Weekend at the beach.....(cal state)

At Cal State Long Beach, we ran into some interesting people. As a whole, we talked to about four people. We had gone on a Saturday morning, from about 10 a.m. until about 12 p.m. We knew we weren't going to be able to talk to as many people as we wanted, being that not as many people are on campus during the weekend.

The first person we talked to was Mychael Baker, a 19-year-old student who's major escapes my mind at this very moment.

He was walking across campus handing out fliers for one of his friends who was running for Student Body President at the time.

He feels that race does have an affect on education, particularly those of blacks. While some are underprivileged, others are automatically viewed as such because of their race. He feels that keeps some from getting ahead in terms of education. Those aren't his exact words, but you can hear his views for yourself on the video.

At first we weren't going to use his footage, because for some reason, we decided to shoot him in front of a waterfall on campus. Visually, it was a good idea. But we weren't thinking about how distracting it would be to the ear.

I take responsibility for the dumb decision, because I was the leader of the group that put the video together. Despite the mishap, my instructor Amara Aguilar found a way to manipulate the footage so that the sound of the waterfall isn't as loud.


We also talked to someone who we thought was a CSULB student, but he wasn't one yet, technically. He was there taking an assessment test to attend the school and said he'd be starting classes there in the Fall.

Shawn Garner, a Paramount High senior at the time, said that there has been racial tension at his school, but races from time to time have come together. He gave an example of a program at his school in which all of the different cultures came together and shared all of the different foods, history and dances from each culture.

Talking in his sleep

We talked to about 15 people throughout the course of shooting material for the video. In the interviewing process, some people gave us very good answers and others didn't exactly answer the question. So all in all, we ended up choosing the people who gave the best answers.

One of the most enjoyable guys to talk to was a freshman student named Chris from Jordan High . His picture is on the right.

Jordan was the first place we went to for interviews.

At first we had started to talk to students right in front of the entrance, until we were chased off the front by one of the administrators who said we needed to ask their parents permission and that we had to give them notices that let them know we were using them.

So we went down to a park not too far from the school. We saw a young man who was sitting on the bus stop. He looked as if he had just woken up. He talked very sluggishly and still had crust in his eyes.

Nevertheless, we got some very good answers from him. He said that the high school is divided into two campuses, one strictly for the ninth graders and the other for 10th, 11th and 12th graders.

He gave a very detailed break-down of the racial divide of Jordan. He stated where all of the different races/ethnicities hang out; the blacks hang out by the stadium, the latinos hang out by the cafeteria, the samoans hang out by the stadium,etc.

I forget what question we asked him, it may have been something to the effect of "What can people do to ease racial tensions at schools?"

His answer?

"People just need to stop gangbanging, stop killing and stop hating on other races. If you don't like 'em, just leave 'em alone."

The statement was so simple, yet so profound. I and the rest of the team wanted so badly to include it in the video. It was probably one of the best interviews we collected. But when it came down to editing, we found that his answers weren't as good as others.

Poly was a no-go

We had plans to include students from Long Beach Poly High School in our video. We figured it would have been appropriate, since most of the suspects in the Halloween "assault" were/are students at the school.

On a Friday morning, sometime in March, I and one of my other partners, Brittany, drove to the school and was there at about seven in the morning hoping to interview some students before they went to class. We had already confirmed this with our partner Hector and we all agreed that we would meet up there.

We arrive at the school and we call Hector. He tells us that he forgot that we were supposed to be going to Poly that day. Not to mention, his camera hadn't been charged. So even if he had met us there, chances are that we wouldn't have gotten much footage that day.


We had a camera on us, but it turns out that the battery died while we were getting some footage of the school. We got a few good shots, which we may use in the video. The pictures that you're seeing now are just a few of the ones we were able to take. There were no more than six total.

We all thought about going back and trying to get footage of some of the students during Cerritos' spring break, which was April 1-7. Around this time, Poly was still in session (they didn't go on Spring Break until the following week) so we considered doing it then.

I kind of wish that we had gone, just so we could have gotten some more people to choose from. Who knows, we may have been able to talk to some really educated and cool people. It would have been nice to include the opinions of the students there.