The Siege

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.)

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.

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.

 

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