The power of the BLOG

Have you been following the big Gallaudet University brouhaha? (See Searching for answers.)

GU is an internationally recognized liberal arts school for the deaf. Recently, the university’s trustees indicated that they were about to appoint Jane K. Fernandes to GU’s presidency.

But many of Gallaudet’s students reject Fernandes. In a very big way. They’ve protested. At one point, over 130 protestors were arrested. Classes could not be held.

For some, the problem with Fernandes concerns deaf “identity politics.” Fernandes, who is deaf, learned sign language only late in life. To some at GU, she’s not “one of us.”

But other protesters insist that the problem is simply Fernandes’ lack of leadership skill. You know, she’s none too charismatic and such.


Jeez, these Gallaudet people have high standards. In the SOCCCD, we’re thankful when the Chancellor goes through a whole week without being a conniving rat bastard.

But at Gallaudet, they’re all pissed off because Fernandes doesn’t smile when she meets people and she doesn’t look ‘em in the eye.

IVC’s Glenn Roquemore doesn’t have the smile problem. He’s got a frozen smile. In fact, most of us wish he’d just break out and sneer once in a while.

With Fernandes, there are other concerns. Apparently, some people think that she isn’t into “shared governance.” That is a problem. We sympathize.

TODAY, a friend called to say that, just that moment, NPR was doing a story on Gallaudet. Out here in the Canyon, we don’t get NPR, so I went online instead. Sure enough, today’s “All Things Considered” had a story entitled Blogs capture, amplify Gallaudet protest.

In the story, reporter Robert Shapiro explains that Gallaudet officials expected the protests to die down, but, instead, they’ve only grown.


One reason: THE BLOGGER. That’s what they call a guy named Ricky Taylor. Says Shapiro,

…Taylor has become pretty famous among deaf people. They know him as Ridor. The blogger. Who boasts on his popular Web site—RidorLive.com—that he is "arguably the most controversial Deaf blogger in America."

… Taylor's blog is certainly lively. ... It's opinionated. And it's full of attitude. Just like the protests….

…Protesters demanding the resignation of the new president at Gallaudet get much of their information from Taylor and dozens of other deaf bloggers. Deaf people rely heavily on e-mail and the Web…

When the protests started, Taylor was a cheerleader and often an agitator. Now, when Gallaudet staff want to leak some piece of information critical of the school's administration, it's likely to end up on RidorLive.

…Those blogs—including one that carried a kind of play-by-play of the arrests—were read by deaf people around the world…People like John Egbert, from Minnesota. He read RidorLive…, then got on a plane and came to Washington to support the protests….

… Egbert joined students, faculty and alumni who rallied over the weekend—a couple thousand of them at this university of only 1,700 students.

That’s cool. Way cool.


UPDATE: in this morning’s Washington Post: Gallaudet Protesters' Camp Demolished, Injuring Some

PICS:
1. Kleenex dispenser, IVC's Wellness Center
2. Comet the cat
3. I take a snap as I drive toward Cook's Corner, yesterday morning
4. A recent shot of the eastern sky

Going focal on local yokel

"This may be Southern California, but it's not the Deep South."

--Patrick Kelly, a Teamsters spokesman.

☆ The OC SUPEs (Stupes?) weigh in on the Tan Man Scan(dal): OC board won't correct letter

☆ In yesterday's Sacramento Bee: Peeling back OC's odd politics. Dan Walters puts the Tan Man scandal into the larger context of local GOP knuckleheadery.

"...[L]ocal police officers blew up a student locker on the California community college’s Pleasant Hill campus...."

☆ From the "We think WE'VE got it bad!" file: Bomb threat closes a campus

☆ From the "Thank God we ain't in Texas" file: Art Teacher and District Reach Settlement. Teacher loses job after tykes catch glimpse of "nude statue" on a field trip. Too bad Howard wasn't there. He would have sued the statue too.

☆ IVC President fired for "failure to lead". OK, I made that one up. But I walk around campus, and, Glenn, you should hear what people say. Sheesh. Get a clue.

☆ South County board jailed for "persistent and defiant assholery". I can dream, can't I?

Board president Tom Fuentes?

Well, we're rapidly approaching the BOARD's December organizational meeting, when the trustees elect their officers.

Who will be elected board president? That's an important question. The president is powerful, in part owing to his influence on the agenda.

If memory serves, each board member--except Bill Jay and Tom Fuentes--has served as president. I have no idea if either man is interested in the job.

But if Fuentes wants it, it is difficult to see how he could fail to get it. He has more seniority than Jay, and it is doubtful that even relatively enlightened trustees would maneuver to block his ascension.

A Fuentes board presidency could be a big problem. Fuentes, you'll recall, is the fellow who once asserted, on TV, that faculty have a 36-hour work week and that, on average, they make $100K per year. (TV interview.) Clearly, he views the CTA (of which our own Faculty Association is a chapter) as the Great Satan of California politics and of everything that is right and good. (See Fuentes World.)

Plus he's flat evil. He's the kind of guy who'll give you the stink eye--or, worse, the stink smile. He'll have one of his pals take and monitor one of your classes. He'll leave burning sacks of sh*t on your doorstep and place guards on all your polls.

He'll even call you a "whore." (See Kill it & grill it.)

Plus he's got lots of connections with Howard Ahmanson and the folks who seek to give us "intelligent design" in the classroom and worse--Christian Reconstruction. ("My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives," said Howie. See Ahmanson.)

And remember how and why he targeted the "study abroad" program in Santander, Spain! (Some suspected that that was payback for CH's public criticisms of the F-man.)

So hang on to your hats. If Tom wants it, he's got it.

A disappointing revelation

1. FIFTEEN GRAND. On today's Total Buzz, Martin Wisckol (of the OC Register) explains that, when, recently, he went through Tan Nguyen's campaign accounting, up popped the name (Trustee) "Tom Fuentes."

Jeez, Martin. That's old news. Get a clue. (Tom Fuentes, campaign advisor)

According to these records, says Wisckol, Fuentes received $15,000 from Nguyen's campaign from December to May. Writes Wisckol,

I talked to Fuentes about it last week and he said he did consulting work on the campaign for the primary and ... the two parties went their separate ways afterward. "Nothing unfriendly about" the parting, he said. "I have not spoken with Tan in months, so I'm not sure what direction the campaign has taken."

Tom reportedly added:

"As for the letter itself, it is a sad and disappointing revelation."

I wonder how disappointed Tom would have been had it been revealed that the Tan Man hired guards to stand outside polling places?


2. MORE RETALIATION? Today, Facilities and Maintenance workers told me that they feel that Director (of F&M), Wayne Ward, continues to retaliate against custodians who, one month ago, filed an Incident Report re Wayne’s conduct. (See "It's a condom".)

The workers tell me that, this morning, Wayne met with custodians, informing them that he is “here to stay” and that he has no intention of altering his behavior or practices.

Also, they report, Wayne announced that there would be work schedule changes.

After the meeting, the worker who, last week, found himself pulled from his usual task in order to scrape gum off the sidewalk, was informed by Wayne that he would now be switched from the day shift to the swing shift. Simultaneously, a swing shift worker would be switched to day shift.

Apparently, this change will entail a serious hardship for the worker, who has a second job, one he has held for seven years, which conflicts with the swing shift. The worker explained that his family depends on that second income.

Reportedly, Wayne was unmoved. According to my sources, Wayne then told the worker that he (the worker) was too easily influenced by his day coworkers and, that, as a result, his attitude has suffered.

Again, according to my sources, this worker has never been told that there is a problem with his attitude. Further, he is known to be a hard worker who is friendly and courteous to all. He has received appreciative emails from school deans regarding his hard work.

One custodian told me that, in his judgment, the schedule change is clearly an act of retaliation.

He added: “Wayne is trying to keep those who stand and speak up out of the day shift.”


3. BABRAHAM LINCOLN. From Wayne's World:

GARTH: What are you thinking about?

WAYNE: Cassandra. She's a fox. In France, she would be called La Renarde, and she would be hunted, with only her cunning to protect her.

GARTH: She's a babe.

WAYNE: She's a robo-babe! In Latin, she would be called Babia Majora.

GARTH: If she were a president, she'd be Babraham Lincoln.

Lost in Tanslation

Rebel Girl Grades Tan Nguyen's Letter

"Es verdad. Washington bullets again."

—The Clash, "Sandinista!"

Rebel Girl has been following the brouhaha over candidate Tan Nguyen's letter to prospective voters. Let's be more specific: his intimidating and fraudulent letter to 14,000 prospective voters with Spanish surnames. Let's be specific, and accurate, too: brouhaha without much ha-ha, and shock —shock! —to discover that gambling (voter fraud) is going on in Casablanca County.

Rebel Girl feels left out. Though she boasts a terrific Spanish surname, one of the most popular and easy to pronounce, she herself did not receive one of the letters because she dwells outside the 47th Congressional District. Most of her political mail celebrates the governor posing with charismatic (hot, hot, hot!) Latino leaders and declaring his devotion to education. Yeah, right.

No, like many of you, she had to track the epistle/evidence down on the internet. Then, pocha as she is, she had to find an English translation. Sigh. Life is rough for a second generation Mexican-American. And they say we don't assimilate. Sheesh.

Mild-mannered professor of English that she is, Rebel Girl has spent the weekend pondering the text.

Granted, there was much to ponder beginning with, what was Tan Nguyen thinking? And what did Rebel Girl's favorite college trustee and Nguyen's advisor, Tom "My family swam over from Spain— I'm no Mexican" Fuentes know and when did he know it?

But really, she looked at it with the eyes of a person who has graded college student writing for the last 15 years. And what did she see?

Rebel Girl reviewed her grading standards. She considered in terms of what we like to call the rubric. The letter was a C, at best, C minus maybe. A C grade meant satisfactory, sometime marginally so. It showed an understanding of the basic ideas and information involved in the assignment but it may also have had some factual, interpretive or conceptual errors. Clearly the writer's intent was clear, even though his execution was ineffective. In a C-level paper, the writer's argument is sometimes only partially developed, with little analysis, with limited use of textual evidence. With its five scant paragraphs, the Nguyen letter was certainly that. The arrangement of a C-level paper may not appear entirely natural or smooth, with some awkward transitions, a few weakly unified or undeveloped paragraphs. This was most definitely true of Nguyen's work, especially the last two paragraphs. While there was an attempt to create a sense of transition between the paragraphs, the grand leaps each one made, coupled with a complete lack of sources to verify their outstanding (sic) claims, made this work marginal at best. In fact, the more Rebel Girl thought about it, and got herself worked up, the more she thought this work was not at college level after all, not a marginally passing paper. And that even without considering the occasional wordy sentences structure and awkward word choices she felt the need to wince.

So, finally, it failed.

Okay, granted, the letter was a translation. For all she knew it might, in the original Spanish have been a work comparable to Carlos Fuentes' The Death of Artemio Cruz or perhaps something by Borges: you know, prismatic and labyrinthine, what those folks call magical realism. Okay, so perhaps it was unfair to grade the translation. She planned to offer the Spanish department faculty time to weigh in on this project.

Then, today, late news, from the You Can't Make This Up Department, which is down the hall from the Spanish department. At his press conference, Tan Nguyen blamed the "hysteria" over the letter on, yes (Si), wait, here it comes…a bad translation! In the original English draft of the letter, he said, the word "immigrant" (translated to emigrado or immigrante—the jury is still out) wasn't used—instead the phrase "just a resident with a green card" was. So, it was the translator's fault—not his. And no, he wouldn't be dropping out of the race. Why should he?

Why indeed? (Any teacher can tell you—K-12, college or university, that is one lame excuse.)

But, let's do a closer read, shall we?

Mr. Tan neglected the more problematic part of the letter, which threatened the recipients with this Borgesian fabrication:

At the same time, you are advised that the government of the United States is installing a new computer system to verify the names of all new registered voters that vote in the October and November elections. Anti-immigration organizations can ask for information from this new computer system.

And what about that "October" election reference? Is that just sloppiness or what? Tee hee. How much did he pay his ghostwriter? His translator?

There were two more items, though a person could go on and on. Reb won't. For instance, that bevy of anti-immigrant group names that decorates the margins and letterhead. Hmmm.

Here's the crema on the flan. The letter is signed: Sincerely, Sergio Ramirez.

Rebel Girl was certain that she was one of the few Orange Countians who recognized this hearty effort at evoking an Everyhombre, using a nom de plume for a helpful if stern Mexican quasi-official, a name with authority and lots of hot vowels.

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?

She knew the revolution had fallen on hard times but figured that Sergio, like his compadre Daniel Ortega, was busy retooling his image to fight another day. La lucha continua and all that.

So what could have brought Sergio Ramirez, the former vice president of revolutionary Nicaragua to the heart of OC?

Imagination is a lovely way to travel. And, of course, only the imagination of Tan Nguyen and his campaign advisors could have flown the former Second in Command of the revolutionary people's state to John Wayne Airport. Imagine how that brainstorming session might have gone:

All right guys, we need a Latino name. One that rings a bell, but not too many bells.

Jennifer Lopez? Nah. Eddie Olmos? No. Ricky Ricardo? Dead. Tomas Fuentes? Nope. Too fucking obvious.

A hand waves in the back of the room. I know, I know. How about Sergio Ramirez, the former Vice President of Nicaragua? That'll show those commies.

But my very favorite part of this letter is the closing paragraph, which reads so well, so true, so fine, now that the truth is out. Take another look and see for yourself:

Do not listen to any politician that tells you the opposite. They are only looking out for their own interests. They only want to win elections without any regard to what happens to you.

That's right. You tell 'em Tan.

Sergio Ramirez' Website

Civilitude vs. rudeitude

Professors (that's what the board is calling us these days), you might want to read an article in today’s Los Angeles Daily News. It’s called “Missing manners a rude awakening in college classes.”

They arrive late, talk on cell phones in class, throw temper tantrums, send ill-mannered e-mails and make threats.

…[A]cross the nation, professors … are watching students in their classrooms sink into this abyss of rude behavior, prompting discussions on how to encourage civility….

...Stephanie Badali, 19, and her friend Dorine Farsad, 18, said students who bring laptops to class are often surfing the Internet—and there's little professors can do.

"It's like high school all over again," Farsad said. "As much as a teacher will say please don't do it, they are just going to do it anyway."….

I’ve noticed that, in almost every one of my classes, some students—often, several students—concentrate on their laptops rather than on me or the discussion. That's new.

Plus there’s more droolage. I don’t wanna generalize though.

And then there’s cursing—and I don’t mean the fluffy & friendly kind—I'm talkin' the "B" word and the dreaded "C" word. And spitting—though that happens outside, mostly. And sneering. And sleeping. And talking on the phone.

And even rank air biscuitry. OK, what do you say or do when they do that? (Last Friday, in my honors class, flatulencia happened, evidently. It was ghastly. I moved the lectern ever southward, until I almost leaned out the doorway.)

—Tell us your “rude and crude” stories. We’d love to hear ‘em! Or tell us what you do about outbreaks of rudity and crudity in class. Inquiring minds wanna know.

(I hear that Saddleback students are way worse than IVC students. Is that true?)

P.S.: ONE OF OUR more clever readers sent us pictures of his favorite female icons to post on the blog (Audrey Hepburn, et al.), but I can't seem to open his attachment. In the meantime, here's one of my all-time BABEraham Lincolns:

She's just the BEST. Check out "Rid of Me."

Sunday evening with Sarah & Adam

Sarah insisted on climbing atop "Gilligan's Peak" so she could get a good look at "Vulture Crag" (in the middle, in the distance).

I call her "Uncle Sarah." She always corrects me.

Sarah & Adam's parents brought 'em to a pumpkin patch today. Hence the pumpkin-colored shirts. They've really got a thing about pumpkins. Can't get enough of 'em.

These are happy kids, boy. They're always making me give them "monkey rides." At the end of each ride, I'll put them down and then they'll say, "Again." They can't get enough of those monkey rides.

Sarah will break into song at the drop of a hat. She makes up her own words, too--just like her Uncle Chunk.