This post was updated at 7 a.m. May 17.
Editor:
I want to express my enormous discontent with the students who go up front during the Board of Trustees meetings only to complain and demonize the trustees. Trustee David Finkel was right when he said the the student protesters do not represent the entire student body—most of us are more polite and civilized than that.
Unfortunately the student protesters, members of the Student Organizing Committee, who attend the board meetings are misinformed and misguided. There's an article in the Corsair newspaper about how disorganized the Student Organizing Committee movement is, and how a professor who tried to videotape one of the committee meetings was censored. The leaders of the movement are very intelligent people, but they are using their power to misguide their membership.
I’ve been to a few of the committee meetings. Until April 3——I was actually a follower. But the leaders have idealistic and unreal views, and they confuse the followers, not on purpose, but because they believe they are doing the right thing; they are fighting the system! The problem is, they are completely misinformed, and they don't realize that they are not fighting the system at all; that they are not helping if all they do is make noise and complain. They should guide their people into finding solutions, and should never use violence under any circumstance. When April 3rd came and the SOC leaders chose to use violence to disrupt the board meeting and get media attention for it, I finally came to my senses and noticed it wasn’t about the students, because if it was, there would have been concern for their safety.
The school has 35,000 students and they are not being represented by the Associated Students officers, most of whom don’t even know what’s going on. It’s pointless to have Board of Trustees meetings like the last two we had, where the board commits to listen to each and every student for hours and hours just to hear insults and complaints. Students should be going there to offer solutions; we have a lot of smart people on campus.
I suggest the college does a massive survey that would bring ideas together and unite the entire Santa Monica College community with two goals in mind: to inform and to find solutions to our . We should all be focused on fixing the problem, instead of just making noise! I ask all the departments of the college, professors, faculty, students, and board to work together to fight for our educational system as a group. Please be opened to share and listen to ideas and develop them as a team. United we are stronger!
— Taynara Moura, Santa Monica College student
