Dueling TJs?

Young TJ

     A few weeks ago, we reported that ailing SOCCCD trustee Tom Fuentes managed, despite his condition, to swear in his son TJ as an alternate member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee.
     Near as I can figure, TJ is about 26 years old. Pretty young for politics, I’d say.
     But now we’re hearing that Tom is grooming that very kid to take over his seat on the SOCCCD Board of Trustees!
     Evidently, some people (with the initials BH) take this story seriously. I don’t. It’s one thing to have a kid on the OC GOP Central Committee. It’s quite another to put ‘em on a freakin’ college board that spends half a billion dollars of taxpayer money every year! I don’t buy it.
     According to this story, TJ would make his way on the board either through appointment or election.
     If this yarn comes to fruition, we'll have dueling TJs on the board.

Just TJ

     While we’re on the subject of board elections, four board seats are up for election in November: Bill Jay, Frank Meldau, David Lang, and Tom Fuentes. Jay’s been sick a lot lately: missed several meetings. But he’s back, I guess, though he doesn’t say much. He always looks to me like he needs to go home to get some sleep.
     Don’t know about Lang. Why one Earth would he want to remain on the board?
     Meldau has grown comfortable on the board, I think. I suspect (and hope) he’ll run.

Old TJ

     Saddleback College Poli Sci instructor Derek Reeve is in the news again, though only barely (New housing agency's chairman vows to end it):

     In the first meeting of the newly created San Juan Capistrano Housing Authority, City Councilman Derek Reeve was selected chairman and immediately said he will make it a goal to dissolve it.
. . .
     "If you can live with the rich irony that I hope one day to dissolve the agency, if you're OK with that, I'd be happy to do it," Reeve said before the four other council members, who also serve as Housing Authority commissioners, confirmed his chairmanship.

Non-TJ

     Guess so. He didn't mention whether, as chairman, he'll plagiarize or ridicule Muslims.

     Former trustee and current Assemblyman Don Wagner is always in the news about something, even if it’s just the opening of a new drugstore in Tustin.
     A few days ago, a woman named Elizabeth Emken joined the crew of obscure Republicans who hope to challenge Dianne Feinstein in November, and she snagged Wagner's endorsement. (See.)

Higher Ed news

Utah Lawmaker’s Bid to Limit Tenure is Defeated (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     … The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Christopher Herrod, a Republican, argued that tenure stifled competition and was unnecessary, because only 42 percent of Utah professors have it….

With long-term consequences, community college students struggle to pass college-level math courses (EdSource)

     Large numbers of community college students are struggling to pass the college-level math classes they need to complete a degree or transfer to a four-year institution, with long-term implications for their futures.
. . .
     According to an EdSource analysis, in the fall of 2010, 45 percent of students taking college-level math courses at California’s 112 community colleges received a failing grade below a “C” or dropped the class before the end of term.

Plans to slash and boost college aid (educatedguess)

     Gov. Jerry Brown and Assembly Speaker John Perez are heading in opposite directions on college financial aid. Brown proposes to pare back eligibility or amounts of aid for 72,000 of 244,000 low- or modest-income families receiving Cal Grants. Perez on Wednesday proposed a massive scholarship program for nearly 200,000 University of California and California State University students in the solid and upper ranks of the middle class. But then, Perez is counting on an extra $1 billion by eliminating a corporate tax break that Republican legislators say they won’t abide….

Born in the USSR (Inside Higher Ed)

     The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 meant the end of the Cold War, the dismantling of Lenin statues, and the near-disappearance of the schlocky Soviet stereotype in a certain kind of Hollywood movie. It also resulted in a migration of Soviet scholars, which greatly affected the field of mathematics in the United States, according to two professors who have co-authored a paper called “The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians” to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics….

'We're Losing Our Minds' (Inside Higher Ed)

     …With most critics of higher education focused on rising prices or on whether American colleges and universities are producing enough degree and certificate holders with sufficient skills to keep the U.S. economy vibrant and competitive – the latter known in shorthand as the "completion agenda" – a few analysts are homing in on the quality and rigor of what students are learning (or not) en route to those credentials.
     Last year's Academically Adrift set the tone, providing data suggesting that many colleges are imposing relatively minimal academic demands on their students and that, perhaps as a result, many students do not appear to gain in some measures of cognitive abilities as they move through college….