More news that's fit to print

Rodrigo Carbonel, Alexis Antoniadis, Eduardo Razo, Melody Soto / Roundup

Holding hands to make a bold statement

After orchestrating the ‘March in March’ rally and with the pressure of the state’s budget crisis, the Associated Students Organization (ASO) turns its focus towards the ‘Hands Across California’ fundraiser.

The Foundation for California Community Colleges is expecting to bring one million people including students, celebrities, and selected officials together on April 17.

All participants will join hands in a line up and down California to help raise money that will directly benefit the California Community Colleges Scholarship Endowment (CCCSE), a permanent fund that provides annual scholarships to thousands of students every year.

“We can help so many students by participating in this,” said ASO Sen. Jonathan Fackler, Scholarship Committee chair. “If we raise enough money, we could potentially see 50 new scholarships available exclusively for Pierce College for years to come.”

The Bernard Osher Foundation will match every dollar that is raised from now through June 2011.

ASO will be hosting the Scholarship Benefit Night in connection with ‘Hands Across California’ at the T.G.I. Fridays in Woodland Hills.

In order to participate in the Scholarship Benefit Night, students would have to eat at the restaurant and present the event flyer so that 20 percent of their profit will go to the Pierce College Scholarship fundraising cause.

Lower enrollment means fewer professors

During the Pierce College Council meeting Ken Takeda, vice president of Administrative Services, dropped the bomb to the members that Pierce was going to cut the enrollment.

This also means that there will be cuts to part-time faculty.

Takeda doesn’t know exactly how many classes or faculty members will be cut next year, but he knows it will be more than enough.

“Cuts can be fairly steep,” said Takeda. “We won’t know how many classes we will have until the state budget.”

After informing the council of the news, the council then questioned if Pierce was going to replace the recently retired teachers.

His response was that they were taking it into consideration.

Throughout the rest of Takeda’s report he touched on the school’s budget and stated that the state budgeted about $1.4 million to Pierce which he hopes to receive soon.

PASS gives academic seminar on college

Four guest speakers from UC Berkley and one from UCLA were in the Great Hall Wednesday speaking about transferring to a four year

university during a meeting held by the Filipino Club.

The speakers are from PASS (Pilipino Academic Student Services) and students at UC Berkley.

They touched on a variety of topics from financial aid to life on the UC Berkley campus.

“A lot of this info students don’t know,” said Camile Conanan, 20-year-old sociology major, a guest speaker from UC Berkley.

Pierce ends the year, unexpected surplus

Ken Takeda, vice president of administrative services, presented the preliminary budget for the year.

The projected ending balance is $8.4 million. Takeda noted a significant growth, due to an additional $1.4 million that was awarded to community colleges by the state and that would be distributed to Pierce College next month.

For Takeda, the projected balance is, “a relatively good result for a bad year.”

It was proposed that $2 million out of the ending balance for 2011 and an additional $450,000 from a separate account would be set aside for use in 2012.

Takeda said that the decision on how many full time faculty positions will be filled would be decided March 2012 during the District Budget Committee meeting.

President Joy McCaslin said that in the next council meeting, members were going to “at least try to do some replacements,” for the instructors who has retired last year.

One of the last topics mentioned was student enrollment.

“If the tax measures for next year don’t pass, we’re going to have to cut our enrollment far beyond this,” Takeda said.

Great Hall film festival continues in May

The film festival organized by the Diversity Committee for Spring 2011 will have a student empowerment theme.

The festival is scheduled for the first week of May.

Film screenings will take place in the Great Hall throughout the morning, evening and afternoon.

Anthropology professor Diane Levine said the May 2 through May 5 dates set for the festival were still "tentative."

In addition to the film screenings, student contests in photography, art and short film will take place.

Prizes in the form of gift cards for the Freudian Sip or campus bookstore will be awarded for each category.

First place winners will receive a $200 gift card, second place a $150 gift card and third place a $75 gift card.

Subsidizing the ITAP card program

The bond that funded the ITAP card and gave Pierce College the opportunity to sell ITAP cards to students who use the Metro for only $15 is empty, according to ASO President Daniel Axelrod.

"So for next year the two options are to get rid of the I-TAP card completely or have a referendum to make all students pay anywhere between $25 and $50, and whether you take the Metro or not you're forced to buy the card, so it's a bad situation," said Axelrod.

Starting next semester, even students who do not use the Metro might have to pay a $25-$50 fee to subsidize the ITAP card in addition to the already debated unit fee increase if the referendum is passed.