In 1987, Viewpoints reported on RCC’s police officers offering escort services to students’ cars at night.
VOL. 100, NO. 7
This program lowered crime rates
DECEMBER 9,
2021
on campus by 95% according to campus police.
VIEWPOINTSONLINE.ORG
History under Dodger Stadium JENNIPHER VASQUEZ NEWS EDITOR
This is the second part of a series about the history of Dodger Stadium.
are hard to come by,” says Glen MacDonald, a water expert who holds UCLA’s endowed chair in the Geography of California and the American West. According to the BlueGreen Alliance, cities are still using pipes that are about a century old. An estimated 20% to 50% of water is lost to leaks in the supply system. “People talk about reducing the time you take showers, but if you think about 50% of water flowing through the system being lost, it’s another magnitude,” said Daniel Tartakovsky, a professor
The local narrative Residents of “Chavez Ravine” were presented with offers to sell their property to begin building public housing, and those who didn’t sell were violently evicted in 1959 when the city of Los Angeles finalized a deal to build Dodger Stadium. Local officials and the media offered many reasons for the eventual displacement. Vincent Montalvo, Buried Under the Blue co-founder, said the Los Angeles housing crisis was the start of what caused the displacements that May. Frank Wilkinson, Housing Authority official, presented the idea of turning the land into public housing units that would be named Elysian Park Heights, which the residents of these three communities disagreed with. “We were in a housing crisis back then too. L.A. has been in a housing crisis for decades,” Montalvo said. “It seems like every time they have a housing crisis it’s a reason to take away indigenous people’s land.” He spoke about how the Arechiga family, Buried Under the Blue co-founder Melissa Arechiga’s family, was portrayed for demanding that they be paid a fair price for their home. The media portrayed the family as aggressive, implying they should not be allowed the right to ask for more money for their assets because the city was offering a “fair value.” “That’s your investment, that’s the inheritance you’re going to leave your children,” Montalvo said. “They weren’t being unreasonable to the deal, they never said they wouldn’t have sold, but they didn’t want to
See WATER on page 3
See BURIED on page 3
DANIEL HERNANDEZ | VIEWPOINTS
From left: Jennifer Shaw, Al Weyant-Forbes, Deborah Brown, Sharice Fox, Wendy Silva, Robert Hyers, Bryan Keene, Andrea Dillon, members of LASSE and SAGA, continue to work to create an inclusive environment on campus.
RCC faculty, staff seek LGBTQIA2+ resources DAESHA GEAR OPINIONS EDITOR
The Riverside Community College District Board of Trustees said it is attempting to ensure a welcoming environment for LGBTQIA2+ students by funding Student Services and Ally training. However, much work needs to be done to achieve this ideal environment, according to faculty, staff and LGBTQIA2+
students at the Nov. 2 Board meeting. According to the district, there is no accurate number of this particular demographic of students as it relies heavily on data. Some students may not have publicly come out and may feel uncomfortable doing it on a survey, according to Al WeyantForbes, Extended Opportunity and Services (EOPS) specialist for Riverside City College. Consequently, it becomes a
challenge for RCCD to provide support or fund services for its LGBTQIA2+ students. “Not having that data makes it hard to get funding because everything is about the retention rates, like success rates,” Wendy Silva, LGBTQ+ Association for Student Success and Equity (LASSE) secretary, said. “And if we can’t prove that LGBTQIA2+ students are struggling, then it’s hard for the school to give us money to help (our) students do better.”
Despite challenges, LASSE and members of other Student Services are still managing to capture this underrepresented student experience. Some students, however, felt discriminated against and reported their experiences to Deborah “D.” Brown, co-chair of LASSE. “Two students that I spoke with ended up dropping (their)
See LGBTQ+ on page 2
California water conservation efforts continue JOYCE NUGENT STAFF REPORTER
This story is part four of the series about California’s water crisis. Read more about it on our website. There will never be enough water to satisfy California’s demands, even in good years. The current megadrought, exacerbated by climate change, has only worsened the problems. California’s water supports three main sectors — urban population, agriculture and environment. The urban population uses 11%, agriculture
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uses 42% and the environment uses 47%. Environmental water includes water in rivers, water required for maintaining habitat within streams, water that supports wetlands and water needed to maintain water quality for agricultural and urban use. As the largest farming companies continue to demand a large share of the state’s water, stakes couldn’t be higher for the environment. Competing interests take more and more fresh water out of the ecosystem, draining its rivers and groundwater. After the devastating drought ended in 2017, the Sacramento Bee reported then Gov. Jerry Brown’s warning, “But the
next drought could be around the corner. Conservation must remain a way of life.” In just four short years, sooner than many scientists expected, California faces another drought and a severe water crisis where some towns have seen their wells go almost completely dry. Any proposed solution to California’s many droughtrelated water problems must be part of a significant effort that includes better management of existing water supply, with rainwater harvesting, recycled water and changes to outdoor landscaping and farming. “It’s obviously a big, big problem and magic solutions
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