City College seeks to strengthen mental health services

By Danny Roberts drober47@mail.ccsf.edu

With mental health issues among U.S. college students on the rise, City College Student Health Services (SHS) conducted a survey on Dec. 2 requesting student feedback for the college’s Mental Health Services.

“We are committed to strengthening our mental health services for our students, ensuring that our mental health services are welcoming and accessible to students from all circumstances and backgrounds, and reducing any barriers that may prevent students from accessing them,” said the SHS email, with the electronic survey link.

Mental health is a rising concern for college campuses. More than 60% of U.S. college students met the criteria for one or more mental health problems for the 2020-2021 school year, a nearly 50% increase from 2013, according to a 2022 Healthy Minds research study of 373 college campuses.

The study also found that students of color had the lowest rates of mental health service utilization with the highest annual rate of treatment for Asian, Black, and Latinx students at or below the lowest annual rate for white students.

“In 2021-2022 we served 287 students (with 1525 appointments) and reached approximately 209 additional students through outreach events,” said the City College mental health staff when contacted via email.

“We are also working on doing more outreach. Because studies are showing that a greater percentage of people are experiencing some level of depression and anxiety, we are working on ways to reach more students.”

With the stigma around mental health issues, cost barriers to care, and uncertainty about where to seek help, the path to receiving mental help can be challenging. At City College, Mental Health Services seek to offer a safe space for students to discuss their concerns

C ity College Mental Health Services provide counseling and support for a variety of issues that affect students. “All students who are taking credit classes are eligible for services and do not need to pay anything beyond the student health fee,” said City College mental health staff

From Monday-Tuesday 9 a.m.-5:45 p.m. and

Wednesday-Thursday 9 a.m.-3:45 p.m. students can access counseling through the Student Health Services virtual help center via Zoom or by phone call.

Students can receive confidential counseling to talk about whatever issues they’re struggling with. The staff provides short-term counseling to assess each student's current situation and can refer them to appropriate community services if needed.

These support groups vary by semester but are listed on the student health services website

According to the mental health staff, these services benefit students in a number of ways. “It enables students to verbalize and attenuate their distresses and students typically express that they get some relief.” In the support groups, “students validate each other and share empathy. They also learn ways of coping with their elevated or increased number of concerns.”. The need for mental help is higher than ever, but despite this increasing ease of access to care, many students don’t take the first step toward help.

“Everyone can use support at one time or another and it takes a lot of strength and courage to ask for that help,” said the City College mental health staff. Take that first step towards help. Mental Health Services can be reached by phone at 415-239-3110 or virtually on the City College Student Health Services website at: https://www. ccsf.edu/student-services/ student-health-services.

UC Davis Body Donation Program Moves to Water Cremations to Protect Environment

By Fiona Raymond-Cox frc@mahfan.net

As part of its Body Donation Program, the University of California, Davis is building a water cremation facility to sustainably dispose of bodies that are received by the School of Medicine. The new fit-for-purpose facility is part of the university’s $620 million Aggie Square development proposed to open on Dec. 15, 2024. Expected to be fully operational in the Summer of 2025, the facility and the whole development are targeted to be LEED Silver-certified following the UC system standards.

Water cremation, also known as alkaline hydrolysis and green cremation, “falls right into that environmentally sensitive, forward-thinking aspect that the UC system brings,” said Aron R. Davis, director of the UC Davis Body Donation Program.

UC Davis is one of six UC campuses where the public can sign up to leave their bodies to science when they die. These body donation programs allow first-year medical students the opportunity to dissect and learn from the bodies donated as part of their early education to become doctors. Mr. Davis expects the program to receive 600 bodies per year, but noted that they could add worker shifts to accommodate more. Once the bodies are no longer needed, they require disposal.

“Our bodies are full of plastic, metals and think of some of the dental work with mercury and other toxic chemicals that if burned can enter the atmosphere,” Mr. Davis said.

Reducing its environmental impact has been the key driver in the evolution of the UC Davis Body Donation Program. Currently the program contracts with an outside agency to transport the donor bodies for cremation.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a gallon of gasoline burned creates about 8,887 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2). According to National Geographic, one single-flame cremation creates an estimated 534 lbs of CO2. Reuters puts this number at 800lbs.

In contrast, water cremation is carbon neutral. Further, the likes of metal and breast implants, joints, hernia mesh, polymethyl meth- waste and taken off campus with other medical waste by a licensed disposal company.

Mr. Davis, who learned about the “amazing” technology of natural water cremations 10 years ago, proposed the method for the Body Donation Program. But UC Davis is not alone. University of California, Los Angeles has been operating a similar facility since 2010. Travis G. Seims, assistant director of the UCLA Donated Body Program, said that when they wanted their own form of body disposition, “This was really the only viable option, particularly since UCLA has a green initiative,” he said. “Our footprint is about four times less than that of flame cremation.” acrylate (PMMA) (also known as bone cement used to hold implants in place), and mercury found in teeth – all of which are harmful to the environment – can be recovered and recycled or sent to a refinery. Prosthetics made from poly carbons will need to be disposed of as biohazardous

Working with Mr. Seims and his other counterparts at UCLA, Mr. Davis has been able to leverage the lessons learned, including statistics and research.

“We use about 400 gallons of water depending on the size of the body,” Mr. Seims said.

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Once used, the water is returned to the wastewater treatment facility. When the original equipment was installed, the City of Los Angeles needed to be satisfied that pathogens would be destroyed and the water safe for use before it entered the wastewater system.

“We all get up in the morning. We go to the bathroom. We cut ourselves shaving,” Mr. Seims said. Any one of us might have “an infectious disease such as Covid, Tuberculosis, Hep C, HIV. You know all that is going into the same authority and City of Los Angeles.

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Culture Editor Emma Pratt espratt8@mail.ccsf.edu treatment area. The funny thing is, that what we’re sending there is sterile,” he continued, referring to the quality of the wastewater once the donated bodies have been treated via the water cremation process.

UCLA undertook stringent testing to satisfy the state water

“We tested 30 times in 30 months before the permit was issued and nothing was found,” said Dean Fisher, retired director of both the Mayo Clinic’s Anatomical Bequest Program in Rochester, Minnesota (1988-2008) and the UCLA Donated Body Program (20082021). UCLA is still required to submit regular test data to the California Department of Public Health. Mr. Davis expects to go

Opinion Editor Renee Bartlett-Webber rbartle8@mail.ccsf.edu

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Social Media Editor Derek Chartrand Wallace dwalla30@mail.ccsf.edu through similar testing to demonstrate to the City of Sacramento that the UC Davis equipment runs appropriately, and pathogens are destroyed.

Several companies supply alkaline hydrolysis machines. Mr. Fisher worked with scientists, engineers, doctors, infection control and water specialists to select and implement Resomation LTD’s Resomator – the machine used to facilitate water cremations – at both locations. Originally concerned about having control over how to appropriately care for and ultimately dispose of the donated body, he said, “All of these wonderful attributes came along as we started to run,” referring to the environmental benefits.

Mr. Davis visited the Mayo an hour. Mr. Seims said, “Pathogen destruction inside the unit is 60,000 times greater than an autoclave,” which is used to sterilize medical and other instruments.

When the unit needs to be cooled, cold water is run through a coil mechanism to bring the temperature down. That water can be retained in a storage tank for reuse. However, the water inside the unit is safe to be discharged into the public utility waste stream once it has cooled. The solid remains are rinsed and dried before being removed from the Resomator.

“The way we’ve described it before is if you died out in the middle of the desert versus died up in the Sierra mountains, the decomposition of your body would be different depending on the elements, but decomposition will take place,” Mr. Seims said.

“All we’re doing is taking the body’s natural decomposition process and we’re speeding it up from, you know, days, weeks and months or years to a matter of hours.” recycling efforts. UC Davis and UCSF expect to do the same.

Regardless of water or flame cremation, the UC Body Donation Program does not return the remains of its body donors. Instead, they are broken down to create ash. Water cremation creates a pure white calcium phosphate ash. All ashes are scattered at sea.

“For me it’s a dream,” Mr. Davis said of the forthcoming water cremation facility at UC Davis. “Having a lab but also to be on the cutting edge of technology. With climate change this is a better way going forward.”

Continued from The Guardsman and Etc. Magazine Win Big on page 1

Parking Rate Increase Near Multi-Use Building

By Renée Bartlett-Webber rbartle8@mail.ccsf.edu

be transferred to City College. One instructor argued that losing 2,000 spaces would be detrimental to the commuter college’s future and would greatly impact the community. There was even an allegation that the 2017 proposal violated the California Environmental Quality Act.

Clinic and UCLA as well as an operation in Kent, Washington to help inform the layout of the UC Davis facility. The campus Facilities and Planning Department is working with a Resomation LTD engineer to plan the UC Davis facility. Mindful of its carbon footprint, UC Davis will install an electric generator to create the steam necessary to operate the Resomator. Given its size, the facility’s walls cannot go up until the Resomator is installed.

UC Davis’ bio cremation room will have a single Resomator plus a supporting sled of equipment to hold chemicals. The machine is like a tube; it is cylindrical in shape. The donor body is wrapped in organic material, either cornstarch or silk, so the material breaks down in the process. The donated body is placed on a tray that slides into the Resomator, which weighs the body and adds the right mixture of water and chemical (approximately 95% water to 5-8% of an alkaline solution (potassium hydroxide also known as caustic potash).

“We describe it like a whirlpool bath,” Mr. Seims said. A recirculation pump runs throughout the process to keep the fluids circulating around the body to break up the molecules. Steam is run through the Resomator to heat it up to above 300 degrees for over

Safety has been a major consideration in planning and operating the Resomator. The latest Resomation LTD technology allows for remote monitoring and will send alerts if a problem arises. This means that the UC Davis team and Resomation LTD staff can be informed of a problem, and a technician can be dispatched as necessary. Retaining chemicals in the same room avoids the need to pump them from another floor. The new equipment can be run by a single person. “A dishwasher is harder to run,” Mr. Seims said.

The UC Davis Body Donation Program was created in 1969 along with the School of Medicine to supply specimens for the Anatomy program but it now falls under the School of Medicine. In addition to serving anatomy course students, it has grown to serve the School of Nursing and other groups within the UC system that include Surgery, Emergency Medicine and Orthopedics. Whole cadavers or body parts are loaned for education research at California State University Sacramento, Chico and Cal Poly Humboldt, as well as to community colleges, the US military, Air Force, Fire Department, Office of Emergency Services and paramedic groups, and they are returned after use.

UC Davis will be the second UC campus to have an alkaline hydrolysis machine. It will serve both UC Davis and University of California, San Francisco due to space constraints at the urban campus. There are no plans to change University of California, San Diego and University of California, Irvine’s flame cremation process.

UCLA’s annual memorial service for body donors’ families is funded by its water cremation

Derek Chartrand Wallace, who has been with The Guardsman for two years and runs the paper’s social media accounts, won the College Media: Feature Story/Serious Nature award for his story “Calel Olicia-Aramboles: Reading the Signs Leading to Rams’ Success.”

“It was a very interesting story to cover for me. I got in touch with the football player Calel, scheduled the meeting in Zoom with a translator and framed the experience from his teammates who shared their testimony on having a player with hearing disabilities.”

The piece is about the running back football player for the Rams and his experience as a deaf athlete.

Erin Blackwell, Editorial Cartoonist at The Guardsman during the spring and fall semesters of 2021, won under two categories — College Media: Editorial Cartoon for her piece titled “Budget Cuts” and College Media: Photography/Sports for “Rams’ Reign Continues with Strong Performances Versus Las Positas and Santa Rosa.” “I had a fantastic experience drawing cartoons for The Guardsman and feel honored to win these awards,” she said.

As of Jan. 17, the lower Balboa Reservoir parking area (behind the Multi-Use Building) has changed management from City College to Douglas Parking. It now costs $6.50 to park and student and staff permits are not honored. The lot is open Monday to Friday from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. There are QR codes posted to pay electronically or an attendant will be present to accept payments. All other campus parking lots will remain at $5 and continue to honor valid student and staff permits.

In December 2022, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) officially sold the 17-acre property to BHC Balboa Builders LLC. Plans for the reservoir consist of 1,100 housing units, half of which are planned to be affordable units at 55% to 120% of average median income (currently $53,350 to $116,400 for a one-person household.)

Proposals to build a housing development on the Balboa Reservoir date back to the 1960s and have failed consistently every decade, until the city resurfaced the idea in 2017 and it was approved in 2020.

There has been perpetual opposition to such proposals that has continued to the present day. Neighbors and City College faculty have spoken out against the privatization of public lands and advocated for the land ownership to

While the debate may continue, the ownership has been officially transferred and plans to go forward with construction are underway. In a letter to the City College community, campus police said, “CCSF will start to work collaboratively with the landowners and hopefully develop a long-term agreement at consistent parking rates.”

Continued from The New Trustees on page 1

The new trustees ran on a shared platform, and some of their values include developing a balanced and transparent budget, enhancing workforce training, increasing green practices on campus and supporting immigrant, BIPOC, and LGBTQ communities.

“Change is possible,” said Harry Bernstein, music faculty at City College, during public comment. “You have voiced opposition to the systemic downsizing of the college. This should be the community college for all San Francisco, not just those favored by policies designed by, enforced by, Sacramento.” He expressed hope that the new trustees will listen to the concerns of faculty and students.

“I can’t say how truly thrilled the labor council is to have these new members join the City College trustees,” said Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council. She added that she wants to help bring funds for “real job training” back to City College. “I’m talking automotive repair and vocational things that have been lost.”

Chung thanked the crowd for all the support. “All of you have been incredibly supportive, not only of us as newly elected trustees, but of our college and it's been a long fight.”