Tuesday, March 3, 2015

More on Bill Jay

     Some background on trustee Bill Jay, who died this week:
     Bill joined the SOCCCD board in April of 2004, after a special election necessitated by the resignation of Dorothy Fortune. Jay had been both an instructor and an administrator at the district; he retired in 1999. (From 1996 until 1999, Jay served as Vice Chancellor of Administrative Services and Human Resources for the District.)
The Faculty Association's own
Steven J. Frogue
     Fortune had resigned from the board in September of 2003 amid allegations that she had moved out of the district area seven months earlier. She had been one of the original "board majority" (Frogue, Fortune, Lorch, Williams) who ushered in an era of corruption, incompetence, and anti-intellectualism, starting in December of 1996. Their ruthless and notorious 1996 political campaign was conducted by rogue leadership of the Faculty Association, including Sherry Miller-White, Sharon MacMillan, Ray Chandos, Ken Woodward, and many others. (See The Dissenter’s Dictionary, 1999.)
     Jay, as trustee, was always sympathetic to the faculty union and its concerns; the (newly reformed) union had worked to ensure his appointment in 2004, out-maneuvering the conservative board majority (led by the likes of Tom Fuentes and Don Wagner) at the time. As we've reported previously,
Woodward
The controversy concerning the Board’s political gamesmanship drove away the Majority’s choice, and thus it was that Bill Jay, the union’s candidate, became Fortune’s trustee replacement.
     In May of '04, our pal Marla Jo at the OC Register reported the relevent events as follows:
   The envelope flap is the latest wrinkle in controversy over who will be the new trustee for the [SOCCCD], which operates Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges. The election is to replace former Trustee Dorothy Fortune, who moved.
   Trustees appointed Eric Norby, chief of staff to his brother, [Republican] Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby, to fill the position, but faculty and students complained that the process smacked of cronyism.
   They gathered signatures on petitions to trigger a special election—a move that caused Eric Norby to resign, saying he didn't want the stress of running for office. (OC Register, 5/27/04) 
—Enter Bill Jay, one-time member of the SOCCCD Faculty Association.

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