Thursday, April 10, 2008

Our bubblin' cauldron

.....THE DVORMAN CASE. There’s a marvelous story in today’s OC Weekly about Capo Valley High School teacher James Corbett. You’ll recall that he and his district are being sued over Corbett's approach to teaching (remember “Jesus Glasses”?), which has got some Christians’ panties in a knot. (See Capo Valley High's James Corbett Isn't the First Local Educator to Face OC's Cultural Conservatives.)
.....This Corbett fellow is interesting:
The veteran history teacher...has taught at the university level in Beirut, Missouri, North Carolina and locally at Saddleback College. He has a Ph.D. in journalism from Ohio State University and wrote his dissertation on terrorism in 1970s Belfast. While teaching at the American University of Beirut in the mid-’80s, Corbett experienced “days of 155mm artillery bombardments,” he says. “I left after one academic year. The next year, all the faculty were kidnapped.”....
.....The OC Weekly's Altan and Arellano compare the Corbett case to the somewhat similar Joel Samuel Dvorman case of nearly fifty years ago. It was the Dvorman case, they explain, that set our beloved county down the path to being that special place where John Schmitz types are under every other rock. (Anyone who reads the letters to the OC Reg knows that, alas, these people are still among us.)
.....About Dvorman:
He ran for and won a seat on the Magnolia School District Board of Trustees in 1960...But Dvorman immediately proved unpopular. One of his first actions was to vote against a measure proposed by Magnolia’s other trustees to distribute Bibles in schools. For a district that had just desegregated five years earlier—long after the historic 1948 case Mendez v. Westminster ended segregation in Orange County elementary schools—this new trustee was too much for some parents: a liberal Jew who was a member of the ACLU and openly participated in protests against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
.....Trust me, the article is terrific.

.....FACULTY CONTRACT. Things are happening re the faculty contract, although the non-availability of some key players isn't making things easy! I don’t want to mess anything up here, so I’ll just say that, based on what I know, people should hang tight and let things play out a bit. [UPDATE: the union is recommending work-to-contract, effective immediately.]

.....ESCORTED OFF CAMPUS? This afternoon, I ran into a reliable sort who had talked to an equally reliable sort who spoke to someone who "knew" that Vice Chancellor of Human Resources, Bob King, was “escorted” off of campus today. “How do you know?”, I asked. The answer makes me think that it may well be true. [UPDATE: TOTALLY FALSE RUMOR.]
.....What gives? Anybody out there got the facts?
.....In any case, these days, the ol’ SOCCCD seems like some kinda bubblin' cauldron, don't it?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The King rumor is not true; I saw him on the 3rd floor late this afternoon. Rather word is that the VC's will be leaving as follows: King on 4/28 and Serban on 5/16.

torabora said...

Do your VC's do anything besides eat rubbery shrimp and get paid too much?

Are you going to name buildings with leaky roofs and stained ceiling tiles after them?

Just asking....

Anonymous said...

The rumor about King is false. He and everyone else 'cept Gary are back on the 3rd floor today.

Anonymous said...

Those little Christian types sure are an insecure lot, aren't they?

"Mommy, the bad man said something about Jesus--call the lawyers!"

Anonymous said...

Please folks, put down the blog for a minute and send a letter with a stamp or an email to the OC Weekly thanking the editor for doing the story and asking for updates, and generally expressing your support for smart, analytical, history-teaching writing like this.

Anonymous said...

Gracias for the love, Dissenters!

Anonymous said...

VCs, King in particular, have one very important function: moderating Kangaroo Courts of VP of Student Services Lise Telson, during which Telson gives a "second chance" to students who did nothing wrong in the first place.
Latest update on Crosby v. SOCCCD. The district has now spent $3000 in court reporter fees alone for their appeal against Crosby.
http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/dockets.cfm?dist=43&doc_id=1201360&doc_no=G040033

Get ready for another $200,000 + expenditure in legal fees to Liebert Cassidy & Whitmore defending Mathur's right to snoop on everybody's email campus wide, as well as his and the Board's ability to impose "conservative values" on students' library computer use.

Anonymous said...

That would be a fine role for King, if he were willing or able to fulfill it. Unfortunately in the Crosby case, he did not. As a result, the Case is now before the California Supreme Court. See
http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/mainCaseScreen.cfm?dist=0&doc_id=1903340&doc_no=S171570

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...