Miguel Rivera did not retain a lot of what was taught at the “Every 15 Minutes” event that he attended as a senior at Norwalk High School in 2009, but when he returned two years later he was far-better prepared. Such events takes place each year at high schools across the country. They feature gruesome, yet staged car accidents strewn with “injured” and “dead” students, and such reality checks as a Grim Reaper removing a student from a classroom every 15 minutes to die, corresponding to the frequency of teenage death in the U.S. due to drunk driving. Rivera, now a sociology and business administration double major at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) and founder of ... Read More
Features
MSA Spring Summit Strengthens Brotherhood Among 1,000 Young Men of Color
When Jeff Duncan-Andrade saw an African-American and a Latino student straightening each other's ties before the opening ceremony of the Male Success Alliance (MSA) 7th Annual Spring Summit “Reclaiming Our Legacy: Achievement, Advancement and Advocacy,” he was reaffirmed of how “legit” the event and the university's commitment to helping young men of color is. For Duncan-Andrade, an associate professor of Raza studies and education administration and interdisciplinary studies at San Francisco State University, it was his fourth time speaking at the day-long summit. Hosted by the MSA at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) on Feb. 4, the summit featured workshops, ... Read More
Walter Mosley shares his work and personal reflections of the Watts Rebellion
With his wryly clever conversational style, best-selling author Walter Mosley charmed a packed Loker Student Union ballroom after stopping by California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) Feb. 16 for a reading from his novel “Little Scarlet,” and to share thoughts about writing, racial inequity, and his personal reflections of the Watts Rebellion. Mosley was the guest speaker for the Department of English 2016 Patricia Eliet Memorial Lecture. He is a prolific writer of more than 40 books–ranging from crime novels to literary fiction–and is widely recognized for his Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins detective series based in Watts, which includes the first book in the series “Devil in the Blue ... Read More
Shari Berkowitz and her colleagues discover that sleep deprivation increases risk of false confession
Shari R. Berkowitz, an assistant professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), and her fellow researchers provide the first empirical evidence that sleep deprivation increases the risk an innocent person will falsely confess to an act of wrongdoing. Berkowitz and her colleagues published their paper “Sleep deprivation and false confessions,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Berkowitz assisted in designing the experiment, creating the research materials, and writing the paper. The researchers' breakthrough study found that after a single request, the odds of participants providing a false admission were 4.5 times higher if they had ... Read More
A Change is Going to Come. But When?
What happens after a community rises up in protest and demands an end to inequality, brutality, racism and economic injustice? Justin Gammage, CSU Dominguez Hills assistant professor of Africana studies, examines whether or not civil rights movements – both past and present – have effected change. For the last couple of years, an angry chorus of protest has risen in response to a string of police shootings that have resulted in the deaths of unarmed African Americans across the United States. The Black Lives Matter movement, along with other activist groups, have newly elevated an old, persistent issue into the national dialogue. “In the last three years, there have been the largest ... Read More