Especially less-than-excellent

NOW, A WORD FROM OUR ACCREDITORS. The Accrediting agency (ACCJC) sends out its letters on January 31—tomorrow—so we’ll soon learn their assessment of our two colleges. It’s hard to predict what they’ll do. I’ve heard no rumors.

Toward the end of our last cycle, Mathur and the board seemed to do everything in their power to mess things up. It’s as though they were trying to prove that they are precisely the bastards they are widely suspected of being. But the Commissioners can be way political and self-serving and all the usual shitty and depressing things. Will they actually do their job? Will they wash their hands of us? Who can say?

MATHUR UNLEASHED. So far, it looks like the power shift from Lang to Wagner (board president) has meant that Mathur is now allowed to roam freely, scaring children, torching fields, poisoning wells, and so on. (The leash that master Lang wielded was weird and long, but at least he used one.) For instance, recently, Mathur and his team of hounds have racked up quite a record of peeing on policies with regard to hiring committees. What? There are rules re committee membership? Screw that! There's no third-level interview for deans? There is now!

Luckily, thus far, watchdogs have used effective counter-measures against Mathur's dictates re faculty hiring.

WHAT ABOUT BEEFING UP FACULTY SALARIES? We’ve heard next to nothing about our unfolding 50% problem, the MASSIVE Mathurian Fuckup that dares not speak its name. It was barely mentioned at last week’s board meeting, the meeting in which Nothing Happened.

But my guess is that things will get ugly. Great pressure will be applied to slash non-instructional costs. All the creative bookkeeping in the world isn’t going to bring us up to 50%. (See Look at the data.)

If you read Dissent, then you know that Trustee Don Wagner—our new board president—has expressed an odd perspective about the 50% problem, namely, that we should just hand back the money to the state. Hmmm. Why would he propose such a thing?

Because, dear readers, the 50% problem is precisely this: that we are spending too little on instruction compared to other things. And instruction means faculty salaries. Now, normally, you can comply with the law without resorting to huge faculty salaries, but things ain't normal, cuz Mathur's an idiot, and so everything's a rush job. In this emergency, all we can do is beef up faculty salaries.

But there’s no way that certain trustees—Wagner, Fuentes, Lang—are gonna sit for ad hoc faculty raises, since, as you know, faculty work only 36-hour weeks for ten months of the year while pulling down on average about $100K a year. (Who says? Tom Fuentes says. See Fuentes bashes faculty.)

That’s the word in some circles, anyway.

RED, RED HERRING. Even though the 50% law has been around since, like, 1960, Fuentes and company have been running around as though it just came down Main Street like Godzilla. Fuentes and other district officials recently met with the other OC community college districts to carp about that law. Or so said Mr. Fuentes during his report at the last board meeting.

Fuentes’ efforts are, of course, a red herring. See, we’re not supposed to notice that, unlike the SOCCCD, all those other districts are complying with the 50% law, and are liable to do so well into the future. We’re not supposed to notice that, because Mathur blew off the law for years, we’re destined to be out of compliance for some time. —Either that or some serious pain will be dispensed in the district.

Mathur won’t feel any pain. He makes $300,000 a year.

UPDATE: yesterday, I included here brief mention of an IVC administrator about whom we've been hearing for years. I stated that the latest story (it came to us from a reliable person) concerned her over-spending her budget. Certain knowledgeable persons contacted me and suggested that the matter in question is more complex than the story suggests and that the assertion that the dean over-spent her budget is inaccurate. Dissent regrets any factual error regarding that administrator and her actions re budgeting.