Hilda Delgado Beacon Award Citation

Hilda Delgado is a writer and editor at Campus News, the student newspaper at East Los Angeles College, where she was assigned to the newspaper's Associated Student Union beat.

While becoming familiar with the way the student government organization operated, Delgado discovered-as others before her-that the ASU was notorious for failing to produce or follow proper agendas and an abysmal record of public notification of meetings and subjects to be discussed.

She asked her journalism professor, Jean Stapleton who did a panel this morning on Censorship and Secrecy on Campus, for a copy of the Brown Act. Instead, Jean showed Hilda our reporter's notebook.

In Jean's words, "The next time I saw Hilda, the book was underlined and marked and she had a lot of questions. Soon she had whole sections of the law memorized."

Hilda filed a formal CPRA request for the ASU's minutes. When she was stalled by the officer in charge, she called the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office where she was told that although the ASU's stall was against the CPRA's regulations that there were no provisions for enforcement.

Not one to be dissuaded by trivial roadblocks, Hilda called CFAC and talked to me about her situation. We put her in touch with CFAC Board Member Barbara Blinderman, who conversed with Hilda and helped her ultimately attain her goal.

In the end, Hilda got all of her information, and the student officer who had refused to release the records was impeached.

"I have been teaching students about the Brown Act and FOI for 29 years now," Jean reflected recently. "Many students understand it well enough to know and be angry when the law is violated. A few have filed FOI requests. But I have never known a student to be so thorough in learning the law and so tenacious in applying it as Hilda Delgado."

But this story has an even happier ending.

In a recent e-mail, Hilda expressed appreciation for CFAC's help. "It was quite an experience to say the least," she wrote. "But it helped assure me of one thing: I am in the right field."

Journalism can use more Hilda Delgados, so we are delighted to have played a small role in her selection of that path.

For her tenacious demand that her student government obey open government laws..

.For her ability to quickly grasp open government law and apply it to student government

for the energy and enthusiasm she brings to the open government movement

but mostly for her tenacious and successful demand that her student government obey open government laws

The California First Amendment Coalition is pleased to present Hilda Delgado with a Beacon Award.