Update: that daffy new tutoring referral “protocol”

Who can 'splain it?

     A PROTOCOL FROM HELL—and SADDLEBACK. You’ll recall that, during flex week, the district set up a system for referring students to tutoring. The new system works like this: faculty who open their Spring semester rosters automatically refer all of their students to tutoring—unless they uncheck a pre-checked box appearing at the bottom of the roster page.
     Wacky!
     I first heard about it on Friday of flex week. The next day—two days before the start of the semester—I posted about the new protocol (Referring students, sight unseen, to tutoring? Huh?), explaining that, on my reading of Title 5, it is unlawful, among other things.
     Title 5, I reported, clearly suggests that

… to do this tutoring thing right, all students who are tutored … must be enrolled [in tutoring] on the basis of a referral. The referral must be by a “counselor or an instructor.” The latter must be referring the student to tutoring because of “an identified learning need.”

Justice: some say IVC's VPI practices a dastardly form of "thought control"

     So, obviously, the new protocol ain’t kosher. Or so I wrote.
     A week or two later, the new protocol came up at the meeting of the IVC Academic Senate, and, at that time, VPI Craig Justice expressed unhappiness with the dang thing. The new protocol, he said, did appear to violate Title 5. (But gosh, hadn’t anybody at Saddleback College, the initiator of this daffy protocol, clued him in about it?)

     THE NIGHTMARE IS OVER. Well, at the last IVC senate meeting (two days ago), Justice explained that he had met with his counterpart at Saddleback College (Don B), and it was agreed that the new protocol would have to be undone and replaced with something that would square with Title 5.
     OK, so that’s one problem solved, I guess. (See also The automatic referral "protocol," part 3: violating Title 5.) Send cash prizes to DtB.

"Hey, Buster. I have an identified need."