Andre Fuller/Roundup
A public meeting to discuss the dwindling number of acres of the Pierce College farm, due to construction, between Pierce and the community will possibly take place in the coming months.
The meeting was discussed at the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees meeting on Oct. 4 at the Educational Services Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Mark Smollin, a pre-vet student at Pierce College and volunteer at the farm area on campus, spoke about his first year at Pierce.
He came to Pierce to make a difference by working with the animals in the community.
The reduction of acreage at the farm has presented a major problem to the Pierce students and community, according to Smollin.
“My first year here in this school [Pierce], two months in—there’s a problem,” said Smollin. “And that is, there’s more shrinking coming,” he continued, referring to the amount of potential acre reduction at the farm on campus.
Thankful for the new Center for the Sciences building at Pierce, students want to use that as an addition to the “hands on experience on the farm,” according to Smollin.
Even so, his concerns over how the farm is being handled and the lack of support for the issue, concerns him the most.
“Who will step forward [regarding the board members and LACC faculty members]?” said Smollin. “So I can trounce upon Dr. Clarence Pierce’s original image of a school of Agriculture of 454 acres, so he will not continue to have cement poured of the communities’ heritage.”
According to Interim President Joy McCaslin, Pierce’s agricultural land makes up half of the 454 acres on campus. She also stated that the 25 acres of land Smollin referred to is a service agreement Pierce College has with the farmer.
McCaslin is open to a community meeting on the farm issue. However, she hasn’t heard from the board about having such a meeting.
“I did not get a direction from the board about having a community meeting,” said McCaslin. “Over the years, we have had community meetings for groups of students who had concerns. “
Keeping the farm and the programs involved with it together is a main concern for Pierce College, according to McCaslin.
“We want to insure the students in the pre-vet and other agricultural programs, that their programs are not getting cut,” said McCaslin. “In fact, we’ve really gone over board with trying to protect those classes. Oppose to we already had to some pretty good cuts to the rest of our classes. Primarily we want the students to know that we are trying to protect those programs and we’re doing our best in this budget crisis.”
In other news, the vote on whether to increase the LACCD budget by $950,000 from the Contingency Reserve will be postponed to Dec. 2, citing more clarification for board of trustees members.
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The story has been edited to correct the notion that a public meeting will take place when it was just discussed.
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