The Year of Living Stupidly: The Dissent’s Seriously Ersatz “Semester in Review” by the Scooby Gang

[From DISSENT 58, 5/16/01]

“Voulez-vous couchet avec moi, c’est soi?”

“Nope.”

L’affaire journaliste

Late last spring, two faculty members were called on the administrative carpet for alleged “professional misconduct.” Their crime? Criticizing a student-written editorial published in the school newspaper, The Voice. The complaining student scribbler, a fellow evidently wholly unfamiliar with the rights and responsibilities of the fourth estate (despite his role as a newspaper editor), charged that, in expressing their criticisms, the profs (neither of whom were instructors of his) interfered with his right to express his abject cluelessisms.

One dean wisely declined to pursue the complaint, citing the faculty members’ First Amendment rights while, across campus, another dean began to assemble a guillotine plus the machinery of an “official inquiry” where, he promised, “other charges would be brought.”

After the faculty member’s lawyer contacted the dean, once, twice, almost three times, the threatened inquiry silently died of neglect—though, as happy testament to his contrition or embarrassment—or maybe complete unprofessionalism—the dean has since spoken not a single word about the threatened tribunal or, indeed, the disposition of this supposedly epoch-shattering matter.

Perhaps his silence is linked to the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the student.

Je m’appelle “Mud”

“C’est plus qu’un crime, c’est une faute!”

—A French saying

Merd! Where has that fiery editor-in-chief and staunch defender of student rights gone to? While one might guess that he transferred to another college as do so many, reports have it that, in fact, he is living avec père et mère in Santa Ana. And was his disappearance linked to the roughly simultaneous disappearance of computer equipment and monies of the student newspaper? (You read right, mon amie!) We’ll never know because, sources explain, the Mathurian régime declined to pursue the theft, preferring sub-carpet sweepage to scrupulous super-carpet displayage. Voila!

Pourquoi?, you ask. We don’t really know. But please remember that the skedaddler was, during his inglorious tenure, an enthusiastic defender of the Mathurian junta and, indeed, a happy recipient of gratuitous Gooian perks. In fact, the very editorial that drew the criticism of the two profs attacked rebel faculty and praised administrative crack-downs on freedom of expression. Sacre bleu!

Meanwhile, the same dean who so passionately criticized the profs for “interfering” with the student newspaper has been spotted lately in The Voice’s newsroom, cavorting in an 800 pound gorilla suit, and haranguing the student advisor. C’est la guerre!

If it’s Brown, flush it

Tolerance is another word for indifference.

—Somerset Maugham

As you may know, Ken Brown, a long-time IVC philosophy part-timer and bonhomme, has established an enviable reputation as an instructor and colleague of the highest order. As was explained last year during a tense Humanities and Languages School meeting, he is in fact our best philosophy instructor, or so said the sole philosophy full-timer at that memorable gathering. Plus he has made numerous valuable contributions outside the classroom.

Even so, he has now been fired, evidently owing to alleged rudeness or something. He thus joins a growing list of proud firees who…

—Wait a minute. This episode concerns a part-timer. Who cares?

Evidently, not the full-time faculty, who have done virtually nothing about the situation. I guess they shot their wad (an unimpressive little package) a year ago, when the regime went after Andrew T, that noted raconteur, rabble-rouser, and similarly excellent fellow.

Faculty silence speaks volumes. No wonder the Dissent went into hibernation. It shall do so again, tout à l’heure.

That special litigation magnetism

Last week, the district was served with a spanking new lawsuit regarding Board Policy 8000, that remarkable testament to authoritarianism and illiteracy, alternatively known as the “Speech and Advocacy Policy.” As you may know, this sorry doctrine is the product of an equally sorry saga: back in ’98, IVC President Raghu P. Mathur, faced with irksomely decorous student protests, decided to crack down, à la the Gipper, by arbitrarily restricting student speech; this inspired a lawsuit. (The students had the nerve to suggest that our Accreditation was threatened by the actions of the Board and Mathur, its sycophantic lackey. Mr. Goo thus clamped down on student protests, using another administrator, who was later fired. Not long thereafter, the college was indeed placed on the Accrediting agency’s “warning” list.)

That suit led to the adoption of a stupid Speech and Advocacy policy that was successfully challenged by students in Federal Court. The district responded by writing a new policy from scratch, a 30-page monstrosity that has simultaneously warmed the hearts of lawyers and stoked the indignation of disbelieving Times columnists, among others. But the Board Majority, led by the Education Alliance’ Nancy “Poo-pants” Padberg, took no notice. They happily adopted the thing and ran off to their Rush Limbaugh listening club.

Stay tuned.

Oh yeah. Last week, down at the district, I witnessed the serving of the papers for this suit. Minutes earlier, in BGS, we ran into an administrator who, referring to Raghu Mathur (who, these days, acts as a Vice Chancellor on the side), said, “At least we only have to live with the guy once a week.” We laughed.

When we went up to the 3rd floor of the Saddleback Library, lookin’ for the Chancellor, we found Raghu, hidden away in his closet. He looked like the goddam Maytag repairman, so lonely was he, contemplating his wash and dreaming of customers who never materialized. We made a sad face and left him there, heading for Chili’s for a brewsky.

The Dean’s List

While Santa is our favorite list maker, dispensing goodies to good girls ‘n’ boys and lumps of coal to naughty ones, lately we’ve become fascinated by another compiler of names, this one much closer to home and sans his own holiday. A dean, it appears, has been making a list—and we can only wish he had, like Santa, checked it twice before submitting it to the local press for review. An examination of the document (snagged by the Dissent editorial staff) suggests that the dean and/or his colleagues have submitted the material not only to the school newspaper but also the Times and the OC Register. The OC Weekly, much accursed for its coverage of all things Districtular, and the similarly accursed and celebrated SOCCCD Dissent, were inexplicably left off the fellow’s distribution list!

The listifying dean has, apparently, spent much time down at the Registrar of Voters Office, compiling a list of what he believes to be faculty and staff who were fiscally active in last year’s effort to elect Non-Neanderthal Trustees. A cursory Saint Nickular double-check of the list would have revealed discrepancies in numbers and names as well as other more disturbing disparities. A little thought might have also revealed some inherent problems with the very notion of a dean’s list of faculty and staff’s civic activity. Consider:

Problem One: Over 20 boys and girls on the list are under the dean’s direct supervision. One has to wonder (a few lawyers already are wondering) how their inclusion on the list has played and will play into faculty evaluations, which, as you know, are penned by the dean!

Problem Two: Some people listed are neither faculty nor staff. These few are—STUDENTS! While the public might express only mild disapproval of deans tracking the off-campus Constitutionally-protected political activities of faculty and staff, the tracking of student activities is another matter entirely. Indeed, this is the wrinkle that the local press usually finds most interesting—as do the students who made this dean’s list.

(The matter of the dean’s list was recently brought to the attention of the Acting Chancellor by the union Pres. The Chanc seemed unable to see the problem, and indicated simply that he was leaving for his vacation. Oh, good.)

Lawyers, Guns and Money

In graduate school, this intrepid future Dissent writer learned that a gun introduced in the first act must go off in the third. [Editor’s note: that was not a threat.] So offered Anton Chekhov, I believe. So far, no firearms have appeared in this issue of Dissent, but lawyers aplenty have and one wonders whether the self-declared fiscal conservatives who oversee our once-fine colleges have taken note. As recent SOCCCD history attests, a lawyer who appears in the first act merits fees in the third—and, so far, it’s the district that doin’ all the paying.

Of particular concern should be the behavior of one particular dean who has yet to read or perhaps needs to review the faculty contract, the district sexual harassment policy, and the fundamentals of Equal Employment. —No, the scandalous vulnerability attending part-time employment status does not trump state law nor collective bargaining, as any good labor attorney will tell you.

Lebow takes a bow; Sherry takes a powder

David Lebow, an official of the California Teachers Association, has for years helped shepherd the Faculty Association out of the valley of ludicrous Loutery and into the valley of decorous Decency. For his trouble, he was nominated for a CTA WHO award, which he won.

We’re told that, at the ceremony, when the time came to stick Lebow with his pin (or whatever), Sherry M-W walked out of the room, sticking out her tongue and seething humidly under her polyester pantsuit.

We don’t know if it’s true, but it oughta be.

What else? Dunno. Gotta go. —The SG