The policy disappearance mystery, part 2

THE GOO THICKENS. Yesterday morning, just when faculty were being encouraged (by colleagues wary of Mathurian shenanigans) to access and read the faculty hiring policy (BP4011.1), that very policy disappeared from the district's board policy website. (See yesterday's post: The mystery of the missing policy.)

Some of us immediately smelled a rat. Later that afternoon, we were told that the situation was the product of an innocent SNAFU. According to the story, a classified employee had simply removed the policy in order to fix some typos. But then she couldn't get the policy back onto the site. (But why remove the policy to change it? Odd.)

Later, BP4011.1 seemed to reappear on the site, but, in fact, the wrong policy was placed there (namely, the hiring policy concerning administrators and managers, not faculty).

THE LATEST & THE GREATEST. Today, I again went to the board policy website, whereupon I discovered that its contents had changed yet again. This time, a version of BP4011.1 was posted (a Word file), but it was not the version that was posted (as a pdf file) last week! Last week's version began

Preface: The hiring of highly qualified full-time faculty is essential to the educational mission of the South Orange County Community College District.

But today's version begins

Preface: The Board of Trustees derives its authority from statute and from its status as the entity holding the institution in trust for the benefit of the public.

Further, last week's pdf file ends with: "Adopted: December 12, 2005." That made sense. That's about when it was adopted (after successful litigation by the Academic Senates).

Today's Word file does not include that language. That's very odd.

I don't have time right now to look more carefully at these versions. But I do know this. It would be highly illegal for the district to unilaterally change this policy.

Check it out.

P.S.: I've had a chance to peruse the hiring policy currently posted on the district website. It is indeed the wrong policy, an iteration that does not reflect important changes that were later made at the insistence of the faculty's representatives and that were incorporated in the policy approved by the board in December of 2005. -CW

Historians for Obama

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: Historians Team Up to Back Obama:

In the weeks approaching the 2004 and 1992 elections, among others, groups of educators issued formal statements of support for the Democratic nominees for president, taking public stands as members of their profession. In recent elections, groups of scientists have also weighed in — after the party nominations were settled.

But in a move that is unusually early and specific, a group of prominent historians on Monday issued a joint endorsement of Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency. The endorsement, released through the History News Network, was organized by Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University, and Ralph E. Luker, a historian who is one of the leaders of the popular history blog Cliopatria. The scholars who signed included two past presidents of the American Historical Association — Joyce Appleby of the University of California at Los Angeles and James McPherson of Princeton University — and many other A-list scholars in the field.

Officials of the AHA (which was not a party to the endorsement) and several other long-time observers of the discipline said that they could not think of a comparable example of historians collectively taking a stand in a political race in this way….