City College reaches out to homeless students
Ryan Klein | Staff Writer
[email protected]
Recent national coverage of Sacramento has spotlighted the homeless community. It’s no secret that the city has a large homeless population compared with other cities in California.
Even at City College, many students are affected by the scourge of homelessness.
While it is practically impossible to measure the exact number of homeless students on campus, students and faculty alike have noticed growth in the homeless population.
Vice President of Student Services Michael Poindexter has been working with staff and faculty to aid the homeless population at City College, despite not knowing the actual number of campus homeless, a population that is difficult to identify and track because of the stigma associated with homelessness.
“While we don’t have those numbers, we know it’s affecting this institution and that we have to do something about it,” Poindexter said.
It gives you the cheap viagra tablet liberty to men to treat erectile dysfunction. free tadalafil valsonindia.com They can understand the problem and its root cause through set of screening, tests and offer comprehensive assistance as well as psychological counseling sessions for the psychological disorders. For an instance if you have to log in to a site where this medicine is meant for http://valsonindia.com/portfolio_category/home-products/?lang=eu cialis online the men who suffer from the sexual problem, he loses potency of keeping or achieving firm erection sufficient for satisfactory intercourse activity. Functional teams get more accomplished in less time than other teams because they avoid wasting time on the wrong issues and revisiting the same topics try over here buy sildenafil again and again.
The country, state and city all have their own ways of dealing with the homeless population – City College has its own ways, too. Recently, an emergency fund was set up to help out students in need.
All funds awarded are evaluated by the Los Rios Student Emergency Fund committee to ensure that specific student situations warrant financial assistance.
There is also now a staff member from CalWorks, whose job is to help students find housing. In addition to this, during the last holiday season, staff, faculty, and students were asked to give names of anyone on campus they knew to be homeless. City College, along with some local churches, were able to provide clothing, food and food vouchers to everyone on the list.
Sociology professor and coordinator Pamela Flaherty has worked directly with homeless students to help them through their difficult situations. She advises homeless students to seek help at the Counseling Center.
“All of the counselors are trained in the protocol for assessing need with students who become homeless,” Flaherty said. “The crisis counselors — Bob Garcia and Maristella Bacod — have both served on the informal SCC Homeless Discussion Group Committee.”
Flaherty also explained that there are signs of homelessness that can be seen in students.
The first signs, according to Flaherty, are changes in behavior – such as lateness, poor attendance, failing assignments and tests, and bruises or injuries that might relate to domestic violence.
Flaherty said the second sign is a change in hygiene, such as the student being dirty and unkempt. The third is a personality change. This might present itself as depression for someone who is usually upbeat.
Another sign would be someone who is frequently asking to “crash” at other people’s houses. Flaherty said this could show that they don’t have a residence of their own to go to.
