Orange County News Blog

So legendary liar Lou Dobbs quit his CNN show last night, and the expected reactions are flowing in: Aztlanistas rejoice, Know Nothings rail. The campaign against Dobbs was very much a La Raza conspiracy, but California for Coalition Reform head Barbara Coe is also pointing a gnarled, cigarette-stained, deluded finger at President Barack Obama.

"Believe what you wish," Coe told her minions last night in an email. "However, in my opinion, Obama and La Raza are primary suspects and I hope and pray that FOX NEWS has the courage to hire him and keep him on the air - sharing TRUTH with ALL Americans! She also added this disgusting postscript:

If Islamic terrorist NIDAL HASAN recovers from his wounds suffered as he MURDERED 13 American servicemen/women in cold blood, perhaps OBAMA will mandate that HE be the host of this portion of the CNN show, with CAIR and LA RAZA as co-sponsors.

Sadly, that's one of the least-craziest remarks Babs has ever made. Anywoo, some of Dobbs' worst hits!

I'm rich, bitch!

​Remember Freedom Corp, the folks who own the OC Register?

Yeah, that Freedom Corp, the one that filed for bankruptcy in September. The one that announced Nov. 2 that its 118-year-old East Valley Tribune is going bye-bye at the end of the year. The company that has been forcibly retiring and laying off just about anyone who isn't named Frank Mickadeit.

Well, according to a Nov. 5 story by the Arizona Capitol Times that was based on figures collected from recent bankruptcy filings, even while all these cut-cutting measures were taking place, Freedom executives paid out nearly $3.7 million in bonuses to--you guessed it--themselves. Freedom CEO Scott Flanders took home $1.1 million in the past year, including one "$400,000 bonus just weeks before the company filed bankruptcy."

What about Register publisher Terry Horne, you ask? He got about $200,000.

​More than 60 people got up and spoke at Monday's board meeting for the Orange County Transit Authority. Pacific Progressive has the run-down: It was a diverse group of people telling OCTA how detrimental further cuts to the OC bus system would be.

It's a sticky issue. Facing a steep decline in sales tax revenues and budget cuts from the state legislature, some form of public transportation cutbacks would seem inevitable. OCTA already slashed 233,000 hours of bus service, and is now considering a plan to cut 300,000 more.

But the Transit Advocates of Orange County say they think they've found a way out. Tomorrow, OCTA may consider whether they're right.

​The Microsoft mall gods have blessed the Shops at Mission Viejo with the honor of being home to the second ever Microsoft retail story in the world. Why Mission Viejo? We're betting they want to staff the store with Nadadores, but who really knows.

The store opens Thursday. The Mission Viejo Dispatch previews:

A large white curtain should drop at 10 am to permit entrance and to expose of the large digital video wall... The first 1,000 people are expected to receive gift bags containing a $25 gift certificate, a ticket to the 5 o'clock Justin Bieber concert, and few dollars worth of small items.  It is expected the concert will be in the parking lot outside of the mall, but the exact site is unknown... In Scottsdale, Microsoft fans waited outside for up to 12 hours before the opening, according to Seattlepi.com. 

HEY KIDS! It's TERRI!



That's right! The mascot robot for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is coming to Long Beach's Aquarium of the Pacific on Nov. 14. As we all know, that's "Our Planet Day" at the Aquarium.

​We missed this item on the LA Times's Funland blog on Monday. Apparently, Irvine water park Wild Rivers, which has spent the better part of its decade proclaiming it would soon shut down but never actually doing so, may finally see its last day in 2010.

In its place would be a seemingly identical water park, owned by the same people as before, but with a different name: Splash Canyon.

Wikicommons

​Sure, the Irvine Great Park may seem like an inexorably stalled vanity project for Irvine's longtime political don. It may be tainted by scandals, and we may be a little suspicious about how soon and how well the $65 million dollar construction its board just approved will be executed.

But... pumpkins!

​Last week, we posted about the Global Climate Change Day of Action event taking place at Irvine Regional Park tomorrow. There'll be bells tolling, bikes biking, and a bunch of people forming a "350" for an aerial camera.

But there are more of these shindigs tomorrow all over the world, including in Orange County. It is the Global Day of Action, after all.

The most intriguing, at least for Jews: a "global climate healing Shabbat" at Temple Judea Laguna Hills.

More events after the jump.

​Call it an anti-death panel. We just received a press release saying that the world's top aging scientists will converge on Manhattan Beach from November 13 through 15 to figure out how to put off that whole getting-old-and-dying thing.

The scientists, supposedly, will "predict the end of aging by 2029."

Which sounds cool but... We'll all be kinda old by then anyways. Couldn't they get this thing done now?

​The Mission Viejo Dispatch reports that the Saddleback Republican Assembly has voted to endorse the recall of Mission Viejo Mayor Pro Tem Lance MacLean. "But wait!" you, faithful Navel Gazing reader, pleads. "Didn't they already do this?"

Yeah, back in Febuary, the SRA--a sanctioned branch of the state Republican party--called for MacLean to resign shortly after he was presented a petition expressing a desire the behalf of more than 50 citizens to see him recalled for office. Then, they called for MacLean, whom they endorsed in 2002, to step down.

Now, by a unanimous vote, they've published a resolution saying MacLean should have resigned then and should be voted out of office now. That original petition turned into a signature drive with more than 10,000 Mission Viejo voters supporting the idea of a recall election.

The city council will vote tonight to finalize Feb. 2, 2010 as the date for the special election (nine months before MacLean would be up for reelection anyway). Last meeting, when the recall came up, MacLean spent a few minutes defending himself from behind the dais and ended up referring to his fellow councilman John Paul Ledesma as "John Paul Lobotomy."

Full text of the resolution below.

​Watch out, sinning citizens of OC's sinningest towns. The OC Sheriff's Department will be on the streets tonight looking for drunk drivers as part of a federal anti-DUI program that targets "areas that have a high incidence of DUI related arrests and collisions."

So, naturally, they're headed for the county's three biggest party zones: Lake Forest, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Magarita.

That's right. Those of you drinking Patron with your pies at Cocos off Crown Valley, beware. Think twice before getting behind the wheel after gulping PBRs at the TGIF in RSM. And for the love of Rick Warren, cancel your kegger planned for the Saddleback Church parking lot.

Sheriff's department spokesman John McDonald says police try to "even it out among the cities" over time as to where they patrol for DUIs. So it's sort of just part of the rotation that these three foothill burgs will be saturated by a team of ten or more deputies tonight. The areas they target within the cities, though, will be zones of historically high drunk driving incidences.

Islands patrons, you're on notice! Get a cab!

UPDATE! 4:59 p.m. McDonald called back with the number of DUIs in each city being patrolled tonight. Read on...

Oct. 24 marks the International Day of Climate Action. This is a big deal, at least according to the slickly wordless video below:



(Sidenote: Isn't the style of the video eerily similar to the one introducing the brand new and hilarious GOP.com? Something tells me this aesthetic just jumped the shark.)

In Orange County, the festivities for the Day of Climate Action will be taking place at Irvine Regional Park, put on by Orange County Interfaith Coalition for the Environment.

Even if you're like Dana Rohrabacher and like to laugh at concepts like "science" by citing every instance of rain or snow as evidence that global warming is a hoax, you can still benefit by attending. How? Fitness!

The St. Regis adopts policy banning bailed-out banker parties: Are you ready for this South County disaster?

​Do your best to imagine the following:

The year is 2010. I Love Bagels has run out of shmear. Golden Spoon only offers gummy bears as topping. Lauren Conrad L.A. Candy has fallen off of the Amazon Top 1000 list. Dana Point Harbor no longer smells like cigarettes, fish and ice cream. The roots have begun to show in Diane Harkey's bang highlights. Laguna Beach High School has switched its mascot back to being "The Artists."

These are all South County disasters. Are you prepared?

​Late Friday afternoon, the Orange County Registrar of Voters announced it had certified the signatures gathered by Mission Viejo city activists seeking to recall Mayor Pro Tem Lance MacLean. 

It's a big step for the recall movement, which gathered nearly 14,000 signatures -- though they only needed 9,393 registered Mission Viejo voters to agree to a recall. The city council will ultimately set the date for the recall election, which could be held as early as January 2010.

Have no idea what this is all about? Read our cover story from March. It involves choking!

John Gilhooley / OC Weekly

​Today, Dr. Orly Taitz Esq., the Laguna Niguel dentist, lawyer and real estate agent who is attempting to sue Barack Obama out of office, appeared before Judge David O. Carter in Santa Ana's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse. The occasion: a hearing in her lawsuit, Barnett vs Obama. We were there.

Midway through the hour-and-change hearing, it became clear that in Taitz's mind, today was going to be a day straight out of a Dean Koontz-Dan Brown mash-up novel. It didn't quite turn out that way.

A few weeks ago, a YouTube video surfaced showing what was purported to be Barack Obama's original birth certificate, obtained in Mombasa, Kenya (this is different from the other Kenyan birth certificate that got so much press last month for being a likely hoax). Just a few days ago, a man named Lucas Smith came forward with an image of that certificate. Taitz got him to submit a declaration into the court's record on Sept. 3 stating how he came to obtain the certificate. She flew him out, picked him up from the airport this morning and took him to the courthouse -- where he would, in her expectation, testify at today's hearing and blow open this whole usurper-president thing.

​The Orange County Register did another immigration story over the weekend, this one interviewing Know Nothings and saints on opposite sides of the issue. I understand that reporter Cindy Carmaco has to adhere to trying to antagonize the Know Nothings as little as possible lest she receive dozens of nasty phone calls and email like every Reg reporter who ever covers SanTana and immigration, and thus must refer to any anti-immigrant loon as "anti-illegal-immigrant." But seriously, Cindy's editors: let your writer report the truth.

She interviewed Barbara Coe, the queen of the modern-day Know Nothing movement and head of the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group California Coalition for Immigration Reform. Besides referring to CCIR as a mere "anti-illegal-immigration group," Carmaco also lets Coe crow about her wacky email blasts. "Our direct e-mail list is well over 500 people but beyond that a good many of our direct e-mail lists are group leaders of other groups throughout the nation. It could get up to the thousands," the living cigarette boasts.

Reg editors: CCIR doesn't just hate the illegals. If so, why do they rail constantly about Muslims, or want Sikhs deported? And that email list! No constant publication since Congressman James Utt's rantings has been more hilariously hideous--just go through our archives to see Babs rail against vaccines, proudly proclaim herself a Birther, and wish the swine flu on our president. Is this really a good source on the immigration debate, Register?

In Coe's latest email rant, she doesn't like her Wikipedia entry. We agree: nowhere is there ALL CAPS WRITING, and it's much too kind to this wretch.

​For the second year in a row, OC Weekly has been honored with inclusion in Harper Collins' annual Best American Crime Reporting compilation, which just arrived on bookshelves this week. Moxley's "Hate and Death," a gripping, terrifying account of the brutal, broad-daylight murder of a young Vietnamese-American, Thien Minh Ly, by a drug-addled racist named Gunner Jay Lindbergh. The story, which you can read here, also won Best Feature Story at this year's Orange County Press Club.

Rounding out the book are stories from such publications as The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Los Angeles, The Atlantic, Details, GQ and New York magazine.

OC Weekly previously made the Best American Crime Reporting list in 2008, with my story "Just a Random Female," which also deals with senseless murder. Anyone noticing a pattern here?

Anyways, our collective hats go off to Mr. Moxley. We who toil salute you!

"Those who believe in truly limiting government, in domestic and overseas affairs, should realize that we are no longer part of the conservative movement and certainly not welcome in the Republican Party. We're not loved or wanted. Don't despair. I can guarantee that it's far more entertaining watching Republicans lose elections from a distance than from within their crazy, immigrant-bashing, warmongering, torture-endorsing, government-expanding, civil-liberties-trouncing hothouse."

--Orange County Register editorial writer Steve Greenhut, in the conclusion to his column today that ripped apart the OC Republican Party over their supposed conservatism. Greenhut forgot to mention that our local GOP is also rife with pedophiles, pedophile apologists, pedophile protectors, and pedophile-protector apologists, but otherwise he's right on.

Photo by Christopher Victorio

March of the graduates.

UPDATED WITH LINK TO SLIDESHOW...

Last night's bittersweet mock graduation ceremony for students caught in the horrible, perpetual limbo of being educated, bright and ready to work, but denied the chance to because of their illegal immigration status, was not attended by the congresswoman they once considered their champion and ally (and who has relied heavily on the support of illegal immigrants in her narcissistic-forget-your-roots climb to the top).

About 100 students graduating from UCI, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Long Beach and other universities attended the mock graduation at the Teamsters Local 952 Hall in Orange and expressed their ardent desire to be recognized for their academic accomplishments, like their fellow classmates--and to be allowed to apply for and compete for jobs with them. (Some of them appeared earlier on Gustavo's radio show. Also, see photographer Christopher Victorio's slideshow.) Their pleas have fallen on Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez's deaf ears, despite her outward "support" of a bill that would give these students permanent legal resident status and allow them to apply for financial aid.

Last month the Orange County DREAM team, a collection of undocumented OC college students, sought Sanchez out and asked her to co-sponsor the DREAM Act, a bill that would provide a legal path to citizenship to students like them who have lived in the country illegally for years (usually through no fault of their own, since they were brought as young kids), and have attended middle school, high school, college and even grad school here. Loretta refused to co-sponsor the bipartisan bill but said she would vote in favor of it if it ever reaches the House. The least Loretta could do now is offer these poor grads internships at the U.S. Capitol. Then they could learn a thing or two, first-hand, about political hypocrisy, and what not to do to your most faithful and vulnerable constituents.

CLICK HERE for a slideshow of the graduation.

*Updated by Gustavo: Salon.com weights in...

Dan Froomkin, the onetime Orange County Register reporter who is best known as the author of the Washington Post's widely-read White House Watch blog, is out of work. According to a story today by Politico blogger Michael Calderone, the Post apparently decided to let Froomkin go because it no longer felt the need for his column. Froomkin drew ire from the Post's conservative readers for his tough coverage of the Bush White House as well as his perceived pandering to President Obama.

"THANK GOD the washingtonpost.com finally fired this guy," commented one reader on Froomkin's last blog post earlier today. "I've been posting on here for over a year that Froomkin needed to start looking for a new job what with no longer having Bush to kick around. Turns out Froomkin's percieved relevancy lasted less than 5 months into the Obama era."

Kris Coratti, the Post's media communications director, told Politico that the paper felt it was simply time to say goodbye to Froomkin. "I think the easiest way to put it is that our editors and research teams are constantly reviewing our columns, blogs and other content to make sure we're giving readers the most value when they are on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources," she said. "Unfortunately, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated , and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for washingtonpost.com."

According to Froomkin's personal website, he worked at the OC Register from 1989 to 1995. Highlights of his tenure there include his coverage of the infamous "Honor Roll" murder case, hanging out with virgins at Cal State Fullerton--that's nice work if you can find them--and writing an "accessible" profile of Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher, an accomplishment worthy of UN recognition. 

These days it's rare to hear about a reporter leaving the newspaper where he or she has worked for more than a decade that isn't totally depressing. Which is it, this time, you might ask? Layoff? Buyout? Nope: John Gittelsohn, a business writer at the Register who has covered Southern California's real estate crisis better than anyone else, is quitting the OC Register to take a job in New York City with Bloomberg News.

A Register memo from yesterday broke the news to Gittelsohn's colleagues. It follows in its entirety:

All,

John Gittelsohn -- the business reporter who knows where all of Orange County's most elite skeletons are hidden -- is leaving us  to work at Bloomberg News in New York City where he will be reporting on national real estate topics.

John  came to the Register from the Sun Sentinel in Florida to cover K-12 education. He later reported OC's Asian communities, traveling to Vietnam and China on reporting trips, state government, including covering Arnold for two years in our Sacramento bureau, and, most recently, reporting on Orange County's rich and infamous, such as indicted Broadcom billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III. He met his future wife, Debbie Belgum, when she was
working at the Register and (these are John's words)  "He made many other friends here, whom he will miss -- along with Southern California's ideal weather."

His last day will be June 26.

Please call him if you come to New York, but don't expect to camp out on his couch.

On a personal note John's departure will leave a huge hole on the Business team's very deep bench and we will miss him -- and his booming laugh --very much.

Julie Gallego
OC Register
Money Team Leader

Best of luck, John!

When someone from the Federal Communications Commission called the newsroom this morning, I was hoping it was because one of us Weekly-ings were being fined for indecency or something cool like that. Nope. The gub'ment was just checking in to make sure our readers knew about the final, nationwide switch to digital TV happening on Friday,  June 12.

Well, readers, did you know about it?

If you've still got a crusty old television, it won't really work after the 12th, as all "full-powered television stations" will be switching their signals. The cool thing is that the FCC is offering free installation of analogue-to-digital converter boxes and rejiggering of antennas. Call 1-888CALL-FCC or visit dtv.gov and you could have someone visiting your house to magic up your TV. Who are these free installers? Contractors, Americorps volunteers and -- firefighters! Ladies, be still your fluttering hearts.

Is it just me, or does this commercial make the Anaheim Abilites Expo look kind of cool?



I mean, a dude in a wheelchair flips off a half pipe!

The event starts today at 11:30 a.m. and runs through Sunday. It's intended for anyone in the "disabled community," including caregivers, vendors and people with disabilities. But... it's free, and there's a "wheelchair lacrosse" demonstration. Sounds a little bit like the totally crazy sport of wheelchair rugby that starred in 2005's acclaimed Murderball documentary. I don't know why you wouldn't want to witness that in person, even if you're not in the market for a new mobility-enhancement device.

Plus: wheelchair fencing, soccer, dancing and tennis demonstrations are on the schedule. Could be a recession-proof way to spend an afternoon. Details here.

Presented without comment:

The Orange County Human Relations Commission and the Anti-Defamation League have arranged a meeting with Los Alamitos residents tonight, to figure out how to be safe in light of hate activity in the city. The meeting's at 6 p.m., 4000 Farquhar Ave.

The incident spurring the meeting is the vandalizing of the minivan of a white woman with black children. Her car was spray painted all over with swastikas and epithets back in April.

And the Register has a run down of other recent hate-crime-esque activities in and around Los Al, including sidewalk chalkings and the beating of a half-Salvadoran man.

But the article doesn't mention that the famous, stupid racist incident in the small north-OC city earlier this year. That would be, of course, Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grouse sending a White House/watermelon patch joke (pictured) to a black acquaintance. Grouse claimed at the time that he had no idea that watermelons came with racial connotations, in which case he's a drooling idiot instead of a bigot -- not for being ignorant, but for forwarding an email that in no way makes sense without understanding the racial subtext.

Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, et al.: Watch out. Los Alamitos may be small, but its white supremacy nonsense quotient might best yours in time.

Whoa! They're moving the Sydney Opera House to Anaheim!

Oh wait, no. That's the newly approved design for the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, a.k.a. ARTIC.

On Tuesday, the Anaheim City Council awarded architecture firm Parsons Brinckerhoff/HOK with the contract to design and lay the groundwork for ARTIC, a regional transportation hub that's been more than 15 years in the making. The dollar total for the job could reach $24.3 million. According to the Register, Parsons Brinckerhoff beat out other "heavy hitter" companies, such as the one owned by icon-making architecture legend Frank Gehry.

Isn't that great? An independent, underdog firm besting the glitzy name brand?

Actually, Parsons Brinckerhoff is something of the anti-underdog. Founded in 1885 (yes, it's 124 years old), PB has helmed some of the world's biggest civil engineering projects.

This has, of course, included a few BOONDOGGLES, as the Weekly pointed out in 2003. The biggest eyebrow-raiser came from the Boston Dig project, which is to be expected given the fact that it was the most expensive highway construction project in American history. Brinckerhoff ended up paying $407 million in restitution for subcontracting screw-ups that led to a tunnel collapse and the death of a motorist.

In Orange County, the firm has made some bucks off of two of the biggest transportation money sinks in the county's history. In 2003, Parsons Brinckerhoff was awarded $9.6 for preliminary engineering of the CenterLine light rail plan (remember that thing?), a plan that died a death of a thousand cuts and a million Steven Greenhut columns. Before that, the firm oversaw the construction of Orange County's brand-new toll-road network, including the Eastern, Foothill and San Joaquin corridors. As Moxley has exhaustively chronicled, Orange County's toll roads have essentially served as cash furnaces for the state, local and federal governments and are, to this day, swimming in debt.

Of course, neither of those things were necessarily the fault of the firm. Then again: Would it matter if they were? A glance of at the California Secretary of State's website shows that the company has sunk big bucks into political campaigns all over the state. And they've been peppering Orange County races with $249 contributions to all sorts of candidates over the past decade:  Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, County Supervisor Chris Norby, State Senator Lou Correa and State Senator Mimi Walters, Lou Correa and Dick Ackerman are among the OC-familiar names to get little love grants from Parsons Brinckerhoff.

That's how politics is played, and there's nothing inherently wrong with a company helping elect politicians who share their interests. You should see the amount of money heaped on candidates from local waste management companies. But when you read in the Register that Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle is "thrilled" about the latest ARTIC development, it can't hurt to know that Pringle has taken money from the firm that made that development possible.

yaaaay / Flickr / Creative Commons

Not the LA Marathon.

This report filed by Weekly proofreader/velocity junkie Jack Grimshaw:
 
Two questions remain from Monday's L.A. Marathon: Where did all these hotshot OC wheelchair racers suddenly come from, and what the hell is in the water in Katherine Jobe's home area of Los Angeles?

Of the top 15 finishers in the wheelchair crank section of the race, four are from our gracious neck of the woods: Michael Trujillo, Huntington Beach, who placed ninth in 1:42:00; Johnny Pedroza, Irvine (11, 1:46:03); Mike Otteson, Fullerton (12, 1:47:15); Rocco Paniccia, Yorba Linda (15, 1:50:39). Must be some under-the-radar bionic training program we're not yet privy to.

(Other OC racers placed notably - Wilians Nava, of Tustin, finished 23rd overall in the men's road race section, in 2:41:38; Leng Klukken, of Huntington Beach, who won her hometown Surf City Marathon in February, placed 11th overall in the women's race and second in her 35-39 age group in 3:00:16, with Carista Strickland, of Aliso Viejo, 18th overall and winning her 40-49 age group in an impressive 3:14:07. Winner of the men's 55-59 age group was Jose Abel Cervantes, of Santa Ana, in 3:00:54; third among women 50-54 was Kat Wallace, of Anaheim (3:52:39); winner of the women's 65-69 section was Hiroko Spradlin, of Buena Park in 5:27:13.)

Which brings us to Katherine Jobe. She won the women's 90-98 age group... yeah, you read that right. At an age where most us will be happy just to be breathing and not drooling too much down our shirt, she was pounding out 26.2 miles in an astounding 4:56:08. I ran the Long Beach Half-Marathon back in 1989 at less than half her age and haven't yet recovered.

Laguna Woods is famous for many things: elderly people, elderly people and elderly people. So when the nation's best newspaper sends a reporter to the tiny OC city, chances are, the story that comes out is going to be about youth baseball.

Just kidding. It's going to be about elderly people.

An article published last Thursday in the New York Times peaks in at the bridge game of a group of nonagenarians in the retirement community formerly known as Leisure World. Apparently, Laguna Woods is the subject of a long-term study by USC and UCI to find out how some people can live past 90 without succumbing to dementia. So far, results are pointing to the idea that mentally demanding tasks -- such as playing a game of bridge -- help prolong mental vitality. But it might be less the card-counting and more the social interaction involved in the game that makes it fortify the mind.

The piece also touches upon the dilemma faced by ultra-old bridge players: What do you do when one of your friends starts losing their ability to compete? Do you keep them around the bridge table? Turns out, the answer is often no.

"When a partner starts to slip, you can't trust them," said Julie Davis, 89, a regular player living in Laguna Woods. "That's what it comes down to. It's terrible to say it that way, and worse to watch it happen. But other players get very annoyed. You can't help yourself."

Read the full story here, and decide for yourself the merits of a journalist referring to a game of bridge as "the last communal campfire before all goes dark."

woodleywonderworks / Flickr / Creative Commons

On Memorial Day, we remember sacrifices -- and don't really update Navel Gazing. But since you're here, how's this for sacrifice: Second-year UC Irvine student Christopher Proffitt has penned a letter to the campus taking full responsibility for causing the campus to go into lock down last week when he was spotted with an imitation firearm.

It sounds like it was all caused by some harmless fun:

I was picked up at school around 1:30 p.m. to go play airsoft with a few friends. I walked out of my dorm and was consequently seen with my airsoft rifle as I walked to the Mesa Court parking lot. We left the campus and entered an area with no cell phone service. We were engaged in our airsoft game, completely unaware of the events that were taking place on campus. It was only when we were finished and returned to the cars that we viewed our cell phones with the Zot Alert and numerous other messages alerting us about the situation. I contacted the police immediately, went to them directly, was questioned and ultimately released.

But Proffitt then takes all the blame:

My release in no way excuses my disregard for campus policy and the unease that my actions caused my fellow students. No one should ever have to walk around worrying about whether or not they may be in danger. We attend universities and colleges to further our education and to become intelligent individuals who make intelligent and level-headed decisions. My decision to walk to a car holding my airsoft gun was absolutely foolish.

He personally apologizes to the students and faculty, Chancelor Michael Drake ("who had to make the decision to lock down the school") and the student who was mistakenly detained by police during the panic. Proffitt could have just let the whole thing blow over -- after all, he didn't mean to set the whole campus on alert -- but this letter show's he's got more class than that.

Full text at New University.