By Saul Ruiz and Sandra Vidrio
EL CAJON, CALIF. — First Year Experience at Grossmont College has hosted an Anime Palooza, the first of the Spring 2025 semester, on March 25.
The FYE has planned some events throughout March to celebrate Women’s History Month. According to Edgar Torre, First Year Experience Peer Mentor at FYE, Anime Palooza is an event that has the purpose to teach students and staff at Grossmont about the history of women in anime through games, trivia, and conversations about anime altogether.
First Year Experience welcomed students this week to another hosting of Anime Palooza on Grossmont College’s campus.
Anime Palooza was an event conjured and coordinated by the First Year Experience organization on campus. First Year Experience consists of faculty coordinators and peer mentors who seek a better social life at Grossmont College. As far as experiences in First Year Experience are, peer mentors like Edgar Torre are assigned a group of first year students which they check in on and communicate with throughout the semester.
According to Torre, the FYE has hosted similar anime trivia events in the past, and many people have attended and had “a lot of fun.” However the peer mentors who originally coordinated the event have graduated or left the school, this left the event and position of hosting it up in the air until Torre took on the mantle.
Abby Algarin, an FYE program coordinator and employee of Grossmont College, was approached by Torre as the new host of Anime Palooza, which was then discussed and planned for the Spring 2025 semester.
“Since he picked a date in March, I said ‘why don’t we do women in Anime,” Algarin commented on the origin of the theme, in time with March being Women’s History Month.
All students and staff from Grossmont were welcomed to this event. No RSVP was needed nor was “anime experience.” Even when Anime Palooza was an anime event, Torre mentioned students shouldn’t have been afraid to attend as it is not required to have any anime knowledge, ”there is not a level of anime of yours […] no expectations or requirements,” he said, “the only requirement is that you are willing to have fun,” he added. Torre also mentioned that not being an anime expert was good as this event was going to help students to connect to people and make more friends.
Paola Rubio, a nursing major student at Grossmont, said she does not know a lot about anime; however, she was still excited to attend. “Even though I don’t really like anime, I think it is a really good opportunity to learn a little bit about women in this industry,” she said, “and also to get to know new friends, new people,” she added.
Anime Palooza was deemed by its coordinators a success, leaving possibilities for other Anime Palooza events to be hosted at Grossmont College’s campus going forward. FYE continues to seek out opportunities to bring together various communities at Grossmont, as well as bettering campus life for first year students and pushing them to thrive.
