The Crier
Thursday, January 15, 2009	Issue 14	Spring	2009
What’s Happening in Student Government?
By Anthony Popkin
Each week your Student Association Government Assembly (SAGA) meets to discuss issues and concerns that affect students, collegewide. You may be asking, what is SAGA? As any other governing body, it is comprised of several different levels of government in order to keep a form of checks and balances. It consists of the Executive Board, the Student Senate, and the House of Representatives, each of w’hich plays a significant role in allowing communication between students, staff, faculty, and administration.
Your SAGA has not met as of yet due to today’s Campus Life Fair, but below are some areas that members of SAGA have worked on during the break and need your feedback and help.
Student Senate Scholarship Program
Your Student Senate has been working hard on creating the “Make Change” Scholarship Program. To fund this scholarship, the Student Senate has worked with Amy Gush, Director of Fundraising in Institutional Advancement and ServU Credit Union.
Around the campus you will likely see small piggy banks, which are made of recycled materials, with the purpose of collecting donations to go towards funding this scholarship. The Student Senate needs your help and you can donate by dropping change into one of these banks. If you would like to help, you can stop by the Student Life Office or the Student Senate Office and get your own piggy bank which you can fill and bring back.
For more information please see Nancy Agan in Student Life or Julie Gorman in the Student Senate office.
Regalia
There has been discussion regarding possible changes to the regalia that students wear during the commencement ceremony. SAGA is conducting a survey during the Campus Life Fair to see which regalia students prefer. If you are unable to attend the Campus Life Fair and would like to give your feedback on the regalia you prefer, please see Woody Knowles in Student Life or Anthony Popkin in the Executive Board.
Above: The traditional regalia
Left: The regalia new options are cither black or red with the Coming Community College logo on it.
Colored pictures available on
MyCCC
From the Editor:
This week marks the first week of my last semester here at CCC, which also means my last semester of weekly meetings, pizza that I don’t personally have to pay for, slaving over a computer doing layout, student leadership meetings, writing, reading, photographing, and editing. The end is near. But we aren’t quite there yet.
At the start of each semester I put this letter into The Crier and I try my best to explain what we do and what we plan to accomplish in the semester ahead. For those of you who have never picked up a copy of The Crier, we are the student newspaper. We are currently comprised of a staff of five dedicated Executive Board members and a handful of other students that contribute to the paper with articles, photographs, or poetry. Anyone can make contributions to The Crier. We meet on Tuesdays at 12:40 in our office in the lower level of the Commons Building, and if anyone is interested in attending a meeting you can just stop by, but you do not have to attend a meeting to make contributions to The Crier. We are going to be focusing heavily on recruitment this semester since four out of the five members of the Executive Board will be graduating in May, so if you are interested in getting involved with The Crier, now is a great time!
improving the newspaper this semester. We would like to implement a classified ad section into the paper, and if you are interested in placing an ad for something to sell, something you wish to buy, somewhere to live, someone to live with, or a service you are willing to provide, you can email us the information to criernewspaper(o)yahoo. com, and we will place the ad for you at the cost of $1. We will also accept advertising from other clubs or departments on campus as well as local businesses, and information about this type of advertising can be acquired by contacting us by email as well. We also want to implement an advice column, so be on the lookout for that in coming weeks. Finally, in keeping up with the college’s ideal of sustainability, we will be printing fewer paper copies of The Crier each week, but you can still catch us online when you log onto WebCT. This online version will also feature colored photographs.
As always, we welcome any suggestions or feedback from students, faculty, and staff. Feel free to contact any member of The Crier at any point during the semester. We appreciate your readership and feedback.
Lindsay Woodruff Editor-in-C.hief
In addition to recruitment, we also want to focus on
Thursday, January 15, 2009
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ULTIMATE
ROAD TRIP
YOU CAN SUCCEED INCOLtEGE!
The Ultimate Road Trip™: Campus2Career
Program can show you how,....
Come to one of the follow ing presentations to learn more about:
* Successfully Managing the Transition to College
- Tips for Getting Great Grades and Managing Time
- The Power of Work Experience and Internships
- Meaningul Extracurricular Involvement
- The Importance of Starting NOW
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 Main Campus 12:45- 1:45 pm Triangle Lounge, Commons
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 Elmira Center 3:00 - 4:00 pm U004
This program can help you navigate through life and career options - which can ultimately lead to successful experiences in college and beyond.
For more information, check out the website at w'ww.makingitcount.com.
Culture Shock: A Homeschooler’s Look Back on Her First Semester at
CCC
By Anna Hoylcr
To start, a quick explanation what I mean when I say I was"homeschooled.’’ There are (believe ic or not!) many different styles of homeschoalmg. The method used by my family was rather strict compared to some other home-schooling families. We were assigned work that had to be finished by the end of the day. It was in our better interests to get it done first thing in the day, because then we would have the rest of the day to do something fun. We did not grow our own food, only dress like the Amish, or lock ourselves inside all day. Nor did we sleep until noon or do school in our pajamas. If you’d seen us on the street, there would have been no way to tell that we were homeschooled.
But still, changing from being home-schooled to attending a college was a major change.
As a homeschooler, I always loved having more freedom than my poor normal school’ friends. Family vacation in October? No problem, start the year early. Grandma visiting for two weeks? We’ll catch the work up later. Even just in my own day to day schedule, if I finished my work early, I could do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day. I had times in high school when I was done by noon and we’d go to a museum or meet some friends at the ice arena. That freedom is pretty much gone now. I’m trapped in a preset schedule of classes. It sucks, but is hardly the biggest adjustment.
As a homeschooler, the only person in class with me was my brother. To suddenly be in class with twenty other people, none of whom I know, was intimidating. Walking into my first class on my first day was kind of difficult. I really would much rather have turned around and run back to my car. To have a teacher who never even bothered to learn the names of his students was even more intimidating, almost downright scary. But, somehow, I survived.
But a major change that will probably make all of you who came from public school roll your eyes? Homework. When you’re homeschooled, all your work is done in one blow; you read about it, then you answer questions or solve problems that relate to what you read. So, now you mean, not only do I have to have to listen to this teacher for an hour, now I have to spend an hour do-ing'homework? That sucks, man! That was a major adjustment, finding the time to get it done. I used to laugh at public schoolers when they complained about homework; now I understand why they were complaining.
There are many more minor things that have showed me I am literally moving from one world to another. I am learning many new things, both in class and outside of class. I am glad I was homeschooled, and feel in a way that I am more prepared for college than if I had not been. College was a major change, but  have adjusted and look forward to the rest of my time at CCC.