Ten years of Bowdlerizing excellence!

WELL, HERE WE ARE in 2007, struggling against Raghu Mathur and his appalling friends to submit HONEST Accreditation reports to the commission.

It's not the first time. In fact, we've been through worse!

Let's return to a more innocent time: spring, 1997, in beauteous Irvine, California....

A few weeks after Mathur’s illegal appointment as interim President of IVC (April), Professor Rebecca Welch, who had been serving as the chair of the college’s accreditation “self-study,” resigned in protest over Mathur's ascendancy.

Months later, Mathur appointed his crony (and union Old Guard pal) Ray Chandos as chair. By local tradition (if not law), the chair of this committee is supposed to be jointly decided by the Academic Senate and the college President. The senate held a vote in which Connie Spar was chosen (to be recommended) by a wide margin over Ray. This did not stop Mathur from appointing Chandos as head of the Accred self-study.

What follows are bits of some relevant newspaper articles.

April 2, 1998
Controversy arises over Chandos appointment
By Jason Chittenden
Staff Writer [The IVC Voice]

Contributing to the tension on campus, Irvine Valley College President Raghu Mathur appointed Ray Chandos as Accreditation Self-Study Chair on March 23 despite the Academic Senate's vote of 15-4 in support of Connie Spar for the position….

April 21, 1998
College: Harsh report softened?
EDUCATION: Committee members say south- county accreditation report was altered.
By KIMBERLY KINDY
The Orange County Register

Harsh criticisms directed at the embattled South Orange County Community College trustees were removed from a draft report prepared for Irvine Valley College's accreditation review, according to district records released Monday….

[Kindy's article included the following comparison: Original draft vs. Chandos' draft:]

HOW DRAFT REPORT DIFFERS FROM ORIGINAL

ORIGINAL
"General community perception of the current board majority holds that (it) ... is not an 'independent body' but rather operates at the whims of a small vocal group of faculty, notably the faculty union leadership."

CHANDOS' DRAFT
"...the board is an independent policy-making board capable of reflecting the public interests..."

ORIGINAL
"...this board has repeatedly violated the California Open Meetings Act ... such repeated violations have resulted in additional lawsuits now underway and in a general breakdown of confidence."

CHANDOS' DRAFT
Statement was omitted from draft report.

ORIGINAL
"In the past, the board has interviewed the chancellor's final recommended candidates. More recently the board has instead directed the selection process itself..."

CHANDOS' DRAFT
"The governing board selects the college president under the employment procedures for executive positions, and delegates the evaluation of the president to the district chancellor."

ORIGINAL
"The president (Irvine Valley College President Raghu Mathur) makes every effort to review budgets and expenditures, though his unfamiliarity with college-wide budgeting and state fiscal concerns requires him to rely extensively on the advice of others, notably, specific board members' preferences..."

CHANDOS' DRAFT
"The president is well informed of state allocations and other income projections early in the budget development cycle." [End]

April 22, 1998
College District's Self-Evaluation Draft Draws Fire for Its Omissions
• Education: Critics say items critical of South Orange County trustees were omitted from the faculty administration report being sent to accreditation agency.
By ROBERT OURLIAN
LA TIMES STAFF WRITER

…Critics of the majority of the Board of Trustees charge that a draft report of a "self-evaluation" prepared by faculty and administrators was altered to remove lengthy passages critical of trustees.

The editing—while not illegal—shows an attempt to cover up problems at Irvine Valley College, one of the campuses administered by the South Orange district, critics charged….

4/25/98
College District Not at Risk, Trustees Say
• Education: leaders offer assurances on quality and accreditation after the latest flap, over criticism edited from a report.
By ROBERT OURLIAN
LA TIMES STAFF WRITER

Leaders of the South Orange County Community College District hastened to offer assurances Friday that educational quality is being maintained and that accreditation is not at risk as students threatened to leave the district to attend other colleges...Criticism is intensifying over faculty contentions that a draft college accreditation report on the school system's administration was "sanitized" when criticism of trustees was removed. But administrators said the process has retained its integrity....

May 1, 1998
OC Weekly
A Clockwork Orange
by Matt Coker

ERASER HEAD: Stinging criticism of the South Orange County Community College District board of trustees was reportedly removed from a self-evaluation prepared by a committee of faculty students and staff for Irvine Valley College's accreditation review, it was disclosed on April 20. Key passages detailed board micromanagement and violations of the state open-meeting law. Language blaming the district's state financial-watch status on the board's refusal to heed the advice of its own financial experts was apparently excised. The Irvine Valley professor who headed the eight-member committee reportedly said he edited many statements out of the report for length's sake. But it wasn't short enough for trustees, who complained the sanitized version was still too critical of them. Accreditation officials invited committee members to send them an alternative report if they believe the final version is inaccurate....

Behind closed doors

OUR BOARD, here at the SOCCCD, is known for, among other things, its “persistent and defiant misconduct” re the Brown Act, a law that forbids “secret” discussions by "legislative" bodies: school boards, city councils, and the like.

Ah, but infamy is fleeting. It looks like the Capo school district’s board are the new paragons of arrogance, incompetence, and secrecy. Check out this morning's LA Times: "Capistrano Unified secret meetings criticized":

Capistrano Unified School District trustees routinely violated the state's open-meetings law, discussing in secret topics such as construction contracts, how to silence a district critic and ways to prepare parents for bad news about schools, all of which should have been debated in public, according to a report released by the Orange County district attorney's office Tuesday.

Trustees tried to keep the community from participating in district decision-making and to manipulate public opinion, the report said.

"That such discussions are undertaken in secret by a body charged with the community's most important obligation, to adequately educate its young, is nothing short of disturbing," said the report by Assistant Dist. Atty. William J. Feccia.

The 58-page report is the latest blow to the beleaguered southern Orange County district, which this year saw its former superintendent and another top administrator indicted on felony charges of using public funds to influence an election and create an enemies list. Although the alleged violations of the state's open-meeting law do not meet the bar for criminal prosecution, if the district disputes the findings, prosecutors could file a lawsuit to prove the violations occurred, the report said.

…Though most of the district's 56 schools are well-regarded, its trustees and administrators have been mired in conflicts in recent years. Critics have loudly protested the location of a new high school, opposed attendance boundary changes and fought construction of a $35-million administration complex while hundreds of classes were being held in aging portables….

Really, you should read the whole article. For me, it’s like déjà vu.

The OC Reg covered the story, too. They note that

The district attorney's recommended actions follow on the heels of a lawsuit earlier this year against the district, when the district agreed to record its closed-session meetings for one year and have trustees undergo Brown Act training as part of a February settlement agreement. However, the district admitted to no wrongdoing in that settlement. The district attorney's report, by contrast, insists that the district confess to the alleged violations.

Years ago, when Wendy and I sued the SOCCCD board over its Brown Act violations, at one point, the court required similar recordings.

Guess what?

That’s right. The board flat didn’t do it.

TEN YEARS AGO:

9/19/97
Second lawsuit filed vs. college district
By KIMBERLY KINDY
The Orange County Register

A second lawsuit that accuses South Orange County Community College District board members of violating public meeting laws was filed Thursday.

An Orange County Superior Court judge also signed a ruling against the board on the first lawsuit Thursday, saying board members violated the Brown Act in April when they appointed an interim president at Irvine Valley College behind closed doors. The judge had made an oral ruling two weeks earlier.

In the second lawsuit, Irvine Valley Professor Roy Bauer accuses the board of violating the Brown Act on July 18 when it met in closed session and emerged with a plan to reorganize the administration at both Irvine and Saddleback colleges.

Three board members walked out of that meeting in protest, trustee Dave Lang said.

"In my estimation, there have been violations of the Brown Act," Lang said in an interview. "I have made that known very well to them (fellow board members) when I walked out of the meeting in July."

Suck up and smack down

THE BIG ISSUES at the SOCCCD continue to be (1) Accreditation and (2) the “50% law.”

ACCREDITATION. Just in case anyone was wondering, there’s no chance the Faculty Senate Presidents of our two colleges will be signing the Accreditation Focused Midterm Reports.

The Irvine Valley College report will be forwarded to the commission on October 11th (Thursday). The Saddleback College report will likely be forwarded tomorrow.

To learn why these reports will be sent unsigned by faculty leaders, just view the discussions of the reports that occurred at the August and September meetings of the SOCCCD Board of Trustees (items 7.1 and 7.2 respectively). (Luddites: click on the pretty blue words.)

A colleague and friend—a grizzled district veteran—enjoys saying that Chancellor Raghu Mathur embraces a “suck up and smack down” management philosophy, which is pretty obvious. Unsurprisingly therefore, Mathur has ordered Saddleback College President McCullough and Irvine Valley College President Roquemore to achieve signage.

But it ain’t gonna happen.

THE “50% LAW.” As you know, the district just squeaked by, fifty-percent-wise, for 2006-2007, but non-instructional expenditures have been trending upward for five years, and so the worry is that the district will be out of compliance for 2007-2008. That’s why a special committee (DRACula) was formed to study the matter and make recommendations. The committee seems to be making rapid progress.

Evidently, data regarding 2007-2008 expenditures were distributed by the district at the recent DRACula meeting. I’m told that projections have been made based on that data, and the picture is not good.

Instructional spending, again, is supposed to be at 50% or higher.

Try 46%.

The Song Remains the Same (Rebel Girl)

YESTERDAY Columbus Day was observed, and Rebel Girl's son, a kindergarten student, returned home with the construction paper ship in a bottle pictured above. The "poem" printed on the sail with the drinking straw mast reads:

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus called aboard his crew.
Mighty strong and brave was he,
As he sailed across the sea.

It seems to Rebel Girl that, during her elementary school years, Columbus Day marked the beginning of a season that ended with Thanksgiving. She spent much of that time with her long black hair plaited into two braids, clutching ears of corn and colorful gourds. She screamed at the parade of explorers and pilgrims disembarking from their white-sailed ships: "Welcome to our shores!" and "We will teach you to plant corn!" In the play, the pilgrims taught her how to bow her head and give thanks. Her feathers were construction paper, her brown dress was fringed with yarn, her feet were bare but her hair was real.

She was an all-purpose Indian in the school pageants, retired after Thanksgiving so that the children more apt to be cast in the Nutcracker might take the stage.

It's all coming back to her.

MEANWHILE, as an unconscious part of their private observation of Columbus Day, Rebel Girl's family finally gave in and called Roto-Rooter about the sluggish kitchen sink drain which had, over the weekend, while Rebel Girl tried one solution after another, resulted in much dishwashing being done in the adjacent bathroom sink.

The plumber arrived, a burly overly polite fellow who kept calling Red Emma "sir." His story finally came out: he was a marine, happy to be back after two tours, carrying shrapnel in his body, hoping to move with his wife to Murrieta, buy a house and become a parole officer. He had been in the original assault on Fallujah.

Rice was the culprit. The plumber warned us about too much faith in the InSinkErator. I wouldn't put anything down there, he said, except, maybe, lettuce.

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