This ranks as one of the most dramatic bits of footage shot by a member of the AOL Patch SoCal family. Last night, Santa Monica Patch local editor Jenna Chandler was at a Santa Monica College Board of Trustees meeting when all hell broke lose.

In the face of an overflow of concerned students there to make their voices heard regarding proposed tuition fees, Santa Monica College campus police officers pepper-sprayed the crowd. Chandler’s film runs only 17 seconds, but that’s more than enough to chillingly capture the chaos:

More info about last night’s headline grabbing events can be found at LA Weekly’s Informer blog, where reporter Dennis Romero has embedded Chandler’s video. Under the proposed plan, free classes at the westside community college would be switched over to a fee-based system.

Chandler, a Chapman University graduate, got her journalism start as an intern with the Orange County Register and NBC Southern California. She was previously the editor of San Juan Capistrano Patch, and Tuesday’s article has already generated a large number (for Patch) of reader comments.

Chandler tells FishbowlLA she shot the video using her “Patch-issued point and shoot Sony Cyber Shot.”