By KARI NEERING THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: June 2, 2003)

A housing office created to help match interested Rockland Community College students with prospective rentals in the county is rarely open and doesn't provide students with enough information, according to school employees.

Kim Sojak, secretary in the college's international student services office, said she and her co-workers have helped just as many students than before the office was created, even though it was supposed to ease their load. With more than 250 international students enrolled, Sojak said the group of students weren't getting enough help from the housing office.

"It's very frustrating, even for us," she said. "I don't know if it's because of the hours there or what. Whatever it is, it's not working. And we have to stick to what we know works here."

The housing office was established two years ago to help athletes and international students find a place to live. The college's intention was not to act as an agent or landlord, but merely a referral service.

Gary Peskin was asked to stretch his responsibilities as an employee in the athletic department to assist students. No new money was available to hire new faculty, so the college worked out a new schedule for Peskin.

But a recent academic reorganization changed that schedule, giving him less time to devote to the housing office.

Peskin deferred all comments to his boss, Athletic Director Dan Keeley, who said 491 students picked up a housing list from the office this academic year. The list was updated every two weeks, he said, and nearly 120 listings were not renewed, presumably because they got a tenant.

"On our end, it's doing fine," Keeley said of the office. "Is it the best housing office in Rockland county? No. But we do what we can."

The college began the office in the spring of 2001. Officials asked landlords with apartments, basements, rooms or other vacancies near the main campus in Suffern to contact them with listings.

Maria Dell'Arciprete, coordinator of international student services at the college, said the housing situation in Rockland was tough on foreign students who already lacked the credit history and references most landlords require.

Local housing and real estate experts say monthly rent on most two-bedroom units in the county can range from $1,200 to $1,500 — apartments that are hard to come by, even for locals.

Dell'Arciprete said because foreign students don't know the country, language or culture, they needed help throughout the process. The housing office was helping athletes, she said, but she was disappointed in its effort to help foreign students.

"A person comes from halfway around the world ... how can you expect to hand them a list and just say 'here?' " she asked.

Maria Salazar, 25, arrived at the school from Venezuela in 2000, and left and came back in 2002 with no place to live. Instead of the housing office, she sought help from the international student services office, and within a week, had an apartment in Suffern.

"I tried to look for an apartment at first, by myself, but as a student, it was very hard," said Salazar. "You have to have a job, and credit, and more than $2,000 a month for rent."

Dell'Arciprete said her office has a strong relationship with Suffern Realtors who called regularly with new listings for students. Originally it made sense that she and Peskin would work together, she said, but it never happened.

Though a growing number of community colleges in New York state either offer or are considering campus dormitories, the college has no such plans in the near future.

Keeley said that in addition to athletes and international students, the office was open to any RCC student in need of housing. He said the college was renewing its housing effort this year and hoped to help more students.

"It's a valuable service that we provide," he said, "and I hope it's as helpful as I think it is."

Three Providence youths testify in support of a bill that would allow students who are undocumented immigrants to attend the state's public colleges.

05/30/2003 BY MARION DAVIS The Providence Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Liseth Rincon graduated from Central High School last year with a 4.0 grade-point average. She had been active in extracurricular activities. Getting into college should have been a breeze.

But Rincon, 18, was born in Venezuela. She came here with her family three years ago, and she has no green card, no Social Security number.

She found out in her senior year what that meant for her dreams.

No state or federal financial aid -- so forget private colleges. Out-of-state tuition at the University of Rhode Island, well beyond her reach. And exclusion from the schools she might be able to afford, Rhode Island College or the Community College of Rhode Island.

Each year, as many as 50,000 to 75,000 students like Rincon graduate from the nation's public schools, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized their right to a K-12 education, but through a combination of federal law and local policies, their journey often

QUESTION: Okay, another subject, yes. Mr. Gaviria is in Caracas to support the sign of an agreement between the opposition leaders of Venezuela and the government. I just want to know the importance of the U.S. -- of the -- that your government is giving to the sign of an agreement which reproduced rights of the Venezuelan constitution. What is the big deal in that?

MR. BOUCHER: Well, we think it is important that they have taken this step. We certainly welcome the agreement that the Government of Venezuela and the opposition reached this last Friday, May 23rd, to set the framework for a referendum on the tenure of President Chavez and other elected officials. I think it does reflect hard work and a commitment of Venezuelan negotiators, as well as their international supporters and the Secretary General of the OAS.

We look forward to both sides signing the accord. We will continue working with our partners to facilitate a peaceful, constitutional, democratic and electoral solution to Venezuela's political impasse.

We note that the agreement recognizes the important role the international community can still play in providing technical observation and monitoring assistance for any future electoral process.

So it is important in that the parties have agreed to implement the provisions of the Venezuelan constitution that are discussed there, and we think that is a political and constitutional way to move forward and resolve some of the tension here.

QUESTION: Richard --

QUESTION: Excuse me. To follow up, is Venezuela in any way to be worried on the current relationship between both countries, between the United States and Venezuela, needs to be worrying?

MR. BOUCHER: I think we have taken this issue by issue. We have spoken pretty loudly about some of the events in Venezuela, particularly a crackdown on freedom of the press, a crackdown on political and electoral freedoms that have taken place. And we have looked very strongly to this process led by Secretary General Gaviria of the Organization of American States to try to reestablish a sense of political balance in that country and to establish the basic rights of Venezuelan citizens. So we think this is important in that regard and I think this is a way of getting away from the tensions and the problems that have existed in the relationship with the United States.

Article Published: Sunday, May 25, 2003 - 12:00:00 AM MST By Diane Carman, Special to The Denver Post

Yolando Vallejo didn't care. The Rifle High School student said she never felt like she belonged in school. School seemed irrelevant.

"I had family problems," she said. "I always learned a lot when things happened to me." School was not happening.

So she decided she was going to quit, get a job, do something real.

Then the unexpected happened.

School got real.

Rifle High School Spanish teacher Maria Carrion-Kozak saw some information about a program at the University of Denver Center for Teaching International Relations. She was the adviser for the International Affairs Club. This looked interesting.

Carrion-Kozak is from Venezuela, and, as it turned out, the 20 students who joined the club were all Latinos - some first-generation immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador.

In many ways, the club was a refuge for them. Many were struggling with English, and some were barely passing their courses.

Most knew what it was like to feel isolated and foreign even in their own hometown. In the club, they translated for each other. In the club, they stuck up for each other.

Elizabeth Beindorff, project director for the DU World Affairs Challenge, invited them to participate in a statewide competition for a student project on world hunger.

But International Affairs was just a little club at a rural school with no money. It seemed impossible.

No problem, Beindorff said. She offered to waive the registration fee. She sent the materials and urged them to try.

Carrion-Kozak admits she was freaked.

"I was not prepared for this at all," she said. "I'm a Spanish teacher. I have no background in this."

But the students were eager, so she enlisted Kim Goossens, a school board member, to help with the project, and they went to work.

The kids began doing research after school. None of them had a personal computer at home, so most of the work was done at the homes of Carrion-Kozak and Goossens.

The students identified the 25 hungriest countries in the world and the causes of hunger in each of them. They learned that 1 billion people don't have enough to eat, that nearly half of them are children.

Once the students began to realize the scope of the problem, they mobilized quickly.

They organized a hunger strike at school, asking students to forgo lunch to experience what it's like to be hungry. They urged them to contribute their lunch money for hunger relief. They raised nearly $400.

They volunteered in a soup kitchen. They researched the hunger relief organization Heifer International, and used their money to buy a water buffalo to help starving villagers in the developing world. And they wrote and performed a skit, complete with a video presentation and music produced by a student rock band and the school choir.

Then they held more fundraisers, this time to pay for transportation to Denver for the competition in March at DU.

Despite all their work, they were prepared to get creamed.

Many of their competitors were from tony suburban schools. Some of them were from gifted-and-talented programs. They were just poor Latino kids from Rifle.

They smoked them.

On Thursday, they brought their winning project, "Giving a Face to Hunger," to the World Trade Day business conference in Denver.

In front of a painted cardboard set, wearing handmade costumes and few signs of nerves, the students delivered their poignant, powerful dramatization of the plight of the hungry to a roomful of buttondown business types.

When the students finished, the place erupted. The businessmen and women wiped tears from their eyes and gave them a standing ovation.

It wasn't just the skit.

At a time when a third of Latino students don't finish high school and teachers struggle to make school more compelling than a $6- an-hour job in a fast-food joint, a bunch of brown-faced kids with mediocre grades and limited English skills discovered their own remarkable ability.

"A lot of people didn't believe in us because the club is 100 percent Latino. Then we won," Leidy Ruiz said.

"We proved to ourselves and others that we don't all drop out and that we're smarter than we look," said Vallejo, who admits she's decided to stay in school - and not just because of the sudden acclaim.

Winning the competition was great, she said, but to her something else was more important. She discovered that even a bunch of poor kids from Rifle could make a difference.

"To be able to change even one person's life, that was the best thing."

As she spoke, Carrion-Kozak passed a tissue to Beindorff. The tears were welling up again.

They knew just what she meant.

Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail: dcarman@denverpost.com .

chronicle-tribune.com By KRISTEN HARTY, Minority affairs reporter. kharty@marion.gannett.com

I discovered last week that the world is divided into two sorts of people -- people who can roll their 'r's and people who can't.

I fall into the latter category.

Ray Vasquez was trying not to laugh at me on the first night of Spanish class at the YWCA of Marion. We were going around the table, pronouncing the Spanish vowel sounds and consonant sounds, most of which are very similar to English.

Eventually -- inevitably -- we got to the 'r.'

"Say "errrre," Vasquez said, rolling the sound effortlessly off his tongue.

I already knew I couldn't do it. I know a little French and a little German and used to speak Hebrew pretty fluently. Never could roll a darn 'r.'

So I hesitated, of course. Tried to will my 'r' to roll. Everyone was looking at me and waiting in anticipation.

"ARE," I said. The sound stuck in my throat like an engine that wouldn't start.

Vasquez, who seems to be a very nice man -- pleasant and patient like a good teacher should be -- actually giggled a little bit. I know he couldn't help it.

And truthfully, the class was about evenly split between those who could roll and those who couldn't.

"It's not in your language, so you don't learn how to do it," said Vasquez, a native of Venezuela, who translates and teaches Spanish in a number of Grant County settings. "Don't be afraid to say it wrong because nobody's going to joke about it. This is a learning place."

And anyway, the point of taking the eight-week beginning Spanish class at the YWCA isn't to perfect the language or its pronunciation. The class is designed to give people a little exposure to the Spanish language and culture.

I'm taking it because I always feel ignorant that I don't know the most rudimentary rules of Spanish, and because in Marion there is a pretty good-sized Hispanic population that is growing. It's hard to make friends with people or understand who they are if you don't know anything about their language or culture.

So this is a start, a small effort to expand my horizons just a bit.

And the YWCA class is supposed to be fun, Vasquez said.

"This is the thing I can tell you, Spanish is not difficult to learn," he said. "It's just about patience, perseverance, time and having someone who can help you out."

Sounds like a worthwhile challenge.

As far as learning to roll an 'r,' however, it may be hopeless.

"Say 'carrrrrra,'" Vasquez said.

"CaR-ah," said I. "CaR-ah."

Er....Er...Ugh.

Originally published Sunday, May 25, 2003