Showing posts with label Rebel Girl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rebel Girl. Show all posts

Thursday, December 24, 2020

The Best of Rebel Girl (1998-2006): If I Had a Hammer

March 03, 1998 
Dissent 3 
     Unlike the convenient (lecherous Zeus’s sneaky self-changes) or vindictive (the punitive metamorphosis meted out to the presumptuous Arachne) or even compassionate (Daphne’s mutation into a laurel tree) transformations so prevalent in Greek myths, the recent morphing of faculty to management seems steeped in self-interest and nepotism, inspired perhaps by hubris....
     Rebel Girl recommends that offerings of thigh bones wrapped in fat and libations be presented to Nemesis at the appropriate alters near you. 

March 18, 1998 
From Dissent
Originally entitled: WE’RE WAIST DEEP IN THE BIG MUDDY 
     Clearly, the union leadership, which has so often ignored the rank and file in the past, has done so again—and this time cloaked themselves with our “manufactured” consent. At the press conference, Brother Bob Kopfstein … said that the union opposed the recall on the grounds that it was “disruptive.” Apparently the presence on the college board of a person who sympathizes with the Institute for Historical Review and The Spotlight is not “disruptive.” Apparently the systematic dismantling of shared governance is not “disruptive.” Hmmm. 

December 15, 1998 
From Dissent 14
Originally entitled: Rebel Girl Says: “Basta!”—Or Tales of “Bad” Behavior and Nobel Prize Winners 
     …Rebel Girl knows that every demonstration needs props (related to propaganda, from the Latin for propagate or to spread)—how else to communicate a message to the masses? So while concerned faculty and staff arranged themselves in an impressive conga line, Rebel Girl ran to her faculty office and located a half-sheet of poster board stashed between the wall and a bookcase for just such an occasion. The placard was, she decided, large enough for just one word. But, she wondered, what single word would best communicate the nature of the crisis?....
     …[I]n her cluttered office, the crowd of tension makers outside growing by the minute, Rebel Girl decided what exact word would serve. Six letters, plus the ubiquitous exclamation point…. 
     Finished, she returned to the clock tower picket with her sign. It was well received and passed along from one hand to another until it reached the window glass, where it was pressed so all inside could see it. Our message? Enough!.... 


October 11, 1999 
Dissent 33
     … “But that’s not all that’s been taken down,” she went on. Rebel Girl elaborated on another story that had also reached her that morning. Faculty had until August 8th, to remove any material posted on their office doors, windows or painted surfaces within their offices. If faculty didn’t remove material by that date, the material would be removed for them. 
     “Is this also about sexual harassment?” asked Mr. Pulitzer Prize. 
     “No,” she said, “it’s about worker harassment and the First Amendment. It’s about what they try to get away with when they think no one’s looking.” 
     “What are you going to do?” he asked. 
     “What we’ve been doing for the past two, three years,” Rebel Girl said. “Resist.” 


November 01, 1999 
By Rebel Girl 
[Hostile attorney:] Would you consider the depiction in the upper right-hand corner as being one of maiming? 
[Rebel Girl:] Actually, I would think the only body part that you could [lose] and not have it be considered maiming would be your head. I would offer that that would be a beheading. I’m sorry, I am this English teacher, okay? So I am amending my earlier definition of “maim.” Now, I…believe this is a depiction of a beheading, not a maiming.

December 23, 2000 
By Rebel Girl 

Created by Rebel Girl


September 23, 2002 
By Rebel Girl 
(with apologies to Calvin Trillin) 

I’ll brief the Senates and the unions 
and notify all classified employees 
I’ll send out a lot of memos 
Then do just as I please. 

September 25, 2005 
By Rebel Girl 
     At first, I attributed the student’s roving eyes to her indifference to the great but sometimes inaccessible Russian [viz., Chekhov], but then, following her eyes, I saw what she saw: a single mouse, rambling across the flat panels of fluorescent lighting fixtures, through which he (she?) was exquisitely illuminated from furry tail to pink foot pads. It was like watching the Discovery Channel. The eyes of the rest of the students then followed, with the predictable surprise and oohs and ahhs, not of delight but something else which is triggered by vector in the human cerebellum, an autochthonic revulsion which Rebel Girl has herself learned to control, but to which she sometimes succumbs in too-close proximity to administrators and Republicans. 
     Class stopped while we watched the critter make its confident way out of our illuminated line-of-sight, which took some time as the mouse seemed not in any hurry. 
     “Don’t worry,” I reassured the students, a couple of whom seemed ready to run, “it’s not heavy enough to dislodge the panel.” This sounded authoritative, even to me. “It won’t fall on you. After all, it’s not a rat....” 


October 16, 2005 
By Rebel Girl 
ONE THOUSAND SOBER TRUTHS [including….] 

     [Room] B-104 has missing ceiling tiles, and has for years. Every rainy season there is a major leak in that area of the roof. The seemingly long-term solution appears to be this: once the first storm of the season arrives, a large trash barrel is placed in the middle of the room to catch the water. Perhaps this saves money that would otherwise be spent on roof repair and ceiling tiles. Fiscal conservatives, rejoice: join hands and dance around the plastic barrel. Besides, the trash barrel and the rain adds a special something to the classroom: namely a kind of industrial bleakness and dread, a Home Depot kind of despair, and the dependable plunk-plunk-plunk inspires more of the existential drama evocative of the late Irish playwright Beckett. 


By Rebel Girl
October 17, 2005 
What is buried in the old orange grove anyway? 
We can't tell unless you tell us. 
The truth is out there. 
Go find it. 

—Rebel Girl 

By Rebel Girl
October 29, 2005 
(An adaptation of Hemingway’s adaptation of the Lord’s Prayer-–see his short story: “A Clean Well-Lighted Place.”) 

Some lived in it and never felt it but she knew it all was Raghu y pues Raghu y Raghu and pues Raghu. Our Raghu who art in Raghu, Raghu be thy name thy kingdom Raghu thy will be Raghu in Raghu as it is in Raghu. Give us this Raghu our daily Raghu and Raghu us our Raghu as we Raghu our Raghus and Raghu us not into Raghu but deliver us from Raghu ; pues Raghu. 

- Rebel Girl 

By Rebel Girl 
October 29, 2005 
     …Perhaps the chancellor believes that his salary, the physical conditions of his life and workplace, the resources available to him, his fancy new car, his Big Chair, his fancy new office digs-–perhaps he imagines that he is a symbol of the district’s success, that our students and indeed ourselves can look at him and feel pride. As goes Raghu, so go us all. But he isn’t a symbol of success, of course. He is, if anything, a symbol of wretched excess, squandered resources, the rise of mediocrity and the power of nepotism. 
     Meanwhile, the lights flicker in my classroom. The mice scurry across the ceiling. The air conditioning fails to work, so we prop open the door with a tin trash can. Soon the room fills with autumn leaves. We laugh and make the most of it. We work hard at transcending our surroundings, very hard. My students know—they are smart, after all—that the conditions of their classrooms reveal what the college thinks of them. 
     To their credit, they think more of themselves than that. 


November 10, 2005 
By Rebel Girl 
     Speaking of PODs (Pals of Dana), ex-chairman of the Orange County GOP Tom Fuentes, who now darkens the halls of the South Orange County Community College District as a trustee, apparently has some scary ties of his own, according to the latest rants from everyone's favorite dissent-spewing SOCCCD website Dissent the Blog. Seems that Tio Tomas is on the board of directors of Regnery, "which publishes books not likely to be found on an academic's bookshelf," Dissent reports.

November 12, 2005 
By Rebel Girl 
Tidbit of the Night: 

     When I "googled" (I know, I know, I have better things to do)—but really, when I "googled" Raghu Mathur (What's an ace reporter to do on a slow night, huh?), anyway, when I "googled" Raghu Mathur — well, hang on, the second result (That's number 2) that came up was DISSENT! 


November 19, 2005 
By Rebel Girl 
     At the most recent board meeting, Trustee Fuentes opined that we should try and lure star faculty from UCI (and OCC) to come and teach at our little campus in the orange groves…. 
     Who does the starry-eyed trustee imagine might feel motivated to traipse across town and teach for the paltry adjunct faculty compensation offered by the district, not to mention return some of it for the privilege and convenience of parking on campus?.... 
     How about we just recognize the trustee’s yammering for what it is? A few minutes of hot air offered to distract whomever is listening from real issues. A purposeful blowing of smoke. Or as Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” says: “Merely corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.” 


By Rebel Girl
January 16, 2006 
     …Years passed, the college underwent its “changes” and so-called “multicultural programming” was taken over by people who imagined Yul Brynner’s “The King and I” offered relevant lessons in assimilation for college students. Say no more, though Rebel Girl could say plenty. 
     …But Rebel Girl can’t help to add that the deafening silence by which King Day is celebrated on this campus is a sharp contrast to another day that she still remembers: on April 27, 1994, our district distinguished itself by becoming the only college district in the nation to close in an official day of mourning in honor of the passing of Richard Milhouse Nixon. 


by REBEL GIRL 
March 11, 2006 
…The Feng Shui Hypothesis: 
     [The college president’s] window’s openness, its physical and metaphysical vulnerability, allowed the potential for passersby and onlookers to transmit potentially negative energies to the office’s occupant. 
     With installation of the Presidential Window Blind, the college president has both remedied his precarious position, trapping the accumulated psychic energy he creates, while shielding himself and also deflecting the transmission of random or negative cosmic elements emanating from passerby and onlookers. 
     The Chinese have a phrase for this which, translated loosely, amounts to “Fuck off.” 

April 08, 2006
By Rebel Girl  
Rebel Girl writes an administrator about classroom 2: 

     …I decided to investigate the ceiling area to see if the collapse that seemed to loom earlier was somehow mitigated by the sunshine. As I pressed my fingers upward to feel the condition of the ceiling panel—my fingers sunk into the panel with startling ease as if it were a slice of sodden white bread. 
     Clearly, the ceiling in this area is rotten. 
     But more alarming than the ease with which my fingers sank into the panel was what occurred after I retracted them—which I did quickly, I assure you. 
     The indentations instantly filled with swarming black ants. 
     As I watched, the ants spread outward from my finger indentations and across the panel. I am not a squeamish person, but the spectacle of the swift-moving ants was fairly nauseating. 
      Thanks for your attention to this matter. 


April 17, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     Ahem. Rebel Girl has been especially busy of late, what with the predictable tumult of paper grading that comes, lo, as if a seasonal floodwater. The winter of their discontent has ended, the glacial icepack of student disinterest or ennui has melted after many cold weeks, and so she is drowned, ironically, in her own spring rains. Then there is her relentless inspection of classroom facilities for real flooding and rodents and insect infestation, not to mention the mid-term carpeting adventure, which found her packing and unpacking her office as if auditioning for some strange Olympic event. 
     —And then there is her ongoing adjustment to her duties as department chair…. 


May 02, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     Rebel Girl, along with Red Emma, and pulling Limber Lou in his little red wagon, joined thousands of others marking the Day Without An Immigrant in Santa Ana yesterday…. 
     As the march began to move out, I looked up. In the wide set branches of a tree, sat a broad-chested young man, in clean, well-pressed khakis and a white button-down shirt. His tie was red, white and blue. His hair was clipped close to his head. His brown face was gleaming with sweat. He shouted down at us, urging us forward, like some figure out of Greek mythology. 
     At the plaza where we paused for speeches in English and Spanish, we met up with three colleagues from Saddleback. We congratulated each other on being there as it was clearly the place to be. Solidarity, indeed. 
     Media reports cited counter protesters, but I saw only one, a single fellow, singularly unhappy, standing there with his own bitter hand-lettered sign. He had, Red noted, obviously more problems than one. 
     The march continued, winding its way around the Civic Center. At the corner of 901 Civic Center Drive, the crowd looked up and noticed a group of men on the roof, arms crossed, watching us. Clearly business men, they had taken off their suit jackets to better bear the heat, but their ties remained tight around their necks, their shirts tucked into their belted trousers. Standing there, arms crossed, they watched us, the slowly moving sea of white shirts and red, white and blue flags. We started waving, calling out “Hello!” “Hola!” No reaction. We shouted louder. Nothing. We called, “Come join us!” and realized how absurd that request was, but still, we repeated it. “Hello!” Come join us!”…. 

May 03, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
The long spring meeting 
Raghu says nothing 
so so many times 

A fishy smell 
the room where we sit for years 
waiting for nothing 

The spring we don't see 
the marked trees await their fate 
the ax, the death which arrives for all 

The chancellor! 
not interested in oak trees, 
teachers or students without classes 

The clock tower rots 
A-quad rabbits stare ahead 
still, waiting to run 

May 08, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     This regime—the board and Chancellor, the administrators in charge of the commonwealth, public education, our cultural and political lives—have done to language what they have done to our nation, our state (Der Terminator) and our county. They are foolish people for whom language is something less a tool than a destroyerator of tools. As Orwell claims, “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” 
     “Pure wind.” 
     Brrrrrr. 


May 20, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     Much could be said about yesterday’s commencement ceremony at IVC. Rebel Girl will leave most of that to her colleague…. 
     I know, I know. Apparently some in yesterday’s audience found charming the parade of bloopers and egotism that was lost on me. 
     Could be. Maybe. I know staff members wearing sandwich boards were hawking the official video version of the ceremony to an eager crowd. But in the parking lot, out of the trunks of their cars, business was booming for those quick-thinking entrepreneurs offering a specially priced bootleg “Commencement 2006 Outtakes: Bloopers.” 
     Sure, picking the wings off of a fly is fun, but for how long? Reb cannot linger long in a world where delusion and malapropism pass for charming hobbies, though that may be where she is doomed to live out her days…. 


August 21, 2006
By Rebel Girl 
 [The] Adventures of a Night Dean 
     …Meanwhile, she wondered: How many of those students remembered the orange groves where they now parked their cars? How many faculty remembered for that matter? Early on, still a fresh hire who knew only how to say yes, she once spent an afternoon in the groves with students, raising money by allowing people to pick their own oranges. The students didn't raise much money but they had fun. Late in the afternoon, a woman had driven up and asked if she could pick the orange blossoms. She'd be happy to pay she said. The fragrance reminded her of her childhood in Iran. She went off with armfuls and paid more money than the people who picked the fruit. That must have been ten years ago. Back then Kit looked like one of them – a young woman in blue jeans, squinting in the sunlight. Now, still in blue jeans, but wearing a black classic blazer, (she thought of the coat as her concession to meetings, as a kind of professional shield that she wielded.) Kit was who she was, no doubt about it. A middle-aged woman whose gray hair surprised her. 
. . . 
    Just last Spring this section of campus had been cordoned off for hours when the college president found a suspicious package. The Bomb Squad was called. Students, staff and faculty were swept into the parking lot and kept there. A bomb-detecting robot seized the object and removed it to the special bomb-transportation truck. X-rays revealed no explosive device. The president's "bomb" was a sandbag, a leftover from a video production. Kit marveled at the man's suspicion, his paranoia. She thought his fear said more about him and his own predilection for violence then it did about his foes on the faculty and staff. 
     Kit glanced around for security, the friendly fellas packing heat who rode around the campus in a fleet of unlikely but swift golf carts, her backup. They were nowhere to be seen…. 


August 22, 2006
By Rebel Girl  
     …Death comes. We gulp. The air is more precious than ever. Our lungs. Our heart. It all comes back to us, what it means, how it works. There is never enough time it seems to say or do what we should and that is the special sharp grief that survivors possess. 
     Now is the time, a wise friend reminded me early this summer, when my mother-in-law, in round three of ovarian cancer, went into hospice, for my husband to tell his mother what he wanted her to know. We knew she was dying and that knowledge was a difficult gift, but a valuable one. But too often, we don't know that death is coming…. 


August 27, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     It's true. 
     There are others like us out there and Rebel Girl, through her online rambles (ah, she remembers the days when she'd pack her rucksack and off to Europe she'd go with a train pass and Swiss army knife), has found them. 
     Listed below are some of the best blogs written by our comrades across the country and the world. They offer insight, affirmation and stimulation. Maybe they'll even inspire you to join us…. 


September 19, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     …Mostly though I am haunted by events of last week that Chunk alluded to in an earlier post: a student was expelled from campus due to his actions. I am somewhat close to these events and remain shaken and confused by many elements. This follows on the year anniversary of my chair-ship, which first immersed me in the world of student grievances (so many grievances, so little time!) and the sometimes related sphere of disturbed students (there's more out there than you imagine!). 
     While the grade grievance process is fairly straightforward, I have found myself puzzled and somewhat frightened by how vulnerable instructors (and staff and other students) are when dealing with a student who is obviously disturbed. Such a student presents, at times, a physical threat as well as a professional one. 
     What is to be done? How to preserve access for all students while still preserving and protecting those who teach? So they pull one student out of one instructor's class—but what about the next instructor who faces that student?  

October 16, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     …Sometimes the universe offers you little moments of serendipity. Sometimes you look over at the stack of papers and curriculum revisions and course equivalency forms stacked six feet high next to your desk and see that, yes, when the Big One hits, you will be crushed to death by the writing of students who cannot distinguished between "their," "there," and "they're." But this, along with, apparently, noticing the hypocrisy of the Schwarzenegger crowd, is what we call irony. To which the front-page story of an earthquake (!) in Hawaii on the same day adds even more. Ah, Monday, Monday…. 


October 17, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     REBEL GIRL, reporting from Irvine Valley College: 
     LATE LAST WEEK, in an early morning raid, Bio-Nite commandoes liberated a washing machine, which had been rudely padlocked, allegedly by a member of the School of Fine Arts. 
     Said machine and its accompanying dryer were always the property of the School of Fine Arts; that fact is not in dispute. 
     However, for some time, the two machines had been stored in Bio-Nite Territory where they were used to wash the thin nylon costumes often seen in Fine Arts productions. In recent years, an accord had been reached and ratified by the two factions, which allowed the Bio-Nites to utilize the machine for purposes deemed more serious (the cleansing of laboratory garments). This access was seen as an exchange for the continued storage of said machines in Bio-Nite Territory…. 
      Whatever the motive, the Bio-Nite Liberation Army (BNLA) commandoes moved into swift action, and said machine was liberated via a device identified by a renegade art historian as either an "Oklahoma picklock" or a "Texas nutcutter." 
     All parties involved declined to state their names, leaving Rebel Girl unable to fill in the details. 

October 22, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     …It was kind of shocking. Could it be, she wondered, THE Sergio Ramirez, a stalwart Sandinista revolutionary in Nicaragua back in the day, Vice President of the little country that roared at the US and then was undermined by the Reagan-Bush-Elliot Abrams even as the CIA mined its harbors? And wasn't my, our, Sergio Ramirez himself, ironically, a writer, in fact a novelist of some renown? Could this Ramirez have undergone the same kind of transformation as, say, Christopher Hitchens, turned from socialist land reform and education and national self-defense advocate (No pasaran!) into a nutty right-wing national chauvinist, all the while living here in Garden Grove or Santa Ana or Newport Beach and doing the cha-cha-cha with La Nutjob Suprema Senora Barbara Coe?.... 


By Rebel Girl 
October 29, 2006 
     …Meanwhile, Rebel Girl herself remains astonished by the vision at the heart of the story Tan Nguyen keeps telling: how, after the hysteria broke out about the letter, he retreated to the shores of the Pacific where, he claimed, he met many Latinos. He approached them and asked them the meaning of emigrado. These Latinos with sand in their zapatos all told him the same thing: an emigrado is a green card holder and thus, in Nguyen's loca cabeza, they exonerated him and his campaign. 
     I can't help but picture the scene: Huntington, maybe Corona del Mar. Latino families out for the day with Igloo coolers and folding chairs. It's what we call Indian summer here in So Cal. You can still don shorts and tanks tops and not catch a chill. The kids let the waves chase them. Seagulls squawk. Bags of Doritos flutter in the breeze. Los Tigres del Norte play on the boom box. A slight man dressed in a white button down shirt and dress pants stumbles toward las familias. He clutches a crumpled letter, looks harried. 
     Can you help me, he asks. Can you tell me what emigrado means? Please? Please?....

November 14, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     AS some of you know, department chairs serve as “night dean” one evening every semester. For that evening, the ND holds all the power of the college in her hands. You know, the football, the red phone to the Kremlin, keys to Glenn’s office so the night dean can swivel in his chair, a sidearm for personal use, a private Cushman to tool around the grounds in, the presidential Seadoo to cruise the Gensler Lagoon. Being night dean is sort of like being lieutenant governor. Rebel Girl looked around for special orders to sign in during this evening’s power vacuum but found none, alas. 
     Rebel Girl knows she should use this time to grade papers, review applications in the adjunct pool, clear her desk and revise curriculum but she has been going all day and simply doesn’t have it in her. So she orders a medium size Moroccan pizza (baked eggplant, pesto, feta, pine nuts & mozzarella) from Z-Pizza and pops a lemon Snapple. She’s feeling particularly flush since she (and the other two chairs in her school) finally got paid! A check appeared in her mailbox, made out from the district's "Revolving Cash Fund" account. However, the amount of her check is puzzling and leaves her to wonder just how much she isn’t getting paid. Still, she’ll shut up and deposit it. She'll sit on the "Revolving Cash Fund" and rotate. She'll pay her property tax. And if anyone could help her figure out the compensation package, she would appreciate it…. 


November 19, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
 …Even though Rebel Girl doesn't care for John Updike nearly as much as everyone else, she offers him and his poem "Relatives" as part of her Thanksgiving week offering. Recent events (!) have left her pretty much wordless so she will renew herself this week by giving loyal Dissent readers other people's words to read and thus uphold the stereotype of mild-mannered professor of English in the process….

November 20, 2006
By Rebel Girl  
     …Years ago—Rebel Girl is now at an age that when she says years it does indeed mean years—so over two decades, nearly a quarter-century ago, Red Emma, who even then was a man who knew what he wanted, gave her the following poem. (Yes, they go waaay back folks, those two.) Yes, he typed the poem out as was done then. 
      Rebel Girl had never heard of the poet before, the great Peter Everwine who lived then and lives still (someone say yes!) in the great Central Valley of California. The poem was from Everwine's book Keeping the Night. She taped the poem to the wall of her small kitchen, above the round table where they first began to eat regularly together. Rebel Girl cooked Red his first artichoke, made him drink coffee, red wine, ouzo. He kept giving her poems. She is, all these years later, still thankful…. 

November 28, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     If Rebel Girl had a hammer, you can bet she'd hammer in the morning, in the evening, all over this campus. There is, indeed, much repair needed. 
     However, the inability to find the necessary tool to hammer out our particular strains of injustice and incompetence, plus the inability to generate many words continues (Week 2!), so Rebel Girl will do what some of her students sometimes do when faced with a blank page and a deadline: Quote! A lot!.... 


December 07, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     Smokin' in the Boys Room. In the back of the room, having arriving fashionably late, slouched K.S. and Rebel Girl, the two stalwart female profs who close the place down most Thursday nights, Rebel with her writers, K.S. with her cadre of mostly female students wielding scalpels above the prone forms of small, dead animals. The two lobbed a few questions – stipends, reassigned time, the justice of the DRAC model and the possibility or lack thereof of increased justice in the future. They watched as the Chancellor, as is his wont, unspooled his vision, a tapestry of aphorism and narcissism. 
. . . 
    In the Still of the Night. Rebel Girl minded her tongue for once and didn't ask about the state of security of campus, especially late at night. She didn't mention the student who recently died in the middle of the night in the parking lot, whose death went unnoticed for over 10 hours and who had to be found by his father the next morning. She thinks about that event often and wonders what went wrong here that night, what other matters were so pressing that no one noticed a car sitting in a well-lit narrow strip of the parking lot with its windows rolled down and a young man inside…. 

December 13, 2006 
By Rebel Girl 
     Don't even ask what the past week has been like. Suffice to say, Rebel Girl has not finished grading her various paper sets, has not finished staffing all the classes for the next semester, has not finished writing letters of recommendation, has not even begun to do faculty evaluations let alone holiday shopping and sister calling and instead has been composing a 2000 word essay titled "Pedagogy of the Deceased." It's too long and dreadful to post here but if you want a copy just let her know and she'll be happy to share the pain…. 


December 14, 2006  
By Rebel Girl 
     The most dreadful semester wound down in fine style in the A-200 faculty lounge on Wednesday when two instructors, inspired by what a little goodwill might do (Yes, Virginia, yes!) created a party from nearly nothing: a few trays of cookies baked by a generous faculty mom in Whittier; a cardboard box o'coffee bought at the local neighborhood mega-monster corporate coffee-opoly; a tablecloth improvised from the OC Weekly holiday edition; chairs stolen from various empty classrooms (the faculty lounge sports, as you know, only four chairs); and jazzy holiday tunes wafting from a nearby office. 
     Friends, it doesn't take much to make folks happy. Yes, George Bailey, it's a wonderful life. 
     Chris and Jan from the Health Center (a Zen-like zone of peace and tranquility in the Student Services Center) took the prize for traveling the most distance to attend the spontaneous cookie soiree. A-100 was well-represented by Kathy, Gee and Al Tello. The adjunct pool sent representatives from Fine Arts, English and Spanish. Beth from the Reading Lab showed up, and the usual suspects from A-200 were in attendance, ambassadors from across the disciplines and programs. The dapper and charming Bob, Dave F's personal hero, also put in an appearance. We reminisced. We told jokes. We roasted chestnuts. We were visited by the ghosts of administrators past. We asked advice of each other. We gave advice. The spirit of holiday camaraderie --- all, amazingly, without boozy nog --- nestled itself into our collective bosom, and an atmosphere of cuddly and jingly and warm descended on the straw-strewn manger, er, lounge…. 

December 19, 2006
By Rebel Girl  
     MORE POETRY today from Rebel Girl who is trying to muster up the energy to finish grading, compile the summer schedule, pack for Mexico and relate to you all the sad tale of her student and maybe yours who needs assistance perhaps more than he knows. More on that later but get your checkbooks ready. Rebel Girl has opened a savings account at the teachers credit union with his name on it and will be asking, soon, for your donations…. 
Graphic by Rebel Girl


February 01, 2007 
By Rebel Girl 
     …She remembered that last year, Red Emma had tried to do a good turn and buy a case of cold medicine for the local Catholic Worker homeless shelter only to be challenged at the check-out counter at Target. Seems that even over-the-counter cold medicines are subject to restrictions, especially when one is buying in quantity. Who knows what you're really doing with that cough syrup… Long story short, Red actually muscled and shamed his way through the resistance he met at Target, summoning up the specter of homeless kiddies who really needed their Tylenol and Robitussin and carted off his case of the stuff to Santa Ana….
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Saturday, December 19, 2020

A GUIDE to COOL STUFF on Dissent: the 1990s


     Between exams (grading), I’ve been tidying up the blog a bit. 
     Here’s a chronological list of some of the first posts on Dissent the Blog—referring to events that occurred before the blog was initiated (during the time of the newsletter Dissent).
     They tell quite a story. 
     Click on the LINKS.

PRE-DISSENT

Thursday, March 23, 1995 
The symbolic kick-off of the district’s troubled era (1995-2012); and it all started with IVC's student newspaper:

Trustee Frogue: "There is a group, right here in Orange County, called the Institute for Historical Review [the nation's top Holocaust denial organization]...they have raised questions about some of this stuff. I've looked at some of their publications, kind of strange and definitely new, I've never seen anything like it before. There's somebody that wants to engage in the debate about the Holocaust."


Tuesday, April 4, 1995 

"Was it 6 million who died?" Frogue asked, saying he wonders "whether it's the number of people who were actually killed, or the number of people who actually died, or the number of people who were actually put in the gas chambers." 



April 20, 1995 
...According to Foothill High School student Emily Hoffman, Frogue "decided the Holocaust was made up." Frogue told his World Cultures class "the Jews made it up to make people feel sorry for them," according to Hoffman, who was quoted in the Register. "He said it was more like sixty people that got killed, rather than 6 million." 
     Other high school students of Frogue's say he used racially derogatory terms in class, referring to Asians as "yellow people," Latinos as "brown people" and African Americans as "negras."  

Sunday, October 6, 1996 
"The manner in which the reporter tried to put words into my mouth, and into the mouths of three colleagues leave little doubt in my mind as to how he elicited such comments from these young women" [who claimed that Frogue denied the Holocaust and made highly offensive remarks about women in his classes]. 

Friday, November 1, 1996 
...And so, in December of 1996, the era of the conservative "Board Majority" began. The [Union] Old Guard got what they wanted—for the time being. But their "victory" was the beginning of a painful and precipitous decline for the two colleges and the district. The BM concentrated its efforts on dismantling the machinery of "shared governance" (a concept that emerged from the historic "AB1725" legislation of the late 80s). Phony accreditation reports were written, Old Guard schemers (Runyan, Mathur, Woodward, et al.) became administrators, and the Old Guard's long-time foes sought cover....


Saturday, November 2, 1996 
WHITE: "The Faculty Association was forced to compete in the past campaign because life as we know it was under threat... [T]he Faculty Association, in desperation, turned the campaign over to a professional firm..."

Friday, November 15, 1996 
OC Weekly: "Local political observers are calling it the "most scurrilous and vile" campaign ad of the season, and it wasn't the deft handiwork of ... Orange County's most infamous negative campaigner. No, the ad...was sent by a college-faculty association on behalf of a slate of three conservative candidates and one Democrat vying for seats on the governing board of the Saddleback College District." 
Chunk visits San Francisco


Monday, November 25, 1996 
"Frogue has been accused of denying the Holocaust, according to a former board member and several former students who say his comments about Jews and those who died at the hands of the Nazis cross over a line of ethics, propriety and recorded fact….
“I believe Lee Harvey Oswald worked for the ADL,” Frogue said in a half-whisper during a recent interview on the Foothill High campus. 
Asked to repeat his assertion, Frogue said, “That’s right. . . . I believe the ADL was behind it.”  


DISSENT/VOICE:

Monday, May 19, 1997 

Roy Bauer [addressing Frogue]: Excuse me. Are you saying that the referendum was rigged?.... 

Jan Wyma: (We're having?) a public meeting and you call our faculty liars. 

Frogue: I said there have been rigged elections at Irvine Valley College. I've seen them. Twice. You want me to name names? [Indecipherable mixed voices.] The evidence is in the record. 

(?): It exonerated the Senate. [It did.]....

Frogue: The record did not exonerate the Senate. 

(?): I'd like (you) to name names. 

Frogue: The record...We can, if you'd like [mixed voices, indecipherable; reference is made by someone to Frogue's speaking of liars.] No, I didn't call anybody "liars." I said there were rigged elections. 

Bauer: You, sir, are a coward.  

 

Wednesday, July 16, 1997 
...The reorganization came as a surprise, for ... neither administrators nor shared governance groups had been consulted, and, indeed, the Sorenson Group (consultants hired to help the district with its organizational problems) strongly advised against the board taking actions absent discussion with shared governance groups. Indeed, at IVC, only days earlier, faculty were assured by Acting President Mathur that no such action would be contemplated until the fall, when faculty returned from summer vacation. In fact, however, Mathur was the key figure in the planning and execution of the reorganization, and his assurances were lies. All of this is revealed in legal declarations....


Monday, August 18, 1997 
Roy Bauer (interrupting Frogue): [So you're saying that] All the papers [reporting testimony re Frogue's Holocaust denial and other remarks] are liars. All the papers. The Register, the LA Times, the Irvine World News—they’re all liars. Is there a conspiracy against you? Is that what’s going on? 
Frogue: No...we’re getting away from this. What we have... 
Bauer: Are you still a fan of the Institute for Historical Review [a Holocaust denial publisher]? 
Frogue: Mr...? You’re out of order, please.


Wednesday, September 3, 1997 
A national search was conducted by the board for a new President of IVC. Several internal candidates ... applied for the position along with more than 30 others comprising the initial pool of candidates. In establishing the selection process, the historical method was completely discarded, whereby a screening committee was appointed consisting mainly of the shared governance groups at IVC to interview and present to the board the top handful of candidates, with their ratings and recommendations. The current process is a complete “white-wash” since the screening committee neither rates the candidates nor eliminates any candidates, and the entire remaining pool ... of 18 candidates were reinterviewed by the full board of trustees, with no consideration of the committee’s input. The reason the majority of the board prevailed upon the chancellor to adopt the revised process, in my view, was so Mr. Mathur would not be eliminated from the pool.... 

Sunday, September 7, 1997 

Our community college is in jeopardy because its elected, if overlooked, leaders violated not only the state open meetings law and their own district policy but also their covenant with our educational community. District employees who protest or question these moves have been reprimanded, and on occasion, disciplined. They've created an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, a hostile workplace where it's increasingly difficult to teach students.



Sunday, September 21, 1997 
"The hate-mongers are intent on negating the choice of the voters and working to discredit Frogue and his reform projects at Irvine Valley and Saddleback colleges."

Saturday, November 8, 1997 
"The occasion here depicted is particularly memorable for me, for I arrived five minutes late and thus did not realize that the President had already advised everyone that there would be “no discussion or questions.” ... Imagine others’ shock, then, when, at the meeting’s end, I blurted out several questions with no inkling of my audacity! And imagine my embarrassment upon learning of my error. (“I said at the start, you are not to ask questions!”)"

Saturday, November 8, 1997 
[A Faculty survey respondent:] '...But the survey has already achieved one item—"Making people laugh." Pam...I have a few more ideas that you might add to the list: 1 ) Hire cheerleaders to bounce around campus chanting the names of faculty and staff. 2) Have students paint themselves with school colors, and then spell out the name of the faculty/staff member of the week on their backsides. 3) Publish a ten-most-wanted list. 4) Get all of the faculty and staff together in a swimming pool full of strawberry jello and play pin the tail on the jackass.'


Sunday, December 7, 1997 
'Soon, the proceedings seemed just like a meeting, and so, ever the stickler for detail, I asked, “Has the meeting begun?” Sherry said No. Nevertheless, my question seemed to cause her to declare that the meeting had now begun, which surprised me. I asked, politely, if we had a quorum, and, as she had done during a previous meeting, Sherry ignored me. Pete Espinoza, however, interrupted Sherry, saying, “I think this is important; the meetings of every organization I’ve ever belonged to start by determining whether there is a quorum” .... One or two others agreed. An unfamiliar woman then suggested that we simply hold an informal meeting. The suggestion caused Sherry obvious pain; evidently, she expected to do some real business, despite the unhelpful Marie Calendar ambiance, which seems to shout, “Mmmm! It’s time for pie!”....'

Thursday, January 15, 1998 
     This issue of the ‘Vine presents more information regarding our district’s infamous July, 1997, “reorganization.” Trustee Lang, in his depositions of January and February ’98 excerpted here, explains that, in the months preceding the July meeting, the issue of eliminating the “chair” model at IVC in favor of the “dean” model had not been discussed by the trustees and that the body had neither authorized nor accepted studies or materials from staff, including administration, regarding that kind of administrative change.... 
Irvine Valley College's PAC


Tuesday, January 20, 1998 
[Holocaust revisionist, Joe Fields:] "[It seems that] Anything that attacks western civilization or Christianity is OK.... However, the same people who tolerate that — and I might add, it’s the shrill, shrieking voice of political Zionism — is here tonight to attack Mr. Frogue and to push their agenda. ... We just said the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States, not to the flag of Israel. [I’m speaking to] Anyone here who's going to push this ADL sponsored garbage. ... If you're here to push this nonsense and keep attacking this man because of your narrow agenda I might suggest you get off your butts and go back to Israel where you belong."


Sunday, February 22, 1998 
[Woodward:] Look, Steve Frogue has been teaching for 30 years; he’s had thousands and thousands of students. Supposedly—I haven’t seen this—Mr. Bauer has found five students who allege—I haven’t seen the affidavits—that somehow he’s denied the Holocaust. I can find 5 students to say, you know, similar things about Mr. Bauer....

Wednesday, March 18, 1998 
"In fact, Brother Woodward chided fellow Brother Bauer about Bauer’s claim to the contrary: “Well, the faculty union actually itself, as Roy Bauer well knows, has not taken a position on Mr. Frogue....” So the union’s quick action, some four weeks later, to oppose the recall campaign and support Frogue caught some of us by surprise. Had we missed something? A meeting? A phone poll? A flyer? Were we supposed to vote on Frogue as well as our contract? What happened? And when?" 

Wednesday, March 18, 1998 
"Hubris is perhaps the best way to characterize the current jostling for power within the evolving SOCCCD administration and the insolent behavior of the board majority. How else to explain the ascent of Raghu “Narcissus” Mathur, Mike “Ganymede” Runyan, Ken “Midas” Woodward and the other Myrmidons who wait for resignations and the subsequent job announcements?"

Friday, March 27, 1998 
[PIPER:] “Isn’t it ironic that … a filthy, anti-free speech mother-fucker like you [Bauer] came on the scene and caused such a big commotion in an effort to silence my views?”


Friday, March 27, 1998 
...The three of us talked. The agreeable Walt explained to Ronnie and me that the union is like an amateur crew on a ship, and the ship has grown larger and the seas have grown rougher, etc. I said, sure, but why won’t this crew listen when someone finds a manual explaining how to run a goddam ship? Walt removed his glasses and appeared to stare into the distance....

Friday, March 27, 1998 
[Raghu's advice:] ...Say to yourself at least ten times per day, “I love myself” or “I like myself.” Make a photo copy of the palm of your hand and give yourself a “pat on the back.” Laugh a lot with others; don’t join in the whining. Have an appreciation party. Have an appreciation break at work. Verbally appreciate at least five people daily.... 

Friday, March 27, 1998 
Red Emma teaches writing part-time at Irvine Valley College. His activist politics demand his union membership, but in five years of teaching here, not once has anybody ever invited or encouraged him to join the union or provided him materials regarding representation by his local. 
Red Emma wonders why. Red Emma organizes other part time faculty members, many of whom also wonder. ... Red Emma calls the union rep, who does not return phone calls, but later leaves photocopies of the application materials, with the full deduction for dues (full-time $70/month) written in. But, surely, this amount can't apply to adjunct faculty. Can it? [He called the CCA; no, it's $18, not $70]


Thursday, April 2, 1998 
RAGHU: "I understand that some students have asked instructors to allow them to speak in their classes about campus political matters. In light of professional sense and matter [sic] of good practice, I would like to caution and advise all faculty to maintain the integrity of the classroom instruction by adhering to approved curriculum and course outlines of record for their day-to-day activities. It is not a good practice for faculty to allow campus politics to interfere with the educational interests of the students in the classroom...."

Friday, April 10, 1998 
...As more union-endorsed trustees have been elected, the faculty association's power has grown. So have teachers' paychecks. The sixth-largest community college district in California, the South County district currently has the highest-paid faculty. The average full time professor's salary is $67,495—which is $12,000 more than the state average for community colleges, according to the state chancellor's office....


Tuesday, April 14, 1998 
[The district gets audited:] ...So, anyway, Fortune and Williams joined [Interim Chancellor] Hodge in her office at some point—it’s all gettin’ fuzzy in my head—but, after a coupla minutes, they stomped out again still hissin’ and steamin’ like before. Yuh see, [Trustees] Fortune and Williams came back into the Conference Room and thought they could sit there all day for this string of meetings, but the Lenz Man [state fiscal dude] coughs up this big hair ball and says, No Goddam Way. I mean he says they’re just not welcome, OK? So like Fortune fills her shorts and runs around like a goddam dog, ‘cuz she’s gotta stay on the outside lookin’ in. And that’s just what she does—glarin’ and glowerin’ and snarlin’, I mean. And she’s somebody who can do that, baby.


Tuesday, April 14, 1998 
Here's a frightening thought: What if part-time faculty joined the union, used their new political power, and played a role in contract negotiations, workplace issues and the life of our academic community? Scarey, huh?

Tuesday, April 14, 1998 
...In response, Sharon MacMillan briefly explained how the disparity [in how the two college faculties voted] had come about. I think she said that, at first, Saddleback faculty were asked to show IDs and so on, but some objected, and so the Saddleback, but not the IVC, instructions were changed in mid-election. Naturally, union leaders saw no problem with this change at one campus but not at the other. For his part, Mr. Hart [the mediator] seemed particularly uninterested. “I’m just here to count ballots, ya know!” he said. “Hey, everybody, I’m practically worthless!” he added, in my imagination. 


Sunday, April 26, 1998 
...Well, it turns out that Pam works for some dog-faced fool belongin’ to the Christian Coalition, and that rat bastard found out about Pam and the Recall. So he tells her he’s concerned about her involvement—’cuz he’s a right-wing Frogue-lovin’ asshole or somethin’—and that she should meet with his Christian Coalition pals some time to talk it over with ‘em. She says OK—she doesn’t wanna say “no” to the Boss Man—and he sets it up. When she shows up to this thing—it’s at some restaurant—she’s amazed to find this rogue’s gallery sittin’ around a table breathin’ heavy Christian breath at each other: Zanelli, Williams, the Boss man, the head of the local OC Christian Coalition, a plastic Big Boy, and Frogue. She couldn’t believe it! It was an ambush at the KK Korral!....


Monday, April 27, 1998 
[District press conference:] ...At some point, Glenn Roquemore seized upon the notion of “balance.” He said that it was Ray’s job to seek a balance, not just to present the views of one “side.” Eventually, [Times reporter] Ourlian responded to Glenn’s theme by asking whether Glenn was saying this: to be objective, the report must have an equal measure of praise and of criticism of the board. (Later, Ourlian and I joked: “It’s a good thing these people weren’t in charge at Nuremberg: ‘Sure, these Nazi fellas did some bad things, but, hey, there were some real positives, too.’”)....  

Monday, April 27, 1998 
At the meeting's conclusion, Red approached Prof. Woodward to thank him and confirm his attendance at the May 8 meeting. Woodward again agreed to attend, but candidly offered that "you should form your own unit because most full-timers are not concerned with part-time issues," a sentiment echoed by Madame Chair, who joined us briefly in what was for me, the afternoon's apogee. The honesty of these two union leaders seemed a welcome, if confusing, respite from the obfuscation and bafflement (to me) of the meeting itself. 
Analysis: Part-timers have not been recruited, it seems, because they were not welcome.


Tuesday, May 12, 1998 
Q: What is the sound of one hand clapping? 
A: A union dominated by a majority of part-timers, but represented by a minority of full-timers.

Wednesday, May 13, 1998 
With the help of the union Old Guard (Sharon M, Ray C, et al., addressed the Board in this regard), Frogue was replaced with extreme anti-unionist Tom Fuentes. Having already funded the victory of the anti-teachers union Padberg and Wagner in 1998, the union Old Guard had, through these actions, helped bring about a board dominated by anti-unionists who are largely hostile to faculty interests.

Sunday, June 21, 1998 
I read out loud a letter sent to me by Frogue's "scholar," Mike Piper: 
“Some of my Black Nationalist supporters in Southern California are watching your activities closely. They believe in Freedom of Speech, motherfucker, but you don’t.” 


Tuesday, June 30, 1998 
...A coupla weeks ago, Jeff K and Rich Z spoke with Raghu on behalf of the Academic Senate. (Such meetings are routine.) I am told that, in the course of the conversation, [President Mathur] briefly raised his hands to the heavens and declared that he believes in God and that (therefore?) the latter entity is on his side. He went on to refer to a coming era of justice or retribution, evidently of the divinely instigated variety. Jeff and Rich insist that glossolalia was not involved, though Jeff thought he saw stigmata form on Raghu’s right cheek. (Hey, everybody in A100: hide all the dictionaries! While you’re at it, hide the Captain’s palm tree.)....

Tuesday, July 28, 1998 
Years ago [in 1994], after Dan Larios was selected as IVC president—but before he arrived on campus—the cunning Mr. Goo, sensing an opportunity, busily constructed a document that listed IVC personnel and that drew yellow lines over the names of those employees whom Goo judged to be troublesome or unsavory. Essentially, it was a Mr. Goo “enemies list.” When Larios arrived, at some point, the ignoble Goo presented himself to the new president and handed the document over to him, hoping the unsolicited “gift” would create a useful debt of gratitude. 


Monday, August 17, 1998 
Did you know that...during an address at the May board meeting in which he defended himself against a 74% faculty vote of no confidence, IVC president Mathur, offering no evidence whatsoever, falsely accused three faculty of sending him racist “mail threats”? When one of the three demanded an apology, district legal counsel Spencer Covert responded on behalf of the district with a letter asserting that Mathur, by virtue of his participation in a “legislative proceeding,” was protected by an “absolute privilege” that is not lost “even if the person making the statement acted with actual malice or with intent to do harm.”....


Tuesday, September 8, 1998 
Today, a friend told me that Mr. Goo had just hosted one of his lunch events. I expressed surprise and explained that I had heard nothing about it. ... As you know, Mr. Goo’s history with special lunches has been disastrous. Last November, he scheduled a “Brown Bag Lunch” that managed to attract only George McCrory, who showed up with a banana. Under the circumstances, an ordinary human being would immediately drop the matter and never speak of it again, but not our Goo. A few weeks later, in the execrable Laser Beam, he expressed his gratitude to “everyone” who participated in this “very successful” event. I wonder what it’s like to be able to just lie like that? 
You’d think a man who received a vote of confidence from only 24% of the full-time faculty would know better than to host “lunches” of this sort. Not so. My friend reported that Thursday’s event was also an abject failure, despite the lure of a free hot lunch. [4 of his flunkies showed; he had ordered 20 lunches]

Wednesday, September 16, 1998 
…[C]hief Romas acknowledged that 38s are not unsafe; but the district’s 38s are old, he said. Lang jumped in to express both his respect for Romas/Parmer and his inclination to disarm them. “Why are we the exception among community college districts in the area [arming officers]?” asked Lang. Frogue opined that it is unwise to leave cops unarmed. Williams, finally finding a topic he cares about, stated that it is a “travesty” to suggest not arming police officers. Apparently addressing Mr. Lang, he said, “Get real.” “Stop living in an ivory castle.” (Yes, an ivory castle.)…. 
     Frogue then explained that, if only people knew the details—details, he implied, that were suppressed by the press!—of the Lorches’ fabled encounter with violence (?!), they would understand the need to arm campus cops. (Huh?) Idiotically, Lorch explained that only someone who has experienced what she experienced knows whether campus cops should have guns. “You don’t know until you’ve experienced this yourself,” she said, thereby marking the nadir of the evening….  


Thursday, September 17, 1998 
SOCCCD Brown Act Declarations: September 1998 (Burgess, Deegan, Loeffler) 
[VPI Burgess on Williams' backroom "deal":] At the meeting on September 5, 1997, Trustee Lang stated that Trustee Williams, on behalf of the Board Majority, had contacted him regarding the appointment of Mathur as the president at IVC. Trustee Williams stated that the Board Majority had agreed to appoint Mathur to the position of president at the September 8, 1997 meeting. Trustee Lang stated that the Board Majority was concerned with the consequences attendant to a 4 to 3 vote for the Mathur appointment [i.e., they sought unanimity] and that they were interested in reaching a compromise. Trustee Lang stated that the Board Majority promised to renew my administrative contract and the administrative contract of Dean Deegan if the Board Minority [Lang, Hueter, Milchiker] would agree to vote with the Majority on the Mathur appointment or abstain from voting against Mathur. ... Dean Deegan and I refused to allow the renewal of our administrative contracts to be exchanged for the Board Minority’s promise to support (or not oppose) the Mathur appointment....  On August 22, 1997, Chancellor Lombardi informed me that the Board Majority would not renew my administrative contract....

Monday, September 28, 1998 
     I got there on time, and so I didn’t see the motley crew of Nazis who, I later learned, picketed outside, for the stupid fellows arrived late. (Someone should explain to these people that real Nazis are punctual.) I did, however, encounter a man at the entrance—not a Nazi, a Democrat—who waved a sign that said that Congressmen Cox and Rohrabacher are “hypocrites.” I said, “Well, of course,” and then started to walk inside; he handed me a red comb on which was written, “Get Dornan out of our hair!”  


Monday, October 5, 1998 
Last year students, local residents and members of the Jewish and gay communities joined the faculty and staff efforts to challenge the board. In a rare show of Orange County activism, students Delilah Snell and Diep Burbridge gathered nearly 100 of their colleagues for a series of campus demonstrations, the first in the college’s near-twenty-year history. … The rallies attracted major media coverage. In response, the board, Mathur and their cronies claimed the students were “misled” by a handful of “disgruntled employees” and “leftist” faculty. Even freedom of speech took a nosedive…. Now the students, represented by the ACLU, are suing Mathur and the board for violating their First Amendment rights. … The board’s actions are astonishing, but what is even more astonishing is that at a small commuter college, in a largely Republican district where most people never learn the names of public officials, these students cared enough to challenge injustice and are fighting to secure future students’ rights…. 


Tuesday, October 6, 1998 
[Revealing Williams, that conniving hayseed cop (who later became the poster boy of OC corruption)]

"No matter what the details were, Mr. Williams’ attempts, during a private conversation with a trustee prior to a board meeting, to broker a deal between opposing trustee camps regarding an upcoming vote, was an assault on the ideal of open and honest government. With the Ralph M. Brown Act, the state of California has wisely forbidden private agreements among members of “legislative bodies”—e.g., community college trustees. We believe that, prior to the Sept. 8 meeting, Mr. Williams and his compatriots secretly agreed, through private conversations, to support Raghu Mathur and, further, secretly pursued a deal concerning the presidential appointment with their opponents on the board. These actions were violations of the Brown Act."


Monday, October 26, 1998 
     General Pinochet’s house arrest notwithstanding, there is room for evil in the world and it resides in a little room in the Saddleback library where, true to Red Emma’s sorry expectations, that group we whimsically call the union leadership attempted first to get everybody to agree that nothing could be done about my concern.... Then Mr. Lebow and his CTA team advised that he was there to “officially” advise the correctness of my interpretation of the “each” clause, after which time it was the responsibility of the Rep Council to amend the bylaws. Yikes.... 
Lisa & Roy


Saturday, October 31, 1998 
“Why is the faculty union giving money to endorse candidates who are appealing to a segment of the voter population who is opposed to unions? “ said Irvine Valley College professor and union member Brenda Borron. “It’s simple. It’s the buying and selling of board members. They will do anything to keep control of the board majority.”  
Monday, November 2, 1998 
Our district represents a microcosm of what’s happening across the state and the nation. Sadly, the crisis at SOCCCD has received almost no state or national media attention since Mr. Frogue’s proposed seminar. Why not? It is in fact because in its way, this crisis nearly perfectly represents all the coordinated attacks on public education: the attack on intellectual integrity, the attack on labor and student rights, the promotion of corporate hegemony and so on.


Monday, November 9, 1998 
I remember challenging Sherry to acknowledge this aspect of her “leadership” at a forum shortly after the notorious ’96 campaign. (January 10, 1997.) On that occasion, she said that the leadership had to resort to unsavory campaign tactics in order to “preserve life as we know it.” “So,” I said, “you are saying that the end justifies the means.” “No,” she answered. “I am not saying that at all. I’m saying that we needed to take this action [using a homophobic flier] to protect life as we know it.” Oh. At the time, I got the distinct impression that the woman does not know what the phrase “end justifies the means” means. 

Monday, November 9, 1998 
I could not help imagining the party for the other side: Mr. McClendon discoursing on democracy and unionism; Lee Walker in the corner, trying to think of the name of the Governor; Ken Woodward hissing and sneering and alerting others of his “Ph.D. in economics”; a bepolyestered Sherry bitching and moaning about her unparalleled labors at the Xerox machine; some of the “Scandalous Boys” leering and choking and turning red; Frogue and Mathur trading paranoid fantasies. In a room like that, no decent person could resist the urge to go postal.  


Tuesday, November 10, 1998 
...Undoubtedly, the educators Mathur praises in his email deserve commendation. But those who know the Goo know that the last paragraph of his message is intended as a comment. It is saying that there exist educators at IVC who don’t “deserve our affection, support, and gratitude” and don’t “care about the students, the college, and the profession.”

Tuesday, November 10, 1998 
MATHUR CENSURED FOR LYING by Chunk Wheeler 
[INSTRUCTIONAL COUNCIL MEETING:] Wendy mentioned that she had met with Chancellor Lombardi ... and he indicated to her that he had met with Raghu on Monday, March 21, and was aware of the petition Raghu had been circulating. Many chairs expressed anger at hearing this because, at the Instructional Council meeting on Tuesday, March 22 [i.e., one day after Raghu’s meeting with Lombardi], Raghu had been questioned regarding this petition and had said that he had not forwarded [it] to anyone. IC had agreed that no one will work outside of the IVC governance structure and agreed-upon processes. They felt that Raghu had lied to IC because he had already spoken with the Chancellor [about the petition]. ... Margie made a motion to censure Raghu Mathur. [It carried.]

Tuesday, November 10, 1998 
This month’s Lingua Franca reports disturbing developments from Serbia, these at the University of Belgrade. Passage of President Milosevic’s “Law on Universities” allows the government to appoint deans directly…. Deans and rectors, reports Lingua Franca, are now responsible for all future faculty appointments. … Let’s see: Government interference in administration. Heavy-handed control of hiring policies. Unannounced meetings. Laws passed absent public input. Attacks on activist Philosophers. Personal vendettas against disloyal faculty. Messing with curriculum. Violating the Brown Act. —I certainly hope Raghu and Glenn are getting this down.  


Monday, November 16, 1998 
"Recent decisions made by some of the trustees have resulted in dismantling of outstanding educational and administrative structures at Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College. Nearly all of the most talented managers have left the college district because of micromanagement and poor judgment by some trustees and their appointees. The state of California is closely examining financial, educational, legal and administrative actions taken—sometimes in secret...."  

Monday, November 23, 1998 
FROGUE ON A NUT ROLL by Big Bill 
[Trustee] Lorch had evidently used her brief time away from the mike to create a demeanor of utter stupidity and condescension. She now lectured: “We are in a new era.” There is an “industrial revolution in education.” We need to compete with other schools, and that requires being productive. Concerning productivity and its role in the hiring process, she was hearing one thing from IVC, another thing from Saddleback, she said. She just wanted to know whether the colleges were using a “straight productivity model.” “I don’t need more data,” she concluded, once again sinking into her chair with an air of peevitude. Someone near me muttered that, after 5 1/2 years, Lorch had learned absolutely nothing. Another person just shook his head, saying, “She’s an idiot.”


Monday, November 30, 1998 
During one session [to prepare new School Chairs], I challenged Glenn [Roquemore] and Howard [Dachschlager] to explain to me the basis of their evident distrust of the School of Humanities and Languages, an attitude shared by many, it seemed, at their end of campus. I assured them that, in my experience, and contrary to what they seemed to think, I had never encountered nor even heard about plots against them or against anyone else by the School of H&L. As far as I could tell, I said, H&L has always pursued its goals and agendas openly and directly. (I could have added: without the use of anonymous petitions, enemies lists, or secret backroom deals.) I added that, whatever anyone else had allegedly done, I was determined to be completely open about anything I was contemplating doing as chair....

December 07, 1998 
Just before 1:45, J emerged from the A100 building with a faintly foppish [Chancellor] Sampson in tow. (One senses that our new Chancellor cares more about his haircut than about, say, the Brown Act.) A circle immediately formed around him while Mathur, the consummate unprofessional, still in his office, scribbled at his desk with his back turned to us…. What happened next was amazing. For the next half hour, as the crowd grew to perhaps sixty (others stood off to the side and watched), Sampson was peppered with challenges from this disparate group of people who nonetheless agreed that we had had enough [from Mathur]. At least a dozen people spoke; they spoke eloquently and passionately and unanimously about Mathur’s arbitrary and autocratic ways. It was a proud, if rare, moment in the history of the Goolag.  

Tuesday, December 15, 1998 
NARCISSUS by Niles Nemesis (Dissent's "Northern Field Correspondent") 
What I am referring to, of course, is the recent “Poinsettia episode” at IVC classified staff’s holiday event. In case you haven’t heard, our beloved leader crashed the party, insisted on delivering a seasoned message (“We really don’t think of you as [second class citizens]!”), and snatched the holiday centerpiece—a beautiful poinsettia—from a senior classified staff member by pulling a “six months seniority in the district” card to trump the astonished throng. Never mind that this was a party conducted to celebrate the fine work of classified staff. Never mind that he wasn’t even invited (a conscious decision). And never mind that the purpose of the “contest” to award the table centerpieces was to acknowledge and honor our most senior classified staff members. In the Magoo universe, all celestial objects revolve around him in Ptolemaic perfection.  


Tuesday, December 15, 1998 
Yesterday, I sought to duplicate something for one of my classes but found that the A200 copier was down for repairs. So I ventured into A100—IVC’s Administration Building—to use its copier, but, when I entered, I found that THE PRESIDENT, Raghu P. Mathur, was conducting a bizarre ritual. He stood before a crowd of perhaps thirty people; he said something—“Bla”—and then the audience responded with a single CLAP. Then he said something else—“Bla Bla”—and, again, a single, loud CLAP. These antics pleased him enormously, though his audience seemed disturbed, like that kid who had to hop on Saddam’s lap. What, I asked myself, could this possibly mean? [Mathur had learned this routine from OC GOP chief Tom Fuentes, a Saddamesque fellow.]

Monday, December 28, 1998 
Teddi threatened to sue the district, I guess, cuz we were puttin' her head on this dinosaur. I think she was once a "Breck Girl" or something. Or was that a "Beck's Girl"? 


Monday, January 4, 1999 
Mathur: "This was a pure and simple case of racial discrimination against a professional educator, who all his life has worked hard to earn people’s trust, confidence, respect, and affection. There is absolutely no question in my mind even today that I am the best qualified to do the job 100 times better than Clella Wood or any other dean in this position at IVC on any day of any week, month, or year...." 

Thursday, January 7, 1999 
[Student Deb Burbridge:] “He’s been writing [the newsletter] for 18 months and only now they’re reprimanding him. I’ve been reading it for six or seven months and it’s always been that way. For me, it was really informative, because I couldn’t go to all the board meetings and I relied on “The Dissent” for what was going on. I find his sense of humor satirical. I didn’t take it very seriously at all. If anyone knows Roy he’s the most soft-spoken and non-violent person you can imagine.“ 


Monday, January 11, 1999 
[Opening session:] ...Next came introductions of some visiting bigwigs, starting with Williams and then moving on to Nancy Padberg, one of the new trustees. Marcia Milchiker was introduced last for some reason. I seem to recall that Sampson also mentioned Trustee President Dot Fortune, who was not actually present, though she was there in spirit, a kind of moral stinkwater that covered the ground and filled the air. Dot gives Cedric his marching orders each morning. Despite her zany past (witchcraft, professional wrestling) and her manifest looniness and boorishness (she drives everyone nuts), she is now the Empress of SOCCCD, the “brains” of the operation. Good Lord. (I was just kidding about the professional wrestling.)....

Thursday, January 14, 1999 
How, we asked, is using the phrase "Mr. Goo" to refer to Raghu an instance of racial discrimination? Well, explained Sampson, Goo sounds like “gook,” and “gook” is a term of disparagement for Asians. “President Mathur,” explained Sampson, “is an Asian.” I responded by noting that never—I mean never—had I associated the phrase Mr. Goo with the term “gook.” I said that I intended the term Mr. Goo as an allusion to “Mr. Magoo” and perhaps to, well, goo, the sticky substance. Besides, isn’t the term “gook” usually associated with Vietnam and the North Vietnamese?


Thursday, January 21, 1999 
A judge has ordered the South Orange County Community College District to tape-record its closed-door meetings for two years because of its “persistent and defiant misconduct” in violating state open-meeting laws. Orange County Superior Court Judge Tully H. Seymour also referred the case to the District Attorney’s Office for possible criminal prosecution, court records show. A prior finding of Brown Act violations against the district in 1997 also will be forwarded…” 

Monday, March 15, 1999 
"Ask Ms. Fortune" (or "Ask Miss Fortune") was one of our more popular features. "Miss Fortune" is, of course, a pun. "Misfortune" or "Miss Fortune"? The latter was a certain notoriously bumptious trustee, one who quit the Board amid rumors that she no longer resided in the county. Ah, a typical SOCCCD factoid! The feature was authored by the one and only Red Emma, starting March of 1999.

Tuesday, March 23, 1999 
Wagner was always thus 


Monday, August 16, 1999 
“Under the current president, decisions are made unilaterally by the president, and at his direction are kept at the administrative level only, or reflect Board directive[s] irrespective of the college-wide governance organizations…When the president establishes priorities for the college and makes decisions, he usually does so irrespective of the advice of others and without their support.” “[A]lthough the current president had previously been a school chair for a school of eight full-time faculty, he had never served in a senior administrative position. His chosen Acting Vice-President of Instruction [Glenn Roquemore] has had no administrative experience at the college other than one month as a school chair….” “Outside observers note that the Board continues to make sweeping changes with ‘very little depth and understanding of consequences’ of those actions…, without ‘linking changes to evidence’…, and without consulting the administrators most affected…These matters confirm the conclusion of the Sorenson report that there ‘is little evidence of trust anywhere in the organization.’” 
—Excerpted from the supplemental [Accreditation] report for standard 10. (7/31/98) THEIR MONKEY BOY


Monday, August 16, 1999 
...Fortune broke in to read endlessly from the policy, and then she said something. I’m not sure what she said, ‘cuz I tuned out, but it had that “you mean to tell me!” feel to it. Everyone ignore her and rolled their eyes, which only increased her agitation and peevitude…. 
     Frogue seemed befuddled again. “Is this a motion or an amendment?”, he asked. Someone said, “Good God.” A snore ripped through the night.


Monday, August 16, 1999 
...Fortune quickly established a redolent peevitude that never dissipated. We had discussed this damn business for over a year, she said. Everybody was involved—a lawyer, the ACLU, students, my Aunt Minnie, et al. We did everything right, she declared. In the end, we adopted UCI’s new policy, and, she noted, at the time, no complaints were heard from the two Academic Senates. So what’s all this infernal caterwauling?! 
     Naturally, Dot didn’t know what she was talking about....  

Monday, October 4, 1999 
...Johnny Boy [Williams] mentioned his having attended something called “Constitution Day” at the Claremont Institute, which, I’m told, is a right wing think tank. During his report, Frogue said he showed up for that one, too, and he even asked questions. I bet the people at the Institute were impressed by these two dolts from south OC, one bouncing a soccer ball on his head, the other quoting Spotlight [a white supremacist tabloid]....

 

A nice example of an SOCCCD board meeting, 2010:

Padberg seeks to impose PG on Saddleback College TV content

Also: Mathur is fired

Here we find trustee Don Wagner seeking to pull the two colleges out of membership with the American Library Association, a group he judges to be a bunch of "liberal busybodies."

2000: Williams targets WASC

An effort by faculty to convince the board not to renew Raghu Mathur's contract

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Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...