TCC students discuss gun control, school shootings

The country is ablaze with the topic of school shootings, and with the most recent being a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, guns are once again back in the discussion.

2022 had 51 school shootings that resulted in injury or death, according to Education Week. In 2021, there were 35. Currently, 2023 is at 13.

NE student DeAngelo Lara grew up around guns. He said that his father taught that guns were tools and to respect them.

“Personally, that’s what I believe that, you know, guns are tools. And that they’re really good to have especially if you do need to defend yourself,” he said.

Lara said guns can be used for wrong, however, if they end up in the wrong hands. “It’s really sad, you know, especially for the people who died,” he said. “The case with the first grader that shot his teacher was really shocking because you just wouldn’t expect that, especially for a young kid to just walk into school and shoot his teacher.”

Gun control has various steps for regulation, and Lara said there were many steps to take before actually receiving a gun and was unsure between stricter laws and rights.

“I feel like if they need to add more than that, I’m perfectly fine with that,” he said. “But I feel like they shouldn’t ban because that kind of also takes away part of our rights.”

NE student Kaylee Medrano did not have the same exposure to guns and that only her grandparents owned them. She said she was unsure about the system of gun control but that owning guns felt like an extreme. “I feel like there needs to be tighter restrictions on obtaining it, but I don’t know enough about how that system works to say a lot,” she said. “But when you see how many school shootings we have compared to other countries, it feels like common sense.”

Medrano had a friend who experienced an active shooter at her school some time during her friend’s eighth grade year.

“Seeing all my friends trying to contact their parents, and like, they were legitimately fearing for their lives, there was more of an issue at that moment with the school,” she said. “The administrators were not being kind about them leaving.”

She said looking away from gun control and instead at school administration may prove helpful.

“We may not be able to change a lot of federal laws, but schools should be taking more precautions

See Shooting, page 2 about the new food option.

“I’ve overheard people [talking],” Mahoney said. Moore believes Caffe Noliz is a good option for students in between classes, and can see it being benefi- cial to students long term.

“We’re going to be adding more food items — hopefully to the fall,” Moore said. “So we’re looking up.” In the future, Herndon hopes to See Food, page 2

TCC’s WebAdvisor has officially shut down and new systems are being employed for student workers.

According to the TCC’s WebAdvisor official website, the site will no longer be available after April 1.

“All services previously provided by this site have been successfully migrated to other systems,” the statement said. “Registration and student-related functionality will continue to be available through MyTCCTrack. Other WebAdvisor functionality has been migrated to Hello! TCC.”

This message had been available on WebAdvisor’s official site for quite some time, and having it shut down may not have come as a surprise to many students. Some students believe WebAdvisor has long since become outdated.

“I think I’ve known about the shutdown for a good while now,” NW Campus student Robert Flores said. “WebAdvisor looks extremely dated, so I think that they’re shutting it down because all of its features are available through the TCC home website.”

On the flip side, there are some students who believe the shutdown will lead to confusion and won’t be helpful for certain people going forward.

“Students nowadays love fast results and without this in place, I think it will create frustration and confusion with students and staff,” NE Campus student Margarette Meyers said. “In 2023, we do not need any more hardships, especially with the teacher shortages and everything else that is happening in the world. Going to college needs to be as easy and accessible as possible.”

Despite not many campusgoers being affected by WebAdvisor’s absence, there are still a select number of people on campus who have been impacted by the change. The end of WebAdvisor has made it so student workers and TCC staff will need to rely on systems unfamiliar to TCC heading into the future.

Among these systems is the implementation of TimeClock

Plus, an automated cloud-based system designed to streamline the time management process for supervisors and student workers.

During a virtual training session held March 28, “TimeClock Plus will be what student, part-time and full-time, non-exempt employees will use to manage their time,” Ronnie Watkins, the TR executive director of finance and administrative services said. “Any student who does not work for TCCD will not use TimeClock Plus.”

This system offers automated employee time tracking and scheduling, leave and absence management, document management, reporting and analytics. All of which are available on mobile.

“We needed to update our tools,” Watkins said. “We needed a more reliable tool for our time management and our lead management.”

Watkins said the change to TimeClock will help simplify the process of entering time information for student workers.

“For the students, it should be a very easy piece of software,” Watkins said. “You log in, and you clock in. You log in, and you clock out. That’s really all they need to know.”

A shift towards these newer systems could inspire a change in the “culture” of student workers and supervisors, and help encourage them to better manage their time, Watkins said.

“We’re looking to change the culture,” Watkins said.

Watkins said one of the reasons for wanting to “change the culture” was to make sure employees practiced better work ethics.

“Some supervisors get in the habit, even with these timecards, where they forget or don’t approve time,” Watkins said. “Even today, we’re manually sending emails out every week to our supervisors saying ‘Don’t forget to turn in your time,’ ‘Don’t forget to approve the time on the timecards,’”

Taking responsibility is one of the primary lessons Watkins hoped student workers and supervisors will took away from the change to the new TimeClock system.

“It’s all about accountability,” Watkins said. “That’s a great thing to learn in college, and that’s why we’re trying to change the culture here.