Kick 'em to the curb!

I sometimes realize that I haven't got a clue what goes on in the lives of my students. I kinda know what music they listen to (as long as they’re listening to the White Stripes). But I have no idea what TV they watch.

They sure as hell don’t watch what I watch. You know, Nova and Medium and Meet the Press.

A couple of days ago, the IVC community got an email from Roquemore’s secretary about a "casting call" for some MTV show called "Next!" Attached to the email was a poster. (See.)


Evidently, the show is produced by the same people who brought us "Date My Mom," whatever that is.

I asked some of my students about these shows. "What's 'Next'? What's 'Date My Mom'," I asked.

Naturally, they knew all about ‘em. In fact, they regarded me as if I had just confessed to never having heard of Christina Aguilera! Gawwd!

I found the show’s website, and I checked it out.

—Let's just say that, if you like the idea of stupid surfers representing students and "hotties" representing the raison d’etre of education, then you’ll just love "Next!" representing dating.

Here’s how MTV describes the show:

Ever wish you could bail in the middle of a bad date? Well, NEXT is the MTV show that lets you do just that. We'll set you up on 5 dates. The minute you get annoyed, angry or just plain bored, simply kick 'em to the curb by saying "NEXT", and start over with someone new. Don't feel too bad for the ones you give the boot. They'll get cash for every minute they last and the one who makes it to the end gets a chance to turn the tables. They can choose to go on a second date with you or take the money and run. So be careful what you do, because sooner or later you could be the one hearing the word "NEXT." (My emphasis.)

I watched a video clip on the website that allegedly captures the “best moments” of the first season. It’s exactly what you’d expect (I'm going from memory, so I might not have the dialogue exactly right):

CLIP: a gal, maybe 18, walks up to a seated young guy who’s checkin’ her out. Even before she says anything or her butt hits the chair, he rolls his eyes and buries his face and shouts “Next!”

What a gracious fellow!

We get a shot of the girl’s expression. (Funny, eh?)

CLIP: a young guy is looking at his “date,” but he looks worried. She scrunches up her nose and says something like, “You kinda stink.” He says, “What do you mean?” She says: “Maybe like cat piss.”

What a gracious gal!

The camera cuts back to the guy’s forlorn face. We’re having a good time!

CLIP: a woman in her forties is getting a back rub from some young guy. Supposedly, she’s trying to convince the guy to date her daughter, but it’s more like she’s tryin’ to get into this kid’s pants herself! She says, “I like it rough, really rough!” She barks or grunts or something. We see the young guy’s face; he’s looking into the camera. He’s looking into the faces of young people like himself--apparently, the only people who exist. His face is saying, “God, as IF I’d EVER play hide the salami with this geezer!” (Ha ha ha ha ha!)

--Well, that last one was from the clip reel for “Date My Mom,” not "Next!", but, after a while, all these shows seem the same.

I Googled “Next!” and found a clip from the show “Talk Soup,” a program that dispenses snideries and cheap shots at the most embarrassing moments of each week’s “reality” programming. This particular clip showed Talk Soup playing ten seconds of “Next!” in which two young people are at a bar on their “date.” The girl says she’s very nervous. The camera then cuts to the floor beneath her, which is wet with beer.

–No, not beer. Urine! She gets up off her stool and we see that she’s so nervous (I guess) that she’s peed herself. The guy looks at the stool and yells, “Next!”

What a gentleman!

He stands back. He says, "Are you nuts?" The camera cuts to the girl’s horrified face. (Ha ha ha ha!)

Let’s face it. These kids watch some sh*tty TV. And their TV watching doesn’t seem to be balanced with some opposite kinda TV. What would the opposite be? CSI?

I don’t want to campaign against this crap. It exists, and there’s nothing I can or would do about it.

But we’re a college. Shouldn’t we at least refrain from EMBRACING it?

"Fuentes World," part 1

Ever hear of Mark Bucher?

Now, bear with me here. Mr. Mark Bucher is a minor player in “Fuentes World,” the world of Orange County way-right-wingers who continually weave in and out of each other’s political plans and projects. The players of Fuentes World comprise a kind of Christian Neanderthal Rat Pack, and Bucher is maybe Joey Bishop.

EDUCATION ALLIANCE. Back in 1993, Bucher, then a businessman, and two pals—James Righeimer and Frank Ury—fought for passage of the “school voucher” initiative (Prop 174). Apparently, when that measure failed, the three amigos founded “Education Alliance,” in Tustin, an organization dedicated to placing “conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, on local school boards” (Cosmo Garvin).

At the time, Frank Ury was a trustee on the Saddleback Valley Unified School District board—having been elected as part of a slate that took out trustee Raghu Mathur in ‘92!—but, owing to Ury’s support of the voucher initiative, he lost in 1996 to an opponent who was heavily financed by the California Teachers Association (CTA), of which, incidentally, Raghu was a member. (CTA is the parent organization of our own Faculty Association.)

THE CAMPAIGN REFORM INITIATIVE (1998) . Perhaps that experience helps explain Ury, Righeimer, and Bucher’s decision to author the so-called “campaign reform initiative” of 1998. You’ll recall that Proposition 226 would have required “all labor unions to obtain annual written permission from union members before allocating any dues for political action or political education efforts” (Garvin). Evidently, when a very similar measure passed in Washington state in 1992, union coffers took a huge hit. (See Garvin and Cristopher Rapp.)

In other words, Prop 226, whatever its intrinsic merits, was a major threat to the clout of unions in general, and to the clout of teachers unions in particular. The CTA’s continued uber-clout in California definitely depends on the failure of such measures as Prop 226.

By 1998, Education Alliance’s campaign reform initiative had attracted the attention of big-time national Republicans. Bucher and his pals got much of their support in their battle for 226 from out-of-state Republicans who dreamed of passing such measures all over the country. One big contributor was J. Patrick Rooney, a close advisor of Newt Gingrich. Another was Gingrich crony Grover Norquist.

Well, 226 failed.

But wait! What’s all of this got to do with US in the good old SOCCCD?

WAGBERG. Well, in a way, a lot. Back in 1998, the Faculty Association secretly used mucho union funds to elect two anti-union trustee candidates: Don Wagner and Nancy Padberg. Both Wagner and Padberg were affiliated with Bucher/Ury/Righeimer’s Education Alliance.

No surprise there. Over the years, Wagner has openly advocated the school voucher concept, and he was a big supporter of Prop 226. As a conservative, he’s clearly way out in the darkest Fuentes right-wing frontier. In fact, you’d have to say that he’s a denizen of Fuentes World. (Not so Padberg, evidently.)

Wagner helped found, and is presently on the Executive Board of, the Orange County chapter of the Federalist Society, a right-wing attorney group with strong ties to the Bush White House. The FS is associated with the philosophy of “strict constructionism” (as opposed to judicial “activism”).

Only a month ago, the OC Federalists hosted a debate at Gulliver’s Restaurant in Irvine about Proposition 75—you know, this year’s version of the GOP’s anti-union “campaign reform initiative.” (The Republicans are gonna keep pushing this thing until it takes! It’s just a matter of time.)

The debaters? Beverly Tucker of CTA, and—you guessed it—Mark Bucher of Education Alliance.

There are other SOCCCD/Education Alliance connections. According to Kimberly Kindy of the OC Register, Trustee John Williams, who has long portrayed himself as the unions’ friend, “has strong ties to members of the Education Alliance, which supports opponents of union-backed candidates” (10/31/98).

FUENTES. And there are Fuentes-Education Alliance connections aplenty. According to the OC Weekly (in 2000), Education Alliance’s Jim Righeimer is the “longtime trusty lieutenant to [Dana] Rohrabacher and OC Republican Chairman Tom Fuentes….”

Perhaps you know—and perhaps you don’t—that there are three notorious right-wing “Board Majorities” among OC school districts. Fuentes, being the sort of guy he is, has hovered in the background, and sometimes the foreground, of all three. They are: (1) the Orange Unified School District “Board Majority” (which was offensive enough to be successfully recalled in June of 2001), (2) our own SOCCCD “Board Majority” (which was much dissipated by the inclusion of Bill Jay and the awakening of Nancy Padberg), and (3) the notorious Westminster School District “Board Majority,” which has taken aim at laws requiring fair treatment for gays. (Re Fuentes and the OUSD Board Majority, see OC Weekly, 12/28/01)

Mark Bucher was the Orange Unified BM’s attorney—yes, he quit his contractor's business in favor of the law in 2000—but he was quickly fired after the BM was replaced. Later, he became the Westminster School Districts BM attorney.

These guys sure do get around!

Plus, Bucher is the current Treasurer of the OC Republican Party—the organization that Fuentes chaired for twenty years and until recently.

Got all that straight?

AHMANSON. One more thing (for now). The initial sugar daddy of Education Alliance, and the chief backer of the OUSD’s Board Majority, was Orange Countian Howard Ahmanson. According to Jerry Sloan (http://www.skepticfiles.org/fw/alliance.htm), Ahmanson is a “Christian Reconstructionist idealogue and daddy deep-pockets [who has] embarked upon a plan to capture California’s school boards.”

What’s a Christian Reconstructionist? Well, according to Wikipedia,

Christian Reconstructionism is a highly controversial religious and theological movement within Protestant Christianity. It calls for Christians to put their faith into action in all areas of life including civil government, and envisions the private and civil enforcement of the general principles of Old Testament and New Testament moral law, including those expounded in the case laws and summarized in the Old Testament Decalogue.

(Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Reconstructionism)

In 1992, Ahmanson, a creationist, was quoted as saying: “My purpose is total integration of biblical law into our lives.” (See website of American United for Separation of Church and State.)

Funding the Education Alliance in its early years was, according to Sloan, part of Ahmanson’s plan to carry out his Reconstructionist philosophy in California/Orange County. (It appears that Ahmanson stopped funding EA by the late 90s.)

Ahmanson is on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute. Guess who else is on CI’s Board?

That would be Tom Fuentes.

That's some world, that Fuentes World.

More soon. —Chunk

(For a brief bio of Mr. Ahmanson, see:

http://www.nndb.com/people/374/000058200/)

WHAT KINDA GUY DOES SOMETHIN' LIKE THAT?

I left the last Board Meeting early, at about 9:30, and so I missed the fireworks that occurred during its last hour. As I reported on the 15th and 16th, Tracy Daly, the district's irrepressible Director of Marketing and Public Affairs, was grilled that night by the Board re her (and the Chancellor's) request for $229,830 basic aid dollars for IVC and SC marketing, outreach and recruitment.

That wasn't pleasant. Tracy took some heat from skeptical trustees, especially Wagner and Fuentes. But at least Mathur spoke up to defend the request. It had his name on it, not just hers.

Today I ran into a friend who witnessed the part of the meeting that I missed. I mentioned that I thought things were getting a bit unpleasant re the request for marketing moola.

She said: "That was nothing! You shoulda seen what happened later!"

She told me that, during the last part of the meeting, Tracy was again grilled, only this time things got really hot. The grillage concerned item 43, revision of the district "logo/graphic identity."

My friend reports that some of the Trustees were peeved about the item. How come we're changing our logo? We never asked for that! How come the mountains on this logo are too big?

--That sort of thing, she said. The 'Tees were generally miffed. Maybe not all of 'em. Like I said, I wasn't there.

But, sheesh. Talk about your micromanagement!

Evidently, Tracy took ALL of the heat for the perceived impudence or effrontery, or whatever it was, that the trustees saw in Tracy's logo revision activity.

Now get this: I have it on very good authority that, in fact, Chancellor Mathur was up to his eyeballs in the logo revision project! Without doubt, he knew about it and gave it his "OK"!

Like I said, Tracy took the heat, and there was a lot of it blastin' her way.

Did Chancellor Mathur speak up on Tracy's behalf? Did he stop everybody to say, "Wait a minute, I OKed this thing, so leave this gal alone!"?

He did not. He just sat there, watchin' Tracy's body jerk around as it was machine-gunned with bullets of bombast.

--You know, like at the end of Bonnie and Clyde. Only without Clyde.

Now tell me! What kinda guy does somethin' like that? --CW

UPDATERY by Chunk

1. Leaf eruptions quelled. Not long ago, Dissent's crack photographer, Raul, took some pictures of one of the so-called "temporary" classrooms at IVC. One photograph, which appeared in this blog, revealed the poor condition of the eaves of a prominent and notorious classroom--the one between A300 and the IVC Bookstore, which is affectionately called "the sh*thouse." (Well, that's what I call it. But affectionately.)

As Rebel Girl has explained, the eaves of this particular building appeared to be stuffed chock-full of very old rotting leaves. So stuffified were these eaves that they even sported unpleasant "leaf eruptions"--i.e., places where the cheap plywood could not avoid blooming hideously outward like one of those deep-fried onions at Outback. See pics.

Recently, we noticed that workers had ripped the old wood away and had removed the leaves. (See.)

Well, that's a good start. We appreciate the effort. We hope to see further progress soon! I mean, you're not gonna leave it like that, are you?

2. Can I have two? We are a peevish lot here at Dissent. A while back, we presented a picture of the typical whiteboard "eraser" at IVC, namely, a filthy old rag that looks like it may have originated in Howard's bathroom or worse. (See pic.) It's been stinkin' up A405 for months, maybe years.

Well, again, we've noticed a change. A week or so ago, Rebel Girl informed me that a set of white towels, each with a delightful blue stripe, suddenly appeared in her classroom and in another classroom of a colleague.

"Didn't they put some of those blue-stripe towels in your classroom?" she asked.

"No," I said. I was peeved.

But today I noticed that, sure enough, A405 sports exactly one towel of the blue-stripe variety.

I guess that's an improvement. Could I have another one?

That reminds me of an old movie I saw once. In the movie, a kid cries about having no shoes. His dad feels bad about that. Then, on one fateful day, dad proudly presents his son with a gift. It's a shoe! "Here you are, my son! Just what you wanted!"

The kid looks at it. Then he looks up at Dad. He asks: "Can I have two of 'em?"

Dad smacks him upside the head.

Just for laughs, I present a picture of an actual whiteboard eraser. (See.) I do appreciate the effort represented by the new blue-stripe towels. Still, why not purchase some ACTUAL ERASERS?

I would be happy to supply a hard copy of the photograph to the individual charged with purchasing erasers. Let me know. I'm in A239--you know, the office that forms stinky puddles near the window (underneath my computer) during rains. We've got tiny livestock, too.

3. Air testage. Somebody told me that, two days ago, some guy was in A200 with fancy equipment to test the air. Somebody asked him, "What are you doing?" He said: "I'm testing the air." The guy did not elaborate.

In the meantime, long-suffering Mr. S continues to stew in heavy juices of rank peeviosity in his unfortunate, spore-bedevilled office. He's particularly peeved about his rank and heavily spore-ified carpet.

One day, he told me that he was personally gonna rip the carpet out of his office and throw it out the door.

I urged him to hold off on that.

See? Chunk's no trouble-maker! He's a trouble-stopper!

THE UCI ALL-STARS!

DISSENT the BLOG has once again attracted the attention of Matt Coker of the OC WEEKLY. Check out his Nov. 18-24 posting at:

http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/06/11/web-coker.php

(Or click on the link to "Clockwork Orange" at the right.)

Coker presents Trustee Fuentes' curious remarks about luring part-timer "stars" from UCI. (See Nov. 14 post on Dissent the Blog.) Then he writes:

Dissent the Blog's Rebel Girl (think Commie Girl, only not Commie Girl) just reported over the weeknd on all the reasons UCI's star faculty would not want to come to the South County campuses, including bad pay, part-timers must pay to park, crappy part-time faculty offices, crappy classrooms and various molds, spores and other nasty junk that wafts from the campus ventilation systems.

But other than that, they'll love it! Which is why Clockwork enthusiastically forwards this list of UCI faculty members we're just sure Fuentes & Co. would welcome with open armaments:

Urban theorist/SoCal doomsayer Mike Davis

Political scientist/thorn-in-OC-GOP's side Mark Petracca

Sixties historian/Nation contributor Jon Wiener

Middle East historian/Bush war critic Mark LeVine

Chicano historian/OC's preeminent labor historian Gilbert Gonzalez

The entire Cross-Cultural Center

French deconstructionist/UCI part-time faculty member Jacques Derrida (Mitigating factor: they'd have to dig him up!)

Investigative journalism lecturers/commie pinko fags Will Swaim and Gustavo Arellano

Is that enough star power for ya?

--Chunk here. Incidentally, Petracca is an old fan of Dissent (he used to ask me to send him the latest editions) and Wiener once shared the stage with IVC Philosophy instructor Roy Bauer when each received an award from IVC's Student Liberties Club circa 1998.

Plus Jacques Derrida once borrowed Rebel Girl's snorkel equipment. Or was it a kayak?

He returned it, sans deconstruction. --CW

Twinkle, Twinkle, Trustee Tom

"Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars,
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars…"

At the most recent board meeting, Trustee Fuentes opined that we should try and lure star faculty from UCI (and OCC) to come and teach at our little campus in the orange groves. (See "Nov. 14 Board Meeting, part II," 11/16.)

His proposal begs questions aplenty, but Rebel Girl will leave the begging of those to others more suitably irreverent and “sophomoric” (Red? Chunk?). She will presently address only one: Besides the glamour of working with Trustee Fuentes, what, exactly, is in it for these “star faculty”?

Who does the starry-eyed trustee imagine might feel motivated to traipse across town and teach for the paltry adjunct faculty compensation offered by the district, not to mention return some of it for the privilege and convenience of parking on campus?

Lousy compensation and paying for parking aside, let’s consider the bountiful resources available to our present part-time faculty. Perhaps these will attract the stars from the U of C at I.

Take for example, the part-time faculty office in A-200 (please!). A modest hand-lettered piece of paper taped to the door affirms that it is, indeed, the part-time office. The otherwise unadorned facility serves, theoretically, the needs of some 60 or more part-time faculty and their students.


The office resembles a windowed closet (with one window broken and leaning against the wall for months now), tucked away between a mail box arrangement and the cheerful Howard Gensler Memorial Xerox Cubicle, its constant rhythmic sound and light show, a jolly mechanical celebration of the ingenuity, creative thinking, and can-do spirit of that clever fellow. (See "The Howard Hilton," 9/30/01)

For those nostalgically inclined, the part-timer’s office conjures the sites of those screwball college pranks of the 50s where students crammed into telephone booths and Volkswagens, even as their parents cowered in bomb shelters under the house.

A quick survey reveals the bunker is equipped with two desks--that’s one for every thirty “star” instructors, teacher-to-furniture ratio-wise. The drawers of one desk are broken and splintered (or the equivalent of the splinters produced by particle board), no use to anyone unless they are going to use their gaping cavity as some kind of “cubby” or public storage unit. Or maybe this is what the Martha Stewart-type magazines mean by “distressed”?

Our inventory is completed by noting one table, one bookcase, three chairs, two computers, a telephone, and a scattering of table lamps.

But there’s more. Need I remind anybody that the part-time office is also an outpost or protectorate of the now famous colonies of mold of the A-200 building? There’s something perhaps the pedagogy stars are not getting in enough quantities over at UCI. Nothing quite like being exposed to Penicillium (a potential allergin-–I think that this is related to the stuff that if I ingest can kill me!); Aspergillus (allergy, respiratory infection) and my favorite: Stachybotrep (allergy, respiratory and skin irritant and some strains give off gases that are nerve toxins). I bet they don’t have this stuff over at UCI--at least not in faculty offices and classrooms, maybe in the labs--but not, you know, available for the taking or breathing. Not just giving it away!

And don’t get me started on the classroom conditions “star” UCI faculty would face once they leave their part-time office. You know how Rebel Girl feels about rodents in the ceiling, podia, floors and broken furniture. (Hey, has anyone seen the broken window over in the CEC building yet? Or the cascades of mulched leaves eating away at the sagging eaves? We’re talking YEARS of leaves here. Good compost, poor roofing material.)


She feels, well, like calling the health department.

That said, part-time faculty do, to their credit, use their sad little part-time office. After all, our part-time faculty may be employed part-time but they are full-time professionals. We all see them in there, making do and doing as well as they can.

It makes me wince. They deserve so much more--and so do their students.

The beautiful thing about Fuentes’ nutty offerings a few nights ago is that nobody takes him seriously. Or do they? I look forward to his follow-up and welcome a concrete proposal for a campaign to, yes, stay with me here: attract Senate and, presumably, Non-Senate Faculty to apply for teaching positions at Irvine Valley and Saddleback colleges. And what might such a proposal look like? How would it be promoted? A junket to UCI? Lunch with Chancellor Drake (who’s got a liver ailment, not to mention contract struggles with his own faculty and staff unions)?

How about we just recognize the trustee’s yammering for what it is? A few minutes of hot air offered to distract whomever is listening from real issues. A purposeful blowing of smoke. Or as Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” says: “Merely corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”

Of course, trustee Fuentes doesn’t even bother with corroborative detail. He just says stuff.

-- Rebel Girl

SOME CARTOONS

We at Dissent used to have fun adapting old cartoons to our contemporary Dissentular purposes.

I thought it might be fun to reprint some of the cartoons from old issues--cartoons that might still have meaning or might have a new meaning.

Or not.

1. LEAVE! This cartoon appeared in the 'Vine (the predecessor of Dissent) on July 28, 1998. By that time, Raghu had experienced a massive (76%) vote of "no confidence" from full-time IVC faculty. As you know, he later (in 2000) suffered a 90% vote of "no confidence." In 2004, as Chancellor, he managed to hit 93.5% "no confidence," a personal best. (If you click on the image, it should get bigger.)


2. THAT MUST BE UNCOMFORTABLE. Eight or nine years ago, faculty warned the Board that the district's reserves were too low. The Board Majority dismissed such warnings, for it dismissed anything the faculty had to say (unless the faculty were Old Guard union patrons like Lee W, Sherry M, et al.).

This cartoon appeared in September of '98. At the time, Kathie Hodge was the acting chancellor.


3. LITIGATION ATTRACTOR. This next cartoon, which alludes to the Accreditation team's visit, is from an issue published on July 6, 1998. By then, the Board had been spanked pretty hard for its "persistent and defiant" Brown Act violations. And it had also been sued for (Raghu's) violating students' free speech rights (those suits were ultimately successful):


4. FROGUE IS "TOPS." Fiinally, this one is from the period in which Trustee Frogue was receiving tremendous attention owing to his embrace of wacky conspiracy theories, his apparent Holocaust denial (so swore numerous former students), and his plan to invite a crew of crackpots and anti-semites to a forum at Saddleback College: