The boys of Spring Break

☛

WELL, for the two benighted colleges of the South Orange County Community College District, it's SPRING BREAK. That's when things get especially wacky.

I shall provide two very recent examples.

I. The stupid kid on the roof

My day was done, and I started walking out to the parking lot. It was quiet at Irvine Valley College.

Then something caught my eye. A small crowd of students were looking up at the roof of building A400—the one that reeks of formaldehyde. There was some kid up there. He was sitting, doing nothing.


I asked: "What's that guy doing up on the roof?"

"We don't know."

"Well, did anybody ask him?"

"Um— No."

I came closer.


"Hey, kid. How come you're up on that roof."

"I dunno. I'm just up here."

I stared at him. I took a couple of snaps.


"Kid, maybe you should get down off the goddam roof now."

Long pause. "Yeah."

He got up. He walked to the north end of the building and then, somehow, he shinnied down (I wasn't watching). The same small crowd of students followed his progress.

When the kid finally returned to earth, he ran and whooped and hollered like an asshole.

The crowd cheered.


II. Love that Bob!

This morning's post about the ATEP meeting ("A pitcher, no catchers") inspired lots of peevish commentary, but it also got lots of hits, especially for a Friday, which tends to be sleepy, at least for us.

Why all the hits? I dunno, but, in the past, whenever I've included photos of "Park Ranger" Bob Kopecky of ATEP, our numbers have shot up. I guess the guy's dreamy or something.

OK, ladies. —More Bob!



This one's from a couple of months ago. That's Tere F, ATEP's Director of Public Information & Marketing, to the right.

A pitcher, no catchers

☺

IT SEEMS THAT SOCCCD Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur is in a big hurry to secure faculty “buy-in” with regard to the ”Advanced Technology and Education Park,” the hopeful name given to sixty-eight acres of abandoned Navy dirt & dilapidation in Tustin. Provost Bob Kopecky and his team have labored for years now to bring the ATEP project to a propitious point, for the parcel is undoubtedly valuable, and thirteen parties—some of them well-heeled—have submitted “partnership" proposals. Each proposal-maker hopes to serve his interests (namely, use of primo real estate!) while seeming also to serve the SOCCCD's interests (namely, creating special voc ed opportunities).

No doubt owing to this recent emergence of Big Money and potential Technicolor spotlightitude (roll all the proposals together, and you’ve got over a Billion Bucks!), Mathur has finally noticed ATEP.

Naturally, he’s grabbed that ball and he’s running like hell with it.

In the meantime, faculty, at least at Irvine Valley College, have generally expressed annoyance (or worse) concerning their evident and unexplained ATEPular out-of-loopitude. It has seemed to faculty that this ATEP deal, with its manifest implications for curriculum and program development, is being defined by Raghu and the Big Money Men—sans faculty. It's yet another instance, they say, of Mathur and the board ignoring the faculty’s rightful role.


Yesterday's IVC all-college meeting:

Yesterday afternoon, Mathur arranged for a special meeting at Irvine Valley College to update everybody on ATEP. As these meetings go, it was a success. It was well-attended and the presentations were, well, good.

There was a problem, though. Lots of administrators and classified employees showed up. But only three faculty showed.

At a college, faculty are important. They're crucial to any project that concerns, well, education.

But they didn't show for Mathur's ATEP meeting.


I confess

Let me confess from the start that, unlike most of my colleagues, I am an ATEP booster. I like and trust Bob Kopecky. I think this ATEP thing could be great, not only for the colleges, but for the county. Listening to the many ATEP possibilities yesterday, I was genuinely excited, and not for the first time.

Hell, I’ll even say that Mathur’s part in yesterday's presentation was excellent. Really.

—Except, of course, for that moment when he responded to a faculty comment (no, not mine) by saying that it “appalled” him. (It appalled him a “little,” he said.)

That’s the petty and ugly side of Raghu. Long-time denizens of IVC know it well.

Can such a man lead?

—Still, essentially, as far as I can see, this ATEP deal sounds at least very promising. If handled intelligently and carefully, it could be great.

But none of that matters. For a a project like this to work, you’ve got to get faculty buy-in. But, at least at IVC, faculty refuse to be led by Raghu. They just don’t trust him.

Can you blame them? (To learn the many reasons for faculty distrust, simply peruse Dissent’s archives. Start with 1997.)

In brief:

So here’s what happened at yesterday's meeting. I’ll be brief.

Chancellor Mathur spoke first and at length (in truth, he hogged almost all the time). He explained how ATEP must be funded. The money can’t come from the two colleges—they can’t spare a dime. It can’t come from basic aid (i.e., money derived from local property taxes), which wouldn’t be enough anyway. The only option is to invite “partnerships” in which private entities pony up the needed bucks.

Bingo.

Raghu explained the short- and long-term plans for ATEP. Short-term, ATEP will open in the fall with a modest set of course offerings (30-35 sections). Classrooms will be ready in two months; a dean will be hired within a week or so.

Long-term, we’re pursuing the aforementioned partnerships. Owing to Kopecky & company's hard work, thirteen proposals have materialized. They add up to a huge amount of money.

That’s “not a shabby start,” said Raghu.

After the “executive council” (Mathur, the VCs, the two college presidents, Kopecky, et al.) interviewed the proposal makers, 5-7 of them were invited to make their pitch again to the board (December through February).

Now, a “team,” led by Vice Chancellor Gary P, will pursue negotiations with the parties.

The district faces a deadline. We’ve got to show the City of Tustin that we’ve got a master plan and that we’re making “significant progress” in implementing that plan by April of 2009.

During the negotiations process, the district will be advised by: a law firm that is experienced in such negotiations, a “master architect” (who will work with the the proposal makers' architects), an experienced financial advisor, and experts among our own ranks (Serban, et al.).

In the meantime, Vice Chancellor Serban and Provost Kopecky will work with faculty, et al., to identify programmatic and curricular needs, etc.

The latter work must be accomplished within the next few months, said Mathur. Anyone who wants input can have it, he said.

The Chancellor explained the “Camelot” proposal. The Camelot Group proposes a film/TV/soundstage/studio complex with a radio and, possibly, a TV station. CSU Fullerton has a film (production?) program, and they, too, are very interested in using any studio/soundstage facilities we might have.

CSU Fullerton has a bio-tech program, too, that it would love to house at ATEP.

Raghu emphasized that the proposals are exactly that: proposals. These parties have explained what they want. We need to be clear about what we want (we want to train students) and adjust our approach to negotiation accordingly. It is a mistake, said Raghu, to suppose that any proposal maker will get precisely what he or she has asked for.

Raghu also explained proposals of the SEIS Group (robotics), ADM Works (rapid prototyping, product design), EBD (assisting minority entrepreneurship), and the Young Americans (400 young people, singing/dancing/taking classes).

The county faces a growing shortage of nurses, said the chancellor, and so we might wish to extend Saddleback College’s nursing program to ATEP. “Culinary arts,” too, can be housed at (extended to?) ATEP.

Briefly, Bob Kopecky spoke. He reminded the audience of his notion of “imbedded education” (student training/education must be truly imbedded in anything we do with our "partners") and his hope that we can launch a “21st Century campus” in which students work “shoulder to shoulder” with business people, technicians, and so on, using the "latest and greatest" equipment.

At the end of the presentation, Mathur made another pitch for involvement from members of the campus community. He did the best job I’ve ever seen him do in asking folks to get involved.

Hell, he had me going.

But faculty were not in the room.

P.S.: AS I WRITE (Friday morning, 8:00 a.m.), Mathur and Co. are preparing for a repeat performance at IVC, but that is likely to attract a far smaller audience.

At yesterday's presentation, a member of the School of Humanities & Languages--the unit most associated with opposition to Mathur--raised this question: lots of energy and money is going into this third campus, but there's so much that still needs to be done at the two colleges. For instance, at IVC, long-promised and much-needed buildings have yet to materialize.

"What building are you talking about?" asked Raghu.

"The Humanities building. We all know what building we're talking about," said the faculty member.

Back in 1980, said the faculty member, a Humanities Bldg. was promised, but it kept being put off. In recent years, the project seems to have even disappeared from planning altogether. The English department, she said, is the biggest dept. within H&L, and it doesn't even have its own classrooms.

"We can't even get the basics," she said, "for the largest school on campus."

That's when Mathur went off the rails a bit. The faculty member had a point. Indeed, during one of Raghu's visits to the School of H & L a year or two ago, he expressed sympathy for this very complaint. He even suggested that he'd look into it and try to do something about it. (We never heard back from him.)

At yesterday's presentation, however, he responded with hostility. At first, he kept his cool. But then he said: "I'm a little appalled by your comment."

Appalled?

Perhaps he thought better of it. Later, he did say that "we will do our darndest" to help with the space issues at the two campuses.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: Get Rid of Death. Celebrate Increase. Make it be Spring

~
We here at Irvine Valley College, once known as the little college that could, the little college in the orange groves (Remember the days when the students raised $$ via orange picks?) are teetering on the edge of Spring break – the felicitous event runs this year from March 12-16. Rebel Girl expects that by the time she leaves campus tonight around 10:30 or so, the college will be all but abandoned, except for the midnight crew in the bio labs who spend the late night hours with sharp instruments poised above the skinned and prone cadavers of small animals. Meow!

Yes, the semester has reached its official half-way mark. We're almost there folks. Hang on.

Last week, a student arrived in my office with the good news that begins about now: acceptance into the department of English the nearby UC, home of the fighting deconstructionist anteaters. I was, the student told me, happier about the event than either of his parents had been. I took him on a victory lap – cruising the hallways looking for the open doors of colleagues and staff so I could show him off and he could see that he had done good.

Meanwhile, both Captain America (b. 1941) and Jean Baudrillard (b.1929) have passed away. Captain America, who first emerged as an anti-fascist agent in WWII had recently been become a leader in the resistance movement to the federal Superhero Registration Act. Capt. America was gunned down by a sniper on the steps of the federal courthouse Wednesday. Baudrillard, French cultural theorist and philosopher, claimed that we live in a world where simulated feelings and simulated experiences have replaced reality. In 2005, he told the New York Times, “All of our values are simulated. What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car? It’s a simulation of freedom.” Baudrillard died after a long illness in Paris.

And now, some poetry. Yes, I know it's March, but here's a poem entitled "February,"—for the Spring that is just around the corner and for International Women's Day, which is—though few know it—celebrated today.

From that wonderful and fierce Canadian, Margaret Atwood:

February

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It's his
way of telling whether or not I'm dead.
If I'm not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He'll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It's all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we'd do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it's love that does us in. Over and over
Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and the pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You're the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

Delicious yellowcake

☺

Today, in honor of the conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby on four counts of felonious misconduct impeding an investigation, faculty in the A200 building of Irvine Valley College consumed a YELLOW CAKE made from a TRADER JOE'S mix.

All participants agreed that it was delicious.

P.s.: the cake was conceived and baked by the Reb. —CW

Irvine balloon college

☛

I arrived at the college this morning, and what did I see? Friggin' balloons!

Was it International Balloon Day already?

Nope. A big red banner--plus a lurid Carl's Junior Greasemobile and the uncollegiate sounds of grab-ass—made clear that it was SENIOR DAY once again at little Irvine Valley College.

That meant: busloads of noisy and balloon-loving kids from local High Schools. At one point, I ran into Helen Locke, Director of Student Affairs, who organizes these special events. She beamed and informed me that "shitloads" of High Schoolers had showed up! Yes, entire shitloads of 'em!

Well, no, she didn't say "shitloads." But she did say that 600 had showed up. She was as pleased as punch.



~~Goddam kids were everywhere, messin' stuff up~~

Naturally, Senior Day means noise and horseplay, and that drove the timid local fauna to the periphery.

At about 11:00 a.m., the Reb noticed a rabbit a-trembling outside our window:


We tried to say hello, but the rabbit was too pissed for conversation.

Do you remember the CEC portables fiasco at the start of the Fall semester? Seems like a million years ago, doesn't it? Well, that particular fiasco went like this: the Facilities & Maintenance guy (Wayne W) had fallen asleep again, and, as a result, some contractors had failed to finish some crucial work on the new portables. The upshot: during the first day of class, students showed up to rooms that they could not enter. You don't want students standing around like that. Not good.

Naturally, faculty weren't warned, and nobody freaks out like faculty freak out. And so the whole thing became a collosal & noisy FUBAR, the kind that happens a lot at IVC.

That's right. I've got a theory about that. You see, Irvine Valley College is part of the South Orange County Community College District, the offices of which are at majestic Saddleback College—the other half of the two-college district—which is 15 miles to the south (in Mission Viejo). That means that our Board of Trustees, who meet once a month, regularly see Saddleback College, the bigger college. Month after month, that's all they see: friggin' Saddleback College—plus their fancy & expensive new digs, which happen to be smack dab in the middle of the Jumbo college. Except for the two that live or work there, the trustees never get up to Irvine.

In a way, I can understand that. To get to IVC from South County, you've gotta drive north, up toward the nasty & aging end of the county, the end full of buses and taggers and tracts of ugly & cheap ($600K) old homes. Who wants any of that? Everything's shiny and new in South County, like the breasts & Hummers on Real Housewives.

So, naturally, after a while, our trustees—who, truth be told, aren't very bright anyway—just forget that little IVC even exists. And so the place is neglected, like some outhouse way out on the back forty.

That's my theory.

Well, today, right about when that rabbit showed up, Reb started telling me about the classrooms in the new CEC portables. She explained that she had just visited an instructor in CEC 2, and she had noticed a big friggin' hole in the ceiling.

"Holes already? In the new portables?"

"Yeah, it's horrible," she said.

So I hotfooted it over there and took these snaps:




I couldn't take a picture of the smell, of course, but, trust me, it was funky in there.

On my way back, I ran into the Chair of English, who was talking with one of the writing instructors, and since they were having such a great time carping about ceiling holes and room stink, I took a snap:


Later, I heard some music over by the library, and that led me to the music room. I encountered a student of mine who was at the piano. He played me some classical. That sounded great. Then he explained that he really likes boogie-woogie, which he proceeded to play. Very cool. I said that I was big fan of the Kansas City piano style of the late 30s. The kid's eyes lit up. We talked music.


After my 12:30 class, I headed for the parking lot, but I was drawn again to the hoopla over by the Student Services Center. SENIOR DAY was winding down. Helen and her colleagues were carrying things away. Carl's Junior was hosing out its Greasemobile.

I encountered three students who insisted that I take their picture:


Took a snap of these twigs, too:


I've got a bad cold, and so my judgment isn't so good. Something tells me that I shouldn't be taking snaps of twigs.

That I've got no judgment is funny, I guess, cuz I'm on the search committee for the new Dean at ATEP, and we're meeting again tomorrow. Yesterday, we interviewed 7 candidates, and I really faded after about the 4th. I nearly slept during the last two. I have no idea how I scored 'em or even if I scored 'em.

It's fun working with the search committee. Good people, all, I think. They all believe in what they're doing, and they're doing a good job, near as I can tell. And why not?

God bless Bob and his crew! LONG LIVE ATEP!

~~At one point, the balloons, once festive, took on a dark & portentous aspect~~

Play Ball!

☛
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light…
— from "Casey at Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer

Rebel Girl stands corrected. The IVC Phasers, those intrepid weekend ballplayers have never "suffered a string of losses" as she previously reported. No. Quite the contrary, the IVC Phasers were league champions last year. Which league she doesn't know but she is corrected and impressed.

Apparently, she misinterpreted the mood of the two players. No string of losses at all, merely a defeat that felt like a string of losses.

Since then, the IVC Phasers have rebounded and you can see them show their stuff on most Sundays at Harvard Park. Bring the kids.

A source who declined to go on the record claims that the Phasers have indeed signed on a former Teacher of the Year as a key player but the fella has yet to show up. Rumor has it that his absence is related to a salary dispute. Could it be?

Inquiring minds want to know.

What a lark! What a plunge!

☛
The IVC book club, which meets on Tuesday afternoons, will this week discuss Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Rebel Girl wishes she could be there but she is happy enough to know that people will be talking about this novel. Yes.

"Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? But that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she never met; being laid out like a mist between people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself."

Buy some flowers for yourself. Throw a shilling in the Serpentine. Tell Sally Seton you love her.