Disallowing Ethnic Slurs

* Re “College District Won’t Allow Offensive Views at Meetings,” Feb. 13:

It is unfortunate that it required complaints to coerce the South Orange County Community College District board to do what they should have been doing all along.

The problem is not with simply “offensive views.” The problem is that statements are being made that appear to be more allied with anti-Semitism and hatred than with facts or proven historical data.

As the article mentions, charges are openly hurled at the board meetings that are “marked by angry disputes and vitriolic comments about Jews and the Holocaust.” Now, following community complaints, “trustees will not allow ‘vitriolic, racial or ethnic remarks, slurs, or insulting, demeaning or foul language.’ ” But shouldn’t this have been disallowed all along?

Calling the Holocaust “nothing but 6 million lies” is not simply a view, it is a blatant lie itself, not based on historically factual data. Why would the board ever permit such statements to a body supposed to represent an educational institution?

Let us hope the recall against Trustee Stephen J. Frogue is successful and we can start to get some new and objective people on the Board of Trustees.

IRVING FRIEDMAN

Laguna Niguel