It's not about disgruntled faculty

Dissent 55

November 6, 2000

ON THE “GENESIS OF THE WAR”: It’s not about disgruntled faculty

by Chunk Wheeler [Roy Bauer] 

     In Nashville, Board President Padberg explained the existence of discord and dissent in the SOCCCD as a reaction by some faculty to the 1997 Reorganization: “After an administrative reorganization…, we experienced a great deal of negative press. This was pretty much led by disgruntled staff who were suffering from these cuts [in reassigned time caused by the Reorg].” Sampson there presented the same account: according to him, the “genesis of the war on the board” was the ’97 reorganization, when ten IVC school chairs lost their “privileges and free time.”

     Nonsense. As the following entry (from the Dissenter’s Dictionary) makes utterly clear, there was considerable discord and dissent in the district long before the Reorg (or the abolition of reassigned time).

     In truth, the sources of discord in this district go deeper than the Reorg issues; the dissention has arisen from the Board Majority’s indecency, its rejection of such values as “process” and the rule of law.

DISCORD AND DISSENT IN THE DISTRICT

     Although the July ’97 reorganization was, in many ways, a divisive event, contrary to the endlessly repeated claim by members of the BM/Old Guard axis, it was not “the cause” of discord and dissent within the district.

     The era of extreme discord and dissent started, not in July of ’97, but in December of ’96, the date that marked the arrival of the Board Majority. From the very beginning, Frogue, Williams, Fortune, and Lorch, voting as a block, acted upon their inveterate distrust of shared governance groups, especially faculty, and these groups wasted no time reacting.

     Consider: in January of ’97, both academic senates issued letters objecting to the board’s decision, in closed session, to strip senate officers of reassigned time—an apparent violation of the Brown Act. In February, an editorial in the Saddleback student newspaper, the Lariat, assailed the trustees for their misguided attacks, led by trustee Fortune, on Study Abroad programs. In the March 20 issue of the Lariat, Rick Travis, then-Saddleback ASG president, is quoted as saying, “There is no shared governance at Saddleback,” a reference to the failure of the board to notify Saddleback and Irvine Valley student governments of its March 17 meeting. In the same issue, a Lariat editorial bemoans the board’s “dictatorial tendencies.” In May—two months prior to the reorganization—the IVC Academic Senate conducted a referendum which yielded a 72.5% vote of “no confidence” in the board, owing to “repeated actions taken which indicate its unwillingness to participate in the spirit and intent of shared governance.” Also in May, a group of faculty and community members presented the board with a “demand for cure and correct” regarding its violations of the Brown Act in April. A July 3 Irvine World News editorial expressed alarm at the situation at Irvine Valley College, where, it said, “we’re witnessing...an autocracy replacing a democracy.” A raucous board forum which occurred one week before the reorganization was dominated by bitter complaints about president Raghu Mathur, who, according to many speakers, flouted the requirements of shared governance and seemed, despite his interim status, determined to make “sweeping changes.” Also in July, the Sorenson Group issued a report in which it asserted that “Each and every stakeholder group [in the district] has been disempowered.” In an address given at the regular board meeting of July 14 (two days before the reorganization), trustee Lang spoke of “dysfunction” and “chaos” in the district and warned that “Outstanding administrators at the highest levels have left or are considering leaving or retiring...[M]orale among other employees is extremely low because they feel their voices are not being heard and that all vestiges of academic freedom and established processes are gone.”

     Surely these facts refute the notion that dissent and discord within the district can be traced back to the reorganization of 7/16/97. In reality, owing to the Board Majority and Mathur’s lawlessness and rejection of shared governance processes, the district was roiling with discontent in the months preceding the reorganization, and none of it concerned administrative reorganization.

     As of this writing, the discord continues, fueled by such acts as the chancellor’s announced intention to strip the Academic Senates of the authority accorded them by mutual agreement. 

      —Roy B