Student conference to defend education

The Guardsman

Laura Elder

In  the wake of the March in March demonstrations in San Francisco and  Sacramento, a handful of activists braved the stormy weather on March 27  to meet at San Francisco’s Main Library to plan a statewide community  college conference.

The  conference will be held on May 12 at the City College Mission campus  and is intended to be a “networking opportunity to stop the  privatization of public education,” said Shanell Williams, City  College’s Vice President of Communications for the Associated Students  council.

“This is a human rights issue and we want to connect with people throughout the nation,” she said.

The conference’s mission statement is “to keep the community in community college.”

The  committee in charge of planning the statewide community college  conference is made up of an eclectic group of volunteers, including Bay  Area community college students, instructors and administrators.

Topics  discussed at Tuesday’s planning meeting included potential workshops,  panel discussions and plans for outreach to all 112 of California’s  community colleges.

“It’s important that other colleges feel like they have buy-in with the conference,” Williams said.
In order to facilitate outreach, the planning committee has divided up the task among its volunteers.

Susan Lopez, a City College ESL instructor said, “it is essential to organize on a statewide level so we can network together.”

Williams,  who participated in the March in March demonstrations in both 2011 and  2012, said she believes that this year’s March in March participants  were “a more informed student body with a sense of all being in this  together.”

With  the upcoming conference, she hopes activists “will become more  organized across California and build bridges with other community  colleges so we can move forward with the same information.”