Mitch’s Pitches

Let me pitch you something: if there is one place equivalent to a confession room at a Catholic Church, or doctor-patient confidentiality at a psychiatry center, it’s the locker room of any sports team. But, when presidential candidate Donald Trump said grabbing a married woman “by the pussy” is “locker room talk,” he is making an outrageously lewd and moronic statement that could potentially damage the integrity of sports.

To protect their sport —and themselves, professional athletes have been quick to respond to Trump’s egregious statement, denying any type of conversations of sexual assault that take place in the locker room.

Benefits are meant to be an advantage, a convenience and a reliable fallback. Without them, we are strained and uncomfortable. Employees deserve benefits. They are important for financial, medical and economical reasons.

According to labor411.org, the district and the unions came to an agreement that would continue Los Angeles Community College District full-time employees’ yearly $1,500 in health care reimbursement for another two years.

Now that those two years have passed, employee Health Reimbursement Agreement (HRA) are set to not be renewed and it is a huge problem.

It is important that employees get reimbursed for many medical expenses due to extremely high fees that aren’t covered by basic insurance plans.

This non-renewal will hurt many faculty members who depend on this establishment.

Although the LACCD can cancel an HRA at any given time, it is unethical to do so. Many Pierce College employees have had life-changing experiences due to this benefit, so why take away something that only goes to aiding the right of well-being?

According to Richard McMillan, instructor of history and humanities, the HRA benefits have been a godsend.

“In January of 2013 my wife was diagnosed with non-hodgkin’s lymphoma and, because of this little card, we were able to pay for her treatment,” McMillan said.

Part of McMillan’s wife’s treatments included shots that cost about $1,500 each. McMillan said that he had to give her one everyday for about two months.

The HRA benefits help employees through financial needs, but it also eases the burden during desperate, emotional and sentimental times that they’ve gone through.

Health fees are constantly on the rise and the average U.S. Citizen cannot afford to pay these expenses without any personal budget cuts.

According to AARP.org, there are nearly 30 million Americans with hearing loss and the average price of a single hearing aid is $2,300.

“We need the HRA… I have a two year old and a five year old. You want to know what I use [HRA] for? My son has a hearing aid, he’s two years old. It’s very expensive. Both pregnancies were very difficult,” assistant professor of history Brian Walsh said.

Medical expenses are utterly high-priced, and it is unreasonable to have an employee pay for such a cost by themselves. A board member trustee for the LACCD can earn from $200,000 to $450,000 a year, according to transparentcalifornia.com. Why is it that budgetary needs are being subsided while administrators continue to get rich?

These extra funds should be used toward beneficial areas, not toward someone’s new handbag or hot rod ride. Money doesn’t seem to be lost, but rather hidden. So, with that being said, there should be no excuse or reasoning toward the loss of HRA benefits.

Director of the Health Center, Beth Benne, said at a Board of

Should professors take attendance?

Basketball sensation, Lebron James said, “Obviously, I got a mother-in-law, a wife, a mom and a daughter and those conversations just don’t go on in our locker room. What that guy was saying, I don’t know what that is. That’s trash talk.”

For Trump, directing his comments to sports jargon was just a quick way to cover-up, and make excuses for the offensive things he said.

By saying, “this was locker room banter,” what he is actually trying to do is get the public to feel empathetic and understand where he’s coming from, because a lot of people have discussed inappropriate things in private, and in a locker room full of testosterone-fueled athletes, that could be perceived as ‘macho superiority’ to some, he is going on that perception that some might assume.

Sure, if you get a group of guys together someone will share a sex story, but never is it something along the lines of sexual assault, especially bragging about it. That will never be OK to do or say, Mr. Trump.

Do not try to avert your offensive nature to something so pure as sports.

BRIAN

The prolific filmmaker Woody Allen once said that “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Nowhere else is that more true than on a college campus.

Think about it, you have a course you attend once or twice a week for 16 weeks. You have a midterm, a final, and a handful of assignments sprinkled throughout the semester, and then you’re done.

It’s not a massive amount of work or even much effort. If you didn’t procrastinate until the last second, you probably wouldn’t even give it a second thought. And after all your hard work, you get a little piece of paper that helps you get a job.

For a majority of jobs, a college degree is a requirement, no matter what the major is. Multiple studies show that the degree itself matters more to an employer than the major.

“College-educated workers are more plentiful, more commoditized and more subject to the downsizings that used to be the purview of blue-collar workers only. What employers want from workers nowadays is more narrow, more abstract and less easily learned in college.” The Declining Value Of Your College Degree published in The Wall Street Journal.

In the modern age, a college degree is not only a symbol of education, but also commitment. It shows that you can finish what you start, which is very important to an employer. So why wouldn’t the same be true for a professor? How can anyone be certain of your education if you weren’t there to receive the information in the first place? Should colleges just pass anyone who signed up for the class? bcaldera.roundupnews@gmail.com

No. You put in the work and you receive the benefits of both your labor and time.

To avoid excessive amounts of busy-work or excessive testing, the professors need a physical way of making sure you retained some of the information required to pass the class and there is no easier or more effective way to show that than by taking attendance. If you’re in the classroom during a lecture, common sense would say you heard some of the things that were being said.

If you want to skip your class go ahead, it’s your money and your choice, but to receive the same grade as someone who put in the effort devalues the accomplishment. Fair is fair and when you put in the time, you reap the benefits.

Cartoonists:

Taking attendance is unnecessary at the college level and, if it counted for a portion of a class’s grade, students could suffer unfairly.

As students, we’ve had our names called for attendance since pre-school. This is done so that our parents are held accountable for making sure we get educated, as required by the California compulsory education law.

However, once students reach higher education, there is no need for professors to waste class time by taking attendance. Pierce professors take attendance the first couple of weeks of the semester for an official count, or census. It takes a lot of time out of the lecture.

There are so many people in each class, that it drags on to hear the professor call out 25 different names. Not only are the instructors calling out these names, but they’re spending a lot of time mispronouncing the name and then learning how it’s actually pronounced.

Additionally, once a student enters college, it is expected that he or she will take responsibility for his or her own work. It’s safe to say that a student at this level understands how much missing a class and the materials presented in lectures can affect one’s ability to keep up. Students who miss a few days of lecture are aware that they are missing information that could help them succeed, but they still choose to miss class for whatever reason. And, as adults, we are allowed to make that choice. mvigil.roundupnews@gmail.com

Trustees meeting that her husband had a heart attack less than a year ago. Benne’s husband spent 47 hours in the hospital, and the bill turned out to be about $50,000. Benne and her husband recently finished paying off their portion of that bill.

“We all know our healthcare system is broken, but until we as a country can control the hemorrhaging costs of healthcare, our HRA’s are critical to many of us who are struggling to make ends meet,” Benne said.

When a student is sick or has an emergency, the last thing they want to worry about is the points they are going to lose as a direct result of their absence.

It would undermine the student’s ability to make his or her own choices if attendance is taken in college classes and weighed in toward the grade.

Some students have a natural tendency to understand a lecture or grasp a concept quickly. If I understand what my biology professor is lecturing about and I have my $200 textbook at home, I should be able to skip some days and not have my grade directly suffer.

As students, we know our own abilities and limitations. We don’t need babysitters.

Advisers: the student newspaper staff. Under appropriate state and federal court decisions, these materials are free from prior restraint by the virtue of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Accordingly, materials published herein, including any opinions expressed, should not be interpreted as the position of the L.A. Community College District, the college or any officer or employee thereof.