Los Angeles City College
Colleges & Universities
855 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
LACC seems to exist on the tuition of students that shouldn’t be in college. It’s better to have no-shows than no one show at all! In keeping with the tradition of its most famous alumnus dropout Charles Bukowski, a lot of bums drop out of this college. They cut in line on free taco day before doing so. In my experience of the five classes I’ve taken here, about 40% of the class ends up disappearing at the end. LACC incentivizes this behavior by taking out the burden of even having to go online and press the withdrawal button. It’s the first college that I’ve been to whose departments expect teachers to drop students who stop showing up.
I don’t know what the future holds for LACC. They seem to think it’s in for another heyday with all of the construction happening and platitudes of hope being offered in the form of writing scholarship themes. But the attendance level is very low and the slow burn of gentrification in East Hollywood might bring no hope! I’m used to campuses actively being busy in the middle of the day but everyday feels like Saturday here. It’s a strange experience, given Santa Monica and Vermont is busy. And on an actual Saturday, you can hear the echo of footsteps and see a tumbleweed roll.
It’s a shame because they have some great professors. I’ve been talking Spanish classes here and the college offers professors who are more talented and passionate than even the ‘good’ teachers at the UC school I’ve attended. One thing that I appreciate about the teachers at LACC is that they’re humble. The level of self-absorption of some teachers at the research university I attended, in my experience, is that of Narcissus at the podium overlooking a reflecting pool.
The bad things about LACC are the cliches of the crime-ridden inner city school minus its overpopulation. The emptiness of the campus due to its underpopulation makes my bike more unsafe for a bike than locking up on Santa Monica or Vermont or Melrose. I had to get a second u-lock as my back bike tire got swiped twice in one month here by the same asshat with the equipment and know-how to remove back tires from vintage bikes. Also, it’s the first college campus I’ve been to where being asked for change by many different types of people on campus is part of the college experience. Bukowski would be one of them.
Useful: 6 Funny: 2 Cool: 3
6/3/2018