Thursday, December 30, 1999

Red Emma's infamous "open letter" to Raghu


NOT-SO-SECRET SERVICE (OC Weekly 12/30/99)


An open letter to Irvine Valley College president Raghu Mathur


ANDREW TONKOVICH [aka "Red Emma"]

December 30, 1999

Dear President Mathur: 
     I note that the South Orange County Community College District board of trustees recently awarded you a $200 monthly "security stipend." I am sure that, like me, all Irvine Valley College (IVC) faculty, students and staff will sleep better knowing efforts have been made to address the menace to your personal safety caused by threatening phone calls and e-mail (undocumented); political attacks on you in [the faculty-run] Dissent, the Los Angeles Times, The Orange County Register, OC Metro, OC Weekly, and [the student-run] Voice newspapers (constitutionally protected); and letters mailed to you via the U.S. Post Office (also, oddly, unavailable).
     I am writing to offer my services as a security consultant. As your security stipend is equivalent to a full two weeks' pay for my own work as a part-time instructor, you'll understand that I'm eager to start work immediately.
     As your presidential security consultant, I am prepared to: 
• Escort you to and from your car and the administration building every morning and evening. 
• Maintain secret files on high-profile personnel (we'll call it an Enemies List), including—but not limited to—academic-senate president Peter Morrison, philosophy instructor Roy Bauer and anthropology instructor Wendy Phillips. 
• Put English instructor Kate Clark under immediate 24-hour surveillance. 
• Taste your meals to check for poison. 
• Maintain a physical-security cordon in front of your office window. 
• Enforce the IVC clap. 
• Proofread your memos and letters for punctuation and spelling errors, clichés, factual errors, and ad hominem attacks.

I hope you'll contact me immediately for an interview, or at least file this letter.

January 7, 2000 OC WEEKLY

IN SECURITY

Thanks for printing my letter to Irvine Valley College president Raghu Mathur offering my services as Security Consultant (“Not-So-Secret Service,” Dec. 30). Mathur has yet to contact me regarding a job interview, presumably planning to spend his $2,400 annual stipend on a pit bull and a home alarm.
Please note that our illegally appointed community-college president not only manufactured unsubstantiated stories about “threats” to him (later contradicted in his free-speech-case deposition) but somehow also persuaded the South Orange County Community College District board of trustees to spend taxpayer dollars on this assertion. The board voted unanimously to write him a big check.
Readers may be further interested, or merely amused, to note that the same board recently elected as its president and vice president two candidates who in the most recent election received the endorsement of the Christian Coalition.
You can’t make this stuff up. Although, if you’re Mathur, you can make it up and get paid for it.
On a happier note, I’m proud to report that our union local—purged of the anti-democratic, pro-management types who helped get this wacky board elected—is reorganizing to defend our district from Mathur and his cadre of “fiscal conservatives” who’ve tried to run our little college into the ground.
Andrew Tonkovich
Instructor, Irvine Valley College

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