You can tell a lot about an issue based on how the agency or organization surrounding it approaches the topic, and nobody writes better press releases for themselves than government.
Take the recent announcement by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the cleanup of the Casmalia Superfund Site was added to an “emphasis list” of superfund sites. If you didn’t know, superfund sites are the top tier of toxic waste dumps that the EPA manages, but this tweak will address the cleanup “as quickly and safely as possible,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said.
You know Pruitt, right? The guy facing a baker’s dozen of ethics violations and investigations? There’s his strange housing deal with a D.C. lobbyist, traveling in luxury airline seats on the public dime, and the recent revelation that he spent $43,000 for a soundproof phone booth in his office so he could talk to President Donald Trump without being overheard.
Nothing to hide here, just soundproofing my office and installing biometric locks!
At the bottom of the EPA’s press release about the Casmalia Superfund Site, there’s a green banner with a gold “Superfund Task Force” badge. The banner says that Pruitt began the task force when he took charge of the EPA to “restore” the “Superfund program to its rightful place at the center of the Agency’s core mission to protect health and the environment.”
Yeah, see what they did there? Forget about all the scandal and waste, or the fact that Pruitt led multiple suits against the EPA as Oklahoma’s attorney general—he’s the one returning the EPA to its core mission.
I don’t think Pruitt’s, or his EPA’s, efforts to change the conversation is going all that well. Sure, we can be happy that Casmalia is getting a little more attention (EPA officials have told the Sun that the timescale on a cleanup like that is marked in centuries), but it won’t slow down the reporting on all of Pruitt’s scandals.
When an agency tries to steer the conversation like that, it only makes reporters more suspicious. That’s when we really start digging.
How about the way Allan Hancock College officials reacted to the questions Sun Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash posed about sexual harassment policies at the school. *Spoiler alert* they didn’t handle it well.
I’m sure Hancock staff were a bit blindsided when asked point blank about Christine Reed’s statement at a Hancock board of trustees meeting about being sexually harassed by a coworker at the college. That’s a sensitive subject, but the answer probably isn’t to respond by denying access to public information.
Hancock’s Title IX Coordinator Nohemy Ornelas said she knew the number of reports made to the Title IX office last year but wasn’t “comfortable” sharing the information. When Susan Houghton, the executive director of College Advancement, was asked for the number, she said Hancock didn’t have it. A call up the coast to Cuesta College’s Title IX coordinator yielded the same data in less than three minutes.
If there’s public information, we’re going to get it, one way or another. The fact that the Sun even needed to file a Public Records Act request should be concerning—why couldn’t Hancock just give us the data?
Hancock is doing its best to put a good foot forward during Sexual Assault Awareness Month with the on-campus Clothesline Project being a visual representation of that, which is great, but there’s a bigger story there than what the college’s PR department put out. Maybe Hancock is used to news outlets rewriting their press releases, but that’s not what we do. And if the purpose of the project is to raise awareness about sexual assault and harassment, why refuse to share info that would help the public (that’s you) better understand how the issue affects North County’s community college?
And after a college employee alleged that she was not only harassed but retaliated against for speaking out, then Hancock should do everything possible to walk the walk when it comes to making the campus a safe place for students and staff alike to come forward and report abuse.
The Canary wants everyone to feel safe. Send your thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 19-26, 2018.