Morning Report: 'I Would Not Choose To Ever Go Back There'

By The Voice of San Diego, the Voice of San Diego

August 10, 2021

Investigative records and other public documents first alerted us to the fact that California State University San Marcos officials determined a professor had harassed students, but decided to allow him back in the classroom after his union intervened. (The school has since said he’ll be moved to a new role that doesn’t involve direct contact with students.)

But those records, and crafted statements from university communications professionals, can only tell us so much.

One of the students who was harassed has spoken on the record about her ordeal for the first time to VOSD’s Kayla Jimenez.

Hanna Holford said she was so distressed by the harassment, and the process of investigating her claim, that she had to take her final semester of college entirely online.

She only learned that CSU San Marcos had backtracked on its decision to fire professor Chetan Kumar from Voice of San Diego’s reporting.

“She said the settlement he signed with the university amounts to ‘a slap on the wrist’ and that she believes her experience reveals numerous areas for improvement in the process of investigating harassment claims and communicating the outcomes to victims and other students,” Jimenez reports.

Given how it all played out, “I would not choose to ever go back there,” Holford said.

Faulconer Says ‘Not in My Campaign’ to Earlier YIMBY Stance

Many national outlets swooned over then-Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s 2019 state of the city speech in which he staked his position as a YIMBY and announced plans to spur more development. “A Golden State mayor takes on the NIMBYs,” the Wall Street Journal, for example, declared.

Now, as he runs for governor, Faulconer isn’t just disavowing some YIMBY priorities, he’s recasting his own administration’s efforts, as Andrew Keatts lays out in a new piece.

In a debate last week, Faulconer pledged to veto any bill to eliminate single-family housing. Yet his administration argued that many of Faulconer’s housing policies at the time, like making it much easier to build granny flats, had already begun to undo single-family zoning.

Coronado Mayor Files Paperwork to Challenge Peters

Richard Bailey, the Republican mayor of Coronado, has created a new committee to run for California’s 52nd District, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Scott Peters.

Peters himself defeated a Republican to win in 2012, but since then has had a relatively easy time defending the seat. Voters in the district chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump 63.4 percent to 34.2 percent in 2020.

Bailey has been outspoken about COVID-19 restrictions, and has argued against making investments in public transit. More recently, he criticized the California Interscholastic Federation’s decision to revoke the Coronado High basketball team’s Division 4A regional title after members of the crowd threw tortillas at the mostly Latino team from Escondido’s Orange Glen High. Bailey called the move a “rush to judgment,” according to City News Service.

In Other News

• In the latest Border Report, Gustavo Solis explains some of the stats and history behind Mexico’s decision to sue U.S. gun manufacturers for the flow of guns into the country. It turns out Texas is fueling the problem far more than California.
• The Sheriff’s Department released some documents related to its claim that a deputy overdosed on fentanyl merely by being exposed to it. The department promised to release unedited footage from body worn cameras within a week. The claim and a video the department had produced about the incident received national backlash after epidemiologists and other professionals reasserted such contact overdoses are impossible and could lead to first responders being unnecessarily reluctant to offer aid. The sheriff said he made the call to declare it an overdose, not a doctor (Union-Tribune).
• The Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board found insufficient evidence to hold anyone accountable for the 2020 death of a man in the Vista jail. Cameras that might have shed light on what happened were inoperable. (Union-Tribune)
• UC San Diego Health plans to require hospital visitors to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. (NBC San Diego)

The Morning Report was written by Sara Libby and edited by Scott Lewis.

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit news organization supported by our members. We reveal why things are the way they are and expose facts that people in power might not want out there and explain complex local public policy issues so you can be engaged and make good decisions. Sign up for our newsletters at voiceofsandiego.org/newsletters/.