CSUN On Point

­­Whether or not college athletes should get paid has become a controversial topic in sports in recent years.

College sports as a whole pull in about twelve billion dollars annually from television, marketing, school ticket sales and student fees, but NCAA players get none of it.

Ninety-six percent of the money the NCAA generates is used to build stadiums and sports facilities, pay staff, coaches and to buy sports equipment.

“I don’t think we should have an actual income for playing,” said CSUN baseball player and starting pitcher Conner O’Neil. “However, I don’t think we should have to pay to go to school either.”

It’s no secret that being a college-student athlete is hard work and takes outstanding time management and balancing skills, but along with that comes many positive benefits and potentially life-changing opportunities.

“I think besides those being on scholarship or getting a free education, they have access to strength and conditioning coaches, sports psychologists, facilities, good coaching,” said CSUN Kinesiology Professor and expert in sports psychology Dr. Jacob Jensen. “I feel like all of that adds up to thousands and thousands of dollars, and I don’t see that they need to be getting paid more than that.”

Electronic Arts’ most popular video games were NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball, but EA Sports has discontinued its college video game series amid lawsuits raised by former players seeking compensation against the NCAA. The students sued the NCAA claiming that the organization had violated US antitrust laws, by prohibiting the athletes from receiving any of the revenue the NCAA earned by selling their likenesses.

Although this topic has been an ongoing debate, what separates professionals from amateurs is the ‘business aspect’ of sports, and that doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon.

Moderator: Kiesha Phillips

Anchor: Celene Zavala

Producer: Jordan Williams

Social Media Editor: Delmy Moran

Reporters: Delmy Moran, Brittni Perez, Kiesha Phillips, Daniel Saad, Jordan Williams, Celene Zavala

Recently, social media have started setting a high beauty standard for both men and women.

Billions of dollars are spent annually on beauty products in this country, and a  study done by a British makeup company found that 68 percent of employers say they would not want to hire women who don’t wear make up.

“One’s sense of self-esteem is hit hard when one feels as though he or she doesn’t measure up to the classic image of the media,” psychologist Yvonne Thomas said.

“The media’s job is to tell a story, ” said Gender and Women’s Studies Professor Shira Brown, Director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center. “The story being told portrays a false sense of image for the average person, especially young boys and girls, whether it’s on television, magazines or the radio…Unfortunately the story being told is [of] a particular body or hair type, which puts pressure on society’s body image.”

The Internet has become the go-to way for finding information. Many people go online to do research about health and beauty, and find the same unrealistic standards of beauty there that they would in traditional media. Experts said those standards have an impact on individuals.

“I got a lot of doors shut on me, and that really actually lowered my self-esteem and I did get anorexia,” said social media model Magi Tcherno. She said she didn’t feel beautiful until she under went a breast augmentation. Tcherno jumpstarted her own modeling career by representing herself online after she was rejected by modeling agencies who told her she wasn’t good enough. It was at that point, she said, that she became more determined and developed the self-confidence to build her own modeling career.

Dove, a personal care products manufacturer owned by Unilever, has built a marketing strategy around increased self-esteem for men and women, partly by showing many different body types and standards in their advertising.

“I believe that good things come when you show diversity in body type; good things come when you show diversity in skin color and height,” Brown said.

Moderator: Delmy Moran

Anchor: Brittni Perez

Producer: Celene Zavala

Social Media Editors:  Jordan Williams

Reporters: Delmy Moran, Brittni Perez, Kiesha Phillips, Daniel Saad, Jordan Williams and Celene Zavala

San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick re-ignited athlete-driven protests with his stand against police brutality, and he’s empowered many other athletes to speak out.

In 2015, The Washington Post documented close to a thousand fatal shootings by police, ninety-three of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about forty percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police, and were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire.

Now the argument over whether or not professional and collegiate athletes should be able to use their platform as a personal means of expression has become a large national issue.

This isn’t a new movement. Athletes like Mohammed Ali and 1968 Olympic Medalist Tommie Smith are known for making athlete-driven statements decades ago.

Since athletes are technically at work when they decide to make these protests, the debate stems from whether or not they should be penalized for doing so.

“Some of them may feel they are not at that level to take that risk,” CSUN Africana Studies Professor David Horne said. “[Their employers might say] ‘we expect you to not conduct yourself in a way that would embarrass the team or the business’.”

But athletes have only their professional platforms to make a statement. Whether they are in an interview or on the field, they have a limited amount of airtime, but they often have a large following.

“It’s their right to do so,” said Reverend Jewett Walker, President of 100 Black Men of Los Angeles. “If someone chooses to do that, I think we should embrace that, honor that, and respect it.”

Many athletes have messages that aren’t meant to start controversy.

“My responsibility was to be an example,” said CSUN Women’s Basketball Coach, and former college basketball player, Jason Flowers, “so somebody that had the same background as me could look [at me] … and say ‘that person was able to succeed, and I’m capable of it too’.”

Moderator: Jordan Williams

Anchor: Kiesha Phillips

Producer: Daniel Saad

Social Media Editors: Delmy Moran and Celene Zavala

Reporters: Delmy Moran, Brittni Perez, Kiesha Phillips, Daniel Saad, Jordan Williams and Celene Zavala

In this November’s ballot, a proposal to tax property owners as a means to better community parks, could pass, depending on voters in Los Angeles County.

Measure A proposes that voters pay higher property taxes to pay for park projects. If it passes, supporters say Measure A should bring in $94.5 million a year.

According to the Los Angeles Times, there is a large disparity in park access. Countywide, there was an average of 3.3 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. Communities in central and South Los Angeles, southeast county areas and parts of the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys had the most park-poor areas.

“Measure A addresses quite a few things,” said Program Associate at the Trust for Public Land, Yadira Cerrato. “It would be providing upgrades for existing parks. It will also provide funding for future parks, help protect water sources like rivers and creeks, as well as keeping our beaches safe, clean and protecting outdoor open spaces.”

University of Edinburgh researchers suggest it is healthy to spend time outdoors. Their 2013 study found that walking in nature and spending time under leafy shade trees actually causes electrochemical changes in the brain, that can lead to a highly beneficial state of effortless attention, lower frustration and higher meditative states.

“Nature is therapeutic because it builds empathy and it improves our health,” Eco-therapist Suzannah Ferron said. “It lowers every stress marker we have: it lowers our cortisol, our blood pressure and our heart rate. It increases our sense of connection, our sense of fascination, and it builds our bio-philia…[an] innate sense of belonging to each other, to nature, to all of life.”

Many CSU campuses have Outdoor Adventures Programs, allowing students to get in touch with nature. This month a San Jose State student, who was a leader of the program, drowned while on a trip to Sequoia National Park.

“Tonight we have our trip leader meetings, so we are talking about what happened, and I have already sat down with our risk manager, HR, and my director, talking about what we can do,” said CSUN Outdoor Adventure program founder Tim Szczepanski. “We are looking at training our students at being lifeguards, wilderness first responders, and first aid and CPR-certified.”

Resources like the Outdoor Adventure program can help students and communities spend more time outdoors, but it is up to Angelinos to vote, on this upcoming November’s ballot, to decide if local and national parks will enrich the lives of future generations.

Moderator: Celene Zavala

Anchor: Delmy Moran

Producer: Brittni Perez

Reporters: Delmy Moran, Brittni Perez, Kiesha Phillips, Daniel Saad and Jordan Williams