The SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT —
"[The] blog he developed was something that made the district better." - Tim Jemal, SOCCCD BoT President, 7/24/23
The Lariat is making available (here) some sort of preview of its Fall Orientation Edition, set to hit newstands in a week.
Read “police strive to protect students,” “painless registration process,” and other fluffy stories that inspire the question, “What’s the difference between the Lariat and a college house organ?”
house organn.
A periodical published by a business organization for its employees or clients. (American Heritage Dictionary)
Dear Lariat kids: we suggest leaving college and district PR to college and district professionals who are paid to make these institutions look good. (They seem pretty good at it.)
Your job? Cut through the fluff. Find out what's really going on, what students should know, if they are to be genuinely informed.
Suggestions for stories:
• Will Don Wagner be too distracted by his run for Assembly to do his job as SOCCCD board president? • Gosh, what's it mean when one of our trustees (John Williams) is publicly spanked by the OC Grand Jury for gross incompetence, etc. re his county office? That he responds to said spankage with open defiance? That he continues to claim to be among our board's "fiscal conservatives" who believe in small and efficient government? • Just what is the deal with ATEP? The district has sunk (and continues to sink) huge money into this property, but it remains unclear what the campus will even be! • Given the (increasing) religious diversity of South County communities, is it appropriate for SOCCCD's Chancellor to publicly show (as re recently did) a video that assumes that everyone is a Christian? • What are the issues raised by SOCCCD's odd circumstance--that, at a time of state-wide and county-wide draconian budget cuts, it continues to sit atop a huge shitpile of money and it's "fiscally conservative" trustees have no intention of returning any of it to taxpayers? • Why have there been no negative political consequences for our trustees for their continued support of the despised and incompetent Raghu Mathur and their record of abject folly (historically and recently) re the colleges' accreditation? • As a recently released survey of students and faculty (at IVC) makes clear, students haven't a CLUE of the issues that have roiled this district for more than a decade. Just why is that? How can that be overcome? • Given the harsh economic realities of the moment, can our colleges' student governments justify jacking up textbook prices as a source of revenue?
No doubt our readers can come up with further suggestions.
German prosecutors are investigating about 100 professors across the country on suspicion they took bribes to help students get their doctoral degrees, authorities said Saturday.
The investigation is focused on the Institute for Scientific Consulting, based in Bergisch Gladbach, just east of Cologne, which allegedly acted as the intermediary between students and the professors, said Cologne prosecutor's spokesman Guenther Feld. … According to … two publications, students paid between euro4,000 to euro20,000 ($5,700 to $28,500) to the company, which promised to help them get their doctorate degrees through its extensive contacts within university faculties. … So far, evidence points to the involvement of about 100 professors across the country spanning ''numerous disciplines,'' Feld was quoted as saying. Most are people teaching classes on a contract basis, rather than full-time professors, he said.
Evidently, it is possible that the students did not know they were paying for bribes.
One professor (a law professor no less) who has been convicted of a crime in connection with this scheme “said he needed the money to renovate his Hamburg mansion.”
Normally, I do not condone this sort of "argument."
UCI's Student Academic Advancement Services is slated for closure at the end of this month, a casualty of the current budget crisis,
Among SAAS's programs is the long-running Summer Bridge program. For years, Rebel Girl and Red Emma, along with so many others, taught in that program - and were taught by it.
Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur chose “Responsibility and Accountability in a New Age” as the theme of yesterday’s “Chancellor’s Opening Session,” which was just PERFECT ‘cause, even though Mathur highlighted our recent faculty hires and our continuing efforts to satisfy the Accreditors’ demands, at no point did he acknowledge that much of the hiring was a hurried effort forced upon us by Mathur’s own failure to heed the 50% law or his active participation in mucking up an accreditation report, bringing the district as close to ticket-pullage as it has ever gotten.
(Video of the opening session is now available here. --8/30)
8:45 a.m.
I showed up early for the Fall '09 SOCCCD opening session, held at Irvine Valley College’s Performing Arts Center, aka the IVC “big top.” Sat up front as usual, but sans camera.
Attendance was good, I guess. The hall was mostly full, and there was the usual how-was-your-summer clamor. I guess if morale is low for a long enough period, a kind of rust of good humor collects, and so, there it was, all red and coarse. Or maybe it was the free milk and cookies that set the mood. Dunno.
At about 8:50, Don Wagner stepped up to MC. But doesn’t Tom Fuentes do that? Tom Fuentes was “tied up,” Don said. (I think this was an allusion to a love (or grievery) that dare not speak its name—namely, Tom's affection for his good pal, the odious and newly dead Bob Novak, aka the "prince of darkness.")
Don said something about “his” board, and that seemed stupid, ‘cause nobody in their right mind would want to lay claim to those doofi.
American Idol:
We’ll start, he said, “with a bit of a musical moment,” whereupon Saddleback College’s Erin Long stepped out to warble the Star Spangled Banner, bending notes nicely—though she does go for that pointlessly filigreed style that is standard now where IQs are low and ratings are high (viz., American Idol). After that, she sang something called “The Climb,” which appears to be a Miley Cyrus ballad. Bleccch. (But I did like Long's voice. The audience seemed thrilled by it.)
Wagner introduced the recently-disgraced John Williams and his invocation, which, Don said, is offered in recognition of this country’s rich religious heritage (a reference, I guess, to Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Marshall Applewhite, and other wacky American religious innovators).
Evidently, Williams feels that one should introduce a prayer with a JOKE (if it was a joke, it was at the expensive of non-Judeo-Christian theists and non-theists; hence it was somewhat sinister and obnoxious to many of us), and so he told the story about the teacher who questioned the possibility of Jonah’s being swallowed by a whale (what with the whale’s narrow throat), and some kid wasn’t having it. Eventually, the kid figured how she could settle the matter: she'd die and go to heaven and then ask the J Man herself.
“Yeah, but what if Jonah’s in hell?” asked the teacher.
“Then you can ask him,” said the student.
Har, har, har. People who question absurd fairytales go to hell, if’n the ridiculous fairytale is a Bible frickin’ ridiculous fairytale. Har har.
Williams is an idiot.
Don noted our bad economic times. But, thanks to our marvelous board, the SOCCCD is sittin’ pretty, he said. We’re in great fiscal shape and somebody oughta give us a prize, he seemed to say. Since we’re just about the only district not cutting classes, headcount and FTE are way the heck up, he added.
Don went out of his way to thank faculty (and others) for their “amazing, single-minded dedication” to students. “He must be running for office,” thought I. He is.
Wagner introduced various VIPs, including trustees Williams and Marcia Milchiker, whereupon Chancellor Mathur minced into view, sans Elvis. He was met by weak applause and a collective stink of resignation.
He made us say "good morning" twice. A child screamed.
As per usual, Mathur had all the new hires sprint up on stage, one by one. He started with new faculty and then moved on to new administrators, but he obviously missed at least half of the new faculty hires, and so Brenda B stalked up to the stage and told Wagner that Mathur fucked up, and so Wagner whispered into Mathur’s blubbery ear that he’d fucked up, and so Mathur got all dazed and confused for a second but then consulted his index cards.
It was like watching a guy work at the DMV.
Eventually, the photo-op was ready and the picture was snapped. Whew!
Pole dance:
Next, a dance instructor named Fabienne Levenson performed for us—with the help of Belgian crooner Jacques Brel and about 12 feet of exercise bar—and that was great. I think Mathur was trying to impress his pal Michael Drake, who sat quietly in the audience awaiting his cue to edify.
Levenson's artsy-fartsy dance was riveting, but she sure did kick up a lot of dust, which I could see orbiting the stage lights high above our heads. Somebody oughta sweep that stage once in a while.
After Levenson’s pole dance, Wagner remarked: “Raise your hand if you can do that.” Laughter.
Then came the Chancellor’s turn to squawk. He introduced his “team,” which took a while. He yammered like he does, though he seemed to lack passion, and I do believe his voice grew softer and his message grew diffuse as he spoke. Some in the audience commenced snoring. Maybe that was me.
He talked about the state budget and education’s fiscal woes. People are pissin’ an’ moanin’ throughout the state, he said, but not us, ‘cause we’re doing just fine. What’s our secret?, he asked, rhetorically.
“We operate within our own means,” he answered.
No doubt, Drake raised an eyebrow or something. “Asshole.”
(Fiscal heroes, are we? Did you ever wonder if, owing to our Basic Aid gravy train—which relies on unusually high property tax revenue—we spend more taxpayer money per student than any district in the state? Does anybody out there have the data? I'm suggesting that, just maybe, despite our board's endless blarney about "fiscal conservatism," our district spends more taxpayer money per student than those fiscally liberal districts.)
Mathur mentioned our tremendous growth in the area of online instruction. The data shows, he said, that campus-based instruction is in decline everywhere, and that’s true for us too. Online instruction is the wave of the future, he insisted, and so we’ve got to push it more strenuously.
Faculty in the audience, a doddering crew, just stared.
Mathur next demonstrated that he cannot pronounce the word “renovate.” “We need more nurses,” he then opined, explaining that Saddleback’s nursing program will soon spread north to Tustin’s ATEP campus.
Then came another musical interlude, this time involving clarinet and bassoon. That was good. I’ve always had a weakness for bassoonery.
A great penguin joke:
Then came keynote speaker Michael Drake, Chancellor of UCI just up the road.
Drake told a great “penguin” joke and then lectured a bit about the budget. Sounded pretty bad. It just gets worse and worse, he said. He noted that our state has led the world in higher education and in our system of government. (That last point seemed odd, given our government’s dysfunction.)
He provided some fascinating history of our nation’s development of universities, starting with the Morrill Land Grand Act of 1862, which essentially provided seed money for colleges and universities across the country. Our colleges were not just for the rich, nope.
Drake noted the conceptual scheme of an African people who recognize gradations of deaditude: dead, completely dead, and dead forever. Well, higher ed in Cal is just dead is all, said Drake.
So cheer up. Could be worse.
Drake presented a chart that showed the impressive correlation between money spent and level of health per country. The USA showed up pretty much way up and to the right where you'd expect it to be. But it’s a bit low compared to some countries. Why’s that?
Well, it’s the health care disparity in this country, declared Drake.
Despite that, the staunch Mathur walked up and handed Drake a plaque. (I briefly imagined what Drake would do with it later in the day. I imagined his pride.)
I've gotta admit, Drake is a good speaker. The audience seemed to like him too.
Flintstonian distance ed:
Next came our own VC Bob Bramucci who gave his usual highly-entertaining presentation about technology. He’s a funny guy and a real show-off.
At one point, he noted that “distance ed” is older than the Civil War. “OK,” I thought. “How’s that?” Pony Express or something.
Is online instruction inferior? It is not, he said. In fact, it seems to be superior.
The faculty stared, unresponsive. One lady quietly rubbed wrinkle cream into her pours.
Bob made the usual point that technology is just a tool that can make things better or worse, like a knife or, say, a chunk of silicone. It all depends on what you do with it.
He played his ax a bit. Don't know why.
“Textbooks are toast,” he said. Apparently, owing to the availability of books online, etc., textbook publishing is in the same quandary today that the music industry was in when Napster came along.
We all liked that.
In the future, everyone will get a prize:
Mathur handed out pins to faculty, honoring them in proportion to the number of years they have managed not to be fired as employees of the SOCCCD. Wow. (I spotted that rat bastard Patrick Fennel, and Howard Gensler, too. Those two seemed particularly proud.)
The session ended with a real doozey. Mathur showed a video of patriotic images accompanied by that execrable Lee Greenwood song, “God Bless the USA.” (Check out the song's dreadful lyrics.)
In its final sequence, the video offered some verbiage. The gist of it was that we owe our freedom to the sacrifice of soldiers and we owe our saved souls to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Really.
Somehow, at this moment, only one song will do. It's the one I'd play if I were the Chancellor:
PENGUIN JOKE:
A man was driving down the highway with a car full of penguins--penguins sticking out the windows, penguins coming out the sunroof, penguin everywhere. A cop pulled him over and told him if he didn't want a ticket he'd better take those penguins straight to the zoo. The man promised he would and drove off.
The next day, the same highway, the same car, the same guy, the same cop and the same penguins -- only this time the penguins were all wearing sunglasses! The cop pulled the guy over and said, "I thought I told you to take these penguins to the zoo!"
"I did" said the guy. "Today I'm taking them to the beach."
Cal State Fullerton said today that, “Due to a precipitous drop in state-support as a result of California’s ongoing budget crisis, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences has cancelled from 140 to 150 class sections, or close to 10% of the 1,600 sections which the College planned to offer when fall semester begins August 22, a step which could impact as many as 3,200 students in the college.” … It might be necessary to make additional section cuts during spring semester….
Meanwhile, Matt Coker (at OC Weekly) reports on the resurrected LGBT pride festival, held in Irvine’s Mason Park on Saturday:
The festival commenced in 1988, and eventually reached a peak of 9,000 participants. But, by 2002, interest had flagged and it was abandoned. (These days, the festival is for the “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender”—i.e., LGBT—communities.)
Coker explains why police are a regular feature of such events:
The police were out because of the experience of past LGBT pride festivals in Orange County, including the notorious 1988 inaugural event in Santa Ana's Centennial Park, where angry Christian conservatives threw urine-filled balloons, taunted attendees with chants of "Go back to your closet" and cheered on an airplane they'd hired to fly over the event with a banner reading, "Sodomites out of Santa Ana! No AIDS in OC!"
California K-12 education reform: the state vs. the union
As you know, President Obama hopes to improve education in this country, and so he’s dangling huge chunks of money for states to spend—but only if they go along with his favored reforms, including the pursuit of charter schools and teacher evaluation using student test scores.
Owing especially to that last thing, California won’t be eligible for Obama dollars, unless the state's laws change.
As the NYT reported yesterday (Dangling Money, Obama Pushes Education Shift), California’s legislators are scrambling to do what is necessary to knock loose some of those dangling dollars, but that means rewriting a law “that prohibits the use of student scores in teacher evaluations….”
Naturally, that law “had strong backing from the state teachers union.” The union is really down on using student test scores to evaluate teachers.
The Times describes Obama’s new rules (for fed money) as follows:
The proposed rules … [that likely will be adopted after 8/28] require states to show they are fostering innovation, improving achievement, raising standards, recruiting effective teachers, turning around failed schools and building data systems.
But the major teachers unions have long opposed “using test scores in evaluations, saying misuse of ambiguous data could lead to unfair dismissals.”
It seems to me that we should work hard then to overcome ambiguity and unfairness, not refuse to consult test scores. The notion that there can be no fair procedures for teacher evaluations that use test scores strikes me as absurd on its face.
The Times quotes Education Secretary Arne Duncan:
“In California, they have 300,000 teachers” he said. The top 10 percent are the “best in the world,” he said, the bottom 10 percent, “should probably find another profession, yet no one in California can tell you which teacher is in which category.” ¶ Something is wrong with that picture,” he said.
I recommend reading economist Paul Krugman’s primer on the health care debate in yesterday’s New York Times (The Swiss Menace). Krugman briefly describes three approaches to providing universal health care now used in the “advanced world”:
1. “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors”
2. “The second route to universal coverage leaves the actual delivery of health care in private hands, but the government pays most of the bills.” (Canada, France)
3. “…[T]he third route to universal coverage relies on private insurance companies, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to ensure that everyone is covered.” (Switzerland)
Krugman briefly identifies myths surrounding each of these approaches.
Obama’s proposal, says Krugman, essentially is “a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage.”
That’s not Krugman’s favored approach, but, he says, “a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now.”
Good Lord, the summer’s almost over, and it’s time to think about Faculty Professional Development Week, which starts tomorrow! (See schedule (a pdf file))
THE CHANCELLOR’S OPENING SESSION:
Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur’s opening session, on Tuesday at Irvine Valley College, will feature UCI Chancellor Michael Drake. Drake will yammer about “the role of higher education in today’s national and global economy with focus on the roles STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), diversity and green technologies play in it.”
Don’t know much about Drake. He’s long been an advocate of affirmative action (he actively opposed Prop 209), so there’s that. That won't please trustees Fuentes and Wagner, I bet.
OK, but on the negative side, one or two years ago, Drake totally mucked up the selection of the dean for UCI’s new law school. Remember when he hired, then unhired, then rehired Erwin Chemerinsky? Then he claimed, unbelievably, not to have been influenced by local Chemerinsky-hating Repubs?!
Lately, he’s taken heat for his handling of UCI’s chard of the big UC budget conflagration. The charge: he’s not being honest about the consequences of the chaotic and violent budget-reduction scramblings that he is now calmly pursuing.
For Drake, prosperity is just around the corner, I guess. I’ve gotta say: the fellow is beginning to sound like a classic bullshit-spouting Administrator from Hell.
No wonder Raghu likes ‘im. I bet they hang out together at the Elephant Bar.
Mathur, for his part, has chosen the theme: “Responsibility And Accountability In A New Age.”
Accountability? As usual, Mr. “50% Law” is oblivious to irony.
IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE: BLOWING OFF SCIENCE AND REASON
I noticed one particularly odd item on IVC’s schedule of events, also on Tuesday:
How to Optimize Your Health Dr. Mamak Shakib, Irvine Spine & Wellness Center
Easy to implement, natural approach to optimize your health. So the economy is not to your liking, stress is building up and you find yourself lacking energy. Learn how to take control instead of being controlled.
Since Shakib works at the Irvine Spine and Wellness Center (ISWC), I checked out their website.
Essentially, ISWC is a center for chiropractic care and related alternative medicine hornswogglery. It’s motto: “the Center of Health for You and Your Family.”
That’s right. These chiropractors are all you need to keep your whole family healthy! Chiro ain’t just about back pain!
For instance, parents are encouraged to bring their children to ISWC to cure their ear infections with chiropractic adjustments. (See Quackwatch.) The good doctors explain:
Our approach is simple. When parents bring their child for us to check, we look specifically for distortions in the upper spine. If nerve tension is detected, we gently reduce it with safe and natural chiropractic adjustments. This helps restore nervous system integrity.
Those of you familiar with chiropractic’s wacky theory of spinal “subluxations” will find none of this surprising. For these Spinal Manipulators, health is about restoring the flow of something-or-other through the spine.
It’s mystical!
Shakib does not rest content advocating chiropractic. She also attacks medicine (i.e., regular medicine), which, she says, really "mishandles" things. For instance, You’ll be relieved to learn that the good folks of ISWC reject “germ theory,” a cornerstone of modern medicine.
Germs causing disease? Forgetaboutit.
What else is Dr. Shakib about? As ISWC’s website makes clear, Dr. Shakib is into metabolic typing and EFT.
What are those things? Something scientific, I bet!
Metabolic typing:
Gosh, I did a little research, and it turns out that the guy who invented metabolic typing was successfully prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license in 1970. (Still, he is slightly more impressive than chiropractic’s notorious quack founder, Daniel David Palmer, who, when he wasn't feeling the bumps on people's heads, was convicted of the same offense.)
That doesn’t sound good.
OK, but does MT work? That’s the relevant question here. I’ll cut to the chase. According to the American Cancer Society:
There is no convincing clinical evidence that supports the claims made for metabolic therapy or any of its components. Some aspects of metabolic therapy may in fact be harmful. (See American Cancer Society.)
EFT:
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) were invented by New Ager Gary Craig, an "energy healer." According to the ISWC website,
EFT is an emotional version of acupuncture except needles aren't necessary. Instead, well established energy meridian points on the body are stimulated through a series of tapping.
a form of alternative psychotherapy, that is based on a theory that negative emotions are caused by disturbances in the body's energy system and that tapping on acupuncture points while focusing on a specific traumatic memory balances the system, thereby neutralizing the negative emotion.
W goes on to explain that
Testing of the EFT hypothesis through the use of a placebo group produced the same positive changes in recipients as following the EFT's standard methodology. A 2007 article in the Guardian suggested that the act of tapping parts of the body in a complicated sequence acts as a distraction, and therefore can appear to alleviate the root distress.
Theoretically, EFT is a typical “New Age” therapy. It refers to mysterious processes involving unverifiable entities. For instance, as Bob Carroll notes, the notion of “subtle energies” is central to EFT theory:
Subtle energies is the … term for chi (prana, ki, orgone), those mysterious energies that are in constant need of balancing, harmonizing, unblocking, channeling, funneling, and transferring in order to maintain perfect health. … Gary [Craig]'s discovery came when he found out he could cure people by using acupuncture without the needles. He stimulates so-called energy meridian points on the body by tapping them with his fingertips. … It apparently did not occur to Gary that maybe he had tapped into the placebo effect or the power of suggestion.
Get this, science fans: “subtle energy,” like mysterious chiropractic “innate intelligence” blocked by "subluxations" in the spine, is untestable. Hence the notion is utterly pseudoscientific.
WE ARE TOO SCIENTIFIC!
The good doctors at the ISWC are very sensitive to the charge that their methods—e.g., chiropractic adjustments—aren’t scientific. On their website, they respond. How so? By asserting that "Chiropractic is Scientific." Really. See if you can find an argument here—something beyond a bald assertion. (They do note, with hilariously blatant sophistry, that ordinary medicine is also guilty of using "unverified" methods. [Oh, so I guess that shows that chiro is scientific. --Huh?!])
In the end, having offered no discernible argument for chiropractic's scientificness, Shakib (and her colleague Dr. Cocks) take the last refuge of the quack: an appeal to patient testimonials:
Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. Ask our delighted patients whether chiropractic is scientific.
Yeah, they'd surely know about that. If S&C have an argument here, it is to the conclusion that chiropractic works, not to the conclusion that it is "scientific." Good grief!
Yeah, but, given these happy customers, S&C's methods must be efficacious, right?!
Veddy, veddy good. Please note that people who use urine therapy (such as the late former Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai) offer similarly enthusiastic testimony for the efficacy of their "medicine."
"I tried it (gargle, spit), and it definitely took care of those dang hemorrhoids!"
Gosh, how can you argue against that kind of evidence!?
"Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable."
