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| Colonel Stevens |
IT'S 1985-86: Essentially, what happens at Coast happens again at Saddleback, too. Faculty hate the Chancellor, but trustees double down on their man, and so faculty target key trustees for recall. The recall fails, but the anti-establishmentarian momentum is enough to win key victories in the subsequent election. In each case, post election, new board majorities, favorable to the faculty union, emerge. According to conservatives, we’re seeing teachers’ unions “taking over the board of trustees.” According to progressives, knuckle-draggers are being removed from positions of authority, at colleges, where surely they do not belong.
But it isn’t that simple.
And do these unions really seek to “control” their boards, their districts? At Coast, lots of payback occurs when the New Majority arrives. Is that what happens at Saddleback, too?
And what sorts of tactics are these teachers' unions willing to use to win?
In the case of the Faculty Association at Saddleback, ruthless, win-at-any-price, realpolitik tactics are used—very much like
the ones later used, in 1996, when homophobic fliers pander to local Repubs. In 1985, it appears that FA president Sharon MacMillan and her hubby, a local anti-tax, back-to-basics Republican, are behind the nasty tactics.
And just how bad was Larry Stevens anyway? It’s clear that he should never have been hired, given his worrisome record at Tacoma Community College.
That's f*ck-up #1. But he was smart and he was able to convince the board of his ideas, innovations, changes—including the bonehead move of scheduling more classes on Fridays. When the faculty balked, the board doubled down on backing Stevens.
That's f*ck-up #2.
Whatever might be said of Stevens' policies, the essence of the "Stevens problem," as many suggested, was his autocratic manner, which made it impossible for faculty to respect him. A wiser board would have seen that and corrected it; they would have cut their losses, for the district’s sake, and sent the Colonel packing.
But no.
The result? Three and a half years of discord, disunity, acrimony.
Here are the gory details:
