Mighty special, Glenn

     As you know, Irvine Valley College President Glenn Roquemore is a remarkably, er, unacademic fellow. For a college president, he’s special, he is.
     Today brought us the fellow’s latest public spasm of super special unacademery, coming this time in the form of singular Roquemorean verbiage—a "resolution."
     Members of the college community just received an email from the IVC Chief of Police, alerting us to the upcoming Great California ShakeOut Earthquake Drill. In support of this effort, the Chief writes, IVC President Roquemore has issued a resolution:

A RESOLUTION OF INTENT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE GREAT CALIFORNIA SHAKEOUT AND WORK TOWARD BECOMING A SAFER CAMPUS COMMUNITY.

     Golly. Do we really need a resolution to participate in this thing? Why not just announce that the college will participate?
     But that's just me.
     The Chief attaches the resolution, a pdf, to his email. I opened it up. I’ve posted it above (see).
     Since it’s a resolution, it offers a series of “whereas”es and ends with a “be it resolved that.”
     Here’s the first “whereas.” It’s a humdinger.

WHEREAS, the [“the”?] Irvine Valley College recognizes that no community is immune from natural hazards whether it [it?] be earthquake, wildfire, flood, winter storms, drought, heat wave, or dam failure and recognizes the importance [sic] enhancing its ability to withstand natural hazards as well as the importance of reducing the human suffering, property damage, interruption of public services and economic losses caused by those hazards….

     That’s one seriously special piece of writing.
     Here’s a subsequent “whereas”:

WHEREAS, the protection of Irvine Valley College employees will allow them to facilitate the continuity of government and assist the campus community following a major earthquake event….

     Is it just me? Are others struck by the oddness of Glenn’s interest in protecting IVC “employees”? I guess the idea here is that, if the college secures the survival of employees, not being dead, after the quake, they can “facilitate the continuity of government.”
     Yeah, cuz that's what community colleges are all about.
     Plus, again, not being dead, they can “assist the campus community.” The idea here seems to be that IVC will target “employees” for protection so that those employees, having avoided earthquake death, can assist students post earthquake.
     See what I mean? This is a special piece of writing, this resolution.
     Here’s one more “whereas”:

WHEREAS, community resiliency to earthquakes and other disasters depends on the preparedness levels of all stakeholders in the community – students, staff, faculty, managers and administrators….

     “Resiliency.” I guess that’s Glenn’s special spin on “resilience.”
     “Stakeholders”? Yeah, everybody in Irvine has a share in M&M Enterprises, and the Big One will make us all rich.
     Here’s the resolution’s “be it resolved” finish:

Irvine Valley College hereby approves participating in the Great California Shakeout hereto by taking time to recognize and acknowledge the importance of preparing our college for the purposes of building a safer campus community and reducing the loss of lives and property from a major earthquake event by taking proactive steps today.

     So Glenn's resolution is a statement of "intent to participate" in the Shakeout; but it's also a statement of "approval" of IVC's (or others'?) "participating" in the Shakeout. Gosh, this nifty Res is a veritable Swiss Army Knife.
     It gets better—er, more special. The Res is a statement of approval (of the Shakeout) "by taking time to recognize" such-and-such. That Glenn sure does know how to write special sentences.
     Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of earthquake preparedness. And I’m not against this “shakeout” extravaganza. Not in principle, anyway.
     But we’re a college. Maybe our public statements shouldn’t be so, um, special.

OC: same old Land o' Corruption

Aide to Supervisors' Chairman Files Claim Alleging Corruption (Voice of OC)

     Dave Zenger, until recently a senior aide to Board of Supervisors Chairman Shawn Nelson, has filed a legal claim against the county alleging that Nelson abruptly fired him after other county supervisors complained about Zenger conducting, at Nelson's direction, numerous investigations into alleged improper use of public funds.
     “Mr. Zenger was demonstrably terminated in retaliation for Mr. Zenger’s conscientious inquiries and investigations into questionable or possibly illegal schemes, projects and activities by county personnel,” reads a June 6 letter sent by Zenger’s attorney, Steven Dial – who also represents county Human Resources manager Kathleen Tahilramani in another whistleblower lawsuit against the county, which is scheduled for trial on Nov. 18….

The A205 saga continues: Roquemore and his merry SNAFUsters

     HERE'S THE STORY: faculty who teach in IVC's A205 (the "Anthro" room) figure out that there’s a disturbing pattern among instructors who use the room: they’re suffering bronchitis and the like. (See The mold monster returns?) They alert the authorities, who blow them off as per usual, but then students who’ve apparently been sickened by A205—four of 'em—come out of the woodwork and that’s when things start jumpin’—in the way that things jump at IVC, namely:
     Administration have the HVAC system inspected, and it checks out A-OK. That means that the problem is specific to A205—likely the mold monster. This information isn’t sent to the faculty or students—it's the usual IVC communication zilchitude. But, somehow, the info does get to faculty.
     Anyhow, the name of the administrative doctrine then embraced is “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” (aka the prime Roquemorian directive). By this morning, one peevish instructor is under the impression that room A205 is locked and entry is strictly verboten (this morning, I dropped by A205 and took a picture of the "verboten" warning on the door; sure enough, the door was locked).
     Yeah, great. But then an instructor who uses A205 shows up (at 8:00) to teach her class there—nobody’s tells her about this verbotenitude. And so she says, "What's the deal?" and she calls security, who immediately send over a cop who unlocks the door. The instructor is soon happily teaching to her flock in this sick classroom, a fact just then noticed by the aforementioned clued-in instructor and her dean, who happen to be walking (and peeving) along the path outside A205!  (See pic below.) Jeez!
     To make a long story short, the room is again locked and declared verboten. Last I checked it’s still that way, but who knows. Maybe, by now, they’ve moved Early College (or Intro to Mold) in there or something. You never know. Not around here, that's for sure.

UPDATE: I checked the door of A205 this morning (Friday). The "verboten" sign remains, but the door is now unlocked!

Moisture outside the southeast window is a possible source of seepage.
"Hey, they're holding class in there!"

Student-Loan Default Rates Continue Steady Climb (Chronicle of Higher Education)
     …The latest three-year default rates were highest among for-profit institutions, but dropped slightly from the previous year—from 22.7 percent to 21.8 percent. The three-year rate for public institutions was 13 percent, and for private institutions it was 8.2 percent.
     Borrowers who attended for-profit colleges represented about 32 percent of all borrowers entering repayment in the 2011 fiscal year, up from 28 percent in the 2009 year, and for-profit-college students accounted for 43 percent of the defaults….

A:200 - The Mold Monster Returns? or "Faculty keep getting sick"

A-205: "a vague environmental issue"

Late this afternoon, denizens of the A-200 building learned of an announcement shared selectively through email and posted on A-205's classroom door. It seemed somehow eerily familiar and also the perfect capper to a doomed day. (Don't ask.)

If you were (Please note the past tense) teaching in A-205, generally occupied by the anthropologists and their skulls (well, not theirs, poor Yorick, but you know what I mean) but also loaned out to various Hum and Lang types (See, in A-200 we like to share what we got even if it isn't much, unlike some folks—sniff, sniff—better yet, don't sniff—at least not in the vicinity of A-205), well, you aren't teaching there anymore!

A-205 instructors were informed that their classes were no longer occupying A-205 due to a "vague environmental issue" which needs to be "corrected."

Most people, Rebel Girl notes, were moved to other classrooms in the aging A-200.

If you were not teaching in that room or taking a class you may not have noticed the flier taped to the door that forbade entry under any circumstance. Pretty strong language. Rebel Girl, rebellious and foolhardy as always, tried the knob. The door swung open (of course!) and she entered.

She didn't see anything out of the ordinary, unless you want to count the peeling vinyl floorboard near the door which exposed a gap or sorts, a kind of pocket between the wall, floor and floorboard filled with a tangle of hair and other detritus. But Rebel Girl doesn't really count that because as far as she is concerned, that is pretty much par for the course in IVC classrooms—peeling floorboards, hair in the corners, you know.

She sniffed. Nothing out of the ordinary. She took inventory: same skulls, same maps, the usual collection of aging newspapers articles displayed when Clinton was president and another Republican, named for a small amphibian, was holding the federal government hostage.

She wondered what the "vague environmental issue" could be.

After she left, she asked around. Nobody knew. Of course not. (Cuz it was "vague"?)

Even though the whole building is serviced by the same air conditioning unit that blasts air in and out of nearby classrooms and offices, even though walls are shared by offices and classrooms, no one else except those immediately affected had been informed of an "environmental issue"—or hazard—use the noun you prefer. And even those people were not told of what Rebel Girl discovered later as she went home and made a few calls.

"Instructors kept getting sick," one in-the-know faculty member reported, "Bronchitis. Finally someone noticed a pattern."

One wonders what, if anything, the students were told. And why workers (faculty and staff) who spend 20-45 hours a week in  the vicinity were not informed—especially those with existing physical conditions who might make them more vulnerable than others to the presence of the bacteria, mold and other particles that cause bronchitis and worse. Can you spell liability? Responsibility? Responsiveness? Transparency? Weren't some of these words included on that recent survey monkey of wish list values sent out by SPOBDC? (Yup, "spob-dick.")

Rebel Girl also wonders who made the decision that only A-205 was toxic. She hopes it was someone who knows something about the spread of mold and air conditioning units and shared walls, etc. Jeez.

This latest vagueness, of course, points to the pervasive absence of useful communication at IVC. What helicopter? What parking lot fiasco? What mold? 

And, of course, it brings to mind the mold monsters of yore:

Colonies of Mold  (November 1, 2005)
Mold Pie with Mouse Turd Topping (December 9, 2005)
Decomposed Materials of Organic Origin  (January 13, 2006)

There are other stories out there (don't ask), but Rebel Girl will leave you with an unlikely but relevant one:

Tuesday night, after a wretched day at the college (don't ask), Rebel Girl washed up at a meeting of the Inter-Canyon League, one of the local governing bodies in the hinterlands. (IVC's own Chris Riegle is on the board.) Officer Garcia from the CHP was a genial guest speaker, there to answer residents' concerns about speeding on the canyon road and the recent spate of high-profile accidents from such behavior. Rebel Girl listened as her neighbors asked for the impossible—a CHP officer every mile or so, pulling over the reckless and inspiring other to obey the laws.

The officer, she soon realized, was speaking the hard truth: few resources, stupid human nature, one cop for the whole canyon area. There is is no way we're going to stop the foolish and reckless. But you good people should not behave like them. We all need to be better than those fools, and that will make the difference, perhaps the only difference we can make.

A sobering tale for this morning carpool mother, her backseat filled with kids, who is often passed by impatient speeders happy to cross the double yellow line on Live Oak Canyon or Santiago.

An instructive tale for a teacher who wonders how deep the commitment is out there to real teaching, the real work of a real college. (Don't ask.)

Hey, wasn't "intellectually rigorous curriculum" on SPOBDC's wish list too?

Welcome, sulfur dioxide
Hello, carbon monoxide
The air, the air
Is everywhere

Breathe deep
While you sleep
Breathe deep

*

The Wendy file: a "credible Democrat"

      Here’s the latest on former IVC Ac. Senate President Wendy Gabriella’s bid for the 73rd Assembly District seat. According to GOP blogger (and longtime pinhead) John Fleischman (Former CRP Vice Chairman Steve Baric Drops Bid For State Assembly; Flashreport), one of the more viable among the five Republicans running for the seat—Steve Baric—has dropped out of the race:

     A few months ago Steve Baric announced his candidacy for the open 73rd Assembly District in South Orange County. The popular Rancho Santa Margarita City Councilman and former Vice Chairman of the California Republican Party made a big splash, coming out of the gate with prominent endorsements from his former boss, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, and Sheriff Sandra Hutchens. …Baric ended the June 30th fundraising period with the most cash in the bank….
     Steve Baric has dropped out of the race.

     It’s not clear why Baric has pulled the plug. (He gives his reasons, but they sound like BS. Something about “more meaningful work” he’s got to do. Don’t thinks so.)
     Evidently, it’s important to Baric that a fellow Republican wins the seat:

     “The California legislature continues to be dominated by very liberal politicians who are intent on increase taxes, growing government, and enacting new laws that make California a less-safe place in which to live,” Steve told me. “I am committed to working hard to ensure that South Orange County continues to have a strong, principled conservative representing us in Sacramento.”

     Yeah, whatever.
     Fleischman sums up the situation thus:

     Of course, Steve’s departure from the field of candidates in AD 73 means now the field has dropped to four candidates — Rancho Santa Margarita Councilman Jesse Petrilla, Dana Point Councilman Bill Brough, Capistrano Valley Unified School District Trustee Anna Bryson, and former Laguna Niguel Councilman Paul Glaab. There is also a credible Democrat on the ballot as well, Wendy Gabriella, all but insuring that only one Republican advances to the November election.

     Sounds good.
     That was yesterday. Today, over on Art “Loose Cannon” Pedroza’s blog (Baric and Asm. Chavez to appear at Petrilla 73rd A.D. campaign reception on 10/3), we learn that

Steve Baric has ... already agreed to appear at a campaign event for his colleague on the Rancho Santa Margarita City Council, Jesse Petrilla, who remains in the race for the 73rd A.D.

     Pedroza also opines that

     Bryson and Gabriella will vie for women voters and both have backgrounds in education as Gabriella is a teacher at Irvine Valley College.
     The primary is a top two open election. Gabriella should make it to the general election as there are so many Republican candidates splitting up the vote.
     Brough’s connection to Harkey is a negative. Petrilla seems to lack experience while Bryson has it in spades. This really will come down to who can raise more money and make a better case to the voters. Bryson and Petrilla have the most name identification, while Brough and Gabriella are lacking in that area.

     I don’t know if Pedroza knows what he’s talking about. Naturally, he's partisan--leaning toward the Repubs.
     Some Democrats think that a member of their party might actually make headway in this race, deep in the Neanderthal caves. The Republicans are pretty F-ed up these days. In OC too. And Wendy's an uncommonly strong candidate.
     We'll see, I guess.

SEE ALSO Laguna Niguel Democrat dives into Assembly race (OC Reg)

THE IRVINE VALLEY CHRONICLES: no ideas, just clichés & buzzwords

     Just in case there was any doubt that IVC is a royally F-ed up place, today, faculty received an email from the Academic Senate President, asking us, on behalf of the Strategic Planning Oversight and Budget Development Committee (everyone calls it "SPOBDC," pronounced spob-dick), to fill out a survey.
     The survey offers a list of familiar buzzwords and clichés that are supposed to express "values."
     Evidently, the all-important SPOBDCians assume that, once a community has chosen its fave “values” terms—from a list created by said spobdickians—it has ipso facto identified a college “values statement.”
     Really? Um, maybe they're aiming at superficiality and buzzitude. Yeah, that's gotta be it. Who, among the educated, would approach a values statement by picking buzzwords from a list?
   
     According to Craig Hayward, IVC’s Director of Research, Planning & Accreditation (and, no doubt, a member of SPOBDC)—whose request is included in the Senate Prez’s letter—

     A values statement provides additional information about an organization. It qualifies how the mission is completed and identifies ways in which IVC is distinct[ive] in its provision of educational opportunities.
     A potential list of values for a values statement was developed by SPOBDC members at the committee’s annual retreat on 7/26/13. SPOBDC has requested that members of the Academic Senate, the Classified Senate and ASIVC participate in a survey to identify the core values that are important both for how IVC operates and how it should operate. Please take a few moments to provide your feedback on the proposed values for an IVC values statement.

     Hayward then provides a link to the online survey.
     Well, I clicked on the link and I opened the survey. It tells us that

     The following values are being considered for inclusion in an offical [sic] IVC values statement. The purpose of this statement will be to add depth [my emphasis] to our mission statement by identifying values that are particularly important at IVC in terms of how we currently conduct our affairs, as well as how we aspire to conduct our affairs. Please provide your impression regarding each value [i.e., click one of three bubbles] and whether it is a core value of IVC that should be included in a values statement.

     Next, we’re asked to “indicate the extent to which each value [in the list that follows] is a core IVC value that sheds light on how we fuflill [sic] our mission.”
     At long last, here’s the list. It offers, of course, exactly the uninspired, dishonest, and cliché-ridden crapfest that one expects:

A positive spirit
Access
Accessibility
Civility
Collaboration
Collaborative leadership
Community
Conservation
Diversity
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Equity
Excellence throughout the institution
Innovation
Integration of CWE and internships
Integrity
Intellectually rigorous curriculum
Mutual respect
Partnerships
Quality
Resourcefulness
Respect
Responsibility
Responsiveness
Stewardship
Student success
Sustainability
Transparency
Other (please specify)

     (I wonder if anyone on SPOBDC thought to offer sentences, even paragraphs, in expressing our values?)

shit-for-brains

     Some items on this list—civility, collaboration, mutual respect, respect, transparency—seem inspired by the college and district’s current Accreditation travails.
     Yeah, we’re crafty, we are. To convince the Accreds that, contrary to Accred visiting teams, we’re a seriously civil, respectful, and cooperative bunch down here, we’ll insert these terms into our “values” statement. I mean, any college that would tweak its “values statement” just to please the Accreds must have something on the ball, civility-wise (and integrity-wise), right?
     Most other items are just the usual vogue/cliché blarney: accessibility, conservation, diversity, innovation, responsibility, student success, sustainability, transparency, etc.
     Obviously, a less imaginative or distinctive list cannot be imagined.

     Is it just me? Or do others find this buzzword approach to identifying “the college’s values” offensive?

* * *

     The root problem, of course, is that the people in charge at IVC have no values.
     Or they have them, but they’re seriously F-ed up.