Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Gung-ho!

MRAP at Saddleback?
     EXPENSIVE PARKING? Natch, owing to IVC’s lurid death cult—aka Glenn Roquemore’s yearly and never-ending 9-11 commemoration—parking will likely be terrible tomorrow at the college. We just got an email from the Pres telling us that “On Thursday, over 175 parking spaces in Parking Lot 5 will be reserved for the 9-11 Ceremony and will not be available.”
     On the subject of parking: some faculty have been squawking loudly about the new policy according to which 2nd faculty parking stickers will now be $20 each—i.e., they’ll be the price of a faculty parking sticker. Previously, faculty could get the second sticker for one measly buck.
     When squawkage about same was heard at last week’s senate meeting, I asked the senate Prez to explain how much students and managers pay for parking stickers: it was something like $80! So let’s have no more complaining about the increase for that second sticker, OK? Faculty have it easy, parking-sticker-wise.
     Parking at IVC can be pretty bad, but at least the local cops don’t tow the cars of “offenders” away. I’m told that they do that all the time down at Saddleback. Sheesh, they’re pretty gung-ho down there.

Campus police could spare their MRAP for Autoshop event
     IN CASE STUDENTS PLANT LAND MINES. Speaking of Gung Ho, a local reporter contacted me today about the fact (at least he seemed to think it was a fact) that “Saddleback College campus police have an MRAP.”*
     What’s an MRAP? Well, according to Wikipedia, an MRAP—or Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle—“is an American term for vehicles that are designed specifically to withstand improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and ambushes.” According to W, “From 2007 until 2012 the Pentagon's MRAP program deployed more than 12,000 MRAPs in the Iraq War and War in Afghanistan.” Nowadays, the ISIS crowd is using the ones we left behind.
     See the pic above.
     Why on Earth would Saddleback's campus police have a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle? What next, a Harrier?
     The reporter was trying to get ahold of the Saddleback College chief of police, but he wasn’t getting anywhere with that.
     He asked me for a comment. (He's a big fan of Dissent the Blog.) I told him, “I think the trustees let our cops get an MRAP when they found out that some of our students are Democrats.”
     I also reminded him of our district’s curious history with perceived threats of violence:
1. MO' STOPPING POWER. Back in 1998, campus cops requested an upgrade from their old 38s to new 9 mms. They should have left the matter alone. Some trustees (Fortune, Lang) wondered why ours was the only district in the county that arms its cops? That day, the cops were lucky to keep their pee shooters. (See 1998: Should SOCCCD cops have guns?
2. BOOKS CAN BE DANGEROUS. And then there was the time that a small-time San Clemente politician came to the board meeting to urge the board to train students to respond to terrorists by throwing books at them. (See DtB’s “curious moments in SOCCCD history,” part 2: the specter of "school slaughter"
3. A MIGHTY FORTRESS IS OUR LIBRARY. Best of all, there was the time trustees had designed a cool library for Saddleback College, but then some students set fire to a B of A up in Santa Barbara. The trustees freaked and forced the architects to redesign the library as a fortress against students. (See A weird windowless library, alleged marauding flag-swiping Hippies, the protean name, and other district mysteries—Solved!)
     As Rebel Girl told me over the phone just now: "You can't make this stuff up!"

*The Spring/Summer edition of Saddleback College’s Good Stuff includes the following:

GET SOME!
     So I guess that confirms it: Saddleback's Campus Police have an MRAP.



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