In our rodent world: the mystery of the missing policy

AS YOU KNOW, Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur has screwed up bigtime (see A Mathurian fiasco), for he has allowed the district to trend toward severe noncompliance with the 50% Law (which requires that at least half of district expenditures be on instruction). Mathur has responded to his huge f*ck-up with a massive hiring initiative. At the recent board meeting, he explained that he hopes to hire 45 (or 40) full-time faculty ASAP. (Note: even if that occurs, it will do nothing to bring us into compliance this year, since the new hires won’t start work until the fall of 2008.)

Even before the board meeting, it was clear that Mathur was determined to push for these hires. Further, it appeared that he and his crew were intent on violating provisions of our new (and hard-won) hiring policy, BP4011.1!

The latter situation, Senate officers told us, was being addressed.

Last Wednesday (the 21st), we, here at Dissent the Blog, suggested that faculty, especially faculty who expect to serve on hiring committees, bone up on that policy (see Our hard-won hiring policy). Faculty knowledge of that policy, we reasoned, was the best defense against abuse by you-know-who. (That point had already been made on campus by some senate officers.)

The blog post included a link to the district website at which board policies are posted. At the time, I made sure that the policy (i.e., the correct and current policy) was posted there. It was.

But then, this morning, someone discovered that the policy was no longer listed at the site. I checked. Sure enough, it had disappeared, without explanation.

I smelled a rat.

IVC’s Academic Senate President immediately made inquiries. In the afternoon, she reported what she had learned: that a classified employee had removed the policy in order to correct some minor typographical errors but that, somehow, she was having difficulty returning the corrected policy to the site. The Senate Prez was inclined to believe this account. I.e., she was inclined to think that there’s no rat.

Well, OK. I decided to leave the matter at that.

But, just now—more than five hours later—I returned to the district site. The listing for BP4011.1 had reappeared. Great.

I downloaded the file. What's this? It isn't 4011.1. Rather, it is 4011—Employment procedures for administrators and managers.

What’s it all mean? Dunno.

I’m smelling rodent again. Lots of people are. That wouldn’t happen, of course, were our Chancellor to be an honest man. In that hypothetical world, we’d all say, “Hey, mistakes are made. No big deal.”

But in our rodent world, such talk seems foolish.

SEE ALSO:

• Mathur: the case of the mysteriously missing reference check
• Mathur: the case of the mysteriously missing "threats" (See esp. section 25)
• Mathur: the case of the mysteriously missing plaque (See Jeff's remarks)
• Mathur: the case of the mysteriously appearing agenda item

Another loose right wing cannon, this one at Dartmouth

(See YouTube: Dartmouth trustee)

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: Speech Hits a Sore Spot at Dartmouth:

[In] … a speech given last month — and posted recently on YouTube — … a trustee slams a former college president, says that many academics don’t believe in God, and evokes the Spanish Inquisition in a comment about Larry Summers, the former Harvard president. ¶ Todd J. Zywicki, the trustee and a law professor at George Mason University, gave the address at a John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy conference. Zywicki says he regrets the way he phrased some comments but adds that portions of the speech have been taken out of context. ¶ Much of the address is a call to arms for those who think academe is infused with leaders who preach the dogma of “environmentalism and feminism.” ¶ Zywicki says the “establishment” at elite colleges is “vicious” and that “if it were the case that there was no morality and no values being taught in the academy, that would be better than what we have.” …. ¶ “Those who control the university today, they don’t believe in God and they don’t believe in country,” he continues. “The university is their cathedrals…their entire being. Both those who fund it and those who teach within it are tied up in the university.” ¶ Commenting on campus culture as a whole, Zywicki told the audience, “We have the Spanish Inquisition, and you can ask Larry Summers whether or not the Spanish Inquisition lives on academic campuses today.” ¶ Discussing a late former president of the college, highly regarded by many faculty members for extolling intellectual life, Zywicki said in the speech: “They then brought in this fellow, truly evil man, James Freedman, who basically, simply put, his agenda was to turn Dartmouth into Harvard,” he said in the speech, according to a transcript from the IvyGate blog (Zywicki said he didn’t question the accuracy of the passage.) ¶ Freedman died last year of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and critics say the comments are in poor taste. Zywicki said he apologizes to anyone who came away with that sense, and that he meant to attribute “truly evil man” to a colleague who had previously used that characterization to describe Freedman. ¶ “That’s one of the dangers of speaking from notes rather than from text,” Zywicki said in an interview. “I didn’t mean many things to be taken literally. Obviously I was speaking in perhaps an inappropriately informal manner. If I had known the remarks would be taken out of context, I would have been more thorough in fleshing out that idea.” ¶ Zywicki said he intended to criticize Freedman for what he described as a belief in political correctness at all costs. “Perhaps it was unduly flip, but I have serious concerns about the way he dealt with students while he was president. Someone who bullies and attacks undergraduates in the manner he did is somebody for whom I have absolutely no respect,” he said in the interview. ¶ Revisiting the speech, Zywicki said he regrets the “God and country” comment, which he said was unduly casual. ¶ “I’m not trying to imply that liberals do not believe in God and country,” he says. “The point I was trying to make is that for many people who control the modern university, that modern orthodoxy which is intolerant of many views has taken the place of religious orthodoxies of the past.” ¶ On the Summers comment, Zywicki said that he has consistently expressed concern about any orthodoxies that interfere with free inquiry on college campuses. “That includes incursions from the right and concern about orthodoxy from the left in the form of political correctness and restrain on free speech such as speech codes.” ¶ “I was hoping in a brief set of remarks to illustrate why modern orthodoxies are just as dangerous as ancient orthodoxies.”

How I Spent My Thanksgiving

AT 4 AM Saturday morning Rebel Girl awakes when Red announces that there is someone screaming "fire." It's one of her reoccurring dreams, she thinks, then she thinks, no, it's Red's dream, not hers, but it was neither. The plaintive voice calls again: fire.

No power. They stumble around in the darkness: shoes, clothes, flashlights that work as opposed to flashlights that do not. Rebel Girl gets out and sees it first: the gabled roof of Red's uncle's cabin, two doors down, ablaze. The winds are howling. It's a long story involving hoses and water, smoke and firefighters, the dawn that finally came. We were lucky once again: no one was hurt. The fire didn't spread.


Rebel Girl liked how the firefighters carried out the furniture and assembled it on the lawn.

It was as if they would all sit down once again around the big table and eat.