The perfect Sturm und Drang

.....EACH COLLEGE'S accreditation progress report is due on October 15. That's just seven months away. But, of course, a progress report is a report on progress, and any progress, naturally, must occur before the reports are written.
.....—Unless, of course, we wanna get tricky—you know: describe our progress first and then do what we gotta to make the description seem plausible.
.....That's strictly Bush league.
.....Now, unless the report writers plan to wait until the last minute to write their reports, whatever progress that “we” make needs to be made by, say, August or September. Even earlier.
.....And don’t forget that, traditionally, faculty are virtually incommunicado during the summer months. If they figure into this "progress," it had better be made by May.
.....We're in the middle of March.
* * * * *
.....How will this work exactly? As I said, progress report committees are now forming. Will still other committees now be organized to actually make the progress—i.e., the progress to be reported by the committees now forming? It seems not. Evidently, the committees now forming are “the” accreditation committees. The idea seems to be that these committees will make the progress—or somehow cause the progress to be made—and then, having accomplished that, will set about to report on the progress.
.....It's crystal clear.
.....Perhaps we will rent Irvine's big fucking orange balloon, tie it up at the colleges, and paint on it: MAKING BIG PROGRESS.


.....The committees will be large and diverse. Evidently, Trustee Don Wagner, the board president, will serve on each college committee. I hear the Gary Poertner, too, will be on the committee, at least here at IVC. Plus a few administrators. Plus some faculty, the number not yet determined. Plus some classified. Here at IVC, Wendy and Jerry will also be on the committee.
.....Gosh. One thing about big and diverse committees, they really know how to focus.
* * * * *
.....I keep hearing that NO faculty at Saddleback are willing to serve on their college’s accreditation committee. After the way Mathur and Wagner messed with the last report, Saddlebackians are fed up.
.....That's gonna take the starch out of the Saddleback effort, for sure.
.....And then there’s this: it looks like negotiations between the district and the faculty union over the faculty contract have ground to a halt, or are threatening to do so. The word is that the district is seriously low-balling the faculty. (Keep in mind that the only solution to our 50% problem is to increase the proportion of district expenditure devoted to faculty salaries and benefits.)
.....I hear that union officials are contemplating a “work action” according to which faculty will do only the work that is identified by the faculty contract.
.....Naturally, that work is less than the work that faculty presently do.
.....But here’s the clincher. Were a work action to occur, it may, of course, affect these accreditation committees—well, not Saddleback’s committee, which can’t scare up faculty anyway. But if, for whatever reason, faculty refuse to be on these committees, it seems unlikely that these groups will succeed in their modest aims.
.....Imagine the ACCJC receiving a progress report that faculty refused to participate in. "Promising!", they'll shout.


.....It gets worse. Right now, owing to the Chancellor’s monumental screw-up regarding the 50% Law (by the way: we seem doomed to being in noncompliance with it, despite efforts now underway), about 40 search committees are gearing up to hire new faculty. It’s an all-out effort to increase “instructional” expenditures without resorting to, oh, raising salaries. Can’t have that. So saith certain trustees, namely, the ones who got us into this accreditation fix by bullying and insisting on their man Mathur, the screw-up.
.....But what if faculty, or even most faculty, refuse to do this work—this work for which they are not compensated?
.....(By the way: I don’t know any colleague who isn’t on one or more of these hiring committees. Thus far, everyone seems quite happy to do this work.)
..... Given the existing hiring policy, those searches will simply have to shut down, for the policy requires a certain number of faculty per committee. And if the searches shut down, the faculty don't get hired, which puts us even further below the 50% line.

.....Yikes.



UPDATE:

Today (3/13), at the IVC Academic Senate meeting, President Roquemore came to explain progress made in the formation of the Accreditation committee, which will be meeting some time soon after Spring break. Reportedly, he answered Senators' questions to their satisfaction. He also updated faculty on developments at ATEP, which seem to be taking an upturn.