Staff member moved by Ghana trip

By Grace Jones

Eight faculty and staff members were chosen by Superintendent President Mike Munoz to embark on a trip to Ghana, or as attendees have described it, the motherland in Sept. 2022.

With that, one of the first changes trip attendees Angela Fowlkes noticed was how different she felt about her physical body while in Ghana.

“It was life-transforming for me, said Fowlkes. “It made me love myself more. When I was with the natives they were very simple people. They are not vain, they are not into vanity. When I went, I forgot my brush and I was looking for mirrors because I was so self-conscious about my ap-

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pearance. I realized that I was able to relax and accept myself. It was more of a journey of self-acceptance for me.”

Fowlkes continued in depth about her innate feelings of insecurity and how she overcame it through mindfulness and reassurance from the Ghana native’s way of life and culture.

“When you see the picture of me in the annual report you see that I just have on jeans and a shirt because, I have never been exposed to any African traditional clothes like head wraps or anything. So I felt very self-conscious and out of place,” said Fowlkes.

“My hair was gray and I didn’t feel good about myself, but once I got there and got around the native people I realized they are the proudest, most beautiful people. They don’t get up in the morning every day and compare themselves to Western beauty standards and society, just me being natural is enough and I have never been this happy in my entire life,” she added.

This trip was commenced by the 8 to Men program. The 8 to Men program is an African American male program that consists of different community colleges from the state of California to get the opportunity to visit Ghana.

“This was the catalyst for me to accept and love myself. When I came back, that’s what I wanted to instill in the students here,” added Fowlkes.

Fowlkes also mentioned the Cape Coast slave dungeon which she visited for edu- cational purposes and to experience how grim and terrifying the conditions were for Ghana slaves during the 1660s.

“We went to the Cape Coast dungeon and were shown the trails and paths the slaves were led down. When I got to the dungeon I was a tourist, I went in with a tourist’s eyes. I was so excited to take pictures of everything. When I came out of the dungeon I came out through the lens of a slave. It took a toll on my body physically,” revealed Fowlkes.

“I had to be alone on the bus and it stripped me of my humanity. They took us to the next place and the next place each time it got worse and worse. They gave you the visualization and the smells from 400 years ago were still there,” she added.

Fashion club’s pop-up celebrates Earth Day

By Grace Jones

A pop up tent stood out amongst the cloudy gray weather with colorful racks of bathing suits, tote bags, scrunchies, pins and bandannas for sale accompanied by soft indie music at the Fashion Club popup on April 18.

As a tribute to Earth Day fashion club members wanted to express their creativity and support of Earth Day through accessories and bags.

The LBCC bistro located next door to the fashion club pop-up helped with foot traffic as students were able to buy pastries and drinks while they shopped.

The artistic texts and graphic designs of earth-theme images on white tote bags were a fan favorite amongst the fashion club members, as well as the event coordinator and fashion design and merchandising professor Chantel Bryant.

“ I love the tote bags, because two students designed the artwork and the fashion club voted which artwork they wanted to go with,” fashion design professor Bryant said.

Bryant then stressed the importance of earth day and reflected that belief by mentioning the prevention of clothing going to the dump with taking clothing donations instead

“All of the fabrics we used here except for the swimwear are all donated upcycled fabric. The tote bags are recycled cotton and 100% organic. So we are just trying to educate students on earth day and sustainability,” stated Bryant.

“The swimwear is sampled from the fashion industry and if we hadn’t taken the donation then it would have ended up in the landfill. So we are preventing fabrics and garments from going into the landfill,” Bryant added.

The assortment of bathing suits was very popular amongst customers who were browsing. One LBCC student couldn’t help but gush about all the colorful patterned bathing suits but was slightly disappointed with the sizing.

“The bathing suits were very nice and colorful but since I’m on the bigger side I didn’t find my size. I would love to see more diversity in sizes,” said LBCC student Caroline Hunter.

The swimsuits ranged from extra small to extra large and were sent from a local swim manufacturer. However this made it so fashion club members had no control in the sizes available at the stand .

When asked why fashion is important to individuals, fashion club members insisted that fashion is passionate form of self-expression.

“I think fashion is important to express yourself through clothes and you can express your culture, pop culture, or just anything artistic that you want people to know about yourself,” said fashion merchandise student Krystal Gallego.

“It is important to have this pop-up to expose the fashion department. I feel like people don’t know there is a fashion department here. We are a small old building,” Gallego said.