8:30am | Sen. Alan Lowenthal will be at CSU Long Beach Thursday evening to hold “Policy on Tap,” a 90-minute town hall at which students, faculty, and staff will have the chance to tell him directly their concerns and suggestions for how he might help them during the current educational crisis and beyond.
The town hall is an occupational homecoming for sorts for Lowenthal, and it’s a medium that has personal resonance.
“Some of my fondest memories during my almost 30 years as a professor at CSULB involve times spent engaging students in serious discussion about the future of our communities,” he says. “It is even more critical today, as our state’s higher education system finds itself under fiscal assault, for the voices and concerns of those most impacted to be heard. I plan to listen to those voices, to those concerns, and in a bit of role reversal for a former professor, learn from the attendees. […] I firmly believe that the voices of students and faculty must be heard and must play a key role in any solution.”
Lowenthal’s office says the senator will “provide a legislative update on higher education bills now moving through the state Legislature [two of which were authored or introduced by Lowenthal] and the current funding issues facing California’s community, state college and university systems,” but that he “will devote the majority of the meeting time to taking questions from the audience.”
Lowenthal, who serves as chair of the Senate Education Committee and Education Sub-committee on Sustainable Facilities and is a member of the Education Sub-committee on Education Policy and the Select Committee on College and University Admissions and Outreach, acknowledges the feelings of discontent many students and educators may feel toward government, but says this is all the more reason for him to make efforts to hear directly from the people involved.
“We can sit in Sacramento and read about what teachers and students need,” he says, “but that’s no replacement for hearing directly from our constituencies, for talking one-on-one and hearing individuals express their concerns, telling us their suggestions, what they need to make things better and what we can do to help them.”
“Policy on Tap” takes place Thursday, April 12, from 6pm to 7:30pm at The Nugget Pub & Grill (in the University Dining Plaza building) on the CSULB campus (6300 E. State University Dr.). The event is open to the public. For more information, call (562) 529-6659, or visit Sen. Lowenthal’s Website at sd27.senate.ca.gov.