In recent years, budget cuts have changed the entire scope of the community college system.

There was a time when community college courses were free, easy to get into and students had a greater sense of community involvement and outreach. To be successful on the college level today requires a small fortune, lots of dedication and a flexible schedule.

Getting into classes in a specific major isn’t usually that much of a challenge. However, getting into general education classes is almost always headache-inducing.

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    As the spring semester moves to an end the weather gets better, some students might try to find any reason not to do   work. Things can get tricky and the workload can become difficult, but on the Sacramento City College campus, many students take measures toward lightening the load and making life easier.

Amber Murphy, 20 and Sarah Levi, 19, for example, spend Saturday mornings together studying different subjects. Murphy is better at math than Levi, while Levi is better at English and political science. “We met last year and started studying together,” Murphy says. “We’re both better at different subjects and I figure that two heads are better than one when you have a problem.”

Murphy and Levi spend four or five hours together every weekend doing homework. They both consider themselves good students, but Levi says that she wasn’t always a good student and she’s had to work at it.

“I get A’s now, mostly,” Levi says. “I didn’t used to get good grades and I used to really think about what I could do to get better grades. I started studying with Amber and that really helped.”

Group studying works well for Murphy…» Read More

A City College Film-Making Projects class video, “iThrone,” took first place March 1 in “iPhone Life” magazine’s contest “iPhone Life Video Contest: Create a Fake Apple Announcement” for producing the most popular contestant parody of an Apple product announcement.

“iThrone” was declared the winner after receiving the most viewer “likes” on the magazine’s YouTube channel as one of the top three of the 10 finalists chosen by “iPhone Life” from among the total videos submitted.

Narrated by student Miles David Fargo over the opening chords of “Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30” by Richard Strauss, the video came to life from a collective effort of Film-Making Projects student, according to Theatre Arts and Film Professor Robert Gore.

“I’m not necessarily the designated voiceover guy, but I did do the voiceovers for the Hobbit [parody trailer] film as well,“ Fargo said. “I did the Gollem impersonation, and some other things.”

“I’m always looking for projects to do in the class,” Gore said, “so I thought we should do the contest with the class. We brainstormed a lot of different ideas.”

Fargo says “iThrone” was the result of collaborative team efforts backed by the encouragement of supportive faculty.

“I’ve been working closely…» Read More

In March, the Los Rios Debate Team outperformed other community college teams, reaching the semifinals at the Western Novice & Junior Varsity Championship Tournament hosted by California State University,Sacramento.

Led by Sacramento City College students and City College communications professor and debate team coach, Jared Anderson, Los Rios was the only community college team to reach that level in the competition.

“There are really only two other community colleges in the country that can share the spotlight with us,” says Anderson. Such success is notable, says Anderson.

“We don’t get seniors on our team. We’re doing well in competing with other schools’ seniors in their second year.”

In February, the team also experienced success and challenges at the District 1 Qualifier and Pacific Championship hosted by Pepperdine University at their campus in Malibu.

“We had a lot of great success in the novice division,” says Anderson. “In the varsity [competition], against other teams trying to qualify for [the Nationals competition], we had a tougher time.”

Although the team risks adding losses to its record by competing at the varsity level in some tournaments, its members say they appreciate the experience gained by competing at higher levels.

“[It] enables us…» Read More

Valentine’s Day may have been a flop, or there simply hasn’t been any time to take the significant other out on a date lately, but there is at least one reason to leave the house.

Susurrus, SCC’s Literary Magazine, is hosting what is billed as a Date Night fundraiser on April 19.

According to Irina Yevtukh, the Susurrus event coordinator, couples and singles are invited to enjoy a cozy, relaxed evening snuggled up to a private movie and perhaps engage in social conversations with other couples and singles at midtown’s Sacramento Poetry Center at 6 p.m.

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Enjoy gardening? Well, City College has an opportunity for you. On April 9, at noon the City Farm club had its first harvest of the semester. Located between Lillard Hall and parking lot F between Sutterville Road, the experimental garden has been growing various vegetables since 2011.

City Farm club adviser Robyn Waxman says that the best time to harvest a plant depends on the weather and advised the club members that harvesting should be done either in the early morning or at night. After cultivating seeds for past semester, the City Farm club members pulled out green and red lettuce, mint and cilantro. With these veggies, the City Farm club members and guests made a “zero carbon footprint” salad to eat.

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The City College Student Center observed a Cesar Chavez Day celebration on April 4.

To honor Cesar Chavez Day a local Mexican-American singer named Dinorah performed a variety of cultural songs for the City College students in the building.

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducated the person who has learned to read,” [sic] were famous words from Chavez, the Latino American civil rights activist for the American labor movement.

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The white walls of the Kondos Gallery on campus will exhibit vibrance with the signature color blue from its namesake artist Gregory Kondos. The gallery will display work until April 26 from the esteemed Sacramento artist to celebrate his 90th birthday.

Kondos himself will also be giving a lecture on Thursday, April 11, from 3:45-4:45p.m. The reception for the exhibit will follow the lecture, starting at 5 p.m.

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The Cultural Awareness Center welcomed cultural to its building once more on March 19 with an African American City College student who wanted to transmit love and culture through gourd art.

“[The gourd] just connected me back to Africa,” said Shirley Sanders, a 35-year-old business major. “It connected me back to being proud of whom I am.”

Through the two-hour event, the attendees were able to see Sanders in action as she gave them step-by-step instructions on how to create art with gourds, a variety of edible and non-edible fruits with a hard shell. She explained the origins of gourd art and described the connection gourd art has with cultures all over the world. Sanders also gave attendees the opportunity to make gourd art themselves.

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Victoria Law, author of “Resistances Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women”, spoke to City College students March 14 in the Cultural Awareness Center.

Law addressed the issues and statistics of the women incarcerated. According to the Assembly Bill No. 2530, women who are pregnant, in labor or are post-partum have to be shackle-free.

“Seventeen states, including California, are currently anti-shackle,” Law said.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 80 percent of prisoners have children under the age of 18.

“I came today because of my major and that I wanted to learn more about what’s going on, to become aware and to be able to share the knowledge and help someone,” said Alexis Jones, 32, sociology major.

The seminar was to inform students about what is happening to incarcerated women.

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