The Chancellor’s opening session: "dead, completely dead, and dead forever"

Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur chose “Responsibility and Accountability in a New Age” as the theme of yesterday’s “Chancellor’s Opening Session,” which was just PERFECT ‘cause, even though Mathur highlighted our recent faculty hires and our continuing efforts to satisfy the Accreditors’ demands, at no point did he acknowledge that much of the hiring was a hurried effort forced upon us by Mathur’s own failure to heed the 50% law or his active participation in mucking up an accreditation report, bringing the district as close to ticket-pullage as it has ever gotten.

(Video of the opening session is now available here. --8/30)

8:45 a.m.

I showed up early for the Fall '09 SOCCCD opening session, held at Irvine Valley College’s Performing Arts Center, aka the IVC “big top.” Sat up front as usual, but sans camera.

Attendance was good, I guess. The hall was mostly full, and there was the usual how-was-your-summer clamor. I guess if morale is low for a long enough period, a kind of rust of good humor collects, and so, there it was, all red and coarse. Or maybe it was the free milk and cookies that set the mood. Dunno.

At about 8:50, Don Wagner stepped up to MC. But doesn’t Tom Fuentes do that? Tom Fuentes was “tied up,” Don said. (I think this was an allusion to a love (or grievery) that dare not speak its name—namely, Tom's affection for his good pal, the odious and newly dead Bob Novak, aka the "prince of darkness.")

Don said something about “his” board, and that seemed stupid, ‘cause nobody in their right mind would want to lay claim to those doofi.

American Idol:

We’ll start, he said, “with a bit of a musical moment,” whereupon Saddleback College’s Erin Long stepped out to warble the Star Spangled Banner, bending notes nicely—though she does go for that pointlessly filigreed style that is standard now where IQs are low and ratings are high (viz., American Idol). After that, she sang something called “The Climb,” which appears to be a Miley Cyrus ballad. Bleccch. (But I did like Long's voice. The audience seemed thrilled by it.)

Wagner introduced the recently-disgraced John Williams and his invocation, which, Don said, is offered in recognition of this country’s rich religious heritage (a reference, I guess, to Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Marshall Applewhite, and other wacky American religious innovators).


Evidently, Williams feels that one should introduce a prayer with a JOKE (if it was a joke, it was at the expensive of non-Judeo-Christian theists and non-theists; hence it was somewhat sinister and obnoxious to many of us), and so he told the story about the teacher who questioned the possibility of Jonah’s being swallowed by a whale (what with the whale’s narrow throat), and some kid wasn’t having it. Eventually, the kid figured how she could settle the matter: she'd die and go to heaven and then ask the J Man herself.

“Yeah, but what if Jonah’s in hell?” asked the teacher.

“Then you can ask him,” said the student.

Har, har, har. People who question absurd fairytales go to hell, if’n the ridiculous fairytale is a Bible frickin’ ridiculous fairytale. Har har.

Williams is an idiot.

Don noted our bad economic times. But, thanks to our marvelous board, the SOCCCD is sittin’ pretty, he said. We’re in great fiscal shape and somebody oughta give us a prize, he seemed to say. Since we’re just about the only district not cutting classes, headcount and FTE are way the heck up, he added.

Don went out of his way to thank faculty (and others) for their “amazing, single-minded dedication” to students. “He must be running for office,” thought I. He is.

Wagner introduced various VIPs, including trustees Williams and Marcia Milchiker, whereupon Chancellor Mathur minced into view, sans Elvis. He was met by weak applause and a collective stink of resignation.

He made us say "good morning" twice. A child screamed.

As per usual, Mathur had all the new hires sprint up on stage, one by one. He started with new faculty and then moved on to new administrators, but he obviously missed at least half of the new faculty hires, and so Brenda B stalked up to the stage and told Wagner that Mathur fucked up, and so Wagner whispered into Mathur’s blubbery ear that he’d fucked up, and so Mathur got all dazed and confused for a second but then consulted his index cards.

It was like watching a guy work at the DMV.

Eventually, the photo-op was ready and the picture was snapped. Whew!

Pole dance:

Next, a dance instructor named Fabienne Levenson performed for us—with the help of Belgian crooner Jacques Brel and about 12 feet of exercise bar—and that was great. I think Mathur was trying to impress his pal Michael Drake, who sat quietly in the audience awaiting his cue to edify.

Levenson's artsy-fartsy dance was riveting, but she sure did kick up a lot of dust, which I could see orbiting the stage lights high above our heads. Somebody oughta sweep that stage once in a while.

After Levenson’s pole dance, Wagner remarked: “Raise your hand if you can do that.” Laughter.

Then came the Chancellor’s turn to squawk. He introduced his “team,” which took a while. He yammered like he does, though he seemed to lack passion, and I do believe his voice grew softer and his message grew diffuse as he spoke. Some in the audience commenced snoring. Maybe that was me.

He talked about the state budget and education’s fiscal woes. People are pissin’ an’ moanin’ throughout the state, he said, but not us, ‘cause we’re doing just fine. What’s our secret?, he asked, rhetorically.

“We operate within our own means,” he answered.

No doubt, Drake raised an eyebrow or something. “Asshole.”

(Fiscal heroes, are we? Did you ever wonder if, owing to our Basic Aid gravy train—which relies on unusually high property tax revenue—we spend more taxpayer money per student than any district in the state? Does anybody out there have the data? I'm suggesting that, just maybe, despite our board's endless blarney about "fiscal conservatism," our district spends more taxpayer money per student than those fiscally liberal districts.)

Mathur mentioned our tremendous growth in the area of online instruction. The data shows, he said, that campus-based instruction is in decline everywhere, and that’s true for us too. Online instruction is the wave of the future, he insisted, and so we’ve got to push it more strenuously.

Faculty in the audience, a doddering crew, just stared.

Mathur next demonstrated that he cannot pronounce the word “renovate.” “We need more nurses,” he then opined, explaining that Saddleback’s nursing program will soon spread north to Tustin’s ATEP campus.

Then came another musical interlude, this time involving clarinet and bassoon. That was good. I’ve always had a weakness for bassoonery.

A great penguin joke:

Then came keynote speaker Michael Drake, Chancellor of UCI just up the road.

Drake told a great “penguin” joke and then lectured a bit about the budget. Sounded pretty bad. It just gets worse and worse, he said. He noted that our state has led the world in higher education and in our system of government. (That last point seemed odd, given our government’s dysfunction.)

He provided some fascinating history of our nation’s development of universities, starting with the Morrill Land Grand Act of 1862, which essentially provided seed money for colleges and universities across the country. Our colleges were not just for the rich, nope.

Drake noted the conceptual scheme of an African people who recognize gradations of deaditude: dead, completely dead, and dead forever. Well, higher ed in Cal is just dead is all, said Drake.

So cheer up. Could be worse.

Drake presented a chart that showed the impressive correlation between money spent and level of health per country. The USA showed up pretty much way up and to the right where you'd expect it to be. But it’s a bit low compared to some countries. Why’s that?

Well, it’s the health care disparity in this country, declared Drake.

Despite that, the staunch Mathur walked up and handed Drake a plaque. (I briefly imagined what Drake would do with it later in the day. I imagined his pride.)

I've gotta admit, Drake is a good speaker. The audience seemed to like him too.

Flintstonian distance ed:

Next came our own VC Bob Bramucci who gave his usual highly-entertaining presentation about technology. He’s a funny guy and a real show-off.

At one point, he noted that “distance ed” is older than the Civil War. “OK,” I thought. “How’s that?” Pony Express or something.

Is online instruction inferior? It is not, he said. In fact, it seems to be superior.

The faculty stared, unresponsive. One lady quietly rubbed wrinkle cream into her pours.

Bob made the usual point that technology is just a tool that can make things better or worse, like a knife or, say, a chunk of silicone. It all depends on what you do with it.

He played his ax a bit. Don't know why.

“Textbooks are toast,” he said. Apparently, owing to the availability of books online, etc., textbook publishing is in the same quandary today that the music industry was in when Napster came along.

We all liked that.

In the future, everyone will get a prize:

Mathur handed out pins to faculty, honoring them in proportion to the number of years they have managed not to be fired as employees of the SOCCCD. Wow. (I spotted that rat bastard Patrick Fennel, and Howard Gensler, too. Those two seemed particularly proud.)

The session ended with a real doozey. Mathur showed a video of patriotic images accompanied by that execrable Lee Greenwood song, “God Bless the USA.” (Check out the song's dreadful lyrics.)

In its final sequence, the video offered some verbiage. The gist of it was that we owe our freedom to the sacrifice of soldiers and we owe our saved souls to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Really.

Somehow, at this moment, only one song will do. It's the one I'd play if I were the Chancellor:

PENGUIN JOKE:

A man was driving down the highway with a car full of penguins--penguins sticking out the windows, penguins coming out the sunroof, penguin everywhere. A cop pulled him over and told him if he didn't want a ticket he'd better take those penguins straight to the zoo. The man promised he would and drove off.

The next day, the same highway, the same car, the same guy, the same cop and the same penguins -- only this time the penguins were all wearing sunglasses! The cop pulled the guy over and said, "I thought I told you to take these penguins to the zoo!"

"I did" said the guy. "Today I'm taking them to the beach."