Empty Halls
Southeast satellite campus struggles to attract more students.

There's no steady stream of people walking through the glass doors at1800 Oakdale. There's barely a trickle. One mural faces Phelps and another Oakdale, each depicting the neighborhood, including the shipyard, in bright blues, reds and orange contrasting with the gray building. No one lingers outside waiting for a ride. A familiar dirty-toilet odor lingers in the air. Inside, the lobby is virtually silent, except for the occasional phone ring at the information desk. Spring schedules and class fliers are neatly piled on the front counter. Everything is in its place, appearing untouched. A meeting is being held in the Alex L. Pitcher community room. Less than 20 people are in attendance for the Citizens Advisory Committee on a Monday night.

The two City College classes being offered tonight have a record low of two people in computer class and about 15 students in the political science class. This is the usual picture of a day or night during the fall semester at the Southeast Facility and satellite campus of San Francisco City College. The center was built in the neighborhood as a mitigation measure in return for the Bayview Hunters Point community's acceptance of expansion of the water treatment plant that today treats 65 million gallons of sewage on dry days and more than three times that amount of waste and storm water on rainy days. The facility must house an educational program, childcare program, a community meeting room and a program for senior citizens. City College of San Francisco leases 85 percent of the building. On any given day the facility is stark. Some complain the atmosphere is the result of City College's poor class offerings. Others, however, strongly contend the opposite and that the college is doing everything it can to draw more students and community members into the facility. "[The city] tries to make it look good. They owe us because of the water treatment plant, but there is really no maintenance," says Lisa Lam, 19, a Bayview resident and student at the Southeast campus. She takes most of her classes at the main Phelan City College campus, because she says there are not enough useful classes at the Oakdale campus, just a few blocks away from her home where she has lived for 12 years. "For the exchange, everyone is suffering from the plant, but not everyone is getting the

Photo by Moorea Morehart Lisa Lam says she can't find the classes she needs at the Southeast satellite campus of City College.

benefits," Lam says. Lam is one of approximately 1,000 students from the neighborhood who attend the Phelan campus. The most recent numbers from City College state that 988 Bayview Hunters Point students attended credited classes at the Phelan main campus in the fall of 2001, while only 4 percent of Southeast campus' 1,987 total students were from the community. For non-credited classes, 338 students were from the neighborhood.

Spring semester

In the spring semester, Lam will have to take all her classes at Phelan campus because all of her requirements, including an advanced math class, will not be offered at the Southeast campus. Only 18 credited classes will be offered next semester, ranging from vocational courses to childcare.

"I work during the day and I have to go across the city for school?" asks Cheryl Fields, 36, a mother who also lives a walk away from the campus. She adds that a lot of classes come and go mostly because there is not enough outreach to neighborhood residents. Those classes that do survive are usually under enrolled.

"Why would I tell someone to come here if [classes are] not offered here?" she asks. It's a catch 22 for the college, say City College officials. If the college could get more classes relevant to the community, then more students would attend the Southeast campus. But the college can't offer more classes until more students enroll.

"There has never been a serious concrete outreach to the community about what the college has to offer and what the community wants," says Henry Calhoun, who has worked at the information desk for nine years. He knows the schedule by heart and where each class is and each office. In his opinion, more people attend the skills and vocational classes at the Evans Street satellite campus.

"If they had the right courses, they could attract more from all over the city," he says. "City College comes up with classes that they think will be successful. A lot of classes that failed were not advertised to the community."

Facility's role

The Southeast Facility Commission, which was established in 1987 by the Board of Supervisors, is in charge of the well-being of the facility. It serves at the pleasure of the mayor and works to increase employment of community residents, create opportunities for them to participate in the educational programs, expand opportunities for children's daycare, and provide special services to improve the general economic, health, safety and welfare of residents in the community. It is the community's liaison to City Hall.

The commission's day-to-day person is Executive director Toye Moses, who has acted as the landlord of the facility for 11 years. He can be seen sometimes briskly walking from his office in the facility to the community room for whatever committee or commission is meeting there, speaking with the dean and other community members, or traveling between facilities (a childcare facility is on the hill too). There is always something that he is doing, often handling many projects at once.

"People need to know more about what's going on. They have no excuse not to enroll. If they don't have a GED or high school diploma, (City College) can accommodate them," says Moses.

However, outreach can be improved, he says. A park could be in the facility's place instead, if community members such as Shirley Jones had not lobbied against it. As the first president of the commission, Jones looks back and still believes that getting the facility was a good deal for the community, even though she admits that the community does not use it.

"One thing we wanted was accredited classes that would be held there. We haven't gotten as many as we could have," Jones says. "If [the college] did, [the community] would use it."

Another original commission member differs. Espanola Jackson, a community activist, believes the deal wasn't favorable enough to the neighborhood. "The facility was not a good deal. The city didn't tell us all the facts," she says. "They didn't tell us that (Brisbane and South San Francisco's) waste is coming here," she says. The water treatment plant also treats some sewage from those areas. Another problem is that no one foresaw the growth of the city. During the mitigation process, the community met with the water department at the Providence Baptist Church and the Bayview Opera House. "The community was more like a family then," remembers Jackson. "Now we can't get them to use (the college)."

Campus is being used

Head librarian Lori Brown feels that the facility is in fact being used a lot. She lists the Renaissance/ Parents of Success program, which sublets from City College, people from the One Stop Career Center to request information on job descriptions, and a flow of high school students who participate in a City College preparatory program. The library is located on the fifth floor, where there are less than a dozen bookshelves filled with periodicals and encyclopedias, a handful of work stations and a few computers. It's about the size of about two classrooms.

"Although it's small, we're just a branch. The main library is eight stories high," reminds Brown. Anything that can't be found at the Southeast campus library can be ordered from any of the other branches, she says if people can't find what they are looking for in the 1,800 periodicals that the library has in the database.

The unique thing about the Southeast library, librarian Reiko Hatakeyma tells: "It's where we (City College) have the most African American publications and periodicals. It's very good because were in the middle of an African American community." The library also expanded the ESL collection since the neighborhood has a lot of immigrants to serve.

Brown is also proud that they do a lot of outreach to the students by decorating the bulletin boards and the lobby display case that often celebrates the ethnic heritage of the community. "We relate well with students. They know they can come here anytime. We help with resume writing, and computers," says Brown.

The dean of the campus insists that the community is using the campus and the facility. "It may be a notion, but the facility is being used," says Dean Veronica Hunnicutt. She is another one of the busy bodies at the Southeast facility, often running into Executive Director Moses. Outreach is a big priority to her, as others have pointed out.

"There's been so much outreach. Sometimes [the students] don't get the information for whatever reason. They should know that we are here," she says. Counselors and deans speak to representatives of community-based organizations about the school's programs; they distribute materials and disseminate information to the community.

She reminds students that not every class offered at Phelan is offered at the satellite classes and that Southeast has very successful programs including the Working Adults program and the entry-level biotech classes that prepare students for the 30 biotechnology firms within a 20-minute drive from San Francisco and the University of California, San Francisco biotechnology campus opening up in Mission Bay.

As for attracting more students from the community, she says, "Sometimes there is a level of intimidation and fear about coming to campus. Come here, get familiar, work with us to enhance our programs."

She stands firmly behind her belief that she and her staff are doing what they can to bring more students to the campus. "In my mind, the door swings open at 1800 Oakdale. We'd always like to see students," Hunnicutt says.