ADMINISTRATIVE EXODUS (1999).

ADMINISTRATIVE EXODUS.
(From The Dissenter’s Dictionary, 1999)

     I refer, of course, to the escapes, firings, and retreats-to-the-classroom that have been the sorry fate of nearly all of the district's--and especially IVC's--best administrators since the arrival of the Board Majority in December of '96. Among the victims: Terry Burgess, Pam Deegan, Nick Kremer, Nancy Reynolds, Dan Rivas, Bob Loeffler, Pauline Merry, and others. (Chancellor Lombardi, Saddleback VP of Instruction Bill Andrews, Saddleback president Ned Doffoney, and IVC president Dan Larios also moved on for various reasons.) Even recent hires have joined the list: in December of '99, IVC's new VP of Instruction, Patricia Spenser, fled to a job at Fullerton College. Her distaste for Raghu P. Mathur had been palpable within weeks of her arrival late in the Spring of ‘99.
     IVC's Bob Loeffler, who quit as VP of business services in '98, explained at the time that "I can no longer effectively or happily work in the unsettled political and administrative environment in both the district and at IVC." (Irvine World News, 7/9/98)
     Unfortunately, many of these fine administrators have been replaced, temporarily or permanently, by incompetents, including Old Guard cronies, such as Glenn Roquemore, Mathur’s utility incompetent.
     IVC's Raghu P. Mathur has adopted a novel way of explaining the exodus of his best administrators. On more than one occasion, he has characterized a VP's escape to another college as a "feather in the cap" of the district, a fine example of the doublespeak of which he is so fond.
     Key classified employees, too, have occasionally fled the district. In September of '98, IVC's new spokeswoman, Bevin Zandvliet, quit after only one month on the job, saying, "I was told that there were some things I was not to focus on...From my own research...I got a picture of an administration that was doing some thing that I don't think I could represent without violating my own ethics...People are walking on eggshells around there...[Mathur] said he has an open-door policy and that he believes in communication, but I didn't see it." (Register, 9/25/98)