Thunder, Lightning, and the Sun Is Out!

Not to be silenced by an oppressive administration, The Southwestern College Sun releases an independent issue of the newspaper today. Read more at The Sun Goes to Press!

Also on the illumination menu today is the Governing Board Candidate Forum, on campus tonight. See our previous post for details.


Come out of the dark; see the light. Save Our Southwestern College.

SWC Governing Board Candidate Forum This Thursday!

REMINDER: This Thursday, CSEA and SCEA (classified and faculty unions) are sponsoring an open forum for all SWC Governing Board candidates on the November 2 ballot.

Invited candidates, listed in ballot order

Seat #2
Terri Valladolid
Jesseca Saenz-Gonzalez

Seat #4

Yolanda Salcido

Norma L. Hernandez



Seat #5
Tim Nader
William “Bud” McLeroy
Jaime Mercado
Jorge Dominguez

Where: Southwestern College, main campus, Room 751
When: 7:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:45 p.m.)
Cost: FREE; free parking available in Lot J
Campus Map

Format: The format will include a short statement from each of the candidates present and then questions from the public. Questions must be submitted in writing and be directed to the entire panel. Jordan Mills, SWC Speech and Debate coach, will moderate.

Also keep in mind these upcoming opportunities to meet, greet, and support our candidates: Have You Met These Candidates Yet?

All Are Invited: Meet and Greet for Norma L. Hernandez This Friday

As many of you know, Norma Hernandez, former Superintendent/President of Southwestern College, is running in the current SWC Governing Board election.

Here is another opportunity to meet her in person, ask questions, and gather with like-minded folks who are seriously concerned about the future of our college!

The event will be held on Friday, October 1, 5:00-8:00 pm, at the home of Chuck and Patti Charter in Coronado. The address is 442 I Avenue.

Wine and cheese are on the menu, and I know that Patti and Chuck have been cooking up other tasty delights as well.

Step up and eat the hors d'oeuvres. Talk, make friends. Sounds silly, and yet, ultimately, that's the only thing that works when it comes to real change. . . .

More info on the event.

Meet Candidate Norma Hernandez at Bonitafest!

Today only, the annual Bonitafest: food, crafts, and fun!

Norma Hernandez, running for Seat #4 on the SWC Governing Board, will be there from 10 am to 4 pm. Look for the Hernandez for Southwestern College Board booth on Bonita Road, and stop by and say hi!


Bonitafest takes place along Bonita Road, approximately two miles east of the 805 Freeway, between Willow Street and Otay Lakes Road. The booths are located in the Bonita Village Shopping Center, McMillin Realty parking lot, and the Bonita Plaza Shopping Center. Bonita Road will be open all day. Parking: Kaiser Permanente (Bonita Road & Willow Street) and Bonita Valley Community Church (4744 Bonita Road).

Award-winning SWC Sun Shut Down

Twenty-six press awards, and what does the college do to the Southwestern College Sun? Cancel the first issue.





As reported in Southwestern Board Must Go!, twenty-six reporters just received San Diego Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. The administration has responded . . . well, it hasn't responded. Nothing. No press release. No "way to go." Nada. (And given that faculty union president Andrew MacNeill sent an email informing SWC Superintendent/President Raj Chopra and PR man Chris Bender at 6:40 this morning, there's really no excuse.)

Shortly afterward, The SWC Sun released the statement, "Publishing Crisis Update: Issue #1 Canceled." The statement points out that district PR claims that they were working to quickly resolve the crisis were "misleading or false."

Also revealed in the statement are four areas of concern:

(1) Suspension of the printing of the Sun.

(2) The threatened arrest of Branscomb [faculty adviser to The Sun] and three students who were stopped by campus police for removing a journalism computer from the journalism lab.

(3) The district's plan to remove the Sun's link from the home page of the college's website.

(4) An administrative prohibition of campus employees from talking to Sun journalists without the permission of district spokesperson Christopher Bender.

By now, the first three are still shocking but familiar to most. The fourth is downright flabbergasting.

How many times does the administration and Board of Southwestern College have to be taken to task for First Amendment violations? And how can they be stopped?

Step 1: VOTE IN A NEW BOARD THIS NOVEMBER!

Watch for mailers that should be arriving soon, and please share and display. Let's Save Our Southwestern College!

Context, Convenience, and Controversy

As we pointed out in our last post, controversial events easily capture the community's attention--for the moment. A more complete understanding of an issue's scope, its causes and possible solutions, however, requires a fuller grasp of context: what led us to here? how have similar events been handled? how does the current situation compare to those that occurred in the past?

Obviously, the answers to these questions can't be found in PR hack sound-bites. In fact, it's part of the PR hack's job to place a small frame around complex issues, cutting out the context so that only one interpretation is possible: theirs.

Contradiction used by permission
© Gary Taxali

Here, then, to hack the hack are two pieces submitted for your consideration:

1. How (In)Convenient

Citing a policy that hasn't been applied in over fifteen years, SWC administration has halted the publication of the number one college newspaper in the country because the contract ( for a measly $3,000) between the Sun and the company that prints it hasn't been approved by the Governing Board.

How convenient.

The District has stopped the presses just a few weeks before elections involving a majority of Governing Board members will take place. And this decision is even more convenient considering that the Sun has been critical of administration, particularly Superintendent/President Raj Chopra, and the Board.

The District has some funny ideas about what is convenient. Last summer, when the faculty union learned that some teachers had not been paid for their work in June, union leaders took this issue to the District. "It would be inconvenient to pay them for just a few days," the District responded. " We'll make up the difference in their next paycheck."

Convenience is not the issue, the union informed the District. The California Education Code--the law, in other words--requires that faculty be paid on time.

The Ed Code also requires that all District employees be informed of the amount of sick leave they have accrued on their monthly paystubs. This does not happen at SWC, even though the union has been raising this issue with the District for years.

When it is convenient, administration and the Board will dig out a decades-old "policy," which does not have the force of law. But if a law is inconvenient, the same people will simply ignore it.

How hypocritical.

2. (As of Yet) Unpublished Letter to the Editor, San Diego Union-Tribune:

RE: College newspaper threatened with publishing roadblock

Taken out of context, the decision by Southwestern College administrators to halt the publication of our award-winning student newspaper because a contract with a printer hasn't gone out to bid might seem a reasonable, responsible protection of taxpayer money. But the big picture reveals something much different.

First, the shenanigans and dubious ethics involved in awarding multimillion dollar construction contracts to firms who later kick back thousands of dollars to re-elect incumbent Governing Board members shows that District officials aren't particularly concerned about protecting taxpayer money. Giving a $100,000 contract to a public relations firm whose job is to "isolate extremists" reveals the mindset of the SWC Governing Board and administration: Anyone with a differing opinion must be silenced.

This latest attempt to retaliate against the Sun is simply part of a long pattern of retaliation. The faculty adviser, who last year received the most prestigious national award possible for college and university journalism instructors, had his reassigned time eliminated. Just a few days ago, student journalists were threatened with criminal charges because they were taking school-owned laptop computers off campus to do their work.

Criminal charges are not laughable, but administrators' logic is. Laptop computers are designed to be portable. Student journalists routinely cover stories outside the boundaries of the campus, and laptop computers--and school-owned digital cameras, as well--are the tools they use to do their jobs. If all students were forbidden from using school-owned equipment for off-campus school activities, then the the football team would have to leave its helmets and pads behind when it traveled on the road.

Finally, the timing of this latest move against the Sun is curious. The student paper--containing articles critical of administration and the Governing Board--will not go to press just a few weeks before elections involving a majority of Governing Board members take place. Dusting off a decades-old policy, one which has never been enforced, to justify this action is simply another way of silencing dissent.

Philip Lopez
Former President, current Secretary, of SCEA faculty union

Feels Like Old Times

It was just one year ago that the Save Our Southwestern College blog got its start. The issues at the time: ham-handed administration, threats to freedom of speech, accreditation headed for the rocks.

My, how things haven't changed.



One of our first posts linked to a News 10 story:
College President Accused Of Targeting School Paper

Sounds familiar, don't it?

Posted the same day was a set of links to coverage from The Sun documenting problems with Raj Chopra's management going back to March of 2009:
If No News Is Good News . . .

After that came a series of posts documenting the efforts of people on the ground--faculty, staff, and students--to get the college back on track. In October 2009, nine documents were posted, including a copy of the Academic Senate's Vote of No Confidence in Raj Chopra and materials explaining the importance of Shared Governance (a key area that the Accrediting Commission later found lacking).

Also posted in October '09 were alternatives to the 25% class cuts, a timeline documenting issues with adversarial leadership, other cost-saving suggestions, and the first Governing Board meeting protest, including transcripts of some of the speeches.

But wait! There's more--much more, and if you care to take a deja vu walk down memory lane, just start back in September 2009 and work your way forward. It's a lot of reading, but a lot has been going on for quite some time.

Southwestern's issues (and this blog) didn't start with the teachers' suspensions. That event merely put both the college and the blog on the map. The people who care, the people who know, the people who work in the midst of mismanagement, greed, ignorance, ineptitude, and spite (to name just a few oughta-be deadly sins) have been trying to spread the word, trying to Save Our Southwestern College.

Will you help them? More importantly, will you help the thousands of students who depend on SWC for their education?

Please visit the sites of the candidates currently running against Board incumbents. Please contribute. (See left sidebar.)

Meanwhile, here's the roll call of press pieces on the most recent free speech mess at SWC:

Sun Under Attack (from the SWC Sun)

Southwestern College Bars Student Paper from Printing (from the Huffington Post)

College Newspaper Threatened by Contract Policy (from SignonSanDiego)

Students Claim Administrators Looking to Shut Down Newspaper (from 10 News)

Southwestern College Halts Publication of Student Newspaper (from The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Student Journalists Say College Trying to Squelch Them (from Inside Higher Education)

Now is the time for change. Es tiempo de cambiar. What will you do to make it happen?