Students angry over pricey courses pepper-sprayed

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Campus police pepper-sprayed as many as 30 demonstrators after Santa Monica College students angry over a plan to offer high-priced courses tried to push their way into a trustees meeting, authorities said.

Raw video posted on the Internet Tuesday evening showed students chanting "Let us in, let us in" and "No cuts, no fees, education should be free."

Students were angry because only a handful were allowed into the meeting, and when their request to move the meeting to a larger venue was denied, they began to enter the room, said David Steinman, an environmental advocate who is running for Congress as a Green Party candidate.

Two officers were apparently backed up against a wall, and began using force to keep the students out of the room. Steinman said both officers used pepper spray.

"People were gasping and choking," Steinman said.

Marioly Gomez, 21, said she was standing in a hallway outside the meeting with several hundred other students who wanted to get into the meeting.

"I got pepper-sprayed without warning," she said.

Santa Monica College spokesman Bruce Smith said he believed it was the first time pepper spray had been used to subdue students on campus.

"It was the judgment of police that the crowd was getting out of hand and it was a safety issue," he said.

 

Trustee David Finkel called on campus officials to look into Tuesday evening's events.

"I think it gave the college a black eye which I know it didn't deserve and certainly didn't need," he said.

Video of a similar incident at UC Davis in November, in which an officer doused a row of student protesters with pepper spray as they sat passively, drew worldwide attention. It became a rallying point for the Occupy movement.

Firefighters were called to the campus at about 7:20 p.m. Five people were evaluated at the scene and two were taken to a hospital, Santa Monica Fire Department Capt. Judah Mitchell said. Their conditions were not known, but the injuries were not believed to be serious, Mitchell said.

Students have been upset over a new plan that involves the formation of a nonprofit foundation which would offer core courses for about $600 each, or about $200 per unit — about four times the current price. The program is designed to cope with rising student demand as state funds dwindle.

The move has raised questions about whether it would create two tiers of students in a system designed to make education accessible to everyone and whether it's even legal under state education law.

Community colleges statewide have lost $809 million in state funding over the past three years, causing schools to turn away about 200,000 students and drastically cut the number of classes offered.

Trustee Louise Jaffe said during the meeting that she doesn't believe the students want to listen.

"We spoke for four hours and we weren't understood," she said.

___

Associated Press writer Whitney Phillips contributed to this report.

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A Reason to be Angry -- and a Better One to be Happy (The Motley Fool)

After Standard & Poor's downgraded America's credit rating Friday and the stock market lost itself entirely yesterday, everyone's emotions are running high. Mine have gone like this. When news of the downgrade hit, I thought, "Eh, no big deal." In April, S&P gave 50-50 odds of a downgrade if last week's debt-ceiling deal didn't cut $4 trillion from future deficits. The deal didn't. So who was surprised? After I read why S&P made the downgrade, I became annoyed. After yesterday's 600-point bloodbath, I'm now angry. You should be, too.

Who am I angry with? Washington. By S&P's account, they are the sole reason the nation's credit was downgraded. Few sensible people think the U.S. lacks the economic means to pay its bills. Push comes to shove, and taxes can be raised or money can be printed. These create a litany of other problems, but they invariably solve a debt problem. America can pay its debts.

The real roadblock is the political acid that gets in the way of our debt management. The debt ceiling has been raised 88 times since the 1940s, almost always without incident. Last week was different. It was turned into a political hostage. And S&P made it clear that the last week's debt-ceiling rodeo show is what ultimately sparked the downgrade. "The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed," it wrote. "The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy."

Now here's what's outrageous. After S&P made it clear that political bickering drove a stake through our nation's credit rating, political leaders responded by pulling out the howitzers and doubling down. "This is essentially a tea party downgrade," said Obama campaign chief David Axelrod. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, "The president's failure to put our nation's fiscal and economic house in order has caused a massive loss of confidence that resulted in an embarrassing downgrade."

Um, guys, this is exactly what S&P is talking about. By continuing to throw rocks at each other, you're engraving its point in stone. The biggest threat to our economy is not runaway spending or high taxes or entitlements. It's the vitriol used to prevent rational debate and agreement about those topics. The continuation -- even acceleration -- of that vitriol after the credit downgrade is what makes me angry. It should make all of us angry. When people asked what you thought of political bickering one week ago, the smart answer was, "Oh, I don't pay attention to that childish stuff." But that childish stuff shaved several trillion dollars off global wealth in the past week. This isn't just a sideshow built for cable news sound bites. It has a real, tangible, impact on people's financial lives.

But amid it all, there's reason for hope. There's reason to be thankful. There's reason to smile. It's simple: Every seed of prosperity is planted in the dirt of fear. Every bull market in history found its footing in the screams of panic. In 1933, people utterly gave up hope that the Great Depression would ever end. That turned out being the single best time in history to buy stocks. In 1982, people lost confidence that the Fed could tame inflation. That created a buying opportunity of a lifetime. In 2009, investors were sure that the financial system was unsalvageable. That paved the way for stocks to double within 18 months.

Will the crash of 2011 turn out the same way? Let's make it clear: No one knows how much further markets might fall. There could be more blood to come. But no one I know at The Motley Fool is panicking. Instead, we're looking at the current price of some high-quality stocks with sheer amazement, if not amusement. Yesterday, Fool Jeremy Phillips talked about Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL - News). Others have mentioned Ford (NYSE: F - News) and General Motors (NYSE: GM - News). Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT - News) now trades at about seven times next year's earnings. Waste Management (NYSE: WM - News) yields 4.5%. Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B - News) trades at one of the lowest valuations it has seen in decades. We don't know how much lower these stocks might go. But we know that buying them at current prices will serve us well over the long haul. And that opportunity wouldn't be here without the charade that is our Congress.

"We're all in the gutter," Oscar Wilde once said, "but some of us are looking at the stars."

How about you?

Check back every Tuesday and Friday for Morgan Housel's columns on finance and economics.

Fool contributor TMFHousel. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Waste Management, and Ford Motor. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Ford Motor, Waste Management, Berkshire Hathaway, General Motors, and Microsoft, as well as creating a bull call spread position in Microsoft. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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