Volume 78, Issue 20 | www.elaccampusnews.com | Wednesday, April 27, 2022 | Single copy free - additional copies 50 cents
LACCD board allocates $1.5 million for pilot program LOGOS COURTESY OF EACH PARTNER PROGRAM
BY BRENDA DE LA CRUZ Staff Writer The Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees approved a $1.5 million pilot program, allocated from district funds, to house over 100 students who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The idea and proposal was brought up last year as part of Senate Bill 330. The bill prohibits local jurisdictions from enacting
new laws which can reduce the legal limit on new housing or delay housing by means of administrative barriers. SB 330 also allows LACCD to partner with non-profits or private programs to meet the needs of the pilot program. Currently, the LACCD has partnered with five local businesses: • Jovenes, Inc (who help those ages 18-25 in Southeast LA County) • Los Angeles Room and Board (who focus on keeping
community college students enrolled and on the path to graduate while housed) • Optimist Youth Homes and Family Services (who help homeless youth and young families, provide mental health services, etc) • Seed House Project (helps homeless youth with housing, education, employment opportunity, and mentorship) • The Shower of Hope (provides unhoused individuals with meals,
showers, clothing, hygiene items, and case management to help with housing) The pilot will run for an entire year and aims to help students who were affected by multiple factors, such as high rents, cost-of-living and the recent pandemic that made resources even scarcer than they were already. Not only will these students receive housing, but they will also be provided with wrap-around services to help them through a strengths-based approach by
providing basic needs. Additional services will include food, WiFi, mental health, tutoring, academic and financial counseling, and employment assistance. Being able to provide its students with housing during an ongoing pandemic is crucial in ensuring these students have the tools to help them graduate. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) conducts annual homeless counts in an effort to determine what services are needed. However, due
to COVID-19 a count has not been conducted since 2020. According to LAHSA, the homeless population in Los Angeles County increased by 12.7% from 2019 to 2020. This year’s count has taken place but the results are not expected to be disclosed until over the summer. Campus News reached out to LACCD Board of Trustees President Gabriel Buelna for additional details on how the pilot will be conducted, but did not hear back in time for publication.
Town Hall provides update on student housing BY JONATHAN BERMUDEZ Staff Writer East Los Angeles College President Alberto J. Roman and Chair of Social Science Marcel Morales, co-hosted a Town Hall and discussing student housing and updates on campus facilities. Roman said how proud he is for what the ELAC staff has accomplished. He said the food vouchers, hot spots and housing they have provided are helping students in need. Roman said there is a need to focus more on housing needs. He said there are public updates for facilities on campus that have been there since the ‘70s. Morales said there are certain things he wants to accomplish. Morales said the meeting is an open dialogue so that the students of ELAC could participate. School administrators want to find out what the student community wants, thinks and what concerns they have. He said members of the district are ‘the district big shots.’ They are the ones that have been helping ELAC with housing and facilities on campus. The Los Angeles Community College District members are: Rueben Smith, Peggy Quijida De franke, Ian Erdhart and Edwin Van Ginkel. Morales also introduced his own team: Miguel Duenas, Sonia Lopez, and Jessica Olivas. “I got to give a special shoutout to Jessica who is on the frontlines of this issue, working on this every single day and who helped with this presentation a great deal, and when students have housing issues she’s the person that we come to,” Morales said. Vice Chancellor of LACCD, Reuben Smith presented what his team has been doing, including housing.
Smith said there was going to be a presentation that Director of Bonds for LACCD, Ian Erhardt was going to share. The presentation will show the conditions assessment, which is how they consider new facilities and to possibly create a master plan. Erhardt said that when in discussion for a new bond he noticed that some of their needs were not met with the first three bonds that they created with ELAC. Their data is based on percentages of the condition of buildings across the district. These percentages are how they come up with the facility commission assessment. They also look at the Facility Commission Index (FCI) which is a study that is done by the state. Their studies happen in threeyear increments but due to the pandemic they were able to create records for 2019. ELAC sits at 25%, but Erhardt believes it will go down after they demolish bungalows and once nursing moves to the new building. The old nursing building, will be demolished. The FCI is based on whether or not the flooring in buildings from the ‘70s have been updated. He wants to get that percentage below 10. He said when they were evaluating the bonds they were trying to look at what wasn’t picked up. “A lot of infrastructure work needs to be done to all of our campuses,” Erhardt said. He said that even though we have ‘new pretty buildings’ he noticed the pipelines feeding those buildings aren’t quite adequate enough.
GRAPHIC BY ZASHA HAYES
News Briefs
VPAM opening reception
PHOTOS COURTESY OF CENTER THEATRE GROUP
Virtual-career fair focuses on the arts BY GABRIELA GUTIERREZ Staff Writer Students and professional artists came together for the Going Pro Career Fair on Saturday having multiple-unfiltered discussions about all-things arts related. All discussions began with the introduction of both moderators and panelists in the form of a visual description of themselves, their outfits and the physical areas they were in. They also said the name of the land they were occupying in order to honor the stolen lands of the indigenous peoples and Native American tribes that resided in the United States of America before. The fair consisted of three primary live discussions between artists and audiences along with 20-minutelive sessions for students who wished to have more personalized advice. The live discussions were: •You’ve Graduated: Now What? Navigating Your Creative Career. •Master of All: Becoming an Intentional Multi-Hyphenate. •I Quit: What We Can Learn from the Great Resignation. Although all discussions touched on slightly different topics, they all resonated with one another on the importance of technology in the world of theater. “Right now, we’ve seen the theater have a huge shift in the way that we present our work. The digital space became a platform. It became an alternative venue for us,” Sammy Lopez said. During the “You’ve Graduated” discussion, speakers Socks Whitmore and Armando Huipe said what their personal experiences were like navigating through the world of theater arts during and after graduating from college. Whitmore said burnout was a huge problem throughout college and that time-management and self-care became a priority postgraduation. “I was doing all of these things
The Vincent Price Art Museum will host an opening reception for Sonic: Terrains in Latinx Art, April 30, 6-8 p.m. Free admission. There will be a DJ and cash bar.
all the time. I don’t regret that, but especially because I graduated right at the start of the pandemic. That set me up for massive burnout. So one of the things that became a massive pivot for me, immediately postgraduation, was how to manage my time,” Whitmore said. Whitmore said there were no personal regrets during and after college career-wise.
“Art is one of the few jobs, right now in this world, that humans were truly meant to be doing.” SOCKS WHITMORE Artist
“Even when I do projects that don’t come to fruition, that are not the most pleasant collaborative experience, that I’m not happy with the end product, I don’t feel like there’s a lot of things where I’d [say] ‘I wish I never did that’ because I feel like [I learned from those things],” Whitmore said. Huipe said that he sees the future of theater arts being forced to address the issue of climate change. “I think that the field will have to reckon with the climate crisis. I think that is headed our way,” Huipe said. Whitmore and Huipe had advice for members of the audience. “Art is one of the few jobs, right now in this world, that humans were truly meant to be doing. Credit scores weren’t part of the plan, that got made up somewhere along the lines. But art has always been a part of who we are. So if you’ve decided that that’s what you want to do with your life, that’s an incredibly worthwhile purpose. Don’t doubt for a second
Free speech Q & A
that it means something,” Whitmore said. Huipe said the industry is underresourced and undervalued. Due to this it is a difficult path, but that reminding one-self of the beauty in art during tough times is important. The “Master of All” discussion went into depth about the experiences of multi-hyphenates. Panelists Pia Shah and Howard Ho both said there are pros and cons of being multi-hyphenates. Shah said she had to learn to acknowledge her worth in the world of arts and theater as an actress with considerably less experience than others who have more in their repertoire. She said as an actress, she was asked to write a play and she felt she didn’t have the experience for it but went for it anyway. “Just because I haven’t submitted to festival after festival for playwriting and I’ve been focused on other types of expression, doesn’t mean that a play that I write can’t be great. It might be one time. It doesn’t have to be like ‘and now I’m a playwright and I’m going to be writing plays for the rest of my life,” Shah said. Both Shah and Ho said they used the strategies that have helped them across the board for all of the careers they do. Shah said finding new multihyphenates is essential to her learning because no two paths are the same. “Keep a notebook or a Google doc of all these ideas. Eventually you’re gonna have a ton of stuff and [say] ‘This is an entire play. All these ideas now, I can put them into a play. I can put them into a book. I can write a poem and make a collection of poems,’” Ho said. Ho said that as a multi-hyphenate it can be tough for others to understand that he can do more than one thing. He said it can also be tough to say no to certain projects that don’t necessarily align with what he’s doing sometimes. “It’s not about you, you can do
The Social Sciences faculty will host an in-person discussion about the current state of freedom of speech in America tomorrow at 12:10 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. located in building G7 room 102.
Literary Journal of ELAC
everything, but other people only want to pigeon-hole you. So you kind of have to train them, in a way, to see you in that multi-hyphenate glory. Sometimes that means saying no,” Ho said. For the final discussion, speakers Garlia Cornelia Jones and Sam Morreale said the act of quitting had affected their lives during those times. “I think that saying ‘I quit’ was certainly a great resignation moment for that small thing. It was saying ‘You know what? This isn’t for me anymore. I’ll be okay. That extra three/four hundred bucks a month, I’ll find it somewhere else or I won’t do this or my kids won’t have that, but my self-respect will stay intact,’” Jones said. Morreale said many artists are underpaid and undervalued. He said reality has affected him as an artist himself. He also sees the lack of fair pay as a propellor for the great resignation. The great resignation has had 48 million people quit their jobs, for a variety of reasons. “When you donate to institutions you can say how you want those funds to be used. Even as a single donor. Even if it’s 25 bucks that you are offering to an institution, you are allowed to say ‘I want this to go to x, y, and z,’” Morreale said.
Sports Page 6
Celebrate National Poetry Month during the open mic event tomorrow, noon-2 p.m. in the S-2 courtyard.