When Pierce gets political Students get an opportunity to engage with participants in local government

SHIR NAKASH Staff Snakash.roundupnews@gmail.com

Pierce College is inviting all interested students to drop by the Great Hall, and participate in its spring semester Day of Politics from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 12

Professor of political science, Denise Robb, has been in charge of organizing this event every semester for the past five years. The event’s content changes from year to year, depending on what elections are coming up. However, regardless of the content, Robb started Day of Politics to generally give students an easy incentive to get more politically involved.

“On this day, students can meet candidates who are running for office and learn about the propositions on the ballot,” Robb said. “They can gain debate skills and learn what’s going on in their city, their state, their county, and the central government.”

This semester, the event will start out with District Director Ron Rubine hosting an hour long teachin on the Porter Ranch gas leak. The teach-in will include a discussion with panelists organized by Rubine. He was unavailable for comment on who the panelists are exactly.

The main event is from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. when Pierce College and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) are co-sponsoring a debate among five of the six candidates running for District 27 State Senate. The debate will be moderated by Professor Anthony Gabrielli who said that, though he has been teaching political science at Pierce for the past eight years, this is his first year getting involved with Day of Politics.

“We’re going to ask questions on a broad range of issues,” said Gabrielli. “Some questions will be on local issues in the district and some will be on bigger, overarching issues because, even though all elections are local, [they] still have to show that [they] have a grasp of the bigger picture.”

The primary election for State Senate District 27 will be held on June 7, 2016. The general election

Bookstore Manager Grigor

Hogikyan, they are currently waiting for the new logo to be approved before they can purchase new furniture and appliances with the Brahma Cafe logo.

“For summer, we close at 3:30 [p.m.] and sometimes at 3 [p.m.], and we close on Friday,” Hogikyan said. “We don’t have enough employees to cover those [evening shift] shifts.”

There is no official date when the cafe renovation will be completed, but according to Hogikyan, their estimate is before the end of the semester.