By Sara Ballenger

Students, staff resurrect paper

The volunteer staff of “The Sentinel,” Foothill college’s newspaper, hopes the March 19 premiere issue makes a good first impression - again. The community college in Los Altos Hills, has been without a student newspaper for the past two years. Students and staff are resurrecting the once defunct publication.

“Prior to this, three-fourths of some of the issues was just a reprint of the Dean’s List,” said Sentinel advisor Paul Starer. “It was sort of a joke on campus. Certainly it wasn’t anything that either the college or the students could be really proud of as a strong voice for students. “

The Sentinel wasn’t always a joke. “The Sentinel was produced early on in the school’s career, even at the old location before this site was built,” said Starer of the current campus, 12345 El Monte Ave. “With the social and political turmoil of the 1960s, along with the free speech movement came a very radicalized notion of student papers. The Sentinel was really for spearheading that kind of stuff.”

Starer gave an example of an issue he found in the archives that covered a campus visit by a top military advisor in the Vietnam War. Students at Foothill protested his presence on campus and he was splattered with fake blood, he said. “That’s what the paper was reporting on in 1971.”

How did such a strong voice become mute? When journalism and mass media professor and department head Herman Scheiding retired in 1993 after 25 years of teaching, he took the one person journalism department with him.

“I always thought the advantage of a one person department was that you get close to students. In that way, you are kind of a mentor,” Scheiding said. “It would have been nice to have another voice and another point of view,” he said in thinking about if additional professors had taught in the department.

“One weakness was just having me, and a strength was just having me. It depends on how you look at it,” Scheiding said.

Scheiding speculates the demise of the journalism department and “The Sentinel,” was primarily economic.

“Enrollment was the lowest in the whole school in terms of departments. The administration felt it was not profitable to keep it going,” he said. Another reason for low enrollment was that students could not get credits for the class that would transfer to a four-year university, he said. “When I left in ‘93, the paper was really gone.”

“When that instructor retired, there was no momentum to replace him,” Starer said.

The paper slipped into total oblivion in the last two years. he said.

“Student government was upset by the fact that there was no paper,” Starer said. “Eventually the academic senate was approached to bring the paper back.”

The paper found support in the Academic Senate President, Dr. Larry Rouse. Rouse agreed to work with both the senate and the administration to find a way to bring the paper back.

“He was basically our cheerleader for getting this started,” said Rhiannon Heldebrant, production and design manager. “I talked with him at the end of fall quarter of 2000. We started getting ideas and enthusiasm,” she said.

“The students came to me and just pleaded. ‘Can you use any influence to help leverage the opportunity to bring the paper back?’ Not as a laughing stock, which it had become, but as a first rate quality paper,” Rouse said.

“That’s when I put out a request to the interim president and her presidential cabinet. ‘Could you let us have the opportunity to revive it?,’” Rouse said. “She said yes, if the students are willing to commit some money to it as they had in the past.”

“We were troubled at first by the fact that we had no real start-up money. The student government set aside funds as seed money for the paper to get a computer and to cover initial printing costs,” Starer said. The student body gave the paper $8,000 from the student budget, Rouse said.

“I got this in part, by a learning community grant by the Packard foundation,” said Rouse. “The Packard Foundation gave us $25,000 in seed money to start learning communities. A portion of that we used to get CD Roms for (Adobe) Photoshop, QuarkXpress and other supplies to enhance the ability to get this off the ground,” he said.

“The learning grant was a great impetuous to give us some seed money, and to legitimize our taking the risk to go forward,” he said.

Another request of the president was that an advisor to find someone to instruct the course.

Starer stepped up to teach the journalism class, starting January of 2001.

Drew Dara-Abrams, Editor in Chief, stared the paper after signing up for Starer’s class.

“I saw some banners around campus. I was Editor in Chief for my junior high and high school papers so I volunteered for the position.” Dara-Abrams said.

Every staff position is volunteer.

“I’ve been waiting so long to do a print newspaper. We finally had the budget and we said, ‘let’s go to print right away,’” Dara-Abrams said.

Once a printed version was out, the staff of 12 gained a lot more enthusiasm.

“It’s a little hectic and a little cramped but it’s been great,” said Heldebrant.

Dara-Abrams hopes to leave behind a strong paper when he transfers from Foothill at the end of next year.

Some of “The Sentinel’s former staff have gone on to make their mark in the journalism profession.

De Tran, the editor of “Viet Mercury,” De Tran, editor of “Viet Mercury,” the Vietnamese edition of the Mercury News, got his start in journalism as a writer and editor of “The Sentinel” from 1982 to 1984.

“The Sentinel helped my analytical and critical thinking skills. It definitely helped my writing,” said Tran. “It taught me a lot of self-confidence and to believe in myself, which you can’t underestimate.”

Tran was pleasantly surprised when he saw the new Sentinel. “I think it’s a noble endeavor. There is a perception that a journalism program just produces a newspaper. They don’t see beyond that,” he said. “It teaches a lot of skills like leadership, and organizational, that other classes don’t provide,” he said.

“I loved the Sentinel,” said Tim Goodman, TV critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. Goodman worked with Tran on the staff of “The Sentinel.” “We’ve made careers out if it. It’s a place to start. It proves that you can start anywhere and make it. It’s not about what school you go to, or the size of the paper,” he said.

“The momentum is coming back. The language arts division is meeting to begin to develop curriculum so the students can get real units that transfer,” Rouse said. Rouse hopes to see a return of the journalism department at Foothill.

“It’s such an advantage to have a first-rate paper,” Rouse said. Rouse hopes “The Sentinel” becomes a draw for enrollment at Foothill.

“We’re confident that this will continue. We want to build the infrastructure so the torch is passed to the new generation. This is a story, like the miracle on 42nd Street - the miracle on 12345 El Monte,” Rouse said. The students published the second issue last Monday. For more information about “The Sentinel,” call 949-7372. Copies of the paper can be found at the Sentinel office, room 2126 at Foothill College, 12345 El Monte, in Los Altos Hills.