Community college means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It means the chance to be the first generation with a college education for a low-income student. It means a way to be promoted at a job for a single mother who wants her child to have a better life. It could simply mean a transition from high school to state university. To us, it means exactly what it sounds like – community.

If you look around De Anza College, you will see the definition of community all around you: a unified body of individuals, groups of students on different paths struggling toward the same end. Students, instructors, classified professionals and President Murphy – we all work together as a community to ensure students obtain a great education. Despite budget cuts, layoffs and turmoil all across the state of California, we are held together by one thing – that being community.

State schools might deny us admission, the UCs might raise the price of their tuition, but we at the community level are the luckiest. We support one another. We can be angry together, we can march together and we can get out of this crisis together.

Look around De Anza again.

Be grateful for where you are. Be lucky for your student leaders. Your small group of student activists, freaks, nerds, singing guys, Marlo Custodios, Keith Hubbards and Matt Bradleys. Be grateful for your instructors who have taken financial hits that many of us will never experience. Be grateful for our janitors, our cooks, our senate and our trustees.

We at La Voz are grateful for every single one of you. Unlike a large, impersonal university, we don’t have to search far to find extraordinary people. You are a small community of people doing big things. You are passionate, dedicated people worth writing about. On behalf of all of you at De Anza, we would like to say thank you to the extraordinary people for an extraordinary year during an extraordinary time.