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Human rights advocates decry Holtville carnage A P R I L 25, 202 1
A N A C P H A L L O F FA M E N E W S PA P E R
SC DEBATE TEAM PAIR MAKE IT TO U.S. NATIONAL TOURNAMENT BY XIOMARA VILLARREAL-GERARDO Associate Editor-in-Chief
There is no debating that the 2021 Southwestern College debate team is extraordinary. Khamani Griffin and Joaquin Arreola are the first team from SC to qualify for the prestigious National Debate Tournament, an elite invitation-only event in its 75th year. Students from Ivy League colleges, private universities, state universities and community colleges
across America competed against each other for top honors. Veteran coach Eric Maag said he was happy to be part of the team led by new head debate coach Ryan Wash. Maag has coached forensics and debate at SC for 16 years, he said, and was “thrilled” to see students from the college qualify for the hyper-competitive NDT. Maag said it is beyond impressive that Wash was able to lead students to the NDT in PLEASE SEE Debate PG. 2
A N AT I O N A L PA C E M A K E R AWA R D N E W S PA P E R
A PARTIAL FALL REOPENING Vaccinations, screening required, 20-30 percent capacity for fall schedule
BY EDGAR ORTEGA and ITATI FADDIS Assistant Editors
Southwestern College’s Chula Vista campus will remain a ghost town through the summer, but plans for a partial fall reopen are gaining momentum. Steadily improving coronavirus
infection and hospitalization rates in the South County have encouraged college administrators to attempt a broader reopening in August than was initially discussed in March and April – including a possible bump from 20 percent student capacity to 30 percent. A l l e m p l oye e s a n d s t u d e nt s who wish to work or study on campus will require COVID-19 vaccinations. The CSU and UC systems announced last week that vaccinations will be mandatory o n i t s c a m p u s e s . C a l i f o r n i a’s
community college system has yet to announce a statewide policy, but individual colleges like SC are already mandating vaccines. Some SC science labs, performing arts ensembles and athletic teams are scheduled to reopen in August in limited numbers, but the remainder of classes are scheduled to continue as remote or online education. Current plans are to reopen SC completely in January 2022. Other notable elements of the rapidly-evolving reopening plans PLEASE SEE Reopen PG. 6
ENVIRONMENTALISTS CONTINUE FIGHT FOR SICK TIJUANA RIVER South Bay cities press lawsuit over polluted beaches, endangered health BY BIANCA HUNTLEY ORTEGA, MARIA HERRERA IBARRA and KAITLYN GREER News Editor, Assistant Editors
It is the 90th anniversary of a South County nightmare and no one is celebrating. Tijuana’s sewage rolls on across the border — sometimes trickling, sometimes in roaring torrents. The once-picturesque Tijuana River Valley is choked with trash, tires and raw sewage. It is a slow-moving stew of mercury, benzene, cadmium, DDT and hexavalent chromium medical waste. It hosts drug-resistant flesh-eating bacteria and has caused countless people from Coronado to Rosarito to become seriously ill — often causing infections that damage the eyes, ears and throats of swimmers and surfers. Even the toughest of tough guys such as Navy SEALs, U.S. Marines and Border Patrol agents are no match for the bacterial beasts of Boca de Rio and the polluted shoreline of Imperial Beach. Undocumented migrants crossing the river and wetlands also fall ill. Some die. Greg Cox has been around for most of it. “It’s a shame it has continued this long,” he said. “Ninety years is inexcusable.” Finger pointing between the nations has fueled recrimination and ill will that has paralyzed progress, Cox said. In 2000 a brainy bilingual surfer named Dr. Serge Dedina founded WildCoast/CostaSalve, a binational organization created to foster cooperation with environmentalists and PLEASE SEE River PG. 4
It’s a shame it has continued this long. Ninety years is inexcusable. — GREG COX FORMER COUNTY SUPERVISOR
JULIA WOOCK / STAFF
Heaven help day laborers
F
ranciscan Friar Adolfo Mercado (center) blesses carloads of food and clothing as humanitarians assemble at Chicano Park prior to visiting Mexican and Haitian day laborers at three regional Home Depot stores. Day laborers are mostly homeless, living in canyons and streambeds near the stores. Enrique Morones of Gente Unida (r) organizes the visits. Page 3
Zolezzi rebuts charges from 'defective' investigation, insists she was scapegoated BY JULIA WOOCK Editor-in-Chief
EDITOR’S NOTE: An article in the October 5, 2020 issue of The
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CIAO MANGIA ITALIANO! South Bay's political and civic gathering place is another victim of the global pandemic. Pg 9 THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN
SC MUST PRIORITIZE MENTAL HEALTH Pandemic-related maladies overwhelm students, faculty. Pg 7
BLACK JOURNALISTS SHOW THE WAY San Diego Association of Black Journalists professionals mentor SC students. Pg 10
Sun headlined “Zolezzi Fired Following Critical Report By Investigator’’ detailed the conclusions of a 245-page investigation report by the Titan Group regarding complaints made by college employees against former Director of Facilities Charlotte Zolezzi. The Sun obtained a copy of the report through the California Public Records Act after former college president Dr. Kindred Murillo and Vice President of Human Resources Rose DelGaudio refused requests to release it. Murillo and DelGaudio declined comment for the October article, but other college administrators told The Sun that Zolezzi had been “fired” following nearly three-and-a-half years on paid leave. Zolezzi declined an opportunity in September 2020 to comment on the October article. In March 2021 she contacted The Sun to deny that she had been fired and to request an opportunity to reply to the charges made against her in the Titan report. Murillo confirmed PLEASE SEE Zolezzi PG. 11
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NEW TRUSTEES BRING NEW PERSPECTIVES SD City College professor Kirin Macapugay, BVHS teacher/coach Don Dumas bring experience, service BY MATTHEW BROOKS Senior Editor
When the governing board went searching for two replacements, it did not have to look far. Don Dumas was right across the street, Kirin Macapugay is a former student and frequent visitor. Macapugay and Dumas were appointed to replace Tim Nader and Nora Vargas, who were both elected to other offices in November. Vargas is now a San Diego County Supervisor, Nader a Superior Court Judge. Governing Board President Leticia Cazares said the search came up with “two awesome new trustees.” “We are honored to welcome these incredible student-centered leaders to our governing board,” she said. “We look forward to continuing the important work of creating a culture of belonging where every student and employee has what they need to succeed and thrive.”
KIRIN MACAPUGAY
A Morse High School graduate who began taking classes at SC when she was a high school junior, Macapugay said she clicked with the college on her first day on campus. She completed 16 units by the time she graduated from Morse in 1996 and decided to stay at SC for her freshman and sophomore years. “I could not afford to attend a university right after high school, but that is not the reason I stayed at Southwestern College,” she said. “Going to Southwestern was a great experience for me. I was comfortable there because of my having taken classes while I was in high school. I paid only $270 a semester! A bargain. I had a good time there and learned a lot from some really great professors.” She transferred to SDSU in 1998 and graduated with a degree in psychology in 2000. In 2002 she completed a Master’s in social work, her passion. Macapugay said she worked briefly at Bonita Vista High School, then fulltime as a social worker. “Helping people and seeing to the wellbeing of people is important to me,” she said. “Women of color in the South Bay need much more support and attention than they have historically received. They need more people to advocate for them.” Macapugay said she received a life-changing phone call in 2014 “straight out of the blue” when an administrator in the SDSU Graduate School of Social Work asked if she would teach a class. “I never expected to be a teacher, but I love it!” she said. “I taught other classes at SDSU for a couple years then applied for a professorship at San Diego City College in 2017. I got it!” Teaching gives her a platform to help develop caring, service-oriented young adults who can help to transform the community, she said. “Part of my personal code of ethics is to empower people who are oppressed, vulnerable and living in poverty,” she said. “All people deserve compassionate care.” Social workers see so much of what is happening in society, she said, some of which is inspiring, some that needs attention from policy makers. “I am constantly reminded that things aren’t always fair,” she said. “We must work toward justice. We must insure access to opportunities. We must remove barriers so that people can access opportunities.” Social work will inform her service on the governing board, Macapugay said. “I think the way Southwestern College serves the community is heartening, but how can we build on that?” she said. “We need to constantly modernize. We need to continually ask if we are
Debate: First team to qualify for National Debate Tournament CONTINUED FROM PG. 1
his very first year. “It just speaks volume about his commitment to debate and his intelligence,” Maag said. “The way he pushes and motivates students is exceptional. I am really excited about having him on board.” Wash joined SC as Director of Debate just eight months ago, but has years of experience as a national student debate champion and coach. When his students qualified for NDT, Wash kept things cool. “I am a big stickler about doing what got you here,” he said. “I told the students they should be really excited, but I did not want that
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KIRIN MACAPUGAY
DON DUMAS
The only promise I can make is that I will always try to put people first and do what is right. I want to be with students and staff as we head into our futures, some that is known, most that is unknown. Students are our priority and I never want to forget that. — Don Dumas
doing everything possible to prepare students for what lies out there in their futures.” Southwestern College is a starkly different place in 2021 than it was in the mid-1990s when she was a student, Macapugay said. “What worked then may be obsolete now,” she said. “Two decades ago things were so different. That is a challenge human beings kind of always have to face. We must always focus on student success, which I know people at Southwestern College do. That requires being open minded about tailoring instruction and programs for students. We are never going to be a one-sizefits-all kind of college.” Racial tension in America is running high, Macapugay said, and “Southwestern College is a microcosm” of what is happening in society at large. “I think the discussions we are having are kind of painful, but very healthy,” she said. “I cannot change my skin tone and would never try to. I am very proud to be a Filipina, but it took me a while to get there. Sometimes I was the only woman or person of color at meetings. It became more like that as I moved upward. It took me some time to be okay with that. The way I look at it now is that it is a blessing. I can be that different voice at the table representing people who need an advocate.” Past racism in San Diego County has subtle, but powerful aftershocks, she said, including the practices of “redlining” in the 1940s – early 1970s. Redlining was the written or verbal exclusion of people of color from certain communities and from housing. Developers, realtors, bankers and others in the housing industry often had “covenants” that prevented Latinos, AfricanAmericans, Asian-Americans and Jews from purchasing homes in coastal communities and middle class enclaves. “The effects of redlining are still here,” said Macapugay. “Why do you think so many people of color live south of the (Interstate) 8? It was by design! People of color were pushed into the South Bay and into Southeast (San Diego). That’s why Southwestern College is so important. It is the only (institution of higher education) in the South County.” Higher education is America’s best means to
to change the way they got ready because it would have taken them out of their comfort zones.” Griffin, a communications and African-American Studies major, has been on the team for just over a year. “It is a huge honor,” he said. “It means a lot to qualify for the NDT with the team that I did.” Griffin said qualifying was a team effort. “It is the first time I felt like I did not have to do everything on my own,” he said. “We had immense support from individuals who were truly dedicated and wanted to see us succeed.” A r r e o l a , a p h i l o s o p hy a n d communications major, and Griffin were partnered up just three months ago. Griffin said he and Arreola bonded because they “shared the same vibe.” “Joaquin and I are good friends,” he said. “It makes it a lot easier when
elevate people out of poverty, Macapugay said. “Community college is amazing because it is one of the last frontiers to changed society,” she said. “That’s why we need to remove (financial) barriers and others. We need to make higher education accessible to the people who need it the most.”
DON DUMAS
Bonita Vista High School history teacher Don Dumas said he is a longtime admirer of Southwestern College, but believes the college is not close to reaching its potential. “Southwestern has done a wonderful job educating a binational population,” he said. “There are areas that need our attention and I am optimistic that we can get there.” Southwestern College – like most American colleges and high schools – is struggling with equity, the ability to provide the same level of services and success to all students. Data from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office indicates that Black male students and Latinos at SC fare less well than other students. “My two passions as an educator are seeing students reach their goals and equity,” he said. “I mean, that’s why we are here, to inspire and guide our students so that they can reach their potential. We need to be mindful of equity because our society has not always been a level playing field for all students. We are improving in that area, but we have a long way to go.” Achieving equity after hundreds of years of inequity in American society will require education leaders to see things through a different lens, Dumas said. Southwestern College has begun to take steps in the right direction, he said, but hard work remains. “I would like to see SC close its achievement gap,” he said. “I think SC has been mindful of this situation for many years and most of its faculty and staff are dedicated to this work. I am looking forward to advocating for policies and practices that improve the transfer rate and the degree completion rate for underserved groups.” Dumas, the first Black SC trustee, said he is aware of the racial tension at the college and hopes to be part of the effort to improve the campus climate.
you are competing with someone that you get along with and have a really good working relationship with.” Arreola said he was proud to compete at the NDT. Coming from a community college made it even sweeter, he said. “It is reassuring that my partner and I were able to make it (as community college students),” he said. “Being the first Latino and Black students to reach the tournament is also very powerful.” Before being partnered up, Arreola worked with Roberto Villagomez and Griffin with Abel Zambrano. Maag said the work of Villagomez and Zambrano was significant to the qualifying process. SC tallied four wins and four losses in the tournament, Wash said, punching above its weight for a community college up against major universities. “I think this is a super great
“The (anti-blackness) lawsuits filed against the district are troubling, but not unique to the college,” he said. “There is a society-wide problem of anti-Blackness. We should work to eliminate anti-Blackness everywhere.” One of the first steps to eliminate antiBlackness and harmful stereotypes about people of color is to include them in the K-12 curriculum, he said. Not representing people of color in American history books damages the psyches of minority children, he said. “When you are a person of color you don’t learn too much about your own cultural background in K-12 schools,” he said. “You need to find that in college. Black people don’t show up in K-12 curriculum. There is a kind of systemic erasure. Students of color learn that their ancestors’ experiences are secondary to those of Western Europeans. That reinforces this notion that that people of color are in an inferior position in world history.” Southwestern College will have a role in the slowly-developing national effort to make textbooks and curriculum more inclusive, Dumas said. Colleges and universities are often places of great discovery for Americans of color. “I didn’t know so much was missing from the K-12 curriculum until I was in college,” he said. “High school students of color too often find that their values and cultural norms are not compatible with the mission of the schools. They are often marginalized for the way they talk, their fashion choices, their hair style. Too many schools have systemically criminalized your culture and what you bring to the classroom. By criminalize I mean everything from being scolded by the teacher, being sent to the principal or having the police called.” America’s racial reckoning has been very painful to watch, Dumas said, but a source of hope. “Things are starting to change,” he said. “Southwestern College is changing as well. That is encouraging. That is healthy.” Dumas coaches the varsity basket team at BVHS, an experience that has informed his leadership style, he said. “I see myself as a teacher-leader,” he said. “I refuse to be outworked. Good things don’t happen overnight and they don’t happen without people pushing for them. You have to keep after it. When you are a leader there will always be hiccups, but you cannot give up. Always put in the work, never stray off course from your mission.” Dumas said growing up as a young Black student seeking to become an educated person and a successful professional shaped his worldview and personal philosophies. “I understand what students of color go through,” he said. “I have that perspective. Every person of color knows that the higher up you move in society, the more people in positions of authority will critique you. We have a saying in the Black community that we have to be twice as good. We have to be almost perfect. That’s a lot of pressure because no one is perfect. I still feel that I have to be exceptional. That is part of the historical experience people of color have.” He was quick to add that people of color must strive to remain positive and foster a can-do spirit. “I always assume people are fair-minded and equity-minded until they prove otherwise,” he said. “I have found that at Southwestern College.” Dumas said he is hopeful that faculty and staff can weather “bumps and hiccups” and push into a brighter future. “I want to do whatever I can to help the faculty and staff develop a positive campus culture,” he said. “That is what I am looking forward to the most. Southwestern College is trending in the right direction. I will do everything in my power not to mess that up, to enhance that. Southwestern College should lead with confidence. There is nothing we cannot do if we do it together.”
COURTESY ERNESTO RIVERA
ON THE MAIN STAGE — Joaquin Arreola (above) and Khamani Griffin qualified for the National Debate Tournament and racked up four wins. They were the first SC students to crack the elite 75-year-old competition.
showing,” he said. “(Griffin and Arreola) are sophomores competing against mostly seniors and juniors, and they were holding their own. I think they have become excited about their futures in debate.” Griffin said he has learned a great deal from debate. He confessed feeling scared at first due to the intense preparation. “Policy debate taught me how to be a better civilian,” he said, “but more specifically, a better Black civilian in a world I feel is very unpredictable.” Arreola said debating helped him become more confident. “ Pu b l i c s p e a k i n g i s o n e o f (Americans’ greatest) fears next to death,” he said. “I think that if anyone at SC is interested in boosting their confidence and striving to make the best of their community college experience, then I would definitely recommend joining the debate team.”
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JULIA WOOCK / STAFF
STRAIGHT FROM THE FRIAR — Homeless day laborers accept food and drink from Franciscan Friar Adolfo Mercado at an encampment near a Home Depot. Starting at dawn, the workers amble up from a stream bed and wait alongside the road offering themselves as landscapers, carpenters or strong backs to do hard work.
IF IT BE MAN’S WORK, I’LL DO IT BY JULIA WOOCK Editor-in-Chief
J
uan Hernandez is a walking Swiss army knife. He can paint. He can mow and trim. He can hammer, saw, drill and bevel. He can glue, sand and varnish. He can make anything out of wood, fix anything with a motor and get any balky car to run again. He can landscape with plants, wood chips, bricks, blocs and rocks. He is a rare talent, but because he is a Mexican Swiss army knife he often works all day, all weekend or all week for less than minimum wage. Sometimes he gets nothing. He lives in a frigid streambed near a Home Depot with his compadres, praying that rain and la migra stay away. Mexican day laborers are San Diego County’s very productive, very hidden labor force. They are the creativity and sweat behind thousands of landscapes, buildings and interiors. Their products are on display in every community, but they themselves rarely get a second glance from passersby. They are invisible, and often cold, sick and hungry. Gente Unida founder Enrique Morones equates the region’s “expendable” day laborers to the “expendable” farm workers Cesar Chavez fought for in the 1970s. He said they are not expendable at all, but essential with a capital E. Hernandez, 42, is from Tijuana, though he lives in a slice of earth across the street from a busy Home Depot. Every day for the past four years he ambles out of his camp, cleans up to look presentable and stands along the roadway hoping a contractor, landscape crew or weekend warrior will open the door to his car or truck to wave him in. Where they are going, what he will do, how long he will do it and how much he will be paid are rarely mentioned. “Sometimes they will hire us for a job and then not pay us,” he said. “It is something that happens often, either to me or someone else here. So we try to stick together to know who to work for.” Fernando, 43, is from Culiacán, Sinaloa. Like his compadre Juan, he said he has worked for about four years as an itinerant day laborer. Working as a day laborer on spec is a grind, he said, and the hardest part is showing up every day of the week and only finding work one or two days. “We are always ready, waiting and willing to help,” he said. Fernando said hours vary depending on the employers and the projects, but a typical workday is 6:30 a.m. -- 3:30 p.m. Jobs are generally 10-15 minutes away, but can be much further. Most employers give them water and lunch of some sort, but not always. Morones said day laborers are ghosts that hundreds of motorists see, but flesh and blood people who are invisible. It was not until 1986, he said, that he became aware of San Diego County’s gente del canons (people of the canyons). One of his first actions when he founded Border Angels in 1986 was feeding farm workers living
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JULIA WOOCK / STAFF
JULIA WOOCK / STAFF
in the canyons of Carlsbad. He said Gente Unida activist and SDSU MS graduate Erika Alfaro told him her father knew Morones from his visits to the canyons years ago. Her father was a farmworker in the strawberry fields who picked fruit to help pay her way through CSU San Marcos and SDSU. “(There are) a lot of myths (about day laborers) because a lot of people just drive by the Home Depot and don’t think about those people out there (along the road),” he said. “None of these people want to be homeless. People don’t know their stories.” Unlike some of the areas occupied by San Diego County’s homeless population, the day laborers take pride in keeping their homes in the canyons and roadsides picked up. Unfortunately, the city of San Diego is not picking up the barrels of trash. Hernandez said city and county crews used to pick up trash every 3-4 weeks, but no one has emptied dumpsters in at least four months. “We clean up around here,” he said. “We sweep and we pick up trash. We formed a group and took turns picking up trash. Those with pickup trucks take trash bags away as often as possible.” Gente Unida schedules periodic visits to day labor camps in San Diego and Chula Vista, bringing food, drinks, clean clothes and encouragement. Even during the pandemic volunteers brought supplies on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Martin Luther King Day and other holidays.
PARKING LOT POT LUCK — Volunteers from Gente Unida periodically bring food, water and clothing to Mexican and Haitian migrant workers outside Home Deport stores. Some San Diegans abuse the men by not feeding or paying them after hours of backbreaking labor.
Mexican day laborers at the Home Depot in Mission Valley have new neighbors -- refugees from Haiti. Polylingual card games in Spanish, French, creole and fragmented English were punctuated with laughter. A small group of Haitians snacked on strawberry Pop Tarts and orange juice from the back of an old grey pickup truck and recounted their harrowing experiences working on stadiums in Brazil. Olympic and World Cup Soccer organizers shipped thousands of Haitians to Brazil to build stadiums and infrastructure for the glamorous global athletic events, only to abandon them when the work was done. Rather than return to destitution in Haiti, they made their way up the west coast of South America, through Central America and onto the “refugee highway” of Mexico. Many are stranded in Tijuana, but those who found sponsors are now working menial jobs in the United States and Canada. “There is nothing in Haiti, nothing,” said one who winked and said his name was Eddie. “Better here, man. At least we are not starving, you know?” Morones said the day labor camps are American capitalism at its worst. As long as society benefits from the cheap labor and takes no responsibility for the men who do it, the Home Depot camps will grind on and the predawn wakeup calls will continue. Juan, the Mexican Swiss army knife, will stay sharp. There’s work to be done.
THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN
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COURTESY WILDCOAST
RIVER OF TEARS — Volunteers from WildCoast work to remove recyclable plastics and other garbage at a solid waste catch on the American end of the Tijuana River. Their efforts help to dramatically reduce the amount of trash that enters the ocean.
River: Government, activists demand a solution to sewage, garbage fouling beaches CONTINUED FROM PG. 1
This is like the worst man-made environmental disaster. There’s nowhere else to compare it to because it is a binational issue, and on the U.S. side alone there are multiple jurisdictions that oversee the land. — BETHANY CASE CLEAN BORDER WATER NOW
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scientists. WildCoast has enjoyed some remarkable conservation successes in Baja California and the Eastern Pacific, but not much with the Tijuana River. WildCoast Communications and Policy Director Fay Crevoshay said the Tijuana River sewage has proved intractable. “This problem is a problem of two countries in one region,” she said. “You cannot solve this problem from one side, not from Mexico and not from the U.S.” B e t h a ny C a s e , c o - c h a i r o f Clean Border Water Now, agreed. C h e m i c a l s , t ra s h a n d s ewa ge pollution impacts nature reserves and farmland on the U.S. side and the colonias in Tijuana, along with our shared ocean, she said. “This is like the worst man-made environmental disaster,” she said. “There’s nowhere else to compare it to because it is a binational issue, and on the U.S. side alone there are multiple jurisdictions that oversee the land.” Dedina is now mayor of Imperial Beach. He entered politics largely to work on IB’s horrific environmental issues, he said. Dedina said he and his sons have fallen seriously ill due to the pollution over the years. Sewage, he insists, is a “growing crisis.” “The most important thing we can do for people is to make sure they have access to clean air and clean water and public infrastructure that works, whether it’s in Mexico or the United States,” he said. Recently the San Diego County Board of Supervisors created a South County Environmental Task Force and declared the Tijuana River a public health crisis. Dedina said acknowledging that polluted water and air is detrimental to the South County’s public health is a welcome start.
“The fact is, the sewage and toxic waste (dries and becomes airborne) and folks in South San Diego, San Ysidro, Imperial Beach and Coronado are breathing it,” he said. “It’s a very, very toxic and unhealthy situation.” Case agreed and said she wants the county to issue a state of emergency, which allows the state of California to do so as well. Once that happens money from all levels of government can be released to start infrastructure projects that could solve the issue. “They’re doing studies, and it’s so aggravating because there have been so many studies done,” she said. Mosquitoes are another serious problem, Crevoshay said. Tires in the riverbed hold contaminated water where mosquitoes lay eggs, causing their population to explode. Local mosquitoes spread disease like Dengue Fever, Zika Virus, West Nile Virus and even Malaria. “Borders and walls don’t stop anything,” she said. Cox said through SB 507 Senator Ben Hueso secured funding to study options to capture and treat sewage. It proposed $400 million in projects that could reduce the number of days of raw sewage enters the U.S. to about 12 days. In 2019 Cox, then President of the National Association of Counties, went to the White House along with Dedina and other local leaders. They met with officials from several government agencies to suggest the United States, Mexico and Canada Agreement (USMCA) contribute funding to address the longstanding pollution problem. Dedina said he does not think the $300 million dollars allocated by the U.S. government is enough. Much more needs to be done to mitigate environmental issues impacting communities along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. “I think a good first start is to take the money that was allocated towards the border wall and reinvest it into infrastructure along the U.S. and Mexico border,” he said. Cox said the money from the USMCA will be used to reduce sewage in the Tijuana River Valley and the open ocean that causes beach closures from Rosarito to
Coronado – sometimes beyond. “It’s a tremendous economic impact on the city of Imperial Beach and to a certain extent Coronado,” he said. Beaches are often closed for 180 days or more, Cox said. Case said when its beaches are closed tourists avoid Imperial Beach and spend their money elsewhere. Dedina agreed, calling p o l l u t i o n I B ’s m o s t c r i p p l i n g economic and health problem. Dedina has surfed Imperial Beach since 1977, but recently had surgery on his ears to mitigate damage caused by the polluted, bacterialaced breaks of IB. Union leaders of the U.S. Border Patrol, Navy medical personnel and migrants advocacy groups have all publicly stated that the dirty water is a serious health threat. Cox and Dedina both called pollution a national security issue. Dedina said the military agrees. “The fact is, you have toxic waste and sewage impacting the United States from a foreign country and impacting our national security personnel,” he said. B o r d e r Pa t r o l a g e n t s h av e spoken out and shared how agents experience respiratory illnesses and other health maladies, Cox said. There are also reports that the soles of their boots have corroded due to the chemical pollution from some of the factories located near the Tijuana River. Case said Navy SEALs do not train in the ocean when the beaches are closed. “We know for a fact that Navy SEALs have gotten sick,” she said, “but the Navy has not spoken out about it.” Cox said the pollution damages the region’s economic development and its system of parks. Border Field State Park has 1,800 acres of parkland, 22 miles of trails, and a camping site – none of which can be used during a sewage spill. California State Parks spokesman Jorge Moreno said toxic runoff from the Tijuana River closes the park an average of 165 days a year. Pollution also sickens park staff, Mo re n o s a i d , a n d h a s c au s e d services to be reduced or eliminated.
Lifeguards were eliminated due to sewage contamination of the ocean, he said. Un d e r t h e US M C A t h e U. S . government has allocated funds to address the pollution, but none can go to helping the Mexican government solve infrastructure issues south of the border. Crevoshay said the two countries must to work together. “Mexico doesn’t have the money to invest,” she said. “In Mexico they’re not thinking $300 million, they’re thinking $100,000 here another there.” WildCoast is trying to close the money gap, she said. Donations support cost-effective projects like trash collection systems and pumps. In January WildCoast set up a trash boom suspension system in the Lureles region of the Tijuana River to catch tires, trash and plastics, much of which can be recycled. WildCoast is also collecting data for future studies and funding requests, Crevoshay said. Surfrider is backing a project that funnels water in the Tijuana River Channel into a catch basin, Case said. In the near future a collection station will send dirty water through a wastewater plant, she said. Surfrider also filed a lawsuit against the International Boundary and Water Commission. Imperial Beach, San Diego and Chula Vista joined as plaintiffs. Surfrider aims to keep the issue at the forefront, Case said. Dedina, praised for his decades of diplomacy, admitted he is finally running out of patience. Earlier this year the usually-mannerly mayor wrote a scorching tweet at Mexican bureaucrats and Baja California Gov. Jaime Bonilla. “If I get one more WhatsApp message or Tweet from officials in Mexico claiming the sewage crisis is ‘fixed’ I will lose my %#&@!” he wrote. He may not be alone. CHECK IT OUT
To learn more about the Surfrider Foundation in San Diego, visit its website sandiego.surfrider.org.
APRIL 25, 2021, VOL 57-A, ISSUE 5
COURTESY ERNESTO RIVERA
DREAMWEAVER — Casandra Morales said she found her voice at the SC DREAMer Center. SC may have thousands of DREAMer students and alumni, but there are no accurate figures.
CITIZENSHIP REMAINS DREAMERS’ DREAM AS U.S. POLITICS EVOLVE BY EDGAR ORTEGA Assistant Editor
Maria Clemente is a DREAMer with a dream. She would love to travel, but dares not. Clemente (a pseudonym) is one of an estimated 3.6 million who may gain citizenship if Congress passes the Dream Act of 2021. It is far from a done deal. Though Congressional Democrats and President Biden support the legislation, conservative Republicans, nativists and white supremacists are lined up against it. “I’ve always said DREAMers are American as Americans, just without papers,” she said. Alejandra Garcia, project specialist for the Southwestern College DREAMer Center, said DREAMers were raised as Americans, but unable to access the same opportunities of full citizens. Clemente’s travel will have to wait, she said. “Even if you were to apply for the Advance Parole, it’s always up to the Border Patrol agent to decide whether you’ll be (able to re-enter) or not,” she said. Ruben Luis Reyes of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said he is optimistic about the prospect of the DREAM Act becoming law.. “Once it gets to Biden, he’ll sign it,” he said. “I have no doubts about that.” Gente Unida founder Enrique Morones has seen the DREAMer issue bounce back and forth depending on which political party was in power. Morones has been a staunch advocate for immigrants for more than 25 years. “DREAMers, in general, represent the best of the American spirit,’’ he said. “They are soldiers, students, professionals, entrepreneurs...people who strengthen our economy and our society.” Garcia agreed. “We are resilient and that’s what we represent,” she said. Before Reyes was a lawyer he tutored high school students, he said, some who were undocumented. DACA allowed them to earn degrees, purchase homes, start businesses and contribute billions to the economy. “It is a huge, huge benefit to bring in undocumented individuals,” he said. Clemente said she was 17 when she began applying to colleges. That is when her mother told her she did not have a Social Security number and was not an American citizen. She was stunned by the revelation. “That shut the door to education because I wouldn’t be able to go to college without (financial aid),” she said. In 2012 she was able to revisit her dreams of attending a university, thanks to DACA. She received a Social Security number and moved back to California to attend college. A pathway to citizenship would allow Clemente to give back to her country -- the United States, she said. Morones and Gente Unida organized a years-long voter registration drive to encourage Latinos to vote in the 2020 presidential election. Now that Democrats are in power, Morones said, they need reminders that Latinos vote. “Unlike with President Obama (who had an obstructionist Republican Congress), we’re a little bit more vigilant in holding their feet to the fire,” he said. “I know that President Biden has good intentions overall, but we have to make sure (Democrats) come through.” Reyes agreed. “We’ve let the problem fester for so long,” he said. “DACA was putting a band-aid on an open wound, but it didn’t stop the bleeding and it didn’t help cure the overall problem.” Garcia said DACA is not enough. “I still have a lot of students who don’t qualify for DACA because they don’t meet the specific dates or the specific requirements,” she said. Clemente said it is stressful living as a DACA recipient. “I’ve heard the (motto) ‘Undocumented and Unafraid,’ but to me (my immigration status) is this huge secret I don’t talk about,” she said. “That’s something I keep to myself.” Reyes said the DREAM Act is far from perfect, but considering the current political climate, “it’s about as good as you’re going to get, if you can even get it.” Clemente reluctantly agreed. “It is so unfair to keep (us) in limbo,” she said. “My life is in (politicians’) hands and their decisions are going to shape my future.”
APRIL 25, 2021, VOL 57-A, ISSUE 5
COURTESY DIEGO PEDROZA
MURDER CAPITAL — Women are a disproportionate percentage of the soaring homicide rate in Tijuana. Anti-femicide activists are also growing in number and demand that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador take meaningful action.
PROTESTERS DEMAND GOVERNMENT ACTION ON FEMICIDE CRISIS More than 4,000 known femicides in Mexico last year BY PAULINA NUNEZ and EDGAR ORTEGA Assistant Editors
TIJUANA, MEXICO—Women in this city face an even graver threat than rampant COVID-19. Their leading cause of death is men. Tijuana is a global capitol for femicide, with a murder rate of nearly 11 per 100,000 in 2020. Mexico loses at least 10 women daily to femicide, often unspeakably violent. Studies by the World Health Organization concluded that 1 in 3 women on the planet have been physically or sexually assaulted. World Economic Forum data shows that six women are killed every hour by men worldwide. At least 4,000 Mexican women and girls were murdered in 2020 — that were counted. The actual number is almost certainly much higher. Mass graves in Tijuana, Juarez, Irapuato, Alcapulco and other femicide clusters sometimes have uncountable numbers of dismembered bodies — all female. Activists in Tijuana and across Mexico have expressed outrage at Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an erstwhile progressive who critics say has made little or no effort to stop the genocide. Southwestern College student Bridgett Valenzuela was among the protesters at a recent rally in this city of between 2.2-3 million. Valenzuela and her fellow protesters were advocating for people of color and women’s rights. She said the news media needs to do more to cover the issue of epidemic femicide. “The only reason it’s even being talked about is because of all the people taking a stance, marching and taking part in protests,” she said. Valenzuela said women are the targets of violence in Mexico because of a toxic macho culture where they are perceived as weak. Many men think they can get away with hurting women because nobody
The only reason it’s even being talked about is because of all the people taking a stance, marching and taking part in protests. — BRIDGETT VALENZUELA SWC STUDENT
is going to believe the women if they contact law enforcement, she said. America’s Me Too Movement has helped make people more inclined to believe Mexican victims of violence, she said. “Women came out and said ‘This is happening to me, too. We’re not making this up,’” she said. Harassment and sexual objectification of women has no borders. Briana Ramirez (a pseudonym) is an SC student who crosses the San Ysidro border daily for school. She said she experiences chronic catcalling, stalking and harassment on her way to campus. “I cross the border walking almost every day and I like to go to school comfortably, so I wear leggings and a sweatshirt, nothing really provocative,” she said. “I’ve noticed that when I’m walking, men see that I’m alone and they think it’s easy to catcall me, ask for my phone number.” Ramirez said she is often followed by men from Mexico all the way across the border into the U.S. “Instead of thinking about my day at school, I’m thinking I need to walk faster so the people following me don’t approach me,” she said. PLEASE SEE Femicide PG. 6
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Reopen: Vaccines required, temperature checks part of plan
ETHNIC STUDIES TAKING HOLD
CONTINUED FROM PG. 1
include: • Daily COVID screenings for all employees and students entering campus. • Issuing wristbands to individuals approved to enter campus. • Hiring part-time personnel to conduct screening. • Outdoor, covered study spaces with wifi, possibly in Lot J. • Zooming spaces for students taking both face-to-face and remote classes. • Improved campus cleanliness and sanitation. • Installation of modern heating and air conditioning ventilation systems. • Clear signage to lead students to face-to-face classrooms and labs. • Reopening the Cesar Chavez student services center staffed at 50 percent its normal level. Even as California’s COVID-19 data shows improvement in infection rates, the region served by SC remains dangerously high, according to County data. SC President Dr. Mark Sanchez said the college is monitoring the COVID-19 infection data differently than the San Diego County Department of Public Health. “We’ve essentially seen that our COVID-19 infection rates in the South Bay are almost double what they are in San Diego County,” he said. Sanchez said he wants to see the college open as broadly as possible as soon as it is safe, a position echoed by faculty and classified employee leaders. America’s vaccine rollout has dramatically improved the local situation, he said. “We’re actually seeing the leveling off between the County data metrics and the South Bay metrics,” he said. “We’ve seen a significant decline in the infection rate.” Sanchez said the college will take extra safety precautions. “We’re going to make sure that we put high-grade air filters into the HVAC systems, so that any airborne viruses are filtered out,” he said. “(We will also encourage) social distancing.” Silvia Nogales, president of the classified employees union, said SC is in a predicament due to its location. “The impacts of the pandemic have been much more severe here than in other parts of the county,” she said. “We border Tijuana and so the rates of contracting COVID-19, the death rates, the hospitalization rates are much more elevated in the South Bay.” Nogales said reopening safely is complicated for a campus with 2,000 employees that usually enrolls 20,000 students. “There will be departmental plans because every department, every unit, every school, every center operates differently,” she said. “We’ll need to plan for those types of unique situations for those unique departments.” Rob Shaffer, president of the faculty union, agreed. “The factors being considered are the data from the CDC, the infection rates, particularly in South County, how to control and monitor traffic on campus,” he said. “And, of course, we want to put the students first.” Nogales said college leadership needs to inspire confidence. “People have to feel safe to come back to work,” she said. “That’s the important thing. They have to have trust and they have to have confidence that we are looking out for their safety.” PIO Lillian Leopold said college surveys of students indicate they are weary of online classes and eager to resume face-to-face instruction. SC has suffered a 14 percent enrollment falloff since March 2020. “We’ve heard from our students that they really don’t like the online instruction,” she said. “Our students prefer classes in person, and so we are hopeful that once we return to fully in-person classes, that the enrollment trend will reverse.” Shaffer said faculty miss students, too. “I have adapted to teaching remotely, but I miss the students,” he said. “Students are the best part of my job.”
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BY BIANCA HUNTLEY ORTEGA News Editor
David Walker, the Black abolitionist, had a tough sell. He had to convince the strong-willed White abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison that a gradual approach to the end of slavery was a sucker’s bet. Incrementalism, he argued, was a road to the status quo. Walker carried the day and Garrison changed his thinking. Emancipation had to happen immediately and completely. Southwest High School social sciences teacher Francisco Medina Villa also had a tough sell. He had to go up against hundreds of years of Eurocentric history to introduce a modern ethnic studies curriculum. He also hopes, he said, to carry the day. Ethnic studies has been a controversial concept across pockets of America, including multicultural Southern California, which has frustrated proponents for years. Even educators who say they support ethnic studies often cannot agree on exactly what it means and what shape it should take. Scholar Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera defines ethnic studies as the “interdisciplinary study of difference — chiefly race, ethnicity and nation, but also sexuality, gender and other such markings — and power, as expressed by the state, by civil society and by individuals.” Medina Villa said his year-long course is a process that explores identity before touching on the intersection between the history of marginalized groups and today’s social justice movements. He worked for three years to develop the course, he said, but it was worth the effort. “I always wondered why we were so behind in terms of activism,” he said. “Part of that activism involves offering courses like this.” California’s K-12 curriculum lacks meaningful references to the historical experiences of people of color and underrepresented groups, Medina Villa said. Students generally do not learn about history beyond the EuropeanWestern Civilization perspective until college. Medina and other high school teachers insist that is too late and unacceptable. “(Traditional American history) is just the introduction, it’s a small piece of the pie,” he said. “Why not introduce high school students to that (broader) content?” Jose Fuste, an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at the UCSD, said the conversation surrounding an Ethnic Studies curriculum at the high school level is “tricky” because it requires a definition. “We need to be geographically mindful when we think about Ethnic Studies,” he said. Medina Villa agreed. Even the demographics of SDUSD and SUHSD are starkly different even though their service areas overlap, he said, requiring the course to be flexible. “Each and every school is different, their student population is different,” he said. “Teachers have different characteristics,
There’s a lot of pounding on the table by people who worked on the model curriculum, who want to make policymakers aware that ethnic studies is not multicultural studies. “Ethnic studies is really about how we got (here) in terms of fault lines of power and social identities. — JOSE FUSTE, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR UCSD approaches and experiences.” Fuste said trying to create an Ethnic Studies curriculum in a district that has never had one is challenging because “it is an unknown space.” Medina Villa said the challenges are worth the attention because it is important for students to see their histories and experiences reflected in the curriculum. Two books he uses are Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.” “The language is very straightforward,” he said. “It tells students how it is and I think that a lot of times in education we’re missing that.” Metztli Carbajal is in the first class of students to ever take an Ethnic Studies course at the Sweetwater Union High School District. She and her mother launched a campaign to have the course offered districtwide. “It’s not just a history class or sociology class, or even a peer mediation class,” she said. “Ethnic Studies is all of those combined.” At the state level ethnic studies curriculum has hit roadblocks, Median Villa said. Educators who created the original frameworks have disavowed the newer versions, claiming they have been “watered down” for political reasons in an attempt to please conservatives. “There’s a lot of misconceptions out there,” he said. “Ethnic Studies is not multicultural education. It’s history and it’s a form of critical pedagogy.”
Fuste concurred. “There’s a lot of pounding on the table by people who worked on the model curriculum, who want to make policymakers aware that ethnic studies is not multicultural studies,” he said. “Ethnic studies is really about how we got (here) in terms of fault lines of power and social identities.” At SUHSD students in the ethnic studies elective course have almost completed its first year at pilot schools, Southwest and Olympian. More campuses are expected to offer ethnic studies next year, but specifics have not been announced by district administrators. Medina said he hopes ethnic studies teachers everywhere are passionate. Teachers must be willing to share their own humanity with students, something that can be uncomfortable. “Treat this course with a lot of humility,” he said. Otay Ranch High School social sciences teacher Marcos Heredia said he has his principal’s support to teach ethnic studies in 2021-22. It will be his first time teaching it, he said, and he hopes enough students sign-up. Fuste said an ideal ethnic studies curriculum would use the collaborative Socratic method rather than a didactic lecturing teacher. “We’re not supposed to teach ethnic studies as an orthodoxy,” he said. “It’s something that has a history, but it also changes. It’s in flux. (It changes) as our students change.”
FIRST CLASS
The Sweetwater Union High School District offered its first Ethnic Studies class in 2020.
Femicide: ‘Toxic
masculinity’ blamed for murders of women CONTINUED FROM PG. 5
Valenzuela said she became a femicide activist after a horrific personal tragedy, the murder of her own mother. In January 2020 several men broke into her family’s home in Rosarito, she said. Her mother had just ended a call with her granddaughter while in the company of her autistic 14-year-old son and a visiting neighbor. The killers broke in, shot the neighbor, then gunned down Valenzuela’s mother. Valenzuela’s brother was in an adjoining room. He discovered the bodies. Authorities have not identified the murderers or their motives. “I don’t know who would do something like that to my mom, especially because she was the type of generous person who would see somebody on the street and take
Mexico is a very sexist and misogynistic country. As men, we must stop objectifying women and end the (traditional way) men see women as inferior. — DIEGO PEDROZA TIJUANA RESIDENT
them home to help them,” she said. Valenzuela said she suffers from PTSD as a result of the murders. “If it can happen to somebody like her, who literally made piñatas for a living and took care of her child with a mental disability, if something like that could happen to her, then what could happen to somebody like me?” she said. Her mother would have been 53 this month, Valenzuela said. She left behind three grieving children. “My mom’s case went under the radar and that is part of the problem here (in Mexico),” she said. “So many women are brutally murdered almost
every day it becomes normalized.” Diego Pedroza of Tijuana said he supports the feminist movement and opposes Mexico’s toxic machismo culture. Femicides have been normalized in Mexico, he said, and usually go unreported by the nation’s news media. Pedroza said the problem is rooted in a culture that treats men as superior to women. “Mexico is a very sexist and misogynistic country,” he said. “As men, we must stop objectifying women and end the (traditional way) men see women as inferior.” Pedroza said change starts with individual men.
“I believe the best way to support the movement is to look at yourself in the mirror first, then try to fix sexist behavior within your own group (of male peers),” he said. “We must protect all women, not just our moms and sisters.” Valenzuela said Indigenous women are the most victimized, a statement backed by data from WHO and American health organizations. Crimes against Indigenous women and girls are frequently miscatagorized by law enforcement and unreported by the news media because they occur in remote parts of the country. “I just feel like there’s a lot of White feminism,” she said. “If you’re not White, they usually don’t listen to you.” Valenzuela encouraged people who witness any kind of abuse against women to intervene and help end the violence. “I would definitely try to help them get professional help,” she said. “Nobody who loves you should be hurting you.”
Mexican femicides are increasing so sharply they have become uncountable. APRIL 25, 2021, VOL 57-A, ISSUE 5
E D I TO R I A L S
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O P I N I O N S / L E T T E R S TO T H E E D I T O R
The mission of the Southwestern College Sun is to serve its campuses and their communities by providing information, insights and stimulating discussions of news, activities and topics relevant to our readers. The staff strives to produce a newspaper that is timely, accurate, fair, interesting, visual and accessible to readers. Though The Sun is a student publication, staff members ascribe to the ethical and moral guidelines of professional journalists.
EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Julia Woock Associate Editor-in-Chief Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo Senior Editor Matthew Brooks Senior Staff Writer Andrew Penalosa News Editor Bianca Huntley Ortega Campus Editor Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo Viewpoints Editor Anissa Durham Arts Editor Aranza Gutierrez Cortes Sports Editor Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo Photo Editors Israel de Jessus Nieves Matthew Gomez
A S S I S TA N T E D I T O R S Itati Faddis Kaitlyn Greer Maria Herrera-Ibarra Paulina Nunez Edgar Ortega Kinya Savedra
S TA F F W R I T E R S Alexia Cano Jennielyn Cato Janae Earnes Yahir Ibarra Victoria Rietz Naylhea Serrano
S TA F F A R T I S T S Baby Bonane Ji Ho Kim Assistant Adviser Kenneth Pagano Adviser Dr. Max Branscomb
AWARDS/HONORS National College Newspaper Hall of Fame Inducted 2018 Student Press Law Center National College Press Freedom Award 2011, 2018 National Newspaper Association National College Newspaper of the Year 2004-2020 Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker Awards 2003-06, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012-2017, 2019, 2020 General Excellence 2001-21 Best of Show 2003-21 Columbia University Scholastic Press Association Gold Medal for Journalism Excellence 2001-20 College Media Association National College Newspaper of the Year, 2020 California College Media Association Outstanding Community College Newspaper
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San Diego County Multicultural Heritage Award California Newspaper Publishers Association California College Newspaper of the Year 2013, 2016, 2020 Student Newspaper General Excellence 2002-20 Society of Professional Journalists National Mark of Excellence 2001-20 First Amendment Award 2002, 2005 San Diego Press Club Excellence in Journalism 1999-2020 Directors Award for Defense of Free Speech 2012 Journalism Association of Community Colleges Pacesetter Award 2001-18 Newspaper General Excellence 2000-2021 American Scholastic Press Association National Community College Newspaper of the Year, 2020
XIOMARA VILLARREAL-GERARDO / STAFF
College deserves credit for attention to mental health, but must do more
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hen the apartment is on fire the first response is to call for help. When the car is in a ditch it is time to call for help. When the house is flooding someone needs to go get some help. COVID-19 and its impacts to our society have the brains of college students on fire, in the ditch and under water, but too few young adults are asking for help. Often when they do ask for help, they do not get any. Health care professionals have a clear message: young adults ages 18-24 in the U.S. have never been in worse mental shape. Four-in-10 Americans are suffering from anxiety or depression during the pandemic, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, as opposed to 1-in-10 in early 2020. The same study found that 56 percent of young adults 18-24 reported symptoms of anxiety and/or a depressive disorder. Young adults are more likely to report substance abuse and suicidal thoughts. Other conditions, like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), are manifesting or worsening during the pandemic. Time for a quick review of PSYCH 101 and Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Our most fundamental needs are food, water, warmth and rest, wrote Maslow. Next in his pyramidshaped hierarchy are security and safety, followed by relationships and friendships. Anybody seeing a pattern here? These are all things taken away from young adults sheltering in place or things that are threatened. Maslow’s next step is prestige and a feeling of accomplishment, which have been completely eliminated from the lives of so many young adults. The top of the pyramid — learning and creativity — require the other needs to be met before they can occur.
The Issue: More than half of America's young adults report anxiety or depression during our marathon pandemic. Our position: Our nation must destigmatize mental health care, college needs to add crisis counseling professionals. Therein lies the rub. It is damn hard to ponder protozoa or cogitate on consonants when you are scared, hungry, tired, lonely and feeling kind of worthless. It is pretty much impossible to swim with Socrates and play with Plato when you are worried about housing, sick family members or looming financial ruin. Mental health is determined by a range of socioeconomic, biological and environmental factors, according to World Health Organization reports. The pandemic is more than a medical phenomenon, it is a mental health crisis that exacerbates anxiety, stress, xenophobia and stigma, according to a study by the Wiley Public Health Emergency Collection. The final log on this fire is the stubborn persistence of mental health stigmatization. So here are the three problems facing all those 18-24-year-old Southwestern College students: 1) Pandemic-fueled mental health maladies, 2) Too few places to ask for help, 3) Fear of asking for help. We acknowledge that many SC administrators, faculty and staff get it. We have seen protean efforts from some quarters to address the needs spelled out by Maslow and to provide mental health support. But it is not even close to enough.
It just isn’t. Our college’s one full-time crisis counseling expert and his team of mostly interns are absolutely buried in an avalanche of requests for help from students and professors who care about them. They must feel like they are juggling flaming knives and there is a guy on the sideline tossing axes, rattlesnakes and roaring chainsaws at them, too. SC has lost more than a quarter of its students and will lose more in the fall, even if it does re-open 20 percent of its classes for faceto-face instruction. So there is a financial incentive for the college to help its students wade through their Maslovian maladies and find some mental health assistance. Community college researcher Dr. Sara GoldrickRab, who has studied the effects of the pandemic on college students, predicted a catastrophic enrollment falloff unless more young adults can be encouraged to enroll (or re-enroll) in colleges and universities. She also said that even relatively small amounts of cash support can work wonders (she reported that a $250 cash scholarship to Black male students resulted in a doubled completion rate). Students, it is okay to ask for help. It is totally okay to ask for help. If you feel overwhelming anxiety, stress, anger or depression, ask for help. If you have thought of suicide, please ask for help. It is out there. There are trained professionals at the college standing by to help you. For free. Make an appointment by email at: swcpersonalwellness@swccd.edu. Southwestern College leaders, you need to bolster the mental health team. If you cannot clone Dr. Amaral, you need to get him more help. Much more help. Now.
To make an appointment with a college mental health professional, email: swcpersonalwellness@swccd.edu.
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It is time America cancels ‘cancel culture’ BY YAHIR IBARRA A Perspective
JOURNEY FOR JUSTICE JU LI A WOOC K
U.S. women attain more, but are still earning less
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amala Harris and American women figured we’d broken the glass ceiling in November when the nation elected a woman as vice president. Seems, though, we just broke the glass skylight. Another ceiling looms over the glass shards on the ground being swept up by women who get paid a whole lot less than men. America’s pay gap lives on. Women are still paid considerably less than men for the same work, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2017 the average earning for men was $52,146 versus $41,977 for women. That’s a $10,000 difference. Business Insider magazine reported that women make 82 cents to the dollar that men make. It gets worse. U.S. Census Bureau data shows the largest disparity was among women of color, specifically Latinas and Black women. Business Insider found that Latinas made 53 percent and Black women 61 percent of what White men made for the same work. The American Association of University Women reported that Latinas would have to work an additional 293 days to earn as much as their male counterparts, while Black women would have to work 214 more days. Women cannot even bridge the gap by earning a college degree. In fact, a report by the Economic Policy Institute asserts that women are paid less than similarly-educated male counterparts at all education levels. Ironically, the gap expands as education level rises. EPI researchers blamed excessive work hours, pregnancy, child rearing and promotion disparity. It literally does not pay to be a woman. Equity could be years away. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research anticipates the United States will not close the pay gap until 2058. United Nations data estimates bridging the worldwide gap will take 70 years. Putting the squeeze on women is unfair and immoral, but also very bad for our country. Women are now about 58 percent of college graduates and women across America are now better educated than men (37 percent of U.S. women have a Bachelor’s degree or higher). Women are 50.5 percent of the total U.S. population, so we are punching way above our weight. Cutting so much of society’s talent out of the economy is self-destructive. Placing women on equal footing as men will strengthen America profoundly, as will fully inviting talented people of color into the boardroom. Instead of acting on a nobrainer, our nation continues to act like it has no brains.
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new phrase entered the dictionary last year. “Cancel culture” is the idea that people or things can be “cancelled” for being offensive. It is a concept abused by both the Left and the Right. It is used for summary judgment and public executions as well as a shield by abusers to mask their bad behavior. Cancel culture is the attempt to erase something or someone from public view. It is not anything new. It could be something like burning books in Birmingham or witches in Salem. Republicans have embraced cancel culture as their new boogie man. Ne’er-do-wells try to dodge consequences for bad behavior by claiming they are being unjustly cancelled. Though most of their arguments are specious, it has happened before. Those accused of cancelable behavior can lose their right to due process and can be punished out of hand in the court of public opinion. This happened a century ago in 1921 to comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who was accused of rape and murder. He was acquitted, but banned from Hollywood anyway. It happened to Minnesota Senator Al Franken, whose accusations
XIOMARA VILLARREAL-GERARDO / STAFF
were not even investigated. He was pressured to resign for posing for a silly photo on an airplane with a sleeping woman whom he never even touched. Arbuckle and Franken were unfairly cancelled. In today’s hyper-sensitive climate, the concept of cancellation is based on fear, specifically the fear of discomfort. As master Yoda told his protégé Luke Skywalker, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Cancel culture is fear turned into hate. It is its own form of intolerance. Repercussions are just responses to inappropriate actions. Repercussions are what happen to our former president, our governor and wrong-
headed monuments. Gov. Newsom deserves repercussions for being hypocritical for attending a party after he had asked the rest of us not to. Whether he deserves recall is debatable, but the voters will decide, not a cancel mob. To remove a monument is not to cancel history, but to stop celebrating something that does not deserve praise. Activists clamoring for the removal of the statue of former mayor Pete Wilson from Horton Plaza argue that he represents racism from the past. A statue venerates a person and what he represents. Glorifying Wilson feels like glorifying racism. Newsom and Wilson deserve different degrees of repercussions.
Newsom is likely to survive the birthday party debacle and remain in office, but he deserves to lose a level of approval. The future of Wilson’s statue is uncertain, but our evolving ideas about racism indicate he does not deserve to be glorified. There is a danger to dismissing consequences as if they were merely cancel culture. Guilty or misbehaving folks cry “cancel culture” when they face deserved repercussions. When the Congress passed articles of impeachment against Trump, some of his supporters like Jim Jordan howled that Democrats wanted to cancel the president just because he had incited a mob to riot at the Capitol – an action that led to the deaths of five people. Some politicians are using cancel culture as a form of ju jitsu. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has responded to charges of sexual misconduct with his own allegations of cancel culture. Georgia’s QAnon congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has implied that some Democrats should be murdered. When she was sanctioned and removed from committees, she declared that she was being unfairly cancelled. Words matter, but cancel culture spews toxic, meaningless words. Cancel culture is fake morality, a hip name for public shaming and lynching. It is abused by accusers and the accused. If anything needs cancelling, it is cancel culture itself.
JI HO KIM / STAFF
Fetishizing Asian women S contributes to misogyny
tereotypes about submissive, hypersexual Asian and Asian-American women feed into a toxic culture of disrespect, diminishment and sometimes sexual violence. Entertainment media fuel fetishization with depictions of compliant, docile AAPI women too eager to please.
Never, ever any excuse for anyone to use the N-word BY YAHIR IBARRA A Perspective
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hether African-Americans should use the n-word among themselves is a matter for that community to debate. There is no debate that Latinos and non-Black people should not. Too many of us do. Like the novel coronavirus, the n-word has virulent variations that are dangerous. Using the version with the -a at the end is not an acceptable alternative. In America the n-word was (and remains) a white supremicist term of degradation toward AfricanAmericans (though it has at times been adapted to insult other non-white people or to demean
progressive White people who are called “n-word lovers” by conservatives). Should Latinos use it? Never. Never, ever. Yet we do, at least the -a variation. Latinos are engaging in hostility toward African-Americans when they use any of the ugly language of slavery, Jim Crow and 21st century racists. Mexican-Americans have their own n-words, some with ugly connotations, some without. “Negro” in Spanish means black and being a “Negro” or a “Negra” is a source of pride. Some Latino n-words do not even begin with the letter n. We have the p-word. “Prieto” and “prieta” alludes to brown skin. In a formal sense, the word is not derogatory, but can be very derogatory when used with malicious
intent. (I have been on the wrong end of the p-word a few times. It stings.) Once while riding on a bus in the U.S. with my Mexican-American friends, we talked about how we envisioned our kids would look. Due to our miscegenation (being mixed race), there is a roll of the genetic dice that can mean either brown or white skinned babies. A friend said with a frown, as if she had just licked a lemon, that she did not want her kid to be prieto with straight hair— which described me and about half the other people on the bus. Indigenous Mexicans are constantly targeted with racist invectives by lighter-skinned mexicanos. In 2019, after Yalitzia Aparicio from “Roma” was nominated for an Oscar, Mexican
actor Sergio Goyri was caught on camera sputtering that she was a “prieta.” People like Goyri are continuing a malignant tradition of anti-browness in Mexico. Brown implies ugliness, poverty and ignorance, which is pinned on the indigenous part of a mestizo. The pejorative form of prieto is a decaffeinated Mexican version of the American n-word that seldom raises eyebrows, but should. My peers’ willingness to use it was very normalized. The word has become a filler in conversations, almost a nervous tic like “well” or “uh.” Among friends it is like Mexico’s “dude” or “wey.” It’s not. It is a thinly veiled derivative of something vile. Latinos should not use it. No one should. APRIL 25, 2021, VOL 57-A, ISSUE 5
CAMPUS NEWS / STUDENT NEWS
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PROFILES
BRITTANY CRUZ-FEJERAN / STAFF
POWER CENTER ON THE CORNER — Mangia Italiano was a cornerstone of the Third Avenue redevelopment and a popular family-style restaurant. It also became a hotbed for local politics and civic engagement.
! O MANGIA A I C
ITALIANO
PIZZA, PASTA, POLITICS WERE ALWAYS ON THE MENU AT BELOVED EATERY BY BIANCA HUNTLEY ORTEGA News Editor
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ew York has Sardi’s. Chicago has the Billy Goat Tavern. Chula Vista has Mangia Italiano. Had. Third Avenue’s venerable family Italian joint has closed its swinging glass doors for good, another COVID-19 victim. Another blow to democracy. Besides its tasty hot bread sticks, saucy pastas and pantheon of pizzas, Mangia was a hub of South Bay politics and civic engagement. Its cozy banquet room on the alley saw political candidates seeking endorsements, elected officials asking for support, and movers and shakers moving and shaking. Owners Adam and Kathy Sparks created a popular family menu and a popular gathering spot. Groups were always welcome to use the sunny, just-large-enough banquet room in the back along the alley. They never charged a banquet rental fee, which attracted local institutions like the South Bay Forum, Chula Vista Democratic Club and Southwestern College Educators Association. Former SC trustee Humberto Peraza said he misses the restaurant and its unique South Bay vibe. “It was the place to meet for years and years” he said. “Mangia became the restaurant where everyone in Chula Vista, and even outside of Chula Vista, if you were going to have meetings, you would go to Mangia.” Professor Alejandro Orozco said the union historically used the banquet hall at Mangia to hold “meet and greets” between faculty and governing board candidates. Part audition, part pizza party, political neophytes from both parties would share their philosophies as they passed the olive oil. “Those meet and greets were for getting more eyes on a candidate,” he said. Meaningful union endorsements were often at stake. Political careers could come and go as fast as the vin rose. Members of the South Bay Forum,
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BRITTANY CRUZ-FEJERAN / STAFF
NICE TO TIRAMISU! — Candidates and political activists would frequently meet up in Mangia Italiano's cozy banquet room on the alley.
including former San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox, would often discuss policy over a plate of pasta. Cox likened Mangia Italiano to the Cheers bar, where the community gathered to talk over issues and ideas. He said he would miss Mangia. “It’s one less meeting space for a lot of organizations,” he said. Tanya Castaneda, VP of the Chula Vista Democratic Club, agreed. “Chula Vista does not have a lot of places that are suitable for community meetings, so the political and advocacy groups are mourning the loss of the space,” she said. For the SCEA “it’s going to leave a hole,” said Orozco. Mangia Italiano hosted plenty of memorable moments. For Peraza, it is where he got his first Democratic Party endorsement when he ran for Chula Vista City Council, he said. For others, it was the debates on topics like cannabis sales, the homeless and education policy. Cox said it was a cauldron of a health
democracy in action. “Policy decisions were (developed) there,” he said. Orozco said in his first year of involvement with the faculty union’s political action committee he was part of a team that interviewed governing board candidate Griselda Delgado. When Delgado won on election night, Orozco said he felt a sense of satisfaction. “It was the culmination of one whole year of interviewing,” he said. Peraza said he spent nearly 25 years working in San Diego County politics as a senior aide to a U.S. Congressman, a prominent Assemblywoman and others. Mangia Italiano was there for all of them. “It’s hard to replace somebody like (Adam Sparks) and a facility like that for the community,” he said. Castaneda agreed. “Mangia Italiano was a great example of a business that took it upon itself to make the community better.”
THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN
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COURTESY SWC
LATE BLOOMER — Retired president Dr. Kindred Murillo said she took 10 years to earn an AA degree, but blossomed as a scholar in midlife to earn a doctorate and become a college president.
MURILLO 'PROUD OF PROGRESS ON EQUITY' BY JULIA WOOCK Editor-in-chief
To say Kindred Murillo was a late bloomer is kind of like saying LeBron James is a good basketball player or Prince could play guitar. A bit of an understatement. Murillo’s recent retirement as president of Southwestern College capped a dizzying later-in-life flurry. She took 10 years to earn an AA degree, completed her Bachelor’s in her early 40s, her Master’s at 45 and a doctorate at 55. Even so, she squeezed in two college presidencies and was a small town mayor, to boot. She was making up not for lost time, she said, but from a series of unpredictable events that changed the trajectory of her life. “Although I did try to screw it up — I did a really good job of it,” she said. “ I got pregnant when I was 15 and had a son when I was 16, got married, had a second child, and then I started Barstow Community College. And it saved me.” A professor pulled her aside, she recalled, and asked about her educational plans. At the time, she said, she was raising two children and getting a divorce. He said she had an amazing mind for math and foresaw a future in business or finance. She said she thought about it and decided to earn her Bachelor’s. “I was probably the longest (tenured) student in Barstow College history,” she said. “It took me 10 years to get my AA degree, because I was working three jobs at one point... I started my doctorate when I was 50, and I got it when I was 55, so it’s never too late.” She was working at Southern California Edison in Human R e s o u rc e s a n d f i n i s h i n g h e r Master’s, she said, when electricity deregulation took effect and the company decided to downsize. Laying off people was grueling, she said, and she announced she did not want to continue when her boss told her to take time off. She took six months off and it gave her time to spend with her terminally-ill mother. After the six months lapsed, she returned and quit. “I basically said, I can’t do this, I want to do something constructive,” she said. “So at the time, I was the mayor of a community in the desert. I had helped with a financial (feasibility) study for the town of Yucca Valley and we incorporated.” Murillo said she had the opportunity to teach part-time at the Copper Mountain campus of the Desert Community College District and fell in love with teaching. She was then asked to develop a CalWorks program and one thing led to the next. She became chief business officer, then vice president. She later served as president in Lake PLEASE SEE Murillo PG. 13
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THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN
COURTESY JERRY MCCORMICK
TALENTED ROLE MODEL — Former SC journalism instructor Dana Littlefield is now the Public Safety Editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune and an active teacher with the San Diego Association of Black Journalists.
San Diego Assn. of Black Journalists encourage SC students to consider the career
BLACK JOURNALISTS SHOW THE WAY BY ANISSA DURHAM and BIANCA HUNTLEY ORTEGA Viewpoints Editor, News Editor
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hen Jerry McCormick taught journalism classes at Southwestern College, he often encouraged his students to stand out. There were times, though, when he wished he did not stand out quite so much — like all the times he was the only Black journalist at his job. One episode he said is burned in his memory was a day at a Colorado Springs newspaper when a tour group came through and a manager leading it pointed to McCormick as their “Black editor.” McCormick founded the San Diego Association of Black Journalists to help support African American professionals in an industry that is still predominantly White and to encourage students of all races to consider journalism as a career. For about 40 years the journalism profession has made a conscious effort to diversify its ranks. The 1968 Kerner Commission Report ordered by President Lyndon Johnson following racial unrest in American cities concluded that the news media had a hand in racial discrimination because it was populated overwhelmingly by White men who did a poor job covering communities of color. Black Americans, in particular, said they rarely saw themselves in the news or entertainment media in a good light. The Society of Professional Journalists has made it a working goal to diversify the news media until it “looks like America” and has a workforce that represents the diverse demographics of the nation. Its latest goal was to achieve this by 2020, which did not happen. “Progress has been slow, too slow,” said McCormick. “Last year, all of the sudden, it became good to be Black. It’s like ‘oh, let’s pay attention to Black people.’” NBC 7/39 News producer and meteorologist Keith Bryant has taken over the reigns of SDABJ and has carried on McCormick’s signatory project, Pro for a Day, which has been hosted for 20 years by Southwestern College. Pro for a Day is an all-day, intensive journalism bootcamp for print, broadcast and multimedia journalists. Earlier this month Bryant
and a team of SDABJ members hosted its first high school Pro for a Day. “Progress is happening,” he said. “Ten years ago Black women were not even able to wear their natural hair on camera.” In 2019 the California legislature enacted the Crown Act to protect against discrimination based on racebased hairstyles in the workplace and public schools. San Diego Union-Tribune Public Safety Editor Dana Littlefield has enjoyed a very successful 20-plus years at the newspaper that was, nevertheless, difficult at times. Efforts to diversity the U-T in the 1980s and 1990s were almost completely undone by rightwing owner Doug Manchester after he purchased the paper from the Copley family. Now under the ownership of billionaire medical entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the U-T is once again beginning to diversify its ranks and move people of color into positions of leadership and prominence. Littlefield said she received a great burst of encouragement when she was younger from a Tuskegee Airman she met at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. A welldecorated former military pilot told her how proud he was to see a young Black woman reporting for the U-T. She often tells young journalists of color that if they want a newsroom to become more diverse, “go in there and diversify it!” “No matter what field you are in, you will face challenges,” she said. “It might be because of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics or your perspective, but you go in and engage with people and that’s how we become better people in a better society.” Data from the aggregate employment site Zippia Careers conclude that about 7.5 percent of American journalists are Black, compared to the 2017 census data that shows Blacks being 12.3 percent of the U.S. population. Black journalists have increased CHECK IT OUT
To learn more about the San Diego Association of Black Journalists, visit their website www.sdabj.org.
COURTESY JERRY MCCORMICK
GODFATHER OF BLACK JOURNALISTS — SDABJ founder Jerry McCormick is a former SC journalism instructor and U-T editor who is now Public Information Officer for the city of San Diego.
Journalism is not for the weak, it really isn’t. You have to be strong to be in this business. You will go through (difficulties), but you deserve to be here. The path is not going to be easy for you, but at the same time, I wouldn’t trade this career for anything. — JERRY MCCORMICK SAN DIEGO ASSOCIATION OF BLACK JOURNALISTS
about 2 percent in the past 25 years. Black journalists, however, earn more on average than their White colleagues. More than half of American journalists today are women, according to the report, and the number is growing. Besides encouraging Black college students to pursue careers in the news media, Bryant said, SDABJ is working to encourage young journalists of all races to give African Americans and all people of color a fair shake. He said representation is important and people watching TV news need to see people who look like them on the staff. “We really need the young journalists of color to work hard and join us,” he said. “As I say, just do it! Do not give up!”
McCormick agreed. “There are times when people are not going to believe in you,” he said. “There will be times people are going to try to dissuade you from this path. There are times I thought I couldn’t do it. But the reality is, you can, you will and you must.” Southwestern College is an important college for journalism’s future, McCormick said, because of its diversity and students with linguistic skills. “Journalism is not for the weak, it really isn’t,” he said. “You have to be strong to be in this business. You will go through (difficulties), but you deserve to be here. The path is not going to be easy for you, but at the same time, I wouldn’t trade this career for anything.”
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SOME CLUBS DECIDE THAT IT’S BETTER ZOOM THAN TOMB BY ITATI FADDIS Assistant Editor
‘Rona scattered students this year, but clubs kept many of them united. Southwestern College has nearly 40 active clubs Zooming along despite the closure of campus. Andrea Flores, treasurer of the Business Club, said her group kept after it. “We created a video for the Club Fair and people went through our
break room,” she said. “We were so excited! The fact that people went to the Club Fair and decided they want to go to the Business Club was really cool.” Professor Carole Ziegler advises the Earth and Science Club, which she founded in 2004. Although popular activities like camping, hiking and exploration are on hold, the club is Zooming and booming. “We would do silly science movie
nights, where we would take a Hollywood film and have popcorn and potluck,” Ziegler said. “We would have a discussion after whether the science is silly or if they had used some consulting. I like to use the example of ‘Finding Nemo.’” Phi Theta Kappa is an SC club and international organization that president Christian Sanchez said is the only recognized honor society for U.S. community colleges. “Our theme for this year was
Inherency, so we did something along the lines of education within our community,” he said. “We did a little bit of research about Southwestern College and we presented to the governing board.” PTK’s “College Project” studied formerly incarcerated SC students from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, Sanchez said. The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) is focused on supporting Latino STEM
students. SHPE leader Donovan Orozco said the organization brings in inspiring guest speakers and provides networking opportunities. SHPE also hosts scholarship workshops, social meetings, study nights and robot building projects. “(We) offer students knowledge, expertise and experience they need to enter the STEM workforce,” he said. “There are also scholarship opportunities. We help each other out.”
COLLEGE ASSURES DREAMERS SAFETY DR. KINDRED MURILLO
TIM FLOOD
ROSE DELGAUDIO
Zolezzi: Ex-Facilities Director claims she was falsely accused
What happened was that they convinced this investigator to reopen this in a whole different vein. They accused me of racial discrimination, which made no sense, because all of that happened before I was there.
CONTINUED FROM PG. 1
this spring that Zolezzi had not been terminated and left employment by mutual consent.
‘HARDWORKING EMPLOYEE’
Former Southwestern College Director of Facilities Charlotte Zolezzi denied she had engaged in any inappropriate behavior and never uploaded unauthorized software to spy on employees, allegations made against her by employees and deemed credible by Titan Group investigator Kathryn Johnson. Zolezzi said she was “an honest, hard-working employee” thrust into a “very difficult situation,” including dealing with a trio of custodians accused of a series of legal and district violations. The custodians later sued the college for racial discrimination for alleged mistreatment that happened before Zolezzi was hired. They accepted a small cash settlement and resigned.
O R I G I N A L T I TA N I N V E S T I G AT I O N
Zolezzi said the contentiousness began when the district opened an investigation into two facilities employees who were fighting. She said she had nothing to do with the squabbling employees and had only ever received very positive performance reviews from her former boss, former VP of Fiscal Services Tim Flood. Zolezzi said she was not aware she was the subject of an investigation until Johnson conducted a second interview and confronted her with the series of allegations. “What happened was that they convinced this investigator to reopen this in a whole different vein,” she said. “They accused me of racial discrimination, which made no sense, because all of that happened before I was there.” Zolezzi, a Latina and an open member of the LGBTQ community, said she knew what it was like “to be on the wrong end” of racial discrimination and if any lingered in the facilities department she “wanted to make sure it was addressed.”
‘WANTED RACIAL THING TO END’
“I wanted this racial thing to end,” she said. “If there was someone that did something discriminatory, that needed to be brought out. The people who were offended needed to have some kind of satisfaction, so that started some kind of a survey (by Titan to gauge employees’ morale and feelings about their workplace).” Johnson, writing for the Titan Group, concluded that Zolezzi had
APRIL 25, 2021, VOL 57-A, ISSUE 5
BRETT ROBERTSON
— CHARLOTTE ZOLEZZI FORMER SC DIRECTOR OF FACILITIES
inappropriately asked employees what they had said in their survey responses. “Beginning in February 2017 and continuing on until approximately October 2017, interfered with an EEO investigation when she breached a Confidentiality Agreement that she signed and agreed to, when she solicited confidential information from employees during the District EEO process,” read the report. Zolezzi said that is not true. She said as Director of Facilities her responsibility was to ensure employees were available for the interviews and compensated for their time. She said this involved coordinating schedules and confirming that employees had completed their interviews. She said she did not ask any further questions of employees as to what they said in their interviews. “I was told everybody was going to have this survey and I (said) ‘Great!’,” she said. “I scheduled everybody. I told everybody these were confidential surveys.”
NO SPYWARE LOADED ON COMPUTER
Titan’s report alleged that Zolezzi had uploaded unauthorized software to her college computer to spy on employees and had driven to the college late at night in a borrowed car to spy on employees. “During the 2017-2018 school year, the Director engaged in highly i n a p p ro p r i a te b e h av i o r w h e n she allowed or put unauthorized software on a SWCCD computer/ electronic device; thus, acted in conflict with District policy,” stated the report. Z o l ez z i s a i d t h e a l l e ga t i o n s were not true. She said she never uploaded personal software to her college devices and was not tech savvy enough to do it even if she had wanted to. She said her devices
were tampered with after she had turned them in. “There were things on my iPad that were changed,” she said. “There was some kind of program that was downloaded. It was called TeamViewer, so you can watch someone else’s computer or log on someplace remotely. They claimed I did that so that I could watch the custodians at night, or I think something like that, and it’s not even a program that allows you to do that.”
‘MILK AND COOKIES’ MEETING
Zolezzi said the only time she went to the college late at night was to hold a meeting with employees over milk and cookies to seek their input about upcoming scheduling changes. SC administrators had told her some night custodians would need to start working the 10 p.m. - 6 a.m. “graveyard shift.” She said her former boss, Flood, was thoroughly briefed on the meeting before and after it happened. “I never came in at night other than to meet with them for that meeting,” she said.
DENIES REPORTS OF R E TA L I AT I O N
Three allegations of retaliation towa rd s e m p l oye e s we re a l s o sustained in the Titan report, but Zolezzi said everything she did was done with the approval of college human resources directors, the classified employees union and Flood. “I said, ‘I didn’t even know about it, so what am I retaliating for? Nobody did anything to me,’”she said. “So all of the procedures I did -- all of the performance-improvement plans, the verbal reprimands, the written reprimands -- anything that came up was all run through HR and blessed by them. If there was a performance improvement plan, I sent it to HR.” Zolezzi said she feels she was caught
up in a long-simmering Southwestern College issue that she had nothing to do with. David S. Bristol, her attorney, said in his response to the charges that Zolezzi was “a faithful and dedicated employee of the District, as was evidenced by her exceptional employee evaluations.”
‘A M E R I C A N S U C C E S S STORY’
“Ms. Zolezzi is the type of American success story the District should be celebrating,” he said. “Zolezzi brings to the District the type of diversity and expertise that should make the District proud to have her as an employee.” Bristol pointed out that Zolezzi, a military veteran with a Master’s degree, was a rare woman and rare LGBTQ person to serve as a college facilities director. He said Zolezzi was “made a scapegoat” based on “false, contrived and untimely charges.” “Ms. Zolezzi...is being forced to wonder if the discrimination she has long faced, but that she hoped was behind her, has resurfaced,” he said. Earlier in the year the college terminated Brett Robertson, also an open member of the LGBTQ community, over racial tension in the ASO an investigator concluded was fanned by district employees. A separate investigation blamed Robertson’s underling and an assistant professor for the situation, but Murillo instead fired Robertson and demoted former Dean of Student Affairs Dr. Malia Flood, Tim Flood’s sister. Tim Flood left SC for a position at another local college, as did Malia Flood. Zolezzi said she “loved” working at SC and was sorry she could not continue. She emphasized that she, unlike Robertson, was not fired. “I quit on June 30, 2020,” she said. “I was not fired. I did not want to go back to the college after all that happened. It was just too painful.”
Immigration status confidential BY YAHIR IBARRA Staff Writer
In this Age of Disinformation college staff has a clear message for undocumented students: You are safe here. Southwestern College was one of the first institutions of higher education to pass formal policies to protect undocumented students from ICE and the Border Patrol. Angel Salazar, an SC financial aid specialist, said the rules are still in place. “We do not share (immigration status) information with any outside agencies, with ICE or anyone else,” he said. “This is confidential information.” Salazar said another myth involves financial aid. “A lot of times students don’t think they are eligible for financial aid, especially some of our undocumented students,” he said. “They (think because) they are undocumented the college cannot provide assistance. That’s not true.” Trust is essential, said Serene Vannoy of Admissions and Records. SC does not rat out its students. Though there is no precise data, many education officials have said it is possible that Southwestern College has more DREAMER students than any other college or university in America. Each and every one of them is welcome, according to Alejandra Garcia of the SC Dreamer Center during a panel discussion titled “Undocumented Students Can Go to College.” SC’s Dreamer Center provides financial aid assistance, immigration services, counseling, legal services and other essential support free of charge. Vannoy said students eligible for AB 540 status may attend SC for $46 per unit even if they are not considered a resident. AB 540 students can benefit from the California Dream Act Application, she said, unlocking the California Promise Grant or the Student Success Completion Grant. External and internal scholarships are also available, she said. Salazar said AB 540 students from SC are eligible to attend universities and earn degrees, receiving financial aid along the way. And ICE will never know.
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ANOTHER CHANCE FOR PAST PRISONERS Clean Slate Clinic volunteers help expunge records, remove barriers BY BIANCA HUNTLEY ORTEGA News Editor
Paying one’s debt to society does not always mean freedom. Invisible bars can surround those impacted by the criminal justice system for a lifetime. Those with records often cannot land jobs, rent apartments, secure loans or vote. Even after serving out their sentence, the punishment continues. A trio of high-minded volunteers set out to change that. In 2012 they opened the San Diego Clean Slate Clinic to help the justice impacted expunge their records when possible and fully re-enter society. Co-founder Keira Auzenne, a lawyer, said going through the criminal justice system is stigmatizing. “You’re told no again and again for employment opportunities, and then you’re oftentimes separated from whatever support network you did have, which would be your family and friends,” she said. Auzenne, former public defender Su s a n C l e m e n s a n d e d u c a to r Norman Jackson founded the legal clinic to help break the cycle of rejection and recidivism. Research indicates that former prisoners who cannot find work are at highest risk to reoffend. As of 2018, 7.9 million Californians had an arrest or conviction and the state has one of the highest recidivism rates in the country. Like many societal maladies, p re j u d i c i a l t re a t m e n t o f t h e formerly incarcerated hits Black, Latino and poor communities hardest. Ironically, public housing regulations prevent persons with records from renting or living in a government subsidized apartment. People with records struggle with unemployment and homelessness, pushing them right back into potential trouble. Au z e n n e m e t C l e m e n s a n d Ja c k s o n a t a n e m p l oy m e nt subcommittee where they were giving expungement presentations to those willing to listen. Auzenne had previous legal clinic experience, she said, and wanted to do more to assist formerly incarcerated people who were trying to get their lives back in order. When the Clean Slate Clinic opened in 2012, about 15 to 20 people would show up for monthly expungement services, said Auzenne. At the start of 2020 that number had grown to 60 to 75 -- all based on word of mouth. All services are offered for free or a nominal fee. Clean Slate is located inside a career center and has its own LiveScan machine. It allows clients to complete background checks, receive assistance filling out legal paperwork and sign up for job services, like resume reviews and interview preparation. It has become a one-stop transformation shop. Jackson said they want clients to see their complete rap sheet and understand it. Their clients learn what information will show up during a background check, what can be expunged from their records and what type of jobs they can apply for. “You give people a realistic view of what they’re up against,” he said. Clients have the chance to fix any mistakes when they have access to their complete record, Jackson said. He has seen cases where a client was charged with a misdemeanor and it was mislabeled as a felony. Clients also learn their rights as employees working in California. PLEASE SEE Clean PG. 13
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THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN
COURTESY ERNESTO RIVERA
CARING IS A SUPERPOWER — Rachel Perez was 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 where she counsels children whose parents died in military service.
Altruistic leader shows history and kindness resonate forever I know this sounds corny, but I want to use whatever talents and abilities I have to help others. 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.
BY ANDREW PENALOSA Senor Staff Writer
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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. 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
— RACHEL PEREZ COURTESY ERNESTO RIVERA
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.”
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Rising above a troubled past SC's Phi Theta Kappa mentors formerlyincarcerated now attending college BY BIANCA HUNTLEY ORTEGA News Editor
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ew seem to notice, but Southwestern College has a new satellite campus in the southeastern corner of the district. These formerly and currently incarcerated students are turning pages and turning over new leaves. SC’s Phi Theta Kappa has reached out a hand. Members started their college project, the Rising Scholars and Resident Mentorship Program, to help justiceimpacted students. Former member Jennifer Gomez is also involved. Now president of Underground Scholars at UCSD, she still wanted to participate in the mentorship program. Gomez knows the challenges from experience. She has a history of addiction, she said, and is justice impacted. Her past gives her a unique connection to her mentees. “I try to give advice, but from my own personal history,” she said. “If you’ve never been to Southwestern College you probably don’t know half the resources that are available to you. You don’t know how to use Canvas, you don’t know how to do all this stuff.” PTK mentors strive to obliterate obstacles faced by justice-impacted SC students, so they enlisted the help of Raquel Funches, the project specialist of SC’s Restorative Justice Program. Funches knows the ropes. Most Rising Scholars are older, firstgeneration college students who are figuring out all the steps required to enroll in classes, receive financial aid and academic counseling all before taking their first class, she said. Part of that description fits Sonia Camargo. Now the vice president of Rising Scholars, she has been with the
Coming from where I come from, not many of us make it to college. People like me need to see people like me make it. — SONIA CAMARGO VICE PRESIDENT RISING SCHOLARS
Clean: Volunteers expunge records of formerly incarcerated CONTINUED FROM PG. 12
Certain charges will no longer appear to employers after seven years, said Jackson. Clients that have a charge expunged no longer have to report it to potential employers. “Employment is such an important part of our lives, it gives us structure and meaning,” he said. Clean Slate Clinic runs on volunteers from local law schools and college students majoring in criminal justice. Some volunteers are previous clients paying it forward. Volunteer Dr. Henri Migala, an educator, said he wanted to help people who are trying to move on from their past. Expungement is a grueling process, he said, and something few people without law degrees could tackle. “ I h ave t wo M a s t e r s a n d a Doctorate and there’s no way in the world I could have navigated this process,” he said. APRIL 25, 2021, VOL 57-A, ISSUE 5
club for more than a year. Support from Funches and PTK is meaningful, she said. “Coming from where I come from, not many of us make it to college,” she said. “People like me need to see people like me make it.” Her pathway to higher education has been tough, she said, including multiple dropouts and restarts. Camargo’s mentor is Gomez, who has been helpful with assignments, homework and encouragement. Gomez and other PTK mentors have convinced Rising Scholars they can earn good grades and degrees, Camargo said. Carey Quinn Neloms is still incarcerated, but he said access to higher education has given him direction and hope. He gave up his job at Donovan State Prison to take classes through the SC Restorative Justice Program. He was paired with a mentor, which he said was an honor because he has lacked mentorship throughout his life. His experience with the program is restoring his connection to the outside community, he said. Aside from learning, Neloms runs a group with some of his incarcerated peers. Members discuss what they want to be remembered for. Neloms said he lives by the words, “He hurt, but he also helped a lot of people.” His goal is to earn an Associate’s in business administration and now help as many people as he can. Gomez holds up James Elliot, the first formerly incarcerated PTK International President, as a role model for her resident mentees. “I sent them both articles on James Elliot, just to let them know how far this young man, who has been in prison, has come,” she said. SC PTK members predict the mentorship program is here to stay. Moody agreed. One hopeful development the program has seen is that mentees can grow into mentors, said PTK advisor Miriam Moody. “We were also able to support and sponsor PTK membership at Donovan State Prison,” she said. There are now 14 incarcerated students in the Restorative Justice Program at Donovan sponsored by PTK and Neloms is one of them.
Volunteers round up the necessary forms for the clients to complete with lawyers and law students. They also help clients write their declarations seeking expungement. Declarations go to a judge for review. Law school students benefit by learning about an aspect of the criminal justice system, said Auzenne. “It was an educational opportunity for volunteers to really see that ‘Driving While Black’ happens,” she said. “Black and Brown people are overpoliced and not offered treatment opportunities at the same rates as their white counterparts.” Migala agreed. “You have to give people an out,” he said. “If you don’t give people an out, then how do you think they are going to behave if they don’t have an alternative?” COV I D - 1 9 p ro t o c o l s h ave temporarily shuttered the Clean Slate Clinic, but Jackson said he still receives emails requesting expungement services. It signals to him the need is still there. Auzenne and Jackson want to reopen and carry on the work at first opportunity.
Murillo: 'Late bloomer' served 4 years as president CONTINUED FROM PG. 10
Tahoe, before being hired at SC in January 2017. Tragedy struck out of the blue. Murillo’s 14-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident. “Losing her just about did me in,” she said. “But I still know that that was what was supposed to happen and I was blessed to have her for 14 years. I am where I am. I’ve made a difference in more students’ lives, I think because of that.” Mu r i l l o s a i d yo u c a n n eve r overcome the loss of a child and the pain becomes part of who you are. It was a supreme act of forgiveness that allowed her to press on. “When I could forgive the young man that was driving the car that rolled and ultimately killed her, then it brought a piece of humanity to me that I don’t think I had,” she said. “I try to help people (in) these kinds of situations. Sometimes
FORMERLY INCARCERATED GREAT AMERICAN SUCCESS STORIES
COURTESY WIKIPEDIA
MALCOLM X The former Malcolm Little served time for petty theft before becoming a giant in the fight for equal rights for African-Americans.
COURTESY WIKIPEDIA
FRANK ABAGNALE The subject of the film "Catch Me If You Can" was portrayed by Leonardo de Caprio and pursued by Tom Hanks. He became an elite fraud expert.
COURTESY DISNEY WIKI
TIM ALLEN “Home Improvement” and “Toy Story” star overcame drug dependency to become Buzz Lightyear and numerous other iconic characters.
people can’t forgive. (I believe) he didn’t deliberately do that. It was an accident. To be able to say, ‘Oh, look, I forgive you. Don’t worry, you know, let’s move on. I want you to have a good life.’ I think that was something that helped me (to) be a better person.” Sociology major Anna Sanchez said Murillo’s extraordinary ability to forgive the young man who caused her daughter’s death touched her. Sanchez said it is “remarkable” Murillo has gone through so much tragedy and is able to carry on with such grace. “She taught me that one of the best things you can do as humans is to forgive and find a way to recognize humanity,” said Sanchez. “She’s encouraged me to be better today than I was yesterday.” Murillo said her greatest accomplishments at Southwestern College was changing the narrative about diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as emphasizing the need to be more student centric. “Everything we do should be for students and it should always be equitable,” she said. Murillo said she was also proud
COURTESY NASCAR
JUNIOR JOHNSON A NASCAR superstar who won 50 races and is now a successful owner in the world of auto racing.
COURTESY WIKIPEDIA
50 CENT Curtiss Jackson III served a brief sentence and earned his GED in prison, where he also planned his new career as a rapper/business magnate.
COURTESY IMDB
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. Iron Man spent time behind iron bars for drug convictions, but following rehab restarted his acting career.
of her role in diversifying college leadership. “Since I’ve been here, we’ve diversified the college by almost 8 p e rc e n t a n d m a n a ge m e n t ’s diversified by 14 percent,” she said. “I can tell you...it’s better to have a cabinet that is diverse...because diversity changes the conversation (and) narrative.” Disciplining employees was one of the hardest parts of her job, she said, but the college president must hold people accountable. “People go ‘well, you’ve talked about being kind, but yet you did this’,” she said. “You disciplined this person,’ (My response is) but think about all the people that were being hurt because this person wasn’t doing their job or because this person was saying (inappropriate) things. You’re hurting a lot more people. You can’t have inclusivity unless you hold people accountable for it.” Sleepless nights ensued. “The minute you find it fun to discipline somebody or demote somebody or fire somebody, you should not be in management,” she said. THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN
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RISING ARTISTS ELEVATE WEARY COMMUNITY By Andrew Penalosa Senior Staff Writer
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’Rona
fighters Original children's show will open SC's new amphitheater, first production since last March By Andrew Penalosa Senior Staff Writer
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ust when all seemed lost at an abandoned college in a traumatized community, a hero has emerged to save the day. Knock on wood. “Superhero Planet,” a children’s play by Southwestern College alumnus Cynthia Galaz Ochoa and theatre professor Ruff Yeager, hopes to blast through the silence of shutdown with a colorful grand opening of the college’s new outdoor amphitheater. “Superhero” will require some superhuman effort. Contractors are scrambling to finish the new theater complex, designer Michael Buckley is cogitating over lighting and safety, and Yeager will fight through difficult Zoom-based rehearsals right up to the scheduled opening in May. Yeager and the theater team were looking for a hopeful project to open the amphitheater. He decided to invite Ochoa to collaborate with him on a play for a younger audience. It is a rare TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences) for a college known for bold productions of classic and provocative work. Ochoa and Yeager both said they are confident the play will be a supersized hit for South Bay children. Like all good theater, compelling language is essential, Yeager said, but for “Superhero Planet” to work, staging will also matter. “(This show) is very presentational,” he said. “It will be very stylized, almost cartoon-like.” Ochoa said she wants the play to be educational and fun. College administrations also want the show to be safe. Southwestern’s vaunted theater program has not produced a physical show on campus since March 2020 when a critically-acclaimed production of “Romeo and Juliet” was shut down a week before its opening night. About 40 people witnessed a Saturday afternoon dress rehearsal the day after the campus was closed to classes by the novel coronavirus. No one knew it last March14, but Mayan Hall has been dark ever since and will be henceforth. SC’s grand dame of the performing arts has taken its final bow. Yeager made a proposal to VP Dr. Minou D. Spradley and Dean Dr. Cynthia McGregor for a performing arts festival during the last two weeks of the Spring 2021 semester. She said yes -- with provisions. Yeager said the outdoor amphitheater could safely host sociallydistanced performances, though he expects challenges. “The audience will be limited,” he said. “We will follow all health protocols. Temperatures will be taken (and reservations will be required).” Staging a play during a pandemic is a new experience, Yeager admitted, but possible. “Supervillains will be stage left, superheroes will be stage right and they appear basically one at a time,” he explained. “(At) center stage will be a duo (the main characters of the play).” Technical Director Buckley has vast experience designing sets, lights and sound in scores of Southern California theaters, but has had to add pandemic protocols to his pallet. His solution is to use different levels of the amphitheater to keep the performers socially distanced. He acknowledged that he and his crew are inventing solutions for the production as they go. Buckley is also serving as the college’s technical adviser of the construction of the new theater complex and has spent great amounts of time during the pandemic on campus overseeing its creation. “We are not ready to move in yet, so this will be our first time doing anything in this space,” he said. “A lot of the challenge will be figuring out just how to do it.” Ochoa said she was ecstatic to have the opportunity to co-write a show with her former professor and to see it produced live. “It is going to be emotional,” she said. “I miss theater, I miss the stage. I am also an actor and I miss the rehearsal process. (It is joyous) to be creative and to (see projects) come alive.” “For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy,” wrote Shakespeare. Buckley said he is indeed hopeful...but has a backup plan, nevertheless. Should COVID rear its spiky head and push the region back into purple, Buckley said the project will be filmed with no audience. Like their superhero, Yeager and Ochoa are confident the play will triumph over darkness and hit the stage as planned. Theater, like humanity, has weathered many a pandemic and broke through brightly on the other side.
t would be nearly impossible to live in the South County without seeing the art of Wendy Gracia. Motorists and pedestrians stream by her murals and street art in San Ysidro. Theater-goers have seen her sweeping paintings on sets. She has created the Bonitafest mascot on street banners, posters, shirts and buttons viewed by hundreds of thousands since 2014. One of her latest creations is her blog for Rising Arts Leaders called Artist’s Toolbox, whose mission is to support other artists. The Sun caught up with the former Southwestern College Student of Distinction Award recipient recently for an interview and her thoughts about the role of art in our society. The Sun: What influenced your decision to join Rising Arts Leaders? Gracia: After I graduated from Laguna College of Art and Design in 2018, I chose to move back home to San Diego County and I was trying to get a job at a museum (in Balboa Park). My director (sculptor) Kate Clyde knew that I was trying to find my footing in the arts community here in San Diego County because I was still kind of more versed on things up in Orange County. She recommended I look up Rising Arts Leaders. The Sun: You were integral to the development of a blog on the Rising Arts Leaders website called Artist’s Toolbox. Where did the idea come from? Gracia: Last year I was part of their Artist’s Advocacy committee, so I would work with my partner (Ivette Roman) to create connections within the arts community in San Diego County. Last year we put together Artist’s Toolbox and started conducting interviews with local artists. The Sun: Are there any particular artists you are eager to interview? Gracia:: Two of my favorite San Diego County artists are Ale Ruiz Tostado and another artist that I absolutely adore is Jessica Petrikowski. The Sun: Who is represented on the blog? Gracia: We have small business owners, we have painters, we have writers and all types of creative people. The Sun: What do you hope to accomplish with the blog? Gracia: It is about artists who are getting started. The whole committee is about uplifting the community and creating connections.
LATINA LIBERTY Wendy Gracia is a prolific public artist whose work has been seen by legions of San Diego County and Baja California Norte residents. Her Latina Lady Liberty is a popular mural in San Ysidro.
The Sun: How did the blog start? Gracia: We wanted to find a way to make our online presence more prominent. We were not so much online and then the pandemic happened, so we had no choice but to adapt. The Sun: What content did the blog feature when it started? Gracia: We started by writing reviews of arts events and then we decided to start interviewing local artists, business owners and others to highlight creative people and their supporters who are doing cool things. The Sun: Please tell us how you became involved with the Beautification Project in San Ysidro. Gracia: (Yvette Roman) is connected to Geraldo Meza, who works with the San Ysidro Border Public Art Committee. They are the agency that gets the okay for us to paint certain (utility) boxes. The Sun: Did you participate? Gracia: I did. I painted one that featured a piece of pan dulce and I wrote Quédate en casa con un rico pan dulce y cafecito! (Stay home with some sweet bread and coffee!) I also painted a Lady Liberty, but she was a Latina wearing a serape. She should be welcoming to everyone because Lady Liberty is all about immigration. The Sun: What have you sought to convey with the utility box paintings? Gracia: The goal with Artbox and the Beautification Project is to convey messages of unity that are uplifting and colorful. That’s what art should do.
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I am proud of the program and what I have accomplished, but I am really proud of the athletes and the assistant coaches who have helped me support the program. — YASMIN MOSSADEGHI SC SOFTBALL COACH
SOUTHWESTERN’S SOFTBALL SAGE BY XIOMARA VILLARREAL-GERARDO Associated Editor-in-Chief
COURTESY ERNESTO RIVERA
‘SMART AND KIND’ — Former soccer star Alondra Osuna is beloved by her teammates and respected by her coach.
OSUNA IS SCHOLARATHLETE HONOREE BY JANAE EARNES Staff Writer
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londra Osuna left Southwestern College last spring on a high note. Soccer star. 4.0 GPA. Student of Distinction Award. There was more to come. Osuna was recently named to the 2020 California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) ScholarAthlete Honor Roll, the state’s most elite team. Not bad for a first-generation American from Guadalajara. Soccer coach Carolina Soto said Osuna leads with kindness and generosity. “Alondra always wanted more than just doing well, she wanted to bring her teammates with her,” she said. “She’s unselfish, very kind and a very good leader that wants to see everyone around her excel.” Former teammate Alexis Gonzales said Osuna has integrity and humility. “Alondra will prosper because she is smart and kind,” said Gonzales. “She can do anything.” Osuna said she was grateful to be honored. “Coach Soto nominated me and so it feels great to have a support system that you can always go back to,” she said. Soto said Osuna has enormous potential. “I’m just really proud of Alondra and I want her to know that she’s appreciated and respected,” Soto said. “Great students are not always recognized, so I’m glad she’s getting this recognition because she deserves it.”
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oftball coach Yasmin Mossadeghi wrote the book on how to hit a softball. ...no, really. She wrote the book. “Between the Lines: The Mental Skill of Hitting for Softball” is still a best seller among softball players and coaches across America, and an Amazon perennial. Chances are it is being read right now by persistent players in Pennsylvania, canny coaches in Connecticut and managing moms in Missouri. Mossadeghi hits it out of the park wherever she goes. She was a high school star in Huntington Beach and a record-setting hitter at CSU Fullerton, where she was an All-American. She played professionally in Germany and Russia. A fearsome power hitter, Mossadeghi hit .362 during her career at Fullerton and is still the program’s all-time homerun leader with 47. She is second in homers all-time in Big West Conference history. She has been SC’s head softball coach for 12 years, transforming a moribund program into a consistent playoff team. More than two dozen of her student-athletes have earned university scholarships for softball. They take The Book with them. Just as MLB Hall of Famer Ted Williams transformed baseball with his revolutionary book “The Science of Hitting,” Mossadeghi is the Swengali of Softball. Her scientific examination of fast pitch has done for high school and college women what Isaac Newton did for physics. Her magnum opus came less from inspiration than necessity, Mossadeghi said. While she was working on her Master’s degree in Kinesiology at Fullerton she had to complete a project, thesis or testout. She decided to do a thesis and “Between the Lines” was born. It found fertile ground because it was the first book about hitting a softball. “At that time, my specialty was being a very good hitter and being able to use my mental game to be successful,” she said. “I took those tips and tools from my sports psychologists, my teachers, and my coaches and created an easy how-to (book about) at hitting at the higher level.” Like Williams’ masterwork, Mossadeghi’s book is accessible and user friendly. It has pictures and diagrams that put thought into the muscle. It took Mossadeghi one semester to gather her interviews for the book, she said, and another year to finish it. It was published a little over a year later, in 2007. Mossadeghi said writing the book was transformative. “The greatest takeaway was all of the information I gathered from the student-athletes,” she said. “I think that information is invaluable and because I was able to take the time and they were willing to reveal what it took for them to be successful, it has made me a better coach.” Growing up in Huntington Beach, Mossadeghi played soccer and volleyball, but softball was her first love. She was a prodigious homerun hitter at Fullerton, but also had the brains to match the brawn. She earned a Bachelor’s in kinesiology and a Master’s in kinesiology with an emphasis on sports psychology. Although Mossadeghi has no plans for another book in the foreseeable future, she said, she is cogitating on a video project. “I am hoping to someday be able to (create) a video series to motivate athletes about the mental game and teach coaches how to coach the mental game,” she said. Just as Williams was the master of out-thinking the pitchers of the mid century, Mossadeghi preaches that bat speed is worthless without quick thinking. “Between the Lines” is as much about what’s between the ears, she said, and she relishes her position as a coach who is also a college professor. Softball teaches young women valuable lessons in a hardball world. “I am proud of the program and what I have accomplished,” she said, “but I am really proud of the athletes and the assistant coaches who have helped me support the program.”
COURTESY YASMIN MOSSADEGHI
TOP DAWG — Softball coach Yasmin Mossadeghi
was an All-American softball player at CSU Fullerton and remains the university's all-time homerun champion. Now she is SC's all-time most successful softball coach.
SOFTBALL SCIENCE “Between The Lines” was written with high school and college players and their coaches in mind. It introduces the mental aspects of the game and confidence-building for success on the softball diamond.
CHECK IT OUT
To learn more about Between The Lines: The Mental Skills of Hitting for Softball, visit amazon.com
ATHLETES SAY THEY’RE READY TO GO WHEN SPORTS RESUME By Miguel Diaz Staff Writer
Last football season’s only score was COVID 19, Southwestern 0. This season is still in limbo, but Saturday Night Lights may illuminate gridirons again if the South County can turn the corner on ‘Rona. SC President Dr. Mark Sanchez said he wants to see a full slate of fall athletics, but only if regional health professionals say it is safe. Offensive lineman Christian De La Cruz
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said he is ready to hit the field. “Back in September I was told by my coaches that we would be playing in February or March, and when that time came around it kept on getting delayed and delayed,” he said. “Then it got to the point where we aren’t going to play the whole next season. It was pretty rough.” De La Cruz said he is optimistic. “I have gotten a few scholarship offers so far,” he said. “I took a trip to Arizona because my brother is a personal trainer. I was there for about half a year lifting, conditioning
and staying in shape for football.” Cornerback Arnold Escano said he is not discouraged by the year away from football. “I played my whole freshman season at 17 years old,” he said. “The way that I look at it is that I took a year off without losing eligibility.” Escano said he has high hopes for his future. “My dream school is the University of Oregon,” he said. “My goal is to play my second season at SC so I can show the (Oregon) coaches more film.”
Quarterback Joshua Owen pushed through the pandemic, he said. “ I ’ve b e e n t h row i n g w i t h s o m e quarterbacks,” he said. “Some (are) free agents, some NFL guys (and) college guys.” Owen is already looking at universities, he said. “(I have) been contacting Division I schools,” he said. “It’s been a little weird because I can’t fly out there and talk to them, and they can’t come to see me. (I may) have to make a decision without seeing (the campuses).”
COURTESY RUSS SCOFFIN
PASSING IT ALONG — QB Joshua Owens and his Jaguar teammates were sacked by 'Rona in 2020, but look to bounce back this fall.
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DESERT OF THE DEAD — Human rights activists with Gente Unida create a makeshift memorial at the site of a crash on a rural highway that killed 13 of the 25 farmworkers jammed in the back of a stripped out SUV. Activists suspect the Border Patrol of chasing the vehicle and causing the accident. INS officials deny there was a pursuit.
JULIA WOOCK / STAFF
UNTO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN G E N T E U N I DA H O N O R S V I C T I M S O F H O LT V I L L E C R A S H T H AT K I L L E D 1 3 BY JULIA WOOCK Editor-in-Chief
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NO MAS MUERTES (NO MORE DEATHS) — Human smuggling often occurs in remote areas away from population centers and news media, said Gente Unida founder Enrique Morones, leading to lack of awareness and underreporting.
We need to rise up and say ‘no more deaths!’ Justice is not blind when it comes to people of color and the LGBTQ community. They get treated in a totally different manner. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. We need to raise our voices every single time. — Enrique Morones
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MPERIAL VALLEY OUTSIDE HOLTVILLE, CA—A relentless sun seared the smoldering sand. There are no longer any signs of the blood of 13 migrants killed and 12 injured in a horrific high-speed collision on this normally-silent desert highway. The desert sand has done what it always has, draining away all evidence of the cycle of life and death in this stark edge of California. Like the nearby paupers cemetery with the remains of nearly 1,000 unidentified migrants, this is a patch of land where dreams come to die. Plastic flowers, handmade crosses and thrift store veladoras (votive candles) wilt in the withering sun, along with the memories of Holtville’s dead. Volunteers with the human rights organization Gente Unida held a series of vigils to honor those whose lives were taken and refresh the short memories of the government. Gente Unida founder Enrique Morones said the Imperial Valley is a killing ground for migrants who die from hypothermia, starvation and dehydration. “¡Ni una muerte más!” said Morones, his voice cracking with sadness and anger. “If we had just laws, these people would not have to pile into a makeshift vehicle and
risk their lives. When we do things for others, we do it for God. We do it for love and we do it for the souls of our brothers and sisters.” Immigration activist Gloria Saucedo clutched a heavy cross with the message: “No más muertes. Reforma ya.” (No more deaths. Reform now). “This cross is a little larger than the rest, but I believe this is the cross every migrant carries along the way,” she said. “This cross represents struggle and sacrifice, the lives lost and those left behind.” Saucedo said it was important for the living to be inspired by the migrants and continue to fight for humane immigration reform. American farms and factories rely on migrant labor, she said, and migrant laborers need work visas, decent treatment and basic human rights. Arizona human rights activist Luis Vega said he would not stop fighting for his migrant brothers and sisters until there is fair immigration reform. He called for bipartisan support to end migrant tragedies. “Today will be one of the days I hope members of Congress in Washington D.C. will look at when discussing immigration reform,” he said. Plastic flowers, handmade crosses and roadside candles are all that is left to see of America’s latest migrant mass tragedy. Vegas said he hopes it’s enough.
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