New year sprouts new hope following a rocky 2010-11

Doom and gloom hovered over the college last year.

Significant budget cuts and a very public and adversarial faculty contract negotiation may have left students with a hangover. In addition, President John Sygielski abandoned the college to take a similar post in Pennsylvania and there are three new faces on the Mt. Hood Community College District board.
These events may make it hard to step into this school year with an optimistic eye.

But students still have one very strong beacon of light to cling to heading into 2011-2012, and it’s tucked away in a corner of the Academic Center, coming from the College Center.

New Associated Student Government President Jackie Altamirano and Vice President Erika Molina lead a team that will surge forward with an ambitious list of student-serving campaigns that include partnering with local colleges to bring attention to the heavy financial loads placed on students through tuition and book prices.

They also have high hopes of creating a diversity resource center that will serve as a haven to minorities who may have felt isolated thus far in their student journey. This is a commendable project that holds virtue, considering the Portland metropolitan area was cited as more than 75 percent Caucasian in the 2010 U.S. census. However, this center will serve as home to all types of minorities, reaching further than just ethnicity.

Students can even choose to put hope into the drastically different team of administrative bigwigs.

The departure of the Mt. Hood president last year may have seemed like a bad omen, if you want to look at it that way. The loss of three long-standing board members may also have seemed like yet another hit to the college in a long run of public battery, if you want to look at it that way.

A better view to take is that a new interim president and three new board members may have a perspective that students have not yet seen in the well-furnished offices upstairs and they may turn out to serve students very well.

If the ASG leadership is able to take the reins on delivering a more tolerant and fiscally relaxed campus on the student side, and if the new administrative super team can finally take a step down and see through the eyes of students and faculty, even just 2 percent more than last year, then everyone has a good chance at having a serene school year.

It’s a choice students all have had to make at the beginning of this year: Will they focus on all of the mistakes and disappointments in past experience at MHCC — or will students hope for the best and embrace a brighter future?