Lea esta historia en Español

Update: On Tuesday, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the emergency appeal on the grounds that the plaintiffs failed to show they would suffer irreparable harm, upholding a Colorado judge’s ruling on Monday.

Despite broad protections for transgender student athletes, California has become the latest battleground in the growing national movement to remove them from women’s college sports.

In one case, two public universities in California are leaving the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics after it imposed a ban in April on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports. 

In a much more publicized case, four teams in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Mountain West Conference have forfeited games against San José State’s volleyball team this fall after one of its players identified a teammate as transgender and joined a lawsuit against the NCAA, opposing its policy allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports.

On Nov. 13, volleyball players from those universities filed a separate lawsuit against the conference, the conference commissioner, and California State University officials for the same reason. The plaintiffs requested an “emergency” motion to prevent the alleged transgender volleyball player from participating in the conference tournament that starts Nov. 27. On Monday, a Colorado judge rejected the suit, leaving the season forfeits to count as wins for San José State and allowing the team to play in the tournament with a full roster. Plaintiffs have filed for an emergency appeal, to be heard by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

“California has robust non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students, specifically transgender students, at all levels,” said Tony Hoang, executive director for Equality California, a nonprofit civil rights organization.

California is one of 24 states in the country that allow transgender student athletes to play on sports teams that match their gender identity. California enshrines protections for transgender students in the state education code and in policies for all three public college and university systems. Transgender athletes are allowed to compete by the largest athletic associations operating in the state — the California Interscholastic Federation at the secondary level, and the California Community College Athletic Association and the NCAA at the collegiate level. California goes further, even, than the U.S. Department of Education, which has yet to enact proposed protections for transgender athletes in its Title IX anti-discrimination policy.

Despite all of this, transgender athletes in California are still susceptible to legal and social pressures playing out across the country. Twenty-six states ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports at any level. In some of those states, lawsuits against national athletics organizations are sweeping California into the battle. 

President-elect Donald Trump has said he will ban transgender students from competing in sports altogether. “We’re not going to let it happen,” he said on Oct. 15 at a town hall in Georgia when he was asked about transgender athletes in women’s sports.

Shiwali Patel, the National Women’s Law Center’s senior director of safe and inclusive schools, called bans on trans athletes “attempts to weaponize civil rights law to justify discrimination against an already vulnerable group of students.”

Since AB 1266 took effect in 2014, California students from K-12 to collegiate levels have had the right to “participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”

The onus is on public colleges and universities, and not athletics associations, to adhere to California’s protections for transgender student athletes. However, the mounting pressure against athletics associations is affecting California college athletes nonetheless.

Lawsuit against NCAA gains momentum

So far this fall, the women’s volleyball teams at Boise State University in Idaho, Utah State University, University of Wyoming, and The University of Nevada, Reno, have forfeited conference matches against the San José State University Spartans. The forfeits came after Brooke Slusser, a San José State player, publicly claimed that one of her teammates is transgender. In statements to the press, Slusser has argued that the teammate poses a physical risk to other women players during practice and competitions. CalMatters is not naming the teammate to preserve her privacy. San Jose State has not confirmed whether the student is transgender.

At San José State, “there have been no reported injuries involving either our team or opponents,” said Michelle Smith McDonald, the university’s senior director of media relations. “We don’t anticipate any changes to our current roster between now and the end of the season.” 

In September, Slusser joined more than a dozen other female athletes in the Georgia-based lawsuit Gaines v. NCAA, filed in March. According to the suit, the plaintiffs allege that transgender athletes “disproportionately burden female athletes by reducing female competitive opportunities, forcing female athletes to compete against males in sex-separated sports, depriving women of equal opportunities to protect their bodily privacy, and authorizing males to access female safe spaces necessary for women to prepare for athletic competition, including showers, locker rooms and restrooms.”

On Nov. 13, Slusser and 11 other plaintiffs from colleges in the Mountain West Conference filed a lawsuit in Colorado claiming the NCAA, the conference, San José State and other universities “have engaged in a purposeful and illegal assault on the rights of women athletes” by allowing transgender athletes to compete. The suit sought an emergency injunction to prevent the alleged transgender athlete from competing and to take back the wins San José State accrued when the teams forfeited. The judge denied the motion, writing that “until the filing of this lawsuit, there was no dispute between the parties over the applicability or enforceability of” the Mountain West Conference’s policies allowing transgender women to participate. “The rush to litigate these complex issues now over a mandatory injunction places a heavy lift on the MWC at the eleventh hour.”

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs in both lawsuits did not respond to interview requests.

Robin McElhatton, the assistant director of media relations for the university, wrote in an email that “all San José State University student-athletes are eligible to participate in their sports under NCAA and Mountain West Conference rules. We are gratified that the Court rejected an eleventh-hour attempt to change those rules.”

A similar statement from the California State University stated officials “applaud” the court’s decision.

San José State student athletes are governed under the NCAA and Mountain West Conference policies and the college adheres to Cal State anti-discrimination policies. San José State will stay in the Mountain West Conference through the 2031-32 school year, according to Smith McDonald.

“The Mountain West Conference prioritizes the best interests of our student-athletes and takes great care to adhere to NCAA and [Mountain West] policies,” according to a statement provided by Javan Hedlund, senior associate commissioner of the conference. He did not comment on the Colorado lawsuit.

The National Women’s Law Center filed a motion to join Gaines v. NCAA as a defendant, but was denied by the court on Nov. 1. The center argued in its motion that “while Plaintiffs purport to speak on behalf of all women, they do not represent the interests of women who are transgender and want to continue participating in NCAA sports, nor the cisgender women who want to continue participating with them.” 

The National Women’s Law Center has advocated for gender equity in sports since its founding in 1972, the year Title IX was enacted. “We know that trans inclusive school policies around sports are essential to fulfill Title IX’s broad promise of protecting well-being and education opportunities for all women and girls,” Patel said.

If the plaintiffs prevail at the district court, Patel said the case will go to an appellate court. Because the Biden administration has not enacted a proposed Title IX policy for transgender athletes, uncertainty remains within the courts, Patel said. “But what we do know is that the circuit courts that have heard this issue, have come out in favor of trans student athletes,” she said.

Members of the NCAA Gender and Equity Task Force did not respond to CalMatters’ multiple requests for comments.

The potential impact of banning transgender athletes

For transgender student athletes, the significance of having access to team sports goes beyond fairness. States with anti-trans laws show worse mental health outcomes for transgender youth. Bonnie Sugiyama, the director of San José State’s PRIDE Center, said transgender students particularly stand to benefit from access to sports in school. 

“You get leadership skills, you get community, it’s great for your mental health to be able to play,” Sugiyama said. “To restrict people based on their identity … just because you don’t know where to put them? That’s not really an acceptable response.”

As a lifelong multi-sport athlete and former high school basketball coach, Sugiyama understands that athletics associations must create policies that cultivate a safe and fair playing field.

Sugiyama points out that blanket bans on transgender women don’t take into account whether an individual took hormone suppressants before adolescence, which has a major impact on how the body develops, nor do bans reflect how trans athletes compare to the range of physical traits of the average cisgender player of their sport. 

“We should be talking about opportunities for everybody,” Sugiyama said. “At the end of the day, people just want to be able to play sports.”

Transgender athlete bans impact all athletes, research has found. A Center for American Progress report using CDC data says that in states that banned trans students from playing with their peers, fewer girls overall are playing school sports. 

“On the other hand, where states include and support trans students, more girls are playing sports,” Patel said.

Federal anti-discrimination policies are unclear on transgender athletes

Transgender students were first written into Title IX in 2016 when the Obama administration specified that students could participate in sex-segregated activities and access bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded those protections during Trump’s first presidency. On Aug. 1, the Biden administration enacted new protections for transgender students, reversing DeVos’ revision but not including protections for transgender athletes specifically. The Biden administration has not provided a reason for the omission. 

The renewed Title IX policies met backlash across the country even before they were enacted. At least eight lawsuits resulted in injunctions in 26 states blocking the revisions from taking effect.

“Instead of focusing on the true mission of Title IX, which is to protect women and girls from discrimination in education and to protect and promote women’s and girls’ sports, the Defendants attempt to rewrite it entirely [to] institutionalize the left-wing fad of transgender ideology in our K-12 system and tie school funding to it,” one lawsuit out of Kansas reads.

A national injunction resulting from the Kansas lawsuit included more than 300 California K-12 schools and at least 50 colleges and universities, but those schools are still obligated to follow California’s education code.

“Federal law is the law of the land. But states are allowed to pass laws that go above and beyond what federal law does, and California has done that,” said Jennifer Chou, a civil rights lawyer who is the American Civil Liberties Union Northern California’s head of gender, sexuality and reproductive justice.

Athletics associations fracturing on transgender athlete issue

Without clear Title IX protections for transgender athletes, athletics associations across the nation have established their own policies governing the participation of trans students in college sports. In April, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics banned transgender women from participating in their women’s leagues. The association has 237 member universities across the U.S., including nine private institutions in California and two public four-year universities. 

In September, Cal Maritime decided to separate from the association by June 2025. UC Merced also announced its intent to leave the association and join the NCAA starting in fall 2025. 

According to Cal Maritime’s chief of staff, Karyn Cornell, interim president Michael Dumont’s review of the education code drove the split from the association. In a letter to the campus, Dumont explained that the association’s ban on transgender students contravenes state law and California State University policies, and affirmed the university’s commitment to provide “an inclusive and equitable community that values diversity and fosters mutual respect.”

“They’re doing the right thing, and they’re standing up for people like me, which is good,” said former Cal Maritime student Sophie Scopazzi, who once pushed for gender-neutral uniforms at the university. In November 2021, Scopazzi filed a Title IX complaint when some Cal Maritime student leaders sent emails and tweets with hateful, anti-LGTBQ+ comments. Then-President Thomas Cropper called the language “offensive” but said it was protected free speech. Scopazzi appreciates Dumont’s actions now.  

“It’s nice to have a president that’s willing to say, ‘This is against our values. What they’re doing in [other states] is against what we stand for here at Cal Maritime,’” said Scopazzi, who graduated in 2023. 

While there are over a dozen collegiate athletic associations in the United States, the NCAA and the NAIA are the primary national associations for four-year universities. The NCAA has over 1,000 institution members nationally, with 60 in California.

The NCAA’s policy on transgender athletes, established in 2011, is currently “under review.” In April, the NCAA Board of Governors discussed transgender student athletes but did not propose changes to the policy, which was last updated in 2022. The current NCAA policy aligns with the International Olympic Committee’s guidelines for transgender athletes, which ensure that competition is “fair and safe and that athletes are not excluded solely on the basis of their transgender identity or sex variations.”

The committee leaves it to each sports’ governing body to determine its eligibility criteria for inclusion based on hormone levels. In the case of male to female transgender athletes who compete in women’s sports, these criteria typically require hormone level testing at different intervals preceding competitions.

Most community colleges in California also require certain testosterone levels for transgender women to compete in women’s sports. In California, 110 community colleges participate in the state-established California Community College Athletic Association. 

“Under 3C2A policy, transgender men and women may compete on men’s teams, but trans women may not compete on women’s teams unless they have completed at least one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment for gender transition,” according to Mike Robles, director of communications for the association. 

Civil rights advocates who spoke with CalMatters believe that attempts to enact anti-transgender policies will fail in California. Hoang of Equality California also believes the lawsuit against the NCAA will be thrown out.

“An overwhelming majority of courts have consistently upheld legal protections for transgender individuals, particularly in cases involving anti-discrimination laws, and we’re hopeful that this case won’t be going anywhere, and it is a publicity stunt,” he said.

For the record: The story has been updated to state that the National Women’s Law Center sought to join Gaines v. NCAA as a defendant, but was denied.

CalMatters is covering the impact of the national fight over transgender students in California college athletics. Do you have a story to share? Reach out to the College Journalism Network at cjn@calmatters.org. 

Amy Elisabeth Moore and Desmond Meagley are fellows with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

California colleges enroll over 2 million undergraduate students in a given academic year spanning the forests of Arcata to the beaches of La Jolla. While Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is widely expected to secure her home state of California’s electoral votes, students enrolled at California’s colleges are making important choices on other national, statewide and local races on their ballot.

The CalMatters College Journalism Network spoke to college students about what issues are important to them and how pursuing higher education has informed their perspectives.  Some students are voting for the first time, some have been voting for a long time, some are using their vote to protest and some aren’t voting at all. Here’s what’s important to seven college voters from across California.

Tracy Tran, 21

Fourth year
Public Health major
UC Irvine

Tracy Tran, a first-time voter in a presidential election, hasn’t filled out their ballot yet but has already researched and planned out their voting decisions. Since Tran doesn’t discuss politics at home often due to disagreements with family members, they find resources like the CalMatters voter guide helpful in understanding issues on the ballot and informing their vote.

While in college, Tran says they’ve tended to surround themselves with people of similar political perspectives but also challenged themselves to hear from all sides.

“I think it’s taken me a little bit more effort to try and really listen to all sides of the argument,” Tran said.

Some issues important to them while voting include abortion, education, immigration and the Israel-Hamas war. Specific propositions that stand out to Tran are Proposition 6, a constitutional amendment that would eliminate indentured servitude in California prisons, and Proposition 33, which proposes allowing local governments to implement rent control policies. 

“There was one proposition that basically abolishes slavery, like for real in California, by making an amendment that’s related to involuntary servitude for prisons,” Tran said. “I think that stood out to me because I was like, finally something is happening.”

As a public health major involved in research and a health justice internship with the Young Women’s Project in Washington, D.C., these experiences have shaped Tran’s understanding of health care, which is also on the ballot. 

“Having that background information in terms of what it means to have, like, Medi-Cal being covered permanently and those kinds of things, it definitely helps for me to have more familiarity with those subjects,” they said. 

– Camelia Heins

Diego Roman, 20

First year
Urban Planning major
Santa Rosa Junior College

Diego Roman, a first-time voter in a presidential election, voted as soon as his vote-by-mail ballot arrived. Then he took three friends who had filled out their mail-in ballots to drop  off their ballots.

“I’m Puerto Rican of Puerto Rican descent, so we’re in a very politically precarious situation,” he says. Puerto Ricans who live in the mainland United States can vote in presidential elections, while those living in Puerto Rico cannot.

A comedian’s remarks about Puerto Rico being a floating island of garbage at a recent Trump rally “lit a fire underneath Puerto Rican voters,” Roman said. He found the comments jarring, especially for a campaign that’s trying to win over Hispanic voters and thinks they will hurt the Trump campaign. 

Roman said it’s important to vote, even if someone is uncertain about which candidate to choose, because voters influence policy in local and national elections. Of all the propositions on the ballot this election, Proposition 33 on rent control stood out to him the most. Florida, where he lived before moving to California two years ago, does not provide rent control. As a student who lives in the dorms, rent control may not directly impact Roman. However, the vast majority of students live off campus and rent control “would help to keep them from starving or spending most of their paycheck on rent,” he said.

As a child of a parent in the military, Roman has lived in four states, a U.S. territory and Germany. When his family moved to the United States, his parents took that as the signal that they should discuss politics openly and inform themselves about the various propositions. Roman describes his mother as an independent thinker who critiques both parties, which taught him to think about issues from different angles.

Roman, who is studying urban planning at Santa Rosa Junior College, says being in college has affected his views in ways he didn’t expect, “because there’s so many different perspectives out here.” In college, he is constantly meeting new people in the dorms, his classes and the Political Science Club where he’s having conversations that help him better understand how the propositions would impact the community and state. 

“There are stimulating conversations, especially since we’re in an election year right now,” Roman said. “Talking about it, understanding the election, seeing what’s going on, is a really, really big thing in all of these classes.”

This election, Roman is most concerned about democracy — he feels that people both take democracy for granted and don’t recognize how easy it would be to lose it. 

– Amy Elisabeth Moore

Linda Piera, 68

Returning student
Undeclared major
Los Angeles Pierce College

Linda Piera is experienced in political activism. Over the years, Piera has gone door-knocking for progressive candidates and protested for environmental issues. But this election, she said she feels a renewed encouragement — brought on by taking a community college political science class full of young people who are informed and passionate.

“It makes me a little more hopeful than I have been, being an older person, that if young people in the class take over management of our institutions, there will be hope,” Piera said.

The retired physical therapist cast her ballot by mail well before election day, and she voted for Vice President Kamala Harris. Although Piera said Harris “wouldn’t be ideologically my first choice,” she added that, in the current electoral system with two major parties, she wanted to vote for Harris.

“I feel very strongly that it is important for a functioning democracy, for everyone to do the bare minimum of voting,” Piera said.

The items on the ballot that motivate Piera most are local and state issues. She said she especially cares about trying to pass Proposition 33, which would allow local governments to impose rent control, and Proposition 35, which would make permanent a tax on managed health care plans and raise more money for Medi-Cal.

“In order to prevent a collapse and ensure that people’s health care needs are met, and I do believe health care is a right, not a privilege, there has to be secure funding,” Piera said. “Of course, other things could be done too, but this is a worthy first step to secure the funding. I feel very strongly for Prop 35.”

– Delilah Brumer

Aadi Mehta, 20

Third year 
Political Science and Communication major 
Cal Poly Pomona

As a California native and the child of immigrants from India, many would expect Aadi Mehta to be similar to many Californians in their political views, but he is a proud young conservative who voted in person prior to election day in his first presidential election. 

“I find that sometimes sticking out and being sort of the outlier, it’s not a problem at all,” said Mehta. “There’s a lot of pressure for conservatives, especially not only on this campus, but in California in general, to kind of get in line with more of the dominating liberal standpoint.”

This pressure is what drives him to run the Republican Club on his campus. He says that it allows him to meet like-minded people as well as foster discussions between political ideologies across the spectrum. He explained that some of his views were solidified once he went to college. 

Coming from what he describes as a politically “split household,” he was encouraged to embrace traditional American values but saw his family choose different candidates each election. 

“Growing up, you don’t really have an understanding of who you really do believe in, or what your beliefs are,” said Mehta. “You kind of are slowly developing that as you get older. You know, if you asked me 10 years ago which party I aligned with, I couldn’t give you an answer, because I wouldn’t know.” 

Mehta is passionate about how his vote can impact the economy, immigration and foreign policy. He also said it’s important to understand how the United States is handling international conflict. He believes these issues have the potential to bring Americans together and drive people to make the final decision about who to vote for. 

He shared that he doesn’t always agree with Donald Trump, and admits that although some of his rhetoric is false, he believes in his policies. He argues that a strong character can get a candidate to the White House, but may not lead to a successful record. 

“We need someone who has the experience of being tough, someone who has already proven on these critical issues that he’s done a good job,” Mehta said.

– Victoria Mejicanos

Yana Ross, 50

Studying Native American Studies, Art Studio, Natural Resources, and Communications
Santa Rosa Junior College

Yana Ross, a 50-year-old student at Santa Rosa Junior College, says she will “definitely vote,” even though she thinks “the two-party system isn’t the greatest” and the electoral college is unfair. It’s a historic opportunity to vote for a woman of color, she says. 

She’ll vote for Kamala Harris because “Trump was one thousand times worse, and (his) administration was one thousand times worse, especially for Indian people.” Ross is concerned because “Trump is very anti-Indian” and fears that “he wants the Supreme Court to destroy our sovereignty.”

Ross is an enrolled citizen with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, which comprises Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok. She is also Mishewai Wappo and part white. She says her mother raised her to understand political issues and how decisions made by other people affected her, her family, and her people.

“I’m Native American. There’s a diversity among Native Americans, and I think that’s what makes our community and our country strong, and, ultimately, why I think participating in democracy is worth it, even though it’s very challenging,” she said. 

Because she thinks it’s “especially important to vote locally,” Ross wants other students to feel empowered to participate. “It really makes a difference and these measures do affect real people. I don’t know that that message always carries across.” 

Ross thinks it would be a setback if Proposition 4, the climate bond, doesn’t pass. She supports the bond because the approach brings together different groups to work together for climate change. “Prop. 4 supports working with tribes and Cal Fire, it works to save drinking water, to do good land management practices and stewardship, to address sea level change, to help some wetlands, which help with the sea level rise.” Ross explained that the bond will support wildfire projects and make it possible for “Cal Fire to do a more prescribed fire, which is a traditional ecological practice by Native Americans, that people are finally getting hip to.” 

Ross is also concerned about the fallout after the election. She is part of the Student Leadership Council that is working with the administration to anticipate anything that may arise out of the elections. “(We are) trying to anticipate any outcome, because there’s a lot of issues at stake. There’s a focus on really making sure that we’re protecting our trans students, who are on the front lines of the hate mongering, (and) also our undocumented students who were really attacked during the last Trump election and really targeted.”

Ross sees a greater awareness and more ways to care and build community, noting that her campus “has been rolling that out and creating all of these avenues for us to process what it is to be in democracy.”

On Wednesday, student leaders are planning to offer spaces where students can process their emotions by making zines, talking with counselors, meeting with community organizations, and engaging in self-care activities.

– Amy Elisabeth Moore

Yasmine Dmeiri, 23

Third year
Art Studio and History major
University of California, Davis

As a Palestinian and Filipino American, voting is more than a civic duty for Yasmine Dmeiri – it is a moral dilemma. 

“I’m pretty frustrated since both main party candidates are supporting genocide of my people,” Dmeiri said. “We’re in this situation where we have to kind of pick between the lesser of two evils which I’m tired of having to do. I’m pretty frustrated because of the system and how it’s built. It’s as if you don’t have any other option.”

As the death toll rises in Gaza, Dmieri doesn’t feel represented by former President Donald Trump’s or Vice President Kamala Harris’ pledges to continue military funding to Israel. To protest, she plans to vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party, her second time voting for a third-party candidate in a presidential election. 

Still, for Dmeiri, the fear remains of what a Trump presidency could result in. Trump’s anti-Palestinian rhetoric, such as using “Palestinian” as an insult in his June debate with Biden, concerns her, along with stances on other key issues for Dmeiri. 

“I feel privileged that I live in California because it is a blue state, so my vote almost always relies on California voting blue. I feel like if I lived in a swing state, it would have been a different story,” Dmeiri said.

As Dmeiri navigates her feelings of  grief and unease this election cycle, she wishes for people to practice empathy as they cast their ballots this election.

“I wish people could open their minds and hearts and put themselves in other people’s situations and ask themselves, ‘How would I feel if this was happening to me,’” Dmeiri said. 

– Khadeejah Khan

Daniel Zhao, 19

Second year
Prospective Politics and Economics double major
Pomona College

With a conservative mother and liberal father, Daniel Zhao has learned to approach politics with an open mind. He grew up in the Riverside County town of Eastvale, California, which he describes as a “purple city” due to its mesh of people with various political party affiliations. 

“I think the most important thing that I remember, and that most of my family embodies, is that it’s OK to be wrong. It’s OK to have an argument with someone, to realize, hey, maybe what I was thinking isn’t necessarily what’s going on,” Zhao said. “[I] definitely grew up in a very supportive household, that was very open to political dialog and discourse and I think that’s made me who I am today.”

Though keeping an eye on the national stage, Zhao said statewide issues and local elections are his top priorities this election cycle. He stated that the economy and crime are two of the most pressing issues of this election, specifically noting California propositions 33 on local rent control and 36 on criminal penalties as crucial ballot initiatives. 

While Zhao has had luck finding friends with whom he can openly discuss politics, he says it’s challenging to find others willing to engage in dialogue with differing viewpoints at Pomona College.

“Going to a small liberal arts school in Southern California, you realize very quickly that it definitely is an echo chamber,” he said. “There’s definitely a solid group of students who are, I’d say, politically moderate, if not right-leaning that just feel like there is no safe space for them to express their opinions.”

– June Hsu

Nari Whitaker, 23

Broadcast Journalism major
Junior transfer student
University of Southern California

Nari Whitaker, a junior transfer student at the University of Southern California, has voted before in Georgia but said he’s not voting this year.

Whitaker said he “doesn’t feel too bad” about not voting as he felt skeptical about the presidential candidates’ promises on new laws or policies. He said the tedious process of obtaining a mail-in ballot from his home state left him unmotivated to cast a ballot. In Georgia, mail-in ballots must be requested and returned by Election Day, whereas California’s voting process automatically sends all residents a mail-in ballot, only requiring that ballots be postmarked on or before Election Day.

Whitaker is not familiar with local government and politics in Georgia, so he has not done much research on any measures or propositions, saying they didn’t “really stand out to me personally.” Most of his knowledge about the election and potential policies on the ballots comes from watching the presidential debates where he was most interested in economic policies. 

“Things like gas, rent, mortgage — stuff that takes my money is really what’s important to me,” Whitaker said. “If it’s not something to do with the money I have, then it’s not really a big deal for me personally.”

Whitaker studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design, the University of Georgia, and now USC. He said his time in college has given him diverse perspectives and raised his awareness of international issues.

“My knowledge on certain topics has definitely risen, especially things people have to deal with outside of the country,” Whitaker said. “USC has helped me see different perspectives more clearly because of the classes I had to take for my broadcast journalism major. We talked a lot about politics, religion, race and gender. This school in particular has let me see a [variety of] people’s opinions and varied angles on topics.”

– Lauren Bui

Moore, Brumer, Mejicanos and Hsu are College Journalism Network fellows. Heins, Khan and Bui are contributors with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Nathan Lim, a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, recently spent the summer working on an artificial intelligence tool to help students evaluate their senior project ideas for ethical and social justice implications.

He is one of many California college students choosing to learn about AI theory and its emerging applications while preparing to enter an ever-changing workforce. Simultaneously, colleges and universities across the state are working to expand and develop AI courses and degrees to keep up with demand. 

With hopes of bolstering these efforts, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the first statewide partnership with a tech firm to bring AI curriculum, resources and opportunities to California’s public higher education institutions. The partnership with Nvidia, a leading AI software development company, will bring AI tools to community colleges first. In the future, the hope is to add partnerships for the California State University and University of California systems as well, according to the governor’s press release. 

As colleges and universities are developing AI programs, these partnerships will give students more access to the technology that tech companies use while teaching students how to use it,  said Alex Stack, a deputy communications director for Newsom.

Lim is a junior studying music and computer science, with a concentration in AI. He sees the potential for AI in both learning how to play instruments and making music more accessible. 

“What if there was an AI private teacher to answer questions and provide feedback on playing?” Lim said. “This could make it available to so many more people that can’t afford $50 to $100 an hour for private lessons.”

Lim learned to play the violin, guitar and piano with help from a middle school teacher and YouTube tutorials. He said his family could not afford private lessons, so he is mostly self-taught. While the internet helped him evolve as a musician, he thinks AI will drive society’s next revolution in technology.

“It almost feels like, obviously I wasn’t around for it, but the creation of the internet,” Lim said. “People were like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to use that.’ Now if you don’t use it, I mean, what are you doing? So I feel like it’s going to get to a point like that with AI, if not already.”

In Lim’s data science course this quarter, the program that he uses to complete homework assignments, Google Colab, has AI embedded that will generate the needed code for him if prompted correctly. 

“Learning is much less about what we can remember and memorize, and much more about asking the right questions because that’s what AI is,” Lim said. 

Lim’s dad also studied computer science in college and encouraged Lim to explore coding from a young age; the rapid growth of AI focused Lim’s career path. 

“Someone asked me a question about why I want to specialize in AI in the computer science field,” Lim said. “I told him, ‘I feel like if I don’t, then my job is gonna get replaced by someone who does.’”

Developing paths to AI careers

Many California colleges and universities are racing to prepare students for high-paying AI engineering jobs, although the path to these careers often require a master’s or doctoral degree. Community colleges and universities are working to lay the groundwork for students to pursue those more advanced degrees, while also finding ways to get students involved in AI at the undergraduate level.

Over the next decade, computer and mathematical jobs, which include AI, are projected to grow by 12.9 percent, the second-fastest of any industry, according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. At tech companies such as Meta and Google, postings for AI-related jobs list six-figure salaries, with many reaching above $200,000 annually. 

“The growth of computer and mathematical occupations is expected to stem from demand for upgraded computer services, continued development of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, and an increasing amount of data available for analysis,” the labor report states.

Angel Fuentes, the dean of business and workforce development at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, is pushing for community colleges to foster AI literacy, so that students across disciplines understand the basic terminology, uses and ethics of AI, even if they aren’t pursuing a tech career. He said AI literacy is important because AI is starting to impact fields from medicine to the humanities to business. 

Fuentes also said he’s started to see more “blue-collar AI” opportunities popping up — jobs that work with AI, but don’t necessarily develop or innovate with it, and that typically don’t require master’s degrees. One example is a prompt engineer, which is someone who writes the inputs that companies use to get responses from AI platforms such as ChatGPT. Prompt engineers may use AI to help create presentations or streamline a company’s internal processes, for example.

In part to prepare students for those more accessible AI jobs, eight California community colleges now have AI degrees or certificates, with more in the works, Fuentes said. These programs focus on skills such as computer programming and entrepreneurship. 

“The world is changing so fast and we want our students to be prepared,” Fuentes said.

The California partnership with Nvidia aims to create AI programs, software and dedicated AI spaces for community college students, educators and workers.

Louis Stewart, the head of strategic initiatives at Nvidia, said the partnership will initially last three years, allowing students to get “AI-enabled.” Stewart emphasized the importance of “reskilling and upskilling” workers, including people who are returning to school to switch careers, by teaching them about AI.

Nvidia is not being paid by the state, and the company is covering the costs of teaching students and faculty about AI, Stewart said.

“The community colleges are a great starting point because it is a great way to get tools and resources into these classrooms that might have a harder time accessing it,” said Stack, with the governor’s office.

Even though only 1 in 5 community college students transfer to a four-year university, officials hope to equip and inspire students to continue their AI studies beyond community college, or enter the workforce in AI-adjacent roles.

A key point for some administrators and faculty in the community college system is ensuring students understand the ethical and unethical uses of AI, as well as the terminology and real-world applications. 

Some efforts to integrate AI in education have gone wrong. The volatility of a tech startup led to Los Angeles Unified shelving one AI tool, while school board members for San Diego Unified were in the dark about AI technology they had approved in a broader contract. In both of these districts, problems arose when clear communication and expectations surrounding AI were not established. Experts have warned that it’s crucial for decision makers to vet AI solutions, and be thoughtful when it comes to implementation of AI in education.

Read More: California’s two biggest school districts botched AI deals. Here are lessons from their mistakes.

The idea behind the AI literacy push is that “AI is here to stay” and various sectors, not just tech, “should embrace it,” said Nasreen Rahim, a professor at Evergreen Valley College who trains teachers on how to best use technology. 

“You can’t just shut your mind to AI and have that be your mindset,” Rahim said. “It’s about having an open mind.”

The California community college system has a new set of academic integrity guidelines for AI, which aim to ensure “expectations are clear” for students in terms of what is considered responsible use of AI, and what isn’t.

Brian Sawaya, a biomedical engineering student at Foothill College in Santa Clara County, has found a network of peers at the community college level who, like him, are dedicated to exploring tech fields, including AI.

“Community college students are some of the most driven and most ambitious people you’ll meet,” Sawaya said. “Because community college students are underrepresented in terms of access to opportunities, and companies are trying to diversify their workforce, it’s important to have opportunities for community college students.”

Sawaya is the president of his college’s robotics team, and he said he uses AI to help his club’s robots better detect objects and avoid obstacles. Sawaya said he is excited to transfer to a four-year university next year to continue his studies in the field of wearable technology, which includes prosthetics. 

How four-year universities are adding AI programs

As Newsom pointed out, the UC and Cal State systems will also benefit from AI industry partnerships in the future. 

The Cal State Board of Trustees announced in September that the university system is seeking $7 million in its 2025-26 budget request to fund AI infrastructure for students and faculty. 

Four universities in the Cal State system have AI programs: Cal State East Bay, San Francisco State, San Jose State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The CSU Generative AI Committee convened for the first time this fall in response to some CSU campuses’ demand for systemwide guidance on developing AI programs and managing AI use.

At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, students in the Computer Science and AI Club meet every Sunday afternoon in a large lecture hall. On a recent Sunday, 80 students, mostly computer science freshmen, sat in front of two projectors to learn about AI basics from club leaders.

“As the president this year, I’m trying to champion a place where people who know more about AI come to teach people who know less and are very interested,” said Leo Horwitz, a computer science senior at Cal Poly. 

The club offers workshops to teach the foundations of AI to students and is working on original AI application projects – for example, one that will research and generate code and another that will automate and referee games of red light, green light. The club partners with local companies to raise funds, and it gets money from the student government, which sponsors clubs, Horwitz said. 

Horwitz is excited about the possibility of Cal Poly working with a leading AI developer in the future. 

“A direct partnership with a company in the industry is productive because it’s easy for academia to fall behind,” Horwitz said. “No matter what [the partnership] is, we’re interacting with them. This is a way for us to force ourselves to be in the thick of it with the cutting edge stuff.”

Horwitz’s professor, Franz Kurfess, offers opportunities for his students to work with companies as part of his courses. He is also leading the project that Cal Poly junior Lim is working on to use AI in evaluating students’ senior projects. 

“Working with an external company is an excellent opportunity for students to learn about practical applications of AI in a context that they might experience later in their career,” Kurfess said. “It also exposes them to professional work practices where they may not be able to get away with things that they are doing for class assignments because they have other people depending on their work.”

In another partnership with this news organization, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo faculty and students recently worked with CalMatters to build Digital Democracy – an AI-powered website that tracks lawmakers, legislation, campaign contributions, and congressional hearings and sessions.

Across the UC system, leaders are working to incorporate AI across disciplines, while balancing the potential pitfalls of the technology. A UC presidential working group chose a list of “responsible AI principles,” which include transparency about AI use, safety and privacy.

For Chris Mattmann, the chief data and artificial intelligence officer at UCLA, ongoing developments in the world of generative AI mean it’s crucial to “innovate and experiment,” but to do so with the guidance of “responsible and ethical principles.” Mattmann began at UCLA earlier this year, and his role is the first of its kind at any UC. 

Mattmann works to oversee AI strategy across UCLA, including how the technology is used by faculty, students, staff and researchers. He emphasized the importance of developing AI literacy across disciplines. UCLA recently became the first California college to offer ChatGPT enterprise accounts, allowing a limited number of student groups and faculty to use the technology through the university.

“(Our goal) is to hopefully demystify AI, so people really understand what’s coming, what’s here, the opportunity, but also the need to really be guided by ethics,” Mattmann said.

Beyond the public higher education systems in California, private universities are also working to create AI opportunities for students. While some private universities such as Stanford have added concentrations or minors in AI, USC is developing a new AI major in response to the immense demand for AI instruction, said Nenad Medvidović, the computer science department chair at USC. 

Medvidović says that some students are driven by an academic curiosity of how AI works, but others are driven by making sure they are employable after they graduate. 

“I’ve seen many waves of technology that have kind of come along and matured,” Medvidović said. “Nothing has come close to what we’re seeing right now with AI and machine learning and large language models.”

Delilah Brumer and Jeremy Garza are fellows with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Adrian Castillo is not accustomed to job security. He’s a part-time professor who simultaneously teaches media arts courses at three different Los Angeles-area community colleges, while also working as a high school substitute teacher to make ends meet. Castillo often doesn’t know which colleges will offer him classes to teach next, or whether those classes will be online or in person. 

“It is stressful just trying to balance everything,” said Castillo, who has taught at the community college level for 10 years.

Castillo’s experience — an ever-fluctuating schedule and lower pay compared to his full-time colleagues — is common across the California community college system, where 68% of faculty, about 35,000 of them, are classified as part-time. 

Existing law caps part-time faculty at teaching 67% of a full-time load, which typically equates to three courses, at any single California community college campus during a semester.

On Sept. 22, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 2277, which would have raised the cap for part-time faculty to 85% of a full-time load, or about four courses, at a single community college. The state Legislature approved the bill earlier this month. In his veto message, Newsom wrote that “this bill continues to create unknown, but potentially significant costs or cost pressures in the millions to tens of millions of dollars.”

The Association of California Community College Administrators argued in a letter opposed to the bill that “AB 2277 would infringe upon the local authority of community college districts to collectively bargain their own paid leave provisions at the district level.”

Fragmented health care coverage a concern

The administrators association has also opposed previous iterations of the bill due to concerns that allowing part-time faculty members to teach more courses at a single campus could trigger the Affordable Care Act, requiring colleges to expand health care coverage for part-timers.

Meanwhile, faculty unions say AB 2277 wouldn’t have triggered the Affordable Care Act because of a provision in the bill stating part-time faculty assignments at any single community college must be fewer than 30 hours per week. 

The vetoed legislation was supported by the California Part-Time Faculty Association, which said in a letter that AB 2277 would “improve quality of life for part-time faculty” by “allowing them greater opportunities to be a resource to their students and participate in the campus community.”

Health care is a focal point for part-time faculty, with many not receiving health insurance from the colleges where they teach. In 2022, the state provided $200 million to a fund to help community colleges pay for health care for their part-time faculty, and that funding is ongoing. But it doesn’t fully bridge the gap.

Kirsten Olson, a part-time anthropology professor in Oakland, relies on receiving benefits through her partner, who is a full-time professor at Laney College. The districts where she teaches offer some health coverage for part-timers who qualify based on their per-semester course load. However, she said she prefers her partner’s plan because it’s “automatic, easy and I don’t have to fill out paperwork every semester.”

Olson teaches “an extraordinary number” of classes — eight to 10 per semester across four colleges. That’s twice the load typically taught by full-time faculty. 

“I’m very honest with my students because I’m great at getting into the classroom, (but) I may not have their work graded for them by the next class,” Olson said. “I will get to it as quickly as I can. But they have to understand that I’m as much of a gig worker as many of them are.”

Students feel effects of absent professors

When part-time faculty are spread thin, it can have an adverse effect on students, said Ivan Hernandez, a computer science major at Diablo Valley College who serves as the president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges. Hernandez said most of his peers probably don’t notice if their professors are part-time or full-time, but their learning can be harmed when part-time faculty don’t have time to be on campus often or hold regular office hours. That’s why Hernandez said he supported AB 2277.

Long term, Hernandez said he hopes part-time faculty receive “more fair compensation” and are able to teach at just one campus, not just for the sake of their own wellbeing, but for the sake of students, too.

“When you’re part-time and doing multiple things, like teaching at different institutions, that affects the flexibility of the professor,” Hernandez said. “And they work really closely with the students. ”

AB 2277 was authored by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican representing Rancho Mirage in Riverside County, who issued a statement saying he was “disappointed” by the veto.

“While this is a setback, I am confident we can find a solution,” Wallis said in the statement. “We must be fiscally responsible, especially in tough budget years, but improving our education system remains one of my top priorities.”

Faculty say more needs to be done

Scott Douglas, a part-time professor at several community colleges in the San Diego area, worked as part of the California Part-Time Faculty Association to push for the bill.

Five days a week, Douglas drives a 100-mile loop between MiraCosta, Palomar and San Diego City colleges and the University of San Diego to teach math. He works out of his mobile office, a 2016 Ford Escape that has about 120,000 miles on the odometer. A lengthy commute has been Douglas’ reality since he started as a part-time professor in 1987.

“Adjunct faculty are so dislocated,” Douglas said. “They’re so spread out on all these different campuses and disengaged, that they don’t become faces or names that their full-time counterparts are aware of, and they’re not incorporated into the system and part of the system.”

He said AB 2277 would have helped. 

“It’s sort of psychological, if you can get more work on a single campus, be more present, helping students, be more engaged, more in the faculty meetings,” Douglas said.

But some other part-time faculty, such as Siobhan McGregor-Gordon, aren’t as disappointed by the veto as much as in the situation overall. 

McGregor-Gordon has taken on many responsibilities as a part-time faculty member at Santa Rosa Junior College. She teaches courses under the English for Multilingual Students umbrella, represents her college on the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges and serves on her college’s Academic Senate, among other roles.

McGregor-Gordon said AB 2277 “perpetuates the same bad system.”

“Our California Community College system is run on the backs of part-timers, just like Walmart,” she said. “And it infuriates me.”

Part-time faculty looking for job security often have to rely on their seniority. Jeff Judd, a part-time professor of 20 years at Las Positas College and five years at Contra Costa College, says his work is more stable than part-time professors who are just getting into the field because he gets preference in the courses he can teach. That’s because Las Positas College, where he began his teaching career, gives priority to faculty who have been there the longest. Contra Costa College allocates a certain number of units per semester after teaching for several semesters. Both systems put new part-timers at a disadvantage, making it hard to get even one class on campus.

The changes AB 2277 proposed could “certainly make life easier” for part-timers, Judd said, but would require the professors to do more professional development, such as attending workshops and conferences, in some community college districts including his. In Judd’s district, the more units a professor teaches, the more hours they must commit to professional development. If a professor teaches at multiple campuses, as many part-timers do, those hours can become untenable.

Several part-time faculty said they would like to see community colleges across the state offer more full-time roles. They also want the campuses to offer better pay and benefits to part-timers teaching across multiple colleges, with course loads that are equivalent to their full-time counterparts. 

Castillo, the part-time professor in Los Angeles, said teaching is a passion that “outweighs the cons.” So Castillo, a community college graduate himself, will keep at it despite the challenges he and many of his colleagues face.

“I made a lot of great friends (as a community college student) and it really just kick-started my career,” Castillo said. “I try to pay that forward.”

Desmond Meagley, Amy Moore and Lizzy Rager contributed to this story. Brumer, Meagley, Moore and Rager are fellows with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Lea esta historia en Español

More than a year after stinging audits, hearings with state Legislators and outcry from students and faculty calling for change, Cal State University is moving closer to meeting requirements from the state to reform how it handles reports of sexual discrimination, harassment and assault at its 23 campuses.

The Cal State Board of Trustees responded positively to a progress report given during its meeting this week by officials in the Chancellor’s Office tasked with overhauling the university system’s Title IX procedures. Reforms underway include internal audits of five campuses each semester, collecting data for an annual report, and hiring civil rights attorneys to handle cases more efficiently. 

The calls for systemwide change followed a review by the Cozen O’ Connor law firm hired by Cal State to investigate how its central office and 23 campuses managed Title IX cases of gender and sex discrimination. In May 2023, the firm found that Cal State must make campus environments safer and hire more employees dedicated to addressing these cases appropriately, as many were mishandled.

The California State Auditor released an audit in July 2023 reaffirming that Cal State inadequately addressed issues of sexual harassment and discrimination and stipulating 16 actions to fix the broken system. Through AB 1790, approved in July this year, Cal State is compelled to implement those recommendations by July 1, 2026. So far, 10 have been completed and two are nearly complete. One of those is an annual report that the university system must give to the state Legislature by Dec. 1, per SB 808.

Recently, Chancellor Mildred Garcia spoke at a hearing Aug. 14 before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, the Assembly Higher Education Committee and the Senate Education Committee, where she announced that $15.9 million had been invested across the CSU and within the Chancellor’s Office to bolster civil rights programs and services for the 2024-25 academic year.

At the Cal State Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday, the Title IX progress report also included a briefing on how the systemwide Civil Rights Office will train the staff on using trauma-informed practices. Presenters also announced a new steering committee that will bring together representatives from all areas of the universities where employees and students might go for support, to make sure they are directed to the right resources and don’t fall through the cracks.

“We must keep our focus on how students and employees engage with our processes. To do this well, we must do a better job of holistically supporting them and directing them for where to go for support,” said Hayley Schwartzkopf, the associate vice chancellor for civil rights programs and services. “It will take all of us working together to change the culture.”

Several board members thanked Schwartzkopf for the progress her office has made since the last board meeting in July.

“I want to thank you for this report,” Trustee Douglas Faigin said. “It’s very impressive, and the new focus on victims, the focus on people is very gratifying. Thank you for doing this.”

Timeliness and trauma

Cal Poly Pomona women’s basketball Coach Danelle Bishop needed action after experiencing discrimination and retaliation on the job. So she did what employees and students are supposed to do: She called the Title IX office at her university. However, she found an under-resourced and overworked staff.

So Bishop made another call, this time to the California State University Board of Trustees during the public comment portion of its meeting this week. 

“I learned that the CSU’s Title IX system is broken,” Bishop told the board. “We deserve a safe and healthy workplace free from abuse, harassment and bullying.” 

Despite the efforts by Cal State to reform its Title IX offices, individuals such as Bishop who have sought support have been stuck in the waiting game. 

Bishop did not want to give details about her experience of discrimination at Cal Poly Pomona due to privacy concerns, however she shared with CalMatters that her situation arose in Spring 2023. She reached out to the Title IX office and did meet with staff a couple of times, but nothing has changed. They did email her links to Cal Poly Pomona’s Human Resources Operations and an Employee Assistance Program. 

“It’s just traumatizing in ways that I’ve never had to deal with in my life,” Bishop said. “I’m going through it right now, and I know, I know there’s going to be a day that, you know, things are going to get better, but it’s been, it’s been a long year and a half, very long year and a half, almost two years.”

In response to a question from Trustee Diego Arambula about timeliness with Title IX cases, Schwarzkopf answered that there needs to be a balance with expediency and a trauma-informed approach.

She explained that a trauma-informed approach is a practice for civil rights professionals to support individuals with sensitivity.

“Sometimes, you know, a student or an employee will engage with our civil rights office, and they’re unsure if they want to proceed,” Schwartzkopf said. “That takes time and conversations, but you [Arambula] are absolutely correct that once that decision is made, we have to move forward expeditiously on our university campuses.”

In addition to the $15.9 million funding sent to campuses for their civil rights offices, Schwartzkopf added that the Chancellor’s Office will ensure that systemwide directors and civil rights attorneys are expediting Title IX cases. 

Spotlight on campuses and annual surveys

The five dedicated systemwide directors and five civil rights attorneys hired by Cal State will be in charge of obtaining and publicizing data through regular compliance reviews of civil rights offices at each CSU campus every three years as well as an annual report survey.

The five campuses that will be reviewed first, this fall, are: Chico State, Cal State Maritime, Cal State Bakersfield, Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State Long Beach. During spring 2025, another five campuses will be reviewed, and so on.

Once the review for each campus is complete, the systemwide director will meet with the campus president, the campus council, the civil rights attorney and other individuals the campus president would like to be there to outline the areas of strength and growth for the selected university. 

Information from the compliance reviews will be aggregated into a public report.

Bishop, whose campus will be one of the first universities to be reviewed, would like for her issue to be properly researched by the Title IX office at Cal Poly Pomona.

“I would like to see every issue that I bring up actually be researched,” Bishop said. “Instead, I was told their job is only to notify whoever they need to notify on campus, and they’re not required to research or look into every issue.”

Despite each Cal State campus reforming its Title IX processes, some students at Cal Poly Pomona are unaware that the university has an office tasked with assisting students and employees who have experienced sexual assault, discrimination or harassment. 

Bernadette Venegas, a third year psychology student at Cal Poly Pomona, had no idea there was a Title IX office at her campus, but is troubled to hear that the system is not working for many.

“It sucks that there is not a good system that people can feel safe and supported by so that if something ever does happen to them they may not feel they have the support that they need,” Venegas said. “I feel like everyone should feel safe in the college they go to.”

Another recommendation the state auditor made is conducting a Systemwide Annual Report Survey. The 2023-24 survey will include standardized data from the number of cases reported, case types, timeliness of completion, patterns and trends from all of Cal State’s 23 campuses.

“The CSU has not previously ensured that information was collected in a consistent manner through efforts and standardized reporting, written guidance, training and ongoing support,” Schwartzkopf said. “The CSU system will be better able to more accurately obtain and transparently report this information.” 

Due to the lack of consistent and comprehensive data throughout the university system, the data produced by the annual survey will act as a baseline for a unified case management system.

The Chancellor’s Office is expected to receive the results from the survey Oct. 1 and will present the data to the state Legislature Dec. 1.

“Eventually, we’ll have a case management system,” said Interim Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Albert Liddicoat, “which will give us the ability to track from all those different offices that are entering incidents related to a student or comments that were made that might triangulate onto something that’s happening more broadly, and then it needs to be proactively addressed.” 

Victoria Mejicanos contributed to this story. Mercy Sosa and Victoria Mejicanos are fellows with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Lea esta historia en Español

Pink hues adorn the horizon as the sun rises on a nondescript parking lot at Long Beach City College. The lot is quiet but not empty, with the same gray asphalt and slightly faded white lines as any other one on campus. But from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., it is much more than a place to park. 

The lot is a designated area for Long Beach City College’s Safe Parking Program, an initiative from the college’s Basic Needs Center that offers safe overnight parking for students and connects them to resources like showers and Wi-Fi.  The program was created to address a particular student demographic: homeless students living in their cars. 

A report from the Community College League of California found that 2 out of 3 of the state’s community college students struggle to meet their basic needs and almost 3 out of 5 are housing insecure.

To help these students, multiple legislative measures have tried to create safe parking options similar to Long Beach City College’s. The most recent effort was Assembly Bill 1818. Introduced by Assemblymember Corey Jackson early this year, the bill would have required the California Community College and California State University systems to create pilot programs to provide safe overnight parking for students living in their cars.  

“Parking lot homeless programs are a best practice that’s been used throughout the nation; churches have done it, cities have done it, it’s time for colleges to step up and do it too,” Jackson said.

The bill was killed in the appropriations committee on Aug. 16, but would have required the California State University to select five campuses to participate in the pilot program; the California Community College chancellor would have had to select 20. The pilot program would have lasted through 2028. 

The appropriations committee, which assesses the financial viability of a bill, estimated establishing pilot programs across the Cal State system would cost around $500,000 as well as an additional $2.25 million in annual costs. For the California Community Colleges, the committee estimated between $91,500 and $112,00 in one-time costs and $10 million to $13 million in annual costs for the duration of the program. 

Justin Mendez, coordinator of Long Beach City College’s Basic Needs Program, oversees the safe parking program and said those estimates sound high, although he acknowledges that costs will vary from campus to campus. Long Beach City College has been able to fund their program for less than the committee’s estimated costs by working collaboratively with other departments and using existing contracts. 

While the bill had garnered support from organizations like the California Faculty Association and the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, several community college districts and the California State University system opposed it. Some of their concerns include liability risk and cost. They also argue that providing secure overnight parking is not a permanent solution. 

Letitia Clark, chief communications officer for the South Orange County Community College District, said the district has been investing in programs that support basic needs, including housing, as well as exploring building housing on campus as part of their facilities master plan. 

“We don’t want any mandates or anything that would take away from that, and especially with an alternative that we actually don’t think is safe and really provides a good quality of life for our students,” Clark said.

Mendez at Long Beach City College acknowledges that overnight parking is not a housing solution.

“We’re not in the understanding that providing our students a safe place to park is providing them housing,” Mendez said, adding that the program is just one of the many resources available for students facing housing insecurity. However, overnight parking provides an immediate safe space while students are connected to longer term housing. 

Providing holistic support

Started in 2021, the program has evolved over the years. The lot is now located next to the college’s campus safety building, which has allowed Long Beach City College to cut down on the nearly $500,000 they spent the first two years hiring an outside security company. Students have access to the bathroom in the campus safety building throughout the night and can access the locker room showers from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. at the nearby school stadium.  

Being next to the campus safety building means overnight security officers and parking employees periodically check in on the lot as part of their routine rounds. Mendez said that despite there not being 24/7 surveillance there haven’t been any safety issues. 

The lot has 15 parking spots reserved for safe parking participants from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. although the program can have around 30 folks enrolled at a time. Mendez said they rarely have issues with capacity because students use the resource to varying degrees — some enroll as a backup because they are at risk of losing their housing, others may only need a night or two while they wait to relocate. 

Students in the Safe Parking Program need to be enrolled in the primary terms of fall and spring. However, they can continue using the program during summer and winter without being enrolled during those terms. They must also be independent; service animals are allowed but students can’t be living in their vehicle with family or have dependents. 

These eligibility requirements have evolved as Mendez and his team assess what is realistic and better serves students. Originally, the program required students to have their vehicles registered and an up-to-date license but now that is something the college assists them with. 

Once enrolled in the program, students receive a welcome packet, sign a liability release form and are connected with a case manager to find long-term housing, whether that be through one of the college’s community partners or elsewhere. 

For the 2022-23 academic year, the program had a total of 24 students. Twelve of them found transitional or permanent housing. For fall 2023, 21 students enrolled in the program, two obtained permanent housing and 19 of them continued into spring 2024.

The community has also been supportive of the program. Mendez said that since it started, the program receives donations of blankets, gift cards, hygiene kits and other necessities. 

Elliot Stern, the president of Saddleback College, spoke against AB 1818 during a Senate committee hearing, arguing that colleges need to get students out of their cars and into their basic needs centers so their needs can be “addressed holistically.”

At Long Beach City College, students access the parking program through the basic needs center and its online request form. What began as a COVID-19 emergency aid application has continued to be a useful one-stop-shop application for students seeking help.  

“For all of our basic needs efforts, we always take a wide scope and try to cast the widest net we can,” Mendez said.

The survey asks whether students are facing housing insecurity, which could mean they are struggling to pay rent or have to move frequently, or if they are homelessness, meaning they don’t have a permanent place to live. If they answer yes to either, the survey then asks if they’re sleeping in their vehicle, couch surfing, staying in hotels or borrowing a room. 

Through this data, the Basic Needs team can directly connect students with specific resources. For students who self-identify as living in their cars, the outreach coordinator then refers them to the Safe Parking Program.  

When students aren’t allowed to park

AB 1818 was inspired by the experiences of students attending campuses without overnight parking. The bill originated as a response to Cal Poly Humboldt evicting students living in their vehicles.

On Oct. 25, 2023, Cal Poly Humboldt students received a mass announcement stating that the university would begin enforcing a parking policy it had previously overlooked and would be evicting students who were found sleeping in their vehicles overnight.

One of those students was Caleb Chen, a second-year public sociology graduate student. He applied to Humboldt in late June of last year and knew finding housing would be difficult. After doing some research, he learned about the university’s alternative living community and figured it would be feasible to live out of his van.

Chen was in the graduate lounge with a friend when they both got the email.

“Oh, the jig is up,” his friend told him.

The eviction announcement said allowing students to sleep in their cars was “unsanitary” and “unsafe”  — terminology that not only made students feel dehumanized but also something they considered inaccurate. 

Brad Butterfield, president of the Alternative Living Club, a school club created by Humboldt students living in their cars to form a community and advocate for establishing a mail service, said the administration brought up similar sanitation concerns when they pitched the idea of a safe parking program on campus. 

“We don’t need, nor ever asked for, bathrooms, showers or security,” said Butterfield, a journalism senior. “All we need is a place to park overnight.” 

Butterfield lives in an RV, which has a built-in bathroom. He has a membership at a local gym and showers there. For students without RV’s, Chen said there still are bathrooms on campus that are open 24/7 and that most undergraduate students shower in the school gym. 

“It’s really difficult to be pretty much told that you can’t exist,” Butterfield said. “We weren’t causing any harm. We all kept a really low profile.”

Butterfield said that at the time of the evictions, 25 to 30 students were living in their cars. Some lived in discrete vehicles like SUVs while others lived in RVs like him. 

The email announcement stated that campus officers had received calls from members of the community “expressing fear and frustration about the situation.”

“There were never any issues between the vehicle dwellers on campus,” Butterfield said. “Not between us as a community and certainly not between us and the campus community at large.”

According to Butterfield, it was quite the contrary. He said some students had told him they felt safer knowing there were students in the parking lot at night who could call the police if anyone was trying to break into their car — something the group had done in the past.

The stigma around homelessness is something that Mendez from Long Beach City College has been fighting since the beginning of the safe parking program. He said the staff have a student-centered approach and are mindful of treating students with dignity.

“There’s all of these negative stereotypes about what a homeless person is instead of realizing that these college students are coming here to be successful. They’re coming here to work on their long-term goals and help themselves and their families,” Mendez said. “I think that level of dignity has made the biggest impact beyond the actual connection of housing partners.”

The mischaracterization of homeless students is what ended a 2019 bill that was also advocating for safe parking. Assembly Bill 302 was introduced by Assemblymember Marc Berman, and would have required community college campuses to allow overnight access to parking, bathroom and shower facilities for students living in their cars. 

The bill made it to the appropriations committee where it underwent significant amendments that Berman said “watered down the bill” and “treated homeless community college students like pedophiles” by placing restrictions for campuses within a certain distance from elementary schools.  

“It was really unfortunate and damaging in terms of stigmatizing homeless students. And so, because of a lot of those reasons, we decided to stop the bill from moving forward and work on other solutions to the issue,” Berman said. He later drafted Assembly Bill 132, which successfully passed and required every California Community College to establish a basic needs center and hire a basic needs coordinator. 

In 2020, another student tried starting a pilot overnight parking program at his campus. Grayson Peters, now a UCLA alumni, was a founder of UCLA Safe Parking and came across similar arguments from his administration at the time.

He said UCLA administrators told him allowing students to live in their cars and park overnight was “fundamentally unsafe.” Peters said that while he agrees with the statement, the alternative can be even more dangerous for students. 

“Students are actively sleeping on unsecured city streets a few blocks over, without the benefit of university guards or university facilities or the student gym nearby to go to the restroom in the middle of the night if they need to,” Peters said. “The status quo is more unsafe than the solution we’re proposing.”

Butterfield and his partner have experienced that risk. After being evicted, they tried to find safe places to park around the city. But Arcata has a 72-hour parking limit, which meant they had to relocate every three days. Butterfield said the Arcata police have harassed them multiple times. 

“It feels like we’re constantly trying to outrun the police because they keep wanting us to move from here to there to here to there,” Butterfield said. 

Cal State Humboldt referred students to a safe parking program run by a local nonprofit organization, but that program ended this summer.

Stephanie Goldman, the associate director of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, said data shows that a student’s proximity to campus can affect their academic outcomes.

“[Safe parking] is not only giving them a safer option, but an option that is conducive to them reaching their goals,” Goldman said.

Such was the case for Chen in Humboldt, who, before the eviction, was doing much better academically because the commute time was so short and he didn’t have to stress about where he would spend the night. 

Chen spent the remainder of the semester and the following one at a local public parking lot. He now lives in a studio apartment he can afford because of loans and scholarships and is splitting rent with his partner who moved up to Humboldt.

“When that announcement happened in November, it was just a wrench into a lot of people’s livelihoods let alone academic success,” Chen said. 

Jackson said he was disappointed that the bill was “mischaracterized” by the educational systems as encouraging students to live in their cars as opposed to more effective interventions. Moving forward, now that the legislature is on a break until January, Jackson said he will  be scheduling a meeting with the Cal State and California Community Colleges chancellors to see if “there’s ways that we can still get this done.” If not, he will be reintroducing the bill next year. 

The Student Senate for the Community Colleges said they will continue to advocate for student basics needs including securing funding for dorms.

Jetaun Stevens, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit law firm Public Advocates, said she hopes the bill returns with a greater coalition behind it. She said that while AB 1818 was mostly sponsored by the author, working with advocacy organizations who can co-sponsor the bill would help bring forward student stories and amplify the potential impact of the bill.

“Oftentimes it does take [bills] that are somewhat controversial quite a few times before they make it across the finish line,” Stevens said.

Briana Mendez-Padilla is a fellow with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Despite the Los Angeles Harbor College student ID that proves otherwise, Citlali Gonzalez hasn’t felt like a college student. 

Yes, she recently finished her associate degree in human services and, yes, she is transferring to Cal State Dominguez Hills this fall. Still, as someone who for the past year has been mostly taking online classes, college doesn’t feel like the social experience she’d imagined fresh out of high school five years ago. 

Like Gonzalez, roughly half of California community college students are taking classes online — a significant shift compared to the years before the COVID-19 pandemic. While community college data shows that its students perform worse in online courses compared to in-person ones, many college officials defend the shift to online learning. 

The “modality,” whether a class is in-person or online, is irrelevant, said Rebecca Ruan-O’Shaughnessy, who oversees educational services and support for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. She said what matters is “engagement” — the degree to which students interact with their peers and their professors.

Nationally, the federal government is concerned about a lack of oversight for the growing number of online courses. The California State University and University of California systems have also increased the number of online classes to varying degrees, though research on online success rates at four-year universities is limited. 

In July, the U.S. Education Department proposed new rules that would call on colleges and universities to collect more data about online courses, including students’ attendance. “We have been hampered in the ability to fully understand students’ participation in distance education, account for differences in outcomes and conduct oversight, accurately measure taxpayer expenditures on distance education programs, and gauge the success of such education,” wrote the department.

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office responded to the regulations by submitting a public comment document, saying they hope the department will consider the “new costs” to develop the infrastructure to collect the data. The UC also answered publicly, saying data collection might create “confusion and stymie the development of future online education programs.” In an email to CalMatters, the Cal State system stated they were “generally in support” of the regulations and trust that the federal department will consider the potential impact on diverse student populations juggling different responsibilities.

Meeting students ‘where they are’ means going online

For 23-year-old Gonzalez, who works 40 hours a week at her day job, the convenience of online education is paramount. “It works for my schedule,” she said, adding that it’s allowed her to make time for things that help her well-being, like Jiu Jitsu. Gonzalez said that the best professors structured their courses in bite-sized pieces by breaking up lectures into shorter videos and adding quizzes after each reading. They were also quick to respond to emails. 

There are typically two kinds of online courses: synchronous classes, where the professor and students meet in real-time, and asynchronous classes, where students watch pre-recorded videos or otherwise learn independently. Community college data of the past few years shows that students in synchronous classes have consistently performed better than asynchronous ones. Historically, students in synchronous classes get more interaction with their professors and that “real-time engagement” can translate into better performance, said Ruan-O’Shaughnessy.

Nonetheless, asynchronous classes are popular among students and, according to state data, these classes outnumber synchronous ones by more than 170,000 course offerings. If students want these courses, then colleges need to “meet them where they are,” said Ruan-O’Shaughnessy — and they should do so in a way that doesn’t jeopardize the quality of their education. She and other community college leaders are pushing to expand access to online counselors, tutors, and other support systems that can serve students online, both synchronously and asynchronously. 

For Amber Chiang, a communications lecturer at Cal State Bakersfield, the aspect of “engagement” is also top of mind. In the online public relations courses she teaches, she said she supplements the lack of face-to-face class time by offering synchronous online office hours and using different communication platforms, such as Slack and Discord, for students to communicate with her and with each other. 

But she prefers asynchronous instruction because she said it’s more convenient for students. “It’s making it possible for them to further their careers in a way that they may not have had an opportunity to,” Chiang said.

Lower performance for Black, Hispanic students in online courses

In California’s community colleges, students who enroll in online classes skew older, according to a study by researchers at UC Davis, UC Irvine, and the University of Pennsylvania. It raises a question: are these students performing worse because class is online or because they have other family or work obligations that younger students don’t? 

The study controlled for these issues, in part by looking at students who enrolled in both online and in-person classes, but found that those taking online classes, especially asynchronous ones, still performed worse. The performance gap between online and in-person courses was particularly high for Black and Hispanic students.

While Gonzalez received A’s throughout her last year taking online courses at Harbor College, she recognized the advantages of in-person instruction. She said she opted for an in-person statistics class because she knew she might struggle with an online math course.

She said attending class in person helped her focus better, and since she knew she would have questions, it was quicker to ask them directly to her professors than communicate via email. Being on campus also made it easier for her to attend tutoring sessions, which helped her master the material. 

“When it comes to something that I feel was so difficult for me, I was like, I can’t do it online because I’m not going to be disciplined,” Gonzalez said.

Online success at four-year institutions is hard to define

The Cal State and UC systems have also grown their online education offerings, though there are fewer compared to the more than 1 million unique community college students each year who enroll in at least one online course. For the Fall 2024 semester, Cal State campuses enrolled more than 800,000 students in online classes – a sum which double counts students who enrolled in more than one online course – according to data provided by Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith. In the same academic year, over 100,000 undergraduate students at the UC enrolled in online courses, said Ryan King, director of communications for the UC. The UC also double counts students in its data.

Data from the Cal State system shows that students in synchronous and asynchronous online classes performed better than in-person ones in the 2023-24 academic year. However, studies looking at online learning at four-year institutions are inconclusive after considering different variables, such as the complexity of courses being offered, the instructor’s experience teaching online, and the type of students who choose to take online courses.

A 2021 study looked at students taking an economics class at a highly selective public liberal arts college in New York and found only a slight difference in grades between students who attended lectures in person and those who only accessed the lectures online. While students learning online performed slightly worse, the study recognized that since the type of student choosing online classes is so varied, “any estimated gap between the two modalities would be biased,” meaning it could be due to a student’s background or experience.

Additionally, online course offerings at the Cal State system are only slightly above their pre-pandemic numbers and have been consistently decreasing since 2021. The Cal State data is looking at a much smaller scope of students than those attending a community college.

The UC did not provide systemwide data.

Promoting online education — despite ‘messy data’

Online education isn’t new, nor are its problems. Internet-based courses began at California’s community colleges in the early 2000s and grew slowly over the following decades to the point where about 1 in 3 students were taking online courses before the onset of the pandemic. Since 2006, when the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office first collected data, students in online courses performed worse than those in person, but the gap has narrowed over time.

Still, the data is “messy,” said Alyssa Nguyen, the senior director at the Research and Planning Group for the California Community Colleges, a non-profit organization. Before the pandemic, she said there were very few synchronous classes and the data didn’t effectively track how student performance in those classes might differ from others. 

Both the UC and community college systems define a course as online even if only half of the class takes place remotely. The Cal State definition leaves more room for interpretation, saying  an online class is any course “that is offered via computer/internet,” Bentley-Smith said. This can include hybrid classes or classes where students meet synchronously once a week and work asynchronously for the rest of the week. 

Rolin Moe is the executive director of UC Online, which supports online education at the UC. He  said the pandemic helped people realize the benefits of technology in education but that “without thoughtful design,” courses ran the risk of lowering UC standards. To ensure quality, Moe said UC Online has provided more than $50 million over the course of 11 years directly to campuses to help develop online courses. UC professors also have access to experts in online course design through the UC Learning Center that assist with their technology needs.

Chiang at Cal State Bakersfield received training and a certification from Quality Matters, a nonprofit organization that provides services and resources for educators to strengthen their online courses. 

Ruan O’Shaugnessy, with the community college system, said her team is working to improve the quality of its online instruction by helping professors engage students, especially in asynchronous classes. In one popular professional development program championed by the system, professors are encouraged to send individual messages to students before the semester begins and to make their lectures more interactive and accessible. In separate studies, two community colleges found that those changes can lead to an increase in the number of students who pass the course.

Michael Mogull, a math and statistics faculty member at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, said he has learned over time what best practices work for his students since he began teaching online in 2017. 

Mogull’s class includes weekly discussion posts where students share what they learned in class and group quizzes where students can get together and discuss the quiz. He also uses Pronto, an educational texting app where students can reach out to each other and Mogull with any questions. The app also has a video call feature where students can create subgroups to work together. 

However, Mogull has noticed some students may not be as excited for group work and are less willing to participate.

“I think students are getting more used to the online, asynchronous modality,” Mogull said. “I think it’s still up to the student to kind of decide: is this the right format for me? Like, am I self motivated enough to be doing all this stuff without the requirement of attending lectures twice a week?”

Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.

Briana Mendez-Padilla is a fellow with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Months-long delays. Lack of trust. Failure. These are just a few ways in which investigators a year ago described the inadequate responses to sexual assault and discrimination across the 23-campus California State University system. 

Now, the system says it is meeting this month’s deadline for implementing 12 fixes for problems reported in a July 2023 state audit and a law firm review of how its universities have mishandled cases reported under Title IX, the federal prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex. Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith says the university system is on track to meet all 16 fixes outlined in the audit by July 2026. Lawmakers are not taking the system at its word, however. Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill requiring Cal State to implement the state auditor’s recommendations and provide the Legislature a progress report by next summer.

A series of high-profile cases, including one that resulted in the head of the university system resigning, sparked the review of Title IX procedures and illuminated severe distrust among many students and employees in the Cal State system. The Chancellor’s Office commissioned the Cozen O’Connor law firm to undertake a yearlong investigation, in which teams visited each campus either in-person or via Zoom, conducted interviews, and surveyed 18,000 anonymous employees and students about their experiences with the Title IX offices at their schools.

“This is not a singular issue that one person or one group can address. This is really an issue that’s going to take the work of every single member of our CSU campus community for the Chancellor’s Office to really build a culture change,” said Hayley Schwartzkopf, associate vice chancellor for Civil Rights Programming and Services. Hers is a new role created by the Chancellor’s Office to oversee anti-discrimination efforts. 

When Schwartzkopf began in February, each campus was already starting to make major changes —  including hiring more staff, creating specialized roles, and communicating better with students and employees. At the system level, Cal State is adding staff to the civil rights office to provide support and oversight to the 23 campuses.

Rape case shows how staffing leads to failures

According to the law firm’s report, nearly every Cal State campus struggled with understaffing and insufficient funding in their Title IX offices, which handle reports of gender discrimination as well as sexual harassment and assault. Staff vacancies were reported at 10 campuses, while the staff available often had multiple duties beyond their job descriptions. Each institution receiving federal funding must have at least one Title IX coordinator, but the firm’s report concluded that it takes several staff members to handle reports, investigations and disciplinary actions.

Read More: Cal State recently was forced to deal with several sexual harassment allegations. A new report finds it repeatedly fell short

“On most campuses, there are not enough people to do the work that they are assigned,” Cozen review chair Gina Maisto Smith told the Cal State Board of Trustees last May. “Individuals that are overloaded with too much responsibility are focusing on the fires, and as a consequence all the other things are just dissolving and leading to a lack of trust in the system.” 

Staff turnover was also a problem at several universities, including Sonoma State, where there was “historic instability in the leadership,” according to the Cozen report. That office had five staff positions from 2021 to 2024, though seven people left and were replaced during that time, according to university data obtained by CalMatters. 

For Sonoma State alumna Amanda, who asked not to have her last name used to protect her privacy, the turnover led to her case lasting more than a year. When Cal State released findings in her case in July 2023, the hearing officer found “based on a preponderance of the evidence” that a fellow student did “engage in Sexual Assault – Fondling and Rape” of Amanda in October 2021 in violation of Cal State policy, according to the officer’s final report reviewed by CalMatters. (The hearing officer is an impartial, contracted attorney trained in Title IX investigations for educational institutions.)

Amanda first reported the incident to her campus’s police department in February 2022. She decided to forgo a police investigation, and instead pursue a Title IX case, saying she hoped it would be a quicker and less cumbersome process.

“I was wrong,” she said.

Amanda wanted the student expelled or suspended for at least a year. At first, she sought an informal resolution, a mutual agreement of both parties. But she and the other student were unable to agree on terms, so Amanda pursued a formal Title IX investigation through the Cal State system.

Formal investigations should be completed within 100 working days after the Title IX office notifies the students they are starting the investigation, according to Cal State policy. In Amanda’s case, the investigation began on March 7, 2022 and was supposed to conclude by July 29, 2022. The preliminary report still hadn’t been finished when, seven months into the still-open case, the investigator on the case left the university on Oct. 5, 2022 for an unknown reason. The Title IX office then sent Amanda four notices of extension as a new investigator took over, according to emails she shared with CalMatters.

Sonoma State’s current Title IX Coordinator, Julie Vivas, declined to discuss Amanda’s case or past personnel issues in her office, but acknowledged “the turnover in Title IX offices is very high due to a number of factors” in California and nationally.  

Confused by the delays, Amanda emailed Sonoma State’s then-president, Mike Lee. His chief of staff met with her in January 2023 and a month later emailed Amanda explaining the investigation was delayed due to scheduling conflicts, additional witness interviews and the transition of the new investigator.  

“We recognize that this was a long process. Moving forward, we expect these cases to be concluded within a more reasonable timeframe, especially as we become fully staffed,” the email stated.

During that year, Amanda continued her studies but quit her on-campus job and didn’t go into certain buildings to avoid the other student. Despite a no-contact order, she still would run into him. She said the worst was hearing the sound of a skateboard, which he often rode, feeling her stomach drop, then looking over her shoulder and sometimes seeing him ride by.

“​​It was like psychological torture,” Amanda said. “Because this big, big traumatic thing happened and I was already falling apart from it … And then you’re put through this process. And it’s like, they just keep ripping the wound open over and over again.”

A hearing was finally held in June 2023, a month after she graduated.  After considering testimony from both parties and other witnesses, the hearing officer’s report said a preponderance of evidence led her to conclude that Amanda was sexually fondled at knifepoint and then raped by a fellow student.

The student denied wrongdoing, according to hearing documents. He was suspended for one semester, required to complete training on consent and write a reflection paper. Amanda appealed, asking for a stronger punishment. After three extensions, her appeal was denied and the case closed in October 2023. Amanda resents the time she spent on her Title IX case rather than her education at Sonoma State. 

“It’s hard because the school that I loved, that was supposed to take care of me and protect me, they didn’t do that. They failed. And, you know, even as I was graduating, I should have been so proud of myself, I should have been focused on, like, everything I accomplished. The only thing I could think about was, it failed me.”

Campuses adding staff, restructuring offices to improve caseload

Versions of stories like Amanda’s were shared over and over by students and employees throughout the Cal State system who felt as if they’d been failed by a system meant to protect them. The Cozen survey detailed lengthy investigations, poor quality of anti-discrimination training and sexual harassment prevention programs, and overall negative campus climate.  

The Cozen report cited a lack of Title IX oversight at each campus. In response, campuses and the Chancellor’s Office are adding staff, including four regional directors to help campuses implement policy changes and update their systems for tracking reports.

So far, campuses have not received extra funding for Title IX positions, spokesperson Bentley-Smith stated in an email. Instead, campuses have used existing positions and funds for new staffing and costs. Cal State plans to finalize its budget plan for Title IX services by the end of July, which may include a small increase for 2024-25, she wrote.

The state audit and Cozen report both recommend each campus have six Title IX staff members. However, that amount depends on campus size, number of reports received and resources available, Schwartzkopf explained. 

“When you have a lot of cases and not a lot of people, it means that you can’t spend the amount of time that you would want to on a particular case,” Schwartzkopf said.

For example, Cal State Monterey Bay, which has more than 7,000 students and 1,000 employees, had two Title IX staff members in 2023 and is now recruiting for a third. San Diego State, which has more than 37,000 students and 4,000 employees, had six Title IX staff in 2023 and has since hired three more.

At Fresno State — a campus with nearly 24,000 students and more than 2,000 employees — its four Title IX office staff members were splitting their time with another campus office focused on discrimination cases based on identities other than sex, such as race and religion. Fresno State was one of four Cal State campuses operating separate offices, which the Cozen report recommended combining. Now, the university has merged both offices under the Office of Compliance and Civil Rights, with six positions. With more staff, they can address issues faster, said Bernadette Muscat, dean of Library Services and co-chair of the Title IX implementation team at Fresno State. People no longer get bounced around between the two offices. 

A university needs both care and compliance roles, the Cozen report found. Many Title IX office staff, however, were taking complaints and then investigating them, which led to the first points of contact switching hats to be impartial investigators. Cozen recommended restructuring offices to separate roles and prevent the perception that Title IX processes are solely legalistic. 

Before December 2023, San Francisco State’s Title IX office had three full-time investigators who also took initial complaints, serving 23,700 students and 3,700 employees. As a result, the university’s investigators were stretched too thin and 17 of 48 open investigations were over a year old, according to the campus’s Cozen report. The office has since moved one of the investigators into taking reports exclusively, and hired another investigator to fill that gap. The office restructuring has allowed the investigators to “focus solely on the investigation process,” Lori Makin-Byrd, interim Title IX Coordinator, wrote in an email to CalMatters. 

Building trust through communication and victim support

To restore trust on campuses, the Cozen report recommended campus Title IX offices communicate with students and employees more quickly and in more personable, easy-to-understand ways.

Quick communication helped Fresno State chemistry senior TJ Lake, a nonbinary student, get a discriminatory practice fixed at the campus testing center. Lake was repeatedly misidentified with their “deadname,” or previous name, on testing documents. After a meeting, the Title IX coordinator helped the testing center resolve the issue within a month. Lake received confirmation via email and felt satisfied with the timeframe.

But in another case, Lake said they were being repeatedly misgendered by the doctor and staff in the Student Health and Counseling Center as they sought gender-affirming care. Lake emailed the Title IX Office in April 2023, and was bounced between the anti-discrimination office and the Title IX office when they were still operating separately at Fresno State. At one point, the Title IX coordinator emailed Lake a 90-page PDF of the school’s Title IX policy, including definitions of misconduct and options available. The legalese confused Lake, who was unfamiliar with the terms presented.  

“I think just more communication and explanation would make it a lot better,” Lake said.

By June, Lake filed a Title IX complaint against the campus health center. The Title IX coordinator emailed Lake in August suggesting an informal resolution rather than an investigation and attaching the 90-page PDF again. Lake ultimately decided to go through with the informal resolution “to see how that goes,” email records show.

Per the final resolution agreed to by Lake and Janelle Morillo, associate vice president of Student Health, Counseling and Wellness, the university found an off-campus gender-affirming care provider for Lake, who remains on a waitlist there to receive treatment. The Student Health and Counseling Center also agreed to provide training related to LGBTQ+ support to its staff, which it has accomplished, Morillo said. Additionally, the campus health center now has a “trained medical team” specifically to help support transgender and nonbinary students. 

Cal State is working to update its nondiscrimination policy by Aug. 1 to meet the Biden administration’s deadline for implementing new Title IX protections for transgender and nonbinary students, among other provisions, which 26 Republican-led states have sued to block. So far, judges have temporarily blocked the rule in 14 states.

In the Cozen survey, 24% of students, faculty and staff who chose not to report discrimination or assault said they did not trust the university process. A similar percentage didn’t report because they thought their university would not do anything.

Cal State Los Angeles alumna Esmeralda Gollas said she knew of the Title IX Office’s negative reputation at her university. But in her experience, she felt supported both times she reported cases, first for sexual harassment during her freshman year and then a sexual assault during her junior year. When reporting the assault, Gollas called the Title IX Office at 4:30 p.m., about 30 minutes before closing. The office’s coordinator stayed on the phone with her until 7 p.m., she said. 

“They kind of talked me through what opening a case would mean if I wanted to press charges. They let me know, it’s not gonna be easy,” Gollas said. “They were very real with me, which I appreciated.”

She was directed to the campus police instead of the Title IX office because her assault occurred off-campus. Title IX offices respond to reports of incidents that occur on campus or during campus-sanctioned off-campus events, according to Cal State policy. Gollas didn’t pursue an investigation for personal reasons. During her reporting process, she received counseling through Cal State Los Angeles’ contracted victim advocate service, Peace Over Violence.

“I felt very listened to,” she said. “I think they did the best they could with what I was willing to agree to at that time.”

The Cozen report acknowledges campus advocates play an integral role in supporting students and employees who’ve experienced sexual harassment or assault. At Sonoma State, Amanda’s case advocate, Susan Pulido, provided her support, even after retiring in May 2023. Pulido walked students through the Title IX process and, upon request, attended every Title IX intake meeting. According to Pulido, some students told her she was one of the only people validating their experiences. The Title IX intake process can be “cumbersome” and confusing, Pulido said. There’s no one to explain the steps, so the advocate is there to answer any questions.

“And they can get honest feedback and honest information,” Pulido said.

The Cozen report recommends a campus-employed case advocate attend each intake meeting. According to the report, each university had at least one advocate but more would help spread the workload. The report also suggested campuses add a designated advocate for those who are accused of harassment or assault, which only five campuses had at the time of the report.

Sustaining Title IX changes over time 

The California State Auditor identified the Chancellor’s Office as responsible for the failings at each campus Title IX office. The audit recommended policies for hiring procedures, adding a more in-depth data tracking system, and clarifying procedures for investigations. The Assembly Committee on Higher Education then called out Cal State and other California higher education systems in a February 2024 report, which provided further recommendations for each campus and oversight guidance statewide. 

“It’s really important that we are deliberative and thoughtful in our process,” Schwartzkopf told CalMatters. “And it’s very important that we get it right. You don’t want to rush through these kinds of changes. And so if we need additional time, then we need to take that time to get it right for our campuses and for our communities and for our students and for our employees.”
The Board of Trustees will receive a progress report on Title IX reforms from Cal State staff during its bimonthly meeting July 22 to 24.

Wilson is a fellow with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Lea esta historia en Español

Alina Kralya tinkers with a microcontroller for one of her computer science projects at American River College. Nearby, a group of other first-generation college students sit in green and blue chairs, chatting about their math homework. It’s a typical scene at this community college space for students in the Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement program, called MESA.

Two years ago, Kralya was in her first year at an engineering university in Ukraine when the Russian invasion and the subsequent war uprooted her family. After moving around Eastern Europe, they sought refuge in sunny Sacramento with $300 in their pockets. 

Between language barriers, a brand new academic system and trying to make sense of trigonometry, it hasn’t been an easy journey for the 20-year-old, who dreams of going into robotics. When she needs tutoring or just a quiet place to study away from her younger siblings, she comes to the MESA center.

She’s still buzzing with excitement about a recent conference for female engineers she attended in San Jose. The program covered her entrance fee and transportation costs, and staff helped her set up her LinkedIn profile for the event. “Listening to all those successful ladies in STEM, oh my gosh, it was so nice,” she said.

California allotted millions of dollars in 2022 to create the same program at community colleges across the state. Currently, 91 out of 115 campuses have programs established, with three more set to create one next year. The state hopes the expansion will reduce barriers to STEM jobs for “underserved and underrepresented” students. As the initiative rolls out statewide, questions remain about how long the funding will last, and how the programs can track how well they’re working.  

To enroll in the program, students must be both low-income and a first-generation college student. The students’ parents can’t hold a bachelor’s degree in any country to meet the first-generation requirement. 

Read More: Who is a first-generation college student? California colleges, universities can’t agree.

Less than 1 in 5 community college students in California who want to transfer to a university succeed in doing so within four years, according to a report from the Public Policy Institute of California. For Black and Latino students, transfer pathways are even weaker: 13%  for Black students and 16% for Latinos.

Beyond bolstering transfer rates, the goals for MESA include increasing representation of Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans in STEM industries. In 2021, 9% of STEM workers nationwide were Black, while 15% were Hispanic or Latino, according to a report from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. 

“The community needs people to be in these positions as doctors, as scientists, as engineers, as computer scientists who actually understand the community that is being served,” said Edrina Rashidi, the officer of advocacy for the Community College Association of MESA Directors, who recently lobbied for more legislative support for the programs. 

Students in the program have access to a range of support, such as tutoring, academic counseling and help finding internships or scholarships. The physical centers offer computer equipment, textbooks and a place to study. Program directors work closely with students to connect them to resources. 

As of fall 2023, 4,279 students were enrolled at a MESA program on their campus, according to state data. 

State funds expansion of MESA programs systemwide

Four years ago, MESA programs had a $2.5 million statewide budget. After lobbying efforts from the MESA directors association, the program now has a $39.4 million statewide budget and was written into the California Education Code. Over 50 colleges have taken advantage of the funds in the last two years, nearly tripling the number of programs from 34 to 94.

Each college received a total of $428,576 for the 2022-23 school year, in the form of a grant from the state. This past year and every year through 2027 they’ll get at least $280,000 each. However, the state chancellor’s office expects colleges to eventually start covering some of the costs, so that the programs can stay afloat if the state money disappears, according to the statewide MESA project monitor Stephanie Ricks-Albert.

The state grants will be up for renewal in 2027. Rashidi said the organization will continue to look for ways to support the program’s stability long term. 

The program also exists in different forms across the state and nation. In California, many universities and high schools have MESA programs or clubs that are overseen by the UC Office of the President with a budget of about $7 million. 

Inside a MESA program

Computers, STEM textbooks, whiteboards, a free-to-use printer and a coffee machine occupy the MESA center at American River College, housed on the first floor of the sleek new Diane Bryant STEM Innovation Center. A line of university pennants hangs from one wall; on another, three astronauts smile from a poster that reads, “FROM MESA TO NASA.”

Over 200 students have access to this space. It’s where tutors like Marco Alaniz, who is also a MESA student studying computer science, can often be found. He’s had a love for programming since his mom bought him a computer as a little kid, but he struggled when he started college the first time over 20 years ago, and ultimately dropped out. 

“I just wasn’t prepared,” Alaniz said. Because his parents never went to college, they didn’t have the experience to help him navigate school or teach him time management habits. “So really, growing up, I was kind of on my own on that, just kind of figuring things out.”

After about 15 years of working odd jobs to pay the bills, Alaniz enrolled in American River College in 2019 to give his computer science degree another shot. For the past year he’s tutored MESA students. It doesn’t pay enough for him to quit his job so he can take classes full time, but he really enjoys breaking down difficult concepts for his fellow classmates, and it’s even made him consider a career in education.

Samuel Morrison, the college’s interim MESA project lead, explained that the cost of living is one the biggest challenges for the low-income students he serves. He helps connect them to scholarships and internships, as the programs are required to do. One creative way the college has found to financially assist its students is to create paid projects with faculty mentorship and research opportunities students can apply for.

“So students are finding, OK, this is a stipend that I can use to pay for gas to get to school, or I can use to supplement food costs,” Morrison said.

Still, the college lacks a designated MESA academic counselor. Kralya, the Ukrainian student, explained that the general counselors she’s seen are not always familiar with STEM-specific transfer programs, which can differ between universities. Adding financial aid to the mix makes things even more complicated; Kralya and Alaniz both had to declare multiple majors to get certain transfer requirements covered by financial aid.

“That’s why we have to find a really good counselor who can tell us this, because this information is not listed anywhere,” Kralya said. 

The state requires the programs to have designated counselors, but getting an in-house counselor can be a lengthy and complicated process, Morrison said. He hopes to have one on board by the spring of 2025.

Students can also sign up for field trips, which include conferences and college tours. Students this semester visited the Sacramento State University planetarium, attended the Women in Engineering conference in San Jose, and toured UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.

At programs across the state, students who are either low-income or first-generation, but not both, can still access certain resources, such as tutoring and counseling, but can’t go on field trips or receive paid research opportunities. There are currently 1,345 of them enrolled systemwide, called ASEM students, or “Friends of MESA” at some colleges.

Growing pains as programs roll out systemwide

Two years after new funding opened the doors for more programs, many still need to hire staff, find the required minimum 500 square feet of space to house the center, or recruit students to officially get off the ground. 

Just hiring a program director to lead the program can be a lengthy process. A year and a half after receiving its grant, the program at Laney College in Oakland is still without a director. The college’s dean of math and sciences, Inger Stark, appointed math instructor Kyla Oh as the program’s faculty lead for the program in the interim.

“It has definitely slowed us down,” said Stark. The bulk of the work falls on Oh, who teaches fewer credits so that she has time to focus on the program. Stark squeezes the administrative side of the program into her workday as a dean. 

Right now, the state money covers the entire program, which launched in April with an initial cohort of 14 students. Stark is determined to ensure the program stays afloat through any changes in the funding, but she’s spent enough time in her community college district to have seen many “beautiful initiatives” get weeded out.

“It is heartbreaking,” she said. “A huge amount of work can fall on the ground.”

The need for more granular program data 

Tracking MESA programs in a comprehensive way is not easy. Some basic data is available through public dashboards, but directors want easy access to more in-depth information about their programs to help make sure they’re meeting their goals. 

“We actually have no way of measuring our success, still, with the Chancellor’s Office,” said Rashidi, the lead advocate for MESA directors. 

Basic information, such as the total number of MESA students in the system, is available through the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office public data tool, DataMart. However, that information isn’t broken down by race, gender or major. Granular data could give program directors the ability to quickly check if their efforts to reach students from underserved backgrounds are working.

Limited information on MESA student success is publicly available. Of the MESA students who first attempted to complete a transfer-level math course in the 2021-22 school year, 79% passed within one year, compared to a 54% completion rate for the general student body, according to the Transfer-Level English and Math Completion Dashboard. 

CalMatters requested MESA transfer statistics and racial data from the Chancellor’s Office. According to the data, about 62% of MESA students were Hispanic or Latino as of December 2023, while 4% were Black.

To count transfers, the Chancellor’s Office counted students who were in MESA in one school year, and then enrolled at a university the next year. By this metric, MESA programs collectively transferred 1,010 students after the 2021-22 school year, including 563 Hispanic or Latino students and 23 Black students.

Nearly half of MESA students enroll at a university within four years of taking their first community college class, as of 2017, the most recent year complete data is available. Students were considered to be MESA students if they participated in the program at any point during their first three years in the community college system. 

The Chancellor’s Office will analyze the status of the programs at the end of the current grant cycle, and the results could affect how much money programs will receive in the future, according to an emailed statement from Melissa Villarin, a spokesperson for California Community Colleges. Any additional funding would be based on “program and campus metrics,” according to the statement.

This story was updated to more accurately explain the advocacy plans of the Community College Association of MESA Directors.

Khan is a fellow with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

Graduation season has come to a close. Thousands of new graduates, with diplomas in hand, are entering the workforce this summer. For the class of 2024, their college experience has been a crash course in perseverance. 

Many of these students were the first to graduate high school during the COVID-19 pandemic. They took their first steps onto campus virtually, by logging into Zoom. Now, they’re stepping into an ever-changing labor market. Despite the uncertainty there is reason to be optimistic.  

College graduates in today’s market earn higher salaries, experience lower rates of unemployment, and are more likely to work full time and year-round than those with only a high school diploma, according to a report from the Public Policy Institute of California.

“Even for those who get into debt to go to college in the long term, that’s an investment that pays off,” said Marisol Mejia, a research fellow at the institute.

For low-and moderate-income students, it takes an average of two years to recoup the net cost of a college credential, a recent CalMatters analysis found. For graduates from some campuses, the time to recoup college investment is less than three months. 

Jobs that require degrees are also growing faster than those that don’t. Occupations that typically require a bachelor’s degree are predicted to grow by 6.7% from 2022 to 2032, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. By contrast, the number of jobs that typically require a high school diploma is expected to increase by less than 1%.  

“The big picture story is that occupations that require higher education are growing faster, and are expected to account for a larger share of jobs in the future,” said Michael Wolf, an economist for the bureau. 

The nation’s aging population is one factor influencing the market, leading to more health care openings both in and out of hospitals. Nearly half of all new jobs by 2032 are expected to be in the health care and social services sectors. One in 6 will be for home health and personal care aides, who typically don’t need bachelor’s degrees. 

Computer- and math-related jobs, such as software engineers and data scientists, are also predicted to have high rates of growth. A “relatively small number” of occupations are set to decline, for myriad reasons, Wolf said. Rising e-commerce means fewer jobs in physical retail. Automation will likely replace some clerks, farmworkers, and factory workers, according to Wolf. 

The CalMatters College Journalism Network chatted with California college students about the unique college experience that shaped them as they enter the workforce. Meet five students in the graduating class of 2024, profiled by our fellows. 

‘This changed everything about me’

Between navigating the foster care system and helping raise his siblings, Larry Gonzales did not spend much time thinking about his academics after graduating from Wasco High School in 2002. But on his way to the parole office in February 2018, Gonzales saw a flyer for Project Rebound, a program at Cal State Bakersfield that provides resources and support for formerly incarcerated students. It had been just seven months since he was released from prison. 

“Knowing that I needed to do something big and massive to show that I’ve changed my ways, college is what’s probably going to be that,” Gonzales said. “If there’s anything that shows determination, I would say it’s a degree.”

Gonzales enrolled at Cal State Bakersfield in 2018 as an undeclared student. Although he briefly majored in environmental resource management and agricultural business, sociology provided insights that interested him the most.

“Sociology kind of got me to study the head game of people, per se,” Gonzales said. “I would rather look into a community as a whole and why they do what they do.”

Gonzales, an Army veteran, was a leader in Veteran’s Club and student government at Cal State Bakersfield and on a committee for students with disabilities across the Cal State system. While he advocated for students in those various roles, Gonzales says there is limited support from his university for students like himself: a single father working a full-time job while being a full-time student. College became even more challenging when he, and his family, had to transition to online classes during the pandemic. 

“It was the hardest thing ever to do,” said Gonzales. “To do college and then help junior high kids and elementary kids, and be the teacher when there was no teacher, and then go to work. It was probably the hardest year and a half of this entire college thing.”

Now that he has graduated, Gonzales is still unsure what his plan will be. Although he has been accepted into a master’s program online at Capella University, he says his top priorities are supporting his two teenage daughters and landing a position where he can put his sociology degree to work. 

“I’m really worried about, now, I’m going to be a college graduate and I can’t find work,” said Gonzales. “Am I going to end up in fast food with a college degree? Is someone going to hire me at this age with that background? Our school doesn’t have any help when you’re done or in the last semester.”

For Gonzales, going to college helped turn his life around. He’d like to start a nonprofit that focuses on helping students, including those who are formerly incarcerated, understand their rights. 

“I would say that your chances shouldn’t be limited,” Gonzales said. “You just have to find the right way to unlock somebody’s potential, and for me what it was is higher education. This changed everything about me.”

-Profile by Haydee Barahona

‘Open to the right range of possibilities’

One of the things Lauren Neibel never got back from the pandemic is her sense of time. She remembers stepping onto campus for the first time two years into her education at Cal State Long Beach and feeling like a freshman. 

“It was a little jarring,” Neibel said. “There’s a little sense of strangeness that’s overhanging because I feel like I’m kind of starting to get used to campus and now I’m graduating.” 

Originally from San Jose, her family moved to Nevada in 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began. So despite being a Cal State Long Beach student, Neibel was taking her classes from Nevada. Both places were completely new to her. 

“It was strange to have life just kind of pause for a while,” Neibel said, adding that the pandemic and quarantining forced a lot of introspection. 

Going to college was always a given for Neibel. Both of her parents graduated from Cal State Long Beach and she has been passionate about learning all her life. Learning remotely was not her vision for her college experience, especially after just having moved to a new state. To make matters more difficult, virtual workshops that Neibel once enjoyed were noticeably impacted by remote learning. As a creative writing major, workshop classes are the space where students can share their writing and receive feedback, but the communication process was daunting over Zoom. 

“I feel like there’s a lot of value in being in the classroom, and getting to kind of see people face to face and getting to know each other and kind of having a more natural flow of conversation,” Neibel said. 

For Neibel, the transition out of college feels quite similar to the transition into it: a sense of excitement intertwined with nervousness. Now that her time in academia has finished, she finds it bittersweet. Each time she felt nostalgic in class she would remind herself to “stay in the present.” 

While a lot of her plans for the future feel vague, she is excited about going back home to Nevada and catching a bit of a break. Grad school is a possibility but, overall, Neibel grounds herself in knowing that what she wants to do is write, and she will figure out the avenues for that with time. 

“​​I’m just trying to be open to the right range of possibilities and kind of appreciate that time in my life that’s coming up, and just really make the most of it,” Neibel said. 

-Profile by Briana Mendez-Padilla

‘For the first time in my life, there’s not really a formula’

After spending his first year of college at Southern Methodist University in his home state of Texas, David Wang moved halfway across the country to transfer into his dream school — and his parents’ alma mater — the University of Southern California. Moving to Los Angeles was the farthest Wang had ever been from home. Having just gotten out of a long-term relationship and without his support network in a new city, Wang said he felt “insanely overwhelmed.”

“Everyone around was going a million miles per hour, right — the whole busy thing,” Wang said. “I was very intimidated when I first got here and definitely felt the imposter syndrome: ‘Do I deserve to be here?’ and then it’s like, ‘Can I even cut it here?'”

After a great deal of trial and error, the doubts eased over time as Wang found communities and clubs that made him feel comfortable and enriched his college experience. After being in a slew of extracurriculars all through elementary and high school, from Model United Nations and debate to sports and art classes, Wang said he cut back what was on his activities at USC to find necessary balance.

“I tried to replicate that, and I quickly realized that it was just simply not sustainable,” he said. “I was just running myself in circles for no reason, and so that’s naturally why I started cutting a few of them.”

Pursuing a business degree always felt natural for Wang, the first in his immediate family to pursue a career outside of music. Though he didn’t once question his decision to major in business in the last four years, the COVID-19 pandemic changed Wang’s mindset, pushing him to let go a little, he said. 

“I spent a lot of time both self-reflecting on the person that I want to be, but then I also took a step back and realized how unserious certain things in life were,” Wang said.

At the start of his final semester of college, Wang put up 18 sticky notes on his bedroom wall, each symbolizing a week he had left at USC. As he looked at the nearly empty wall signaling what little time he had left of his senior year, he knew he needed to make the most of what time he had — for once in his life, to appreciate the journey over the destination.

“I’m not very great at enjoying the moment,” Wang said. “I find myself oftentimes getting into a club that I really wanted or getting an internship I really want, or like, a really great moment with friends as well — I’m very grateful for them, but I find myself not savoring them enough.”

A few decades from now, Wang said he envisions himself back in Texas, starting a family and maybe even owning a business. As he mulls over the consulting job offers he’s received, both in Texas and on the East Coast, Wang said he feels the weight of the uncertainty and the broad range of possibilities facing him after he graduates.

“For the first time in my life, there’s not really a formula,” Wang said. “It’s like, ‘What am I going to do with my life? My future?’ I’m very worried about what that looks like, just because I’m very big on structure, but I guess part of the beauty of life is that there isn’t that structure.”

-Profile by Christina Chkarboul

‘The journey never ends’

For the first time in his life, Kenneth Bevens made a New Year’s resolution for himself. After finishing a rough first year of college with all his classes online, Bevens said he couldn’t connect with his professors and classmates on a meaningful level. His grades suffered as a result and it took a toll on his mental health.

So to start 2021, he set out to try 183 new activities – or a new activity every other day. Bevens completed 156.

He conquered his fear of heights through skydiving. He took up “curiosity days,” researching a new topic for fun. He met strangers, tried digital art, went on mystery road trips and road roller coasters. By the end of the challenge, Bevens felt like a completely new person.

“That kind of catapulted me into becoming more sociable and realizing the value of just pursuing kindness,” Bevens said.

Then, in March 2022, he picked up his mom’s old camera for the first time. Bevens said he was immediately hooked. Since April of that year, he’s documented approximately 50 events, including club trips and outdoor excursions. He’s also taken portraits of Cal Poly students, which he will use for his senior project. 

“I feel like I crammed four or five years of college experience in three, between all the outdoor adventures,” Bevens said. “And I feel like I have no regrets about leaving college because my college experience is so well-documented in photos.”

Bevens grew to be an extrovert during the pandemic. Now, a successful weekend for Bevens is marked by how many people he meets and connects with. Bevens can often be found taking pictures on low-cost backpacking trips or running barefoot through the mud. He loves finding communities of curious people like himself.

After graduation, he sees a future full of photography and adventure, starting in Alaska. Then, he’s not too sure. But one thing is for certain: he will be organizing his life to travel. He ultimately hopes to capture images that inspire people, especially young kids. 

“The journey never ends, truly, even though this chapter will,” Bevens said. “All these relationships I’ve poured so much love into will last a lifetime and my heart will be full.”

– Profile by Elizabeth Wilson

‘I want to do everything.’

Learning a new language totally online was a challenge for Vy Le. She came to Oakland from Vietnam during the pandemic, in search of a better life for her kids. Although she had a degree from her home country in information technology, her English wasn’t strong enough to support a career in the field. At 32 years old, with no job and no clear path ahead of her, Le enrolled in an English class at the College of Alameda.

She struggled to keep up at first. While her listening improved, her speaking lagged behind. It was hard to focus at home when she could turn off her camera and take care of responsibilities like cooking, cleaning, or catching up on sleep. When her teacher would call on her, she couldn’t answer in English, even if she understood the question.

Eventually, classes returned to in-person instruction and her English began to improve. By then, Le had found an entry-level job as an assembler, earning $21 an hour. She looked for programs that could improve her skills and land her a higher-paying position, eventually deciding to try the machining program at Laney College in Oakland.

After just one class, Le fell in love with learning about machines. Two years later, she’s taken enough courses to receive a Machine Technology certificate. At the same time, she worked her way up in the machining industry, and now earns over $36 an hour as a quality control inspector for a medical technology manufacturer, using precise computer-controlled equipment to test assembly parts. She hopes the new credential will net her a raise at her current company. 

Le isn’t done learning. She wants to spend another year studying English. After that, she’s got her sights set on a one-month program in Los Angeles that will teach her the machine programming skills she needs to advance to the next step in her field. But Le also wants to slow down and spend more time with her two kids. Between school, work, and household duties, it’s been hard to find time to take her 5-year-old son to the park. 

Others in her life question her choice to go to school, learn English and work in the male-dominated field of machining. They ask her why she didn’t choose to be a nail technician, like many other Vietnamese women in her position. Le thinks about her daughter, 12, looking on from the crowd at her graduation, and knows she made the right choice. 

“That is my life, you know?” she said. “I want to do everything.”

-Profile by Li Khan

Khan, Barahona, Mendez-Padilla, Chkarboul and Wilson are fellows with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation