Protest and demonstrations often get old.
Where once seeing a sign with pictures and messages written on it had some significance, now people usually shrug and pass by without a second thought.
Associated Students Inc., however, has thought of a unique way to engage students in actively creating change in their community and drawing attention to the problem of homelessness.
ASI is doing its part to help reduce homelessness and raise community awareness by hosting a “B.E.A.C.H. Sleepout.” B.E.A.C.H. Sleepout is an event where students are invited to the Central Quad on Upper Campus near the McIntosh Humanities building from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon to hear speakers, testimonies and luminaries voice concerns and illuminate the lesser-known aspects of what it means to be homeless.
The event is the first of its kind this year at Cal State Long Beach, but similar events have been hosted at other schools including UC Irvine, according to Andrea Esposito, the community service coordinator for ASI.
Probably the most important part of the event is the spectacle the sleepout has the potential to create. Students are invited to sleep on the grass between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon of this week.
Even if a vast majority of students choose not to partake, a miniscule percentage of the students participating in such an event certainly would send a message to the city of Long Beach that the CSULB community cares about the homeless that are so abundant in Southern California. A percentage as small as 3 percent would draw out more than 1,000 49ers.
Having 1,000 people sleeping out on the Central Quad would certainly be quite a sight and merit attention from not only from Long Beach’s City Council, but from other large organizations and local governments as well.
In L.A. County, homelessness abounds, highlighted by Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, which has become so bad and sadly so socially acceptable that police have been known to drop people off on the street who have no other place to go.
Long Beach, too, is no stranger to the problem of homelessness. Within the pages of the Long Beach Press-Telegram, stories about homeless people abound. Homeless people being kicked off the steps of a local church, homeless people cropping up in new areas of the city, homeless people meagerly getting by and suffering in poverty – the list goes on and on.
CSULB has some clout in California. We’re one of the largest universities in the state. A significant number of students turning outwould speak to the importance of an issue that often gets overlooked and ignored.
The only shortcoming the sleepout may have is that it isn’t happening in conjunction with other local schools. Organizing a collective effort with other schools around the Southern California area would definitely add strength to the message students would be sending local legislators about their concerns regarding the problem of homelessness.
Too often people recognize a problem but say they don’t know how they can get involved. Now the opportunity to become active in a solution to a huge social problem is right in front of us.
