OUR POSITION: The Sun is preparing to take the college to court for the release of covered-up investigations and documents.
The Sun is done playing nice.
Generations of staff and editors-in-chief have come and gone from building 640 seeking records that Southwestern College repeatedly and illegally refuses to share. We asked nicely at first. We have exhausted every avenue for obtaining records related to Michael Cash’s time as SC’s police chief and other issues.
So now we are going to court.
Thanks to Katy Stegall’s internship with Voice of San Diego in the spring and our administration’s boneheaded attack on The Sun and its adviser this summer, we have connected with Felix Tinkov, a First Amendment lawyer willing to help journalists defend their Constitutional rights.
For too long SC administrators have mistreated student journalists, often to cover up illegal activity or poor decisions that the public has the right to know about.
What they have not been able to comprehend is the fact that the only difference between a professional journalist and a student journalist is a paycheck. We have the same rights and responsibilities, but the college feels safe breaking the law when it comes to ignoring CPRA requests from The Sun.
For years administrators have bullied us with lawyers.
Now we have one and we are going to use him.
Starting with Editor-in-Chief David McVicker in 2013 and subsequent EICs Anna Pryor, Bianca Quilantan, Mirella Lopez, Alyssa Pajarillo, Katy Stegall and Brittany Cruz-Fejeran, our newspaper leadership has sought a copy of the Melinda Nish-authorized investigation that exonerated Cash for firing his gun on campus — nearly hitting three employees.
McVicker and his staff of 50 were asked hundreds of times by hundreds of campus employees and community members — how on earth was Cash allowed to return to work? We still do not know. People are still asking.
Each Editor-in-Chief made his or her successor pledge not to surrender the quest for the Betty P. Kelepecz investigation of Cash. Cruz-Fejeran is the latest in the line of Templar Knights who continues to fight this battle against obstruction and opacity. The Sun has asked at least nine times for the Kelepecz report over a period of six-plus years and got a different mendacious excuse each time.
During his five years at SC Cash was put on leave twice, including the notorious incident where he fired his gun. He was put on paid leave a second time for nearly a year for illegally hiring and arming some of his buddies without going through any hiring process.
Cash is no longer here, but that does not matter. Nish and now Dr. Kindred Murillo have perpetrated a coverup. Although an internal investigation determined the gunfire was intentional and negligent, an outside investigator who was friendly with Nish mysteriously came to a different conclusion, then was paid with taxpayer funds.
Unfortunately for the curious public, both reports were hidden from the community, even though we paid for them.
Covering for Cash was a catastrophic mistake.
The Sun subsequently reported on Cash covering up numerous campus sexual assaults, misuse of public funds to hire his friends for high-paying jobs that did not exist, failure to keep accurate crime logs, and spending more than $1 million on unauthorized vehicles and other toys.
SC is spending millions of taxpayer dollars on lawyers and investigations. It has spent tens of millions on settlements. There is virtually no public accountability of how this public funding is being spent.
The Sun wants to get to the root of the issues that plague our college and bring them into the light. Only then can the infection heal. Corruption at SC has taken a huge economic and psychic toll on this campus for more than two decades. Instead of admitting mistakes and firing problematic staff and faculty, the college’s history consistently shows that administration’s first instinct is to cover up misdeeds. Raj Chopra, Melinda Nish and Kindred Murillo are all cut from the same cloth — a thick black curtain of secrecy.
Nish protected Cash from the consequences of his actions and provided him a golden parachute. Now Murillo is doing the same for others. Murillo tried to bury a scandal involving a professor who had sex with students in his office, filmed them and stored the images on his college computer. Murillo allowed him to leave with a “neutral” recommendation without publicizing his identity. John Tolli was then hired by San Diego City College as a lab tech where he worked for more than a year, free again to prey on young women. He was put administrative leave after Stegall’s investigation.
Tolli would still be in a position to endanger City College students were it not for Voice of San Diego and Tinkov forcing SC to release its investigations. Murillo should pray every night to whatever god she worships that Tolli did not molest any City College students. If he did, she should be terminated and never be allowed to work with young people again.
Stay tuned.
Opacity breeds corruption and crushes accountability. This college has closed public meetings to student journalists, intentionally misrepresented crime reports to hide sexual assaults, permitted insubordinate administrators to secretly rewrite board policies to decrease access, hid public documents behind phony excuses and ignored legitimate California Public Records Act requests.
The Sun plans to make up for lost time. We are making a Christmas list of back information we plan to sue the school for.
Our administrators know what they are.
So do we.
Winter is coming.
