After being smoked out, shunned and sidelined from campus decisions that affect their everyday lives, students at CCC are just weeks away from receiving a much-needed break.
It’s been a hell of a semester, but in some ways, it lived up to everything it was expected to be.
Even before the Butte County Camp Fire initiated a campus closure that lasted over a week, campus improvements were not keeping pace with expected outcomes.
Following a spring semester marred by controversy, provoking drastic administrative shifts to occur over the summer, many hoped the internal rebuilding would have minimally kept pace with the actual construction on campus.
To the contrary, administrative issues still exist and student voices are still the last to be heard.
Sometimes it seems more attention is paid to bringing students to the college than is spent providing the students on campus an optimal learning experience.
In theory, college should be a place to find a path in life that offers a respite from the struggle of living in an over-priced pocket of the country.
Instead, East Bay students facing documentation issues, food insecurities coupled with race and gender discrimination come to campus and struggle to be respected as members of this campus community.
Nobody said college would be easy.
However, extending a commute to attend college because local jobs don’t offer a sustainable living wage takes a special level of dedication.
What’s worse is parking two blocks away after sitting in traffic for an hour because parking absolutely sucks.
This semester students felt the grit of dirt between their teeth from ongoing construction and inhaled countless parts per millions of fire ash because N95 masks were not made available to students until the day the campus closed.
Students are led to believe that their best interests are the main priority on campus.
Despite their empty proclamations, athletes, musicians, artists and academic scholars all toil in obscurity on campus.
Great performances go unattended and accomplishments in the name of the school are rarely recognized when students return from representing the campus.
Why aren’t JAZZ-ology CDs sold in the Bookstore?
The group is nationally recognized and effectively ignored on their own campus.
They deserve the support.
With the closure of the Gymnasium later this month, both men’s and women’s basketball teams will have to play the majority of their games this season on the road — alone. These student-athletes deserve better — they deserve our support.
Sadly, students will have to shoulder the burden of representing the campus alone.
Despite all of this, students at CCC continue to persevere, compete and succeed.
Hopefully, administrators use this break to devise a plan to make CCC a campus that’s welcoming and supportive.
Students deserve a college they can be proud of.