UCC President Rachel Pokrandt
On April 23, 2024, Winchesterdam.com published an article by Mike Lee entitled “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech.”
Due to the media blackout imposed on Douglas County, Oregon, no other news service on planet Earth covered this important story.
UCC’s student newspaper The Mainstream, established in 1965, hasn’t published for two years because UCC President Rachel Pokrandt permanently terminated the 59-year-old periodical in April 2024.
Although it is possible that one of the students on The Mainstream staff forgot to renew the domain name “Mainstream.org,” it is noteworthy that neither Pokrandt nor her staff realized The Mainstream’s URL was a valuable asset.
For the past two years, Mainstream.org, the domain name of the website for UCC’s now-defunct student newspaper, has been for sale at GoDaddy.com for a cool $29,900.
This attack on UCC students’ first amendment rights was part of Pokrandt’s crusade to prohibit on campus discussion of the infamous 136-year-old Winchester Dam, despite overwhelming county-wide support for the removal of the most dangerous and illegal dam in Oregon.
A human health hazard as well as an obstacle to wild migratory native fish, Winchester Dam is the subject of a $27.6 million lawsuit brought by the State of Oregon against the dam owners for Ryan Beckley’s record-breaking fish kill of more than 550,000 Pacific lamprey during so-called dam “repairs” in August 2023.
In January of 2024, the UCC students who served on The Mainstream newspaper’s staff voted unanimously to publish several articles on the controversial and long-ago-condemned Winchester Dam. To this end, Mainstream student reporters attended meetings of local nonprofit organizations, researching their story.
But due to Rachel Pokrandt’s zero tolerance for students’ first amendment rights, these articles were never published, even though the paper carried the legal disclaimer “Any opinions or art presented in The Mainstream do not represent the viewpoint of this newspaper or UCC.”
Half a century ago, in the 1970s, The Mainstream published students’ perspectives on nuclear power and editorials opining for the Equal Rights Amendment.
Melinda Benton, a member of the UCC faculty for 30 years who is now retired, served as the Student Media Advisor to The Mainstream.
On April 3, 2024, Benton informed the students who served on The Mainstream’s staff that UCC President Pokrandt was terminating the popular journalism course and, by extension, The Mainstream newspaper.
Ironically, the now terminated journalism course, whose students published The Mainstream, consistently drew higher enrollment than the Student Media or Public Relations classes UCC offers.
Winchesterdam.com published an article entitled “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech” on April 23, 2024.
National Public Radio (NPR), on the strength of the article, decided to cover this important national news story.
But when NPR phoned The Mainstream, they were told by one of the student reporters that, “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech” story was false. She told NPR that “The Mainstream was not being shut down.”
And so, NPR did not report on “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech.”
But Pokrandt apparently lied to her students, her faculty, and more than a dozen concerned citizens who phoned her office in opposition to the termination of The Mainstream. Pokrandt claimed that Winchesterdam.com’s “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech” story was false.
And they believed her.
In this way, the people who could have prevented the death of The Mainstream unwittingly conspired to kill it.
A number of these concerned citizens, bolstered by Pokrandt’s vociferous denial, turned to social media, where they posted comments on “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech” story, claiming that the news of the termination of the 59-year-old Mainstream was patently false.
For example, the respected local author and community activist Robert Heilman, has championed free speech throughout his long career. A former timber worker, Heilman was selected by the UCC’s board of education to receive an honorary associate degree in 2019.
Heilman posted this comment to a Facebook group where “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech” had been shared:
“I spoke to the publication’s instructor at the time of this post. The U.C.C. administration had been notified several months prior to this old post that she was about to retire but neglected to seek her replacement until a month before I spoke to her. I was told that, due to legal concerns about publishing reporting by unsupervised students, the Mainstream could not keep publishing until a new instructor was hired. As a former reporter aware of the potential legal consequences of slander, libel and plagiarism, this made sense to me. I do not know what the current status of the publication is, but I stand by my statement as made at the time. Please feel free to conduct your own investigation if this is still a matter of concern for you.”
But Heilman didn’t stop there.
Acting as a self-appointed first amendment content policeman, Heilman inexplicably commented, on each and every Facebook group page where “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech” article had been shared, “This is false information.”
In this way, Heilman undermined the only news source reporting on this significant story, unwittingly aiding and abetting Pokrandt’s authoritarian plan to shut down the student newspaper once and for all.
John Dietzel, a member of the Facebook group “Progressive Activists of Coos County” commented, “Looks like Mr. Heilman is correct. Over on the Umpqua Community College Mainstream Newspaper [Facebook] page is a note from two days ago saying that the paper’s adviser is retiring, but that the paper expects to continue.”
Betsy Cunningham, who has long been associated with the Democratic Party of Douglas County Oregon, is not a licensed attorney. Nevertheless, she frequently dispenses unsolicited (and usually unfounded) legal advice. Case in point, Cunningham posted a comment on “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech” article on Facebook:
“I ask you [to] remove this post here because it seems pretty clear, it is not factually accurate. It promotes unsupported opinion as fact and is potentially libelous. Common ground should be based on fact or it is nothing more than common opinion and, as we all know way too well these days, that does not mean it is true or that there is even some truth to the substance of the assertion.”
Apparently, Cunningham was wrong.
Melissa Benton, then a member of the UCC faculty and Student Media Advisor, personally informed her students on The Mainstream’s staff on April 3, 2024, that UCC President Pokrandt was shutting down the campus newspaper.
But apparently, Pokrandt reprimanded Benton for revealing this to her students.
It is unknown what leverage Pokrandt used to make Benton retract her statement but apparently it was effective. Benton posted the following comment on “The Death of Umpqua Community College’s Campus Newspaper and Student Free Speech” story on Facebook:
“I am UCC’s student media advisor. The student newspaper hasn’t been shut down, and no UCC staff member at any time asked us to remove any story about a dam. Perhaps the confusion is because I am retiring in June, so my job position has been posted. Once a new advisor is hired, student media will continue. Until the new advisor can take over, the student newspaper may be on hold. President Pokrandt has always been supportive of UCC’s student media.”
But Benton’s retraction hasn’t aged well. The Mainstream newspaper has not published an article in two years, and the valuable URL was allowed to expire. That is to say, The Mainstream newspaper is dead.
How could so many Douglas County “do-gooders” have been so wrong about something so important?
And why did so many people believe Pokrandt’s misinformation despite all the evidence to the contrary?
UCC sits high on a hill overlooking the infamous Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River, historically the #1 steelhead stream in North America.
But the derelict, deadbeat dam provides no hydroelectricity, flood control, or irrigation. Condemned in 1976, its sole function is as a private water ski lake for the approximately 100 privileged Winchester Water Control District (WWCD) members whose pricey homes surround the dam site, at the exclusion of the public.
The dam is an impassable barrier to wild migratory native fish whose counts at the dam have dwindled in recent years. The 80-year-old fish ladder is perhaps the worst man-made obstacle to fish in any Oregon river and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, as well as an administrative state judge, has ordered the WWCD to build a new $70 million fish ladder by 2030.
The dam leaches arsenic, copper, and chromium into the drinking water supply for 37,700 Douglas County residents. And Ryan Beckley, the President of the WWCD Board of Directors, and owner of TerraFirma Foundation Repairs, sits on the Roseburg Community Cancer Center’s board of directors.
According to the Oregon Water Resources Department, “loss of life” will occur when the leaking dam fails. Recreational rafters have been injured after being sucked over the lip of the dam and falling 17-feet onto the bedrock below.
Yet the UCC administration goes out of its way to curry favor with the moneyed WWCD members in hope of extracting sizable donations—so much so that, in November of 2023, UCC president Pokrandt went so far as to hire one of the WWCD homeowners, Leila Goulet.
Now UCC’s Student Engagement Coordinator, Leila Goulet is a Canadian immigrant who was employed briefly at the Red River Zoo in Fargo, North Dakota, before becoming director of education at Winston, Oregon’s Wildlife Safari, where she worked with grade school students.
Students commuting to the UCC campus have no alternate route other than the two-lane road through one of the wealthiest neighborhood in Douglas County—the homes surrounding the Winchester Dam.
The proximity between the “haves” and the “have nots” in this geographic arrangement is particularly poignant. For most UCC’s rural poor students living in the lowest wage county on Oregon’s Highway 5 corridor, Goulet is the personification of everything the WWCD represents.
But Goulet is apparently overreactive whenever the Winchester Dam is mentioned. In 2024, she was recorded at a public meeting uttering profanities, bullying students, and restricting their free speech in matters pertaining to the controversial dam.
When UCC students suggested inviting a guest speaker to talk about the Winchester Dam, Goulet insisted that a representative of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) also be invited so that “both sides” would be represented.
This is ironic, in light of the fact that ODFW is the plaintiff in the unprecedented $27.6 million lawsuit in which Goulet and the other 98 owners of the Winchester Dam are defendants.
Despite Pokrandt and Goulet’s ongoing effort to suppress discussion of the dam, support for its removal is widespread throughout Douglas County—so much so that at a town hall meeting on the UCC Campus on March 2, 2024, at which Pokrandt introduced U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, the Senator asked for a show of hands to gauge support for removal of the dam. Nine out of ten hands went up. Witnesses report that Pokrandt blanched when she saw that practically everyone in the 110-person audience had raised their hand.
Free speech is an essential element of a healthy educational institution. UCC students deserve the opportunity to exercise their first amendment rights. And a student-run community college newspaper is an indicator of a democratic learning environment.
One thing is clear; Rachel Pokrandt put freedom of speech on the chopping block, killing The Mainstream newspaper, exactly as she intended.
And that’s downright un-American.
