El Sol Spring 2020 by Southwestern College Sun Newspaper

EL SOL

Issue X - Spring 2020

Indomitable

Dr. Ruth Chula Vistaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beloved Holocaust survivor stared down Nazis to spread a message of hope

EL SOL

Issue X - Spring 2020

Table of Contents

EL SOL

Issue XX -- Spring Spring 2020 2020 Issue

of Table of Contents Contents Stranded In Tijuana Stranded Refugees cannot cannot Refugees workor or get get work asylum hearings hearings asylum

On the the cover: cover: On

Ruth Sax Sax – a Ruth life well well lived life

Two countries countries–– Two one long long commute commute

TakingThe TheWho Who Taking by bythe thehorn horn

Unsafeatat Unsafe any anyspeed speed

Love Love in in thethe time of of COVID time COVID

Students Studentsliving livingin in Mexico Mexico face faceaagrueling grueling international internationalcrossing crossing

Dean DeanCynthia Cynthia McGregor McGregorsure sureplays plays aamean meanFrench Frenchhorn horn

Daily dangers Daily dangers loom forfor college loom college wheelchair users wheelchair users

Great production Great production castcast asunder by by asunder deadly pandemic deadly pandemic

21 21

All Allshells shells end endwell well

Studying the past toto Studying the past improve the future improve the future

LGBTQ LGBTQrefugee refugeeisis homeless, homeless,but but remains remainshopeful hopeful

Southwestern’s Southwestern’spopular popular turtles move to upscale turtles move to upscale new newhome homeatatSea SeaWorld World

Journalism student uses Journalism student uses herher talents to serve talents to serve veterans, dependents veterans, dependents

Generous Generouscar carclub club honored honoredin innew new Chicano ChicanoPark Parkmural mural

31 31 36 36

Teaching Teaching the the secrets of secrets ofchampions champions

122 122

‘No snitching’ ethos a a ‘No snitching’ ethos contagion forfor minorities contagion minorities

Home Home is is where where the car is the car is

New New heights heightsfor for altruistic lowriders altruistic lowriders

Chula Vista’s beloved Chula Vista’s beloved Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivor became a great morah and became great a clarionaof hopemorah and a clarion of hope

59 59

Olympic medalist Olympic medalist helps students clear helps students clear the hurdles of life the hurdles of life

40 40

Full-time advocate Full-time advocate for part-timers for part-timers Professor’s dissertation Professor’s the dissertation documents abuse documents the abuse of college adjuncts of college adjuncts

47 47

54 54

Police Policedisrespect disrespectofof black blackmen menisishurtful hurtful African-American African-American students studentsfeel feelunsafe unsafeonon their own campus their own campus

65 65

Universities Universitiesselling selling our seats for cash our seats for cash UC, CSU systems UC, CSU systems squeeze out local squeeze out local students of color students of color

78 78

Part-timers fear a Part-timers fear a barren retirement barren retirement Long-time classified Long-time classified workers can work 40 workers can 40 years withoutwork benefits years without benefits

83 83

89 89

Accreditation is is aa Accreditation dangerous game dangerous game Illustrated journey Illustrated journey through the perils of of through the perils evaluation process evaluation process

92 92

Special EdEd toto aa Special very Ed.D. verySpecial Special Ed.D. Professor overcame Professor overcame the racism of low the racism of low expectations expectations

93 93

A rare church where A rare church where it is okay to be gay it is okay to be gay LGBTQ congregation LGBTQ congregation rejects hatred of rejects hatred of conservative churches conservative churches

97 97

103 103

Gangs, criminals Gangs, criminals leverage mistrust of of leverage mistrust lawlaw enforcement enforcement

Legendary alum Legendary alum returns to home world returns to home world

107 107

J. M. Straczynski J. M. Straczynski follows “ Babylon 5” 5” follows “ Babylon with a provocative with a provocative new biography new biography

Taylor guitars choice Taylor guitars choice ofof musical superstars musical superstars El Cajon axes El Cajon axes favored by Clapton, favored by Clapton, Prince, Taylor Swift Prince, Taylor Swift and Dave Matthews and Dave Matthews

113 113

Messenger of the Gods Messenger of the Gods Dr. Mark Van Stone Dr.hieroglyphs Mark Van Stone reads reads hieroglyphs and created the face and created of the college the face of the college

139 139

120 120

Destruction Destruction byby mountain bike mountain bike A handful of of A handful thoughtless riders thoughtless riders damage habitats of of damage habitats endangered species endangered species

144 144

Hope forfor thethe future Hope future resides in young people resides in young people

153 153

Dr. Jane Goodall Dr. Jane Goodall saidsaid the the world world needs help,help, but she needs but she remains optimistic remains optimistic

Paper thin, Paper thin, iron strength iron strength

159 159

A celebration of A celebration of China’s culture China’s culture is a reminder that is a reminder that we share this world we share this world

Concept and Layout ConceptHerrera and Layout Edward Edward Herrera

Illustration Victor Santander, Ever Parmely-Denherder, Wendy Gracia, Jennifer Valenzuela

Message from the Editors

EL SOL

Issue X - Spring 2020 Editor-in-Chief

Pernisha Gaines

Thank you for picking up the magazine that was left for dead when COVID-19 closed our college. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening March 10, the Southwestern College Sun newspaper broke the story that college administrators were planning to announce closure of the campus Friday afternoon, March 13. After the story broke, the college president hastily announced the plans one hour later via theswcsun.com. Southwestern was the first California community college to declare a shut down. A domino was tipped. On Wednesday, March 11 the state’s remaining 113 colleges announced they would follow Southwestern’s lead and close on Friday. Southwestern journalism students frantically finished their final issue of The Sun and began to push subsequent work to its website. Friday the 13th of March was triage day for El Sol Magazine. It seemed hopeless. Faculty and editors spent the day tracking down half-finished articles, unedited photos, and illustrations from a dozen artists to load into the one computer we were allowed to take off campus with us to shelter-in-place. Fans of The Beatles probably know the “Let It Be” album was assembled from hundreds of hours of unfinished tapes. Likewise this issue of El Sol. Shut down in the sixth week of our 16-week semester, journalism students were scattered in a coronavirus diaspora to hunker down in houses, hostiles, hospitals, hotels and humble habitations from mountainous Poway northeast of San Diego to eerily empty Rosarito Beach in Mexico. Many of our friends and classmates vanished into silence. We hope they are okay. After about a week of sifting through emotions and negotiating our new reality came the crusade to save El Sol. An ambitious hand-drawn cover by a team of artists was nowhere near finished, ditto for designs and illustrations for packages inside the magazine. A skeleton crew secure enough to work decided we wanted to print what we had and tell the stories we had reported the best we could. So without our newsroom, technology, schedules or ability to meet face-toface, we launched into “El Sol in Exile” entirely remotely, trying to finish before our printer was forced to shut down. It was un milagro de ciberspacio. Challenges abound, but desire and talent prevailed. It is not the polished El Sol we set out to create in January, but like the “Let It Be” album, many memorable creations emerged from the chaos of the long and winding road. Our efforts pale compared to professional journalists, first responders and health care professionals on the front lines of the COVID-19 war. Young Southwestern College nursing students who were our classmates the second week of March are out there right now courageously battling a pandemic. Our respect, best wishes and love to the newly-minted heroes of 2020’s silent spring. We drew strength and inspiration from you. The Staff of El Sol

Writers

Stephanie Aceves JoseLuis Baylon Kathleen Blankenship Brittany Cruz-Fejeran Justin Dottery Caleigh Goldman Manuel Gonzalez Nicholas James Marty Loftin Karla Luna Fernando Martinez Ana Paola Olvera Andrew Penalosa Andrew Perez Sole’ Ruiz Katy Stegall Julia Woock Artists/Designers

Karen-Alleluia Agbuya Dan Cordero Yaritza Cuevas Justin Dottery Claudia Duran Stephanie Garrido Wendy Gracia Edward Herrera Marty Loftin Qiuzhu Luo Mikayla Moore-Bastide Hoang Nguyen Ever Parmely-Denherder Michelle Phillips Victor Santander Jennifer Valenzuela Photographers

JoseLuis Baylon Gamaliel Carreno Brittany Cruz-Fejeran Marco Figueroa Caleigh Goldman Nicholas James Karla Luna Fernando Martinez Ana Paola Olvera

Art Director

Kenneth Pagano Adviser

Dr. Max Branscomb El Sol / Spring 2020

Santos Catalino López Velásquez and his refugee family waited two months for an asylum hearing only to be dismissively sent away when U.S. immigration officials saw that his baby daughter has contracted chickenpox. U.S. agents told him to come back when his daughter was “healthy” and refused to give him a new appointment.

Stranded in Tijuana

‘Remain in Mexico’ rules prevent refugees from working in the United States or Mexico

Story By Julia Woock Layout and Design By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran, Fernando A. Martinez and Julia Woock

Photo Fernando A. Martinez El Sol / Spring 2020

Eight miles from Southwestern College an international drama has hit pause. Migrants must remain in Mexico, no more welcome there than in America.

ne year after snaking processions of Central American refugees populated international newscasts to all corners of the globe, they are largely forgotten in a fetid corner of Tijuana. Streams of indios dressed in the cheerful colors of their Mesoamerican textiles forded rivers, trodded empty roadways, and clamored aboard flimsy buses during their fleeting moment on the world stage thanks to NBC, BBC and Reuters. Today they wait in hand-me-down Knott’s Berry Farm t-shirts in tumbledown sanctuaries in crime-infested pockets of Baja California — meters away from Alta California, U.S.A. Barely eight miles from Southwestern College an international drama has hit pause. The Trump Administration has overturned decades of American policy and practice related to refugees. Instead of allowing them to wait in the U.S. prior to administrative hearings on their refugee applications, migrants must remain in Mexico, where they are no more welcome than they are in America. La familia López Velásquez El Paraíso, Honduras This year Santos Catalino López Velásquez was shot in the face by criminals and engaged in a shootout with pistoleros at his home while his family hid behind furniture. His arm and nose were broken by thugs, he nearly lost an eye and has glass embedded in his face. He lost his farm to gangsters and had his house

Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

López Velásquez’s son does not let a case of chickenpox spoil his day. El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

“They told me they couldn’t let me through because my daughter was sick,” he said with his speckle-faced little girl on his lap. “I told them that was an important reason to allow me to go through. My baby needs medical attention. They showed no humanity and turned me away.” — S A N TO S CATA L I N O LÓPEZ VELÁSQUEZ

Where wealth is absent, creativity has blossomed at Tijuana’s migrant shelters. Children are encouraged to express themselves through art, which NGO social workers said can help them come to grips with the traumas they have endured.

burned to the ground. He traveled 3,500 torturous miles to la línea, where he is forced by the U.S. government to live in a hovel. He said it was one of the best years of his life. His wife survived the horrors to give birth to a precious new daughter and his family is alive. That, he said, is a good start for a new chapter in his life. López Velásquez and his family are refugees from Honduras stranded in Tijuana by the Trump Administration’s “Wait in Mexico” policy. The 42-year-old former coffee farmer suffered another cruel turn this week when U.S. immigration officials took one look at his baby daughter and cancelled his asylum appointment with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Chickenpox, no puede pasar.” López Velásquez and his family waited two months for the appointment. Immigration officials refused to give him another one. “They just said to come back when your daughter is no longer sick,” he said. American officials swiftly rejected a note from an American doctor that sought medical help for the seven-month-old. Safety and hope beckoned less than 100 yards away. On the other side of la frontera López Velásquez’ nephew was waiting. He had traveled all the way from Wisconsin to pick up the Hondran refugees and sponsor them in The Badger State. “No puede pasar, varicela.” News that might devastate most people was just another setback for the remarkably optimistic López Velásquez. Even as he recounted fear, pain and bitter disappointments, a persistent smile insisted on coming through as he described a harrowing narrative. “They told me they couldn’t let me through because my daughter was sick,” he said with his speckle-faced little girl on his lap. “I told them that was an important reason to allow me to go through. My baby needs medical attention. They showed no humanity and turned me away.” El Sol / Spring 2020

Chickenpox and measles can get loose in refugee camps and shelters, according to UNICEF personnel visiting the Movimiento Juventud shelter in Tijuana. Forcing stressed, cold, exhausted and underfed people into a small area can encourage the spread of childhood diseases easily preventable in industrialized countries, said a visiting UNICEF official who asked not to be named. The planet’s richest industrialized country is just yards away and so are vaccines for the diseases los niños López Velásquez contracted while waiting dos meses en Tijuana. López Velásquez smiled reflexively and pledged he would continue his arduous quest to find a safe home for his family. He would love to live in the United States and work in the Wisconsin dairy industry powered by migrant labor, he said, and he would be okay settling in Canada, too. Just some place safe. Mexico and Latin America are no longer options for the López Velásquez family, he said, because of the power and reach of the delincuentes that drove him off his five-acre coffee plantation in El Paraíso, Honduras. Drug cartels are forcing coffee growers and other Central American farmers to plant coca or opium poppies to produce cocaine and heroin. López Velásquez said his brother sold his adjoining farmland to the death squads at gunpoint. He refused and has paid dearly. The first attempt on life occurred while he was driving a rural road. He was ambushed by cartel gunmen who somehow missed him, but shattered the window inches from his face. He lost sight in one eye and bled profusely. Miraculously he escaped execution. “I remember thinking I had lost my eye because I could no longer see out of it,” he said. “It turned out to be all the blood that was running down my face. I stumbled out of my car and collapsed. The last thing I remember was seeing a car pull up, not knowing if the people were there to help me or finish me off.” He regained consciousness in a hospital. A broken arm and shattered finger were not set correctly and are now deformed. Painful shards of glass remain embedded in his face. Criminals returned. They shot at his house while López Velásquez and his family were inside. He had a new gun and managed to fight them off, but knew los maleantes would return in greater numbers. It was time to flee. As the family escaped for el norte, los malandrines burned his family home to the ground. They fled on June 9, one month after his daughter was born, and traveled through mysterious Mexico for four months. Their first stop was Zacatecas, he said, where the family stayed for two months in a church. Parishioners offered shelter and helped López Velásquez find a construction job. Ciudad 12

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

Refugees prepare El Salvadorian pupusas, which they sell on the streets to create a revenue stream to buy food for others in the shelter.

Refugees help to maintain the shelters they live in.

Juárez was next, then a place he called Sonoyta for three weeks. He presented himself to American immigration officers at San Luis Rio Colorado, a small city in the northwest corner of Sonora, about 75 miles east of Mexicali. Mexican immigration officials demanded bribes throughout the trip, he said. Las mordidas added up, siphoning off hard earned money for food, water and shelter. “They let us continue our journey because of the bribe money we paid them, not because they had any humanity or cared that we had kids,” he said. López Velásquez had previous experience with crooked government officials. Police in Honduras are among the most corrupt in the world. Murder is a cottage

industry, he said. “In Honduras, if someone wants to murder someone else, the first thing they do is contact the police, because the police are in control of everything,” he said. “After bribing the police the criminals can easily grab anyone and kill them. If you pay a little more, the police will kill them for you.” Worried that he still may have a price on his head, López Velásquez said it is essential he and his family leave Latin America. “Mexico is not a safe country because people from Latin America can come and go,” he said. “The United States is not the safest country, but people from Latin America cannot just come and go. It would be more difficult for the criminals to come

look for us.” López Velásquez said he and his family long to live in any safe country. “If the United States gave us the opportunity to ask Canada for asylum, we would do it,” he said. “Just not Mexico or another Latin American country where the police are owned by the cartels and the criminals. It is easy for them to find someone. If there is money involved, it moves everything.” Despite his daily travails, López Velásquez defied the stereotype of a dirty, desperate refugee with his clean clothes and wellgroomed appearance. “I want to look as best I can to be ready if an opportunity comes my way,” he said. “Maybe work, maybe an appointment with the El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Fernando A. Martinez

Americans. I must be ready and I want my family to see I am hopeful and have faith.” He has no idea when he will meet again with U.S. immigration officials, he said. First his baby daughter’s face must clear. Yesenia Ardon Ortiz San Martín, El Salvador A loving mother abandoned her children to save them. She traveled north to look for work so she could send money back to poverty stricken San Martín, El Salvador. Today Yesenia Ardon Ortiz works for free. She is helping others in Tijuana, but not her family in San Martín. At least not yet. “What motivated me to come here was a friend who told me there were many job opportunities in Tijuana for people who are driven,” she said. “So, my motivation was to work and provide a better future for my children.” Her friend was half right. There are job opportunities in Tijuana, but not for Salvadorians without work permits from the Mexican government. Ardon Ortiz worked for a cleaning company in Tijuana until the Mexican National Guard and immigration officials flooded the city like an El Niño deluge. Refugees without papers could not work. So, like many a clever American who loses her job, she created a business. Ardon Ortiz started making pupusas, a traditional Salvadoran food similar to the Mexican gordita. She and other residents of the Movimiento Juventud shelter sell them to raise money. “I told the director of the shelter my idea,” she said. “Since we are no longer receiving government aid, we should open a little pupusería to raise money for cooking oil, rice, sugar and other items because we offer breakfast, lunch and dinner (to refugees). We do not make a lot of money because we have to reinvest in the ingredients for las pupusas, but what is left over we use for things we need around here.” Pupusas Power feeds scores of refugees daily. Pesos earned by Ardon Ortiz and her puffy treats are the revenue stream that keeps penniless refugees from going hungry. Like any loving mother, Ardon Ortiz works hard to make sure her cares eat well. “For breakfast they have bread with café con leche for the adults,” she said. “For the kids we have things like cereal and milk or arroz con leche. For lunch we have rice and beans. Usually accompanied by things like chicken, wieners or meat. Sometimes we have soups or salads. We have aguas frescas, made with different fruits like papaya, watermelon, or apples. For the last two months an organization called World Central Kitchen has donated dinner, typically consisting of rice and beans as sides and dishes like albóndigas or 14

El Sol / Spring 2020

La cocina de Movimiento Juventud.

chilaquiles.” Ardon Ortiz said shelter residents take turns in the kitchen. Children do not attend school, she said, but can go to a government program three times a week for reading and writing. Non-Governmental Organizations like World Vision and UNICEF also hold periodic workshops as well as outdoor activities and sports for the kids. Ardon Ortiz said she has heard allegations that people use children that are not theirs to cross the border. At her shelter families require documentation that show which refugees are parents. Children are clearly identified. Children are further protected by el DIF (National System for Integral Family Development) to ensure minors are not unaccompanied. “When we intake a family, we ask for identification and birth certificates to verify and establish the

“I understood the need for a place for people that may have never left their hometown. They need a place where they can learn to adapt and it is not easy. You are met with indifference and even discrimination. If these are issues that face Mexicans who immigrated between states, imagine what foreigners feel.” —YES ENIA ARD ON ORTIZ

kinship,” she said. Movimiento Juventud is a shelter geared towards families, Ardon Ortiz explained. Single men are redirected to a sister shelter a block away which is also under the leadership of José María García Lara, 52, who said he opened the shelter because of his own experience immigrating to the border from Puebla. People would notice that he spoke with a different accent or that he was not from there, he said, treated him differently. “I understood the need for a place for people that may have never left their hometown,” she said. “They need a place where they can learn to adapt and it is not easy. You are met with indifference and even discrimination. If these are issues that face Mexicans who immigrated between states, imagine what foreigners feel.” Ardon Ortiz said many of the 2018 refugees have dispersed. Some of their journeys were successful, some were not. “Most of the people that arrived in the caravans have since scattered,” she said. “Some decided to remain in Tijuana. Others moved about two hours away. Some made it into the United States, but many were denied asylum. Many returned home.” Movimiento Juventud is a multinational shelter, Ardon Ortiz said. “We have people from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador,” she said. “We also have Mexican nationals from places like Chiapas El Sol / Spring 2020

or Guerrero.” Ardon Ortiz made her journey on her own. She said it was hard not knowing where to go and not having a guide. She traveled from El Salvador to Tecún Umán, Guatemala and then crossed el Río Suchiate into Mexico on a raft. She took a taxi to Tapachula where she said she heard they would give humanitarian visas in three days, only to learn it would be three months. She said she joined a caravan in Tapachula that embarked in March. “We walked for an entire day,” he said. “Later a friend and I, and a few other people, branched away from the caravan, avoiding checkpoints and sleeping on the street. There were many risks, but we had to take them.” People leading the caravans made promises they could not keep, she said. She did not know who organized the caravan, but just joined when she saw many people gathered. Many different nationalities were traveling together, she said. It was a polyglot rumor mill. Exotic people from faraway lands had vastly different estimated times of arrival. They promised humanitarian visas, without evidence. A once-buoyant caravan grew stagnant and weary. Frustration finally made Ardon Ortiz branch away. “The feeling of despair and separation from your family,” she said. “The blisters and ulcers on your feet from walking all day. Being sunburnt. The heat. The fact that you need to carry water to survive, but that same weight is pulling you down and makes your body ache. Your body weakens. You’re carrying your luggage and your water. You feel you can’t carry on. It makes you feel like you simply can’t do it anymore. Your options are to turn back, let immigration catch you, or you keep fighting.” Women do not usually make the journey alone, she said. It is not safe. Refugee women are frequently raped or robbed. She said she and her comadres stayed in abandoned homes they would encounter to rest and recover from oppressive heat and humidity. Or bitter mountain cold. During a brutal mountain blizzard all they had to cover themselves were pieces of plastic. “What really kills you is the cold,” she recalled. “The rain that fell would burn your face and skin as it hit because it was almost like hail.” Beastly men and brutal weather were mild compared to the brutal La Bestia, a migrant train Ardon Ortiz said surely came straight out of the Mouth of Hell. Migrants hop the notorious northbound train, often with catastrophic results. Thousands of migrants have been killed or maimed by falling from the moving train. Refugees have lost legs and arms, or been dragged across rocks and rails. Ardon Ortiz said the train hit a vehicle in Orizaba, 16

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Jahaziel Valencia

“They tell you no migrants or simply ignore you. They can tell you are a migrant because your hair is messy or you are sunburned. The sun is not the only thing that burns your skin. The wind and the chill burn it, too. They can see in your face that you are not from there. They can tell that maybe you have not bathed in a couple days.” —YES ENIA ARD ON ORTIZ

but was allowed by Mexican authorities to continue because the driver was drunk. Terror ensued when police used a flashlight to inspect the train for unauthorized passengers. Ardon Ortiz said it was impossible to sleep or relax on La Bestia due to the risk of rolling off and being smashed like an egg under the train. “You dare not fall asleep,” she said. “You must remain awake. You have to tie yourself to something to sleep.” Finding something safe and sturdy enough to strap on to the beastly train was nearly impossible, she said. Refugees literally held on for dear life. Her overweight friend struggled to hop on the moving train. Ardon Ortiz said her amiga fell three times and avoided death or amputation when another migrant pulled her out from La Bestia’s path. She fell and broke her nose in Ixtepec, Oaxaca. A good Samaritan took her to the next train stop to catch up with Ardon Ortiz. Catching up to a moving train is challenging for a young, athletic person. It is a death-defying act for middle aged mothers. She said that you have to run at the same pace as the train and grab the bars tightly or risk falling underneath and dying or losing limbs. Most times when they jumped abroad, they were left dangling and had to pull themselves up. Shins and thighs smashed violently against the relentless train. In Arriaga they hopped a cargo train that took 12 days to reach the state of Veracruz. In Orizaba they were caught and kicked off. “When we reached Veracruz, it was freezing cold,” she said. “We did not know where to go. We did not know where we were. The was a freight yard where they disconnected trains. We felt like those trains disconnected.” Ardon Ortiz said she hopped six trains. It was exhausting and dangerous. There were two nights they did not sleep while waiting for trains. Five went by, but they were too fast and the women could not hop aboard. “I just could not do it anymore,” she said. “It

Yesenia Ardon Ortiz fled poverty in El Salvador to work and send money to her family. Mexican officials will not issue her a work permit.

became increasingly harder to hop on. The trains travel too fast. My friend and I decided to continue our journey on the bus.” They boarded the bus in Ciudad Serdán that took them to the City of Puebla and then Mexico City. From there it was a three-day bus trip to Tijuana. On their way, they had their first brush with Mexican immigration. “We ran into immigration in Sonora,” she said. “They asked where we were from and told us to step

off the bus. We did not know if the bus would wait for us or leave without us. We were afraid we would be left stranded there without a single peso because we spent all our money to buy the ticket. We hoped for luck and the grace of God.” They told the Mexican immigration officials they were going to work in Tijuana. It worked and the women boarded the bus just before it rolled out. They brushed paths with immigration a second time in Tecate, but got lucky. La migra had already El Sol / Spring 2020

“They let us continue our journey because of the bribe money we paid them, not because they had any humanity or cared that we had kids.” López Velásquez had previous experience with crooked government officials. Police in Honduras are among the most corrupt in the world. Murder is a cottage industry, he said. — S A N TO S CATA L I N O LÓPEZ VELÁSQUEZ

Santos López Velásquez, a cheerful former coffee grower who escaped death squads in Honduras, at a mural near his family’s Tijuana shelter. The López Velásquez family lost its asylum hearing due to their baby daughter’s chickenpox.

detained a group and were occupied. She said after a month they arrived in Tijuana. “I am alive thanks to God and was able to survive La Bestia,” she said. There were places in Mexico that denied service to refugees. Some restaurants and food stands posted angry handmade signs that read NO MIGRANTES. Proprietors would spot them and slam their doors, even though they had money to pay for their food. “They tell you no migrants or simply ignore you. They can tell you are a migrant because your hair is messy or you are sunburned. The sun is not the only thing that burns your skin. The wind and the chill burn it, too. They can see in your face that you are not from there. They can tell that maybe you have not bathed in a couple days.” Ardon Ortiz said she understood why some people may have disliked migrants. Previous caravans had come through and “practically left all of Mexico dirty.” They met kind and considerate people, too, who gave them drinking water and let them bathe. Refugees got different looks along the way. Loathing. Compassion. Disgust. Pity. Curiosity. Fear. Ardon Ortiz said she saw caravans on the television, but never thought she would be part of one. “I used to say, I’m never joining one of those migrant caravans. I’m not crazy.” She paused and shook her head slowly. “They say sometimes you end up swallowing your own words.” Leaving her children was very hard, she said, but searching for better opportunities was imperative. Despite her unsavory surroundings and derailed plans, she said she remains optimistic that someday she will be allowed to work and send money home to her children. Until then there are pupusas to make. Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

Brittany Cruz-Fejeran, Fernando A. Martinez, Jahaziel Valencia and Matthew Brooks contributed to this section. El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Fernando A. Martinez

TWO COUNTRIES, SIX HOURSâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

ONE LONG COMMUTE

TO SCHOOL Story and Design By Fernando A. Martinez

Residents of Mexico approach the Tijuana side of the border checkpoint at San Ysidro to cross into the U.S. More than 9.4 million pedestrians entered the U.S. from Tijuana in 2018, including legions of students. El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Fernando A. Martinez

La Frontera is like Mictlan, the Aztec underworld, at dawn and dusk for Southwestern College students who twice a day dare to challenge the darkness.

uan Carlos wakes up every morning in a “foreign” country. He rolls out of bed at 4:30 a.m. in the Lomas Virreyes neighborhood of Tijuana, and gazes towards el norte. His Southwestern College class begins promptly at 8:30. He has an international border to cross. Thousands of SC students make the arduous crossing several days a week, rising before los gallos and returning under the beaming moon and twinkling stars. College officials estimate that 30-40 percent of SC’s students live in Tijuana, Puerto Nuevo or Rosarito. Some come as far away as Ensenada. Most are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans who live south of la frontera, but hundreds—probably thousands—are white, African-American or Asian-Americans who live in Tijuana for its low rents, cheap gasoline and overall affordability. Wait times at the world’s busiest international border are completely unpredictable and typically arduous. Delays can be caused by weather, law enforcement activity, holidays, border patrol shift changes, and even visits by the U.S. President or cabinet officials. Political jousting between the U.S. and Mexico spurs retaliatory shutdowns, slowdowns and showdowns. Even la Virgen de Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint, air brushed on vehicles and tattooed on muchos brazos, has a hard time guaranteeing an easy cross. A good commute for Juan Carlos is two hours, a typical is three and a bad is four. An awful delay is five hours and a catastrophic delay is six.

Sometimes frustrated students moo like cattle as they are funneled into a long line in an INS corridor. Waits are capricious and can take hours on a bad day. El Sol / Spring 2020

There are days I’m in class and I cannot pay attention because I’m trying not to fall asleep. I’m thinking ‘after this I’m going to get something to eat.’ It is distracting and doesn’t allow me to continue with my usual activities because I don’t have the same energy a regular person does.

Photo Fernando A. Martinez

—JUAN CARLOS

Juan Carlos gets about four hours sleep a night, he said, rubbing his eyes. His mamá wakes up an hour earlier at 3:30 a.m., to make him a portable breakfast shake and prepare him a lunch. This is often all he eats all day, he said. Lack of sleep and hunger take their toll, he said. El espíritu está dispuesto, pero la carne es débil. “There are some days I’m in class and I cannot pay attention, I’m falling asleep. I’m thinking ‘After this I’m going to this place to buy something to eat,’” he said. “It’s distracting and as whole it doesn’t allow me to continue with my usual activites because I don’t have the same energy level than a regular person does.” Ariana holds a precious SENTRI card from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol given to “preapproved, low-risk travelers” to cross faster. Wait time at the Port of Entry is greatly reduced, but the commute is still typically an hour—much longer if she is required to endure an entirely random secondary inspection. Ariana said she buys burritos from street vendors at the border for breakfast and lunch. Like Juan Carlos, sometimes that is all she eats until she crosses back to Mexico later that night and has dinner at la casa. “There are days I do not have a meal,” she said. “I do not have a meal until night, at dinner, because at school food is too expensive.” Estephania said she only has shakes for breakfast. Sometimes she finds short snatches of time for a snack between her consecutive classes beginning at 8:30 a.m. Eating hours before dawn means her body wants lunch while many of her classmates are at home having a leisurely breakfast. Despite their transportation and transborder trials, all three students agree that the sleep deprivation, hunger and grueling commutes in smoggy lines of testy border crossers is all worth it for an American education. “Nobody (in Mexico) has these opportunities,” Estephania said. “(We) take advantage of them.” At the swarming San Ysidro Port of Entry, more than 70,000 cars and 20,000 pedestrians cross 24

El Sol / Spring 2020

Vendors sell breakfast burritos, tortas, churros and other portable foods that students can eat in line or for lunch.

Photo Fernando A. Martinez

More than 10 million people cross the border at San Ysidro every year, including tens of thousands of students heading to Sweetwater Union High School District campuses and Southwestern College.

Small teams of vendors take orders in the slow moving stream of vehicles, then hustle between cars and over concrete barriers to deliver food and collect cash.

the border every day, according to Border Patrol data. As many as 10 million people cross la linea at either San Ysidro or Otay Mesa annually. It is humanity’s busiest border in recorded history, but a routine trip to school for many Jaguars. Juan Carlos said he only sees his brother when they cross and his mom when she drives them to and from the border. Ariana and Estephania concurred— the commute is tough on relationships and family. They spend most of their waking hours in the sunlight of Chula Vista. Shouldering heavy backpacks is another struggle. All three students carry everything they might need 26

El Sol / Spring 2020

A degree from any United States college is way better than anything you can get in Mexico. It’s really important that I do this. —JUAN CARLOS

throughout the day. Estephania carries her books and extra supplies in case of a border closure. Students who live in Mexico are never entirely sure if they will be able to return home that day. Transborder students do not always have a plan B in case of a border closure. Some might be able to stay with a friend or a family member, but others go homeless, sleeping in their cars as they do not have anywhere else to go. After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the East Coast, the border was closed tight for 10 days. Students living in Mexico formed a camp in the parking lot of a Chula Vista Walmart. Many SC

professors brought them food, water, blankets and bedding. Others allowed students to stay at their homes. Political turmoil caused by unexpected outbursts by U.S. President Donald Trump also cause border closures and lengthy delays. These events hang over students like a veritable Sword of Damocles, causing stress and anxiety. A 2016 report by UCSD researchers found that students who study in the U.S. and live in Mexico are at greater risk for depression and health maladies. Some suffer from refugee-level stress and anxiety. El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Fernando A. Martinez

Thousands of vehicles idle in an eye-burning smog of sulfurous Pemex gasoline fumes and morning coastal fog.

No matter how hard things get, how bad it hurts, how much you cry, you have to keep running, you can’t stop. That’s what I did. — C E S A R G A R AY

HOME IS WHERE THE CAR IS

Like a spiraling gumball machine, pedestrians go up, down, left, right and sideways through a maze of walkways on both sides of la frontera.

“I have back problems because of stress,” said Ariana. “This is something new that had never happened to me when I was studying in high and middle school in Mexico.” Anxiety attacks plague Ariana, she said, caused by the stress of crossing the border. Even though she wakes up three hours before her class starts, she never knows for sure if she will make it on time. Constant fear of a border shutdown and worry about mistreatment by Border Patrol agents contribute to her high stress levels, she said. No Border Patrol agent, endless snaking line at Customs or barrier that may appear like the Gates of Hell can keep Juan Carlos, Ariana or Estephania from attending Southwestern College. 30

El Sol / Spring 2020

An American college degree is too valuable, they all said in their own way in two languages. Juan Carlos is blunt. “If anybody has a degree from a United States college, it doesn’t matter what school it is from, it’s going to be way better than anything you can get (in Mexico),” he said. “From an educational point of view, it is really important that I do this.” La Frontera is like Mictlan, the Aztec underworld, at dawn and dusk for Southwestern College students who dare to challenge fate in the darkness twice a day. Like the Aztec spirits who braved the dangers during the days of creation, 21st century spirits accept the risks and hopes of someday reveling in the light.

Story By Nicholas James Layout and Design By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Nicholas James

Cesar Vizcaino Garay sorts through his school bags to find his homework and the textbooks he needs for the day. Garay has been living in his car since September.

Cesar Garay was just a child the first time his dad was kidnapped. Garay’s home faced a bridge where the crime cartels hung bodies to send a message. His family worried that Señor Garay would be one of them. Garay’s 22 years have never been easy. He crossed the border nearly every day and started working full-time at 12. He also tried to find time to help his family. Garay lived in Tijuana until middle school. His dad—the sole provider for a family of six—ran a 30-year-old business importing and exporting supplies for ranches. It was a good business, but also provided a gateway for extortion and dangerous criminals. Tijuana was already a hostile place to own a business and raise a family when his dad was kidnapped by a criminal cartel the first time in 2006. “My family was threatened with murder, the (cartel members) knew where we lived, where we went to school and what time we got out,” he said. Garay’s mother decided to leave Tijuana for her children’s safety. Tension developed in the family and once his dad was returned unharmed, his parents divorced. Garay’s mother and three brothers crossed the border to start a whole new life in the United States. It was a very different transition. “We moved here with nothing, my mom had no job,” he said. “The only thing my dad gave her was a little bit of money to rent an apartment.” With little money and little English, Garay’s mother opened a catering business. Garay and his brothers were the staff. He went straight from school to work all through secondary school, missing out on sports, clubs, extracurricular activities and developing friendships. Garay said high school was especially difficult 34

El Sol / Spring 2020

I was called every single thing you can imagine. I was called a faggot, I was gonna burn in hell, you’re a disgrace to this family. because he was bullied for the way he spoke and his appearance. He also struggled with his sexuality, unsure if he was gay or bisexual. His conservative upbringing added to the stress. At first he felt it was wrong to consider himself a member of the LGBTQ community, he said, or at least that is what he had been taught. He kept his sexuality private until recently when he met a young man in a class at SC. They began a relationship and Garay came out to his family members. They did not respond well to the news. “I was called every single thing you can imagine,” he said. “I was called a faggot, I was gonna burn in hell, you’re a disgrace to this family.” He also lost people he thought were friends, he said. He was pushed away by peers from his church, who mysteriously accused him of sexual harassment. He said he was surprised by the level of hate he received from so-called Christians.

“(Because of ) my sexuality I got to know the real side of people.” he said. His once-loving mom gave him an awful ultimatum. “Either you change who you are or you don’t come back,” Garay recalled her saying. He moved out. Poverty and homelessness ensued as he struggled to pay for classes, supplies and food. Garay resorted to living in his car and dumpster diving. That is when he finally decided to ask for help. During a visit to the Jag Kitchen he received an SC Cares Grant. He also thanked friends who helped him with supplies for classes and professors that helped him with textbooks. SC, he said, was his light of hope in a deep dark tunnel of despair. Garay, less worried about starvation, became involved in the ASO last year. He worked with Dean of Student Services Dr. Malia Flood on issues, involving EOPS, Veterans Services and Disability Support Services. Flood said Garay has a huge heart, is altruistic and eager to help students. Flood said she sees him doing great things in the future. “He definitely has a passion for living,” she said. Garay also took advantage of the SC Cares Closet, which provides students with business casual clothing. Academic Senate President Emily Morissette, director of the closet, said Garay is a good spirit and helpful.

“He has been an absolute professional and delight to work with,” she said. Garay’s newest project is MAJA, the Mexican American Japanese Alliance. He said the U.S., Mexico and Japan have a special bond in the San Diego-Tijuana borderlands that people should celebrate. MAJA is a “learning community,” he said, where students can learn Japanese culture, philosophy, folklore and arts. Garay said he has Japanese ancestry he wanted to share his enthusiasm about the culture. It is also cathartic, he said. “I wanted to take all that hate, negativity and pain and turn it into something beautiful for students and the school, not just for me,” he said. Garay has earned an Associate’s degree in Art History, and is now studying communications and French. UCSD, UCLA and the University of British Columbia are his transfer targets. He would like to major in Asian Studies and work with the United Nations as a translator or a professor in another country teaching Spanish. “No matter how hard things get, how bad it hurts, how much you cry, you have to keep running, you can’t stop,” he said. “That’s what I did.” Garay lives in his car, but he said it is an improvement. “Even though I sleep in my car, I don’t feel homeless because I’m always really busy.” El Sol / Spring 2020

The Tijuana-San Diego region is one great, unique and beautiful community. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; S A LVA D O R B A R A J A S

AMIGOS

FOR EVER Story and Photos By Nicholas James Layout and Design By Yaritza Cuevas

El Sol / Spring 2020

alvador Barajas was a lightweight boxer in his youth. He is a heavyweight artist in his golden years. Chicano Park’s most prolific muralist has unveiled his latest towering masterpiece, “Amigos,” a vertical tribute to the venerable Amigos Car Club, the high- minded league of lowriders. Barajas honored two pillars of the community on a pillar propping up the Coronado Bridge. Beloved Chicano heroes Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez and Rigoberto “Rigo” Reyes soar across the top of the mural like angels guardian watching over the iconic park and the border-spanning Latino community. “The mural is not just art,” Barajas said, “but a representation of something bigger, something greater. The history of lowriders is richly ingrained in Chicano culture and the culture of this region.” “Amigos” evokes the Mexican- American youths of the 1940s who were slapped around in their own communities during World War II by rednecky sailors and Marines from other parts of America. Chicanos in Los Angeles were on the brunt end of the Zoot Suit Riots when marauding military men and their racist allies invaded their communities to beat up the men and assault the women. San Diego County Chicanos suffered much of the same abuse, and worse, had their communities slowly gobbled up by Navy bases in Logan Heights, National City and Imperial Beach. Hard-drinking sailors would stumble out of establishments along National City’s “Mile of Bars” and accost Latinos who lived and worked in the area. Lowriders started out as a pushback against the invaders and their disrespect of Mexican-American culture. A sight to see and a marvel of creativity, lowriders are customized vehicles that have been lowered, enhanced and glittered with colorful paint and automotive art. Mexican-American youth lowered blocks, cut spring coils, z’ed the frame and dropped spindles. An American classic was born. So was a Mexican-American message. Reyes said the lowrider was a statement of pride and individuality. Like snowflakes and fingerprints, each lowrider is unique. “Lowriders, for us, were very, very important for our identity,” he said. “It was our community trying to develop something of its own, to develop our own identity.” “Amigos” shows a stream of cars flowing from Las Playas in Tijuana up the coast highway to Chicano Park. Barajas did not paint the border in the mural, he said, because no border can separate the reality that the Tijuana-San Diego region is one great, unique and beautiful community. 38

El Sol / Spring 2020

Aztec dance troupe Calpulli Mexihca offers a blessing of sage and spirit song.

Amigos patriarch Rigoberto “Rigo” Reyes recalls a time when the border was fluid.

In the 1940s and ‘50s the border was a rather humbled checkpoint that was not always staffed. Today’s militarized, heavily-fortified barrier is a very recent development, Barajas said, and not a part of the heritage of the area. Reyes agreed. “San Diego and Tijuana are sisters in a unique region,” he said. “The so-called border was never really a border. We don’t see it as a border, per

A 1936 Dodge Ram owned by Amigos stalwart Rafael Palacios.

se. We have so much in common. We go back and forth across that border.” Our borderlands are unlike any other border region in the world, Reyes, said, due to the robust interchange and an emergent culture that other Americans are just beginning to see and do not understand. “It’s very important that we celebrate our shared history,” he said. “Ours is a very rich culture that

the world is barely beginning to tap into.” “Amigos” reminds viewers that the Amigos Car Club is more than a collection of dazzling cars. It is a philanthropic organization of generous men and women who serve the community they love. VIA Transportation, Inc. sponsored the mural, Reyes said. Barajas, an Air Force veteran, boxing champion and gifted professional artist thinks big, but starts small. He makes miniaturized versions of all his murals and projects before he starts on the real thing – his creative process that allows him to be tremendously creative, but also cost effective. Most of his models – including “Amigos” – are smaller than a shoe box, but as detailed as a Da Vinci. “I brought over this small display to show them what the final product would look like,” he said. Barajas has become the essential Chicano Park artist, and is a foundational influence on its look and character. He helped to paint the original “Founders Mural” in 1973 after members of the Logan Heights community staged a massive, weeks-long protest in April 1970 to block the construction of a Highway Patrol station on land under the brand new Coronado Bridge that had been promised by the San Diego City Council as a badly-needed park. Protesters came from all over the United States to join the rebellion and help build Chicano Park. Barajas and a team recently repainted and updated the Founders Mural, adding Chicano heroes Chunky Sanchez and Herman Baca as well as muralist Michael Schnorr, a former SC art professor. He also painted the murals “I Am Somebody,” “Border Angels” and “La Virgen de Guadalupe No Olvidados,” which includes a tribute to the Southwestern College Sun. He has also painted murals at schools and created a series of motivational posters for students among his many projects. A Raza Renaissance man, Barajas is also the author of “Chicano Park Mural Restoration Manual,” an exhaustively detailed academic study of each mural, how it was painted and requirements for restoration. Caltrans used the manual during its seismic retrofit of Coronado Bridge pillars and left the murals virtually intact. Amigos Car Club, like Barajas, is a cultural giant in the borderlands. Besides transforming cars into moving works of art, the award-winning club supports artists, students and philanthropic endeavors on both sides of la linea. “Los Amigos are a great bunch of people,” Barajas said. “It was an honor to paint a mural that reflects their story.” El Sol / Spring 2020

HURDLES

LIFE OF

Story By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran Layout and Design By Edward Herrera

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Courtesy Toni Campbell

I My father believed an idle mind leads to trouble. Keep your mind and body active as a way to keep away from the temptations of drugs and gangs. —TONIE CAMPBELL

El Sol / Spring 2020

t was the best 13 seconds of his life. In 13 ticks of stopwatch, Tonie Campbell won a bronze medal in 100-meter hurdles at the 1988 Olympics. Today, 32 years later, he said he remembers every second. Every breath, every step, even the angle of his arms. “In a race you are a robot,” he said. “You have to divorce yourself from what is happening and control what is happening.” As a teenager in Compton, Campbell said he played baseball in the spring and football in the winter. But he got tired of both sports and asked his parents if he could take a break. His dad said no way. “My father believed an idle mind leads to trouble,” Campbell said. “Keep your mind and body active as a way to keep away from the temptations of drugs and gangs.” There were no idle minds in the Campbell house, or idle feet. His friends were going out for track so he joined, too, even though he said he was the second slowest kid in his neighborhood. “The reason I was not the slowest because the other kid was my little sister who was three years younger than me,” he said mischievously. Campbell said he felt he was not strong or fast enough for any of the events, but team captain Curtis Perry urged him to try the high hurdles. Campbell told Perry he was nuts. “I said, ‘Look, I’ll do the low hurdles’,” Campbell said, “‘but I am not doing the high hurdles because you are crazy if you do high hurdles.’” “Don’t be a pussy,” Campbell said his coach told him. Campbell said Perry pushed him hard. As Campbell staggered from the push he found a high hurdle in his path. In his desire to not hit his face on the hurdle, he instinctively jumped over it instead. It was love at first flight. He was a hurdle protégé and soon went from the slowest to the fastest in Compton. Then he became one of the fastest in the nation. Campbell was invited to Olympic tryouts. His

“In a race you are a robot,” Campbell said. “You have to divorce yourself from what is happening and control what is happening.”

Illustration Edward Herrera

In 1988 Campbell made the Olympic team for the third time and traveled to Seoul, South Korea. He returned home an Olympic medalist.

coach told him the key was to finish in the top three of each heat. Campbell said he followed his coach’s orders, making top three in every race leading up to the last finals. “I was setting personal records every round getting in the top three,” he said. Campbell was an Olympian…until he wasn’t. World events overwhelmed the next two Olympic Games. In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. In protest the United States and other countries boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics hosted that year in Moscow. “I realized the things that were going to happen to me were (out of my control),” he said. Then the International Olympic Committee dangled an alternative before the U.S. athletes. They could go to Moscow, but not as Americans. They could represent the committee, rather than their country. Weird as that was, it got a whole lot weirder, Campbell said. 44

El Sol / Spring 2020

“The CIA found out about it,” he said. “They sent a letter to our leaders saying, ‘You will not disgrace your president and if you do, your visas and passports will be cancelled.’” None of the American athletes took that risk and they instead went to the Philippines to participate in the “Freedom Games” with other athletes from other boycotting nations. Campbell said politics and sports should never mix, but the Freedom Games was as infused with politics as much as the Moscow Olympics. He said it felt like a poor consolation prize. “After that summer, I promised myself I would always be awake,” he said. “I would always try to take control of my future, my career.” In 1984 he made the Olympic team for a second time, only to have the Los Angeles Olympics boycotted by the Soviet Union. Campbell said this does not make an athlete any less of an Olympian, but the 1984 Olympics lost luster when the Soviet

Bloc nations stayed away. “With the Russians and several other countries not there, we were not allowed to compete against the best,” he said. “That was something taken away from us.” In 1988 Campbell made the Olympic team for the third time and traveled to Seoul, South Korea. He returned home an Olympic medalist. “Making a third team in Korea made it all make sense,” Campbell said. “I got to fulfill my dream of being an Olympian and an Olympic medalist.” His Olympic finale was nearly a catastrophe, he recalled. There was confusion at the starting line and a runner mistakenly jumped the gun. Runners who had exploded out of the blocks were stopped and told there would be a restart. Campbell said this was a dramatic blow for him because he had used lots of energy in that false start. He returned to the starting line and was not completely reset when the gun fired again. He got a poor start and trailed the

field. He remembers every second, every step and every hurdle. Of the 90,000 people cheering in the stands, he said, he only heard the people most important to him. Strategically placing them at each hurdle, he heard his coach give him a verbal cue to accelerate, his parents at hurdle four shouted encouragement and his best friend Róbert Cannon spurred him at hurdle seven because Campbell said he tends to slow at certain hurdles. Despite the awful start, he rocketed from last place to the podium and a bronze medal. “That was one of my proudest races ever because I should have come in last,” Campbell said. “I hit a gear that I had never known I had before.” Bronze was his gold and Campbell was happy to be an Olympic medalist of any color, he said, but he wonders how the race would have played out had things gone according to plan. “It is nerve-racking. It is scary. It is exhilarating,” El Sol / Spring 2020

Courtesy Tonie Campbell

“He gets personally involved (with coaching),” said his wife Deborah. “It is a passion he has.”

ENGLISH PROF TURNS DISSERTATION INTO

RALLYING CRY FOR he said. “It only lasts 13 seconds in real time, but it lasts a lifetime in the moment.” His Olympic experience was the gift that keeps on giving, he said, and inspired him to help others to feel it. He continued his legacy as an Olympian by giving back to his sport. Following his retirement as a competitor in 1992, Campbell began coaching track and field at USC. In 2003 he became head coach at SWC. He still continues to do camps, clinics and private coaching. He has mentored 17 Olympians and one Olympic medalist, and remains flush with the Olympic spirit. “People may think of Olympians as selfish in that Olympians probably think this is all about me, this is my time,” Campbell said. “But becoming an Olympian changes your life forever.” Campbell’s wife Deborah said he enjoys helping young athletes. “He gets personally involved,” she said. “It is a passion he has and, for as long as he can, he is going to keep giving back.” Deborah Campbell said her husband works seven days a week sharing his wisdom with other athletes. He also volunteers for charity organizations like Athletes for Education and his own Prodigy Coaching. “He tries to be at home more for his family, but it is who he is,” she said. “It is what he does. We all 46

El Sol / Spring 2020

support it and America needs people willing to give their time like that.” Campbell said one of the athletes he is most proud of is Scout Bassett, who competed in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She got 10th in the long jump and 5th in the 100-meter dash. Campbell said she did outstanding for her first big race and told her he did not place in his first race, either. Bassett said Campbell is inspiring. “I would never have believed in myself in the ways I do now if it were not for Coach Tonie,” she said. “I have never felt that kind of faith from a coach who really believes I can do amazing things.” Bassett said Campbell pushes her hard, but keeps it enjoyable. “One thing I want people to know about him is that he is so much fun,” she said. “Training is intense and there is a lot of stress, but I love that he just makes it fun.” Bassett went on to win bronze medals for both the 100-meter and hurdles at the 2017 World Para Athletics Championships in London. Maya Nakanishi, another athlete coached by Campbell, won a bronze medal in the long jump at the Championships as well. He said he hopes to coach more champions, including his SWC athletes. “The ride is still happening. It is going to take me until my last breath.”

ADJUNCTS Story By Manuel Gonzalez Layout and Design By Hoang Nguyen

Higher education’s abuse of adjuncts is the theme of Dr. Jessica Posey’s dissertation.

As an adjunct you are constantly worried about what you say and how you are perceived because you can get backlash. If you are speaking out about injustice or being marginalized, you can be perceived as a troublemaker. —DR. JESSICA POSEY

achel Nead really likes teaching. A lot. For years before she was finally hired as a tenure-track assistant professor of communications, Nead was an adjunct—the hard working, low paid, far ranging, barely noticed, often abused, seldom hired parttimers who teach 75 percent of the classes at Southwestern College. Nead was the queen of “Freeway Flyers.” There were semesters the Long Beach resident taught nine classes at five colleges in four counties. Even though she travelled 1,300 miles a week bouncing between Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange and San Diego counties, she made less than a full-time professor. Much less. Higher education’s abuse of adjuncts is the theme of Dr. Jessica Posey’s dissertation “The Plight of Adjuncts: May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor.” What she found was alarming, she said. Most adjuncts reported they lacked job security, health benefits, a livable wage and respect. Posey said adjuncts are treated as second-class citizens, even though they have Master’s degrees, a requirement in higher education that places them in the top 13 percent of adult Americans. Nead’s horror story is repeated daily across America, Posey said. Her dissertation was an attempt to examine the adjunct experience

El Sol / Spring 2020

If there’s one thing I learned from adjuncts, it was that even though they are treated harshly and even though they don’t have benefits and the ideal salary or the sense of security, they are the type of people that could not see themselves doing anything else but teach others. —DR. JESSICA POSEY

with a specific focus on how part-time instructors are made to think, feel and act as a result of their employment status, she said. Adjuncts live in fear of many things, including speaking out. “As an adjunct you are constantly worried about what you say and how you are perceived because you can get backlash,” she said. “If you are speaking out about injustice or being marginalized, you can be perceived as a troublemaker.” Nead agreed. She said adjuncts’ health can suffer, as well. “My ultimate goal was to be a full-timer, so I gave up my health and my social life,” she said. “I ate a lot of fast food on a daily basis because I wasn’t able to make meals for a 14hour day.” Darius (a pseudonym), a subject in Posey’s dissertation, said he felt like he is chasing a dream that may have already slipped through the cracks. “I think trying to reach that full-time position is comparable to going to the moon,” he said. “Actually, someone wanting to go to the moon will have a better shot than I do at reaching a full-time gig at a community college.” Nead admits she was lucky to be hired on a tenure track, but she also worked hard to create her opportunity. Averaging about 250 miles a day, she would spend more time on the road than at her job, she said.

“I would be gone 14 hours most days and I would easily do 20 hours or more driving in a week,” she said. “Sometimes I would teach 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and had to go three hours early to my next campus due to the commute. I would start teaching at 4 p.m. all the way to 9:30 p.m. and sometimes students wanted to talk to me, so I wouldn’t leave campus until 10 p.m., which meant I wouldn’t get home until midnight.” Prior to becoming a full-time professor Posey had to depend on MediCal and Food Stamps, she said, because she was not making enough money to get by as a graduate with a Master’s degree working out of five different campuses. Lack of health insurance is another perpetual anxiety for adjuncts, according to Posey’s research. Professor of English Laura Brooks served as an adjunct instructor for six years with no health benefits. She was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, which ironically later barred her from health coverage. “Once you get cancer, you aren’t eligible to get life insurance anymore,” she said. “For the last couple years I’ve been getting really worried about my kids, their future and making sure they were taken care of. I was kind of burdened with this idea of debt that I would be leaving behind if I died. This week I signed all the Southwestern College benefit paperwork and I was offered life insurance.

Most adjuncts reported they lacked job security, health benefits, a livable wage and respect. Adjuncts are treated as second-class citizens, even though they have Master’s degrees, a requirement in higher education that places them in the top 13 percent of adult Americans.

It was such a relief as a full-timer to get offered all this.” Stress levels for adjuncts are among the highest in the U.S., Posey said. Nead agreed. “As a part-timer it was really stressful going term to term,” she said. “You didn’t know if you were going to get the class or not. Oftentimes when you get offered a class you don’t want to turn it down even though you wanted to turn it down. One term I ended up teaching nine face-to-face classes because I didn’t want to say no. I was afraid I would not get a class again or not asked to come back.” Geoff Johnson, the adjunct rep for the SC faculty union, said he fights hard to bring equity to his fellow part-timers. He has his own horror stories, including being the father of a sick child with no health insurance. He joined homeless and indigent people at a health and social service hospital. “I’m standing on El Cajon Blvd, got my son in my arms, he’s screaming and I was asking myself if is this what I went to (graduate) school for,” he said. “I went to school and got a job where I couldn’t get insurance and couldn’t take care of my own family.” Johnson said the experience 15 years ago still fuels his activism. “Maybe I can’t end adjuncts’ suffering, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to accept it,” he

said. “I’m going to be damned if I don’t try to do something about it.” SC President Dr. Kindred Murillo said she is sympathetic. “The area of deep concern is trying to help create the salary parity,” she said. “So we are moving money into that and recognizing we need to make strong progress in that area. We are trying to schedule adjuncts better. We are trying not to schedule classes and then cancel them, it’s an injustice to the students and an injustice to the adjuncts.” Murillo said she would like to see SC hire more of its adjuncts. “We will work on really solidifying the hiring process for adjuncts and onboarding (hiring from within),” she said. “SC has not done a really great job onboarding part-time, full-time, anybody for that matter, so we are looking to fix that.” Despite monumental struggles and suffering, Posey said adjuncts love to teach. “If there’s one thing I learned from adjuncts, it was that even though they are treated harshly and even though they don’t have benefits and the ideal salary or the sense of security, they are the type of people that could not see themselves doing anything else but teach others,” she said. “That’s where they feel they can make the most difference in people’s lives.”

SC has not done a really great job onboarding part-time, full-time, anybody for that matter, so we are looking to fix that. —DR. KINDRED MURILLO

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Ernesto Rivera

ALL SHELLS END

WELL Story and Design By Fernando A. Martinez

The rambunctious reptile known as Little JD signals his approval of the spacious new pond at SeaWorld.

The (Southwestern College) Foundation was able to connect me with SeaWorld’s animal care department. They were thrilled to have the turtles. —DR. MEGAN ECKLESESTRELA

El Sol / Spring 2020

outhwestern’s turtles and fishes are gone. But they are okay. In fact, they have successfully transferred. SC’s turtle pond was demolished along with the 300 buildings in October. A new IT data center and classroom complex will be built in its place. The turtles were transferred from SC to SeaWorld in April. A bigger pond was planned for the new science building, but was scrapped at the last hour, according to biology instructor Dr. Megan EcklesEstrela, the last caretaker of the pond. She said the turtles were hard-shelled

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Ernesto Rivera

Director of the Veterans Resource Center Johnathan (JD) White wishes Little JD the best as SC’s beloved turtles move to SeaWorld. Their pond was demolished as part of campus reconstruction.

ambassadors for peace. “For me, the story of the pond is one of collaboration and teamwork among not just staff and faculty, but administrators,” she said. “The pond has brought together divisions of the campus that would normally not interact directly with each other.” Peace-by-Turtle had many supporters, Eckles-Estrela said. Jonathan White, director of the Veteran Resource Center, was one. “I offered to help where I could,” he said. “I would just help to keep an eye on it. If the water level was low, I would let her (Eckles-Estrela) know.” He also fed the turtles, he said. Caretakers worked together to relocate the turtles, said EcklesEstrela. “Everyone had the same goal, the turtles needed to be fostered,” she said. “We needed to work together to find a place for them.” Relocating the pond to the new MSE building was considered, she said. But a late redesign eliminated las tortugas. “The spot where the pond was going to be lacked enough depth for the turtles to survive,” she said. SC’s Botanical Garden was also considered, Eckles-Estrela said, but nixed. Botanical Garden ponds have fish, she said, and the presence of turtles in these ponds would effect the ecosystem. Turtles may have eaten the fish and their waste would change water quality. Eckles-Estrela said college officials decided SeaWorld would be a safe home for the turtles. “The (Southwestern College) Foundation was able to connect me with SeaWorld’s animal care department,” she said. “They were thrilled to have the turtles.” On the day they were transferred, Eckles-Estrela took the turtles out of the pond, put them temporarily into

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Ernesto Rivera

Dean jams with legends

TAKING THE WH

SC Biology instructor Dr. Megan Eckles-Estrela gives an impromptu lesson on turtle anatomy with the help of Big Mama.

BY THE HORN Story By Karla Luna Layout and Design By Edward Herrera

plastic drawers and drove them to SeaWorld. “The turtles got the warmest welcome at SeaWorld,” she said. “It was incredible.” Eckles-Estrela gently marked the turtle’s shell with a circular file in case the college wants them back, and to identify them in case someone wants to visit them at their new home. “Gently, I set it (the file) up against the edge of the shell, and just spun it with my fingers so it ground away a little bit,” she said. “It’s just like filing your nails. It’s an established way of marking turtles in the wild.” Marks can last up to a decade, she said. All 25 goldfish taken out of the pond were fostered by a student, said Eckles-Estrela. Plants were also adopted.

El Sol / Spring 2020

“All the plants that were around the pond are being fostered by either faculty or staff,” she said. “Nothing that was in the courtyard with the pond died during the demolition process. The pond didn’t die, it just dispersed.” The pond was sustained by volunteers and donations. “Resources for the fish and turtles were always donated,” Eckles-Estrela said. Acting Director of Facilities Aurora Ayala said there are no contingencies to building a new pond on campus. “To build a pond for the turtles is not in our plans,” she said. “But neither was the turtle pond and it turned out to be something beautiful for the campus.”

El Sol / Spring 2020

McGregor, a Southwestern College dean and French horn virtuoso, joined Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey as The Who performed its seminal rock opera “Tommy” at Viejas Arena. She jammed on French horn parts performed by bassist/brass player John Entwistle on the 1969 recording.

hen Dr. Cynthia McGregor received an e-mail asking if she would like to play a concert with The Who, she said she thought it was a tribute band. Turned out “it’s the real me, doctor.” McGregor, a Southwestern College dean and French horn virtuoso, joined Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey as The Who performed its seminal rock opera “Tommy” at Viejas Arena. She jammed on French horn parts performed by bassist/ brass player John Entwistle on the 1969 recording. I’m A Sensation! After years of hard work mastering the tricky French horn, McGregor said she finally feels like a rock star. “I’ve been glowing,” she said. McGregor said she grew up listening to The Who and said the band’s music was part of the soundtrack of her life. “They’re like The Rolling Stones,” she said. “You just hear their music everywhere!” SC students too young to be experts in British Invasion bands such as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Who nevertheless hear music by The Who almost daily on the radio as well as television commercials for GMC trucks (“Eminence Front”) and T-Mobile (“Baba O’Riley”). The Who also performed the Super Bowl halftime show in 2010. Veteran San Diego Union-Tribune music

Illustration Edward Herrera El Sol / Spring 2020

A flurry of emails were exchanged before McGregor realized she was not communicating with a local cover band, she said. They were the real deal—accompanied with a full symphony orchestra.

Success is a combination of hard work, talent, patience and luck. We can control hard work and we can foster talent through it. As educators we need to find opportunities that help (students) realize their dreams. —DR. CYNTHIA McGREGOR

critic George Varga said a true performance by The Who needs French horns. He gave McGregor a shout out in his U-T review. “The Who’s late bassist, John Entwistle, was himself a French hornist and played the instrument on The Who’s recording of ‘Pictures of Lily,’” he said. “That should make Cynthia’s experience playing with The Who doubly memorable.” Entwistle also played memorable French horn parts on classics “5:15,” “I’m a Boy,” “My Wife” and the overture to “Tommy.” He died in 2002. Crazy Flipper Fingers A flurry of emails were exchanged before McGregor realized she was not communicating with a local cover band, she said. They were the real deal—accompanied with a full symphony orchestra. SC’s dean of the School of Arts, Communication and Social Sciences said she did not rehearse directly with the legendary guitarist Townshend, but practiced to a click track in her home office with the sheet music and setlist provided by the band. Orchestra musicians rehearsed together only briefly during a pre-show sound check, McGregor said. “Hey, we’re professionals, we know what to do!” she said, with a pronounced twinkle in her eye. Most of the setlist were songs from “Tommy,” she said. Orchestra members wore concert black and headphones playing click tracks or synchronized audio cues so they could accompany the band. She sat in a cozy orchestra loft just above and behind the heads of Townshend and Daltrey. Her life flashed before her eyes as the lasers pivoted and raced across the arena. Meet the New Boss McGregor joined the SC facility in 2004 and

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she started to gain of confidence in her ability to master a notoriously difficult instrument, she said. They worked together for years. Before he died Hammer introduced McGregor to a new mentor, Tim Smith, who she said changed her life. Doug Hall, said he enjoys having his friend McGregor in his French horn ensemble, Hornswoggle, which performs annually at SC. “I’m so proud of her,” he said. “She’s a wonderful person and musician. Cynthia is a very busy executive at Southwestern College, mom of two musicians, and a horn player.”

Courtesy Jason Hums

taught music for 14 years. She became dean in July 2018. She has been an advocate for performing arts programs, she said, and has tried to help faculty find resources. “I am very familiar with what the arts needs are, both for performing and visual,” she said. “I have done what I can to help them try and figure out a way to fund what they need.” McGregor said she always liked music, but came to French horn during her sophomore year in high school. She read a short newspaper article about a high school orchestra going on tour in Australia. “The very last sentence said we really need more French horns,” she recalled. When she met orchestra director Eric Hammer

Join Together with the Band McGregor said she was able to watch The Who do its sound check on stage. She took videos and even a few selfies in an almost empty arena. It was, she said, like a private concert. SC music adjunct Healy Henderson played violin in the orchestra and was orchestra manager. “She was playing and she made sure everyone was in their places as they needed to be,” said McGregor. “I thought it was cool that they had the first violinist and the first cellist that were on tour with them and they have been doing performances throughout the country. I feel like they are my people. It was really fun seeing that vibrant, classically-trained music being integrated into rock music.” McGregor said her favorite song to perform was “The Rock,” because it had the most French horn music. A massive Jumbotron gave McGregor’s friends and family opportunities for pictures of her on screen, seated right above Townshend and Daltrey. “I could spit on them if I wanted too,” said McGregor with a laugh. (She decided not to.) She even has a video of Townshend saying “Thank you to the orchestra” as the cameras pan her face.

“The orchestra was so thrilled to have this kind of opportunity to be in a rock group,” she said. Her French horn parts were not difficult, McGregor said, and she did not have to practice much. She confessed that her biggest challenge was being there to work, instead of enjoying the show like other fans. “It was a totally different mindset for me when I sat down.” Tommy Can You Hear Me? Headphones that played the click track were essential, she said, due to the tsunami of sound crashing off the walls, fierce feedback and audience noise. She also wore earplugs due to the blasting trumpets right behind her head. “It was really challenging to feel in control of everything when there was so much that was different in your brain in terms of how you play,” she said. “We’re trained to listen to each other and have that responsibility. It made me feel very fortunate that I got to experience this kind of performance. It’s a completely different way of framing of being a musician when you’re on stage like that supporting a legend.” The Kids Are Alright McGregor said this kind of experience can be achieved by students if they remain steadfast on their dreams and continue to improve themselves. “Success is a combination of hard work, talent, patience and luck,” she said. “We can control hard work and we can foster talent through it. As educators we need to find opportunities that help (students) realize their dreams.” Playing with The Who reminded her of lessons she tried to teach her students. “We all need to take risks,” she said. “And taking risks sometimes we fail, sometimes we succeed, but in all those failures you learn to do better.” McGregor is now the proud owner of a Who t-shirt, guitar pick and other souvenirs. Her faculty seem to enjoy giving her the business about her flirtation with rock-n-roll stardom. An admiring colleague sang his take on “Pinball Wizard” in the ACSS faculty room just loud enough for McGregor to hear: “That deft, mum and kind dean/sure plays a mean French horn!”

El Sol / Spring 2020

DISRESPECT

OF BLACK

MEN DEMORALIZING A Perspective By Solé Ruiz Illustration By Victor Santander Design By Justin Dottery and Victor Santander Layout By Solé Ruiz

El Sol / Spring 2020

We see black people killed, brutalized and tortured by the police on a near daily basis. It cycles through viral videos, haunts our histories and makes recurring appearances in our nightmares.

El Sol / Spring 2020

very black person has a story of when they were taught how to act when confronted by the police. I was in high school— many of my black male friends were younger. We see black people killed, brutalized and tortured by the police on a near daily basis. It cycles through viral videos, haunts our histories and makes recurring appearances in our nightmares. Now it’s on our campus. I wasn’t watching a stranger be taken down by four Southwestern College officers. David Rasean Vereen is my friend. I ran towards the computer screen the video was playing on as I recognized his voice. Brutality against my people is not new. Each time I see black men assaulted, I picture my brother, my future children. This time it is someone I really care about. I wept as I watched my friend David slammed to the ground by the police. His pleading echoed throughout the Devore Stadium parking lot. His only protection was a student filming the brutality. God only knows what might have happened to David if the police knew no one was watching. Community members do not want to believe something like this can happen on such a diverse campus. Some viewed it as a rare outside plague that slithered in and infected Southwestern College. That is false. Black students do not need a viral video of a black man being brutalized by police to understand because this is a reality we face every day. Even at a fine institution like

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lll ooo ooo kkk eee ddd

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THEY are…

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DOES

NOT RESPECT

AUTHORITY

failed to comply

anyw ay probably a criminal

NEEDS TO LEARN

SOME MANNERS Our college administrators and police demonstrated a startling lack of empathy and showed they do not care for black students and our safety.

SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO THE POLICE

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HE WAS PROFANE

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Southwestern that promotes education and awareness, we are defined by the color of our skin. People quickly formed uninformed opinions as the video went viral. Controversy broke out before David was even united with his family. I saw how people downplayed his assault because he swore. I heard people justify his assault because of a “misused” handicap placard. What many people do not know is that David tore his anterior cruciate ligament in 2017. “I tweaked my knee a couple times after my ACL surgery,” he said. He used his mom’s handicap placard to make it less painful to walk to class. David had a previous altercation with the same officer over the placard, but not about “misusing the placard.” The first encounter was over the placard being expired. An officer followed David to his car like he was stalking prey. He assumed David was still using the expired one. David explained that the placard was up to date and would not expire until 2021, but the police officer took it upon himself to continue to harass him. This ultimately led to him being slammed to the ground, his face smashing the hot pavement. It is easy for an outsider looking in to say, “He deserved it for not complying,” but no one deserves inhumane treatment. Race played a part in this violence, whether it was direct or subliminal. Peers who are not black expect us to justify our reactions. They ask questions like, “Why didn’t he just follow orders?” They expect us to plead our case on police brutality. We are worn down. When we voice our concern, we are said to be loud and aggressive. Southwestern College administrators refused to admit that the officers handled the situation poorly. This encouraged people to think that what was done to David was somehow acceptable. I asked SC Chief of Police Dave Nighswonger how would he feel if it was his son wrestled to the ground. Instead of giving an honest and humane answer, he hid behind the college’s favorite excuse, “It’s an ongoing investigation.” Our college administrators and police demonstrated a startling lack of empathy and showed they do not care for black students and our safety. We heard promises of justice and change, but no action plan. David’s story is one that scares black mothers. They lie awake at night in fear for their black children. This was a traumatic experience for David’s loving mother that will be scared into her memories. David will also have to carry pain right up through the day he has to teach his children how to act when confronted by the police. 70

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SHOULDN’T

HAVE DONE WHAT

HE DID

MOBILITY

S AN

UPHILL BATT E Story By Kathleen Blankenship Photos, Layout and Design By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

Psychology Instructor Shannon Pagano hits a dead end on a sidewalk with no curb cut. She said SC has many barriers that prevent wheelchair users from transiting campus.

Staff and students who use wheelchairs say Southwestern College has made some progress on accessibility, but still has a long way to go.

Lack of strategically placed curb cuts force Pagano and other wheelchair users out on to roads and into traffic. She was once brushed by a speeding catering truck and has had mirrors on large pickup trucks whiz by inches from her head. Persons with disabilities call the H Street exit “Death Hill.”

rown vs. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling, was a bold attempt to end the Jim Crow era doctrine of “separate but equal.” “Separate but equal has no place,” read the 1954 decision. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Disabled Americans are still victimized by inferior facilities, according to a Southwestern College psychology instructor who uses a wheelchair. “Disabled people are definitely separated and sure ain’t equal,” said Shannon Pagano. “We are the forgotten final battle of the Civil Rights Movement. The acts of inclusion and equality are divided goals that do not include people with disabilities. We talk a lot about diversity and inclusion, but that only seems to me to be about race and gender. It doesn’t seem to ever have anything to do with ability.” Pagano said SC meets minimum American Disabilities Act guidelines, but that is not nearly good enough for staff and students with disabilities. “We are still not reaching that whole point of inclusion,” she said. “I still have to go off separately on a separate path that’s going to take me twice as long to get to the same spot where everyone else is going.” People who use wheelchairs have to go through dangerous places at SC, Pagano said, separated from other students and employees. Posted access pathways send people in wheelchairs out onto busy roads, dark remote areas, steep hills, and even along the football field during practice and games.

El Sol / Spring 2020

“Believe it or not, people in wheelchairs are directed through the athletic building, down the elevator and out right along the field,” she said. “There are footballs or soccer balls being thrown and kicked in every direction. If a football hits me in the head it’s all over, I’m dead.” Disabled students’ “Devore Detour” is a disregard for their physical and emotional safety, Pagano said. “(The message here is) I do not matter,” she said. “My safety is not important to this institution that I work for and where I was a student.” Flying footballs are not even the most dangerous projectile facing people in wheelchairs on campus, Pagano said. “Death Hill” is the moniker disabled people at SC have given the entrance/exit to East H Street. As she climbed the hill facing traffic at dusk, Pagano was inches from cars and trucks – so close she had to duck under the mirrors of larger vehicles. SC’s sidewalks are not safe either, she said. Many have signs posted in the middle, are broken or are dead ends with no curb cuts to allow wheelchairs to descend to street level. There are places on campus where curb cuts lead to a sidewalk without cuts, forcing the wheelchair user to roll out into the busy ring road. “It’s kind of unbelievable that a sidewalk with a curb cut leads to one without a cut,” Pagano said. “I pointed these situations out years ago, but they haven’t fixed the problem. It’s so disheartening and disrespectful. They have the resources to fix these accessibility problems, but they haven’t done it. It makes us feel like we are invisible, like the college just doesn’t care about us disabled folk.” Potential lawsuits abound for the college, she said. “Part of the accessible pathway takes us behind an industrial dumpster outside the football stadium,” she said. “It’s isolated and dark. It’s rape waiting to happen.” Pagano said people in wheelchairs are reluctant to file lawsuits or speak up. “Whenever a disabled person does file a lawsuit, they get ridiculed for it because it’s taken as us just being difficult,” she said. “I do not feel acknowledged when I’m behind those dumpsters. In fact, when I’m behind those dumpsters, I feel completely disregarded, that I do not matter.” The ADA passed in 1990 to keep people with either physical or mental disabilities from being separated from the rest of society. It requires employers to provide people with disabilities with reasonable accommodations. ADA guidelines were intended to create inclusion for people with a disability, Pagano said, but they often create more separation. ADA was last amended Jan. 1, 2009. 76

El Sol / Spring 2020

Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

Pagano and people who use wheelchairs often cannot reach sinks, soap dispensers and hand dryers. She carries baby wipes in her purse in lieu of properly washing her hands. Pagano said she is unable to unlock and open many doors on campus.

Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

Absence of curb cuts on the northern side of campus force Pagano and wheelchair users through a convoluted path that requires they enter the health sciences building to use an elevator, then cross the length of the football field, often during practices and games. Pagano said she has had numerous errant footballs and soccer balls whistle past her head.

Patricia Flores Charter, the former director of SC’s Disability Support Services, said Pagano is right – ADA does not go far enough. “If we only comply with ADA, then people will not have full access,” she said. “People who use wheelchairs oftentimes can’t get into the bathroom (and) can’t wash their hands.” Pagano agreed. “A year ago, I said they needed a lower soap dispenser (at the new gym) because it was too high,” she said. “College officials said it was being ordered and it’s still not here.” Pagano carries hand sanitizer because she cannot wash her hands in most college restrooms, she said. “People look at me like an uncouth slob because I don’t wash my hands,” she said. “Believe me, I want to! I wish I could.” Dr. Malia Flood, dean of Student Services and the former director of Disability Support Services, said the college has accessibility shortcomings. “I think there’s more to do and I think the challenge is to always keep that at the forefront,” she said. Humberto Gurmilan, an adjunct instructor of journalism and a wheelchair user, said doors on campus present a challenge for the disabled. Gurmilan, former sports director at Telemundo who was recently elected for the San Ysidro School Board, has worked hard all his life pushing past boundaries for the disabled, but cannot push through many of the doors at SC. “Some doors are too heavy for some people with disabilities,” he said. Pagano agreed. “Not only are the doors too heavy, most do not have disabled buttons to open them,” she said. “There are literally rooms Beto (Gurmilan) and I cannot enter.” A stated goal of the original Americans with Disabilities Act was to open the nation’s institutions, businesses and recreational facilities to citizens with disabilities who had traditionally been excluded. Since 1990 the estimated percentage of California college students and staff who use wheelchairs increased by 11 percent. During the same period wheelchair use at SC increased 17.35 percent. Data suggested the ADA helped to increase the number of people who use wheelchairs who attend college. In 1992-93 the college reported that 46 students had a mobility impairment. In 2018-19 the number grew to 64 students. Pagano was asked if SC’s topography discouraged students from enrolling. She said she was not aware of any research exploring that question, but her “gut feeling” was yes. “It’s hard enough for me in a motorized chair,” she said. “It’s got to be nearly impossible for someone who uses a manual chair.” El Sol / Spring 2020

LOCAL UNIVERSITIES SELLING OUR SEATS Story By Julia Woock Layout and Design By Julia Woock

El Sol / Spring 2020

In an act of chicanery that has malignant social and racial implications, the UC system began selling seats at its prime universities to foreign and out-of-state students who pay $44,000 annually to attend.

El Sol / Spring 2020

alifornia’s grandest thefts are not diamond watches, luxury cars, technology, art or credit cards. None of these come close to the pilfering of our seats at UC and CSU campuses by craven universities like UCSD and SDSU. Southwestern College students, their parents and taxpaying members of this community have been ripped off blindly in the past decade by greedy administrators from the University of California system who whine to members of the California legislature that they are underfunded. Get in line, folks. Have you been to Southwestern College recently where we cannot afford experienced administrators, clean bathrooms, decent carpets and modern classrooms? But that’s another story. Poor UC system. It must be tough to scrape by on $37 billion. So, in an act of chicanery that has malignant social and racial implications, the UC system began selling seats at its prime universities to foreign and out-of-state students who pay $44,000 annually to attend. That is $30,000 more than California students – about three times the normal tuition of $14,000. UCSD, UCLA and Berkeley are selling off between 35-45 percent of all their enrollment to students from Saudi Arabia, China and other American states not named California. Problem is, they are not their seats to sell, they belong to us – or at least they were originally created for us. About 55 years ago the California Higher

El Sol / Spring 2020

Education Master Plan created to three-tiered system that for a while was the wonder of the world. The University of California system would educate the top 10 percent of students from the Golden State. The California State University system would educate the top 25 percent. The California Community College system, as our journalism professor likes to joke, educates the top 100 percent. Not anymore. Pouty UC leaders have tried for years to put the arm on the California governor and legislature for a hefty funding increase. When they did not get everything they wanted, they declared war – except it was students for low-income, minority communities who got killed. UCSD, which regularly pulls in multi-million and multi-billion dollar gifts from philanthropists is nevertheless a philanderer. Last year and for the last several years UCSD has auctioned off 41 percent of its enrollment spots to foreign and out-of-state students. That’s about 4,000 seats. This starts a destructive chain reaction for South County students. Those hard-working 10 percenters with 4.something GPAs, lettermen’s jackets, science fair championships, ASB titles and lead roles in the high school musical are no longer a lock to go to UCSD. So, tails between their legs, they trudge off the SDSU where they take a seat from a 3.0 student. Honor students rejected by UCSD and SDSU end up dazed and confused at Southwestern College, even though they did everything their parents, teachers and older sisters told them to do for 13 years. SDSU brags about taking only 1 in 13 applicants. Those rebuffed by San Diego’s two major universities are estimated to be between 75-80 percent students of color and about 70-75 percent low income. Education – the great American equalizer – is no longer even close to being equal. Norma Cazares, the recently-retired director of the SC Transfer Center, has been outspoken about this problem for years, but got little support at Southwestern College or anywhere else. “It’s always been a struggle, like pulling teeth,” she said. “International students pay a whole bunch more that out-of-state students and certainly way more than local students. That is a way the (UC and CSU systems) make money, but to the detriment of our local students.” UC and CSU officials scold low-income students for not applying to universities like Merced and Humboldt that are far from home. Many South Bay students are considered “place bound,” meaning that they lack income to move, work to help support their families or care for ill or elderly family members. Research shows that low income Latinas and Filipinas have the most pressure to remain and the fewest opportunities, regardless of their academic 82

El Sol / Spring 2020

The UC and CSU leadership, by the way, have done just about everything they can think of to make us feel like this situation is our fault. UC raised its GPA requirement from 3.0 to 3.5 and now claims to only consider the top 7.9 percent of California’s best and brightest.

achievement, which generally outstrips their male classmates. Thus a societal malady perpetuates. Besides the underlying racism and classism fueled by this seat selloff, there is the fundamental issue of who owns the seats to begin with. The UC and CSU systems are both taxpayer funded, meaning a lot of hard-working dads, moms, grandparents and neighbors have worked for decades to pay into a system that their children are now locked out of. This is a class action suit (pardon the pun) waiting to happen. The UC and CSU leadership, by the way, have done just about everything they can think of to make us feel like this situation is our fault. UC raised its GPA requirement from 3.0 to 3.5 and now claims to only consider the top 7.9 percent of California’s best and brightest. UCLA was caught red handed throwing away a third of its applications without even reading them. When confronted about this, UCLA officials were surprisingly nonplussed. “Way too many applicants, not enough seats,” shrugged admissions officials. No refunds, either. Where have you gone, Norma Cazares? Southwestern turns its lonely eyes to you. We need more people like our 619 Chicana warrior to help fight this battle or else a lot of us are going to spend many, many years as Jaguars – then many more in retail.

CSEA fights for ‘living wages’

PART-TIME EMPLOYEES FEAR BARREN RETIREMENT

Story By Julia Woock Layout and Design By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

Photo Gamaliel Carreño

Classified employees union decries unfair treatment of poorlypaid food service workers, calls for a salary reclassification of blue collar staff.

Josie Kane, a 37-year SC food service employee, is of retirement age, but has no health benefits and said she is afraid to stop working because she needs diabetes medication to stay alive.

osie Kane is retirement age, but dares not retire. Kane has dedicated 37 years to feeding students as part of the Southwestern College Food Services team. She is diabetic and dependent on insulin, which is covered in her health care plan. She would like to hang up her spatula soon, but her current contract does not include health care benefits after she retires. Kane and her coworkers are trapped in the kitchen for life. “I have diabetes (which requires) insulin, syringes and medicine,” she said. “I knew I was covered here and I appreciated that. When I started (on insulin) I was paying a dollar for like three bottles. Now it’s like $10.” CSEA President Silvia Nogales has set out to change these conditions so that classified employees can retire with dignity. “The contract reads that you have to be a full-time employee to get the retirement benefits,” she said. “That’s the sad part. They work all these years and when it’s time for them to retire they don’t have that benefit.” Nogales said the current CSEA contract limits benefits to full-time employees who work 40 hours a week, 12 months a year. Classified employees in food services are considered part time even if they work 40 hours a week because they work only 11 months. That disqualifies them from retiring with benefits. Nogales said the union looks to revised

El Sol / Spring 2020

contracts that will allow part-time and full-time employees to retire with some level of benefits. “I don’t see a reason why the district should fight us on that,” she said. “It’s only fair.” Nogales said some student workers make more money than classified staff. “Many hourly and student workers are working more hours than our contracted employees,” she said. “It’s sad that a student worker can make more money than a contract employee.” Nogales said contracted employees that work .475 percent of a contract equates to about three hours a day. Student and hourly workers, she said, often work five to six hours a day. Student workers are capped at 20 hours a week, but employees who work three hours a day, five days a week end up working 15 hours. Most of these jobs are held by parents or heads of households, Nogales said, which places them in precarious financial position. Some hold two or three additional jobs and suffer food, housing and medical insecurity. “We have about 330 non-teaching employees that make up the other workforce,” she said. “The administrative secretaries, the clerks, the IT, the food services, the custodians, gardeners, mechanics, lab coordinators, lab technicians, student services — everybody that provides a service to our students.” Evelia Zepeda, one of Kane’s colleagues in food services, has been an hourly employee for five years and a classified employee for nine years. She said her passion is cooking and being around students. Her contract is 35 hours for nine months, leaving her three months out of the year looking for ways to supplement her income. Retirement, she said, seems impossible. “Retirement is going to take a long time to go on the steps,” she said. “Especially when I worked 20 hours at first and so far I’m only at 35 hours. Five hours shy of 40. I’ve been trying everything to try to get those 40 hours and also get a contract of 11 months. It’s been kind of impossible. For retirement I’m looking at quite a long time, but I like what I do and I wouldn’t go anywhere else.” Nogales said there is a case where an employee worked in cashiering for 24 years before her position was converted to full-time in September. She worked three hours a day, with a .475 contract and no benefits. Supervisors had told the employee there was not enough money in the budget, but yet they continued to hire student and hourly employees to do the work that piled up in her absence, as well as expensive administrators. Nogales said if there was money to pay those workers, there was money to pay the employee. 86

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Photo Fernando A. Martinez

Many hourly and student workers are working more hours than our contracted employees. It’s sad that a student worker can make more money than a contract employee. — S I LV I A N O G A L E S

She said now this employee earns benefits at the full-time rate, versus the previous .475. This was not an isolated case, Nogales said, and the college has been abusing some of its most vulnerable workers for decades. Several employees have similar partial contracts, including many in food services workers. “In food services those are nine, 10- and 11-month positions, so they only work a certain amount of hours during the day, but they employ 42 student workers,” she said. President Dr. Kindred Murillo said she was unaware of the situation in food services, though one of her priorities since her arrival at SWC is addressing the fact that some classified employee do not make a livable wage. “There are classified employees, that if you look at the salary schedule, they make less than $15 an hour, which is absolutely unacceptable,” she said. “So we are doing a classification review and I’m hoping that’s going to put the lowest level jobs in a place where they come up to at least what I call a livable wage.” Too many classified employees are not treated humanely, Nogales said. “We are an institution of higher education and we are supposed to be, or should be, providing livable wages,” she said. “That includes health and welfare, that includes compensation, and that includes a safe working environment so they can do the job of servicing our students.” Classified employees are often locked into low pay by a system that is stacked against them. To receive higher pay, classified workers are expected to write a sophisticated reclassification request. Nogales said the reclass process would challenge people with advanced degrees and are an unfair barrier for people who are not trained as lawyers or administrators. Murillo said a systemic classification review was an important component of the new CSEA

Estela Villegas helps feed students, but struggles to feed her own family. Classified union leaders call that unjust.

contract, as is for an additional step on classified salaries beginning July 2020. Nogales said immediate classification reviews are essential. She said the current process is laborious and can take years when classified employees cannot wait years. Many positions have not been studied or reclassified for 10 years or more, she said. “It’s gut wrenching work because you are dealing with people’s lives,” she said. “As a union representative I want to see our employees thriving and happy to come to work and doing the jobs at livable wage so they can go home and provide for their families. That’s it.” Classified employees are some of the college’s most loyal and faithful, Nogales said. CSEA’s senior employee has worked at the college for 41 years, she said, and the last round of 36 retirees took 2,700 years of combined institutional memory with them. “They enjoy coming to work every day, they enjoy serving students, they enjoy serving the community,” she said. “By helping to improve the

Classified employees are often locked into low pay by a system that is stacked against them. To receive higher pay, classified workers are expected to write a sophisticated reclassification request, an unfair barrier for people who are not trained as lawyers or administrators.

El Sol / Spring 2020

I think we’ve put a very good offer on the table, so I can say I feel pretty comfortable that we’ve agreed to do that. —DR. KINDRED MURRILO

lives of our students, we improve our lives and we improve our community.” Nogales said there has been significant headway in negotiations with the district, with Vice President of Human Resources Rose Del Gaudio negotiating on behalf of the college. Together they are trying to resolve other issues involving the classified employees, like paying an hourly employee for doing the work of a classified employee. “When Rose came in she recognized right away that we employ hundreds of hourly employees and she understands that employing hourly personnel to do classified work is a no-no,” said Nogales. “So she is helping us to try to fix that and get that under control.” Food Services employee Ricardo Godoy said part-time workers are taken advantage of in many ways. “There are nine-month employees asked to work in an hourly capacity, out of class,” he said. CSEA union steward Barry Thele concurred. “They got nine months, but the college needed them for hours so the employees come back in an hourly capacity,” he said. “We need to hire them full-time.” Enrique Ramirez, a 30-year food services employee, said he and his colleagues are tired of hearing the district is “working on it.” Thele said the instability of SC’s administration has crippled progress and damaged employees. “(Previous VPs were) very supportive, but before we get anything done we get turnover,” he said. “Next thing you know, that vice president has left and we have to start this process all over again.” Nogales said the food services department falls under Dr. Kelly Hall, the new VP of Business and Financial Affairs who joined the college less than six months ago. She said she is hopeful a fairer contract will get things done this time around. Nogales said that is also her goal. “We are trying to work with this new vice 88

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There are nine-month employees asked to work in an hourly capacity, out of class. — R I CA R D O G O D OY

president and I think we will accomplish some things with this vice president that we have not been able to do in the past,” she said. Murillo said the college is negotiating with all its units and college leadership had made a generous proposal. “I think we’ve put a very good offer on the table, so I can say I feel pretty comfortable that we’ve agreed to do that,” she said. Nogales said she is hopeful CSEA and the college have made strides in converting part-time employees to full-time. “We take it one position at a time, that’s all I ask,” she said. “That we honestly look at some of these and let’s convert them where we can. Let’s revisit in a year, let’s see where the funding is at.” Nogales said she believes the college will eventually do right by the classified employees. “It’s what’s fair. It’s what’s just and it’s what’s right.”

HISTORY and

KINDNESS are

FOREVER Story By Andrew Penalosa Layout and Design By Julia Woock

Classified employees are some of the college’s most loyal and faithful. CSEA’s senior employee has worked at the college for 41 years, and the last round of 36 retirees took 2,700 years of combined institutional memory with them. — S I LV I A N O G A L E S

El Sol / Spring 2020

Courtesy Ernesto Rivera

achel Perez is a student of the past so that she can be a bridge to the future. A Jewish, Latina child of the U.S. military, Perez studies the horrors of the 20th century in hopes of pushing the 21st in a better direction. Her ancestors were Holocaust victims and survivors, her beloved father a casualty of the Vietnam War. Job One, she said, is to help members of her generation to learn about – and learn from – the violence and prejudice of the 1900s. “It is alarming to me that research and polling indicates that barely half of America’s young people under 30 know much about the Holocaust,” she said. “It is important that the next generation know about the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity so that they are not repeated.” Perez said her classmates may not realize their importance in the transmission of history. “The current generation of 18-30 year olds is the last that will have the opportunity to meet and hear from Holocaust survivors, Pearl Harbor survivors, Navajo Code Talkers, Tuskegee Airmen and Buffalo Soldiers,” she said. “My generation needs to engage these people while they are still among us so we can hear their stories and pass them along.” A journalism major, Perez is active in passing along the stories and heroism of the Greatest Generation. She was the humble behind-the-scenes marketing force for the Chula Vista Library’s Holocaust exhibit “RUTH: Remember Us -The Holocaust,” based on the life of Southwestern College honorary degree recipient Ruth Goldsmiedova Sax. She generated tremendous print and broadcast publicity for the grand opening of the event, and has continued her efforts to market the exhibition for its 12-month residency at the library. 90

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Rachel Perez is a star intern for the Southwestern College Office of Communication and President of the club Jewish Students and Friends. She is National Youth Coordinator for the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

Courtesy Ernesto Rivera

Virtually every major regional newspaper and television news outlet covered the January opening. News media from Los Angeles and Mexico City were also there. Growing up Perez said she idolized former Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir, the iconic leader who was born in Russia and raised as an American in Milwaukee. Meir raised $50 million in 1943 to support Israel’s war for independence and in 1956 was elected prime minister. She was recently honored by Time magazine as one of the greatest female leaders of the past 100 years. Meir taught Perez that young Jewish women could be visionary leaders, she said. Perez formed the Southwestern College club Jewish Students and Friends to encourage classmates to learn more about the rich and ancient Jewish culture of learning and service. There is a soft place in her heart for Vietnam veterans, military personnel and dependents, Perez said. Her father, a Vietnam War veteran, died from the aftereffects of wartime injuries when she was 5 years old. She has devoted her life ever since to

helping other children who have suffered a death in the family. She is the National Youth Coordinator for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, and reaches out to young people who have lost a parent in combat, war injuries or training accidents. “Losing a parent in battle or to a military accident is traumatic,” she said. “I try to use my hard-earned experience to help other young people through the trauma and sadness.” While volunteering with the SC Veterans Resource Center, Perez met someone who changed the trajectory of her life. Ernesto Rivera, the college’s Marketing Communications Associate and former Southwestern College Sun editor, was immediately impressed. “When I met her at that moment I already knew that she was pretty cool and interesting because here she was there to present a check to the Veterans Resource Center,” he said. “She had that something special.” Rivera made it a priority to meet Perez, he said, and was intrigued that she was interested in public relations, marketing and communications. He helped her to land an internship with the Office of Communications and put her to work on the SWC News Center website in fall 2018. Her first story, “FAFSA Fridays Return,” was a learning experience, she said. “I wrote that on my second day here and I remember being really confused because being new to the office I did not really know how to do news writing,” she said. Rivera became her mentor and Perez blossomed. She began to attract other fans, including people in the Disabled Student Services office where she is a student worker. DSS Technician Esther Sakhi said Perez is a natural who is empathetic, smart and kind. “Rachel has the ability to handle (difficult situations) because of her tone and that helps to de-escalate problems,” she said. “People find her so great at what she does.” Perez was a finalist for the 2020 Student of Distinction Award, nominated by both Rivera and her journalism professor. She plans to transfer to SDSU to double major in journalism and anthropology, then earn a Master’s in communications. She sees herself in a career with a non-profit service agency or a military advocacy group. “I know this sounds corny, but I want to use whatever talents and abilities I have to help others,” she said. “I think we need to use our gifts well and advocate for people who do not have a voice or who lack any power to lift themselves up. Maybe we help in a large way, maybe we help in a small way, but even if it’s only one other person you help, that’s what I believe you should do.” El Sol / Spring 2020

Dr. Sylvia Garcia-Navarrete overcame demeaning youth to become a national force

FROM SPECIAL ED TO A SPECIAL ED.D. S E N AT E D I S T R I C T WOMAN of the YEAR Story By Ana Paola Olvera Layout and Design By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

El Sol / Spring 2020

Courtesy Ernesto Rivera

Dr. Sylvia Garcia-Navarrete receives the word from California State Senator Benjamin Hueso that she is the Woman of the Year.

r. Sylvia Garcia-Navarrete woke up on February 19 feeling special. It was her 55th birthday—a milestone that made her reflect on her life. Once labeled in elementary school as “mentally retarded,” she fought for her own sense of worth and intelligence in a world that was expecting her to fail. Now she is a rare Latina with a doctorate and an English professor at SC. Her birthday became more special when her dean, Dr. Joel Levine, asked her to stop by his office. At precisely 1:30 p.m. Levine’s phone rang. California Senator Ben Hueso was on the line. He praised Garcia-Navarrete’s enormous contributions to the community and announced that she is the 40th Senate District Woman of the Year. “We were just floored, impressed with everything that you’ve done and where you come from,” Hueso said. “You are really a part of what’s making California a better place every single day.” Her title comes with a paid trip to Sacramento where she will meet the Women of the Year from other California Senate districts, all of whom will El Sol / Spring 2020

Garcia-Navarrete earned a doctorate in educational leadership with an emphasis on community colleges and became a full-time professor at SC in 2012. The girl who was told she would not amount to anything in life is now teaching doctoral level students at SDSU. be honored on the floor of the Senate. “It’s an honor to have been nominated first of all,” she said. “I’m humbled to be able to represent our college and our community.” Growing up in Encanto, Garcia-Navarrete faced titanic challenges. She was deemed mentally disabled in kindergarten because she spoke only street Spanish. She was placed in Special Education classes and belittled all the way in to high school. In the 7th grade the children of color faced a lot of discrimination, she said. K-12 counselors too frequently warehoused Latino students in Special Ed classes, deeming them “mentally incapable,” she said. It was a traumatic experience, she said, but it changed her outlook as an educator. “You look back,” she said. “You connect the dots to where you are today and that’s a reminder of ‘If I can do it, anyone else can do it.’” Fortunately, at a critical moment in her life, a trusted adult told her she was not stupid and should try college. Garcia-Navarrete enrolled at SC and got a job in the cafeteria. A job in the school cafeteria felt about right, she said. She told herself at the time that was all she knew how to do. Her upbringing had even groomed her for it—learning how to sew and cook in Home Economics classes instead of courses that would prepare her for college. The expected path was set in front of her, but her schedule did not align with the job. She was connected to the Reading Center instead. “It was life changing for me,” she said. Reading Center staff told Garcia-Navarrete that 96

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she was much brighter than she gave herself credit for. She slowly started to believe them. It took her six years to finish her BA, but she launched straight into a Master’s at SDSU. She had to drop to raise her daughter alone, but never let go of her dream of an advanced degree. “I was a single mother and I was homeless for about a month,” she said. “Life happens.” She returned to SC as a teaching assistant and found more support she needed to believe in herself. She said it was inspirational for her to have those “cheerleaders” in her life who would say “You’ve got this!” A full decade after dropping out of her Master’s program she returned to SDSU. This time there was no stopping her. She whipped through her Master’s and was accepted into the extremely competitive SDSU Doctorate in Education Program. Garcia-Navarrete earned a doctorate in educational leadership with an emphasis on community colleges and became a full-time professor at SC in 2012. The girl who was told she would not amount to anything in life is now teaching doctoral level students at SDSU. Journalism Professor Dr. Max Branscomb was her classmate in the doctorate program. He said Garcia-Navarrete is a friend and a hero. “There are people that teach and mentor and inspire people, but she does it just by existing,” he said, “by what she has achieved.” During SC breaks, Garcia-Navarrete teaches in the South Pacific at Palau Community College and other disadvantaged islands in Micronesia, inspiring a new generation of teachers to be educational leaders. She teaches critical thinking and leadership skills to indigenous teachers at the vanguard of an educational Renaissance south of the equator. Garcia-Navarrete said she particularly enjoys encouraging women to enroll in doctorate programs. Back home, she is an SC Advancing Equity mentor, reconsidering the way SC professors approach diversity and socio-economic impacts on education. Levine recommends students take GarciaNavarrete’s classes. Her classroom is another world, he said, because it is an environment that makes students feel respected, confident and inspired. Students who enter her English class become artists of the written word. Opening the door to learning is the easy part, Garcia-Navarrete said. Opening your heart is harder and requires trust. “Opening my heart to do what I do and loving what I do moves me forward and moves other people forward.”

CHURCH Story By Katy Stegall Layout By Mykayla Moore-Bastide

El Sol / Spring 2020

The church prides itself on being a spiritual home and voice for community members, Koeshall said. Members use that voice to bring safety and acceptance to other members of the LBGTQIA community.

an Koeshall’s first call to Metropolitan Community Church was on a payphone. It was 1997. He was gay and didn’t want to be caught calling a gay church. Koeshall had reason to be paranoid. He’d already been kicked out of his last church for his orientation. Two decades later, Koeshall is the senior pastor of MCC’s congregation. It is the only church in San Diego County openly geared towards the acceptance of the LGBTQIA community. America has taken small strides towards openness in the last decade, but it’s still a hard place to be gay- especially on Sunday mornings. MCC aims to change that. The church prides itself on being a spiritual home and voice for community members, Koeshall said. Members use that voice to bring safety and acceptance to other members of the LBGTQIA community. “That’s why we’re called a community church,” Koeshall said. “We want to be available for the entire community. I like the fact that people say it’s nondenominational, but I also like to say it’s multi-denominational. We’re all living together with a vision and a mission of helping to bring people closer to God and one another.” The congregation has done just that. Each service is stitched together with utterances of love and acceptance, a subtle message to

Photo Marco Figueroa Photo Illustration Gamaliel Carreno El Sol / Spring 2020

the members of the church that they are safe under MCC’s roof. Strangers and veteran members alike are embraced upon entrance, each interaction drenched with care. MCC board member Beth Kind speaks of another level of spirituality. “There’s a much deeper sense of connection here,” Kind said. “There’s a sense of safety. People feel safe to reveal themselves. There’s an understanding of confidentiality. It’s nice to feel vulnerable with other people and to feel safe about it.” Kind said her previous church’s acceptance of her being transgender was only surface deep. It took ten minutes for her to feel at home at MCC, and she said the level of immediate love is indescribable. Of all the work she does on behalf of MCC, including transgender group sessions and counseling for LGBTQIA inmates at George F. Bailey Detention Center, one of her favorite moments is to watch members feel truly accepted for the first time. “It’s so great to witness other people sense that acceptance and love here,” Kind said. “People break down and take the love. It’s so easy to take. It’s also easy to give love here. It all comes back to vulnerability. People feel safe to feel vulnerable here.” A Southwestern College employee, who wished to be anonymous, said MCC saved her life. Having a safe place where she and her partner could openly share testimony about their romance and children was uncharted territory before they joined the church. She said it was liberating to be openly gay outside of her home. “I was so excited to have this resource, to have a gay church,” she said. “To have my partner love it so much and to know that they were so involved in the community, it took me to a higher plan. I felt alive again. It just gave me so much hope.” She and her wife are one of the many couples a part of the congregation. As worship commences through the first half of each service, lovers scattered throughout the room hold one another as they sing praise. Their love is not a sin, they’re reminded, numerous times throughout each service. “God chose you,” Koeshall said. “Love is not an option if you follow Jesus.” Koeshall said he was raised in judgement as a child, that he was told God had condemned him to hell for his orientation. He was in a damaged place, he said. It was a place the founding father of MCC knew well. Reverend Troy Perry was a gay defrocked clergyperson who had come out in the 1960s. He had no church, a lack of hope and had just been left by his boyfriend. Deep in despair, he attempted suicide. The motivation to create a church for LGBT folks struck as he was recovering in the hospital from his 100

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Photo Marco Figueroa Photo Illustration Gamaliel Carreno

We understand what it means to be a part of a minority community where the majority discriminates against us. It’s no question that African-Americans have been put down by as a society as a whole for so long. We can lift up our sisters and our brothers and also let people know they’re not alone. We’re with you. — DA N KOE S H A L L

slit wrists. The church’s first service was in Perry’s living room with 12 people. MCC now has over 43,000 members with 160 congregations in 33 countries. In Southern California, services include traditions of numerous religions, bilingual hymns, an ASL translator and tribute to various minority groups throughout the year. During February they honor an icon of Black History Month at the beginning of each service. “We understand what it means to be a part of a minority community where the majority discriminates against us,” Koeshall said. “It’s no

question that African-Americans have been put down by as a society as a whole for so long. We can lift up our sisters and our brothers and also let people know they’re not alone. We’re with you.” The opposition, however, has never been far away. Members of one East County church picketed Sunday services, screaming homophobic slurs and threats as congregates attempted to get inside the church. Vandals spray-painted similar words accompanied with swastikas. Lee Bowman, MCC’s minister of administration, said the vandalism is a common occurrence. Most often vandalized is the church’s pride flag outside the El Sol / Spring 2020 101

‘NOSNITCHING’ SNITCHING’ ‘NO

ETHOS ETHOS CONTAGION AACONTAGION

FORMINORITIES MINORITIES FOR Story By Justin Dottery Story By Justin Dottery Layout Design By Justin Dottery Layout and and Design By Justin Dottery andand SoléSolé RuizRuiz

Photo Marco Figueroa Photo Illustration Gamaliel Carreno

building. Bowman remains unfazed, the devotion within the congregation motivating him to keep working. “You know what we do when they tear it down?” He questioned with a chuckle. “We put it back up again.” Rather than dwell on the attacks, the church provides its enthusiastic and engaged congregation with lively worship and sermons geared more towards real life application than religious theory. Bowman said this is intentional. “I think we feel that we want to let people know that God, faith and the Bible are things relevant to 102 El Sol / Spring 2020

their lives,” he said. “There is a connection there. I think it’s a plus for us when we can give people ideas or tools of practical application. We can explain how Jesus lived 2000 years ago and He does have something to say to them. He offers them a foundation and hope.” Koeshall said unity and integration is key. The man who was frightened on the payphone 22 years ago is no more. He found strength in his community. “My calling continued to be real even though mankind says I’m not worthy,” Koeshall said. “God says yes always to our gifts and our callings. We’re walking in love, not fear.” Sol / Spring El SolEl/ Spring 2020 2020 103 103

If we ever hope to take back our homes from the ruthless violence of gang culture, the unwritten “no snitching” rule has to go.

n the first day of September, my cousin lost her two best friends to a drive-by shooting in South Central Los Angeles. They died in an explosive cacophony of violent gunfire. Complete silence followed. They were shot more than a dozen times. My mother found two slumped bodies, their blood draining away onto the cool morning street. My mother called LAPD. Complete silence followed. No one came forward as a witness. Other than her statement, the police had virtually nothing to go on. No one wanted to talk. In communities such as the one I grew up in, it matters not how bad the crime, people do not talk to the police. If we ever hope to take back our homes from the ruthless violence of gang culture, the unwritten “no snitching” rule has to go. “No snitching” began spreading like a contagion in 2004 when Baltimore artist Skinny Suge (Rodney Thomas) released a DVD called “Stop Fuckin’ Snitchin’.” It was a warning to the black community not to talk to the police lest they be met with deadly force. There were even t-shirts with bullet holes that said “Stop Snitchin’” to deter people from cooperating with the police. “Snitches get stitches” is a preemptive jingle of the ‘hood. This brainwashing comes from predatory criminals who instill the fear of retaliation. It works. In fact, it works very well. Good people are afraid to speak up against bad

Illustration Victor Santander 104

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When we refuse to help the police investigating crime in our neighborhoods, we endanger the people living there. We empower those who make it dangerous for children to play outside and enjoy their childhoods.

people. This perpetuates a culture of drug dealing, theft and violence. This dysfunctional cycle must end. Enablers insist “no snitching” honors a “’hood code,” but it is a phony code without an ounce of honor. It empowers evil and helps to fuel a reign of terror by a few malevolent misanthropes. Impoverished communities get little help from law enforcement because cops rarely get cooperation from people in those communities. It is a self-perpetuating tragedy marked by dead bodies, broken-hearted parents and kids with one less parent. “Oh Hell No, We Don’t Talk to Police!” is a research article that delves into the lack of cooperation police get when investigating gun violence. Co-authors Rod K. Brunson of Northeastern University and Brian A. Wade of Rutgers University concluded that law enforcement grows frustrated by lack of cooperation from people in violent areas. Their research led them to interview 50 young black men from a high-crime neighborhood in Brooklyn. Many admitted they were unwilling to

cooperate as witnesses for a number of reasons. Besides anti-snitching edicts, Brunson and Wade concluded there is a fear of retaliation, cynicism towards the efficacy of the legal system and perceived inability to change their community. “Crime scene investigators frequently express tremendous frustration after tirelessly canvassing for potential witnesses in urban areas characterized by low fatal and nonfatal shooting clearance rates,” they wrote. “The situation is worsened because most gun violence occurs in disadvantaged minority neighborhoods, typically at the hands of gang- and drug-involved individuals, (where such) shootings are least likely to be solved and disproportionately comprise young black males as victims and offenders.” When we refuse to help the police investigating crime in our neighborhoods, we endanger the people living there. We empower those who make it dangerous for children to play outside and enjoy their childhoods. Gang-related crimes in San Diego were up from 385 in 2018 to 463 in 2019. A Pew Research Center survey of 90,000 households indicated that fewer than half of violent crimes in the U.S. are reported to the authorities (46.5% in 2015) or solved (46%). Police deserve a large share of the blame for this situation. They have earned the mistrust and scorn of communities of color through their own acts of violence and lawlessness. Video images of police beating and shooting African Americans are burning into the psyches of people living in black communities like South Central Los Angeles and Southeast San Diego. While it is true that some police are corrupt, there must be a reciprocated effort from police and residents of communities of color to rebuild a trust based on respect. Until we can trust law enforcement, the criminals will use mistrust as an ugly shield to allow them to continue their mayhem. We have a responsibility to speak out against the bad guys to protect the good people. We cannot continue to blame law enforcement for ineffective criminal investigations in the inner cities when they receive so little cooperation from good people in those neighborhoods. We must rebuke evil people injecting the “no snitch” poison into our communities. Turkish writer Mehmet Murat Ildan has it right: “Unless you refuse the bad things happening to you, you will continue to suffer with your own consent.”

We cannot continue to blame law enforcement for ineffective criminal investigations in the inner cities when they receive so little cooperation from good people in those neighborhoods.

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Emmy-winner J. Michael Straczynski encourages students to embrace failure to find success as writers

LEGENDARY

SCI-FI WRITER RETURNS TO HOME WORLD Story By Marty Loftin Layout and Design By Marty Loftin and Edward Herrera

Illustration Edward Herrera

ne day, in a pique of rage, J. Michael Straczynski’s alcoholic father ripped up all his comic books. He said they were worthless. He was wrong. Straczynski is one of America’s most successful and versatile writers. He has excelled in journalism, television writing and screenwriting. And comics. Straczynski returned to his Southwestern College alma mater to talk about his new book, his life and the writing industry, and to thank those who helped him when he was young and desperate for validation. In his new memoir “Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood,” Straczynski shares how comics helped him escape the reality of his broken homelife and fueled his lifelong desire to write. Just like Superman, Straczynski has a troubled origin story. Raised by damaged adults in abject poverty, he moved 21 times before he was 17 as his family escaped the serial debts his father would accrue. Straczynski said his family skipped town about every six months. Straczynski was a smart kid stifled by abuse. His father was physically and verbally abusive, a drunken con man and void of love, he said. Straczynski said he broke off all contact with his father in 1986 and never spoke to him again. Since then Straczynski has always taken issue with bullies, he said, and he was incensed when he learned a malevolent SC administration and board was attempting to block The Southwestern College Sun from breaking the story of construction contract corruption involving college officials. He personally wired the full cost of an issue to a secret printer in Los Angeles so the story could run 110

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The iconic Babylon 5 station.

before the next election. The board majority was ousted, 22 administrators were fired or resigned, and 20 South Bay school officials were charged with more than 60 felonies. Straczynski knew early in his life that he wanted to write, he said, but it was not be until his time at Chula Vista High School that he would find the support of adults who believed in his abilities. His family came to Chula Vista from Inglewood in 1972 and it was there he got his chance to start writing. “I really wanted to write, but nobody said I could,” he said. “No one believed me when I said I wanted to be a writer.” When he told his parents about wanting to write, he said “they would just laugh.” At CVHS, Straczynski got the opportunity in JoAnn Massie’s Creative Writing class and

Straczynski said he got the validation he needed to commit to writing from a satirical play he wrote at CVHS that parodied teachers and administrators. The powerful reception from the audience validated his choice of career and changed his life.

Rochelle Terry’s English class, but it was a rough start. During his first three days he accidentally assassinated not one, but two typewriters. Rather than write him off as an oaf, they encouraged his talent. Straczynski said he felt his early writings were “wretched,” but Terry said “You weren’t wretched, you just liked to pun.” Straczynski said he got the validation he needed to commit to writing from a satirical play he wrote at CVHS that parodied teachers and administrators. He said he knew he had made the right choice when, at the climax of the play, the principal shot him with a starter pistol and he sprayed fake blood on the stage. The powerful reception from the audience validated his choice of career and changed his life. His family continued to move after he graduated from CVHS, but eventually they returned and El Sol / Spring 2020

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Straczynski was able to attend SC. He connected with theater professor Bill Virchis when he submitted a one-act play. Virchis said creative types require outlets to practice their craft. “Actors and writers need a place to fail,” said Virchis. “If you can’t learn to fail, you can’t learn to succeed.” “And boy did I fail!” replied Straczynski. “One of the things that impressed me was your tenacity,” Virchis answered. “You just kept writing and writing.” Straczynski began regularly submitting plays to be performed at SC, and eventually SDSU and Marquis Public Theater. At SDSU Straczynski was a star columnist at the Daily Aztec newspaper. After graduating he struggled, but made money by writing short stories, novels and articles for newspapers and magazines. In 1984 Straczynski attempted to make the switch to television. After more than a year without income he got a job writing for “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. He sold them a few scripts on speculation, then was hired on to their writing staff. He picked up writing credits on 14 TV shows over the next decade, including “Twilight Zone” and “Murder She Wrote.” In 1994 Straczynski created the science fiction masterpiece “Babylon 5,” considered one of the best five sci-fi programs ever. He was the showrunner and executive producer, and wrote 92 of the 110 episodes. “Babylon 5” won two Emmy Awards and two Hugo Awards. The Sun’s faculty adviser was and remains a huge fan of “Babylon 5,” and was rewatching the series on DVD during the period from 2009-10 when former SC president Raj Kumar Chopra promised “to destroy The Sun” and “crush” the adviser. During a memorable episode, Straczynski’s Captain John Sheridan embarked on a dangerous mission and evoked the Egyptian prayer “May God be between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.” The adviser hung the quote above his computer, he said, to find strength to fight Chopra and his cabal. It is still there. Little did he know that it would be Straczynski who stepped between him and harm. From 2001-07, Straczynski worked with Marvel Comics as the voice of “The Amazing Spider-Man.” He wrote the BAFTA-nominated film “Changeling” in 2008. Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie, it grossed more than $100 million. Straczynski’s next project was his graphic novel “Superman: Earth One,” which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. In 2013 112

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excellence he created the comic “Ten Grand,” which sold out in its first week. He also wrote the screenplays to the hit movies “Thor” and “World War Z.” In May 2013 J. Michael Straczynski, one-time rootless boy from a criminal family, was awarded SC’s highest recognition, an honorary degree. Straczynski remains an extremely productive writer. He recently he wrote a pilot for a USA Network series, a novel to be published by Simon & Schuster and a movie to begin production in Germany in June. Straczynski offered some words of advice for writers: “Cut every third adjective.” “Don’t let them stop you from telling the story you want to tell.” “You don’t make art happen, you let it happen.” “Get to know your characters so well you know what they will do.” Straczynski said he takes pride in coming into success from an unimpressive background. “I should be by all rights unemployable,” he said. “If you have the talent, it will carry you.”

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Photo Ana Paola Olvera

Unfinished guitar faces stacked up at the Taylor Guitar factory.

hen guitar god Eric Clapton was asked a few years ago what it was like to be the world’s greatest guitar player, Slowhand scratched his forehead and sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’ll have to ask Prince.” Prince, when asked the same question, said Clapton. Both superstars agreed, however, that the greatest acoustic guitars were made by Taylor, the legendary El Cajon company whose dolcet instruments are also favored by Taylor Swift, Dave Matthews, Zac Brown, Jason Mraz, Jewel, Tori Kelly, George Strait and other luminaries. Taylor Guitars are the voice of legions of the world’s most talented recording artists and performers, but the conscientious company is now an advocate for global sustainability and indigenous people. Taylor’s Ebony Project is an innovative social and environmental initiative that works to protect the trees that produce ebony wood. In 2011Taylor Guitar acquired partial ownership of Crelicam, an ebony wood sawmill in Cameroon. This rare wood is used in many of the company’s signature guitar models for its natural beauty and rich sound. Bob Taylor, the company’s namesake founder, said he is deeply committed to environmental sustainability and safeguarding the Earth’s unique ecosystems. “When purchasing a Taylor Guitar we want our customers to feel assured that they are supporting a highly-ethical and eco-conscience business,” he said. Taylor said his early experience with the Crelicam sawmill led to a shocking discovery. Much of the wood from precious ebony trees was left to waste El Sol / Spring 2020

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Wood used for making guitars at the Taylor Guitar factory.

Photo Ana Paola Olvera

It was a full circle that gave me the opportunity to build the guitar and take the very same one to get a job with the company. – J O S H VA N D E R M A R K

on the warm dirt of the forest floors of Cameroon. Pure-black ebony wood is considered the beauty standard and is highly desired by instrument manufacturers. Different colored variegation wood was left to decay. Taylor Guitars began using variegation ebony and encourages other instrument manufacturers to follow suit. Taylor’s Responsible Timber Purchasing Policy are company rules that ensure wood is managed efficiently with minimum waste. It provides moral guidelines for all purchases throughout the supply chain. Taylor said this has help him to develop a network of trusting long-term partners and suppliers. In 2014 Taylor and Vidal de Teresa Paredes, coowners of the Crelicam sawmill, were presented the Award for Corporate Excellent by the U.S. State Department. Secretary of State John Kerry presented the award for their work promoting sustainable development, respecting human labor rights, advocating for environmental protection and responsible forestry management. “Taylor Guitars has become an effective advocate for improvement of legal and policy reforms,” Kerry said. “They have fundamentally changed the entire ebony trade.” Josh Van Dermark, a 10-year employee and musician, leads tours of the Cameroon project. He said he appreciates the ethics and benevolent intentions of Taylor Guitars. “There’s so many guitar companies, but not enough of them are focused on reforestation efforts to support the impact they created on the world,” he said. Back in 1974 a young Bob Taylor built his first guitar in his high school woodshop class, then went to work in a guitar shop called American Dream owned by Sam Radding. Two years later, Radding sold his business to Taylor who changed the name first to Westland Music Company, then Taylor Guitars. His focus on design, quality and playability made Taylor Guitars 118

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Photo Ana Paola Olvera

Guitars in production at the Taylor Guitar factory.

Taylor Guitar with a neck and bridge made of ebony wood.

Photo Ana Paola Olvera

Josh Van Dermark at the Taylor Guitar factory.

legendary around the world, attracting some of the planet’s greatest guitarists to their products. Taylor sees beyond Clapton, Jade Bird, Tony Iommia and other superstars. He wants to put guitars into the hands of underserved children. In 1990 he teamed with the San Diego Music Foundation to create the Taylor Guitar for Schools program. Taylor provides sponsorships for high school music programs and woodshop classes to push back on budget cuts to arts programs in public schools. Van Dermark’s high school woodshop class was supported by Taylor Guitar and he built his own guitar, which he later took into his interview at Taylor. He was hired on the spot. “It was a full circle that gave me the opportunity to build the guitar and take the very same one to get a job with the company,” he said. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes people from around the world to make a quality guitar, he said. In Cameroon Taylor employees replant ebony trees and take care of the forests. In El Cajon talented luthiers use the dark wood to make their sublime instruments. Only then do the rock stars, country legends and gifted up-and-comers enter the spotlight to make wondrous music. El Sol / Spring 2020

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Courtesy Sandra Scheller Illustration Gamaliel Carreno

Ruth Sax 1928 – 2018

Remembering a great teacher of peace and love

Chula Vista’s Civic Library is hosting a year-long exhibit with stories of Holocaust survivors who —just like Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax — decided to settle down in the South County. “RUTH: Remember Us The Holocaust”

hud, thud, thud, left, right, left. Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax watched out her window as hundreds of Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) soldiers marched past her house and down the streets of Brno, Czechoslovakia. Even eight decades later, as she approached 91, living in peace and safety at Paradise Village Retirement Community in National City, she still shivered recalling the deafening stomp of the goose stepping Nazis, their black rubber boots thundering over the asphalt to announce a new era of darkness. Thud, thud, thud, left, right left. Sax was only 11 when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939. Her life would never be the same. She would survive three concentration camps and endure one of the most nightmarish chapters of mankind’s history. Yet Hitler, his horrors and his henchmen could not break her spirit or extinguish her hope. Born July 6, 1928 in Moravsky Šumperk Moravia, the central region of Czechoslovakia, Sax was the only child of Oskar and Erna Goldschmied. Her family moved to Brno in 1934, when she was six. “Life was really beautiful and simple those early years,” she said. “I went to school, I played with friends, everything a normal child does. Our family lived comfortably. My father was a businessman who sold men’s

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socks with elastic and he was very successful. I was a very spoiled child, and while I would feel sad from time to time because I didn’t have a sibling, that feeling passed quite quickly.” Her early life was uneventful, Sax recalled, but around the time she turned 10 in 1938, she began to notice people acting differently toward her. “The non-Jewish neighborhood children would avoid me,” she said. “They were afraid to play with me. At the time I couldn’t understand why. I had always been a kind friend and person. My parents told me that if I really cared about my friends I would let them go because they could get into very serious trouble being around me. So, regrettably, I did.” Then came the day when everything changed. March 14, 1939 started out happily enough. It was grandmother Klara’s birthday and the Sax family spent all day celebrating. When evening approached and the festivities wound down, the family hunkered down by the radio to listen to some music. But instead of soothing melodies, a loud and brash voice rattled the tiny speakers, warning telling listeners that Hitler’s armies were invading Czechoslovakia. “I remember my mother waking me up, telling me to get ready, that there was an emergency,” Sax said. “So we rushed into a taxi and went to the factory where my father worked because we didn’t know where else to go.” The director of the factory stopped the family at the entrance. He wore a newly emblazoned swastika pin on his lapel and a sour look on his face. He looked Sax’s father dead in the eyes and told him gruffly to “Go home!” Sax remembered her father being shocked. “They had known each other for years,” she said. “The man had always been so friendly and nice. But all of that kindness was gone in an instant, replaced with hate.” The Sax family tried to hail a taxi back to their home, but found that for Jews the world had just turned upside down. “The driver refused to take us home,” Sax recalled, “not because he hated us like my father’s employer, but because he was afraid. He was afraid that he would be caught giving us a ride. So he dropped us off at the train station, which still allowed Jews to travel, and we got back home that way.” Home was no longer home. As the family rounded the corner of their neighborhood, Sax saw two SS officers with revolvers at their front door, demanding entrance. She and her parents stood helpless on the curbside as the officers ransacked their house, helping themselves to whatever they wanted, even the keys to her father’s brand new car. 124

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Ruth Goldschmiedova and tens of thousands of Jews from Czechoslovakia were rounded up by German Nazis in 1939. Those not summarily executed were sent to brutal concentration camps. Ruth was 11 when she entered the camps with her parents and struggled for six years to survive.

ndra Photos Courtesy Sa

Ruth Goldschmiedova was locked away in her first concentration camp when she was 13. She survived a series of brutal camps with her mother, including the infamous Auschwitz death camp in Poland. She reunited with her father after she was free. Survivors struggled to start a new life after they were released because they had nothing. —SANDRA SCHELLER

Scheller

Photo Karla Luna

Ruth made tiny pieces of art out of bread dough and whatever detritus she could find in the camps. She made dolls and — in a singular act of defiance — a miniature representation of the scrolls of the Jewish holy scriptures, The Torah. She hid them for years from her Nazi captors.

“A couple of days later my father told a customer of his who was not Jewish that the officers had taken his car,” Sax recalled. “The customer marched right up to the SS office and got the car back – not for my father, but for himself. He told the Germans my father had given him the car.” Life was now much different for 11-year-old Ruth and the rest of the Jewish community of Brno. They were forced to pin cloth Stars of David with the word Jude (German for Jew) onto their clothes. Jews caught without the star risked summary execution. Groceries were severely rationed and stores could only sell to Jewish customers between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. All Jewish workers lost their jobs or had their businesses confiscated by the Germans. They were forced into ghettos. Sax’s family was lucky to stay in its ransacked apartment because her father’s factory had already paid the rent. Suffering intensified and death came in random bursts of violence. “I remember my father had a cousin, Viktor, who lived across the street from us,” she said. “Before the invasion, he and my father would get together every weekend and chat at a local café. One day Viktor was walking down the street, minding his own business, when a German officer came up to him and called him a ‘dirty Jew.’ Viktor spat at the officer, who took out his revolver and shot him dead. That shook us all.” On the night of December 5, 1941, the Goldschmieds were rousted from bed by two German soldiers who commanded them to grab what belongings they could and leave the house. They were packed into a transport wagon with hundreds of other Jews. Germans herded them into railroad cars, cramming her family and others

The driver refused to take us home, not because he hated us like my father’s employer, but because he was afraid. He was afraid that he would be caught giving us a ride. So he dropped us off at the train station, which still allowed Jews to travel, and we got back home that way. —RUTH SAX

into a single tiny compartment. The journey was arduous and abhorrent. Jews racked with anxiety slept on filthy floors and survived on meager servings of coffee, bread and soup. When the train finally ground to a stop at its mysterious destination, prisoners at gunpoint trudged two miles in the knifing winter cold to a grey train station. No one knew where they were. Nazis had driven the train in circles and made frequent stops to keep the passengers disoriented and confused. At the obscure rail station Jewish captives were pushed into a different train, filthier and more dilapidated than the last. This ride was even longer, Sax said, taking an entire day. Prisoners were consumed with fear, dampened by exhaustion. As the train finally groaned to a stop, the Jews were disgorged like sheep. Shivering, hungry and scared, Sax trudged into Theresienstadt, where she would spend the next three and a half years fighting to stay alive. Theresienstadt was a concentration camp located in Terezin in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. It was named for Saint Theresa, “the little flower of Jesus,” but there was nothing divine in the Nazi “showplace” detention area. It would operate for three and a half years, from November 24, 1941 to May 9, 1945. Theresienstadt was a front, billed in Nazi propaganda as an area of resettlement for elderly Czech Jewish citizens, whom they claimed could retire in comfort and safety. In reality, Theresienstadt served as a transit ghetto. Deported Jews were sorted and sent to other camps based on their perceived usefulness to the Nazi regime as laborers, sex slaves or subjects of sadistic medical experimentation. “As soon as we arrived we had to surrender our belongings,” Sax said. “Everything was taken from us, from glasses and jewelry to the gold teeth in our mouths. Then we had to line up for inspection. The Nazis wanted only the best of us. If you were sick, or too young or too old, they took you to the side and shot you. They only wanted 18 to 38 year olds, so I had to lie about my age in order to stay alive.” Theresienstadt had five barracks. Sax and her mother were assigned the Dresdner Kaserne, her father to Sudeten Kaerne. Their forced separation was ominous. Sax would not see her father again for four years. Conditions were harsh, she recalled. “The camp was in immense disrepair,” she said. “The cots were full of thousands of bedbugs and you could feel them crawling on you in the night. There was a lack of food and drinkable water. The toilet was simply a cut out box that was placed El Sol / Spring 2020

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[Fredy Hirsch] advised us to find a job that worked around food because you could always sneak a bite of what you were working on. He told us that if you worked (around food) you could get 800 calories a day, but if you didn’t you would only get 300. —RUTH SAX 128

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Courtesy Sandra Sc heller

silence. Acrid odor of seared human flesh would waft into the air and cling to the humid atmosphere for the entire day. Death literally hung in the air. On Oct. 20, 1944, Sax and her parents feared their lives would soon end. After three and a half years in Theresienstadt, they were transferred to Auschwitz. Built in occupied Poland in 1940, Auschwitz was an extermination camp whose sole purpose was death and disappearance. It had three units: Auschwitz I (the original concentration camp for Polish political prisoners), Auschwitz IIBirkenau (a central component of Hitler’s “Final Solution”) and Auschwitz III-Monowitz (a labor camp). An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz. At least 1.1 million would die by extermination or starvation. Sax was sent to Auschwitz I. She remembered that as she disembarked the train and staggered toward the gates of the camp she saw a full orchestra playing music near the notorious gateway lettering that mendaciously read “Arbiet macht frei” (Work will set you free). She recalled the music sounding so beautiful because it had been a while since she had heard any. She learned later all the talented musicians who played that day were subsequently murdered. Herded through the gates of Auschwitz, Sax was whisked away by a German officer and sent to the intake line. “Everyone was forced to strip and be shaved from head to toe,” she said. “I felt humiliated, having someone shave my most intimate parts. The Nazis would stare at our bare bodies and snicker and laugh, mocking us.” Everyone was then marched single file to stand before a tall man wielding a crop whip. Sax remembered the man’s handsome gap toothed smile, his neatly parted black hair and his pristinely pressed senior Nazi uniform. Sax was face to face with Dr. Josef Mengele, the sadistic “Angel of Death.” “We were still naked and he would inspect every inch of us,” Sax said. “He would then point his whip either to the left or to the right. If he pointed left, you were safe. If he pointed right, you were sent to the gas chambers. I would survive six encounters with Mengele.” One particular encounter proved almost fatal for Sax’s aunt Elfie and little cousin Dita. Elfie was not feeling well and Mengele was on his way to inspect the woman’s barracks. Sax’s mother was terribly worried and started to slap Elfie’s face in a desperate effort to bring color to her cheeks. She then took a red wrapper from an imitation coffee product and smoothed the ink onto her sister’s cheeks, which brightened them

r Courtesy Sandra Schelle

over a hole in the floor. It was very unsanitary, to say the least.” When she arrived in Theresienstadt, Sax ran into her former gym coach, Fredy Hirsch, who gave her and her mother a valuable survival strategy. “He advised us to find a job that worked around food because you could always sneak a bite of what you were working on,” she said. “He told us that if you worked (around food) you could get 800 calories a day, but if you didn’t you would only get 300.” They followed Hirsch’s counsel. Sax’s mother worked as a potato peeler and smuggled bits of the peeled skin back to her daughter. She worked her way up to a supervisory position and got more food privileges. Taking showers was a rare luxury, so Erna would save kitchen wash water and Ruth would bathe in potato water. Sax worked in the children’s garden growing vegetables. She was under constant supervision. Anyone caught stealing food would be killed on the spot. Sax faced the wrath of the officers after attempting to shake an apple out of a tree. She was lucky, she said. Instead of execution she was placed in 24-hour solitary confinement with no food or water. While Sax and her mother found ways to survive Theresienstadt, other family members did not. Sax’s grandmother Klara died of cancer in Theresienstadt. Camp officials knew she was ill, but gave her only simple pain medication as she wasted away. Her uncle Vilem and his family were transferred to Zamosc, a small village in Poland. Vilem, his brother, wife and children dug their own graves before they were shot to death. Bodies were burned in the camp’s crematory. Sax said bodies lowered into the fires exploded with a cacophonous sizzling din, followed by sickening

Luna Karla Photo

Ruth and her husband Kurt Sax settled in Chula Vista and ran a grocery store in San Diego. Kurt Sax opened a store with the thought that he and his wife would never have to starve again. Artifacts from the RUTH exhibit in the Chula Vista Library, including cloth Stars of David that Jews were forced to pin to their clothes. Jewish people caught without the stars would be summarily executed. El Sol / Spring 2020

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up considerably and gave her the appearance of a healthy glow. Just as Sax’s mother finished applying the improvised makeup, Mengele slithered into the barracks. He ordered everyone to strip and he began what he called his “appeal.” Sax’s mother pushed Dita between her legs and the child went unnoticed. The women feared Mengele would see through their ruse, but he strode by them without moving the whip. As he drifted from the building, the women were told to get dressed. Elfie and Erna breathed a sigh of relief. They would live another day. Sax spent only a week in Auschwitz, but the camp burned an indelible impression into her memory. Six times she faced the sadistic Mengele with his executioner’s whip. “Of the three camps I was in, Auschwitz was the worst,” she said. “They treated us like animals. They made us stand naked in a cold field for hours at a time until we were exhausted. When we went to take showers, they would taunt us. They knew we knew about the gas. They would have us stand there for 10 minutes in utter anxiety and anticipation waiting to see if water came out of the spout or gas.” Her filthy, claustrophobic barracks were nightmarish cages of blood, vomit and feces. Up to seven people had to sleep in a single bunk, a small blanket shared between them. To urinate or defecate in the middle of the night, Jews had only a small, overflowing bucket in the corner. If someone was sick to their stomach, had diarrhea and did not have the strength to get up, they would vomit or evacuate their aching bowels where they lay, onto the other six people. Sax had a terrible time at Auschwitz, she said, but it was worse for her father. He was utterly humiliated and dehumanized, tattooed and brutalized. Sandra Scheller, Sax’s daughter, said her grandfather avoided conversations related to his tattoo, but on occasion he would use humor to lighten the gloomy topic. “A favorite joke of his is very darkly humorous,” Scheller said. “An old Jewish guy in the United States won the lotto jackpot of $120 million. While being interviewed by the local news, he was asked what he was going to do with the money. ‘First thing I’m going to do is give half the money to the Nazi Party in Germany.’ Somewhat surprised by this response, the news guy asked, ‘Why the hell would you do that after all the things they put you and your family through during the Holocaust?’ He said, ‘Well, fair’s fair’, and rolls up his sleeve, ‘they did give me the winning numbers.’” At Auschwitz Sax’s father had a friend who suffered a bad case of diarrhea one night. Nazi officers threw him onto a toilet and started to beat 130

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Ruth Sax spoke to hundreds of groups and more than 100,000 people in face-to-face appearances, and millions more through television and film. She was a tireless speaker and advocate for peace into her 90s. She had a knack for communicating with children and was considered a great morah (teacher).

him. The man messed himself and lay helpless on the floor covered in his own blood, vomit and defecation as they mercilessly kicked in his face. Sax’s father rushed to the man’s aid, but he was already dead. The Nazis grabbed Oskar and nearly beat him to death. Luckily, after the Nazis left him on the floor to die, a Jewish supervisor found him, cleaned him up and covered his cuts and bruises. Two days later the man found a way to transfer Oskar out of Auschwitz to Blechhammer, and then to Gleiwitz. A sub labor camp of Auschwitz, Gleiwitz was built on a train repair yard in Gliwice, Poland. Prisoners built roads and repaired damaged cars. Gleiwitz was cruel and terrifying, but a huge improvement from Auschwitz for Oskar. On January 18, 1945, the camp was evacuated and prisoners were marched single file back to Blechhammer on a death march. Many died from

Courtesy Sandra Scheller

bitter winter cold, malnutrition or gunshots for holding up the line. Oskar and three other prisoners slipped away prior to the death march and hid for 24 hours in kettles in camp the kitchen. When they slid off the lids, they found the camp entirely empty. After taking some fresh clothes and a few supplies, they fled into the mountains, running at night and sleeping by day. After many arduous days on the run, Oskar reunited with his stepbrother Manfred Konka, who had managed to avoid the camps by bribing Nazis and hiding. Konka made a living selling hunting coats, ties and shirts, and was able to barter for supplies. He graciously provided Oskar with money, food and lodging. Soon the men heard some glorious news. Russian troops had pushed into Eastern Europe and the German’s reign of hell would soon be over. Oskar had somehow survived the worst cruelty

mankind was capable of and the searing hatred Nazis had for the Jewish people. He held onto hope that his wife and daughter were still alive. Meanwhile, after spending a week and a half at Auschwitz, Sax and her mother transferred to the Oederan labor camp in Saxony, Germany. Life at Oederan was less demanding and deadly than Auschwitz. Prisoners were not tattooed or forced to wear prison uniforms. Jews’ clothes were painted with a giant white X and stripe every week. Sax still has the long black dress her mother wore, the huge X and line crudely scrawled in fading white paint. Ruth was now 16. She tried to help older Jewish prisoners and make a difference. Her Nazi guards ordered her to work at the camp’s bullet factory. When no one was looking, she would commit sabotage by sneaking sand into the bullet machines, making the German ammunition El Sol / Spring 2020

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useless. In the winter, electricity was rationed and there was not enough power to warm the whole camp. Sax volunteered to go out into the gnawing winter freeze to lay electrical cable in the street. In the early morning of April 11, 1945, Sax and her mother were roused from sleep by German soldiers, ordered to grab their belongings and sent outside. “I remember as we went outside there was a group of Nazi youth standing there, pointing Bayonets at us,” Sax said. “I asked one of them how old he was and he wasn’t much older than I was.” After being counted, the prisoners were hosed down and led to trains bound for Flossenberg, an extermination camp. The way to Flossenberg was in disrepair. Roads were bombed out and bridges damaged. Russians had come to liberate the Jewish prisoners and the Nazi regime was in its death throes. Most German soldiers went on the run, taking what they could and going into hiding. Those left behind dressed in the tattered striped pajamas of the prisoners, hoping to blend in. Russian soldiers seized the train carrying Sax and about 500 other prisoners, offering them food, water and medical supplies. She realized their Nazi captivity was over. “The soldiers were nice to me, giving me chocolate,” she said. “Though not all of them were so gentle. Some of the Russians felt that since they liberated the Jews, they were entitled to some of the women. Many women were raped, but my mother helped me by swaddling me up in a blanket and pretending I was a baby.” Since the rails were bombed out, Sax and the rest of the passengers had to walk and ride open wagons back to Terezin. The trip took two agonizing weeks. As they rounded the corner to the entrance of the citadel, survivors could hardly contain their joy. Their euphoria was short lived. They were not yet free. Everyone was forced into typhoid quarantine and they would spend the next month a stone’s throw from freedom. Time crawled slowly until a day arrived Sax said she would never forget. “I was in the kitchen working and someone yelled at me, ‘Ruthie, there is someone at the gate who wants to talk to you’,” she said. “So I ran to the gate and I saw this really thin, clean-shaven man. At first I didn’t know who it was, but then the man smiled at me and said, ‘Don’t you remember your own father?’ Now, my father had always had a mustache and was very portly, so it took me a while to recognize him. But when I finally did I was in shock. All these years I had thought that my father was dead, but here he was standing on the other side of the gate. I wanted to hug him, but the 132

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Courtesy Sandra Scheller

“I have always loved clothes and sewing, ever since I was a little girl,” Sax said. “My dream was to live in Paris and follow in my father’s footsteps and work as a tailor. When I came to America I became a factory worker, but I would still always be sewing, creating.” —RUTH SAX

Jewish women in the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps were made to wear black dresses with a large X painted on the back. Sometimes Nazi guards would paint demeaning words on women’s backs. Ruth’s mother was wearing the dress in this photo when Theresienstadt was liberated by Russian soldiers in 1945.

gate was electrified. I ran to my mother yelling, ‘Papa is at the gate!’ She was so happy to see him. He had found us by looking up our names through the Red Cross list.” On June 15, 1945, after 30 days in quarantine, Sax, her mother and the thousands of other former prisoners were told that they were free to go. Where to go was the big question. Czechoslovakia was in shambles and supplies scarce. Sax and her family would have to rebuild their lives from scratch. It was years before they were economically stable again. “Everything we owned was gone,” she said. “The only thing I had was a blanket. My parents and I made our way from Terezin back to Brno. We relied on the hospitality of strangers and what little food and shelter we could get at the Red Cross stations scattered throughout Czechoslovakia.” When they finally reached Brno, the family found their former home had been converted into offices for the Nazis. Since Sax’s father had gotten a month’s head start, he had managed to procure another apartment with minimal furnishings. Its former occupants had a daughter Sax’s age and Sax wore the clothes the girl left behind. The family would get meals from a local soup kitchen in a hotel basement across from the train station. “At first the soup was very bare, just broth,” Sax said. “Then, as the weeks went by and the kitchens got more supplies, the soup grew heartier. Potatoes, leftovers, canned food. It wasn’t much, but food is food.” Jewish children were eventually able to return to school and Sax completed her primary education. She enrolled in a local design school where she studied the history and design of clothing. She earned a diploma in clothing design. “I have always loved clothes and sewing, ever since I was a little girl,” Sax said. “My dream was to live in Paris and follow in my father’s footsteps and work as a tailor. When I came to America I became a factory worker, but I would still always El Sol / Spring 2020

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Courtesy Sandra Scheller

Ruth Sax lived a remarkable 90 years and was active to the end of her life. In the year before she died she was presented an honorary degree from Southwestern College, was Grand Marshal of the Bonitafest, named San Diego Woman of Valor and celebrated the Bat Mitzvah denied her by the Nazis when she was a teen. She was devoutly Jewish her entire life and attended temple every Saturday. She embraced the Jewish ethos of service to all mankind.

Courtesy Sandra Scheller Illustration Gamaliel Carreno

Ruth Sax’s daughter Sandra Scheller wrote an awardwinning book about the life of her mother and other regional Holocaust survivors. “Try To Remember, Never Forget” describes the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, but also celebrates the resilient spirit of survivors.

be sewing, creating.” While Ruth was in school that she began to correspond with a second cousin, Kurt Sax. They had played together as children. Kurt fled Austria at the start of World War II and ended up in Northern Italy. After being sponsored by a family in the United States, Kurt immigrated to America and opened a successful newsstand in Anderson, South Carolina. After getting Ruth’s picture and address from a friend, Kurt began to write her letters and soon a trans-Atlantic romance blossomed. After writing a box full of love letters, he asked for her hand in marriage. Kurt traveled by boat all the way to Brno to marry Ruth. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon in Czechoslovakia because it took Ruth four months to finalize her passport. “We arrived in America at Ellis Island in New York City,” she said. “We lived there for a while and then moved to San Diego (County) on the recommendation of a friend and we’ve lived here ever since.” After adjusting to a new country and saving every penny, Sax was able to bring her parents to America to live with her. They opened a café and market, and lived a quiet, peaceful life in the warmth of San Diego County. Erna Kohn died on February 27, 1982. Oskar Goldschmied died August 10, 1988. They died as free citizens of the world, respected in their community and loved by their family on two continents. Ruth and Kurt Sax had two daughters and lived a modest but comfortable life in Chula Vista, thanks to Kurt’s success as a stockbroker later in his life. In April 2012 Kurt suffered a serious stroke. He clung on to life for another month, but died May 11, 2012. Ruth and Kurt were married 63 years. After her husband’s death, Ruth Sax needed help around the house. Scheller tried as best she could, she said, but could not be with her mother 24/7. “At first we tried caregivers, but we had bad experiences,” Scheller said. “One of them physically abused Ruthie, starved her and stole her money. I even found out later that the food she cooked for my mom was food she was preparing for her dogs in Tijuana. We tried different nursing homes, but the conditions were horrible.” Sax spent her last years living comfortably at Paradise Village Retirement Community in National City, where she was a nonagenarian rock star. Aside from implantation of a pacemaker and reliance on a wheelchair following a car accident, she said she always happy at Paradise Village. “The people are friendly, the rooms are clean, the place is beautiful,” she said. “There is a large community of Jewish residents here and the

facility has services every Friday night.” When she was a younger woman, Sax said, she did not like to talk about her horrific Holocaust experiences, but as she neared her 90s, her thinking changed. She said she felt her story needed telling. “Ruth enjoyed meeting with young students,” Scheller said. “She received letters, awards, cards, flowers and tears from people who found her story incredible and moving. We are trying to get help from the City of Chula Vista or any other organization to create ‘Project Ruth – Remember Us, The Holocaust,’ a museum dedicated to Ruthie and her story. Anybody can sit here and deny that the Holocaust happened, but we have the letters, we have the dress, we have the Stars of David, we have proof that it happened. Our goal is to get as many people as we can to see these things and to perhaps get a sense of what it would have been like to live through this.” Scheller wrote an award-winning book, “Try to Remember – Never Forget: From Holocaust Hell to Paradise Village,” recounting Sax’s harrowing story. She is working on a follow up featuring the hundreds of love letters written by Ruth and Kurt. Ruth Sax worked right until her last days getting her story out, exorcizing years of pent up anxieties and fears. She became a prolific public speaker, addressing more than 10,000 students in San Diego County face to face, and many thousands more via her television appearances and film interviews. On May 25, 2018, she was bestowed the highest honor Southwestern College awards members of its community – an honorary degree – for her tireless work speaking to students and civic organizations about the Holocaust. When she received her degree, Mrs. Sax wore a formal doctorate tam given to her by a professor. She joked that she was “the new Doctor Ruth.” A month later, she was named San Diego County Woman of Valor at the San Diego Lyceum Theater. In September, she was Grand Marshal of the Bonitafest and posed for hundreds of photos with young admirers. That same month she achieved as a 91 year old something denied by the Nazis as the 13 year old – a full bat mitzvah at her synagogue. Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax died December 29, 2018, exiting the world stage after a remarkable final scene. She enjoyed her last home at Paradise Village, she said, and loved to play bingo, compare notes with friends about the stock market and make jewelry. She said she was “a happy old lady,” but sometimes, in the dead of night, could still hear the heavy thuds of Nazi boots marching through her childhood. Thud, thud, thud. Left, right, left. El Sol / Spring 2020

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SC Professor is a global expert on hieroglyph language

Messenger

of the Gods Story By Stephanie Aceves Layout and Design By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

These Mayan hieroglyphs are located in the House of the Nine Sharpened Spears, the largest Mesoamerican stepped pyramid structure at Palenque, part of modern-day Chiapas, Mexico. El Sol / Spring 2020

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Photo Nicholas James

The celebrated Mayan hieroglyphic writing system is a sophisticated combination of pictographs directly representing objects and ideograms (or glyphs) that expressed more abstract concepts such as actions or ideas and even syllabic sounds.

ome people just canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t read the writing on the wall. Dr. Mark Van Stone can, even if it is in Mayan hieroglyphics. A brainy and bubbly professor of art history, Van Stone is the Indiana Jones of Southwestern College, just without the fedora. Like Dr. Jones, Dr. Van Stone travels the world lecturing and providing expert testimony on the ancient Maya and their mystifying hieroglyphs. He trotted the globe in 2011 debunking the so-called 2012 Mayan Calendar Prophecy, which doomsayers claimed foretold the end of the world. Van Stone circled the planet assuring humanity the planet would still be here in 2013. He was right! The celebrated Mayan hieroglyphic writing system is a sophisticated combination of pictographs directly representing objects and ideograms (or glyphs) that expressed more abstract concepts such as actions or ideas and even syllabic sounds. Van Stone recently gave an audiovisual lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park that explored the mystery and beauty of Maya hieroglyphs. Only deciphered since about 1980, the ongoing translation of this unique writing system has revealed insight into the Maya, from the victories of kings to names of demons to

SC Professor Dr. Mark Van Stone presents one of his two books, Reading the Maya Glyphs. El Sol / Spring 2020

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personalized chocolate drinking vessels. Fabiana Hernandez, a student in Van Stone’s Art and Cultural of Pre-Hispanic Mexico class, attended. “I thought the topic is really interesting,” she said. “I wanted to learn more about Mexican history.” Alanis Escalera is also in Van Stone’s class. “I also thought the idea of taking art history to be interesting,” she said. “We learn about the Maya, the Olmec and Teotihuacan, but we also get to see how diverse it is and similar it is within all Mesoamerica, so we have that perspective.” Van Stone did not set out to be a rock star, he wanted to study stars. He earned a degree in physics in 1973 and worked in a gamma-ray astronomy laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. He was lured away from the ancient skies to the ancient Earth, and became a calligrapher and carver. “I was an independent self-employed teaching calligraphy,” he said. “Calligraphy literally means beautiful writing and for me the study was how and why people make writing good.” In the world of calligraphy and type design, Van Stone established himself as an expert in paleography and the evolution of written forms. He lectured widely on the subject for the next 20 years. He eventually focused on the most complex, most beautiful and least understood script, Mayan hieroglyphs. “I got started in the mid-‘80s,” he said. “I studied the writing of other ancient cultures before that. I was really into calligraphy and hieroglyphs.” A lifelong autodidact, he relentlessly seized opportunities to study in the reading rooms and storerooms of libraries and museums around throughout the world. He also learned by doing, making Mayan-style artwork. “Being passionate about your subject makes you a better teacher,” he said. “I talk about what I love and I hope I communicate that. There are always some students touched by that art and (art history) becomes their new favorite subject.” Van Stone’s friend Michael Code was an American archaeologist and anthropologist, epigrapher and author. He is known for his research on pre-

Photo Nicholas James

Van Stone and his colleagues have made great progress understanding Mayan culture and language since the 1980s.

Photo Nicholas James

Being passionate about your subject makes you a better teacher. I talk about what I love and I hope I communicate that. There are always some students touched by that art and (art history) becomes their new favorite subject. — D R . M A R K VA N S T O N E Van Stone decodes a glyph. 142

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In the world of calligraphy and type design, Van Stone established himself as an expert in paleography and the evolution of written forms. He lectured widely on the subject for the next 20 years. He eventually focused on the most complex, most beautiful and least understood script, Mayan hieroglyphs. Columbian Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya, and was among the foremost Mayanists of the late 20th century. He invited Van Stone to illustrate the book “Reading the Maya Glyphs.” “I didn’t want anybody else other than Van Stone because I wanted the best,” Code said. In addition to his work as an academic, Van Stone is an avid artist. He designed the Maya glyphs on the SC library, the new wellness complex and most recently the Math and Science building. “In 2002 I was hired here (and) in 2004 the president of the college asked me if I wanted to design the library extension,” he said. “A design on the left side of the library says ‘house of the god of learning.’ The god of learning is Itzamnaaj. He wears a little mirror in front of his face on a headband like an old-time doctor.” The hieroglyphs Van Stone designed for the Wellness Center translate as ‘first health place.’ “I like the idea that someone will enjoy these buildings I did,” he said. “I designed 10 hieroglyphics descriptions on the north side of the building. One design looks like a flower and that is the number zero.” Maya mathematicians invented zero, the absence of value, Van Stone said. This brilliant innovation is celebrated on the new Math and Science building. “I actually designed five or 10 things that went on that building,” he said. In 1982 Van Stone went to Japan to study netsuke, the first non-Japanese scholar to do so. “I really love the carving,” he said. “It’s a very miniature, delicate detail that I really wanted to do.” His dual background in science and art is essential to his unique understanding of Mayan hieroglyphics, he said, as well as the development of all writing systems. His comprehension of these glyphs gives him a rare ability to interpret the Mayan calendar in an authoritative and trustworthy manner—a great relief to humanity in 2011. El Sol / Spring 2020

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D E R E G N A D N E S E I

C E SP ER D N U ACK T T A ut an Layo , y r Sto

d De

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Loft

YOU WERE HERE

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Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

A mountain biker on an illegal trail through a protected habitat preserve on Hill 985, the nickname environmentalists use to identify the 985-foot rise next to Madre de Miguel Mountain. Bikers cut a fence and carved a winding trail through the heart of a butterfly and cactus preserve.

Many of the endangered or threatened species found locally were put in that position by Americans encroaching on their natural environment, like Chinese did to the giant panda.

iant pandas have become a symbol of endangered species, but through conservation efforts their population has increased to 1,800. It is possible to bring back endangered species from the brink, it just requires people to care enough to try. In the San Diego region there are plenty of endangered species that do not get enough love as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) mascot, but protecting them is of great ecological importance. Many of the endangered or threatened species found locally were put in that position by Americans encroaching on their natural environment, like Chinese did to the giant panda. Humans working together, however, are capable of turning the tide of extinction. Last month seven light-footed Ridgway’s rail took flight as they were released by conservationists into the Tijuana River estuary. Were it not for the efforts of Dr. Mike and Patricia McCoy in the 1970s to prevent the estuary from being dredged into a marina, there would be no place to release these birds. They would have become extinct in Southern California. Ridgway’s rail is a small chicken-sized bird that feeds primarily on mollusks, worms and crabs found along the mudflats. They have been slammed by reckless development in the U.S. and filthy runoff from Mexico. In March 2016 a large scale El Niño caused the mouth of the Tijuana river to become blocked and resulted in a buildup of tainted

Photo Illustration Marty Loftin El Sol / Spring 2020

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runoff ruinous to the ecology of the Tijuana estuary. Among the victims were at least 50 leopard sharks trapped on the wrong side of the river’s mouth. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials estimate the number of rails grew from 142 pairs in 1985 to 656 pairs in 2016. Rail populations declined sharply during the blockage of the inlet, when lack of tidal flushing poisoned the invertebrates that are the rail’s primary food source. A rail recovery study warns that “saltmarsh habitat(s) [are] threatened by a combination of development, erosion, contaminant leaching, alteration of hydrology and sediment transport, and sea level rise.” In areas that become completely flooded by high tide, the rails are forced out of the safety of their tall cordgrass environment and have to brave urban areas and are more likely to face predation. Biodiversity is an essential aspect of conserving endangered species. When a population becomes too small, its genetic diversity collapses, leaving it susceptible to the damaging effects of inbreeding. A species needs to have a wide range to ensure genetic diversity so that if an incident like the 2016 El Niño event occurs, there are enough individuals left to repopulate. San Diego County is the most biodiverse county in the continental United States, according to conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International, which called San Diego County one of 36 “biodiversity hotspots” on the planet. These hot-spots are defined as having “at least 1,500 vascular plants as endemics” and “30 percent or less of its original natural vegetation.” That means San Diego county is full of plants that are found nowhere else on Earth, but threatened by invasive species. Conservation International scientists wrote “(biodiversity hot-spots) represent just 2.4 percent of Earth’s land surface, but they support more than half of the world’s plant species as endemics — i.e., species found no place else — and nearly 43 percent of bird, mammal, reptile and amphibian species as endemics.” Almost every natural environment in San Diego has been impacted by human development. Mountain bikers on Madre de Miguel Mountain that touches Chula Vista have created a huge erosion “scar” on the mountain visible three miles away from Southwestern College. People traversing the mountain unwittingly damaged and killed endangered plant species such as the San Diego barrel cactus. Poorly maintained trails led to the creation of several unauthorized trails that damaged endangered wildlife that live on Mt. Miguel, Madre de Miguel and Hill 985. In August the San Diego National Wildlife 150

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Photo Brittany Cruz-Fejeran

Mountain bikers cut the fence surrounding a habitat reserve and carved unauthorized trails down the side of Hill 985. Cactus, coastal sage and rare foothill plantain are crushed by tires and pushed out by erosion.

Refuge partnered with San Diego Association of Governments and the San Diego Mountain Biking Association, with assistance from the Bonita Bikers, to repair the badly eroding Mother Miguel Trail. National Wildlife Refuge ecologists wrote “this trail reroute will reduce the negative impacts to species like Mexican flannelbush, San Diego barrel cactus, Quino checkerspot butterfly and California gnatcatcher, and their habitats.” It will take some time for the scar to heal, but at least there is now an effort to save these three Sweetwater Valley-region peaks. These species and others are also threatened by the

Biodiversity is an essential aspect of conserving endangered species. When a population becomes too small, its genetic diversity collapses, leaving it susceptible to the damaging effects of inbreeding.

construction of the proposed southern border wall. If completed, the wall would harm people seeking refuge in the U.S. and damage the ecosystem the wall would vivisect. Vernal pools are also threatened by human activity. These little-understood ecosystems comprised of seasonal ponds have suffered extreme degradation as humans build over them. They are seasonal bodies of water 2-12 inches deep that host unique animals like the fairy shrimp, whose eggs are able to survive being dried out until the next rain replenishes their pools. Fairy shrimp are an important food source to El Sol / Spring 2020

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Scores of native plants unique to San Diego are classified as endangered. Without action to preserve the biodiversity of this natural environment, much of San Diegoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s natural flora such as cacti and wildflowers could be lost forever.

MESSAGE OF

HOPE

Story By JoseLuis Baylon Illustration, Layout and Design By Qiuzhu Luo

Photo Caleigh Goldman

salamanders, water birds and aquatic insects, but most vernal pools have been lost to human development. Between 1979 and 1986, 698 acres of already-rare vernal pools were eliminated. Now only 65 acres of this environment is left and existing pools are threatened by pollution. A City of San Diego Vernal Pool Habitat Conservation Plan (VPHCP) from October 2017 concluded that fairy shrimp found in 137 vernal pool complexes distributed across the region, but 28 have been completely or partially lost to urban development. VPHCP seeks compromise between the competing interests of development and conservation by forcing developers to set aside certain areas for the preservation of vernal pools. Just as no man is an island, lifeforms in ecosystems cut off into islands are generally doomed. Environmental fragmentation isolate populations from each other and force them to brave the dangers of human settlement. 152

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The California mountain lion struggles to repopulate because they keep getting hit by vehicles or poisoned by eating prey contaminated with rodenticide. Santa Cruz Puma Project tracks about 40 mountain lions in the Santa Cruz mountains and has found that they generally avoid freeways, but are forced to risk death to find prey or mates. California is home to about 5,000 remaining mountain lions, but they are vulnerable. One form of environmental protection that would benefit this species and others would be the creation of wildlife bridges and tunnels that safely connect natural areas. The largest of these projects is an $87 million overpass covered in greenery that would span 10 lanes of Highway 101 northwest of Los Angeles. These green bridges and tunnels, like the Vernal Pool projects, are a step in the right direction but are not a cure for the problem. Human development has had little regard for the natural environment. We must prioritize Mother Nature before it is too late. El Sol / Spring 2020

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Illustration Qiuzhu Luo

Photo JoseLuis Baylon

We’ve got reason to hope. We have to face up to our challenges. One of my reasons for hope is young people. JANE GOODALL

Goodall flipped the script when she documented clear evidence of personalities, emotions and intelligence in chimpanzees.

ane Goodall had to earn a Ph.D. from Cambridge, travel the world and write exhaustively before she was able to convince people that animals had personalities and emotions. She had known all that since she was 8 years old – when her dog told her. Goodall is a science pioneer, women’s rights icon, environmental warrior and prophet of hope in a world settling into gloom. She is also the defacto CEO of Global Monkey Business. Blessed with a legendary mentor and fueled by blazing curiosity, Goodall was famous by age 26 – even though she had never been to college. Prior to Goodall’s research, many scientists argued that humankind was not part of the animal kingdom and that primates lacked emotions or intelligence. Goodall flipped the script when she documented clear evidence of personalities, emotions and intelligence in chimpanzees. “Studying the chimps as I did helped science to come out of its reductionist way of thinking that we humans were isolated,” she told a gathering at the 39th Annual Esri User Conference in San Diego. “The chimps are so like us biologically, as well as behaviorally, that science was forced to start thinking differently. We are part of the animal kingdom and not separated from it.” Goodall was becoming famous for her prodigious work, but faced criticism for not possessing a college degree back home. She had, in fact, never set foot on a college campus.

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“I didn’t even start as a scientist when I went to Gombe, Africa” she said. “I hadn’t been to college. It was Louis Leaky who made me go do a Ph.D. and I was really nervous. Can you imagine when you hadn’t been to college and you go to Cambridge University and are told that you’ve done everything wrong? I was told I shouldn’t have given the chimpanzees names, that wasn’t at all scientific, they should have had numbers. I couldn’t talk about personality, mind or emotion because those were unique to us.” To overcome the obstacles she faced at Cambridge, Goodall did what she did in Africa with the chimps – sat quietly and listened. “If you meet someone who doesn’t agree with you, first listen to them because maybe they might change your mind,” she said. “If you still think you are right, then you must have the courage of conviction. That’s what happened to me when I first arrived at Cambridge. I didn’t believe them when they said animals couldn’t have personalities or emotions because my dog had told me as a child that wasn’t true. I was able to have the courage of my convictions.” Goodall earned a Ph.D. in ethology (the science of animal behavior), one of only eight people to earn a doctorate at Cambridge University without first completing a Bachelor’s degree. Her work in Gombe reported in her dissertation broke new scientific ground. “Now a lot of students are studying emotion, personality and animal intellect,” she said. It was not always so. “I recalled loving animals as a child and I had a very supportive mother,” she said. “When I was 10, I read Tarzan and Dr. Dolittle and I knew I should turn science into a living. Not so many people worked with animals and wrote books about them.” Even as a child Goodall was chided by other kids when she told them she wanted to be a scientist and study animal behavior. “Everybody laughed at me,” she recalled. “They said, ‘How could you do that? You don’t have any money and you’re just a girl!’ But my mother said, ‘If you really want to do this, you have to work really hard and take advantage of every opportunity, but don’t give up!” Goodall said her mom was right. “That’s the message I take to young people all around the world and teach in disadvantaged communities,” she said. “So many people have said ‘Jane, I want to thank you. Because you did it, I could do it, too.’ ” Goodall said she travels the globe 300 days a year with a message of hope as the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation. Her inspiring Roots & Shoots program is now in 60 countries. It empowers young people from kindergarten to university students 158

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to help protect their local environments. She also created a community-centered conservation approach called Tacare that helps communities and governments protect chimpanzee populations in forests outside designated national parks. Like other scientists, Goodall is concerned about climate change and how it has been politicized by right-wing populist politicians. A resulting “war on science” needs to be met, she said. “There’s a very worrying swing to the far right in so many countries with levels of corruption that are very, very hard to fight,” she said. “Climate change, climate crisis is happening. It’s not something in the future. It is not a Chinese hoax. It’s real.” Goodall encourages people of good will to hang onto hope. “We’ve got to face the doom and the gloom and

“I was told I shouldn’t have given the chimpanzees names, that wasn’t at all scientific, they should have had numbers. I couldn’t talk about personality, mind or emotion because those were unique to us.” —JANE GO ODALL

the darkness because if we lose hope, then we may as well all give up. None of this is useful if we think there’s no way forward and that we are doomed. We’ve got reason to hope. We have to face up to challenges. One of my reasons for hope is the young people.” Goodall has a special travel companion who gives her hope and inspiration. Her friend is a plush animal she calls Mr. H. “People cope with seemingly impossible tasks,” she said. “I carry Mr. H because he was given to me by Gary Horne 29 years ago. Gary went blind when he was 21 in the U.S. Marines and decided to become a magician. Everyone said, ‘Gary you’re blind, you can’t be a magician.’ He works with kids and they don’t know he’s blind. He’ll say ‘If things go wrong in your life, you must never give up, there’s always a way forward.’ He does cross-country skiing, scuba diving, sky diving and he’s taught himself to paint, which is incredible.” Chimpanzees are forward-looking creatures, a trait Goodall said they share with humans, particularly young humans. “The greatest danger to our future is apathy. Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help shall we all be saved.”

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Paper thin, Iron strength Colorful umbrella dancers highlight a celebration of the Chinese New Year in Balboa Park. Youthful performers call forth honor and prosperity in the year ahead while acknowledging ancestors. Photo By Marco Figueroa Layout By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran