Last Wednesday, at 2:00, Chancellor Mathur met with the School of Humanities & Languages at IVC. Now, it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that Raghu meets with Divisions/Schools for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to get leadership cred with Dave Lang and the other trustees.
Nevertheless, I show up to this thing, and I’m sitting there with the new and totally untenured guy, plus three or four female faculty—I’ll call ‘em the “Girl Scouts,” ‘cause they’re pretty dutiful.
I guess women are more dutiful then men when it comes to School meetings. Most of the time, when I attend an H&L meeting, I’m the only guy in the room, or very nearly so.
For about ten minutes, me ‘n’ the new guy and the Girl Scouts are just twiddling thumbs. I start looking at the door. But then, finally, Raghu shows, with Glenn in tow.
So, there we are: the dean, four H&L faculty (out of twenty-five or so), and Raghu & Glenn, sitting together in a goddam circle. The dean gets the new guy to explain about the new Religious Studies courses he’s written. That’s good for maybe 1 minute. After that, Raghu gives his standard speech about how he meets with all the schools and divisions.
Then he says: “Is there anything you’d like to share?”
Silence.
Right about then, Lisa, the chair of the English Department, joins the meeting, and she’s got something on her mind. According to the rules, she says, there’s no reassigned time, and so she’s gotta teach a full load plus all this chair stuff. Somebody’s got to do it, and it’s her turn.
As English chair, she’s gotta schedule and staff and evaluate part-timers and mentor them and who-knows-what-else! Plus: how’s she supposed to evaluate part-timers who are teaching when she teaches?
Chairs get a stipend, but them are measly bucks, which makes sense, because they’re for ten hours per month.
TEN HOURS PER MONTH? ARE YOU KIDDING?
This reassigned time ban, she says, is “completely unworkable.” Under the existing circumstances, the English chair job “simply can’t be done.”
Well, Raghu asked for sharing, and he got sharing.
Lisa made her points calmly, professionally. But if you know the Gooster at all, then you know that he flat hates women, especially women who’ve got something to say and they’re saying it to him. So, as Lisa ticks off her points, Raghu’s ears turn redder and redder until they're spurting blood across the room.
Then Jeannie says, “Yeah, the chair of Languages has the same problem.” To be a chair, she says, you’ve gotta be a martyr. You end up shortchanging your students, cuz something’s gotta give.
Mathur can hardly stand it. He’s got women coming at him from left and right. Oh, the indignity!
—But, for now, he holds his temper. He explains that this “reassigned time” business is a union issue, that he’s working with the union president, and they’ll be “collecting data.” Plus: lots of us (he means RAGHU) put in time “above and beyond the call of duty.”
—Not that he’s refusing to talk about this issue. “I’m open to the whole topic,” he purrs.
Open? OK, so Lisa pursues the matter. She reminds him that he was among those who advocated eliminating reassigned time. OK, fine. “So how is this supposed to work?” she asks.
He doesn’t answer the question. He’s got no ideas. We’ll be gathering data, he says. “I’m keeping an open mind.”
Then Brenda brings up another problem. There’s this new practice: when enrollments in part-timers’ classes fall below 22, they’re paid proportionally. Thus, in a class with only 17 students, the instructor is paid 17/22 of regular pay.
Others join the chorus of complaint. We seem to be alone in adopting this peculiar practice, they say, and so we’re losing part-timers to other colleges. “Let’s do what is ethical and good.”
Mathur offers: “We’re not violating the contract, are we? So what’s the problem?”
Glenn enters the fray. He explains that there’s the “humanistic” side and there’s the “business” side of the issue. During a time of declining enrollment, the business side is important. We’ve either gotta offer part-timers courses under these unattractive “contract” terms, or we’ve gotta offer them nothing.
Mathur, who makes about a quarter million dollars a year, explains that he is not “philosophically opposed” to keeping courses that fall below 22. But he fails to say what, if anything, he might do about “contract pay” for part-timers.
Someone notes that writing courses are capped at 25. And that means that, even when they are full, they can easily drop below the magic number, and then the “contract pay” business kicks in. That’s “unfair,” she says.
Steam starts whistling out of Raghu’s crimson ears. Didn’t he just say he was “open”? What is WITH these women!
Lisa raises the issue of summer. Chairs have duties during the summer, but they receive no compensation.
Glenn and Raghu commence blathering. One of ‘em refers to when they were a chair. So Lisa asks: OK, when you guys were a chair, what did YOU do?
For a moment, the two just stare into space.
But Raghu coughs up an answer: Well, he got a stipend. But that was in the old days, before summer stipends and such were eliminated. “I worked within the system,” says Raghu.
Yeah. But the new system “isn’t working well for me,” says Lisa. How are we supposed to make this work—without a summer stipend, without reassigned time?
At this point, Mathur’s temper begins to show: “I gave you my answer,” he declares, a tad too emphatically. “No system is a panacea!” he adds, grumpily.
Panacea? In Raghu World, evidently, to find fault is to demand perfection.
Raghu next asserts that reassigned time was eliminated because it is “expensive.”
DON’T THINK SO: In reality, in 1997-8, during its corrupt years, the Faculty Association secured the elimination of reassigned time for everyone but union officers. The Old Guard rejected reassigned time, not because it was expensive, but because it was a “scandalous system for the favored few,” or so said Bill Heffernan at board meeting (8/97).
During the same meeting, Tony Garcia declared that “the community should erect a statue to [Raghu] for his courage” in “condemn[ing] the obscene and immoral practice of release time.” Obscene? Immoral? Yes. According to the Old Guard, teachers should teach. It is “immoral” for teachers to administrate.
When Raghu became interim President of IVC in 1997, he had been the chair of his school for years. He received 80-100% reassigned time.
Suddenly, Raghu’s phone starts playing Bach’s Minuet in G. He inspects it and then shuts it off. Meanwhile, Lisa presses for an answer. What about these problems? she asks. What can we do about them? Things aren’t working now, that’s for sure.
“I gave you my answer,” says Raghu, peevishly. Besides, he says, making sacrifices “all comes with the territory.” “I’m listening, I’m open,” he adds.
So what. “Something needs to be done to make [the system] more reasonable,” respond the Girl Scouts.
“Nobody has all the answers,” responds Raghu. He commences speechifyin’. He asks a rhetorical question: how come faculty don’t come to board meetings and tell the trustees “Thank you”?
Raghu begins to describe his heroic labors on behalf of the colleges. He portrays himself as going up against miserly trustees. They don’t want to use basic aid money for ongoing expenses. But there’s a big problem: we’re $700-800 million short of what we’ll need to carry out the master plan.
Lisa asks: would the board support a bond measure?
Raghu yammers about that for a while. He seems to say that he’s trying to get the board to see that, sooner or later, they’ll have to pursue that option. I’m “trying to raise their awareness,” he says.
Lisa leaves. She’s got a kid to raise.
Frank shows up. He says, “I don't know what you’ve been talking about, but I think we need to do something to adequately support department chairs!”
