Raising the Minimum Wage

Raising the minimum wage has become a nationwide debate. In California, cities like San Francisco and Oakland have already raised hourly wages. Los Angeles may not be far behind.

The current minimum wage in L.A. is $9 an hour. Earlier this year, Mayor Eric Garcetti said he plans to raise the minimum wage to $13.25 an hour by 2017.

But many activists, including the Los Angeles organizing committee for the Fight for $15 campaign, are asking lawmakers to boost the minimum wage to $15 an hour now.

This week, city lawmakers gathered to discuss raising the minimum wage.

“A key committee of Los Angeles lawmakers just unanimously approved a hotly contested plan to raise the citywide minimum wage to $15 by mid-2020,” according to Wednesday’s article by Emily Alpert Reyes for the Los Angeles Times. “Under the plan, small businesses and small nonprofits — those with 25 workers or fewer — would get an extra year to phase in the wage hikes, reaching the $15 mark by July 2021 instead of July 2020.”

Citizens and lawmakers in favor of the $15 an hour increase believe it will help the economy and give full-time employees opportunities to improve their quality of life. Those against the increase fear it will force businesses to go elsewhere.

California State University, Dominguez Hills students and staff, as well as Los Angeles community members gave their thoughts on the issue of raising the minimum wage.

Jacqueline Orellana is a digital media arts major. In addition to being a full-time student, she holds two jobs and an internship.

Orellana was recently hired for a position that pays $15 an hour as a live sound theater assistant at Ebony Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles. She still receives minimum wage for her work at the campus radio station KDHR.

“Having that increase, it makes living a little bit easier, a lot easier actually,” Orellana said about her new position. “I think the pay increase in Los Angeles will help a lot of people.”

While Orellana said raising the minimum wage is a good idea, she had some reservations about what that means for inflation.

Other concerns students and community members expressed were about the merit of the work minimum wage jobs require as well as what the hike will mean for small businesses.

Joe Ung owns Cassidy’s Corner Café in Lakewood. As a small business owner with four employees he said adapting to a higher minimum wage would be difficult.

Ung said he’s benefitted from working with employees from programs such as Pacific Gateway and South East Los Angeles County Youth Services.

“I think for small business owner, it’s really hard. It’s hard right now at $9 an hour,” Ung said. “What I think is good is grants and programs [that help pay wages for] student workers… I understand the need, but for small business owners it’s hard.”

CSUDH Students and Staff Discuss the California Drought

California State University, Dominguez Hills students and staff discuss ways to conserve water during the California drought.

Dig the Well Before You’re Thirsty

Branding Expert Rochelle Veturis Coles talked with CSUDH students last Thursday about boosting their careers with social media.

New Media Strategist Rochelle Veturis Cole visited California State University, Dominguez Hills last Thursday to inform students about the advantages of professional branding through social media.

Coles was a guest speaker in CSUDH’s electronic journalism class, which teaches communications students about blogging, online content and video production. During her lecture, she stressed the importance of using social media as a branding tool to get ahead in the job market.

“A lot of people think we’re in a visual market revolution right now,” Coles said.

Coles has made a career out of revamping social media for her clients. She’s worked in public relations since 2007 and has connected with countless media industry leaders including Malcom Gladwell and Arianna Huffington.

Last year, Coles co-created Sister Act Media with her sister, Chelsey Veturis, to give herself more time to spend with her family. Her company works with an average of 40 clients a week.

Sister Act Media’s objective is to help students and corporations gain followers and social media traffic through consultations and online resources such as “Free Instagram Training.”

Her advice to the communications students included deleting provocative pictures and profanity on their social media accounts, as well as connecting with favorite newscasters on Instagram to build relationships for potential career opportunities.

She also told students about the demand for social media experts in today’s business world. Coles said many companies don’t have an adequate social media presence and are looking for people who can make them visible using new platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat.

Coles also said personal pages and accounts on social media are considered in the hiring process, and students should think about developing both their personal and professional brand to attract future employers.

“So many [people] want to do social media for companies, but they don’t want to do it themselves,” Coles said. “They want to be behind the scenes.”

In her talk, Coles urged students to “dig the well before you’re thirsty;” a term she used to illustrate the importance of building their professional brand before graduation. She said she wants students to be confident about their content and think about what makes them more marketable.

“Are you really sitting and thinking ‘What am I about right now?’” Coles said.

In addition to social media advice, Coles also gave the class tips on how to make a good impression during interviews. She said phones should be left in the car and the focus should be on creating rapport, not only with potential employers, but also receptionists in the office to get a feel for the company’s culture.

Coles ended her discussion with tips on marketing video content. She explained simple ways to use search engine optimization to promote YouTube videos and talked about the advantages of using images to create a narrative for content. She said Google has given YouTube videos priority in its search engine, making them more visible to the public.

The biggest message of Coles’ lecture was how much power students have with social media. She told students they have more resources than ever to take advantage of career opportunities.

“Social media changed the rules,” Cole said. “Now anyone can have influence and rise up.”

James Scarborough

James Scarborough is an art and theater critic who has written for The Huffington Post and OC Weekly. In 2009, he started his blog, “What the Butler Saw,” as a way to critique theater, cinema and art without the demands of the art world.

Scarborough found his passion for art history in college and attended the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art in London. At the institute, Scarborough began his career as an art critic and wrote for leading contemporary art magazines such as Frieze and Flash Art.

When he returned to Los Angeles in the mid ’90s, Scarborough began to question his line of work. A new style of critiquing had taken over the art world which used French theory to explain art through lofty, wordy articles.

 

“If the construction of this grungemeister Self embodies values of centredness, ego and genius, then its material articulation, expressed thematically as variations on conceptions of time and duration, undermines its integrity,” Scarborough wrote in a 1997 article for Frieze Magazine.

Scarborough found himself at a moral crossroads. He didn’t believe his work was making art accessible. Instead, he said his articles were doing the opposite, pleasing those at the top of the art world with wordy, pretentious critiques.

Scarborough wanted to produce work that didn’t hold art at a distance from the common person. He stopped writing for art magazines in the early 2000s and began his own blog in 2006 entitled, What the Butler Saw.

He named his blog after a 1969 play by Joe Orton, and posted theater reviews. Scarborough said he liked the idea of being a butler because they serve and observe while staying out of the limelight; an idea that embodied how he wanted to reach his audience.

Through his blog, Scarborough found freedom in his career as a writer. He was able to what he wanted, when he wanted. Most importantly, he said his content had integrity.

“It was the perfect intersection of longstanding desire to stop writing for art magazines,” Scarborough said. “I changed the way that I wrote and I changed the way that I explained things, but I tried to keep the idea of quality of what I was writing about.”

Another advantage? He could post a review before any local newspaper and was able to write at his leisure. Scarborough has since expanded the subject matter of the blog to art and cinema as well as theater.

Since leaving the art magazine world, Scarborough has continued to share his work through theater reviews for the Huffington Post and OC Weekly. Last fall, he also worked as an adjunct professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and reached an even wider audience through the university’s cable access channel, teaching Art 100.

 

Joseph Polanco

Joseph Polanco, 29, is finding new ways to use his skills in Public Relations. As a PR intern at Toyota Financial Services, he’s part of a team that helps others.

At Toyota, Polanco works with children and the LGBT community through Girl Scouts of the U.S.A and the Boys & Girls Club of America. With these organizations, his team promotes equality in the workplace through financial education.

“We’re trying to reinvent how public relations is actually done, so we don’t just pay for dinners… at an event,” Polanco said. “We’re trying to see how a donation can be leverage for not for profit…so they can get more awareness put out.”

Polanco first became interested in Public Relations when he joined the army. At 18 years old, he toured in Iraq doing psychological operations. This meant spreading the idea of democracy or American ideals: the army’s version of PR.

As he pursued a satisfying way to lead a civilian life, Polanco decided to study communications with an emphasis in PR and advertising at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He is graduating in May, and will be the first in his immediate family to obtain a college degree.

Today, Polanco is using the skills he’s acquired in the military and at CSUDH to implement innovative ways to reach out to non-profit organizations.

The best part of his job? Research. Polanco loves to find out what communities want. and need. He is also excited about using technology to make connections with clients. One of his latest projects is a “spirit app.” This app spreads awareness about a campaign to stop bullying by changing the color of a photo to purple.

In the future, Polanco plans to keep working in a corporate PR environment. He would also like to travel to see how other countries handle public relations. He said the biggest challenge in finding his career was deciding what facet of the field to tackle.

“Communications is such a broad spectrum,” Polanco said. “Just figuring out what I wanted to do is the most challenging part of it.”

Robbie Boyer Speech on Service

In this video, USC alum Robbie Boyer shares a college football story about service with students from Mariners Christian School. Boyer is the cousin of Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Matt Barkley, who attended Mariners.

In his speech, Boyer talks about the value of service and his experience on the football team at USC. As a member of the “service team” in college, he realized how being on the sidelines helped him learn about the value of helping others and shares how God had plans he hadn’t counted on.