Once upon a time, City College was on the forefront of media revolution. Now this future has been flushed away.

This month’s decision by the college’s Board of Trustees to “indefinitely postpone” construction of the School of Media Arts building fails to meet the growing needs of students.

The Channels is aware that as part of SoMA, we have a bias in favor of this building. However, we do not speak solely on behalf of the journalism department, but for photography, graphic design, web design, multimedia, video production and film studies.

Together these departments house more than 2,700 students.

Media arts are the wave of the future. And with the future of the college in mind, the postponement of advancing SoMA is a big mistake.

For students of media, the needs are constantly growing and changing. The Internet and its technology are developing faster than any of us can keep up. Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook,YouTube and , Twitter are driven by graphic design, web design, photography, video production, and other multimedia elements. SoMA education is in high demand, preparing students to work for local companies, along with rising multimillion dollar international corporations, such as Google Inc., Pixar Studios and Electronic Arts.

With these pervasive forms of media being the “here and now,” here and now wasn’t the best time to shove SoMA on the back burner. This building should have been our top priority.

The college’s reasoning is that the state cut back funding by $10 million, from $32 million to $22 million. So now we are turning our backs on $22 million from the state.

Instead the college is funding “higher priority” projects, one example being the new press box. What students are getting for this $500,00 contribution is hard to say.

The remodeling of the Garvin Theatre will benefit the Santa Barbara community, but at most the theater arts department hosts three or four performances a year. The new SoMA building would have been used by students everyday. And as with all institutes of education, the students should come first.

The SoMA building was the poster child for the promotion of Measure V.

Even when it comes down to the cash, SoMA is an obvious investment. It brings prospective students from all over the community and the world. The awards won by student work provide fodder for grant possibilities. By housing the different departments under one roof, we could have benefited from working with and learning from each other.

City College could have been a mecca for the burgeoning multimedia industry in Southern California. Now our future has been postponed indefinitely.