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By Staff Editorial
By Staff Editorial
President Castro wants the RCC “family” to be like Disneyland and designed with the Nordstrom’s atmosphere.
Loosely translated, Castro wants RCC to be a warm and happy place, without snobby attitude.
He wants this kind of environment developed just in time for RCC’s accreditation.
So how long will this kind of friendly attitude exist?
Will he actually follow through?
Will he remain consistent?
Does he have the rest of the RCC administration, faculty and staff behind him on this?
Castro, you found yourself snubbed by the administration and some of the faculty and staff here at RCC upon your arrival to this campus 8 months ago.
So how does it feel?
Because some of the students who come to this campus all of the time are snubbed the same way.
You might want to think about how their presence is received upon their first arrival.
The students here at RCC, on a consistent basis, are snubbed whether it is by their instructors, administrators or other staff on this campus when they are not easily recognized or understood.
And you wonder why your student enrollment had dropped 3 percent since this last year?
But, he wants to fix this problem.
In fact, he is sure that by making RCC a more welcoming place with someone playing a piano outside Admissions it will bring his clients (students) back. Or at least, he is entertaining the idea.
We are not sure that a piano will be a cure-all to RCC’s problems. If it is, RCC has a long way to go.
But how can we be a family when half of us are missing from the meeting that our “Dad” (Castro) has organized just for us all to attend?
He wants RCC to grow, more or less, change.
He understands that without change there will be no growth.
However, are we willing as a “family” to change for the better?
It is an easy thing to say that yes, in fact we are willing to make our college the best it can be, but actions always speak louder than words.
He wants the faculty and the administration to bridge the gap between them, and just get along. This one will take some time considering they all have to be on the same page.
He wants RCC to be the best with the University of California Los Angeles to be our guide. We think that is a good motivational tool, but it remains a questionable goal because we are not a UC.
He is actually encouraging student involvement. We’re sorry, but by having one student trustee to represent the entire student body just isn’t enough.
More frankly, the students who make up ASRCC cannot count for all of us students here at RCC because they remain a small minority of appointed students.
Who can say in all honesty they speak for EVERY individual in the student body even if they say they do?
All the students at this campus cannot possibly have the same opinion about one thing.
Castro said that RCC needs students to speak out and voice their opinion; this means not just communicating through ASRCC or the student trustee.
He wants students to be actively being involved with the accreditation process.
So what is college accreditation?
However, the administration and faculty would argue that students have always been invited to get involved.
But then why are the doors to these “special meetings for accreditation” constantly halfway closed and the space where students should sign in left off the sign-in list?
Is it intentional for students to be left out?
There is no argument here. It is pretty much black and white.
He wants everyone who calls RCC their campus to participate in making this a better campus.
OK Castro, tell us how.
We think that students need to stop being so worried about what and when they can get out of RCC.
This means that we as students need to stop enjoying our bliss in ignorance and thinking that someone else will fix the problem.
Frankly, we think RCC has had a long history of good planning, but not in executing and remaining dedicated to its plans.
And we are not talking about the reconstruction over there at the A.G. Paul Quadrangle.
We want just as much as Castro does for students and RCC staff alike to be willing to get involved with their college, not with words, but by their actions.
But we can only wait and see…