CALL BACK TOMORROW?

SOBER TRUTH #17:
“WHEN PEOPLE CONTACT US FOR INFO, WE TELL 'EM TO CALL BACK TOMORROW”!

This morning, a friend called to explain that, at about 8:00 a.m., she had called “information” at Irvine Valley College (451-5100). A pleasant recorded message thanked her for calling the college and then provided various extensions. It then said,

“At any time during this message you may press zero for an operator.”

Well, my friend pressed zero. But she didn’t get an operator. She got another recorded message. It said: “There is no operator available at this moment to assist you. If this is an emergency, please call campus police at 949 451-5234. Otherwise, please call us back tomorrow.”

Call us tomorrow!??

Well, I was busy until about 12:15 today. At that point, I called IVC information myself. "Surely," thought I, "by now they've scraped somebody up to man the phone!"

Nope. I got the same message: ”CALL US BACK TOMORROW”!

What’s goin’ on here? Isn’t the college desperately looking for ways to address our enrollments problem? I mean, we’ve formed committees and administration has done lots of finger-pointing: It’s our calendar! –No, it’s those pesky 5-unit courses! –No, it’s our reputation (i.e., “stigma”) for these ridiculously high standards! –No, it's….

--MAYBE IT'S THAT, WHEN PEOPLE CALL THIS !#*%!! COLLEGE FOR INFORMATION, THEY'RE TOLD TO CALL AGAIN TOMORROW!

So I went over to the information desk in the middle of A100 to see what was up. The likable Cathy is usually there.

Now, there’s no more central spot in the entire college than that desk.


Nobody was there. I kid you not! There was a sign. (See.) It said that the info desk was closed and it wouldn’t open until 5:00!

Is anyone in charge at this college? Anybody at all?

—Chunk Wheeler

CURING AND CORRECTING?

As you know, last month, the board violated the Brown Act. On the 13th, it held a closed session (in the "Catalina Room" of a hotel in Dana Point) and discussed matters that were not agendized, thereby robbing citizens of their opportunity and right to weigh in on the topic prior to board discussion and decision-making. Further, it discussed matters that are not allowed in closed session.

Hey, the whole idea of "open meeting" laws like the Ralph M. Brown Act is to make "legislative bodies" do their work in the open, to the degree possible! No secrets! That means you, John!

Well, it now appears that, at the Monday board meeting, the Board will "cure or correct" its violation(s). At least, that's how I interpret item 20 of the agenda for Monday's meeting. (See.) I'm not sure. I mean, what else could be going on?


I'm impressed!

For a fuller account of the Board's history re the Brown Act, see "The Board of Secrets" in the Archives (September 27). (Go to the upper right of this site: Archives, September.)

UPDATE! (I.e., "Uh-Oh")

I Just looked up 54960.1 (to which agenda item 20 refers) . 54960.1 says:

54960.1 where it is found that a legislative body of the local agency has violated this chapter. The costs and fees shall be paid by the local agency and shall not become a personal liability of any public officer or employee of the local agency.

A court may award court costs and reasonable attorney fees to a defendant in any action brought pursuant to Section 54960 or 54960.1 where the defendant has prevailed in a final determination of such action and the court finds that the action was clearly frivolous and totally lacking in merit.

I am no longer impressed. Given the portion of the Brown Act the Chancellor cites, it appears that the Board intends, not to cure or correct, but to pass a resolution according to which the recent "demand of cure or correct" is unwarranted, and that any litigation along those lines would be "clearly frivolous."

Translation: if you pursue this, you'll have to pay our attorney fees. And that's big money.

Say hello to the ol' "deep pockets" strategy! (Am I wrong?) --CW

Sober Truth Hotline Heating Up!

This just in:

A student reports that the mouse who made the cameo appearance in "Mouseberries" is a regular or longterm resident of that classroom. Perhaps the mouse is auditing? Picking up some GE units?

The much ballyhooed Laser Technology Optics Lab appears to be dead--or as dead as a low energy photon.

Sources say there is apparently a facility on campus that is rented out to the private sector (near or around the B Complex) for mysterious testing purposes--and said facility is staffed by someone who is someone's father (say no more).

But there is more: Tests! All in the Family! Meathead! Area 51! Art Bell! Anti-gravity! Chem Trails! Autopsies! What is buried in the old orange grove anyway?

We can't tell unless you tell us.

The truth is out there.

Go find it.

--Rebel Girl

ONE THOUSAND SOBER TRUTHS or "There's a Hole in My Beckett"

by Rebel Girl (always sober, generally peevish)

“The lie which elates us is dearer than a thousand sober truths.”

—Pushkin


A thousand sober truths is work-in-progress—and we welcome your contributions. We begin with the first baker’s dozen: doors, telephones, floors, furniture, undergarments—and yes, more tiny livestock. Moo.

Please note that readers can now “comment” by clicking “comments” at the end of the entry and, yes, if one wishes, one can comment anonymously. (Whew!) Or else, one can always forward sober truths to any of our reporters.

For origins of the sober truths, see “Mouseberries":

http://dissenttheblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/mouseberries-by-rebel-girl.html

(So far, all contributions reference IVC.)

ONE THOUSAND SOBER TRUTHS:


1) The automatic door opening device (the one allowing differently-abled people to access easily) on the A-200 building has been broken (at least) since the beginning of the semester (late August). Every day, I press it and every day it declines to open the door. Now, it might be observed that this is the only door equipped with this device in the A-200 building. I suppose those who need to use it to access the building are forced to rely, like Blanche Dubois, on the kindness of strangers. Fortunately there are plenty of kind souls in the A-200 building. Violation of the American with Disabilities Act? Simply an oversight? An unwitting homage to “A Streetcar Named Desire”? (UPDATE: the automatic door operating device was finally fixed the week of October 10 – whew!)

2) Major Tom to Ground Control. During the first week of classes, all phone calls to the campus operator were seemingly redirected out into space or, perhaps, to La Habra, or say, Belgrade or Belfast, and people were left on hold for upwards of 35 minutes. This was documented, once by an employee who, having dialed the front desk and received no pick up, just ring after ring after ring, walked with the ringing cel phone to the front desk only to be told by the substitute there that the operator’s telephone wasn’t ringing at all because it was automatically forwarded!

3) The person who meant to sit at the (new!) information desk in the Student Services Center to help redirect people when offices are closed doesn't begin working until 9:00--when all the other offices open up anyway. Hmmm.

4) Victoria's Secret? Classrooms are "outfitted" with torn underwear, bathrobes, and various other items of often intimate apparel serving as rags to erase perennially dirty white boards!

5) Sources say that televised meetings of the Board of Trustees are "edited" to remove trustees' angry faces and outbursts.

6) IVC map boards. Designers failed to recognize that the plexiglass holders, tilted at a perfect angle to cook in the So Cal sun all day, will fade the already pale maps of IVC before you can say “midterm”! Why the designers can’t learn what the legions of Eagle Scouts who produce this kind of project on a regular basis know leaves me puzzled. (UPDATE: new map boards appear to be under construction. Wait and see.)

7) Podia. One podium currently in use has a bite out of it. Really. (Check it out in A-202!) Others tilt more than the leaning tower of Pisa. One was once repaired by the students themselves (there’s initiative for you!). Others fail to hold books, lecture notes. Some disappear entirely leaving a crop circle-like shadow on the floor.

8) Holes in classroom ceilings which attract tiny livestock. Perhaps the livestock feed on the podia when class is not in session.

9) The collection of broken, breaking, abandoned and stained furniture in the so-called “lounge” in A-200 – suitable, perhaps for that production of “Waiting for Godot” that Susan Sontag staged in Sarajevo at the height of the war but a bit disconcerting to find in use at a community college. What message is the college trying to send to the folks who visit? Read more Beckett?

10) Those $500 telephones that now sparkle in every classroom (I may not have a podium—and the faculty lounge may host—publicly—the kind of furniture one expects to find in flop houses or wartime theater—but my classroom does have a telephone that, with its jet-pack good looks, makes me imagine that it can fly.) While I am all for some kind of communication system with the outside world, these particular models offer more bang than required for mundane classroom use. I hear students enjoy them, though, as often these landlines offer better reception than the students’ own cell phones. Me, I’d rather have a sturdy podium, batteries for the wall clock, a mousetrap or two, and maybe an old-fashioned wall phone that connects immediately to campus security. Or, perhaps, the cell phone number of the chief of campus security. (Ah, wish granted this week—I now have the cell phone number for the campus security chief. Ring-a-ding.)


11) Portable or temporary classrooms nearly as old as the students who sit in them. One of my students was born in 1989. At least these classrooms do provide shelter for the youthful rodents and tiny livestock who reside beneath them. Next time you stroll to your portable classroom, make the rounds of the perimeter and check out the digs. Note the cute rounded archways of the mouse holes, just like in the cartoons! See the rodents and bunnies busily at work. Marvel at the size of one particular gap under the steps of those far flung CEC buildings (CEC 5? CEC 6? You know, the ones out near the pumpkin patch) and imagine what kind of creature crawls in there at night!

12) A-203 (nickname: “fishbowl”), a dreary but often a prized classroom nonetheless by faculty who utilize small group work, received “new” chairs last year—large, almost-impossible-to-move blue chairs that dwarf the tables and crowd the already small quarters. Rumor has it that these chairs were “freebies” or “promotional items”—the gist being that somehow they were a deal and we were lucky to get ‘em. All was fine with the chairs, except, of course for the extreme immobility part and the crowded floor plan—just ask students with access issues or even a faculty member with lots of equipment. Then, during the course of summer, the carpeting was removed and replaced by linoleum, and now the floor, two months into the fall semester, is a Jackson Pollock-like kinetic design of black scrawls—disturbing, strangely compelling, and plainly publicly filthy. (Note: Pollock isn’t filthy—he’s a genius—but the A-203 floor is.)

13) B-104 has missing ceiling tiles, and has for years. Every rainy season there is a major leak in that area of the roof. The seemingly long-term solution appears to be this: once the first storm of the season arrives, a large trash barrel is placed in the middle of the room to catch the water. Perhaps this saves money that would otherwise be spent on roof repair and ceiling tiles. Fiscal conservatives, rejoice: join hands and dance around the plastic barrel. Besides, the trash barrel and the rain adds a special something to the classroom: namely a kind of industrial bleakness and dread, a Home Depot kind of despair, and the dependable plunk-plunk-plunk inspires more of the existential drama evocative of the late Irish playwright Beckett.

Ah, the theater.

—That’s all for now, folks. Stay dry. —Rebel Girl

CALLING ALL HEROES! by Red Emma

“There are some people who think that to understand something allows them to put it in the drawer of nicely arranged memories and let it rest. They are the lunatics who think that a ghost can be exorcised by inviting it to dinner and requiring it to use table service and a napkin.”

—from Calling All Heroes, by Paco Ignacio Taibo


Red Emma appreciates the unguarded confession, the unintended verity, the irony which cannot speaks its name because it cannot look down at its jacket lapel and read its own nametag.

Back when Emma was just a little activist, he packed into a room at UCLA with a crowd of other Central America peace types to shout down some invited members of the ruling El Salvadoran government (“Hi! My name is Death Squad”), a bunch of thugs in tight-fitting suits who took it quietly enough from us for a while (they were getting a stipend, after all) until one of them stood up, walked to the edge of the stage, pulled out his index finger, aimed it at us and warned, “It is easy for you to be Socialists in this rich country, but it is not so easy in mine.”

No, in his rich country we would have been shot and raped and our bodies dismembered, the guns and bayonets provided by Ron Reagan, the killers trained by the U.S. military. Get it? In fact, in his rich country, he would have killed us. Ironic, huh?

My favorite recent admission: “Hmmm, I’m unfamiliar with IVC.” Here is where I’m supposed to cop authorially to one of those, my emphasis added, deals or a nifty “(sic),” but the emphasis was there already, and all theirs. This elegant admission erupted from the lips of a higher ed academic colleague, one of that variety of apparent political innocents who have somehow either avoided the news, missed it, refused to embrace the argot of the moment (“IVC” = “disaster”) and who now consider anybody with a bee in their bonnet (like Red) so outside the realm of acceptable discourse as to perhaps be lying to them about everything, perhaps even about the very existence of Irvine Valley College, and generally to be a big fat bummer.

In conversation with these folks, I never know how much I can assume, and so I never quite know how much to explain toward making our jolly conversation make sense at even basic sentence level. It’s like my own lapel, and the button on it. If at this point in the war you don’t, for instance, understand what “He Lied, They Died,” means, where to start?

After pretending not to know, there’s the effort to equalize, balance and smooth all things out, to reconcile and to accommodate, to deny an analysis, and to always, always, see both sides to every argument. It causes me to think that maybe these gentle people were busy that day at college twenty years ago and didn’t show up to hear the representatives of the Moral Equivalent of Our Founding Fathers threaten a bunch of kids at a university campus. Maybe they were pledging a frat or going out for cheerleading. (More on that later.)

To review: The “He” in “He Lied, They Died,” is George W. Bush (and possibly his toady, Colin Powell). It refers to the administration’s lie about the purpose and motivation for overthrowing and occupying Iraq, and starting a civil war. (Get your own button at www.thenation.org)

More review: Our community college district has been the locus (I almost wrote "locust") of, in no particular order, the ascendancy of a first-class maroon to the office first of IVC presidency, then district chancellor, attacks on gay rights, dozens of lost lawsuits by a district which hires lawyers for kicks, and, yes, a weirdo conspiracy theorist Holocaust denier, not to mention the declaration of war on Spain by the former chair of the OC GOP.

Now are you familiar with IVC, you big dope?

And there’s more IVC in the news, if you want to find it. A fews weeks ago one Earl Krugel of the Jewish Defense League was sentenced to twenty years for conspiring to blow up a mosque. Perhaps some are not familiar with Earl and the late Irv Rubin, who took his own life in Metropolitan Jail, both of the JDL, a far-right Zionist hate group likely responsible for the murder of activist Alex Odeh and linked, as it happens, to our little district from hell. Searching Dissent on-line archives will scare up an unlikely “appreciation” of Irv by Yours Redly, where the Zionist-Palestinian-Frogueian Nexus of Historical Incredulity is explained. Really, it is.

Meanwhile, I just read Paco Taibo’s Calling All Heroes, a startlingly imaginative, wonderfully disjointed and moving novel about the massacre of Mexican students by their own government in 1968, which Taibo himself witnessed, if by “witnessed” you include being beaten on the head and shot at. This little book provided me some inspiration for my trip on a recent Friday morning to the campus of Santa Ana High School, where I encountered a whole squad of administrators. Let’s assume that they were not there to welcome me as I distributed anti-military recruitment fliers to students on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild. No, the Security Lady, principal, and football coach told me to leave the private property of their public high school. I walked across the street, and distributed about 1,000 fliers. Sure, I had thought, it was odd that the journalism teacher warned me administration was “so conservative here.” But then, as if to prove it, she hid her face—I kid you not—and whispered to me before fleeing, “Oh, no, the principal.”

A brief internet search identifies the principal as a deacon in a religious outfit called the United Church of God and points to his hosting of, yes, candidate George W. at Santa Ana High School. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s comforting, in fact, how easily one’s impressions are confirmed here in the OC. Check out Wikipedia for kooky religious groups. Remember Herbert Armstrong? It turns out that the principal of a giant public high school in Orange County is a right-wing, pro-military, pro-W. religious goof who digs the GOP, and believes in:

√ The Premillennialist belief in the return of Jesus Christ to rule the earth from Jerusalem.

√ That the dead are unconscious after death awaiting a resurrection at Christ’s return.

√ The existence of Satan, who currently has primary influence over the world.

√ The identity of the United States and Britain as the descendants of the Israelite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim. This belief is also shared by the Christian Identity movement, of which the UCG is not generally considered a part.

√ The rise of a European Beast power as the revival of the Roman Empire who will conquer the United States and attempt to fight Christ at the latter’s return.

√ Abstinence from pork and other meats, and declining to observe holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, New Year, and St. Patrick’s Day.

No wonder they hate me. I recognize the Antichrist’s return to Downey to rule the world, using zip codes and fluoridation. I believe the dead are unconscious but that they are also Republicans. I see the identity of the United States and Britain as descendants of the Stoogist tribes of Moe and Curley but definitely not Shemp. And so on. (I hope these folks like Halloween, but I kinda doubt it.)

The high school kids I met that morning were amazing, wearing a uniform hipster blend of old-school punk (Ramones, Dead Kennedys) and heavy metal black, always black (viva 1968!) t-shirts, tight-fitting blue jeans, friendship bracelets and long hair. They all stopped to talk, and to take more brochures inside. A self-identified ROTC student told me he hated his ROTC instructor. I explained fragging. The MEChA students said they’d invite me in for a debate.

I returned to my car after an hour, illegally parked in the Visitors Space, just in time for the Security Lady to give me a ticket. She observed my IVC parking sticker—“IVC, huh?” and I wondered what she meant, but mostly I thought about the Taibo novel, which is not to say that I am equating the reactionaries and Unfamiliaristas of our county with the crimes of a state against its children thirty-five years ago. Except that I couldn’t help but think I had sure been going in that direction as I joked and chatted with sixteen year olds who knew exactly why the military wanted their souls and understood exactly what my lousy button meant.

All of this to say that my editor at Dissent encouraged me to write about the proposal by some cheerful IVC students—and the apparent assent by instructors and administrators!—to initiate or continue a cheerleading group or club or whatever, but who find themselves faced with the vexing problem of leading cheers absent a genuine mascot. For those of you unfamiliar with Irvine Valley College, our school’s proud mascot is, yes, the Laser. That’s right, the LASER, probably the only mascot in the country that is actually an acronym (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). Wikipedia is again helpful here, if helpful means confusing, but I liked this bit a whole lot: “The verb ‘to lase’ means ‘to produce coherent light’ or possibly ‘to cut or otherwise treat with coherent light,’ and is a back-formation of the term ‘laser.’”

Red Emma eschews organized sports, but I swear I recognized the term “back-formation” from childhood days when I was forced to watch television football war-play as the uncles digested their turkey and drank Coors and the US of A dropped tonnage on Laos, Cambodia, Viet Nam, and so on. Back formation seems to me the way in here, Dear Reader, toward satisfying my editor, toward helping out the big IVC team (not that we even have a football team), toward familiarizing the unfamiliar and generally contributing to a discussion about history and its ghosts. It’s possible there is an IVC basketball team. I know that there used to be a petanque court, so that, whether b-ball or p-ball, you’ll want to forget everything you ever knew and instead cough up some of that ole’ school spirit on behalf of the nation’s unlikeliest mascot.

Lasers, lasers, we’re all right!
We’re a coherent beam of light!

Got no football, got no team!
We’re a bright red laser beam!

Pass that photon! Stimulate emission!
We’re on another PR mission!

Vision correction! Muscle repair!
Remove unsightly body hair!

We’re the district that hates the Spanish!
Our mascot makes glaucoma vanish!

Who’s the district that had the Denier?
And a Chancellor who’s still a liar?

Lasers, lasers.
Go laaaaaaaaaasers!

Dave Lang sometimes voted fairness!
Now he votes to keep his Chairness!

Fool, this ain’t no low-enrolled school!
It’s an expensive hi-tech tool!

Put on your goggles, cover your cornea!
We was number one in California!

You think right now your eyes are burning?
Wait till we use Distance Learning!

WE WILL, WE WILL
BLIND YOU!

Attack the Senate and governance shared!
Keep the faculty stupid and scared!

2, 4, 6, 8!
WASC will not accreditate!
Irvine! Irvine! Irvine!


—Red Emma

CAMPUS BLATHERAGE:

1. Have you noticed that Vice Chancellor Tom Anderson seems to have set up housekeeping at Irvine Valley College? On Wednesday, I saw him at the H&R School meeting; then, yesterday, I noticed him at IVC’s academic senate meeting. This morning, I think I spotted him walkin’ out of IVC's strawberry patch!

Won’t somebody give him a job and a home?

2. Also at yesterday’s senate meeting: Mr. P from PE was complaining about all the “Cialis” ads he keeps getting on his school email. At one point, Mr. P leaned toward self-appointed Laser and Mathur-appointed homeless person Tom Anderson and asked: “Mr. Vice Chancellor, what can we do about this Cialis spam?”.

Without missing a beat, Tom said, “Well, order some, I don’t know!”

3. While we’re on the subject of Lasers, there’s some buzzage at IVC about replacing our mascot, the Laser. At the senate meeting, a new hire explained that he worked in marketing for fifteen long years. In fact, he was the guy responsible for the blue and pink marshmallows in Lucky Charms! (I mighta got that wrong. I’m a Fruit Loops man.) Anyway, he’s clearly way knowledgeable, what with the marshmallows and the M & M’s and all, and he thinks that our logo (with the Laser, I guess) “is horrible.” I guess that's right.

Mr. P from PE, too, definitely opposes our mascot. At games, other colleges get to scream, “Go Tigers!” and “Go Rat-Bastards!” You can’t really scream about Lasers. What would it mean?

4. Mr. P is against our college’s name, too. Part of the problem is that there’s no valley here. (Actually, we’re on some kind of plain.) On the other hand, nobody's gonna notice that particular flub. I mean, people around here voted for George Bush.

Some people up here at “Saddleback College North Campus” (that's Dan's suggestion) think that our college has a “stigma,” and maybe even a handful of “stigmata.” So maybe changing our name is just the thing.

And maybe not. I mean, we've worked pretty hard to develop a good academic reputation and all. (Never mind about administration. Bleccch.)

Do we wanna throw it all away?

It looks like the senate isn't gonna weigh in on this anyway.

5. Recently, Dissent presented transcripts of faculty comments at the momentous June Board Meeting—the one where Raghu got his contract-renewal plus his Quarter-Million-Dollar salary. Our favorite part was when Jeff told the story about Mr. Goo’s “rain miracle”:

“In 1997 I was approached by administrators [about] honoring our departing college president Dan Larios with a plaque to be mounted at the site of a small native plant garden that students and I installed a month before…It was a great send-off for Dan that day, and I had the honor of unveiling the plaque.

When Mathur replaced him as president, the plaque soon disappeared from a large rock on which it was firmly bolted. The official word was that the stone plaque—stone plaque—was washed off the rock in the rain.”

I figured it might be nice to find that rock and take a picture of it. It wasn’t easy, cuz, as you know, IVC is pretty run down, and the rock was pretty much grown over with brush. Well, after some machete work, me and Rebel Girl exposed that rock. Check it out!

Odd, isn’t it? I inspected several other plaques on campus, some of them older than the “Larios” plaque. Somehow, rain didn’t do a thing to them.

6. We learned that the group (the two academic senate presidents, the union president, Mathur and Lang) that’s been working on a mutually agreeable faculty hiring policy is almost finished. But there is one sticking point—namely, who’s gonna have the most say in deciding who’s on search committees? The district insists that the college President should have the power to choose four of the seven members, but the faculty are standing firm on the senate choosing four of the seven. The faculty position is that it’s inappropriate for administration to control both the start and the finish of the process.

7. Not sure about Saddleback College, but the Accreditation Progress Report re IVC is in the mail. The IVC senate (i.e., its President) worked very hard on it. It's a pretty honest document.

Two members of the Accred team will visit us on Nov. 3rd to see if really real reality matches reported reality. The two Accreds will hang around with “their antennae up,” as Tom A recently explained.

We’ll get the final word from the Accreds some time in February.

8. You’ll recall that the academic senates are thinking of asking the AAUP (i.e., the American Association of University Professors) to be our rep in the “Technical Assistance” process (re the issue of defining duties and responsibilities, I believe). It turns out that the State Academic Senate has a formal relationship with the AAUP. That came about when IVC’s Academic Senate reached out to the AAUP after VPI Dennis White banned discussions of the war in the classroom two years ago. (See Archives: April 2003)

But we’re breaking new ground here—apparently, no senate in the community college system has used the AAUP as its agent before. And so the State Senate has to meet to work out the details.

Did I mention that the state academic senate is a very fine organization and that it is run by very fine people?

9. Last year, IVC’s Academic Senate worked with VPI Dennis White to explore the possibility of moving to a “compressed calendar.” The idea seemed to be that a change to that kind of calendar might address our enrollments problem.

Are you aware that Scott Simpson of the district produced a report last summer entitled “Impacts of compressed calendars in California Community Colleges”? Simpson crunched the numbers, comparing districts that adopted compressed calendars with those that have not.

The upshot: there appears to be no reason to believe that a move to a compressed calendar will increase FTES or headcount. Simpson writes:

Administrators at several colleges have reported increases in FTES following the implementation of a compressed calendar with the inclusion of a Winter intercession [sic]. However, these observations have not been placed in the context of enrollment trends occurring among all community colleges, including those that have not adopted alternative calendars. While the present report does not address specific aspects of calculating FTES under the new class schedule…, it will be seen that colleges and districts differ with respect to changes in headcount enrollments and FTES after the establishment of a condensed calendar, but in many cases the increases in enrollment are one-time events and often coincide with general trends in all community colleges in California. (2)

I’ve perused these data (a tedious task), and it does appear to me that they fail to show that moving to a compressed calendar is attended with a permanent increase in FTES or headcount. (Hence, it is unlikely that our enrollment decline can be attributed to students’ preferring other colleges to ours owing to our not having a compressed calendar.)

Included in the report are the results of a survey of state community college faculty, staff, and administrators done by Judith Beachler or Los Rios. The survey does not limit itself to alleged FTES/enrollment advantages to switching to a compressed calendar. (There may be pedagogical and administrative advantages.) Here is Beachler’s conclusion:

The move to a compressed calendar clearly has both pros and cons, making it a decision that should be carefully weighed. Institutionally, there are many compelling reasons to move to a compressed calendar. Moreover, for the most part, it appears to appeal to many students, although there is concern about its impact upon those who struggle. The impact upon faculty and staff must be carefully weighed. Many of the respondents felt that there were negative impacts upon the staff. However, many went on to suggest that in spite of this, it is a better format. At the very least, such a change, because of its complexity and organization-wide implications, should be made with very careful planning and perhaps when other multiple complex changes are not being implemented internally at the same time or are externally impacting the organization.

THE UPSHOT:

1. According to impressive data collected by the district, it is unlikely that our moving to a compressed calendar will slow or reverse our enrollment problems. The data simply do not support the claim that changing the calendar has FTES benefits.

2. Nevertheless, there may well be good non-enrollment reasons for switching to a compressed calendar, if the testimony of many who have experienced a switch is to be believed.

CHANCELLOR MATHUR GETS BROWN PAPER

As we've reported, Chancellor Mathur has been served a "demand to cure or correct." That is, a member of the public has formally demanded that the board correct its violations of the Brown Act (for the Sept. 13 special closed meeting).

We've reproduced this "Brown Paper" below. (Click on the image to see a larger version.)

For information about the Brown Act, click the "Brown Act/1st Amendment Project" link at the top right of this webpage.