No news is bad news

We try to keep on top of things here at Dissent the Blog, but sometimes it ain’t easy, cuz, sometimes, there’s not much to keep on top of.

BOARD FRUSTRATION. Near as I can tell, the SOCCCD board of trustees is very frustrated with faculty right now. Evidently, the problem concerns faculty union and Saddleback College Senate leadership. Don’t know much about the union situation, although it’s a sure a bet that it concerns contract negotiations and union Prez Lee Haggerty.

I’m told that the senate is viewed by trustees as pressing for an excessive amount of reassigned time.

Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur to the rescue, I guess. “Please Raghu! Even though you are both a creep and a boob, we rely on you to protect us from faculty!”

As you know, it is at the December meeting (this year, on the 5th) that the board elects its officers for the coming year. Right now, Don Wagner is president of the board, and it seems likely that he will continue for another year.

But know this: Tom Fuentes and Bill Jay are the only trustees who have never served as board president. I doubt that Bill wants the job. If Tom wants it, he’s got the votes.

Yikes!

STUDENT NEWSPAPERS. Once in a while, I check out the local college student newspapers, most of which are lame. The Saddleback College/IVC Lariat, however, is among the better papers. It’s online site is usually pretty lively.

Not right now, though.

On Tuesday, the Lariat posted about “Juicy Campus”: Juicy Campus takes online gossip to the dark side. JC is a predictably offensive student gossip forum that has grown in popularity around the country, although, evidently, it’s not yet grown grape vines through our particular colleges (and parks).

Last Wednesday, OCC’s Coast Report reported on the effects of that school’s budget crisis—“including a seriously scaled back winter intersession, a cut of more than 100 classes in the spring and the possible evisceration of its summer session….” But that’s old news.

Yesterday, the CR’s hot news was the “subsiding” of a rash of vehicle break-ins.

The seldom stinging Fullerton College Hornet reports that there are new cabinets in the Fullerton College faculty lounge. Yup.

On the other hand, it also includes a conversation with NOCCCD Chancellor Ned Doffoney, who, as you’ll recall, was the President of Saddleback College in the mid-90s. (Sitting Down with the Chancellor.) The article traces Doffoney’s career, starting in the Louisiana swamps.

Curiously, his years in the swamps of Saddleback College are left unchronicled! We are told about his move to a Los Angeles trade school in 1982—and then, suddenly, he is sipping coffee with a friend in 1998, and he hears about an opportunity to leave his “gated community” in South OC in favor of them bayous back home. Saddleback College isn’t even mentioned.

(Below, I've attached an old article describing a typically swampy event during Doffoney's last year as SC President.)

CSU Fullerton’s Daily Titan seems to be experiencing a particularly disastrous lull. At it’s website, I clicked on "news" and found a week-old story about a lecture on cyber-bullying (Panel says cyber-bullying is a crime).

The UCI New University’s top story is about a presentation about immigration last week by professor Bean (Langson [Library] Host to Immigration History).

I guess things get a little slow around Thanksgiving.

Hope you have a good one.

June 5, 1997

Saddleback College cans newspaper adviser
Student paper has been critical of district board

Kathleen Dorantes received word May 20, without warning that she would no longer be the adviser to the Saddleback Valley [sic] College newspaper, The Lariat.

She was told the decision came from the office of the college president, Ned Doffoney, and Doffoney had given no reason, Dorantes said last week from her home in Riverside.

Some sources at the Mission Viejo college...say the move was politically motivated. The student paper has been critical of the majority of the college district's board of trustees since the election in the fall.

The faculty member appointed to take Dorantes' place as adviser, Lee Walker, is an outspoken supporter of the board majority.
...
During one of the years she was the adviser, 1996, the paper won one of the top awards in the state for community college newspapers, the General Excellence Award from the California Journalism Association of Community Colleges.
...
Doffoney said in a telephone interview that the decision had been a "contractual" one. He said that any full-time faculty member can bump any part-time faculty member at any time. Doffoney said that Walker had approached him and indicated that he wanted to advise the newspaper.

Walker could not be reached for comment.
...
When asked about reasons for the change or reasons that the college president, rather than an immediate supervisor, would make a decision about a faculty teaching assignment, Doffoney said, "I think this conversation has gone about as far as it can," and indicated he did not want to comment further.