Sen. Adam Schiff held a town hall at Cuesta. Students were among the last to know | Opinion
Boomers have, for the most part, been leading the resistance against Donald Trump.
They email their lawmakers and write letters to the editor. They protest in front of Tesla dealerships and march in the streets, holding up signs that say things like, “Ikea has better cabinets.”
So it wasn’t a surprise that boomers made up probably 90% of the audience at Sen. Adam Schiff’s town hall meeting in San Luis Obispo on Tuesday night — even though it was held on the Cuesta College campus.
After the meeting, Schiff told reporters that the makeup of the audience was not unusual.
“What I’ve found traditionally at events like this is, because of where they are and the time they are, you often attract an older audience.”
Except, something else was at play on Tuesday night.
The handful of young people who did attend the town hall said their fellow students weren’t made aware of the event.
“They didn’t tell Cuesta College students or faculty,” said Lucia Landeros, Cuesta’s student body president.
She only found out about it that last minute, she said — even though she is the student representative on Cuesta’s Board of Trustees. Other board members were given seats of honor and introduced at the start of the meeting. Landeros didn’t get so much as a heads up.
Landon Block, opinion editor for Cal Poly’s Mustang News, said he, too, learned about the event only that day and was equally frustrated that more students didn’t know what was happening.
Lindsay McKee, another student journalist, was in the same situation. She wrote an opinion piece for Cuesta’s student newspaper that appeared Wednesday morning. The headline: “Hosting a dinner party without being invited.”
Cuesta College officials said they were asked not to publicize the event because it was by invitation only.
‘It felt incredibly off-putting and wrong’
McKee, Landeros and Block did manage to get press seats at the event and were on hand when Schiff and Rep. Salud Carbajal, who co-hosted the town hall, met later with reporters.
Still, they were baffled as to why students were left out of the loop.
“How can Cuesta College host two very important California government officials, without wanting the majority of the Cuesta College community to know about it?” McKee wrote. “It felt incredibly off-putting and wrong. ... I never felt so small on my home turf.”
Tom Fulks, chair of SLO County’s Democratic Party, said the lack of advance notice was related to security.
“Safety was the primary driver of the cloak-and-dagger routine,” he wrote on Facebook, though he also acknowledged that neglecting to connect with local stakeholders was “a key mistake.”
“Some bad decisions were made, none with ill intent or arrogance, just inexperience with and unawareness of the SLO County landscape,” he wrote.
Schiff’s office regrets lack of notification
The senator’s team said it sent notices of the event to thousands of Central Coast residents. Voters who had previously contacted Schiff’s office were among those who received invitations, along with local officials and the media.
Though it did not have a list of students, Schiff’s team said the location was designed to make it easy for students to attend. It added that it regrets that more students were not notified.
Hoping to get to the bottom of things, Landeros approached Schiff after the meeting to talk about the lack of communication.
He didn’t have an immediate answer, she said, but “he looked very concerned. He was nodding.”
The morning after the event, Landeros seemed willing to cut Schiff some slack.
“He appeared concerned, and he appeared receptive,” she reiterated, adding that she hopes there will be more legislative visits that will include students.
Schiff: ‘You have to reach out to young people where they are’
To be fair, it’s not as if Schiff has been purposely avoiding young people.
Before the Cuesta town hall, he spoke to a political science class at Cal Poly and toured the university’s Strawberry Center. He also met with students when he recently toured Chico State.
“The senator’s office always welcomes the opportunity to engage with students, and Schiff has been visiting college campuses up and down the state for the last three years,” his spokesperson said.
The senator also has a strong presence on YouTube, where he posts videos on a variety topics. One recent video was filmed inside a classroom.
“You know, I think that if we’re going to reach out to young people, we have to reach out to young people where they are,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “By that, I don’t just mean on campus, but a lot of young people are most active online, more accessible online, and this was really the kind of genesis of our YouTube channel.”
Yet the senator missed out on an excellent opportunity to meet with students face to face — students like JayCee McEntire, who is about to graduate from Cuesta’s challenging nursing program and has a job lined up at French Hospital.
She “absolutely” would have attended the town hall had she known about it, she said, and would have liked to ask about the gutting of the Department of Education.
“Hearing about it the day after was really disheartening,” she said.
For what it’s worth, a return visit is not out of the question.
According to Schiff’s office, he is looking forward to returning to the Central Coast to meet with Californians — including students.
This story was originally published April 24, 2025 at 2:21 PM.
