Category - Campus News

By Ashley Rico, Reporter

Lone Star College-Kingwood President Katherine Persson speaks to a crowd of faculty members in her informational meeting “What’s Up Doc?”, Thursday, Jan. 26, Student Conference Center auditorium. Persson closes the meeting with final thoughts on concerned issues of the campus. Photo by Ashley Rico.

President Katherine Persson recently addressed the concern of faculty members about parking permits and parking space.

In this past Thursday’s monthly informational meeting, “What’s Up Doc?,” some faculty members expressed their concern about students using faculty/staff parking permits and parking in faculty/staff parking spots.

Persson was unable to provide a concrete reason as to how and why some students might have acquired faculty/staff parking permits. In response to the campus’s current issue with parking space, she said, “I, myself, do not have a designated parking spot.”

One particular factor of the parking space issue could be the increase of enrollment each year at LSC-Kingwood. Persson announced in this informational meeting that since last spring semester, enrollment has gone up by three percent.

There were several other concerns and announcements presented in the meeting. A faculty member suggested that a stoplight be placed at the four-way intersection of Kingwood Place Drive and Kingwood Drive to help better control the traffic.

Intersection of Kingwood Place Drive and Kingwood Drive. During the What’s Up Doc? Informational meeting on Feb. 2, a faculty member gave President Katherine Persson the suggestion to put a stoplight in this intersection. Photo by Michelle Lecumberry.

Persson noted the next phase for LSC-Kingwood of the 2014 Bond Referendum, a Lone Star College system-wide improvement plan. Phase two of this major project (which spans from July 2016 and June 2018) includes the construction of a new Healthcare Instructional Building that is to be 60,000 square feet (along with the expansion of healthcare programs) and the increase in parking space by 550 spaces. To learn more about the 2014 Bond Referendum and of the projects and progress specific to LSC-Kingwood, please visit this website, http://www.lonestar.edu/2014-bond-referendum.htm.

Persson also announced that LSC-Kingwood has recently hired a new Veterans Advisor, Rogelio Espinoza, who is an Army veteran himself.

Espinoza has helped develop a new Veterans Club and also wants to host a panel of speakers, projected to be in March, on how to help veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts.

Administration has also hired new Police Captain Edwin Gomez, who also serves as the LSC System trainer for handling active shooters.

By Ashley Rico, Reporter

History Professor Raul Reyes gives lecture for the opening of the Black History Month celebration at Lone Star College-Kingwood, Feb. 2, Classroom Building A building. Photo by Ashley Rico.

Did you know there’s a high possibility that Africans were the first to discover the Americas in as early as 500 B.C., even before the well-renowned 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus?

As a way to kick off Black History Month at Lone Star College-Kingwood, history Professor Raul Reyes presented his research on African and Afro-Latino origins of the Americas, titled “The Untold Story of the Triumphant Afro Historical Legacy and the Americas,” on February 2.

According to Daryl M. Scott, a professor at Harvard University, Black History Month originated in 1926 from a one-week celebration of the black community’s progress in the second week of February coined the “Negro History Week.” The celebration was created by historian Carter G. Woodson with the help of his colleagues. The reason why Woodson placed the celebration in February is because of the black community’s long tradition, at the time, of celebrating the February birthdays of Frederick Douglass (since 1890s) and Abraham Lincoln (since his assassination in 1865). It wasn’t until 1976 when President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized February as “Black History Month.”

Though, while some people often think of Frederick Douglass in the name of Black History Month, Reyes decided to present information of black history that goes beyond reverting back to just the Civil Rights era and the emancipation of slaves in the United States.

Reyes presented the Olmecs, a well-known civilization of people who are commonly characterized with Mesoamerican origins by many scholars. However, Reyes introduced non-mainstream research that claims the Olmecs are of African origins, saying that they were the first to contribute in the development and introduction of calendars and mathematics in Africa and the Americas.

An Olmec colossal stone head, Creative Commons, Photo by Jesús Gorriti. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/. No changes were made.

Once Reyes arrived at, in his research, the origins of black enslavement in North America, he points to Esteban, the first African slave of North America and the first few non-natives to explore North America in the 1500s.

Esteban was sold into slavery to a man named Andres Dorantes de Carranza, who then took him on an expedition to North America. Before they landed, they got attacked by Native Americans from the Gulf of Mexico in what is modern-day Galveston. After being enslaved for years by Native Americans, where he learned and studied their culture and language, Esteban traveled 15,000 miles across North America. Eventually, Esteban was killed by Native Americans who saw him as a threat. He was one of the few non-natives who had seen much of North America.

Reyes said that the reason he chose to talk about Esteban is because he wanted people to recognize those we don’t talk about.

This is Reyes’ second time providing a black history presentation to commemorate Black History Month on campus, in which, he expressed, he eagerly volunteered to do.

“The primary reason that I did it was [because]…I [wanted] to make sure no one pigeonholes me–that they see me and the presumptions are made that my knowledge about history is limited strictly to the Latino experience, Mexican experience,” Reyes said. “I don’t appreciate that, I consider myself an ethnic studies student–that I do my research; I do it with the intent…of telling the untold story.”

LSC-Kingwood student Greg Kisschke attended the discussion with his wife in part “to fulfill class campus activity” for his U.S. History class, as well as to gain new historical knowledge; what Reyes’ presented they considered unconventional and not often explored or even mentioned in some history classes.

“We have an interest in non-typical history,” Kisschke said. “This was a very interesting, unique [piece of] information, though not surprising. [It is] good to hear facts,” Kisschke said.