L.A. City College Presidential Hopeful Fostered Retaliation Culture as LAVC President

Pasadena City College Superintendent-President Erika Endrijonas has been announced as a finalist for the L.A. City College President Position. The move would be a step-down in authority from her current position as CEO of a college district to a management role of a single college under her the LACCD Chancellor’s supervision. When Endrijonas accepted the PCC Superintendent-President position in 2018, she was quoted by the Pasadena Star News as citing the increased authority as a major consideration in taking the position “I felt ready to be a superintendent-president and work directly with the board.” It would also come with a pay decrease over over $100,000 dollars, if Endrijonas and outgoing LACC President Mary Gallagher’s posted salary is anything to go by.

Endrijonas’s willingness to take such a big career decline my seem surprising, but it shouldn’t. Currently the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees is deciding whether or not to fire Endrijonas. Two months ago Endrijonas was announced as a finalist for Superintendent-President of Santa Barbara City College (where she had previously served as the Career and Technical Dean for nearly a decade) and Mt. San Antonio College. However after further evaluation Mt. San Antonio College went with a different candidate and Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees announced they would re-open applications and extend their Presidential search for other candidates. Having been passed over by her two first choices, Endrijonas was quoted by Pasadena Now as stating she “plans to complete the process at LACC while waiting to see what happens at PCC.”

Endrijonas’s rejection by three community colleges is stunning as it comes less than a year after Inside Higher Ed reported a shortage of California Community College Administrators.

At the heart of the situation is how Erika Endirjonas treats people and the culture she fosters in her role as a Community College President.

When Endrijonas was first announced for the position, she announced listening as the first item on her agenda in an interview with the Pasadena Star-News; “Her first order of business? Checking in with students, faculty, staff and residents of the communities served by PCC. “The first thing I’m going to do is basically listen — talk to the various communities and constituencies, not just at the main site but all of the sites where Pasadena City College operates,” Endrijonas said in a phone interview.”

But according to Pasadena News Outlets she’s done very little listening and a great deal of bullying. Last year the PCC Academic Senate passed a vote of no confidence in her leadership 17-12. PCC student newspaper The PCC Courier covered that during the meeting “Endrijonas was called “stubborn,” “arbitrary,” “unsafe,” among other descriptions. She was accused of violating “the regulations and spirit of shared governance.”

This was followed by the PCC Faculty Union passing a similar resolution with 66% of full-time faculty members voting they had no confidence in Endrijonas’s leadership. Adjunct Faculty members staged protests and made public comments to the Pasadena News Media and at meetings of the LACCD Board of Trustees.

Months later Pasadena voters replaced incumbent trustees with new members.

Last September, The President of the Board of Trustees hired legal counsel to advise on contract negotiations with Endrijonas, and whether or not to extend or end her contract.

The response from Endrijonas’s allies has been a tidal-wave of retaliation and abuse against PCC Board of Trustees President Sandra Chen Lau for doing the job that Pasadena voters elected her too. At the April 19, 2023 Board Meeting, Endrijonas’s allies on campus staged a very public tantrum that was poorly received. Multiple news items have been published personally attacking Ms. Chen Lau.

Perhaps the most obnoxious statement came from Bill Hawkins quoted as saying: “Who is Sandra Chen Lau and why is she taking a wrecking ball to this venerable institution?”

Ms. Chen Lau was forced to defend her self and the Pasadena voters that elected her and the new trustees with a very public Op-ED ‘Standing Up for Good Governance’ against the smear campaign ran against her on Endrijonas’s behalf.

This petty torrent of abuse against an elected official for providing oversight on behalf of PCC stakeholders appears surprising at first.

But it shouldn’t.

The way Endrijonas has been characterized so far by those who have dealt with her sounds like one of Tami Cowden’s villainous archetypes “the abusive autocrat, she lies, cheats, and steals her way to the top. Her climb to success has left many a heel mark on the backs of others. She doesn’t care about the peons around her – only the a achievement of her dreams matter. Forget expecting a helping hand from her – she doesn’t help anyone but herself.”

And evidence has surfaced that this is a long-standing pattern of bad behavior going back as far as her previous institution Los Angeles Valley College where she fostered an existing culture of retaliation.

Under Erika Endrijonas’s leadership LAVC engaged in illegal retaliation.

That’s not an opinion.

It was a the finding and determination of a jury who awarded a $2.9 million dollar judgement to a former employee. When asked if she would return to LAVC, the employee responded “Not after what they did to me.”

On May 2, 2023 ‘Erika Endrijonas faces new questions in LACCD fraud’ hit the wire detailing two student filed accreditation complaints against LAVC.

This was followed on May 5, 2023 ‘Dozen LAVC Cinema Student Narratives challenges Erika Endrijonas’s LACCD Success Story’ undercutting Endrijonas’s image as a student success champion.

And new emails and Facebook Messages from 2014 – 2017, show that Student 1 and 2 made multiple attempts to resolve matters at the college level before approaching Accreditation. They also show that both students appear to have suffered retaliation by LAVC Officials in response to challenging multiple violations of accreditation.

The first documented attempt came in Fall 2014, when Student 1 sent a detailed letter to the LACCD Board of Trustees President Scott Svonkin, who in turn notified LACCD Chancellor Francisco Rodrigues about problems in the LAVC Media Arts Department. This was followed by petitions and letters from students to LAVC Media Arts Department Chair Eric Swelstad, CTE Dean Laurie Nalepa, Vice-President of Academic Affairs Karen Daar, and College President Erika Endrijonas in 2015. This was followed in 2016 with a second letter to Scott Svonkin and a dozen student narratives collected and sent to Erika Endrijonas.

In a 2015 Student Facebook Chat, Student 1 describes someone improperly accessing Student 1’s Academic File and removing paperwork to prevent Student 1 from graduating. The post also specifically mentions LAVC Department Chair Eric Swelstad refusing to sign another student’s paperwork and threatening to deny accommodation to a third student undergoing medical treatment.

A series of emails show that despite Student 1 was also denied the opportunity to walk at LAVC’s college commencement ceremony June 7, 2016. The official notification, including that Student 1 had earned the ‘President’s Distinguished Honor Award’ and completed multiple certificates and association degrees in Media Arts, Cinema and Television was supposedly mailed May 25, 2016 but conveniently didn’t arrive until June 10 – three days after the ceremony.

Endrijonas’s email reply to Student 1 inquiries was the same calloused indifference to others that she has demonstrated as Superintendent-President at Pasadena City College.

Student 2 collected a petition of twenty-three students and submitted it to Endrijonas’s desk demanding that LAVC’s Department Chair Eric Swelstad and Dean Laurie Nalepa abide by Accreditation.

A 2017 Email shows that ultimately Student 2 took the classes needed for graduation at LA City College, only to have Eric Swelstad inform that he wasn’t “familiar” with the coursework at LA City College and wasn’t sure if they would count for graduation either.

It also an audacious lie.

LAVC’s Media Arts Advisory May 19, 2017 Meeting Minutes show faculty from LACC including Cinema Chair Joni Varner were participants.

Minutes from the LACC Cinema/TV Department Industry Advisory Committee Meeting on June 9, 2017, show LAVC Faculty including Department Chair Eric Swelstad participating in curriculum development conversations.

This also isn’t the first time Eric Swelstad or LAVC had weaponized graduation to retaliate against a student either.

On May 19, 2009, an LAVC Cinema Student filed a lawsuit at Van Nuys Courthouse East against Los Angeles Valley College and naming the entire LAVC Media Arts faculty, area Dean, Vice-President, President and every member of the LACCD Board of Trustees as respondents for reasons mirroring the complaints that Student 1 and Student 2 brought almost a decade later and retaliation he suffered for speaking out.

“46. When plaintiff complained about the above referenced matters, Swelstad and other Valley College officials retaliated against plaintiff by refusing to grant him a Certificate and creating a hostile learning environment for him in class.

47. On or around June 2007 plaintiff satisfied the requirements to get a Cinema Arts Production Certificate (“Certificate”) at Valley College.

48. On or around June 2007 plaintiff applied for an Associate Degree in Media Arts at the Valley college graduation office.

49. On a letter dated December 19, 2007, Plaintiff was notified by by the Valley College graduation office that he would need to take three additional non-media/cinema classes to qualify for the degree.

50. Plaintiff called the Graduation Office soon after receiving the letter and talked to the to staff there who told him that, however, he fulfilled the requirements for the Motion Picture Production Certificate.

51. Plaintiff was told that he would receive a Certificate in the mail and that his scholastic record would reflect that fact.

52. Despite repeated phone calls to the Valley College Graduation Office and Academic Affairs regarding this matter, plaintiff was not given the certificate.

53. On or about September 2008, plaintiff finally visited the office on September 2008, and was told to fill out another form in order to receive the Certificate. Plaintiff filled out the form.

54. On our about October 2008, Swelstad denied the plaintiff the certificate via a letter even though plaintiff has fulfilled the requirements to get the Certificate.
55. On our about October 13, 2008, plaintiff notified Delahoussaye and Reed that plaintiff had fulfilled all requirements for the Certificate and that they should take care of the matter as soon as possible. On or about October 13, 2008, Yasmin Delahoussaye and Dennis Reed denied request.”

There is no record of how Endrijonas responded to Student 2’s situation other than permitting Eric Swelstad to remain Department Chair. While it’s not known for a fact if Endrjionas was aware of this prior pattern of retaliation, what is known is not only how Endrijonas responded to the same retaliation towards Student 1, but also in her response to Student 1’s Accreditation Complaint in 2016 she stated she’d done an extensive fact-finding mission into the issues in LAVC’s Media Arts Department under Eric Swelstad’s governance.

Either Endrijonas lied to Accreditation about her fact-finding mission, or she did the fact finding mission and was aware of the existing retaliation culture in the LAVC Media Arts Department and fostered it.

Retaliation was the number one EEOC prosecuted complaint in 2019, before Covid closed multiple industries. And failure to graduate is the number one problem facing California Community Colleges – which will soon start costing colleges tax dollars if they don’t clean-up their act under California's new funding formula. LACCD just lost a $10 million dollar lawsuit at LA Southwest College for retaliation, because of a Vice-President who should have been fired and wasn't. And under Endrijonas, LACCD also lost a $2.9 million dollar lawsuit at LA Valley College.

Is the LACCD Board of Trustees and Chancellor really planning on throwing away more taxpayer dollars on a President who has not only lost the confidence of her current institution after four years of mismanagement, but has also fostered an existing culture of education and financial abuse against students as a form of retaliation at LACCD?