‘Real stuff’ on student leaders’ agenda

For a few weeks, it was possibly the most famous student government in America — the target of protests on campus, impassioned phone calls to the administration and page after page of articles on Google’s news site.

Now, with the furor over the Pledge of Allegiance having fizzled, Orange Coast College’s associated student body is quietly back to work for the spring — and it has a full load on its plate. Among the projects the trustees have lined up for the coming months are a new multicultural center on campus, an environmental sustainability project and a referendum to change the student government’s constitution.

“I’m happy just to be able to get back to work,” trustee Jason Ball said about the end of the pledge controversy. “Real stuff, you know.”

OCC’s trustees made national waves in November when they opted to no longer recite the flag salute at their twice-weekly meetings. Shortly after the decision, a number of people on campus — and a number off campus — complained, and the board’s once-sparsely attended meetings filled with crowds debating the merits of the pledge. The trustees finally opted to restore the pledge as an “opportunity” on their agendas, and the tension died down.

The nation’s eyes may no longer be on OCC, but the campus still looks to be an eventful place in the coming months.

Trustee Coyotl Tezcatlipoca, the president of an immigrant-rights club on campus, is leading the drive to establish the Calpulli Cultural Center, which would provide a forum for students of different backgrounds to hold concerts, art exhibits and other events. Tezcatlipoca said he had already crafted a mission statement for the center and was looking for an available building.

“Right now, we’re in the stage of just getting physical space,” he said. “We’ve been doing stuff already.”

Trustees are also looking into making OCC more environmentally sound, proposing new recycling bins around campus and solar panels to energize buildings. Trustee Regis Jues said his board would be meeting today with a number of campus clubs to discuss a renovation of the campus recycling center, which may eventually have solar power as well as meters to show its conservation of energy.

Ball and trustee Brent Bettes are spearheading an effort to change OCC’s student government constitution and hope to hold a referendum in March. One idea, Ball said, was to assign student leaders to different areas of campus, with one overseeing environmental issues, one covering the bookstore, and so on.

“The problem we’re facing is that there’s very little written policy on what student government does, and we want to clarify what people should do in the future,” Ball said.