Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

DREAMers Breakfast

Support equitable access to education by attending this year’s DREAMers Breakfast! – Hosted by the PCC DREAmers Resource Center and the PCC Foundation.

Friday, February 11th, 2022: 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Portland State University Virtual Social Hour & Info Session with Students with Children

Are you thinking of transferring to PSU and wondering what resources there are for students with children? Join the Transfer & Returning Student Resource Center and Resource Center for Students with Children for a virtual lunchtime info session and social hour on the services and resources available ! Learn about PSU and the Resource Center for Students with Children, ask questions, and meet other transfer and returning students with similar experiences! Children are welcome! Event hosted by the Portland State University Transfer & Returning Student Resource Center and Resource Center for Students with Children.

Register: https://bit.ly/trsrc-rcsc-feb21

Conference Student Scholarship: 2022 Oregon Women in Higher Education

• Apply for scholarship here »

PCC Students: considering a future career working at a College or University? Apply for a scholarship to attend the 2022 Oregon Women in Higher Ed conference. Application deadline: January 2, 2022. Conference: January 27 – Jan 29th in Ashland, OR.

Note: in order to receive priority consideration, in the bottom question “Is there anything else we need to know?” please write “I’m applying on behalf of the PCC WRC funds.”

Shout Your Abortion Casting Call

• Register here for Shout Your Abortion Casting Call »

Calling all PCC student actors! No experience required!

Are you a PCC student who feels strongly about body autonomy? Are you concerned about the future freedom of reproductive rights? Would you like to participate in a theater play raising awareness?

PCC’s Women’s Resource Centers are staging a multimedia performance in Spring 2022, aligning with the Shout Your Abortion movement in drawing attention to abortion bans in the US.

Students of all genders are encouraged to join. Interviews will be offered on January 12th & 14th

Disability Services and Women’s Resource Center Accessible Book Club:

Book: Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

In their new, long-awaited collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime disability justice activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centres the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all.

Leah writes passionately and personally about creating spaces by and for sick and disabled queer people of colour, and creative “collective access” — access not as a chore but as a collective responsibility and pleasure — in our communities and political movements.

Bringing their survival skills and knowledge from years of cultural and activist work, Piepzna-Samarasinha explores everything from the economics of queer femme emotional labour, to suicide in queer and trans communities, to the nitty-gritty of touring as a sick and disabled queer artist of colour.

Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of colour are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a toolkit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient, sustainable communities of liberation where no one is left behind. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.

• Group date and time will be determined soon but will begin Week 2 of Winter term (January 17th- 21st) and run weekly throughout the term.
• Group Details: This group is open to all interested students and staff. The format of this group will be flexible and adaptive and will be centering accessibility needs of all members.
• 10 copies of the material are available for students registered for the group in chosen format (physical book, digital book or audio book). There may be more need than what we have available. Please consider checking out a copy via the PCC our county library systems.
• If you are interested in registering, have any questions about the group or accessing the text, want to talk through disability concerns, contact Kiera or otto.
• Kiera (Coordinator RC WRC): kiera.hansen@pcc.edu
• Otto (Disability Advocate & QRC Reorganization Consultant): otto.norton@pcc.edu

Returning Women’s Club Events: Terrie Quinteros

• Register here for Returning Women’s Club Events  »

All PCC student attendees are eligible for a drawing for a $25 grocery card.

Monday, Jan 24th – 1-2pm – Join Terrie Quinteros from the PCC Cascade Queer Resource Center for “Intro to the Queer Universe.” Learn some commonly used phrases and terms when engaging with non-binary, queer and trans folks. Broaden your horizons & continue your education in all things queer.

Returning Women’s Club Events: Heather Smith

• Register here for Returning Women’s Club Events  »

All PCC student attendees are eligible for a drawing for a $25 grocery card.

Monday, Feb 14th – 1-2pm – Join Heather Smith from PCC Career Pathways. Come learn more about PCC’s Career Pathway certificates and Career Pathways’ STEP program. These programs offer academic and financial support for eligible students, helping with the cost of attending career technical education at PCC.

Returning Women’s Club Events: Hayley Hayes

• Register here for Returning Women’s Club Events  »

All PCC student attendees are eligible for a drawing for a $25 grocery card.

Monday, March 7th – 1-2pm – Join Hayley Hayes from PCC’s Outreach & Advocacy Project. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and Hayley will talk about ways to get support and get involved. Hayley will be hosting a Traveling Postcards project, which is a self-guided crafting/art-based activity. Hayley will share info about the project and help register anyone who is interested. Event co-hosted with the WRC SY Students with Kids Club.

March 8th: International Women’s Day

Save the date! Details to come.

May 5th: Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women’s/Relatives Day

Save the date! Details to come.

 

Returning Women’s Club

• Meeting times – see event listings above.
• To receive zoom link for meetings, sign up here.
• sign up, email sewrc@pcc.edu.

Join in for support from other women returning to college or starting college at a non-traditional age. Build community, share resources, get support connecting to campus! Questions? Email sewrc@pcc.edu.

Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance Club

Join in for conversation on feminist issues, open mic events, book group, and more! To sign up email wrc@pcc.edu.

Title IX Awareness Club

For details or to sign up email wrc@pcc.edu.

Students with Kids Club

For details or to sign up email wrc@pcc.edu.

Club de Lectura Feminista

Winter Term 2022 meeting times: Mondays 6:00 pm- 7:00 pm. For details or to sign up email alicia.gonzalez16@pcc.edu or magali.cruz@pcc.edu.

Stress Reduction: Categorizing Your Self-Soothing Activity Collection

In addition to Coordinating the Cascade and Rock Creek Women’s Resource Centers, Rebecca and I (Kiera) each regularly teach a section of CG 145: Stress Management. Winter 2022 Offerings are listed in that section of the Newsletter. We wanted to offer a moment of self-reflection around stress in our lives.

When we talk about stress relief- we often think of what we can do to calm ourselves down in the moment we are experiencing the stress feelings. We often pick an activity from our mental and/or physically documented list such as deep breathing, taking a slow drink of water, snapping a rubber band against our wrist, and/or a visualization meditation. These activities we do on our own to help ourselves are called self-soothing activities. Building up your collection of self-soothing activities is such a helpful stress management strategy.

Let’s be real for a second though: there are some stressors that can’t be mitigated by even the most skilled deep breathing practice. We experience so much in our daily lives depending on our identities and social locations. In the moment, not every self-soothing activity in our collection fits perfectly with a situation or physical/mental manifestation of stress. It can be helpful to understand the unique ways that certain stressors manifest for you individually, the why of the stressor, how it shows up in your body and what helps.

• What is one of your biggest stressors? Is it school? Finances, work, family, traffic, health concerns, a friendship or intimate relationship?
• What are the most common ways that stress shows up in your body physically and emotionally? Do you become tearful, irritable, or do you shut down? Do you stop sleeping, clench your jaw, or does your heart hurt?
• Do you notice that your stress response looks different depending on the stressor? For example:
  • Unable to sleep the night before a test
  • Become tearful when having difficult conversations with partners
  • Notice you are irritable when you think of managing your bank account
  • Clench your jaw in traffic

Recognizing these stressor specific responses in advance can be helpful for a multitude of reasons but for this exercise in knowing ourselves, it can help to know which self-soothing activity to try before, during and after.

What are your favorite self-soothing activities? Which stress responses do these self-soothing activities mitigate? Which big stressors do these stress responses usually pair with?
For me, I experience tightness in my chest when speaking up in a large group setting. It helps me to really focus on my breathing before, during and after the stressor. It also helps me to take a drink of water before and during if I notice my chest tighten back up. The stress I experience when I think I can’t pay a bill on time. When it comes to finances, my stress response is to avoid it. That is an entirely different set of self-soothing tools.

Want to share yours or to talk to someone at the WRC about stress? Contact us. If we can’t help, we will help you find someone who can!

Outreach and Advocacy Project Resource Share: Students Guide to Radical Healing

My name is Hayley Hayes (she/her). I am originally from Boise, Idaho, and am currently living in Northeast Portland with my partner, our puppy and our cat. My passions include cooking, being in the sun and water, and working in the anti-violence field as part of a greater goal of dismantling sexism and challenging a society that overwhelmingly says “we don’t believe you.”

I’ve had the honor of working alongside survivors of relationship and sexual violence through 24/7 crisis lines, emergency shelters, and hospital response for the past 7 years or so. In my current role as a confidential advocate here at PCC, I work to meet students who are experiencing this type of harm where they are at through safety planning, connection to resources, emotional support, and more based on whatever students identify as helpful to them.

The resource I am sharing is a wonderful tool created by students at the University of Las Vegas which was created with the belief that everyone has an innate capacity to heal from trauma, and deserves to know that what happened isn’t your fault, and there are tools out there to support you. Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all for healing, but I hope this resource can help send the message that your trauma is valid. The holidays can be a tough time for many reasons, so if you find yourself needing a break, or something to occupy your mind, take a peek at this resource and know that you are not alone.

https://unlvcare.github.io/healingzine/

If you have experienced harm resulting from intimate partner/dating violence, sexual violence, harassment, or stalking, or have questions and want to talk to someone, you can contact confidential and privileged staff and advocates through the Women’s Resource Centers and Outreach and Advocacy Project. Hayley is one of them!

PSU WRC Creating Feminist Futures Conversation Series

Want to catch up on past offerings in this series? Here are the recordings, courtesy of the PSU Women’s Resource Center:

• Land Back and Indigenous Feminism – Creating Feminist Future Series
• Black Feminism – Creating Feminist Futures Conversation Series
• Dismantling Carceral Logic – Creating Feminist Futures Conversation Series
• Trans Feminism – Creating Feminist Futures Conversation Series