Growing up in L.A. in the '60s, I would take summer school classes at Santa Monica City College. L.A. had a great junior college system back then and tuition was cheap enough (about $10/class) so that a kid like me, with few resources, had access to a quality post-secondary education and with that, a job and some social capital. I remember SMCC students as being mostly white, sandy-haired and really into the surfer sub-culture, ie. the Beach Boys,
Dick Dale, The Ventures and doing the surfer's stomp at the Oar House on Friday nights.
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| Courtney Aravena, left, speaks Wednesday about being pepper-sprayed the previous evening, while Ernie Sevilla tells of being pressed up against the wall by the crowd next to the officer who used pepper spray. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times / April 4 |
On Tuesday, hundreds of what is now called, Santa Monica College students (none of them sandy-haired)
