The seriously wacky world of California community colleges

     As you know, things can get mighty wacky at community colleges. There’s no limit, it seems, to the wackiness, especially when it comes to top administration and trustees. For instance, who’d o’ thunk we’d ever see a board (like the SOCCCD board until July 2000) that included a Holocaust denier, or one that appointed a guy Chancellor even though said guy had sued the district (once again: the SOCCCD board)? (See the OC Register, "Teacher's view of Holocaust stirs furor,” 4/4/95 and LA Times, 9/13/00: "Irvine Valley President Sues College District," 9/13/00.) Or one in which a trustee had secret meetings with administrators to make secret deals about hiring and firing quid pro quos (that would be the SOCCCD of ’97)? Click on article below for details.

       On Friday, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported (3 college trustees boycott over Sandoval agenda item) that three trustees of the Southwestern cc district “boycotted” a board meeting last Wednesday to prevent its being held—in order to prevent discussion of an item to extend a Southwestern College vice president’s job for a month or two. 

     It’s a tangled tale. Greg Sandoval, the VP, resigned not long ago after someone claimed he’d sexually harassed them. Then he tried to unresign, but the district’s Supe, Raj Chopra, wouldn’t have it. Then, when Chopra left town, Southwestern board president Dave Agosto hastily snuck a new item onto the board’s agenda for August’s meeting. The item was for an action that would have extended Sandoval’s administrative employment to January. 

     Why? ‘Cause, that way, Sandoval would be old enough, while still employed, to receive lifetime medical benefits! So three of the trustees put the kibosh on the meeting, thus deep-sixing Agosto’s agenda gambit. 

     Maybe that was the right thing to do. Dunno. 

     The Trib quotes Chopra as saying, “In my 35 years as an administrator, I have not seen one time an agenda item changed the way (this) did.” He oughta hang around the old SOCCCD. Raghu Mathur became an administrator when a similar maneuver was employed (back in '97). That one was illegal, as it turned out. 

     This Southwestern story doesn’t end here. In fact, it starts to get seriously convoluted at this point, ‘cause Sandoval is on the board of another district that does business with Southwestern, and it turns out that it was somebody on that other board, who benefited from the relationship, who urged Agosto to…. 

     Well, you know. 

     Have I mentioned that SOCCCD’s chancellor, Raghu P. Mathur, has been the subject of three votes of "no confidence" in the past ten years? —that, for the last one, 93.5% of full-time faculty indicated that they had “no confidence” in his leadership? Yeah, so the board gave him a raise.

     Now, we're on the accreditation chopping block, in part because of the "plague of despair" engendered by the ruthless and wily Mathur. 

     Will this board fire his ass? No, Mathur's ass is safe. The ass of SOCCCD's two colleges? Not so much.

Voting "no confidence" in Chancellor Mathur, 2004

    Red Emma (aka Andrew Tonkovich) reminds us that "Today at noon on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles/ 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara my very special guest is one of our most read, most translated, most celebrated authors, the novelist/essayist/poet/screenwriter Paul Auster, who community radio listeners will also know from his work hosting NPR’s National Story Project."