The Siege

First Step – Taking Notice

Yeah, that’s right. “You’re just a student” is not only insulting to you, but more importantly, such sentiments betray an attitude, especially if coming from someone in a position of power, which can seriously undermine your rightful opportunities to fully participate in the college experience. You need to take note.

Depending on the situation, “You’re just a student” can really mean any and/or all of the following:

1) You’re just a child who should know his/her place, which is to politely and obediently comply with our commands.

2) I am unwilling to show you the respect that I would give to another adult.

3) You don’t really know anything, but we do.

4) Okay, maybe you know a few things, but not nearly as much as we do. Just keep quiet, listen and learn.

5) Let us adults handle the really important issues. Run along and play now.

6) You’ll have to ask our permission if you want to do that.

7) You’re unqualified to challenge us since we are the authorities and you certainly are not.

8) You are fragile and might break if we treat you like an adult.

9) We can easily manipulate you. You won’t even notice that we did it.

10) You are too immature to talk about certain things, like sex, for example.

11) We can make rules up on the spot. Who’s going to know the difference, you? Ha, ha, ha, ha…

12) Why don’t you just wait until you get out of school to ask those kinds of questions? Hmmm? Now go away.

13) We’re not really going to give you the tools to be fully-empowered now. Are you kidding? What, you think we want 30,000 students who know and assert their rights on our campus. As if!

A Warning to the Office of Student Life

Click here to read the entire five-page letter.

This is what happens when the remedies of the system are exhausted and inadequate to the task. You go outside of the system. And now the participants in the Office of Student Life – Assistant Dean of Student Life Deyna Hearn, Student Activities Advisor Benny Blaydes, and the Associated Student Board of Directors…plus others – have received a five-page notice about their obligations under the law from the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney. In the unfortunate event of further violations, it’s unlikely the D.A.’s office will limit their involvement to a letter. Violations of the Brown Act are a misdemeanor.

But let’s start back at the beginning.

Don’t you just hate it when good people fail to get the recognition they deserve? The Siege certainly does. Santa Monica College has some folks (click here) involved with the Office of Student Life, student government and school newspaper – the Corsair – who just haven’t gotten the attention that should have come their way. In a democracy, such information is very important.

And with the Corsair mostly disinterested in many student affairs for much of this year (click here), despite the presence of “Corsair club” (How many times did your club actually meet this year, exactly?) representative and the paper’s news editor, Lauren Ciancimino, at Inter-Club Council meetings, you’d have thought there might be better coverage. But no, there wasn’t. In fact, the paper could hardly have taken less interest in many of the critical issues raised at student government meetings because, generally, no reporter showed up to find out what those issues were. And even if they were in attendance, not a peep was the usual result.

So The Siege has gladly produced a couple of videos to fill this vacuum and to honor just three people (Student Activities Advisor Benny Blaydes, outgoing ICC Chair and incoming A.S. President Victoria Pregler – both featured in video 1 - and Jeremy Meyer, Corsair editor in chief – in video 2 - that you might have learned more about, if anybody cared to tell you. (Meyer is the good-looking fellow on the right.)

NEWS: On Thursday last at 11:15 am, there was a “spoken word” event at the Santa Monica College Clocktower, sponsored by the SMC Associated Students, ICC and the campus club A.L.A.S.(Association of Latino American Students). Billed as “Celebrating Spoken Word Through Unity and Diversity” and featuring paid performers “Tiwatunali,” plus unpaid performances by SMC students, the event was a mix of poetry and words of “revolution.” But the real drama featured the repressive and intimidating misconduct of SMC officers Malone, Hearn, and Champagne.

(click to watch)

The video above is just a two and a half minute snippet of footage taken by this author of the three officers. Watch, in particular, how Officer Malone reacts to SMC student Gaily Ezer, 19, as she shares a particular passage (Article 19) from the pocket edition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) on December 10, 1948) she had with her.

During the first half of the video, the audio of the exchange between the officers and Ezer is overwhelmed by the public address system amplifying the words of Tiwatunali. But during the second half, you can hear Malone bully and threaten Ezer with arrest, coupled with his unwillingness to respond to her pleas for clarification of his words.

Formal complaints are being filed with the Santa Monica College police department, the Los Angeles District Attorney, and the California Attorney General based on words and actions taken by the aforementioned officers this day.

Furthermore, well-known civil rights and police misconduct expert, attorney Steve Yagman, is being sought for representation.

There. Are you happy? That’s the new name for this site.

A certain minority of well-meaning, but seemingly non-confrontational types have volunteered some reservations about the name of this news magazine – The Siege. The rationale is that the current title is too in-your-face, too incendiary, too inclined to raise the hackles of those who believe that calm, diplomatic discourse is always the best way. If the name isn’t nice, then some people won’t play.

The Siege, by the way, didn’t ask for the advice. People with greater insight just offered it, to help.

Amidst the lamentable absence of student leadership at Santa Monica College, especially as it has been with the 2005-06 Associated Student Board of Directors and the Inter-Club Council, there remains a consistent exception, a sole voice - unelected - but nonetheless speaking out regularly and powerfully in the public comment portion of student government meetings and at every other opportunity for constructive service to SMC. (Click to see a sample of Mr. Lee in action.)

Note to the Associated Student Board of Directors:

Sure, you’d rather the term was history and you were chillin with your posse on some tropical beach. We get it. But uh, today’s only May 4th and vacation’s a few weeks away. Think maybe you could stay connected and keep updated the mere handful of official campus bulletin boards we have?
Knowing what’s up at this place is tough enough.

UPDATE: The Siege forgot to mention that up until just recently, if you called the Office of Student Life and no one was there to answer, the pre-recorded message you heard let you know about the upcoming Christmas holiday and winter class schedule.

How to Ignore the Brown Act When No One is Watching

The perp-walks we witness by politicians who’ve breached our nation’s laws and the public trust are the politicos’ comeuppance for habits usually beginning way back when. But where and how could such misbegotten behaviors have started you might wonder?

Well, step right up to a possible breeding ground right here at SMC where under the challenged guidance of Assistant Dean of Student Life Deyna Hearn and Student Activities Advisor Benny Blaydes (both of whose next link up the chain of command is Dr. Robert “Bobbie” Adams, vice-president of student affairs), the so-called “leadership” of Associated Student President Sadia Afolabi and Vice-President Jeff Jensen, plus that of other directors, has ill-served the SMC student body by undermining their rights through consistent violations of the Ralph A. Brown Act.

30,000-plus students and a turnout of a mere 407 voters for the recent Associated Student board of directors elections is an incredible indictment of the failure of the Office of Student Life - its advisors and the current board of directors - to establish their relevancy to the vast majority of students who attend Santa Monica College.

Go ahead and click here to play a nice video editorial
(just the beginning) on where this travesty begins and where the responsibility lies.

Much more to come…

Report Card Arrives Early

This article begins a multi-part series exposing the dysfunctional, mismanaged and, in some respects, criminal nature – philosophical, practical, moral and legal – of the Office of Student Life at Santa Monica College as it operates (or, rather, doesn’t) under the ultimate jurisdiction of Dr. Robert “Bobbie” Adams, vice president of student affairs, but actual day-to-day management of Assistant Dean of Student Life Deyna Hearn and Student Activities Advisor Benny Blaydes.