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explores how college students achieve their goals, whether they’re fresh out of high school, pursuing graduate work or looking to join the labor force through alternative pathways.Last spring, Dr. Alberto Román was appointed chancellor of the L.
A. Community College District. Since then, he's had to lead LACCD's response to a federal government that's taken an aggressive stance toward undocumented immigrants, many of whom are enrolled in community colleges.Román, some students have become the head of their households overnight, after having their parents detained and deported. Alouette Cervantes-Salazar, who runs East L.A. College’s Dream Resource Center, also said “quite a bit” of students have moved to take coursework online.The district’s Dream Resource Centers are hustling to provide legal support, temporary housing options, additional mental health services and food vouchers for affected students.When Alberto Román was a boy growing up in the Mexican state of Durango, his father was often far from home. Most times, he’d be gone for months. Román’s father, Javier, had a third-grade education. And when work was scarce in Mexico, he’d venture north to the United Sates and take whatever job he could find.“He was a guy you would find at Home Depot,” Román told LAist. “He did whatever it took to put food on the table and provide with shelter.” Román missed his father terribly, and he relished the time alone with him. When his father would return to Mexico, they'd hike to a majestic statue of the revolutionary Pancho Villa, where Román and his father could also look out at their city. Román did not know it then but, soon, that view would become a memory. When he was eight, his father returned; but, this time, Javier took his son, his daughter, and his wife with him back to the U.S. The family settled in Rialto, in California's Inland Empire. Suddenly, Román had a new home and new challenges to contend with.The move to Rialto unfurled a series of labels and experiences. Román became undocumented; an “English language learner”; a teenage father; a parenting student. With time, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and, then, a first-generation college graduate who would one day earn a doctorate. Today, Román serves as chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, which includes nine campuses and more than 200,000 students. A lot of these students are parents like he was, Román said, and the vast majority of them have to work to help put themselves through school.Román was appointed chancellor last May. Soon after, the Trump administration unleashed its militarized mass deportation effort, which included raids and aa small percentage of the overall higher ed population In conversation with LAist, Román referred to the ongoing raids and immigration detentions as “inhumane.” He also described the experience of a student whose father didn’t come home one night. After being detained by immigration agents, Román said, the student’s family “didn't know where he was for two months.” The student was 20 years old when her father was taken. Overnight, she became the head of her household. Now, on top of fulfilling her responsibilities at school, she has to figure out how to keep herself and her younger siblings housed and fed.According to Cervantes-Salazar, the Trump administration’s deportation effort has transformed campus life. When the raids began last summer, she said, “quite a bit” of students who used to take classes in person moved to complete the semester online. For some, Cervantes-Salazar added, online coursework has become preferable because it enables students to better juggle school and work. For others, the fear of getting to and from campus amid Whether the Dream Resource Centers' support will be enough to meet student needs remains to be seen, but Román takes their stories to heart. “These are the stories of our community,” he said. “These are the stories of our students. These are the stories of their parents. And they areFrom 'English language learner' to college graduate Román’s story in the U.S. began in the 1980s. After moving to California, it took Román about two years to learn enough English to communicate with his classmates. Until then, his time in school was lonely.— an educational model that teaches students in English and another language to achieve biliteracy — were rare in the U.S. At Román’s elementary school, he said, they were nonexistent. To help him learn English, Román’s educators placed him in a separate room for about three hours a day. He was given a stack of books. His job was to put on headphones, listen to audio recordings of the texts and do his best to follow along. When Román tried speaking English, some students made fun of his accent. A bilingual child who struggled with Spanish was tasked with serving as his interpreter.His parents made it clear that returning to Mexico was not an option. They’d been poor and had limited schooling, and they wanted something different for their children. Though neither of Román’s parents got to finish high school, he said, they were determined to send their children to college. Román’s older sister graduated at the top of her class and went on to UCLA. Román aimed to follow in her footsteps. But, when he was a high school senior, Román learned his girlfriend was pregnant. He was 17, and he wasn’t sure how fatherhood would square with pursuing higher education. When Román told his parents there was a baby on the way, they remained steadfast."Now you have all the more reason to go to college," his father told him. That fall, Román enrolled at UC Riverside. To help provide for his son, Román got a job at Payless ShoeSource, where he worked up to 40 hours a week. When possible, Román stacked his classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to keep the rest of the week open for work. “It was tough,” Román said. “I was getting home at 10, 10:30 at night, trying to read, trying to do essays, trying to be a father.” “In moments of weakness,” he added, he contemplated quitting school. But, like his parents, Román wanted a better life for his son.Román graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1999. When he crossed the stage at his commencement ceremony, his child, his parents and his sister beamed from the audience. Today, Román connects his lived experience to that of students at the district, 70% of whom study part-time. “That’s because they're working, because they have families,” he said. Last spring, Román watched thousands of new graduates embrace their loved ones after receiving their diplomas at a commencement ceremony at the Greek Theatre. “When I see my students on stage waving their degrees — despite all the challenges they face — that award is so much more meaningful,” he said. “I know what they went through.”Plus, see world-famous actors perform stories about the ocean, listen to French synth-pop, check out photos from the border and more of the best things to do this week.who’s boss and go to the ballet. We have a great dance community in L.A., and this special performance from American Contemporary Ballet of two classic George Balanchine pieces displays the extraordinary talent required for ballet and the art form's lasting impact. This one kicks off with Sharon Stone and Lily Tomlin, and features performances from Dave Bayley of Glass Animals, Bruce Vilanch, Bellamy Young and many more sharing moving works about the importance of our oceans, just ahead of L.A. Climate Week. Plus, LAist readers can use the code OCEANLOVER for 10% off Did you know there’s donation-based yoga, outside among the friendly spirits of Hollywood Forever Cemetery, several times a week? Start your day off with Kundalini, Vinyasa flow or meditation with some of L.A.’s top teachers. Check the schedule and bring your mat, towel, water and, of course, sunscreen. Back in 2017, I took a road trip to Tecate, Mexico to see JR’s enormous installation of a towering image of a child peering over the Mexican border across to the same, dusty southern California landscape on the other side. It was a powerful message about humanity, immigration, and social justice. He brings that photo and many more to a new solo show,Eid Mubarak to all those celebrating the end of Ramadan this week! If doughnuts are part of your tradition, find out why, as LAist’s Yusra Farzan digs into thehas your music picks; on Monday, you can celebrate the best in pop at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre, while on Tuesday, R&B singer Son Little plays the Troubadour. Tuesday and Wednesday, New Orleans songstress Madeleine Peyroux presentsat the Blue Note. Also on Wednesday, shoegaze stars Nothing are at the Belasco, and a whole bunch of bold-faced names will be at “Toby Gad & Friends” at the Hotel Café. On Thursday, hip-hop legend Talib Kweli plays the Blue Note, Australian dance artist 1tbsp plays the Fonda, Irish indie-pop duo 49th & Main play the El Rey Theatre and Canadian folksters The Barr Brothers play their first of two nights at the Troubadour with support from Benjamin Lazar Davis.Back in 2017, I took a road trip to Tecate, Mexico to see French photo artist JR’s enormous installation — a towering image of a child peering over the Mexican border across to the same, dusty Southern California landscape on the other side. It was a powerful message about humanity, immigration and social justice. He brings that photo and many more to a new solo show,If you haven’t been to a WORDTheatre event, you’re in for a treat, as actors and musicians take to the Saban stage to present stories and songs from the sea. Producer Cedering Fox pairs performers with stories that speak to them, and brings short pieces to life in unique ways. This one kicks off with Sharon Stone and Lily Tomlin, and features performances from Dave Bayley of Glass Animals, Bruce Vilanch, Bellamy Young and many more who will share moving works about the importance of our oceans ahead of L.A. Climate Week. Plus, Best Things to Do readers can use the codeDid you know there’s donation-based yoga, outside among the friendly spirits of Hollywood Forever Cemetery, several times a week? Start your day off with Kundalini, Vinyasa flow, or meditation with some of L.A.’s top teachers. Check the schedule and bring your mat, towel, water and, of course, sunscreen.. A story about love between two young poets — a 27-year-old man and a teenage boy — is “based on Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine’s notorious affair, but set in the epochal downtown poetry scene of filthy 1970s New York.” Take yourself back to a grittier time. The event is sold out, but tickets may be available in person on the day of the reading.I’ve been using French music and ChatGPT to practice my French language skills lately, so I’m pretty into Swiss songstress Vendredi Sur Mer. She brings her dreamy French synth-pop that evokes time in the Swiss Alps to the Roxy; her latest album,Corned beef and cabbage, Guinness, whiskey specials and a burlesque show are all on tap at the annual St. Patrick’s Day party at the Cat & Fiddle pub. Raise a glass and sayand go to the ballet. We have a great dance community in L.A., and this special performance from American Contemporary Ballet of two classic George Balanchine pieces —Officials are making plans for locals and visitors who are attending the World Cup matches in Los Angeles in the heat of summer.As L.A. prepares to host the global soccer tournament – and the Olympics in 2028 – organizers and local officials say that making sure fans and city infrastructure are ready to endure the heat is critical. That's especially true as the region gets warmer due to climate change.L.A.'s making plans for locals and visitors who will be at SoFi Stadium, fan events, and watch parties. Those changes, though, will be temporary: pop-up hydration stations, shade structures and a public messaging campaign on how to stay safe in the heat.are any indication, by the time the World Cup arrives in Los Angeles this summer, it could be really hot. As L.A. prepares to host the global soccer tournament – and the Olympics in 2028 – organizers and local officials say that making sure fans and city infrastructure are ready to endure the heat is critical. That's especially true as the region gets warmer due to climate change. " We're living in a new reality where heat is no longer a background condition – it's an operational threat, a public health emergency," Susana Reyes, Metro's head of sustainability policy, said at a recent county meeting on Olympics preparations." shows up first where people are most exposed: on the sidewalks, at bus stops, at stadium queuing lines and on long walks to and from transit." L.A.'s making plans for locals and visitors who will be at SoFi Stadium, fan events, and watch parties. Those changes, though, will be temporary: pop-up hydration stations, shade structures and a public messaging campaign on how to stay safe in the heat."The World Cup provides an opportunity… to test things out during the World Cup and then scale them up in advance of 2028," said Edith de Guzman with, a collaboration between USC and UCLA working with local governments to bring more permanent shade to the Los Angeles area.Los Angeles is counting on its public transit system to carry a lot of the burden when an influx of fans come to town this summer and again for the Olympic Games. That means many fans, local and visiting, will be on foot, the bus or train in a city that is famously car-centric. " For major events like the World Cup and the Olympics, millions of visitors will rely on transit often during the hottest parts of the day," said Reyes, with Metro." We are concerned about seniors, children, people with disabilities as they take public transit and are exposed under the heat of the sun."It will also launch a public messaging campaign starting next month, putting up signage on buses and at bus stops with tips on staying cool and avoiding heat illness. A spokesperson with the mayor's office said the city will use similar tactics at its fan watch parties that are slated to take place across the city, and is collaborating with council districts and the Department of Parks and Recreation on shade structures and hydration stations.There are bigger expectations for L.A.'s plans to address the heat come 2028. The last two times the Olympics came to Los Angeles, the city launched major tree planting programs. L.A.Planners are taking a different approach ahead of this Olympics, focusing on shade structures more broadly rather than specifically on planting trees. Edith de Guzman with ShadeLA said that's because planting trees is resource intensive, requiring funds to plant and maintain the trees, especially in the first years after they've been planted. Planting trees also requires community buy-in. " really points to shade as being the ingredient that is kind of a slam dunk way to create that safety that we seek," she said." Trees are still our favorite type of cooling, but we're broadening it to also include more flexibility." That means canopies, pop-up structures and infrastructure to create shade, with or without tree cover. ShadeLA is working with the city, county and Olympics committee LA28 on a regional plan to bring more shade to communities ahead of 2028. It's createdof communities lacking tree cover that are expected to see an influx of activity from the World Cup, Super Bowl and Olympics. But many of the specifics are still to come. That's also true of LA28, which has promised to create a"Heat Mitigation Plan." A spokesperson told LAist that it was expected to be finished by mid-2027. One permanent program already in the works will bring more shade to L.A.'s transit riders. The Bureau of Street Services is building 3,000 new bus shelters around the city to replace L.A.'s many exposed transit stops. According to Dan Halden with StreetsLA, the department has installed 300 shelters since 2024, and expects to add 200 more by 2028. Still, L.A. has a long way to go. In L.A. County, urban areas have just 21% shade cover at noon on average, according to data from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation – less than the national average of 27%. And it's only getting hotter.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.It was a big night for director Paul Thomas Anderson, who also won best director and best adapted screenplay for the film. Cassandra Kulukundis, casting director ofOccasionally those on stage gestured toward the world beyond Hollywood:"No to war and free Palestine," Javier Bardem said on stage, presenting the award for best international feature film.is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage … it's that you lose it through countless small, little acts of complicity. When we act complicit, when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don't say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it, we all face a moral choice." Co-director Pavel"Pasha" Talankin, who shot footage for the documentary while working at a Russian school, said onstage,"In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now."KPop Demon Hunters; music and lyric by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seon and Teddy ParkIts full legal name is the"Academy Award of Merit." The Academy officially adopted its nickname, Oscar, in 1939. But where did it come from? Bruce Davis got that question all the time — in letters and emails from the curious public — during his two-decade tenure as the Academy's executive director, which ended in 2011.Cedric Gibbons, the art director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is credited with designing the iconic statue ahead of the first annual awards banquet of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1929.of the era) standing on a reel of film, holding a crusader's sword to defend the industry from outside criticismAnd Los Angeles-based sculptor George Stanley made the statuette a reality, one that stands 13 1/2 inches tall and weighs 8 1/2 pounds.to learn about three competing theories, none of which may be true, and a fourth theory that just might hold the answer., where many of Hollywood's top talents will walk the red carpet before settling in for a night of triumphs, heartbreaks and abruptly cut-off acceptance speeches. Most of us just refer to the ceremony as"the Oscars," the longstanding nickname of the gold-plated statuettes that winners in each category take home. Cedric Gibbons, the art director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is credited with designing the iconic statue ahead of the first annual awards banquet of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1929.of the era) standing on a reel of film, holding a crusader's sword to defend the industry from outside criticismAnd Los Angeles-based sculptor George Stanley made the statuette a reality, one that stands 13 1/2 inches tall and weighs 8 1/2 pounds.Bruce Davis got that question all the time — in letters and emails from the curious public — during his two-decade tenure as the Academy's executive director, which ended in 2011. "And what astonished me was that when I would ask around the building, everybody would say, 'Well, we don't exactly know,'" he told NPR."And so I didn't do anything about it myself until I was retiring.""As it turned out, that was not an easy thing to find out," Davis said."It took a lot of running around and doing some actual research, and I did finally come up with something that I'm reasonably confident is the right answer." There are three enduring — and competing — myths about where the name came from. Davis debunked them all and proposed a fourth.as shorthand for an Academy Award in March 1934, when entertainment journalist Sidney Skolsky used it in his Hollywood gossip column. Davis recounts the apocryphal legend this way: Skolsky was running up against deadline on his awards-night rough draft when he was stopped by the word"statuette." "He thought it sounded awfully snobby and he didn't know how to spell it," he said."And he asked a couple of people around in the hall, and I guess no one was helping him spell statuette." Skolsky later said he thought back to a vaudeville routine where the master of ceremonies would tease an orchestra member by asking,"Oscar, will you have a cigar?" And he claimed he decided to poke fun at the ceremony's pretentiousness by referring to the statuettes as Oscars instead. Davis sees a few holes in this story, namely that the term appeared in at least one industry publication months before Skolsky's column. But it's not a total loss for Skolsky, who is separatelyThe most famous version of events involves none other than legendary actress Bette Davis. She had long claimed, including in her 1962 biography, that she coined the Oscar's nickname while accepting her first Academy Award some three decades earlier. "Her story was that she was holding in her hands and just kind of waiting for the ceremonies to move along, and she started looking at the hindquarters of the statuette and she said … the hindquarters of the statuette were the very image of her husband," Davis explained. But Davis' husband at the time, musician Harmon Oscar Nelson Jr., was primarily known by another nickname,"Ham." And mentions of"Oscar" appeared in print years before Davis won her first one, in 1936. Davis eventuallyShe apparently referred to the statue as such in the 1930s"because it looked like her Uncle Oscar," said Monica Sandler, a film and media historian at Ball State University.Herrick joined her then-husband, executive director Donald Gledhill, at the Academy in the early 1930s as an unpaid volunteer, and became its official librarian in 1936. Herrick took over as interim executive director when he left for the Army in 1943. She was formally appointed to the role two years later and led the Academy until her retirement in 1971. "There are very few women with the type of power and control she had over an institution at that time in the industry," Sandler said. Herrick is credited with building up the Academy's library into one of the world's primary film research centers, as well as negotiating the award show's first television contract — and a major step toward financial independence — in 1953. Davis says she often took credit, in conversations and media interviews, for jokingly naming the Oscar after her uncle. But he's skeptical of Herrick's claim. "We're not sure that she was really the first person to use that because she had difficulties over the ensuing years in identifying this Uncle Oscar," he explained.He said her name surfaced every now and then, but he didn't have"much hard proof" until after his retirement, when he got wind of the Einar Lilleberg Museum. It's a small community center in California's Green Valley honoring Eleanore's brother, Einar Lilleberg, an"And I thought: 'This is it. Now, this is going to tell the story about the Oscar,'" Davis says."And he almost did." He said Einar's correspondence was light on detail, but unmistakably credited the naming to his sister, describing it as:"Yes, she got in the habit of doing that, and the rest of the staff thought it was amusing not to call them the 'Academy Award of Merit,' but just 'Oscar' … and it really did catch on." So which Oscar did Lilleberg have in mind? Her brother's explanation, which Davis endorses, is that she was thinking back to a Norwegian veteran they had known as children in Chicago, who"was kind of a character in town and famous for standing straight and tall." Davis wasn't able to track down that particular Oscar. But he says no one has challenged his theory in the years since his book was published,"so I'm sticking with it."While Davis takes some personal satisfaction in the outcome of his quest, he accepts that the mystery of the Oscar nickname may never be solved conclusively. "If I had come up empty, I wouldn't be arguing that we need to change the name," he said."But it's interesting that it became such a tradition. There were no film awards that had a personal name before Oscar gained his, and then … within the next couple of years … everybody started looking for a personal name." Sandler, the media historian, says that because the Academy Awards were"really the first major pop culture award," many others used it as a template. The prizes in other countries' most-prestigious award ceremonies have similarly personified names: France's César Awards, Mexico's Ariel Awards, Italy's David's. Plus, there are the Emmy and Tony awards, both products of the mid-20th century. Davis says he's just satisfied that people are still interested in the Oscars, regardless of who they're named after.
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