By Katherine Garcia
kgarcia203@student.alamo.edu
The Student Leadership Coalition has started a petition to oust the chancellor, said Gilbert Perez, coalition member and business management sophomore at Palo Alto College.
The coalition met with Chancellor Bruce Leslie and student trustee Jacob Wong April 10 in Killen Center to discuss keeping majors.
Both parties explained their cases but did not reach an agreement.
Perez said Leslie and Wong explained how removing majors would save students time and money on transferring, but he said the coalition will not back down. “They’re still pleading their case, and we’re still pleading ours.”
Wong said other issues were resolved, such as getting a building similar to this college’s empowerment center at other colleges to compensate for the lack of student services.
However, the coalition brought up majors with “accusations, not solutions,” Wong said.
Wong said the petition needs to be backed up with facts. He asked coalition members about the benefits of majors on degrees and was met by silence.
He said he has met with several local business owners who said having a major on a degree does not affect a graduate’s ability to be hired. Wong said he is planning to discuss potential hiring with the board, Chamber of Commerce and the San Antonio Higher Education Representative Assembly.
Perez said the council would like to meet with the rest of the board. He said the petition will circulate to all five Alamo Colleges, and he hopes to get a majority vote of 60 percent of students wanting to oust the chancellor.
He hopes to present the petition to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges and ask for guidance and direction.
Perez said the coalition will be at every regular board meeting until their goal is realized. “We’re not loosening up. We’re just getting stronger,” he said.
1 Comment
The chances of this being successful are pretty slim. I’ve heard some of the arguments they are making, and they are not working with facts. Everything is speculation, and I’ve heard that when the SLC has been presented with a conflicting viewpoint, rather than do the necessary research, they shut it down and blow it off.
They somehow expect 60% of 60,000 students to sign a petition, when I would guess that almost 90% of our students have never heard of the Chancellor or the board, or really about any of this. 36,000 signatures is a very lofty goal.