on Mayoral candidates MIA ‘Bigworms’ the menu
The Collegian FEATURES, PAGE 7
OPINION, PAGE 5
Issue 8 • Friday, Feb. 21, 2020 •
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Delta explores student housing potential BY JAELYN MORALES Staff Writer
Campus as students’ home.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY VIVIENNE AGUILAR
On Feb. 2, Delta College’s Board of Trustees held a meeting where they discussed the possibility of providing student housing for Delta students. Colleges across the nation are dealing with the growth of student homelessness, which has been a main reason for the rise of college dropouts. Delta President/Superintendent Dr. Omid Pourzanjani said, “As an education system, our focus is to educate.” Pourzanjani and Delta’s Board of Trustees are on a mission to find a solution to this problem. They will no longer ignore one of the many problems that is possibly stopping a student’s success. “The best way to move someone out of poverty is education. If they want to improve their lives, we should do everything to help them,” Pourzanjani said. Pourzanjani wants to solve the issue “...at a scale.” Twenty-five percent of college students in America alone are finding themselves crashing on different couches every night or outside in their parked cars. College of the Siskiyous in Weed is one of the few community colleges that provide housing for their students. “Having students live on campus can help them focus on school in a different way than spreading out in various apartments and rental homes,” Siskiyous Director of Student Housing Douglas Haugen said. But there are some obstacles in the way of this project. “The obstacles are logistics, finances and politics,” Pourzanjani said. But the main concern is financial. Students who are not applying or not finishing the process of financial aid make the solution to this problem even harder to find. “We would have to ramp up students to fill out their financial aid,” Pourzanjani said. Housing is, of course, not going to be free. The hope is that the community that surrounds Delta can help in the meantime while campus officials try to find a way to make student housing work. “I think the community will support it. But will they allow it?” Pourzanjani said. Besides the concerns of financial stability — some students have other concerns if housing was to be built on campus. “There’s already random people coming onto campus and it probably wouldn’t be safe to live on campus,” Delta College student Adriana Sanchez said. There are many obstacles and details to be worked out in order to begin the process. “We need to know how many homeless students we have,” Pourzanjani said. Pourzanjani is asking for full student body participation. A survey is being constructed to answer the question of how many homeless students the campus educates. “The students need to fill out the survey,” Pourzanjani said.
Enrollment numbers, down at start of semester, continue to steadily climb BY TYRA GREEN
Social Media Editor
The MyDelta system has made registration more complicated than in previous years, which student say could potentially cause a decline in enrollment. Enrollment, though, is climbing. As of Feb. 13, 2020 at 7 a.m., the student count was 18,687, or up 1.6 percent compared to the start of the day
on Feb. 14, 2019, when enrollment was at 18,384. “Our current enrollment numbers continue to increase and are above comparisons with last Spring in units taken and total student count,” said Dr. James Todd, Delta assistant superintendent and vice president of Instruction and Planning. On the first day of school, Jan. 21, 2020, student enrollment was at 18,275,
or down 1.3 percent compared to the count of 18,561 from Jan. 22, 2019, according to Todd’s report. Enrollment numbers were down 9.4 percent as of 12 days before the start of school, according to the report, presented to the board of trustees at its Jan. 21 meeting. Students say MyDelta could be a contributing factor. “The only problem and flaw I see is
the MyDelta system just because it’s so confusing to get into a class, see which classes are even available to begin with because it just lists them all and you kind of just blind-eye picking classes,” Delta College student Isaiah Sison said. Student enrollment at Delta, and systemwide, has decreased in the last few years, however.
See ENROLL, page 12
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