Student protesters were pepper sprayed when they attempted to force their way past police and jam a trustees meeting at Santa Monica College. In yet another case of students wanting something for nothing, more than 100 students jammed the hall to protest the college’s attempt to stay solvent.
The California community college system has lost more than $800 million in state funding over the past three years, and in order to be able to continue serving the students, a plan was created whereby a nonprofit foundation would offer core courses at $200 per unit instead of the current price, roughly $50 per unit. The college has had problems accommodating the overflow of students wanting classes, and the plan would increase the number of classes offered.
The protesters weren’t passive. They pushed the officers in their attempt to enter the meeting of the board of trustees. Some students had already been admitted, but the room for the meeting couldn’t hold all the students. The students chanted, “Let us in, let us in … no cuts, no fees, education should be free.”
Two officers, backed up against a wall, used pepper spray when the students started to push their way past them. A spokesman for the college stated, “It was the judgment of police that the crowd was getting out of hand and it was a safety issue.” Louise Joffe, one of the trustees at the meeting, asserted that the trustees spoke for four hours with the students at the meeting, and that the trustees weren’t understood.
Is it any wonder? When the students want their education for free while the college is going under, is there any reasoning with them? One student yelled, “We won!” after the students had been pepper-sprayed. This is the kind of bullying tactic that is flourishing in the Saul Alinsky-Obama era: acting violently and then claiming victim-hood when the real victims fight back.
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