Is it time for Shredder to shred itself?
Perhaps I was wrong about Cal Poly‘s musical moves when it comes to attacking the St. Fratty’s festivities that have clouded the university’s reputation around St. Patrick’s Day.
Maybe the school’s plan worked. Or maybe law enforcement really stepped it up when it came to cracking down on students gathering in the streets so we didn’t have a repeat of last year. Or maybe it was both.
Either way, I don’t have much to shred about St. Fratty’s this year, which is disappointing. Only a handful got arrested. There aren’t reports of any major incidents.
Boring!
But students still broke some ceiling tiles in campus housing—how? And students did push over the barricade separating the students who wanted to attend Morning on the Green but didn’t get tickets from those who were able to nab the 5,000 tickets that “sold out” in 3.2 seconds.
Moves like that meant those waiting to get in got in, so Cal Poly eventually shrugged and left the barricades open. The concert peaked with 6,000 attendees—the largest event ever held on campus, according to university spokesperson Matt Lazier, who emphasized for all the haters out there (It’s me. I’m a hater.) that the concert was never meant to hold every student on campus.
“Most students don’t take part in unruly celebrations in the neighborhoods, and the event’s main purpose was to provide an alternative to those gatherings,” he said. If you’re going to be unruly, do it on campus!
Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong called the unruly behavior that led to loose barricades “dangerous and unacceptable.” Don’t be unruly on campus, either!
They’re students. The part of their brain that assesses appropriate unruliness levels and bad decisions isn’t fully developed yet. That’s why they collapse roofs, climb into neighbors’ yards, mount light poles, and walk the streets with giant “rage gallons” filled with alcohol.
They key is heading off that kind of predictable behavior as an institution. And I get it, you’re trying! I’ll give Cal Poly a B-minus for effort, and an F for foresight about that wait line and what could happen there.
I’m handing out multiple F’s today. The San Miguel Community Services District (CSD), which opted out of joining a joint powers agreement with four other agencies that overly the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin, also gets an F for foresight. That severely overdrafted basin is trying to get its shit together so people can continue pumping from it for years to come.
The conversation about that basin’s water woes has only been going on for more than a decade, but at least one elected official is simply sick and tired of it.
“I don’t want to hear about it again, personally,” CSD board President Ashley Sangster said at the district’s March 13 meeting. “It’s a dead issue at this point.”
Correction! It’s not a dead issue. The joint powers authority, which his CSD won’t have any power or authority on, will make decisions about the basin that will directly impact San Miguel and its residents. Apparently paying $8,000 a year was simply too much to shoulder for a seat at the decision-making table for the whole basin—which doesn’t actually have any district boundaries in it.
It’s definitely coming up again, Sangster. Whether you want it to or not!
“It’s been tiring to listen to it all and dealing with it all,” Sangster said.
Oh. Being an elected official isn’t all fun and accolades, huh? You actually have to deal with tough decisions and a public that you can’t win with, no matter what.
Just ask Elon Musk! Oh wait, he didn’t get elected.
Just ask Cal Poly! Also, not elected, but I’m going to swing back in that general direction.
The school launched a partnership with Allan Hancock College at the beginning of this school year called the 2+2 program—a transfer program where students can stay on Hancock’s campus after earning their associate degree and get a bachelor’s in sociology from Cal Poly professors. The pair recently announced a new business major to add to the program with two more degrees in the works.
This has been a more-than-a-decade effort spearheaded by Hancock President Kevin Walthers, who described a bill that Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) introduced earlier this legislative term as crucial. The bill—Assembly Bill 1462—aimed to give Hancock an opportunity to offer one new baccalaureate program, which could have meant that Cal Poly may not have reaped the tuition rewards (almost $12,000 per year per student).
“That bill he filed was huge,” Walthers said.
I guess Cal Poly didn’t like those odds, so it caved in to the external pressure and the potential dollar signs that its future could hold without competition from a cheaper source of post-secondary education that ends with a bachelor’s degree.
The deal between Cal Poly and Hancock is better than what that bill could have provided for Santa Maria’s students, Hart said, so he’s going to pull the bill.
“I think that the [CSU] system would rather solve the problem that way than to have a legislative fix,” Hart said. “Having the colleges come together and create a win-win solution is the best of all outcomes.”
Pressure is the ultimate provider, amirite? Δ
The Shredder is always under pressure. Send comments to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Spring Arts Annual 2025.