The union representing California State University faculty reached a tentative agreement with the university system late Monday, putting an end to a planned five-day strike after one day.
“In case anyone forgot, STRIKES WORK! After months of negotiations and two strike actions, our movement for a #betterCSU has paid off!” the union announced on Instagram.
Faculty are expected to resume teaching Tuesday and students were advised to look for messages from their instructors. The agreement, which must be ratified by union members, includes higher salary floors for the lowest-paid workers, safer workplaces and an expansion of parental leave. In an email to faculty members, union leaders said the agreement includes a 5% salary increase retroactive to July 1, 2023, among other benefits.
“I am extremely pleased and deeply appreciative that we have reached common ground with CFA that will end the strike immediately,” CSU Chancellor Mildred García said in a statement. “The agreement enables the CSU to fairly compensate its valued, world-class faculty while protecting the university system’s long-term financial sustainability.”
The unanticipated announcement came after faculty at all 23 campuses of CSU, the nation’s largest four-year university system, staged a massive walkout Monday, the first day of the term for most students.
While faculty members marched in chilly rain throughout much of the state, students navigated a dizzying mix of instructions: Classes are canceled, classes are temporarily on Zoom, class is in session; assignments are online, assignments are scratched for a week. Official email communication with professors was cut, leaving some unsure if classes were taking place.
Neither university administrators nor the union had an official tally of the number of shuttered classrooms. But students throughout the system said faculty did not show up to most, if not all, of their classes.
The university said it did not cancel classes and clarified what it called “misinformation” about the status of instruction.
“Classes are not canceled. Individual faculty members who decide to strike will cancel their own classes,” a message said Monday. “If students have not heard from their instructor that their class is canceled, they should assume that it is being held as scheduled and go to class.”
The message said the two sides were “in communication with each other over the weekend” but did not share details.
The strike by the California Faculty Assn., which represents 29,000 professors, lecturers, counselors, librarians and coaches, culminated months of increasing tension between the union and CSU administration. It was the latest California walkout in higher education and TK-12 school districts as faculty and other workers — many stressed or burned out after the pandemic years — have demanded higher salaries amid escalating costs of living.
Just over a year ago, about 48,000 University of California academic workers, teaching assistants, researchers and postdoctoral scholars walked out for about five weeks, ultimately winning significant improvements in wages and working conditions. The Los Angeles Unified School District shut down for three days in March 2023, when teachers walked off the job in solidarity with school support staff, who won pay increases. A month later, L.A. teachers agreed to a contract that provides a 21% wage increase over about three years, averting a second strike.
Union demands
The CSU faculty union had pushed for an across-the-board, 12% wage increase for the 2023-24 academic year and wanted to raise the minimum salary for full-time faculty to $64,360 from $54,360. The union also sought improvements such as smaller class sizes, gender-inclusive restrooms and a full semester of expanded parental leave.
The tentative agreement falls short of the full slate of demands. In addition to the retroactive pay, the agreement includes another 5% increase on July 1 that is contingent on state funding. It raises the minimum salary for faculty by $3,000, increases paid parental leave from six to 10 weeks and improves access to gender-inclusive restrooms and lactation spaces, the email said.
It also extends the current contract, which was slated to end in June, by one year.
“This historic agreement was won because of members’ solidarity, collective action, bravery, and love for each other and our students,” said Antonio Gallo, an associate vice president of lecturers, in the email. “This is what People Power looks like. This deal immensely improves working conditions for faculty and strengthens learning conditions for students.”
Scenes on campus
The one-day strike left CSU campuses nearly empty.
About a dozen people lingered in the Cal State L.A. student union in the morning, as faculty members in red ponchos picketed outside. The normally crowded campus Starbucks was devoid of customers.
“Normally the line would be out the door,” said Jordyn O’Connell, a student who works as a barista.
All of O’Connell’s classes had been canceled because of the strike. The 20-year-old psychology major supported the strike but had been looking forward to resuming classes after the winter break.
“I’ve been really eager to get back,” she said. “I just hope that we get this figured out. I’m ready to start the semester.”
For some students, it was not clear which classes were canceled. Moments before heading into the student center at Cal State Fullerton on Monday, Leslie Segundo, an arts major, learned that a professor who had been scheduled to teach one of her classes had moved the start date to next week because of the strike.
Segundo hadn’t heard from all of her professors and assumed that those who had not emailed her were going to hold classes.
“I will attend the classes that are available,” said Segundo, who commutes to campus from Orange. “As far as the teachers that are on strike, they haven’t emailed me in clear detail about it. I don’t think I’ve been assigned any readings.”
Around lunchtime, Karen Carrillo, president of the Associated Students Inc. at Fresno State University, said there wasn’t a typical rush at the campus food court. Three of her five professors canceled classes this week, a move she supported.
“We are still learning, even if it’s not in the classroom,” Carrillo said. “We’re learning from professors how to lead by example and how to fight for what they believe is right.”
Michael Lee-Chang, a second-year student at Sacramento State, said the campus looked like a ghost town. A friend sent him a picture of one class in progress; the only people in the room were the student and the professor. Lee-Chang said he feels that most students support the strike.
Cal State officials had circulated online forms, asking students to report classes that were canceled. Lee-Chang said many were reluctant to “snitch on their faculty, because it’s faculty they know and care about.” Some students were filling in the forms with spam, reporting on the status of fictional classes such as “Evil 101.”
The rain did not keep Stevie Ruiz, a Cal State Northridge professor in the Chicana and Chicano studies department, from protesting. He said the vast majority of students stayed away from campus. Ruiz added that about half of Northridge’s student body is Latino, and many are the first in their families to attend college.
“This is a working-class struggle. We’ve been really amazed by the outpouring of support from students. What happens to us affects them,” he said. “They care about us, and we care about them.”
California State University officials are unilaterally raising faculty pay by 5%, rejecting demands for much higher increases and ending contract negotiations with the faculty union, a move that has ramped up labor strife as a systemwide, weeklong walkout approaches.
The pay hike effective Jan. 31 is far from the 12% increase for the 2023-24 academic year sought by the California Faculty Assn., which represents professors, lecturers, counselors, librarians and coaches. University officials said Tuesday the union’s salary demands were not financially viable and would have resulted in layoffs and other cuts.
“With this action, we will ensure that well-deserved raises get to our faculty members as soon as possible,” Leora Freedman, vice chancellor for human resources, said in a statement. “We have been in the bargaining process for eight months and the CFA has shown no movement, leaving us no other option.”
Charles Toombs, president of the California Faculty Assn., lambasted the university’s decision to end contract talks.
“CSU management expressed nothing but disdain for faculty,” he said in a statement. “CSU management has never taken seriously our proposals for desperately needed equity transformation for CSU students, faculty, and staff.”
The divide over pay had reached an apex in recent weeks, with faculty staging one-day strikes at four campuses in early December to voice dissatisfaction with the university system’s pay proposals. A weeklong strike is planned at all 23 of the system’s campuses starting Jan. 22, which marks the beginning of the spring semester for most students.
The CSU and faculty union were engaged in so-called reopener bargaining, in which parts of the existing contract can be negotiated before it expires in June. Bargaining sessions were scheduled for this week, but university leaders imposed their final offer during a session Tuesday, according to the union.
Toombs said the union, which represents 29,000 workers, had planned to “bargain in good faith” and explore a solution that could avert a strike. Instead, he said, they were met with “disrespect from management.”
“Management’s imposition gives us no other option but to continue to move forward with our plan for a systemwide strike,” he said.
Before Tuesday’s session, the sides had reached an impasse, meaning they could not reach an agreement on their own. That triggered a report from an independent fact -finder, who recommended the sides agree to a 7% increase.
Having exhausted the negotiation process without an agreement, the system was permitted to impose a final offer during bargaining. Faculty members may strike to protest the system’s decision, though the union has not yet said if they will extend the walkout planned for this month beyond a week.
Throughout negotiations, union leaders have called on the CSU to draw on money from its reserves to pay for increases, accusing the system of “hoarding billions of dollars in reserves instead of investing in faculty and staff.” An Eastern Michigan University professor commissioned by the union to conduct a financial analysis of the CSU found the system is “in very strong financial condition” with “a high level of reserves.”
But university officials have disputed the union’s findings, contending that they need to maintain the reserves to pay for short-term or emergency expenses. They also said some of the money the union says is part of the university’s reserves cannot be used on salaries.
“We are committed to paying fair, competitive salaries and benefits for our hard-working faculty members, who are delivering instruction to our students every day and are the cornerstone of our university system,” Freedman said. “But we must also operate within our means to protect the long-term success and stability of the university, our students and our faculty.”
Freedman noted the 5% raise aligns with increases given to unions representing other CSU workers.
In addition to across-the-board increases, the union had also sought to raise the salary floor for its lowest-paid workers to $64,360 from $54,360. During the one-day strikes last month, lecturers said they live in financial precarity, with many having to teach classes at multiple campuses or take on debt to pay for basic living expenses.
The faculty association also sought other improvements, including caps on class sizes, an expansion of paid parental leave to a full semester, accessible lactation rooms, and gender-inclusive restrooms and changing rooms.
The CSU’s move is unlikely to stem disagreements over pay. With the current contract set to expire in June, both sides will probably begin negotiations over the next contract in the coming weeks or months.
The University of California appears poised to buy the former Westside Pavilion, which was once one of L.A.’s hottest malls but later converted to office space for rent to companies such as Google, according to state records and two real estate sources with knowledge of the deal.
One of the sources, who was not authorized to speak about the project, said the deal had closed.
The 584,000-square-foot office complex, which has been renamed One Westside, sits on prime real estate in the heart of the Westside, about two miles from the UCLA campus. Officials have been looking for ways to expand the school’s capacity.
The University of California seeks to acquire and improve three adjoining commercial properties along Pico Boulevard that make up the old mall, an environmental notice posted with the state showed. The efforts were first reported this week by the commercial real estate news site Urbanize L.A.
UCLA spokeswoman Mary Osako declined to confirm or deny reports of what she called a “rumor” about the potential transaction.
A purchase would mark the third major acquisition for the public university system in Los Angeles in less than two years.
UCLA is the most-applied-to university in the nation, but its Westwood campus is among the smallest of the nine UC undergraduate campuses, leaving it limited room for growth.
Seeking to expand its footprint, UCLA announced this summer it acquired the Art Deco-style Trust Building in downtown Los Angeles and renamed it UCLA Downtown. Just nine months prior, UCLA spent $80 million to buy two other major properties owned by Marymount California University, a small Catholic university that shuttered last year. The purchase included Marymount’s 24.5-acre campus in Rancho Palos Verdes and an11-acre residential site in nearby San Pedro.
Designed by prominent 20th century mall architect Jon Jerde, the Westside Pavilion was both hailed and reviled by locals who saw it as commercializing their community when it opened in the 1980s. The three-story mall buzzed with shoppers. But decades later the rise of e-commerce and changing consumer tastes helped bring a slow death that was hitting brightly lit indoor shopping centers across the country.
Hudson Pacific Properties, a Los Angeles-based owner of office and studio properties, acquired control of the bulk of Westside Pavilion in 2018 and announced it would turn the sprawling three-story mall into offices.
At the time, experts and elected officials touted the Westside Pavilion’s rebirth into office spaces as an example of West Los Angeles’ growing appeal to media and technology companies.
Google signed a 14-year lease in 2019 and had plans to build out a massive campus there. Then COVID hit. Those ambitions were never realized amid a crash in the office market, and more recently an overall pullback of tech companies on real estate expansions and rising interest rates.
Earlier this year, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, announced it would cut 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, amid “a different economic reality.”
In the environmental document, the university system didn’t say what it wants to do with the property, but states it will not make a decision until state regulation is complied with and an overall site development plan has been approved.
At the time UCLA purchased the landmark downtown property, Chancellor Gene Block said it would offer extension classes there but it also hadn’t “precluded” the potential of undergraduate and graduate classes.
Staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report
Custom: Screenshots – Democracy Now! and DailyWire+ YouTube Videos
Conservative actor Nick Searcy unloaded on Peter Beinart after the MSNBC analyst suggested that outrage over Ivy League presidents failing to condemn anti-Semitism on their campuses was an affront to free speech.
Several top university presidents took the banner of free speech and ran with it during a House committee meeting earlier this month, refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews.
The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) repeatedly offered excuses for the racist, often violent rants of left-wing students on campus.
“We embrace a commitment to free expression – even views that are objectionable, offensive [and] hateful,” said Harvard President Claudine Gay. “It’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying and harassment. That speech did not cross that barrier.”
Gay was responding to protesters on the campus calling for a “global intifada.”
NEW — Congresswoman Elise Stefanik demands Harvard’s President Claudine Gay resign in a fiery exchange over antisemitism on campus.
“Harvard ranks the lowest when it comes to protecting Jewish students,” Stefanik said.
At the time of this post being written, Penn President Liz Magill had resigned following her testimony before the committee, a move critics celebrated as a notch against ‘woke’ universities letting their students run the asylum.
There was pressure for Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth to follow suit.
But Beinart didn’t feel the Ivy League presidents should be criticized or have to suffer the consequences of their actions.
“The campaign to depose the presidents of Penn, Harvard + MIT is a campaign to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus,” he wrote on X. “If you support it, please have the decency never to sermonize about free speech, academic freedom or cancel culture again.”
The campaign to depose the presidents of Penn, Harvard + MIT is a campaign to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus. If you support it, please have the decency never to sermonize about free speech, academic freedom or cancel culture again.
Searcy, best known for his role on FX’s Justified, gently reminded Beinart that it is liberals in this country that set the guidelines for what speech is allowed and what gets you canceled.
“You made the rules about ‘hate speech,’ bitch,” he shot back. “Now you have to live by them. Tough titty.”
You made the rules about “hate speech,” bitch. Now you have to live by them. Tough titty.
— Nick Searcy, INSURRECTUMAL FILM & TELEVISION STAR (@yesnicksearcy) December 10, 2023
Searcy is a frequent critic of liberals on social media, often subscribing to the James Woods School of obliterating the left using their own tactics.
He shredded American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Randi Weingarten after she begged for a “pandemic amnesty” in which people would forgive and forget the actions taken by public officials and commenters during the COVID pandemic.
“This bish ruined more children’s lives than the Grinch,” he countered. “Of course, she agrees with having no consequences for her stupid lies.”
Beinart, meanwhile, likes to parrot anti-Semitic rants made by people like members of the ‘Squad.’ In an interview earlier this year, he cited sources denouncing Israel as an “apartheid state.”
Beinart seems to share a common cause with some Ivy League students.
Students that Leon Cooperman, an American billionaire investor and Columbia Business School graduate, recently described as being just shy of intelligent.
“I think these kids at the colleges have s*** for brains,” he said.
“We have one reliable ally in the Middle East, that’s Israel. We only have one democracy in the Middle East, that’s Israel. We have one economy tolerant of different people, you know, gays, lesbians, etc,” Cooperman said. “So, they have no idea what these young kids are doing.”
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Rusty Weiss has been covering politics for over 15 years. His writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, Fox News, Breitbart, and many more.
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I’m a dude (despite the fact that according to some professors throughout the nation, anyone can be a “dude” these days), but that doesn’t mean it’s plain as day to see that throughout the country, conservative women on campuses face a unique variety of challenges men such as myself will never have to tangle with.
Luckily for the ladies out there, Network of Enlightened Women (NeW) president and founder Karin A. Lips has a new book out which sets itself up to be the definitive guide for handling the challenges of surviving a liberal campus with your sanity, integrity, and dignity intact.
Lips’ new book, “You’re Not Alone: The Conservative Woman’s Guide to College,” emerges as a significant work because of it’s mission to show young, conservative women that the difficulties they encounter from liberal professors and students, whether it be directly in the classroom or throughout campus, are experienced by others and there are answers out there.
Are you a conservative woman experiencing liberal bias on campus? Worried about your daughter or granddaughter attending a college with a liberal bias? “You’re Not Alone: A Conservative Woman’s Guide to College,” is here to help. It is a first-of-its-kind guide that provides… pic.twitter.com/swaceHKr54
For context, Lips has been an advocate for conservative women for some time now, so if anyone is the definitive expert on this topic, it’s certainly her. As president and founder of NeW, Lips has managed to establish and lead a true platform for conservative women to speak honestly about their views and the experiences they carry with them – having gone through the university experience without coming out the end a blue-haired, feminist, communist who also can’t determine their own gender.
The primary goal of “You’re Not Alone” is to equip young conservative women with the necessary tools and knowledge to navigate the predominantly liberal terrain of higher education. The book provides a blend of personal stories, practical advice, and strategies to help these women thrive in academia without compromising their conservative beliefs. It addresses the challenges they face, such as liberal bias, self-censorship, and the need to find supportive networks.
Popular conservative women who have backed this book include Senator Marsha Blackburn, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Townhall editor Katie Pavlich. If you know anything about these three, you know that in the political sphere they received flack over the years for not just being conservatives, but being women who are also conservative— often targeted because their views and actions along don’t align with the progressive agenda that has largely dominated the female vote in the United States in recent times.
“Navigating college can be challenging, but this book offers a road map for conservative women to stick to their principles, thrive on campus, and succeed,” said Katie Pavlich.
“I appreciate NeW ensuring that our next generation of young women are ready to take on the important challenges facing our nation and society,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn. “Reading this book is a great first step in setting yourself up for success as a conservative woman in a liberal world. Do not give up, and keep fighting for your values and faith!”
The Conservative Woman’s Guide to College shares strategies for dealing with biased administrators, hostile liberal professors, and intolerant classmates. Buy a copy today so you or a loved one is prepared!https://t.co/mZcBh675B3
From the perspective of a conservative man, the book’s significance cannot be overstated. It brings to light the unique challenges that conservative women face in college settings. These challenges include pressures to conform to the majority view, the quest for fair representation, and the balancing of academic and personal convictions.
The book not only acknowledges these struggles but also offers guidance and solidarity to those who might feel isolated due to their conservative views.
“You’re Not Alone” is an essential read not only for conservative women embarking on their college journey, but also for a broader audience interested in understanding the diverse experiences within our educational institutions. It is a valuable resource for parents, educators, and anyone who supports intellectual diversity and the freedom of thought.
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As another mass shooting traumatizes a college campus — this time the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — California universities have developed a set of tools, including video trainings, text alerts and enhanced door locks, to protect their students, faculty and staff.
The UNLV shooting that left three dead and one injured comes as all University of California campuses are currently providing “refresher training” on active shooter situations for communities and first responders — a task made more urgent Wednesday, said UC Davis Police Chief Joe Farrow, coordinator of the UC Council of Police Chiefs.
He said requests for campus trainings have escalated in recent weeks due to rising tensions over the Israel-Hamas war, which has triggered multiple rallies and reports of vandalism, violence, harassment and threats on both sides.
Now, he said, campus security needs to be alert for any incidents that might be inspired by the violence at UNLV.
“I’m not sure about copycat acts, but there are probably some people who look at that and think that’s the solution to their problems,” he said.
“Our hearts and prayers go out to UNLV. They have just suffered every community’s greatest nightmare,” he said. “First responders across America train constantly to prevent and respond to these horrific incidents. We are all saddened by yet another senseless act.”
The UNLV shooting took place about noon Wednesday a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip.
It was the latest of at least nine other mass shootings at or near college campuses in the last 15 years — including one at Michigan State University in February, where the gunman killed three students and injured five others, and Morgan State University during homecoming week in October, which injured five people.
Preparing for an active shooter at colleges has been a regular part of safety planning for nearly two decades in California — home to the nation’s largest systems of public higher education and a state that has experienced its share of campus tragedies.
In 2016, a UCLA professor was fatally shot in his office by a former doctoral student. In 2014, a man killed six UC Santa Barbara students in the nearby town of Isla Vista and wounded 14 others before shooting himself in the head at the wheel of a BMW. In 2013, a gunman killed five people and injured three others in a shooting rampage that ended at Santa Monica College. At Cal State Fullerton in 1976, seven people were killed by a custodian who stormed the library.
In one common protocol at colleges, UNLV students said they received emergency messages from the university at 11:51 a.m. Jason Whipple Kelly, a second-year law school student at UNLV, was walking onto campus to take a final exam when he saw the text:
“University Police responding to report of shots fire in BEH evacuate to safe area, RUN-HIDE-FIGHT.” He soon heard sirens and he saw police run onto campus. “I was walking to the law school, got the text and turned around and ran back to the car,” he said.
He praised the university communication, saying updates and instructions were sent out every couple of minutes.
Another law student, Carlos Eduardo Espina, said in the midst of the emergency, some students were confused by the messaging about the shooter’s location, leading them to believe there was a second shooter on campus.
The 10-campus UC and 23-campus California State University systems generally share the same practices for responding to active shooters. UC offers a list of resources on how to handle active shooters, including online classes, instructional pocket cards and video trainings by the FBI and other federal agencies.
The UC website advised students to keep three key words in mind: Run, hide, fight.”
UC campuses have worked to improve safety by upgrading technology, enhancing training and adding unarmed security officers, mental health professionals and other resources to supplement their sworn police forces, Farrow said.
Here is more about how California’s colleges prepare for that possibility.
What are colleges required to do to protect students?
Under the Clery Act, a federal law enacted in 1990 and expanded since then, each time a school is notified of a campus crime, an official must review the crime and decide if it represents a “serious or ongoing” threat. All higher-education institutions — public and private — that receive money for federal student aid programs are required by law to follow the Clery Act.
If the threat is deemed serious or ongoing, the school must issue a timely warning to the entire campus.
Colleges and universities must also establish and put into effect emergency responses and notification systems. They must inform the school community about any “significant emergency or dangerous situations involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees on the campus.” That includes shootings, fires, earthquakes and crimes of sexual violence.
Campus police agencies are required to have a rapid response plan for mass shootings, said Melinda Latas, director of campus safety compliance for CSU. Those plans, which are posted to school websites, detail how authorities manage the first response in a shooting and how campuses must train for them.
The federal law was named for Jeanne Clery, a first-year student at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, who in 1986 was sexually assaulted and killed in her dorm room by another student she did not know.
What does training look like?
Training is critically important, for both security officers and the wider community, campus security experts said.
Cal State Fullerton holds an active shooter drill every two years in specific locations on campus, such as a parking structure or the student union, Police Capt. Scot Willey said. The university trains about 200 students on run, hide, fight procedures. During one drill, Willey said, a police officer is dressed in a padded suit while carrying a rubber rifle. Students are taught where to run and locations that are good for hiding. They’re also taught to use items around them — staplers, laptops, iPads — to fend off an attacker if there are no other options.
At UC Davis, students are given training on active shooter situations during required orientations; the workshops are also available to all campus members.
Students are taught to silence their cellphones, although it helps officers when people message about what is happening in their part of campus, as first responders are sometimes “going in blind,” Farrow said.
What security challenges do open campuses present?
Unlike K-12 schools, public college campuses are not gated, with access open to anyone.
“You don’t know everybody that comes on your campus,” Farrow said. “That’s the disadvantage that you have, and that’s what they experienced in Michigan State.”
When police receive the first reports of a shooter on campus, the protocols are generally consistent across universities, Farrow said. The dispatchers write up a notification that an active shooter is present, giving a location if known, and urge people to leave the area or shelter in place. This is automatically sent to the entire campus community and to parents and families who have signed up for such notifications, Farrow said.
How has the technology evolved?
Improvements to technology, including enhanced door-locking systems and closed-circuit cameras that help authorities identify potential shooters, have helped campuses to be better prepared.
Notification systems that allow campuses to send out mass alerts are mandatory for all higher-education institutions, said John Ojeisekhoba, president of the International Assn. of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.
At Cal State Fullerton, police can consult hundreds of surveillance cameras throughout the campus, Willey said. The school can blast “shelter in place” warnings over indoor and outdoor speakers, along with sending email and text alerts.
“Text is the most efficient thing that we can use and probably the quickest way that we can communicate with our community,” he said.
Under UC Davis Chancellor Gary May, the campus has launched a $32-million, seven-year plan to enhance security with such technology as an automatic door-locking system, allowing officials to close all buildings simultaneously rather than having to use individual keys.
UC Davis also has added a sophisticated camera system that monitors public access. Other U.S. campuses have invested in “shot spotter” devices that detect gunshots and quickly identify where they are coming from, Farrow said.
UC Davis has increased unarmed security officers on its safety staff. The officers help patrol the campus, check building locks and escort students to classes and dorms when requested; some are trained to take down crime reports.
Similar steps are being taken throughout the UC system as President Michael V. Drake has led efforts to reshape campus safety practices by supplementing the traditional reliance on sworn police officers.
“One thing all chancellors say is that we have to keep these open campuses as safe as we can,” Farrow said.
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Teresa Watanabe, Debbie Truong, Angie Orellana Hernandez, Richard Winton
The arrests of two students bringing loaded weapons to Redondo Union High School on consecutive days were not believed to be tied to a planned school shooting or gang-related, Redondo Beach police said Wednesday.
Police provided the update at a virtual safety meeting they hosted along with the Redondo Unified School District in response to the lockdown of the school on two consecutive days. Parents and community members submitted over 350 questions at the one-hour virtual event held via YouTube at 8:30 a.m.
Redondo Beach Police Lt. Cory King said one of the popular questions asked revolved around the intent of the two students.
King said an investigation was ongoing, but “what we do know is that there was no evidence of a planned school shooting, or specific hit list or act of violence threatening a specific individual.”
He also said police have no confirmation that “the students that we’ve arrested or spoken to have been documented as gang members.”
Despite the unknown motive, Redondo Beach Unified administrators said they’ll move to expel the students.
“Just to remind everyone, the law dictates that bringing firearms to campus like in this situation … is an expellable offense,” Principal Anthony Bridi said at the meeting. “And we intend to exercise those legal rights.”
The safety meeting came in response to incidents on Monday and Tuesday when two 15-year-old sophomores were each arrested on consecutive days for carrying guns and high-capacity magazines onto campus. Verbal tips to police led to the arrests. No one was harmed and no rounds were fired despite early and incorrect reports Tuesday of a school shooting.
The district canceled Redondo Union High classes Wednesday as police conducted a weapons and explosives sweep with dogs. The school is set to reopen Thursday.
Families hugged kids after signing them out to take home from Redondo Union High School after the school was locked down after a report of a student with a gun on campus in Redondo Beach on Tuesday.
(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)
District Supt. Nicole Wesley praised school safety procedures that led to the arrests without any injuries and encouraged students, faculty and staff to immediately report suspicious activity.
“Please continue to speak up,” she said. “This week has proved that ‘see something, hear something, say something’ is not just a slogan, it is a powerful safety tool.”
When students return to campus Thursday, they’ll find officers stationed at school all day and access will be limited to three entry and exit points. Wesley also said the district would be installing metal detectors at the school.
Redondo Union parent Beau Bowden, 43, said he felt like school leadership “was very on top of communicating with parents on both incidents.”
His 16-year-old daughter, Belle, missed class Tuesday due to a sinus infection, but he said he received timely updates all day.
While his daughter “felt apprehensive” about what happened, she told him she wanted to go back to class Thursday.
Bowden pinned blame on the parents of the two armed students. He suggested that the parents should be arrested and charged, as was the case in a Michigan school shooting by a 15-year-old boy in 2021.
“I grew up in West Virginia, so I’m not anti-gun, but I’m for responsibility,” he said. “These types of gun instances are happening too commonly, and we have to do something to stop them.”
A 10th-grader was arrested Tuesday after bringing a loaded firearm onto the campus of a Redondo Beach high school, officials say.
The same thing happened Monday.
Classes at Redondo Union High School will be canceled Wednesday after the second incident in as many days in which a student brought a loaded weapon to school, officials said. Tuesday’s incident included a false report of a school shooting.
In both cases, officers with the Redondo Beach Police Department said they had apprehended a 15-year-old sophomore who was carrying a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine on campus — although in each case, police said, there was “no evidence of a specific threat or plan for violence.”
Tuesday’s incident was reported to police at 9:23 a.m. as a student with a weapon.
Officers were already on campus as security had been beefed up after Monday’s arrest, and said they found the student with the firearm within minutes. The student tried running away from police, according to the department, prompting a school lockdown that lasted less than 40 minutes.
The student was apprehended by a school employee and two police officers. No injuries were reported during the incident, and police said that earlier reports of shots fired or a school shooting were false.
Monday’s arrest occurred around 10:30 a.m. at the school located at 1 Sea Hawk Way. The campus, which had over 3,100 students enrolled as of 2021, is the only public high school in the district.
Administrators had contacted police on Monday, saying students had reported a student with a gun on campus. Police responded and arrested the male student, who was not identified because he is a minor.
In both cases, the suspects were arrested on suspicion of multiple firearm violations, including being a juvenile with a firearm, possessing a firearm on school grounds, having a high-capacity magazine, carrying a loaded firearm in public and possessing an unregistered loaded firearm.
Police gave no details about the type of firearm carried by each student, nor did they say how the students acquired their firearms, citing the ongoing investigation. Investigators have neither confirmed nor denied whether the two incidents are related.
Officials with the Redondo Beach Unified School District will host an online meeting at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to discuss the incidents and safety protocols for Redondo Union High School.
“The two back-to-back incidents are something we would have never imagined,” district officials said in a statement. “We are going to need to work together to solve the issue of access to guns.”
The campus closure on Wednesday will allow Redondo Beach police to sweep the campus for weapons and explosives, school officials said.
When school resumes on Thursday, only three entry points will be open on the campus, and each will be monitored by police officers and school administrators. Police will also perform additional patrols at the high school and all other campuses within the school district.
A sophomore at Redondo Union High School started the week by carrying a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine onto campus, police say.
Officers arrested the 15-year-old male student at the school after he brought the firearm onto campus. They said he did not appear to have plans for shooting the weapon at the school.
Around 10 a.m., multiple students told administrators at the school that they’d heard a student had a loaded gun on campus. School officials contacted the Redondo Beach Police Department, and officers arrived at the campus around 10:30 a.m. and found a 10th-grader with a loaded firearm and ammunition.
Redondo police investigators said an initial investigation determined that no threats had been made and there were no plans for violence. No students or staff were threatened or injured at the school, where more than 3,100 students are enrolled, according to the Redondo Beach Unified School District.
“We understand that incidents such as these are concerning,” read a statement from Jason Kurtenbach, the district’s executive director of student services. “We are working in partnership with RBPD, who will continue to have an increased presence on and around all our campuses.”
The student was arrested on suspicion of multiple firearms violations, including being a juvenile in possession of a firearm, bringing a firearm onto school property, possessing a high-capacity magazine, carrying a loaded firearm in public and possessing an unregistered loaded firearm. The booking charges will be submitted to the Los Angeles County Probation Department for filing, according to police. The student has not been identified publicly because he is a minor.
Redondo Beach police declined to specify details of the firearm possessed by the student or its provenance, citing the ongoing investigation.
“At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident involving only the student who has been arrested,” police said.
Kurtenbach said in his statement that the district would work with the student and his family regarding discipline but cited California Education Code 48900, which requires districts to expel students who bring weapons to campus.
“That said, please know that this matter has our full attention and RUHS and district administration’s work will be guided by the law and our unwavering commitment to campus safety for all students and staff,” Kurtenbach said.
Anyone with information for police can call investigators at (310) 379-2477 or text (310) 339-2362.
UC Berkeley is being sued by Jewish groups claiming that the university has fostered a “longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism” on campus — an accusation that university officials say paints a distorted and inaccurate picture of the school.
Filed Tuesday by the Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, the complaint alleges Berkeley Law, the university law school, has “failed to confront, much less combat” antisemitism and that policies adopted by some student organizations discriminate against Jewish students. The lawsuit also alleges students have faced violence and harassment since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched an attack in Israel, killing about 1,200 people.
“The University has enabled the normalization of anti-Jewish hatred on campus,” the complaint, filed in federal court in San Francisco, reads. “Jewish students feel compelled to hide their identities.”
But university officials refuted many of the claims, and said the allegations made in the 37-page complaint don’t reflect “the facts of what is actually happening on campus.”
Tensions have been high at the campus following the Oct. 7 attack, sparking ongoing and, at times, opposing protests occurring at the same time. But UC Berkeley officials say they’ve been reaching out to student groups, offering counseling support, and making other arrangements to protect free speech and support students on campus.
A banner calling for a cease-fire hangs from UC Berkeley’s Sather Tower as hundreds of people, mostly students, read the names of Palestinians killed, during a protest at UC Berkeley on Nov. 16.
(Brontë Wittpenn / San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
“UC Berkeley believes the claims made in the lawsuit are not consistent with the First Amendment of the Constitution, or with the facts of what is actually happening on our campus,” Dan Mogulof, spokesperson for the university, said in a statement. “The university has long been committed to confronting antisemitism, and to supporting the needs and interests of its Jewish students, faculty and staff.”
The lawsuit claims that, following the Oct. 7 attack and the ongoing protests on campus, Jewish students have been targets of harassment and physical violence, and that Jewish students have received hate emails calling for their gassing and murder.
“Jewish students have reported being afraid to go to class, which would require them to pass through the pro-Hamas rallies taking place in Berkeley’s main thoroughfares,” the suit reads.
The suit also alleges that several student groups, including those that represent women, Asian and LGBTQ+ law school students, have adopted policies that discriminate and exclude Jewish students, including those that call for divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel or require that speakers repudiate Zionism before being invited to speak. Representatives for some student groups could not be reached for comment.
Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, refuted the claims.
“The complaint filed by the Brandeis Center paints a picture of the Law School that is stunningly inaccurate and that ignores the First Amendment,” Chemerinsky said. “For example, student organizations have the First Amendment right to choose their speakers, including based on their viewpoint. Although there is much that the campus can and does do to create an inclusive environment, it cannot stop speech even if it is offensive.”
Mogulof, spokesperson for the university, said some of the claims made in the complaint “have no basis in fact.” Despite the claims of possible discrimination in the lawsuit, he said the university was not aware of any incident where a student was excluded from a student organization based on their Jewish identity.
He said university officials have found no incidents where students reported getting the kind of emails that were described in the complaint.
“This is the first anyone has heard of an allegation of that sort,” he said. “I can assure you that if we have — or if we do — we will respond strongly and quickly.”
School police have also received one incident of alleged violence that occurred on Oct. 25, he said, involving two people who tried to take an Israeli flag from a student during a rally for Palestine. When they were unable to take the flag, the suspects hit the student in the head with his own metal water bottle.
Police are still pursuing leads in the incident, and school officials have reached out to the student.
“The university is taking this very seriously, and the student has been offered support,” Mogulof said.
For some, the university’s actions have not been enough.
“I don’t want to see students physically assaulted and the university not be willing to investigate it as a hate crime,” said Hannah Schlacter, a student at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Schlacter, who said she’s been helping lead the campus’ Jewish student community, is also a member of Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. Although not named, she said she provided testimony for the suit.
She said she was concerned university officials did not refer to the Oct. 25 incident as a hate crime. She said another incident on Oct. 16, where two people wearing masks tried to yank away an Israeli flag from a Jewish student wearing the flag as a cape, was also not being investigated as a hate crime.
“The university happens to not be following the policy in place to respond to these issues,” she said. “The fact of the matter is that the university is not investigating that as a hate crime and that to me is concerning.”
She said Jewish students are also concerned about what she called “indoctrination” by professors, including an incident where a graduate student offered extra credit for students who attended a pro-Palestine demonstration.
After school officials heard concerns, the options for extra credit for the class studying the Middle East were expanded to include any local event that involved the topic, including protests or documentaries.
The lawsuit comes as protests have erupted in universities and city streets across the country following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and the ongoing military actions of Israel in Gaza.
Some supporters of Israel have called on university leaders to better police pro-Palestinian rallies, while supporters of Palestine have also accused some campus leaders of issuing statements that condemn violent attacks by Hamas, but don’t criticize Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
In a statement to UC Berkeley students and staff on Nov. 3, Chancellor Carol Christ said she was concerned about an alarming increase of “antisemitic expression” in the country and campus.
“Our university condemns antisemitic expression in its very form, and we are committed to addressing it when it occurs and responding when it is reported,” she wrote.
Palestinian students and supporters have also faced harassment, threats and doxxing, she said, and urged students to report any incident to the Office for Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination.
About 300 UC Berkeley faculty have also signed on to a letter condemning the Oct. 7 attack. Some students on campus had referred to the attacks as “resistance” and part of a “freedom struggle,” which signatories of the letter call “repugnant and indefensible.”
Among those who signed the letter were Christ and Chemerinsky.
Maddy Montiel and Brad Butterfield marveled at the community they found this semester at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Montiel, an environmental science major, and Butterfield, a journalism major, had lived in their vehicles for several years, the only way, they said, that they could afford to attend college. They usually found parking in campus lots or on nearby streets.
But the pair and about 15 others like them — students living in sedans, aging campers, a converted bus, who could afford a $315 annual parking permit but not rent — found one another on campus parking lot G11. They started parking together in a row of spaces and named their community “the line.” They shared resources: propane tanks to heat their living quarters, ovens to cook meals. They helped one another seal leaky roofs and formed an official campus club aiming to secure a mailing address.
They felt safe.
Students Brad Butterfield and Maddie Montiel embrace next to a pair of parking tickets she received from Cal Poly Humboldt police.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“None of us have ever had something like that before,” said Montiel, 27. “People who live like this don’t really congregate, and try to stay out of view.”
Then the notices arrived late last month. The university was going to enforce a campus policy, written into parking regulations, that prohibits overnight camping. Remove vehicles by noon on Nov. 12, or they could be towed and students could face disciplinary action, the letter said.
Montiel and Butterfield moved their vehicles to another campus parking lot, hoping the university would back down if they became less visible. They found two spots under redwood trees at the edge of campus. Others from G11 scattered, driven back into hiding.
On the morning of Nov. 13, several students who stayed at G11 and other campus lots awoke to discover parking violations on their windshields, a $53 fine for living overnight in their vehicles, $40 for those whose vehicles were too large for one spot.
The actions by Humboldt — defended by university officials as necessary for health and safety — provide an up-close look at how low-income California State University students determined to earn a college degree struggle to meet their basic needs amid the state’s student affordable housing crisis.
Cal Poly Humbolt student Caleb Chen eats noodles in his van in campus parking lot G11.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“We’re putting everything we have into our education in order to be here,” Montiel said. “For them to just keep putting all of this added pressure onto us just seems really unnecessarily cruel.”
The campus-wide email landed at the end of October: The university would soon prohibit students from sleeping in cars.
“Overnight camping in University parking lots creates unsanitary and unsafe conditions for both those encamped and for our campus community at large,” the email said. “The University Police Department and other campus offices have taken calls from concerned members of the campus community expressing fear and frustration about the situation.”
Days later, three administrators visited students parked in G11 to share details about the enforcement, said Butterfield, 26.
“This is a direct response to the public health and safety concerns that have stemmed from overnight activity in University parking lots,” said a letter given to students. The university would provide temporary emergency housing to students through the end of the semester, which ends in December, or would help students identify campsites or other locations where they could park off campus.
Tom Jackson, Cal Poly Humboldt’s president, declined an interview request through spokesperson Aileen Yoo, who said university staff is also available to help students find longer-term housing solutions.
“These aren’t evictions. The University is enforcing a long-standing parking policy,” Yoo said in an email.
Two people walk through the lobby of a building at Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
In response, faculty in the sociology department wrote a letter to university officials, condemning them for upholding a policy that “criminalizes” the students. The message to the campus community “framed our houseless students as a group of people who are feared, clearly intimidating them to get them off campus,” the letter said.
“There are ways that we can address this in a way that best serves our students and community,” said Tony Silvaggio, chair of the sociology department and vice president of the Humboldt chapter of the California Faculty Assn. “And it’s not just kicking them off campus to live on the streets somewhere else.”
The University Senate, a campus governing body, passed a resolution urging the university to suspend its enforcement of the parking policy until the end of the academic year, include students in decision-making and explore “safe parking” options on campus.
The students of G11 started an online petition, pushing back against the characterization that they are unsanitary or create danger. The students said they went out of their way to pick up trash and to maintain a clean environment.
The campus-wide email was “an attempt to shame, humiliate, and isolate the houseless community on campus,” the petition said. “We are living in our vehicles and are legally homeless because, quite simply, we cannot afford rent.”
After the uproar, the university sent a second campus-wide email that said, “The challenges of affordable housing can be particularly acute for students, and the University is invested in supporting them.” But the university did not reverse its decision.
Butterfield and Montiel raced to persuade officials to reconsider, meeting with administrators, including campus police and the dean of students.
They tried to schedule a meeting with Mark Johnson, the university’s chief of staff, and Cris Koczera, director of risk management and safety services. But an email from a campus ombudsman told the students the administrators would not meet with them. The university’s decision and the options it presented were clear, the email said, and “no constructive discussion is to be had.”
For Montiel, Humboldt was a world away from San Bernardino, her hometown. She first visited the university in high school, tagging along on a road trip with a friend.
Students Brad Butterfield and Maddy Montiel, along with their dog Ollie, prepare for class after taking a shower on the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Montiel was struck by the abundance of the nearby forest, the beauty of the redwoods that towered over campus. Years later, she learned the college had an environmental science program that offered experiences that aligned with her goals of working in ecological restoration.
“I fell in love with the place and always saw it as a dream — but never attainable because it was so far, and it’d be too expensive,” she said.
She attended Riverside City College for five years, enrolling in classes full time as she juggled multiple jobs. After she earned multiple associate degrees, she told herself, “I’m just going to go for it and figure out living up in Humboldt.”
She is making it work by living in a 1995 Chevy Coachman, purchased with a loan that costs her $600 a month. She has also taken out $25,000 in student loans for tuition and fees and works as a studio tech in the campus metalsmithing studio to pay for other living expenses.
In fall 2022, Montiel purchased a campus parking permit that allows students to park on campus during the academic year and eventually settled into the G11 lot.
A student’s note on the window of his van tells police he is not camping at Cal Poly Humboldt. The university recently told students they could not sleep in their cars overnight.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
In her aging Coachman, she studies on a tray table and practices yoga on a narrow strip of walkway. She cooks meals on a small propane stove inside. Her bed is lofted over the driver and passenger seats. Every other week, she visits a dump station to empty waste and fill her water tanks.
Over time, more students began to park in G11, a lot situated among dorms and a short walk from a campus market. The location was convenient for shuttling back and forth between classes or to access the campus gym for showers. This semester, the 15 to 20 students found comfort in their community. They celebrated the start of the year with a beach bonfire and eventually formed the Alternative Living Club.
Student Caleb Chen searches for water late at night with a gallon container on the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
The club began as a way for unhoused students to receive mail, as they needed an address for scholarship and job applications. Montiel, the club’s president, envisioned more. The club could offer a support system for unhoused students, an avenue to propose ideas about how the university could better help them. They talked about pooling funds for a storage facility, formalizing a safe parking program.
Montiel said many cash-strapped students have approached club members and said they are leaning toward moving into vehicles “because it’s their last and only option” to stay in college.
But now Montiel wonders if the club and the growing visibility of homelessness on campus led to the university’s decision to displace them.
“We’re kind of more seen,” she said. “We weren’t just scattered and hidden.”
Carrie White, another student who took up residence in the parking lot, transferred to Humboldt after graduating from community college in Utah. As she calculated her living expenses, the 27-year-old biology major realized she could not afford rent while attending school.
“I can’t afford to pay $1,500, $900 a month and work and then do a STEM degree,” said White, who is from England. “I can’t afford it.”
Student Brad Butterfield prepares to move his camper off the Cal Poly Humboldt campus.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
So she purchased an old school bus and gradually converted it to her home. At Humboldt, she works up to 20 hours a week, balancing a research assistant job with an internship in 3D facial reconstruction and a fellowship where she volunteers in the community.
As a person who is autistic, White said, she relies on routine and is sensitive to noise and light. Living in her bus, she has some control over her environment.
“I’ve tried to do those things with my budget and with my situation, and then this has happened,” she said. “There’s a lack of thought and consideration.”
This isn’t the first time in recent years that Cal Poly Humboldt has generated anger over its response to student housing shortages.
Last academic year — in anticipation of a large enrollment jump after becoming a polytechnic campus — the university announced it would prioritize limited on-campus housing for first-year students. Many continuing students would have to search for housing in off-campus rentals or at a limited number of motels leased by the university.
Around the same time, officials also weighed a proposal to house students on a floating barge, an idea that attracted national media attention and was mocked in a brief segment by Stephen Colbert. The barge plan has not materialized, and enrollment remained flat this academic year.
Brad Butterfield stores his belongings with his dog Ollie after taking a shower on the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
But the university’s approach to dealing with housing shortages points to a larger issue in the California State University — the nation’s largest four-year public higher education system, with nearly 460,000 students.
At Cal Poly Humboldt, 2,069 beds were available on campus in 2022, the report said. The campus enrolled nearly 6,000 students.
Humboldt also faces challenges unique to its location as the northernmost Cal State campus. Arcata, a city of about 19,000 people where Cal Poly Humboldt is located, is in the midst of its own housing crisis. Earlier this month, the City Council declared a shelter crisis.
The declaration enabled the city to draw on funding to continue operating a safe parking program, which is operated by Arcata House Partnership, an organization that provides support for unhoused people. The program provides a space for residents who live in their cars to safely park and services including charging stations, bathrooms and meals, as they work to find stable housing.
But the program is full, and up to 20 people at a time are on the waitlist, said Darlene Spoor, executive director of Arcata House Partnership. She said she would be “willing to have a conversation with people from the university about whether we could open a safe parking program for students.”
Students Derek Beatty, left, and Caleb Chen hang out late at night in parking lot G11 at Cal Poly Humboldt.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Spoor said, more people have moved to Humboldt and purchased homes at high prices, pricing some longtime residents out of homebuying and driving up rental costs.
Plans are underway to ease the strain on students. By fall 2025, Cal Poly Humboldt plans to build more on-campus dorms and apartments, increasing the number of available beds by 1,250.
But on-campus options still remain out of reach for some students. A dorm room shared by three people and a required basic meal plan, for example, is expected to cost at least $10,900 per student next academic year. Room and board in a double costs about $13,000; a plan for a single dorm room runs more than $14,500 for the nine-month academic year.
Neither of those options would have worked for Steven Childs. The 47-year-old wildlife major said he would not have attended Humboldt if he could not live out of his cargo van.
He was scrolling YouTube one day when he came across a video that showed Humboldt students living in their cars. He thought to himself, “Oh, man, I think that’s my option. That’s the only way that seems reasonable.”
Childs, who lives in the San Gabriel Valley when school is not in session, gave up work as a private investigator to attend Humboldt. His wife’s salary now supports them both.
“I’m pushing 50, and I don’t want to be saddled with college debt through retirement,” he said. “I could sacrifice and live out of a vehicle.”
Butterfield, the journalism major, could not find housing that worked within his budget range of $650 to $900 a month, plus security deposit and other fees.
He decided to pay for his education with savings from service-industry and other jobs, and does not want student loans.
Brad Butterfield and Maddy Montiel study in a camper parked on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
He lives in an 1976 GMC Sportscoach that cost $9,500. He spends at least $200 a month on expenses for the RV, including insurance and propane.
“I had a couple hundred dollars left in my bank account to come up here and try to live off of,” he said.
On the night of Nov. 13 — hours after receiving citations for overnight camping — about 10 G11 students gathered inside a small university building. They worried they could face disciplinary action or lose their vehicles. Five unpaid tickets could get them towed.
One student said he had struggled to fall asleep the night before, worried that parking enforcement would ticket him. Another student wondered aloud about what they would do next semester. They brainstormed ways to draw more attention to their fight.
They talked about occupying a building. They discussed how they would appeal the parking violations, and weighed potential legal action. Two students said they planned to sleep overnight in a campus study room so footage from security cameras could prove they did not sleep in their vehicles.
In the end, they agreed to stay in touch over a group chat to prepare for the upcoming weeklong fall break.
Student Brad Butterfield outside his camper at the Cal Poly Humboldt campus.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Montiel and Butterfield had decided to move their vehicles again, this time off campus, to a city street next to a university parking lot. They have to move the vehicles by 7 a.m, when the city begins enforcing metered parking restrictions.
“Love you guys,” Montiel told the group before everyone went their separate ways.
A massive former military hangar that burned in Tustin earlier this week, closing schools over asbestos worries, reignited Saturday night.
The city of Tustin tweeted that there was “an active flare-up above the north doors of the north hangar” around 5 p.m. Saturday, adding that the Orange County Fire Authority and the Tustin Fire Department were on scene.
The north hangar was one of two enormous structures on the property, 17 stories high and 1,000 feet long, that were used by the military during World War II and later served as sets for the TV show “Star Trek” and the film “Pearl Harbor.”
One of those hangars burned last week, creating a spectacle for drivers passing by.
The city also closed several public parks and canceled a planned Veterans Day celebration over health concerns stemming from possible contamination.
A note on the Tustin Unified School District’s website on Saturday said that Monday will be a “non-student day” on all campuses and that an environmental consulting firm has been retained to test all schools for contamination stemming from the fire.
An Arab Muslim student at Stanford University was struck by a driver in a hit-and-run collision that the California Highway Patrol is investigating as a hate crime, according to the university.
The student was walking on campus about 2 p.m. Friday when the driver made eye contact before accelerating and striking the student, according to a news release from the university’s Department of Public Safety. The driver shouted, “F— you people,” as he sped away, the release said. The student’s injuries are not life-threatening.
Stanford’s president, Richard Saller, sent a message to the community condemning the violence.
“We are profoundly disturbed to hear this report of potentially hate-based physical violence on our campus. Violence on our campus is unacceptable,” he said. “Hate-based violence is morally reprehensible, and we condemn it in the strongest terms.”
The driver remains at large, authorities said. The victim described him as “a white male in his mid-20s, with short dirty-blond hair and a short beard, wearing a gray shirt and round framed eyeglasses.”
The vehicle was described as a black Toyota 4Runner, model 2015 or newer, with a tire mounted on the back with a Toyota logo in the center of the wheel. The victim said it had a white California license plate with the letters M and J, with M possibly the first letter and J in the middle.
Campuses across the country have been pushed to confront anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel, in which militants killed 1,400 Israelis and took about 220 people hostage.
Relentless attacks by Israel in the Gaza Strip in the weeks since have killed more than 9,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Earlier this month, Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez spoke to the university’s faculty senate, detailing concerns from Palestinian American and Muslim community members who fear for their safety and who have described “troubling incidents and interactions rooted in Islamophobia.” She also relayed that Jewish and Israeli students have reported feeling fearful on campus, “feeling that they are targets of hate because of their identity.”
The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee has said it has heard from students across the country, including California, who have faced threats on campuses since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Abed Ayoub, the group’s national executive director, said his staff has also heard from students who are facing expulsion or losing job opportunities for expressing their beliefs. Others are having their social media posts monitored and are threatened with violence.
A week into the Israel-Hamas war, a Berkeley law professor published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal under the headline “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students.
Backlash was swift. More than 200 alumni signed an open letter to the law school’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, urging him to “publicly address the harm” done by the article and to uphold freedom of speech for all students.
In an email to the Berkeley Law community, Chemerinsky affirmed the school’s commitment to freedom of speech, including language that “others find offensive, even deeply offensive.” He also noted that the professor was expressing a personal opinion and did not speak for the law school.
Then last weekend, Chemerinsky, a constitutional law scholar who is Jewish, published an op-ed of his own in the Los Angeles Times. He described antisemitic remarks directed at him since the war started, as well as statements from students and academics around the country that he said “celebrated the Hamas terrorist attack.”
“There has been enough silence and enough tolerance of antisemitism on college campuses,” he wrote. “I call on my fellow university administrators to speak out and denounce the celebrations of Hamas and the blatant antisemitism that is being voiced.”
Even before Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 incursion into Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian issue had been a painful source of conflict on college campuses. The escalating war, including relentless Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion of Gaza, has turned U.S. universities into battlegrounds over speech and the potential consequences of airing opinions that some regard as hateful.
More than 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack, and Palestinian militants are holding about 220 people hostage.
At Berkeley Law, the inflammatory Wall Street Journal op-ed by Steven Davidoff Solomon, an expert on corporate law and an advisor to the Jewish law students association, has had a chilling effect, say some students who advocate for Palestinian rights.
“Many feel uncomfortable speaking out beyond their private social media accounts,” said Matt Fernandes, a third-year law student and member of the Berkeley chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine. “Everyone’s scared. Everyone’s fearful. Everyone feels angry and betrayed by our own faculty.”
In the op-ed, Solomon recommended against hiring his own students if they “advocate hate and practice discrimination.”
He referenced a bylaw that the Berkeley chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine had adopted the previous academic year vowing not to “invite speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.” Eight other campus organizations signed on to variations of the bylaw, which critics slammed as silencing Jewish students.
“If you are a legal employer, when you interview students from Berkeley, Harvard, NYU or any other law school this year, ask them what organizations they belong to,” Solomon wrote. “Ask if they support discriminatory bylaws or other acts and resolutions blaming Jews and Israelis for the Hamas massacre. If a student endorses hatred, it isn’t only your right but your duty not to hire him.”
Last month, a New York law firm rescinded a job offer to an NYU Law student who had written what the firm described as “inflammatory comments” about the Hamas attack. Another law firm initially rescinded offers to Harvard and Columbia students for similar reasons.
The New York Times reported that about two dozen Wall Street law firms signed a letter to law schools cautioning that students hoping to be hired should be prepared to work under “zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses.”
Fernandes said he feels that Solomon directly targeted marginalized students because most of the organizations that adopted the bylaw, some of which were named in the op-ed, represent students of color and queer students. Many of Fernandes’ peers are worried that by expressing support for the Palestinians, they could jeopardize their law careers or face online abuse.
During the bylaw controversy, students associated with Law Students for Justice in Palestine were doxxed and deluged with hate mail, Fernandes said.
At one point, a truck circled the campus displaying billboards that named several students, including Fernandes, and declared them part of “Berkeley Law’s Antisemitic Class of 2023.”
Solomon did not respond to requests seeking comment.
After Solomon’s op-ed was published on Oct. 15, Liz Jackson’s phone lit up with messages from fellow Berkeley Law alumni.
Jackson is Jewish and a founding attorney with Palestine Legal, which defends the rights of people who speak in support of Palestinian freedom.
“The content of his op-ed went around like wildfire,” she recalled. “It was shocking and racist, and very offensive to myself as a Jewish alumni and … students of all backgrounds who identify with Palestinians.”
To Jackson, the opinion piece read as a call to punish law students who advocate for Palestinian rights, many of them students of color who already face barriers to employment.
With other alumni, she began organizing the open letter to Chemerinsky, which, in addition to urging the dean to speak out, accused Solomon of violating the university’s free-speech values by threatening the safety and livelihoods of students based on their political opinions. And, the letter said, Solomon conflated “support for the Palestinian people or criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”
Asked in an interview on Monday if he thought Solomon’s op-ed was harmful to students, Chemerinsky said, “What else can I say other than — that isn’t the law school’s position, and we’ll help every student find a job?”
Some law students said they largely agreed with Solomon.
Jacob Shofet, a first-year student who is Jewish, said law firms have the right to choose their employees.
“Everyone has a right to free speech. And law firms are free to hire who they want to hire,” he said. “At the same time, I think organizations on campus, both in the law school and UC Berkeley itself, have blurred the line between legitimate Palestinian issues and rights, and a support for terrorism that wants to see me dead.”
Charlotte Aaron said that as a Jewish student she has felt increasingly unsafe on campus since the war started.
Last week, Aaron said she retreated to her home in Arizona for a few days after watching some of her law school peers join hundreds of other students in a pro-Palestinian protest on campus, chanting phrases such as “smash the Zionist settler state.” The walkout was part of a national protest calling for Israel to end its siege of Gaza.
“Employers have an obligation to consider this moral failing,” said Aaron, a third-year student. “I wouldn’t want any person who justifies the murders of Oct. 7 and the holding of hostages to be my lawyer. I am deeply concerned about these individuals being in positions of power one day.”
After initially taking no action, Chemerinsky emailed editors of campus law journals on Oct. 23, informing them that students can no longer receive academic credit for working on a journal that has adopted the bylaw.
In his Oct. 29 op-ed, Chemerinsky noted that he strongly opposes “the policies of the Netanyahu government,” favors “full rights for Palestinians” and believes “that there must be a two-state solution.”
But, he wrote, he can no longer stay silent when some people on college campuses are “calling for an end to Israel.”
Aaron said she approves of Chemerinsky’s willingness to condemn antisemitism and feels “lucky” to attend a school he leads.
But some alumni criticized Chemerinsky’s op-ed for failing to also condemn anti-Palestinian racism that students are experiencing. Jackson said she was alarmed that Chemerinsky would use his platform to “center his own personal discomfort” when “we’re watching a genocide committed in the name of Jewish safety.”
She said Chemerinsky “smeared his own students” and ascribed a level of hate to them “that essentially is the same thing as the Solomon op-ed, but a little lighter.”
The UCLA Police Department is investigating a recent incident of violence as a hate crime. A student walking on the Westwood campus early Sunday was shot in the face with a BB gun.
A police report said the incident occurred about 1:30 a.m. when a white four-door sedan approached the student, who was walking on De Neve Drive near Rieber Hall, a dormitory in the northwestern part of campus.
A passenger in the back seat of the car yelled a homophobic slur, according to the report, then brandished a white BB gun and shot at the victim, striking the individual in the face and narrowly missing their eye.
The victim sustained a minor abrasion below the eye.
The driver of the vehicle was described as a male wearing a black ski mask, and the passenger who fired the BB gun was also a male, according to police.
The investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Police offer safety tips
After the incident, police reiterated safety tips for students on campus.
In the event of an emergency, call 911; for non-emergencies, call the 24-hour UCLA Police Department line at (310) 825-1491.
The department says students should always be alert and aware of their surroundings. They should try to avoid poorly lighted or deserted areas when walking at night.
Students, as well as faculty and staff, can utilize the UCLA SafeRide service, which provides free transportation among campus buildings, on-campus housing and nearby residential areas. On-demand rides can be requested Monday through Friday from 7 p.m. to midnight, excluding holidays and seasonal breaks. Rides can be booked using the TripShot app available on Google Play or the App Store.
The continuous ride service SafeRide Loop operates in the evenings, arriving at designated stops around campus Monday through Friday from 6:45 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. — a map of the route is online.
The department also has community service officers who can escort students, faculty, staff or visitors 365 days a year from dusk until 1 a.m. Students in need can call (310) 794-9255. They should reach out 15 minutes prior to departure time. A police dispatcher will ask for the person’s name, location, the address where they need to go and a call-back number.
Lastly, the Police Department advises students to secure their residences by locking all windows and doors. They’re advised not to leave doors to buildings propped open, including entrances to campus buildings.
Feb. 8, 2023 — As mental health issues rise among teens and college students, this week’s first-ever global Student Mental Health Week couldn’t be better timed.
The urgency is quite apparent. A recent study showed that nearly one-third of students worldwide said their mental health has worsened since returning to campus following the COVID-19 lockdowns.
With suicide rates on the rise, this campaign, established by five youth-focused nonprofits including Born This Way Foundation launched by Lady Gaga, the Inspiring Children Foundation co-chaired by singer-songwriter Jewel, the Jed Foundation, and Chegg, an education-technology, wants to draw attention to the issue.
“Even before the pandemic, we’ve seen increased rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide deaths among students,” says Laura Erickson-Schroth, MD, chief medical officer at the Jed Foundation, which protects emotional health and works to prevent suicide among teens and young adults. “Young people are exposed constantly to wars around the world, the social and political unrest in our country and the climate crisis — things that adults never were when they were teenagers. I don’t think we recognize how much they’re dealing with.”
All week, social media live events will aim to help educate policymakers, educational institutions, and communities on the mental health challenges students are facing. Another goal is to urge students around the world to develop call-to-action plans with their legislators, all with the goal of boosting mental health support.
“The previous generation overlooked mental health issues, which created a culture where there was so much shame around not feeling comfortable in your own head,” says Matine Khalighi, a sophomore at Harvard University and executive director and founder of EEqual, a for-youth-by-youth nonprofit focused on overcoming student homelessness. “There’s now a new wave of being open about mental health challenges. Creating a space where we can talk about this makes us feel less alone.”
Cherrial Odell, a Stanford University sophomore who survived suicide and an adverse childhood, serves on the boards of both the Born This Way Foundation and the Inspiring Children Foundation. For Odell, this week is critically important.
“We all have mental health concerns,” says Odell, who this week, as president of the student-run Stanford Mental Health Outreach group, is hosting daily events on the Stanford campus. “The beauty of our generation is that we’re a lot more open about talking about these issues. That’s a beautiful thing. After all, opening up and sharing your story is a strength, not a weakness. It shows you have the courage to share what you’re going through.”
Ultimately, Erickson-Schroth hopes that the week informs adults, too.
“It’s so important for the adults in young peoples’ lives to recognize the signs that a young person is going through something that is causing stress and anxiety,” she says. “It’s also important for parents to feel like they have the resources to provide that help.”
Neal Horen, PhD, director of the early childhood division at the Center for Child and Human Development and the director of the HOYA clinic in the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown University, hopes this week helps focus more attention on the potential pitfalls students may face at this major developmental phase of their lives.
“Going to college can be amazing or it can be an arduous trek if we’re not paying attention,” he says. “This is a major time of identify formation with kids asking themselves ‘who am I,’ ‘where do I fit in.’ That plus the immediate independence they may experience living away from home is a big demand to put on someone and can lead to mental health challenges we have to pay attention to.”
This is a story about a kitty cat who went on the lamb and is now back in our care, after taunting the staff and volunteers of APA! for over a year! We applaud her efforts, but it is time to get this little lady some medical attention.
When Pancake first arrived at APA!’s main facility, she was clearly pretty scared, making her a flight risk candidate. Fly, she did. Luckily, she stuck around campus, making appearances. For months, the staff and volunteers reported “Pancake sightings.” We even attempted several strategized opportunities to get her back into our hands, with the biggest goal of getting her spayed. We have several “community cats” hanging around our facility – our very own barn cats! We care about this population and want to make sure they receive necessary medical attention so that everyone stays safe and can live a healthy life!
The whole organization has been in on it, for over a year! Here are some highlights from email threads:
“Volunteer just reported seeing them on the roof!”
“I was informed this cat was just spotted under a red car in front of the medical clinic!”
“Operation Ruin Pancake’s Romance”
“After a week long battle….. Pancake wins.”
“Catching Pancake (the Remix)”
The teams have finally found success and are celebrating that this girl officially received her spay surgery and has been released back into the family she created with the other APA! Community Cats. We have the honor of Pancake making her appearances around campus for many years to come!
Our barn cat program supports the cats who prefer the wild frontier. While traditionally seen as “unadoptable” in the sheltering world, our barn cat program has created a way for everyone to live in harmony– community cats get to go about their feral cat lives and those that adopt them receive pest control services for the simple cost of room and board.
Think you need a barn cat or two to support some property you have? Reach out to us – we can fill the order for you!
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The three students killed in a shooting at the University of Virginia were all members of the school’s football team, the school’s president said.
President Jim Ryan told a Monday morning news conference the shooting happened Sunday night on a school bus of students returning from an off-campus trip.
The suspect has been identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., who is also student.
The incident occurred Sunday near a university parking garage. In addition to the three football players killed, two others were reported to have been wounded.
Police went on a manhunt Monday in search of the student suspected in the attack, officials said.
During a press conference in the 11 o’clock hour local time, the university police chief, Tim Longo, was given word that the suspect was in custody. He immediately returned to the microphone and reported that update to the assembled reporters.
Classes at the university were canceled Monday, following the violence Sunday night, and the Charlottesville campus was unusually quiet as authorities searched for the suspect, whom university President Ryan identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr.
A shelter-in-place order to the university community had been lifted less than an hour earlier after a law-enforcement search of the campus.
In a letter to the university posted on social media, Ryan said the shooting happened around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
The university’s emergency management issued an alert Sunday night notifying the campus community of an “active attacker firearm.” The message warned students to shelter in place following a report of shots fired on Culbreth Road on the northern outskirts of campus.
Access to the shooting scene was blocked by police vehicles Monday morning.
Officials urged students to shelter in place and helicopters could be heard overhead as a smattering of traffic and dog-walkers made their way around campus.
The university police department posted a notice online saying multiple police agencies including the state police were searching for a suspect who was considered “armed and dangerous.”
In his letter to campus, the university president said Jones was suspected to have committed the shooting and that he was a student.
“This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia,” Ryan wrote. “This is a traumatic incident for everyone in our community.”
Eva Surovell, 21, the editor in chief of the student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, said that after students received an alert about an active shooter late Sunday night, she ran to the parking garage, but saw that it was blocked off by police. When she went to a nearby intersection, she was told to go shelter in place.
“A police officer told me that the shooter was nearby and I needed to return home as soon as possible,” she said.
She waited with other reporters, hoping to get additional details, then returned to her room to start working on the story. The gravity of the situation sunk in.
“My generation is certainly one that’s grown up with generalized gun violence, but that doesn’t make it any easier when it’s your own community,” she said.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said agents were responding to the campus to assist in the investigation.
The Virginia shooting came as police were investigating the deaths of four University of Idaho students found Sunday in a home near the campus. Officers with the Moscow Police Department discovered the deaths when they responded to a report of an unconscious person just before noon, according to a news release from the city. Authorities have called the deaths suspected homicides but did not release additional details, including the cause of death.
On April 16, 2007, another Virginia university was the scene of what was then one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history. Twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech were gunned down by Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old mentally ill student who later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Three people were killed and two wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia late Sunday night, officials announced, with police urging people at the university’s Charlottesville campus to shelter in place as they search for the suspect.
Police are hunting for a suspect in a shooting at the University of Virginia.
Getty Images
Key Facts
Police and university officials urged people to shelter in place after the shooting at the university’s main campus in Charlottesville late Sunday night.
Police warned the suspect, identified as school student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., is at large and is believed to be “armed and dangerous.”
Jones was described as wearing a burgundy jacket, blue jeans and red shoes and police said he may be driving a black SUV.
The UVA police department said multiple police agencies are working to apprehend Jones, including Virginia State police, who have deployed helicopters.
University president Jim Ryan said he is “heartbroken” to report the shooting had resulted in three fatalities and said the university is working closely to support the families of the victims.
What We Don’t Know
Two victims were injured in the shooting and are receiving medical care, Ryan said in a statement. He said the university will share additional details “as soon as we are able,” adding that the institution will “keep our community apprised of developments as the situation evolves.”
Crucial Quote
“This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send,” Ryan wrote in a statement on the shooting. “I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia.”
