The suggested names for the renaming of the PCC does not connect to students and the surrounding community in any way.
As the 75th year of the opening of LBCC’s Pacific Coast Campus approaches, LBCC’s associate vice president Alicia Kirkwood shares her plan to change the PCC identifier from the Pacific Coast Campus.
The three different options that are up for consideration are: Community Learning and Trade Campus, Careers and Community Learning Campus, and Community Learning and Technology Campus.
Although these names do represent the classes that are available at the Pacific Coast Campus, the names should also encourage students and the surrounding community to attend. The names shouldn’t just be mechanical company-like identifiers, they should also be fun and unique.
The need to rename the way people identify PCC is understandable. LAC is the Liberal Arts Campus mainly because the classes on campus deal with arts and humanities. Most of the degrees that students receive at LAC are only the beginning of their college career.
The classes that are mainly available at the Pacific Coast Campus are trades such as welding technology, automotive technology and metal fabrication technology. PCC also offers English learning classes, and other classes to help community members strengthen their skills.
Kirkwood’s hope is that by changing the campus identifier from PCC to something else, the community around the campus will know what is offered at the campus.
This should not be the only concern when renaming the identifier. LBCC should also want the name and identifier to make potential students see themselves in the identifier.
The school wants community members and students alike to know that PCC is a campus thriving with different options for people, but that’s not enough for everyone.
Some want to know that their college cares about them and the community that they come from.
LBCC’s Board of Trustees, president and associate vice president have the opportunity to change the campus’s identifier into something unique, but instead are choosing a name that only shows a glimpse of what classes are available at the campus.
Kirkwood stated that they made sure to get the opinions of staff members, students and faculty alike for this name change.
This process began with surveys being sent out asking students, faculty and the Board of Trustees what words and phrases they thought of when thinking of the PCC campus. After that, focus groups were held to dissect and find names that would match what people answered to the survey.
Renaming the PCC to something so bland will not connect to all students.
Renaming the campus as something that does not capture the community can become unappealing to people in the area and defeats the purpose of the reidentification.
The new name options could reinforce that the PCC is nothing more than just a campus offering learning trades and classes that don’t require you to transfer to a four-year university. It could solidify the “us versus them” stigma that some students and people have because PCC is in a lower income neighborhood.
If one of the new names is chosen to be the new identifier of the Pacific Coast Campus, the effect it’ll have will be the opposite of what Kirkwood is trying to accomplish.