The Student Equity and Achievement (SEA) Center was buzzing with conversation and razors at the first Barbershop Talks event of the semester on Wednesday, Feb. 25.

This is not the first time that the support network Men of Color Action Network (MOCAN) has brought the Barbershop Talks event to campus.

Students and staff brushed over deep topics like love, absent parental figures, and Spike Lee over free food while five paid barbers gave around 20 free haircuts, mainly to students.

“Other institutions don’t do Barbershop Talks the way that we do…in regards to fluidity, that freedom and just to be able to express and not being so gung ho on [promoting] the academics,” Student Services Specialist and Men of Color Action Network (MOCAN) member Wiley Wilson said.

The first time the event was held at El Camino College was back in November 2023, although the Barbershop Talks have taken place at other college campuses through their own MOCAN chapters.

At this particular event, Wilson invited El Camino College alumnus Rickerby Hinds to host the event alongside him.

The topic: “How do you know you are loved?”

Hinds attended ECC in the mid-80s, working for the college paper The Warwhoop. His articles about the wrestling team can still be found in the archives.

He would go on to become a successful playwright, and currently shows one of his plays, “Dreamscape,” across the nation and internationally.

“[Hinds] is able to understand what students went through because he went through it himself,” Wilson said.

Wilson remembers the first Barbershop Talks on campus because he thought it was one of the most fun, he said.

Jagait Packard, 33, an intern of counselor Chris Hurd, said a lot of “what you learn, you learn in the barbershop.”

When one student asked, “Do we think that Cheesecake Factory is an appropriate first date?,” it became a provoking take that had attendees analyzing the question.

Packard said, sometimes you listen to conversations you maybe should’t be when you’re young, but anyway, you hear them at the barbershop.

Hinds said it’s a combination of the sound of ongoing conversation, or music, or something playing on the TV. A lot is happening. You can choose what you want to focus on, he said, a multi-stimuli kind of place.

When you are at the barbershop, “you have a space where you can exist,” Hinds said.

UP NEXT:

The next Barbershop Talks will be held on Wednesday, April 1 at the Student Services Building, Room 100. The theme will center on business networking and will prepare student men of color for the Leadership Conference that will occur a couple of days after.