[FROM DISSENT 50, 8/21/00]
Monday, August 14, 2000:
The Fall “Opening Session”:
I showed up at Saddleback’s Ronald McDonald Theatre at about 9:00 a.m., just as the last of the coffee and donuts crowd filed inside to take their seats at the back of the hall (presumably in hopes of avoiding the stink that emanated from the front). As we entered, we were handed a program filled mostly with the names of “service pin recipients,” a list a more meaningless than which cannot be conceived. The session promised to by gloomy, owing to the overwhelming pall of ruin that now pervades the district now that, essentially, idjits are in charge and nothin’ works.
Ticklin’ them ivories:
At about 9:05, Cedric “Liberace” Sampson, seated primly at a piano in a sparkly rhinestone jacket, got things started with a single C-chord, which echoed stupidly through the hall. “Last year,” he warbled nasally, as Mathur tapped his foot, “was a turn-around year.” Meanwhile, at stage right, about a dozen dignitaries, including three trustees, quietly snoozed in chairs that were arrayed across the big, empty Ronald McDonald stage. Trustee Williams—who, as a tyke, was the model for the Bob’s Big Boy statue—stoically chomped on a french fry.
A year ago, cooed Ced, the press produced lots of “unflattering news” about the district—but no longer! Besides, he added, we’re no longer on the fiscal watch list and, owing to a highly effective intimidation campaign, we’ve overcome our warning status with the Accrediting Commission! We’ve been “delivered” from these nuisances, he roared, breaking briefly into a daft rendition of “Chopsticks.”
No one was buying it and he knew it. Worried, Ced broke into a Grinch grin and then explained that, at Saddleback College, they’re about to demolish a building, an event, which, he assured us, is “symbolic.” (Everyone seemed to agree.) He continued: they’re also putting up a parking-lot! (“Where’s his pal Dot?” I wondered.)
The Chancellor, with his usual air of contempt, went on to recite recent personal achievements. Hadn’t he fixed the sewage system at Saddleback in his spare time? Hadn’t he taken the Accrediting Commission to task for applying unwritten subjective standards to the SOCCCD and not following its own goddamn rules? And hadn’t the Department of Education confirmed his charge that one of the Commissioners was biased? You bet!
Oddly, Ced neglected to mention that, according to the DOE, the Commissioner in question was biased, not against the college, but in favor of it. No matter: Ced is into sophistry. He launched clumsily into “Heart and Soul,” humming persistently and defiantly through his nose.
From my perch amid snoring colleagues, I amused myself by studying the fine array of stinkwater dignitaries below. Marcia and Dave held their noses. Raghu picked his, I think, threatening a total cranial collapse. Trustee John “Brown Boy” Williams, sporting an aspect of staunch harrumphitude, bitterly clutched an empty bag of fries as a lurid puddle of goo formed around his left shoe.
El Ced spoke of the Master Plan, which emphasizes growth and development, he said. Full-time faculty hiring, he declared, should proceed in accordance with the Plan. “Our goal,” noted the Chance, is to achieve an “internal consensus” regarding the direction of the district. Also, we should seek to regain a leadership role in the “community college movement.” Cleverly appealing to an old TV ad, he urged us to “just do it.” He briefly paused to take a bow.
More yawnage. Somebody belched. Raghu Mathur’s lower lip jutted upward hideously as he contemplated Board Policy 8000 and the tight relationship it posits between campus speech and lawn-care. One or two droplets of a ghastly brownish fluid dripped from the ceiling, bespeckling the rotting floor.
Ced pressed on, noting that, all over the state, districts have failed to adopt policies required by law, and our district is no exception. We have until November to correct the situation. He seemed to look forward to the process.
Utterly bored, I again studied the seated dignitaries, who stared blankly into space. The audience stared back. A relatively lively Tom Carol admired his Hawaiian shirt, while, immediately to his right, Mike Runyan’s head seemed to sink impossibly deeply into his body. Meanwhile, somewhere, Mr. McClendon was listening for extra-terrestrials while Mr. Walker practiced trouser-fastening.
Ced closed by promising, as he had done a year ago, that we will soon “convert” the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station. The political machinations of the Feds and other school districts have delayed conversion, he noted peevishly. Finally, he simpered: “I look forward to working with you,” and slid testily off the piano bench and into the repulsive puddle of filth that encumbered the stage. The feeble sound of polite applause followed him to his chair.
“What’s that stink?” asked a new hire. Someone pointed downward, toward the stage, aghast.
Her first big kiss:
Next came the presentation of service pins. I do believe that I was the only person in the room who did not receive one. Dean Howard Gensler got a 10-year pin even though he was hired as a full-timer in 1999. “What could this mean?” I asked myself.
The ceremony would have been unrelievedly tedious were it not for two prodigious incidents. First: one of the recipients gave President Bullock a bear hug and then lifted her straight into the air, causing her to thrill and gasp, and, upon release, to stumble and squeal as though she had just received her first Big Kiss. Second: Kathie Hodge, despite not having been lifted into the air at all (not while I was lookin’), received a truly enormous round of applause, causing Ced to look up and feign magnanimity and joy. His pain was palpable. John, looking vaguely Hitlerian, strangled his empty bag of fries.
Eventually, Mr. Goo, radiating fumes from his sweaty suit, stood up, splashed through a stinkwater puddle, and made his way to the podium. The situation was not promising, for Mathur regularly punishes audiences with his trademark melange of New Age twaddle, educationist drivel, business-world blather, and stupefying malapropisms. Plus he owes me money.
“Good morning,” he sniffed imperiously, already employing the spiffy leadership techniques he learned this summer at Hah-vud. (On Tuesday, at IVC, he explained that, at the conference, he had read so darned much that it all started coming out of his ears!) The audience lamely responded with the same. Said the Gooster: “I think we can do better than that!” Not so, as it turned out.
Mathur then introduced new hires, a wholly tedious exercise, though, at one point, a comic book did fall out of Mr. Goo’s massive and fleshy left ear, injecting a welcome note of the bizarre. Bullock, who seems even more convinced than the rest of us that she has absolutely nothing to say, went through the same exercise. Everyone suffered horribly.
Crap slidage:
Mulder instructed all the new hires to get up and move to the front of the room, cuz it’s a drag to speak to a big empty space like she was doin’. (At the Ronald McDonald Theatre, people traditionally line the back wall in hopes of avoiding notice by Ronald.) This produced several minutes of chaos. The bespectacled Mulder gazed patiently upon the scene, wondering just what was wrong with us.
Nevertheless, Mulder soon expressed admiration for the quality of our new faculty and the “longevity” of other faculty, what with all the service pins and bald, shiny heads. She invited us to applaud ourselves, which we did. Then Mulder explained that she recently visited Tucson, where the average age was 112.
Mulder likes to tell jokes and stories, and she told a good one about “duck crap” (punchline: “We’ve been sliding into this building for years”). Looking briefly in the direction of the chancellor (or so it seemed to me), she deftly tied the crap theme to the notion of “responsibility,” as an oblivious El Ced polished a rhinestone with his hanky.
Mulder likes to string together lots of positive things, even if they don’t really add up to anything much. She announced that teachers are “wonderful” and that California is a “bellwether state.” She spoke of diversity and shared governance and how it really does rain in California. (“Man, it pours.”) She joked about the likes of Jimmy Hoffa (“I was nice to those guys”) and, finally, she noted WASC’s new standard, according to which faculty are supposed to take the lead in securing student “success,” etc., which is all part of the new “accountability” craze that’s sweeping the nation, like those damn Razors you can’t seem to get away from.
She lingered on that last point, her big “accountability” theme. We should not be threatened by this new accrediting “mandate,” she said. Rather, we should view it as an “opportunity” to invest in the future of students!
I found it necessary to snort.
Mulder is into lists. She spoke of five “powers” to produce change: the power of presence (that had something to do with being “entrepreneurial” and “showing up” for stuff), the power of imagination and intelligence (somethin’ about “kaleidoscopic thinking,” sacred cows, and dead faculty, I believe), the power of voice (“If you dream it and give voice to it, then you can do it”—Bleccch!), the power of partnering (some damned people, she said, think they’re in charge of everything!), and the power of motion, momentum, and persistence (“Middles are difficult,” said she, causing Old Guardsters in the center of the room to grimace and scratch their empty, balding heads).
Mulder made a few more scattershot points: we teachers have to take a leadership role; there are “five practices” that will help us (she listed them); teachers gotta experiment and take risks; my brother Fox is a flake; and so on. She quoted “Megatrends.”
Finally, Mulder returned to the theme of responsibility and duck crap: “We share responsibility,” she said with an air of self-satisfaction, “in creating the internal and external world.” That sounded like crap to me, but everybody else acted as though Agent Mulder had just handed ‘em a pearl.
That was about it, so we all got outa there fast. In the mad rush to leave, some people did get hurt—mostly, I think, owing to flying rubber cylinders and the frenzied feet of panicking Old Guardsters. Later that day, stinkwater broke through the walls and ceiling and drowned a coupla students. But, hey, life goes on.
The Faculty Association luncheon:
Not long after, I wandered over to the cafeteria, where the Faculty Association was holding its customary Flex-week luncheon/love-in.
People sure do like to tie on the feed bag, especially when they can do it for free. (“Hell,” said someone, “I’m goin’ for seconds on them lard chips, cuz I pay for ‘em with my dues.”) There was so much sloppy beef and cheese that people got happy just lookin’ at it all. Soon, everybody was chowin’ down and yuckin’ it up with abandon, inspiring Lee H to announce that he couldn’t remember when we’ve all had so much fun!
Adam Probolsky is a big fat idiot:
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| The GOP's Fuentes |
Well, said she, when she arrived on the 12th, Fuentes’ appointment was really already a done deal, and, when that’s the score, you’ve gotta go along and just get the best deal you can for yourself!
She was probably right about the “done deal” part. To many observers of the special meeting, Fuentes’ appointment seemed to be, well, highly orchestrated. Consider: of the three candidates who were interviewed on the 12th, only Fuentes showed up with written answers for each of the Board’s questions. Someone in the audience told me that the pro-Fuentes remarks offered that night by three Old Guard unionists were read from documents written in the same font as was displayed on Fuentes’ prepared answer sheets. Possibly this verbiage was provided by the remarkable Adam Probolsky, a fat man in a white shirt who kept running around the board room fixin’ things. Probolsky, one of Fuentes’ lieutenants, is a consultant for local right-wing politicos. His partner is the son of Lou Sheldon (of the “Traditional Values Coalition”). Essentially, Probolsky’s a big fat idiot.
Conspiracy fans, I’ve got two intriguing facts for you to chew on. (1) Six days before Fuentes’ coronation, a select group of OC Republicans partied at the Corona Del Mar home of Tom Phillips, a filthy-rich East Coast publisher who hopes to enter politics here in OC. The shindig was a gathering of the “Silver Circle,” an elite support group for the OC GOP. I’m told that George W’s nephew was among the special guests that day.
Guess who else attended this soiree? That would be Trustee Williams, Trustee Wagner, Board President Padberg–and Tom Fuentes.
(2) Intriguing factoid #2: Raghu Mathur met with Fuentes months prior to Frogue’s resignation (perhaps in May). –Ain’t it cool?
Don’t sweat the big stuff:
As I was saying, at the union feed lot, my Old Guard friend defended Mr. Fuentes, explaining that she is more impressed by little things about a person than that big dumb stuff she reads in the papers. That’s why she likes Frogue, despite all those pesky facts (legal declarations provided by former students, quotes in several newspapers) that seem to point to his being a Holocaust denier. Evidently, once during a conversation with the Froguester, he related how he killed a possum in his back yard. Boy did he feel bad about that. After all these years, he still grieves.
“That’s good enough for me,” she said.
“Oh,” I responded, as the “Twilight Zone” theme played in my head and “Mr. Bojangles” played in hers.
A Starship Enterprise:
At about noon, Association president Lee H addressed the group. His election, he said, was a mandate to “right the course” and “steady the ship.” People didn’t want “business as usual.” Lee then introduced various Faculty Association officers and division representatives. They all seemed terribly pleased to be there.
This exercise made clear that the days of Old Guard domination are over, even though several Old Guardsters were in the room, sneerin’ and gossipin’ and runnin’ up for seconds, cuz they paid for the chow, goddam it.
Lee explained the need for everyone to “work together.” There’s nothing worse, he said, than a union that is not unified. “That’s a contradiction!” We need to go back to being “one of the Starship community colleges of the system,” offered the president. He announced an August 29 candidates forum and noted his regular and friendly visits with the Chancellor.
“Uh-oh,” I thought.
Hard to port!
Lee then asked the Chancellor to address the crowd.
The Chancellor? How odd, thought I. Here’s a guy who, on behalf of his corrupt board patrons (who fear union opposition in the next election), illegally blocked the collection of union PAC funds despite instructions from duly authorized union officials. And we’re lettin’ him speak? I don’t get it. “The ship’s a bit off course today, Lee,” thought I.
El Ced got up to repeat some of his blather about how last year was a “turn-around” time for the district. Then he picked up on Lee’s “working together” blarney. You’ve gotta have three things: a strong faculty, a strong board, and strong administration, he said. When the system works, it’s like three strong stool samples on somebody’s leg. (Or maybe it was three strong legs on a stool. Not sure.) Now, he added, the board is strong, but administration is weak, and, in recent years, the faculty have been weakened by divisiveness. So it’s like we’re on a broken sub on the bottom of the ocean or something.
Ced, who, I’m told, is seeking the union’s support in his effort to receive a lengthier contract and a big fat pay raise, threw Lee a kiss and then ended his remarks by inviting us to send thoughts and suggestions his way. Even hostile ones. “Anytime you have a hostile thought,” he said, “send it as an email.”
I wouldn’t recommend it.
Just then, the coffee maker made a deep bubbling sound. Someone whispered to me that we oughta rename the union the “Kursk.”
The president of CCA (I think) got up to speak. (Her name’s Dian Dolores Hasson.) She addressed the state budget. She noted that each district must come up with a five-year plan to reach a 75/25 ratio of full-time to part-time faculty. She condemned the voucher initiative (Prop 38), which, she insisted, isn’t just a K-12 issue. She’s a firm believer in public education, she said. “Everything we do must be for the students,” she added.
And that was about it.
Stupid and ruthless:
In the melee Monday night, police charged protesters with horses, fired “stinger rounds” at them and pushed them far away from Staples before allowing them to scatter. The opening moments of that push were rough, and amplified by the fact that the LAPD had cut off some natural routes of departure. That, according to many observers, made it hard for protesters who wanted to leave peacefully to do so without confronting the police. Instead, many were struck with batons or shot with stinger rounds.On Friday, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks apologized to anyone who was struck or shot while trying to leave the area peacefully.
“We’re sorry if anyone was injured unnecessarily,” Parks said.
—LA Times, 8/19/00
Later that night, I got a call from a friend who was acting as a green-capped legal observer at the protests outside the Democratic Convention hall up in LA. She was on a “puppet truck,” she said, which drove away just minutes before a horrible clash erupted between protesters and cops. A mutual friend and fellow legal observer—a kingpin in efforts to support protesters’ rights—had been hit between the eyes with a rubber bullet which seemed to come from out of nowhere. (A few days later, the bruise left by the bullet had spread down her face, leaving her with two enormous black eyes.) Another legal observer—Carl Manheim, a respected educator—ended up in the hospital, owing to the effects of a rubber bullet or cylinder on his shoulder. These people were being peaceful and cooperative, she said, but that didn’t matter to the LAPD.
My green-capped friend was frightened. All the protesters now feared the police, she said, and that was plenty creepy. “These cops are insane. If you think those assholes at the district are stupid and ruthless, wait’ll you get a load of the LAPD!”
A few days later, she was back in OC and called me from her home. She was upset about LA and about the district. “Things suck,” she said.
And they do.
Oh, and, by the way, welcome back! —CW
