The Fresno City College Rampage reporters won several awards at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges Convention which took place in Los Angeles from April 3 to 6 .

Over 55 community colleges attended the convention which was held at the Wilshire Grand Hotel.

The following reporters won awards: Cody Gless, Shirley Nakagawa, and Francine Ramos won second place in Enterprise Story/Series; they were also awarded general excellence in newspaper writing.

Carrie Gunter and Joseph Rios won fourth place in the enterprise story/series with the Hillary Clinton story that was published last semester.

Out of 55 community colleges, only 15 receieved the General Excellence award. The Rampage was one of the 15 that received this award. The general excellence award is based on the content, layout, and balance of issues covered. The Rampage staff was very excited for this important honor they received of the JACC annual convention.

“I think it’s a combination of what we are working towards,” said Rampage advisor Dympna Ugwu-Oju. “It shows that our students are learing to balance good judgement and excellent layout.”

Ife-Chudeni Oputa won fourth place on her opinion piece on racism. Joseph Rios won first place in the sports feature photo.

Of this award, Rios said, “I’m not a photographer; at least I don’t think so. It was a complete surprise to me.” Rios also won Honorable mention in the Bring-In advertisement category.

The JACC brought a new competition to the state convention called Team Feature 2.0 which had three students from each school participate in multimedia reporting of a story in LA.

The reporters were sent to Olivera street. There, they found an amazing story about an artist with amazing cultural paintings.

They spent all of that Friday investigating the multimedia project. They pieced together piece through the night and competed Saturday morning.

At the JACC banquet, the top three productions were shown.

The one by Rampage reporters was the first video to be previewed. The team glowed with excitement. Jeannie Batey, Cynthia Moreno, and Joseph Rios took one big prize in this category.

Rampage adviser Dympna Ugwu-oju was elected president of Northern California(Norcal) Branch of JACC.

In the board of directors, she will serve as the vice-president of the JACC. Rampage reporter Pedro Quintana was also elected president of Nor-Cal, student branch.

The Rampage students celebrated the recognition they received at the JACC convention. Ugwu-oju said, ” We can only go up, the sky is the limit for us.”