The Evil of Froguenstein (Matt Coker; OC Weekly)

OC Weekly - April 10, 1998

The Evil of Froguenstein

The real monsters behind community college trustee

Steven J. Frogue

by Matt Coker

     IF YOU'RE LIKE MOST ORANGE Countians, this is probably how you imagine Steven J. Frogue: He's a big, fat, Nazi goose stepper. He stands in front of his bathroom mirror at night in his swastika jammies, holding a black comb under his nose, and pretends to be Adolf Hitler-foaming at the mouth and swatting imaginary flies before the masses. Frogue thinks the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith is filled with a bunch of Catholic-president-slaying juden who have nothing better to do these days than figure out ways to fuck with the Frogue. "Holocaust, schmolocaust," he'll tell you-without you asking. "So it was strongly suggested the Jews go on a little extended holiday. Is that so wrong? Well, is it?"
     I'd ask Frogue if any of this stuff is true, but he won't let me. Something about the OC Weekly being "too radical," as the South Orange County Community College District's spokeswoman put it.
     Frogue, a member of the board of trustees that oversees the district encompassing Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College in Irvine, has been accused of anti-Semitism and minimizing the Holocaust. Meanwhile, he's also part of a reform-minded board majority that-depending upon who you listen to—is saving the colleges from financial ruin or driving them into the ground.
     Over mere months, several top administrators have unexpectedly retired or been canned. Teachers have been stripped of department chairmanships, deans have been moved from campus to campus, and teachers have been plucked from classrooms to replace administrators. Board majority members have been accused of interfering in the district's day-to-day operations. Against this backdrop, the state is preparing, if necessary, to take over the financially troubled district.
     The controversy surrounding Frogue—the top vote getter in the 1996 trustee elections—has led to a recall drive. However, it's obvious when you speak with anyone on either side of the recall movement that there is more to the push to push out Frogue than bigotry and pesky board meddling.
     So while conspiracy theorists like Frogue would have you believe Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy for those who really offed John F. Kennedy, here's another conspiracy theory for you-from an outside observer who cares not what a community college trustee truly believes when he stares into the mirror at night:
     Steven J. Frogue is the patsy in the mess that has become the South Orange County Community College District, and there are indeed dark forces behind it all.
     They're called teachers.

From Tustin News, 1992

     FIFTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD FROGUE HAS TAUGHT high school history in Orange County for 30 years. He has served on the college district's seven-member board of trustees for six. He's as Middle American as a cornstalk. Hails from Illinois. Served in the Marines. While stationed at El Toro, fell in love with Orange County.
     Received bachelor's and master's degrees from Chapman University. Lake Forest resident for 26 years. Married to an elementary school teacher. Two grown sons. Presbyterian deacon.
     "He doesn't do press," answered Pam Zanelli, who was hired a couple of months ago as the college district's public-affairs consultant. Nor, she said, would the district chancellor, other administrators or other board members speak to me.
     "They're afraid of you," she explained.
     Frogue may be Weekly-shy, but "he craves attention," according to Terry Burgess, former vice president of instruction at Irvine Valley College, who recently became president at Chabot Community College in the Bay Area. "He likes being the naughty boy. He loves people to listen to him."
     Frogue would have to agree that he has a stunning ability to piss people off.
     Late last summer, Frogue, then the board president, got his fellow trustees to approve spending $5,000 in district money to bring four speakers to Saddleback for a JFK-assassination seminar. Among the speakers lined up: talk-show host Dave Emory, who contends Nazis who fled defeated Germany played a leading role in slaying the dashing young president; John Judge, who echoes the views of late New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in saying a cabal of gays and the military-industrial complex were behind the killing (documented so deliciously in Oliver Stone's madcap romp JFK); and Sherman Skolnick, a self described "traditional Jew" from Chicago and frequent contributor to Spotlight (which the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] calls "the most anti-Semitic publication in America"), who has written about a plot against Kennedy in Chicago two weeks before the assassination involving Oswald and an Oswald look-alike.
     But it was the fourth speaker on Frogue's dream team that caused the matzo to hit the fan: Washington, D.C., author Michael Collins Piper, whose latest book, Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy characterizes the Kennedy killing as a joint hit orchestrated by top-level CIA officials in collaboration with organized crime "and, most specifically, with direct and profound involvement by the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad."
     Witnesses, historians, Jewish activists, U.S. courts and even California approved high school textbooks agree that 6 million Jews. perished during the Holocaust, many in gas chambers. Piper, also a Spotlight contributor, has said the figure might be far lower and that, in any case, no Jews died in gas chambers.

FA President

     Mainstream scholars laughed off the speakers. But the district received more than 200 angry phone calls and unwanted international media coverage. The seminar was first moved off campus and then shelved for good.
     But that didn't end the rancor. A recall campaign aimed at Frogue was launched as fast as you can say, "Die, Nazi scum." Saddleback and Irvine Valley student newspapers and student governments called on Frogue to resign. The Orange County Human Relations Commission, which has rarely criticized elected officials, denounced Frogue as "anti-Semitic" and "intolerant."
     Some defended the trustee. The uproar put academic freedom under attack, reported Vanderbilt University's Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation that defends free speech. Piper, the Spotlight, and its ultrafringy publisher, the Liberty Lobby, used the seminar's torpedoing to attack the ADL, which they claim has been at "the forefront of the effort to squelch . . . writers, editors, radio programs" and "is on the other side of just about every position patriots advocate."
     Defending Frogue's seminar, Zanelli cited that seven of every 10 Americans don't believe the Warren Report, which determined that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy. She maintained that Frogue led a similar class in 1988, and "no one said anything." It should be noted that Frogue was not a district trustee, let alone the board's president, in 1988.
     News of the seminar turned seats at the district's monthly board meetings into hot tickets. First came Israel backers,. Holocaust survivors and militant Jewish activists. They were soon joined by Frogue supporters-uninvited, according to Zanelli-who spouted neo-Nazi and white-supremacist rhetoric. While protectors and supporters took over the meetings-loudly-the man of the hour either remained silent or didn't show up at all. Frogue's defenders insist he was trying to keep an out-of-control situation from getting worse. Others read his silence as smugness toward critics or agreement with creepy supporters.
     "I do not hold Mr. Frogue accountable for the fact that white supremacists came and spoke in support of him," said Rich Prystowsky, an English and humanities professor who presents a well-regarded Holocaust seminar at Irvine Valley. "I do hold Mr. Frogue accountable for not telling these supremacists, 'You have the right to speak, but you don't have my support.' That he is accountable for."

From Persons (others)

FROGUE'S RECENT CHUMINESS WITH reputed anti-Semites didn't come out of nowhere. He told Irvine Valley's student newspaper, the Voice, in 1995 that he has read publications from the Institute for Historical Review, the Newport Beach organization that contends the Holocaust was exaggerated. Frogue inferred that perhaps the institute's information should be debated in public.
     As a high school teacher, Frogue's attitudes toward the Holocaust caught students' attention. Ten former students at Foothill High School in Santa Ana have given sworn affidavits to the Committee to Recall Steven J. Frogue, claiming the history teacher questioned the Holocaust and denigrated Jews, Asians, Mormons, Hispanics and African Americans during classes. In her affidavit, Lida R. Jennings, who attended Frogue's social-studies class during the 1982-83 school year, said the teacher told his students: "The Holocaust didn't really kill that many Jews. It was more like 6,000." After an in-depth discussion of Japanese internment camps, Pamela Suzanne Brown-Bustamante said she asked the teacher when he would cover the Holocaust. "His reply was to the effect that he would not be discussing it in class because it was too controversial a subject and that he questioned its validity and significance," said Brown-Bustamante, who felt his "remarks were an affront on a very personal level because of my Jewish heritage." John Mapes took Frogue's world cultures class as a freshman in 1992-93; he remembered "a few instances where people would get upset to the point of tears in his class at his comments."
     Complaints from Foothill High students and parents in 1994 reportedly led to Frogue's removal from his history class for a year. His new assignment: watch kids on detention. A tenured instructor, Frogue appealed to the school board, which returned him to the classroom. Today, Frogue vehemently denies that inappropriate comments led to his temporary reassignment. No, he says; the move occurred because it was his turn for detention duty. Officials at the Tustin Unified School District, who oversee Foothill High, can't comment because it's a "personnel matter."
     Frogue was quoted in a 1997 LA Times story saying he believes Oswald worked for the ADL. But amid the recall heat, Frogue now claims past quotes attributed to him in the mainstream and student press are "lies." One Times story he won't run away from is a March 1 column on the Orange County edition's opinion page by his board chum Dorothy Fortune. (Frogue, Fortune, Teddi Lorch and current president John Williams comprise the so-called board majority-or "Gang of Four," as it is unaffectionately called. ) The story accused ADL, and Jewish Defense League (JDL) officers, "most [of whom are] from Los Angeles County," of fueling the fire engulfing Frogue.
     Zanelli told the Weekly she co-wrote the Fortune piece. And, in our interview, she resurrected a point Frogue has frequently made in past stories: that the ADL "spies" on people. That's a reference to a lawsuit the ADL settled in 1996 with several civil-rights organizations that alleged the league hired agents to gather secret information about their activities.
     "It is really insulting to me as a Jew who has worked on projects for the ADL to have this human-rights organization treated this way," Prystowsky said of the Fortune/Zanelli story. "I think there would be a real outcry if this was happening to other groups."

Times 8/22/97

     TO UNDERSTAND HOW A GUY LIKE FROGUE ends up on the board of trustees of a community college, you have to know something about the history of campus politics in what used to be called the Saddleback Community College District. In the early days, the South Orange County Community College District Faculty Association-which negotiates collective-bargaining agreements for all instructors-was weak. Then it began backing trustee candidates.
     No one really pays much attention to community college district boards. An ambitious politician is not going to find a nonpartisan board seat much of a launching pad to higher office. And a trustee's traditional role is to just vote yea or nay on matters that have already been thoroughly hashed out by administrators, academic senates and faculty department chairpersons. The most important votes a trustee casts are for employee contracts.
     As more union-endorsed trustees have been elected, the faculty association's power has grown. So have teachers' paychecks. The sixth-largest community college district in California, the South County district currently has the highest-paid faculty. The average full time professor's salary is $67,495—which is $12,000 more than the state average for community colleges, according to the state chancellor's office.
     Anyone who runs for a board seat without the backing of the faculty association is going to have a tough go. Just to stay even, such a candidate would have to double the local union's backing, since the California Teachers Association (CTA) automatically matches any contributions the faculty association doles out.
     "Very few people can raise that kind of money for a community college board seat," said a source involved in school board elections for Orange County teachers unions. "Candidates that are union-elected are committed to the union."

Pam Zanelli

     Everyone except David Lang on the South County district's current board of trustees was backed at one time or another by the faculty association, including Frogue, who harbors conservative views but bleeds union blood.
     "This is not really about Frogue and whether he has a right to say whatever it is he says," the source said of the controversy swirling around the trustee. "The question is really whether the union has systematically turned the board into an adjunct board of the union. A recall won't accomplish much because the union still has all the cards."
     So check out this conspiracy theory: a career high school teacher has run-ins with administrators. He runs to the union for protection. Besides hanging out with conspiracy nuts and professional anti-Semites, the teacher presses the flesh with influential local and state teachers union members (faculty associations at the high school and college districts fall under the same CTA umbrella). With their blessing and financial backing, this good union soldier wins a community college board seat. He says and does some nutty things, but the seat is his to keep so long as he fulfills the union's chief goal: increase teacher salaries.
     "He's anti-administration by persuasion," Burgess said of Frogue. "I'd offer he doesn't get along with administration because he isn't worth a shit."
     Endorsed by the faculty association, Frogue and Williams won their first four year board seats in 1992. Williams remained mostly in the background after joining the board, but "Frogue was wacko from the jump," Burgess said. The trustee took on the ADL, administrators and Irvine Valley's academic senate (he called it an "intellectual drive-by shooting" and "the Spanish Inquisition carried out by fifth-graders"). But few took Frogue seriously, certainly not the then-board majority. He was like the goofy uncle you put up with once a year at Thanksgiving.
     Then came the Orange County bankruptcy of December 1994. Property-tax revenues had already taken a four-year beating thanks to the recession. New home building, which had been the district's hope for new property-tax revenues, stopped. "The way funding works is, if the district generates enough money, all that money stays within the district," said Bob Cosgrove, a Saddleback English professor, former academic senate president, member of district and Saddleback budget committees, and recall supporter. "They had been living high on the hog."
     Suddenly, those funds were no longer keeping pace with rising spending, and the district was forced to rely solely on state payments for each student enrolled, which totalled less than had been coming in before and was subject to the whims of Sacramento's budget ax.
     The financial downturn turned out to be a boon for Frogue, providing him with an issue in his 1996 re-election campaign that resonated with South County voters wary of bureaucrats wasting their hard-earned tax dollars. "He ran on a platform of reducing administration and being more responsive to students," Zanelli said.
     A number of teachers went to the leaders of the faculty association before the 1996 election and asked that the union not endorse Frogue because he already had a reputation as a nut. The union ignored them and instead hired an outside consultant to help direct the campaign of its slate of candidates: Frogue, Fortune, Williams and Don Davis.
     That consultant was Pam Zanelli.

     ZANELLI-WHOSE EX-HUSBAND, JERRY Zanelli, worked for former LA County state Senator David Roberti-told the Weekly she's been in politics since she was 19. The Tustin resident represented former Governor Jerry Brown in OC; was Brown's appointment to the male-dominated Orange County Fair Board; sat on Santa Ana's Human Relations Committee; served on the staffs of former state Senator Paul Carpenter and then-county Supervisor Harriet Wieder, helped the campaigns of a slew of Assembly and judicial candidates; and was a founding member of the Orange County Commission on the Status of Women.
     She was paid $4,200 to be the faculty association's 1996 campaign consultant. One of the campaign's most dramatic moments came when the slate mailed a hit piece aimed at its opponents: "Taxpayer Alert: Don't Allow Your Tax Dollars to Pay for Same-Sex 'Marriage' Domestic Benefits at Your Saddleback Community College District." Sent to Republican voters in the district shortly before the election, it alleged that the slate's four opponents-including incumbent Lang-supported the use of "education tax dollars" for health benefits for employees' same-sex partners, college classes including "content about gay and lesbian lifestyles" and "seminars and conferences to educate participants about the gay and lesbian lifestyle."
     "Vote to oppose these four candidates," the mailer read. "Their plan will cost taxpayers $9,000 per 'partner' each year."
     Lang later told The Lariat, Saddleback's student newspaper, that no candidate on his slate campaigned with domestic-partner benefits as an issue, although they were asked their feelings about it at a public forum. The claim that Lang's slate planned gay and lesbian seminars and classes "was invented," he added.
     The mailer was paid for by Taxpayers for Responsible Education, a political action committee established by what was then known as the Saddleback Community College District Faculty Association. The union spent at least $44,000 on behalf of Frogue's slate in that election, records show.
     The mailer worked (except for Davis, who lost to Lang). Frogue was the race's top vote getter, garnering 128,361 votes and a decisive 61 percent to 39 percent trouncing of his opponent.
     How does a candidate with Frogue's baggage get elected by such huge margins?
     "Because, to put it bluntly, most people don't know who's running when you get to races that far down on the ballot," said Bob Wilberg, a recall volunteer and unopposed Democratic candidate for the South County's 73rd Assembly District seat, currently held by Republican Bill Morrow, a Gang of Four booster. "A person puts himself down as an educator, and there's a commonality there for a school board seat. Most people, including myself, don't ask who these people are."
     Teachers incensed over the mailer asked faculty association president Sherry Miller-White why such divisive literature was used to elect the union's candidates. She blamed the association's hired consultant-Zanelli emphatically denied it was her-and then reminded everyone of the union's desire to have its candidates win elections at all costs.
     The cost may be higher than Miller-White first calculated: at the board's March 23 meeting, Orange County gay and lesbian groups announced that they have joined the Frogue recall drive because of lingering outrage over the mailer. That announcement came a few days after another by the recall committee: infused with sizable cash from an "anonymous" donor to help pay for a Santa Monica political consultant, the committee quit trying to beat the clock to get the recall on the June ballot and is now shooting for November. At a Zanelli-arranged press conference the next day, Frogue, with Williams and Miller-White at his side, said: "The recall of Steven J. Frogue has failed. They couldn't deceive the public once, and they won't be able to deceive the public a second time."

     AFTER THE '96 ELECTION, ZANELLI LANDED another job that placed her close to the Gang of Four. Her consulting group was hired by the board to look into the district's public-information program in the wake of the Jews-killed-Kennedy incident. After the consultants' report-foes say it cost taxpayers $15,000-was handed to the board, Zanelli was hired as an in-house consultant, serving as the district's media spokesperson and providing political expertise. Frogue's opponents call her "a $5,000-per-month spin doctor," referring to the amount she's reportedly paid and the information she's dispensing. The board voted on March 23 to turn it into a full-time position. With a resonance in her voice that could only lead one to assume she'd rather swallow Drano than answer the other way, Zanelli replied, "No" when asked by the Weekly if she'll apply for the full-time position.

Frogue, age 16

     SINCE THE GANG OF FOUR'S RISE, THE District has "gone hugely downhill in a hurry," according to Burgess. "The board majority makes itself out to be a champion of the taxpayer dollar-the kind of thing people like to read in Orange County. It is all abject bullshit."
     Burgess is among the long list of administrators who have also been let go, told their: contracts would not be renewed, or have retired. "My departure is a direct consequence of the politics of that place and the agenda of the board majority, which feels like it's on some sort of jihad to right past wrongs," said Burgess, who pointed to his longtime criticism of faculty-association tactics.
     "Those in power now are a vengeful lot," he said. "If you talk to the rank-and-file people . . . morale is horrible. They are all very angry, frustrated and fearful of losing their jobs. [The board majority is] playing with people's professional lives."
     Burgess clearly sees the Gang of Four's ascendancy as a kind of Revenge of the Nerds: hounded by administrators throughout his tenure as a high school teacher, Frogue is now in a position to give back.
     Not so, says Zanelli, who claims any pain is a byproduct of the board's commitment to reform a district in severe financial trouble. "Four [board members] have the same goal: streamline administration," she said. "This is going on around the country with community colleges. They are trying to stretch tax dollars, and they are trying to be more responsive to students."
     To do that, Zanelli says, the board killed a program that allowed teachers to consider themselves on-the-clock when they perform administrative functions and redirected that teaching time into more core-subject classes.
     But to replace fired or retired administrators, the board has-in six out of 10 cases-plucked appointees out of district classrooms. According to the recall committee, that negates ballyhooed gains in putting more teachers to work. And a source close to the district claims that nearly every new administrator had recently been active in the faculty association. "They are rewarding their friends, not picking qualified people," the source said.
     Critics also charge that the board has mishandled "release time"-a procedure that pays teachers to perform quasi-administrative tasks. Some teachers sit on the academic senate, for example, an advise-and-consent teachers council. Under release time, the hours teachers spent sitting in academic senate meetings could be subtracted from the time they were required to spend in front of students. Not anymore. From now on, the anti-administration Gang of Four has said teachers will teach, and administrators-handpicked from among their loyalists, critics say- will administer.
     Faculty members opposed to the Gang of Four say the attack on release time is destroying the notion of "shared governance." The union hierarchy's answer to this grievance? Sharon MacMillan, the association's president-elect, has said teachers were repeatedly warned that release time was getting out of hand and that a policy to control it needed to be established. "The academic senates did not respond," she said.
     "When the academic senate president is making more than the chancellor, something is wrong," added union negotiator Kenneth Woodward.
     About 15 hours of release time is dedicated to faculty association officers so they may work on union business, district teachers said. The board has not stripped them of that time.

Sharon MacMillan, in her youth

     PERHAPS NOTHING—CERTAINLY NOT Frogue's alleged anti-Semitism-so polarized the district as "The Junta of July 16." The district's policy manual states that a committee of faculty and staff is to screen candidates for administrative jobs and forward a list of finalists to the trusses, Burgess said. But without notifying the academic senate or the public, the Gang of Four decided in closed session in April 1997 to promote chemistry professor and Frogue loyalist Raghu Mathur to the position of interim president of Irvine Valley College. The other three trustees had walked out of the meeting, claiming the board had violated the Brown Act, the state's open-meeting law.
     Irvine Valley philosophy professor Roy Bauer successfully sued the board over the Brown Act violation. Under that state law, governing bodies can meet in private to discuss personnel or pending litigation, but the matter to be discussed must be announced before going into closed session, and no vote can be taken in private.
     Zanelli discounts the violation, calling it "a procedural issue. The board was following the advice of a previous chancellor and its attorney."
     But it wasn't the first time trustees had gathered outside public meetings to discuss district business, according to former trustee Harriett Walther, who volunteers for the recall. She said Williams assured her at a board meeting during the height of the bankruptcy that he, Frogue and Lorch had been meeting separately to tackle the problem. Walther said she was ignored when she asked for agendas and minutes from those meetings. The Brown Act is supposed to apply to such subcommittees.

Walther

     On accusations that this board seems to do a lot of things in private, Zanelli replied by restating the law—"You can't do that. This is a public institution run by tax dollars"—but didn't actually deny the charges.
     Mathur's appointment brought a resounding vote of no-confidence in the board from the Irvine Valley faculty. The board fired back on July 16, 1997. On that day-the day of the Junta—the Gang of Four voted in closed session to return all department chairpersons—10 faculty members, including Bauer—to their classrooms. Deans from Saddleback were transferred to Irvine Valley to take over the ex-chairpersons' administrative duties.
     It was a kind of bureaucratic "fuck you." By eliminating Irvine Valley's chairpersons and dumping that release time back into the classrooms, the district saved $600,000 in school overhead and $250,000 in salaries, according to Zanelli. Meanwhile, it has allowed the district to offer 10 percent more classes in such core subjects as English and math. "It had a very real effect on the bottom line," Zanelli said. "This restructuring...cost nothing because the deans [who were transferred from Saddleback] were already getting paid. But it created a lot of anger."
     That's not all that has created anger. Some in the Gang of Four have resorted to "desk checks," monitoring the work areas of administrators to make sure they are on the job when they should be, Cosgrove said.
     "Four board members are micromanaging the district," said Cosgrove, who has been with Saddleback since 1981. [They are] not letting people do what they are trained to do....This group is asking for l9th-century high school board controls."'
     After meeting behind closed doors-again-in September, the Gang of Four removed the "interim" from Mathur's presidency title. Unlike other administrative hirings, a faculty/ staff/community committee was not allowed to submit a list of finalists among the 19 candidates for the post. The board also skipped having the chancellor make the final recommendation.
     The Gang of Four liked the process used to hire Mathur so much that they voted on March 23 to make it formal district policy.
     "No one does that in the state," Burgess said.

In 2016, Frogue's son (2nd from left in 1989) became Trump's chief health policy advisor

     THE REAL DANGER WITH THE FROGUE regime is not anti-Semitism or even declining morale caused by "reforms." It is the looming financial crisis. The state chancellor's office recommends that, ideally, a district hold 5 percent of its budget in reserve. Before the bankruptcy, the South County district had 6 percent of its $70 million budget in reserves. At the end of the last fiscal year, it was less than 2 percent, a distinction that landed the district on the state's watch list. Should reserves dip to 1 percent, the state could take over district finances.
     Before his recent retirement, vice chancellor of finance Anthony Carcamo predicted the reserves will be 3 percent when the current fiscal year ends.
     Fortune has said the board is looking to slash another $700,000. Someone from the outside looking at a district where teacher salaries and benefits account for more than 50 percent of its budget might assume belt tightening should begin there. But the Gang of Four says the district's mission has always been to maintain a top-quality faculty. And given Frogue's base of support in the union-support that has withstood charges of anti-Semitism and gay-bashing-it's unlikely that even looking at holding the line on salaries is an option.
     That could produce a showdown between the board and the state chancellor's office, which has noted the district continues to dole out high salaries while on watch. "It is so out-of-whack," said Burgess, who alleged there are faculty members showing up to class-two days per week earning $81,000 per year and more than 30 professors earning more than six figures per year.
     Carolyn Gillay, a Saddleback faculty member in the business sciences-computer-information-management department and union supporter, does not like the assertion that teachers are overpaid. "I can't believe what's being told to the public," she said. "People think I'm making all this money. I took a pay cut to come here."
     Gillay, who after 14 years at Saddleback earns about $72,000, believes teachers are generally underpaid. "If you live in Orange County, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to live here than it is in, say, Riverside," she said. "You'd expect salaries to be higher here."
     They certainly will be under the five year faculty contract approved on March 31 after a monthlong union election that set a district record for ballots cast (190) and featured the closest margin o victory longtime observers can remember (55 percent to 45 percent). The contract applies to the 300 full-time and 700 part time faculty members in the district.
     Carcamo is reportedly wary of the pact, saying it will cost the district $5.6 million. "It's just flat-out irresponsible" considering the district's precarious financial position, Burgess said.

Econo boy

     The Gang of Four will tell you the contract, which the other three board members opposed, does not include a pay increase for the first year. "That should impress the state chancellor's office and show them we are taking the watch list seriously," Williams reportedly told The Orange County Register.
     The first year of the just-signed contract applies to the current school year ending in June. As fast as you can say "Yippee, it's July," yearly cost-of-living increases, currently estimated at nearly 3 percent, kick in and continue through 2002. Zanelli told the Weekly those raises are mandated by the state.
     Another example of the contract seeming to be cognizant of the watch status is cost-of-living raises appearing to be tied to whether the district retains a 3 percent reserve. But when that was brought up at a tense faculty association contract meeting in a bone-cold Saddleback lecture hall on March 9, Miller-White assured colleagues the district can only "ask the union to reconsider negotiations." By simply deciding against going back to the bargaining table, the raises will automatically kick in no matter how low the reserve dips, Miller-White said.
     "The board put that provision in the contract so that it could hide from the state the fact that they're giving teachers a raise," MacMillan said.
     The contract also restored five levels at the highest end of the pay scale that had been negotiated away in the 1970s. Seventy-five longtime professors will get $2,500 yearly stipends along with their cost-of-living raises at restored levels, retroactive to the current school year.
     "Even though there are no raises per se, everybody in those five steps will get a 3 percent raise by virtue of just being alive at the end of the year," Burgess explained. "If there is a 3 percent [cost of-living] raise, they will get a 6 percent total raise in a 3 percent economy."
     "What you have are union loyalist on both sides of the [bargaining] table," said Bauer, who, in addition to suing the board, pokes fun at them in his campy campus newsletter The Vine. "The whole thing really stinks....These so-called fiscal conservatives are doing the bidding for a greedy union."
     Zanelli, who claims the new contract will drop the district from first place in the highest-paid faculty sweep stakes to fourth, responded, "The faculty association approved the contract with a zero percent raise [the first year]. If that means the union controls these four board members, the proof isn't in the ... contract."

     SOME ARGUE THAT THE RECENT TURMOIL proves there should be no multicampus community college districts, that there should be accountability on each campus. Others want to do away with citizen elected school boards at local community colleges altogether, redirecting oversight to a state-appointed board of regents patterned after California's university system. Until that day comes, community college boards will continue to be vulnerable to zealots pushing agendas that divide their campuses and communities.

Matt Coker

     One would think this rise of the fringe would frighten teachers unions. But that apparently isn't so in the South Orange County Community College District. The only thing the union seems to fear these days is the amount of press all this is getting. Life was much easier when no one paid attention.

SEE ALSO

• NIGHT OF THE NAZI by Chunk Wheeler
• FROGUE'S "SCHOLAR" HINTS AT VIOLENCE
• FROGUE AMBUSHES A YOUNG CRITIC--WITH HELP FROM THE CHRISTIAN COALITION by Tom
• A MOTLEY CREW OF NAZIS VS. JDL THUGS: OH, WHAT A NIGHT! by Chunk Wheeler
• THE SAYINGS OF CHAIRMAN FROGUE (1997?)
• LIES! LIES! LIES! --the May '97 Board Meeting
• TO CONCERNED UNIONISTS: FROGUE DEFENDS HIMSELF AGAINST THE CHARGE THAT HE IS A HOLOCAUST DENIER
• His view of Holocaust stirs furor (Dan Froomkin)
• IS TRUSTEE STEVEN FROGUE A HOLOCAUST DENIER?

RAGHU IS FIVE YEARS AHEAD OF HIS TIME

Compare the following with IVC VPI Dennis White's "war talk discussion ban" of 2003. See in Archives.

Memo from IVC President Raghu Mathur to "all faculty" 4/2/98 [NO POLITICS IN CLASS]

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT To: 

All Faculty 

I understand that some students have asked instructors to allow them to speak in their classes about campus political matters. In light of professional sense and matter [sic] of good practice, I would like to caution and advise all faculty to maintain the integrity of the classroom instruction [sic] by adhering to approved curriculum and course outlines of record for their day-to-day activities. It is not a good practice for faculty to allow campus politics to interfere with the educational interests of the students in the classroom. Discussion of political matters, for example, in political science classes is certainly appropriate. Students are welcome to use other forums and avenues to exercise their freedom of speech without interfering with educational interests of other students. I appreciate very much your professional consideration of this matter. 

Thank you. 

Raghu Mathur 

President Irvine Valley College

FROGUE'S "SCHOLAR" HINTS AT VIOLENCE

From Dissent 4, 3/27/98

[Michael Collins Piper was among the quartet of cranks that Frogue invited to his ill-fated “Warren Commission” forum. Piper is the reporter for “Spotlight,” which is the chief publication of Willis Carto’s anti-Semitic “Liberty Lobby.” (See ARCHIVES: January and June of 1998.) [Piper's ultimate fate?: HERE]

When Piper was denied his day in the sun—Frogue bowed to public pressure and cancelled the forum—he was angry and tried various ploys to get back into the limelight. He sent me a letter to provoke me in some way; in it, he repeatedly called me a “motherfucker,” and so, since Frogue was unapologetic about his forum idea, I decided to read the letter to the board (January ’98). Apparently, that really caught Piper by surprise. That’s amazing to me, but there it is.

Here, Piper seems to suggest that I am now in physical danger, owing to his uncontrollable friends. Whatever.

I informed the district, but they didn't seem to care.

Mathur was granted a security stipend because of the "threats" he claimed to receive from a "core group." Oddly, despite referring to about a dozen "threats," he never provided a shred of evidence of the existence of any of them. You'd think a guy would keep threatening letters and emails. Doncha think?]

Letter from Frogue's pal (and invitee) MC Piper

Originally entitled:

PIPER AGAIN

By Big Bill

Frogue

As you know, recently, I received an unscholarly letter from Mr. Michael Collins Piper. I’ve just learned that Trustee Marcia Milchiker received an e-mail message from Mr. Piper several months ago. It begins: “Dear Marcia: I was shocked to see your picture and read your resume and find that you appear to be a sensible, decent person. Contrast that with the shrieking, hysterical manner in which you approached my intended speaking engagement in California.”

He goes on to call Milchiker “crazed” and a “hypocrite” and someone “in the same category as the Nazi stormtroopers.”

More recently—March 23—Piper sent a letter to the Acting Chancellor. This time, it was signed. In the 6-page letter, Piper asserts that he has received some “interesting” information about me. (He fails to say what it is.) He claims that he wrote me to “advise” me that he had this information, and that he wouldn’t use it, although I should remember that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

In fact, I received no such letter. If I had, I would have distributed it far and wide.

More recently, he says, he wrote me another letter to “give me the jitters.” He described it as a “sharply-worded letter including that most infamous of nouns” [namely, “motherfucker”]. It is, of course, the letter that I reprinted in the last issue of Dissent.

Upon a brief discussion of the “infamous noun” (including a quotation by Ashley Montegu), Mr. Piper says:

Which brings me to another point: yes, indeed, my Black Nationalist friends are very disturbed at Roy Bauer and they have been monitoring his activities...And it was one of my Black Nationalist friends, by the way, who selected that choice “term of endearment” for Roy Bauer.

(I would add that I have no control over any Black Nationalists in California any more than...the ADL has any control over the violent Jewish Defense League leader, Irv Rubin who is going to have a forum in the South Orange County Community College District in the very near future.)

Not that I think that the highly descriptive term I aimed at Roy Bauer is applicable to Roy Bauer by any means.

But it has much more impact than calling Bauer the schmuck and the nebbish and the momzer that he is.

Piper then becomes defensive:

...my use of that “foul” term in a PRIVATE LETTER TO ROY BAUER has nothing to do with what I wrote in my book....So essentially, Roy Bauer is one big shvantz who’s trying to distract your attention by focusing your eyes on some ugly words and trying to keep you from looking at a serious and scholarly work...that presents a point of view that he and his ADL handlers don’t want to hear. Don’t let Bauer make monkeys out of you.

Later, the hapless Mr. Piper adds:

What’s more, all sorts of scatological filth also pours out of the mouths of such Vegas favorites as Buddy Hackett, Jerry Lewis and Jackie Mason (who once negotiated to play another major ADL contributor, mob thug Meyer Lansky, in a film of Lansky’s life.) So Roy Bauer better catch up with the times.

His letter ends thus:

Inasmuch as this affair has become a subject of public controversy, I believe it is the right and duty and responsibility of the SOCCD [sic] board of trustees to allow me to come to a forum on its campus to discuss my book and to debate my critics. I’ll even pay my own way. And I won‘t use the kind of language that I use in personal letters (not for public consumption) sent to Roy Bauer.

I look forward to your invitation.
Constructively,
MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER

UNION MEETING: A SOLEMN OATH OF HALF-ASSERY

BIG BILL [Roy Bauer] REPORTS

Dissent 4 – March 27, 1998

On the 23rd, I drove down to Saddleback College for the union meeting. Having had arrived quite early, I briefly visited Bob “Antichrist” Cosgrove, who was sacrificing a student or something deep in the bowels of BGS. He and I exchanged a secret handshake known only to ES’s [Eagle Scouts] (we’re devil-worshippers, you know), and then I headed for the library to wait for the meeting to begin.

I settled into a station of one of those goofy library cubicle thingamabobs, grading papers. From my lonely thingamabob, I could see the door of the union meeting room, which is important since, sometimes, Sherry [Miller-White] waits until the last minute to leave a note on the door saying “meeting canceled. Fuck you.”

Naturally, the meeting’s start time—3:00—came and went, and no one appeared—but that meant nothing. Soon, Sherry walked by and said “Hello, Roy,” unchirpily, but then she left again. Other union Brothers and Sisters appeared, and we all walked into the room. Evidently, we were waiting to be let into the room next door since someone else had signed out the room we now occupied. I mention this detail only because, in the world of Sherry and the Rep Council, life is just one such episode after another, as though they have all sworn a solemn oath of half-assery.

Sherry

By 3:10, amazingly, a dozen or so people had gathered in the new room and the meeting was under way. (As usual, Sherry did not bother to determine whether a quorum had been reached.) She immediately distributed handouts; among them were minutes—yes, minutes!—of the last meeting, which were notable for such sentences as, “A motion by Bob Kopfstein and seconded by Sharon Macmillan, passed anonymously.” Yes, anonymously.

Sherry announced that we would begin with a “closed session,” which meant, of course, that non-Rep Council riffraff were obliged to leave the room. (Isn’t democracy wonderful?) Sherry turned to me and said, “I promise, Roy, just 15 minutes; I promise!” I left without comment, and so did Ronnie Lebauer. We walked to my lonely thingamabob.

Absurdly, from there we could hear everything that was said at the meeting, for the door had been left wide open, though it was rudely banged shut after a few minutes. Then we watched Walt D., another non-Rep Council union Sibling, walk up to the door, open it, and enter. Oddly, he did not exit, so Ronnie marched in and asked what gives, and, soon, they both walked out, which was good, since I was beginning to think that the Council just didn’t like people with “bauer” in their surnames.

Kopfstein

The three of us talked. The agreeable Walt explained to Ronnie and me that the union is like an amateur crew on a ship, and the ship has grown larger and the seas have grown rougher, etc. I said, sure, but why won’t this crew listen when someone finds a manual explaining how to run a goddam ship? Walt removed his glasses and appeared to stare [into the distance].

Twenty-two (not fifteen) minutes after our exile, the door was reopened and we took our seats once again. The council—or maybe just Ken Woodward—seemed to be ridiculing those who had expressed distrust of the union leadership with regard to the contract ratification election. “There’s no satisfying them!” said someone. “Whadya gonna do with people like that?” said another.

But the meeting soon moved forward. Sherry revealed, I think, that the “6 month” rule in the bylaws (according to which those who are FA members for less than 6 months are not allowed to vote) is illegal. She remarked that the current bylaws contain internal contradictions.

Later, Sherry gave a fuller account of the need to revise the bylaws. There were two problems, she said: first, the election procedures were insufficiently detailed, and so the revised bylaws will provide details taken from CTA “boilerplate.” Second, “proportional voting” (according to which part-timers are only partial voters) needs to be changed or abandoned. Sherry, of course, has championed proportional voting in the past (e.g., at one of the recent Q&As).

We next looked over [Mike] Runyan’s “Board Policy 4000.5” (concerning discrimination and harassment). Somehow, I was not given a copy. Sherry said that, “basically, it says the Board has to obey the law.”

Next, we heard a bylaws update. As you know, at the last meeting, the Rep Council decided that only the Council would be allowed to vote concerning the ratification of the revised bylaws—in direct contradiction of the current bylaws which state that bylaws are to be changed by a 2/3 vote of the membership. Sherry finally acknowledged this, whereupon others exhibited a Carsonian “I did not know that” expression.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kopfstein suggested using a “refusal” ballot vote, a curious practice according to which members who do not vote are regarded as having voted in the affirmative. (See BELOW.) I indicated that, probably, the refusal ballot scheme is illegal. The Rep Council, however, was undeterred; the draft of the revised bylaws, they said, would be sent to CTA in Burlingame (from the 16th to the 24th), and those people would catch illegalities, if any, when reviewing it.

One might assume that, as a preliminary to the bylaws ratification election, members would be permitted an opportunity to examine the current bylaws plus the proposed changes. Sherry made no such assumption. She explained that the bylaws are 16 pages long and that it wouldn’t do to duplicate all of that material for everyone. Hence, she advocated distributing only those parts of the bylaws that are being amended. I suggested that we could not have an adequate ratification election on the amended bylaws unless the voting membership were provided a copy of the current bylaws plus the proposed changes. I explained, further, that it is not difficult to scan and reformat the bylaws in a more convenient form such that fewer pages are necessary. This had not occurred to Sherry, an apparent Luddite. In the end, I believe, the Council decided to provide to the membership the full text of the current bylaws plus the changes.

As usual, Sherry spoke about the bylaws revision process—the identifying of internal contradictions, the correcting of typographical and grammatical errors, the inclusion of CTA boilerplate—as though it were a massive scholarly project. Evidently, she has even hired a typist for the project.

—Am I missing something? The revision process—at least as she describes it—should take no more than a weekend, typing included. What’s the big deal? Also: why haven’t members been solicited for input concerning revision of the bylaws? And what is the relationship between these revisions and the recommendations of the CTA “leadership team” that visited last year? Is the FA being forced to make these changes by the CTA? Inquiring minds want to know.

Eventually, we discussed Propositions 226 and 227. 226, you will recall, proposes allowing union members to redirect the portion of their dues that is spent on politics. Critics view it as an assault on unionism or at least on unions’ ability to collect money from members. The CTA, of course, opposes the measure, as do most members of the Rep Council, evidently.

Though I had said absolutely nothing about the matter during the meeting, the ever-boorish Mr. Woodward suddenly looked over in my direction and slyly remarked, “As we all know, Roy supports 226!” Among this group, Ken’s remark seemed to be the equivalent of saying, “As we all know, Roy favors puppy killings.”

In response, I pointed out that I had in fact never endorsed this initiative. Mr. Woodward then referred to the appearance of George Will’s pro-226 piece in the ‘Vine. I explained that I sometimes include pieces in the ‘Vine that do not represent my own view. (Indeed, in that very issue of the ‘Vine [2/13/97], I also reprinted, without commentary, a letter by Acting Chancellor [Kathie] Hodge which suggested that the district’s problems have been exaggerated.) This point, however, went nowhere with Mr. Woodward.

In fact, I’m not sure what to make of 226. I remain undecided concerning it.

Unfortunately, Mr. DeAguero chose this moment to challenge me concerning 226. He looked at me and said something to this effect: “Are you prepared to go on record endorsing [opposing?] 226?” Now, I must confess that I was irked by this question. Others in the room, evidently, are permitted to hold their views privately. I, on the other hand, am expected to reveal on demand to the Rep Council how I plan to vote in future elections.

I explained to Walt that, in fact, I wasn’t sure whether or not I favored 226. He said, “Well, you have a right not to answer my question.” I said, “I am answering your question; I haven’t decided on 226.” There is, of course, a difference between saying that one won’t state one’s decision and saying that one has not made a decision.

No doubt, at some future date, Mr. Woodward will don his “bratty school-girl” persona again and declare, “As you know, Roy refuses to tell us what he thinks of 226!”

At some point, a discussion of the much-anticipated April election ensued. Evidently, Mr. Kopfstein will design the ballots, which (I believe) will be “centralized”—that is, one ballot will be distributed that will include every item to be voted upon. (Does that mean that, say, a member of division X may vote on the Rep election for division Y? I certainly hope not.) The double-envelope system will be used for this election.

We are now in the NOMINATIONS period, which, I believe, will extend through the 21st of April. (I’m not sure about this date, so please verify.) I believe that the actual election is set for the period from the 24th until the 30th of April.

A discussion ensued about who may be nominated. Any active dues-paying member may be nominated to be a Division Rep, we were told. In the case of union officers, however, only members of the Rep Council may be nominees—or so declared Mr. Kopfstein, the union’s “bylaws specialist.”

Not so. Someone referred to the bylaws, which state the following:

A. Regular Elections
1. ...Any person(s) running for executive office must have been a representative or an active member in Union activities for a minimum of four years.

“Oh.”

Anyone can make a nomination, apparently, and there is no form to fill out. Those who wish to nominate someone for office or who wish to nominate themselves should send word to Mr. Kopfstein, who indicated that he is “probably” the one to whom nominations should be sent.

I asked if the membership could be provided with a list of those who are currently in the Rep Council. I was told simply to consult any union newsletter. “Is that information accurate?” I asked. “Yes,” said Sherry.

"CIVILITY" & RAGHU'S TOUCHY-FEELY SIDE

From Dissent 4, 3/27/98 

originally entitled: 

“NAVIGATING THE WINDS OF CHANGE” by Chunk Wheeler 

Recently, Irvine Valley College’s lamentable president, Raghu P. Mathur, took time out from his lies and illegalities to distribute an idiotic document entitled, “Civility: Where Has it Gone? How Can We Get it Back?” Evidently, it was written or assembled by two instructors—one from Saddleback, the other from LA Southwest College—who shall remain nameless. 

The document includes a section entitled, “40 Ways to Appreciate Yourself & Others.” Here, we find such remarkable advice as the following: 

• Buy a special gift for yourself to reward your efforts. 
• Keep the positive cards, notes and letters you receive. 
• Keep track of your achievements in a “win” journal. 
• Give yourself one compliment per day. 
• Have a “Brag Buddy” to share successes with. 
• Say to yourself at least ten times per day, “I love myself” or “I like myself.” 
• Make a photo copy of the palm of your hand and give yourself a “pat on the back.” 
• Laugh a lot with others; don’t join in the whining. 
• Have an appreciation party. 
• Have an appreciation break at work. 
• Verbally appreciate at least five people daily. 

In yet another section of the “Civility” document, we find the following inspirational “work,” by one Dempsey Byrd: 

ANYWAY—Dempsey Byrd 

     "People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them ANYWAY. If you do good, people will accuse you of selflsh ulterior motives. Do good ANYWAY. …

     Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. be frank and honest ANYWAY. People favor underdogs but only follow top dogs. Fight for some underdogs ANYWAY. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build ANYWAY. ….. 

     Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you've got ANYWAY." 

—Naturally, one of our contributors has a response to this nonsense: 

Against Civility: Where did it come from? How can we resist it? by M. Bakunin 

[I suspect that this was the one and only Red Emma]

From Dissent 4, 3/27/98(?)

     The presumed demise of civility, much lamented by elites, managers and toady college presidents, represents an expression by the disenfranchised of the fundamental project of freedom: resistance. It's instructive that the silly (and reactionary) platitudes offered in "Attitude" from "Navigating the Winds of Change" -- “Handouts Assembled by Saddleback College, Student Development Office" are credited to an ”Unknown” author. 

     This seems right. “Unknown" is either a stooge or the nom de plume of management, of authority. He deserves his anonymity. He has earned it. 

     It's further instructive to see Fullerton college's president, subject to a very uncivil no-confidence vote, echo President Raghu Mathur in her recent LA TIMES interview, calling for same. 

     Civility is a petit bourgeois behavior, a conceit used by Imperial Britain, Imperial France and Imperial Margarine. 

     But it's "not nice to fool" the powerful and civility is as quickly abandoned by them as it is demanded. When somebody tells the truth, for instance. It's like professionalism. This is a concept valuable to somebody, but who finally? Let them take your power away. Let them give $60,000 to their puppet slate. Let them exploit a process you've respected and tried hard to work with. Let them invite Nazis to your college district. Then, embrace your hard-fought political rights, set up a table, alert the community, write letters to the newspaper and, voila, you are behaving, of course, unprofessionally. You are uncivil.

     Civility: polite disregard for workplace politics, polite disregard for Nazis at school board meetings, total lack of historical appreciation of workplace politics, unwillingness to engage others in discussion of politics, fear of prejudicing meetings or classes or students with political discussion. 

     Quiz: What defines civility? Lack of politics. Lack of power. Lack. Uncivil: a vote of no confidence, talking about the president's illegal appointment, pinning down officials on their lies, calling a union undemocratic and homophobic and anti-Semitic and being right.

“How I Joined the Union” —OR “Invisible Ink”

“How I Joined the Union”

—OR

“Invisible Ink”

by Red Emma

Dissent 4 – March 27, 1998

Red

Red Emma teaches writing part-time at Irvine Valley College. His activist politics demand his union membership, but in five years of teaching here, not once has anybody ever invited or encouraged him to join the union or provided him materials regarding representation by his local.

Red Emma wonders why. Red Emma organizes other part time faculty members, many of whom also wonder. (There is collective wondering a-plenty at our bi-weekly organizing meetings.) Red Emma calls the union rep, who does not return phone calls, but later leaves photocopies of the application materials, with the full deduction for dues (full-time $70/month) written in.

But, surely, this amount can't apply to adjunct faculty. Can it?

More phone calls by R.E., no answers from R.C. [Ray Chandos], the union rep. Similar calls to SOCCCD payroll. They suggest talking to Lee Walker, advice so laughable Red Emma wets his pants just thinking about it.

So, finally, the Red One just signs the form and, a few days later, receives a membership card, signed by the rep. In the payroll deduction box, either written in invisible ink, or perhaps not written at all, Emma's monthly payroll deduction. None at all. Zero. Blank. Free!

Red Emma, a dues paying (such as they aren't) SOCCCD-Faculty Association member becomes the following week the single adjunct faculty member to actually vote on the contract. (For the record--"No.") Of over two hundred part-time faculty presumably represented by the F.A. bargaining unit, he's the only one to actually have a direct say on the contract (a wretched thing).

In fact, Red Emma spoke with Debra Landre, CCA President at the recent COFO (Conference of Faculty Organizations) workshop at Long Beach City College (also attended by Richard Lewis of Saddleback, who carries a license to wear those suspenders). President Landre assured Redness that in fact PART-TIME UNION DUES ARE $14.00 monthly. Landre expressed her cautious dismay (some kind of automatic administrative reflex lately) that IVC adjunct faculty have not been solicited for membership and offered demure congratulations on my joining up. I asked her for union promotion materials; i.e. brochures, buttons, condoms or those cute little keyring flashlights. This was, judging from her delighted, if confused response, apparently the only time in the history of the academic universe that anybody's begged to join the proud union.

Stay tuned. Red Emma is eager to report the amount dislodged this coming payday from his huge part-time paycheck by payroll and the local.

Invisible ink, if I remember from my Hardy Boys reading days, is revealed by rubbing charcoal on it or otherwise causing it to come into contact with heat, an element I encourage all part timers to apply to this confused union, which purports to represent us. Do they want us as members or not? Stand by.

–RE

See PART II of this series

Andrew Tonkovich

Against Civility: Where did it come from? How can we resist it? (Red Emma)

Against Civility: Where did it come from? How can we resist it? by M. Bakunin

[I suspect that "Bakunin" was the one and only Red Emma, who hadn't yet settled on his name. -RB]

From Dissent 4, 3/27/98(?)

     The presumed demise of civility [see Civility], much lamented by elites, managers and toady college presidents, represents an expression by the disenfranchised of the fundamental project of freedom: resistance. It's instructive that the silly (and reactionary) platitudes offered in "Attitude" from "Navigating the Winds of Change" -- “Handouts Assembled by Saddleback College, Student Development Office" are credited to an ”Unknown” author. 

     This seems right. “Unknown" is either a stooge or the nom de plume of management, of authority. He deserves his anonymity. He has earned it. 

     It's further instructive to see Fullerton college's president, subject to a very uncivil no-confidence vote, echo President Raghu Mathur in her recent LA TIMES interview, calling for same. 

     Civility is a petit bourgeois behavior, a conceit used by Imperial Britain, Imperial France and Imperial Margarine. 

     But it's "not nice to fool" the powerful and civility is as quickly abandoned by them as it is demanded. When somebody tells the truth, for instance. It's like professionalism. This is a concept valuable to somebody, but who finally? Let them take your power away. Let them give $60,000 to their puppet slate. Let them exploit a process you've respected and tried hard to work with. Let them invite Nazis to your college district. Then, embrace your hard-fought political rights, set up a table, alert the community, write letters to the newspaper and, voila, you are behaving, of course, unprofessionally. You are uncivil.

     Civility: polite disregard for workplace politics, polite disregard for Nazis at school board meetings, total lack of historical appreciation of workplace politics, unwillingness to engage others in discussion of politics, fear of prejudicing meetings or classes or students with political discussion. 

     Quiz: What defines civility? Lack of politics. Lack of power. Lack. Uncivil: a vote of no confidence, talking about the president's illegal appointment, pinning down officials on their lies, calling a union undemocratic and homophobic and anti-Semitic and being right.