LUCERNE
New activities for Seniors at the Lucerne Alpine Senior Center
Lucerne Alpine Senior Center is happy to announce two new activity programs for Seniors 55+, starting this month.
Amy Patton, the Lakeport Library’s crafts specialist, will be presenting a different fun and easy craft on the third Thursday of every month, beginning Thursday, August 17, at 10 a.m. The Library supplies all the materials for the program free to participants. All you need to bring is your imagination! Amy is also happy to answer your questions about the variety of services offered through the Library.
Also on Thursdays, beginning August 24, at 12:30 p.m., local musician Craig Wilczewski will be teaching guitar and ukelele to beginners and former players who would like to revive their skills. Classes will be given weekly, every Thursday following lunch at the Senior Center, at 12:30 p.m. Students need to bring an acoustic guitar or ukelele and a digital tuner (which can be downloaded free on a smart phone or a tuner can be purchased at Strings & Things music store in Lakeport). Craig, who has taught guitar for 30 years, says, “Anyone can learn to play. Some get it slow, some get it faster, but my class can prepare you to go to any jam and feel confident.”
The Lucerne Alpine Senior Center is now open Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m, for seniors 55+ and caregivers accompanying them. Lunch is served from from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Suggested donation is $5 per person for lunch. Your donations help us to buy fresh, tasty food and keep our kitchen running.
We’re located at 3985 Country Club Drive in Lucerne, between 9th and 10th Avenues. Our Thrift Shop, located on 9th Avenue around the corner from the main building, is now open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., accepting donations from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. We welcome volunteers of all ages so that we can offer more services and open our Thrift Shop for longer hours.
For more information, see our website, lucernealpineseniorcenter.org and go to our Facebook page, Lucerne Alpine Senior Center 2021, or call 707 274-8779.
—Submitted
SAN FRANCISCO
Ninth Circuit affirms Clovis Community College flyer policy is unconstitutional
On Thursday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit deemed Clovis Community College a poster child for student censorship, ruling that the college must abandon the unconstitutional flyer policy it used to silence conservative students.
In October 2022, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression secured a preliminary injunction on behalf of the Clovis student chapter of Young Americans for Freedom and its student board members who wanted to post conservative flyers on the college’s bulletin boards. Clovis asked the Ninth Circuit to overturn the preliminary injunction — and yesterday, the Ninth Circuit resoundingly rejected Clovis’ appeal.
“Clovis tried again to justify its censorship, but the court saw through its flawed arguments,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. “The panel’s decision shows what we’ve argued all along: Clovis’ flyer policy is overbroad, vague, and indefensible in a court of law.”
Clovis’ flyer policy prohibited students from posting flyers that contained “inappropriate” or “offensive” language, effectively giving Clovis administrators free reign to remove any flyers they disliked. As the court wrote, “What is ‘inappropriate’ or ‘offensive’ is a subjective determination, which would vary based on a college administrator’s personal beliefs.”
In November 2021, YAF-Clovis founder Alejandro Flores and fellow club members Daniel Flores and Juliette Colunga received permission from administrators to hang three flyers on bulletin boards inside Clovis’ academic buildings. The flyers advocated for freedom and listed the death tolls of communist regimes.
Emails obtained via a public records request revealed that soon after the flyers went up, a Clovis administrator wrote that he would “gladly” take the flyers down, following complaints about their content. The administrator also wrote that approving the flyers in the first place may have been a “mistake,” and that Clovis instead should have censored them under a policy that states, “Posters with inappropriate or offense [sic] language or themes are not permitted and will not be approved.”
On Nov. 12, Clovis President Lori Bennett personally ordered the flyers removed. After doing so, she searched for a reason to justify the viewpoint discrimination, inventing a brand new rule requiring flyers to double as club announcements.
“If you need a reason, you can let them know that [we] agreed they aren’t club announcements,” Bennett wrote to Clovis staff. Clovis does not have a policy on the books that requires flyers to be club announcements. But with this excuse in hand, Clovis employees told student workers to remove the flyers.
Administrators later used that pretextual justification to stop the students from hanging a new set of five pro-life flyers — which the students submitted for approval in December — on the bulletin boards inside heavily trafficked campus buildings. Instead, administrators banished the flyers to a rotting “free speech kiosk” in a desolate part of campus.
FIRE filed the lawsuit on Aug. 11, 2022, aiming to hold the college president and three other administrators responsible. After FIRE secured a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the policy last October, Clovis appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit.
—Submitted
