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By Dira Wong
A Perspective
Editor’s Note: Dira Wong was assigned to take notes at a town hall meeting organized by Vice President of Academic Affairs Sam Agdasi and contribute to a story The Sun was working on regarding the class cuts and enrollment management issues. After listening for about an hour and 45 minutes, Wong grew frustrated by what she heard and stood up to speak. The following is a transcript of her remarks, lightly edited for space. As reporters are expected to be non-participants and not express their opinions in public, Wong’s comments fell outside of journalism protocol and she was removed from the story. She retains her American right to freedom of expression, however, and the Editorial Board of The Sun thought her comments insightful and relevant to our readers so they are presented here.
Hi. I’m actually here as part of The Sun newspaper, but as a student I have concerns. I failed out my first semester here at Southwestern. I was going through some hard stuff at home. So I, a student, rely on winter intersessions and summer classes because I have two jobs. So I don’t have time to be in classes eight, nine hours a day. I have to go to class in summer and winter.
And from what I’m hearing there is a lot of data, there’s lots of numbers, there are so many statistics up there on the board. But students aren’t statistics. We’re humans.
People want to come here to learn. We’re doing our best and we’re coming here every day. Hearing that our classes are being cut is so angering.
It’s angering truthfully because this is damaging our ability to come here to learn. This is a community college. People who come to community college are not coming just to mess around. We’re not coming just to get an AA. We’re coming because we want to transfer out. We want careers.
Maybe we didn’t have a chance or the money to go to a university, but we’re here to learn. Right now I’m not seeing that support from the upper figures of this community college. I’m not seeing support for the students…I don’t think people were properly informed about their classes being cut.
See, right now we’re signing up for our spring and winter intersession. (Students) signed up for their classes expecting to come here in January to start off their winter sessions and they were not told their classes were going to be cut (until afterwards).
You say you want to keep us informed. You say you want to keep us in the conversation, that you want us to feel supported. But (there are no students) here. I’m the only student here. I’m not seeing anyone else here. I would like to be informed and it sure looks like other students would like to be informed as well.
We just want to come here to learn. We’re not numbers on a board. We’re human beings that just want to come here and do our thing.
I’m seeing a lot of confusion from the staff. This is my first time ever coming to a meeting like this, so this is a bit overwhelming and there are a lot of eyes staring at me. I’m not the best speaker. I’m a journalist and we want to spread the news to the students. A lot of people don’t know about this. A lot of people aren’t aware of the changes happening within our school. With the bond money coming and everything, lots of people don’t know about that. This is a community college. Shouldn’t the community know about it?
Sorry, that was it. Thank you.
