Three Chico State students are facing fines and jail time after being charged with a misdemeanor in connection with the alcohol and fraternity-related death of a freshman student. Indian students on campus are taking action to raise relief funds for India after an earthquake that killed about 20,000 people. A 21-year-old Chico State student who died from a fatal car collision.
These were the stories on a sobering front page of The Orion that greeted students on the morning of Feb. 14, 2001.
The 40-page issue also covered the invasion of credit card companies on campus and a local women’s clinic newly offering an early option abortion pill.
In an article about students getting squeezed out of money — with both credit card companies and Chico State cashing in — it was reported that the problem became so intense that the Associated Students government passed legislation to ban “credit card marketers from acquiring vending space within the Bell Memorial Union.”
Credit card companies pay universities for the right to market their cards to students on campus, and in the case of First USA and Chico State, the university was paid “a small percentage of every dollar students charge on their Chico State First USA card.”
Jumping to the second article of interest, the local clinic, Women’s Health Specialists, had fought for twelve years to make the abortion pill available to women in Chico, according to the article. The pill is also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex.
“Women have the right to fight and choose their reproductive freedom,” said Christina Romero-Perez, the clinic manager. “We don’t tell women what’s right or wrong but allow them to know their options. And the more choices, the better.”
One of the few mentions of Valentine’s Day in the issue was a column by graduate student Brian Johnson, asserting his strong dislike of the holiday from his perspective of working as a cashier.
“Most of her purchases consisted of chocolate, but she also had one bag filled with those little candy hearts. They’re the kind with the little messages on them, such as ‘You’re Sweet,’ or ‘Be Mine,’” Johnson wrote. “One of them read ‘Let’s Be Friends,’ which I found momentarily ironic and a little dreary. Even on Valentine’s Day, somebody is going to be getting the ‘let’s just be friends’ speech. Hey, at least it’s sugar-flavored.”
A Feb. 14 issue of The Wildcat — published 52 years ago to this day — highlighted an oil spill in Chico Creek and the recent opening of the Office of Veterans Affairs.
A keenly aware student noticed air conditioner fluid in Chico Creek and reported it to the student-run Environmental Law Group, who uncovered the story — library construction workers accidentally dumped about two gallons of oil-based, used air conditioner fluid into the creek. Workers were told to pour liquid wastes down a drain that flows to the city sewer system, not knowing that the wastes were instead going down to a storm drain strictly for rainwater due to a new pipe connection.
Flipping past short news briefs, letters to the editor and a wide range of advertisements, readers come to a short story about services for veterans. The original Veterans Office — now known as Veterans Education and Transition Services — at Chico first opened in October 1973, a “one-stop service center for the veteran on campus, as well as the surrounding community.” With the new office on campus, Chico State joined the ranks of community colleges and universities that had an office specifically to help veterans, about 90% of educational institutions in the state at the time.
Archives of The Wildcat and The Orion can be found online and in the Meriam Library on campus.
