Student employees in the Loker Student Union at California State University, Dominguez Hills provide a variety of services throughout the 120,000-square-foot facility, from greeting visitors at the information desk to overseeing laptop rentals. This semester, they also extended a helping hand to the homeless through a service project by buying and collecting items from the campus community and delivering more than 100 hygiene packs to the homeless on Town and 4th Streets in downtown Los Angeles. The packs were delivered last month to the area by Damesha McKnight, senior, biology, and Lily Guillen, senior, sociology. The two students accompanied Dr. Sophia Momand, a physician in Student Health and Psychological Services, who regularly visits Skid Row to dispense basic health care and medicine.
The scene on Skid Row is not new to McKnight, who has also participated in the biweekly visit to the area by students in the Pan African Union make to the area, delivering a lunch of hot dogs and encouragement to the residents.
“Some of us live in L.A. and see these people on a daily basis,” she said. “We don’t want to finish college and forget where we came from. We are struggling college students, and we took money out of our own pockets to get this stuff. It was a challenge for some of us, but we gave. Whatever they need, we want to be able to give it to them.”
McKnight said that while some students were hesitant at first to participate in the hygiene pack project, they learned from watching others take part.
“I think it taught people how to care,” she said. “As they saw it go on, it touched a lot of people.”
Stacy Dixon, a junior majoring in business administration, said that recognizing that there will always be those even less fortunate is important for college students.
“Even though we might have tough times, there’s always someone else who’s going through even tougher times,” he said. “It’s always good to look out for others and do for [them] what you would do for yourself.”
For information on the Loker Student Union, click here.
