After several months of deliberation, Capital Public Radio has taken over managerial control of KHSU and expects to resume hosting local programming and internships.

The move comes two years after KHSU was massively cut back, firing most employees, ending the volunteer program, reverting to national broadcasts, and leaving its future very much up in the air. Since then, KHSU has not had any local programming and has broadcasted national feeds of NPR and BBC.

The initial decision to cut back KHSU came as a surprise to many, particularly the employees of the station itself who were not told ahead of time that most of them would be laid off. The administration had fired all but two of the people working there. They both stepped down soon after.

After briefly running simulcast with NSPR, the station began running entirely national broadcasts and has not done any local programming since, citing NPR and BBC as their most popular broadcasting.

Phil Wilke, general manager of North State Public Radio, says he also was unaware of the decision to cut most of the station, which was made while NSPR and the HSU administration were in talks about a partnership to help produce more content.

“We had been in initial talks with Frank [Whitlatch] and the university administration, with Chico state, and with Cap Radio on a proposed partnership,” Wilke said. “But it hadn’t gotten far beyond the ‘Hey how are you doing, this is great in concept’ phases, so there was no real proposals on the table, we were just getting to know each other.”

With the current deal, Cap Radio and NSPR will provide the managerial resources to run the station while HSU keeps the station’s licensing rights. While not much is set in stone, the station hopes to explore how they can give students a greater role in the kind of on air programming that KHSU will be producing in the future.

According to Frank Whitlatch, HSU’s VP of Advancement, this arrangement is similar to one in other colleges.

“In essence, what the university did is hire Cap Radio to be the general manager and handle some of the staffing for our radio station,” said Whitlatch. “That’s the simplest way of explaining what we’ve done. A sort of similar arrangement is in place with Cap Radio and Chico.”

Currently there is not going to be any classes that have direct student involvement in the KHSU station, but if everything works well, they will begin to bring in volunteers and interns, as they did before, in addition to possibly giving students more of an active role.

Longtime former KHSU volunteer Tim Warner who hosted “The Buck Calhoun Show” for 18 years, heard the plan to move forward with Capital Public Radio but urges the university to consider the link that the station has provided to the community that went away following the sweeping cuts at KHSU in 2019.

“The administration needs to realize what an important bridge the radio station was to the community and to not burn that bridge,” Warner said. “Importance of HSU in this community, and the importance of this community to the college should not be underestimated.”

Warner also stressed the role of having local programming that does reflect the diverse community that Humboldt County embraces.

“I think that changing out a local community point of view to a very generic white liberal NPR-style programming will exclude a lot of student and community voices,” Warner said.

Cap Radio and NSPR intend to begin conducting market research into exactly what kind of content they could start running. In a press release from HSU, Cap Radio’s general manager Jun Reina said that the research will help them provide audiences with stronger programming.

“With the results of this research as our guide, we will evolve KHSU’s on-air and digital programming and will be able to ensure stronger resources to improve audience services,” said Reina. “This includes uninterrupted access to national programming from NPR, BBC and APM.”

Humboldt State is continuing to offer students and faculty vaccinations.

In the past week, the university has received 504 doses of vaccines, including the first dose of Pfizer and second dose of Moderna.

According to Public Information Officer Grant Scott-Goforth, the university expects to receive mostly second doses after this week.

“The requirements for receiving vaccines is changing and vaccines will be allotted from the State of California through a third party administrator, Blue Shield,” Scott-Goforth said.

HSU has given out 1,950 vaccine doses so far and continues to encourage everyone to receive their dose as long as they are eligible.

Michele Stephens is the Humboldt County Public Health Director.

“We are so thankful to those members of our community who waited for their turn, and now it’s here,” Stephens said. “We encourage everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible, so we can all spend time with friends and loved ones safely and protect those under 16 who can’t yet get vaccinated.”

Currently, HSU is offering a limited amount of vaccinations to students who are immunocompromised.

Humboldt County Public Health has opened eligibility for vaccines to any resident 16 and older. Students interested in a vaccine should sign up using the MyTurn system set up by the state of California.

Find more detailed information on the HSU website.

The virtual AS Presidential debate took place on April 7 between Lizbeth Cano-Sanchez and Jeremiah Finley.

Finley is the current AS President and is running for re-election, but Cano-Sanchez is also running for the position for a second time after her Spring 2020 takeover when the acting president at the time had to step away.

The moderator for the debate was Dan Sornia, the AS Program and Media Coordinator. Since the candidates were on a 45 minute time crunch, Sornia spent no time getting straight into the debate.

“Each person’s response will be timed in order to make sure that we’re on track and making sure we’re giving equal attention and equal time to both candidates,” Sornia said.

They then asked the candidates to each introduce themselves, with Finley going first and Cano-Sanchez going second.

Following introductions, the first set of questions were asked and included how the candidates planned to bridge communication between the student body and AS, as well as the information being discussed at University Senate meetings.

Both candidates emphasized the importance of continued efforts to enhance communication between committees that are receiving information in spaces that are inaccessible to the majority of students and the campus community.

“We’ve been able to get the ball rolling on a lot of topics, such as the student fee task force report that is going to be taken up again and will be relooked at or examined by the Student Fee Advisory Committee,” Finley said.

Cano-Sanchez said that the SFAC would be one committee that she would spend more time with. She said that the redirection of student fees is crucial and it is especially important to ensure that directed fees are used to fund student programs.

“We need to demand the administration for things to get done and I think that the president voice can be heavily used to do this,” Cano-Sanchez said.

Finley said that throughout this past year, students have experienced a lot of pushback from administration on a lot of different topics. Oftentimes student advocates and board members feel as though they’re being silenced.

Both candidates wanted to let it publicly be known that leaders on campus, especially the AS President and board members, have an obligation to enhance student voices and minimize the disenfranchisement of those voices by the administration.

As the debate came to an end, Sornia read through two questions from the audience for candidates to answer. One asked whether they believe that students voices were actually taken into consideration.

“Unfortunately, my executive committee members have been called disrespectful at times for probing and challenging a little bit more than my predecessor has,” Finley said.

Cano-Sanchez agreed that administrators have been selective with what student voices are being taken into consideration.

“When I served, I definitely saw that my voice as president was prioritized over other voices which I did not like,” Cano-Sanchez said.

Finley and Cano-Sanchez then gave their closing statements and reminded students that they can vote starting on April 12 and ending on April 16.

HSU students can vote for their 2021-2022 AS officers online on April 12 through April 16.

Even though the last date to appear on the ballet was March 29, students can still register to be a write-in up until April 8.

Casey Park, AS board coordinator and AS elections committee advisor, said that there are currently six fully filed candidates on the ballot who are running for five positions, and the president position is the only one right now that is being contested.

“We have 10 elected positions that are available for students to file to be a write-in candidate for,” Park said. “This week, we will be having a debate for the president candidates and discussions between pairs of our other candidates.”

The current AS President, Jeremiah Finley, is up for re-election and believes that he has a chance to continue advocating for students on campus.

“In leading the AS Board of Directors and the student body at HSU this year, I have had to challenge and probe more intentionally as the student voice needed to be introduced into spaces that it hadn’t been in before,” Finley said.

Being a part of the student government during the pandemic year of 2020, the AS board members had to face unforeseen challenges. However, it allowed Finley to find support in places where he hadn’t thought to look and created relationships with campus partners that were previously unobtainable like with the other AS Presidents in the CSU system.

AS Vice President Malluli Cuéllar is grateful for the opportunity to experience taking part in the election process before COVID-19, as well as being a part of guiding her peers through the virtual transition.

“It definitely felt unfamiliar, but having to adapt to virtual elections allowed candidates to explore innovative ways of campaigning,” Cuéllar said.

She said that although she may have been the first VP to spend her whole elected year virtually chairing meetings, she is likely not going to be the last. Cuéllar looks forward to passing off all of the knowledge and tips that have helped her during her time as VP.

Cuéllar is especially appreciative of her time with AS and feels like it built her up and she has emerged as a confident and empowered leader ready to navigate any spaces she enters knowing that she can contribute in meaningful ways.

“The most beneficial part of being a part of the student government from my perspective is knowing that in every space I walk into, when repping the student body, I have about 5,000 students behind me,” Finley said.

The pandemic has pressed the need for more gender specific policies within universities as data from HSU reveals that female faculty have been disproportionally affected by the lack of accommodation for unpaid caregiving responsibilities.

According to HSU’s data for fall 2020, 52% of faculty on campus are lecturers and of that percentage, 61% are women. Female faculty at HSU are no exception to being disproportionately impacted by the lack of COVID relief, as well as the ongoing budget cuts.

Nicola Walters is a lecturer in the Politics Department at Humboldt State and a member of the Humboldt chapter of the California Faculty Association. She said that following the CFA Statewide’s COVID-19 Relief Town Hall in February, the CFA finally received data from the CSU on COVID-19 leave use.

“Only 2% of faculty were granted COVID-related relief from CSU administrators,” Walters said.

Walters also said that the reasoning behind why female employees in universities are being significantly affected is because parenting and elder care responsibilities fall disproportionately to women and people of color. So, the CSU administrators rejecting COVID-19 relief creates a gender equity gap.

According to a study released in December to the Lancet Journal, there has been a significant drop in women authorship in research fields and an increase in male authorship since the pandemic began. The study also said that the unexpected day care, school, and workplace closures exacerbated many of the well documented challenges women in academia face already during non-pandemic times.

Meghan O’Donnell, CFA associate vice president of Lecturers for the North, said that faculty within the CSU are expected to meet standards set by their university’s reappointment, tenure, and promotion policies each year.

“There’s been many professors who have been stuck with caregiving and parenting responsibilities during COVID and have just been totally unable to do the required research and publications, as well as attend conferences and engage in professional development,” O’Donnell said.

She mentions that although there are many men who also take on primary caregiving responsibilities, the majority are women, particularly women of color.

O’Donnell said that with the issues of racism and gender inequality, institutions and businesses have notoriously created policies and practices that are gender-neutral and race-neutral. The reality is that by doing this, it actually harms those populations, it doesn’t support those populations.

“I think one of the solutions is to really focus on creating policies that support women, particularly women of color in academia,” O’Donnell said.

Another solution O’Donnell suggests for institutions to help their female faculty is to provide accessibility to paid leave and support, as well as being flexible with accommodations. She said that the recognition of unique needs is important.

Chelsea Rios, fiscal coordinator for the Women’s Resource Center at HSU, is not surprised that women, especially women of color, have to prove their existence yet again in male dominated spaces, but wants more for women than to simply be recognized.

“The pandemic highlighted how disproportionally women are accounted for in the workplace, but at the same time, I don’t believe much will come with this awareness unless action is done,” Rios said.

It’s five minutes until your class starts in Founder’s Hall. You have a big test that you forgot a scantron for and you are rushing. But then you remember — the HSU bookstore is right on the way to Founder’s Hall and carries scantrons, among other things.

But then you wake up and realize it was all a dream and the bookstore is nowhere to be found on campus. It is fall of 2021 and you, like many other students, are left without a centralized location to grab school supplies and attire. Come July, this will be the reality for Humboldt State. The university has been cleared to move its bookstore to a new location adjacent to the Arcata Plaza.

Anisa Benamira-Dod is a student frustrated with the decision to move the bookstore off-campus. A junior communication major, she is concerned that the bookstore’s on-campus absence will impact students in more ways than one. More specifically, she is concerned that students will not be able to access the bookstore as easily due to its vicinity.

“I know a lot of people that don’t have cars. And so walking from Creekview all the way down to Arcata — the Arcata Plaza — it would just make it a day trip,” Benamira-Dod said. “Not many people would want to go to the bookstore just for like a few books or something like that if they don’t have a car.”

While it is great to appeal to the off-campus community, Benamira-Dod feels that a separation will occur.

“It’s starting to create a distance between like people who live on campus and people who live off campus,” Benamira-Dod said.

Aaron Ostrom is the founder and co-owner of Pacific Outfitters, a retail chain in Humboldt County with locations in Arcata, Eureka, and Ukiah. The Arcata location will be the future home of the HSU bookstore. For him, it wasn’t sustainable to continue on with his Arcata store due to a number of factors.

When COVID shut everything down last year, Arcata, in his words, turned into a “ghost town.” It wasn’t just the town itself that got shut down. Shipping and manufacturing also got shut down and that really threw a wrench into everything. Faced with this adversity, Ostrom decided that he could turn his Arcata branch into a warehouse for the other two stores that were deemed essential, unlike the Arcata location.

But then the Arcata store ran out of merchandise. Between that and Humboldt State limiting the number of students on campus, things were not looking good.

“It was hard to really justify investing in a bunch of inventory to fill a store back up,” Ostrom said. “I gotta pay the bill for all those goods in like 60 days after making that investment.”

When HSU came knocking inquiring about the vacant space, Ostrom answered the call with open arms. Now Humboldt State will rent the former Pacific Outfitters location from the local chain. Ostrom is glad to have a local institution taking the place of his old store and feels that there are economic benefits to be gained for both sides in this deal.

“Every single day, we would get people asking about HSU gear and HSU students, of course, showing up, HSU students bring their families, Ostrom said. “So, I think having a bookstore in town will be great for HSU merchandise that they want to sell.”

Todd Larsen is the director of housing operations and one of the main individuals involved in the bookstore’s relocation to downtown Arcata. From his perspective, there are a few key reasons behind the shift.

“Students have been asking us for more student activity space, student lounge space, and creating a student center which we don’t have, as you know, on campus,” Larsen said. “It’s giving the bookstore more accessibility. Two-thirds of our students live off campus and also parking — people that come to campus here they can’t even get to the bookstore right in a normal year there’s no parking.”

Larsen and his team plan to turn the bookstore’s old space into a recreational space.

“We’re looking at an opportunity to maybe bring in Stars restaurant in the old Windows space,” Larsen said. “And really just providing a lot of fun and a central place on campus where students can go. And we don’t have that now and it’s hurting us.”

HSU students will be able to buy Scantrons at the College Creek Marketplace in addition to the off-campus new bookstore. Additonal items are being considered for the Marketplace, too.

The Natural Resources building is sporting a new mural, ready for the return to in person classes coming next semester. The new painting was the result of a campus wide contest put on by HSU students and came with a $1,000 reward for the winning artist. The contest was held last month, and had artists from all over the campus sending in art pieces with the hopes of sprucing up the spaces that students spend the class time in.

The winner of the mural contests was a piece titled “The Merge” by studio arts major Vincenzo Alatorre. Alatorre’s painting features a woman sitting in the palms of a tree and conferring with an eagle, over a large pond. The piece symbolizes finding sanctuary in nature and the natural processes of the earth. According to Alatorre, he heard of the mural contest like many other, through the call put out over Instagram.

“I found out about it over Instagram and the prompts really resonated with me,” Alatorre said “And the opportunity to get my art on campus and get seen caught my attention.”

This piece was the culmination of a several month long process started by HSU graduate Allison Muench, who came up with the idea of holding an art contest after looking at the spaces she was working in during class. Muench went forward with the plan to get some new student made artwork put up by collaborating with several members of the faculty, such as dean of the natural resources and sciences department Dale Oliver, and putting the call out to bring in as many students as possible to submit art and vote for the winner. According to Oliver, the work to a large degree was the result of cooperation between a wide group of different departments at the school.

“there’s a public art committee on campus, and they were just starting up. the purpose of that committee was to oversee all public art requests.” Oliver said “they haven’t formed completely so what we did was we reached out to the chair, James Laughlin with the art department. together we decided how this could go forward to get university blessing”

Muench initially wanted to run a contest because she thought that spaces on campus could use some more work, and that it could be a great opportunity to get students involved. After getting the school on board, Muench put out the word over Instagram and via word of mouth to as many students as possible, with prompts like finding sanctuary in nature and being both lost and found in the natural world. From that came 18 submissions from students in various different parts of the campus.

From there, Muench put out a poll for people to vote for their top three favorite pieces. Muench hopes that projects like this will both set a precedent for further opportunities to allow student artists to showcase their work on campus, and to encourage students to look at the buildings their working in and consider how they could be made more vibrant and interesting. While this was the only one approved for now, Muench hopes there is potential for more art in the future.

“I think if students are interested in repeating this process there is potential for it.” Muench said. “Personally i’m hoping to get one more up.”

Although talk has circulated across campus via social media within the past week about a second spring break, Humboldt State officials say that it’s not possible without jeopardizing student learning outcomes.

“Back in December, the university announced changes to the spring schedule,” Grant Scott-Goforth, the communications specialist for the university, said. “We know it’s caused some frustration, but HSU continues to have to make changes to the ever-changing environment of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This year’s spring break took place during the week of Feb. 22-26, only a month into the semester. Scott-Goforth said that the difficult decision was to help adapt to requirements from the California Governor’s Office and the CSU Chancellor’s Office amid the regional “stay at home” order announced in December.

HSU students just entered the second half of the semester and they feel concerned about the productivity of the remainder of the semester.

After feeling burnt out already with only Caesar Chavez Day to look forward to, students are hoping for some sort of help from the school or their professors.

Ali Holen is graduating from HSU in May with a bachelor’s in kinesiology and a minor in pre-physical therapy and dance studies. She feels as though some sort of help to alleviate some pressure off of workload would allow for many students to get their footing and finish off the semester strong.

“The motivation is little to none and the assignments/exams just keep coming,” Holen said.

For Spring Break, Holen traveled to Santa Barbara with her boyfriend. Although they both worked hard to get all their assigned material done beforehand, they ended up spending more time on school during the break than they had previously expected.

The earliness of the break ended up taking a toll on Holen and she is not the only one who feels this way. Both her roommates and coworkers who are students all have similar feelings where they feel like they can’t catch their breath.

Within the past week, students across campus made it known that they are beginning to feel the burden of this long spring semester. In response, some faculty members understand that a second spring break is not possible, but are offering an informal break to allow students to catch up.

During the week of Mar.29 to April 2, Marcy Burstiner, a professor in the journalism department at HSU, is not eliminating any assignments, but rather giving students the option to do them for extra credit. It will ensure that students who can do the work don’t feel cheated out of learning opportunities.

“Those who feel overwhelmed can skip them and then those who are worried about having fallen behind can make up some work and gain extra credit,” Burstiner said.

There are seven weeks until finals week and the end of the Spring 2021 semester for HSU students.

Home Away From Home and Equity Arcata held a free food and supply distribution event for HSU students on March 15. The rainy event was catered by Roman’s Kitchen and included free food and free bags of supplies like gift cards, shampoo, hygiene products, and more. Equity Arcata hosts events like these a few times a year to help give college students the chance to save some cash on some of the expensive items they’re going to need to live on their own.

Equity Arcata, the group that hosted the event, is a collective of volunteers that organizes various work groups in order to put together events that help make Arcata a more racially equitable community. These groups help to address the potential barriers that can make life difficult for people trying to make their home in Arcata. According to Cati Gallardo, chair of the Equity Arcata communications working group, these work groups focus on things like housing, student safety, and more.

“We have several working groups all focusing on various kinds of racial equity in Arcata,” Gallardo said. “Specific to housing, police and student safety, or ongoing learning which offers racial equity training for community members at HSU and also at K-12 schools.”

This specific distribution event was done by Home Away From Home, a group of volunteers that helps to get food and supplies to college students and to help them feel welcome in Arcata while they choose to live here. This year the event was catered by Roman’s Kitchen, who gave out free sandwiches and burgers, but under normal circumstances, the event would be a potluck where students can come in and get some free food and a free goodie bag of all of the things an underfunded student may need.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions this year and last, that couldn’t be done, but regardless, Home Away From Home member Gillen Martin says that this is the third event done under quarantine and hopefully they can do another around finals week.

“This is our third distribution like this, we did one in October, one in December, and this is our third.” Martin said “Hopefully we get another grant to do another one around finals week. We always like to hold one kind of in honor of finals week too because students are kind of dealing with some stuff, so they don’t have to worry about it.”

The distribution events mainly bring in students from HSU in Arcata but also from any of the surrounding colleges, and are open to any students who could use something to eat and some free stuff. A lot of students are led to the event by one of the many other projects that all dedicate time and effort to helping Arcata and Humboldt as a whole be a more welcoming and safe community.

For many majors across campus, in-person engagement has been a pipe dream. Yet for some majors, particularly ones in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-related fields, the experience of seeing classmates and professors in a physical classroom or lab setting is now a reality. Lasting until the end of the semester, these courses and activities are being offered on a limited basis.

Ayse Macknight is a senior oceanography major and a scientific diving minor. Macknight is a teaching assistant for the scientific diving program and assists where she can. The diving program meets once a week in-person to do exercises in the HSU pool.

“I’m helping mainly with skills,” Macknight said. “I’m helping out with all the other diving classes.”

Macknight is satisfied with the way that the diving program is handling all of this with major coronavirus safety measures being enacted.

“When the students first arrive, they meet outside and they brief and then they go into the pool through one door and they pick up their gear and they put it down, and then they go outdoors,” Macknight said. “It’s kind of like a circle — everyone’s always going one direction so it’s like minimize chances of running into each other. Afterward, we disinfect all gear that anyone’s put their mouth on or anything.”

Senior forestry major Sarah McGee is involved in more hands-on classes. She is doing both individual and group activities.

“For my soil fertility class, we’re doing experiments in the forestry greenhouse and so we’ve been assigned two to three 30 minute time slots a week where we can go into the greenhouse by ourselves and conduct our own experiment that’s soil fertility-related,” McGee said. “For my soil microbiology class, we are doing some algae experiments in the soil lab.”

McGee is excited to be back in person doing things rather than staying at home sitting in front of a screen all day.

“It’s a lot more motivating and it’s a lot easier to stay on task and be accountable when you’re meeting up and doing things in person, I think,” McGee said.

Not all in-person classes and labs are STEM-focused. A few other majors like film are also conducting face-to-face instruction. Kylie Holub is a junior and a film major currently in Film 2 where she is learning about lighting and audio. She reiterated the significance of being in-person for film projects.

“Seeing the equipment and being able to have different students have the ability to check out the equipment and then test it out and things like that and to learn about it,” Holub said. “So it’s definitely, I think, very important to have these face-to-face opportunities, plus film is super collaborative so like getting to know your classmates and just like vibing with people is kind of important.”

In the upcoming week, Humboldt State University is expected to communicate where the remaining $11 million from the second round of CARES funding will be allocated after receiving over 200 submissions from campus input.

HSU’s communications specialist, Grant Scott-Goforth, said that although the university planned to seek input through Feb. 26, the university is still finalizing the allocations and expects to announce them this week.

“The President’s administrative team is currently reviewing the input and working to prioritize allocations,” Scott-Goforth said.

The University obtained the input via individual submissions, as well as from various meetings, such as the University Senate, Associated Students, and the University Resources & Planning Committee.

Individual submissions were sent through a questionnaire on the University Budget website that posed the following question: What are the top three investments the University should make to successfully adapt to the impacts of COVID-19 and enhance the educational experience of our students?

In an open forum held by the URPC on March 5, James Woglom, an associate professor in the art department at HSU, opened the meeting by addressing all the people that are currently working on budget plans for the future of the university.

“We have 19 incredible people really informing our conversation and we’re also looking to expand that conversation,” Woglom said. “We’ve reached out since the fall to the CFA in thinking about trying to get a CFA representative on the URCP so that those perspectives can also be shared.”

The committee’s desire for CFA input comes as the CFA chapter at Humboldt State has put pressure on the administration in response to pandemic-related layoffs that the university deems necessary.

On March 10, the House passed the American Rescue Plan. The plan is a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that also includes nearly $40 billion for higher education. This would provide HSU with additional one-time resources on top of the remainder of unallocated funds from the second round of stimulus funding.

The CFA chapter at HSU has specifically mentioned that additional funding could be headed our way throughout this next academic year.

“The CSU is about to receive $800 million in COVID-19 stimulus money. Spend it on the people providing the coursework, the people most responsible for student success,” the CFA Faculty association commented on the CFA Humboldt Facebook post on March 12.

As HSU communicates the allocation of the remaining $11 million in funds from the second package this week, we are likely to see another round of stimulus funding come our way in the coming weeks.

Cats are no strangers to the Humboldt County streets. They can be found roaming around but not all of them are tamed. Oftentimes, these animals are stray and even pregnant, in some cases. They are usually brought to shelters like the Humboldt Animal Rescue Team in Eureka.

Accepting cats from a variety of different circumstances, this volunteer-based group aims to nurture them until they can be adopted.

It is standard procedure at the shelter to isolate the newer, more frazzled cats upstairs where they can acclimate to their new environment without worrying about interacting with any people. But getting them to actually come out of their shells is where HSU students factor in.

Many of the cats that are brought into the shelter are shy and not sociable enough to be adopted by anyone yet. Rose Kessler is a lead volunteer that oversees the other HSU student volunteers. She is very in-tune with how the cats evolve emotionally over time during their stays at the shelter.

“When they first come in, a lot of these cats are angry,” Kessler said.

Kessler is extremely grateful for the Humboldt State students that come in every week and help care for the cats that could not otherwise volunteer at other shelters around the county.

“Right now, a lot of the rescues, from what I hear, they’re not accepting volunteers right now because of COVID,” Kessler said. “And we are.”

Jesse Morales is a fourth-year communication major. They are very experienced with cats and have been regularly volunteering at the shelter since 2019. Now, it is virtually second-nature to them interacting with the cats to the extent that they do.

“We just kind of come in and show that people aren’t gonna hurt them and get them used to us.”

Volunteers begin the process of getting the new cats comfortable by first sitting in a room with the cat. From there, they gradually try to physically engage the cats more and until the cats warm up to them enough that they can be moved downstairs.

Lexi Cortez is a sophomore and one of the newest volunteers at the Humboldt Animal Rescue Shelter. An avid cat lover, Cortez has always enjoyed working at shelters with cats.

“I’ve always wanted to work at shelters and stuff — just being able to help them,” Cortez said, “I’m glad I get to do it now.”

Kessler has been working with Cortez and from what she has seen, is impressed with the work Cortez has done.

“They don’t know her, so they’re a little bit shy,” Kessler said. “I can tell they like her but they’re watching her.”

One of the cats that found a home, albeit temporary, is Oliver. Morales is currently fostering him but it took a lot of patience to ground him in the confines of the shelter and then eventually in their home.

“He definitely was not the nicest cat here and he did not get along with other cats,” Morales said. “And I just steadily worked at him, continuously, until a couple months when I started fostering him.”

Last month, the Native American Agricultural fund awarded the Blue Lake Rancheria $50,000 dollars for the operation of agriculture programs that will take place at the Daluviwi’ community garden. These workshops will focus on the propagation of native plants, mostly food, and also fund a farm stall that will give those taking the workshop the chance to sell what they produce and learn valuable agricultural business skills. Some of this will be done with the assistance of HSU students working with the Food Sovereignty Lab and the Native American studies department to also gain skills and experience.

Daluviwi’ means food it Wiyot, and the garden provides food for both the casino restaurant and for the elder nutrition program, which is aimed at ensuring that elders who may be stuck at home can eat properly. Aside from the individual plots that the garden will use to continue growing those foods, there is also going to be a farm stall built that the garden will not only use to sell the excess food grown that does not go to the aforementioned restaurant and elder nutrition program, but also to teach skills used in the agricultural industry. Daniel Holsapple, HSU alum and manager of the Daluviwi’ garden project, hopes to also use this stall for any number of other possible goods.

“The farmstand is going to be kind of multi-purpose, on one hand, we’re using it to sell excess produce that doesn’t get used by the elder nutrition program or the casino restaurant, and people who use the garden plots will also have access to the farm stand,” Holsapple said. “I’m hoping to do some other things like growing and selling native ornamentals or cut flowers.”

The community garden workshops were also planned to have a deal with HSU for things like compost and to partner with students from HSU’s Food Sovereignty lab project, which works with local native communities to study Indigenous natural resources and environmental sciences. While COVID slowed things down before anything was finalized, according to Holsapple, this would include things like having Native plants available to the Food Sovereignty Lab from the garden.

According to Cody Henrikson, an HSU student who has been working for the Food Sovereignty lab from early on, this partnership currently is taking the form of internships and assistance with community gardens for the Blue Lake Rancheria and other local communities until the primary workspace is finished with construction and larger scale collaboration can begin.

“We are partnering up with local tribes to support their local gardens and such,” Henrikson said. “And provide internships as kind of our first phase of what we’re looking at”

The steering committee for the food sovereignty lab is made up of people from the local native communities, including Blue Lake Rancherias Jason Ramos, who is himself an HSU alum. While the lab is still in the process of getting up and running, hopes are that they will be able to help out even more with local gardens like the Daluviwi’ community garden and create a space for the continued preservation of Native food ways. According to Carrie Tully, graduate student and fellow member of the steering committee, these connections will be a big part of the operation of the lab moving forward

“There’s going to be lots of partnerships because our steering committee is comprised of a lot of important people and people representing important groups in the local groups,” Tully said. “So the partnerships are a big thing.”

Recently, the Pfizer vaccine has been doled out to different groups and communities around the world. Now, HSU is joining in and offering the vaccine to employees that are cleared to work on-campus and are considered higher risk.

According to Cris Koczera, interim director of Risk Management and Safety Services at HSU, an estimated 637 doses are going to be picked up and distributed to HSU staff and faculty in the coming week.

“What we get is highly dependant on what’s available through the county,” Koczera said. “We find out pretty much the Thursday before how many we’ll have to pick up the following Monday.”

For Koczera, it is pleasing to see the fruits of her and her colleague’s collective labors regarding getting the vaccine center up and running at HSU.

“It was a lot of coordination with the county because we are functioning as a closed pod unlike a lot of the other sites throughout the county,” Koczera said. “So, our pod is really intended just for HSU staff and faculty at this time and then once we are able to open it up to the wider student population, that will be the plan.”

Among those who are eligible are student employees who work in “auxiliaries” like housing and dining services. Montel Floyd is a senior who is majoring in critical, race, and gender studies with a concentration in ethnic studies. He works for Housing as a resident advisor in the dorms and is appreciative of the fact that he and his fellow RA’s are able to receive the vaccine considering their importance to the university.

“We are the ground workers for residents right now,” Floyd said. “We have the contact with them — daily basis, on our rounds — and if issues arise, we have to have contact with them — sometimes like knocking on doors.”

Even so, Floyd is a bit skeptical of getting the vaccine due to what he has heard about what has happened to some people that have gotten it. Still, he believes that the vaccine will do more good than harm.

“I know it’s important to getting it, I have grandparents that I will be going home to soon,” Floyd said. “And also just got into grad school in Georgia and also going to be working for housing there as well, so I think it’s very important to protect myself with the vaccination.”

Rae Robison is a professor in the department of theatre, film, and dance who is going to get the vaccine on March 10. Doing so is especially important to her because her father recently passed away from COVID-19 complications and her mother tested positive for COVID-19.

“I’m an only child,” Robison said. “He was my person. And right now, I literally just got off the phone with my mother. She’s 77 and they don’t have enough vaccines for her in Arizona.”

Her determination to get the vaccine is fueled by reasons other than the fact that her parents contracted COVID.

“My partner works for St. Joes and we are very aware that if you get it, you can get it again,” Robison said. “The longer my mom and my aunts are not immunized, the more stress I have.”

Robison is humbled by the fact that all of the staff at HSU will get vaccinated.

“Almost all of the staff and faculty and support folks and everyone that works at HSU are older, and in that bracket” Robison said. “I will feel better when the majority of us can get vaccinated.”

On March 5, HSU students were able to tune into the final presentation of the 27th annual Social Justice Summit where Sonya Renee Taylor talked about the importance of radical self-love to undo the systems of oppression that constrict us from being our true selves.

Taylor is the author of “The Body is Not An Apology,” but spoke specifically about the second edition of the book that came out on Feb. 9, “The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The Power of Radical Self-Love.”

The event opened with Q. Medina ensuring the audience that the Social Justice Summit is intended to breed conversation and provide a comforting place for students to share their personal experiences and opinions that relate to the topic of the event.

“Be open to learning then unlearning and share from experience using ‘I’ statements,” Medina said to the audience.

The presentation from Taylor started with a little background on her 10 years of experience as the founder of the digital media and education company, The Body is Not An Apology.

The content shared by the company reaches half a million people each month, as well as her recent book making it on a number of best sellers lists, including the New York Times.

“What I am seeing and what I am so grateful for is that it has touched millions of people’s lives,” Taylor said in response to contextualizing what it means to be apart of best sellers lists.

She said that New York Times status is unimportant, but what is important is that it means that people are starting to ask better questions about what it truly means for us to live in a just, equitable and compassionate world.

Taylor believes it is essential that readers understand the necessary shift away from masculine energy, disentangling the term from gender and biology. This would move us out of a time where the focus has been power over the individual and into a time where we question how our individuality impacts the collective.

She said that we tend to have this notion that how we choose to live does not impact anyone else. But, as COVID threw us into a virtual world last March, we saw firsthand how one chooses to use their digital space impacts those around them just as much as within their physical space.

“We are at a time where how we move inside our own beings has to shift because we need each other,” Taylor said.

She said that this particular season of life emphasized that our liberation is bound up together. How one lives in their own body opens up a greater pathway for how others live in theirs or it can continue to constrict and restrict others’ identities.

Taylor said that this practice of radical self-love does not mean solving one’s self esteem or self confidence. Rather it’s the part of us that longs for the source within us—an inherent, original relationship with ourselves and others.

To invite our inherent origin of radical self-love we must work to undo the systems of oppression that pull us away from who we have always been to begin with. We must undo the systems of hierarchy, terrorism, violence, oppression and degragation that create a ladder in society with an allusion that there is a top.

“If the ladder had a top that you could actually attain, Jeff Bezos would stop making money and Elon Musk would not be trying to send cars to Mars,” Taylor said, receiving a lot of praise in the comments.

She said that this allusion of the top of the ladder is really just white, able bodied, relatively young men. The remainder of the ladder consists of the rest of society establishing their self worth through trying to figure out where they fit.

Taylor closed the presentation by saying that the goal of finding radical-self love within ourselves is for us all to hop off this ladder and abolish it. The ladder being the systems of oppression that we understand and organize our lives inside of our bodies and the social world.

The audience responded enthusiastically, with Tim’m West, who is teaching Hip Hop & The Black Experience at HSU this semester, personally expressing his gratitude to Taylor within the chat.

“I love the ownership of your identities and the embodiment of your truths,” West said.

HSU’s Formerly Incarcerated Students Club hosted a webinar on March 5 to highlight the effects of COVID-19 in prisons and ways in which those effects could be mitigated. The Formerly Incarcerated Students Club also works with Project Rebound, an organization that helps formerly incarcerated students return to life outside prison and advocates for solutions to the United States’ high prison rates.

With incarceration rates being as high as they are in the US, prisons can be a prime breeding ground for COVID-19, and often are left without much in the way of support or resources to help combat it. This lack of support can greatly endanger the lives of many people in prison who are highly vulnerable.

The state and the CDC both have implemented guidelines for ensuring that prisons remain safe, but these guidelines are often not nearly enough to ensure that people are actually secured. COVID rates in state prisons are often significantly higher than the rates seen in the state as a whole. Considering that at least 17% of inmates are over 45 and are at increased risk of severe symptoms, this lack of security can be a death sentence for people whose crimes are relatively minor.

According to Jazmin Delgado, President of the FISC and student support for Project Rebound, the responsibility for this comes primarily down to states failing to properly implement safety measures in state prisons. While prisons may test staff and inmates, only half of US states actually require prison staff to wear a mask, and most do not stock adequate soap and disinfectant for inmates in accordance with CDC guidelines. This comes partially from a lack of resources, but also a lack of effort.

“State facilities are either A) not implementing these guidelines,” Delgado said. “Or B) not implementing them to the fullest of their abilities.”

Ultimately, a large part of the problem is that prisons are simply not built to allow for proper social distancing and safety measures. Prisons in the US have people constantly coming in and out, both staff and inmates. Additionally, people are packed so close together that the only way for them to properly isolate themselves would be solitary confinement, which is itself deeply undesirable and discourages inmates from revealing if they have symptoms or not. This has led to large spikes in the numbers of cases of COVID-19 in state prisons, which can become spikes in the surrounding areas when correctional staff return home later.

According to Project Rebound’s Jeremy Teitz, these guidelines are almost impossible to implement and getting harder with rising prison populations.

“How are these guidelines that are already near impossible to follow going to be followed when jail populations are increasing?” Tietz said. “Jails aren’t made for social distancing, and I’m not sure how the CDC thought jails would implement these guidelines.”

Incarceration in the US is a problem that is getting worse. Project Rebound hopes to assist students who have served prison sentences and to advocate for solutions to this continually rising issue, such as lowering sentencing for nonviolent crimes and allowing for individuals to get their felony records expunged and reenter the workforce. In the words of Project Rebounds Program Coordinator and HSU Graduate Tony Wallin, this is an issue that affects everyone, not just people who are currently imprisoned.

“We’re at this weird time where things have exploded and you don’t see people who aren’t affected,” Wallin said “One in three people have a criminal record. There are the same amount of people who have criminal records as have college degrees.”

The Native American studies department is currently hosting a fundraiser to raise money for the construction of a new lab space. The monthlong fundraiser will include a telethon, a silent auction, a currently ongoing film series, and more. The lab will be part of the BSS building, and contain workspaces for the cultivation and preparation of indigenous natural resources including food, and will provide hands-on experience for students to learn about these resources while engaging with and supporting students and local communities.

The fundraiser hopes to raise $25,000, which will fund the construction of the lab space itself in the fall but the lab is largely tasked with paying for it themselves. To do so along with the fundraising site at justgiving.com/campaign/NASFoodLab, and the film series that’s going to be showing a movie the first Friday of each month till May, they are going to be running a telethon on Mar 19. starting that Friday and running through the weekend. According to Cody Henrikson, one of the students working to get the project off the ground, the telethon will include music, speakers, a silent auction, and more.

“There’s going to be stand up, art demonstrations, all sorts of cool stuff going on,” Henrikson said.

The Food Sovereignty lab and cultural workspace began as a class project in the Native American studies department, hoping to create something that will continue to benefit students in upcoming semesters and create a space for the research of indigenous food and cultural resources. After winning second place at the CSU research competition for graduate behavioral sciences, the project became an idea for a central space for the nine local tribes to help generate knowledge about Indigenous natural resources and how they can be utilized for the betterment of the community. Because the topic is so far-reaching, many different classes around campus will get to all utilize this space.

According to Amanda McDonald, research assistant for the Native American studies department and one of the people involved in the lab’s conception, it was the product of asking native students, staff, and faculty what kind of things would be beneficial

“We asked what do we want to do that will have lasting impacts for the community, be something that future students can use,” McDonald said. “And we thought let’s ask our Native staff and faculty what they think should be on campus. We asked students in ITEPP and Intercept and Native Americans studies majors what can bring more healing and vibrancy to the modern existence of Indigenous people.”

Once the lab is constructed, the hope is that it will be used for projects in conjunction with local tribes, specifically anything that involves the cultivation and use of Indigenous natural resources and the continued sustainability of those natural resources. This includes not just food practices but things like creating regalia that is vital to native cultural practices, and the production and storage of things like basketry. Indigenous food and resource practices are complex and have a very important place for Indigenous cultures, and require delicate ecological management. According to Assistant Professor Kaitlin Reed, these food resources were targeted by settlers along with Indigenous people themselves, making their preservation all the more important for both indigenous cultures and ecological issues at large.

“When settlers invaded California, they attempted to not only kill and remove Native peoples,” Reed said. “They also supplanted ecological management which dramatically reduced food production that Indigenous peoples were dependent upon.”