Desire and Obligation

REBEL GIRL spent the last weekend before the semester at a family holiday party in Parker, Arizona, on the banks of the Colorado River, some six or seven hours across the desert. As you may know, the Colorado River is held hostage by technology. This baffles Rebel Girl. The result this weekend was that the river was "low"–too low for boat rides, too low to gaze at and have one's spirits raised. She gazed instead at the television screen and watched a football game between the Green Bay Packers and some team from Seattle that was played in a raging snow storm, which added something, she must admit, to the spectacle. She opined to the cousin nearest her that her mother used to root for Green Bay way back in the late 60s. They were good then, the cousin confirmed.

Others headed out to the infamous Desert Bar where they drank and shot at things. Upon their return, yet another cousin confided that, at the Desert Bar, he was told that his grandfather had had a vasectomy BEFORE his own father was conceived, which suggested that his bloodlines to the family were perhaps thinner than originally believed. That means that you can go home NOW, Rebel Girl said but he didn't seem to hear.

The next day, on their way home, on the California side of the river, they drove past the Wyatt Earp Post Office. It's something sitting there, in the middle of nowhere. She wished she had a letter to mail. Next time she'll stop.

Meanwhile, the new semester begins.

Crisis caveat

Faculty, welcome back.

As you know, the big news right now is the governor’s proposed budget. According to CCC Chancellor Diane Woodruff, “The California Community Colleges received a reduction of $525 million that includes a two-thirds reduction in growth funds.”

No doubt, you’ve already received lots of emails alerting you to the trouble ahead.

But NOTE WELL: there can be no doubt that Chancellor Mathur will exploit the situation to serve his interests. That’s what the man does.

As you know, owing to his bungling, our colleges are, and have been, in crisis mode re the 50% Law. The gist: state law requires that at least half of expenditures (in community colleges) go to faculty salaries and benefits (“instruction”). But, for years, in part because of ATEP start-up costs, we’ve spent increasingly less on instruction and are now doomed to cross below the 50% mark. (See The data & Documents.) Among the desperate measures we’ve taken: the en masse and ASAP hiring of faculty.


No district would do that unless it had to. Faculty hiring should be done carefully, deliberately. Not hurriedly.

Our haste has already produced fiascos. HR has bungled advertising for these 45 new hires. Check out our ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's useless; and it contains errors. (This was discovered during a recent IVC Academic Senate meeting in which it occurred to folks to actually go online and check out the ads that HR was in such a hurry to get into the CHE.)

No doubt Mathur will seize the opportunity to blame all of our woes, including our 50% woes, on the state budget. He’ll announce various obnoxious initiatives too, using the budget crisis as cover.

We can’t let him get away with that.

"But wait!", you say. "The state’s budgetary woes do not apply to us because we’re on basic aid!"

Well, yes. But there’s a big “but”: despite our special funding situation (we rely on local property taxes), our board of trustees insists on funding the colleges as though we received the more common state funding. And so that means we’re headed for seriously lean times. We’ll have to spend less money.


Meanwhile, the district (i.e., Gary Poertner) projects that we are headed for non-compliance with the 50% Law (for 2007-2008) to the tune of four and a half million dollars. But the projection assumes a faculty COLA of 4.53%.

Among the provisions of the state budget: no COLA.

That means that we’re headed for an even greater degree of non-compliance (with the 50% Law) than we thought. And that means: we need to hire more faculty or increase faculty salaries/benefits.

How that all fits with spending less money ain’t exactly clear to me. (Admittedly, I’m no money guy.)

At any rate, it’s important that we learn the facts about all this and keep an eye on you-know-who.

So welcome back.