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Coach visits AS; director talks code

By Chhun Sun
The Collegian

Steve Cleveland knows the importance of student attendance at basketball games. It can help the home team get the edge on its opponent, he said.

He knew this when he was head basketball coach for eight years at Brigham Young University in Utah, turning around a program that lacked student support and wins.

Cleveland, now Fresno State’s men’s head basketball coach, wants the 2,000 free student seats at the Save Mart Center to be filled every time his team plays. This can start when Fresno State kicks off two exhibition games Nov. 2 and 9 against Masters College and Fresno Pacific, respectively.

“There are things you can control and there are things you can’t control,” said Cleveland, who spoke during the Associated Students senate meeting Thursday night, referring to such scandals as Stacey Johnson-Klein’s termination and Ray Lopes’ untimely resignation that each happened spring semester 2005.

“Here we are,” he said. “We are at a starting point. We don’t really know what point and time if anything we’ll change. It’s not hard to be excited about the football team. But basketball is a bit different.

“We do have pretty good support, but I need to get to the students, whether it be in the dorms or on campus. I can e-mail the students and invite them to come to the game.”

Cleveland took the BYU team that started his coaching tenure with a 1-25 record to finish in eight years with 138-104. Cleveland offered suggestions to the student government to attract more students, such as giving away free T-shirts and selling all-sports passes, where students can attend a football game and other sports game for free.

Athletic affairs senator John Migliazzo said he knows how much of a difference it makes when the student section is filled, which is right behind the hoop on the southeast side of the Save Mart Center.

“I do know that when there are students they change the atmosphere of the whole game,” said Migliazzo, who is part of a committee comprised of students, advisers and representatives of the athletic department.

“We never had an effort to market the ticket, and this what committee is for,” Migliazzo said.

Also in Thursday’s meeting Stephen Rodemeyer, director of the Smittcamp Family Honors College and a Fresno State chemistry professor, spoke to the student government about the newly adopted Fresno State Honor Code.

The code: “The California State University, Fresno is committed to maintaining a culture of academic integrity where all members are expected to adhere to fundamental values in both academic and non-academic endeavors. For purposes of this code, academic integrity is defined as a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to five fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. From these values flow principles of behavior that enable academic communities to translate ideals to action.”

A task force was set up to enforce the Honor Code in 2003. Now Rodemeyer wants student government to spread the word about the code, saying, “This requires all parts of the university to participate in the honor code and includes the administration, faculty and students. We need all three of those groups to be involved.”