Enrollment is capped at approximately 750 students.
Enrollment has been declining in recent years.
Marymount College ranks two thousand, three hundred, and fifteenth, according to someone who has thoroughly researched facts and figures concerning Marymount.
Sadly, the last student to parish while attending Marymount was under 21 and had a blood alcohol level of between .17 and .21, according to the Deputy who investigated the crash. (The differences in the level is because of where and when some samples were taken)
In the State of California, the legal limit to be considered under the influence is .08, less than half of the victim's lowest level tested.
Four-year Colleges have a greater percentage of students who are 21 or older than is found at most Junior Colleges.
It looked, until this past Wednesday, that the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council was likely to disapprove the appeal filed by CCC/ME to the Expansion Project.
Marymount was poised to be granted just about every part of the Facilities Expansion Project save on-campus housing.
The College was placed on Academic Warning for originally a two-year period but the College corrected problems and that warning was lifted late in the first year of warning.
Dr. Brophy and supporters of Marymount know that without on-campus housing under existing conditions, the College will most likely fail.
Perhaps there is not enough financial incentive left to build the current Project, without on-campus housing being assured.
There are very few, if any, four-year Colleges in California that do not have either on-campus student housing or near adjacent housing for students.
Marymount College does not offer off-campus housing within a reasonable walking distance.
It stands to reason that Dr. Brophy and others need to use whatever means are required to have on-campus housing for the College to survive.
But then again, Bob Lowe basically begged the City Council to approve the T.O.T. Rebate. Even with the T.O.T. Rebate now rescinded, the Resort is not closed and some City Council members claim business there is quite good.
It is not surprising to me that Dr. Brophy and others are attempting this change in order to secure on-campus housing in the future. If the College gets to become a four-year accredited College, it will most certainly need to find a way to get on-campus housing. I feel strongly that College representatives would bring lawsuits against the city of R.P.V. should they receive four-year status and are denied on-campus housing.
Some folks have already stated to me that these most recent plans were hatched long ago.
I am concerned how this will play out in the current election cycle.
Are there candidates that favor having Marymount becoming a four-year institution? If there are, what kind of support might Marymount and its supporters provided to those candidates?
What might supporters of Marymount do with City Council candidates who oppose either on-campus housing or the College moving to a four-year program?
Is Dr. Brophy and others who may not live in our city attempting to 'rig' the election?
I most assuredly hope not.
The credibility of Dr. Brophy can be called into even more question. I feel so sorry sometimes when I find I can no longer trust Dr. Brophy's words and intentions. I have tried to offer him my best but it seems on-campus housing is his primary goal with Marymount.
It is also an unfortunate opportunity to have our election mired in this latest fiasco. Voters on both sides of the campus housing debate will want to know where the candidate stands on dorms and having the College become a four-year institution.
We have other large matters for the candidates and voters to deal with and we did not need or want this incursion into our decision-making challenges.
So here is what I am considering about the candidates.
If any candidate favors Marymount becoming a four-year College it means to me that the candidate knows full well that that support is also support for on-campus housing.
I highly doubt any candidate who favors having Marymount become a four-year College would get my one remaining vote I haven't endorsed yet.
It then stands to reason that any candidate that supports on-campus housing at the College even if it remains a Junior College will most likely not get my vote and I would hope won't get many votes from voters.
But I am going to watch the machine that may be from Marymount supporters and whether any candidate withers under pressure.
I understand that when a group tries to sway elections to get supportive candidates elected, it is still bad but it happens all the time.
Of course I wrote to our City Council members. I also wrote to two members of CCC/ME. I wrote to Jeff Lewis and one other candidate.
My current thought is that during the opening of the City Council meeting, Council members should individually state that unless the city receives written documents stating that Marymount will not continue with efforts to become a four-year College, then our City Council must kick back to the Planning Commission, the Project Plans they approved.
Since almost every four-year College in California has on-campus or nearby housing, the current Project Plans must be restudied and reworked to include the probability that on-campus housing would be granted via lawsuits against the city by Marymount.
This all may be moot though. I can be contended that Dr. Brophy and other have no intention of moving forward with the current Project Plans until they receive approval to become a four-year institution. Then they simply skip into Council Chambers with facts and figures for four-year institutions and have their legal counsel skip along and smile at Council members as he or she offers the fact that Marymount will be most willing and able to go to court to seek approval for on-campus housing via expensive to the city lawsuits.
Whether Marymount can stand the time lag between accreditation and ruling is a good question. Maybe if they won't fund an Expansion Project until a ruling comes forward, they won't have to expend funds and stay open no matter how few students attend classes.
All in all, it seems to me to be a sneaky, smarmy, end-around trick to get on-campus housing. For a College affiliated with any religious organization to attempt this is sorrowful and doesn't provide good impressions towards that organization, in my opinion.
If the site could eventually acquire a more business-education Junior College, I think the peninsula has a great number of human resources to make a program like that work better than just about anywhere else.....except perhaps Century City.
I have to fight against having Marymount become a four-year College because it means they would get on-campus housing much sooner than any later. But on-campus housing was always the first goal of Dr. Brophy's with the Expansion Project, wasn't it?
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