Over his long musical career, Frederick "Keith" Fiddmont, a saxophonist of 45 years, woodwind specialist, and Director of Jazz Studies at Santa Monica College, has performed with legendary musicians such as BB King, Gladys Knight, the Temptations, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder. A St. Louis native, Fiddmont has had a burning passion for jazz music as long as he can...

It’s 11:15 a.m. in Art complex room 214, and the March 22 Forum for the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society has just begun. After a short introduction, arguably the most important student on SMC’s Associated Students Board of Directors takes center stage in front of the gathered crowd of over 100 honor students and begins his speech. He begins nervously...

The critic Walter Benjamin once wrote, “There are perhaps paths that lead us again and again to people who have one and the same function for us.” He included among these functions the roles of pupil and master. For myself, Santa Monica College philosophy professor James Stramel, who passed away from leukemia on Thursday morning, achieved a kind of dual...

Before Feb. 27, SMC alumnus Tom Bibiyan, 34, was primarily known for his involvement in the Green Party. “I’m running for city council in the 26th district of Los Angeles,” Bibiyan said. “I will be on the ballot. This has kind of been a speed bump in all that.” The "speed bump" he referred to? Being stabbed by Klu Klux...

A group of around 40-50 protesters gathered outside of the Los Angeles City Hall midday on Friday, March 18, rallying against the City Council's decision to confiscate tiny houses built by Elvis Summers, the founder of the tiny houses and a dedicated non-profit activist, from city streets. Summers has been building and donating the mini-homes on wheels to the homeless...

The world of old Hollywood has become an endless source of fascination for modern storytelling. From recent best picture winner “The Artist,” to 2015’s “Trumbo,” artists have found themselves looking back to the beginning of America’s most profitable art form. The trend makes complete sense. The birth of Hollywood was a glamorous and absurd time, filled with incompetence. Santa Monica...

I was recently on a 14-hour Greyhound bus trip from the Southwest towards California sitting next to a Donald Trump supporter. The woman was in her late 50s and had been ditched in Texas by her trucker boyfriend. Every imaginable social ill had hit this woman: She was a disabled veteran who had endured the VA’s shoddy management, she’d been...

SMC was recently approached with the opportunity to host an album preview for rising Harlem rapper A$AP Ferg’s new release “Always Strive and Prosper,” which would include an appearance from the rapper. It was to be held in a room at the Cayton Center on the afternoon of Monday, March 22. The proposed event would have involved between 50 and...

Sports – Athletic Dept. Put on Probation, Coaching Position Graveyard Grows The SMC Athletic Department was put on probation and Women’s Soccer Coach Aaron Benditson has been fired over a recruiting violation. The Western State Conference ruled that Benditson broke the California Community College Athletic Association bylaw 2.3.1, which limits the locations that coaches can recruit from. SMC’s Women’s soccer...

“It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” – Benito Mussolini (tweeted by Donald Trump at 3:31 a.m. on Feb. 28) When I turn on CNN now, I prepare myself to cringe. Since the summer of 2016, the media has been addicted to one word that permeates every program and fuels every...