A Question of Free Speech?

In less than 30 days, I have read two articles on Chris Mayda, editor in chief of L.A. Valley College’s Valley Star. To read these pieces, anyone would come away feeling a tremendous injustice was done to the woman, who is being denied her voice on a campus newspaper.

Only, I know better.

From mid-January to Feb. 27 of this year, I served as opinion editor of the Star, chosen by Mayda herself. Mayda made enemies from Day 1. The bungalow housing the newspaper “learning lab” was a tinder-box ready to explode.

Tony Cifarelli, the Star adviser, was quoted as saying Mayda is the best and most talented journalism student he’s taught in 15 years. That might be true. Only she wanted to pull off a one-woman show and a newspaper requires great team effort.

During my time at the Star, I found the opinion page to be compromised by Mayda with the aid of Cifarelli. When an article that some considered racist and anti-Semitic was published in late February, I was not allowed to print a letter to the editor that voiced an opposing view in the subsequent week’s issue.

I could not fight the Mayda-Cifarelli team alone. I quit the paper by withdrawing from Valley College.

Journalism Chairman Roger Graham was more than fair with Mayda, as he was with all his students. Mayda chose to run the paper from her own residence and use her own desktop publishing system. Her words were first and foremost on the front page, Op-Ed page, A&E; page.

California tax dollars are hard enough to come by for community college education. So what about the rest of us aspiring writers? We didn’t get the chance we deserved as students of a “learning lab.”

EVA R. YELLOZ, Sherman Oaks