Spartan Daily Reinforces "San Jose State" Historical Revisionism

Spartan Daily

While the above-linked story in the Spartan Daily about the 1906 earthquake was interesting, once again the Spartan Daily got it's history wrong.

The image it used was of the (California) State Normal School (not San Jose State) building. The California State Normal School existed from 1862 until 1887, at which time the California Legislature renamed it the "State Normal School" at San Jose. The University's history website was recently amended to reflect this fact.

For an accurate image of the second California State Normal School building, see http://www2.sjsu.edu/sjsuhistory/secondbldg.htm

When today's Tower Hall was built the school's official name was the STATE NORMAL SCHOOL at San Jose. The school retained that name until 1921. The so-called "San Jose State Normal School" never existed.

It's a shame the University Special Collections is giving the Spartan Daily daily inaccurate and misleading information about the school's identity during an important part of its history.

SJSU: Apathy State University

Few cast ballots in A.S. - News

As the above story from the Spartan Daily indicates, only 469 San Jose State (SJSU) students out of 30,000 bothered to cast votes in the recent race for Associated Students student government positions, despite the fact that A.S. controls $6 million in student fees.

Several articles in the Spartan Daily recently have highlighted the rampant apathy among SJSU students. It seems that not only do most SJSU students not care about their student government, they don't even care about their school. In fact, many SJSU students go beyond apathy to outright antipathy, as evidenced by posts by SJSU students on Myspace.com and elsewhere under titles like "I Hate This School".

Perhaps SJSU should be renamed "Apathy State University" in honor of the majority of students' attitudes toward the school.

Groups like the CSU Spartans ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CSU_Spartans ) are trying to combat SJSU apathy and academic and athletic mediocrity by restoring the school's valuable, prestigous and inspiring identity as the oldest and original California State University. This, they believe, will not only increase the name recognition and value of their degrees, but also help attract better, more committed residential students who will actually care about the school and help restore it to greatness.

To learn more, please visit, California State University, San Jose