Santa Monica College Sex Scandals Exposed: Part 1

When most people hear the term "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," they think of the famous 1989 movie written and directed by Steven Soderbergh. However, sex, lies, and videotape exists in the real world in a community college known as Santa Monica College (SMC) and its vocational satellite campus, the Academy of Entertainment and Technology (AET). Here, various unscrupulous administrators, faculty, staff, and students combine their heavy-handed efforts to shut down our online news media network, Phoenix Genesis, by going on a major smear campaign thinly cloaked through harsh disciplinary sanctions against its Editor-in-Chief, Des Manttari. Unfortunately, innocent people suffer at their hands, including, but not limited to, the disabled student body at SMC, my staff writers, and fellow SMC blogger, Jeff Higley (see: The Siege Online). Since SMC is a public school, the taxpayers also suffer financially by paying these public servant salaries as well as ever mounting outside legal fees to their nepotistic law firms.

SMC has not blinked a bit to allegedly violate its own administrative regulations and board policies, the California Education Code, the California Public Records Act, the Ralph M. Brown Act, as well as a handful of the amendments to the California and United States Constitution, including those protecting undue search and seizure, due process, and freedom of speech. Throw in the alleged criminal acts of those involved including, but not limited to, extortion, blackmail, lying under penalty of perjury, fabricated police reports, intimidation, coercion, and bribing of witnesses, and SMC has quite a mess on its hands.

Of course SMC's administrators have all gone into hiding, like ostriches with their heads in a hole. On or about June 16, 2006, I emailed Vice-President of Planning and Development Robert Sammis, requesting further documents and a date for the suspension appeal. This was my second email in one week. I have received absolutely no response. The same goes for my numerous emails to Assistant Dean of Judicial Affairs, Judith Penchansky. Nothing. No response from the SMC Board of Trustees, no response from Denya Hearn, no response from our new president Chui L. Tsang. SMC clearly wished to rid themselves of an investigative student reporter by and through an email suspension of two years. They did not think I would fight back to defend my rights.

According to SMC's Missed Information Online, dated March 20, 2006, President "Tsang has been a champion of student first amendment rights and the student press here at City College." Oops, wrong college. At Santa Monica College, he has done not a single thing to remove the illegal Free Speech Zone or to eradicate the Student Code of Conduct, which in essence is little more than a vehicle to punish pure speech, nor has he stepped up to the plate to uphold the First Amendment rights of SMC students. Oh, Tsang allegedly "encouraged diversity at City College." Here at SMC, he's turned his back and closed his eyes to the discrimination against SMC's diverse student body, allowing SMC to use repeated police force and interrogation against its students.

Ironically, AET Dean Katharine Muller, who wished to have me removed from school for a tongue in cheek parody photo (bottom right) of her, is seen in this same issue presenting President Tsang with a box of "manage mints." Is that so he can sweet-talk his way out of this mess to the press and to the various regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education?



Perhaps Katharine Muller, in charge of SMC's External Programs, should have spent more time addressing the various problems at AET including dwindling enrollment numbers, lack of internships and job placements, and the infighting between AET professors David Javelosa and Jim Keeshen. Once alleged friends, each was now trying to gather a small army in their camps to discredit the other. While I worked as slave labor for Keeshen, he complained on more than one occasion about wanting out of the "vortex" of AET. Last summer, in an off-campus meeting with Keeshen, he complained that Javelosa and AET animation professor Chris Fria were "micro-managing" the place. He wished me to uncover dirt so that he could work toward firing these two colleagues. I could find absolutely nothing against Chris Fria, whom many AET animation students hold in the utmost high regard.

Of course Keeshen came to the fray with unclean hands. A simple glance at his SAVE SMC profile reveals alleged misuse of public funds, discrimination against disabled students, kickbacks, misuse of students for his own commercial enterprises through Jim Keeshen Productions, etc. As Keeshen told me back around August 31, 2005, he was using the school to finish his Day of the Dead (a.k.a., James Keeshen and El Dia de Los Muertos) animated film. Because I was helping him to escape what he considered a hostile work environment, Judith Penchansky and Katharine Muller devised an ingenious plan to allegedly blackmail him to write a defamatory and untrue statement against me. Of course Keeshen covered his tracks and documented this less than ethical blackmail to cover him and me.

However, under the pressures faced by SMC's administration and the death of his father, he caved in and went on to make many more false accusations against me and to threaten his students in the process. One of those unfortunate students was Lindsay Berkovitz, who uses a wheelchair due to her limited mobility. On or about February 22, 2006, Keeshen told Ms. Berkovitz to "park yourself where ever you feel comfortable." When she asked later to use the restroom, Professor Keeshen responded, "Just no videotaping, okay?" The list of harassment and threats go on, ranging from attempting to coerce her from testifying to the SMCPD ("Lindsay, stay out of this.") to his now famous March 1, 2006 hate speech against the disabled, alleging that those with autism and Aspergers are to be construed by the SMC community as being "a problem," "destructive," and a "mental disease." Shame on Jim Keeshen.


Jim Keeshen and booth babes at E3 Expo 2004. At the time, Keeshen was a staff writer for Phoenix Genesis.

Here's a wonderful quote by Jim Keeshen heard by Lindsay Berkovitz and other students:

Hospitals report that gang bangers, the young gang bangers who are like 12, 13, that come in to be mended complain that they didn't know that violence hurts them. Because they see violence in our stories and they just figure you know what, you hit somebody and he kind of goes like this and then he hits you and then he goes like that and then you hit him back and then you shoot him and you wing him and then he shoots you and blood is spurting all over the place. And it's the way it is. Until you actually get shot or somebody actually hits you. And if anybody here's ever been hit hard, you know you go down and you don't want to get up. Let alone the fright of a gun going off, particularly in your direction, gives you.

-- SMC Professor Jim Keeshen to his ET 2 Storytelling Class at AET on April 17, 2006.

Back in January 30, 2006, we did a blog article entitled "How AET Manipulates its Curriculum & Certificates." David Javelosa was doing a lot of renaming and reshuffling of courses over at AET. Javelosa was also the advisor to the SMC Gaming Club (a.k.a., SMC Game Club). According to a March 26, 2006 email from SMC Professor Howard A. Stahl to me, Stahl stated that both he and Javelosa were co-advisors of the club. Stahl's participation was limited to "signing off on all the forms."

On March 26, 2006, I emailed AET Interactive Media Professor David Javelosa. I wrote him the following: “I hope you had a great time at the GDC conference this week. I wish I could have went. I was wondering if you are still the faculty advisor to the SMC Gaming Club on campus or if someone else has now taken the mantle. Please let me know if you are the current advisory or, if not, who is now in charge.”

Professor Javelosa never returned my email. According to an email from Professor Howard A. Stahl (see above), Professor Javelosa continues to advise the SMC Gaming Club in his capacity as a SMC faculty member. Professor Javelosa has maintained personal and commercial webpages on the AET school server, which advocate teenage sex and military violence under his ET 13 Game Authoring course. You could view the webpages on the SMC Academy of Entertainment and Technology server. They were there as recently as June 15, 2006. Now, they have mysteriously vanished as it seems AET has revamped its website. Fortunately, I had downloaded all the questionable material, including webpages and mp3 songs, as well as making screenshots for the last several months.

Professor Javelosa has concealed this webpage from the SMC students. There are no links from his ET 13 course homepage. Rather, one can only find these pages through a redirect he has set up under www.javelosa.com, despite the fact that this school server is paid for with public funds. Notice in the following screenshot how the links and the main URL all go to the AET server:



On these webpages, Professor Javelosa has inappropriate sexual images, including a semi-nude picture of him. You could view this page on the AET server under "david Microwave." Unfortunately, SMC has now quickly taken it down, so here's a screenshot I took with the mp3 actually downloading:



On this page, you can view his semi-nude photograph as well as his sexual mp3 songs including “Young & Ready” and “Permissive Attitudes.” Professor Javelosa has sexual music he has created including “G-Spot” and “More Music For Teenage Sex.” These songs are in mp3 audio format and use school bandwidth when downloaded and paid for with public funds.





Professor Javelosa has also created a webpage that advocates military violence. You can view this webpage, entitled “Collateral Damage” on the AET server. There is an image of a military tank and violent music created by Professor Javelosa. The Collateral Damage soundtrack includes songs entitled, “Here Come the Body Bags,” “Seeds of Deception,” “Thematically Related Warfare,” and “Ramadi Massacre.” There is a link to a violent student project by Jamal Aziz Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s “WAR: The American Flag” movie, done with Macromedia Director, has violent middle east war images accompanied by violent rap lyrics by Fred Wreck that advocates killing.



One could construe this as free speech. However, given the fact that all these images and music are on the AET school server, concealed from the general SMC community, including administrators and students, and that Professor Javelosa is the advisor of the SMC Gaming Club, this music and images are inappropriate. Given the fact that Professor Javelosa is advocating violence and teenage sex and he is in charge of supervising a 14 year-old minor who is in the game club, this is further inappropriate. Additionally, given the fact that the SMC Gaming Club is advocating a “military coup” against the SMC Associated Students, by and through Thomas J. Baker, and Baker has used violence against us, a reasonable person can construe that Baker, this minor, and the SMC Gaming Club are influenced by Professor David Javelosa. To see more on the SMC Game Club, click HERE.

Let's move to part 2 of our exposé and see how these professors have influenced various SMC students to actively work to defraud our school and defame my good character.

-- Des Manttari,
Editor-in-Chief,
Phoenix Genesis

(c) 2006: Phoenix Genesis/MBS LP

Feel free to link or print this; just include the SAVE SMC URL: http://savesmc.blogspot.com/

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