Students who work at Fresno City College have been affected by the campus shutting down due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Most students who were already working before the pandemic did not lose their jobs initially. Kathy Bonilla, Fresno City College’s public information officer, said FCC has “paid student aides through the end of April using the hours they had worked in February.”

Eventually though, some positions were affected.

“Because of expected budget cuts, we put a hold on student aides, provisional positions and some new hires,” said Bonilla.

According to Bonilla, the only ones not affected were primarily student ambassadors and tutors, because of their crucial role in enrolling students for the summer and fall 2020 semesters.

Now, hiring is back up and running. Omar Gutierrez, the Vice President of Administrative Services at FCC, explained that there are three different avenues to be hired through.

“We have students that are hired from work study funds, we have students that are hired through our regular general fund, and then we have programs that are able to hire students like EOPS, respective programs like that,” according to Gutierrez. “The process is fairly similar through all of them.”

In order to work through federal work study, students can apply by completing a FAFSA application. For the upcoming school year, applications for FAFSA open up on October 1, 2020 and close on June 30, 2021. However, in order to be eligible for state financial aid, the FAFSA application must be submitted by March 2, 2021.

More information on EOPS and instructions on how to apply for it can be found in the FCC webpage.

As for how FCC is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the same restrictions apply there as they would anywhere else. People who come onto campus must be wearing some type of face covering, like the commonly-worn mask or a face shield. 

Also, places on campus that have a significant number of people come through are being cleaned regularly. 

“We do clean areas that we are aware that are being populated. We clean them daily,” Gutierrez explained. They have employed a mister that sprays solution into the air and “disinfects everything that it touches, from air to actual surfaces.”