The Ranger Online

Guest Viewpoint by Carol C. Reposa [Click to enlarge]

Viewpoint by Rennie Murrell [Click to enlarge]

'San Pedro High' moniker not reflective of actual outcomes

In the past, whenever I heard anyone refer to this college as "San Pedro High," I laughed it off because I knew the phrase simply did not apply.

Our students could - and did - compete successfully for good jobs, rewarding lives and admission to strong four-year colleges and universities.

I basked in the knowledge that some of our students eventually attended schools like Yale and MIT, that others became astronauts (like Francis Scobee, for whom our planetarium is named), that still others built careers as doctors, architects and judges. Thus, our nickname was a joke - a bad one, maybe, but a joke.

These days, however, I'm not laughing so hard. During the last decade, faculty have felt increasing pressure to improve "retention rates" (the number of students left in a class at the end of a semester) and to award more "productive" grades (A's, B's and C's).

While these outcomes may seem desirable, too often they can be met only by the lowering of academic standards.

To compound the problem, this college now has several well-funded mandates, all of which have as their goal reaching something close to 100 percent pass rates and 100 percent "customer" satisfaction. Everyone is to be happy and successful at all times.

This may be a noble aspiration, but it is unrealistic. Students begin work here at wildly varying levels of academic preparedness. Unjust though it may be, students also differ in motivation, emotional maturity and native ability.

Thus, it should surprise no one that course outcomes for our enrollees will vary as well. Many do fine work during their time here, others perform adequately and some perform poorly.

These inconsistencies may be troubling, but our open admission policy makes them inevitable. Community colleges are the great unsung heroes of higher education in the United States.

In Texas alone, they enroll 74 percent of the freshmen and sophomores in the state as well as 76 percent of the minority freshmen and sophomores, and their service does not stop there.

According to a Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board study, students who transfer from community colleges to four-year schools are as successful at obtaining degrees as those who begin their studies at universities.

In recent decades, however, state appropriations to community colleges have dwindled, resulting in smaller budgets and shrinking programs.

In the 1970s, the Texas Legislature provided roughly 60 percent of our operating income. Today, it funds only 31 percent. In short, SAC is cash-strapped.

Thus, it's easy to understand the allure of those millions of dollars offered by well-heeled foundations like Lumina.

But if acceptance of such grant monies comes at the cost of diluting course content so that all our students can get good grades, then the price is too high. We cannot afford this Faustian bargain.

Our students, like college students everywhere, want their diplomas to be credible, their admission to good four-year schools assured, their careers promising.

But none of this can happen if credentials earned here become ludicrous because the college has abandoned its academic standards.

No one wants to attend a college that the rest of the academic community regards as a laughingstock.

Any program, however well-intentioned, that promotes the dumbing down of course content jeopardizes the future of our students and thus betrays the population that SAC was established to serve.

So far our dubious nickname has been a joke. Let's keep it that way.

Carol C. Reposa is an English professor at this college.

Results of deadly force incidents always the same: Irreversible

Two lives were lost in San Antonio recently because of questionable actions of law enforcement officers.

While some shootings are well within the use of deadly force, some shootings need to be questioned.

The shootings of an unarmed man beating a woman and a passenger in the back seat of a stolen vehicle need to be questioned thoroughly.

An expert on deadly force and professor at the University of South Carolina, Geoffrey Alpert, told the San Antonio Express-News, "Shootings need to be judged on what the officer knows at the time, not on 20-20 hindsight."

"You don't try to subdue someone and take the chance of getting stabbed," Alpert said.

The question then is what led San Antonio Police Officer Reynaldo Montes to believe the unarmed man was armed with a knife and that the lives of Montes and his partner were in jeopardy.

At 11:50 p.m. March 2, John Cervantes, 26, was reportedly beating his girlfriend who was holding their baby in their bedroom in the 200 block of H Street.

The officer shot and killed Cervantes because Montes thought he had a knife in his hand. If shootings are judged on what the officer knew at the time, then what this officer knew at the time was wrong. A splattering of blood in the house and a dimly lit bedroom do not necessarily indicate a person is being assaulted with a knife.

The argument of perception and what one knew at the time is subject to interpretation, and more important, should be questioned thoroughly. The failure of the police to identify themselves is the first mistake.

The second and most fatal of mistakes is the use of deadly force because of "what the officer knew at the time." To eliminate the threat and kill a person can't be corrected.

How do you return to someone the life taken from them?

How do you give back to the family members a loved one?

In the second incident, Heather Lytle, 15, a back-seat passenger in a stolen vehicle, was killed on Feb. 28 by Bexar County Deputy Robert O'Donnell. O'Donnell believed the vehicle was a threat to his safety.

Lytle could have had absolutely no control over what the driver might do. Is that a justified shooting? Was she the threat?

I'm scared to be pulled over by the police because in the police officer's mind, I, too, could be making an imagined threatening gesture. I "thought" he had a gun or a knife at the time does not justify killing.

I don't want to become a statistic because of what a police officer "knew at the time."

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