This year marks the 25th anniversary of “A League of their Own” starring Geena Davis, Madonna and Chabot College’s very own Tom Hanks. The movie takes place during World War II.

The movie is loosely based on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) active from 1943-1954. The Rockford Peaches, Kalamazoo Lassies, and the Racine Belles are some of the famous teams in this film.

The movie tackled the issue of sexism in sports. During and after this league’s existence it did not get a lot of attention coverage like the MLB (Major League Baseball) did, because they were women.

The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) is another example of sexism in sports. The WNBA doesn’t get as many viewers or attendees as the National Basketball Association (NBA). In 2015 the average attendance for WNBA games was 7,318.

The average viewership of an NBA game is 1.5 million, and the number gets higher (over 3.5 million) during the playoffs and the finals. “I don’t necessarily have a preference I think both of the WNBA & NBA are just as athletic as the other. People don’t watch the WNBA because they don’t like to watch girls play basketball. We need more recognition for how hard the woman players go out there and play. I played basketball in High School so from my perspective girls are just as good as guys.” says Chabot student Jada Moses.

According to The Washington Post, about 40 percent of American athletes are female, but media coverage of female athletics makes up only 4 percent. “The WNBA doesn’t get a lot of attention like the NBA does which I understand because the media focus more on men than women. Nobody that I know watches the WNBA” says Chabot student Shavonee Porter.

Female athletes are only paid a fraction of what male athletes are getting paid. For example, the US Women’s soccer team split $2 million for winning the World Cup. Last year the US Men’s soccer team only split $8 million for losing. The average salary for a WNBA player is $72,000, while the medium for an average NBA player is 2.2 million. Same goes for the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of that season. Sylvia Fowles the Center for the Minnesota Lynx, and 2017 WNBA MVP. Is only being paid $109,200. While Russell Westbrook 2017 NBA MVP plays Point Guard for Oklahoma City Thunder is being paid $26.54 million.

The art gallery at Chabot opened twelve years ago, and now it’s closing the doors. According to the art history professor Diane Zuliani, there was no coordination funding and an annual operating budget of zero. Professor Zuliani invested her time in the gallery for twelve years and was never able to institutionalize a funding source. Professor Zuliani stated, “this was an ongoing and protracted shortfall not in anyway related to our new Dean, Deonne Kunkel Wu. It needs to be clear that Deonne bears no fault for this turn of events.”

According to Professor Zuliani the gallery was created  with a grant of $23,000 from Partnership for Excellence, a nonprofit organization. The grant allowed her to convert a classroom into an art gallery. In 2003 she received the grant, and the gallery held its first exhibit in 2005.

The gallery has held over 30 exhibits in the past twelve years. Dean of Arts, Media and Communication Deonne Kunkel Wu recalled her favorite moment was “a poem a student had produced, about how she was in the arts and needed to take an astronomy class. And when she got the class it was just so inspiring to her. It just changed her life and the way she related to the universe.”

Through the art gallery, Diane brought the community together in ways that strengthened us. The gallery has attracted the faculty, students, and the community to see new artwork. It was a place where students could express their feelings through art and the audience could look and relate to the artists. While the art gallery was open the impact that it had on students was motivation. It was the place where hundreds of Chabot students first exhibited their artwork publicly, according to Professor Zuliani.

Katelin Kaiiag, a former art student, said, “art is meant for self-expression and exploration. Not to please others… It’s an important aspect of art that one piece of art could mean more to me than you and vice-versa.”

In addition to the inspirational impact on students, it had a significant impact on the National Association of School of Arts and Design (NASAD) accreditation team. NASAD had this statement about the gallery, “The Chabot Art Gallery exhibition program appears to be ambitious and varied in theme, ranging from student and faculty exhibitions to visiting artists’ work from an impressive variety of media and geographic locations-from local to international.

The gallery has made a tremendous mark in the lives of students, faculty and the community. With the closing of the gallery, it will have a negative impact on the students and faculty. Dean Kunkel Wu added “not having a place to go that draws me to a higher purpose, or elicits an emotional response, that brings healing and connection is a loss to me personally. It is a loss to all students across campus because we are here for students, we are here to help them build their voice. Now, we don’t have that for our community, students or faculty.”

Professor Williams, instructor of Economics, in a campus-wide email stated, “I would like to add that since this program is so fundamental to any school that lays claim to support of the humanities, I have to wonder if there is some unseen strategy on the part of those who allowed this suspension to happen. It seems somehow akin to the idea that all education should be online. I would like to urge all the faculty to not let this issue pass without a fight. Chabot has many small mistakes in the past. This is not a small mistake.”

Erica Mones, a former student who took Zuliani’s museum studies classes, went on to get an MA in Museum Studies and was teaching our gallery classes. She had this to say “In regards to the gallery, I do not blame (Diane). It’s very unfortunate that there has been no support for such an important space the entire time it existed. On behalf of all of the students who took the classes over the years, thank you. Thank you for dedicating countless hours to make that gallery look the absolute best it could…. I have many fond memories there both as a student as well as a teacher. Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU Diane”

At the beginning of every semester, the Chabot student parking lot is always a problem for parking, and the ticket dispensers don’t work. Sometimes these problems cause students to be late or even drop out of classes.

Omar a student here at Chabot says “I don’t park in the student parking lot I mostly park down on Hesperian I know it’s farther to walk to my class but I don’t have to worry about paying or about being late to class because the time I come sometimes it is packed” In this case many students do not park in the student parking lot but in the parking lot of Quickly, Burger King, or down Hesperian Blvd. just to save money or not to worry about the hassle of the student parking lot.

Campus Safety Officer Moore says, “We have received numerous complaints about ‘there isn’t enough parking’ or ‘the ticket dispensers don’t work’ unfortunately, the amount of parking is not an easy fix, but the complaints of the ticket dispensers are easy to resolve if a student contacts the Campus Safety Department in a timely manner. There’s a lot that we can do to resolve ticket dispensers but nothing for student parking spaces.”

At the start of the semester some students take other alternative transportation to get at Chabot “During the first three weeks I always take A.C. Transit. I live in Oakland and I have to get up earlier but it’s worth not worrying where to park? Or if there’s enough space to park” says an anonymous student. The Campus Safety Department encourages students to use other alternatives like; carpooling, Uber, Bicycles or taking A.C. Transit.

While students still complain about not having enough parking spaces or problems with the ticket dispensers another dilemma students have is the fact that faculty/staff are parking in student spaces even though they have their own. The student parking lot has just over two thousand parking spaces with more than fifteen thousand students attending Chabot, yet the faculty/staff Parking lot has just over 400 parking spaces. Why do they park in the student parking lot? Maybe because of close parking. Some students question this practice, do the faculty/staff members get citations for parking in the student’s spaces? According to officer Moore, “The faculty/staff can park on campus in any parking lot as long as they display a valid parking permit.” faculty/staff has more parking advantages than students.

Beginning this Fall semester, there’s a new program replacing Blackboard, called Canvas. Instructors use Canvas to display their student’s grades, assignments, online tests, discussion boards and more. Chabot is joining the rest of California Colleges who are already using the new program. Canvas integrates with other apps like Note Bowl, Google Drive or DropBox. Any instructor can use Canvas for any subject they’re teaching.

Dr. Scherbart teaches Humanities, Philosophy, Religious Studies here at Chabot College, he stated, “California is not mandating but is offering all of the 100 plus community college districts, a chance to be part of a statewide push and initiative to use the same learning management system.” He is also one of the chairs of the Chabot Committee for Online Learning

There are loopholes in Canvas, nothing major but students and instructors should know. The setup is; go to discussions read everybody responses, but before you can see your response, you have to go through and leave a comment. The Loophole is if you have to post before you can see others’ responses you can post something meaningless as a period, comma or a question mark. Then it will unlock everyone’s comments. Then you can go through and edit your previous response. Prof. Scherbart was unaware of the loophole and will look into it.

Students will have a slim chance to copy someone else’s answers because it would be no use for them. Dr. Sherbart explains, “In the past with my online courses, I could set up quizzes so that questions were put in random order and the default in Canvas is that they’re put into a set order … [In Blackboard] the possibility of having a list of the correct multiple choice answers and if you give it to someone it would be no use because their answers would be in a different order than yours, so their answers might not be the same.”

Since this is a transitional semester where some Instructors are still using Blackboard for their classes. English Instructor here at Chabot Ms. Barbara Worthington is still using blackboard for her classes. “I prefer to stay with the current way of submitting the work. I already have a curriculum setup in Blackboard… I don’t want to rush into it until I know exactly how comfortable I am using it, but also how my students are using it to be able to answer their questions. I plan to attend several trainings for it [Canvas],” she stated. Ms. Worthington will be using Canvas next semester.

If you’re having problems finding Canvas, it is located at the bottom of the Chabot webpage. There’s a link to Canvas right next to Blackboard. If you’re having problems with Canvas, there’s a toll-free number 1-844-600-4956.