Tonight's board meeting: Mathur machination mashed

Just got home from the board meeting. Well, no, I just got home from Chili's and trying to (a) fill my gas tank and (b) find an open road to home. That wasn't easy.

Tonight's meeting was a real snoozer. The board spent most of the night picking nit. Good grief! More about that tomorrow.

The discussion of the big "50% Law" issue was deferred. People were tired and it was late.

It looked like discussion of reassigned time (RT), too, would be deferred, but then Wendy G—IVC's Academic Senate President—drew the board's attention to a difficulty. The colleges need to know ASAP if reassigned time (which supports all sorts of important work) is going to be cut back between tonight and the next meeting. (It's no secret that Mathur has already ordered a massive reduction in RT at both colleges, as though that measure were demanded by our 50% difficulty.)

Mathur then pontificated. He lectured that we must take a "comprehensive" view in dealing with the 50% difficulty (a difficulty, by the way, that is a creation of his heedlessness and incompetence). There can be no "sacred cows," he said. And so RT, too, must be on the chopping block.

It's just Mathur going after his "enemies" again.

It was late, and Lang didn't wanna deal with this. But Wendy persisted. To his credit, he let her speak. We need to talk about this now, she said.

Trustee Bill Jay and others seemed to be on top of this issue. They noted that, even if all RT were eliminated, it would be a drop in the friggin' bucket relative to our problem (namely, that, thanks to massive spending by the district, we are spending far less than the required 50% on instuction). Further, both colleges are well over the required 50%.

The problem, Bill implied, lay elsewhere than at the colleges. (Get it?)

In the end, Lang and other trustees said that there were to be no "precipitous" cuts in reassigned time!

Mathur started making that rat face that he makes. You know, the one where he scrunches his nose. Ghastly!

Later, some of us went to Chili's to wind down. After about 45 minutes, we noticed that Mathur was behind us, sitting by himself at a table, chewing on his cud.

He looked like shit.

Soon, I made my way home on the 5, but the El Toro and Lake Forest offramps were closed off! i ended up going all the way to Bake. Then Bake was closed off. Plus I was running outa gas!

I made my way over to El Toro Rd. and found a gas station. As I drove into the hills, I could see that, in many places, they were still ablaze! My eyes hurt. My nose too.

It's a wild night, man.