Incidental factoids

"FACULTY AND STAFF" of the SOCCCD received an email today from Chancellor Raghu Mathur and Board President Dave Lang. The email notes (1) the Trustees’ recent inclusion of the “District/Board of Trustees Response in the Colleges [sic] Mid-term Accreditation Reports” and (2) faculty opposition to the inclusion. (Actually, faculty objected more to the manner of the inclusion than to the inclusion.)

The email then refers to “continuing advice of the Accrediting Commission” that, allegedly, approves of the inclusion, faculty to the contrary notwithstanding.

But here’s the problem, Dissent readers. Mathur and Co. asked ACCJC officials whether the district’s response may be included in the report. Naturally, the answer they received was “yes.”

But, in asking the question, do you suppose that Mathur and crew mentioned such circumstantial factoids as that the inclusion occurred outside approved processes and that among the included elements are false, inflammatory, and undocumented assertions?


Guess!

But it looks like at least some of these circumstances might be communicated to the ACCJC after all. So desperate are Lang and Mathur to entice the faculty senate presidents to sign these reports—the senates have directed them not to—that they have invited the colleges to add “any comments” about the inclusion:

At this point, 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 signatures on the reports.

My guess is that Mathur will get his signatures. But the price he’ll pay are Accreditation reports that make clear what he has struggled to obscure.