Dean sings "Ain’t That A Kick in the Head" (Yes. It is.) [Red Emma]

One Dean.

Nov. 11:

From: Red Emma, Acting Dean

TO: All faculty and staff at Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College, also students and people in the library, those smoking twenty feet from any building, not to mention the nice old guys selling their used cars on the weekend.

This is to remind everyone (including faculty, lab staff, office staff, employees, family members, old guys, casual sexual partners, and even the Employee of the Month) in the schools and in the fields and, lo, even those among the beasts and birds and, yes, those who dwell in faraway lands not to mention the golfers across the street that any and all contact with former mediocre chemistry instructor Raghu Mathur, college president Raghu Mathur, Chancellor Raghu Mathur (yes, all three of them!) must be routed through District Human Resources or Western Union or, if it is a legal holiday as Veteran’s Day, via district carrier pigeon.

Yet another Dean

All deans, including Dean Martin and Dean Jones, have been informed to do the same. If you receive telephone calls, emails, letters, telegrams, Harry and David’s Gift Packs, flowers, a dirty joke or pleasing limerick, or other contact from anyone claiming to be a dean or even a Dean, please inform my office at once, or District HR. If you receive an email, please forward it to me, or to HR. Let’s all go forward, by all means. And if you see the pigeon, please do let me know. We like that pigeon. Dean Roger Owens is currently the responsible administrator of record, at least that’s what people say. But can you ever really be sure what with people making insulting remarks about baked goods? As this responsibility is assumed by other deans, everyone will be notified at that time. “Everybody will be notified at the time.” I don’t know about you but I find real reassurance in writing that sentence, and sharing it with you today. It reminds me that there will also be balm in Gilead and that we shall all someday be bringing in the sheaves, whatever they are.

This protocol is “standard operating procedure” when someone is placed on administrative leave. Don’t be alarmed, please, by this impressive and provocative-sounding phrase. Nobody is having an operation. We are all feeling quite well.

This formalized avenue of contact protects all employees from excessive exposure to litigation, deposition, chicken pox or other legal processes that individuals may unwittingly expose themselves to arising from what may appear to be “normal” or benign contact. Formalized Avenue, those of you with a GPS or access to MapQuest will know, is the cross street with Definite Boulevard. These are, in fact, actual streets in the city of Irvine, California. I know that many of us enjoy driving to this particular intersection and watching the traffic stop and start, ebb and flow, shuck and jive, observing the pleasing and reliable cooperation of drivers who almost never, say, get out of their vehicles right then and there (!) to wonder at how so many anti-government, anti-librarian, anti-public education pro-privatization Reagan Republican activist types still manage to pull in a paycheck every month from a taxpayer-supported public education institution, get themselves fired, and then sue that very institution for even more money, claiming they were discriminated against because of Big Government. But I digress.

It is hoped that HR and all deans will reach a mutually agreeable separation agreement very soon. This is hoped for all of us, really. Mutually agreeable separation is sometimes the very best we can hope for in this life. That, and a nice piece of cake, with plenty of rich, creamy frosting.

Finally, if you point a finger at somebody, anybody, remember that four fingers will be pointing back at you. Unless of course, you are somebody who goes around pointing at people with both hands, which would mean that eight fingers are pointing back at you.

God bless us every one at this holiday season, and God Bless America, too.

But they still have each other.