Update: Nov. 2, 12:15 p.m.: On Oct. 26, the Academic Senate, in response to allegations that an Associated Students member had been asked to end their committee to investigate allegations that high school students were allowed to enroll in college classes without proper assessment, issued a letter in support of the Associated Students right to form the committee.
“The Mt. San Antonio College Academic Senate recognizes the right of students to exercise their voice in the shared governance of our College and, as such, fully supports the Associated Students’ hearing about the College’s Dual Enrollment Program and proposed Early College High School,” the Academic Senate wrote. “Furthermore, we discourage any actions by college employees intended to block this or any other formal or informal Associated Students’ hearing, inquiry, discussion, debate, forum, or meeting.”
Associated Student President Brian Moon, 22, said that the Academic Senate has been supportive of Associated Student’s actions but they have separate goals.
“I can’t speak on Academic Senate, but what I see is that they’re more looking into the curriculum side and a lot of procedural issues,” Moon said. “For us, we’re trying to get to the truth of the matter, which is what they’re trying to do too. But [we’re] looking at how it’s impacted our students, specifically.”
“We are being very objective going into this because we do know that the Academic Senate has a lot more information than we do and they’ve sort of chosen a direction to go into,” Moon said.
The issues with the Dual Enrollment program began when it was discovered that at one high school students that failed a Math assessment test were placed in a lower level course instead of being given a lower leveled assessment test. While another high school placed students in a course solely based on their GPA instead of being given an English assessment test despite the course the students enrolled in requiring students be eligible for English 68 courses at Mt. SAC. Finally, it was discovered that dual enrollment courses were not open to the public as previously agreed on with Mt. SAC students being kept out of the courses.
“With us, we do not have the same information that the Academic Senate has, that the administration has, so we’re looking into that before we go a certain direction. I just want to make sure our students are taken care of before we start rolling out these different programs.”
Associated Students’ committee plans to meet sometime next week.
During an Associated Student Executive Board meeting on Oct. 3, Student Trustee Corey Case requested that Associated Student President Brian Moon form a committee to research recent controversy surrounding the Dual Enrollment program. It had been recently discovered that high school students in three courses from the Dual Enrollment program had not been properly assessed in order to take their courses. Case argued that the student government needed to independently look into the issue.
“Beyond just taking whatever the academic senate has put forth, we don’t just take that for face value,” Case said. “We go and do our own investigating.”
Each member of the executive board supported creation of the committee but were unsure on how it should be formed. Moon did not take action at the meeting but later formed the committee to look into the Dual Enrollment program controversy.
This is an ongoing story. Please check back for updates.
