Just in: Emergency meeting Friday to address Tuesday night's events

Margaret Quinones-Perez, chair of the Board of Trustees, told the Corsair that a special meeting will be held at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow in the Theater Arts building on the Santa Monica College main campus. The meeting will be in response to last Tuesday night's student protest against Contract Ed, which came to blows with the Santa Monica College Police. The meeting will be open to the public. The governing board will address a request by Jack Scott, Chancellor of California Community Colleges, that SMC put the two-tier tuition policy on hold. The board will release an official statement tomorrow.

"It's unfortunate what happened," said Perez. "The board needs to make this right for the students."

"It was no one's intention to keep students from being heard," Trustee Susan Aminoff told the Corsair. "I just don't think we knew the extent of how many students would come."

Aminoff said the administration was not prepared for the opposition on the part of the students to utilize the overflow room adjacent to the boardroom.

"We were prepared for students to use the overflow room," Aminoff said. "We had it set up with chairs, tables, the camera and screen, for everything they would need."

Referring to the pepper-spraying incident Tuesday evening, Aminoff said that, "whether or not we had to do it to maintain control of the crowd, it was deeply regrettable."

Student protestors describe the incident as "police brutality" and call for the termination of Sgt. Joe Williams. They maintain that the Tuesday night protest was "peaceful."