“You Could Mention Here…” How Cal Poly Scripted the City’s Answers to the Grand Jury

Public Interest File No. 6

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Overview

While the San Luis Obispo County Civil Grand Jury was actively investigating fraternity enforcement in San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly’s Office of the President sent the City a memo of prepared answers on the exact subject matter the Grand Jury was examining, supplying language for how the City could frame its response to that investigation. City Manager Whitney McDonald forwarded it to the City Attorney, the Deputy City Manager, and the City Council. More than a year later, Mayor Erica Stewart used language that echoed Cal Poly’s framing almost exactly.

The Grand Jury was investigating the City and did not have jurisdiction over Cal Poly. Therefore Cal Poly was not a respondent of that investigation but voluntarily cooperated to provide information. The documents published in this file show Cal Poly supplying the City with framing language for its response to the Grand Jury’s inquiry, and show that language resurfacing later in the Mayor’s public statements.

The documents published in this file allow readers to review the underlying records and reach their own conclusions.

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What the Documents Show

July 1, 2024

The 2024-2025 San Luis Obispo Civil Grand Jury was empaneled and at some point thereafter, they begin an investigation into the City of San Luis Obispo, including but limited to SLOPD’s failure to adequately respond to St. Fratty’s Day in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and the City’s failure to enforce its laws regarding the unlawful fraternity operations within the City’s residential neighborhoods.

October 15, 2024

At 4:46 PM, Courtney Kienow, Cal Poly’s Director of Community Relations in the Office of the President, emailed City Manager Whitney McDonald a document titled “FAQ FSL” related to Fraternity & Sorority Life. Her message read: “Here you go Whitney. Believe it or not, this is the fastest document we’ve ever gotten approvals for and out! *winking emoji*”

The attached FAQ addressed, among other topics, Cal Poly’s role in fraternity event oversight and the question of whether fraternities operating in violation the City’s laws could accurately be called “illegal.”

On event registration, the FAQ stated: “Cal Poly does not approve or deny parties – we approve/deny the registration.”

On the word “illegal,” it stated: “‘Illegal fraternity’ is an inaccurate colloquialism. The Constitution of the United States of America is clear about the 1st Amendment right to freedom of association.” Directly beneath that answer, the FAQ instructs McDonald: “You could mention here that every fraternity currently listed on our greeklife.calpoly.edu website is recognized by the university.”

The document also contains a note from Kienow on the question of whether Cal Poly holds students accountable for noise violations. After a first answer stating that Title V – Cal Poly’s student conduct code – does not address noise, Kienow added: “Note: I don’t think this is what they are looking for, but sometimes we have IFC Judicial Hearings for excessive noise citations.”

October 22, 2024

At 5:41 PM, City Manager Whitney McDonald sent a “Mid-Week Update” email to Deputy City Manager Greg Hermann and City Attorney Christine Dietrick, BCC’d to the City Council. Referencing FAQ memo, she wrote: “Cal Poly FAQs re Fraternities and Sororities – Shortly before our Council meeting began last Tuesday, Courtney Kienow sent me a copy of a FAQs page that Cal Poly put together regarding Fraternities and Sororities. The document was put together very quickly and includes some interesting positions that I will talk through more fully with Cal Poly leadership when possible, including as part of a larger fraternity enforcement discussion.”

The City Council received Cal Poly’s self-authored framing for how the City could respond to the Grand Jury’s inquiry, one week after Kienow sent it to the City Manager.

End of 2024 / Beginning of 2025

The Grand Jury interviewed witnesses, including members of the City staff.

January 16, 2025

At 4:40 PM, Kienow texted McDonald a follow-up to a meeting with Cal Poly President Jeff Armstrong, providing Greek life enrollment figures: “about 17% of our students are involved in Greek life. For Fall 2024, that’s 3,921 in fraternities and sororities of our 22,842 total enrolled.” McDonald replied: “Thanks!”

January 17, 2025

At 9:42 AM, Kienow texted McDonald: “Hi! Can you remind me… the city did 2 in person interviews with the grand jury AND provided written responses? We’re trying to align with what you did.”

McDonald replied: “I think they interviewed 6 people from the City and we provided information in response to a couple of written PRAs.”

Kienow was seeking these details, by her own words, so that Cal Poly could “align” its own account of its Grand Jury participation with the City’s.

January 21-27, 2025

On January 21, 2025, a resident (a Cal Poly graduate and retired 30-year Marin County Probation employee, the last 11 years as Chief) submitted a message through the District Attorney’s office online contact form. The message enclosed a “Viewpoint” op-ed responding to a Tribune editorial on Cal Poly fraternity housing. In it, the resident argued that Cal Poly’s refusal to supply off-campus event addresses, unlike Sacramento State, Fresno State, and Chico State, was “a policy decision” that “needs to be reversed,” and called on the District Attorney, Chief of Police, City Manager, and School Superintendent to demand Cal Poly release the addresses.

On January 27, 2025, at 9:20 PM, SLOPD Chief Rick Scott emailed the resident’s op-ed to Courtney Kienow, sending it to her personal email address rather than her Cal Poly email. Scott wrote: “Hi Courtney, This came to be by way of the DA, but thought I would pass it along since this editorial was published in the paper. This should have already made its way to George.” “George” refers to George Hughes, Cal Poly’s Vice President of Public Safety, indicating Scott understood there was already a channel through Cal Poly’s own law enforcement, and sent the material to Kienow’s personal account in addition to that channel.

At 9:52 PM, Kienow replied from her personal email: “Thanks for sharing. I’ll pass along to the team.”

November 2025

More than a year after the FAQ was circulated, Mayor Erica Stewart addressed the “illegal fraternity” issue, saying, “It’s not a real word.” She went on to compare a fraternity operating in violation of the municipal code to having a trash can in the wrong place.

Kienow’s October 2024 memo said: “‘Illegal fraternity’ is an inaccurate colloquialism.” The Mayor’s public framing thirteen months later, that “illegal” is the wrong word, is consistent with the memo’s own language and reasoning. The records do not show whether the mayor was drawing on the memo directly, on briefings that incorporated it, or arrived at the same framing independently. What the records do show is that her office received the memo, and that her public statement echoes it.

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Why This File Exists

The purpose of this Public Interest File is to preserve and organize the documentary records so that members of the public can review them for themselves.

The records include Cal Poly’s FAQ memo, the email transmitting it to the City Manager, the City Manager’s email forwarding it to the City Attorney, Deputy City Manager, and City Council, the January 2025 text exchange between Cal Poly and the City Manager regarding the City’s Grand Jury participation, the SLOPD Chief’s forwarding of a citizen’s DA correspondence to Cal Poly’s personal email channel, and the subsequent public statement by the Mayor addressed in this file.

Together, they provide a contemporaneous record of how Cal Poly’s framing for the City’s response to a Grand Jury investigation moved from the Office of the President into the City’s internal correspondence, and ultimately into a public official’s own words.

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Documents Included in This File