El Centro hires new staff; some former staff are frustrated
by Salvador Sandoval-Garduno and Hortencia Lopez
El Centro Académico Cultural de Humboldt opened for the fall semester with a new student staff. Staff from spring 2026 were asked to reapply for their positions. According to our student sources, none were brought back, but El Leñador couldn’t verify this with El Centro’s coordinator, Brenda Perez.
El Leñador reached out to 4 former employees, and only two responded. El Leñador was able to confirm that one employee reapplied for their job and didn’t get rehired.
Reapplying for jobs
In July, Valeria Ramirez Alvarado, a former employee who worked for El Centro during the spring 2026 semester, received an email that said, “We’re going to reopen the application for students to apply, and if you want to reapply, you can, but it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get your job back.”
Irma Rodriguez, another former student employee, was frustrated because she was not automatically offered the positions back after she had been told verbally she would, as she had been from the fall to spring semesters. However, an example Student Worker Appointment email that was provided to El Leñador stated employment was for one semester.
“I’m pretty sure everyone, or at least most of us, were expecting to come back, and then all of a sudden it was like, ‘Oh, you kind of have to find a new job,’” Rodriguez said. She did not reapply for her position.
El Leñador reached out to Perez for clarification, but she forwarded the email to Cal Poly Humboldt Marketing and Communications (MarCom).
When asked about the student employment process, they responded by email stating, “Student assistant appointments are limited to one semester. Departments are not required to reappoint student assistants for subsequent semesters, and student assistants are generally not required to reapply. However, a department may choose to recruit broadly for a position to provide other students with an opportunity to apply.”
The Marcom email response also included a quote from the Associate Vice President for Student Success and Dean of Students Molly Springer: “We’re grateful for our student assistants, who not only help with day-to-day operations, but also support essential programming that contributes to the success of all Cal Poly Humboldt students.”
Ramirez Alvarado reapplied for her position because she didn’t want the programs that she worked on to lose progress, like Cafe con Chisme. She believed the work she had done would have proved she was deserving of being rehired. She got an initial interview, but a few days later received an email informing her she didn’t get the job.
El Centro’s hours
At the start of the semester, El Centro reduced hours while onboarding new staff. This led to some confusion among students about the Center’s operating hours and whether previous services were still accessible.
MarCom stated in their email that “El Centro was open, and services were available during the first few weeks of the semester, but at reduced hours due to limited staffing.”
El Centro’s programming
Two former student assistants from the spring 2026 semester are worried the staff turnover will negatively impact current programs offered by El Centro.
Rodriguez said that experience matters in running El Centro. “The center runs on experience; you want someone with experience, knowing how the center runs, just so you could teach the rest of the staff,” Rodriguez said. “Because if you start from point blank, like we did, we had to relearn everything.” Rodriguez said she did not know if previous programs would return.
On Oct. 1, Marcom sent an email confirming regular programs would continue. “According to El Centro, existing programming that serves the El Centro student community will continue.”
El Leñador also got confirmation from the El Centro Instagram page that Cafe con Chisme will come back on Oct. 7 from noon to 1 p.m.
As for some of the former workers at the Center, they say the vibe has changed.
“Right now, it’s a little bit awkward and kind of hard to go in there. Not because I don’t want to. It’s more the vibe has changed a little. And that, of course, comes with the new staff and no offense to them,” Rodriguez said. “It’s just a whole new vibe and just trying to get used to it. The music’s not there, the conversations aren’t there, the TV isn’t on.”
