School Administrators

Is humanism in film dead? If you consult box-office wonder "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" -- with its crush of ultra-violent, heavy-metal robots -- maybe so. If you talk to Teri Schwartz, the new dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, the answer is hopefully not.

Aurora Ponce is senior class president, boasts a near-perfect A average and is UC-bound with plans to study engineering. But according to the 18-year-old and her supporters, officials at the Accelerated School, a collection of South Los Angeles charter schools, have barred Ponce from making her valedictory speech at Saturday's graduation as punishment for participating in a student sit-in to protest increased class sizes and the elimination of college prep classes.

Jonathan Veitch, former dean of the New School's Eugene Lang College in New York City and scion of a prominent Hollywood family, will be the next president of Occidental College, the liberal arts campus in Eagle Rock that Barack Obama attended for two years. Veitch's hiring at Occidental, announced Friday and effective July 1, comes after several years of leadership instability at the 1,868-student campus, which has had four presidents since 2005.

Porter Middle School administrators believed a boy was dealing pot on campus. So they allegedly sent a student to buy some. The sting worked -- to a point. The student successfully bought drugs and the administrators at the Granada Hills campus reported the incident to authorities.

It was the middle of the night. I was asleep. My mom came in and started punching me. She said I didn't fold my clothes right. I threw her off of me. She was real drunk. She started on me again. The police came. She said: 'What? I'm just kicking my son's ass.' Just another night. -- Carlos, 17 :: The little school in South Los Angeles is the end of the road, reserved for those who have bombed out of the rest of the system. The mildest cases were merely kicked out of their last school.

Two televangelists have resigned their posts as regents at Oral Roberts University, as the debt-ridden school tries to regroup after a spending scandal involving its former president. The university also settled Thursday with one of three professors who filed a wrongful-termination suit against the school. Benny Hinn and I.V. Hilliard resigned from the board of regents, where they were involved in making major school decisions, university spokesman Jeremy Burton said Thursday.

The president of the California Community Colleges board is expected to step down after state Senate Republicans on Monday blocked confirmation of her appointment by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on grounds that she had voted to support tuition breaks for illegal immigrants. Board President Katherine "Kay" Albiani is the third member of the community colleges board of governors in the last six months to lose her position over the board's controversial vote on illegal immigrants.

Critics of the Capistrano Unified school board said Tuesday that they had collected enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot to oust two trustees. More than 62,000 signatures are on petitions to recall Marlene Draper and Sheila Benecke. The committee needs to submit about 41,000 signatures -- just over 20,000 per trustee -- to the Orange County registrar of voters by Tuesday to hold a recall election. It's the second recall attempt against them since 2005.

The College of William & Mary, the nation's second oldest, lost its president last week after a culture-war clash that began when he ordered the removal of an 18-inch brass cross from the altar of the historic Wren Chapel. His decision, an act of legal principle to some and a blunder of liberal activism to others, touched off a revolt among conservative bloggers and alumni of the state-supported school in Williamsburg, Va., and led to his resignation Tuesday.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, moving to improve struggling campuses that are taking part in his high-profile and high-stakes school reform effort, has tapped a veteran San Diego educator to take charge of instruction at those schools.