IVC President Hernandez's Opening Session: Redemption and Vision

YOU DON'T have to be an old-timer to remember when the opening session of the IVC Staff Development Week meant a pitch for signing up for Triple-A and a warning against texting while driving or a lawyer teaching us how to create community or perhaps a video reminding faculty and staff who the “real patriots” are (hint: not us!). 

But old-timers like Rebel Girl won’t let folks forget the time the Chancellor dressed up like Elvis and crooned and shook his hips. After all these years, she is still traumatized. This wasn’t how she imagined her career in higher education. She understood that academia, especially at the community college level, meant enduring a certain kind of spectacle, some pomp, some circumstance.

But she also expected more.

Today was different. Sure there were the technical glitches which will inspire the best of us to troubleshoot our debut in our virtual classrooms next week and the pro forma platitudes from the trustees, this time delivered via recordings that rendered them oddly cheerful and animatronic, reminiscent of Disneyland’s "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.” (SPOILER ALERT: Lang announced that this is his last term.)

But Chancellor Burke ended her presentation with an extended tribute to John Lewis, reading at length from “Together You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation,” his essay published posthumously in the NY Times, including these lines: 

     Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it. 

     You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Pretty remarkable for the SOCCCD. Thomas Fuentes must be rolling in his grave.

And what about IVC’s new president Dr. John Hernandez? He took the time to introduce himself to the college community, with words and images, announcing that his family story, like so many, was an immigrant story and how his individual journey was, he realized later, distinguished by “the struggle to develop my identity and what it meant to be gay in a traditional heteronormative religious Latino family and not knowing how to reconcile my truth.” 

But then, he told us, smiling, he “experienced college.” He described his time as an EOPS student at Fullerton College where he worked as a student ambassador at local high schools and then explained how this period and his concurrent service in a youth ministry program inspired his values that shaped his career in education. As one faculty member observed, “[It’s] nice to hear his personal narrative reflects what the community college experience is all about: not just 'career training' but also personal growth.” 

Hernandez went on to describe an impressive equity-based vision for IVC that goes beyond banners, branding, and feel-good catch-phrases, pointing out our achievements and potential but also noting what’s missing. He noted that an “overall framework” is missing which should connect campus equity initiatives to an overall equity framework that would actually assess progress, document and validate benchmarks, and “measure the effectiveness of each and every effort,” otherwise we run the risk, he warned, of having dozens of activities that, as he pointed out, make us “feel good” of having pursued the laudable equity goal without knowing if we have succeeded.

Rebel Girl

Later in the day, Rebel Girl caught the new president attending the final session of a long day, the IVC EMCEES (Elevating Men of Color by Engaging and Embracing Solidarity) and WOCC (Women of Color Collective) planning session. Unlike his predecessor, who often showed up to events like this at the beginning to make some remarks, perhaps take a photo and then flee, Hernandez stayed the whole time, listening, taking notes – and then toward the end entered in the conversation only when asked and was thoughtful and observant.

“It’s like a real college,” someone (unmuted) remarked. 

Rebel Girl agrees. 

Finally. Leadership.

Well, if you've got the time, here it is: