I have a dream (and faculty have a union)

"We're an organization, and we have tasks to perform!" said the rabbit

    [Colleagues, on Monday, at IVC, the SOCCCD Faculty Association held a Rep Council meeting.]

     Gosh, I woke up this morning from a terrible dream, and you know how that is: you’re in a twilight zone as your brain stumbles from sleep to wakefulness; it's like a trip in one of those Star Trek transporters, which means that, for all that you know, the old you is obliterated and a new you comes into being, oblivious that he’s just then started to exist, a fraud, a copy, with fake memories and a fake ID.
     So maybe I’ve got nothing to do with this dream, but, anyway, in that dream I seem to remember going yesterday to a meeting of the AARP, which somehow was the faculty union, and it was just horrible, man. It was in some awful room at IVC where, on the wall, there’s a map of the world, but China and Indochina are obliterated by a handout. What’s that about?
     I sat there, feeling unwelcome, like people with harry eyeballs kept expecting me to say something obnoxious, but I had no intention of saying anything, and, in any case, I remained silent and just sat there, marveling at the decrepitude and lunacy around me. Everybody seemed old or sick or demented. I wanted to get out of there, but I was frozen.
     “We’ve got a new office!” screamed geezer #17, and then a group of oldsters suddenly ran to the white board and tried to pin up a poster of James B. Utt, but every time they got it up there for a second or two, it just fell down again, and the pins flew across the room causing everybody to duck and run, but in the manner of elderly folk.
     Then somebody who was lying on the ground, sleeping, suddenly got up and started reciting a nursery rhyme followed by the numbers 30, 32, and 38. It was some kind of geezer mantra I guess, and it caused some of the old farts and lunatics to get mad and start tearing up chairs. “These are chairs,” they declared. “And they’re worth more than you think!”
     OK. That was weird. But then some gal said we could rescue the whole situation if we just get everybody to give a quarter of their senses. But that didn’t make sense to me since we’ve got five senses, not four, but I’m pretty sure that everyone was agreeable nonetheless, and that worried me plenty, cuz I started to think that I was that quarter or that sense. You know dreams.

RG in England, years ago

     The geezers started singing a song that everybody knew and liked. “Make rich bastards pay and pay!” they chanted, whilst one guy with a really big two-toned head started laying out spread sheets with zillions of numbers on ‘em. “15 to 1,” he said, and everyone understood. Not me, boy.
     “Get your clingy car stickers!” shouted the lady from kindergarten. "Talk to your friends!" Don’t know what that was about. She drove a Honda, I think, but how would I know?
     Somebody handed the guy with the head a sack of nickels, and he eagerly grabbed it, as he carped bitterly about his predecessor, a “political consultant” that “we paid for” through those cool automatic deductions that some people think are downright un-American.
     It was all very Alice in Wonderland, complete with Mad Hatters and white weasels and a greasy fat guy sitting high above us on a wall, smiling and cracking and seeming to know something important.
     Somebody scrawled “Meldau” on the whiteboard, and, just then, that Utt poster popped one of its two pins and started swinging across the room straight at me like some giant tractor blade. That’s when the Wizened Ones sauntered into the room, saying little but smiling at the fat guy up on that wall. “We’re here,” they said, and they started to cry. They invited Fat Boy to “come on down” and receive valuable cash prizes in the amount of just over $5,000—evidently, a gift from the AARP. But there were some oldsters there who were totally against the idea somehow, but, despite that, the appearance of the Wizened Ones and the Fat Boy caused the “Meldau” on the whiteboard to fade and disappear. Evidently, that was some kind of disaster, and some people started to moan.
     That’s when a rollercoaster suddenly roared through the room, first threatening to kill the organization’s new Prez, who was oddly silent for a moment, but then it veered violently to the right into that greasy fat, stupid, and corrupt guy, who was clutching his $5K. He dropped and farted but hung onto his cash, still smiling. The Wizened Ones then commenced carping about their latest round of plastic surgery and the inconvenience of keeping tabs on their many investments. “Fuck Brown,” they chanted. “Long live the Tio Fountain.”
     Sheesh. I’m getting too old for dreams.


A joker is not a devil, but a demagogue is a jackass

     Then somebody dragged a huge chair into the room, demanding that it be valued properly, but that activity got “tabled” or something, and nobody knew whether to shit or go blind.
     “Well, we can make a motion that we’ll just sit here and wait,” said the blond robot with the glasses, but the guy sitting to my right said flatly, “You don’t need a motion to do nothing, stupid.” I looked over at ‘im with admiration, but then he, too, disappeared, leaving only a smirk and a late grade submission form.
     “Breast implants!” screamed somebody, probably a woman. “We now get breast implants!” Everybody seemed to agree that that was a good thing. Guess so. “Didn’t we get those before?” I asked. “No!” screamed the crowd of oldsters in unison. “It’s your union at work,” they insisted.
     Next, the Prez stood up and said that the “evaluation forms are written,” and that we’d all have to use them to get evaluated by our students. On the other hand, said geezer #5, after students take 'em, nobody gets to look at ‘em, and they’re just gonna be thrown into the trash along with collegial consultation and single-semester sabbaticals. That seemed to please everybody except the guy who wanted MySite evals.
     Well, that’s about when I woke up, unless you buy into the "five second hypothesis," which, as you know, has never been disproved and that may well be true.

Trustee Lorch exceeds legal limit (of classes)

     Teddi Lorch was a long-time part-time instructor at Saddleback College and friendly with the Faculty Association (union) when, in June of 1993, Trustee Iris Swanson died and the district needed a quick replacement. The union recommended Lorch, and (after the board interviewed several candidates) she was appointed. She ran for the office in 1994 and, with the union's support, she naturally prevailed. She was very much the union's person on the board of trustees—along with Williams and Frogue. With the addition of Fortune in 1996, the notorious "Board Majority" came into being: Lorch, Williams, Frogue, and Fortune.

Trustee’s Teaching Load Questioned: 

Education: Teddi Lorch might exceed legal limit. Some see potential conflict, others credit her action.
By RENE LYNCH

DEC. 21, 1995

     The president of the Saddleback Community College District Board of Trustees, who also happens to be one of the district’s longtime instructors, is apparently teaching a heavier load of courses than state law allows.
     Besides the legal issue the situation raises, some critics point to the potential conflict of interest that Teddi Lorch faces, being the boss of the district chancellor, Robert A. Lombardi, as well as his paid employee.
     Lombardi said Saddleback College erred in asking Lorch to fill in as a substitute teacher when a fellow instructor suffered a medical emergency.
     “That was not right, it shouldn’t have happened,” Lombardi said. “But the way it was explained to me was, it was an emergency situation.”
     Lombardi said he would prefer that trustees be prohibited from teaching at all, but he noted that the California Education Code allows a trustee to teach one class at a time, in an area relating to his or her occupation.
     “My preference would be that trustees make themselves fully available to the board,” said Lombardi, who said Lorch’s teaching requires her to abstain from votes relating to teacher salary, benefits and the like. “You hate to have a trustee abstain.”
     But some trustees dismissed the issue as nit-picking and said Lorch is owed the district’s gratitude for helping an ailing colleague.
     “She is very careful to avoid any conflict,” said Thomas Carroll, president of the Saddleback Community College District Faculty Assn.

     “I really don’t think this is much of an issue at all,” Trustee John S. Williams said.
     Earlier this month, Lorch was unanimously elected president by her board colleagues, some of whom now say they are uncomfortable that Lorch appears to have exceeded the Education Code’s teaching limit of one class for trustees.
     This semester, Lorch, whose subjects are psychology and sociology, took on two additional classes when a colleague suffered a medical emergency and missed several sessions. Lorch filled in for 15 hours during the current semester, college district spokeswoman Diane Riopka said.
     “It’s my impression trustees are able to teach just one class, and [substituting] would be more than one class,” Trustee Joan J. Hueter said. “If she’s teaching more than one class, she’s breaking the law.”
     Lorch, 48, of San Clemente did not return phone calls seeking comment. An attorney for the district also did not respond to requests for comment.
     Trustees are expected to walk a fine line between the competing interests of the district’s 30,000 students, its administrators and faculty—for whom the trustees regulate salary and benefits. As a result, full-time district instructors are not allowed on the board.
     Retired Chancellor Richard Sneed, who refused to allow Lorch to teach while he held office, said trustees should generally be barred from teaching.
     “A trustee teaching poses an inherent conflict of interest,” Sneed said.
     While Lorch has abstained from voting on issues that influence her salary and benefits, Sneed said the public deserves a full-time board member.
     “Abstaining on these important issues really cripples her as a board member,” he said.
     However, Alannah Orrison, chairwoman of the social science department, said Lorch deserves praise for filling in for her ailing colleague.
     “We were desperate,” Orrison said. “She stepped up. We didn’t think it would be a problem.”

     Lorch was appointed in August 1993 to fill a vacancy on the board and earlier this year was elected to a four-year term. She has been a popular part-time instructor in the social science department at Saddleback since 1975, district officials said.
     Currently, she is paid more than $40 per hour in the classroom and is paid $400 a month for attending board meetings, Riopka said.
     Sneed said he barred Lorch from teaching at the district shortly after she joined the board in part because he believes the code limits trustees to teaching subjects relating to their occupations.
     Sneed said he questioned whether Lorch’s professional background at the time—as a civilian analyst for the Navy—permitted her to teach psychology.
     “It was something I obviously was concerned with,” Sneed said.
     School officials report that Lorch is an organizational psychology consultant, although it is unclear how that applies to child and adult developmental psychology, the course she teaches.
     When Lombardi took office in early 1994, he reversed Sneed’s decision based on a legal opinion. Lorch began teaching again in the summer 1994 session.
     The code is somewhat unclear on trustees who teach, said Tom Nussbaum, vice chancellor for legal affairs for the chancellor’s office of the California Community Colleges.
     “The code limits teaching to one class, but it’s a very technical law,” said Nussbaum, who said he personally advised Lorch she could teach one class. “I’m not sure she’s violating the spirit of it by substituting, but that has to be challenged at the local level. There are a lot of gray areas here.”

Faculty Union gets its pick for Swanson replacement

Saddleback Board Picks New Member 

By ANNA CEKOLA 

AUG. 5, 1993 

[LA Times]

     Teddi Lorch, a longtime San Clemente resident and part-time teacher, has been appointed by the Saddleback Community College District Board of Trustees to fill the remaining board term of the late Iris Swanson. 

     The trustees unanimously selected Lorch from a list of 14 candidates during a special meeting Tuesday. She will be sworn into office Aug. 23 as trustee for Area 4, which covers San Clemente, most of Dana Point including Capistrano Beach, and a small southern portion of San Juan Capistrano. 

     “The board had the good fortune and difficult task of making a selection from among extraordinarily qualified candidates, and I am delighted at the board’s choice,” Chancellor Richard Sneed said. 

     Lorch, 46, said she will begin working immediately to “maximize the impact of every dollar spent” and to build coalitions between the business and college communities. 

     She said the appointment also has special meaning in that she will be “fulfilling the remaining term of my dedicated and respected colleague, Iris Swanson.” 

     Swanson, 66, who was elected to the board in 1985 and was a founding employee of Saddleback Community College District, died June 9 of cancer. 

     The board decided on June 16 to appoint someone to fill Swanson’s term, rather than hold a special election that would have cost an estimated $400,000. 

     Lorch, a research technical analyst with the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego, has been a part-time instructor of psychology and sociology at Saddleback College since 1975. 

     She has been involved in many faculty, staff and community activities, including the college ethics and standards committee and the chancellor search committee that resulted in the selection of Sneed. 

     She lives in San Clemente with her husband, Tom Lorch, a San Clemente city councilman. They have a 16-year-old daughter, Adrian Jo. 

     She will serve on the seven-member board until November, 1994, when she will have the option of running for a full four-year term.

SEE: 

Trustee Lorch exceeds legal limit (of classes) (1995)