Online Opportunities Ensure Students’ Success
By Michael Omoruan
Since the pandemic closed Lehman’s campus on March 12, many students have had to either work remotely or lose out on potential internship opportunities altogether. Despite the shock of COVID-19 closures, virtual career fairs and online resources like the Braven Accelerator course and the ALPFA Virtual Symposium have given students new opportunities that would not have otherwise been available to them.
A logo of the nonprofit ALPFA. (Photo via ALPFA)
Edil Abreu, an accounting major at Lehman, relied on both organizations to adapt to the new normal. “As someone who has never taken a fully online class before, this [closure] brought new challenges to light. Luckily for me, I had Braven and ALPFA by my side.” Abreu explained that Braven “helped me improve my networking skills, short term and long-term goals, [and] ALPFA helped me take that next step that I needed to elevate my professionalism.
Founded in 2013 by Aimee Eubanks Davis, Braven is a non-profit organization dedicated to equipping college students with career-ready skills and resources to ensure they can find work post-graduation. Once students enroll in the course, they are placed into cohorts where they work with peers and an assigned leadership coach to work on weekly online modules and meetings dubbed “learning labs.”
Students are taught job-ready skills and practices during these classes and frequently attend workshops led by members of the Braven team to learn how to network, handle common interview questions, and create their own brands over the course of approximately 6 months. Once students complete this course, they become Post-Accelerator Fellows (PAFs) who can stay in touch with Braven team members and regularly receive job-posting newsletters about national and local companies that are currently hiring.
The Association of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA) is another national NGO that focuses on building up its members to become leaders. Both organizations consist of individuals that are more often than not, part of marginalized communities including African Americans, Latinx, and more. Because these organizations were able to adapt rather quickly to the pandemic, they continue to serve their communities.
A logo of the nonprofit Braven. (Photo via of Braven)
Braven hosts webinars that continue teaching current fellows and PAFs ways to advance their college careers. ALPFA recently hosted a virtual symposium on Aug. 5, where recruiters and employees from Fortune 500 companies, like Microsoft and Bank of America dedicated time to interview and talk with a majority of STEM majors.
“The Braven Accelerator program has helped me tremendously with virtual opportunities,” said Afsana Akther, speech-language and audiology major at Lehman. “I secured an internship at New York Vocal Coaching with the help of my Braven leadership coach and working with other fellows. Braven made me job-ready by providing collaborative online modules, networking activities, mock-interviews, and virtual sessions.”
“From helping me build a professional resume, to boosting my interview skills and elevator pitch, ALPFA also connected me with an extensive network of young and current professionals through the ALPFA Convention and other events,” said Benjamin Arias, an accounting major and Lehman senior.
“I was fortunate enough to receive follow-up interviews from multiple companies and received a total of five internship offers for 2021.”
Arias felt grateful for the resources ALPFA offered him. “Both of these organizations gave me the necessary tools to land an internship at a Big Four accounting firm during the pandemic. I was fortunate enough to receive follow-up interviews from multiple companies and received a total of five internship offers for 2021.”
The ALPFA Lehman chapter typically meets every Tuesday at 4 p.m. via Zoom. The Braven Accelerator is a 3-credit course offered every fall and spring semester and is open to all majors.
On Instagram @alpfalc and @bebraven, alpfa.org, and/or bebraven.org.
How Lehman Students Remade Lost Summer Plans
(Photo via CUNY Herbert H. Lehman Lehman College)
By David Kolade
The outbreak of COVID-19 that began in March crept into summer and affected many students’ plans by halting vacations, internships, and jobs. As a result, students struggled to find other ways to occupy their time and adapt to the new normal.
“I was supposed to go to Massachusetts where I would complete a fully funded research program at Novartis Pharmaceuticals,” said Lamount Evanson, a Lehman biochemistry major. “However, due to COVID-19, the research program was canceled. I was offered a position in the next summer program, however since I am graduating in January, they said I cannot do it as I have to be enrolled in an undergraduate institution.” And while he was able to work for the Office of Prestigious Awards as a WAC Junior Fellow facilitating a summer program, he was unable to do any research there.
Other students also lost opportunities due to COVID policies. “My plans for the summer were to do an internship, shadow a doctor, and travel. As a result of the pandemic, I was not able to do these plans,” said Mariam Kamara, a health service administration major. “The hospital wasn’t accepting any interns because it was closed. I wasn't able to go to the country that I wanted to because they weren’t allowing people to come in and travel bans were placed. I ended up staying in the house while taking a summer class.”
Likewise, disruption forced Ezekiel Olumuyide, a chemistry major with a concentration in biochemistry, to sacrifice an important goal. “I had a project to complete at the National Institute of Health on studying the STAT3 pathway in immune cells, and the project would have led to the publication,” he said. “However, due to the pandemic, the program was canceled. [So] I decided to improve my bioinformatics skills by working with Dr. Manfred Philipp on elucidating the molecular basis of SARS-CoV as an application investigating SARS-CoV-2.”
“The hospital wasn’t accepting any interns because it was closed. I wasn’t able to go to the country that I wanted to because they weren’t allowing people to come into the country.”
Some students also highlighted the unexpected opportunities that they met while facing the losses of others. “In my case, I applied to a lot of internship opportunities but I got rejected for most of them,” said Edward Adjei, a major in business administration with a concentration in finance and a minor in media communication studies. “After I joined [the Association of Latino Professionals for America] and got my resume reviewed by some of the amazing board members, I was able to confidently apply to many opportunities for the summer. I was fortunate enough to land one internship opportunity through ‘Project Destined’ which was a 5-week real estate internship, and I got the chance to learn a lot about the fundamentals of real estate, ownership, and acquisitions,” Adjei added. “I am grateful for having that internship experience which I can put on my resume to showcase the skills I gained.”
Sex Workers Hurt by Pandemic Shut-downs
(Photo via Red Umbrella Fund)
By Ogochukwu Ononiwu
Sex workers are one of the many invisible demographics in our neighborhood whose work came to a standstill due to the pandemic. As a result, many of those affected have had to rethink what sex work looks like for the “new normal.”
Debra, a Lehman student and sex worker had an online presence before the pandemic forced her to become fully remote. “Because of the virus, now it’s mostly remote modeling and [other forms]. Sex work is kind of impossible right now,” she said. Sex workers face even more discrimination because they are seen as disease-spreaders, she added. She now relies on her education, tutoring, and previous experiences in the nonprofit world to get by.
Before the advent of COVID-19, Debra explained that sex work allowed her to reach her goals. She was working towards a degree in health services administration and sociology when she first turned to sex work was as a model and adult film actress at the age of 22. Across most of the United States, while prostitution is illegal, sex work has various legal forms like stripping and pornography.
Debra went into sex work consciously, she explained, as a means to support herself, her grandmother, and her partners. In 2014, she became more active in sex work because of school expenses. “Sometimes I would go straight from school to the club… I was juggling so many things at the same time. I would do my women studies homework in the locker room of the strip club.” Debra describes her experience as a perspective on hierarchies; depending on a worker’s position in the strata they would encounter fewer struggles.
Paul, the coordinator of the Red Umbrella Fund, a Netherlands-based global fund led by and for sex workers, explained that with the onset of COVID-19, the organization had changed how funds were allocated. It also shares information to support sex workers in dealing with the pandemic.
Paul became a prostitute as a minor and used his funds to pay for his two master’s degrees relating to his interest in international policies and human rights. He recalled, “I did not identify as a sex worker at the time, and then I listened to a radio show. It was about female students who were into sex work… and I realized that they were speaking about me. I was one of these students. I was not a woman, but a man and a prostitute.”
(Photo via Red Umbrella Fund)
There is a lack of support for sex workers in Europe as well as the US, Paul said. “In Spain, sex workers don’t have access to any government support because their work is not recognized as work, and they are treated as victims. The only way that they could get money in the period they could not work or that it was difficult to work without putting themselves at risk is by to signing a paper saying that they were trafficked and forced to do that job in order to enter and exit prostitution records.” As a result, he said, “you get fake numbers on human trafficking.”
According to the Global Network of Sex Work Project, the conflation of sex work and trafficking started in the 20th century and targeted migrant sex workers. Although sex work is a choice, legislature and early feminists felt the need to attack sex work due to their belief that sex work is undignified labor and it upholds the patriarchy. Due to such practices, the livelihood of sex workers is still put in danger.
Raids of brothels and the criminalization of sex work have forced many migrant sex workers to work in unsafe conditions for the fear of being deported or arrested. Often, police raids legitimize violence and abuse of sex workers because of preconceived notions which leads sex workers to be treated as either victims or criminals.
Alexis, a Lehman student, sees sex workers as people who are simply monetizing off an existing demand, whether they are performing sexual acts or providing fantasies. In her opinion, “I don't feel like they are being exploited because this is their choice to provide services in different aspects for profitable gain. I do, however, feel that society is still struggling with the idea that this is real work and have negative connotations still being put out there based on these women's choice of profession. The thought of sexually liberated entrepreneurial women scares men.”