Instead of picking up the students’ newspaper every morning, the students of the Ventura County Community College district will find empty newsstands by the end of this year.
The district has slashed its journalism program as a result of recent budget cuts.
The Board of Trustees for the Ventura County Community College district voted 3-2 to cut many programs at Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark College on March 8.
Both Ventura and Oxnard colleges’ newspapers were eliminated.
Carol Weinstock, head of the Ventura journalism program, told the Glendale College newspaper, el Vaquero, “[Moorpark college] happens to be at least an hour drive away and on the other side of the county.”
District officials proposed that Moorpark can have a district-wide newspaper and students from Ventura and Oxnard can attend their journalism classes.
Weinstock said, “They say they are keeping core programs like math and English. They are cutting all the programs that give students immediate skills to enter the workforce. They expect our numbers to be 100 in a class like there are in math and English classes, it is like comparing apples to oranges.”
Weinstock retiring in June and she says she is angry and disheartened to see the paper die. “This paper was born with the college, it has been here since 1925,” she said.
“They are saying it’s the budget cuts,” Oxnard College advisor Toni Allen said, “I don’t know if I buy it. We were not very popular on the campus with the administration.”
Students held a sit-in at the president’s office at Oxnard College to protest the budget cuts.
According to the LA Times, district Chancellor Jim Meznek met with a crowd of 100 students who were demanding that the journalism program be spared.
Meznek replied to the crowd that low enrollment in the journalism program and revenue shortfalls prevented the program from continuing.
According to Allen, “students will be protesting at board members’ houses and filing grievances.”
“You have to fight for the right of a student newspaper, you have to show the students what is going on so they aren’t blind to it,” Keith Norris, Oxnard managing editor said.
“They don’t care about the students,” Karina Gonzales, Oxnard staff member said, “It’s ridiculous. This country was based on not letting tyrants get away with anything.”
Officials claim that the budget cuts are due to low enrollment.
Gonzales disagreed. “They manipulated the numbers. They just don’t like what we are saying about them.”
In addition to the program cuts, 130 teachers were laid off in the district.
“It’s a very sad time with all this opportunity to just cut down,” Allen said.
Ventura County students and teachers have made it clear that they won’t go quietly.
“We are heading an underground paper,” Gonzales said. “They thought we were bad before. They don’t even know.”
The Ventura district’s budget was cut by $7.5 million. Programs such as electronics technology, horticulture, hotel management, interpretation, theater arts and machine tool technology were cut.
