Nits better left unpicked, deals better made in the sunshine

☛
(The Holocaust denier resigned, only to be replaced by TOM FUENTES, hater of Spain, contemner of faculty, prayer of prayers.)

1. Consultation, Schmonsultation

As you know, faculty in the SOCCCD tend to complain about the administration & trustees’ failure to consult with them. And no wonder. Remember the faculty lawsuit, a couple of years ago, over the district's unilateral imposition of a new faculty hiring policy? The courts voided that policy. Tsk-tsk.

SOCCCD faculty tend to complain about board secrecy, too. Again, no wonder. A few years ago, owing to some faculty initiative, the courts ultimately ordered the SOCCCD board to cease its "persistent and defiant misconduct" secrecywise. (See sidebar.)

At the time, the district's lawyer was named "Covert." I kid you not.

But, hey, faculty get pesky about secrecy and failures of consultation everywhere, not just in the South OC. Take the profs at UC Berkeley (“Cal”)…

From yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle: BERKELEY
UC faculty critical of BP deal: Professors rail on lack of transparency, academic freedom, by Rick DelVecchio.

UC Berkeley's $500 million energy research deal with oil giant BP took a pounding at a faculty forum Thursday, with a host of speakers critical of the unprecedented partnership—some bitingly so.

The forum, sponsored by Cal's Academic Senate, was the first gathering of campus promoters, skeptics and curious onlookers since the deal was announced on Feb. 1.
The result was a spirited exchange that drew more than 250 people and shifted the focus of the energy deal from the scientific challenge and social mission of creating alternate fuel sources to what it means for the values and culture of the world's top public university.

The deal provides for $50 million a year in research spending…The money will fund a broad range of research aimed at creating new technologies for carbon-neutral liquid fuels, such as ethanol. The sponsors stressed Thursday that the research will include a parallel analysis of the environmental and socio-economic problems related to a major shift in fuel consumption patterns worldwide.

The meeting put top university officials, including Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, on the defensive as critics said the administration has jeopardized faculty trust by failing to adequately explain the implications of the complex deal for academic freedom and for the university's image.

Anthropology Professor Paul Rabinow cited the 1998-2003 research deal between Swiss biotech firm Novartis and Cal's Department of Plant and Microbial Biology. That deal, which provided for $5 million a year from 1998 to 2003, was intended to develop genetically engineered foods. It sparked campus protests and was criticized at the time by faculty members who felt it was implemented without collegial debate.

"The way the university handled it was completely, recklessly stupid," Rabinow said.
The same mistakes are being repeated with the BP deal, he said.

"It should have been transparent, there should have been consultation," he said. "This is silly. You should have given us more time to debate this."

Art history Professor Tim Clark voiced deep misgivings about the lack of discussion on the conflicts that may occur in a research agreement between a public university and private corporation.

"The tension between one imperative and the other ought to be explicit in whatever deal the university strikes," he said. "The deal ought to be open to inspection."

Faculty governance should have a place of power in the arrangement, he said….


2. Nits better left unpicked

Lately, the state's community college system has been getting some seriously bad press. The system oughta hire a good PR firm, if you ask me. They wouldn't have to lie or hire Tiger Woods or anything! Just wave the facts under people's noses, is all.

From yesterday’s Sacramento Bee:
Nitpicking community colleges, by Dan Walters.

California's highways are congested and crumbling, its prisons are overcrowded and close to being taken over by a federal judge, its elementary and high schools do only a mediocre job of educating students, and its parks and other public facilities are in ill repair.

Does anything work very well in California anymore? Yes. Its three systems of public higher education still provide high-quality and relatively low-cost instruction—not perfectly, certainly, but more efficiently and effectively than most other big public programs.

The state's 109 community colleges are an especially praiseworthy institution, providing both college level classes and technical, job-related training at very low cost to students—their fees are the lowest in the country—and to taxpayers.

…[W]hile community colleges are educating the equivalent of 1.2 million students for $6 billion, a much-troubled prison system is spending $8 billion-plus a year on 170,000 inmates, seven times as much per capita. …K-12 schools have six times as many students as community colleges, but cost us 10 times as much.

Walters goes on to ask: “Given these positive facts about our community colleges, why do so many folks want to beat up on them?” It’s a case, writes Walters, of blaming the system “for circumstances that are beyond their reasonable control.”

Check it out.