Inarticulate anarchists at Irvine Valley College

THIS MORNING, Rebel Girl told me that she noticed something odd on campus. She took me out to the construction site of Irvine Valley College’s Business Technology Innovation Center, which is near the Library. The site is surrounded by the usual green construction fence (see). On that fence, someone had drawn a big question mark with a circle at the bottom. In the circle was the letter “A.”

“That circle-A—that’s the symbol for anarchism,” said Reb.

I could see at least two other places on the fence where the same graffito had been drawn.

We stared at one of them.

“OK, but what’s it mean?”, I asked.

“Dunno.”

Later, I looked up “Anarchism symbols” on the web. Wikipedia asserts that, “While anarchists have historically largely denied the importance of symbols to political movement, [they] have embraced certain symbols for their cause, including most prominently the circle-A and the black flag.”

Well, we haven’t spotted any black flags yet.

What do you suppose these anarchists, if that’s who they are, are trying to say?

I’ve got some ideas:

WHAT ARE THESE INARTICULATE ANARCHISTS TRYING TO SAY?

Interpretation #1:

Is this the new O.C. Chomsky Building we keep hearing about?

Interpretation #2:

I think I’m an anarchist, but I’m not entirely sure.

Interpretation #3:

Fellow anarchists: check out this fabulous green plastic camo!

—Let us know if you've got better ideas. No doubt you do.

Sunny says "hey." —CW

The problem with kids today is that they're too succinct

From this morning’s New York Times: College Daily’s Vulgarity Is Now Free-Speech Issue

On the campus of Colorado State University, opinion is divided over whether a terse editorial that ran in the student newspaper on Sept. 21 was an exercise of free speech or immature judgment.

The four-word message began with “Taser this” and added a four-letter expletive directed at President Bush, in a type size larger than most newspaper headlines. The message was “the view of The Collegian editorial board," the daily newspaper stated....

Greg Luft, chairman of Colorado State’s journalism department, said every college newspaper in the country exhibits “occasional exuberance” on its pages....

—Yeah, and occasional succinctitude, too.

(Sorry. We bowdlerized the original headline with that goddam asterisk. Try an' guess what the original word said. )

Les Folies SOCCCD (Will Good triumph over Goo?)

What’s up this week at the South Orange County Community College District?

THE RISING NON-INSTRUCTIONAL EXPENDITURES FOLLIES. Both colleges (i.e., Saddleback College and Irvine Valley College) are forwarding their faculty hiring priority lists to the board of trustees for approval. As you know, attempts to address our “50%” problem (by law, at least 50% of our district’s spending must be on instruction, and we are dangerously close to the 50% line) might include hiring many more faculty, but there’s no use talking about that just yet.

Owing to recent and frantic scrutiny of our financial records, the district has found that it is not out of compliance with the “50% law” for 2006-07 after all. I’m told that we’re at something like 50.03%. Since we’ve been descending from 53% down to 50% in the last five or so years, and since the district and its colleges are essentially spending money now pretty much as they did during 06-07, we’ve got a big problem re the 50% law STILL.

The law (Ed Code §84362) gives to faculty the right to data regarding college/district spending, and so a formal request for those data has been made. District officials have responded and have expressed the intention to comply. The district crowd is pretty peevish about this.

It's hard to say when faculty will get the data.

DRACULA:

At one point, the district decided that our efforts to address the 50% problem would be led by DRAC—the District Resources Allocation Committee. But, now, the Chancellor has created a new committee for this purpose.

It has been dubbed DRACULA—informally, I assume. It’s nice to see that people still have a sense of humor in the good ol' SOCCCD.

I’m told that, very recently, DRACULA met for the first time. I’m hoping to be able to report DRACULA’s progress to you, but the group’s members are pretty tight-lipped.

Many faculty suspect that the 50% problem does not derive from spending patterns at the colleges. Rather, it derives from spending patterns at the DISTRICT. If that’s true, the Chancellor is exactly the kind of guy who can be expected to take steps to prevent anyone from knowing about it.

So, in a way, this is a game, and it’s fun. The faculty and the public want to know the facts, and the district (or the Chancellor) don’t want us to know the facts. Who will prevail? Will good triumph over goo?

We need to know why we spiraled downward from 53% to 50% in a brief period. If we don’t understand this event, we’re gonna be up Shit Creek, cuz the 50% thing is a serious law, not the usual state BS.

THE ACCREDITATION FOLLIES:

Monday night, the SOCCCD board voted 4/3 to include its nasty and inflammatory “response” verbiage in the already existing drafts of the Accreditation Midterm Reports.

You know about Accreditation, right? The ACCJC (of WASC) comes around every six years to determine how well each college is doing relative to established standards. Our two colleges are “accredited” (2004), but the Accreds keep saying that we need to work on some problems, such as administrative instability, trustee micromanagement, and a “plague” of despair—largely inspired by the Board Majority’s ruthless and abusive lackey, Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur.

But the trustees who dominate our board contemn the Accreditation process and the Accreds. Plus they’ve figured out that the ACCJC is essentially spineless. Naturally, therefore, they’ve been less than cooperative in the colleges’ efforts to satisfy the ACCJC that we’re working to overcome our problems.

At the August board meeting, the writers of the most recent Accreditation reports suddenly discovered that the district (Mathur and Co.) had written a “response”—to the Accreds and to faculty. At that eleventh hour, the Board decided to have the “response” verbiage incorporated into the reports. But the faculty who had labored on the Accred reports for four or five months had been careful to write honestly and carefully. The response verbiage, however, was neither honest nor careful. It was shit.

SLO-MO TRAIN WRECK:

At the August meeting, IVC’s Academic Senate President warned that she might not be able to sign off on the report if she were forced to include the district’s nasty and substandard verbiage. (See August meeting video [jump to 7.1].)

No matter. The Board Majority (Lang/Wagner/Fuentes/Williams) approved incorporation of the “response” into each college’s report.

In subsequent weeks, college Accred writers sought a form of “incorporation” that they could live with. Simply appending the “district response” or submitting it separately might be palatable. But Mathur acted to prevent that approach. He pushed for a form of “incorporation” that made signing off on the report an endorsement of the district’s unfortunate language.

At Monday’s meeting, the Mathurian editions were revealed. Again, faculty stated their objections. But on a vote of 4/3, the board approved these stinkoid versions. (See Sept meeting video [jump to 7.2].)

AND SO, starting late Monday night, it appeared that the two colleges would be forced to send Accreditation reports that are not signed by their chief authors or the faculty senate presidents.

Amazing.

"What does it mean? Will the heavens fall?" Such questions bounced all over the goddam walls.

BUT THEN: by midweek, the word had spread that, on the day after the board meeting, board president Dandy Dave "the quisling" Lang had a change of heart! Or perhaps he awoke to the terrible realization that signature-less reports would make him look like an *sshole.

So he set about to undo the mess that he and his nasty friends had created.

Meanwhile, the Saddleback College and the Irvine Valley College faculty senates met. Senators voted to direct their presidents not to sign the reports. The die was cast. Or not?

(At Thursday's IVC senate meeting, when the vote was cast, Mathur's inside man immediately got up and left to make his usual phone call. I don't know why we don't just come right out and say, "OK, Bowdler Boy. You can go call Raghu now. Give the fellow our love.")

Stay tuned. Things could get pretty. Or they could get ugly.

My money's on ugly. —CW

†P.S.:
Speaking of accreditation and Raghu's cronies, remember this?

“[The] Accreditation Self-Study Chair [Ray Chandos] made substantive changes to [the report] or saw that a distinctly different report was submitted to you, external to the work of the committees as a whole and without opportunity for our review. The Self-Study Chair permitted non-committee members to alter the contents of our report without going through the committees for their responses or revision…[W]e have no way of determining what changes were made to the [report], when they were made, who made them, or what evidence base was used to support any such changes.”

—From the preface of the Supplemental Report for standards five and ten of the IVC accreditation self-study. July 31, 1998. (Signed by committee chairs and members.)

Updates on Jamal

For regular updates on Jamal Malone's condition, go to Updates. The site also indicates ways to assist the Malone family.

Jamal is a Saddleback College student who sustained serious injuries last week and is in a coma. (See earlier posts.) He appears to be receiving excellent care at Mission Hospital.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: Because a fire was in my head

It's been a week where Rebel Girl has woken time and time again with a fire in her head. She's writing - not on the blog - but in that other place that still exists, that hazel wood. So - listen to Christy Moore sing, watch the dancer, read the Yeats:


"The Song of Wandering Aengus"

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.


When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.


Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

More on Jamal Malone

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FROM the OC Register: People asking why athlete was beaten: Saddleback College football coach says bad blood didn't seem to exist among players in the assault of Jamal Malone

The game was well on its way to a rout when Jamal Malone and Chad Duran walked onto the field, two first-year college football players trying to stand out amid the Saddleback Gauchos packed roster.

With the team leading Mt. San Jacinto by 38 points—on its way to a 52 to 0 victory—head coach Mark McElroy wanted to give all his players a chance to compete, no small feat on a roster than began the season with more than 140 people.

The Sept. 1 game was the last time Malone, 20, and Duran, 18, competed on the same field. Less than a month later an early morning melee has left Malone in critical condition, and Duran—along with three other individuals—facing assault charges.

Malone remained in critical condition Thursday as family, friends and community members try unravel the events surrounding the attack.

Police said the fight took place during an early Sunday morning party at the Promenade Apartments on Marguerite Parkway. Malone was fighting four other people, police said, when he was punched, fell and hit his head on the concrete. Malone lives at the apartments, but family members say the party was not at his home.

Police arrested Duran, Wallace Rodrigues, and Nigel Kawai, all 18, and an unidentified minor who are facing charges of assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit great bodily harm. Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said that despite rumors to the contrary no baseball bats were used during the fight, pointing out that fists can be considered deadly weapons.

Much of the attention surrounding the incident has centered on the victim and the alleged attackers’ involvement in the football program. Rodrigues, was also briefly involved in the program, McElroy said, although he left before any games were played.

Saddleback officials today attempted to dispel rumors that the fight had anything to do with football, pointing out that Duran had left the team more than two weeks ago.

“I never saw any problems between those two ever,” McElroy said.

With an estimated attrition rate of 25 percent, Duran and Rodrigues’ departures were not unexpected, Athletic Director Tony Lipold said.

“It’s real competitive and they show up expecting to be the star they were in high school,” Lipold said. “It doesn’t always pan out.”….

Saddleback student fights for life

In this morning’s OC Register: Saddleback student fights for life: Four arrested on suspicion of assault on football player:

Three days after receiving the early-morning phone call that every parent fears, Brett Malone is still in a state of disbelief over the beating that left his son Jamal fighting for his life, allegedly at the hands of two fellow Saddleback College students and two others.


Malone, 20, was in a coma and in critical condition at Mission Hospital on Wednesday night, his father said.



...Four people, including a minor, were arrested in connection with a Sunday fight at the Promenade Apartments on Marguerite Parkway, authorities said.


Police say the altercation took place after the four crashed an early-morning party in the area. Jamal Malone's apartment is at the Promenade, but family members don't believe the party was there. 


A fight broke out, possibly stemming from a previous dispute. During the melee Jamal Malone was punched, and he fell and hit his head on the pavement, said Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino.


Police arrested Nigel Kawai, Wallace Rodrigues and Chad Duran, all 18, and an unidentified minor. All posted bond and were released Monday, according to the Sheriff’s Department's online blotter. They could not be reached for comment. 


The suspects face charges of assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit great bodily harm, authorities said. If convicted, they face up to five years each in prison, Amormino said.


Jamal Malone, a sophomore at Saddleback, is a defensive back for the Gauchos. He had played at home Sept. 1 against Mt. San Jacinto College in a game his team won, 52-0. Malone had two tackles and broke up one pass. 


Duran played in that game as well, school sports officials said, but he has since left the team.


“It’s a very unfortunate situation,” said college athletic director Tony Lipold. “It’s really not a football issue; it’s a student issue.


“We’re worried about this kid coming out of it. We’re just praying for him,” he said. “This is a life-changing situation for all these kids. We’re just trying to give (Malone’s family) the support that we can in the most positive way we can.”


Mark McElroy, Saddleback head football coach, has spent a lot of time at the hospital with the family and said Jamal Malone is “a really fine young man.” 


He’s “a really solid team player willing to help the team in any way that he can,” McElroy said. “And he has a smile that will light up the room. He’s a strong young man with a strong spirit.”


The 2005 Tesoro High School graduate is in his first year of playing college football. He will be recognized during a moment of silence at Friday’s game....