Editor’s note: Reyna Olaguez is one of two CSUB alumni receiving Wendy Wayne Ethics Award honorable mentions. The other is Olly López Beltrán, a recent graduate and now master’s in public administration student.
Check out the full list of honorees on the website of CSUB's Kegley Institute of Ethics, the awards founder and organizer.
Reyna Olaguez heard through the grapevine that elementary schools in Arvin had installed water stations that filter out arsenic, but not Arvin High.
So one of her youth reporters at South Kern Sol started asking high school administrators what the hang-up was since the nonprofit Rural Community Assistance Corp. said it wanted to partner with them on a filter project.
Not long after, the high school and the nonprofit did partner up.
“Reyna, what have you done?” she recalled a contact at Rural Community Assistance asking her. “Now they want to work with us!”
No story better illustrates the mission of South Kern Sol and Olaguez, its executive director and a double CSUB alumna. South Kern Sol is a youth-led, mostly foundation-funded media outlet that covers underserved communities in and around Bakersfield, especially wellness disparities in them.
South Kern Sol’s news stories and commentaries are published online and in local small newspapers. Its home page currently features pieces about a failed bid to open two immigration detention centers in McFarland; efforts to promote the 2020 census in areas at risk of being undercounted; and a Bakersfield College philosophy professor who cancelled classes to give students time to vote.
The authors of those three stories reflect the makeup of South Kern Sol’s staff. The first is a youth reporter from Delano, the second a former Bakersfield Californian staff writer and current contributor, and the third an incoming freshman at BC.
“The goal is to uplift the voices of young people,” Olaguez said, “and to shine a light on issues that are not being lifted up in the mainstream media because of shrinking newsrooms.”