The Forum

The Advanced Manufacturing Center (AMC) on the

Florissant Valley campus opened March 24, the

second of two buildings this year. The first was the

Nursing and Health Sciences Building, which opened

in January. The 96,000 square-foot AMC had been

under construction since August 2023 as part of the

college’s STLCC Transformed initiative.

STLCC launched its very first esports team at the

beginning of the 2024-2025 academic year, taking

on several competitive titles including Valorant,

Overwatch, Super Smash Bros, and Street Fighter

6. In September 2024, STLCC established its first

dedicated esports arena at the Meramec campus,

where it houses 18 state-of-the-art gaming PCs,

large flatscreen monitors, comfortable seating,

and a lucrative environment for both practice and

competition.

I first encountered the concept of performance

courses when my academic advisor told me that a

class I was taking wouldn’t count towards my degree,

despite it being on a list of courses that supposedly

would. Performance courses, as I would eventually

learn, are a category of the Humanities and Fine

Arts discipline, and comprise a little over 50% of the

field’s entire general education curriculum, including

all photography, creative writing, theater, drawing,

and sculpture classes.

STLCC’s two-person spring play, “Mass Appeal”,

written by Bill C. Davis and directed by Daniel J.

Betzler, is set to run Apr. 24 at 11:15 a.m., Apr. 25 and

26 at 7:30 p.m., and Apr. 27 at 2 p.m. in the Terry M.

Fischer Theatre on campus. “Mass Appeal” follows

Father Tim Farley, a beloved local priest who keeps

both his churchgoers and his wallet comfortable with

non-confrontational sermons.

For a brief period on Thursday, March 13, two of The

Forum’s newspaper racks were home to a handful of

copies of The Communist: the official party news-

paper published by the Revolutionary Communists

of America (RCA).

The first of what will be a weekly trading card event was held on the third floor of the Instructional Resources building on April 4. 11 students, including myself, showed up to play Magic: The Gathering at “Friday Magic” from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. It will be hosted at the same time every Friday.

On March 18, 2025, NPR revealed that the Trump

Administration had issued a memo a month earlier

ending a decades-long segregation ban on the facili-

ties of companies awarded federal contracts. 

As technology progresses, many college students

find themselves using the latest technology to help

them study. One of these tools is Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are many AI websites and apps–most notably ChatGPT. While these sites and apps

can be used for good, cheating is a huge problem for

schools and teachers alike.

Sunshine Week is a collaborative week of recognition that takes place every year among individuals and groups representative of educators, journalists, government, citizens and community members, as well as the private sector. The purpose is to shine a light on the importance of the people’s access to public records, open government and freedom of information.

Cartoon by Abby Westhoff, April 2025.