By Marissa Patton

Reporter

It wasn’t the talking or laughter that echoed down the hallway. It wasn’t even the smell of delicious Panera sandwiches and cookies. Rather it was the righteous fight against social injustice that drew students to CSU Bakersfield’s Student Union Multipurpose room on Oct 28.

There the Office of Student Life at Bakersfield College and Student Union and Organizational Governance at CSUB hosted the second Student Leadership Conference.

The Multipurpose room was packed with students from BC and CSUB who enjoyed catered Panera lunches and discussed the difficult topic of social injustice.

Entitled “Elephants and Onions,” the forum included two keynote speakers from CAMPUSPEAK, a program that provides numerous learning experiences to students across the globe.

CSUB Student Union and Organizational Governance Director Emile Callahan and Associate Vice President of the Student Affairs Office James Drnek introduced the Student Leadership Conference and accompanying workshop. Drnek discussed how CSUB is embracing diversity and combing students and faculty to make the campus a better place to work and live.

“I get strength and energy from working with positive CSUB students,” Drnek said. “Students have the vision, knowledge, and wherewithal to make CSUB a better place to work and live.”

After introductions and lunch, keynote speaker Victoria Chan discussed her role at CAMPUSPEAK as a roster worker that speaks at many different schools. She hosted a majority of the discussion and encouraged students to speak out.

Chan co-hosted with Angel Garcia, a keynote speaker who is also a full time captain of the United States army. Garcia is the first of his family to graduate college.

“I lived in an environment where the expectations were: you better make money to succeed, you better you better get in a degree that’s going to pay you if you want to live somewhere decent,” Garcia said. “I am the first in my family who goes off to college and the world is telling me, ‘what are you going to do with psychology? You know you can’t do anything with a Bachelor’s, right?’ So I got involved in student government, fraternities, anything and everything I could be a part of.”

Garcia began the conference discussion by explaining the issues of elephants and onions.

“Do we call out the elephants in the room?” Garcia asked. “Do we work on peeling back the layers of the onion? We will discuss how to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and the issues of diversity and social justice.”

The speakers used Powerpoint slides to overview important learning objectives, such as taking responsibility for our conscious and unconscious behaviors and the intended or unintended impact. They described how diversity is everything outside others and social justice is everything that happens inside others.

“Social justice moves you, it tugs at your soul,” Garcia said. “All of it starts from passion.”

Students were given a workbook with outlined questions about social issues. Senior communications major Kelly Dozier was one avid participant who enjoyed discussion.

“I came to hear more about my field and just to see what it is all about,” Dozier said. “As a communications major I need to broaden my field and learn new things. I think they have a lot to say.”

Garcia and Chan shared many important things and were not afraid to broach on intense subjects such as social passivity. They showed multiple video clips of a homeless man being abused by a shopkeeper, demonstrating the homelessness problem and making unfair judgments on people.

Student participation remained constant throughout the entire conference, and many students lifted their voices against complicated social issues.