ELECTIONS / COLLEGE DISTRICT : Trustees Remain Neutral on Prop. 187

Hours of stirring testimony have failed to persuade Ventura County Community College District trustees to endorse or oppose Proposition 187, the controversial plan to deny most public services to illegal immigrants.

Before more than 50 people, many carrying banners and recounting their ancestry to trustees, the governing board early Wednesday rejected one resolution to oppose the measure and another to signal its support.

Two trustees with conflicting political ideals directed staff members to place the competing resolutions on the same agenda, prompting a rare panel discussion in which leaders on both sides of the issue were invited to address the board.

Trustees Gregory P. Cole and Pete E. Tafoya said the potential passage of Proposition 187 warrants that the district take a position on the initiative.

“Issues of public policy should be debated in public,” said Cole, who strongly supports the measure.

District officials invited Ventura County taxpayer advocate H. Jere Robings and Proposition 187 local coordinator Stephen Frank to debate Moorpark Councilman Bernardo Perez and Cal State Northridge Dean Jorge Garcia on the merits of the would-be legislation.

Some district administrators publicly opposed the measure, as did representatives from all three area colleges’ academic senates, which all voted in recent days to oppose the initiative.

Ventura College President Jesus Carreon called the measure a “simple solution for simple-minded people.”

Chancellor Thomas G. Lakin simply said, “Proposition 187 to me is Jim Crow II. It is racially based.”

The exchanges and public testimony made for lively discussion, Trustee Timothy D. Hirschberg said, but both sides failed to persuade him that the governing board should take a position on statewide issues over which it has no control.

“The public wants us to be here to run the colleges, not decide immigration policy,” said Hirschberg, who abstained from both votes.

Trustees Cole and Karen M. Boone voted in favor of the resolution supporting Proposition 187, with Tafoya and board President Allan W. Jacobs opposed.

“I cannot support illegal conduct,” Boone said. “That is why I am supporting Proposition 187.”

Tafoya and Cole sparred on the merits of the initiative at length before it finally came to a vote.

“My constituency is right back there,” Tafoya said at one point, gesturing toward dozens of students crowding the entryway to the meeting hall. “Where’s yours?”

When the resolution opposing the initiative was voted on, it failed on a 3-1-1 vote, with Cole, Boone and Jacobs all opposed.

Jacobs said laws already exist to control the borders and limit the number of illegal immigrants who migrate to California in search of work.

“The problem is we’re not enforcing those laws,” he said.

During the panel discussion, Robings said Proposition 187 is not about immigration. “It’s about illegal immigration,” he said. “It’s a matter of protecting our national borders.

“We can’t accept illegal immigrants simply because they have an excuse to leave their country,” he added.

But Garcia, a Ventura County resident who works at Cal State Northridge, called the initiative “illegal, unconstitutional and immoral.” He said the United States has a rich history of investing in its residents and pointed to himself as an example.

Garcia said he picked peaches in the Central Valley during school, earned his doctorate virtually free due to scholarships and now pays $18,000 a year in taxes.

“If I was still picking peaches, you wouldn’t get a dime out of me,” he said.

The public testimony included nearly two dozen speakers--all of whom opposed the measure. Fred Pierce, a mortgage banker from Oxnard, called Proposition 187 “legal racism.”

Under the measure “all non-whites would have to carry a pass, just like they did in South Africa,” he told trustees.

Cherie Ruzic, an Asian American who lives in Ventura, said the initiative reminded her of the World War II internment of Americans of Japanese descent.

“Maybe you don’t remember the roundups,” she said. “But we can’t forget.”