Talk:San José State University

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Image:Sanjosestatefootballteam1941.jpg
Image you might want to incorporate into the article of the San Jose State University football team in Honolulu, Hawaii, cancelling a game with the University of Hawaii to volunteer with the Honolulu Police Department after the December 7, 1941 attacks. This photo has them training at Honolulu Police headquarters.

Redirects: San Jose State, SJSU, San José State University, San José State , California State University, San Jose, San Jose State College

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[edit] SJSU vs. CSU San Jose

Would someone please elaborate on the use of the adjective anti-California in the following quote, which appears in the SJSU article as of today, Feb. 13, 2006?

"In 1972 SJSC was granted university status, and the name was changed to California State University, San Jose. However, in 1974, despite the fact that the school's CSU name was a modernized restoration of the school's original California State Normal School identity, anti-California alumni at the school succeeded in lobbying the California Legislature to change the school's name to "San Jose State University"." CSU Spartan

Also, someone should probably elaborate in the later "CSU Spartans" paragraph on why those of the pro-"CSU San Jose" persuasion feel the current name is so inferior to the 1972-74 name. I personally don't see much difference and don't understand the motivation. Is it pride for the state of California? Do they dislike those particular individuals who lobbied for the name change in 1974? Does San Jose State University sound too much like San Jose City College (or community college names in general)? I'm not seeing the significance, so please explain. --66.160.179.84 22:59, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Great questions. Yes, pro-California and pro-CSU students and alumni in San Jose believe our identity as the oldest California State University campus (founded in 1862) is far superior to the failed, provincial and non-sensical "SJSU" identity. Your statement that it sounds like a community college name is very apt. The CSU reform and restoration movement in San Jose was founded by MBA alumni and students in 2003, and currently numbers several hundred students and alumni in multiple groups. For more info see http://www.californiastatebell.com. Historical entries in the Wikipedia about (1) the "San Jose State" putsch against the California State University, San Jose, in 1974, and (2) the development and continued growth the CSU reform and restoration movement,are accurate and relevant contributions to the Wikipedia regarding the history of the CSU campus in San Jose. Attempts by persons like NeoChaosX to censor this history and totally exclude any acknowlegement of the existence of this movement, in favor of his own views and interpretatons, is a violation of the five pillars of the Wikipedia. CSU Spartan 02:16, 07 October 2006 (UTC)
It's the people from the GoState organization using Wikipedia as a soapbox for their platform (something that's against Wikipedia policy, I believe). It's been taken care of anyway, but I imagine they'll be trying to change it again when they see their additions have been removed. NeoChaosX 02:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
As part of an apparent campaign of disinformation, NeoChaosX is even attempting to rename the CSU Restoration movement in San Jose. There is, of course, nothing called the "GoState" organization or movement. This was coined by detractors of the CSU reform and restoration movement as part of their efforts to spread disinformation and malign and minimize this movement. The CSU reform movement was born with the creation of the "CSU Spartans" group by MBA students and alumni in October 2003. "GoState" is, and always has been, simply the name of the website http://www.gostate.org which was founded in March 2004. CSU Spartan
Your comment could be interpreted as a personal attack, and they are not necessary nor acceptable. Comment on content, not contributor. SolarianKnight 05:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree with NeoChaosX. The GoState people also made changes to the California State University article that needed to be dealt with, and there is an explanation of the 'flagship campus' controversey and issue on the Talk:California_State_University page. I suggest to the GoState people that they create their own article, cite evidence, records and authorities, and allow us to inspect, research and comment as to the accuracy of the statements made... this is not a bulletin board but rather an encyclopedia, so if all the GoState people are doing is advocating or advancing their own cause then the statements should not be placed here but rather on their own already-existing website. Streltzer 18:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
The founder of GoState.org, Michael Harold, has been repeatedly flogging his agenda in blogs and messageboards since he started the organization. Biggeek 23:26, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

From an outsider's perspective (for what it's worth), I believe being called Cal State or Cal State University, San Jose sounds a lot better than San Jose State University. Cal State Spartans sounds like a team that belongs in the Pac 10, San Jose State Spartans sounds...well WAC. However, we must stick to the facts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.3.8.253 (talk) 17:47, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I've created a stub about their campaign at GoState. NeoChaosX 18:56, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] San Jose vs. San José

Accent marks (San José State University vs. San Jose State University) are included because they are part of the official name of the university (cf. its website) Joelwest 07:05, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

  • This is true. even the city of San José is very adamant about that " ´ " in its name. Davodd 07:17, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

I've never seen San Jose spelled with an accent. The San Jose newspaper doesn't use an accent. http://www.sanjose.com/ doesn't use an accent. http://www.sanjosesharks.com/ doesn't use it. If they do it on their official websites, that's decidedly odd. Do we start putting accents on Los Angeles? RickK 16:36, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

To jump in on this, as both a San Jose resident and a SJSU alum, the city and the university are pretty much the only instutitions that use the accent, the rest of us ignore it. I believe the accent was adopted in the late 1980s or early 1990s to show off our "cultural heratige" as the oldest city in California. It is a symptom of SJ's inferiority complex. Gentgeen 22:46, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The website http://www.sanjose.com/ is a cybersquatter that has no official standing other than they grabbed the name first. The Sharks can call themselves whatever they want -- just as a business could call itself San Jose Bar & Grill or San Josie Bar & Grill -- but it's not as though the city leaders would change their city name to reflect that. (This is reverse causality).

Gentgeen is right that the switch is comparatively recent. I personally agree with him it's a silly affectation, or, more likely, kotowing to political correctness. As a voter in San José and an employee of SJSU, I am not doing this because I agree with the names, but because I want Wikipedia to come up with unambigous guidelines to head off edit wars.

Whether the name choice is serious or silly, the principle seems quite clear. If Cassius Clay wants to call himself Muhammad Ali or Louise Ciccone wants to call herself Madonna, the press, electronic databases and paper-based reference materials honor that. For an organization, whether the Girl Scouts of America or the Department of Defense, the only fair test is what they choose to call themselves. For wikipedia, the only practical test is what name is used on the official organizational website. By such tests, both the city of San José and San José State University require an accent. Joelwest 06:17, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

On a side note, my mom's a fairly high level voluanteer in the local council of the Girl Scouts, so I know their official name to be Girl Scouts of the United States of America[1]. I should go and suggest they move the article, but NAH.
Back on topic, the use of the accent isn't universal within the city. The fire department[2] and the public library[3] use it, the police[4] and chamber of commerce[5] do not. The city charter has no accent mark over the "e", and neither do the seal (the bundle of wheat thingie) nor the logo (the sunset thingie with "The Capitol of Silicon Valley" under it). Now, SJSU's a little different, as the accent is used universally, except for the university's seal, which does not have the mark. I personally don't care where the articles reside, but do think that wherever is chosen, the other needs to be a redirect.Gentgeen 07:49, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure it actually matters what they call themselves as our naming policy states we use whatever is most common in English, which is not necessarily the same as what the city decides to call itself. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) for example. Angela. 19:32, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)
I agree the question is "most common", but "most common" among what universe. Gentgeen is right we have to redirect all variants (as is already policy). For that matter, I have no problem with having the main database link be without accents (whether for San José or anything else) since people won't tend to type them. It just seems as though the proper name should be listed in the beginning of the entry (as with any other dictionary or encyclopedia) cross-referenced to common variants. Joelwest 22:56, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't care whether the accent is used or not, but either way, it should be consistent. The article currently uses both "San Jose" and "San José" multiple times. -anon, 20 June 2006

[edit] Gordon Moore

SJSU lists Intel cofounder Gordon Moore as an alum here. They don't say what degree he recieved, or when, but I'd assume the university knows who it's alumni are, so I'm going to restore him to the list. Gentgeen 17:09, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia's entry for Gordon E. Moore claims he spent 2 years at SJSC before transfering to Cal, which was common back then (my mom made the exact same transition about 8 years earlier). And his wife is a graduate of SJSC.

A quick google check shows the smoking gun of an oral history, where he says "I went through grammar schools here locally, Sequoia High School, two years at San Jose State, where I met my wife-to-be, and then transferred to University of California at Berkeley for my junior and senior years." So the oral history has been added to Wikipedia's biography and we can say that Moore attended but did not graduate from SJSC. JoelWest 22:38, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Not suppried, as the practice is still common. I've got a freind who made the same transition only 7 years ago. Gentgeen 23:33, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Famous Faculty

I removed "Donald West - chemistry" because he is not listed as current faculty. I don't think there's a problem in including former faculty, but since he doesn't have his own Wikipedia entry and there's no information about him on the SJSU site, his significance should be noted to justify listing him ahead of several thousand other faculty. JoelWest 18:51, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

Doctor West is one of the authors (with Douglas Skoog from Stanford University and James Holler from the University of Kentucky) of Analytical Chemistry, an Introduction (my edition's ISBN 0-03-097285-X), which is the standard analytical chemistry textbook in the world, translated into dozens of languages, and used to train generations of chemists (my aunt still has her first edition Skoog/West from the 1970s). A google search for Skoog and West and Holler and Chemistry [6] yields 2,280 results, and if you remove Holler (who became involved in the 5th edition, I think) you get 4,110 results [7]. Dr West was a professor emeritus when I was there 6 years ago, teaching one class a semister. It's possible he's completely stoped teaching by now. Gentgeen 23:06, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Donald M. West retired as of 1995 JoelWest 19:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rivals

I added the University of California, Berkeley, as a rival. As the two oldest public institutions of higher learning in California, these two schools have a storied rivalry dating back to the late 1860s. Their football teams started playing each other in the 1890s and have met many times since. The two schools also compete in D1A intercollegiate basketball, with the latest encounter occuring earlier this year (2006). Michaelch7

Changed the order of Stanford and Santa Clara universities. Stanford is clearly the more significant rival. CSU Spartan

Reinstated Rivals reference to Cal after apparent deletion vandalism. CSU Spartan 03:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Again reinstated link after another round of deletion vandalism. This time put Cal under CSU Fresno. I hereby appeal for Wikipedia protection from this link. Also, how is the vandal able to hide his repeated removal's of this link? CSU Spartan 19:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] California State Normal School

An anonymous user (who I'm guessing is User:Michaelch7) proposed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject California that California State Normal School be restored to its own article. My take on it (as an outsider, although I am from SJ and was a devoted listener of KSJS in my high school years) is that it seems like it would be OK, as long as that article focuses solely on the California State Normal School system as a teacher's college. The History section of this article as well as that in California State University could be summary sections (see Wikipedia:Summary style) of the other article. After all, College of California is its own article, and it might be expandable (with enough research) to be more than what would properly fit either the CSU or SJSU articles. Anyway, I leave it you for discussion. howcheng {chat} 20:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Howcheng. It's nice to see a reasonable response from a Wikipedia admin. And don't let NeoChaosX bamboozle you, like he has the others. He claims the California State Normal School article is related to the CSU restoration movement, but is it really? It simply discusses an entity that existed, and was more than "SJSU" (as it also included what is now UCLA) and less than the current "CSU" Michaelch7
My take on it (as the person who nominated the original article for deletion) is a no. In the CSU talk page, it became pretty clear that User:CSU Spartan/Michaelch7 was a member of a small group that wants to rename San Jose State, and the CSNS article was just used to promote this group and their agenda, in violation of the policy that Wikipedia is not a soapbox. The fact that the original article seemed to partly focus on the naming of the school and the school's "identity" just supported this viewpoint.
Additionally, from the College of California's article, it appears to have a relationship to the UC system similar to Minns Evening Normal School has to the CSU system (as a separate private college from which a public college system was created), and the Minns School doesn't have it own article (the name redirects to an aritcle about it's founder). On the other hand, the entity that was CSNS is now San Jose State, and their histories are one in the same (the history part of the CSNS article was mostly a re-treading of what was already in the SJSU article), which is why I advocated for the article to be a redirect. For the issues of redundancy and considering the creator's motive, I would keep it as a redirect. NeoChaosX (he shoots, he scores!) 20:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the violation of Wikipedia rules that has occurred here as clearly been committed by NeoChaosX and other militant supporters of "City-Statism" within the CSU system. It is obvious that there mission is to totally suppress and censor any view that doesn't comport with their city-statist views, in clear violation of the Wikipedia's neutrality guidlines. Evidence of this could clearly be seen earlier this year, when they deleted the images of all CSU campuses except the city-state campuses of San Jose State, San Diego State and San Franciso State. They also threw in a picture of Cal Poly to cover their tracks. Thankfully, their destructive influence on the Wikipedia has now been diminished as more reasonable editors have entered the fray. Michaelch7
OK, here's what we can do. Whoever it was that proposed the restoration of the article (Michaelch7 or CSU Spartan), why don't you work on the article in your user space. Create a page User:Michaelch7/California State Normal School (replace the username with your username if you are not Michaelch7) and write the article there. I expect it will be a scholarly article about the California State Normal School system and its history, well cited etc etc. When you are done, let people here know and if it's a good article, we can put it back in article space. To me, that sounds like a reasonable compromise -- this allows you to prove that you can write such an article that's not a soapbox for GoState, and it also (for the time being) preserves the consensus that was made in the deletion debate. How does that sound? howcheng {chat} 21:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, that is exactly what I'll do. By the way, your comparison to the College of California is very apt. The California State Normal School was an institution that gave birth to both "San Jose State" and the entire CSU system. It is an important part of California history, and something different and distinct from both the current "SJSU" and the CSU system. The only difference is that the College of California article isn't under attack by a band of city-statist zealots working to usurp California and CSU history, and impose their own distorted city-statist views and perspective on everyone else, in clear vioaltion of Wikipedia precepts. Michaelch7
HowCheng, as per your instructions, the California State Normal School article revisions are complete and it is submitted in honor of the State of California for reinclusion in the Wikipedia as part of the Project California: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Michaelch7/California_State_Normal_School Thank You. Michaelch7 27 December 2006

Restored link to this article, which has been restored by the Wikipedia as part of the Wikipedia Project California Michaelch7 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Change of Year of Establishment from 1862 to 1857

Someone had changed the year of establishment of the California State Normal School from May 2, 1862, to May 2, 1857, which is incorrect. I corrected this mistake, and to prevent further confusion between the school's two years of establishment added a paragraph explaining when and why San Jose State changed its date of establishment from May 2, 1862, to an unknown date in 1857.

Citation for May 2, 1862 law: Act to Establish and Maintain a State Normal School (May 2, 1862), The Statutes of California, pp. 472-473, Benj. P. Avery, State Printer, Sacramento, 1862.

I have personally examined the records indicating when school changed its year of establishment, but I did not make copies. I will go back to the Special Collections Room and secure a citation for this document as soon as possible. Michaelch7 18:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC) 18:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:CSU.PNG

Image:CSU.PNG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 03:58, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Sjsulogo.jpg

Image:Sjsulogo.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 11:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)