Campus Briefs
ELECTION RESULTS IN
The tallies from student votes are in, and City College has a whole slew of new student politicians. At the front of the pack are the new student trustee, William Walker, the new Ocean campus president, Shanell Williams, and the new Downtown campus president, Bouchra Simmons.
Fifteen Ocean campus senators were also voted in, along with a new vice president for the Downtown campus.
After the over 2,000 ballots were tallied, William Walker walked away with 700 student votes. His nearest opponent, Ezra Crowley, received 512.
In a statement made on the CCSF Elections YouTube Channel, Walker said, “we need a trustee candidate who understands cuts. We’ve cut 78 courses midterm, dashing opportunities for a number of students looking to transfer... we need to find a way to make City College a more sustainable institution.”
He was also a member of Coleman Advocates, a community organization that mobilizes Students Making A Change, a club based on Ocean campus.
Shanell Williams was previously vice president of communications for the Ocean Campus Associated Students. She has advocated for education at the state capitol. In January, along with members of Occupy CCSF, she notably “mic checked” the Board of Governors at their meeting in Sacramento when they approved the recommendations of the Student Success Task Force.
-Joe Fitzgerald
NEW MATRICULATION
A resolution to revise City College’s English placement testing policy was passed after two hours of discussion at the Board of Trustees meeting on April 26.
The resolution requires City College to implement new and effective ways of measuring student’s abilities in the matriculation, assessment and placement process.
The new policy will make it so that students will be allowed to retake placement tests after two weeks, instead of three months, and will be allowed to enroll in classes that are one level higher than what is recommended by their scores.
The policy will take effect by the spring 2013 semester.
HONORING GRIFFIN
Also at the board meeting, Chancellor Don Q. Griffin was commended for his more than 40 years of service at City College.
Griffin has worked at City College as a department chair, teacher, administrator and finally as chancellor.
Students, faculty and other members of the community came to the meeting and spoke about Griffin, including Reverend Amos Brown, who served on the Board of Trustees in the 1980s, and spoke about the challenges African Americans have faced in California.
Griffin who is scheduled to undergo surgery to remove a brain tumor, officially stepped down from his position at the meeting.
CHILDHOOD MENTOR
A resolution to contract with the California Department of Education for the continuation of the California Early Childhood Mentor Program was also passed at the April 26 meeting.
For the last 11 years City College has been home to the program that provides funding for child development education at 100 Community Colleges in California.
The total amount of the contract is $2,866,295. Almost ten percent of that will go to City College, giving the school’s budget a boost of $260,572.
-Sean Houlihan
RETROFIT PARTNERSHIP
The Board of Trustees approved a partnership between City College and a national nonprofit organization called Emerald Cities Collaborative, marking the first step towards a future Ocean Campus energy retrofit project that is slated to hire members of the San Francisco Community.
Currently Emerald Cities is retrofitting four affordable housing buildings for Mission Housing Development Corporation under a Community Workforce Agreement which will be adopted for the college’s future green energy retrofit.
After completion of the retrofit, the college would repay Emerald Cities using residual money resulting from energy savings. This repayment would take several years, but requires no initial investment from City College for the retrofit work.
-James Fanucchi
POETRY AT CITY HALL
Over 60 poets and spectators congregated April 27 from all over San Francisco and the Bay Area to participate in the seventh annual Poems Under the Dome open mic poetry reading at City Hall.
The night began with audience members holding hands directly under the City Hall dome as Jorge Molina led the group in an opening prayer.
After the opening ceremony, Supervisor John Avalos read a poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca and then proclaimed that the day officially be called Poems Under the Dome Day.
Following Avalos, poets of all ages and levels of experience, ranging from a high school collective that called themselves the InstaPoets to older and more experienced individuals, participated in the event.
“It was an amazing range of people: multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-generational,” program organizer and newly re-elected Associated Students Senator “Diamond” Dave Whitaker said.
A member of the Beat generation, Whitaker said he conceived the original plan in 2005 — when he first became a student at City College — as he stood atop Alamo Square, looked down on City Hall and was inspired to use it as venue to bring the city’s poets together under one roof.
“As a man I’ve been doing poetry for sometime and my goal is to push the envelope and bring together the mother of all open mics.”
-Kevin Macias
