As the 100th birthday of Bakersfield College approaches, faculty members, community members and BC alumni are hard at work planning the celebration.

The BC Centennial celebration will start with a kick-off party in August of 2013 followed by scheduled events for each month of the school year until spring of 2014. Amber Chiang, who is the chair of the Bakersfield College Centennial Celebration Committee, said that she and the committee have been planning these events for over a year.

“Some of the events are pre-existing but will take on a Centennial theme,” said Chiang.

“The rest of the events are especially planned for the celebration.”

Some of these events include a Centennial Ball, a BC Alumni flag football game, the creation of a signature centennial rose, an opening event of the newly remodeled outdoor theater, the unveiling of a replacement Renegade Mosaic, which is being designed by the BC art department, and the 100 stars project that will recognize 100 BC Alumni.

“My favorite among everything we are working on is the Centennial Book,” said Chiang. “It’s sort of like a yearbook of the past 100 years at BC and due to the nature of my job, I love to read history and see pictures of BC history, which is very vast and deep.”

With budget cuts pressing down on BC, donations and fundraising will provide all of the funding necessary for the celebration.

“We can’t put the school budget toward this,” said Chiang. “We just can’t use school and state funds for parties, which is why we are having fundraising activities.”

Fundraisers they have had in the past include having a table at the Annual BC Garden Fest, and a future fundraiser being planned is a golf tournament that will take place in the spring of 2013.

“Golf tournaments are the hardest fundraisers to plan but they make a lot of money, so we are hoping to have a good amount of seed money of funds when the celebratory year starts,” said Chiang.

“Funding for the rest of the year will just take care of itself.”