Cooperative, not obstructionist

RAGHU MATHUR is the compleat scheming weasel. There’s nothing he won’t do, if he thinks he can get away with it.

Try negotiating with 'im!

At the last board meeting, trustees, on a 4/3 split, voted to include the so-called Chancellor/Board response in drafts of each college’s focused midterm reports to the Accrediting Commission (of ACCJC). This despite protests from the Board Minority concerning the lack of clear process that characterized the development of the “response” within the board—and protests from college personnel regarding the utter disregard of process entailed by this last-minute modification of reports that had been carefully produced with an eye to consensus and documentation.

The college personnel most responsible for producing the report drafts also objected to the content of the response, for it contained numerous factual errors and was inflammatory and largely undocumented.

After the September board meeting, it became increasingly clear to the two Academic Senates (representing the Saddleback and Irvine Valley college faculty) that they could not sanction signing off on the “new” reports. Still, they sought compromise. They were willing to allow inclusion of the response language if that language were removed from the body and appended.

At first, this seemed to clear the way for signage, but then, at the district level, things suddenly changed, and the compromise became unacceptable.

Again, faculty were open to compromise. At one point, Mathur sent out an email that stated, “the colleges are encouraged to add any comments about the inclusion of the District/Board of Trustees Response and make other minor changes in their reports, as deemed appropriate, particularly if such additions would enable the accreditation chairs to appropriately include their signature on the reports.”

The colleges took Mathur at his word. They produced some entirely factual comments about the inclusion, thinking that the Chancellor would accept them and all would be well.

But no. Mathur rejected the comments.

With this fellow, it's obstruction, obstruction, obstruction!

By this point, the Academic Senates were becoming less inclined to support signage. There was much consternation among faculty.

Nevertheless, to my amazement, the senate presidents kept channels of discussion open, despite Mathur's conduct.

In the end (?), here’s what happened. A new version of “added comments” was produced that seemed acceptable to the Chancellor. Here it is:

At the August 27, 2007, meeting of the board of trustees, the document, “Board of Trustees and Chancellor Response to the November 30, 2006, Progress Visit Report for Irvine Valley College” was presented and discussed. This was the first time the document was made available to the college community.

On September 13, 2007, college personnel were directed by the chancellor to integrate the board of trustees and chancellor response within the focused midterm report. There was no opportunity to correct several errors of fact contained in this document.

The Academic senate would like to direct the commission’s attention to http://socccd.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=2 to view the board discussion on August 27, 2007 (item 7.1) and September 24, 2007 (Item 7.2) regarding this matter. Ultimately, the vote of the board of trustees was split, 4 votes in favor of including the board of trustees and chancellor response within the focused midterm report and 3 votes opposed.

The [IVC/Saddleback College] academic senate would like to reassure the members of the accrediting commission that the college community agreed upon the process described with the statement on report preparation whereby all drafts of the focused midterm report were reviewed and revised by the accreditation oversight committee throughout the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007. On August 1, 2007, as documented in the statement on report preparation, a preliminary draft of the report was distributed to the college community for review and revision. The board of trustees and chancellor response did not go through this same process or a similar one that involved review by all college constituencies.

On Wednesday (10/10), the Saddleback College Academic Senate unanimously agreed to direct its president to sign the report—and recommended to the Accreditation Chairs that they do the same—“if and only if the…four paragraphs are included at the close of the statement of report preparation.”

On Thursday (10/11), the Irvine Valley College Academic Senate did the same.

But it would be just like Mathur and his crew to reshuffle the deck one more time.

Board President Dave Lang will have an opportunity to sign the reports this morning. We’ll see what happens.

Some will object to the Academic Senates’ willingness to engage as they have with Mathur and the Board in order to achieve signage of the Focused Midterm Reports. I am not among them. It is important that the senates not obstruct a successful outcome, and, certainly, they have not done so. On the contrary.

Further, the agreed to inclusion of the “four paragraphs” (if such is the case) gives to faculty essentially everything that they might want, for the facts are laid out. The video is provided.

The truth is out there.

(For updates, go to "comments" to this post!)