The Concerned Students Council is a new club that aims to give students a place to bring complaints and problems about the campus. The main problems the club identifies is the quality and price of the food on campus, and the need for a better student community. Steven Lusby is a founding member of the club. “The food is sometimes overpriced and not very good. Many students are willing to go miles to get food elsewhere,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know that we have a football team and a basketball team here. Simple things like that, we want to be able to have some pride in our school. Go Bulldogs, or whatever.”
Arik Israel is the president of the Concerned Students Council, and he said he decided to start this club after looking around the campus. “I was really surprised that there wasn’t already a club like this. This idea mostly came from me being really frustrated about the problems on campus, mainly the food,” he said. The club has a three-prong approach to these issues. “We want to find new problems, raise awareness about problems, both the new ones and the ones that already exist but aren’t getting solved, and then solving those problems. Not just administrators and not just the Associated Student Government but getting students to help solve those problems.”
Members of ASG have been involved with the Concerned Student Council, like Maria Jimenez, the campus life and events representative. “I’ve heard a lot of great ideas that I can go back and tell my team, so we can work towards what students are wanting and needing,” she said. “I think this will improve campus life and I’m looking forward to more and ideas and more constructive input.”
The council is also seeing how much change they can make. “We’re working close with ASG to look at the bylaws, and to see what power students have,” said Lusby. “As the student body we basically do run everything. The school is supposed to be built around us, not the other way around. So we need to express our power and exercise our abilities to change the school for the better for students.”
Members of the Concerned Student Council are looking for a better community among clubs and possibly putting on more campus wide events, such as music and food festivals. “The feel of this school is that of a community college so people don’t tend to stick around after class. They don’t want to get involved,” said Lusby. The club would like more events and places for students to socialize, to create a better sense of community, and therefore a better student experience.