Finals week at IVC: random scenes

Linda and the Reb in the Writing Center. Linda's run the place literally for decades. And now she's retiring. (Click on the graphic to enlarge it.)

I asked the Reb to stand behind this sculpture and raise her right arm. The purse was a bonus. I like it.

Frank and Linda have opted for retirement. It'll be strange without them around

The Reb seemed convinced that this pile of papers-to-grade was colorful and interesting. I'm not so sure. In pots at right are two "oak trees" to be planted in honor of two Humanities & Languages retirees

The Reb runs into a success-bound student: shy, sweet

The Reb's Frida Kahlo socks. Almost as cool as her Commie socks

We bumped into IVC's teacher of the year--who happens to be among four County teachers of the year. She received "valuable cash prizes"

In the Student Services Center

The Reading Lab: mighty busy

In the OC, well, we're flag-happy, I guess

Great skies today

Students taking a final in History

Everywhere you go, there's a retirement party! We found this cake in BZTIC

The Reb: some abstraction for you

The grumpy Mr. B

     LISTEN TO THEM. One good thing about living in a county controlled by a local political party known for noisy piety and rectitude and fiscal conservatism is that at least you know that your government is lean and efficient—and that politicians are honest.
     Ha ha ha ha ha!

T. Fuentes

     Gosh, looking at the parade of losers and louts who have held office and who now hold office in this County—from felon Mike Carona to fraudster Chriss Street to DA Tony “look the other way” Rackauckas—you’d swear our county was some stinking, sulferous slime-ball barely plugging a gurgling, abysmal Hell Mouth.
     OC government is mighty corrupt and sleazy and all about promoting the wealth and power of a few people. (Say hello to Tom for me.) That’s pretty obvious, I guess. I won’t bore you with it.
     THEY'RE INCOMPETENT. We don’t really speak enough, though, about the other half of our abject self-inflicted shittitude—namely, the phenomenal inefficiency and worthlessness of (much of) County government and various public entities. We at DtB have tried to do our part to restore journalistic balance with our coverage of, say, Raghu Mathur’s disastrous and soul-crushing administrative regimes and, say, John Williams’ totally fucked up Public Administrator/Guardian office. But we can only do so much!

G. Argyros

     OH GOOD. Today, though, the OC Reg pulls some weight for once. The Reg’s Kimberly Edds reports that, according to a new report by the county’s performance auditor,

     Orange County’s Human Resources Department has routinely approved unjustified raises and promotions, sidestepping county and state rules to benefit its own employees and those of the county’s chief executive office….
     Auditors reported rampant mismanagement by the county’s Human Resources has made the county more expensive to run and less productive. Auditors said $149.3 million in taxpayer dollars can be saved by changing the way Human Resources does business. Correcting those problems could be the answer to solving many, if not all, of the county’s financial woes.

     Why, of course! Why would anyone expect any different? A hundred and fifty million bucks down the drain. —Well, oops!
     Let’s all go outside and shout, “God, I’m blessed to be living in fucking Orange County!”
     I don’t wanna talk about it. You should read the article.
     I wanna highlight just one part:

     The auditor found … Agency human resources staff repeatedly violated county policy by permanently promoting employees into temporarily classified positions. The most egregious violator was the Public Administrator/Public Guardian, which permanently promoted employees into temporary roles 13 times in three years.

J. Williams

     OBEY. John Williams is an idiot and an asshole. He’s been an idiot-asshole at least for as long as I’ve been paying attention to him, which goes back fifteen years. I’ve pointed out his idiocy and assholery time and again, but lots of people kept sayin’, don’t be mean. Why be so negative? He seems like a nice guy! Look at that smile! Look, dude, he wears that fucking flag pin on his jacket!
     Hey, those people are assholes too. They looked at the clear evidence of stupidity and arrogance and corruption, and they saw what they wanted to see: everything is pretty good. –Now shut up, troublemaker.
     Listen. There are lots of John Williamses—or worse—in this County and in this district. That’s the status quo, man. And, by and large, people go along with it, accept it, pretend it’s a lovely garden, a “blessing.” The asshole steps into the room, once again, and everybody grows hushed, polite.
     “Well, you’ve at least got to respect the office!”
     No!
     DON’T BE AN IDIOT.

Schol*ar*ship

Disclaimer: We here at Dissent vigorously support the scholarship program and have over the years done so in a variety of capacities. In fact, we recently helped raise more money for creating an endowed scholarship. Rebel Girl is even a former scholarship girl. Thank you Assistance League of Long Beach!

However, we are worried about the program. And we're not the only ones. In the past few months, Rebel Girl has received multiple requests for blog coverage of the program. People she didn't even know read the blog, came up and asked her why she hadn't written about it. She promised she would.

So, here she is, keeping her promise and doing so by way of passing along the concerns she has collected. She will resist the urge to go on and on 'cause she still has papers to grade and finals to give. You know how that is.

A 1 x 3 inch box for "academic ability & accomplishment"

The Form
The form used this year to solicit recommendations left something to be desired. Ahem. The tiny boxes where one was to submit thoughtful assessments so candidates could be judged deserving of monetary award or not were, well, tiny. How tiny? Too tiny. Even the students with the most modest of achievement deserved more. Considering the form could not be filled in on line, one either had to track down a typewriter (Rebel Girl owns an IBM Selectric) or simply do the best one could with a pen or pencil. The results? Not a pretty sight. And certainly not comprehensive. If it was her money that was being handed out, and Rebel Girl guesses at least some of it was, well, she'd like to think that there was more evidence submitted in order to evaluate candidates.

To be fair, recommenders could submit additional letters — as indeed, Rebel Girl, frustrated by the boxes and the whole set-up, did. She wonders how many others did so.

Well, as one venerable grizzled faculty member quipped, at least this form was better than last year when no recommendations were solicited at all! He shuddered to think of the results of that. Scholarships handed out using - what? - the students' own testimony (at times unreliable, perhaps self-serving)and transcripts. Scandalous. But that was last year.

The Process
Concern about the process by which the form was submitted was first brought to Rebel Girl's attention by a student who had asked for a recommendation — and echoed by several faculty members.

Despite the form's header of "Confidential" there was little confidentiality. The applicants were asked to upload or fax the forms themselves, which meant, of course, that they read the assessments written about them. As more than one faculty pointed out, there could be an opportunity to add later information as well, if say an applicant desired to give himself or herself a 5 instead of a 3 in "motivation" or "leadership ability." In addition, Rebel Girl was told by several people that because of this absence of confidentiality, some faculty simply gave the same "score" to each applicant — worried perhaps that the students would compare the forms after receiving them back.

Everyone she spoke with bemoaned the absence of the former system (last seen in 2009) where letters were solicited online, confidentiality intact, with electronic reminders about deadlines, etc.

Evaluation and Criteria

This perhaps merits more time than Rebel Girl has. Needless to say, she heard from everyone about this one. There were concerns about the time given for review and evaluation, with many pointing out that the material was submitted early in the semester but evaluation was done quite late and under considerable pressure for swift deliberations. Students were wondering about how the criteria were applied and whether or not the process could be more transparent. Some raised the issue of favoritism and patronage, with worries that people could bend the rules for applicants as they saw fit, perhaps even rewarding those who had not applied in the program.

Rebel Girl did go on and on despite her promise not to. Sorry. And she could keep going, but she won't. So there.

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