Bio faculty proclaim: Roquemore's characterization "was absolutely wrong"

NOV. 18
     ROQUEMORIAN REVISIONISM? At today’s meeting of the Irvine Valley College Academic Senate Rep Council (aka the “Senate Meeting”), during “public comments,” two full-time faculty of the School of Biological Sciences addressed the assembly. They proceeded to contradict what IVC President Glenn Roquemore said during his curious address at the last Senate Meeting (Nov. 4).
     You’ll recall that, at IVC one morning a few weeks ago, word spread that Dean Kathleen Schrader had been “fired.” The story was that she had angered IVC President Glenn Roquemore by making (or allowing), during a meeting of the School of Biological Sciences, comments about his wife’s role in providing a cake for an upcoming event. (Glenn’s wife is Chem instructor Kiana Tabibzadeh, notorious recipient of Roquemoreian invulnerability to discipline, correction, or criticism re her sometimes hinky professional conduct.)
     At the time, Bio faculty who had attended the meeting in question could not imagine what Schrader had said or done that would earn the emnity of the President. That day, Schrader (reportedly) was under the impression that Roquemore was infuriated by the Kiana-cake-related remarks. But Bio faculty explained that Schrader’s only participation in the “Kiana” jocularitude was her efforts to discourage such remarks.
     A week later, to everyone’s surprise, Roquemore showed up at the Senate Meeting to say: what was problematic during the Bio School Meeting was not remarks re Kiana and her cake—indeed, he explained, he has always been terribly scrupulous to treat his wife as he would treat any other faculty. No, the problem concerned alleged objectionable remarks about classified employees: something about their being at the shallow end of the gene pool.
     Oh my!
     Immediately after Glenn's remarkable Senate performance, I spoke with Bio faculty. One instructor told me that he had made the comment about the gene pool, but that it was not directed at classified employees. Further, he could not think of anything Schrader had subsequently done or said that amounted to expressing or permitting objectionable remarks about classified employees. Later (he told me), when he listened to an audio tape of the meeting, he realized that his recollection had been accurate: Schrader had done nothing that could be construed as stating or condoning or allowing objectionable remarks about classified employees.
     So, today, that instructor, a member of the Rep Council, explained that President Roquemore’s characterization of the School Meeting two weeks ago “was absolutely wrong.” He explained that he had made the “gene pool” comment, not Schrader, and Schrader’s subsequent comments were in no sense made at the expense of classified employees.
     He had not come alone. Another senior Bio instructor, who had also attended that fateful School Meeting, next explained that Schrader’s comment—the one that, Glenn now claimed, was problematic—“had nothing to do with classified.”
     Many faculty that I speak with at IVC are already under the impression that the President’s odd Senate performance of two weeks ago was an after-the-fact attempt to rewrite history and thereby to shore up the miserable case that he (and VPI Craig Justice) had against Schrader.
     Stay tuned.