Bet your children’s inheritance this afternoon that no one in Culver City — especially Raintree, Culver Crest and City Hall — will interrupt Mark Rocha on his hurried way out of town and, by acclamation, declare him College President of the Year.
West L.A. College has spanned the personality scale in recent years in a fruitless search for a president with two qualities:
One who can steer the school through expansion waters that make BP’s spill look like a Sunday School creek, and make meaningful peace with the city of Culver City, especially its nearby residents.
So far the answer is zero.
Mark Rocha’s impressive suavity definitely was not the answer. A lovely man and perthaps a strong educator. From an image standpoint, he was a well-tailored fit for the notion of suave and debonair.
But he leaves in two weeks for a new job with the air at the intersection of Jefferson and Overland as clotted with rhetorical fumes as it was when most of his predecessors departed.
The college and its institutional neighbor, Culver City, never have come close to being chums in modern times. This afternoon, the gulf is wider than the Gulf of Mexico.
One Explanation
The only reason there are smiles on the faces of the battling Culver City residents he leaves in his wake — before eagerly dashing across town to turbulent Pasadena City College — is that they are looking at the back, not the front, of him.
Owing to massive campus construction, the ensuing noise and displacement of routine by facilities users, the worst state of public relations this side of the Middle East remains intact, most of all it says here, because of West L.A. College’s perceived airy attitude.
Not one person in Culver City is hoping Dr. Rocha’s heart makes a U-turn. His cheering section could be accommodated in a junior thimble, say people who have been trying to reach even a cold peace with West during the school’s long-running construction season.
Here is a tiny piece of irony to spark the Dr. Rocha-to-Pasadena story. When he came to West from Mission College, he said landing in West Los Angeles was a dream come true.
Retracing some of his rhetorical and physical steps, he used the identical words to characterize his feelings about switching to Pasadena where at least the much hotter weather, if not the boiling turbulence around campus over dissatisfaction with leadership, will make him perspire buckets more than he ever did in this more agreeable climate.
“The college is determined to do things the way they want to do them,” a woman familiar with both parties said this afternoon.
“I understand the college had been meeting recently with representatives from the city, from Raintree and from the Crest, regarding a number of issues that were being contested after the college came out with its supplemental EIR.
“The general belief is that eventually, most of these issues will work themselves out. “Rocha may have seen his job here as done,” the woman continued. “I don’t think the college has done a good job of becoming, or even trying to become, a member of this community. The college has given mostly lip service to the idea of community input.
“They have been somewhat heavyhanded in the way they have approached many of the issues that were of importance to the community. It smacks of hubris and arrogance for the college to claim it could unilaterally abrogate a memorandum of understanding with the community and the other agreements they had with the community by just saying ‘so it shall be.’
“I strongly believe the college did not handle its construction issues appropriately. They could have achieved all they had wanted with a whole lot less opposition if they had partnered with the community and Culver City to achieve the college’s goal of expanding its campus.
“One example I have in mind is excluding public access to the athletic field during the course of construction. Use and access was to the community was provided for in the memorandum of understanding.
“You probably can make the argument that at various times during construction when heavy machinery was operating, it may not have been a good idea for the public to be allowed up there, walking the track and utilizing the recreational area for a period of time.
“But, you see, the college did more than that. They did not just say ‘You can’t do it during these hours, these days or these weeks.’ They essentially said, and the supplemental EIR reinforced the attitude that ‘you cannot use the facilities at all until we say when you can come and use them again, subject to rules that we will promulgate, when we're ready to do that.’
“To me, that violates the letter, if not the spirit, of their memorandum of understanding with the Culver Crest folks who have a written agreement that says the public is going to have access to that area.
“The college could have done it differently, like:
“ ‘Okay, folks. We are under construction. I know it is going to be inconvenient. We really regret it. But we will be closed from Jan. 1 to April 30. Soon as construction is done, we will open the fences and welcome you back to West.’
“Instead, they sort of turned that on its ear and said, ‘It’s closed. We may reopen. We may not. Stay tuned. We will let you know what we decide, and we know you are going to live with it.’”
