Firefighters douse a small blaze at the Ocean campus Lunch Box on May 6. Investigators suspect arson caused the fire that ignited following an unsanctioned fireworks display launched from the roof of the restaurant just before 11:30 a.m.An "unknown device" from the scene is believed to be the source of the fire, said City College Police Department officer Rachele Hakes. ALEX EMSLIE / THE GUARDSMAN Read the full story in the May 12 issue of The Guardsman.
Students, faculty and staff are protesting the budgets in California. There are various rallies, protests and walkouts scheduled. Check back our twitter feed @sfbreakingnews for updates from UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco.
If you’d like to submit photos from various events around the bay area you can upload them to: http://drop.io/march4th
- The Guardsman Staff
An elderly pedestrian is removed from the scene by medical examiners after she was struck and killed by an SFPUC vehicle at Ocean and Miramar avenues on Feb. 9. RAMSEY EL-QARE / THE GUARDSMAN
By Alex Emslie
The Guardsman
A woman was struck and killed by a San Francisco Public Utilities Commission truck at the intersection of Miramar and Ocean avenues at about 1:40 p.m. on Feb. 9.
The San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office has confirmed Xiu Fang Huang, 63, died Feb. 9 at the scene of the accident.
According to witnesses at the scene, Huang was in the crosswalk of Ocean Avenue when the truck ran her over.
Max Heine had just disembarked from the Muni K-line train when he saw the accident. He said the two passenger-side tires of the truck rolled over Huang before the truck’s small trailer came to a stop on top of her.
“She tried to get her head up to look around,” Heine said. “Then she put her head back down and died, I guess.”
City College student Khalil Judie also witnessed the accident. He said the Huang’s head, “smacked on the cement as the truck was running her over. She looked up at us. Then the trailer stopped on top of her.”
Heine and Judie both said the city employees in the SFPUC truck did not touch Huang after they stopped and discovered what had happened. One city worker started praying while the others placed road cones around the body, according to several witnesses.
“We’re still trying to ascertain the cause,” said San Francisco Police Department Officer Leroy Thomas.
Medical examiners prepare to remove the body of an elderly pedestrian, who was struck and killed by an SFPUC vehicle on Ocean and Miramar avenues on Feb. 9. RAMSEY EL-QARE / THE GUARDSMAN
SFPD Officer Sam Chan said the name of the driver is not yet available and the investigation is ongoing. He added that the driver has submitted to a drug test and is cooperating with police.
“There’s no way it could be her fault,” Judie said. “It has to be the fault of the truck. They had to see her. The other car in front of them made the light. The truck should have stopped.”
Medical examiners removed the body from the scene of the accident at about 3:50 p.m.
Tyrone Jue, a public information officer for SFPUC, said the driver “is a 23-year veteran with the city.” This specific crew and truck were part of the water department of SFPUC and were on their way to job on Pacific Ave.
CBS5 Raw Video: Pedestrian Killed at Miramar and Ocean avenues
Be sure to check our live state of the union coverage our 44th President Barack Obama. The staff will be Twittering live during the entire speech. Be sure check back often for updates.
Follow The Guardsman on Twitter via sfbreakingnews for any breaking news in San Francisco, or at City College.
City College’s Oct. 17 1:00 p.m. game was held in Oroville, Calif. against the Butte College Roadrunners, last year’s national champions. Both the the Roadrunners and the Rams are 5-0 so far this season, and ranked no. 1 and 2 in the conference, respectively.
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Former City College chancellor and two current employees were charged today with the misallocation of public funds for a fundraising campaign and other unapproved expenditures.
Philip Day Jr. is being accused with eight felonies for diverting money into a campaign that promoted local bond measures and state initiatives, which would benefit City College. In addition City College administrator, Stephen Herman is being charged with seven felonies for helping Day and Vice Chancellor of Facilities, James Blomquist is being charged with one felony count for diverting a $10,000 lease payment from a motorcycle school into a bond measure campaign, said the Chronicle.
City College has not yet released an official statement about the charges to the public with key administrators being out of town on vacation including Dean of Marketing and Public Information Martha Lucey and Chancellor Dr. Don Q. Griffin.
“[We] are working on getting an official release, which should be available by this afternoon,” said Dean George Rush, executive assistant to the chancellor. “We owe it to our students to keep them informed about the situation.”
Please check back soon for more updates.
Be sure to follow our live coverage of the Supreme Court ruling on Prop. 8. There will be events happening all over the country for Prop. 8. The staff will be Twittering live from San Francisco’s Civic Center starting at 9 a.m. Be sure to check back often for updates.
If you know of any places around the city where people can participate in Prop. 8 event let us know by sending us an e-mail via our contact us page.
Follow The Guardsman on Twitter via sfbreakingnews for any breaking news in San Francisco, or at City College.
By Alex Luthi
ONLINE EDITOR
According to official Associated Students Ocean campus election results released Friday morning, Joshua Nielsen and Ryan Vanderpol were elected to the posts of student trustee and AS president, respectively.
The results were first released via text message by a member of City College’s AS to Rod Santos, acting dean of student affairs and public safety and Diana Munoz-Villanueva, the current student trustee for City College’s board of trustees.
Munoz-Villanueva announced the results of the race for student trustee during the Thursday meeting of City College’s board of trustees at the John Adams campus to the standing room only crowd attending the meeting.
The official results were released to The Guardman by City College student Jimmy Young, an AS senator candidate who ran on the O.S. slate. The results were verified by Pamela Ward, election commissioner, Philip Conklin, assistant elections commissioner and Skip Fotch, associate dean of student activities.
Vote counts for a candidate appear after the candidate’s name.
Winners of each race are denoted in bold.
District-wide election results:
Proposition S Approved
Yes 467
No 207
Joshua Nielsen 846
Bivett Bracket 197
Aito Compton 157
Ocean campus vote tallies:
Ryan Vanderpol 277
Alecia Dominguez 265
Paolo Marquez 172
Olivia Franco 118
Jerry Scripter 54
Nicole Blas 382
Yoowi Jang 281
Marielle Bautista 280
Pedro Alforque 357
Keyla Medonza 325
Laura Medina 311
Moose Adewunmi 308
Choco (Vinci-Paolo) Vilbar 274
Daniel Mancia 266
Eloy Najera 262
Diamond Dave Whitaker 262
Zenryo Trenholm 260
Mei Xuan 257
Rheana Rios 255
Faafetai Tupua 255
Wen S. Li 240
Johnny Lee 239
Raymond Tan 238
Jimmy Young 232
Ashley Brown 227
Christopher Gomora 223
Stephanie Nuttman 217
Joshua Bohar 192
Jacob Anderson 183
Barbara Jefferson 188
Vincent Finkowski 185
Josh Terry 160
William McSwine 152
Tayana Drevaleva 150
Micheál McLoughlin 150
Source: AS Elections
For updates on CIty College’s Associated Students election results, check back with The Guardsman or follow our election twitter feed @ccsfelection.
By Fleur Bailey and Alex Luthi
STAFF WRITER AND ONLINE EDITOR
In the face of increasing concerns for public safety, a review of City College records by The Guardsman has revealed the college appears to be failing to comply with the Jeanne Clery Act, a federal law regulating the reporting of crime on college campuses.
While the college appears to be complying with portions of the law, the requirement of any college or university that employs a campus police department or security force to publish a regularly updated crime log has not been followed by City College.
According to the Clery Act, formerly the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, the college’s requirements can be simplified into three parts: A requirement to produce yearly statistics of crime of a certain nature on campus, a requirement to issue timely warnings regarding ongoing threats to the campus, and a daily crime log no more than two business days out of date.
Graph detailing City College's recent Clery Act compliance. INFOGRAPHIC BY ALEX LUTHI / THE GUARDSMAN
City College does not currently have a full-time chief of police, but Rod Santos, dean of public safety for City College has undertaken some of the responsibilities until a suitable replacement is found. Santos said although he was familiar with the Clery Act, he was unaware that City College was not fully complying with all requirements.
“It’s news to me that we might not be following the Clery Act,” he said. “I didn’t know that there was a 48 hour turnaround time [for crime log updates]. My definition of it is broad; I thought it was just about reporting campus crime.”
Although the San Francisco Community College District Police Department Web site does contain recent crime alerts and annual crime statistics, the last entry to the police log is a report of a stolen backpack that was recovered by the SFCCDPD on Feb. 12. As of press time, the college’s crime log would have to be up-to-date for all reported crimes as of March 6 to comply with the Clery Act.
“I think it is important for students to know what’s happening,” said Yuji Matsumoto, 23, a Japanese and English major and a docent of the Diego Rivera Mural at City College. “It’s in their job description to update their crime log. Accountability is the bottom line and I think it’s irresponsible if they’re not doing it.”
Currently, only one SFCCDPD officer undertakes the task of updating the campus’ crime log. Officer Christian Smith, who compiles the annual statistics for the college, says he uses any time he has outside of his regular duties to update the log. Smith is one of the two peace officers currently stationed at Ocean campus.
“There is no cover up, it’s not a conspiracy [why the log isn’t updated regularly], it’s just a lack of time,” he said. “We are understaffed. There are only two officers on Ocean campus right now, so we can’t be as proactive. I probably could make time, but it doesn’t feel right. I’d rather be out doing my job.”
“We have to be very careful how we handle things,” Smith said. “We’re careful how we release information without endangering the victim or making an already traumatized person more traumatized. We are very careful about victims’ rights, especially sexual battery or very sensitive cases.”
If a college is not complying fully with the Clery Act, a complaint can be filed with the U.S. Department of Education, which is in charge of enforcing Clery Act compliance.
If an ensuing investigation finds a college in violation of the Clery Act, the college can be fined a maximum $27,500 per violation. The total amount of fines can vary, depending on the gravity of the violation and the size of the institution. If the violations are severe enough, the college can lose all of its federal funding, including federal financial aid.
Eastern Michigan University is the most recent of four U.S. colleges to be fined for violating the Clery Act. The University received a $350,000 fine in June 2008 after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education uncovered that EMU had concealed the cause of death of one of its students in 2006.
Media reports stated that the student, Laura Dickinson, was raped and murdered in her dorm room. The university withheld information for 10 weeks after Dickinson’s death before announcing to her parents and the college’s community that her death was actually a homicide.
The Jeanne Clery Act, named after the daughter of Howard and Connie Clery, a freshman at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn. who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986. After her death, Clery’s parents discovered Lehigh students had not been informed about 38 previous violent crimes that had occurred on campus during the three years prior to their daughter’s death.
The Clerys then pushed to have a law created to inform students and the public about crime on college campuses, in the hope that publishing information on campus crime would help students make more informed choices about their safety.
The act was revised in 1998 to include the requirement of updating the crime logs within two days of the last reported incident. While the annual statistics need only cover crimes of a certain severity, a college’s crime log must include all incidents reported to the security force or police department for the college. The log must be made available to any member of the public for inspection.
“I generally feel safe on campus,” said Akira Wong, a 27-year-old English major. “I see the crime alerts posted around campus and I’m curious so I always read them. I don’t go looking for the information, but it’s surprising that there have been so many unreported crimes.”
City College’s police department also falls under the jurisdiction of Peter Goldstein, vice chancellor of finance and administration. Goldstein said that he will work with Santos to keep the crime log up-to-date, and that Santos will ensure a second person is trained to update the log so the college will no longer rely on a single individual.
“The law is the law and we have to comply,” Goldstein said.
This is the first installment of a series highlighting public safety on community college campuses in The Guardsman. The next installment in the series will be in the March 25 issue of The Guardsman.
The Guardsman editors Bonta Hill and Aaron Turner will be covering the Rams’ competition in the state basketball championship, held in Fresno, Calif.
(state brackets from http://www.coasports.org)
Follow The Guardsman’s City College sports coverage on Twitter via ccsfsports for live City College sports coverage on Twitter!
