I'm shocked, shocked!

SOME READERS have asked to see the “district/trustee RESPONSE” to the Accreditors that suddenly materialized at Monday’s meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees.

Well, here it is (at the end of this post; click on the images to make them larger).

Background:

As you know, teams at Saddleback College and Irvine Valley College have been working for months now—in accordance with Accreditation guidelines, which require openness, broad input, and careful documentation—to write the latest in a series of reports to the accrediting commission. The accreditors have asked that the colleges take steps to address such problems as continuing trustee meddling and the prevailing atmosphere of “despair" (caused largely by the policies and actions of the Chancellor and board).

These latest reports are due to the Accreditors in October, but anything sent to them must be approved by the board in September, for the board meets only once a month. That's why the teams provided their drafts this month.

On Monday (see Machinations SNAFU!), at the “eleventh hour,” this accusatory and undocumented response appeared, without warning. Further, Chancellor Mathur, with typical ruthlessness and indifference to process, ordered the teams at Saddleback and IVC simply to “incorporate” the unvetted document into the Accreditation Focused Midterm Reports that they have just finished writing.

During Monday's discussion, trustee Milchiker asked who authored the Response. She received no clear answer. We still don't know exactly who was involved in writing it, beyond Mathur. (Based on the character of the board discussion, it seems likely that trustee Wagner had a hand in writing it.)

I present the 7-page RESPONSE below. Just click on the image, and it should enlarge sufficiently that you’ll be able to read it.

WATCH THE DISCUSSION:

You can actually watch Monday night’s discussion by going to Board Video.

Click on the link; then, at the district site, click on "video," at the bottom right. Look for the “jump to” area. Jump to the section of the meeting devoted to item 7.1. Look just below the video image. You’ll see a timer. Using that timer (and manipulating the green slider) you should be able to go directly to the following points in the discussion:

2:27
Chancellor Mathur’s introduction (to 7.1)

2:29
Trustee Don Wagner’s support of the Response document

2:30:45
Trustee John Williams’ support

2:35
Randy Anderson (representing Saddleback College’s report), offering concerns about the response.

2:38:36
Mary Williams (also representing Saddleback College’s report), offering further concerns.

2:41:08
Irvine Valley College Academic Senate President Wendy Gabriella, offering detailed concerns.

2:50:15
Board President Dave Lang responding (especially to Wendy)

2:52:30
Wagner again

3:01:24
Mathur. At 3:04:45, Mathur explains that IVC's example of Chancellor micromanagement (the goals he gave IVC's President) is "shocking."

3:08:57
Trustee Marcia Milchiker offers concerns about the “response.” At 3:11:07, she rejects some elements of the “response,” despite its supposedly representing the view of the board. At 3:11:50 she asks, “Who wrote it?” She gets no clear answer.

3:19
Mathur decries mistreatment of the board at the hands of Accred report authors.

3:22
Milchiker worries about impression of “continuing dissention” that including the “response” will leave.

3:22:45
Trustee Nancy Padberg complains that the board “minority” was not invited to participate in the writing of the “response.”

3:25:30
Wendy notes that the “response” obviously fails to represent all seven trustees.

Labor Day: to be of use

MONDAY IS LABOR DAY. The first Labor Day was celebrated one hundred and twenty-five years ago, on Tuesday, September 5, 1882. The Central Labor Union in New York City organized the first commemoration, a parade and a picnic featuring speeches by union leaders. 20,000 workers filled the streets in a parade up Broadway. Their banners read "Labor creates all wealth," and "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for recreation!" In 1894, Congress made Labor Day a national holiday.

In lieu of a parade, here is a poem by Marge Piercy.

To be of use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Ruben Salazar, presente

Daniel Hernandez's most excellent blog reminded me that today is anniversary of the 1970 Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. When the LA Sheriffs brutally put down the demonstration, it resulted in the death of Ruben Salazar, the noted Los Angeles Times journalist. He was struck in the head by a tear gas canister which was fired into the Silver Dollar Bar in Whittier.

Photos from the UCLA Digital Library (Ruben Salazar, above and the Silver Dollar Bar, below.)

You Asked For It

TAKE YOUR MIND OFF Monday's board meeting and bake some of these.

From Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

cupcake recipe
makes 12 cupcakes
Ingredients

• 1 cup soy milk
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, chocolate extract, or more vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder, Dutch-processed or regular
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a muffin pan with paper or foil liners.
2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, vanilla extract, and other extract, if using, to the soy milk mixture and beat until foamy. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat until no large lumps remain (a few tiny lumps are OK).
3. Pour into liners, filling three-quarters of the way. Bake 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

Variation: for Cookies ‘n’ Cream Cupcakes: Mix into cupcake batter 1 cup (about 10 cookies; chop first, then measure) of coarsely chopped vegan chocolate cream-filled sandwich cookies (like Newman-O’s). Bake as directed. Using regulation Nabisco Oreos will disqualify this cupcakes from its vegan status.

Fluffy Vegan Buttercream Frosting

Makes: 4 cups
Ingredients

• 1/2 cup nonhydrogenated shortening
• 1/2 cup nonhydrogenated margarine, we use Earth Balance
• 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted if clumpy
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup plain soy milk or soy creamer

Instructions
1. Beat the shortening and margarine together until well combined and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes.
2. Add the vanilla and soy milk, and beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until fluffy.

Variation: for Cookies ‘n’ Cream Frosting: Stir into frosting 1/2 cup (about 5 cookies; mash first, then measure) of finely mashed vegan chocolate cream-filled sandwich cookies (like Newman-O’s). Frost cupcakes generously, and top each cupcake with half of a sandwich cookie.

You can purchase the vegan ingredients such as Earth Balance margarine and soy creamer at Mother's Market or Whole Foods.

*No, Rebel Girl isn't a vegan, she just eats like one.

Monday’s board meeting: machination SNAFU

LAST NIGHT'S nasty little meeting (of the South Orange County Community College District board of trustees) started with Trustee Bill Jay’s bizarre “invocation,” which was actually several minutes of amorphous blather about—no, not the Lord and his benighted creation—but Bill’s 38 years with the district and other decidedly worldly matters. Eventually, the fellow did get back to pious invokery. I do believe Bill then asked the Lord to “serve the students.” But surely that can’t be right.

Soon, trustee John Williams was presented with a tiny toy gun (well, I couldn’t really make it out) for his 15 years of service as a trustee. Irvine Valley College’s new VPI, Craig Justice, was introduced. He beamed.

Trustee Nancy Padberg, pushing for greater transparency, made a stink about some requests for conference money. She seemed to be sniffing around for evidence of John Williams’ notorious spendthriftian junketeering. (The fellow is shameless.)

Evidently, one of the conferences will be held in Canada. So which trustee was planning to go way the hell up there? Inquiring minds wanted to know. Well, it appeared that we just weren’t gonna find out.

Nancy noted, with interest, the assiduous efforts being made to keep this Canada-bound trustee's identity secret. Eventually, Williams got all huffy and brayed loudly that the board was “wasting time” on this issue when more expensive items remained to be discussed! He snorted. Board Prez Dave Lang then said he had no problem with more transparency about who seeks to go to these conferences, given that, as he said, trustees should be “applauded” for going to these darned things.

Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no.


BOARD POLICY REVISIONS:

Eventually, the board got to item 5.2: board policy revisions. There were 32 policies to consider. Now, these policies have appeared on the last two agendas for review, but, last night, they were finally up for approval. For whatever reason, Nancy and Bill waited until last night to voice any objections to them. Nancy wanted to consider each of the 32 policies individually. Bill complained that he didn’t even know who wrote the policies and he was troubled that trustees had had no input in their production.

Lang then explained that this was the third meeting in which these policies have appeared and, as far as he knew, he was the only trustee to offer input concerning them. He plainly took offense at the suggestion that trustees had had no opportunity for input.

But it does appear that Chancellor Mathur, the district's putative chief, runs the place like a partisan sycophantic weasel. That is, he runs the district with his four trustee patrons—Lang, Wagner, Fuentes, and Williams—and he pretty much leaves Jay, Milchiker, and Padberg out of the loop. For what it’s worth, I was at the previous board meetings, and I never got the sense that there was a clear opportunity for trustees to discuss these drafts.

And shouldn’t that be made clear? I mean, obviously, these policies are bound to generate some controversy. And they’re important. Shouldn’t the Chancellor or the Board Prez say, “OK, we’ve had time to look at these, and, next month, we’re gonna vote on ‘em, so do you have any input?”

Mathur just sat during the meeting, twitching his nose.

If you’ve attended board meetings, then you know that Williams, et al., routinely suggest that, if trustees have a question with an agenda item, then they should contact the chancellor ASAP and get their questions answered that way, privately, not during board meetings—which are liable to get bogged down with details. Harrumph!

On occasion, some trustees (Padberg, anyway) have responded to this advice with hostility, hinting that they are uncomfortable communicating with the Chancellor, cuz, well, he’s a lying, scheming, sycophantic weasel. I do believe that Nancy has said so—which, I must say, shows a degree of discernment in the woman that is far from contemptible.

Last night, Nancy seemed to say that there’s too much business being conducted between certain trustees and the Chancellor behind closed doors. The board, she seemed to say, should be engaging in discussion with each other—i.e., during meetings—rather than engaging in private “Q and A” sessions with the chancellor.

She motioned to table the “board policy” item. That failed.

Bill Jay stressed that we will be “living with” these policies for many years, and so it’s important to get them right. There should be a discussion, not just a vote of approval, he said.

Nancy then opined that it was “shameful” to push through important items without first gaining board input.

That set Don Wagner off. You know how he gets. I got off a nice pic of him fuming and spewing. Check it out.

In the end, thanks to Lang’s swing vote, the board voted 4/3 to separate the parts of the item—i.e., to consider each of the 32 board policies separately. Most policies passed unanimously, though Nancy voted against a few of ‘em. Maybe Bill did too.

Naturally, watching the discussion of these items was like watching paint dry.

THROUGH SONG AND DANCE:


After a brief break, Park Ranger Bob Kopecky and his crew made a presentation regarding the recent opening of ATEP in Tustin. Bob showed lovely pictures of the new facilities. He showed charts and graphs. He explained about the ongoing conversations with potential partners Camelot and the “Young Americans,” who, he said, are “spreading the American spirit around the world through song and dance.”

I looked up at him. Was he kidding?

He was not kidding.

The ATEP crew showed a recent KOCE TV news story about ATEP, which was pretty spiffy.

Wagner was curious about Saddleback College’s relative lack of presence at ATEP. What was that all about? Evidently, the problem boiled down to IVC folks carping that some of the courses that Saddleback had proposed would have competed with IVC courses.

Dean Peterson had lots of good chirpy news about the courses slated for next semester.


THE “PEACE DIVIDEND”:

Trustee Tom Fuentes was quiet last night, but he did offer some interesting remarks about the opening of ATEP. He noted that Saint Reagan had “turned the first spade of earth” at Saddleback College back in 1967. And now, thanks to the “peace dividend”—afforded by His Ronaldness—we’ve been able to close military bases (such as the Tustin helicopter station) and build our next college campus.

“I’m very proud of that,” he said.

THE BLOODY ACCREDITATION SHOOT-OUT:

That finally brought us to the item (7.1), which concerned drafts of the Accreditation (midterm) reports. As you know, the Accreditors have dinged us badly—about, you know, trustee micromanagement, administrative instability, the climate of despair—and now we’re supposed to report on our progress in dealing with these problems. A team at Saddleback and a team at IVC have been working for many months to pull all sorts of data and input together, and they’ve produced drafts designed to sooth the savage Accreditation breast. The final reports (one per college) are due in two months, and so drafts have been made ready for review for last night's meeting, with the idea that final drafts will be ready for approval next month.

Whew!

So what do Raghu and his merry band of trustees do? At this eleventh hour, they have produced a nasty little document entitled “Response to the November 30, 2006 Progress Visit Report” that seems designed to piss off the Accreds and the various governance groups. Essentially, it is a rant expressing objections by the Board Majority to the accreditation process and to faculty leadership.

Supposedly, it expresses the “district,” i.e., the board, perspective.

Mathur has ordered the colleges to “incorporate” this “district perspective” document (or its contents) in their drafts.

Really.

It’s not clear to me just how long this "district perspective" document has been circulating. Evidently, it has been floating around among trustees for several weeks anyway.

Once again, however, it became clear that the Board Minority (Padberg, Milchiker, Jay) were left out of the loop. Padberg complained that she first saw this document a few days ago. Marcia acknowledged that she had indeed seen this new “district” document weeks ago, but she did not understand its significance (namely, a document expressing the board POV) and so she did not attend to it.

Wagner, for his part, explained that any discussion of the document will have to occur now, since the final drafts of the two college Accreditation reports must be ready by next month’s board meeting.

Saddleback’s Randy Anderson spoke on behalf of the team that had produced the draft for his college. He noted that the new “district” document contains elements that lack documentation. Oddly, the document seems to address issues that concern, not the present Accred demands, but earlier Accred demands. He expressed concern that, by virtue of adding these new elements, the colleges will be failing to “move forward.”

Mary Williams, representing classified employees, shared Randy’s concerns. In developing the draft for Saddleback, she explained, an effort was made to avoid any further visits from the Accreditors. But these new elements, some of which are inaccurate, will just “cause debate.”


WENDY:

Finally, IVC’s Academic Senate Prez, Wendy G, spoke. She said that when, very recently, she first encountered this new document, she was very “disappointed.” A great effort has been made, she said, to avoid “pointing fingers,” but that’s what this document does in spades. Each element of the Accred report, she continued, should be documented. But now, she said, we’re being asked to integrate elements that are not documented. “That’s a big problem.”

Some of the elements of the document, she said, are “petty.” For instance, it complains that faculty leadership talk loudly amongst each other during meetings. (I’ve not encountered this phenomenon at board meetings, and I attend all of them.) If this is a problem, said Wendy, it has never been brought to leadership’s attention. Why does it appear for the first time in this document? The document refers to faculty filing complaints with the State Chancellor’s Office, and yet, in fact, faculty have not filed any such complaints since 2004.

Wagner looked worried.

The document, she continued, complains that faculty “go to the press.” But, said Wendy, if one Googles faculty leader names, “you won’t find” them coming up anywhere. (You will, of course, find the names of certain trustees.)

Finally, she noted that, if some of these new elements are integrated into the existing drafts, it is not clear to her that she, as Academic Senate President, can sign off on the report.

Whoa!

Wendy then dramatically piled each of the exhibits that the district wanted included, one by one. Each one, she noted, had already been included in the existing drafts. (The only exception was a document that had absolutely no relevance or standing.)

That point made Mathur and Co. look like total a**holes.

Lang responded by suggesting that the district (i.e., Mathur and the Board Majority) was not asking that all of this new material be added “verbatim.” All we want, he said, is inclusion of “our views.”

Wagner reacted quickly to that. Wait a minute, he said. As far as he knew, the idea was to include all this stuff verbatim.

Raghu seemed to be smack dab in the middle of a machination SNAFU!

Wagner carped that Randy and Company’s complaints about the new material’s lack of documentation are “very hollow.” He pointed to alleged examples of documentation deficits in the Accred draft for Saddleback College.

Randy then explained that the authors of the existing drafts have followed Accreditation guidelines, implying that inclusion of this material would violate those guidelines.

Raghu snorted that he knows all about Accred guidelines. He scrunched his nose.

At some point, Wagner started to back off. There was talk of some of the principles getting together in the coming weeks to arrive at new content (re the “district” perspective) that would be acceptable to all parties. “Maybe,” said Wagner, this new stuff wouldn’t have to be included at all.


Marcia Milchiker reminded everyone that our goal is to be accredited, and that’s what the existing drafts from the colleges seek. She asked aloud why, at this “eleventh hour,” this new information was being added.

There are some things in the new district document, she said, that she personally did not want in the report to the Accreditors. If, now, we whip up all of this disagreement, we will only be “shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Padberg suggested that perhaps some trustees (namely, Wagner and his ilk) should simply file a “minority report.”

That’s when she made explicit what was implicit in much of the night’s discussion. She said that the “Board Majority” (namely, Lang, Wagner, Fuentes, and Williams) does not “include” the “Board Minority” (namely, Nancy, Marcia, and Bill).

Well, yup.

Wagner blew his cork over that one. There is “no attempt to exclude input from any trustee!” he fumed. (Methinks the fellow doth protest too much!) But it seemed pretty obvious that certain trustees had been very involved in the production of this new document, and, plainly, the “minority” had not been.

John Williams then grabbed his enormous flanks and hopped up on one of his hobbyhorses. Some trustees, he said, just don’t do their homework!

“As a board member, I’m embarrassed,” he said. I heard a whinny.

Wendy then noted that this new document is supposed to represent the district and board perspective. But, obviously, she added, the document fails to represent the views of all seven trustees.

Well, that was about it. In any case, I’m tired of writing about it.

(To view the meeting, go to Board Video.)

Hot Cupcakes to go!

IT'S A WEEK AND A HALF INTO THE NEW SEMESTER and Rebel Girl continues her campaign to have her students write email requests that are, sigh, grammatically correct and absent the annoying "text" abbreviations that have snuck into written English. She explains it's for their own good. That it's part of their writing practice. She explains that they present themselves poorly when they do not.

While she is at it, she is also asking them to avail themselves of their college email accounts for this correspondence in order to prepare for the university (where such compliance is more or less mandatory) and so that Rebel Girl's emailbox will not fill up (as it has done in the past) with mysterious requests from the likes of Muscleman1991 and HotCupcake18.

So far, this campaign is an abject failure.

For those of you who don't know what she is talking about, she offers a helpful albeit brief and incomplete lexicon below.

Professor: prooffesser

Professor Alvarez: pfsr alvarez

Your, as in "your class": ur cls

You and please as in "can you please explain": u pls expln

Please, as in please help!: plz

I, as in "I need to add your class": I nd to ad ur cls

Writing class, as in "I need to add your writing class": writting cls

Missed class, as in "I am sorry I missed class the first day": im sry I msd cls the first day

Why the article "the" gets special treatment at the expense of "sorry" or "missed" or "class," she cannot fathom.

Her middle-aged mind reels whenever she deciphers the collision of language and technology. She mourns for the lost vowels.

Yes, Rebel Girl knows, she's old, very, very old. And she didn't sleep well last night.

You knew all this and more, didn't you?

(Pictured: cookies and cream vegan cupcakes. Yes, vegan.)

Tonight's Board Meeting sucked

Tonight's meeting of the South Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees was pretty ugly. There was open talk of the "Board Majority" (Lang, Wagner, Fuentes, Williams) leaving the "minority" out of the loop.

That's pretty evident. Nancy rolled her eyes. Don sneered.

Mathur was a creep, taking petty shots at faculty leadership. He and his patrons are gonna screw up the latest Accreditation report, looks like, with an incompetent rant--penned by Wagner?--that is supposed to be "incorporated" into the existing reports.

But Wendy G took 'em to task. Made Mathur, Wagner look bad.

I gotta feed the cat. I'll have a real report tomorrow.

Too bad he resigned before he could arrest himself

Pictured: Rebel Girl's Alberto Gonzales car and country deodorizer

Crap in a can

HEY, BALLOONS BURN!

Last Thursday, the OC Reg reported once again on our county’s BIG ORANGE BALLOON (BOB). Now, I like BOB. I’ve been pumping BOB up for months.

Yesterday afternoon, Rebel Girl called me from the very foot of BOB. She and the gang were planning to take a BOB ride, but the wind was up and so BOB was grounded.

Then, last night, I noticed a news story entitled Two people confirmed dead in hot-air balloon tragedy, near Vancouver.

The story is awful. It includes phrases like “big ball of fire.” How can that be?

Shouldn’t these balloons be fireproof? I mean, what with the abject Hindenburgitude of the very idea of a friggin’ BALLOON, I just assumed they were! —But no. Not that one in Vancouver, anyway.

CRAP IN A CAN:

A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my sister at the hospital. Owing to her kidney failure, she was required to drink some crap in a can. She told me about it. “What’s it called?” I asked.

“Beneful, I think,” said Fannie. “Something like that.”

I said: “Beneful? Isn’t that the name of some kinda dog food?”

Turns out this “Beneful” has a truly disgusting taste. It even smells bad. It was stinkin’ up the room.

Fannie’s friend Angela came by and sipped some of it. She gagged. (To be honest, Angela does more than her share of puking and gagging.)

Turns out lots of patients are routinely given this drink along with their lunchtime rubber chicken. It wasn’t just Fannie.

So Fannie told the doctors, “Listen, this Beneful tastes like shit. I guarantee that nobody’s drinking it.”

They stared. They sniffed it. They looked at each other. They stared some more.

Near as I can tell, it was later determined that, probably, lots of patients were dumping their Beneful instead of drinking it, cuz, well, it really does taste like shit. Medically, that was very bad, it seems.

Evidently, nobody had bothered to say that their daily Beneful tasted like shit. Some just held their noses and drank it. Others just passed on it. Nobody in that hospital had put two and two together.

MORE CRAP IN A CAN:

All this talk of post-Hindenburgian burning balloons and idiotic crap-in-can imbibery reminds me of our district and Raghu P. Mathur’s new contract. Somebody told me that there’s a rumor that Raghu has installed bulletproof glass in his office. If so, then at least he understands the absurdity of his new contract. You’ve gotta give him credit for that.

There’s a BOARD OF TRUSTEES meeting tomorrow night.

I perused the agenda.

The trustees are poised to adopt the Final Budget for 2007-2008 and a whole slew of new or improved board policies.

Among “information items”:

• Draft responses to the Accreditation reports (on the two colleges)
• The cost of security cameras

I’ll try to be there. I must be nuts.

Suffragette City

SATURDAY found Rebel Girl and her two men in attendance at the Women For Suffrage Day Celebration at the University Club at UCI.

What's Women For? Let's take a look at the recent write-up in the OC Weekly, written by one Andrew Tonkovich:

Women For is the local Orange County grassroots organization you’d point to if you wanted to mess with people’s minds, and who doesn’t want to do that? This Irvine-based progressive women’s forum hosts monthly public-education meetings in the heart of conservative South County when it isn’t sponsoring the Great American Write-In each spring. Sure, the nice ladies at WF: OC look harmless, but they’ve lately featured films, panels and speakers on global warming (against), voter-rights suppression (against), single-payer health care (for), uniting women in prison with their kids (for) and military recruitment in the schools (against). They pay for all this terrific agit-prop by dressing up once a year, having lunch together, and honoring some of the other riot grrrls and women who live and work in the OC.

This year’s Suffrage Day Celebration honorees include Professor Paula Garb of UC Irvine’s Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, Susan Kopicki of Democracy for America, Jeanette Merrilees of Save Crystal Cove and two Cal State Fullerton political-science majors who persuaded their campus to go sweatshop-free—which means you’ll have to find someplace else to buy a T-shirt sewn by exploited Central American labor. (See, I am messing with you, and it’s fun!) CSUF Criminal Justice Professor Jarett Lovell (host of KUCI-FM’s Justice, or Just Us?) introduces the young women, Caitlyn Whitney and Charlotte Samuels of the Campus Coalition Against Sweatshops, everybody enjoys some bitchen chow courtesy of UCI’s snazzy University Club, and then it’s back to kickin’ right-wing reactionary ass . . . er, I mean educating our citizenry on a variety of important peace, human-rights, social and economic-justice issues.

You get the idea. Some fun if you like this kind of fun. We do. Three years ago the group saw fit to honor Rebel Girl. So there we were, hand shaking with local activists and elected officials: Irvine mayor Beth Krom, former mayor and now councilmember Larry Agran and councilmember Sukhee Kang. (Did Rebel Girl ever tell about the time that she and Red Emma got arrested with Mayor Agran out in Nevada? No? —Another time.)

Anyway, nothing like meeting with a community college professor to make local elected officials gush about the great services the colleges provide the community. Really. That was nice. And when queried about the state of the colleges, (What do you think of Glenn? How's it going over there now? Any, uh, better? Who chose the color for the new Performing Arts Center? ) Rebel Girl took the high road for the most part. Really. Or at least the carpool lane on the high road. It was easy. These are smart people. They don't need Rebel Girl to confirm what they know.

Rebel Girl and her family were joined at their table by SOCCCD trustee Marcia Milchiker, who reported on one thing and another: her recent study abroad trip to Santander, Spain (that hot bed of international terrorism and anti-American sentiment), as well as the board's summer activities and developments. There's a lot going on but Rebel Girl won't get into here. It's not the time and place. Really.

Both Marcia and Rebel Girl were happy to see former IVC VP of Student Services, Pauline Merry in attendance, looking elegant as usual. Pauline, one of the early casualties of the current regime, had gone on to Long Beach City College and now, years later, has retired. She, too, was once an honoree at another Suffrage Day Celebration.

The lunch ended after the pair of students from Cal State Fullerton were honored for their successful campaign to persuade CSUF to drop their contract with exploitive sweatshops which made me want to rush right home and see where her IVC t-shirt was manufactured.

The answer: her Fruit of the Loom heavy cotton t-shirt was "assembled in Mexico of U.S.A. fabric." This means, Red Emma quips, that the fabric made the two minute trip across the border to the maquiladoras or, in American, sweatshops. The irony of American students wearing college apparel assembled by their systematically disenfranchised peers in other countries is pretty heavy.

Anyone want a cause this academic year? Rebel Girl is sure that the two Cal State Fullerton students would be happy to help.

Suffragette City

Amazing Grace Paley: Every Action Was Essential

NOT ONE SEMESTER HAS PASSED since I've begun teaching (remember, I recently received my 15 year pin!) when I have not taught something by Grace Paley or at least referred to her as a writer, poet, activist, teacher, an example to me, at least, of how to be in the world.

Grace Paley died Wednesday at her home in Vermont. She was 84.

I studied with her briefly in 1984 at a writing conference for women at UC Santa Cruz. I was learning how to talk to people then and I made myself talk to her even though I worried about sounding like a fool. I probably did sound like a fool. She was one who perhaps didn't mind fools as long as they were trying. She asked what I was reading, a typical teacher's question for a student.

Raymond Carver, I answered, and you.

Ray Carver, she said, shaking her head, I worry about him, so much darkness, so little hope.

No, I said, the fool slipping away as I began to speak about what I knew well. You need to read his new stuff, this story, "Cathedral." He has hope now, really.

Good, she said, I am glad to hear it. It's about time.

In workshop Paley advised us to tell the stories that only we could tell and to tell them in the ways that only we could tell them. Don't write the stories anyone could write, she said, write what only you can. This from a woman who, as a young student, had studied with W.H. Auden. At the time, she was writing poetry using British English. Auden asked her why.

This is advice I tell my creative writing students – and myself - every semester.

Much of her life's work is found in three collections of short stories. Margalit Fox, in today's New York Times, describes her work this way:

"Ms. Paley was among the earliest American writers to explore the lives of women — mostly Jewish, mostly New Yorkers — in all their dailiness. She focused especially on single mothers, whose days were an exquisite mix of sexual yearning and pulverizing fatigue. In a sense, her work was about what happened to the women that Roth and Bellow and Malamud’s men had loved and left behind."

In the 1980s, Red Emma and I went everywhere Paley was if she was near. We saw her read when we could. Her cloud of white hair, her tennis shoes, her chewing gum. Her stories. Her poems.

Paley described herself as a "somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist" and was a longtime active member of the War Resisters League (WRL), an organization that does exactly what its name suggests. I like how nearly all her obituaries identify her as "writer and activist." She would have written more, she once said, had she not been going to so many meetings, so many demonstrations. This was said without regret.

In this time of war, I like to remember what she said in an interview in the WRL magazine The Nonviolent Activist. It was in 2000, in their 25 Years Later: The Movement Against the War in Vietnam issue.

The question: How do you assess the role of the small radical peace movement in relation to the mass movement, to the large demonstrations of half a million people?

Her answer:

"Every big demonstration was absolutely essential. And every local operation was absolutely essential. There’s no argument about it, it seems to me. If there were no big demonstrations, we would never have known how many people in Minneapolis felt like us—I mean the joy of being in Washington and meeting people from Idaho, what greater sense of unity could you have? On the other hand, whenever we did something, whenever a draft card was burned, whenever one of the Berrigans [Dan and Philip, brothers and Catholic priests who founded the Plowshares movement by destroying draft board files during the war] or Women Against Daddy Warbucks [which also raided a draft board] took an action, they would say, “You’re turning people against us.” But that was ridiculous because the people were not turned against us, the people were interested. So I think they were both absolutely essential."

Every action is essential. There is life in those actions, big and small. In the poems. In the stories. The leaflets. The letters written. The signs. The marches, big and small. There is hope. Grace.

Those zany parade-loving Republicans!

UTAH TECH COLLEGE & G.O.P. PARADE FLOAT DEPOSITORY. A recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune reports that…

The Utah State Auditor found several misuses of public money at the Mountainland Applied Technology College, most of which illegally benefited former campus president Robert Brems and the Utah Republican Party.

…Auditors found [current campus president Clay] Christensen attempted to falsify documents in using public funds to pay for a parade float for the Utah Republican Party.

…[A]uditors slammed him for continuing with the float project even after being warned by the auditor and attorney general that it was illegal to do so….

They're droppin' out bigtime

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From Monday's UC Berkeley News: Study finds early difficulty for community college students

A new report by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) finds that six in 10 students who enter the California community college system as freshmen with high school diplomas and aspirations to transfer to four-year institutions drop out or lower their academic sights after just one semester. The report recommends increasing support for these students….

Better than a crop circle

IT WAS summery and festive today at Irvine Valley College. At about noon, a nice bluesy band played, goofy blue and white balloons bobbed in the big blue sky, and students were everywhere, smiling and having a good time.

I liked the band's version of Red House, what I heard of it.

A very prominent "information" booth stood out in front of the college's Big Lawn, impossible to miss, and staffed by our best and brightest.


Nearby, at the periphery of the Big Green, an IVC police car stood. It regularly squawed forth stern warnings against parking on the turning circle. It was perfectly absurd.

Plus the cop car's presence might have discouraged registration by felons, and that's just wrong. I mean, let's not shrink the pool. And what about diversity?

It was still pretty festive, though.

Somebody told me to be sure and take a picture of the information desk just inside the Student Services Center, so I went there, and, sure enough, there was an info desk, and it did look impressive, though nobody was there to dispense info. Probably a fluke.


I ain't carpin'. It was a good day. Something tells me this is gonna be a good semester.

One more thing about that big lawn area at the center of IVC: years ago, I hatched the plan of scattering special posy seeds (or whatever) out there to spell out "Mr. Goo" or some such nonsense. I figured it was perfect: the message would just sort of gradually appear over months.

It would be better than a crop circle, boy.

Never did get around to that. That's my one big regret.

The “course shopping” study

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From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: Course Shopping and Its Meaning:

How students add and drop courses is suddenly attracting more attention. …[O]ne of the largest studies ever of students’ “course shopping” behaviors is just out. The study is of an urban community college district (Los Angeles) … [T]he study suggests that course shopping is widespread, comes in different identifiable patterns, and that in moderation it’s not always harmful.

Linda Serra Hagedorn, chair of educational administration and policy at the University of Florida, was the lead author of the study, which was published in The Journal of Higher Education.

…Course shopping refers to a period in which colleges have designated it as appropriate to add and drop courses as a student finalizes her schedule. An official “drop,” in contrast, takes place after that time. In the community colleges studied, a student can drop a course up through the 14th week of a 16-week semester. During the first four weeks (when course shopping takes place), no grade is posted when a student drops. After that, a “W” is posted for withdrawn.

In the new study, based on an analysis of nearly 5,000 students, 38 percent were found to engage in course shopping.

The Hagedorn study breaks down course shopping into different categories:

• Cyclic shopping, in which students — typically early in the semester — drop a course and on the same day or soon after, add another one in its place. (A related group of frequent cyclic shoppers engage in this practice for at least 30 percent of their enrollments.)

• Bulk shopping, in which students sign up for more courses than they will ever take and drop half or more of them.

• Mixed bag, in which students engage in some of each activity.

Prevalence of Course Shopping

No shopping 61.4%
Occasional cyclic—23.7%
Bulk— 7.1%
Frequent cyclic—6.8%
Mixed bag—0.9%

The study found relatively little in terms of demographic differences among course shoppers, although women were slightly more likely to shop. By subject area, mathematics courses were more likely to be dropped.

In terms of impact on academic performance, the study found that — in moderation — course shopping may not be a bad thing in terms of grades. The grade-point average of non-shoppers in the study (2.66) was nearly identical to that of occasional cyclic shoppers (2.68) and bulk shoppers (2.67). Frequent cyclic and mixed bag shoppers had significantly lower GPA’s.

The study notes that there are a range of legitimate reasons to engage in course shopping: Students may be misinformed about courses or their requirements, students’ schedules may change, students may not like instructors, etc. At the same time, too much course shopping can give colleges a false sense of enrollments and may block students from getting into oversubscribed sections.

The report notes a number of findings…:

• Many students who drop English or mathematics courses end up taking courses in another subject altogether. If course shopping was taking place because of students being placed at the wrong level or not liking the instructor, such changes of subject matter would be minimal.

• For cyclic shoppers, about 60 percent of dropped remedial courses were replaced by non-remedial courses. There are any number of ways to interpret that finding, the study notes, and more analysis is needed.

• Bulk shopping, while frustrating to college officials, appears to help some students. The article compares the behavior of some bulk shoppers to a sinking cargo ship. Throwing off cargo may not be enough to stop some ships from sinking, but it will allow some to sail to safety.

…[T]he study offers several suggestions.

First, it urges colleges to post all syllabuses online, so that students who want to gain a better understanding of what a course is about can do so before registering. Second, it urges colleges to look for ways to find out more about why students are adding or dropping courses after the semester starts. If academic advising counselors are in short supply, instructors might be encouraged to ask students why they are leaving or entering a course. Third, the study suggests the consideration of “more overt” approaches to limit course shopping, such as a “three strikes” rule where more than three cycles of cyclic shopping result in some sort of action, such as a limit on future drops or required academic counseling.

Lost and in search of information

TODAY, of course, was the first day of classes here at lovely Irvine Valley College. There were lots of fresh faces, lots of bewildered looks.

Imagine visiting the college for the first time.

Now, IVC is among those places that has no entrance. It has, rather, entry points—like, say, a Sears, which can be entered at several points, all of them lousy.

But let us suppose that some evildoer has placed a gun to our head and has insisted that we identify "IVC's entrance." In that case, without doubt, IVC's entrance is that nameless road (it has a name, but no one knows it) that sort of happens along Irvine Center Drive.

Now, if one takes that road and heads straight (nothing will direct one to do otherwise), one will soon encounter the grand and inviting Student Services Center. But it will be distant, across a vast expanse of lawn, halfway across campus.



"Surely," thinks the first-time visitor, "an information desk is closer than that!"

Inevitably, therefore, the visitor parks and then wanders into the A100 building, which is nearby and which, unlike other buildings at IVC, sports a flagpole.

"This must be the place," they'll say. "Surely, we'll get our questions answered here!"

AND THUS IT WAS THAT, until recently, a visitor who entered A100 would immediately encounter a clearly marked information desk, smack dab in the middle of the building.

* * * * *

Today, after our classes, Rebel Girl and I wandered into the A100 building as we headed to the parking lot. Once inside, we beheld the rumored empty space created by the recent removal of the Info Desk. The rumor was true.


We stared at the space. The Reb pointed at the place on the wall where the word "information" once greeted visitors:

I became peevish.

"I guess we don't have information anymore here at IVC," I said, loudly enough for others to hear.

Just then, three young people wandered into the building from the direction of the flagpole. They were lost. They had questions.

I looked at the Reb. Then I walked up to these kids.

"Looking for directions? Information perhaps?" I asked.

"Yes," they said. They looked at the shitty spot that once said "information." They looked around the room.


Someone attempted to give them directions to the alleged "info" booth in the Student Services Center, way across the lawn, past the coffee zone.

"Where?"

For some reason, these kids remained bewildered. They wandered in the opposite direction of the Student Services Building. We watched their progress.

I looked at Reb.

"Lunch?"

MEANWHILE...

Tomorrow, young Adam and I will race Fords, virtually.

Sarah will insist on hide an' seek.

Up in Pacifica, Fannie's doing well, now that she's home with Tiger-Ann. Recently, she won some kinda prize for this great photo she took at a dance she attended a few months ago: