The Van de Kamps Coalition continues its ongoing investigation of the REAL reasons the Los Angeles Community College District transferred the Northeast Satellite Campus out of the hands of Los Angeles City College and into the hands of District Administration under the direction of Chancellor Mark Drummond. The Van de Kamps Coalition has uncovered a "shocking" misuse of standard American English by the esteemed former Chancellor of LACCD.
Just over a year ago, representatives of the Office of Assemblymember Kevin de Leon sought answers to questions regarding rumored changes in use of the $72 million Satellite College scheduled to open at the historic Van de Kamps site in Fall 2009.
In April 2009, word was leaking out of Los Angeles City College that the District planned to take the campus away from the College. Instead of offering the full schedule of community college classes promised for more than a decade, word was the District was trying to unload the buildings to "commercial lease tenants" to make the site a revenue stream for the District's general fund. This disastrous policy decision was being questioned not only by the community but the Assemblymember too.
Field Representative Alana Yanez of De Leon's Office forwarded a series of questions to LA City College President Jamillah Moore. Moore deflected direct answers by telling Yanez she would follow up with a telephone call. Moore then sent a copy of the questions to LACCD Chancellor Dr. Mark Drummond. Dr. Drummond had just two words in response. Well, really neither of them were words used in standard American English taught in the classrooms of LACCD. Instead, Dr. Drummond used the crude street vernacular to refer to Assemblymember DeLeon's inquiry: "fuk em" he wrote in reply to Dr. Moore's e-mail. Click here to download "fuk em" email (pdf file)
Now this non-standard English form grates the nerves like squeaky chalk on a blackboard. It makes one ask: "What kind of a role model is the Chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District for our young adults if he chooses to use non-standard American English in a business setting?" It's "shocking". Simply "shocking". Every good English teacher would instruct a student that the proper usage of that phrase is "Fuck them" and don't omit the proper punctuation! It would be either a period or exclamation point, depending on the Chancellor's mood in the middle of the afternoon.
Of course, persons of greater taste would counsel avoidance of the use of such trash talk when referring to a member of the State's Assembly in the first place. But at LACCD, neither the public nor elected officials are entitled to respect and accountability by community college officials. The full e-mail string is set forth below.
On a more substantive note: The fact that Dr. Drummond was cussing out anyone who dared to question his hand in the withdrawal of the Center Status application, strongly suggests that voters do not yet know the real story of why Dr. Drummond and some of the LACCD Board members began pushing an effort to hand one building over to the Mayor's favorite charter high school (Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools) and to hand the historic bakery building over to the City of Los Angeles for a bunch of unemployment projects funded with Economic Stimulus money from the federal government. If the City really wanted to stimulate the economy with those funds, it should have been renting private sector office space. Isn't that the idea of the Economic Stimulus package? Apparently not as envisioned by Antonio Villaraigosa and his Deputy Mayor Larry Frank who are intent to hand the Stimulus money to a bunch of SEIU and Workforce Union buddies. That is worthy of a few choice words, but most of us are more polite than the trash talking former Chancellor of LACCD.
One more note: For more than a year, the LACCD has NOT made hundreds of thousands of dollars of exercise equipment procured with federal grant funds obtained by Congressman Becerra available in any community room. President Moore's "assurance" that such equipment would be made available to the community remains another broken promise to Northeast LA. At LACCD, disrespect of elected officials is an equal opportunity offense: both state and federal officials get no respect.
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