The Student Union
Powered by students, sponsored by Ojai Valley News May 17, 2024
Life in Ojai’s Homeless Encampment
Unfiltered Realities: Social Media’s Impact on Teenage Girls Ojai Valley School junior Valentina Edelson
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Melissa Balding, 48, outside her tent in the Ojai homeless encampment, shelters from the rain. Besant Hill School sophomore Eli Gershovich
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t’s extremely windy, sunlight is fading behind the mountains and it’s raining — hard. The raindrops land on the cement like bullets. It is only 50 degrees outside and nobody is around — except a certain few people, who have no choice but to be outside. Behind Ojai’s City Hall — a beautiful Spanish revival style building, encircled by well-maintained shrubs and fronted by a fountain endlessly flowing with water — a starker vision lays bare a sobering truth, especially after an unseasonably rainy and cold winter: a sprawling homeless encampment of tents that first sprouted two years ago, continuing to serve as a makeshift community for roughly 30 people. While Ojai is well known in California and beyond as an affluent community and popular tourist destination with breathtaking mountain views and high-end hotels and restaurants, homelessness, despite popular belief, is prevalent. “My grandpa was here since the roads were dirt,” says Kristen Wingate, 52, who has family roots in Ojai and has been living in the encampment for several months. She’s dressed in a blue puffer jacket and sweatpants, has a hood covering her brunette hair, and is wearing a pair of running
shoes. She is short in stature and speaks with a raspy voice. “People who have lived here for only months have mansions. It’s hard out here when it starts raining. People get sick,” she says. Melissa Balding, 48, has been an Ojai resident for five years. She says last summer she was victimized by a scam in which she lost a large sum of money she invested in a local taxi company. She’s now Wingate’s neighbor, living in the encampment behind Ojai City Hall and on this night, she braves the rain and cold wearing tights, a T-shirt, and a beanie. “What I hate the most,” says Balding, “is when people make assumptions about us. We’re all good people who just got unlucky.” Ojai residents have voiced mixed opinions about the encampment and how City Hall and Ventura County authorities and organizations are responding to aid the unhoused population. “I have talked to people that think it is great that [unhoused] people are allowed to stay. I have talked to people that are very much against [it],” said Scott Garner, a Ventura County Sheriff ’s deputy, who works for the Sheriff ’s Office homeless liaison unit. “I will say I received a lot more complaints and concerns when people were living in the city parks.”
“We’re all good people who just got unlucky.” — Melissa Balding Garner schedules backpack medicine outreach to encampment residents. He emphasized, though, that volunteers — many of whom include doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors, and representatives from various homeless shelters — deliver much of the needed aid. “We have seen an increase in homelessness in the past four years,” said Whitney Nunes, a case worker for Help of Ojai, a nonprofit organization that strives to help unhoused people find temporary housing. “The majority of the [unhoused] people are elderly, the majority of [whom] have lived in Ojai for 20-plus years,” Nunes continued, “with very few of them moving here later in life. People are selling their houses at high prices as rent continues to rise, and a lot of elderly people are on fixed incomes. [But] seniors aren’t the only ones becoming homeless; everyone is.”
hen the clock strikes 6:30 a.m., Katie wakes up and reaches for her phone. She opens her Instagram and scrolls through
her feed. After an hour of mindless scrolling, she gets up and gets dressed, only to find that her jeans aren’t zipping up. She stands there, looking in the mirror, and thinks back to her Instagram feed, filled with photos of girls with small waists and flat stomachs. When her mom offers her breakfast, she declines and begins to put on makeup. She looks at her skin and bursts into tears. The beauty standard set by social media is overwhelming and feels impossible to meet. She decides to take a mental health day because the thought of attending school is daunting. “Every time I open my phone and scroll through social media, I feel like shit. Online… it looks like everyone’s life is perfect and I constantly wish I could have that,” said Katie. High school freshman Katie isn’t the only girl who struggles with feeling insecure after scrolling through social media. According to dosomething.org, 95% of teens are on social media and 37% have been bullied online. Ojai Valley School recognized this issue and hired Robert Brunelle as a guidance counselor to support students’ mental health. Brunelle has a lot of students coming into his office with anxiety due to social media and has seen firsthand the consequences it can have on young people. Social media provides easy access to dopamine that stimulates the brain and provides pleasure. “Everyone in high school — their brain currently has an emphasis on seeking pleasure, attention, and emotions that are in the moment,” explained Brunelle about why social media is so attractive and addictive to teenagers. Social media provides an alternative to in-person conversations. Teens often use social media as a distraction to avoid having real conversations where problems are resolved, resulting in a lack of social communication skills. “I think social media becomes an avoidance of things, which means we aren’t practicing the skills to change [things],” said Brunelle. “Unless you learn skills to actually talk to that person… it’s not going to change what’s going on. So I think it makes it easier to avoid problems.” SEE REALITIES ON PAGE C4
SEE HOMELESS ON PAGE C2
Opinion
Mayor’s Youth Council Gives Students a Voice in Local Politics Ojai Valley School senior Alula Alderson
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t 17 years old, it had never occurred to me that I have a place in the sphere of local politics. But just last month, I stepped up to the microphone at a City Council meeting to advocate against rodenticide usage in the Ojai Valley — a topic I feel passionately about as an environmentalist and animal lover.
“My voice and opinions are heard and amplified.” — Ama Okigbo, Thacher junior With the introduction of the Mayor’s Youth Council, I’m now part of a group where I feel I have the platform and support to help create the changes I want to see in my community. “My voice and opinions are heard and amplified,” agreed my Youth Council peer Ama Okigbo. “I can talk to the Ojai council and be an advocate for positive change from the youth perspective.” Mayor Betsy Stix came up with the idea for the council last spring, inspired by youth commissions in other cities. “Its mission is to teach Ojai Valley high schoolers how city government works, to familiarize the students with local issues and
help them identify bold solutions to these issues, and to encourage them to participate in local government by sharing their opinions on specific council agenda items, either in person or online,” she summarized. The idea of bringing younger voices and new perspectives to the City Council was exciting to Stix. “I think this is what we really need,” she said. “To solve… the problems that we have on our planet, we need different ways of looking at issues — a much more holistic approach — because we are all connected and everything we do affects everybody around us.” On Sept. 26, the initiative was approved at the City Council, and on Nov. 7 the group assembled for the first time. Today, the Youth Council is made up of over 25 students, myself included, from all six local high schools — Nordhoff, Ojai Valley School, Thacher, Villanova Prepatory, Oak Grove, and Besant Hill. Youth Council co-chairs Chris Engel, Kathryn Hotchkiss, and Peggy Grunert, as well as Stix herself, facilitate the meetings; while Air Pizza owner Tere Karabatos generously provides a meeting space and pizza for the monthly reunions. At the first couple of meetings, everyone made introductions and shared what they believe are the biggest issues impacting Ojai’s youth. SEE POLITICS ON PAGE C7
Oak Grove School senior and Mayor’s Youth Council member Ula Leavitt speaks at the City Council meeting on April 23.