THE IRVINE VALLEY CHRONICLES: no ideas, just clichés & buzzwords

     Just in case there was any doubt that IVC is a royally F-ed up place, today, faculty received an email from the Academic Senate President, asking us, on behalf of the Strategic Planning Oversight and Budget Development Committee (everyone calls it "SPOBDC," pronounced spob-dick), to fill out a survey.
     The survey offers a list of familiar buzzwords and clichés that are supposed to express "values."
     Evidently, the all-important SPOBDCians assume that, once a community has chosen its fave “values” terms—from a list created by said spobdickians—it has ipso facto identified a college “values statement.”
     Really? Um, maybe they're aiming at superficiality and buzzitude. Yeah, that's gotta be it. Who, among the educated, would approach a values statement by picking buzzwords from a list?
   
     According to Craig Hayward, IVC’s Director of Research, Planning & Accreditation (and, no doubt, a member of SPOBDC)—whose request is included in the Senate Prez’s letter—

     A values statement provides additional information about an organization. It qualifies how the mission is completed and identifies ways in which IVC is distinct[ive] in its provision of educational opportunities.
     A potential list of values for a values statement was developed by SPOBDC members at the committee’s annual retreat on 7/26/13. SPOBDC has requested that members of the Academic Senate, the Classified Senate and ASIVC participate in a survey to identify the core values that are important both for how IVC operates and how it should operate. Please take a few moments to provide your feedback on the proposed values for an IVC values statement.

     Hayward then provides a link to the online survey.
     Well, I clicked on the link and I opened the survey. It tells us that

     The following values are being considered for inclusion in an offical [sic] IVC values statement. The purpose of this statement will be to add depth [my emphasis] to our mission statement by identifying values that are particularly important at IVC in terms of how we currently conduct our affairs, as well as how we aspire to conduct our affairs. Please provide your impression regarding each value [i.e., click one of three bubbles] and whether it is a core value of IVC that should be included in a values statement.

     Next, we’re asked to “indicate the extent to which each value [in the list that follows] is a core IVC value that sheds light on how we fuflill [sic] our mission.”
     At long last, here’s the list. It offers, of course, exactly the uninspired, dishonest, and cliché-ridden crapfest that one expects:

A positive spirit
Access
Accessibility
Civility
Collaboration
Collaborative leadership
Community
Conservation
Diversity
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Equity
Excellence throughout the institution
Innovation
Integration of CWE and internships
Integrity
Intellectually rigorous curriculum
Mutual respect
Partnerships
Quality
Resourcefulness
Respect
Responsibility
Responsiveness
Stewardship
Student success
Sustainability
Transparency
Other (please specify)

     (I wonder if anyone on SPOBDC thought to offer sentences, even paragraphs, in expressing our values?)

shit-for-brains

     Some items on this list—civility, collaboration, mutual respect, respect, transparency—seem inspired by the college and district’s current Accreditation travails.
     Yeah, we’re crafty, we are. To convince the Accreds that, contrary to Accred visiting teams, we’re a seriously civil, respectful, and cooperative bunch down here, we’ll insert these terms into our “values” statement. I mean, any college that would tweak its “values statement” just to please the Accreds must have something on the ball, civility-wise (and integrity-wise), right?
     Most other items are just the usual vogue/cliché blarney: accessibility, conservation, diversity, innovation, responsibility, student success, sustainability, transparency, etc.
     Obviously, a less imaginative or distinctive list cannot be imagined.

     Is it just me? Or do others find this buzzword approach to identifying “the college’s values” offensive?

* * *

     The root problem, of course, is that the people in charge at IVC have no values.
     Or they have them, but they’re seriously F-ed up.

Why Students Don't Email Anymore

A ha!

From this morning's Sunday New York Times:

"Technology and the College Generation" by Courtney Rubin:

As a professor who favors pop quizzes, Cedrick May is used to grimaces from students caught unprepared. But a couple of years ago, in his class on early American literature at the University of Texas at Arlington, he said he noticed “horrible, pained looks” from the whole class when they saw the questions.

He soon learned that the students did not know he had changed the reading assignment because they did not check their e-mail regularly, if at all. To the students, e-mail was as antiquated as the spellings “chuse” and “musick” in the works by Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards that they read on their electronic books.

“Some of them didn’t even seem to know they had a college e-mail account,” Dr. May said. Nor were these wide-eyed freshmen. “This is considered a junior-level class, so they’d been around,” he said.

That is when he added to his course syllabuses: “Students must check e-mail daily.” Dr. May said the university now recommends similar wording.

So students prefer social media. So far, so 2005. But some professors do not want to “friend” students on Facebook (“I don’t want to learn things about them I can’t unlearn,” said Thomas Tierney, an associate professor of sociology at the College of Wooster in Ohio) or do not think it is their job to explore every possible medium a student might prefer to use at 2 a.m. to find out about a test later that day.

How to get students, some of whom consider their school e-mail accounts so irrelevant that they give their parents the passwords, to take a look?

To read the rest, click here.

*

Someone sent me this. What does it mean? I dunno.

Bachelor's degrees at Cal community colleges?

California's Evolving Master Plan (Inside Higher Ed)
     Community colleges in a growing number of states are offering bachelor’s degrees. Now California and its huge two-year system may join that group.
     A committee created by Brice Harris, the system’s chancellor, quietly began meeting last month to mull whether the state’s 112 community colleges should be granted the authority to offer four-year degrees.
     While the process has just started and has many hurdles to clear, it’s certain to be an attention-grabber in California and beyond….

Most Students Are Unprepared for College, SAT Results Show (Chronicle of Higher Education)
     Less than half of the students who took the SAT in 2013 are ready to succeed in postsecondary education, according to a report released on Thursday by the College Board, which owns the SAT.
     Only 43 percent of the test takers this year met or exceeded the benchmark score of 1550 out of a  possible 2400, the same proportion as last year….

Bugsy, RIP

Micael "Mike" Merrifield

from the Lariat:
published Wednesday September 25

Micael Merrifield dies after heart attack
With a long career teaching anthropology, this beloved instructor will be remembered by many
by Chelsea Jarrell

Micael Merrifield, a Saddleback College instructor and friend of many, passed away from a sudden heart attack last night.

“Micael will be remembered for his insatiable curiosity, boundless energy, and ability to capture the imagination of students.” said Saddleback College President Tod Burnett in a campus-wide email.

With a profound love for tribal anthropology, Merrifield worked for many years with the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, AcjachememNation, helping them in their fight for federal recognition. He also loved traveling and regularly took students on study abroad trips to Ireland, Scotland, Mexico, and Cuba.

Merrifield has been a passionate and active member at the college since 1977 when he started the Learning Assistance Program. He was an instructor in the Anthropology and Behavioral Sciences Department and served as a member on the Academic Senate Committee and Faculty Association.

A bench near the Business and General Science building has been turned into a memorial with a sign reading, 'Rest in Paradise Professor Micael Merrifield."

SEE ALSO Beloved Saddleback Anthropology Professor Died Suddenly Tuesday (Mission Viejo Patch)

Today, at Bugsy’s gravesite

     My emotions are much too raw for me to say much about Bugsy right now. I’ll say this. My love for him was big, very big. I recall telling friends that I had in some sense fallen in love with the little guy. It was, I said, an absurdly big love that somehow overtook me.
     …It was something about his vulnerability. There he was, living for weeks, evidently, in the wilds of the Santa Ana Mountains—just a kitten. How did he get there? How did he survive? It breaks my heart to think that we delayed as long as we did to capture him, to bring him to safety.
     He was such a delicate seeming little man: small, perfectly white, perfectly proportioned, sleek and silky and dignified. Utterly beautiful.
     But he was tough too. He often displayed great strength and cleverness. He was as independent as any guy I’ve ever known. He did his own thing in his own way, always. When we played, we played his way, forever developing unique Bugsian games.
     He displayed his love in many ways, sleeping in our arms, regularly checking on each of us, maintaining vigilance re those pesky red foxes that hung out by the bedroom window. They were an obsession of his. Those foxes. Damn.
     These last two weeks remind me that the Bauer family, for all its noise and craziness, is a tight, loving crew. We support each other; we come together in a crisis. We are together now.
     And we love so completely. It is a hazardous thing to love so hard, so pure.
     That is how we loved little Bugsy.

Bugsy Bauer (2012-2013)
R.I.P.

     He died peacefully, yesterday, just before 6:00 p.m., with his family around him.

Requiem: Death of an adjunct

In the news:

from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 19, 2013:
by Daniel Kovalik

On Sept. 1, Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor who had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years, passed away at the age of 83. She died as the result of a massive heart attack she suffered two weeks before. As it turned out, I may have been the last person she talked to.

On Aug. 16, I received a call from a very upset Margaret Mary. She told me that she was under an incredible amount of stress. She was receiving radiation therapy for the cancer that had just returned to her, she was living nearly homeless because she could not afford the upkeep on her home, which was literally falling in on itself, and now, she explained, she had received another indignity -- a letter from Adult Protective Services telling her that someone had referred her case to them saying that she needed assistance in taking care of herself. The letter said that if she did not meet with the caseworker the following Monday, her case would be turned over to Orphans' Court.

For a proud professional like Margaret Mary, this was the last straw; she was mortified. She begged me to call Adult Protective Services and tell them to leave her alone, that she could take care of herself and did not need their help. I agreed to. Sadly, a couple of hours later, she was found on her front lawn, unconscious from a heart attack. She never regained consciousness.

Meanwhile, I called Adult Protective Services right after talking to Margaret Mary, and I explained the situation. I said that she had just been let go from her job as a professor at Duquesne, that she was given no severance or retirement benefits, and that the reason she was having trouble taking care of herself was because she was living in extreme poverty. The caseworker paused and asked with incredulity, "She was a professor?" I said yes. The caseworker was shocked; this was not the usual type of person for whom she was called in to help.

Of course, what the caseworker didn't understand was that Margaret Mary was an adjunct professor, meaning that, unlike a well-paid tenured professor, Margaret Mary worked on a contract basis from semester to semester, with no job security, no benefits and with a salary of between $3,000 and just over $3,500 per three-credit course. Adjuncts now make up well over 50 percent of the faculty at colleges and universities.

While adjuncts at Duquesne overwhelmingly voted to join the United Steelworkers union a year ago, Duquesne has fought unionization, claiming that it should have a religious exemption. Duquesne has claimed that the unionization of adjuncts like Margaret Mary would somehow interfere with its mission to inculcate Catholic values among its students.

This would be news to Georgetown University -- one of only two Catholic universities to make U.S. News & World Report's list of top 25 universities -- which just recognized its adjunct professors' union, citing the Catholic Church's social justice teachings, which favor labor unions.

As amazing as it sounds, Margaret Mary, a 25-year professor, was not making ends meet. Even during the best of times, when she was teaching three classes a semester and two during the summer, she was not even clearing $25,000 a year, and she received absolutely no health care benefits. Compare this with the salary of Duquesne's president, who makes more than $700,000 with full benefits.

Meanwhile, in the past year, her teaching load had been reduced by the university to one class a semester, which meant she was making well below $10,000 a year. With huge out-of-pocket bills from UPMC Mercy for her cancer treatment, Margaret Mary was left in abject penury. She could no longer keep her electricity on in her home, which became uninhabitable during the winter. She therefore took to working at an Eat'n Park at night and then trying to catch some sleep during the day at her office at Duquesne. When this was discovered by the university, the police were called in to eject her from her office. Still, despite her cancer and her poverty, she never missed a day of class.

Finally, in the spring, she was let go by the university, which told her she was no longer effective as an instructor -- despite many glowing evaluations from students. She came to me to seek legal help to try to save her job. She said that all she wanted was money to pay her medical bills because Duquesne, which never paid her much to begin with, gave her nothing on her way out the door.

Duquesne knew all about Margaret Mary's plight, for I apprised them of it in two letters. I never received a reply, and Margaret Mary was forced to die saddened, penniless and on the verge of being turned over to Orphan's Court.

The funeral Mass for Margaret Mary, a devout Catholic, was held at Epiphany Church, only a few blocks from Duquesne. The priest who said Mass was from the University of Dayton, another Catholic university and my alma mater. Margaret Mary was laid out in a simple, cardboard casket devoid of any handles for pallbearers -- a sad sight, but an honest symbol of what she had been reduced to by her ostensibly Catholic employer.

Her nephew, who had contacted me about her passing, implored me to make sure that she didn't die in vain. He said that while there was nothing that could be done for Margaret Mary, we had to help the other adjuncts at Duquesne and other universities who were being treated just as she was, and who could end up just like she did. I believe that writing this story is the first step in doing just that.

Daniel Kovalik is senior associate general counsel of the United Steelworkers union.

"Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America"

September's meeting of the SOCCCD BOT

     No report. I've decided that I have better things to do.
     Please see Tere's Board Meeting Highlights.

Read it and weep: "Where the money goes..." (Red Emma)

Or rage.

Red Emma read aloud most of Thomas Frank's Academy Fight Song to Rebel Girl over the weekend, just in case you wonder what their home life is like.  It's like that.

In it, Frank recounts the sad tale of the corporatization of higher education and its effects on students and faculty.  It can be found in the new issue of The Baffler.

Check out Rebel Girl's favorite section "Where the money goes":

Above all, what the masters of academia spend the loot on is themselves. In saying this, I am not referring merely to the increasing number of university presidents who take home annual “compensation” north of a million dollars. That is a waste, of course, an outrageous bit of money-burning borrowed from Wall Street in an age when we ought to be doing the opposite of borrowing from Wall Street. But what has really fueled the student’s ever-growing indebtedness, as anyone with a connection to academia can tell you, is the insane proliferation of university administrators.

Political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg tells the sorry tale in his 2011 book, The Fall of the Faculty. Back in the day, Ginsberg tells us, American universities were governed by professors, who would take time out from their academic careers to manage the institution’s business affairs. Today, however, the business side of the university has been captured by a class of professionals who have nothing to do with the pedagogical enterprise itself.

Administrators: Their salaries are generous, their ranks expand year after year, and their work requires no peer review and not even much effort. As Ginsberg reminds us, most of them don’t teach courses, they don’t squabble like English professors at the MLA, and no one ever suggests replacing them with adjuncts or temps. As tuition balloons, it is administrators who prosper. In fact, their fortunes are an almost exact reverse image of the tuition-indebtedness of the young.

According to Ginsberg, “administrators and staffers actually outnumber full-time faculty members” nowadays, even though it’s the faculty members who do the real work of education that we believe is so goddamned important. The numbers are startling. While the ranks of full-time professors have grown at about the rate of university enrollment generally since 1975—which is to say, about 50 percent—administrations have expanded at an amazing pace. Administrators proper are up 85 percent, Ginsberg reports, while the number of “other professionals” employed by universities has grown 240 percent. Their share of university budgets has grown by similar margins.

Naturally, an ugly new class conflict has begun to play out amidst the leafy groves. Administrators, it seems, have understood that the fortunes of their cohort are directly opposed to those of the faculty. One group’s well-being comes at the expense of the other, and vice versa. And so, according to Ginsberg, the administrators work constantly to expand their own numbers, to replace professors with adjuncts, to subject professors to petty humiliations, to interfere in faculty hiring, to distill the professors’ expertise down to something that can be measured by a standardized test.

It is not until you read Ginsberg’s description of the day-to-day activities of administrators that the light bulb goes on, however. The particular pedagogy that motivates this class of university creatures is . . . management theory. They talk endlessly about “process management” and “excellence.” They set up “culture teams.” They attend retreats where they play team-building games. And whole divisions of them are dedicated to writing “strategic plans” for their universities, which take years to finish and are forgotten immediately upon completion.

Political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg tells the sorry tale in his 2011 book, The Fall of the Faculty. Back in the day, Ginsberg tells us, American universities were governed by professors, who would take time out from their academic careers to manage the institution’s business affairs. Today, however, the business side of the university has been captured by a class of professionals who have nothing to do with the pedagogical enterprise itself....

To read the rest - and you should! Aloud! To each other! - click here.

REMINDER: board meeting tonight, at 5:30. The agenda is a large pdf. Check it out.

Bugsy back in his element

     Got to the hospital this afternoon to pick up young Bugsy, whose numbers seem better or at least stable. The vet tech explained that the Bugster has been really “feisty” since the morning, meowing and even playing in his cage. When he was finally brought out to us, he was feisty all right—so much so that he pulled off the bandage over his IV wound. He started bleeding all over the place. But it was no biggie.

     As soon as Annie put the boy in my old jacket and against her chest, he went from feisty to calm and sleepy. It was amazing. He seemed to fall into a coma. On the road, we started to worry about the guy, tried to get him to open his eyes. He did a little, but opened them wide when we finally pulled off Live Oak to Lambrose Canyon, where the road gets bumpy and slow. He knew he was back home.

     When we let him inside my folks' home, he immediately owned the place. He stretched and checked out his old toys. My mom was ecstatic. “He’s so happy!” she kept saying. And he was. He soon made his rounds, rubbing his little tail on everybody’s legs, going from room to room, exploring the closet, inspecting his food bowl. He sure is an independent little guy.

     The boy was back in his element, and it was good. We all rejoiced quietly. We were very happy, at least for the moment.

BOT meeting: tomorrow and five years ago

     The September meeting of the SOCCCD BOT is tomorrow night (at 5:30). You can find the agenda here (a large pdf).
     For a little perspective on the here and now, you might want to view this brief video about the board meeting that occurred exactly five years ago:

BEFORE THE FALL*: Watch Fuentes beam about Mathur's efforts at providing "ethics training" for other districts.

Watch John Williams recall his football days at SC.

Watch Don Wagner genuinely praise the faculty (et al.) he worked with on the Accreditation Report.

*The massive falling out (between Wagner and Fuentes) caused by Wagner's sudden determination, incited by yet another obscene Mathurian connivery, to fire Mathur's ass.

Street, Bryson, Wagner, Fuentes, Williams--four years ago

     A typical scene, really, in OC politics: GOP candidates (and hopefuls) promoting GOP candidates (and hopefuls).
     As you can see, Anna Bryson, now running for 73rd Assembly District (against Wendy Gabriella, among others), was fraudster Chriss Street’s right-hand woman. But why is she here, with Street, at this board meeting? She doesn't actually say anything beyond her name and office.
     TV exposure. Bryson sought higher office (she was already an elected CAPO trustee and she remains so). And Street/Wagner/Fuentes were happy to oblige.
     Also on hand: John Williams, who soon went down in flames as among the most incompetent and sleazy elected officials in county history.

     Speaking of corruption and sleaze, check out this old chestnut from the OC Register, July 19, 2010:

     Chriss Street's travel bill: $60,000

     As trustee of a bankrupt company, Chriss Street got in trouble for using his client's money for his own self interests, including expensive dinners and resort hotels.
     As Orange County's treasurer-tax collector, Street and his top managers have spent more than $60,000 during the last two years attending conferences in such far-flung places as New York, Las Vegas and Washington D.C. -- with stays at the Waldorf Astoria and Venetian hotels.
. . .
     … Street was stripped of his investment duties by county supervisors in March. The action followed a U.S. bankruptcy court ruling that he wasted millions of his client's money in his former job as a bankruptcy trustee.
     Barred from investing, Street and his staff continue to travel and spend, with about six months left on his term as treasurer-tax collector.
     Expense documents reviewed by the Orange County Register show that Street and his human resources chief went to San Francisco for a "business process management" class in June at a cost of $11,462. Street's executive aide Anna Bryson is scheduled to go to South Carolina for a treasurer's conference later this month.
. . .
     [Street] Routinely made last minute flight arrangements and changes that boosted the cost of travel. In April 2008, Street and Bryson made so many changes that it pushed the cost of airfare for a San Francisco trip from $1,620 to $2,300….

Bugs

     Bugsy’s still in the hospital. Visited the little guy yesterday, and he seemed really to want to get out of there. He had been given a whole blood transfusion, but still things weren’t turning around much. So the vet said he should stay, since his numbers were still pretty low (for red, white blood counts, platelets, and whatnot). Now (Saturday) they tell me he's a bit better but to call back by 3:00. Sheesh. I’m thinking of just goin’ down there and just grabbing him. Poor little guy!
     P.S.: Just got back from visiting Bugsy, who'll need yet another blood transfusion. He seemed pretty agitated--seemed desperately to seek a way out of the hospital--but I got him to calm down and sleep. The guys who brought him in the room and took him back seemed very nice. There's that. Let's hope the latest blood will help him rebound.

Amanda Ripley "The Smartest Kids in the World"

I encountered Ripley on Matt Miller's radio show and was very impressed.

I suspect that her book will be important and much discussed.
See New York Times review.

Anna Bryson, gun nut, targeting people with "evil intent"

Brontosaur Bryson

     According to local loose cannoneer Art Pedroza (Who do you support for the 73rd Assembly District in 2014?), the battle to replace termed out Assemblywoman (73rd Assembly District) Diane Harkey will likely be “brutal.” At least five Repubs are scramblin' for that Assembly seat:

     Five Republicans have already announced their campaigns – Rancho Santa Margarita Councilman Steve Baric; Capistrano Unified School District (CAPO) Trustee Anna Bryson, Rancho Santa Margarita City Councilman Jesse Petrilla and Dana Point Councilman Bill Brough (a former Chief of Staff to Harkey who is currently a government consultant), and Paul Glaab, another government consultant.

     It appears that our own Wendy Gabriella will likely be the Democrat in this race.
     The early favorite among the above-mentioned Republicans is probably Anna Bryson, that notorious right-wingnut. (She used to work for fraudster Chriss Street.)
     I’ve been looking into her recent activities.
     She’s still nuts. In fact, she's nuttier than ever.

Democrat Wendy

     I came across a post in the January 9 San Juan Capistrano Patch (Teachers Hit Firing Range After Newtown Shooting, School Trustee Says) that reveals that Bryson is a gun nut who favors teachers and other employees bringing guns to school.
     Really.

Bryson has asked Capo schools to look into the feasibility of the district allowing employees to bring concealed weapons onto campuses, she told the Orange County Register.

     Really? Yep. According to the Reg,

     Anna Bryson, a trustee for Capistrano Unified, the county's second-largest school district, [is] an NRA member and grew up in a household of gun owners.
     "We have made schools gun-free zones, weapons-free zones, and all of the people who have evil intent are aware of it," Bryson said. "I don't think that people with evil intent should have that comfort level. If they walk through our doors, they should be wondering, 'Is there someone there who could harm me first?'"
     Bryson said she's looking forward to having more discussion about the issue and hearing from her constituents. Capistrano district staff is researching issues related to how often armed deputies are present on the district's campuses and the feasibility of the district allowing employees to bring concealed weapons onto campuses, Bryson said.

     This reminds me of the time, back in 2007, when a right-wing wacko showed up at an SOCCCD board meeting advocating teaching our students to throw books and other objects at potential terrorists/shooters.
     Yep.
     Said he:

     "We may see less school slaughter if students are trained and encouraged to protect themselves. On hand in every classroom and on every school campus there are innumerable books, chairs, backpacks, laptop computers, shoes, etc., that can be used at a moment’s notice as defensive projectile weapons against armed assassins…."

     Nope, I'm not making this up. The guy was a San Clemente politician. And a Republican. Tom Fuentes called him "esteemed." (See streaming video here. Jump to item 2.5)
     Natch.

SEE Update on Wendy Gabriella’s bid for AD 73

Bugsy

     Bugsy took a turn for the worse today. My sister found him to be sluggish and a little hot, so she called me. I went out to buy a pet thermometer, and we eventually determined that he had a temp of 104.3. That’s pretty high, cat-wise.
     Called the hospital. We hatched a plan to see where the temp goes; if it stayed high, we’d take him in. So, an hour later, his temp was still at 104.3. So we took him back to the hospital, where his temp passed 106. Sheesh. They got to work on 'im.
     Just got a call from the hospital. Bugsy’s red and white blood cell counts are way low, and his platelets are—well, it’s pretty bad. They’re trying to bring his temp down (with ice, antibiotics). I’ll wait to hear from our doctor in the morning.
     Doesn’t look good.
     The little man was a real trooper through it all tonight. Didn’t complain. Just took it.
     Sweet little guy.
     Good grief.

Power goes out in 39 minutes. Deal with it.

     At 5:21 this afternoon, the campus community received this odd message:

A message from IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE 

So Cal Edison informed Irvine Valley College at 3:45 p.m. of a planned power outage in the area from 5:00 to 5:30 p.m. An emergency procedure will be conducted at an offsite Edison facility at that time. Computers and phones will be unavailable; staff and faculty, as well as students using school computers, are asked to save their work and shut down their equipment prior to the outage. Campus Police phones will be operational. Facilities and the police department will follow standard shutdown procedures.

Faculty will have latitude in determining where and when to hold their classes, as most facilities will be unavailable during the shutdown, but will be available again once power is restored.

NOTE: The women’s volleyball game this evening will be held as scheduled.

--Thanks,

 Bruce Hagan, 
Director of Technology Services

     If the college was informed at 3:45, one wonders why they waited nearly two hours (and only 39 minutes prior to the outage) to alert faculty, et al.
     What gives?
     Who runs this place? Anyone?

Update on Wendy Gabriella’s bid for AD 73

Bryson visits Clown College

     As you know, former IVC Academic Senate president and “Brown Act” attorney Wendy Gabriella is running for the 73rd Assembly District seat (See).
     Visit her website here.
     Not wishing to blindside any old friends and allies, she has contacted the usual suspects among SOCCCD and college leadership and let them know. Reportedly, they have offered strong encouragement.
     Naturally, she’s running as a Democrat, albeit a fiscally conservative one. Her run might seem Quixotic—the 73rd is smack dab in conservative south OC—but change is in the air and the GOP is fragmented. Plus they no longer have the services of a mafia-like “enforcer”—Tom Fuentes. That guy used to thin the field of Republican candidates for any given office, but nobody seems able to twist arms quite like Tom used to do. I guess they could just hire the mafia. Why not.
     Chief among the Republicans running for the seat is Anna Bryson, one of those “Education Alliance” candidates of yore. You’ll recall that she worked for Fuentes’ pal Chriss Street, who resigned his OC Treasurer gig after his conviction for fraud. He's been pissing and moaning ever since, carping that his attorney, Friend-o'-Fuentes Phil Greer, did a shitty job providing defense.
     Bryson's been on the CAPO school board, and she’s made all of the usual moves for a super-duper right-winger. She’s scary. (See here website here.)
     So Wendy’s now on the rubber-chicken circuit, shaking hands, making contacts, asking for money.
     Money’s the big issue right now. Bryson’s got some. Wendy needs some. It’s the usual thing: without money, she won’t be viable.
     Bryson appears to be the last gasp of the Fuentes-generation local GOP. And she’s quite the wacko: she's scrapped textbooks in Capo because they don't match her knuckle-dragging view of the world and she's against the common core curriculum even though that’s pretty much a done deal. I think she seeks a return to stone tablets and charcoal. –Check her out.
     Meanwhile, it appears that Gabriella is being embraced as a fresh face by the local Dems; they view her as a strong candidate with terrific public ed credentials.
     We’ll try to stay on top of this race, which could get WAY interesting.

The people in this video make me feel suicidal. I had to stop watching.

This is your college on drugs

assume - to suppose to be the case, without proof: you're afraid of what people are going to assume about me | [ with clause ] : it is reasonable to assume that such changes have significant social effects | [ with obj. and infinitive ] : they were assumed to be foreign.*

1. Today's visit by students (?) of the California Corporate College caused the predictable parking snafu. One could see students (et al.) anxiously prowling the lots. A colleague explained that she was a half hour late for her class, owing to the fubar. Wonderful, isn't it?

2. At about 11:40 this morning, I wandered over to the IVC PAC and entered. The "California Corporate College" event was in full swing, and the hall was pretty full. Somebody was yammerin' about something ridiculous. I dunno.
     I've got nothin'.

3. I assume that the sun will rise in the morning. Does that make me an "ass"? Don't think so. 

     Note: someone who does not make that assumption is mentally ill. No?

     And suppose that someone really said that "it is reasonable to assume that such changes have significant social effects"? (See def. above.) Only an ass would insist that it is unreasonable to make that assumption. 

4. Insisting that one does not "assume" any such thing would make one an ass. If not an ass, at least a liar. 

     "I am aware that it is at least possible that the sun will not rise. And so I don't really assume it." —Here we have someone who is used to changing words' meanings to save a foolish idea. —A liar or self-deceiver.

5. It's pretty clear, I think, that the truth about assuming is as follows: the phenomenon of assuming comprises a range of cases from the reasonable (and, in truth, more than reasonable) to the unreasonable (foolish or even mad). Hence, some assumptions are foolish (i.e., ass-making) and some are not (far from it). It depends on the case.

     Why overstate the point, declaring all assumptions to be foolish? Just what is the matter with you?

6. It's like the familiar blatherage that "you can be anything you want to be." Well, no. Obviously not. Sure, there are some who need to be encouraged to try to do or achieve things. Yes, there are some who falsely or foolishly underestimate what is achievable as a goal. Be that as it may, it does not justify such idiotic blatherage as "you can be anything you want to be."

7. In this country, when we plan an event, we tend to turn it into a circus. Fighting cancer, for us, is no sober enterprise; it's pink ribbons and "races" for cures. And when we seek to correct an error, we overcorrect and create a new error:

Your vote counts. (Sure, they count it. But it doesn't "count" in the sense of having a bearing on the outcome.)
You can be anything you want to be. (Well, no. Yes, quite possibly, you have underestimated the opportunities available to you. But it takes strength to aim high and miss. The miss could send you spiraling downward. Do these idiots have a slogan for spiraling depressives too?)
There are no limits to what you can achieve! (Ditto.)
This is your brain on drugs. (C'mon. Kinda depends on the drug, doesn't it? And what about that martini in your hand, asshole?)
Celebrate yourself! (I should celebrate myself? What if I'm a lout? A lazy ass? A Tea Partier?)

     *My Mac's dictionary