In the outskirts of San Francisco, away from the bustling streets, blaring horns of traffic and towering gray skyscrapers, SF State seems like a quiet and green oasis. The campus is home to numerous florae and open spaces like the Quad, which stand out from the campus’s angular and concrete brutalist architecture. However, as the campus continues to expand its infrastructure, green spaces seem as though they are slowly disappearing. Amaya Fender is a sophomore at SF State. She recently transferred from UC Santa Cruz in the fall of 2023 because of the smaller class sizes and lower tuition. So f ..read more

Every day, Emmanuel Padilla opens the doors of the Latinx Student Center, where individuals are met with a warm, colorful and welcoming environment. The center serves as an emotional support system for the Latinx student community and provides study spaces, a comfortable seating area and—most importantly—snacks. As the director of the Latinx Student Center, Padilla’s mission is to help students “develop [an] authentic identity” and feel comfortable expressing themselves in their daily lives. Padilla often jokes that, at times, he is an unofficial therapist to the students.  Juanello Marti ..read more

Atop SF State’s Lot 25, students wearing safety goggles, bright red neon vests and red hard hats stand around in anticipation. Staticky conversations crackle from the refurbished walkie-talkies they are using to communicate. Yellow caution tape surrounds a designated area where rockets built by students in the Fog City Rocketry Club are set to launch. Talon Chaulkin Browning, vice president of the club, leads the countdown through his megaphone.  “Ten, nine, eight…” With seven seconds left, everyone began chanting along.  “Six, five, four…” The button to release fuel into the rocket ..read more

When I was nine, I never understood why I was dragged away from holiday festivities to help in the kitchen. Throwing a hissy fit, I would have to put away my books, dolls and crafts, only to stand in the small kitchen in my cousins’ childhood home in Granada Hills and listen to my extended family bicker about the correct way to make my uncle’s paprikash.  For hours, my sister and I, along with my four cousins, were forced to stand over a hefty pot of boiling water and send spoon-sized clumps of dough plummeting to their scorching death. With the steam ascending from the metal pot spawning ..read more

While riding the Muni with your headphones on, sitting in class and minding your own business or even just walking home from a long day of school, you might be oblivious to an admiring stranger waiting for you to look in their direction. The Instagram page @sfsuhallwaycrushes revolves around the lives of SF State students as they go about their days on campus while dealing with typical college student conflicts and relationship struggles. In today’s digital age of social media and dating apps, spontaneous, real-life interpersonal connections and relationships are few and far between. In a div ..read more

Throughout their childhood, Demorié Okoro was captivated by the countless stories recounted by their family members who had grown up in San Francisco. Coming into SF State as a freshman in 2019, Okoro was excited and wide-eyed to experience the city they’d heard so much of for themself. However, Okoro would eventually come to face unforeseen circumstances during their second year.  Suddenly estranged from their mother, Okoro found themself battling financial instability and homelessness. This left them to rely solely on loans and the Pell Grant—a federal aid program for undergraduate stud ..read more

It has only been one year since the Latinx Queer Club has filled the void that many of its members recall feeling in previous semesters. Club president Adrián Reyes, a fourth-year double major in communications and Latino/a studies and a minor in race and resistance, was inspired to create the club after a random conversation they had with two of their peers in the Latinx Student Center.  The three discussed how they felt that SF State lacked LGBTQ+ outlets for Latine students, and how their struggles were not fully understood in the spaces that had already been established. Coincidentall ..read more

At the heart of college campuses nationwide, an epidemic is quietly preying on the lives of students like a thief in the night. A survey conducted by market research company Pollfish found that one in four college students carry the weight of an unanticipated burden—being diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection.   STIs are caused by bacteria, viruses and parasites, and are transmitted through sexual contact. There are eight pathogens linked to the most frequent and prevalent STI diagnoses, only four of which are currently curable: syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and trichomoni ..read more

In theory, people go to college to build the knowledge, skills and connections that they’ll carry with them into adult life. Student publications mirror their professional counterparts in such a way that writers and editors can get a real sense of what being on staff at a newspaper or magazine is like. For most students, this is all they expect from such a program. For Jakub Mosur and Erin Lubin, it was more. Mosur and Lubin met working on Prism, SF State’s student magazine, in 1998. The two sparked a strong connection, and eventually were married seven years to the day after they started dati ..read more

Tony Aguilar — an aspiring health care worker — thought she had finally caught her big break after she secured a four-month-long position in a clinic at the UC San Francisco Medical Center. However, once her contract ended, she faced three months of unemployment and was forced to return to working in the frontline service industry — an industry that, just months before, she felt she had finally been freed from.  Aguilar’s story of becoming stuck in entry-level fields is far from uncommon, and represents a larger trend among California’s young workers. There are 2 million young workers in ..read more