Our Beno

• Board meeting tonight, complete with Japanese sneak attack (agenda) — Trustees will resolve to check vids before showing them ~ $2,445 a person for Orlando junket ~ new Board President?

• A Rainbow of Patriots/Crazies Greet Nancy Pelosi in Irvine (OC Weekly) — Way crazy 9/11 truthers, Fuentesers, et al.

• U.S.A. All the Way Apologies to the cynics, but we’re on a roll. (The New York Times) — That's right, our French fries are still the best, and Apple rules

• Should you treat your children like dogs? Can dog-whisperering techniques used to control canines also work with children (The Guardian) — Sure, why not, and with students too; can we use treats?

AT A RECENT MEETING of the IVC Academic Senate, senators discussed “student learning outcomes” (SLOs) yet again. The discussion got seriously nuts. I listened in amazement. It appeared to me that, perhaps unknowingly, the college had constructed a “system” around the new planning and SLO requirements that was shot through with bad faith and, well, idiocy. I needed to say something.

“I feel that I am in a dystopian novel,” I announced. Most senators just stared. (I don’t think they know what “dystopian” means.)

It does not surprise me that this SLO garbage is being foisted upon us. What surprises me is the impulse to cheerfully accommodate these demands.

What’s the matter with people? Are they too far gone?

But, if you look, you can find plenty of non-cheerful accommodation (or cheerful or non-cheerful non-accommodation). For instance, in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed, Rob Weir declares that he is a “near-total skeptic on the ‘measured outcomes’ fad sweeping academe.” In parentheses, he says more: “Way too much of the latter is jargon-ridden gibberish fashioned by administrators who don’t teach to mollify demagogic politicians who don’t think!”

For us in the community colleges, much of this gibberish seems to originate (after the demagogic politicians, I mean) with accrediting officials. That ACCJC: it is, by itself, its own dystopian novel.

It’s headed by the remarkable "Babs" Beno. Remember when she arrived in the spring of '06 to declare that things in the district were just about, well, hunky-dory? She actually offered that assessment, more or less, immediately after having heard three faculty leaders explaining how remarkably unhunky and undory things really were.

She and Tom Fuentes were on the same page that day. Everything is just f*cking great, they said. They were on a soma holiday together. How wonderful.

I seem to recall that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World describes life under “Our Ford.”

OK then.

Our Beno.

Dystopia c. 2006

1:20 Faculty speak the truth, to no avail
6:28 Babs Beno: “I’ve seen a lot of progress here, so good for you.”
6:50 Trustee Fuentes: “an infusion of good cheer”
7:35 Ian Walton: “Can I really truthfully stand up here and say it’s nice to be back? I’m not even gonna try to answer that question.”

Watch Ian Walton listen to Babs and the trustees and, well, find himself in a dystopian novel.