The professionals! (Just Gimme Some Truth)

     NOV. 15: Just after 5:00 today, we at Irvine Valley College received the following email, announcing the temporary replacement of Kathleen Schrader, the Dean of Math, Science, and Engineering, who was recently fired (then unfired, then placed on administrative leave):

Colleagues:

     Please join me in welcoming Bill Kelly, who will serve as IVC’s Acting Dean of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering through June 30, 2011. Bill previously served as Dean of IVC’s Math and Science Division from July 2004-to 2007. Bill brings extensive community college experience throughout the state, [comma splice!] he served as Dean of Fine Arts, Physical Education-Athletics at Saddleback College from July 2000-July 2001. From 1989-1995, Bill was Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services for the South Orange County Community College District. Bill earned a Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts from Pepperdine University. Please join me in welcoming Bill’s return to IVC.

Very Respectfully,
Glenn R. Roquemore, Ph.D.
President
Irvine Valley College

     President Roquemore, who ascended to administrative ranks back in 1997 owing to his sudden willingness to work with the hated Raghu P. Mathur 

(until then, Roquemore had worked with administration to remove Mathur as chair of his School; the nakedly ambitious Mathur had used unscrupulous means to retain that position, one that the equally nakedly ambitious Roquemore desperately coveted), 

--as I was saying, President Roquemore called Schrader to his office a couple of weeks ago to call her on the carpet over her alleged unprofessionalism as evidenced by some of her instructors’ banter, during a Biological Sciences meeting, regarding Mrs. Roquemore’s planned cake-baking (or cake-buying) efforts for the opening of the new Chemistry buildings. (Kiana is an IVC chem instructor.)

     (I'm told that Schrader was very clear about the object of Roquemore's consternation in conversations she had with friends in the immediate aftermath of her untimely "firing.")

     PLAN B: No doubt after a session with “legal” (or HR) at the district, Roquemore developed a new sense of what occurred during his meeting with Schrader: no, he did not meet with Schrader about snarky faculty comments about Kiana’s cake; it had nothing to do with that! (don’t be silly! Glenn has always scrupulously treated his wife as just another instructor!*); it was, he said, about an alleged offensive remark made during the same meeting about classified employees: something about the shallow end of the gene pool. (Efforts to hear this comment on a tape recording of the meeting have yielded no evidence that classified employees were the target of the “gene pool” remark. Faculty who were at the meeting continue to scratch their heads over what about the meeting could be construed as evidence of Schrader's unprofessionalism--unless it's Glenn's notorious customary unprofessionalism and kneejerkery re Kiana.)

     Before Kelly accepted this acting dean position, the job had already been offered to someone else—a respected member of faculty. She took time to think it over. When she returned to accept the offer, she was then told, “Well, no, we gave it to someone else.”
     The professionals!

*I've spoken to some highly reliable people at IVC who swear that Glenn has--well, let's just say that they report numerous and amazing incidents of a kind that Glenn seems to say have never occurred! Some of these people are talkin'. And not just to me.