Our nebulous past: these guys are all dying

Louis J. Cella, Jr.

     About a week ago (see), I provided a link to an OC Reg story about the death of a “Notorious OC political kingmaker,” namely, Louis J. Cella Jr.

     In that article (Notorious O.C. political kingmaker dies), Martin Wisckol reported that

     Louis J. Cella Jr., Orange County’s biggest political donor before being convicted of embezzlement in 1976, died Nov. 7 after a lengthy neurological illness. He was 87 years old.
     Cella was born in Providence, R.I., on Aug. 21, 1924, and received his medical doctorate from Marquette University in 1948. [According to the Times, he was expelled for cheating from his first med school.] In the early 1950s, he moved to Orange County and joined the Santa Ana Clinic in downtown Santa Ana.
     By the late 1960s, Cella was contributing heavily to state and local campaigns. In 1974, he made $550,000 in political donations, the most of any individual in California. He was particularly interested in the Board of Supervisors and their potential to control health-care facility licensing, according to a 1987 Register profile. He was key to getting four supervisors elected: Robert Battin, Ronald Caspers, Ralph Clark and Ralph Diedrich. All but Caspers were – like Cella – Democrats.

     Hmmm. According to an article in today’s LA Times (Dr. Louis J. Cella Jr. dies at 87), Cella was a registered Republican, though he “mainly supported Democratic candidates….”
     Wisckol goes on:

     Even by Orange County’s lively political standards, it was a wild time, with 42 Orange County politicians and political aides indicted between 1974 and 1977.
     Battin was convicted of illegally using county staff for campaigning. Diedrich was convicted of taking bribes from a developer in exchange for a rezoning vote. Caspers died at sea in a boating accident.

     OK then. The corrupt Cella supported OC Supes (1) Battin, (2) Caspers, (3) Clark, and (4) Diedrich. Battin and Diedrich were eventually convicted of crimes. Clark managed to ride out the scandal, though he gave up his Supe seat in 1986 partly owing to persistent accusations that he had had unsavory dealings with notorious “corrupter” W. Patrick Moriarty. (I think the DA persuaded him to step down.)
     I remember Clark. He was an old-fashioned, glad-handing politician. Some people loved 'im.
     Yes, Caspers, the Republican, died in 1974. As far as I know, his boat and his body were never found (one hears rumors, from older reporters, that foul play was likely afoot).
     Caspers’ right-hand man was, of course, a young Tom Fuentes, whom Nathan Rosenberg once described as “Caspers' bagman.” (See LA Times, Badham vs. Rosenberg at TV Taping, May 20, 1986).
     Rosenberg is a Boy Scout, so I believe 'im.
     Fuentes’ reaction to Caspers’ death was extreme: he entered a seminary. But that didn’t take. Six months later, he left the seminary and became a "consultant." As near as I can tell, he was the kind of consultant who wined and dined certain key persons on behalf of certain companies. He was very good at that. By '84, he was OC GOP chair, where he became legendary for his wining and dining accomplishments.
     It’s all very strange.
     Wisckol snooped around some old Register stories, where he learned that

     In 1976, Cella was convicted of 22 federal counts related to embezzling at least $600,000 in Medi-Cal funds through two Orange County hospitals in which he had an ownership stake. He served 32 months of a five-year sentence.
     Before his indictment, Cella also oversaw a political literature print shop in one of his hospitals, provided candidates with hospital-paid phone banks, and paid candidates for phantom jobs while they were out campaigning, according to the 1987 Register story.
     The story also notes that before his indictment, “Little was known about the source of his apparent immense wealth.”

     The source? He stole it. Well, it’s all very delicious, isn’t it? We’ll probably never know all the details.
     These guys are all dying.

See also Louis J. Cella, Former Orange County Political Power Broker, Dies at 87 (Voice of OC)

These days

I've been out walking

I don't do too much talking

These days, these days.

These days I seem to think a lot

About the things that I forgot to do

And all the times I had the chance to.

I've stopped my rambling,

I don't do too much gambling

These days, these days.

These days I seem to think about

How all the changes came about my ways

And I wonder if I'll see another highway.

I had a lover,

I don't think I'll risk another

These days, these days.

And if I seem to be afraid

To live the life that I have made in song

It's just that I've been losing so long.

La la la la la, la la.

I've stopped my dreaming,

I won't do too much scheming

These days, these days.

These days I sit on corner stones

And count the time in quarter tones to ten.

Please don't confront me with my failures,

I had not forgotten them.

In Cal, broad support for the Occupy movement

From this morning’s Oakland Tribune:
Poll: Californians evenly split on Occupy movement

     California voters are almost evenly split, largely along ideological lines, over whether they identify with the Occupy movement, according to a new Field Poll. ¶ The poll found 46 percent of California's voting public identifies a lot or some with the Occupy movement, while 49 percent declare not much identification with it. But while voters are closely divided in their identification with the movement, a 58 percent to 32 percent majority say they agree with the protests' underlying reason….
. . .
     Conservatives are very unlikely to identify with the movement, liberals are very likely to do so and independents are about evenly split, [Field Poll Director Mark] DiCamillo said.
. . .
     DiCamillo said that for context's sake, he went back and checked a similar poll asking about the Tea Party movement in January 2010; at that time, 28 percent of Californians identified strongly or somewhat with that movement. ¶ By comparison, he said, Occupy is "a bigger, broader phenomenon" than the Tea Party, which was mainly just within the bounds of the Republican Party….

See also: STATE: Most people share Occupy views, poll finds (The [Riverside] Press-Enterprise)

Ask an Editor! Gustavo Arellano takes the helm at the OC Weekly

Over at the OC Weekly, Matt Coker has the news:

Ted B. Kissell informed his news staff via today's copy meeting and everyone else at Orange County's favorite alternative weekly newspaper via email that he has resigned as editor of OC Weekly.

Kissell, who joined the staff weeks after founding editor Will Swaim ended his 12-year run at the helm in 2007, also announced that Gustavo Arellano will assume the editor's post "effective 5:01 p.m." this Friday, Dec. 2....

..."I want to thank all the skinheads, pedophile priests, Know Nothings, and battleship tacos that made this day possible," Arellano said of taking over the editor's office. "I look forward to continuing the Weekly's mission of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable with the best damn group of writers this side of the Fortean Times. And I promise to offer our disgraced, felonious ex-sheriff Mike Carona a complimentary subscription to our rag so he can get his jollies off to our backpage ads!"

Arellano, who grew up and went to high school in Anaheim, began freelancing at the Weekly in 2001 and became a staffer upon graduating from UCLA with a master's degree in Latin American studies in 2003.

Having served as managing editor the past year and a half, Arellano will continue as editor to author his popular syndicated column, ¡Ask a Mexican!, which won the 2006 and 2008 Association of Alternative Weeklies (AAN) Award for Best Column. He'll also keep contributing to the Weekly's tasty food coverage. Indeed, he's rolled some of that knowledge into his forthcoming third book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.

A press release about Arellano assuming the editorship that VVM submitted to AAN today notes that OC Weekly's new editorial chief "is the proud son of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom was illegal."

*
Felicidades a Gustavo!
*
Re Gustavo, see also:

• IVC coulda had a v-8! (DtB) Roquemore twice avoids choosing Gustavo for commencement speaker...
• Commencement speaker choices: the controversial and the unimaginative (DtB)
• Separated at Birth? Ask a Mexican's Logo, Saddleback College's Gaucho (OC Weekly) Picking up on a DtB story...

That's some survey, that Don Wagner "immigration" survey

     Today, I visited Assemblyman (and former SOCCCD trustee) Don Wagner’s government website: here. I noticed a button: “click here to take our latest survey.”
     So I did. At present, Don has three surveys: Healthcare, Immigration, and Jobs.
     I chose the one on immigration. It asks just four questions:

     Observe that the third and fourth questions of this survey are about how respondents “feel” about things:

      (California's "situation"? That's mighty vague. On the other hand, under the circumstances, I think we can safely assume that Don means the state's fiscal situation, which, of course, is dire.) 

     Whether "illegal immigration is a large contributing factor to" the state's fiscal "situation" and how much (if at all) it contributes to it—these are empirical questions. When confronted with empirical questions, one should make the appropriate observations; one should seek the relevant data. 

     One does not ask for people's opinions.

     Odd.

     Also, Don is asking questions about matters imbedded in a cluster of empirical and non-empirical issues that comprise the illegal immigration issue. (Can the existing pattern and amount of immigration be stopped or thwarted? How can it be? At what cost in other values such as privacy? Is multiculturalism a legitimate value? Is it decent to seek to prevent such phenomena as the gradual dilution of one's "culture"? Etc.) 

     Don distorts the immigration issue by implying that it's essentially about whether illegal immigration is costly.

     And isn't Don asking for people's opinions (about these curiously selective matters) already knowing full well what those opinions are? ("It's a big contributor! It's immense!")

     That's some survey, that Don Wagner "immigration" survey.

That's some catch, that Catch-22

Rant On: "futile, if not cynical wastes of time"

Monday is here and, as promised, Rebel Girl has some reading for you.

Clio Bluestocking, Reb's most recent infatuation, weighs in on her community college experience in "The Nebulous Creature."

Blue writes:

In my years at the community college, I found three insidious concepts that pointed toward the endemic problem of the college. All three were the sort of things that, on the face of it, seem like they could maybe be good ideas; but, when you looked a little beyond the surface, you could see that the ideas were concocted outside of the reality of the institution, of the needs of the institution, and of the needs of everyone associated with the institution, including the students. These three things were outcomes assessment, online instruction, and "completion."

Reb likes it when teachers write about teaching. She finds it refreshing.

As you may remember, late last week, Rebel cited Bluestocking's assessment of SLOs.

In the same post, Blue makes the familiar arguments about online education: "The problem is that the dictum seems to not seriously care if it is done well. The dictum is to serve more students and this is an easy and cheap solution. Doing it well will require more staff and therefore more money."

Regarding "completion," Blue points out that institutions, even though they advise instructors "to have compassion and understand the problems facing students with full-time work, full-time family, and full-time course loads; yet, they do not look at that very fact of the students' lives as an obstacle to advancement. You want completion? Address the real reasons that students don't complete."


But here's where she won Reb's heart:

Who is "they" in my rantings here? Who comes up with these ideas, thinks they are grand, and demands their implementation in the face of overall opposition from the people who have to do the implementing? Well, I wish I knew. Anyone can be part of "they" at any point on any issue, I suppose, but the main "they" is the real, endemic problem of the college where I worked. The endemic problem went above and beyond the college itself to the people who the decision makers at the college seemed to want to serve...

This nebulous creature and its handlers, however, had very very little knowledge of how education works or the purpose of education. Very few people connected to this nebulous creature had any experience in education beyond their last college course; and this nebulous creature had obviously failed itself in its own education because it could not conceive of anything as being useful unless there was a point-to-point correlation between something in a classroom and a specific skill that might be demanded by an employer. Anything going on in the classroom must directly translate into a student's ability to profit and the line had to be direct. Any questioning of the nebulous creature's demands was met with "if we don't do what it wants ourselves, then it will come in and do it for us."

Now, I don't think it is a bad idea to explain how the Humanities are useful to society or even to individuals who are just in college to get a better job. That's most of the students in a c.c. anyway. It is the reason that college is connected to upward mobility. Humanities exposes people to a variety of ideas, expands their way of thinking, hones their analytical skills (or exposes them to the concept of analysis), and requires verbal expression and communication most often in written form. Sometimes this may not seem so obvious as one tries to wade through the causes of the American Civil War or the intricacies of Hamlet.

Sadly, the nebulous creature seemed not particularly interested in those explanations. It understands "business writing" or Elizabeth I, CEO. It understands, "student will be able to demonstrate the ability to use a comma" or "student will be able to identify George Washington." It understands "history" as "dates and facts and wars and politicians who have no connection to anything happening now." It understands "literature" as "that boring shit in which everything meant something when really the white whale was just a whale and who gives a damn anyway?" This nebulous creature is simplistic and does not take into consideration that education is a complex endeavor that is bigger than the numbers that they want to production -- sometimes even more subjective and not apparent for years. It can sometimes be as traumatic as it is enlightening, if done right, which is why it should not be a series of hoops to jump through or numbers to generate in order to do it right.

The biggest problem in the face of this nebulous creature was the way that it was able -- despite its nebulous nature -- to force complete capitulation and compliance, to draw so many into its thrall. I kept asking, as everyone complained about the "outcomes assessment," and online "learning," and "completion" -- at every level in some cases -- "at what point do we just say 'NO'?" Seriously, at what point do we, those of us actually IN the college, say "WE are the professionals here, we actually ARE competent, and we actually DO know what we are doing." When do we -- and I mean faculty, staff, librarians, counselors, administrators, everyone at the college who increasingly sees these measures as futile, if not cynical wastes of time -- when does that we seize control of our own business as professionals?

Indeed, what would happen if we did? What if we said, "we will decide our own 'outcomes' and how best to determine if they are being met," rather than going through the farce of the current system in place at the college? What if we said, "these are the terms on which we will offer and implement online courses in our departments according to our department's needs"? What if we said, "your definition of 'completion' has no meaning at our institution, so here is our varied means of determining 'completion' at our college"? Seriously, what would happen? ...

Rebel Girl has not successfully resisted the urge to quote often and long here. Sigh. Forgive her. She hopes that you will visit Blues' original post here and read it in its entirety. She hopes that you will chime in in the comments section and tell us what you really think.

More later~~~~

Trustee Tom Fuentes' dark warning, November 16

Go ahead: install Microsoft Silverlight. The district says it's OK!

The video starts with the tail end of public comments: the "hat" or "mouse" lady offers her services as Chancellor, then stalks off. No stranger than usual.

Addressing the TV audience

00:24 – Board Reports

00:26 – Trustee Meldau
02:00 – Trustee Milchiker
04:46 – Trustee Prendergast
07:02 – Trustee (President) Padberg
08:46 – Trustee Fuentes – He offers his dark and dire warning
11:36 – Trustee Lang
11:55 – Student Trustee Larson
12:50 – Chancellor’s report (Gary Poertner)

Trustee Nancy Padberg and her anti-intellectual idol, Rush Limbaugh

     I recall that, at a board meeting years ago, SOCCCD trustee Nancy Padberg (of San Clemente, that old hotbed of Bircherism) proudly noted her membership in the Rush Limbaugh Club.
     Wow. Limbaugh is an idiot. But his particular variety of idiocy is anti-intellectual. He's the sort of "conservative" who was never educated—he dropped out of college in favor of a radio career—and who has come to believe, as have so many before him, that academia comprises clever but conniving elitists who make it their business to contemn the hardworking, commonsensical little guy.
     That mindset is a variety of conspiracy thinking, a paranoid thing.
     Ever read Richard J. Hofstadter? Two of his classics are The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964) and Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963).
     Those books are indeed classics, endlessly cited and referred to. —But only by intellectuals, natch.
     Two excerpts:

     American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years, we have seen angry minds at work, mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated ... how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But, behind this, I believe, there is a style of mind that is far from new, and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style, simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. (PSAP) 

     The case against intellect [in the puritanical American tradition] is founded upon a set of fictional and wholly abstract antagonisms. Intellect is pitted against feeling, on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or diabolical. It is pitted against practicality, since theory is held to be opposed to practice, and the "purely" theoretical mind is so much disesteemed. It is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism. Once the validity of these antagonisms is accepted, then the case for intellect, and by extension for the intellectual, is lost. Who cares to risk sacrificing the warmth of emotion, solidity of character, practical capacity, or democratic sentiment in order to pay deference to a type of man who at best is deemed to be merely clever and at worst may even be dangerous? (AIAL)

     Rush is very much a part of the paranoid and anti-intellectualist traditions in this country. He sees conspiracies. He demonizes "liberals." He relies on Straw Men. He occasionally appeals, fat-headedly, to the Bible. He takes hillbilly drugs and hums hillbilly tunes. He enjoys football.
     Most of all, like his predecessors, he eschews (because he despises) reason. He relies on fear and fallacy. He is a classic demagogue.
     So Nancy Padberg loves the anti-intellectualist barbarian Rush. As it turns out, she was even the President of the local Rush Club, so enamored is she of the fellow. But she's on the board of trustees of a college district! College: the traditional home of the "pointed-headed intellectual."
     To the uninitiated, learning about "college trustee" Nancy's love of Rush is like discovering that the Prez of the American Philosophical Association is also a member of the Orange County Paranormal Society. It's like finding out that the head of the Philharmonic Society is a freakin' Dead Head.
     WTF.
     Yeah, but this is Orange County.
     I've never bothered to look into the RLCOC (pronounced “rilcok”)—not sure why. But, today, I somehow came across the club’s website. It's a mess. Much of it is literally unreadable, owing to inappropriate font colors, etc. It piles element upon element without rhyme or reason. It has never met a photograph (of one of its geezers) that it didn't like.
     How fitting. Must be run, and consumed, by oldsters who don't know about the interweb and such. (My folks seem to think the internet is an actual place, maybe in Irvine. They fear it and its dark tentacles that (they imagine) seek the unsuspecting dollars of the elderly.)
     Looks like our Nancy is no longer a club officer. The RLCOC website proudly displays a photo of the “Rush Limbaugh Club OC 2011 Officers”:

That's Nancy at left; that's Floyd the barber at right

     The caption: “Past President Nancy Padberg installs Officers Saturday, 11 December 2010.”
     The website is all that you might expect it to be. It provides a link to a hilariously paranoid video from Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network:

“WAKE UP AMERICA! Watch this scary video”:

     For fun, you might explore the site. Here are some of the titles (etc.) that can be found on its motley and headache-inducing pages:

From the RLCOC website

• Bush's Achievements [!!!]
• Obama Dispatches Union Thugs to Intimidate American Citizens
• Rush Limbaugh At CPAC: Doubles Down On Wanting Obama To Fail
• MAXINE WATERS (CA-D) ADMITS LIBERALS = SOCIALISTS!
• Obama Civility Flashback: He laughs at Wands Sykes Jokes: It's not hatred and vitriol when it comes from the left
• Bill Clinton fakes crying at Ron Brown's funeral [Gosh, didn’t Brown die fifteen years ago?]
• [Darrel] Issa: O'bama's [sic] Among 'Most Corrupt Administrations' [Issa? Now that’s rich!]
• America's Ruling Class – and the Perils of Revolution
• Barack H. Obama IS NOT A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN
• Obama Removes Jesus from Easter Message
• America Hangs by a Thread
• "Chickification" of U.S. military is "turning people soft"; there's "no room for that on the battlefield."
• Bringing An End To This False Prophet Obama!

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "we are saying thank you"

Thanks
by W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is.

*

Be a pepper....

Courts, police say pepper spray 'defensive' only (San Fran Chronicle)

     The law frowns on police use of pepper spray against nonviolent demonstrators.
     More than a decade before last week's videotaped incident at UC Davis, a federal appeals court ruled in the case of North Coast logging protesters that officers can legally use the caustic chemical only to prevent harm to themselves or someone else….

UC Davis student: Pepper spray like 'hot glass was entering my eyes' (LA Times)

     “It felt like hot glass was entering my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, I wanted to open my eyes but every time I did, the pain got worse,” David Buscho said during a rally Monday on campus. "I wanted to breathe, but I couldn’t because my face was covered in pepper spray.”
. . .

     "I am here to apologize," an emotional [Chancellor Linda] Katehi said after struggling through the crowd to a small stage where some of the students sprayed by campus police had just described their ordeal. "I feel horrible for what happened."….

Katehi: Campus Police Were Told Not To Use Force Against Students (Sac Bee)

     As the tent city on the University of California, Davis, tripled in size, Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi insisted Tuesday that the school's police department defied her orders when it used force against students in last week's pepper-spray fiasco.
     "We told the police to remove the tents or the equipment," Katehi said in an interview with The Bee in her office inside the administration building, which remains locked down to the public.
     "We told them very specifically to do it peacefully, and if there were too many of them, not to do it, if the students were aggressive, not to do it. And then we told them we also do not want to have another Berkeley."….

Occupy Education: Required Reading over the Thanksgiving Break

REBEL GIRL was going to hold off until the holiday was over but dang — she's not the kind of teacher who doesn't give at least some reading over a long weekend. Nope.

So here's your homework. It will be followed up with responses from the likes of Clio Bluestocking who chimes in on Learning Outcomes:

Outcomes assessment — that is, ensuring that students are learning what they need to learn in order to advance to the next level or in order to have mastered basics of a subject — is generally a good idea. Some oversight on the process is good, too, especially if it is meant to improve performance not punish the performer. All fine and good, except that we, the instructors and the departments, tend to already do this. It's called "a test" or "a quiz," and "peer evaluation" and "department evaluation" through classroom observation. What seems to be demanded, however, seems to be not what the instructors and department have determined is a good means of evaluation, but what someone somewhere else had determined is a good means — even if their means has proven to be a patented failure in actually assessing mastery of a subject. The result becomes a huge waste of time in which the whole official "outcomes assessment" becomes a cynical exercise to produce numbers, while the actual assessing of learning and instruction becomes this renegade shadow activity addressing the actual problems we see in our classrooms — the ones that take time and money to actually fix.

...and Historiann, Dr. Crazy, Notorius Ph.D., tenured radical, Clio's Disciple, The Clutter Museum and other Ivory Tower rabble rousers.

But here's the text that stoked the fire: from the New York Review of Books, Anthony Grafton's wide ranging "Why are They Failing?" considers the eroding engagement of students, the rise in student debt and the decrease in education funding, the shifting priorities of administrators and much more.

excerpt:

...Is the higher education bubble about to pop? I don’t know. The more thoughtful writers warn against monocausal explanations. Bowen and his colleagues, for example, test the effects of student loans on attrition rates. They conclude that it is not clear that debt is a primary cause of student failure. Still, these developments are interwoven, in the experience of many students if not in the intentions of legislators. Imagine what it’s like to be a normal student nowadays. You did well—even very well—in high school. But you arrive at university with little experience in research and writing and little sense of what your classes have to do with your life plans. You start your first year deep in debt, with more in prospect. You work at Target or a fast-food outlet to pay for your living expenses. You live in a vast, shabby dorm or a huge, flimsy off-campus apartment complex, where your single with bath provides both privacy and isolation. And you see professors from a great distance, in space as well as culture: from the back of a vast dark auditorium, full of your peers checking Facebook on their laptops....

...The system runs, in part, on its failures. Administrators count on the tuition paid, from borrowed money, by undergraduates who they know will drop out before they use up many services. To provide teaching they exploit instructors still in graduate school, many of whom they know will also drop out and not demand tenure-track jobs. Faculty, once they have found a berth, often become blind to the problems and deaf to the cries of their own indentured students. And even where the will to do better is present, the means are often used for very different ends.

In many universities, finally, the sideshows have taken over the big tent. Competitive sports consume vast amounts of energy and money, some of which could be used to improve conditions for students. It’s hard not to be miserable when watching what pursuit of football glory has done to Rutgers, which has many excellent departments and should be—given the wealth of New Jersey—an East Coast Berkeley or Michigan. The university spends $26.9 million a year subsidizing its athletic programs. Meanwhile faculty salaries have been capped and raises canceled across the board. Desk telephones were recently removed from the offices of the historians. Repairs have been postponed, and classroom buildings, in constant use from early morning until late at night, have become shabbier and shabbier....

To read the rest — and you should as it will be on the test — click here.


*

1998: Should SOCCCD cops have guns?

SC Police Chief Harry P

     Earlier today, in response to a post about the UC Davis “pepper spray” incident, one reader, contemplating the possibility of student protests at Irvine Valley College, wrote

Our campus police carry guns, don't they? I've always thought that unnecessary. I hope there is a policy in place of how to handle student protests peacefully.

     Not sure about policies. The district’s board policies can be found here. The district’s “speech and advocacy” policies can be found here.
     Upon reading the above comment, I recalled a board discussion about campus cops and their pistols that occurred about a dozen years ago. I wrote about it at the time.

     Found it!
     What follows is from the ‘Vine, #7, September 16, 1998. (The ‘Vine was the Dissent's sister publication.) It’s an excerpt from a longer article about the Sept. 14, 1998, board meeting.

Give us our new guns:

Glock 18c

    The “gun” issue emerged once again. At the last board meeting [at which the gun issue was addressed], campus police chiefs [Harry] Parmer and [Ted] Romas asked for money to replace the police forces’ old and relatively unsafe 38s with au courant 9 mm weapons. Their presentation established that, if campus cops are going to have guns, then they should be new 9 mm jobs, not the old 38s. Trustee [Dorothy] Fortune—who, before she decided to call herself a “fiscal conservative,” was active in the Democratic party—emerged that night as a strong proponent of defanging campus cops. (It turns out that most community college cops are gunless; indeed, ours is the only district in OC that arms its cops.) As I recall, then-Chancellor [Kathie] Hodge and Dave Lang agreed with Fortune, which must have been painful for them. In the end, the cops went home without their new guns, but they managed to keep their old ones.

Dave Lang

    Surprisingly, the issue was back on the agenda [for this month’s meeting]. Fortune once again spoke to the issue. In her remarks, she demonstrated her uncanny knack for really pissing people off, for, in effect, she called Parmer and Romas liars. You see, after the October board meeting, she called up the Orange County Sheriff’s Dept. and talked to a “fellow” there. She asked him about the safety of 38s. “They’re safe weapons,” said the fellow. (Of course, Parmer and Romas didn’t exactly say that 38s are unsafe; they said that 9 mms are relatively safe.) The Fortunate One concluded that she had been lied to or misled by Parmer and Romas. “That’s what you get when you only listen to people with a special interest,” she added. “Let’s spend the money on students, not on guns,” concluded Dot.

S&W model 64

    In response, chief Romas acknowledged that 38s are not unsafe; but the district’s 38s are old, he said. Lang jumped in to express both his respect for Romas/Parmer and his inclination to disarm them. “Why are we the exception among community college districts in the area?” asked Lang. [Trustee Steve] Frogue opined that it is unwise to leave cops unarmed. [Trustee John] Williams, finally finding a topic he cares about, stated that it is a “travesty” to suggest not arming police officers. Apparently addressing Mr. Lang, he said, “Get real.” “Stop living in an ivory castle.” (Yes, an ivory castle.)

    [Trustee Teddi] Lorch noted that the presence of guns is a deterrent. Fortune shot back by suggesting that the worst thing that happens on our campuses is the theft of car radios (well, not quite), so the cops don’t need guns. “Even the radicals (i.e., Frogue’s racist friends and their equally polite JDL adversaries) who sometimes come to our board meetings aren’t that bad,” she said.

    At that moment, I felt Dave Lang’s pain.

    Student trustee Marie Hill noted that she has seen men removing their shirts and revealing tatoos on campus. “Gang members,” she said. So cops gotta have guns.

S&W Model 500

    Frogue explained that, if only people knew the details—details, he implied, that were suppressed by the press!—of the Lorches’* fabled encounter with violence (?), they would understand the need to arm campus cops. (Huh?) Idiotically, Lorch explained that only someone who has experienced what she experienced knows whether campus cops should have guns. “You don’t know until you’ve experienced this yourself,” she said, thereby marking the nadir of the evening.

*Teddi Lorch and her husband

Whatever happened to....

Trustee Lorch: she "retired" in 1998, to be replaced by her friend Nancy Padberg. As we reported at the time, Lorch planned to apply for the district's head HR job. That's exactly what happened. Her former trusteeship and her friendship with Padberg made it all look very bad. When she didn't get the job (Chancellor Cedric Sampson didn't want her), she sued the district for age discrimination or some such thing. Oddly, the district settled, giving Lorch the head HR job. She's still got it.
Trustee Frogue: he's the fellow who was dogged by accusations that, in his high school history classes, he often denied the Holocaust, made racially insensitive remarks, etc. Ultimately resigned (summer of 2000).
Trustee Williams: his ignominy is sufficiently fresh that it requires no review. Ultimately resigned about a year ago.
Trustee Fortune: she eventually resigned amid charges that, for some time, she had ceased living in the area she represented. (She was rumored to be living in Central Calif.)
Kathie Hodge: eventually, she continued her administrative career at the North Orange County Community College District.

P.S.: When I was first hired at IVC in 1986, I was told that a campus cop once accidentally "discharged his weapon," and the bullet went through several walls before it came to rest. No one was hurt.

Notorious O.C. political kingmaker dies (OC Reg)

Watching Fox News makes you stupid

Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don't Watch Any News: Study (Huffington Post)

     Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
     The poll surveyed New Jersey residents about the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East, and where they get their news sources. The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that "people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government" and "6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government" compared to those who watch no news.
     Overall, 53% of all respondents knew that Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak and 48% knew that Syrians have yet to overthrow their government.

     Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson, explained in a statement, "Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News. Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all."
     This isn't the first study that has found that Fox News viewers more misinformed in comparison to others. Last year, a study from the University of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe false information about politics.

UC Davis English Department

from their webpage:

The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi’s immediate resignation and for “a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus.” Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuinely collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the campus community at UC Davis.

*

The latest on Amy Ahearn

     The Lariat provides a mildly informative update on the Amy Ahearn case: What's next for the ailing instructor? Check it out.
     Tom Fuentes’ son, Joey, discusses his family and his father: Boys water polo: El Toro’s Fuentes played inspired in 2011.

Jon Wiener, U.C. Davis and "soul force"

From across town, U.C. Irvine history professor Jon Wiener weighs in at The Nation on the events at UC Davis and beyond:

Two unforgettable videos flew around the world wide web on Saturday, one horrifying, the other inspiring. Everybody knows the first: black-clad cops at UC Davis shooting pepper-spray into the faces of Occupy Wall Street student demonstrators who are sitting passively on the ground with linked arms. More than two million people have watched that video on YouTube—you might title it “the whole world is watching.”

But there’s a second video, shot the next night, that is amazing in a different way: it shows the chancellor of UC Davis, Linda P.B. Katehi, walking to her car after a press conference, with hundreds of students lining her path on one side, sitting on the ground with linked arms – like the students in the first, famous video – but now in a silent protest against the violence she presided over. This video is titled “walk of shame.” [See video above]

The Davis students’ message is clear: we are not the violent ones. We’re not like you. We stand for a different kind of world. And: your violence is not working. We are not afraid. It’s the message of the nonviolent civil rights movement of the 1960s, of Martin Luther King, who spoke of “meet­ing phys­i­cal force with soul force.”

To read "Pepper Spray on Campus: A Tale of Two Videos" in its entirety, click here.

*

• Pepper Spray Outrage (Inside Higher Ed)
• An Open Letter to Chancellor Katehi of the University of California, Davis (Inside Higher Ed)
• UC Davis police chief put on leave after protesters pepper sprayed (OC Reg)

Turkeys

Cruel and Unusual: A President’s ‘Pardon’ as Dark Parody (New York Times)

By JUSTIN E. H. SMITH

     … To riff on Dostoyevsky’s famous line about prisoners: you can tell what a nation is like by the way it treats its turkeys. Obama’s pardoning of one randomly selected bird at Thanksgiving not only carries with it an implicit validation of the slaughtering of millions of other turkeys. It also involves an implicit validation of the parallel practice for human beings, in which the occasional death-row inmate is pardoned, or given a stay by the hidden reasoning of an increasingly capricious Supreme Court, even as the majority of condemned prisoners are not so lucky. In this respect, the Thanksgiving pardon is an acknowledgment of the arbitrariness of the system of capital punishment….

The Willingham case: providing yet another reason to contemn Governor Perry

Derek Reeve qua Saddleback College instructor

     Earlier today, a DtB reader suggested that I consider Saddleback College Poli Sci instructor Derek Reeve’s conduct—namely, his plagiarism—in relation to the Saddleback College Student Handbook.
     OK. The relevant section of the college student handbook states that

Students may be disciplined for one or more of the following causes related to college activity or attendance: [A through R. Item P is] …Academic dishonesty....

     This is followed by points a, b, and c, which explain "academic dishonesty." Point b defines the form of academic dishonesty known as “plagiarism”:

     Obviously, based on the evidence—including admissions by Reeve—that has appeared in the press in recent months, Reeve plagiarized: on a community newsletter/blog, he engaged in political discourse or argument, repeatedly wielding ideas (or formulations of ideas) not his own but as though they were his own.
     But Reeve is not a student at Saddleback College and the Student Handbook is a handbook for Saddleback students. Of course, I do not deny that the Handbook's code for students implies a standard regarding honesty that applies to others beyond students, including instructors. Perhaps this is what the reader had in mind. But, as we'll see, we need not rely on "implied" standards to see the problem with Reeve's conduct.
     Further, even if Reeve were a Saddleback College student, his plagiarism would not have been a disciplinable offense, since the Handbook's code refers only to student behavior "related to college activity or attendance." The college is unwilling to enforce its honesty code upon students in their lives beyond the college. This raises an interesting question: is there a reason that a college would be so willing in the case of other persons—e.g., professors?
     Reeve is, of course, a student at Claremont Graduate School, or so says his Saddleback profile. Previously (see On Derek Reeve's failure to be honest, Sept. 27), I unearthed the honesty code for CGS, and I suggested that he violated the spirit, if not the letter, of that standard.

* * *

     There is a code explicitly relevant to Reeve’s conduct re honesty/dishonesty insofar as he is a Saddleback College instructor; it is the college's Faculty Code of Ethics and Professionalism. In the aforementioned post, I wrote the following:

     ...As it turns out, a dozen years ago, Saddleback College faculty adopted a “Faculty Code of Ethics and Professional Standards.” It quotes a familiar American Association of University Professors statement:

"Professors, guided by a deep conviction of the worth and dignity of the advancement of knowledge, recognize the special responsibilities placed upon them. Their primary responsibility to their subject is to seek and to state the truth as they see it. To this end professors devote their energies to developing and improving their scholarly competence. They accept the obligation to exercise critical self-discipline and judgment in using, extending, and transmitting knowledge. They practice intellectual honesty…." (AAUP Statement, 1990) [My emphasis.]

The Saddleback “code” goes on to require that

Faculty exhibit intellectual honesty and integrity in all scholarly endeavors.

     …Qua scholar and qua college faculty, Reeve is expected to be honest, and, obviously, one aspect of honesty is not passing off other’s writings and ideas as one’s own—even in less-than-scholarly settings. Jenna Chandler’s recent piece in the SJC Patch makes very clear that Mr. Reeve does exactly that—he passed off others’ ideas and writings as his own—and he has done so repeatedly. [End of quotation.]

     Observe that the prohibition against plagiarism, understood as a professional standard, does not restrict its scope to what one writes or says at one's college or even in academic settings. College professors are supposed to approach authorship honestly period, for they are to seek "the truth," employing competent methods. One who offers others' ideas as his own, even on a blog, is no seeker of truth. He is an enemy of that fine endeavor. 
     Further, academia is all about communities—such as communities of experts/scholars. The effort of some community of experts/scholars (re subject X) to arrive at understanding (re X) and to effectively communicate that understanding to the public is damaged when one of its members engages in discourse about X dishonestly, even in somewhat non-academic settings. That Mr. Reeve publicly argued his political theses fraudulently—i.e., with plagiarized elements—undermined the larger enterprise of the community of political scientists and of scholars. Thus, a college, among other entities, has a good reason to concern itself with the honesty/dishonesty of its "experts," even when the dishonesty occurs outside the strict bounds of the Academy. 
     Especially given Reeve's unambiguous denial that he plagiarized—despite his plainly having done so—I concluded (in Sept.) that he "cannot be trusted to argue honestly; he certainly cannot be trusted to instill academic honesty in his students."

     In any case, it seems clear that Reeve violated the above code—Saddleback College's faculty code of professional ethics.

* * *

     So what is the college doing about that? What is the Academic Senate doing?

     Nothing, it appears.
     Sometimes, one's doing nothing amounts to one's plainly doing something—such as exhibiting one's actual values, despite official verbiage implying very different values.

     Again, SC's inaction contrasts with the action of Concordia U to (evidently) fire Reeve based on his failures of honesty. (See More clarity on Reeve and Concordia.)