Category: News

Spring enrollment at PCC is down slightly from last year, despite outward appearances of an overcrowded campus, overflowing class waiting lists, and hard-to-find parking spaces. Crystal Kollross, Interim Dean of Institutional Planning and Research, said at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon, enrollment is currently down by only 78 from this time last year.

The Court of Champions will soon have a new name. The Board of Trustees approved a measure to rename the court in honor of alumnus Dick Ratliff. The Court of Champions is located to the west of Hutto-Patterson Gymnasium and houses bronze busts of prominent PCC athletes and coaches that went on to achieve fame outside of PCC.

PCC Trustee Jeanette Mann of the California Community College Trustees Board, was elected chairperson of the Community College League of California in January.The CCLC is nonprofit public benefit corporation whose volunteer members consist of the 72 local community college districts in California and is a subdivision of the CCCT.

At least 50 students rallied in front of the C Building on Wednesday as a “Day of Action at PCC” to protest against Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget cuts and save public education.Members of The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrants Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) stood on top of the steps leading up to the C Building and chanted “They say get back” to which other members responded, “We say fight back.

Tensions ran high at meetings across campus as students, faculty and staff discussed a recommendation to cut 248 summer, fall and spring class sections and move the 2012 winter session. “Sections will have to be reduced next year,” said PCC President Mark Rocha at the College Council meeting Feb.

After 18 months of delay, construction of a building that will house multiple classrooms and offices has finally begun. The demolition of the former T and K buildings is the first step in a process that will allow for the construction of the new Center for the Arts.

PCC President Mark Rocha on Monday vehemently denied allegations made in a Los Angeles Times article published on Sunday at Monday’s Academic Senate meeting.Rocha read a prepared statement at the meeting.”Suffice it to say here that the Times reporting on West Los Angeles College is utter nonsense,” Rocha said.

A proposed budget from California Gov. Jerry Brown that will slash the community college system budget by $400 million also proposes an increase in tuition fees from the current $26 to $36 per unit. Students’ views on the plan vary widely.

Members of the PCC Faculty Association will vote this week on a tentative agreement with the district that includes a retirement incentive, which could affect more than 10 percent of the full-time faculty.