The phenomenon of homophobia and heterosexism in today’s society was examined Dec. 1 at the City College Cultural Awareness Center.

City College Psychology professor Gayle Pitman, who hosted the lecture, defined the hallmarks of homophobia, and discussed the adverse effects of heterosexism, or the assumption that an individual is heterosexual.

Pitman began the lecture by turning the tables and asking three heterosexual volunteers questions that many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer LGBTQ students face on a regular basis, such as, “What do you think caused your heterosexuality?”  And,“Is it possible that your heterosexuality is just a phase that you might grow out of?”

Psychology major Tighearnan Lee says he encounters homophobia every day.

“A lot of people that already know about homophobia and heterosexism came as a refresher,” said Lee, 25. “It’s kind of hard to get people that aren’t interested in it to listen to the lecture.”

The lecture, which drew a crowd of about 30, even prompted some debate among attendees as to whether or not one’s disagreement with a person’s sexuality constitutes homophobia.

Pitman emphasized the importance and prevalence of covert, or passive-aggressive, homophobia, as opposed to the more overt, riotous, sign-waving variety. While blatant acts…» Read More

Many students with disabilities are discovering a hard truth: that they’ll be stuck paying off student loans after they can no longer afford to go to college.

Because of the Federal Department of Education’s refusal to accept any agency’s determinations of disability other than the department’s, many disabled college students are forced to pay off student loans for tuition when they are unable attend school for a variety of reasons. And rather than accept Social Security’s determinations for disability, the Education Department chooses to use its own set of vague definitions to determine whether candidates with disabilities are worthy of having their loans forgiven.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Aug. 29 article, “Education Department Backs Away From Fix to Help Disabled Student Borrowers,” detailed the issues many students with disabilities face with their student loans.

Social Security’s criteria for determining an individual’s disability claim are fairly straightforward. If people are unable to do work they were previously capable of, unable to adjust to other work due to a medical condition, and the disability is expected to last longer than a year, then people are eligible to receive disability benefits.

However, when dealing with the Department of Education, people need to…» Read More

The City College library will introduce a series of 90-minute virtual  workshops beginning Oct. 17 to help students critically evaluate  potential research sources.

According to the workshop’s developer, Jeffrey Karlsen, the virtual  workshops will focus specifically on searching for sources within  library databases, as well as focusing on differentiating between  scholarly and unscholarly literature. Offered three times — Oct. 17  from 6:30-8 p.m., Nov. 2 from 7-8:30 p.m., and Nov. 18 from 11:30-1  p.m. — the workshops will also elaborate on how a library database is  unlike an average search engine.

The workshops can be completed on any computer with an Internet connection, said Karlsen, and are designed to be completed at home, as opposed to school.

“That’s the best way to do it,” said Karlsen. “Students log into a kind of ‘virtual classroom’. You can also call it a webinar—if you’ve ever done a webinar, you know what to expect.”

The workshops are similar to Path to Information Literacy Online Tutorial (or PILOT), City College’s library’s information literacy tutorial. Much like Karlsen’s workshops, PILOT focuses on educating students on effectively utilizing library databases and critically evaluating research sources in six 60-minute modules.

PILOT, which was developed by…» Read More

The Health Occupations Career Outreach program hosts its sixth annual job fair today Oct. 4 from noon-3 p.m. in Mohr Hall Quad and Lillard Hall Room 103.

The fair will include five different workshops, ranging from Pathways to a Career in Nursing and Strawberry DNA, Careers in Biotechnology, High School to Healthcare and Careers in Healthcare Interpreting. The fair seeks to educate City College students about the opportunities available in the health field.

The workshops will consist of local healthcare professionals, such as Darreis Lucien, M.S.; Ann Stolz, Ph.D., RN; Holli A. DeVon, Ph.D., RN; and Louise Winkelblack, Health Force director of the Los Rios District.

City College Health Occupations students will also host their own workshop titled College Life: A Reality Check With a Panel of Health Occupations Students.

Demonstrations by City College students will also be included.

For more information, please contact Sue Hussey, Science and Allied Health coordinator, at 650-2767 or email her at husseys@scc.losrios.edu

…» Read More

As phase one of the construction on Hughes Stadium draws to a close it brings with it new bleachers and locker rooms, said Mitch Campbell, City College Dean of Athletics.

The upgrade, which began in March of this year, resulted in the replacement of the North Horseshoe and East side bleachers, as well as new locker rooms and storage areas, Campbell said.

“So far we’re very near completion of the first phase,” Campbell said.

Future plans include retrofitting the stadium to meet America Disabilities Act standards. These changes included repairs to the stadium’s infrastructure, replacing the bleachers on the West side, installing elevators on both sides of the stadium, and reconfiguring the press box, Campbell said.

Next spring, when the construction enters its fourth and final phase, the field will get new synthetic turf and the track runways will be reconfigured, allowing maximum width for the soccer field, Campbell said.

The athletics department has been working closely with operations in the hopes that teams and classes can use the facility for as long as possible during the construction.

“We are kind of working around it,” Campbell said. “We’re going to have to do the best we can with alternate facilities.”

…» Read More