Haunting YouTube Video Depicts Jerry Brown as Ebenezer Scrooge

Media communications students at Grossmont College have taken the education crisis issue into their own hands—creating a virtual choir-like film mourning the current funding system of state community colleges.

A parody of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the nearly 6-minute YouTube video, A Student’s Carol, calls out for Gov. Jerry Brown’s attention to the loss of a free and available public education.

“We chose Jerry Brown to be Scrooge simply because of his prominence, which will draw attention to the project in a way that our local assemblyman could not,” said Michael Grant of La Mesa, a journalism professor at Grossmont.

The video was the culmination of three months of work, with countless hours put in by project leader and student Cameron Sisti, among others.

“I wrote the original script … but in February turned the project totally over to the students,” Grant said. “They, not I, had all the information, experience and skills necessary to complete the project.”

The project was completed May 25, and Brown was the first to be sent a link to the video. There has been no response yet.

“It has rough edges,” Grant said, “but it was created ... with the purpose of reminding legislators of the relevance of community colleges to students seeking a meaningful education. I believe the video achieves that.”