May 10, 2000 * Volume 7, Issue 1

Parking tickets at ASU create big business The chaotic motorcade begins at dawn. ASU's parking lots transform into battlefields as commuters and cars with blaring horns and screeching tires file in for another day. Students, faculty, staff and visitors scramble to burrow their way into an adequate parking space. And like Goldilocks, some weigh their options: This spot is too far; that one is too small. Others decide playing fair is overrated and park illegally, decal or no.

Death row inmates share life experiences, find friendship through letters. The letters show up in ASU Professor John Johnson's mailbox every week without fail. Most of them are several pages long and carefully decorated with small oval stickers that were once attached to oranges and bananas. Some of the vowels are repeated too many times, a sign of an old typewriter with sensitive keys and an author with unsteady hands.

Arizona State Hospital needs plenty before it can handle the mentally ill. Severely mentally ill patients in Arizona are sent by court order to the Arizona State Hospital for treatment. In this outdated, "untherapeutic" facility, doctors and staff struggle to give the best care possible. However, patients cannot receive proper treatment until a new hospital is built.

A Globe family learns to survive behind steel bars. Like his father and brother, Aaron is a state inmate. He's one of 1,000 Arizona prisoners who grow up in jail. Aaron is serving four years in Adobe Mountain Juvenile Correctional Facility for manslaughter. His father is serving 10 years for possession of methamphetamines with intent to sell. His brother, Anthony, 21, has 13 1³2 years left in Florence for manslaughter. Aaron is filed away in a compartment because he broke the law. His life has been molded by guards and criminals, not friends and family.

ASU officials have big plans for development along Tempe Town Lake. More than 30 years ago, a group of ASU architecture students constructed a plan that turned the dry Salt River bed into a lake in downtown Tempe. As the largest landowner around the lake, ASU is preparing to develop 18 acres north of Sun Devil Stadium. An early cost estimate for the project is $52 million. But first, university officials need to hire a developer.

Illegal immigrants find work, shelter in booming Phoenix and Tempe. Undocumented migrants from Mexico face numerous difficulties to get into the United States, from ruthless human traffickers to filthy stash houses. Arizona has become the prime crossing location for the migrants because of increased border protection in other states and the booming Phoenix job market. Valley residents live largely unaware of the underground market of goods and services that allow these migrants to build new lives here.

May 10, 2000 Volume 7, Issue 1 Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona © 2000 Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication

Six in-depth feature articles written by ASU journalism students are featured in this edition of The Bulldog, which is published at the end of each semester by the Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication and ASU's Student Media. The Bulldog is an outlet for journalism students who always are looking for places to publish. The articles will range from feature stories to hard-hitting investigative pieces. After all, we are The Bulldog.