Fliers becoming a nuisance Car advertisements add to campus li er problem

Caleb Johnson Roundup Reporter

Students and teachers alike remove persistent advertisements from their vehicles every day, many ignoring the messages written and throwing them away immediately – either into the trash, their car or onto the concrete with other litter.

The general lack of interest or even outright disdain for these advertisements raises the question of why they are placed, and if they are actually effective advertisements.

Tony Noris, a 21-year-old art transfer student, agrees that they do not seem effective when many people ignore and even toss aside the marketing attempts.

“I’ve never paid attention to them -- just gotten rid of them,”

Noris said.

A walk around the parking lots on campus can show students and teachers alike what many seem to do with the advertisements, as the papers litter the ground around the cars and greenery in the lots.

Nick Sumandra, a sign language instructor, says the unwelcome advertisements contribute to litter on campus, which leads to a negative view of the campus and decreases the morale of both students and teachers.

“I believe the more messy the campus is, the less it seems like a college,” Sumandra said, highlighting the effects litter like this has on the campus as a whole.

The more aggressive advertisements jammed between side windows and car doors are even worse for some students, as they can be difficult to remove safely.

Casey Spencer, treasurer for the Pierce Robotics Club, had a flier jammed on his window so badly that his attempts to remove it made the paper fall down and get stuck into his car door.

“There is a flier in my door now,” Spencer said. “Hopefully it does not affect anything.”

Alongside the general disdain for the advertisements placed on windows and windshields, the legality of this marketing tactic is shaky at best in Los Angeles County.

Ordinance Code 2.132 of Los Angeles County seems to state that businesses may only advertise in places specifically in zones bought by the business and sanctioned by a board of supervisors.

Businesses could also be charged with littering under California’s Penal Code Title 10, Section 374.3.

It seems this avenue of advertising will continue; however, it is only a minor annoyance to those who receive the advertisements, and the sheriffs may not always have the time to be patrolling the parking lots for minor inconveniences.

Child Development Center left out of emergency plan

Administration neglects to inform department of incidents that occur on campus

Kat Wilson Roundup Reporter

Pierce College and the Child Development Center have yet to build a master emergency plan that allows the Center to be notified of any emergency situations happening on campus.

Phyllis Schneider, director and instructor for the Child Development Center is one of the many concerned for the children.

Some safety measures have been executed successfully throughout the semester, such as the Great California ShakeOut where the campus-wide communication system was tested. Schneider said that she did receive these messages dealing with the ShakeOut drill, but she is more concerned about crime and emergencies that occur on campus.

“If there was a campus shooter, we would definitely need to know so that we could do a proper lockdown,” Schneider said.

The center does have their own emergency plan to make sure that the kids attending the school are safe during a natural disaster or a lockdown, but the center hopes to have a more cohesive plan that melds the center and the rest of the campus together, Schneider said.

“The difference is that everyone else deals with adults,” Schneider said. “Everyone can go on their own, while kids cannot. Their parents could be inaccessible, requiring children to stay overnight.”

Rolf Schleicher, the vice president of Administrative Services, is working on a more fluid plan, but administration runs into difficulty dealing with the budget that is for emergency funding, Schleicher said.

“Blackboard Connect is what I use to communicate things to the campus,” Schleicher said. “But not everything is important to the Child Development Center. We have to find that threshold of what’s important for them to know.”

So, although administration is in constant communication with the district and the sheriff, the campus still needs money to implement basic emergency necessities that normally would have been included in any other campus, such as intrusion alerts and door locks, Schleicher said.

Pierce is installing a security system with cameras, said Larry Kraus, associate vice president of Administrative Services.

“Lots of people don’t want to implement these emergency elements,” Schleicher said. “I’m caught in the middle.”

LACCD deals with district-wide math problems

Acceleration programs help students pass di cult general education courses

Caleb Johnson Roundup Reporter

The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) had their bi-monthly meeting on campus last Wednesday to discuss the success of the school’s Child Development program and the statewide issues with mathematical success. The school was able to show off the success of the Child Development Center’s most recent achievements.

The Child Development Center has a program that has supported those interested in a career of childcare and development starting in high school, and continuing on through Pierce onto four-year institutions.

UC Berkeley, along with Pierce and other partnering schools recently released a study called “From Aspiration to Attainment,” which detailed supporting practices in obtaining a degree in child development.

“I believe the findings and recommendations are actually applicable to a student attainment of degrees in many disciplines, not solely in child development,” Pierce College President Kathleen Burke said.

The findings indicate that many students had trouble with their math classes. They seem to avoid taking the classes due to low pass rates or after failing, and lose the drive to continue.

Crystal Kiekel, the director of the Center for Academic Success and co-chair of the Student Success committee, emphasized that math is something to work with students to enable their success.

“Mathematics is one of the major barriers to student success,” said Kiekel. “Not in Pierce, not in California, but nationally.”

Only 23 percent of students who begin in Math 115 ever finish the rest of their math courses all the way through, according to Kiekel.

“[Math] is locking 80 percent of these students from graduation and transfer,” Kiekel said. “That’s not okay.”

As a solution, the Math acceleration programs – ‘Algebra Success At Pierce’ (ASAP) and Statway – were created to aid students of various degree goals by giving them the help and resources they need to complete their math education.