So let’s let people know.’  We decided to make that our focal event.”The planning for Homecoming started last fall after Metro was granted its own independent governing board by Gov. Bill Owens.“It was just so crazy a time that we all stepped back and said ‘well, how can we sort of rethink, as a committee, how to celebrate not only our local, but our national recognitions that are growing, as we become a mature and established institution here in the state,’” Duenas said.

“We looked at the calendar, and Homecoming is traditionally tied into an athletic event, and because we have the

national champions tied it into that and hence the Hoops & Hearts around the Valentine theme,” she said.During the series of games, there will be a number of activities. The school will be introducing a new fight song, and recognizing the 50,000th graduate of Metro, a person who graduated just this last year, Duenas said.“It’s not as comprehensive as some institution’s Homecoming weeks,” Duenas said. 

“But, you know, they’ve got longer traditions, a lot more money, and this was an opportunity as a campus for us to get together and find a way again to celebrate our successes locally, nationally, as well as the fact that our enrollment numbers are increasing.“This is an opportunity for us to celebrate as a community, which we don’t get a lot of opportunity to do other than graduation.  And with the nature of our commuter campus, we don’t get together as a community en mass to celebrate and to just have fun,” Duenas said.
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Photo by - Joshua Lawton Metro student Justin Carter, left, and Elin Otter a, a Metro soccer player, work in the new computer lab e.den in Tivoli room 243. The new lab, with 28 stations and six laptop ports, opened for the spring semester to students with a current Metro student I.D.

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Important dates

The last day to drop classes with a 50 percent refund is Feb. 5  at 11 p.m.The last day to withdraw from a class without a faculty signature is Feb. 17.The last day to withdraw from a class with faculty signature for spring 2003 is March 31, not March 25, which is during spring break.  

Graduation Application deadline nears

Students planning to graduate in spring 2003 must submit an Application for Graduation by Jan. 31 in the Office of the Registrar, Central Classroom 105. The card is available in the Registrar’s office and identifies a student’s intention to graduate in spring 2003. The card must have the correct and complete spelling of the name for the diploma, the major/minor, concentrations and proper degree catalog.  

The Metropolitan needs reporters, copy editors

The Metropolitan is looking for a few good writers and editors to help put our paper together. The paper needs news and features writers. You might even get paid a little for your effort if you work for The Metropolitan weekly. If you have taken Beginning Reporting or have what you consider good writing skills, stop by Tivoli 313 and e-mail Jenni Grubbs at grubbs@mscd.edu.

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A thief may turn to teaching after stealing projector

An AHEC employee reported a projector stolen from the King Center Jan. 24. Stolen: Proxima Desktop Video Projector: $6,000. Police have no leads or suspects at this time.TOTAL LOSS: $6,000.  

Keep a closer eye on your bag or you’ll be making collect calls

A Metro student reported his cell phone stolen from his book bag between 10 a.m and 10:10 a.m. Jan. 23. Stolen: Nokia Cell Phone: $50. Police have no suspects or leads at this time.TOTAL LOSS: $50.   

No, I’m not cold, are you?

A space heater was reported stolen from the Administration building at 9 a.m. Jan. 23.Stolen: Holmes Space Heater: $19.99.TOTAL LOSS: $19.99  

Mr. Fixit could be Mr. Suspect

A University of Colorado at Denver employee reported various tools missing from the King Center Jan. 22. Stolen: Blue Plastic Tool Box $15, Misc. Tools $195, Black & Decker Mini Drill $30. The Police have no suspects or leads at this time.TOTAL LOSS: $240.  

If you hit, please  don’t run

A 2002 Honda Accord was damaged from a hit and run. The front left side was slightly damaged while parked on Walnut Street at 5 p.m. Jan. 23. A 1990 Jeep Laredo was also damaged by a hit and run with slight damage to the front left corner. The Jeep Laredo was parked in the Auraria parking lot and occured at 8:35 p.m. Jan.22. Both cars’ damage is under $1,000.  

Multiple arrests on campus

Farest Logan Jr., no campus affiliation, was arrested for trespassing and petty theft at 10:34 a.m. Jan. 21.

Ramon Cardenas Jr., no campus affiliation, was arrested for outstanding warrants at 4:27 p.m. Jan. 21.

Willard Tabbee, no campus affiliation, was arrested for outstanding warrants at 2:11 a.m. Jan. 25.

-Andrea Terrones  
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Photo by - Shannon Davidson A Denver Firefighter enters part of the wreckage on the 3400 block of West Moncrieff Place in northwest Denver Jan. 24 after a midair collision involving two small airplanes.

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