MLK Day volunteer work helps kick off CSUMB’s Welcome Back Week

By Mark Muckenfuss

It was a battle between Lucy Larios and the Australian salt grass.

Crouched over the tangled tendrils of a large clump of the invasive plant, in an open field near Elkhorn Slough, Larios, a third-year marine science student at Cal State Monterey Bay, was refusing to give up. She pulled and threaded the plant, loosening it from the surrounding vegetation it was integrated with, working her way eventually to the root. Grasping the bread-basket-sized plant with both hands, she slowly ripped it from the earth. 

“It felt really satisfying to feel it come out of the ground,” Larios said, after tossing the plant into a pile of other salt grass and moving on to her next victim.

Larios was among 70 students who spent the first part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day doing community volunteer work. It was a good way to kick off a week filled with activities as students returned to campus from winter break. Some volunteers travelled to one of two sites along Elkhorn Slough, while two other groups went to service sites in Seaside. 

Erika Bruce, with the California Climate Action Corps, was directing the students at a marsh restoration area above the slough. She showed them how to identify the native and invasive plants in a cordoned-off plot, and how best to remove the invasive salt grass, wild radish and mustard plants. 

Removing them, she said, “will free up quite a bit of our space for the natives.”

The area where the students were working has been artificially elevated by trucking in soil. It’s a strategy for what scientists expect will occur over the coming years with climate change.  

“As sea level rises, if the level is too high for these native plants, they’re going to get too much salt and die off,” Bruce said. “We are building a version of the marsh for the future.”

Many of the students working the site are members of College Corps, a program connected with AmeriCorps, a volunteer-based organization for college-age students. Cydney Gaither, who graduated with a degree in global studies in May, is recruitment and retention coordinator for CSUMB’s chapter of College Corps. She said she and others began planning the volunteer day activities in October. 

Since its inception at CSUMB, Gaither said, “College Corps has been serving on MLK Day.”

Currently, she said, there are 69 students in the program. They are required to volunteer for 450 hours during the academic year. In turn, they receive a $7,000 annual stipend to help defer their educational expenses and a $3,000 award at the end of the year.  

While Gaither and others were yanking away at troublesome plants, another group of mostly College Corps students was tackling projects at Seaside’s Community Partnership for Youth headquarters. 

Director Ben Bruce (no relation to Erika) said the organization has a long history of partnering with CSUMB. 

“We’ve been participating with the Service Learning Institute since its inception,” Bruce said. “This is our second year with College Corps.” 

The program serves 450 kids each day, he said, largely at remote sites. Often, he added, since staff aren’t present at the headquarters, work falls behind on projects there. 

“To have a day like today where we get a solid group of students and have these projects laid out, it’s huge,” Bruce said. “It’s a special day.”

Thorn Perez, in her second year as a humanities and communication major, was painting over the logo on some visors that had been donated to Community Partnership for Youth. The plan was for kids to eventually paint their own designs on the hats. 

“I know these visors are going to be really fun arts and crafts for these kids,” Perez said, brushing a second coat of white paint onto a visor. It was making her happy too. “I love giving back to my community. I benefited from groups like this when I was a kid in San Diego.”

For Azuki Shoji, a Japanese student who is doing her third year of psychology studies at CSUMB, it was a unique experience.

“In Japan, I didn’t have much opportunity to volunteer,” Shoji said. “I saw this on My Raft and I was like, ‘I have to do that.’ It’s so much fun. I’m doing something for other people.”

Opportunities for fun are in no short supply on the CSUMB campus this week, with a slew of welcome back activities that include the following:

• A magic show with South Korea’s Jeki Yoo at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Otter Student Union ballroom;
• A bike repair workshop from 5-7 p.m. Thursday at the Otter Bike Center;
• A high-ropes adventure session from noon to 3 p.m. Friday at the Challenge Course; and 
• The Winter Ball from 8-11 p.m. Friday in the OSU ballroom. 

A full list of events can be found on the Traditions website.