CSUN On Point

Learning to understand a culture outside of your own is important. But what’s the difference between celebrating another culture and stealing from it?

Cultural appropriation is taking something from another culture outside of your own and misusing its elements or using them without asking or crediting the source.

Appropriation can be something as simple as wearing a piece of clothing from a different culture as a fashion statement, but the lines between cultural appropriation and appreciation can be blurry.

One example: In October, pop singer Adele responded to critics and fans who objected to an outfit and hairstyle she had worn to a Caribbean festival in London last year. She wore a Jamaican flag print bikini top and a hairstyle worn by black women in the region. The singer told Teen Vogue she was trying to celebrate Jamaican culture, but had not “read the room.”

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Adele also has not taken down an Instagram post of her wearing the outfit and hairstyle.

“If I take it down,” she told British Vogue, “it’s me acting like it never happened. And it did. I totally get why people felt like it was appropriating.”

“Folks want to partake [in another culture] because they see something nice,” said Vanessa Galvan, a leader of the affinity group CSUN Latinas Rising. “They see something shiny, they see something different, something exotic, something they haven’t thought of.”

“But it is important to remember,” Galvan added, “there is cultural context and there’s origins, and there’s more to it than just a celebration.”

But it isn’t just celebrities who get stuck. For example, Halloween costumes with Native American themes… or Dia de los Muertos celebrations that miss the holiday’s true meaning, can also cause harm.

As Buzzfeed News pointed out in September, a lot of so-called internet slang is actually rooted in Black Culture. Examples of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) being used out of context. Celebrities such as Olivia Rodrigo, Camilla Cabello and Miley Cyrus to name a few, have all faced criticism for apparent usage of ‘Blaccent’ and or racism online.

People may appropriate culture because they want to connect with other people and be able to understand other people’s cultures, said Ivy Randall, a sociology graduate of  California State University, Bakersfield.

“People get really excited about the event and the fun parts about it, that they don’t take time to inform themselves on the history and why people celebrate these cultures,” Randall said. “When people do educate themselves they are more on the appreciate side rather than the appropriation side.”

Galvan and Randall urges people to be more aware of cultural boundaries, which makes it easier to be aware when one crosses a line between appropriation and appreciation. When one misrepresents a culture, people of color are left in a marginalized position where they are not recognized of the true meaning of their culture. 

 The best antidote to stepping wrong, Galvan and Randall said: educate yourself on the background and history of the culture.

If you decide you appreciate a culture, you should ask for permission and respect the community’s wishes.

According to the California Budget and Policy Center, college tuition and fees in California are more than 13 times higher than they were in 1980, making it harder for students to come out of college debt-free.

About half of public California college students leave school with student debt; the average graduate has just under $20,000 in debt, according to College Insight.

According to the Washington Post, 72 percent of undergraduate students are eligible to receive some form of financial aid, but students who live in student housing have added costs. The costs to live in the dorms have skyrocketed.

Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed the state’s  $47.1 billion annual higher education spending bill, touting investments he said will address college affordability and accessibility and expand financial aid options for students.

What is the state of financial aid for students in colleges and universities in California? To answer this question, we focused on two bills Newsom recently signed into law:  — AB 469 and AB 1377 — as well as a third bill he vetoed: AB 1456.

Assembly Bill 469: Requiring financial aid applications

AB469 requires all California students to apply for financial aid by filling out either a FAFSA or California Dream Act application form.

Sasha Perez, director of public affairs for the Campaign for College Opportunity, says the bill directs K-12 schools to support these students by helping them fill out these applications.

Perez says it is crucial for students to understand the importance of completing the FAFSA. She also said parents of undocumented students need help navigating the system — and guidance that the California Dream Act application can help students access money to pay for higher ed.

Perez believes the AB469 will increase student enrollment in colleges next school year, allowing more low-income students to apply, especially undocumented students who may assume attending a four-year university is far out of their reach. 

By requiring it, Perez believes will illustrate to many underprivileged students that college can be affordable. 

“To make the FAFSA a requirement, it’s less of a burden for our students.” says Perez. 

Sona Tigranyan, a leader in the College of the Canyons student government, says she sees the importance of having immigrant students on her campus. Tigranyan, herself the daughter of immigrant parents, sees how immigrant students place a high value on their education — perhaps even higher than students who were born in the U.S.. 

“Education is not a privilege but is a right for anyone who wants it,” Tigranyan says. She later adds: “Making financial aid available for dreamers is crucial.”

Assembly Bill 1377: Campus housing plans

Another bill that ensures a better financial security for students is AB 1377. This legislation urges all community colleges, UCs, and CSUs to come up with housing plans for students for the 2022 school year until 2027.

“Across the state, there’s an affordable housing crisis,” says Michael Schouten, chief of legislative affairs for the CSU Northridge Associated Students. Housing is a huge issue for many California residents and students. “By an estimate, one in 10 CSU students and one in 20 UC students are homeless,” says Schouten. 

Schouten says he understands the issue well: He lives more than 40 miles away from Northridge which helps him save money he would otherwise spend on on-campus housing. 

 “I’m living at home right now. I’m Zooming,” he says. “We see some students in some recent studies, driving over two hours just to get to campus.”

Schouten sees the disparity between student housing and how it affects students who also commute to CSUN. 

Perez agrees with Schouten, and she says many universities will have to work with their surrounding cities to ensure the building “dense” housing that can accommodate large numbers of students — a process that may require revisiting local zoning codes.

“It’s going to be a process. I expect there will be hiccups in those processes, but a good faith effort from the state,” says Perez.  

She often hears students complain about the costs of housing, gas, and food. Perez adds that most of these expenses are not considered during the process of applying for financial aid. 

Tigranyan also wonders whether all university administrators are spending their current funding wisely. Perez says it depends on the university, but says she’s heard students complain their school lacks resources they need in order to graduate. 

“We have to realize when we look at state funding,” Schouten says, “certain things are being used for certain projects.” 

One vetoed bill, one new law: expanding the Cal Grant

One major source of financial aid is the Cal Grant program, which offers up to $14,000 dollars a year to students attending the state’s public colleges and universities. The recipients don’t need to pay that money back.

While Governor Newsom did authorize a modest expansion of the Cal Grant program over the summer when he signed AB 132, he vetod a different bill — AB 1456 — that would’ve made even more students eligible for the awards.

AB 1456 will hit many local community colleges hardest, according to the news site CalMatters, which reported that the bill would’ve made 110,000 students there eligible for CalGrants.

Tigranyan stresses educators should focus on reversing the trend of declining student enrollment due to the 5.6 percent of students dropping out. Even through the 2020 school year, about 10% of students in community colleges collapsed nationally. 

“I’m not too sure about why the bill was vetoed but, in my opinion, it might be a good idea to reconsider,” says Tigranyan.

However, Schouten says the bills Newsom signed in October represent one of the “the biggest investments” to aid UCs, CSUs, and the California community college system. He was one of many who supported AB 1456 and was disappointed to see it die, but “take it with a grain of salt,” he says.

 “There’s always another legislative cycle, so what didn’t get through this cycle, may get through the future,” Schouten says, adding: “There is definitely investment in higher ed.”

On May 31, 2020, six days after George Floyd’s death, Latora Green began a protest in front of a shopping mall in Sherman Oaks.

Every day since, Green says she has returned to that same spot to hold a pro-Black Lives Matter demonstration.

Sometimes Green is the only person sitting in on the protest on a given day. On other days, up to 100 fellow demonstrators will join her.

Green has transformed her long-running Black Lives Matter protest into a grass roots organization called The Valley of Change.

As time passed after Floyd’s death, and crowd sizes of larger Black Lives Matter protests in Los Angeles began to diminish Dani Marzouca found Green’s organization through Instagram that was continuing demonstrations. This is when Marzouca met Green. She’s now a regular volunteer with The Valley of Change, which holds monthly community trash cleanups, organizes food donations and gives away school supplies.

“That time period,” Marzouca remembered, “there was just a lot of death in the news and it’s the most natural thing to be angry and express that and being with other people who feel the same way who are willing to fight to create a new world where this doesn’t happen.”

Latora Green, leader of The Valley of Change, directs a volunteer during a community trash cleanup.

The Valley of Change is one small manifestation of the broader Black Lives Matter movement, which The New York Times in 2020 proclaimed, “May be the largest movement in U.S. history.” 

The larger Black Lives Matter Movement started in 2013 when George Zimmerman was acquitted for the death of Trayvon Martin. Leading up to 2021 the organization has sprouted chapters all over the United States and evolved in several ways outside of organizing protests that have made international news.

The Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Chapter is involved with various projects outside of demonstrations, such as creating and inspiring youth leaders, engaging in local and statewide policy initiatives, hosting “know your rights” training sessions for members and allies. The BLMLA Research Team engages in data support for campaigns 

Along Ventura Boulevard, volunteers with Green’s The Valley of Change organization will walk the streets sweeping and picking up debris or trash — which Latora calls, “treasures.” The Valley of Change volunteers also hand out water and other supplies to any unhoused neighbor they encounter. 

“Building up the community — this is an act of justice,” Green tells volunteers during a recent cleanup, “and we need to take care of our environment.”

Latora Green works with several area high schools and invites students to assist with the monthly cleanups and food donations. She even asks students to assist with research about wastes,  plastics and cigarette buttes.

Dani Marzouca sees the future and past of activism, “We see the people creating change, and calling on all the activist before us, ancestors, and people who have shed blood for this movement and believe that together all of that energy will end policing.”

Historian and archivist Keith Rice, who works for the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at CSUN’s University Library, refers to himself as an “academic activist.” He has documented the protests that started in 2020, and says this act of preservation is a necessity.

Keith Rice says he has also photographed Latora Green’s demonstrations on Ventura Boulevard. 

“You can change things on a systematic level,” Rice said, “but you have to change the hearts, the minds, the people.”

As an archivist, Keith Rice oversees a collection that includes historic images of 1960s civil rights movement figures including Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., along with images of events like the 1965 Watts Rebellion.

In those black and white photographs, he sees links to the present-day movement.

“Once I started going and photographing the protests,” Rice said, “and understanding what they stood for, I am a defender of them [Black Lives Matter].”

Decades later, “we see young children bringing their signs every single day as they drive by,” Dani Marzouca says, “putting their fists up, screaming Black Lives Matter.”

This show was produced by Domonique Isabeau, Jessica Harper and Cesia Lopez.

Over a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic caused all school campuses to close down as teachers and students switched over to virtual learning. 

COVID-19 created a huge disruption of schooling. According to Education Week, school building closures during the spring semester of the 2019-20 school year affected 50.8 million public school students.

Since then, campuses have slowly started reopening for in-person classes, though many have limited the number of students who can attend at one time. Governor Gavin Newsom’s office says 86% of schools in California have reopened for in-person classes or “hybrid learning,” referring to a schedule where students attend in-person classes some of the time while also offering some classes virtually

Closures of campuses and social isolation have affected many students in a big way but specifically those who are living in poverty. According to Edutopia, a mental health crisis emerged when students lost access to the services schools offered.

Experts and parents say the pandemic has had a huge effect on the social skills, mental health, and academic progress of the K-12 students. 

Greg Knotts, an education professor at California State University, Northridge said, “this year people have settled into a certain degree of complacency about the delivery of instruction through the virtual medium.” 

While Knotts suggested some are excited by online learning, he said most students have not been able to make as much academic progress as they should.

Many students have thrived during the virtual learning and face-to face environment while other students have not. 

Christian Perez, a social worker in the Pasadena Unified School District, works with students of all ages. His youngest student is a third grader and his oldest is a high school senior. Perez said that he has gotten to see the whole spectrum of experiences with distance learning. Some of his students find the social aspects of school difficult, and have had a positive experience in online classes.

“They don’t have that face-to-face anxiety level of interaction that they had before,” Perez said. “We also saw the other downside where the kids that needed that one-on-one time academically or learning wise actually suffered a lot through virtual learning.” 

Many students have been adapting to the in-person class environment despite still being in the middle of a pandemic.

Jenny Hontz is an advocate for Speak Up Parents. For months, her group has advocated for districts to offer the in-person learning option. But Hontz said right now in the Los Angeles Unified School District, middle and high school students’ only have the option to return to campus to attend Zoom classes in a single classroom for the entirety of the day. 

“We have seen a very low number of families opt in,” Hontz said. “Only 7% of high school students in LAUSD are back on campus.”

The majority of students are currently still in virtual learning. Elementary school students are back in-person five days a week for three hours in instruction. Hontz said more than 30% of families in elementary school have sent their children back.

President Joe Biden proposed $130 billion back in February for school reopenings in his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. All of this money would go towards helping pay for more staff to have smaller class sizes and more learning opportunities for students who have not been doing well.

“I think it’s time for schools to reopen safely, ” Biden said during an interview on CBS.

Hontz noted that in more affluent communities on L.A.’s westside, parents are sending kids back to school at higher rates than in lower-income communities such as South Los Angeles and Southeast Los Angeles.

Hontz has a son in fifth grade who has navigated a challenging experience during the pandemic. She said he has been learning how to operate independently. 

“It has been very difficult as a parent to manage and oversee his education,” said Hontz. 

Is there any upside to students returning to campuses?

“Most of my clients have had a positive experience going back in person,” Perez said. “They really missed their friends and some kids did not like online learning.” 

This show was reported by the following team:

• Beatrice Anoh
• Elizabeth Campus
• Justin Gonzalez
• Alfonso Henry
• Jordan Henry
• Ava Lange

Growing up, Melanie Shaw knew her parents expected her to go to college.

“Our family raises us letting us know there’s elementary school, middle school, high school and there’s college,” said Shaw. The child of Belizean and Honduran parents, Shaw is now a CSUN alumni and CSUN Professor in Africana Studies.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 35% of undergraduates were the first in their families to go to college in the 2015–16 academic year. An additional 26% of students had parents with at least some college experience but not a bachelor’s degree.

First-generation students face difficulties other students may not. Some of these scenarios are having access to advising and academic support from their household. Others may not receive advice passed down from their parents that the children of college graduates might expect to receive.

Fresno State University student Cinthya Zavala came to the U.S. with her parents from El Savador when she was 6 years old. Like Shaw’s family, Zavala’s parents also dreamed that their daughter would attend college, but Zavala herself had to figure out how to pull it off.

“Part of the difficulty was just when you come into a country and you don’t speak the language, and you don’t have any family support it’s just growing,” said Zavala. “Understanding that college was an expectation, but I had to accept that I actually wanted to do it.”

Many first-generation college and university students struggle to prepare themselves for the rigors of higher education.

When he went off to college, “I threw myself into a situation I knew was going to be taxing,” said Bryan Abarca, a Los Angeles City College student, “but I felt like I bought into this idea that it’s like this for everybody.” 

Abarca is also the first in his family to go to college.

“You grow up in a family that wants you to succeed,” Abarca said, “but doesn’t necessarily offer you that helping hand.” 

Feeling ill-prepared was one hurdle, but not having the financial stability was an even bigger barrier to surmount. Kwon-Hyuk “Raphael” Lee, a DACA recipient and first-generation college student originally from South Korea, also battled with this.

While Lee saw his friends flourishing, he didn’t understand why his life had to be more difficult because of his family’s financial status.

“I was having a lot of mental breakdowns because at one point I was so angry because I see a lot of my friends succeeding and doing it,” said Lee. “I know they are sharing all of these accomplishments on their social media but I’m like, ‘Where am I?’”

Zavala, also a DACA recipient, said asking for guidance on applications became a struggle. She recalled a time in high school when she was pulling together financial aid paperwork and asked her school counselors for help.

“I had some questions,” she remembered, “and they were like ‘Oh, you know, we don’t have experience with that, maybe your parents can help you.’ It’s like, my parents have no clue what FAFSA is.”

Even after first-generation students complete higher education, they’re at a disadvantage: they’re less likely to have family contacts that can help them build a career that suits their college degree.

Professor Shaw said networking is a practice that should be viewed as a privilege.

“Even now … I feel that I am playing catch up with everyone in my department, even though it’s the Department of Africana studies,” said Shaw. “I’m in a department with other amazing educated individuals that are of color [and] I still feel that there are more steps that I have to take.” 

Like Professor Shaw, Abarca also feels that he has to put in more effort.

“Regardless of what POC group you come from it’s always like five steps up and two steps back,” said Abarca. “You have to work twice as hard to get half the results.”

This show was produced by the following team:

• Emily Brubaker
• Katherine Hernandez
• Mary Paronyan
• Dailyn Simmons
• Diane Zermeño

Over a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic set the nation into an economic recession.

The downturn hit women — particularly Black and Hispanic women — hard, erasing decades of advancements in the workforce and creating what The New York Times is calling a “Shecession.”

When the pandemic hit, unemployment rates among women briefly spiked to an all time high. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 3 million women left the labor force between March and April 2020. Since then, only 2 million women have returned to work.

The last time there were this few women in the American workforce was 1987. 

A number of factors have played a key role in the Shecession.

Gemma Zamarro, a professor at the University of Arkansas and senior economist at the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research, said the pandemic and social distancing measures have primarily impacted female-dominated service-industry workplaces such as restaurants and hotels.

Zamarro said the closures of childcare centers and schools has also placed more responsibilities on women.

Now, many women have been forced to serve as both caretakers and teachers while also working. Their alternative is to leave the workforce altogether.

Chelsea Alford, a single mother and owner of the Slay Room, a small beauty business that offers products to empower women, said she had to “scramble” to make sure her child continued his education, while she tried to come up with other streams of income to pay bills.

During the pandemic, “being a mom especially has felt like a non-stop duty— a job you can never check out of” said Marcella Badillo, a mother of two and activities director at a local charter school.

Zamarro and Alford both had similar experiences as Badillo. They say they took on the roles and responsibilities of a full-time teacher, IT person, while also cooking and cleaning.

“In the back of your head you still have to do what’s best for you and figure out how you’re going to get more money,” said Alford. “All of that took a toll on an individual.”

The closures of childcare facilities and schools has not only revealed the amount of responsibility that has been forced upon women, but alsodemonstrated the shortcomings of United States’ childcare system.

“Childcare has been a problem that we have had for a long time,” said Zamarro, “and the pandemic is showing us how weak it is.”

The Biden Administration recently released $39 billion to help relieve those child care providers who were hit the hardest during the pandemic.

“More people are seeing that affordable childcare is a big deal,” Vice-President Kamala Harris said during a March visit to a Connecticut child development center.

Many childcare centers are privately funded and so the best way to move forward is for more government investment in both childcare and education, Zamarro said.

Evan Jackson is an entertainment reporter and owner of Young Bold & Regal Media Company, which features interviews of black women and women of color in entertainment. Jackson said many of the actors and women of color he’s interviewed have had to pick up new skills in order to stay afloat during the many closures that faced the entertainment industry.

There are consequences for not responding to the Shecession,” Jackson said: “Those women of color and Black women are left out of the loop  when it comes to the investments and when it comes to investing in them.”

Is there any upside to the Shecession?

“Hopefully,” Zamarro said, “there is more understanding and more flexibility in terms of hours or working from home when needed, more support for family leave within employers.” 

Jackson believes there’s hope and that people are “opening their eyes” and taking action in supporting disenfranchised groups, including minorities and women.

This show was produced by the following team:

• Beatrice Anoh
• Elizabeth Campos
• Justin Gonzalez
• Alfonso Henry
• Jordan Henry
• Ava Lange

The COVID-19 pandemic put many high school sports on pause for much of the last year. 

But following pressure from groups like “Let Them Play California,” officials in the state’s Department of Public Health and the California Interscholastic Federation recently announced new rules allowing all sports in California to resume play.

That includes not only outdoor sports like football, but indoor sports like basketball and volleyball. The addition of indoor sports comes after a deal with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office last week. 

The deal also calls for mandatory COVID-19 testing for all players and coaches.

Under the new rules, high school sports will be allowed to return when a county’s case rate drops below fourteen daily COVID cases per hundred thousand people. Case rates in several Southern California counties, including Los Angeles, just dipped below that level recently.

This debate over whether to let these athletes go back and play has been intense in California. 

Bradley Hensley says he co-founded Let Them Play California “out of desperation.”

He said his organization grew as limitations on high school sports stretched beyond last spring, and then through the summer.

“We got to the fall, they canceled, they postponed the season. And they kept saying ‘Oh, next month, next month’” Hensley said. “And they finally issued guidance [on high school sports] in December, and once they issued guidance, we realized the kids would probably never play again and they had no outlets.”

”We basically understood there was no voice for youth rights,” Hensley added. “We really didn’t know what we were doing frankly, and we said, “okay let’s start a Facebook page.” 

 Hensley’s  son is a junior and a quarterback on his high school’s football team. Like many athletes, his son hopes his performance on the field can help him get into college.  

“In order to get recruited,” Hensley said, “he needs to have a varsity film and with no games, there’s no film — so [colleges] don’t look at California kids.”

Hosting a sporting event is not without risk. In a guidance document about youth sporting events, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control advises that “safely hosting a large event, including sporting events, in areas where there are high levels of COVID-19 within the community will be challenging.”

But Hensley says many parents worry about the physical and mental health risks of preventing high schoolers from participating in the sports they love.  

“We have a mental health crisis with our kids because they have no outlets,” Hensley said. “The damage we’re gonna see is a second pandemic. Depression, isolation, suicide ideation and sadly suicide. 

“Sports are proven to help kids both emotionally physically, and psychologically,” Hensley added. “ They’ve lost out on that for several months.” 

Clarissa Nuñez, a cross country and track athlete at Oxnard High School, says being away from her team has been hard.“I tended to isolate myself a lot because of the pandemic and because sports were canceled a while now,” Nuñez said. “I just worked out in my room but it’s not the same when you go outside with a team.”

Some coaches wonder how much time with limited practices, training or conditioning will affect some athletes. 

“I don’t want to rush things,” said Darnell Furman, the basketball coach at Alta Loma High School in Rancho Cucamonga. “I still wanna give them as much time as possible to get in shape. Even though we wanna be playing right away I’m concerned with their fitness so I’m gonna have to watch minutes.”

Nuñez has been mentally and physically getting ready.

“I need to like get back out there,” she said. “I had to do you know yoga, I have to run more because I haven’t been able to run because of the pandemic. You know it’s been pretty hard, but I’ve been preparing myself by working out even harder than before.” 

Nuñez says sports are important to her and she’s happy to have them back.

“Sports have definitely helped me mentally and both physically,” she said. “I could definitely see the difference when I’m in the sport and when I’m not and like now when things are starting up everything’s like opening up again little by little so it’s like been bettering for myself and everyone else.”

This show was produced by the following team:

• I’Yonna Applon Kettles
• Abtin Mashadi
• Malik Patterson
• Cynthia Puga
• Jahaiara Quazi

When a group of casual investors rallied around gaming and electronics retailer GameStop last month, they didn’t only drive a handful of hedge funds close to bankruptcy; they sparked a national conversation about class inequalities in the stock market.

Word spread across social media apps about an upcoming plan to raise the price of GameStop’s stock throughout the last week of January. It ultimately sparked interest in the mainstream as an example of how to make profit in the midst of a sluggish pandemic economy.

In the past year alone, CNBC reports the number of casual investors — sometimes known as “retail investors” — on Wall Street has doubled. The mobile trading app Robinhood became the popular destination for the majority of those involved.

“The biggest benefit of trading nowadays is that you have access to so much research and trading strategies by professionals,” said Daniel Burdick who, outside of his day job as a manager for SoCal Labs, is an active user of the E*Trade platform. “You can earn real good compared to back in the day. Nowadays, you can learn to do it yourself and take on your own risk and build your portfolio to your liking.”

A group of investors on a Reddit forum called “Wall Street Bets” influenced investors. Encouraged by GameStop’s turnaround plan — and enraged by hedge funds betting big money that GameStop would fail — investors drove the company’s stock to 180% above its previous value.

As a result, hedge funds’ big bet against GameStop went sour. Because they put money behind the expectation that GameStop’s stock price would go down, the hedge funds lost huge sums when the price skyrocketed.

A stock represents a small portion of a company that can be sold or bought. Stocks go up and down frequently, which is why people try to purchase a stock at its lowest possible price, then sell it during its highest peak to make big money. In sum, the bigger the stock, the bigger the profit. Hedge funds came into the picture later on. This is when companies take the money and store them in “hedges”.

“If stocks were easy,” said Burdick, “then you wouldn’t be able to make that much money because you have to take on risk… It’s like a get rich quick scheme with the Game Stop AMC thing.”

On January 28, Robinhood and other trading apps made a historic move and halted trading of stocks like GameStop and AMC. AMC is another publicly traded company that was mentioned in the Wall Street Bets Reddit thread. In an official statement, Robinhood said the decision to suspend trading of these stocks was made amid “significant market volatility” and reminded users about their company’s mission statement to “democratize finance for all.”

Professional poker player and investor Stranton Willhelm said he noticed suspicious activity on the app he uses to trade the day after he bought $20,000 worth of AMC stock. Willhelm said the app had blocked him from trading on what he calls the “busiest day of trading” so far — and the app’s stated reason for blocking his trading keeps changing.

“It wouldn’t let me access it because they were ‘adding new features on the app,’” Willhelm said. “And then 30 minutes later it said ‘due to an overload of trading you cannot trade right now.’ Then 30 minutes after that, it completely locked me out of my account and blamed it on me. This whole day’s worth of lies and then they couldn’t make up their mind of which lie they wanted to stick to.”

Hedge funds’ stocks promised GameStop stocks to the brokers of the bank, which was to be one hundred dollars or less, but was actually more. Other stocks then had to be liquidated and GameStop stocks had to be purchased in repayment. The hedge funds were disappointed because they need bigger hedges to make bigger investments. Because they had smaller money, they had to buy smaller stocks, like GameStop.

“Wall Street, I feel like they just felt, ‘We have all these people on the internet trying to beat [us] at their own game,’” said Burdick. “  … And I get that. GameStop obviously wasn’t worth what the price was indicating. That’s not really how stock trading works — but the restricting part, that kind of goes against everything Robinhood stands for.”

GameStop was struggling to stay alive in the last few years prior to the COVID-19 financial crisis; already making it an easy target for hedge fund traders. It’s now easy to buy and instantly download video games online,  and COVID-19 regulations forced GameStop’s retail locations to close last year. Casino games are also becoming very popular among online players, which is a convenient and accessible way to enjoy casino games like UFABET มีความโปร่งใสและยุติธรรม. GameStop found sympathizers on Reddit, which many gamers also frequent.

When gamers discovered how hedge funds were looking to profit off the company, they became furious. They sprang into action by joining the Wall Street Bets thread, where they signed a contract which said they are obligated to buy all GameStop stock.

The following team produced this story:

• Katherine Hernandez
• Emily Brubaker
• Mary Paronyan
• Dailyn Simmons
• Diane Zermeño

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on many people’s finances.

More than 57 million Americans have filed for unemployment since March. Most have already spent their one-time stimulus check from the federal government.

Many have been able to return to work. Still, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that in October, more than 15 million people were still out of the job or working fewer hours “because their employer closed or lost business due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

With many struggling to get jobs these days, Americans have turned to their hobbies, talents, or side hustles into full-time work.

Zamir Hurtte, a lash and nail technician, decided to take control by making her side-hustle her day job — but she says business has been “off and on.”

“It has some good days and some bad days,” Hurtte said. “Some days I will have multiple clients and some weeks I won’t have any. It really just depends I guess on the service they might want or how they’re feeling because … I won’t work with anybody that feels sick.”

There are signs more people are starting businesses during the pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal reports more people are filing requests for an Employer ID Number — which they’d need to start a business. More than 3.2 million entrepreneurs have applied for one so far this year, compared with 2.7 million at the same point in 2019.

Fontana resident Hannah Fields works full-time at an Amazon warehouse while also running her own side business as a lash technician.

“I work graveyards now with doing lashes on the side on my days off,” she said.

“I was fascinated with lashes and I loved how they looked,” Fields added. “I remember seeing a lot of these new lash techs coming out, [saying], ‘Oh, well, you know I can make my own schedule. I can make my own money’…”

The freedom was a draw for Fields.

“I wanted to open up my schedule more,” she said, “for ministry and travel and family and stuff like that.”

It’s a difficult time to own a business, which must deal with new health and safety restrictions, limits on their operations, and the closure of indoor venues. As the pandemic has swept through the U.S., nearly 100,000 small businesses have closed permanently, according to a recent Yelp analysis.

But for Fields, the pandemic has been a great time to start a new venture.

“The worst thing that could happen is you fail,” she said, “but you learn so much from it — and just don’t give up. You’re going to have moments where you feel like you can’t do this but you know what take a deep breath, pray, do whatever you have to do and get it done because the results in the end are the best.”

This show was reported by the following team:

• Nikiko Burnett, anchor
• Tayler Lawson, producer
• Tia Lawson, producer
• Yahaira Joaquin Flores, moderator
• Jeanie Rodriguez, producer

A divided Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as the 115th Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, Oct. 26.

How will Justice Barrett’s appointment affect our nation’s politics?

“I would expect that the decisions that come out of the court on anything like abortion, immigration, crime control— a lot of these are gonna have a much more conservative perspective,” said Craig Renetzky, a criminal defense attorney and lecturer in CSUN’s Department of Criminology and Justice Studies.

But Renetzky also said Supreme Court justices’ political philosophies can change over the course of their lifetime appointments.

Democrats have raised concerns that that Barrett’s religious views may interfere with her decisions.

“She’s a disciple of the late Justice Antonin Scalia,” said Bruce Zucker, Associated Chair of Criminology and Justice Studies at CSUN — a justice who, Zucker says, is no liberal, “but he wasn’t as far to the right as people like [Justice] Clarence Thomas have proven to be.”

Zucker further gave an example on how Scalia surprised people with his decision when “Scalia blasted sort of the conservative bent” on a criminal defense arena.

Although Scalia had a conservative bent at times, and this can in turn give people hope that Justice Barrett will have the same approach on decisions.

It is important to note that Barrett’s mentor Justice Antonin Scalia was a constitutional originalist.

Kimberly West-Faulcon, Professor of Law at Loyola Marymount University, said Scalia and Barrett both ascribe to a judicial philosophy known as “original public meaning originalism.”

“It sounds great to the lay person,” West-Faulcon said, “but it operates in such a way that the judges who are implementing it have an immense amount of power.”

“The reality,” West-Faulcon added, “is [originalism] is a way to cover up a lot of your ideological beliefs a lot of things that you may not, in your own mind, know.”

Many abortion rights activists are are concerned Barrett may cast a decisive vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision.

“That would mean we would return to the status quo that existed before Roe v. Wade,” said Bertrall Ross, the Chancellor’s Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, “in which it would be a state determination as to whether and to what extent women would have reproductive freedom and certain states would make different choices.”

Liberals worry not only about reproductive rights, but also about gun policies.

West-Faulcon believes Barrett and Justice Brett Kavanaugh might be willing to rule favorably on more permissive gun laws.

“Justice Kavanaugh and again I think Justice Barrett is willing to … say, ‘Well if a lot of people have the weapon, it’s no longer unusual,’” West-Faulcon said. “That’s an approach that could mean that the most dangerous assault rifles, if enough Americans were to buy them, we could live in a dystopian America where people are walking around everywhere with assault rifles.”

“Sadly, for some Americans,” West-Faulcon added, “what I  just described is not dystopia it is what they see when they walk out of their homes.”

This story was reported by the following team:

• Muhammed Asad, anchor
• Chloe Hooper, producer
• Alexia Mersola, moderator
• Desiree Leon Rosales, producer
• Gina Wong, producer