The "Two-Year Rule": the accrediting agency dropped the ball, bigtime

.....Recently, our two colleges received dismal letters from the accrediting agency—the ACCJC. All of a sudden, we were told that we must satisfy the agency re its recommendations (i.e., we must fix the problems it identified three years ago)—or else. And we’ve gotta do that by October (that’s when we submit our progress reports; the commission meets and makes its decision about our colleges' accreditation status in January of 2009).
.....What’s that all about? Well, it concerns the Department of Education (DoE) and the federally-imposed “Two-Year Rule.” It's been around a while.
.....Here’s an excerpt from an article, by Janet Fulks, in the February issue of the (State Senate's) Rostrum newsletter:

.....At the second annual … Accreditation Institute…, many were surprised to hear about the impact of the “two-year rule” implementation on our accreditation process. The “two-year rule” is a federally imposed mandate that requires accrediting agencies to place a two-year deadline on correction of all recommendations that relate to deficiencies.
.....Following an accreditation visit, colleges usually receive commendations … and recommendations that may be either: 1) recommendations for improvement or 2) recommendations for correcting deficiencies. Since the Accreditation Standards represent the minimum qualifications for accreditation, fulfilling the standards are [sic] not something colleges must attempt to do, but rather are the minimum expected level of performance. If your college has not shown evidence that it meets this minimum expectation, the result will be a recommendation to correct this deficiency.
.....But why haven’t we heard of this short two-year timeline before?
.....When the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) was being reauthorized as an accrediting agency this fall, the reviewers discovered that this rule had not been enforced in the past, even though the federal government had required it for many years. The federal motivation for enacting this rule was to guarantee that students attending a deficient institution had an opportunity to see that corrected during the course of their study so that they did not receive a deficient college education. This is also why, when being accredited for the present year, the visiting team reviews the previous accreditation reports to see that recommendations have been addressed....
.....Many faculty have commented that in the process of reviewing previous accreditation reports to write their current self-study, they found that some of the same problems were still alive and well. Recommendations have often indicated that institutions failed to meet previous recommendations adequately, allowing the deficiencies to extend into the next six-year cycle (and some for two accreditation cycles). In January, the ACCJC sent out a letter explaining that the two-year rule must be enforced and that it requires recommendations be corrected within a two-year period or increasing sanctions will be placed on the institution. ….[My emphasis.]

.....—Some of the recommendations given to our two colleges go back to 1998.

Pictured: Babs Beno, Managing Director of the ACCJC, in 2006, commending our colleges/district for the lovely progress we are making (See Explaining Babs Beno?.)

Beno's seriously odd "commendation," in 2006:
(For Beno, jump to 6:21)



SH*T HITTING FAN (recently in the news):

Splat N:

…Under U.S. DoE regulations, institutions out of compliance with accrediting standards are expected to correct deficiencies within a two-year period…There has been increased pressure recently on regional accrediting agencies to enforce standards following the Spellings Commission Report and subsequent review of all accrediting agencies, including ACCJC/WASC…The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Improvement of the U.S. Department of Education recently criticized ACCJC/WASC for failure to meet the "two-year rule." The rule requires accrediting agencies to provide no more than two years for an institution to meet standards.

Splat n+1:

…Shasta College has been given a warning by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) in California…"This is all kind of new and a surprise to us," said Bill Cochran, vice president of academic affairs at Shasta College…But the college is not alone. Of the 109 community colleges in the state, 103 were given warnings or put on probation…" This is not a Shasta College thing -- this is hitting the whole state," Cochran said. [My emphasis.]

Why are these people so often dishonest?

.....

YESTERDAY, the OC Register reported that Westminster school trustees reject[ed] 'In God We Trust' motto.
.....The proposal to adopt the motto came from Ocean View School District trustee John Briscoe.
.....The Reg explains how Briscoe got his bright idea:

…[H]e wanted Westminster School District to be [the] first district in the county to display the words publicly because Westminster city officials in January became the first in Orange County to display the words in their City Council room….

.....Evidently, Briscoe has busied himself recently passing out fliers and sending emails, drumming up support.
.....But now get this. According to the Reg,

Westminster officials said a press release written by Briscoe and sent out to local media misrepresented his position with the district. In the press release, Briscoe identified himself as "Elected Trustee John Briscoe working with Westminster School District." [Westminster Trustee Jo-Ann] Purcell said some could infer that Briscoe had been elected to the Westminster School District, instead of to neighboring Ocean View. [My emphasis.]

.....Purcell has a gift for understatement.

Censorship at Saddleback College?

From the March 12 edition of the Lariat (the SOCCCD's student newspaper): College censors musical "Reefer Madness:

Lariat Editorial Board

.....The 1968 Federal Flag Desecration Law criminalized the act of flag burning when it was passed by congress. The legislation was a result from anti-war demonstraters who burned our flag in protest of the Vietnam War.
.....[Though] The act is extremely appalling, it is protected, by our first amendment rights and the freedom of speech.
.....Expression in art forms is also protected by our constitution. Music, or a scene from a play would fall under this protection.
.....In Saddleback College's musical, "Reefer Madness," which closed over the weekend, a scene was removed because it involved the burning of the U.S. Flag in a desecrating manner.
.....Although this was only a projection of the flag being burned, it was still deemed inappropriate by school officials and was ordered to be removed from the final production.
.....The administration of the school didn't have a premise to really demand this censorship. The flag wasn't ever really burned, it was just an illusion created by projection.
.....Even if the flag had been burned it is protected by the burners freedom of speech.
.....In this case the freedom was not about the flag-burners beliefs, rather the expression in art forms. The college's production was an expressive art.
.....While the musical is based on smoking marijuana, the last thing an administrator needs to do is worry about the projection of an American Flag being burned. It is a play, and plays are often filled with adultery, crime, or really anything that could be found offensive to anyone.
.....In this county, we are all too accustomed to the horrible act of censorship. With the unfortunate FCC, censored material is something we as Americans experience too much. Compared to other prominent nations, such as Germany and England, censorship is much more rampant in the U.S.
.....We rarely hear unnecessary bleeps, or see unnecessary blurs in foreign countries, that is, if we do at all.
.....If the reason we use censorship is to protect our society, morals and values, it would make more sense to stop it at its root, rather than smother expressive art forms that are doing their part to motivate and stimulate the public.
.....The musical was a satire focusing on education and awareness, and the burning the flag would have only fueled the message "Reefer" promoted about governments telling people what to think and how to act. —Lariat Editorial Board

--NOTE FROM DtB: I don't usually say such things here, but some of our readers are IDIOTS. I'm sorry, but it's just got to be said. See COMMENTS. -CW

Bullying is working (Vietnamese flag issue)

.....(See Not Really a Banner Day at Irvine Valley College in this morning's Orange County Register.)
.....In this afternoon's OC Reg:
Little Saigon protests raise questions about freedoms

.....Tien Van stands on the sidewalk outside Nguoi Viet Daily News holding a loud speaker in one hand and the South Vietnamese red-and-yellow flag in the other.
.....Behind her is a shrine that has been erected to a much larger version of the flag with a fruit offering and incense burning on a table below it. She and a dozen others are protesting the newspaper's publication of a photo that showed a foot spa bearing the flag colors. Van says the photo broke her heart.
....."Our flag is sacred," she said. "People sacrificed their lives for it. My father and brother died for this flag."
.....Anti-communist protests and demonstrations have come to be a way of life in Little Saigon, whose residents are mostly refugees who fled the communist regime after the fall of Saigon in April 1975. This area is home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.
.....But the recent wave of protests against Vietnamese publications such as the eight-month protest outside Viet Weekly in Garden Grove and the weeks-long demonstration outside Nguoi Viet Daily News in Little Saigon—as well as the threat of protests against Irvine Valley College over a campus flag exhibit that included the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam—has led to debates about a clash of freedoms.
.....The protests, which have been peaceful in recent years, are escalating in seriousness. Nguoi Viet's leadership has reported threats and intimidation. Merchants on Main Street in Garden Grove say they are being bullied and business is being disrupted. Nguoi Viet has fired two top editors.
.....Scott Weimer, president of the Downtown Garden Grove Business Association and owner of the Viet Weekly building, said he is worried the protesters won't stop until the newspaper shuts down.
....."If the newspaper buckles down, it means that this type of mob bullying works," he said. "I understand their feelings about communism, but it doesn't justify the use of these fear tactics—the kind the communists probably use themselves."
.....Protesters accuse Viet Weekly of taking a pro-communist stance by profiling communist leaders, publishing their interviews as well as opinion pieces that favor communists.
.....Nguoi Viet, the largest Vietnamese daily published outside Vietnam, fired two of its top editors after the controversy over the foot spa photo, which was published in the newspaper's Lunar New Year special edition. The paper's editor issued a public apology after an internal investigation, admitting the photo was an error that should not have occurred.
.....The article was about an art exhibit at UC Berkeley of a foot spa created by a UC Davis student in honor of her mother-in-law who worked in nail salons to put her through college.
.....But the protests continue even after the apology and the firings. Protesters now say that they want a public hearing. The newspaper has not responded to that request and protesters say they won't stop until that happens. In recent weeks Nguoi Viet filed a lawsuit and asked for a restraining order against the protesters, alleging that they are threatening and harassing the newspaper's employees and customers.
.....The paper's attorney, Luan Tran, declined comment.
.....Trong Doan and Ky Ngo, who are heading the protest, deny those allegations.
....."We're not trouble makers," says Ngo. "We're here because we love our flag and don't want to see anyone disrespect it."
.....Hai Phan, an editor at Viet Bao Daily News, said the issue has been tough on the Little Saigon media.
....."My friends are on both sides and I feel like I'm stuck in between," he said. "I'm thinking about a lot of different issues right now, but I can't talk about them."
.....Protesters have the constitutional right to assemble and express their dissent peacefully, but when a newspaper buckles under the pressure, it makes a dent in the First Amendment, said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition.
....."It's easy to understand why these are sensitive issues in the Vietnamese American community," he said. "But the newspaper has the right to exercise its First Amendment rights too and when the media's voice is silenced by protesters, it's a loss for all of us."
.....The constitution protects the minority point of view and the unpopular opinion as well, Scheer said.
.....The Westminster Police Department is "caught in between" in trying to protect the rights of property owners and businesses in Little Saigon and making sure that protesters follow the law, said Sgt. Dan Schoonmaker.
.....Schoonmaker says the Nguoi Viet demonstration has been different from previous protests in Little Saigon. Officers are investigating reported threats against employees' lives and at least one reported bomb threat at the newspaper, he said.
.....Detectives are trying to determine who is responsible and what connection, if any, exists between these threats of violence and the demonstration, Schoonmaker said. Police continue to respond to disturbances outside the paper several times a week aside from regular patrol checks, he said.
....."It's unusual to have such disturbances, code enforcement violations and criminal threats associated with a protest in Little Saigon," Schoonmaker said.
.....Ron Bauer [sic], professor of philosophy at Irvine Valley College, said he believes his college was "bullied" by members of the Vietnamese American community into taking down the colorful flag exhibit.
....."It's one thing to raise a concern," he said. "But it's another thing to come in with the threat of bringing in protesters. Such bullying tactics are, I hate to say it, very un-American."
.....But Westminster Councilman Andy Quach and Garden Grove Councilwoman Dina Nguyen, who spoke with college officials on behalf of the community, said it was not a threat.
....."In Bolsa (Avenue), protests are a way of life," Quach says. "Our people love freedom because they lived without it. Protests should be done legally and peacefully, but they should certainly not be viewed as threats or bullying."
.....Nguyen said protests are a legitimate way for community members to disagree with an opposing point of view.
....."The press is a bigger machine," she said. "But these are ordinary people and it takes a lot for them to get organized and express themselves."

I head home, take pics, in the golden light

Not a banner day (Red Emma/AT)

In this morning’s OC Register: Not really a banner day at IVC:
College removes flag display over threat of protests about including Vietnam's

By RED EMMA/ANDREW TONKOVICH
UC Irvine lecturer who taught many years at Irvine Valley College.

.....Wait till they find out that evolution is taught at Irvine Valley College. The creationists, too, will threaten to put a headlock on the community college president, taking a page from the playbook of angry citizens who browbeat him last month. The school's chief administrator acquiesced to threats of disruption, protests, who knows, what—flag waving?—by local activists who didn't like the school's display of the state banner of communist Vietnam.
.....Responding like some confused King Solomon, the chief administrator instructed staff to not only remove the objectionable standard of the evil regime but all 144 of the colorful flags of the world which for 10 years had hung cheerfully enough from the second-floor atrium of the Student Services Center. This in Irvine, Orange County, California, USA. So, under cover of darkness, absent announcement, maintenance crews removed the entire "It's a Small World"-style display of banners and set the stage for more of, well, less.
.....Soon enough the campus could expect to be targeted by Darwin-hating religious fundamentalists, and might now expect the brave president, a one-time geology teacher, to again "consult" with members of the college's Academic Senate, as he claims he did in the case of the flags, and decide, in order to play it safe, to eliminate not only discussion of evolution, but all science classes: botany, biology, anatomy, astronomy, physiology.
.....Which will no doubt encourage other groups to demand that history teachers using textbooks with actual photographs (of Vietnam, say, Ho Chi Minh or perhaps even, yes, the Vietnamese flag) replace these with, well, nothing at all.
.....Or, responding to pro-war types who object to political-science teachers using the Los Angeles Time's "Other Military Deaths" column, he might reasonably be expected to remove newspapers and news racks from campus.
.....Stay with me. That action could, of course, cause anti-choice activists to demand that the school nurse cease handing out family planning literature, condoms and birth control, which means good-bye to aspirin. Finally, some group might discover that the school library contains bibles and "Fahrenheit 451" and works by Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, prompting librarians to remove not only those particular books, but, in a sublimely proactive Fahrenheit 451-esque move, get rid of all texts.
.....Slippery slope? Reductio ad absurdum? Maybe. But recall that this little public college in affluent, educated South Orange County once famously warned instructors not to talk about the Iraq war in class. At the time, its chancellor offered no restrictions on discussing the Civil War, Spanish-American War or War of 1812. Go figure.
.....Still, there's clear precedent at Irvine Valley College for just removing whole topics, discussions, whole cloth. Which makes good sense.
.....After all, not flying the Nazi or Confederate flags has certainly stopped racism and anti-Semitism. Not teaching about human sexual reproduction has certainly reduced teen pregnancy. Not acknowledging slave labor in China or Haiti or, yes, Vietnam, has improved labor conditions with these U.S. trading partners. And burning American flags has stopped imperialism and spread international goodwill, right?
.....Let's give flag-haters the benefit of the doubt and call them human-rights activists. They correctly abhor the policies of Vietnam, of which the flag is a symbol. But if removing a symbol would help anybody in Vietnam, or anywhere, then we should, indeed, remove it and all flags including, yes, our own. I'm with the IVC president there, though I'll bet for different reasons.
.....Instead of flags, we might hang up the U.S. Constitution (while we still have it). Or display a roster of those proud U.S. corporations doing business with oppressive regimes worldwide, including Vietnam. Or go the other route, my own preference, and hang 'em all: the old South Vietnam flag, right next to that of the nasty current regime. And the flags of the former USSR and Rhodesia and the Duchy of Prussia, too, alongside the Cross of Spain and the Upper Voltan tricolor and the flag of the Ottoman Caliphate, a pageant of color and history, benevolence and brutality. More flags, not fewer.
.....We might consider these banners toward educating ourselves about our rich, difficult history. In learning, after all, less is not more. -RE

Andrew Tonkovich

The perfect Sturm und Drang

.....EACH COLLEGE'S accreditation progress report is due on October 15. That's just seven months away. But, of course, a progress report is a report on progress, and any progress, naturally, must occur before the reports are written.
.....—Unless, of course, we wanna get tricky—you know: describe our progress first and then do what we gotta to make the description seem plausible.
.....That's strictly Bush league.
.....Now, unless the report writers plan to wait until the last minute to write their reports, whatever progress that “we” make needs to be made by, say, August or September. Even earlier.
.....And don’t forget that, traditionally, faculty are virtually incommunicado during the summer months. If they figure into this "progress," it had better be made by May.
.....We're in the middle of March.
* * * * *
.....How will this work exactly? As I said, progress report committees are now forming. Will still other committees now be organized to actually make the progress—i.e., the progress to be reported by the committees now forming? It seems not. Evidently, the committees now forming are “the” accreditation committees. The idea seems to be that these committees will make the progress—or somehow cause the progress to be made—and then, having accomplished that, will set about to report on the progress.
.....It's crystal clear.
.....Perhaps we will rent Irvine's big fucking orange balloon, tie it up at the colleges, and paint on it: MAKING BIG PROGRESS.


.....The committees will be large and diverse. Evidently, Trustee Don Wagner, the board president, will serve on each college committee. I hear the Gary Poertner, too, will be on the committee, at least here at IVC. Plus a few administrators. Plus some faculty, the number not yet determined. Plus some classified. Here at IVC, Wendy and Jerry will also be on the committee.
.....Gosh. One thing about big and diverse committees, they really know how to focus.
* * * * *
.....I keep hearing that NO faculty at Saddleback are willing to serve on their college’s accreditation committee. After the way Mathur and Wagner messed with the last report, Saddlebackians are fed up.
.....That's gonna take the starch out of the Saddleback effort, for sure.
.....And then there’s this: it looks like negotiations between the district and the faculty union over the faculty contract have ground to a halt, or are threatening to do so. The word is that the district is seriously low-balling the faculty. (Keep in mind that the only solution to our 50% problem is to increase the proportion of district expenditure devoted to faculty salaries and benefits.)
.....I hear that union officials are contemplating a “work action” according to which faculty will do only the work that is identified by the faculty contract.
.....Naturally, that work is less than the work that faculty presently do.
.....But here’s the clincher. Were a work action to occur, it may, of course, affect these accreditation committees—well, not Saddleback’s committee, which can’t scare up faculty anyway. But if, for whatever reason, faculty refuse to be on these committees, it seems unlikely that these groups will succeed in their modest aims.
.....Imagine the ACCJC receiving a progress report that faculty refused to participate in. "Promising!", they'll shout.


.....It gets worse. Right now, owing to the Chancellor’s monumental screw-up regarding the 50% Law (by the way: we seem doomed to being in noncompliance with it, despite efforts now underway), about 40 search committees are gearing up to hire new faculty. It’s an all-out effort to increase “instructional” expenditures without resorting to, oh, raising salaries. Can’t have that. So saith certain trustees, namely, the ones who got us into this accreditation fix by bullying and insisting on their man Mathur, the screw-up.
.....But what if faculty, or even most faculty, refuse to do this work—this work for which they are not compensated?
.....(By the way: I don’t know any colleague who isn’t on one or more of these hiring committees. Thus far, everyone seems quite happy to do this work.)
..... Given the existing hiring policy, those searches will simply have to shut down, for the policy requires a certain number of faculty per committee. And if the searches shut down, the faculty don't get hired, which puts us even further below the 50% line.

.....Yikes.



UPDATE:

Today (3/13), at the IVC Academic Senate meeting, President Roquemore came to explain progress made in the formation of the Accreditation committee, which will be meeting some time soon after Spring break. Reportedly, he answered Senators' questions to their satisfaction. He also updated faculty on developments at ATEP, which seem to be taking an upturn.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "peace comes dropping slow"

At some moments, Rebel Girl feels like she must have done something right. For some summers, high in the Sierra, she has listened to Galway Kinnell recite this Yeats poem and it is as if Yeats himself is in the small room with the dark wooden walls, crowded with poets. He isn't, of course, his words are though and almost chanted or sung in the company of people who recite them with eyes closed or nearly so, and that is close enough, that is closer than she ever imagined she'd be to anything that felt like that.

A few years back Rebel Girl read a story in the NY Times about how Kinnell showed up when Stanley Kunitz was in the hopsital and recited this Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Everyone thought that Kunitz, then 97 or 98, was dying, but he didn't - he lived to go back home and garden and write and read for a couple more years.

Last week, someone out there in the blogosphere requested some Yeats, so here it is, for you, anonymous one, and for Rebel Girl's friend, who has been struggling mightily this last year and half with cancer and is finally home now and forever, where his peace, she hopes, is dropping slow, with friends and family in Echo Park. Soon, she knows, her friend will arise and go. Yeats wrote this poem after reading Thoreau. The "purple glow" is the heather. He was 23.

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Quaker oaths

•.....Gosh, I remember having to sign a "loyalty oath" back in the late 70s when I worked for UC. Most of us took great offense to that.
....."What if we don't sign?"
....."Then you don't work."
....."Oh."
.....We signed.
....."Waddya gonna do?" we said.

From the San Francisco Chronicle: Pacifist Cal State teacher gets job back:

.....A Cal State East Bay math teacher and practicing Quaker who was fired for refusing to sign a state-required loyalty oath got her job back this week, with an apology from the university and a clarification that the oath does not require employees to take up arms in violation of their religious beliefs.
....."It's the best possible outcome," said Marianne Kearney-Brown, 50, a graduate student in mathematics who was teaching a remedial class for undergraduates. "My concerns have been addressed."
.....As a Quaker, Kearney-Brown is committed to nonviolence and was unwilling to sign the state oath of allegiance that required her to "swear (or affirm)" that she would "support and defend" the U.S. and California constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." She tried inserting the word "nonviolently" in front of the word "support," but was told by university officials that altering the oath was unacceptable.
.....…In a grievance hearing Thursday conducted in a telephone conference call, an attorney for the California State University chancellor's office presented Kearney-Brown with a statement saying in part, "Signing the oath does not carry with it any obligation or requirement that public employees bear arms or otherwise engage in violence."
.....With that statement stapled to the loyalty oath, and a promise by the university to present the clarifying language to other new employees, Kearney-Brown said Friday that she felt comfortable signing the form and returning to work.
....."We're very happy with the results," said Clara Potes-Fellow, a spokeswoman for the CSU chancellor's office. "The university would very much like her to be an employee. ... We were acting in good faith, and we wanted to resolve the situation in a positive way."….

College Republicans: making the world safe for louts & racists?

• From yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. State GOP group wins free-speech case:

.....To the relief of a campus Republican group, the 417,000 students at California State University's 23 institutions no longer face the possibility of discipline for failing to be civil to one another.
.....The change was part of a settlement approved by a federal magistrate in Oakland this week in a lawsuit by the San Francisco State College Republicans, whose members were subjected to a disciplinary hearing after some of them stomped on two flags bearing the name of Allah during an anti-terrorism rally in October 2006.
.....The flags represented the militant organizations Hamas and Hezbollah and had "Allah" written on them in Arabic. A student later complained that the College Republicans had engaged in "actions of incivility" and had tried to incite violence and create a hostile environment.
.....A panel of students, faculty and staff held a hearing in March 2007 and found no violations of university policy. But the College Republicans and two of their leaders filed suit four months later, challenging the speech and conduct codes that led to the disciplinary proceedings.
.....One line in the policy manual that applies to all 23 campuses says students are expected to be civil to one another. University officials said the manual didn't set disciplinary standards or authorize punishment for incivility, but U.S. Magistrate Wayne Brazil said the Republican group at San Francisco State had been investigated for precisely that reason.
.....…This week's settlement includes a systemwide ban on punishment for incivility, along with revisions in the standards for student conduct at San Francisco State.
.....…[T]he university agreed to pay $100 each to the College Republicans and two of its leaders, and $41,500 in fees to their lawyers.
.....The settlement is one of a series of victories won by conservative legal groups against college speech codes.
.....…The San Francisco case is "a great victory for free speech," said David Hacker of the Alliance Defense Fund, a lawyer for the College Republicans.
.....State university students, Hacker said, "are now more free to speak on issues that matter to them."
.....Although the civility standard may seem innocuous, he said, "speech codes like this are consistently enforced against Christian and conservative students across the country merely for expressing their beliefs."….

Photo from Golden Gate XPress
(2nd photo from Neandernews.)

"All that makes existence valuable to anyone depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed—by law in the first place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law." —Mill

Watch what happens when a Republican Presidential Candidate dares to suggest that we are being attacked, not because of what we believe (our freedoms, our values), but because of the nasty things we do (e.g., installing dictators, building military bases, etc.):

"Destroying the fabric of collegiality," 2000

.....Dissent presents another golden oldie, from January, 2000.
.....Chancellor "El Ced" Sampson targets "delegation of authority" to faculty.
....."Shared governance" may be law, but Steve Frogue is agin' it, or so he says. What an idiot.
.....Yep, he's against it. So's Dot Fortune; so's Johnny Boy.
.....For some reason, Don Wagner plays the bongos.
.....We're "destroying the fabric of collegiality" with this, says Dave.
....."I didn't do the research for this meeting," acknowledges Dot, but does that slow her down? It does not.
.....Hey, could we amend this? asks Marcia.
.....Nope, say the Board Majority.
.....It all went downhill from there, of course. We've got the board from hell. Check it out:



For Dissent's account of this board meeting, see Sampson takes aim at "delegation of authority".

Were sanity and reason to prevail, come Oct. 15

Please note the subjunctive mood.

Dissent's golden oldies! —Frogue is an idiot! Williams questions WASC!

Three and a half minutes of golden cheesy video memories.
Hypocrisy, red meat. The usual.
From January, 2000:
(Luddites, click on the big arrow in the middle.)



Williams questions WASC/ACCJC: they meet in Hawaii! Tsk tsk, I say!
Frogue thinks he's clever!: Hey, I'm goin' to Hawaii! Plus: Jane Fonda is reborn. Just sayin'!
Fortune is kinda Fonda AAUW: Gosh, they don't seem so bad
Wagner doesn't wanna fight that fight!: time to table!

Sweet Time

~
Rebel Girl has had one of those weeks: extreme highs and lows, as if a wiggly high pressure system is hovering right off the coast of her life, playing havoc with her usual seasonal weather patterns.

Yesterday, however, was a high.

She traveled up the 5 Freeway to Cal State Los Angeles, that great sprawling urban campus, an island surrounded by four, count 'em, four freeways: the Golden State (as the 5 is sometimes called), the Pasadena, the Long Beach and the San Bernardino. Upon arrival she found herself exiting one freeway, only to accidently get on another. Whee.

She was part of a reading and panel discussion sponsored by the Chicano Studies Department, celebrating the publication of the book, "Latinos in Lotusland," wide-ranging anthology brings together 34 Latino writers and spans 60 years. It's the first anthology about Los Angeles with all-Latino contributors and including some established voices: Alex Espinoza, Reyna Grande, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Alejandro Morales, Daniel Olivas, Salvador Plascencia, John Rechy, Luis J. Rodríguez, Mario Suárez, Luis Alberto Urrea, Richard Vásquez and Helena María Viramontes as well as some newer voices. Rebel Girl is among the newbies. Rebel Girl calls it the "It's About Time" anthology.

It was nice to be somewhere else, if you know what she means. Sometimes it isn't, but yesterday it was. The afternoon was warm and bright. She could see the mountains, still topped with snow. The sky was big and clear. It was an L.A. kind of day, late winter, early spring, who could really tell. She arrived early, got some coffee, sat at a table underneath the trees and reviewed her reading. She felt like a student again, sitting there shuffling through papers, a bit nervous.

Five contributors, Helena María Viramontes, Danny Romero, Reyna Grande, Daniel Olivas, Melinda Palacio and Rebel Girl read. It was standing room only, with those snow-capped mountains visible beyond the windows.

Rebel Girl read from the piece that appears in the anthology, "Sweet Time," an excerpt from a novel which she describes as being on life-support these past ten years or so.

At the reception, the writer Montserrat Fontes came up to Rebel Girl just to say: "Finish the book." Fontes is the author of "First Confession" and "Dreams of the Centaur" and, as she told Rebel Girl, she may have been the first Mexican at Cal State LA, way back in the 60s, when she earned her degree in Comparative Literature with an emphasis in Russian Literature. "Finish the book," she said. Sometimes Reb thinks people are just being nice to her, saying what they think they should say. But Fontes gave her the look. At least Reb thought she did.

the writers: clockwise from the top: Danny Romero, Rebel Girl, Melinda Palacio, Helena Viramontes, Reyna Grande, Daniel Olivas

Monument ceremony at Saddleback

From the OC Register: Saddleback College plans Memorial Day completion of new monument:

MISSION VIEJO — Ronnie Guyer summarized Saddleback College's new veterans' memorial when his speech at the college's campus Wednesday turned into song.

"To fallen soldiers let us sing, where no rockets fly nor bullets wing. Our broken brothers let us bring to the mansions of the Lord," he said.

The words come from the hymn "The Mansions of the Lord," written for the 2002 film "We Were Soldiers" and sung at the funeral of President Ronald Reagan.

Guyer, who served in the Vietnam War, joined three fellow veterans at Saddleback College for a forum discussing the significance of the new memorial. Following the forum, city and college officials broke ground with the veterans at the memorial site, which is scheduled for completion by Memorial Day this year.

Ehren Terbeek, a student at Saddleback College who completed two tours of duty in Iraq, said the college's memorial was not political, but it was recognition of the contribution veterans have made to the country.

"The veterans' memorial is not about whether you support the ongoing struggle in Iraq, or support the president or not," he said. "It's about those patriotic men and women who for whatever reason join the military. It's for these men and women who make the sacrifices, and who may or may not make it home, that we show support and give thanks."....

Mad Max

Our Friend David has sent us new pics of young Maximilian.

1. Here we have Max in the kitchen with seashells.

2. Evidently, young Max sometimes finds it necessary to rest on the rug.

3. Here we catch Maximilian, tiring of the photoshoot.

Loyalty oath, veterans memorial

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed

The California attorney general’s office on Tuesday issued a letter backing the way California State University East Bay fired an instructor who wanted to modify the loyalty oath required of all state employees. Cal State has been much criticized by faculty and employee groups for its decision to dismiss Marianne Kearney-Brown, who tried to insert the word “nonviolently” before a pledge of support for the U.S. Constitution. Many Cal State employees — including some posting comments at Inside Higher Ed — have said that they made similar changes in the past, and did not get fired as a result. But a letter to Cal State from Jacob A. Appelsmith, senior assistant attorney general, released by East Bay Tuesday, said that Kearney-Brown’s situation was handled correctly. Appelsmith noted that the oath does not require anyone to commit a violent act. He said that Kearney-Brown appeared to be acting “in good faith,” but said that court decisions backed a strict interpretation of the oath requirement. Allowing Kearney-Brown to modify the oath would “introduce uncertainty and equivocation,” he wrote. For these reasons, he said, Cal State acted “appropriately in requiring Ms. Kearney-Brown to sign the oath as written.”

From yesterday’s OC Reg: Saddleback College breaks ground on veterans' memorial:

.....Saddleback College breaks ground Wednesday on a memorial to honor the college's and city's veterans.
.....The event begins with four veterans discussing their experiences in the attack on Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp and combat in the Vietnam and Iraq wars.
.....The concrete and ceramic memorial has been in various stages of development since 2005, when college administrators began considering ways to leave a mark on the city. When the idea for a veterans memorial surfaced, administrators formed a committee of veterans to consult for different designs.
.....When the two designers, Richard White, chair of Saddleback College's art department, and Fred Olsen, an associate professor, presented the design to the committee, there was a “silent moment” of approval among the veterans, said Saddleback College President Richard McCullough.
.....“The general consensus of the committee was that's it,” he said.
.....White and Olsen sculpted a model of the memorial using the “fire in place” technique, which allows them to create large, hollow pieces of ceramic that would not fit in a traditional kiln. McCullough said the men are two of the few artists who know how to use the technique, which made the design unique to Saddleback College.
.....“We have the expertise here,” he said. “We didn't want to bring something in that somebody else built; we wanted to design it ourselves.”
.....White said he and Olsen designed the memorial to be interactive, with a seating area and a space for visitors to walk through. He said he hoped the memorial would reflect the relationship between the public and the military, which he said has been much more positive during the Iraq war than it was during the Vietnam war.
....."Even though this war is unpopular, everybody sees that the soldiers are serving us, and they’re protecting us," he said.
.....Several cities and service organizations have donated to the memorial, which will cost about $250,000 and is slated to open next fall.
.....The veterans forum will take place at noon in room 212 of the Student Services Center of Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway. The groundbreaking is at 1 p.m. outside the Administration and Governance building. Parking will be free across campus all day.

You are the master of nothing

CONTRIBUTED BY MR. EUGENE DEBS
.....A minor presidential-race controversy that has been making the rounds lately is McCain's endorsement by John Hagee, a megachurch pastor out of San Antonio, Texas. This has struck a dusty chord with me; once upon a time, I used to watch televangelists compulsively, and remember the man well—if not fondly—from almost ten years ago, well before his current mainstream-media notoriety.
.....Hagee's recent fame has been headlined by the foreign-policy implication of his theology; briefly, he believes that only Jesus can make peace in the Mideast. Therefore, believers are obliged to actively strive for the opposite (i.e. war without end). Also, unlike most evangelicals, he opposes efforts to proselytize Jews, as their persistence in their current hellbound state is a necessary component in the convoluted structure of his eschatology (basically, you can't convert and save the Jews and have yourself your Apocalypse, any more than you can have your cake and eat it too).
.....Oddly enough, this somewhat Ahmadinejadian "throw the Jews under the bus so the rest of us can groove with J.C." viewpoint passes for a pro-Israeli position these days, but I digress. The enduring memory I have of the man is not of poisonous policy stances, but something very different, and quite less grand and geopolitical in nature; a single moment in a single sermon. The American Prospect quotes a snippet from that very sermon (here), but it does not do justice to the scene—I remember that particular broadcast very well, and a simple transcript loses virtually all the atmosphere:

.....A short, rotund, porcine man (still, though he has lost much weight), with a head like an underinflated basketball and little sunken pig eyes, Hagee speaks in the cadences of a carnival barker; key words are punctuated with a wild increase in shrillness and volume; every "payoff" sentence ends with a segue into an ascending-register, jowl-shaking shriek. The subject that day was human freedom; Hagee was agin' it. His decoy was a line from 19th century poet William Ernest Henley, which he misattributed (twice, to "Secular Humanism" and to Walt Whitman), mincing in an effete, nasal, whiny falsetto: "'I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.'" Pausing a moment for a derisive snort, he drew himself up, and in his own voice sneered contemptuously, "Secular humanism says man is the master of his fate. What nonsense that is. You can't guarantee your next breath. Only God can give you life." Hagee drew in a deep breath, a stubby finger stuck out and sweeping the auditorium triumphantly as he thundered: "You are the master of nothing! There is one master, and he is King Jay-sus! And there is no other!"
.....And the audience rose to their feet and applauded. Laughing. Uproariously. As though the thought vastly delighted them. The camera panned the pews; there were old couples, families, children in their Sunday best, all grinning widely, enormously pleased at the master-stroke their pastor had laid upon the wicked humanists. And I—who had in the past been often left angry or repelled or even dismayed by the sort of things I heard from these quarters—I found myself surprised to be simply ...sad.
.....It's hard to isolate the precise utterly demoralizing quality about the utter, vacant happiness, the casual self-debasement of the human spirit on display; but it struck a deep well of melancholy within me. Even the Communists—or the Nazis, if you will forgive me for Godwinizing myself—never quite managed, in seven decades of repressive conformism and gunpoint-enforced groupthink, to pull off the trick of telling people that they were nothing more than chattel and have them actually laugh and applaud them for it!

Tagged as E by Z

.....Evidently, DISSENT the BLOG has been “tagged” as excellent by the inimitable Professor Zero.
.....I’m not sure what that means, but Rebel Girl assures me that it is a very good thing, especially coming from Z.

.....Writes Prof Z:

Dissent - the best of academic blogs, the Bodhisattva. By Chunk Wheeler, Rebel Girl, Red Emma, and Sunny Girl, a cat.

.....I informed Sunny. She was manifestly aloofitudinal.

—Which reminds me, somehow, of my visit with my niece yesterday. She is five years old. At one point, she walked up to me, singing. It was an old John Lennon tune! She sang

All we are saying
is give pizza a chance

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "my shining loaf of quietness"

~
Today's poem comes from Peter Everwine, who has shared the red dust of the San Joaquin Valley for years with poet Philip Levine at Fresno State.

The loaves are courtesy of my own Sunday: 3 cups of lukewarm water, salt, a tablespoon and a half of yeast, 6 and half cups flour. One four or five hour rise, one 40 minute rest. 30 minutes in a hot oven with steam.

Night

In the lamplight falling
on the white tablecloth
my plate,
my shining loaf of quietness.

I sit down.
through the open door
all the absent I love enter
and we eat.