[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]With not one drop of hyperbole, I suggest that the redoubtable Betsy Regalado hereafter be known as Ms. Dec. 7. Just as the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing is known as a Day That Will Live in Infamy, so will the imaginative decision that made this mysterious woman the Acting President of West Los Angeles College for a few weeks this summer.

Ms. Dec. 7 reminds me of someone I once was married to — and the good news is we no longer are.

Snootiness just got a new face. For a college president, she is not bad looking, arguably superior to her two most recent predecessors. However, Ms. Dec. 7’s nose is so high in the air that when purchasing raingear, she ought to buy an extra attachment, the better to prevent her nostrils from flooding out.

When City Councilman Scott Malsin says that West is almost a law unto itself, Ms. Dec. 7’s attitude is what he means. We will live our way, regardless of how the people around us feel, and you, pal, can pound sand.

In two appearances before the City Council, she acted more demurely than a 15-year-old farmer’s daughter attending her first indoors dance where shoes were mandatory. I have a brown paper bag from Ralphs, across the street from campus, that Ms. Dec. 7 may use as headgear for her next appearance before the Council if, heaven forbid, there is one.

After reading her inelegant 9-paragraph July 23 letter (see below) to the now-departed Interim City Manager Lamont Ewell — a foot-stomping rant bashing West’s neighbors — I locked the office and dashed home. Swiftly, I surveyed the mailboxes in our immediate neighborhood to see if any one carried the now dreaded name “Ms. Dec. 7.” Call me Mr. Lucky. We are safe. She is not our neighbor.

December, December, what could you possibly have been thinking when someone — definitely not an English major, possibly using a crayon — crafted that embarrassingly unprofessional letter to Mr. Ewell?

Surely you realize the college steadily has been committing public relations suicide over Culver City for years. How cool of you to accelerate the process.

Dec, as close friends call her, says worse things about West’s neighbors than The Joke Who Became President does about Al Qeada. Evidently it was Dec who organized the meaningless ragtag war party that descended on the City Council last week, inartfully begging the Council to rethink its rejection of the Settlement Agreement so that some of their friends in the construction industry can have work in these tough times. (At least Mr. Dec. 7’s regime won’t have to worry about being remembered for its classiness.)

The ill-advised parade of the woefully uninformed was blob of waste. The City Council’s rejection of the Settlement Agreement a fortnight earlier had no impact on West’s construction plans. Surely Madam President knew that. Didn’t she? The Council could have voted No, Maybe, Yes or Stick It in Your Ear and it would not have affected the campus’s massive and unpopular expansion program. A week from tomorrow, the Los Angeles Community College District trustees are scheduled to vote approval of the project, the only green light that is needed.

He Did It. She Did It. They Did It. I Didn’t.

My guess is Ms. Dec. 7 is well on the political left. She is tone deaf and subtleties less than a rap on the nose elude her.

Didn’t Ms. Dec. 7 realize that the gimmick of rehearsing and parading these poor people to a microphone in Council Chambers was a mission to nowhere, which appears to be Ms. Dec. 7’s destination.

Given the nasty, snobbish tone of Ms. Dec. 7’s backfiring missive dated, if she actually were our neighbor, I would hire two of those terrorizing idiots from the New Black Panthers. I would plant one at the front of the house and one at the back. I would order them to dare her to walk by our property at less than 100 mph..

Now I know why she only has been entrusted with the Presidency for a scant 6 weeks. The campus could turn into a landfill if she stayed longer. She is stripping the office of prestige at such an alarming pace that her successor may have to adopt a pseudonym for the one year that he will be in office. Hopefully, Ms. Dec. 7 won’t wear out the brown paper bag in the few days she has remaining.

Keep in mind that back in June the college, according to the City Council, agreed to provide cross-campus shuttle service for students and others after City Hall acceded to a college request to stop sending busses inside the campus because of neighbor-disturbing noises and damage to the campus roadways.

But, many Culver Citians believe, placing responsibility in the hands of West’s most recent leaders is like asking a 2-year-old to drive a Hummer across country. In the rain.

Four days after Ms. Dec. 7 captured the season’s Pulitzer Prize for Snootiness, Blame-Free Betsy had the leftover hubris to authorize the following letter to Mr. Ewell, and I quote:

“This letter constitutes the College’s formal request for the reinstatement of Culver City Bus service on campus. The City of Culver City and the College have received numerous comments from Culver City residents and College students, faculty and staff regarding the June 9, 2010 discontinuation of the Culver City Bus Service on campus.

“The College has considered these comments, which overwhelmingly and persuasively call for the reinstatement of on campus bus service by the City of Culver City. We request reinstatement of on campus bus service as soon as possible. The previous route utilized immediately prior to the discontinuation of service is still available at this time. Please notify us of your decision as soon as possible so that we can pass the information onto the campus community.

“Thank you for your assistance with this matter.”

Councilmember Scott Malsin is emblematic of Culver City’s widespread unhappiness with the college’s personality and performance. “The whole situation of the city’s effort to work collaboratively with the college is frustrating and disappointing,” he said. “Their attitude does not come as a surprise to me. The college is pretty close to a law until itself while we have very limited leverage.”

The July 23 letter:

[img]908|left|West Los Angeles College Letter to P. Lamont Ewell||no_popup[/img]