Rat bastards & pesky fortuities

THAT INSIDIOUS ALA! As you know, the two colleges of our district have the rare distinction of not being members of the venerable American Library Association.

In some circles, this state of affairs is scandalous, absurd—even unAmerican.

The Board Majority, and especially Trustee Don Wagner, have opined that the ALA are a crew of meddlesome, pornography-loving, child-endangering "liberals," and so, nearly two years ago, they undid the memberships. There was an effort by some trustees to undo the undoing, but it came to grief, owing to a pesky fortuity (namely, Nancy stepped out of the room to answer her phone).

I wonder if Don Wagner and his pals know that, despite our two colleges’ official dissociation with the ALA, the organization’s posters remain prominent on our classroom walls?! I’ve included pictures I took today of some these posters. I found them at Irvine Valley College.

Can someone direct me to similar posters at Saddleback College?

I think I like these posters. They feature celebrities: Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Denzel Washington, Margaret Cho, Stephen Hawking, et alia. These people are depicted reading.

Not one of these celebs is depicted reading pornography. In fact, Denzel is shown reading Dr. Suess!

STINK BOMBS. Among a Chancellor’s jobs is keeping the trustees out of trouble. On that score, too, Mathur is a shitty leader.

At last week’s board meeting, Chancellor Mathur and Trustee Wagner tossed a big stink bomb in the middle of the process whereby the colleges write progress reports to the Accreditors in order to, well, convince the latter that we’re fixing what needs fixing—that is, that the trustees are cutting back on their meddling, that those in despair are less despairing, that administrative flux is giving way to stability, etc.

At last week’s meeting, the authors of the duly written progress report drafts listened in stoic silence to the board discussion of the stink bomb. They watched as the bomb was tossed into their laps. They were told to “incorporate” these seven pages of peevish and incompetent verbiage that, allegedly, represents the trustees’ perspective on the Accreditors’ criticisms and on the views and actions of faculty leadership. In fact, the verbiage at most represents the perspective of four of the seven trustees. It is poorly documented and riddled with confusion and error. It should have surfaced months ago, if at all.

Neither of the colleges knows how to go about the task of incorporation. The whole accreditation effort has been thrown into chaos. The trustees look like total assholes, and it is difficult to see how this episode can avoid worsening our chronic accreditation troubles. That means that we’ll likely be producing more reports.


Meanwhile, it appears that Mathur managed to throw some stink bombs around late last week at a meeting of administrators in which he preached, yet again, that “if you point a finger at someone, three fingers point back at you.”

God, he’s an idiot.

Further, evidently, he distributed some sort of goofy tie clasp to each administrator. Everyone is required to wear it. Administrators are glum, pissed off, demoralized.

Mathur is obviously going through one of his periods of intense peevitude brought on by recognition that no one likes or respects him. Leaders of the various governing groups think that he’s a despot and an asshole. Administrators think he's a duplicitous weasel. Nobody has anything good to say about him. Nobody asks for his advice. People keep leaving burning sacks of sh*t on his doorstep.

His only friend, I think, is Tom Fuentes.


CLUB DAY AT IVC. Well, once again, the atmosphere was decidedly festive today at Irvine Valley College, what with Club Day. I’ve included some photos of the event.

I liked the band. The balloons were fun. Students seemed to be having a good time.

It’s still a good thing to be young and silly and hanging out at IVC or Saddleback.

Now, if only we could get rid of those rat bastards!