Dramatic story unfolds in 'Blood Wedding' Federico Garcia Lorca's play gets a Pierce twist from a seasoned director

Michael Messiha, who plays Leonardo, said the audience can expect a family feud backdrop, a love triangle and a theme that exhibits resistance.

Second Vice President of Curriculum Margaret Pillado said students only have five minutes to get to class and sometimes the classes overlap.

“We need to update the schedule so at least we have a minimum of 10 minutes during passing period,” Pillado said. “For many years, we had this practice and it worked relatively well, but now that we have a software, it does not allow for those overlaps. We need to clean everything up and reorganize it.”

Instructor of Kinesiology Susan Armenta recommended cutting night classes to have more time to schedule classes and the passing period.

Some professors that teach at night opposed this recommendation.

Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Blood Wedding” takes the audience back to 1930s Spain on the dramatic eve of a wedding.

The play is directed by Valorie Grear, a returning director to Pierce, who has done productions including “Born Yesterday,” “An Enemy of the People” and “Fences.” Under Grear’s direction, this season’s show will bring an element of innovation to Lorca’s classic play.

Grear said she goes beyond the scope of a traditional setting of a “rural Spanish tragedy.” She said the vision for the play’s set is minimalistic, as the structures are all white with a textured floor and few furnishings.

The set would be similar to a “Greek tragedy with the emphasis on the language and not so much the props or the setting. They’re still natural in their behavior when the mother and the son are talking – they sit, they cross, they embrace all of those things, but it’s just not cluttered in the naturalistic environment,” Grear said.

Grear said the set’s simplicity emphasizes something greater-the play’s dialogue. Lorca’s writing and the actors’ portrayal of it is meant to be the focal point of the show.

Emely Chavez, who plays the Bride in the production, said that the play follows the Greek tragedy set up.

“The whole story revolves around the bride’s marriage. So a lot of the time, I am center stage and I am open to everybody,” Chavez said. “That’s a style that Greek tragedies follow.”

Bryan Rojas, who plays the Bridegroom, said Lorca’s language is important to the play because this helps the audience understand the complex emotions.

Rojas said his character has a very complicated family history that has resulted in a feud between his family and the bride’s ex-lover Leonardo and his family. The dialogue between the Bridegroom and his mother allow the audience to feel a deep sense of empathy for the family members he lost, resulting in the feud.

“With the bride, she doesn’t know if she should resist the flames of Leonardo or if she should follow her new journey with the Bridegroom,” Messiha said. “It’s all about resisting and the outcome of what happens if you don’t resist.”

Grear said the three leads are acting on the stage for the first time.

She said that while choosing her cast, she decided to select younger and less seasoned actors. Despite its challenges, the importance of this decision is what added to the narrative and realism in the play’s adaptation of Lorca’s work.

“When you’re using younger actors, there’s a lot of just working and teaching acting as you’re going,” said Grear. “But I’m very proud of them, they’ve worked so hard and have dug deep to understand the play.” dpadilla.roundupnews@gmail.com

“Blood Wedding” will run from March 23 to April 1 at the Dow Arena Theatre. You can reserve your tickets now at brownpapertickets.com.

Adjunct instructor Mark Levick said he was not going to stop teaching his classes if the Pierce president did not approve of schedules.

“I don’t care what she says. I’m still going to teach my classes,” Levick said. “They’re trying to fix something that isn’t broken.”

Levick said the the Physics Department has struggled with the schedule changes.

“The folks is physics say that by having classes start ten minutes earlier than usual, at 6:50 p.m., they wouldn’t have a full schedule,” Levick said. “I been teaching classes at night from 7-10 p.m. for years without a problem.”

Chairman of Psychology/ Statistics Maria Perser said that the schedule would not affect her curriculum, but may affect others.

“It needs to be fixed because it can affect other departments,” Perser said. “We are trying to accommodate as many scheduling issues that have been bought up to the senate and hopefully we will be able to share it public with them.”

An agreement was made to have an administrator attend a meeting to settle things.

As the number of school shootings increase, the question on many people’s mind is, “What if?” “What if my school goes on lock down? Will we have enough time to actually lock ourselves up and remain safe?”

On March 7, 2018, Pierce College was subject to a credible threat reported to the sheriff’s department by the Los Angeles Police Department. There was one arrest made and no harm came to students or to the campus, but what if something had?

Most of the classrooms, faculty and administration buildings on campus have windows, which easily can be broken into or shot through, making a clear cut path from criminal to victim.

In the older buildings at Pierce, classroom doors must be locked from the outside. In the case of an active shooter or violent event, this means that teachers must open their classroom doors, reach around to the lock, turn the key, and quickly close the door - all in hopes that their safety stays intact.

Pierce needs to go through every classroom and office, making sure that doors can be locked from the inside and the outside.

Some of the newer buildings on the Pierce campus, such as ELM, have gone under reconstruction and have doors that lock from the inside.

But is that enough?

Pierce should purchase devices that block door jams, so no weapons can fit underneath or through doors.

According to an article published by USA Today, Justin Rivard, a high school student from Wisconsin, has invented a tool to be used for protection during a shooting incident.

Boyd Huppert, the author of the article titled, “High school student invents ‘JustinKase’ tool that could save lives during shooting,” wrote that Rivard invented the tool in his shop class.

“Made of steel plates and

-Corrections-

Volume 128, Issue 3:

Page 3: "Tax help is easy to find here" was written by Richard Espinoza, not Karan Kapoor.

Page 8: In the story

"Brahmas tame Wildcats"

LA Trade Tech's mascot was incorrectly identified as the Wildcats. They are the Beavers.

If you would like to have the newspaper delivered to your classroom please email newsroom. roundupnews@gmail. com

See any corrections we missed?

Email us at newsroom. roundupnews@gmail. com connecting rods, his device slips beneath a classroom door and latches to the door’s jam,” Huppert wrote. “With his device in place, Rivard has yet to find a person who can push a classroom door open, including linemen from his high school football team.”

There are about 240 classrooms at Pierce. The JustinKase sells for $95, so the price for putting one in every classroom would be about $23,000.

Though that may seem expensive, in 2015, Pierce purchased one of the larger golf carts on campus, the Kawasaki Side x Side, for about $16,000.

The cart is not used often, so purchasing the JustinKase tool would be a smart way to use Pierce’s budget for protecting the students, staff and the overall community.

-AnthonyIsome,28,RVT remodel some of the older buildings. With these changes in process, Pierce should look into bulletproof glass to install in place of the existing window glass. Shelter In Place has created bulletproof storm shelters for the inside of classrooms. Shelter In Place states on its website that the shelters were created by witnessing the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012.

According to the website, there is no preparation or warning time before an active shooter arrives.

“Simply put, the difference between minutes and seconds is life and death,” the website wrote.

DANIELLE PADILLA Reporter @dcxpadilla

Many students would like to believe that when it comes to gender bias on college campuses, they live in a more socially progressive time than the generation that came before them.

However, this assumption is false as gender bias is an institutional problem that still thrives on college campuses.

In a time of #MeToo and Trump’s America, people need to remove their rose-colored glasses and realize everyone is not as progressive as they might have once assumed. These issues have been rooted in society for generations, and students have become desensitized to gender bias in all its forms. Whether these instances include a pro-women or pro-men outlook, they are bias, nonetheless.

According to the American Psychological Association, students’ ability to recognize gender biases in academia is more commonly found in students who come from an egalitarian background.

Imagine the first days of a college semester when students are in a frenzy over adding classes. The decision of who will be added to the class has pitted student against student for years. Most teachers will settle the matter with a simple game of rock, paper, scissors with the winner getting the add code. However, after the class is over, a female student will talk to the professor explain her sob

Pierce recently has undergone construction, and it continues to

Pro: One gender above the rest

story, add a few tears, and ultimately get added to the class.

While this is not the most dignified way to add a class, the female student got her objective. If a male student were to try this technique, it would not provoke the same feelings of sympathy from the professor because it doesn’t fit the societal mold of masculinity.

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Education released a data snapshot stating that since the passing of Title IX in 1972, the remanence of gender bias still exists in the education system nationwide.

Now, envision sitting in an English literature class and engaging in a socratic seminar over the week’s assigned reading. There is only one type of student that keeps getting interrupted. These students are the female students. Yes, teachers do have a “wait for your turn to speak policy,” but this rule is often broken in the heat of a debate.

This is not something one always notices because when men interrupt it is seen as being outspoken. In comparison, women generally do not interrupt because society has conditioned women to be patient and wait for their turn.

These small classroom truths are usually overlooked because they have been a part of our culture for decades. The bottom line is gender bias is an institutional problem that cannot be unrooted in one generation. Therefore, this issue follows people all the way to college and through the rest of their lives.

RANDI LOVE Editor-in-Chief @randi_love29

Women are often thought of as having feminine roles in society, with men being grouped into masculine stereotypes.

But on our campus, both sexes cross gender expectations and excel in their positions.

President of Pierce College Kathleen Burke is the person with the most power - and she is a woman. She has no problem making decisions that some would think may be difficult because of her sex.

Times have changed in ways that support men and women doing what they enjoy versus conforming to social expectations.

Women on campus have the opportunity to become welders, automotive technicians, artists, musicians, set designers or anything they put their minds to.

The same goes for men. They can become nurses, mathematicians, theatrical actors or dancers.

Men do not typically go into the nursing field because it is considered a job for women. But that is a stereotype that can be proven wrong at Pierce College. In the spring of 2017, three out of the 21 graduates were 3 males.

Once I complete my education, I want to work in sports or entertainment. Outside of campus, I’ve been told that women have to sleep their way into those industries because it’s harder for them.

While that is sexist and discriminatory, I’ve been supported by classmates, professors and advisors on campus.

The Academic Senate, the Associated Students Organization (ASO) and many of the committees on campus are close to even representation by men and women.

Although societal norms, rules and roles have instructed men to devalue women in the workplace, men on campus support their female counterparts.

Department chairs are mostly women across campus. Those that are men do not devalue the women who sit in the same seat as they do.

STEM classes usually bring men to mind because of science and technology portion, but women are active and scholarly working the program as well.

The campus supports the effort of all its students to succeed in whichever major they choose and frowns upon discrimination due to gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity.

UN.org lists 17 goals to make our world more sustainable, with goal 5 stating, “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.”

“Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world,” the website wrote.

Along with the United Nations and other parts of the world, our campus is doing its best to make everyone feel comfortable and know that they are equal.

While these shelters would be an investment for LACCD, there is still no excuse for not having a basic plan of protection on campus. dpadilla.roundupnews@gmail.com rlove.roundupnews@gmail.com

Cartoonist: are the responsibility of the student newspaper staff. Under appropriate state and federal court decisions, these materials are free from prior restraint by the virtue of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Accordingly, materials published herein, including any opinions expressed, should not be interpreted as the position of the L.A. Community College District, the college or any officer or employee thereof.