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ccclarion.com VOL LXXV • Issue 6
November 2, 2021
Spirits haunt campus
Citrus custodians and a paranormal history professor share their strangest encounters around campus BY LUCY ARGAEZ
EDITOR- IN - CHIEF
LARGAEZ@CCCLARION.COM
As Halloween ends and Dia de Los Muertos approaches, it has become evident that Citrus is no stranger to paranormal activity. History professor Bruce Solheim, who has had paranormal experiences and teaches a paranormal history class, has witnessed ghost activity at Citrus. Solheim has also published a number of paranormal books such as his “Timeless” trilogy, “Snarc” comic series and “Anzar the Progenitor.”
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“Citrus is a very haunted campus, there are a lot of things going on at night,” Solheim said. “During the day we don’t really notice it because there are so many people, but at night when you are alone then you start seeing shadow figures, hearing things, there are all kinds of things going on.” Solheim mentioned several locations around campus where he and the custodial night staff had experienced strange activity. “I think for most people the paranormal is normal, but they are taught that it is not,” Solheim said.
Faculty petition for vax mandate
Solheim has led paranormal investigations around campus during his paranormal history class at Citrus and says they discovered that multiple spirits reside on campus, including the ghost of a former custodian named Ed. Custodian Supervisor Larry Franks said “I have had guys come up to me and talk to me about the things they have seen, some have even shown me photos and videos of things they saw.” Custodial employee David Vazquez said that his experiences have been mostly limited to where he has worked.
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A group of Citrus College faculty delivered a petition to Superintendent/President Greg Schulz on Oct. 26 asking for Citrus College to implement a vaccine mandate for all students, faculty and staff on campus by the spring 2022 semester. The petition was started on change.org by political science professor and Citrus College Faculty Association Treasurer Gerhard Peters. As of Oct. 29, it has been signed by 62% of fulltime faculty, Peters said in an email to administration. Peters first made the Board of Trustees aware of the petition at its Oct. 5 meeting, where he addressed the board. Peters started the petition because numerous faculty in the social and behavioral sciences division reached out to him because they were concerned about the conditions of their classrooms without social distancing and a limited capacity
was playing with the vacuum hose because of the way it was moving. After 10 minutes of watching the vacuum move, he said he built up the courage to put it away. Vazquez said that two weeks after that had happened, he was vacuuming in a classroom when his vacuum repeatedly turned off while being plugged in. “I was kind of like, ‘oh, this place is haunted, but there isn’t anything I can do about it,’” he said. Vazquez also said he has video evidence of a spirit moving the
Read Scary, Page 2
Accreditation team pleased after site visit
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62% of full-time faculty support mandatory vaccines by the start of spring CONTACT@CCCLARION.COM
P1 Building “It started off kind of weird,” Vazquez said. One night while cleaning, a water bottle that Vazquez put on a table fell over. He placed the water bottle back on the table, but did not realize that it would only be the beginning of strange activities in that room. “A couple weeks later I put my vacuum backpack on the same table and then I was walking away from it and I turned around, I don’t know why, but I did and the vacuum hose started swinging kind of crazy,” Vazquez said. He said it looked like a ghost
for long periods of time. Although most of the faculty is vaccinated, according to Peters, the CDC says that anyone can contract the virus and pass it along whether they have symptoms or not. Peters was informed of many “faculty having children too young to be vaccinated,” he wrote. “Some have pre-existing medical conditions that put them at heightened risk, even if vaccinated. Some live with spouses or other extended family members with compromised immune systems.” Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in early October that vaccines would be mandated at all K-12 schools. California State University and University of California campuses have also mandated COVID-19 vaccines for students on campus. “Citrus is an outlier,” Peters said. “Instead unvaccinated students can opt to take a weekly antigen test which is notoriously less reliable than PCR (polymerase
chain reaction) tests.” A COVID-19 antigen test is the nasal test that detects certain proteins of the virus with results in minutes. A PCR test is the most reliable and accurate COVID-19 test which detects genetic material of the virus. The Citrus campus is not the same without the hustle and bustle of trying to find parking and interacting with professors in class lectures, Peters said. “Faculty wants to teach again on campus,” Peters said. “Online Zoom classes have been less than ideal, and so many of us crave the opportunity to teach again in-person. But we insist that the college administration take the necessary steps to promote health safety.” In collaboration with dozens of faculty in trying to initiate this mandate, Peters said the whole process took less than two weeks to organize. Many faculty are in support of
Read Vax, Page 2
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Citrus College’s virtual accreditation visit on Oct. 12 and 13 went well, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Accreditation Liaison Officer Joumana McGowan said. The next step in the accreditation process is for the visiting team to share its draft team report, which the college will check for factual errors before the team completes its final report. The visit was conducted using a new process, which only requires five of the 12 visiting team members to be present during the site visit. Citrus is the “guinea pig” for the process, McGowan said. “The general reaction for the
visiting team was a positive one,” McGowan said in an email. The visiting team verified the college’s program review and student learning outcome assessments and commended the college for piloting the new review process, McGowan said. The site visit was conducted over Zoom across three meetings: welcome and introduction, open forum and an exit report. The team reported their general findings during the exit report, but specific feedback will not be known until a team report is finalized. Any commendations, compliance issues and/ or recommendations for improvement will be included in the team’s final report, McGowan said.
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ASCC decorates ofrenda for Día de los Muertos Page 2
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Día de los Muertos altar is hosted by ASCC on Oct. 29 at the Hayden Memorial Library to celebrate the latino holiday.
Scary from Page 1 cord after putting it away. The Playground The Child Development Center playground is home to many spirits and a dark entity. “One of the night custodians said he was cleaning inside the old building, and he was looking outside the windows, and he saw a shadow figure moving outside in the playground,” Solheim said. After hearing this, Solheim decided to conduct his own investigation with professional equipment and a psychic medium. “We identified a number of spirits that hang out in the playground. There is a young girl who hangs out by the swing set,” he said. “The medium said that there was a nonhuman entity that is there that is malevolent.”
Vax from Page 1
this mandate, and Peters received “almost no pushback” except by a few employees that are “ideologically opposed to vaccine mandates,” Peters said. A survey commissioned in August by the Citrus College Faculty Association said 86.4% of faculty and 87.3% of all employees
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Solheim believes that the figure the custodian saw was that dark entity. Math Buildings “Our old supervisor said that when she was in the old math building that all the doors opened, and she is a tough lady, so she went back and closed them all,” Vazquez said. Vasquez also said that a coworker that had left Citrus said that he saw a light on in the new math building, walked in and turned it off, only for the light to turn on again by the time he walked out. C1 Building Vazquez said that another excoworker covering the second floor of the C1 building heard a noise in the bathroom. He went to see if someone was in the bathroom without permission, and after entering the bathroom,
saw the stall door banging against the stalls. Performing Arts Center Vazquez said he gets an “eerie feeling” when working in the PA building, and has seen things move on their own. “This place is definitely haunted. When I was there the red rope they use for crowd control started moving on its own,” Vazquez said. In addition to this experience, Sohiem says that people have seen apparitions and felt people walk by them in the empty building. “The custodians don’t call it the Performing Arts Building, they call it the paranormal activity building,” Solheim said. These are just some experiences from the custodial night staff at Citrus. Custodial employee Travis Rice declined to share his experiences.
want a vaccine mandate for all students and employees, Peters said. The spring academic schedule shows that most classes at Citrus will be held on campus, but the board of trustees has not indicated whether or not they will require vaccines for everyone on campus. The petition says “that only if
the board refuses to institute a vaccine mandate, faculty be given the option to teach their courses online during the spring 2022 term.” Peters said he thinks that a mandate “may increase enrollment as students will feel more confident that the college is primarily focused on public health.”
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4 Tuesday, November 2, 2021
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1 trustee, a lifetime of legacies
Citrus remembers its longest-serving trustee BY LUCY ARGAEZ
EDITOR- IN - CHIEF
LARGAEZ@CCCLARION.COM
The legacy left by Edward Ortell will not only be remembered by those who knew him, but it will be embedded in Citrus’ past, present and future. “I always saw him as an advocate for students,” Director of Human Resources Robert Sammis said. “He was a very fierce advocate for local control.” O r t e l l advocated for community colleges by ORTELL lobbying S a c ra m e n t o and Washington, D.C. legislators. He also testified before the California State Legislature and crafted legislation with lawmakers. “For more than 50 years, I have had the privilege of working
side by side with dedicated professionals devoted to fostering academic excellence and career success,” Ortell said in a personal essay posted by Citrus College. This spring he was acknowledged as the longestserving community college trustee by the Community College League of California. Ortell was first elected to be on the board of trustees in 1969. “I think he was a distinguished member of the board,” Board of Trustees President Patricia Rasmussen said. “He had a lot of history as a board member, so very often the board would ask him, how it was done in the past and the history behind things, and he would know.” He was awarded several honors such as the Community College League of California Longevity service award, a We Honor Ours award, the City of Duarte Outstanding Civic Service Award, and a CBS anchor Ralph Story
Former Superintendent/President Louis Zellers stands next to Edward Ortell in 2002.
Community service award. “Reflecting on my five decades of service on the Citrus College governing board, I am grateful for the support that the citizens of the Duarte area have continued to show me,” Ortell said in his essay. Ortell was born on March 4, 1939, and died on Oct. 16. His funeral will be at noon on Nov. 12 at Forest Lawn in Covina Hills. Ortell’s cause of death is still unlisted. Ortell held a bachelor’s degree from the University of Dubuque in Iowa, a master’s degree from the State University of New York, a master’s degree from California State University, Los Angeles, and a doctorate from U.S. International University in San Diego. Ortell was elected board president in 1971 because ADVERTISEMENT
the previous board president, Howard D. Tipton, resigned after being selected to be on a federal commission by President Richard Nixon. Ortell had previously been the vice president of the Board of Trustees. He was elected as board president again in 1975. In addition to this, Ortell was the vice president of the Citrus Foundation after the resignation of Darrell Holman in 1974. He previously served as the Citrus Foundation president from 1972 to 1973. Ortell was selected to serve a one-year term as board of trustees president again in 1980. He was also a professor emeritus at Pasadena City College and the author of two college mathematics textbooks. He was re-elected in
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1993 as the Board of Trustees president. In addition to serving on the Board of Trustees, Ortell served on the Community College League of California Advisory Committee on Legislation, California Community College Trustees State Board of Directors, the Community College Association Board of Directors, the Los Angeles County School Trustees Association and the SB 6 Master Plan for Education Task Force. Cliff Wurst, Ortell’s son in law, declined to be interviewed. His daughter, Brenda Fink, was sent two emails, called five times and left one message at the human relations department between Oct. 18 to Oct. 29 and did not respond.