Abject finger-pointage

1. THEY MONITORED THE SITUATION. OK, so today’s the first day of the semester, which is bad enough, but then, at about 7:15 this morning, I get this peevish call from The Rebellious One.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“You won’t believe this! G*d d***it! Jesus ******* ******!” she said (more or less).

The Reb’s the chair of her department. Turns out the CEC temporaries that her department depends on weren’t ready. She and her colleagues had students, but no classrooms. She was seriously screwed.

We’ve chronicled the sorry state of the CEC shitboxes on these pages. Thankfully, a while back, the board granted “basic aid” funds for replacement shitboxes. Great! So when the spring semester ended, the old temps were summarily knocked down. We smiled. “Things are lookin’ up!” We stomped upon the wreckage.

But then nothing happened. “What gives?” we said. Then, finally, just a couple of weeks ago, workers put up the new temps in a big hurry. But they didn’t finish ‘em.

That brings me to last week. Assurances were being thrown around by administration that the new temporaries would be ready to go by Monday. “We’re on top of it!” they said.

Well, we’ve heard that before.


The thing that irks everybody is that administration had a whole goddam summer to put up these buildings. How come they were built at the last minute?

No doubt that’s somebody else’s fault.

Plus, how can it be that nobody was informed that there might be a problem with the new buildings until the first day of classes?

Somebody’s f*ckin’ up bigtime.

Today, various administrators, faculty, and classified employees worked hard to redirect students to new rooms, and they did a great job. They deserve a lot of credit. But Jeez.

At about 3:30 this afternoon, President Roquemore sent out a memo about this “crisis.” He flat blamed the contractor. He took no responsibility at all.

But why did his crew wait until the very last minute to tell affected faculty and deans that they had no rooms? Well, says Rocky, it’s like this:

Last week it was becoming apparent that we could not trust that the electricity would be connected in time for Monday classes. Director of Facilities and Maintenance, Wayne Ward, ordered a back-up generator to provide the electricity if needed. The contractor assured us that we would be able to connect it to the buildings if needed. Wayne worked through the weekend to monitor the progress of the contractor. The contractor’s electrician did not show up over the weekend to install grounding rods that are required before electricity, for any source, can be applied to the building. This rendered the back-up generator useless. In addition, the contractor did not complete required ADA work and then let the crew off work today…On Sunday morning, Wayne informed me that the grounding rods would not be installed and that the generator could not be used.

This is unmitigated finger-pointage. To hear Glenn tell it, nobody at IVC is responsible. On the contrary, they did what they could to “monitor” progress. They deserve a prize, I guess.

At IVC, there’s lots of grumbling about the “old boys network” that seems always to protect managers who, in some cases, just don’t seem to know what they’re doing. Or worse. (More on that at another time.)

2. CAN I USE GLENN’S TIE? This morning, many instructors ran into yet another SNAFU that affected the classroom. I won’t describe it, cuz I’m not sure who’s responsible, and, for all that I know, the mistake is an uncharacteristic screw-up by a good employee. So forget I even mentioned it. I guess.

But I will mention that, when I visited the restroom this morning, upon washing my hands, I found that there were no paper towels. Had to use my shirt. Jeez. That sucks.

Happens all the time.

3. THE COPS ARE KEY-LESS. Some time after 11:00 this morning, a student popped into my office to tell me that a colleague of mine, Professor L of the English department, was locked out of his classroom and his whole class was sitting on the floor in the hallway like a bunch of hippies or something.

I ran over to B100 and learned that Professor L had called security to get the door unlocked. Guess what? Security didn’t have the key. The lock had been changed, but security (or whoever changes the locks) had failed to provid the dean or the cops with the new key!

Eventually, they got in the room. But c'mon!

4. HERNIATED DESKS. A year ago, we bought a big pile of new desks at IVC. Guess what? Already, the faux wood finish is peeling off of 'em. It's like paper. It's junk. How come we buy junk?


On the other hand, it sure was nice weather today. I'm surprised Glenn and crew didn't take credit for it.

Death in a Tenured Position

by REBEL GIRL
(with apologies to Amanda Cross, who would understand)

Chapter One: the Adventures of a Night Dean

Night was hitting the mat with a mighty thump, falling with a whine. Day doesn't give up easily in these, the last rounds of a brutal slugfest of one long hot Cali summer. The sun still flamed just beyond the rumble of the 405 freeway, where Mr. and Mrs. Sucker were driving home to their special place in hell. But nearby, the parking lots that ringed the local community college were full. The eucalyptus trees were turning into elegant blackened silhouettes, their long leaves like rags against the purpling blue sky.

A quick patrol of the hallways saw students slumped for the evening at their desks, instructors scribbling on the now ubiquitous white boards that had replaced the powdery chalkboards of the past. "Fallopian," wrote one teacher in green pen. "Capital," wrote another. "Writing has shape," declared the handwriting of a snowy-haired woman with steely eyes.

I should be in there, she thought. I am one of them.

But tonight she wasn't; tonight Kit Spark was Night Dean, with keys in her pocket, security numbers on a post-it note and nothing to do except keep the peace for three hours.

Could she do it? How hard could it be?

Brother, she was going to find out all too soon.

Meanwhile, she wondered: How many of those students remembered the orange groves where they now parked their cars? How many faculty remembered for that matter? Early on, still a fresh hire who knew only how to say yes, she once spent an afternoon in the groves with students, raising money by allowing people to pick their own oranges. The students didn't raise much money but they had fun. Late in the afternoon, a woman had driven up and asked if she could pick the orange blossoms. She'd be happy to pay she said. The fragrance reminded her of her childhood in Iran. She went off with armfuls and paid more money than the people who picked the fruit. That must have been ten years ago. Back then Kit looked like one of them – a young woman in blue jeans, squinting in the sunlight. Now, still in blue jeans, but wearing a black classic blazer, (she thought of the coat as her concession to meetings, as a kind of professional shield that she wielded.) Kit was who she was, no doubt about it. A middle-aged woman whose gray hair surprised her.

Kit exited one building and headed for another, the A-400 building where the bio teachers resided. She liked them. They were a resilient humorous bunch you could always depend on. Something about knowing how the body works gave them an edge up on everybody else. Besides, she liked the old stuff they kept around, the skeletons and bird nests, the fossils. She wished she had something like that in her classroom, but what would an English teacher do with old bones?

The quad was deserted except for some furtive smokers and equally furtive rabbits that hopped between the bushes and grass. The evening was warm. The students wore shorts, tank tops, sandals. September in Southern California. What was it her Midwestern aunt had called it? Indian summer.

Kit glanced up at the termite-ridden clock tower that loomed over the quad. It too would go the way of the orange groves soon, its square orange face, its blocky tinker toy design destined for the scrap heaps of the Inland Empire. Last year, the clock tower was the gathering place for dissent on the previously quiet campus as its platform faced the bare windows of office of the college president. But now the clock was doomed, festooned with plastic yellow tape that warned people away, and the nearby presidential windows were shrouded with drapery. Dissent had faded over time, over the summer.


Or had it?

Something caught her eye as Kit walked closer to the tower. A figure crouched in the shadows of the platform. She heard whispering, saw a beam of light flash on and off.

Just last Spring this section of campus had been cordoned off for hours when the college president found a suspicious package. The Bomb Squad was called. Students, staff and faculty were swept into the parking lot and kept there. A bomb-detecting robot seized the object and removed it to the special bomb-transportation truck. X-rays revealed no explosive device. The president's "bomb" was a sandbag, a leftover from a video production. Kit marveled at the man's suspicion, his paranoia. She thought his fear said more about him and his own predilection for violence then it did about his foes on the faculty and staff.

Kit glanced around for security, the friendly fellas packing heat who rode around the campus in a fleet of unlikely but swift golf carts, her backup. They were nowhere to be seen.

The night had officially fallen in the few minutes that had passed, a bit too quickly for the floodlights, still tuned to the length of a summer's day, to click on.

It was dark and Kit felt fear – not from the college president, a man she knew had driven home to his mansion in a gated community hours earlier, but an old fear, one that her Midwestern aunt, on the plains of Kansas, might have recognized.

(Be on the lookout for Chapter 2!)