Pierce makes moves to be a safe campus Pierce promotes inclusiveness, LGBTQ community awareness

JOSE HERRERA Campus Lifestyle Editor @jose_herrera012

On campus Safe

Zone workshops are enabling conversations about the issues that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and plus encounter to help direct focus on benefiting foster youth who identify as members of the LGBTQ community.

“There is a strong link between homeless and foster youth children and children who are LGBT,” said Crystal Kiekel, faculty advisor of Gay Straight Alliance (GSA). “It was through our support for foster youth that we opened up a conversation around on how we support our foster youth who are LGBTQ on this campus.”

One of the things the GSA does is, it creates a campus-wide presence so that there are safe spaces for students who are part of the LGBTQ community and to aid in creating a larger conversation than just within the club, where 15 to 20 people are reached but not the whole campus, according to Kiekel.

Foster youth who identify as LGBTQ are at a higher risk of ditching school, experimenting with drugs and less likely to take college prep classes because of the social stigma that a lot of them experience at home and in school, according to Kiekel.

“For former foster youth we have this money to support the students because we know there is an equity gap among foster youth and nonfoster youth in terms of some of our success measures,” Kiekel said.

By opening up the conversation on sexual orientation and gender identity through Safe Zone workshops and trainings that will be offered in the fall and spring, the team hopes to fulfill their cross section of goals, according to Christine Ersig-Marcus communications professor and Safe Zone trainer.

As a result of high demand for the Safe Zone events from people on campus and at the district level, the Safe Zone team returned to continue their work.

“When it came time to come around and pick a training, this was on top of my list because I’ve been to a lot of safe zone types of trainings but this one was by this far the best, I thought, because it was highly interactive,” Kiekel said.

“And it was a train the trainer [type of workshop], which meant that you weren’t just going to come and get some benefits for you. Rather, it’s a pay-it-forward model.”

Pierce faculty, staff and members of administration participated in the second annual Safe Zone’s Train the Trainer and recently had a training meeting for students on Nov. 3.

Preview: GIS Day

RICHARD ESPINOZA

Reporter

@Richard6515789

The Pierce College Meteorology Department will be hosting its annual GIS Day at the Great Hall on Wednesday Nov. 9, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Geographic Information System is a tool that it is used in the field of meteorology. It is used on local news stations when a weather report is given.

The main purpose of using a GIS device is that it is designed to capture, store and manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographical data. Santa Clarita, San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles County, Ven-

Jordan Nathan/ Roundup The different groups of people that were present at the SafeZone Train-the-Trainer event at the Business Education building are shown on these yellow cards on Sept. 30, 2016 at Pierce College, Woodland Hills, Calif.

Two members of the non-profit organization Gay Straight Alliance, located in Rochester, New York, Jeanne Gainsburg and education coordinator Rowan Collins, directed the event and helped guide the conversation, focusing on different sexual orientations and identities.

“So, we are training folks to tura County and Orange County use GIS for scientific investigations, development planning or to calculate emergency response time in the event of a natural disaster.

According to Meteorology professor Jason Finley, GIS is throughout November and hosting events like this would help students get informed about what the Geographic Information System is and how it works.

“What we will have on Wednesday is a series of people from the industry in the real world coming to talk about different things at GIS,” Finley said. “Anyone that has a smartphone or any cellphone with GPS has GIS to locate a restaurant or whatever. GIS is everywhere.”

According to Program Specialist Ngan Mork, GIS Day is an event where students will have the opportunity to learn about Geographic Information System technology and how involved it is in different career fields today.