Letter-Writing Student Still Unsure After Inquiry : Pierce President Blames Strayed Mail on Confusion

The president of Pierce College said Friday that he will recommend changes in campus mail-handling procedures because of a student’s complaint that 320 letters sent to teachers disappeared at the school for nearly five days.

The letters had been mailed last month from off campus to invite teachers to attend a controversial public forum about a multimillion-dollar equestrian facility proposed for a college cornfield.

Los Angeles Community College District trustees ordered the investigation last week after letter writer Laurie-Suzanne charged that mail-tampering and civil-rights violations occurred.

College President David Wolf said his investigation has shown that the letters were locked for several days in a desk in the dean of students’ office because of “confusion” among staff members as to whether the mail was incoming or outgoing.

The dean’s office in the campus student center are a quarter-mile from the campus mail room, Wolf said.

“The question I’m asking is why it left the mail room at all,” he said. “Once it left the mail room, it was in the hands of people who didn’t know what procedure to follow.”

Wolf said he and Laurie-Suzanne interviewed mail-room and dean’s-office workers Thursday. Wolf said he is convinced that the distribution delay was an innocent mistake that did not involve any “senior people” at the Woodland Hills college.

“There’s no malice involved. Just confusion,” Wolf said.

But Laurie-Suzanne, an agriculture student who lives in Granada Hills and organized the equestrian forum for the student government, said late Thursday that she is not sure.

Sponsorship Dispute

Laurie-Suzanne said the school’s dean of students previously had sought to block student government sponsorship of the equestrian forum. She said a secretary locked the letters in a drawer over a three-day holiday weekend after opening one of the mailings to read it. The secretary also had been involved earlier in the sponsorship dispute, Laurie-Suzanne said.

“I think it is not just the mail room misdirecting it,” said Laurie-Suzanne. “It was the administration sitting on it.”

According to Wolf, however, a mail-room clerk sent the letters--individually stamped and addressed flyers that were stapled shut--to the dean’s office because they listed the school’s Associated Student Organization on their return address.

Wolf said the clerk was confused as to why the mailing had individual stamps instead of the cheaper bulk mailing permit normally used by the ASO. He confirmed that an unspecified employee in the campus center opened one of the flyers and read it before locking them away.

By the time things were cleared up, “it was time to go home” on the Friday afternoon before the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Wolf said.

The charges of civil-rights violations also have been resolved--at least from a campus administrative point of view, Wolf said.

He said Laurie-Suzanne’s complaint that the college’s student newspaper killed an advertisement for the forum is incorrect. According to Wolf, student editors told him that Laurie-Suzanne was asked to return with her handwritten ad set in type, but that she never came back with it.

Wolf said a Chatsworth man’s complaint that an agriculture teacher called and told him to tell members of his horse club not to attend the equestrian forum is a matter for the man and the teacher to resolve.

The instructor made the phone call from his own phone, not from a campus phone, Wolf said.

The same thing goes for Laurie-Suzanne’s complaint that the same teacher called her at home and threatened legal action against her over the forum, said Wolf.

Issue Not Closed

But Laurie-Suzanne said the issue is far from closed as far as she is concerned. She said she will discuss her complaints further with district trustees next week.

Wolf said he will send a report on his investigation and his mail-room recommendations early next week to acting district Chancellor Tom Fallo. He said he will decide on specific recommendations after more interviews Tuesday.

Will he use campus mail or the U. S. mail to forward his report? “That’s a good question,” Wolf said.