Ever since Long Beach City College reopened in 2022 after two years of online instruction, there have been monthly cultural celebrations, always tied to different cultural heritage months of recognition.
These events are popular and certainly do provide an entertaining experience for students, regardless of their connection to whatever culture is being celebrated, but that is all these events achieve.
In a way, when reports of racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia from school staff and other students at LBCC go unnoticed, these celebrations of culture seem more like placations than sincere celebration and acknowledgement of the minority groups LBCC claims to support.
For every success story highlighted by Superintendent-President Mike Munoz and his staff, there are tens of Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous students who have very little connection not just to their cultural communities but to the college community as a whole.
In an attempt to solve these issues, LBCC have created cohorts, programs that aim to service a specific demographic of student and ensure they are enrolled in courses with like-minded people and have the support they need, whether it be through specialized college and career counseling, networking opportunities, or financial assistance.
Rather than creating a truly inclusive environment, LBCC has created a culture that separates students into cohorts, clubs and support groups based on race, but does not completely encompass or embrace the larger community outside of those groups.
LBCC is a place where people from all walks of life come together to receive an education, but the ‘community’ part of LBCC seems to be sorely lacking.
There are instances where a student may want to join a specific cohort, be it UMOJA, PUENTE or any other cohort on campus, the classes they may need are often not offered in the course catalog of the cohort, due to the limited course catalog.
These cohorts are far more beneficial for students that enroll as soon as they start at LBCC, but for students who may not have been aware of these programs until their second or third year at LBCC, there are very few courses they can take within a specific cohort.
It is certainly not a terrible idea to create groups focused on specific underserved groups within LBCC, but these programs often fail to fully encapsulate and support students’ needs.
If a student is a member of an underrepresented community in higher academia, it’s very likely they are a member of another underrepresented community, and when these programs decide to hyperfocus on one aspect of a student’s identity, they potentially fail to recognize the intersection between different aspects of their identity.
The solution here is not to host more informative events on different cultures, or to host the same party every month, only switching out the decorations to something more culturally appropriate for the month, or even to create more specialized cohorts and programs.
It is instead to attempt to implement cultural sensitivity and cultural connections to subjects such as art, history or literature into the basic classes every LBCC student must take to graduate.
Including these subjects directly into curriculum could feasibly create a greater understanding and camaraderie between students and administration, rather than the current disjointed community that exists at LBCC.
Creating opportunities where students with different lived experiences can have meaningful conversation, with the acknowledgement that every person in that space is open to listening, genuinely listening with the desire to understand, even if it’s just for a grade, would do far more for the struggles of minority students than any cultural celebration that overshadows true respect with cultural spectacle.
