[Editor’s Note: After the City Council approved two modified bus schedules onto the West Los Angeles College campus, a long displeased nearby resident wrote his feelings to the college president.]
Open Letter to Dr. Rose Marie Joyce, President, West Los Angeles College
June 14, 2011
Dear Dr. Joyce,
West L.A. College’s supposed intent to maintain good relations with its neighbors has taken a nosedive recently, and reached a very low point during last night’s City Council meeting.
First of all, the college’s recent online campaign has been nothing but offensive to campus neighbors. Among the rants posted on your website are suggestions that if we don’t like the noise we should move. Others ask why we moved here in the first place. There are epithets, calling us “stupid, closeminded (sic) people” . . . “jerks.” One of your commenters suggests that we neighbors are “abusing our community of students and staff and teachers.”
And one of your teachers had the temerity to state that this “feels like a class issue.” That grossly offensive comment does not merit a rebuttal, but I’ll say it anyway: This is in no way a class issue. We sincerely feel that the frequent bus service onto the campus is unnecessary. The noise of these buses grinding uphill in front of our homes is an affront to our quality of life. These frequent bus trips are an unnecessary expense, a waste of time and fuel, a burden upon taxpayers, and unprecedented among college campuses in the L.A. Community College District. These trips are not necessary because the campus is well served by Culver CityBus. Eight buses an hour pass by the entrance to campus, which is where the city’s obligation to serve bus passengers ends.
Those are our sincere points of view. You can agree with us or disagree with us, but please don’t insult us.
Don’t belittle our motivation.
And the college is indeed insulting and belittling us. How?
• By posting these odious rants on your website. This site, presumably paid for by our tax dollars, is clearly fostering an environment of hostility and misinformation.
• By Michelle Long-Coffee’s utterly disingenuous apology for the nature of some of those rants. She said that some of them were from Facebook, so what could she do? But she posted them! Anyone can say whatever they want on Facebook. We understand that. But these are posted on your website. Ms. Long-Coffee went on to say that none of these more insulting comments were sent to the City Council. So what? You published them on your website for all the world to see.
They’re still there. By doing so, you further fostered a climate of hostility toward your taxpaying neighbors.
• By conducting a survey, again presumably at taxpayers’ expense, whose objectivity is eliminated in its very first sentence: “Help West fight to keep permanent on campus (sic) bus service.” Talk about leading the witness! And then presenting some of those findings as actual objective survey results during the City Council meeting — the height of manipulation and misinformation.
• By claiming on your website that the City Council’s vote last March to reduce on-campus bus service was “to appease . . . this small group of neighbors.” Such arrogance. Such condescension. How does the college deign to characterize a City Council vote as an appeasement? Could the City Council’s vote possibly have been an intelligent choice to serve the cause of reason and fairness? Not in the college’s mind. This claim is an insult to the City Council as well as to your neighbors.
• By writing in your own letter of March 8 to the WLAC community that the new schedule “was a good faith (sic) effort to accommodate our neighbors in the Lakeside Villas Home Owners (sic) Association who continue to complain about the noise from the buses coming onto campus.” As if this new schedule were the college’s doing! A favor granted to your neighbors. This is a Culver CityBus schedule voted on by the Culver City City Council, not an “accommodation” courtesy of West L.A. College. This was not nor is not your schedule. It is the city’s schedule. And to imply that its adoption was only to “accommodate” the Lakeside Villas Homeowners Association is a dishonest manipulation. All of the neighboring homeowners associations are united in their opposition to excessive on-campus bus service.
• This climate of insult and hostility reached an ugly peak during last night’s meeting when one of your students blurted out during a reading of comments from my wife: “She’s lying!” I understand that you can’t control an individual’s outburst. But I state once again: This is the kind of hostile climate you are fostering, rather than encouraging your students to become decent and civil adults.
Now let’s address some of the misinformation and faulty logic being promulgated publicly by West Los Angeles College.
This, too, reached a low point last night when Ms. Long-Coffee claimed that sound walls and traffic-flow mitigation were virtually gifts from the college, an example of the college’s generosity —as if the college cut a $1.6 million check to benefit its neighbors. Fortunately, Councilman Malsin strongly admonished your proxy for this fabrication. He reminded her and the world that these measures were obligations under the force of law, that the college “did us no favors,” because indeed the sound walls had nothing to do with the college’s beneficence. I add that these sound walls in no way benefit Lakeside Villas, nor do they have any bearing on the bus issue. They were the result of last fall’s settlement agreement and pertained to campus construction noise.
Over and over again we have heard how a reduced on-campus bus schedule has created hardships for college students, but never once have we heard what the college is doing to rectify this situation. Once again, you were soundly admonished by the City Council on this point. As Councilman Weissman said, “It’s easy for the college to say, ‘You do it.’ Why is the college not responsible? I encourage the college to become part of the solution rather than point a finger at the city and say, ‘You do it.’”
On your website, you claim that your predecessor, Mark Rocha, “made an ill-advised decision to ask the CCBus to stop coming on to campus.” (And indeed when he made that decision, we enjoyed two months of bus-free serenity.) Ms. Long-Coffee reiterated that point last night.
But perhaps you are not aware that this same policy is also written into the Final Supplementary Environmental Impact Report for West L.A. College and was approved by the L.A. Community College District board of trustees last fall. It was not just a Rocha policy. It was and is district policy. Ref Item E-7, page 292: “Despite the fact that Culver City Bus access has been an ongoing existing noise source . . . LACCD and the City of Culver City have agreed to have the Culver City bus stop for that line moved to the entry of the campus at Overland instead of driving on campus.”
I don’t know if an approved SEIR has the force of law behind it, but by resuming bus service onto the campus, the college and the city are certainly in violation of the approved report.
Another of the college’s claims is the suggestion that the walk onto campus from its front entrance is unsafe. As I said last night, this is debatable, but even if true: The college has spent tens of millions of dollars in bond money, and it can’t light the entrance to its own campus? Councilman Malsin chided the college on precisely that point. He asked why the college can’t provide adequate lighting, and suggested that there could be some sort of on-demand service for transporting disabled bus passengers. As Councilman Weissman put it, “How is it that we have assumed 100% of the transportation needs for West?”
Is it because the college simply feels entitled to this level of service? No other college in the district has on-campus bus service. That includes Pierce and Valley, campuses at least as large as WLAC. There, as everywhere else in the district, students walk from nearby bus stops onto the campus. The walk from the closest bus stop at Pierce is much longer and gains more elevation than the walk from Overland/Freshman to the on-campus bus stop at WLAC.
The college frequently states that this on-campus bus service has been going on for some 20 years, as if that were somehow a logical argument for ongoing entitlement to that service. How so? The college’s reasoning is muddled: Whether a misguided policy was created yesterday or 20 years ago, it is still a misguided policy. We can debate the soundness of the policy, but to claim that because it is in place that it should stay in place is not a reasonable argument. Speaking of muddled reasoning, Ms. Long-Coffee last night cited bus service at UCLA as an example of a college with on-campus bus service. Indeed it is. But this service has no impact on local residents — it enters the campus by way of the Westwood Boulevard commercial corridor and the UCLA Medical Center — and the drop-off requires a longer walk up a steeper hill than does the walk at WLAC. UCLA does not permit buses to run a loop up onto campus. Essentially she proved our point: That it’s reasonable walk a ways to school from a bus stop.
I’d like to address a few other ongoing claims issued by the college and its students:
1. Access to education is being limited. Culver CityBus provides eight buses an hour to the campus entrance. That schedule hasn’t changed. No one has suggested that it should change. We strongly believe in access to education. That simply is not at stake in this debate. To imply otherwise is another insult to your neighboring community.
2. The walk from Overland is too long, too difficult. The walk from the Overland/ Freshman bus stop to the current stop on campus is just over 400 yards and gains 24 feet in elevation. It’s exactly the same as walking from the City Hall parking structure down to the Pacific Theater multiplex in downtown Culver City. (Google Earth statistics.) By contrast, using the UCLA example that the college likes to cite, students walk 656 yards from Ackerman Plaza (where Culver CityBus No. 6 drops off) to Royce Hall at the heart of the campus. The elevation gain is 66 feet, more than twice that of the walk at WLAC. Yes, the walk for southbound No. 3 bus passengers is longer. They debark in front of the Ralphs shopping center. But rather than complain about it, why doesn’t the college ask the city to move that stop to a point opposite the northbound stop at Overland/Freshman? That would save students two minutes of walking time before they cross the street to make the 24-foot climb up the hill to the current on-campus stop. By accepting and reinforcing in students’ minds that this is a difficult walk, the college is doing them a great disservice. No able-bodied person ever attended college without walking. You are creating in them the expectation that they are entitled to a lift up the hill simply because there is a hill and they don’t want to walk up it. What will their expectations be when they transfer to a four-year college, or move on to employment? Will they anticipate this level of catering?
3. Disabled people can’t make this walk. This is understandable. But the city has made it very clear that transporting disabled people is a college responsibility, not a city responsibility. This is the city’s opinion, not that of a “handful of neighbors,” as you like to call us. As then-acting city manager Martin Cole wrote in a letter to the college on Sept. 6, 2010: “It is the responsibility of the College to provide those with disabilities access to the College campus and facilities.” This is a responsibility that the college has consistently shirked or tried to pass off onto the city. If the college is incapable of shuttling disabled students to its campus from its bus stops, why not proffer some alternatives? We have. Councilman Malsin did last night. We have suggested that buses only run onto campus when a disabled person aboard the bus requests it. We have suggested notification systems, call systems. We have suggested tapping local services that assist the disabled. We have suggested modifying your $15,000 ADA-compliant golf cart to make it street legal. (Lou’s Golf Carts, its provider, told us it would cost about $1,500. I am certain you spent more than that in staff time and resources putting up web pages, placards, conducting surveys, etc.) If battery charging is the problem that Ms. Long-Coffee says it is, why not have an extra battery being charged at all times? Why not request another golf cart? Why not a ride-share program, as Councilman Malsin suggested? Why not investigate the possibility of a bus turnaround on College Boulevard? But the college continues to do little or nothing on its students’ behalf, apart from orchestrating a multimedia campaign that demands services that the college itself should be providing. As Councilman Weissman has so frequently pointed out, the college insists on passing off 100% of its students’ transportation needs to the city—to “point a finger and say, ‘You do it.’”
Finally, Dr. Joyce, to iterate that we harbor no ill will toward WLAC, I have another invitation for you. You never responded to my wife’s and my invitation to come to our home and hear for yourself just how horrendous the noise and the tremors caused by Culver City buses are. (Mayor O’Leary accepted our invitation. I’ll let him tell you about his experience, but let’s just say his lovely Irish accent was drowned out in our living room several times by passing buses.)
This invitation was extended by my wife during last night’s meeting. She said to the Council and to you, “Let’s go for a walk!” She also invited the WLAC college teacher who said on the college website that “it is unreasonable to ask students, staff, and visitors to hike into the campus.”
We can meet at the bus stop in front of Ralphs and experience first-hand just how difficult the “hike” to campus is. We could also hop a No. 6 and ride up to UCLA and contrast the experiences. I guarantee you that UCLA students have a much more difficult walk. I know, because I was one of those students. But you know what? I always enjoyed it. I didn’t ride the bus, but rather rode my bike to the bottom of Bruin Walk, very near the bus drop-off. Then I set off on foot.
I never expected a lift up the hill.
Sincerely,
Bob Howells
Mr. Howells may be contacted at bob@howells.com
