By Javier Valdes
Editor-in-Chief
This fall semester CSU Bakersfield will inaugurate the new Multicultural Alliance and Gender Equity Resource Center, in a move to create a one-stop-shop for students looking to participate in the overall inclusion and diversity of the CSUB campus.
The resource center was created through a collaboration between the office of the president and the division of student affairs, working together with students to create the foundation for the center that will be taking over the first floor of student housing west, in the Rohan building on campus.
Last winter quarter the resource center was still in the planning stages. It wasn’t until after starting an advising committee and receiving feedback from CSUB student organizations that the committee knew what kind of services they wanted to offer in the new center.
Assistant to the President of Equity, Inclusion and Compliance Claudia Catota was really pushing student input during the planning phases of the resource center.
“Because it is a student resource center we really want to work with the various student groups and student leaderships to make sure that the center will embody what the students need on this campus,” said Catota in a prior interview.
The resource center will include a conference room, lounge room, a lactation room, as well as various rooms housing the most diverse and multicultural organizations on campus such as LGBTQ+, MEChA, Japan and Beyond, African-American Student Union and the Muslim Student Association.
The conference room will be utilized to practice for presentations or just to converse about topics that can increase diversity or that can promote inclusion on campus.
Student organizations will be able to personalize their space, each room hosting organizations with similar goals in a move to encourage collaboration.
Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Jim Drnek said that CSUB has hired a graduate assistant that will be helping manage the space and will be in charge of opening and closing the resource center as well as providing graduate level advising to students while helping them connect to campus resources and student organizations.
As the resource center continues to grow Drnek said that they would like to increase resources and have DVDs, books, periodicals, computers, television, and a place to warm up your lunch and make it a full-service resource center available to all students.
Additionally, within the resource center is the office of Campus Advocate Vanessa Corona, who will work alongside the center to create that one-stop-shop for students looking to be pointed in the right direction.
