Trustee Fuentes picks cherries with his ears

cherry-pick: to select the best or most desirable from

At Monday's big powwow among the various "constituent groups" of the district, Barbara Beno, President of the ACCJC, gave a Powerpoint presentation in which she spelled out the nature of accreditation (the presentation was entitled "What Every Board Should Know"). Her presentation was made that night as part of an effort to facilitate overcoming problems that the Accreditation agency (i.e., ACCJC) found with our two colleges. Foremost among them were (a) trustee micromanagement and (b) an institutional climate of fear and despair.

Below, I present two audio posts. The first is a series of excerpts from Ms. Beno's presentation. I'm afraid that it is a bit choppy, in part because I worked from an incomplete recording. Still, by listening to this post, you will get a pretty fair sense of what she came to communicate.

That audio post is followed by another: Trustee Fuentes' remarks in response to Beno's presentation. As you'll hear, Mr. Fuentes seemed to find in Beno's presentation an emphasis that, arguably, she did not give, for, though she said virtually nothing about the board's "independence," Fuentes seems to suggest that it is the board's independence that she came to emphasize.

Judge for yourself.

ACCJC President Barbara Beno (excerpts from her presentation):

(about 5 minutes)

Trustee Tom Fuentes (responding to Beno's presentation):

(about 1 1/2 minutes)