Illustration by Amanda Alten

Against a backdrop of faux marble pillars and potted plants, an epic orchestral tune blares from speakers set up around the football field as the Cabrillo College class of 2012 files in to take their seats. Onlookers blow air horns and shout support from the stadium seating as students are called upon to receive their diplomas and formally end this stage of their education.

Some are in their 40s or 50s and dream of entering a new field or getting a better job than their previous one. Others are in their 20s, about to transfer to a university or enter the workforce for the first time in their lives.

“In 2012, over 18,000 students attended Cabrillo,” said Cabrillo’s vice president of instruction Renee Kilmer as she addressed the crowd. “The oldest student this year is 75 and the youngest is 19. One thousand and 34 of them are receiving their associate’s degrees, over 530 are receiving certificates, and over 500 have plans to transfer to a four-year university.”

Graduating from Cabrillo means different things for each of these students. With degrees and certifications offered in everything from journalism and business to landscape horticulture and fire technology, the class of 2012 is a varied group. Ultimately though, the vast majority plan to use the skills they’ve obtained at Cabrillo to pursue a career, a process that has become increasingly uncertain in the years following the financial crisis of 2008.

The economic outlook darkened again in early June when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the May 2012 Jobs Report, which showed the worst month for jobs added this year. According to the report, the unemployment rate rose in May, going from 8.1 percent to 8.2 percent nationwide, and some analysts have voiced concerns that this may cast doubt on the meager recovery we’ve seen in the past few months.

Graduates, while well aware of the economic environment they’re about to enter, nevertheless remain hopeful.

“I’m about 60 percent confident on the economy, but I’m 99 percent confident in myself and that I can do it, especially with the skills I acquired here at Cabrillo,” said Gabby Avila, who graduated with an associate degree in international relations and plans to transfer to San Jose State University to obtain a bachelor’s degree.

“I think I’m more confident than my instructors are,” said Genoa Fox, who graduated with an associate of science degree in nursing and health science, an EKG certification and an associate degree in Spanish. “My instructors have basically been telling us not to get our hopes up but I say you’ve got to visualize it to do it, and I can see myself doing it.”

Fox hopes to get a job in a trauma emergency room intensive care unit, and eventually to become a flight nurse on an emergency response helicopter team. Fox’s experience has become common among students at Cabrillo and other higher education institutions, as instructors take pains not to get their students’ hopes up and stress taking practical classes as a fallback to ensure employment.

“Times are changing,” said Academic Senate head and history professor Michael Mangin. “You know, something that was so straightforward for most of my adult life like teaching, a lot of my history students would be very interested in teaching and my conversation with them now is a little different than it’s been for the last 20 or 25 years.”

Mangin said he now often advises students interested in history to take a few business or economics classes to augment their liberal arts education and make the prospect of employment a bit easier to come by.

A strictly practical path to the workforce might become even harder for some students to obtain next year though, as Cabrillo College is faced with the most extreme year of cuts since 2008 if the tax initiative on California’s November ballot doesn’t pass. If not, programs such as culinary arts, hospitality management, welding and others could find themselves on the chopping block.

“It is conceivable [that these programs and others will be cut],” Mangin said. “Especially if the November initiative doesn’t pass. My guess is that we’ve probably cut about 15 percent of where we were at four years ago, and we’re probably going to cut about another 8 or 10 percent if it doesn’t pass. Something’s gotta give.”

California poet laureate Carol Muske-Dukes attended the memorial for the late Maude Meehan, a Santa Cruz poet who died three years ago. Courtesy of Anne Browne.

Poets and poetry-lovers alike crowded into Cabrillo College’s Music Recital Hall this Saturday to honor local poet Maude Meehan, and partake in what Meehan dedicated her life to. The memorial reading echoed the love of poetry that Maude Meehan exhibited and shared through her teachings.

Poetry Santa Cruz founded the Maude Meehan Memorial Poetry Reading event last year after Meehan passed away in 2007, in order to pay homage to the woman who was known in Santa Cruz to be a generous and helpful tutor for aspiring poets and writers.

“It is a way that we can honor Maude, a way to keep her in our sights and in our hearts,” said Len Anderson, secretary-treasurer of Poetry Santa Cruz, a local organization devoted to promoting poetry in the community.

Meehan’s work includes two novels of poetry, “Chipping Bone” (1985) and “Before the Snow” (1991). She continued writing poetry until her death three years ago.

“Maude really was a beloved figure in the local poetry community,” said Dennis Morrison, program director of Poetry Santa Cruz. “Not just woman poets, but poets in general appreciated her generosity and spirit and work.”

The event was not only a memorial, Anderson said, but also a forum to “expose poetry of great women poets” like California’s current poet laureate, Carol Muske-Dukes.

Last year, Lucille Clifton, a good friend of Meehan, gave a reading of her work at the event, but passed away shortly after. The First Annual Maude Meehan Memorial reading was the last reading she ever gave.

This year’s event was a success — with over 100 people in attendance. Despite the large turnout and the location on a college campus, student attendance was lacking.

“Our events are very poorly attended by UCSC students,” Morrison said. “That’s our biggest challenge. We’re missing out on student presence and students are missing out on some incredible readings.”

Poetry Santa Cruz invited Muske-Dukes to attend this year’s memorial reading.

The new Cabrillo Music Hall reverberated with excitement and laughter while Muske-Dukes read poems from her upcoming book, “Twin Cities,” as well as from “Sparrow,” a book to grieve her late husband.

Muske-Dukes plans to share her love of poetry on a large scale with a younger generation through her current project, Magic Poetry Bus. Her mission is to finish “Magic Poetry Bus Driver’s Guide,” a book focused on poetry learning and memorization, and provide it to public schools in California for free, mostly through an online version.

“There’s a lot of money we have to raise,” Muske-Dukes said. “I care a great deal about poetry. I’ve been a poet almost my entire life. I believe in the power of imagination to change people’s lives.”

She hopes that Magic Poetry Bus will inspire students in public schools across California to love the written word, just as she was inspired by her mother who used to read and recite poetry by heart when she was a young girl.

Muske-Dukes said, “It made a huge difference in my interest in words and books, literature and great conversation.”

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

Addressing the topic of sex in a public forum isn’t easy. Just ask Jazmine Ancira, second-year at Cabrillo College.

Ancira, writer for Cabrillo College’s paper The Voice, didn’t expect to receive such strong backlash in response to her article published last month, entitled “Sex and the City College.” However, her article, which offered sexual health advice and detailed tips from her colleagues at Cabrillo, was rendered offensive by faculty and community members alike.

The concept for “Sex and the City College” was inspired by the legacy of a previous managing editor of The Voice, who had been interested in starting a column on the topic of sex astrology and compatibility.

“We have a lot of cool people in our staff and they were like, ‘We’re all for it,’” Ancira said. “We wanted to do something out there and edgy … Sex is everywhere. Why not? We are a college.”

At first, the article received only positive feedback from students, but things began to change.

“It took us a week or two to realize that all these people were pissed off,” Zach Stoloff, editor of The Voice, said. “We began to get tons of letters, complaints from alumni, people from the community.”

David Ambrosini, Cabrillo College faculty member, wrote in a letter to the editor, “I don’t want the public to believe our College approves of or supports this particular article. I don’t think it is part of an informative sex education opinion or discussion.”

Ambrosini called the article “lewd, decadent, and pornographic.”

This response struck a chord with Ancira, who argued instead that her article’s educational component is important to consider when determining the value of the work.

In its first section, Ancira’s article uses medical advice to answer three “questions about sex that some of us never grew courage to ask,” consistently advising proper use of condoms and protection from bacteria.

“I honestly did not feel like it was pornographic or anything,” she said.  “It’s education about sex, which is not talked about, and maybe people do want to talk about it.”

The second section of the article includes two student-recommended positions to experiment with during sex, called “The Hot-Tub Hug” and “The Lap Dance.” It also includes a student quote in which the phrase “hit it from the back” is used to describe a favorite position.

The language was called out by Ambrosini, among others. Stoloff, editor of The Voice, argued that the phrase reflects the vernacular of the Cabrillo College campus.

“‘Hit it from the back’ is a phrase which may be (and probably is) shocking to a certain population of people who aren’t familiar with the modern, youthful colloquialisms of sex,” he said in an editorial for The Voice published April 5 to defend the infamous article. “However, this is the dialect of English spoken frequently at Cabrillo College.”

Stoloff also received complaints about a YouTube video, entitled “Wii Sex,” that originally accompanied the online version of the article. Although Ancira’s article is still available on The Voice’s website, the video was removed from the site. Stoloff maintained that his reason for removing it had nothing to do with appeasing those who were offended.

“If the video had any journalistic value to it, I would have kept it up,” he said. “Most of the criticism was directed at the column itself.”

Kristin Fabos, director of marketing and communications at Cabrillo College, said of the article, “Our position is: it was informative, it was instructional journalistically … absolutely there is the First Amendment right for freedom of speech in journalism.”

Addressing the appropriateness of the article and the goals of journalism, Dr. Brian King, president and superintendent of Cabrillo College, responded to the issue in an e-mail to City on a Hill Press.

“Some faculty, staff and community members have shared their concerns with me that the articles were not appropriate for a campus newspaper,” he wrote. “The balance between absolute First Amendment rights and good journalism is at times subject to differing interpretations.”

Stoloff also acknowledged the article’s controversy in his editorial but argued for the integrity of The Voice in spite of the negative responses.

“Being that we are all journalism students trying to learn to do things the right way,” he wrote, “it is a contradicting suggestion that The Voice must reflect well on the school. Rather, the job of a journalist is to get the scoop, and get it accurately.”