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Thursday, April 20, 2023
Volume 160 No. 34 SERVING SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
WWW.SJSUNEWS.COM/SPARTAN_DAILY
Indigenous center to open Fall 2023 By Dominique Huber STAFF WRITER
Native American and Indigenous students at San Jose State have been designated a space on campus. The new Native American and Indigenous Student Success Center will be located in the Spartan Memorial Chapel and is expected to have its grand opening in Fall 2023. SJSU will be the ninth California State University to have a space designated to Native American and Indigenous students on its campus. “We’re glad that the center is here,” said Luis Aquino, who is Zapotec, also known as Ben ‘Zaa, and a Native American Student Organization member. “It’s gonna be a new home for our Native students here and it’s gonna welcome a new generation of Native and Indigenous students on our campus . . . it’s been a long time coming,” Aquino said. Carmina Bosmenier, who is Yaqui and a member of the Native American Student Organization, said she wished they had more institutional support in opening a center. “There’s already so much on our plates and then to be like, ‘Oh you guys have to fight for your own identity space if you want resources or to feel seen,’ ” Bosmenier said. “I think that’s a big responsibility that we all kind of took on because we’re like, ‘Okay well no one else is doing it.’ ” SJSU’s Native American Student Organization is a
DOMINIQUE HUBER | SPARTAN DAILY
INDIGENOUS | Page 2
The Spartan Memorial Chapel, located between the Tower Lawn, the Spartan Complex and Yoshihiro Uchida Hall, is where the Native American and Indigenous Student Success Center is expected to open in Fall 2023.
Experts discuss food insecurity during webinar By Christine Tran STAFF WRITER
RAINIER DE FORT-MENARES | SPARTAN DAILY
Students protest the state of the Joe West Hall laundry rooms in the housing quad on Wednesday.
Protest bubbles up over Joe West laundry rooms By Rainier de Fort-Menares & Alessio Cavalca NEWS EDITOR & MANAGING EDITOR
A group of students gathered in front of Joe West Hall on Wednesday afternoon in hopes of changing the conditions and lack of accessibility in the dorm’s laundry room. Many of the students were from an activism, action and resistance class. Communication junior Mariana Valadez said the students created a campaign focused on fixing the Joe West Hall laundry room to create an accessible and safer path for the people living in the building. “Especially with the amount you’re paying for tuition, you should be getting the resources for what you’re paying,” she said. “And it’s just not safe and we’ve had people come and tell us their conditions that they’ve been in and how the elevators don’t even work and the doors don’t even open and have to prop it up with rocks.” Valadez said the state of the laundry room has caused some students to go to SJSU Express Laundry and other laundromats off campus. “For the amount you’re paying to be living here – I just don’t think it’s fair,” she said.
“Especially for people who can’t access the laundry room, like, what are you going to do?” Communication senior Finn Mathews said Joe West Hall is not the only dorm facing problems. They said they faced issues when they were living in Washburn Hall during their freshman year. “For example, in Washburn, some of my friends weren’t able to actually hear the fire alarms when it was going off in their rooms, which is really, like, it’s a really concerning safety issue,” Mathews said. Mathews said they and Valadez tried to communicate with the multiple people on campus to fix the issues but never received any response. “We’ve also been trying to contact the Residence Hall Association and we’ve reached out multiple times and just heard nothing back from them, which is frustrating because considering the workers, the students trying to make housing safer and safer and better for students,” Mathews said. “We were hoping that the right Residence Hall Association [would] contact us back but we haven’t heard anything so far.” Communication studies lecturer Lucas JOE WEST | Page 2
Non-profit volunteers discussed the role that hunger plays in prolonging poverty in the fourth part of a professional development webinar series. Building Equity in the Silicon Valley Food System is hosted by Veggielution, a community garden in San Jose, and Thrive, a San Mateo County-based network of 200+ nonprofit organizations.
prevent all of our neighbors from having enough resources needed to meet their basic needs,” she said. “We believe we can and must make a different choice and work together to solve the root causes of hunger.” DiFiore said hunger in Maine is a significant issue though news outlets don’t usually cover it. “Maine currently has the second highest food insecurity rate in New England and the highest rate of very low food insecurity – a more severe range of food insecurity that
And our mission is that rooted in growing food, we cultivate nourishing environments which support health, economic development, healing and creativity through urban agriculture. Lauralyn Clawson Urban Growers Collective director of operations
The two speakers were Dawn DiFiore, director of community partnerships at Good Shepherd Food Bank in Maine, and Lauralyn Clawson, director of operations at Urban Growers Collective in Chicago. They spoke to Zoom participants on their individual food systems project that aim to help their own respective communities. DiFiore said she works with many teams across the food bank. DiFiore said improving access to nutritious food, building strong partnerships and mobilizing the public are important to finding long-term solutions in ending hunger. “Our society has more than enough food for all but systemic inequities
involves reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns,” she said. DiFiore said single parent households have the highest rates of food insecurity, and nearly four times the overall rate in Maine. She said Black, Latino, Indigenous and other non-white households also experienced significantly higher rates of food insecurity. In the Bay Area, there was a 63% increase in food insecurity in Hispanic households with children, and in households experiencing job disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a SJSU ScholarWorks article. FOOD JUSTICE | Page 2