'A Neon-flashing Example' 

Editor:

Thadeus Greenson's report of the resignation of Cal Poly Humboldt's President Tom Jackson Jr. raises questions that extend far beyond Jackson's devastating reign that transformed the nascent Cal Poly into what in Humboldt's parlance has become known as Cal Folly.

During Jackson's reign he disrespected and alienated the county's public health officials as regarded COVID restrictions; he sabotaged and prevented a local nonprofit's attempts to develop housing for low-income seniors; he spurned and insulted Cal Poly's own Title IX investigators trying to eliminate a scourge of sexual abuse on campus; he scorned and abrogated Arcata's building codes and its fire department's capabilities by designing and building an off-campus dorm in excess of the city's height limits; he never corrected his predecessor's gratuitous cancellations of the university's popular football program and vital community-oriented radio station; and finally, he took adversarial, draconian and violent actions against peaceful, non-violent, student, faculty and community protesters.

Meanwhile, while orchestrating this assault on the Humboldt community, Jackson received annual stipends totaling $417,996. Over the five years of his disastrous reign, those annual stipends added up to $2,359,980. As a further reward following his resignation, the California State University's Board of Trustees will grant him a tenured professorship ... even though teaching experience appears absent from Jackson's resume. 

Thus it is that the virulent hostility our Humboldt community has suffered from the hands of Jackson and his similarly well-recompensed predecessor was fully supported and wholly financed by the CSU's Board of Trustees. 

And that, my fellow citizens, is a neon-flashing example of why college educations are so goddamn expensive, students bear disabling debts for decades, and how our taxpayers' dollars are used to screw us taxpayers.

I write this not as an anti-tax crusader, but as a life-long advocate for affordable college educations.

Alexander Ricca, Blue Lake