The undocumented students club at Long Beach City College gives undocumented students from different areas a safe space to ask for help and learn from other undocumented students but should be much more than just a club, there should be an Undocumented Student Center where they can integrate with DREAMS services.
The DREAMS service at LBCC provides support to undocumented students and aims to educate the campus on immigration issues and provide resources for undocumented students.
The DREAMS program is located in the undocumented students club advisor, Jose Gutierrez’ office in the Welcome center on the LAC campus in room A1002.
For such an important resource for undocumented students on campus who most likely are having a more difficult time navigating through the education system, the resource should have a much bigger space than a single office.
With new buildings being constructed and the passing of measure AC which grants LBCC campuses up to $990 million, investing in creating an Undocumented student center would be a great use of the new funding.
This would mean a center where the undocumented students club and DREAMS resources can collaborate and create an environment where undocumented students can thrive.
It also creates an interactive safe space for students to voice concerns and reach out to others who understand the situation that they can relate to.
President of the club Melanie Murrillo expresses concerns with the attendance for upcoming semesters after the clubs current members transfer to cal states or universities.
With several current club members transferring, concerns about the club not having new members for the next semester start to arise.
If the club was integrated with the DREAMS program it would draw in more students who are already looking for more resources because of their immigration status.
It is crucial for more students to learn more about the club in order for it to become more prominent on campus.
The club was founded recently in 2023 by Jesus Bernarbe and took some time in order for it to be official.
It not only focuses on serving the latino community but also aims to provide inclusivity to all undocumented students regardless of the region they come from.
Despite all of their efforts the club still remains only a club despite it being a safe space for many immigrant students.
The LBCC student health resource center offers a variety of sexual health products and testing for HIV/STDs.
Both TTC and LAC offer intermittent testing through truck labs that regularly rotate between campuses.
Condoms and lubricants are also provided through a grab-and-go system at the health resource centers front desk office located in the A building.
When posed the question of expanding sexual health resources to other areas of campus, student Jonathan Vazquez agreed to the idea.
“There should be, there’s some students that don’t even know…students are clueless, they won’t ask until it’s too late,” Vazquez said.
They also offer female condoms which are occasionally brought out to their front desk.
Deborah Miller-Calvert, dean of student affairs, has not heard back from any of the student body wanting to expand condom access to restrooms.
When asked if students have reached out concerning expanding services, Miller-Calvert explained that students would have to formally express that desire through student run organizations.
“Not that I’m aware of, often students ask us for it such as through ASB or student halls. Never heard students asking for it but students know where they can get our services,” Miller-Calvert said.
Other students such as student Diego Avila, were not aware that the health resource center provided sexual health resources.
“I didn’t know that but yeah I would go over and use something like that,” Avila said.
The funding for health products comes through students, which is a $20 fee tacked on to the overall tuition fee.
If testing trucks are not available they are then redirected to the nearest hospital for testing such as Saint Mary’s hospital which offers the service free of charge
Planned Parenthood also cooperates with LBCC bringing the organization along for health festivals and workshops.
Currently there are no plans to expand sexual health resources to other parts of campus such as restrooms.
As the cost of food stays high in California Long Beach City College, students struggle to learn how to navigate spending and saving their money.
In 2024, food prices in the Los Angeles area rose 3.5% overall with food from grocery stores rising 2.1% and food away from home rising 5% according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Long Beach City College has many places on campus where students can spend money on food, including the Viking Express located on the LAC campus.
The Viking Express offers quick drinks and snacks for busy college students to buy in between classes.
Students Dimitrious Vasquez, front, and Kristina Milan decide on what snack to buy from the Viking Express on Nov. 14, 2024. (Samantha Navarro)
“I go once or twice a week. I spend about five to ten dollars each time,” Kaleb Valdez, who frequents the Viking Express, said.
On average, Valdez spends about 15-20 dollars at the store each week, which adds up to 60 to 80 dollars every month and 320 dollars each semester.
“It’s good to hear the actual number. I didn’t know it was that much,” Valdez said.
“I would tell a student like Kaleb (Valdez) to schedule time off in your week to go to the grocery store. Plan your days out and prep food. Leftovers are your new best friend,” Personal Finance and Digital and Social Media professor Nick Carbonaro said.
The Viking Express isn’t the only opportunity for students to spend money on campus, a new coffee pavilion opened on the LAC campus in October.
“Just make your coffee at home and plan your dinners,” LBCC Economics professor Fred Beebe said.
Quick, thoughtless transactions like the ones that take place at the Viking Express and other hubs on campus make it easy for students to spend more money than they save.
“I try to save a portion of my paycheck, at least $100 per check,” LBCC student Zac Milton said.
While saving a percentage of every paycheck is a good tool, Carbonaro teaches his students an efficient way to do so.
“One thing I teach my students is the 70/10/10/10 model for budgeting. You take 70% of your income and use it for necessities like your food, clothing, and shelter. 10% goes to your savings, 10% to your investments like stocks, and the last 10% goes to community investments that you can write off for taxes,” Carbonaro said.
The monthly cost for groceries as a college student in California is $293, and college students spend an average of $410 a month eating off-campus food according to the Education Data Initiative.
“One simple piece of advice to save money is to shop the edges of the grocery store. That’s where your fruits and vegetables, milk, eggs, poultry, and water are,” Carbonaro said.
Most of what students spend money on at places like The Viking Express are highly processed foods, which reside in the middle of grocery stores.
“Things like chips and candies cost money because they’re so processed. As food becomes more processed and moves through the supply chain, the prices increase, so avoid those,” Carbonaro said.
Despite the do’s and don’ts of saving money on food, LBCC is home to many services to help students in need financially.
“There are so many campus services to help. Go to Student Life or Student Services, the Viking Closet for clothing, the Food pantry (Viking Vault), even Mental and Physical Health Services,” Beebe said.
Other options for students include scholarships, career fairs, and taking advantage of student discounts.
“It was easier 40 years ago. It’s a different world now and it’s harder on younger people to work and go to school. You give up more now, but there are things that can help,” Beebe said.
The English department threw an event for LBCC students in the P Building courtyard so professors could talk to students about spring enrollment, classes, clubs, while answering questions over food and music.
“The English open house is an invitation to students to see what they are teaching in any particular class and answer any questions students may have about the spring semester,” creative writing professor Jeff Epley said.
Open house gives students and professors a chance to speak outside of class and answer any questions students may have about the literary programs and classes LBCC has to offer, including information about different learning cohorts the college has to offer.
“I teach literature for learning communities that identify as men of color and Latinos –these programs are designed to help them find a sense of belonging in the community on campus, the classroom and make that connection,” Jeff Rivers an English professor who teaches classes for LBCC’s Puente and Male Success Initiative cohorts said.
The English departments open house is very informative for students with an undecided major or just students seeking more information about the English department programs and resources.
“It’s important to make that social connection, especially with students who are in the same peer groups and get to interact with teachers on much more of a human basis– Many of us who like to read and write are introvert, so it’s great for students to interact with people like them who can identify as they do,” Ryle said.
Not only were there English majors and minors who attended but students of other majors as well, like Gabriel Ebrahimi an LBCC Engineering student.
“This event is great, it’s not your 2nd street ad on a billboard – It’s more like a funnel because little by little it goes into specific classes and promotes the classes to let you know what’s available to you,” Ebrahimi said.
The event also hosted a book sale for the students with many books to choose from at low cost, the deal that had students lining up left and right ready to purchase them.
LBCC students looking at flyers about classes for the upcoming spring semester at the English open house event on the Liberal arts campus held in the P building.(Tenoa J. Stewart)
“I think it’s a good place to learn about English, it’s better to come out and learn hands on than online, you connect better that way,” Nandini Reddy, English major and president of the English majors and minors club, said
Students tend to think that these types of events can be very big help to those who have not decided their majors yet.
“My time with the English department has helped me figure out what I wanted and needed for my education. I made my decisions and I hope that more people would join the English community,” Jocelyn Campos, English major, said.
The English department is a mix of everything from creative writing to journalism located in the P building offering workshops at the writing success center and unique classes like ‘New Testament literature.’
New Testament Professor Jeff Wheeler encouraged brings people who are English majors as well as non-English majors who want to read the Bible from a literary perspective.
“It’s storytelling, we break down different stories from how they constructed it to how they are built,” Wheeler said.
The event provided an excellent perspective of different out of the ordinary classes from student to professor that students might or might not have known about.
Marty Triplett, journalism major, said,“I do like that English and journalism majors are in the same department, it’s nice mixing up with people going to similar industries.”
“I like all the professors here, they show what they have to offer for next semester, I liked the children’s story class. It gives you options to learn new things,” Triplett said.
The thrill of English had professors excited for the spring semester as much as the students were.
“I think it is great we are advertising Spring classes and I am able to answer a lot of questions. It’s bigger than last year’s term too,” Daren Smoley, creative writing professor said.
Events like the English open house can most likely give students and professors a chance to talk about transferring options to different schools.
“It helps students with the connection between student and professor, we also have been helping students with plans to transfer,” Smoley said.
The English department even hosts workshops in the Writing and Reading Success Center to help students get better at writing, which could be good for students who struggle.
“There are all kinds of resources in the writing success center, it’s an excellent place to study. They hold raffles where students can win a $100 Visa gift card,” Smoley said.
Smoley helped create the Center and helps to host the workshops that may help students with writing projects.
“Creative writers get feedback and suggestions from their peers, ‘is this working or not’…they foster a network forming their own writer group collaborations which could be good for sparking more novels with each other down the line,” Smoley said.
There are rooms in the writing success center that can be used for group projects equipped with big screen televisions that can be hooked up for presentations so students can practice.
Long Beach City College has now made the process of printing entirely cashless, when it should be inclusive to students who carry cash, not just those who have a credit or debit card.
The change was recently implemented in August of this year and is one of the only methods to print on campus.
In several locations such as the Math Success Center and the library, printing requires manual card entry or funds accessed by the WEPA app.
The WEPA app is an application that allows you to directly login to a printer and upload a file you want to print by tapping your phone on the designated area on the printer.
In order to print, the app requires the user to load a minimum of $5 in funds from a credit or debit card despite the cost of printing only being between 10 to 72 cents.
This process disregards those who don’t have a credit or debit card, because some students can be working jobs that only pay them in cash, excluding them from printing on campus entirely.
The new system requires students to pay a $5 fee upfront which forces them to spend the $5 or not use the printer.
The old system did not have a fee requirement and students were able to pay only for the pages they needed without the fee.
If students can’t use the app, the printer allows users to login manually by entering their card number, however it charges an extra 20 cents per transaction or a deposit of $5 to avoid the extra 20 cent fee if you pay through entering your card manually.
Another way the students can print is by logging into the WEPA website however the $5 first-time fee is still required.
There are professors on campus that still make physical copies of assignments a requirement so having extra fees does not create printing more accessible for students.
Printing should be inclusive to those who use cash, simplifying the process and making it more affordable for students.
If there was ever a time for students to care more about their mental health it would be now, with the aftermath of an election, finals upcoming, and the familial stress associated with holidays, that mental health should be at a higher priority for students.
According to the National Library of Education, the second leading cause of death between the ages of 10-24 is suicide, which is an upward trend occurring after 2021.
Young adults also report twice as many cases of anxiety and depression than teens according to the Making Caring Common project from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
While yes, LBCC does have many workshops dedicated to mental health awareness and care, they seem to be lacking.
We need to break down what is really causing a college student’s mental health crisis.
According to a study by Insider Higher Ed, the causes according to students of the mental health crisis range from balancing academics with personal life, social media, current economic events, and more.
In a similar study, 86% of college presidents seem to believe that social media is the main cause of the mental health crisis, followed by “decreased socialization skills caused by Covid-19” by 74%.
It’s easy enough to tell students to “take a deep breath” or to “get off social media” without knowing what a student is going through.
A lot of the workshops LBCC hosts on campus seem to provide resources towards “Self-Love” and small activities to relieve stress.
If LBCC wants to continue helping students with their mental health, they would provide workshops for skills to help students with things like balancing life or getting into contact with therapists.
A large cause of why the mental health crisis hasn’t changed is the lack of valuable resources given to those in need.
While it’s also easy enough for people to ask those in need to attend workshops for resources, or go to therapy to get help, it is ultimately on the person in need to choose what they will go forward with.
Many students may not know that LBCC offers up to 6 free counseling sessions through the school, as well as access to services such as TimleyCare, a virtual 24/7 hotline app found through the health resources on LBCC’s website.
LBCC’s dance showcase kicked off on Friday Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. with 10 dances in total and three students presenting their first-ever choreographies.
The dance program had a total of nine weeks to prepare all 10 dances and showed a wide array of styles including ballet, modern and a dash of tap dancing.
One of the highlight dances of the show was the third dance titled “And So, They Prevailed” choreographed by student dancer Amanda Arroyo.
This was Arroyo’s choreography debut, with a group performance filled with sci-fi elements and a critique of phone culture that Arroyo believes forces people to conform.
Arroyo’s major inspiration for the dance came about when they witnessed how attached students on campus are to their phones.
“One day I was listening to the music you heard and I envisioned these robotic movements and I tried to get a story from that,” Arroyo said. “I was just walking around school and you can see people all the time on their phones, bumping into each other. We become so reliant on technology that we become frightful to be ourselves.”
Student choreographers produced original and unique dance sets with varying themes, aesthetics, and cultural backgrounds for LBCC’s Dance Showcase. (Alma Tamara)
The finale of the show was “Mi Gente! Wake up.” was choreographed by dance director Martha L.Z. Pamintuan.
The dance focused on the contributions of working-class Hispanic immigrants as well as the culture of these communities.
The performance concluded with dancers walking onstage with slogans encouraging audience members to go vote.
However, the cards raised by the dancers spelled “Go Ovote” when they had meant “Go Vote”
Pamintuan attributed the inspiration of the dance as an effort to shine a spotlight on immigrants and their contributions to the U.S.
“I started the idea a few years ago back in 2009 when I was at UC Irvine. It’s just difficult because as a brown woman looking around and (seeing) how much we don’t value all of the people that do the work,” Pamintuan said. “So (the performance is) about the people behind the scenes, what they offer all of us, as a society, as a nation, as a country.”.
Dance student Alyssa Gallardo was deeply moved after the final act and approached Pamintuan with tears in her eyes.
As a daughter of a first-generation immigrant, Gallardo expressed that the finale’s message meant a lot to her.
“He came illegally at first but he’s now a citizen, he just worked in domestic service and farming for a long long time and got his education and our family. I’m a first-generation college student, so it’s had a huge impact on me. Seeing my dad being represented on stage to some degree and remembering how fun the culture is at the end,” Gallardo said.
LBCC’s English department hosted their visiting writer series with guest speaker, CSULB English professor and writer Suzanne Greenberg, on Nov. 16.
Suzanne Greenberg selected stories from her most recent work “Shopping for Dad and Other Stories,” including “Under the radar,” “How it Happens,” and the titular “Shopping for Dad.”
Greenberg gave short backgrounds for each of the stories which mostly revolved around coming of age teenage girls.
Greenberg also hosted a Q&A after her readings, with most of the questions concerning her style of writing and advice for up and coming writers.
Greenberg attributed the influence of her work on her own life experiences and observations of people’s lives.
“A lot of them are small bits from bits from my life and lives of my neighbors and people around me and then me filling in the blanks making stuff up and imagining things. There’s almost always some grain of truth in each one, but then I fictionalized them and turn them into stories,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg last spoke at LBCC in 2003, around the time her book “Speed-Walk and Other Stories,” was released.
Organized by English professor Jeffrey Epley, also a former student of Greenberg’s, the visiting writer series brings on two writers every semester to read some of their works and participate in a Q&A.
The event brings in a variety of writers across different genres, but Epley’s main aim is to bring on poets and fiction writers.
“I think it’s good to have writers from many different genres. We had a writer who was a prime fiction guy one semester, we had a short story writer last semester who also writes plays and this semester we have Suzanne Greenberg,” said Epley.
The poet speaker of this semester was Luivette Resto, who spoke on October 23.
Aspiring writers were also in attendance, with some having classes in neighboring rooms and were dropping in.
The audience consisted mainly of English majors and there was a question and answer time where they had the chance to ask questions regarding story structuring and workflow. Nov. 15, 2024 (Nick Eismann)
Robert Almaraz, a short story writer and current LBCC student, graduated with a degree in psychology but has since returned to school to pursue an English degree.
Almaraz explained that he was tired of psychology and sought to pursue his actual passions.
“I was kind of over it when I was still going to college full time. I always wanted to switch back to English but I never had the time or the credits, there were too many credits, so it was a lot, a lot of obstacles,” said Almaraz.
Almaraz had a piece of his writing, titled “Concrete Flesh” published in LBCC’s SAGA literary journal, the most recent volume available on the creative writing program’s website.
The visiting writers series will continue during spring semester with more information to be announced.
With finals coming soon, LBCC students and faculty are looking for ways to manage the stress that comes with the end of the semester.
LBCC has a dedicated health office at the Liberal Arts campus in room A-1010, which offers services such as short-term therapy.
Some of these counseling services offered are stress/anger management, academic stress and anxiety and panic disorder.
Professors make it a point to direct students to the mental resources that are available on campus and that students don’t have to worry since it’s paid for in their tuition.
Professors around campus believe in open communication with students so they know they are cared for and help them build their skills in advocating for themselves.
“We professors see when a student is stressed by their grade in the course and how long it takes them to complete an assignment. Those are signals that something isn’t okay and I often reach out to see what’s going on and when appropriate I recommend the student health office,” Psychology and Research Methods professor Arturo Garcia said.
Many strategies can be implemented into classes to create an environment that reduces stress.
“Having extensions for assignments at a reduced value, and allowing exams to be dropped or replaced. Showing up to lecture early to be available for students to ask questions,” department head of math and engineering Ladera Barbee said.
Students aren’t the only ones dealing with stress, professors and faculty are also having to deal with stress.
“As a department head and professor I am slammed with millions of deadlines right now, I’ve been so slammed this whole month,” Ladera said.
Some students may not know how to deal with stress and emotions since it can be their first time dealing with these types of things.
Enriqe Gil, a LBCC first year student whose major is undeclared, talks about the stress he’s facing in his classes.
“I am taking many gen-ed classes and the coursework for my astronomy and chemistry classes are stressing me out and I feel so overwhelmed,” Gil said.
Most students often feel alone and think they have no one to talk to or that no one would understand, leading them to not speak up on their stress but LBCC keeps services open to any student truly suffering and in need.
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
6 months after last activity
__utmv
Contains custom information set by the web developer via the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated every time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
2 years after last activity
__utmx
Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test.
18 months
_ga
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gali
Used by Google Analytics to determine which links on a page are being clicked
30 seconds
_ga_
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gid
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity
24 hours
_gat
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager
1 minute
_gac_
Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together.
90 days
__utma
ID used to identify users and sessions
2 years after last activity
__utmt
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
__utmc
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
