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Air Supply on tour
UTSA Jazz choir performs live with Air Supply at Fiesta Texas
Arts and Entertainment, page 8
Partytime!
Fiesta begins at UTSA with ribbon- cutting ceremon under the Sombrilla
Features, page 4
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Classy Women score big
UTSA's onh^jntr§mural women's athletic team kicksl Q^^7-g--Q--j
' Sports, page 8
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April 18,1995
Serving the UfjivERSiTv of Texas at San Antonio C
Volume 18, Number 12
oumunity
SG defeats impeachment proposal
Accusations, petitions, election violations dominate meeting
By Ryan Lambracht
Editor-in-Chief
A defeated motion for impeachment, accusations of hidden agendas, and more controversy over alleged election viola¬ tions: these were the subjects dominat¬ ing the student govenunent (SG) general meeting last week. By the end of the meeting, SG members promised to bring up many of the same issues again this week.
SG's Apr. 11 meeting began with a surprising announcement when SG par¬ liamentarian Cindy Mikeska moved for recording secretary Mike Godelia to be impeached. Mikeska explained her mo¬ tion by citing the SG constitution, which states the recording secretary may be impeached if he or she does not keep accurate and detailed records of SG meet¬ ings and office hours, and if he or she does not fulfill his or her responsibilities as a chairman of an SG committee.
To justify her motion for impeach¬ ment, Mikeska stated that since Godelia was appointed, only one copy of the minutes has (seen approved by SG. Other cities of tbe minutes have been in an incorrect format or not done at all, office hours were not posted until four weeks ago, and Godelia has done little in his two committee co-chaiimanships.
"Those are his total responsibilities for [SG]. To neglect that for an entire semester is ludicrous, and to be honest, this should have been brought up sooner," Mikeska said. Mikeska later added that "All of [Godelia's] energies have not been to the complete benefit of student govemment or to the students, and I question his motivation."
After Mikeska'smotion, Godelia pro¬ tested by stating he was not notifled of any plans to impeach him; therefore, he said he could not defend himself before SG.
"There are a lot of different discrep¬ ancies [Mikeska] has failed to mention and I would like [SG] to not hastily make a decision on the impeachment process," Godelia said. "I think it would be ridicu¬ lous to sit here and make a vote on hearing one side of the evidence."
Mikeska then clarified that her mo¬ tion could only initiate a trial for im¬ peachment, and that a tribunal of ran¬ domly selected students would decide whether to impeach Godelia if two-thirds of SG voted for Mikeska's motion.
Mikeska quickly received rebuttals from other SG memljers conceming the ethics of her motion.
"You [Mikeska] could have asked for [Godelia's] resignation before you brought up impeachment," said junior
Cindy Mikeska SG Parliamentarian
Mikeska motioned for SG to start impeachment proceedings for Godelia, but her motion failed.
Mike Godelia SG Recording Secretary
Godelia tried to get a committee separate from SG to investigate al- leged elections violations.
representative CThris Delgado. "What you are trying to do here is impeach a person the student body elected in the highest voter tumout that we've had in recent years. Until the investigations [atx>ut Godelia's alleged election mis¬ conduct] are completed, he is the person in line to be recording secretary."
After this speech, SG defeated Mikeska's impeachment motion. A few minutes later, however, Mikeska brought
up another issue that she and Godelia disagreed about last week: a proposition Godelia made which would change SG meml^ership requirements and initiate new elections for next year's SG posi¬ tions.
Mikeska stated Godelia's proposition conflicted with SG's bylaws, and even though it was defeated by SG. Mikeska moved for the (iroposition to be struck
com on pg 3
to hold student vote on SG elections
After having his proposal rejected by student govenunent [SG], SG recording secretary Mike Godelia will hold a refer¬ endum next week on whether SG should holda new election for positions in the 1995-96 academic year. SG has not approved or supported this referendum.
Godelia said he is holding the refer- eixlum because students want the refer¬ endum and because he felt SG would
stall Mntil the semester would be over. "I've gone above and beyond my duties as a petitioner to make sure the students get what they wanted." Godelia said.
SG parliamentarian Cindy Mikeska. however, said the referendum is invalid without SG support. Godelia plans lo hold the referendum on Apr. 24 and 2.'> i n front ofthe HB, JPL and SB from 9 a.m. tp 2 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Colleges battle fake degrees
students talked about parking, crime, and safety at the town meeting Thursday aftemoon
SG holds meeting on campus security
By Lisa Crews
Editorial Assistant
Campus security and the shuttle bus service were topics ofa SG town meet¬ ing held Thursday, April 13 at 12:30 p.m. under the Sombilla. Approxi¬ mately 40 students attended and the meeting lasted about 30 minutes.
Mike Godelia, the SG recording secretary, started the meeting by intro¬ ducing Chief RonakI Seacrest of the Campus Police. Seacrest qx>ke of the new methods which the campus police are using to im|Hove campus security.
"One of the main things we have accomplished was we were able to increase Our staff by six." Seacrest said. This increase has allowed the campus pcAice to create the bike patrol program.
"We now have uniformed polke officers on bicycles on campus and we will be expanding thai program so tliere will be a minimum of two officers on bicycles at all times. This will increase the level of security on campus," Seacrest said.
Campus police are working on im¬ proving night security in two ways. The first way is by providing police escorts around ciunpus at night. A student simply needs to call the cam¬ pus police from the building they're in or from an emergency phone in the paiking lot and an trfTicer will be dis¬ patched to the kxation.
The second imjHovement is the parking situation after dusk. Prior to this year, the paiking lots were re¬ stricted at all times.
"We fek that the fonner parking system was not aiding the appropriate level of security for male and female students who come to the cam? dur¬ ing the late hours of the evening x the early hoius of the moming; so we changed the rules to allow open park¬ ing on campus after 5:00 p.m. with a UTSA pailcing permit," Seacrest said.
The only exceptions to this policy are 24-hour reserved qnces, handi¬ capped spaces, and loading zones.
Seacrest also spoke of ways the campus police are tiying to get student input and feedback on how the police are serving them.
"We have, by working with SG development, a campus safety and se¬ curity committee that is chaired by Miles Simms. We are going to be using them to assist us in the police department lo identify concems and tveds from the students perspective and I will be meeting with them on a regular basis," Seacrest said.
"This new committee will be hav¬ ing a night walk every semester. These are walks in which the campus police and the comm ittee walk the entire cam¬ pus at night to determine areas that need imfHOvement.
The campus police have just com¬ pleted a survey of the lighting on cam¬
pus and are going to upgrade the light¬ ing at the track area.
Chief Seacrest spoke of shuttle bus service acknowledging that ther^ is some concem '^n campus with the quality .of service the shuttle provides. "We are, on the average, transporting 24,0(X) students, faculty, and staff each month; and we are doing that with only two shuttle buses." Seacrest said.
In order to improve the situation, thc service needs to be expanded by two buses.
"This will cost an excess of $140,000 dollars and we do not have enough money to purchase the new buses: we are looking at some options including contracting the service out to a private company and letting them nm the service for us for a fee." Seacrest said.
After Seacrest spoke. Godelia opened the floor to questions. Most of the questions dealt with Ihe parking situation. The general concem was witfi prices of the parking permits. The stu¬ dents were told that price of the per¬ mits are high due to the cost of buildmg new parking lots and maintaining the old ones.
Kristi Hall.president ofSG. said,"I feel the meeting was very informative to the students that took adv-uitage of it. I'm sure they got the concems addressed and I am happy with the turnout, but it could have been better."
By .fanet Singlaton
College Press Service
On television, trumped-up resumes are fertile material for sitcom humor. To nab a job as a perfume clerk, the lead character on the show "AII-American Girl" claims she has worked for therockgroupAerosmi'h. Fox's blue-haired housewife Marge Simpson re-enters the work place with a list of accomplishments so dazzling, she'd be a serious contender for the Nobel Prize.
In the real world, credentials fraud is just as common, but university registrars aren'tlaugh- ing. More and more, people are listing fake degrees on resumes, and it's worth being alarmed about, said Joe Omdorff, who is one of the nation's few experts on transcript security.    His Cincinnati-based company pro¬ duces copy-resistant documents for universities, and he gives seminars on how to foil "wjumabe" graduates and phony professionals.
He just did a survey in cooperation with 47 universities to count the number of questionable inquiries received by their records offices in September. A review of calls checking on people claiming to have either attended the schools or gradu¬ ated from them, found 615 of the indi¬ viduals could not be verified. Among the institutions surveyed were University of Colorado-Boulder, Indiana's Ball State, and Miami University of Ohio.
Registrars say a portion of unveriH- able inquiries result from a caller's mis¬ take about a former students' name or school. But registrars say most errant calls represent people who have lied to potential employers about where they've attended school or received degrees. Some impostors even shoot for the Ivy League. "We get inquiries of that type," said Thurston Smith, associate registrar at Harvard University. "We say we've never heard of this person.
"Schools like Harvard are fairly well-known and are particularly suscep¬ tible to this type of falsehood. We do take it seriously." Smith said. "If there is someone out there claiming to have and degree who doesn't, it diminishes the value of real Harvard degrees. That's a problem for the university and the stu¬ dents."
One woman who works in Yale's uanscript department (who asked not to be named), says she also gets calls about phantom former students. "They pretend they've graduated when they 'vc attended the school without graduating or they've never been to Yale."
No one is sure how many false state¬
ments about degrees are never checked or how many resume frauds function in the workforce undetected. Occasionally a fake draws media exposure due to the politics or sensitivity of the circum¬ stances.
One fakery case left Denverites feel¬
ing a little less secure, because it cen¬ tered on a phony "engineer," who was involved in the construction of the foun¬ dation for the embattled Denver Interna¬ tional Airport.
Timothy Lewellen, 26, faces charges of criminal impersonation after he alleg¬ edly presented a false registration num¬ ber to show he'd passed the Colorado Engineering State Examination. (Lewellen's attorney James Steiert had no comment on the case.) Lewellen has no past criminal record and could re¬ ceive anything from probation to two years in prison, according to the Denver District Attorney's Office.
At times; applicants to secondary or professional schools falsify their records to gain admission. In late November, a federal grand jury issued an eight-count indictment against 32-year-old Jorge Chambergo for applying to the Univer¬ sity of Pennsylvania Law School using false identification.
When providing application docu¬ ments to the school, Chambergo, a resi¬ dent of Jackson Heights, N.Y., allegedly combined his own name with that of Dae Kyung Seu.
Chambergo applied to Penn's law school as Dae Jorge Seu Chambergo, using Seu's social security number as his own. He then used Seu's identification to get a copy of Seu's LSAT score '«nt to the school.
Chambergo also submitted three forged letters of recommendation from members of the Concemed Citizens of Queens and had another from the dean of Morse College at Yale University, which was meant for Seu.
To make himself eligible for increased fmancial aid, the ambitious applicant
lied about his birthdate. He also submit¬ ted a tax retum on which he had written "Seu Dae" next to his own name. • Chambergo has been charged with seven counts of mail fraud and one count of using a false social security numl)er in a scheme to obtain scholarship and loan money. If found guilty.he faces up to 40 years in prison, up to three years of supervised re lease and as much as two nitl lion dollars in fines, according to the U.S. Anomey"s Offico . for the Eastem DisU-ict of Penn sylvania.
Colin Diver, dean of Penn'v law school, says that the de¬ partment occasionally receives false applications, which ^e usually discovered pretty eas¬ ily. "Most of these people think they have all their bases cov¬ ered, but they usually don't," said Diver, adding that once department officials find a dis¬ crepancy, they forward the information to the university's general counsel. "Un¬ fortunately, there are a lot of people who choose to misrepresent themselves to gain access to something they have not eamed outright."
Omdorff said falsifying documents is easy and employees often don't check. "If you want, you can sit down at a computer, crank out a transcript with above average grades, prepare a resume which is obviously inflated and create fake letters of reference."
Catching cheats is the object of his business. He clicked off a horror-house gallery of tales, including people posing as doctors and nurses and treating unsus¬ pecting patients.
A high-tech world makes it all easier, he said. Computers can scan and copy official university emblems and signa- * tures. Laser printers can create more realistic-looking documents.
Lewellen allegedly cut and pasted together papers supporting the claim he was an engineer. Then he photocopied the layouts, a D.A. spokesman said.
Most of the time, all this high-tech hoop-jumping can be gi ounded by simple calls to llie named schools and agencies. Omdorff, however, said that isn't the complete answer. He sells security tran¬ script paper to 740 schools around the nation. Official signatures are written in white on the documents, so when photo¬ copied, the signatures disappear. Photo reproductions tum out with the word "copy" all over the page.
People who fake credentials are often "charming, likeable"employees, he said. But he believes they can drag a business under l)y attracting law suits and under¬ mining ethics.
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