Dissent's Friday forum!

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GO AHEAD, make our day. (I.e., post something; try to be clever....—or something).

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: Spring and All

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REBEL GIRL HAS LEARNED much this week including that fact that a student soliciting another student for sex does indeed violate the student code of conduct. She's not sure whether or not a student menacing another student with a large frightened domestic rabbit violates the code but it did violate Reb's sense of decorum so she put a stop to it. "Make that rabbit disappear," she instructed the slightly embarrassed student.

What can we chalk these incidents up to? Well, poor decision making, yes. But Spring is in the air here and certainly the bunny incident had all the overtones of that season: a white rabbit, sheepish males, alarmed but charmed females—all involved except the rabbit seemed pleased with themselves.

Even the presence of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust with their gory photos as big as doors seem to herald Spring somehow.

Spring has come to the valley of Irvine: root, grip, awaken. There's six weeks left to learn something this semester.

~

Today's poem is from William Carlos Williams, a poet I first read in high school because he had that Carlos sitting there between his Williams.

Spring and All

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

[1923]

Grisly Tuesday

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1. GRISLY IMAGES. There was some unplanned excitement at Irvine Valley College today. An anti-abortion group—calling itself the “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust”—set up two large displays and handed out literature in front of IVC’s Student Services Center.

One of the displays featured a very large and extremely grisly picture of an alleged aborted fetus. It was horribly mangled, with a single eye situated amongst the torn flesh. For those who exited the Student Services Center, the image was impossible to miss. Other pictures on display were also grisly or otherwise disturbing, though they were smaller.

From a distance, I noticed some commotion over there early in the afternoon, but then I had to go to class. After class, at about 2:00, I wandered over to SSC. Two young people stood by the displays, but, by then, almost no one was around.

I spoke with the pleasant girl who stood by the large grisly photo of the shredded fetus. She handed me some literature—a tabloid-style publication called "Stop the Madness." I asked her about the commotion. She didn’t think it amounted to “commotion,” she said. True, she acknowledged, at least one student felt the need to yell or scream her displeasure with the displays.

"What did she say?"

"You know. —Choice.'"

“Did lots of students look at the displays?”

“Yeah, lots.”

Evidently, our students survived the encounter with the images. Everything seemed utterly normal.

Normaller, even.

2. RAGHU MATHUR, SCHEDULER OF COURSES. I’m told—by several people who oughta know—that Chancellor Mathur is now personally determining the course offerings for ATEP in the Fall.

In the long run, ATEP will likely house some fancy Voc-Ed Whizzbangery—perhaps some video studios, and various high-tech manufacturing facilities or whatnot. In the meantime, though, a small portion of the campus has temporary buildings in which a range of classes will be offered. Essentially, it’s a “satellite campus.”

Some draft of the Fall course offerings had already been produced by various schools and departments. Or at least I think Schools and departments came up with it. The Chancellor wouldn’t write it, would he?

Well, whatever the draft’s origins, Raghu now feels that he can change it.

I kept asking, “Isn’t that kinda, um, micromanagy?

“Well, yeah,” said everybody. “So what else is new?”

The Alberto Gonzales "Car and Country" Odorizer

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TRAVEL with the patron saint of the New World Order!

Guaranteed to mask the unpleasant stench of dissent, vanquish the lingering aroma of habeus corpus and extinguish the residual traces of torture!

Also available from the Dissent Boutique: John Yoo cigarette lighters!

—Plus the popular new TOM FUENTES STINK BOMBS!

Trustees living in a bubble? Let's pop it!

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FOR YEARS NOW, we’ve been saying that our dysfunctional community college district is a kind of microcosm of the Bush Administration. For instance, it is often said that George W and his advisors live in a “bubble,” oblivious to reality. That's not good.

Hey, we’ve got a bubble, too!

Consider last Friday’s board forum. Not for the first time, some of our trustees expressed a take on reality according to which the accreditation process is dishonest and biased—that the Accreditation people are somehow in cahoots with faculty. Mr. Tom Fuentes seems to embrace a particularly bold version of the view: the system is phony; it’s fixed by faculty. I’ve heard him say exactly that, though he is usually careful not to say it so plainly when in front of cameras or audiences.

Not sure about Mr. Wagner. Perhaps he embraces a less robust version of the view—something short of a conspiracy theory. Dunno.

Also on Friday, a trustee—and, again, we’ve heard this before—asserted or implied that, among students, there exists substantial FEAR of ACCREDITATION LOSS. Mr. Wagner talked as though the fear is very significant, cuz he was clearly bothered by it.

He even insisted that these fears are encouraged by faculty!

Naturally, if there really were such a phenomenon, then—assuming that our Accreditation is safe, cuz, if it isn’t, we wouldn’t wanna lie about that, would we?—it would be a real problem for us. It would needlessly distract students and maybe even encourage them to get their educations elsewhere. Not good!


Well, if you know anything about the ACCJC (i.e., the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges), then you know that there’s virtually no chance that they'll pull our ticket—a college has got to get seriously evil and incompetent for that [see Compton Community College]—though there’s a very real chance of further embarrassing ACCJC wrist-slapping and the investment of further man-hours (in the hundreds) devoted to holding meetings and writing reports.

At last Friday’s forum, a well-regarded classified employee who routinely interacts with students reported that she has not encountered the “fear” phenomenon, not at least to the degree that Mr. Wagner describes. And, speaking for myself, students never express accreditation worries. And they do lots of squawking, I’ll tell you for sure!

In my classes, accreditation does come up sometimes—when, for instance, I explain what a community college “district” is and how it’s run and overseen. (That's good for a student to know.) But this alleged FEAR phenomenon? Well, as far as I can tell—and I do get around—it doesn’t exist. Not to any significant degree, anyway.

Why, then, do Wagner and Fuentes (and other trustees?) suppose otherwise? (Here's a hint: MATHUR.)

Now, I’m not sure how we can get these people to see reality about the honesty and neutrality (observe that I didn’t say the “competence” or the “efficiency”) of the accreditors. If you’ve got any good ideas about that, let us know.

But this other delusion—that (a substantial number of) students fear our loss of accreditation—should be more amenable to a cure. I mean, either this FEAR phenomenon exists or it doesn’t, right? And if those who actually interact with students day after day—like the classified employee—report that DREAD of ACCREDITATION LOSS is not generally exhibited or expressed by students, then, well, Q.E.D.!


So those of you who regularly interact with students, why doncha contact the trustees and let ‘em know the reality of student concerns. YOU'VE GOT POWER! Use it!

Here are the relevant email addresses:

• Board President, David Lang 
— dlang@socccd.org

• Board VP, Donald P. Wagner 
— dwagner@socccd.org

• Marcia Milchiker
— mmilchiker@socccd.org

• Nancy M. Padberg 
— npadberg@socccd.org

• John S. Williams — jwilliams@socccd.org

I got the above info at the district website under the heading “Governing board.” If you click on their names, you get a little biographical blurb, usually ending with:

Contact [trustee X] at [his/her] email address: xxx@socccd.org

Oddly, Mr. Fuentes & Mr. Jay don’t give their email addresses, although I’m sure they’d love to hear from you cuz, on Friday, the board was pretty clear about that! My guess is that Fuentes & Jay’s email addresses are:

• Clerk, Thomas A. Fuentes — tfuentes@socccd.org

• William O. Jay — bjay@socccd.org

Good luck!

Deer spotting

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Sunny the cat got weirded out like she does, and she started staring out the screen door. So I looked out there and spotted some deer. Took this pic of one of 'em.

I heard another one that was closer, but behind some trees. Did you know that deer make horse-like sounds? You know, that sound of blowin' air out their noses or mouths. What's that called? No, not a neigh or whinny. There's no voice to it. It's more like a gum-flapping sound.

Spotted this in the sky above me.


The dang thing looked so far away, like it was in outer space.

Propagating the negative

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I ATTENDED the Board Forum at Irvine Valley College today, and it was fun! Really!

Considering that it was announced only two days ago and scheduled for a Friday afternoon, it was remarkably well attended, though not by faculty. A friend said she counted about ten instructors in the room.

I should mention that the board holds these forums infrequently, and, near as I could tell, my colleagues who attended this forum appreciated the opportunity to interact with the trustees.

A PLAQUE FOR WAYNE:

Things got rolling just after 2:00. Trustee Tom Fuentes invoked the Lord, and then we all pledged to the flag. Next came the presentation of a plaque to exiting Director of Facility and Maintenance, Wayne Ward. Board President Dave Lang announced that the board wanted to “recognize all the terrific work” that the Waynster had done over the years.

I scanned the room for wry expressions. People were being mighty good. —They didn’t applaud though.


Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur then explained that the purpose of the forum was to answer questions and whatnot. “Let the Q & A begin,” he said.

There was silence, no Q. Finally, an administrator asked the trustees, “What would you like to see happen at the college?” Don Wagner then explained that he wanted to see everyone working together collegially. With that, he subtly launched the canard that the real problem with this district isn’t a rogue board and its toady, but the district’s fractious and unseemly faculty troublemakers.

OFF-CAMPUS SITES:

Eventually, Fuentes said that he supported Bill Jay’s dream of slathering our pedagogy all over the map via off-campus sites. Then someone got all empirical and asked just how many off-campus sites we now have. Glenn Roquemore or Dave Anderson said something like, “a zillion, more or less.” Well, no, but the number was very high, maybe twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven? We all stared at each other. Suddenly, it seemed like our problem was that we’ve just got way too much hangin’ out there, off-campuswise!

John Williams explained that this is an exciting time, owing to our Basic Aid funding, which allows us to collect huge piles of property tax money to pay for all sorts of wonderful things. True enough. (Trustee Fuentes has recently warned that the Basic Aid gravy train could end, what with the housing market being what it is.)

THE ACCREDITATION QUESTION:

I offered a question. I said that the Accreditation Commission is once again demanding that the board cease micromanaging, and yet, in recent months, one board member (I didn't mention Mr. Wagner's name) has declared that at least some of the Accred’s charges of micromanagement are mistaken. How, I asked, can we emerge from this Accreditation process if trustees take this kind of defiant stance?

Wagner is not alone. Last Spring, Mr. Fuentes openly opined that the problem with the district isn't so much board micromanagement as "macromanagement" by others. He was referring to faculty.

Trustee Fuentes commenced speechifying. Affecting a manner of smiley omniscience, he explained that, sadly, there are “elements” within our district who remain determined to “propogate the negative.” Somehow, he said, all these “employee-management issues” become the focus, and so our accreditation suffers.

Don Wagner—the defiant board member to whom I had alluded—then stated that he “disagreed with the premise” of my question, namely, the premise that our accreditation might get pulled.

No way, said Don.

Bill Jay then argued for the thesis that “some micromanagement” is good. For instance, during a crisis, micromanagement is just the thing.

I got a chance to respond. I noted that the issue isn’t whether there are kinds of micromanagement that are good—that’s a “red herring,” I said. No, the issue concerns the kinds of micromanagement that the board has been accused of engaging in. That's not the "crisis" kind. Are trustees gonna cease that kind or are they gonna dig in their heels and say it isn't micromanagement?

I turned to Mr. Wagner. I explained that the premise of my question was not that our Accreditation is at risk—I know that it isn’t, I said—but that trustee defiance ensures that we will continue with the effort—and embarrassment—of report after report. That's been going on for years now.


Mr. Wagner then stated that, maybe not CHUNK, but some faculty have mongered accreditation fear among innocent students!

Frankly, none of my students ever expresses that fear, although, occasionally, some reveal, with bemusement, that they are aware of the controversy over our accreditation, etc.

All you boots on the ground: do any of you encounter students who worry about our accreditaiton? If so, let us know! Speak up!

I explained to Mr. Wagner that he might feel comfortable with our endless Accreditation gauntlet, but he’s not among those who have to produce the lengthy Accreditation Reports. “We” do that, I said, referring to the college.

CONSPIRACY THEORY:

Right about then, Mr. Fuentes, with manifest incredulousness, declared, “Well, we all know where [the Accreds] get their information!”

He was expressing a worldview, which he has articulated more than once in the last year, according to which faculty control the accreditation process. In his mind, it's a rigged system.

“Oh, you mean your conspiracy theory!” I said. “Tell us about that! How does that work?"

Excitement filled the air!

Near as I could tell, several of the trustees—certainly Fuentes, Wagner, and Lang—gave each other a bemused and languorous “ha ha, we know about the Accreditation scheme, don’t we boys?” look.

But they weren’t going to take my bait. Nope. They clammed up.

My God. Some of these people live on freakin' Fantasy Island.

Eventually, Nancy Padberg spoke. She said: “micromanagement is a good thing, really, because it means you’re involved.” I studied Dave Lang’s face. He didn't grimace much, really.

John Williams then explained that it is a natural tendency of elected trustees, city council members, and the like, “to want to get involved in things.” He didn’t think the micromanagement that goes on in our district was as bad as it has been portrayed as being.

(Har har har. He then told of how, years ago, a few trustees, administrators, and faculty leaders would meet out on a boat in Dana Point Harbor to work out the contract and such. They'd shake hands and that was that. —Ah, the good old days!)

A classified employee who works with students reported that she doesn't hear them expressing fears of accreditation loss. She expressed the concern that our “distance ed” offerings do not include enough “foundational” courses to keep students at our college.


REASSIGNED TIME:

THEN, a long-time member of the School of Humanities and Languages—one with a stellar reputation as a teacher—spoke. She explained that, over the years, her relationship with her students has “eroded” in some ways, for she has less and less time to spend with them. She cited some of the non-instructional tasks that seem to have piled up over the last few years: program review, curriculum updates, SLOs, and, now, pressure to pursue distance ed.

That led to a point about reassigned time: i.e., course work from which an instructor is “released” so that he or she can devote time and energy to some non-instructional activity—e.g., chairing a department or a committee. Reassigned time is utterly routine in academia, but not in the SOCCCD.

A "ban" on reassigned time was among the innovations of the bad old "Board Majority"/Union Old Guard Axis that emerged in 1996, thanks to the union's homophobic fliers. Naturally, the ban didn't apply to union officers.

Since then, the absurdity of the ban has produced more exceptions, but reassigned time is kept by Mathur and the Board to an unworkably low level. It's yet another source of low morale.

As things stand, said the instructor, academic chairs (among others doing substantial extra-instructional work) get no reassigned time. Instead, they must teach a full load of classes and then take on chair duties on top of that. As compensation, they receive a stipend.

“I don’t need more money,” she said. “I need time.”

We all laughed at that one. No, we need more money too. But the point was that one can’t teach a full load and then do all of this other work. (Well, maybe some can; but many can’t.) Given the ban on reassigned time, increasingly, the very best faculty will simply refuse to do these jobs. She, for one, would never accept the job of chairing her department.

Mr. Wagner seemed frustrated. He argued that giving the excellent instructor reassigned time removes her from the classroom, so what about that?

“Our adjuncts are excellent,” responded the instructor. Another instructor—one from the School of Fine Arts—chimed in to make the same point: if she were given reassignment for a course, the adjunct who would replace her would be excellent.

Reassigned time doesn’t deprive students of good teachers, Don.

Marcia Milchiker suggested that the best way to increase the availability of reassigned time is through contract negotiations. (Hear that, Faculty Association?)

Then JOHN WILLIAMS weighed in. Trustees shouldn’t be involved in this matter, he said. We’ve got these CEOs who can get together and make the appropriate decisions about reassigned time, said John. This is “not a trustee issue."

That sounded awfully good. What’s gotten into the fellow?

CLUELESS?

I don’t recall what went on immediately after that—I stopped taking notes—but people started squirming like they do, cuz it was nearing 3:00 p.m.

I managed to get the last question. I referred to Mr. Fuentes’ earlier remark about “negativity.” I explained that I know the people who write the Accreditation reports. They are, I said, some of the best, the most conscientious, the hardest-working and honest people in the district.

“How do you think they feel,” I asked, “when trustees embrace the incompetent notion that the Accreditation process is rigged or dishonest?”

“It amazes me that you can be that clueless.”

Upon declaring that my question was actually a statement, Mr. Lang simply concluded the meeting. And that was about it.

Have a great weekend. —CW