![Adding a tray of canned corn to the pile, junior Michael Collop assists in transporting donations for the Holiday Food Drive. The event, hosted schoolwide from Dec. 10-17, raised over 5,000 food items to deliver to the Parkway Food Pantry, helping several families in need. [The drive] is a great thing for us to do because you're giving to those who are less fortunate, and it helps provide for people who can't provide for themselves. [The] competition is always fun, too. It was fun to be in [social studies teacher Jess] Chazen’s class, because he always gets worked up over [the competition]. He made it exciting, and was always convincing us to turn in cans for the drive,” Collop said.](https://bestofsno.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/feature-photo-unsung-2.png)
![NEW CHALLENGE, NEW TEAM MEMBERS: Every season, VEX creates a new game that robotics team members are faced with and have to build a robot to compete in. This year’s game forces students to create a robot that is able to stack rings onto mobile goals in order to score points. The change in games each season is something that robotics teacher Audrea Moyers appreciates.
“One of the things that I like about VEX is that they have a new problem to solve every year,” she said. ¨Even though the equipment’s the same, they have to analyze the game, and they have to come up with solutions that are unique that year. They are using their knowledge from prior years, but they have to kind of redesign a problem.”
As returning teams were faced a new game, some new teams and members had to adapt to a uncommon playing field and game.
“Three of our four teams were competing for the first time this year, and they had very different experiences match to match, so I think they learned a lot,¨ she said. ¨It’s hard just watching a video online to know how it’s actually going to be in person, so they all learned a lot about what gameplay is like, how to work with an alliance partner [and] how to adapt during the day to changes.”](https://bestofsno.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/IMG_9283-1-1200x800.jpg)
On Wednesday, Dec. 11, students and faculty members at San Francisco State University gathered at the corner of 19th and Holloway Avenues for a New Orleans-style funeral march to support the faculty members who are being “exited.”
Participants displayed three coffins and played jazz songs as they marched toward the Cesar Chavez Student Center. Approximately 150 people attended the march to show their frustration and support for faculty members in their final days of the semester, including business student Bella Butcher.
Not only did she discuss the negative aspects for lecturer faculty but Butcher also brought up the issues that students are going through as they struggle to register for classes for the spring semester.
“The professors are losing their livelihoods like they don’t have healthcare, they can’t pay rent in this area that they moved to specifically to teach here and they’re having to just completely start over,” Butcher said. “Faculty and students are the lifeblood of any campus. SF State is nothing without the teachers and learners.”
Third-year industrial design student Ruth Sarasohn is taking action by handing out fliers for attendees to sign the petition after the march.
“I’m really against the budget cuts that are happening,” Sarasohn said. “I feel like admin is just continuing to make more money while the faculty and students are really suffering.”
Sarasohn is mostly upset because she feels for the faculty members who provide such knowledge to students so when they get “exited,” their “power is lost or that information is lost.”
The march, which started at noon, continued for an hour and a half as attendees gave their speeches expressing their frustrations in a circle of people holding up signs such as “Where are my colleagues?” and “RIP the soul of SF State.”
Arturo Arrieta, a history lecturer, is a part of the unknown number of faculty members being “exited” from the university. He says he is frustrated with how lecturer faculty don’t have secure positions like tenured faculty members.
“The soul of our university, which is the lecturer faculty and those who have most contact with our students in the classroom and the lecturer classes — that faculty is being lost,” he said. “To know that you can be on the firing line or just the fact that you can be a lecturer with no security, have no contract, that’s what I feel.”
Eventually, the march moved to the administration building to present the petition to SFSU Provost Amy Sueyoshi and other university officials. At that point, the petition included over 400 signatures and people who attended the funeral march continued to sign.
Kieth Farris, a retired artist who decided to support the march, says that the students can try to turn around the damage that has been done to the faculty members but they have to stick to it.
“Basic education, which is in the humanities, philosophy, psychology — that’s being eliminated here; sounds like the administration is trying to turn this into a business college or something, which it is not and never was so I think that’s really a disaster for the community,” Farris said.
This story was originally published on GoldenGateXpress on December 11, 2024.
