Guest Writer Trevor Campbell from the Pittsburg Job Corps Center, “A Day in the Life”

This is an interesting article I’ve created to give Job Corps students from the past, in other centers, prospective students, or students who are expected to arrive within a few weeks an idea of what goes on at Job Corps. This is the “around the clock typical day” I’ve spent since my arrival week up to now involved in CCAC. This schedule includes weekends and the change of C-Prep/trade to the OCT department. I’m making this as candid as possible, excluding adventures, incidents, or unplanned events. This should get previous or current students interested to also agree and share their “Day in the Life, at” story, giving people another insight to what life is like overall at Job Corps, and for an individual center.

During C-Prep, Vocational Trade, & Education
1. 6:00 AM: “Six O’Clock fellows, time to wake up” – Six is the wake up & MAC sheet time. Everyone is expected to wake up as soon as possible and move along with their morning routines-including hygiene, details (if assigned), & breakfast. You are pretty much forced to be awake by 7:00 AM. Breakfast could be served as early as 6:30, despite the majority of students arriving during the last 20-30 minutes. Morning Details start by 7:00 AM, and you must be off the dorm floors by 7:30.

Filed under: Guest Writer, Job Corps, Job Corps Centers, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, Reader's Comments, Tell Us Your Story, Guest Writer, Job Corps, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, schedule, Student, training day routine, typical day

More Reader’s Comments from August 24, 2010

-from Howard to Trevor,

Here is my take, this coming from a former Residential Living Manager and Center Director:

All dorms on center should have had cleanliness standards in force to begin with. When the Evans dorm supervisor decided to enforce the rules, she should have given the students a reasonable amount of time to get their rooms in order – let’s say three days and a definite time and date when the students would be held accountable for their rooms. If someone had some extenuating circumstance that would have prevented him from cleaning his room in time, that should have been taken into consideration.

Filed under: Comments, Job Corps, Job Corps Centers, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, Reader's Comments, dorm cleanliness, Job Corps, Pittsburg Job Corps

A Student’s Question from Pittsbugh Job Corps Center

-from Trevor Campbell

Today I get back to my dorm in Evans Hall and see a piece of paper on my door. It was something called the “Incident Detail Report”. It is basically a “write-up” to say about my room not being in order. Being involved in Pittsburgh Job Corps Centre for just over six weeks and have lived in three dorm wings (Phoenix-Summit, Alpha-Omega, & Evans Hall) and do know that the rules are this: You clean your room to which wing you’re assigned to. ALL dorms are responsible to be clean by the students in that room daily. Failure to do so will give your room number a spot on the discrepancy List with the things wrong in the room next to it. You would be given a set duration to fix those discrepancies from when the time the dorms open up. If you don’t do so, or failure to fix descrepancies repeatedly, you would get punished. Punishments could be things such as: banned from the dorm lounge for a period of time, in which the whole floor could lose Lounge-Kitchen-Computer Room time in some occasions, or if serious enough, you can be written up, depending on how chronic of an offender you are. This is the rules for at least Phoenix-Summit & Alpha-Omega. In Evans Hall, which is our name for The Honour Dormitory, given to the approx. 100 College-Program students involved in that, there was never a set enforcement of room cleanliness, ever! Until yesterday at our dorm meeting, the Evan Hall Supervisor mentions that she will decide to have the whole discrepancy ruling become adopted to Evans Hall residents. She addresses to us, the dozen or so of the approx. 100 students not on summer break that the room cleanliness policy is a centre-wide rule (which, it never applied to us before) that she is apparently just now enforcing, which probably should’ve been enforced the entire time daily.

So, I received a write up. This is the first day that the room cleanliness was in effect even though the dorms where Shop Kids live have been following up with this all the time. So, can anyone: present student, former student, contractor, spectator, random person tell me that the shop students who may get discrepancies three or more times a week get their room number listen on a sheet of paper get just that and Evans Hall students, the students who are offered more privileges (comfort, privacy, & quietness) because they are involved in a college program and we get to live in a college dorm setting that is clearly not much better than the shop dorms & is most clearly not like college dorm life whatsoever? How is this fair? Why was Evans Hall not following the room cleanliness policy in the first place? Is writing up more than half the students even morally equal (since, after all, we’re the envied privileged kids, or so I thought!) when there are less punishments that are supposed to be acted upon and are acted upon throughout the time of the rule being enforced? And can someone tell me that this doesn’t sound like that the Pittsburgh Job Corps Centre, which is clearly the same old dirty, trashy, and unsafe environment you’d see in any Job Corps centre, didn’t pass it’s inspection and is told they are going to enforce a cetnre-wide rule they should’ve been enforcing in the first place, the Evans Hall supervisor, Residential Advisors, & Residency Management decide to take it out on the students, who were actually never told to clean their room, get a punishment that isn’t so easy to achieve living on Phoenix-Summit or Alpha-Omega? Of course they failed their inspection because we didn’t clean up. If you don’t force us to do something and take action slowly but surely, yeah we won’t clean up, thus making the place dirty, trashy, & unsafe and you guys fail inspections. If Evans Hall and it’s residency staff members ever managed to care about their beloved centre’s reputation enough, then wouldn’t they make us clean up in the first place, like the kids at the shop dorms, so that they could get a better inspection score?

Here’s another set of proof of mismanagement that in this case, Students are being mistreated in because the staff are careless & lazy.

Filed under: Job Corps, Job Corps Centers, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, Reader's Comments, Honour Dormitory, incident detail report, Pittsburg Job Corps, Student's Question

More Comments from a Former Student

-from P

Have you been to one of these centers? I attended the one in Pittsburgh. The conditions were horrible. You are constantly stressed and they will warn you of potential gang fights in the lunch room. Maybe if the 25k per student (based on only 8 months or attendance?) were put towards hiring quality instructors and putting together actual libraries, computers, and other tools needed for the students, it wouldn’t be such a failure.

Almost 8 years after completing the Culinary program there, I am now enrolled in college for Photography. I can tell you that Job Corps is about the people contracted to run them making the most profit. They do almost nothing for those of us who are actually living in their little hell holes.

If it really costs that much, perhaps they should offer that 25k to people who meet the requirements as a grant for higher education? Maybe they should put together a better program? I agree, it is a waste.

-from Job Corps Fraud

For those of us who actually worked at a Job Corps Center WE KNOW what are you talking about. First of all, the “good” teachers don’t stay. They find out very soon that it’s not at all about the “quality of education” one gives the students, it’s who can most effectively manipulate the numbers in order to reach required monthly goals. And, most of the people in management who were setting the unattainable goals had little or no professional education or even knew what it mean to “educate”. Please read the section on “Our Stories” to see how I tried to cope without proper tools or facilities to teach. It was enormously frustrating to have no one listen when you asked for the minimum to get by in order to do your job.

Filed under: Comments, Job Corps, Job Corps Centers, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, Reader's Comments, gang fights, Job Corps, Pittsburg Job Corps, Readers comments

Readers Comments from a Job Corps Student

-from TC in RE: Chicopee Residents Complain About Westover Job Corps Center (2009)

I’ve brought this story up between Pittsburgh Job Corps students, along with various stories from this site as conversations of the program. There are a lot of students who know this program is badly managed and doesn’t set examples of the way a Nation should run. We see how Job Corps is run, and we see how the Government is run. There are students, most probably who would never guess the amount of corruption this program has.

Most of the students who are 18-over would agree that they shouldn’t place a curfew on those students who are adult age. Why would they need to treat us like children? At Pittsburgh, a curfew is 11:00pm for Sun-Thur & 2:00am for Fri-Sat, but then again the MAC sheet doesn’t get displayed until 6:00AM and you wouldn’t be AWOL until the training day starts.

I understand a curfew for certain students, such as all minors, students on CSIO probation, & perhaps C-Prep Kids. I believe that Job Corps doesn’t live up to the “Independant Living” it says it does. Not only would I support lifting a curfew for adult students, I wouldn’t be angry if they didn’t have an RA wake us up to make sure we’re not AWOL/late for class. Tell these kids to wake themselves up at their own responsibility, even if it means buying an alarm clock or going to bed early.

To all those staff/Pro Job Corps people who would oppose a curfew lift: How can you have “maturity” ever be a reason? Would these staff members think it’s fair a 24 year old Job Corps student gets to party on Friday but has to stop drinking just in time to be back and sober (possible?) at 2:00am but have a 18-year old Pitt University student party all Friday night even though he’s underage but has no curfew time to be back on center?

-from TC RE: Readers Comments About Roy Adams and Shriver Job Corps Center

As I’ve been at Pittsburgh Job Corps’ Centre for six months I have had disputes with about six different staff members. One RA, which I figured was a smaller issue, 3 OCT staff members (Pre-Co instructor, My Pre-Co counselor, & OCT Supervisor) & I have issues with the centre director & his accomplice 2nd in charge admin.

It seems like that when a student has an issue with a staff member, the student’s complaint is immediately shut down and the staff member who is being accused of something is automatically defended.

For instance, I had a case brought up to HR about the OCT supervisor who tried to get me have a hospital fax a documentation stating information about my grandmother in the ICU. The info he wanted was info such as the hospital’s phone number, my grandmother’s condition & her potential duration at the ICU. ALL of that particular information is ILLEGAL. I reported this all to HR and the Admins did nothing but defend OCT. I had three incidents THIS WEEK ALONE occur over OCT’s staff trying to make me feel outcasted/shunned so I would in their hopes, self-term. I reported this all to the CD & he defends OCT and their “strong, 2 year dedication to Job Corps”.

I’d go to the Regional Office but why bother? Are they any different and less ignorant to student’s complaints?

-from TC RE: Disorderly Conduct at  Keystone Job Corps Center

This seems like an unfair act for the girl who was possibly assaulted. What are students doing at 4:30 in the MORNING rioting and causing a racket. When is their curfew time?

In the Pittsburgh Centre I attend now, you wouldn’t get very far even making yourself visible at this time of the morning. It seems that certian centres are following certain rules more enforcibly than other rules depending on what problems occur within just a particular centre?

Filed under: Adams and Associates, Contractors, Job Corps, Keystone Job Corps Center, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, Reader's Comments, Shriver Job Corps Center, Westover Job Corps Center, Adams and Associates, corruption, curfew, Keystone Job Corps Center, Pittsburgh Job Corps Center, Shriver Job Corps Center, Westover Job Corps Center

Ripoff Report about Dayton Ohio Job Corps and Pittsburgh Job Corps Centers

Excerpts from the Ripoff Report:

“First, this is a report about Job Corps, a program (for those who don’t know) that is run by the Federal government under the US Dept. of Labor.

This program promised disadvantaged youth with an opportunity to gain valuable job and employability skills, each center, of which there are several hundred, even including a few in Puerto Rico.

Who get’s scammed?

Everyone involved, even the government themselves.

I’ll break it down and explain…” read the article here:

Filed under: Dayton Job Corps, Job Corps, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, Dayton Ohio Job Corps, Job Corps Ripoff Report, Pittsburg Job Corps, Ripoff Report, scam