Rebel Girl has a Brand New Blog

The Mark on the Wall is for all you writers and readers out there: check it out by clicking on this link. She describes it as a literary weblog for Orange County and the border regions of Los Angeles and San Diego.

It's no Dissent but it's something. This week she's all a twitter about Janet Fitch reading in Laguna Beach. Last week it was Jack Kerouac and Virginia Woolf.

Academics more moderate than liberal

ATTENTION ALL DEMAGOGUES!

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: The Liberal (and Moderating) Professoriate.

THE GIST: sure, in academia, conservatives are a minority, but moderates, not liberals, dominate. Community college faculty are the least liberal/radical of all.

The article:

Faculty members identify as liberals and vote Democratic in far greater proportions than found in the American public at large. That finding by itself won’t shock many, but the national study released Saturday at a Harvard University symposium may be notable both for its methodology and other, more surprising findings....

...The results of the study find a professoriate that may be less liberal than is widely assumed, even if conservatives are correctly assumed to be in a distinct minority. The authors present evidence that there are more faculty members who identify as moderates than as liberals. The authors of the study also found evidence of a significant decline by age group in faculty radicalism, with younger faculty members less likely than their older counterparts to identify as radical or activist….

Political Orientation of Faculty Members — 7 Categories

Extremely liberal 9.4%
Liberal 34.7%
Slightly liberal 18.1%
Middle of the road 18.0%
Slightly conservative 10.5%
Conservative 8.0%
Very conservative 1.2%

While that breakdown would at first glance back the claim that academe is run by “tenured radicals,” [authors] Gross and Simmons say that is too simplistic. They analyzed the responses to a series of questions on social and political views of the two “slightly” categories and found significant differences between the “slightly” and “extremely” answers for both liberals and conservatives. They also found significant commonalities among the two “slightly” categories and the middle category.

Based on that view, they argue that there are in fact three identifiable political groupings in academe, and liberalism does not come out on top — the moderate group does.

Political Orientation of Faculty Members — 3 Categories

Liberal 44.1%
Moderate 46.1%
Conservative 9.2%

…The sector breakdowns demonstrate the importance of including community colleges, whose faculty members are more likely than any other sectors to identify as conservative. While some previous studies on faculty politics have suggested elite research universities as the places with the most ideological uniformity, liberals appear to be most dominant at liberal arts colleges…. [My emphasis.]

Red Emma Hurls Himself Against the Wall and Enjoys It Plenty

ALA Banned Books Week 2007
UC Irvine Read-Out Wednesday, October 3

“I'm going to hurl myself against the wall

'Cause I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all.”

Warren Zevon is dead, but he left a lyric for nearly every occasion. He was there in spirit with all the other dead poets and writers—Allen Ginsberg, Kurt Vonnegut and J.D. Salinger (oops, not quite, but he sure is quiet lately)—and I thought I heard him singing the above, which Red Emma has sort of adopted as a personal and political anthem. And here, once again, yet another reason why.

Despite listings in the campus newspaper, the thirty-year-old New University (okay, unreadable, and, besides, nobody reads it—certainly nobody edits it), web and email and newsletter and Much Ado postings and fliers, not a single UCI Senate faculty member, TA, Librarian, or Lecturer came around to support this event organized by the American Library Association in support of solidarity and intellectual freedom. I mention this only because the event was also sponsored by the English Department and the union representing Librarians and Lecturers, so you’d think (were you wall-hurler like me) that maybe some of your colleagues would show, which they did not.

I should say that Red Emma, raised in Sunday School, likes to comfort himself with that New Testament verse about where two or more are gathered, so am I. (Sadly, Jesus didn’t show either.)

Still, I cheered myself at the participation of the new Campus Writing Coordinator, Jonathan Alexander (pictured below standing under the umbrella), who started the 90 minute “read-out” of challenged, banned, censored books with a heroic presentation of Whitman. Sue Cross, a longtime tutor and UPTE organizer, read from Ngugi wa Thiong'o’s Devil on the Cross, which was a great choice because the much-persecuted superstar of African lit runs UCI’s International Center for Writing and Translation, another official sponsor.

Those two good folks went to class and meetings, and so it was the Red Emma up there on his own for awhile adjacent the flagpole, reading out loud the list of 100 top books on the hit list, shit list, whatever it is, compiled by the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Judy Blume is on this list I think 6 times.

You rock, Blumey!

But then the heavens parted on the shit-storm of apathy and indifference and there emerged a lovely young woman named Asia. Unlike the other dopes who just walked by, the noise of the idiot frat boy gangsta rap in their ears, my angel figured out the drill, went through the pile of exemplary bannage I’d assembled near the microphone and the “Free People Read Freely” banner and, delighted, grabbed Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. “My favorite book,” she exclaimed, chortled, gushed. All of those. It was a beautiful thing to witness. “I cried when he died,” she went on.

I surrendered the mic pronto to Asia, who read the first chapter of one of my own absolute favorite novels of all time, both of us laughing at the Jon Jonson and the dirty limerick and the great line about his breath of roses and mustard gas and I looked around and just hoped that she would stay up there and read the whole novel to me, in solidarity with authors and readers and as testimonial to the importance of intellectual freedom. You know, like that.

But she was a Business-Econ major, and had to go to class. My heart was broken, both from joy and discontent, but in a good way. Happily, two of my own Composition students soon arrived, both reading from The Catcher in the Rye, and they were righteous readings indeed and, although I would have done the whole thing by myself anyway, I comforted myself that at least a couple of people got it.

But Lord knows what the New U reporters and photographers there to cover us made of the whole affair. I tried to spin it as the “first-ever” effort and “Next year will be bigger,” but I’m afraid the easy conclusion is the right one in this case: a national event sponsored by multiple organizations on a huge institution of higher learning and eight people show up? And except for the amazing new CWC and my pal Sue, not one actual teacher or other variety of grown-up academic professional? —RE

Andrew Tonkovich

Truth, lies, and video games in the moron nation

From this morning’s New York Times: For Schools, Lottery Payoffs Fall Short of Promises:

…[Pro-lottery] Pitches … have become popular among lawmakers who…have sold gambling as a savior for cash-starved public schools and other government programs….

…Now, a New York Times examination of lottery documents, as well as interviews with lottery administrators and analysts, finds that lotteries accounted for less than 1 percent to 5 percent of the total revenue for K-12 education last year in the states that use this money for schools.

In reality, most of the money raised by lotteries is used simply to sustain the games themselves, including marketing, prizes and vendor commissions.

…Also, states eager for more players are introducing games that emphasize instant gratification and more potentially addictive forms of gambling…. [My emphases.]

Also in this morning’s NYT: Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church:

First the percussive sounds of sniper fire and the thrill of the kill. Then the gospel of peace.

Across the country, hundreds of ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants have drawn concern and criticism through their use of an unusual recruiting tool: the immersive and violent video game Halo.

…Those buying it must be 17 years old, given it is rated M for mature audiences. But that has not prevented leaders at churches and youth centers across Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches that have cautioned against violent entertainment, from holding heavily attended Halo nights and stocking their centers with multiple game consoles so dozens of teenagers can flock around big-screen televisions and shoot it out.

…Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”

Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.

…“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies….

…Players of Halo 3 control the fate of Master Chief, a tough marine armed to the teeth who battles opponents with missiles, lasers, guns that fire spikes, energy blasters and other fantastical weapons. They can also play in teams, something the churches say allows communication and fellowship opportunities…. [My emphases].

The “Pankey Chair”

.I'M HANGIN' AROUND this morning ‘cause I’m on brat watch: my sister-in-law, Susan, is at the hospital, giving birth to two girls. I’m supposed to come runnin’ with my camcorder after the blessed event is completed.

.So here I sit. I’ve been catching up on my reading.

.But wait! I’m looking out my window and I see two deer out on my patio. Very cool. I took some pics.

.Back to my reading:

1. HORNY IRVINE COPS. What’s with the cops in this town, anyway? About a year ago, DtB followed the story of IVC’s “sexy yet corrupt” police chief. (He was let go amid rumors of conduct most foul, and, no, I'm not talkin' about his love life. See IVC’s top cops.) That story led us to an old story about the Irvine PD and its stunning sex-related scandals of yore. (As far as I know, presently, the IPD is squeaky clean. But since I know a bit about inductive logic, I’ve gotta say: it ain't likely.)

.On Thursday, the OC Reg reported that

.A jury awarded more than $1 million in damages Wednesday to a [LAPD] police detective who claimed she was wrongly demoted for complaining about alleged sexual misconduct by her boss…The jury deliberated for several hours before finding that the Police Department retaliated against Ya-May Christle for complaining about former Deputy Chief Michael Berkow....

.OK, this is confusing. Why is this story in the OC Reg? Luckily, a June Reg article clears things up:

.Berkow was brought to the LAPD in 2003 to reform its disciplinary system. The former Rochester, N.Y., officer and Irvine, Calif., police chief initiated investigations that led to dozens of officers being fired for misconduct…He became police chief in Savannah in November.

.So it’s like this: years ago, former New York cop Berkow became Irvine’s Police Chief. Then he went off to the LAPD to head that department’s Professional Standards Bureau. Whilst firing LAPD cops for their professional misconduct, Berkow had “a three-year affair with a female sergeant under his supervision.”

.But of course he did!

.Then he left to become the top cop in Savannah.

.Did you ever get the notion that cop culture is flat rotten?

2. THAT OTHER FUBAR SOUTH COUNTY DISTRICT. The OC Weekly has a fine article about the Wild CAPO school district saga. In some ways, the excesses and vices of CUSD officials parallel those of the SOCCCD. Check it out.


3. THE GAY BOMB? Yesterday, Inside Higher Ed reported that

• ["F*CK BUSH"] J. David McSwane, who wrote the now notorious editorial about President Bush for The Rocky Mountain Collegian, will keep his job. The editorial contained two words, one of them starting with an F, and set off many calls for McSwane to lose his position as the top editor at the student paper at Colorado State University.…[The] board declined to fire McSwane.

• [CHEMICALLY INDUCED GAYNESS] Nobel Prizes will be announced next week, so that means it’s time for the annual Ig Nobel Prizes, which were awarded Thursday night. This year’s winners were honored for research on the side effects of sword swallowing…, how sheets get wrinkled…, bed bugs…, extracting vanilla fragrance from cow dung…, rats’ inability to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards or Dutch forwards…, the “gay bomb” that may be used some day to make enemy soldiers find each other irresistible to each other…, problems in alphabetization created by the word “the”…, and the impact on appetite of a self-refilling bowl of soup….

• [SPILLED MOLASSES AT CAL] About 40 protesters at the University of California at Berkeley assembled an eight-foot high Trojan Horse and spilled molasses on the sidewalk to protest the university’s new research collaboration with the energy giant BP….

4. A NEW BUST OF ST. RONALD. Finally, the OC Reg reports that

"Dutch" is getting a new home in Orange...A bronze bust of President Ronald Reagan will be unveiled Oct. 10 on the Chapman University campus…The Reagan bust was chosen by donor Libby Pankey to commemorate the new Edgar and Elizabeth Pankey Chair in Media Arts.

I like that. The “Pankey Chair.” Didn't Buckwheat call Spanky "Pankey"? Indeed he did.

Evidently, the list of busts at Chapman includes the following “renowned figures”:

• Martin Luther King Jr. [OK, but obvious]
• Cecil B. DeMille [an infamous rat bastard who made big, dumb movies]
• Ella Fitzgerald [OK, she was good]
• Milton Friedman [greed is good, too, evidently]
• Abraham Lincoln [freed the slaves and all]
• Mozart [OK, but they must be using a randomizer]
• George Washington [snooze]

Still waiting for that call. In my family, kids and pups and kittens are called "schlenkies."

Wow. Two more schlenks.

P.S.: why I admire John Ford but not Cecil B. DeMille (movies aside)

[Director John] Ford's attitude to McCarthyism in Hollywood is expressed by a story told by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. A faction of the Directors Guild of America led by Cecil B. DeMille had tried to make it mandatory for every member to sign a loyalty oath. A whispering campaign was being conducted against Mankiewicz, then President of the Guild, alleging he had communist sympathies.

At a crucial meeting of the Guild, DeMille's faction spoke for four hours until Ford spoke against DeMille and proposed a vote of confidence in Mankiewicz.... According to Mankiewicz, Ford's words were:

"My name's John Ford. I make Westerns. I don't think there's anyone in this room who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. DeMille—and he certainly knows how to give it to them.

But I don't like you, C.B., and I don't like what you've been saying here tonight.”

—From Wikipedia entry for John Ford

I love that story. Peter Bogdanovich tells it best.

Oh, and Ford's motion? It passed.

UPDATE:

The Schlenkies have arrived! Two healthy girls, and no C-section! All is well, I'm told. I'm outa here. —Chunk

Is Raghu losing it?

DURING A BREAK this morning, I ran up to the Library to see how Chancellor Raghu Mathur's second "Q&A" was going.

Yesterday's Q&A went badly. It was poorly attended and seemed to bring out the worst in the fellow. Raghu was pointing his Finger of Blame a lot. The air in the room was a suffocating mixture of uncomfortable silence and intimidatitude.

Today's Q&A attracted maybe six people, none of them faculty. And the air seemed even worse. When I got there—about 10:30—Raghu was being treated to some intense brown-nosery by two classified employees, one of whom took the curious position that an Accreditation report is no place for a college to "air its dirty laundry."

As you know, accreditation is the process whereby colleges demonstrate their adherence to quality standards. This includes efforts by the colleges themselves to identify their flaws—including any "errant practices"—for the sake of overcoming them.

The accreditation process is, in a phrase, friggin' laundry time.

Evidently, the dirty laundry de jour is the unseemly conduct of the Chancellor and board members during the last two board meetings—spectacles fully on display, in streaming video, at a district website.

(Starting in August, meetings of the SOCCCD Board of Trustees have been viewable, in streaming video, at this site—yes, click on these blue words. Jump to 7.2 for the September meeting and 7.1 for the August meeting.)

Well, today, as I walked into the Q&A, Mr. Brown Schnoz had just noted that IVC Accred Report writers recently submitted two new paragraphs for the report. In one paragraph, he said, they cited the portions of August and September's board meetings that concerned the Accreditation Reports. They provided a link to the video!

It was during these parts of the meetings that Raghu and his board pals acted like jerks, ramming substandard verbiage down the throats of college accreditation writers.

My God! These terrible FACULTY persons are trying to get the Accreditors to SEE FOR THEMSELVES WHAT REALLY GOES ON in our district by inviting 'em to watch the video on the district's website!

What's the matter with 'em? Are they SATANISTS?!

Yes, yes, yes, nodded Raghu. It's unbelievable, isn't it? But you understand, my good fellow, don't you?

After a moment, Raghu added: "You should run for office." And he smiled.

P.S.:

AGAIN: If you'd like to view the board discussions referred to above, Click on this blue writing here.

Jump to 7.1 of the August meeting and 7.2 of the September meeting. (And for a hoot, don't forget to check out the "public comment" at the start of the September meeting.)

Could somebody download this stuff for us? I can't do that from here. (I ain't got broadband.)

BTW: to contact the accrediting agency and its commission (the ACCJC), click here.

—666

Mathur bloviates (Q&A at IVC)

CHANCELLOR RAGHU P. MATHUR’s “Q & A” at Irvine Valley College this afternoon was a bust. Aside from administrators, only a handful of classified employees attended.

Except for me, no faculty attended.

Mathur was in “bloviation” mode. There weren't many questions, so he held forth.

Fearful employees nodded subtly. The sound of his voice reverberated in the empty room with its high ceiling and odd blackness.

After a few minutes, I just got outa there.

Later, I asked someone how it went after I left. They said, “His mask slipped.” For a moment, the real Raghu was in full ghastly view.

REMEMBER that email two days ago? The one from Mathur that “encouraged” the colleges to “add any comments about the inclusion of the District...Response...as deemed appropriate, particularly if such additions would enable the accreditation chairs to appropriately include their signatures on the reports”?

The team at IVC did just that. IVC's chief Accred writer added two brief paragraphs that explained the facts concerning the district's inclusion of the “response.” That, of course, is just what it would take to get those signatures.

That's all.

Guess what?

Mathur rejected them.


BUT I SEE THE FUTURE. I see a dark time ahead for Raghu and his patrons. Angry commissioners. Peevish goblins. Foul incubi. Wakeful, sweaty Mathurian nights.

Spooky, ain't it?