Joshua Flores

The “A Country Called Syria” exhibit marked the beginning of Middle Eastern and North African Cultural Awareness Month at Long Beach State, showcasing items of Syrian life on April 8.

A Country Called Syria, a nonprofit traveling museum and art collection founded by Maria Khani, showcases furniture, clothing, utensils, art and other cultural items from Syria.

This month, the exhibit is on display at the University Student Union’s art gallery on the first floor.

Khani started the organization partly to address misconceptions about Syria and Syrians, aiming to bridge the gap between perceptions and reality.

“People don’t know the history — people have fear. Syria was always a red-flag of a country — because they don’t know the people of Syria,” Khani said. “So I felt like the more you educate, the more you know — the less you fear. When people got to know more about Syria, they didn’t know that it has a rich history.”

Khani started doing exhibits in June 2013 for ACCS at the Huntington Beach Library, where items were collected from homes and printed, then laminated for display on tables.

Now, ACCS travels to universities including the University of California, Berkeley, California State University, Fullerton and Long Beach State to showcase a curated selection of its more than 600 items at themed exhibits.

“ACCS founders are friends I have known for a while. I also taught at Cal State Fullerton, and so I would take my students to the exhibit when it was there,” Jessica Moss, assistant director of the Interfaith Programs, said. “So when I was tasked with doing MENA Heritage Month, that allowed me to invite them to set up their exhibit.”

The exhibit displays Syrian furniture along with copper and brass art. In the center of the table is a model of Syria with all the items being made and imported from Syria. Photo credit: Joshua Flores

Moss advocated for April, which is recognized as National Arab American Heritage Month, to be called MENA Cultural Awareness Month and given the same recognition as other heritage month celebrations.

Lavinia Badrous, a third-year student and MENA Student Association president, also pushed for the establishment of MENA Heritage Month at CSULB to bring awareness to the communities and their heritage.

“We advocated for a MENA month and we were able to do that through the Interfaith Programs, and all the faculty helped us, reached out to people and got all the events,” Badrous said. “We’re just trying to create community, and we do a lot of cultural and educational events—we’re inviting for everyone. You don’t have to be Middle Eastern.”

This is the first semester the MENA Student Association has been active on campus, according to Badrous.

In collaboration with the Interfaith Programs at CSULB, several events throughout the month will focus on either Arab heritage, such as the ACCS exhibit, or Middle Eastern and North African heritage, planned by the association to celebrate both groups.

“I can tell you one thing about Syria: everywhere you go, you will find history. The land will talk, the street will talk, the buildings will talk,” Khani said. “There is a big history in Syria, and I want to preserve this for the young generation and for people to know more about it.”

MENA Cultural Awareness Month will continue to have events through April 23, with the ACCS exhibit being displayed for the entire month.

The second annual conference in Jain Studies will examine different aspects and roles of gender, with a focus on Jain thought and tradition, through keynote speakers, roundtable discussions and presentations from April 6 to April 8.

The first day of the conference will be held at the Jain Center of Southern California in Buena Park, from noon to 5 p.m., where attendees will receive a tour of the temple. The following two days will be at the Anna W. Ngai Alumni Center on campus, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

“Jainism is actually a religion from India, and according to Jains, it’s as old as any other religion in India,” Shivani Bothra, assistant professor of religious studies and Bhagwan Suvidhinath Endowed Chair in Jain Studies said. “Jains follow the teachings of Jinas, who are also called the Tirthankaras, the word Jain comes from Jina’s.”

In Jainism, a Jina is an individual who conquered their desires and achieved spiritual enlightenment and Moksha or liberation from Samsāra, the life, death and rebirth cycle.

Jains preach nonviolence, non-materialism and open-mindedness. These three tenets are referred to as Ahimsa, Aparigraha, and Anekantavada.

“Jains have the idea of three genders. It’s not just a bipolar of feminine and masculine, but there is also an understanding of third gender, which is also translated sometimes as hermaphrodite,” Bothra said. “So this conference basically reimagines gender from the perspective that the rules of gender has been changing with times… and the role of gender from the textual sources to contemporary lived tradition.”

The conference is sponsored by a grant from the Uberoi Foundation for Religious Studies, allowing the conference to be more expansive and comprehensive. Last year’s conference had about 500 people in attendance over the three days. This year’s turnout is expected to surpass last year’s, according to Bothra.

The conferences’ theme was chosen by Bothra in collaboration with Venu Mehta, assistant professor of Jainism and comparative spiritualities at Claremont School of Theology.

“We are exploring with a fresh insight about how gender is being analyzed, how gender is being proposed, what are the perspectives on gender and how gender is perceived within the Jain tradition,” Mehta said. “We have speakers that also look at religion from different points of view… sociological, animal rights, veganism, LGBTQ.”

Speakers include Long Beach State students Caitlin Below and Eric Magdaleno.

CSULB is only one of two schools in the CSU system to have an endowed chair dedicated to Jain studies.

“The scholars who are coming for this conference are all distinguished scholars of Jain studies from different universities in America and some from outside of America,” Bothra said. “There are emeritus and distinguished professors who will be examining the whole about looking at gender as a useful category for Jain discussion.”

Sophia Pandya, professor and department chair of Religious Studies and co-director of the Beach Pluralism Project, will also be speaking at the event, conducting a welcome speech and moderating a discussion on gender.

“Students learn something. The Jain tradition may be small, but the significance of the ideas of Jainism align with what we at Cal State Long Beach believe in,” Pandya said. “It’s an extraordinary event, one of a kind, with so many experts in a field in one place.”

“Take a leap of faith.”

This was the quote graduate Landon Garza chose to put on his graduation cap, inspired by the game franchise “Assassin’s Creed.”

Garza is one of many graduating students who were decorating their caps on May 29 at the Student Services Plaza, as part of the Grad Cap Decorating Event.

“I feel very accomplished, very ecstatic and I’m happy that I can finally say I graduated college after 10 years,” Garza, a history and behavioral and social sciences major, said.

At the event, students were provided with markers, glitter, glue, letters and stickers to decorate their caps, tailored to different major groups including STEM, humanities and arts.

“There’s a lot of students here. It’s really exciting, it’s really an opportunity for students to celebrate, like graduating and transferring to their top choices,” First Year Experience counselor Aeri Gomez said. “It’s just to celebrate them because they put in all the hard work they’ve done the past, however many years at El [Camino].”

Sponsored by the Student Development Office and the Student Equity and Achievement Center, this is the second time the event was hosted since the COVID-19 pandemic and it reached the maximum amount of students that could register.

Multiple programs, in conjunction with First Year Experience, coordinated the event by setting up tables and chairs, checking students in and serving food.

“It’s a lot of fun, I didn’t expect so many people to be here,” Grace Molinero, a graduate in business management, said. “I wanted to meet other people here and just be able to decorate with other students who are graduating.”

Molinero, who is taking a gap year, said she will miss the amount of resources at El Camino, the smaller class sizes, the availability and kindness of her professors and how she learned about herself.

“Many of my classes I just thought I wasn’t gonna be able to keep up with the rest of the students or do as well in my class, but then it turned out most of the people dropped the class anyways…and I was just very proud of myself that I was able to make it that far,” Molinero said.

Garza said he had fun decorating with the other graduates. On his cap, Garza wrote down the years he attended college from start to finish and added a Star Wars sticker.

After graduating, Garza plans to take a break from college as well as find a job.

“Patience is key. I know it may seem scary at first but eventually you’ll get there to the end of your road and it’s worth it in the end,” Garza said.

The man arrested and charged with murder for the sledgehammer attack of a woman on the El Camino College campus stood before a judge for the fourth time on Wednesday, May 15, at the Torrance Courthouse for a preliminary hearing setting.

The preliminary hearing setting for Jeffery Davis, 40, who is charged with the murder of 65-year-old Junko Hanafusa, lasted about two minutes with Davis’ attorney doing most of the speaking on behalf of his client.

Judge Thomas Sokolov set the next preliminary hearing setting for July 25. When Sokolov asked if Davis understood waiving his right to a speedy trial, Davis only replied with a “yes” in a gruff voice.

Davis, clad in a blue prison jumpsuit and handcuffs, appeared to have a slim physique. He was seen smirking as he walked into the courtroom for his preliminary hearing setting.

Letitia Hines, a coworker and friend of Hanafusa, talked to The Union after the preliminary hearing setting.

“It’s an eerie feeling, it doesn’t feel well, it’s still very upsetting due to the situation,” Hines said about seeing Davis in court.

The original prosecutor for Davis’ case, Walter Quinteros, called out sick the day of the preliminary hearing setting so Deputy District Attorney Stephanie Miyata, representing “the people” during the hearing, took his place.

“It looks like nothing is happening,… but it’s happening behind the scenes,” Miyata said. She said murder cases like Davis’ generally take at least a year to be resolved.

Davis pleaded not guilty to the murder charges against him during his arraignment on Jan. 17. Davis was identified by security camera footage from the Gymnasium, close to where Hanafusa was attacked on Dec. 24, 2023, which officers used to arrest Davis at nearby Alondra Park.

Afurry feline friend joined therapy dogs as they sniffed their way back to campus on Wednesday, March 13, to help students relax, destress and find comfort outside the Student Health Center.

Jabrie Gordon, pet handler for Paws-to-Share, brought River Rocket to campus for the first time, making him the first cat to be part of a therapy dog session at El Camino College.

“He loves getting pets from people… he’s pretty social as a cat when it comes to human beings,” Gordon said. “I love talking to the people that want to come pet him, conversation has been nice, everyone has been nice.”

“Paw-sitive Connections: De-Stress with Therapy Dogs” is a series hosted by Student Health Services and Active Minds Club every semester, inviting people from Paws-To-Share to bring their dogs to campus for students to pet and interact with.

Paws-to-Share is an organization that seeks to bring people and pets together through visits to elderly people, college campuses and K-12 schools.

Wednesday’s session featured four dogs: Blizzard, Cosmo, Twosday and Volcano. This time, the dogs were accompanied by River Rocket, a grey, short-haired cat.

Students sat down at the Health Center Circle on Wednesday and gathered around the dogs and their owners, petting the dogs and conversing with one another.

“This is one of our favorite campuses to go to,” Jamie Burton, pet handler for Paws-to-Share, said. “Animals are very healing and soothing, they can save people’s lives…one of the girls here today was like: ‘Oh I had a migraine when I got here,’ and it’s gone already cause she was playing with the dogs.”

Burton has been with Paws-to-Share for a year and a half and is the owner of her two rescue dogs, Cosmo and Twosday.

“The students build a bond with the particular dogs…two weeks ago was [Twosday’s] birthday and one of the students from here and a couple from Cerritos, they remembered it was her birthday from last year when they saw her… so that’s special for everybody, I think,” Burton said.

Students also petted and interacted with River Rocket.

“My cat is my ESA [Emotional Support Animal], I have mental health issues as well so I think it’s very important and [animals] do help a lot,” Gordon said. “If I’m really upset or crying or really down, he’ll notice and he’ll come up to me and sit on my lap. He’ll make me pet him…and he makes me feel better that way.”

Active Minds and Student Health Services will continue working with Paws-to-Share to return to campus two more times this semester.

Lina Berrio, registered nurse and co-advisor for Active Minds, said the therapy dogs are students’ most popular request.

Berrio said Active Minds is empowering students to understand that they can comfortably talk about mental health and ask for help if they need it.

“It brings a community together of people who love animals…being able to just conversate and have like a collaborative enjoyment of animals, I think helps people decompress from, you know, life,” she said.

The El Camino College Men’s Basketball team is now on a five-game losing streak after a 79-70 home loss versus the Compton College Tartars on Wednesday, Feb. 21.

The game opened with the Tartars winning the tipoff and two missed baskets by both teams.

The Warriors’ missed shot gave the Tartars the opportunity to score a three-point shot off the inbound to open the game’s scoring. The Warriors recovered quickly, however, with sophomore Billy Ray Barnes III making a midrange jump shot.

Unfazed, the Tartars were just as fast in their response, scoring another three points.

This back-and-forth would continue with the score remaining within 10 points for the first half.

Warriors coach Robert Uphoff said his team knew the game was going to be challenging.

“We’ve been struggling with injuries, struggling with a variety of things as well as some various personal issues on the team,” he said.

The coach said the team was optimistic coming into the game.

“It’s really just about keeping it all together,” Uphoff said. “It’s really gonna come down to, what I told the team, who wants it more tonight.”

Initially, the Warriors were able to keep pace with the Tartars, maintaining a 6-6 score early in the game. Compton continued to score three-pointers, bringing the score to 9-6. The Warriors were up 10-9 at one point.

It was a trend that would not continue into the second half.

That was when the Warriors began to stagnate. The Tartars scored four points before the Warriors made a three, which was followed by a Tartars three bringing the score to 18-13 in their favor.

The Warriors were unable to overcome the Tartars’ rally leading into the second half, resulting in the loss of their fifth consecutive game, 79-70.

“Every game is a learning experience, whether we win or lose, but we never lose, we just learn,” Barnes said.

Before the game started, Barnes and Miguel Javier, both sophomores, were honored for Sophomore Night. Their friends and loved ones gave them flowers, framed photos and had their pictures taken with them and the team.

“I feel good, bittersweet, I wanted to go out on a win but it was just a tough night for us, as a whole, [we] made it tough at the end for [them] but gotta be more composed,” Barnes said.

The game had several fouls on both sides, especially during the second half with 11 fouls for the Tartars and 16 for the Warriors.

The Warriors’ 16 fouls gave the Tartars plenty of opportunity to score during free throws in the second half.

“They got hot in the first half getting threes and reality started to set in and they missed all their threes in the second half,” Uphoff said.

Uphoff said most of the fouls were the Warriors’ fault.

“We were out of position, we were about a step or two late on rotations or help side [defense] and giving up too many slips,” he said.

The Warriors stayed persistent in their efforts to defeat the Tartars but lagged too far to recover the game.

In the teams’ last face-off, the Tartars achieved a close victory of 58-57 on Feb. 2 over the Warriors.

“We fought hard, we had a good week of practice, we really focused,” Tartars’ coach Keith Hollimon said.

Hollimon said the Warriors showed it is always a good team but his team came prepared on the night.

“They pressed and bobbed us but we practiced for that press and we were able to get some layups out of it,” he said.

Hollimon said the Tartars earned the win. “El Camino is a tough opponent and I think we won with everything we had,” he said.

A personalized Long Beach State chat bot, an MMA fight result predictor and facial recognition technology applications are just a few projects currently being worked on by students, for students at the AI Research Club.

Established in the Spring of 2024, the AI Research Club is a recent addition to the numerous clubs on campus.

According to vice president and fourth-year computer science major Shaun Lim, the club began as an idea with the former co-president Shrey Modi last spring, who has since graduated.

“We just wanted something to do with like large language models, generative AI,” Lim said. “So we just started coming up with ideas, and actually a big inspiration at the time for us was we heard that UCI had its own chatbot at the time, ZotGPT.

Lim said they figured if UCI could develop their own chatbot, then they could too. Designed around assisting Long Beach State students, the two came up with SharkGPT.

“We used a specific architecture that basically takes data from Cal State Long Beach’s websites and the chatbot reads that data whenever a person asks it a question,” Lim said. “It’s just like a super fast quick search for any Cal State Long Beach information.”

Lim says that SharkGPT can help answer a student’s question that may not be available if they were to search it up on their own. For example, if you were a computer science major interested in the data science industry, SharkGPT can give you a list of classes available at CSULB that would be relevant.

Other students, like second-year computer science major Keith Natakusuma, are also working on their own independent projects within the club.

“I was already working on an AI project for my interests, I’m particularly interested in MMA,” Natakusuma said.“I wanted to compare an AI model to my own picks, so I think it’s just the ability to consolidate things to a predictable outcome.”

With his project, Natakusuma seeks to learn how to use AI to predict the outcomes of MMA fights – a sport he said by nature, is super volatile and unpredictable.

Being a part of the club, Natakusuma said, has helped him learn how to navigate AI and apply it to his own project.

Natakusuma is also one of several club members currently working on developing applications with facial recognition technology, which the club began as a project this semester.

“We are planning to work on, hopefully, a mobile app and there are various topics that we’re still deciding on what to do with,” AI Research Club Teach Lead Soroush Mirzaee said.

Expanding on these topics, Club Treasurer Shrawak Shakya illustrated a few examples.

“We could do things like authentication – one of the ideas I had was authentication for hospitals, but we can’t really do that because it’s sensitive data,” Shakya said. “A more fun one is like music, so if you recognize someone’s emotion and based on that they play some type of song.”

Currently, club members are looking for the best application for the technology that is also feasible for the club to develop.

Mirzaee said that for the development of the application, they are going to use the open source software Flutter, which was developed by Google and is used in applications like Gmail, Google Photos, and the Google Play Store.

The club will also be using Google Cloud Services for the backend, which is code that runs on an application’s server not seen by users, in addition to data storage.

The purpose of developing facial recognition technology is so club members have a project to work on where they can learn about AI, and how they can use tools to develop it into an application that can be used in the real world.

“We’re really just trying to help people because AI is pretty daunting, even from a computer science perspective – like how does it work, you know,” Lim said. “I would say that the main motive is to inform more people on AI and basically demystify AI.”

Signature collectors have been walking around the El Camino College campus and asking students for their personal information and their stances on ballot propositions.

While their numbers have dwindled since the California presidential primary on March 5, some collectors are still on campus soliciting information without being transparent with who they work for or who the information will be passed on to.

One signature gatherer on campus, Paul Yosh, said he worked for a company called APC America as a “circulator.”

Students had mixed reactions to the signature gatherers. Adam Rangel, a 20-year-old undecided major, said Yosh approached him.

Rangel said Yosh asked him questions about issues that would appear on the ballot. He said he did not know why he signed the petitions and just wanted to be nice.

Another student, Jasmine Antonio, a 18-year-old biology major, said she doesn’t mind signing if the petitions are for causes she supports.

“But at the same time, I didn’t appreciate that I was just asked… that [Yosh] just came out of nowhere and I was on the phone minding my own business,” Antonio said.

Antonio said Yosh came up to her asking about signing the petitions, but she wanted to read them first.

The measures included issues such as punishments and longer sentences for those who commit violent crimes, others were about Medi-Cal coverage.

“It was like a little bit of pressure, but I was like I do support [the measures]; but if I was in a rush, I would have been like, ‘Bye!’,” Antonio said.

Antonio and Rangel said they do not know where their information will be going, only that it has to do with ballot measures.

Yosh said a student’s information is needed to confirm if it is legitimate so it can be used by his employer to be passed on to the state.

Yosh said his company, APC America, does not sell signatories’ personal information.

Yosh refused to disclose his supervisor’s name or how to contact the company he works for, but said it is privately owned and campaigns on behalf of the state regarding propositions.

“APC America” yielded no results when looked up on the internet. Instead, the acronym “APC” was found to be associated with a California-based consultant firm, Arno Petition Consultants.

Arno Petition Consultants’ website says it is “the largest and most successful petition management firm in the country.”

It provides petition-gathering services, including ballot initiatives and state petition drives for political candidates and parties.

APC is owned and founded by Michael Arno, who owns and co-founded Virginia-based consulting firm Capital Advisors which provides the same services.

Both companies advertise themselves as being able to help political candidates and parties earn a place on state ballots.

Yosh, who is from Hawaiian Gardens, said his company picks where petitioners go depending on the region and city.

He also claims they are not just at El Camino, but also go to other schools and places like grocery stores to gather signatures.

Yosh said he submits the information he gathered once or twice a week to his employer.

Antonio said petition gatherers should have a designated area on campus so as not to disrupt students’ activities.

“Let’s say if you’re trying to get to class and they just randomly pop up and start distracting you or they’re all like pushing in your face, I feel that’s something not positive for the student,” Antonio said.