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| Is there any "there" there? |
• We keep encountering murmurings—from many sources—about the IVC Foundation. Something’s afoot and amiss, but we don’t know what. You’ll recall that, last Spring, the student scholarship process was revealed to be fubar, though good work was then done to start to turn things around. Stay tuned.
• We hear that the crummy temp box that has housed the IVC bookstore is finally falling apart and that the store will be moved into B100—which, of course, has long housed classrooms.
• The mother of a student contacted me, hopping mad about expensive textbooks that her kid bought, mostly for math courses. Somehow, the kid had to drop those particular courses, but then the bookstore wouldn’t buy back the books. The instructors, I'm told, are selling very special (and expensive) editions that can only be used in their own classes. We’ve been hearing about this sort of thing—and worse—for years.
• It’s a little thing, really. Denizens of IVC’s Bldg. A200 are wondering why both the building printer and photocopy machine were allowed to be so fouled up during the crucial first two days of the semester (things seemed better today)—a period in which, obviously, many important documents (APCs, rosters, syllabuses) must be printed or duplicated.
As usual, there is no sense that anyone has heard the complaints, recognized their gravity, and issued reassurances. The people with power at IVC lack people skills bigtime. They leave us all hanging, wondering why things go the way they do. We're forever in the dark. Things just happen.
Here at IVC, at the top, there's a permanent leadership vacuum. Both the college President (who, you'll recall, got his start owing to a compact with the odious Raghu P. Mathur) and the VPI are, in different ways, utter non-leaders. The Prez seems never to have a freakin’ clue. (Chronic cluelessness seems to define him for most of us.) The Vice Prez, meanwhile, runs the college, and he rules through fear. Mouths are shut tight. People are unhappy. Especially classified.
Meanwhile, the IVC Academic Senate is a new entity, with mostly new leadership, after a three-year period of largely dismal leadership from a president who had curious values (the CAFÉ—the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence—was repeatedly hobbled by weird spasms of elitism, and it sits essentially unused; despite substantial faculty concerns, the scandalous Early College Program was allowed to proceed, robbing resources from our students; the Senate actually went to bat for Prez Roquemore over his turf war re ATEP, that amorphous money pit par excellence) and who obviously proceeded with her longstanding administrative ambitions firmly in mind. Good grief.
Will the new Academic Senate step up? Think so. We’ll see.
• And then there's the faculty union. If the Faculty Association chooses to endorse that über-creep John Williams—evidently on the meager grounds that Williams will likely support the contract—then I would love for someone to explain to me the difference between this FA and the nasty old FA that got all homophobic and Frogue-loving in order to protect "life as we know it" back in 1996.
To quote an infamous Alabamian, there ain't a dime's worth of difference.
If.
19 comments:
Take a look at the dismal responses to the IVC employee (dis)satisfaction survey. The classified are more than disenchanted. They are furious, and I don't blame them. No wonder admin didn't release those results for 8 months and then quietly over the summer after the accreds left town. Regarding the comments at the end of the survey, just fill in all the ****s with Craig Justice and Glenn Rocquemore for a full picture of the sorry state of the IVC college administration. I am hopeful that the new senate leadership can make a difference. I know that some folks didn't complete the survey suspecting that the results would be tracked to the IP addresses on their office computers. Paranoid? I don't think so.
Something's wrong with the "new" Life Science building. It's awfully *quiet* over there.
I think you have to cut the people who oversee the copiers some slack. It is an unfortunate fact of life that machines break down, often at the worst times possible. These people work all year and don't get the summers off. There are other copy machines available (and there are other times to make copies than at the last possible minute).
I can't imagine the effort required to truly reform the IVC scholarship program. I doubt it exists.
The absence of accountability from the application process itself, the vetting of applications and the selection of worthy candidates is scandalous - and yet, the priority is to "produce" the appearance of accomplishment.
If anyone took a hard look at how this all played out...well, you know what would happen.
We need a thoughtful process with criteria that are applied equitably. And a timeline so that the work can be done - not over a weekend - but over some weeks. We need committee members who understand how to recognize and apply criteria - not people who are good-hearted but untrained or those who wish to reward their favorites - over and over again. We need an application process that is accessible to all our students and forms that elicit from them the information needed to judge them. The process must include letters of recommendation from instructors and others in order to verify the statements made by students.
Finally, that civility initiative the admin is hot about about should be applied to the Foundation Office. I mean, really.
I think the people trying to service our copiers and printers work very hard and are very responsive to our requests.
I just wish that whoever is in charge of managing/purchasing the devices could have anticipated what all of us could see in A-200 - the printer - broken most of the summer - would only become more broken the first week of classes.
I agree tech support works very hard and is very responsive.
We do need more paper supplies in A-200 though. People were "stealing" paper from Honors on Monday and from the broken printer. It was gone again by the afternoon and then again in the evening.
The A-100 copier is now off limits unless you have some special ID card.
Certainly people shouldn't always print out materials at the last minute - but people do. Sometimes it cannot be avoided.
I do think that instructors have the right to expect a working printer and a working copier.
I hope the scholarship program can be strengthened this year. It would be nice to have a longer timeline for applications (beginning in the fall) and a longer time to evaluate candidates (beginning in February).
The short application window disenfranchises so many -and benefits those students "in the know." Didn't we used to have limits on how many scholarships a single student could win? So that MORE students could be awarded funds? What happened to that?
The pressure to simply scan applications and choose quickly is awful. If I were a big donor I would be appalled.
How about that Monday concert at IVC? "Mother-f-er, Mother-f-er, Mother-f-er..." Bracing, provocative, loud, repetitive. It really established a tone for the beginning of the semester. Kudos to whoever vetted THAT band. Yowza.
who wants to make a bet that the bookstore will be moved to the b100 art gallery?
any takers?
if that happens that will really suck. art is just as important as the other programs.
Part of the problem with both the printer and the photocopier was a chronic shortage of paper. In the past, a store of extra paper was kept in the cabinet near the photocopier, but not this week. It's such a simple matter: keep extra paper in the cabinet. How difficult is that? What conceivable excuse could there be for failing to leave extra paper? And if the printer experienced difficulties during the entire summer, how hard is it to once for all deal with that printer? Who's in charge here, and why are they so incompetent?
To answer your question: No, there is no there there. He's a plastic smile in an empty suit.
11:55, it's called theaft. Yes certain low-lifes steal paper.
Theft, sorry
9:43, that would be Glenn who allowed that show.
Did anyone really listen to that band on Monday? I'm not a prude, really, but come on. Pretty embarrassing.
Where are the results of the survey?
Just remind me, did anyone try to throw over the previous Senate Cabinet before they refused to seek another term?? I think no one stepped up to 'get rid' of them until they refused to serve another term.....wth?
9:10, I assume you are referring to the IVC Academic Senate.
I have been a member of that Senate for many years. No, there was no effort that I am aware of to "get rid" of anyone on the cabinet. I believe that Lisa Davis Allen served an extra year owing in part to a lack of candidates (volunteers). As in the case of the Faculty Association, the IVC Academic Senate suffers from a degree of apathy or some such phenomenon. This often occurs at the end of an accreditation cycle or upon the resolution of some controversy (e.g., the exodus of Wagner, Williams, and Fuentes). It's as though the "glad that's over!" feeling causes a lack of interest or concern about governance.
No one wish to overthrow the senate cabinet. It was time for new leadership. The results of that satisfaction survey are in Sharepoint.
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