Dear Faculty, Classified Staff and Administrative Staff Colleagues:
On this holiday to observe Veterans Day, I extend to every veteran in our City College (CCSF) community our sincerest gratitude for your service to our country. I am also very proud that our expression of appreciation is backed up with action. Thanks to our great Walter S. Newman Veterans Resource Center, CCSF serves over 1500 veterans to help them continue their higher education.
CCSF veterans understand the call of duty. Some of them will continue on to careers as first-responders and firefighters. Many veterans are among those fighting the Camp Fire and the fires in Southern California.
Of course we send our thoughts and prayers to our colleagues at Butte College and Ventura College who are suffering:
- At last count 138 faculty and staff at Butte College have lost their homes to the fire. The fire has crept within yards of the main campus.
- Ventura College reports that two of its current students were murdered in the recent shooting. This tragedy has been followed by the Woolsey Fire that has destroyed many homes in Ventura County.
So we at City College must do more to help than send messages.
First, if anyone in the CCSF community has any information from the fire areas please let me know. I do not yet have any report that any CCSF faculty, staff or student has suffered injury or loss, although some must know friends and family who did. I am aware of a few staff who were evacuated but I don’t know if there are others. We need to make sure all evacuated CCSF people, if any, are identified and taken care of until they can return home.
Second, I will ask Chief Jason Wendt to organize support crews to travel to the fire area when it is safe to assist with clean-up, counseling and other post-disaster needs.
Third, we will organize this week a CCSF fundraising effort on social media for Butte and Ventura.
In acting to help others we provide the most important element of recovery: hope. I thank our veterans and each member of the CCSF community for providing the hope from the certain knowledge that, now and always, we are all in this together
Sincerely,
Dr. Mark Rocha, Chancellor
City College of San Francisco