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Orange Coast College (OCC) in Costa Mesa, California has become a political hot bed since the 2016 election, and the trend doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon.
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Campus Reform (CR) is reporting that OCC, following pressure from left-leaning activists and faculty, has hired an “independent” off-campus investigator to do some digging into the school’s College Republican club in what is being called a “fact finding” mission to determine whether or not the club had ever violated any campus policies during its two year existence.
OCC College Republican President Emeritus Joshua Recalde-Martinez contacted Dean of Student Life and Services Mike Morvice, who is responsible for overseeing campus clubs, with his concerns following his learning about the “investigation,” reports CR.
“I was recently informed that their [sic] were complaints that have been filed against the OCC Republicans this past semester that may have manifested into some sort of investigation,” Recalde-Martinez wrote, asking Morvice for any information he could provide, reports CR.
“Outside of the initial inquires made in the Fall 2016/Intersession 2017 and OC Human Relations listening sessions from the Spring 2017, I am not familiar with any investigations involving clubs/student organizations taking place at this point in time,” Morvice replied in an email correspondence obtained by CR.
CR reports that Recalde-Martinez later emailed College President Dennis Harkins with the same question, including this time the emails between College Republican members and requests that they participate in the “investigation.” He also reminded Harkins that the Board of Trustees had previously called for an end to the investigation of a professor for her anti-Trump tirade during class.
This time, Harkins answered the question, telling Recalde-Martinez that “the investigation is in response to a discrimination case,” but that it would be “inappropriate for me to provide any additional information other to say the district often uses outside investigators for this kind of complaint,” according to CR.
CR reports that Nora Quinn of the Quinn Law Firm, presumably the lead for the investigation, has not provided the College Republicans with a list of complaints for the club, nor has she identified the individual(s) under investigation.
“I cannot give you a list of the complaints because I’m not authorized to do so, and information continues to emerge,” Quinn told Recalde-Martinez in an email dated July 9, responding to his request for a list of the specific complaints that she is investigating, reported CR.
The apparent lack of transparency from OCC’s administration seems to have pressed Recalde-Martinez to the conclusion that the school is “actively working in conjunction with the faculty union and their campus agitators to silence and target conservative students at the college.” Recalde-Martinez vowed to CR that the College Republicans “will continue to fight this discriminatory behavior by the campus in any way legally possible.”
OCC’s College Republicans have retained the legal assistance of Freedom X, a public-interest law firm that defends conservatives against viewpoint discrimination, as well as the Shawn Steel Law Firm, both of which also represented the club when the school suspended CR member Caleb O’Neil for filming his professor, explained CR.
“This investigation is a waste of time and public resources drummed up by a left-wing campus administration with nothing better to do than to harass the College Republicans,” Bill Becker, chief counsel of Freedom X, told Campus Reform. “If anything were to come out of it, I would be surprised. We’re ready to initiate legal action in the event the club is punished.”
Juan Gutierrez, director of marketing and public relations at OCC, provided the following statement to Campus Reform:
“OCC is looking into formal complaints filed by students against other individual students. No group or club is being investigated. We are following the established College complaint procedures through this process. This process in not related to political ideology, but rather the alleged conduct of students towards other students.”
