Mathur: "we're not here to serve our egos"

At the start of yesterday's powwow among leadership of the district's "constituent groups," Chancellor Mathur offered some remarks. I present a complete audio post below (unedited).

Some of his remarks:

* "We're all taking the Accrediting team's recommendations seriously."

(In fact, trustee Fuentes has responded to the Accreds' recommendation that the board cease micromanagement by asserting that the trouble with the district is not so much micromanagement by trustees as the "macromanagement" of "others." In fact, the Accreds made no mention of, and did not find, "macromanagement" by anyone. To hear Fuentes' "macromanagement" remark, go to the end of this blog)

* "[At the February meeting] over 90 suggestions were identified in terms of how we can enhance institutional climate....[including] 'respect people' [and] 'address issues without attacking individuals'."

(At a recent district administrative meeting, Mathur repeatedly excoriated the IVC Academic Senate President, falsely asserting that she was "behind" the senate's decision to pursue a complaint regarding the district's violation of BP2100.1)

* "[The board members] no longer are interested in micromanagement."

(During the open session that followed this special meeting, the board acted to explore a recent decision, at IVC, to discontinue the tennis teams, despite an explanation of how that decision was arrived at by the appropriate parties. I.e., the board once again engaged in micromanagement.)

* "We're not here to serve our egos."

Faculty speak out about Accreditation and the ALA

Before the start of yesterday's powwow of district "constituent groups," facilitated by the trio of Diane Woodruff of the CCLC, Ian Walton of the State Academic Senate, and Babs Beno of the ACCJC, the public was allowed to address the group. Three faculty took that opportunity. I offer their unedited remarks in audio posts below:

Anna Maria Cobos:
* "[By inserting language about the "macromanagement" of "others" in a resolution] the board and district leadership undermined the intention of the ACCJC recommendation regarding micromanagement directed at the board."
* "The Chancellor stated that faculty members are involved in generating negative press coverage, that they express concern of losing accreditation. As a result faculty leaders are [supposedly] spreading hostility and fear...[Such remarks are a] public attack [on faculty]...."
* "In my opinion, members of this board manipulated the ALA institutional membership for personal purposes...."

To hear trustee Fuentes' infamous "macromanagement" remark, go to the end of this post

Margot Lovett:
* "...I am deeply worried by and I'm profoundly saddened at the current state of affairs in our district...."
* "I cannot adequately express my frustration with a chancellor and a board of trustees that stubbornly refuse to take seriously the report of the accreditation commission and address recommendations...that detail the changes that must be made at the district level...."

Bob Cosgrove:
* "...a healthy debate involves various sides. And the debate that I've been hearing has become less of a debate and more finger-pointing and accusation...."
* "We cannot get people to serve on our committees any longer, and what I see at this college is a lapse into mediocrity...."

Snoozefest

ell, the big shootout at the OK corral turned out to be the big snoozefest at the collosal waste of time.

Things started out OK, with spirited remarks from the likes of Anna Maria C and Margot L, but that was followed by the nauseating self-important drone of Mr. Goo, who now sports a haircut that seems designed to scare children.

What's-her-name from the CCLC (representing, I guess, the trustee POV) seemed to be in a perpetual state of discombobulation. Actually, I think she was there to represent cluelessness. She did a heck of a job.

Ms. Beno, the big cheese of the Accreds, offered a Powerpoint presentation, featuring the obvious and sleep-inducing. I do believe that, at one point, she looked around and noted our high class digs. We all groaned and thought, "lady, this is the only decent building in the district, and it's the only one you'll ever see."

Ian Walton, of the State Academic Senate, actually managed to bring an edge with him for once. At one point, he seemed to say that, based on what he's heard or read about recent board meetings, we don't have a snowball's chance in hell of overcoming our dire crapulosity. It was like he had come expecting to see a board comprising incorrigible blackguards, and, sure enough, when he got here, that's just what he saw. He seemed struck by some horror.

I do believe the fellow wanted to flee from the building ASAP. I caught him glancing at the exit. At the end of the meeting, he was in such a hurry to flee that he barely acknowledged my "good job" and he very nearly knocked me down. He actually jogged across the grass to wherever the hell he was goin'. I bet he's drunk by now.

During her dronage, Beno said that the Accreds look for ethics and such. She said that we serve students. She said that the Accreds don't like trustees interfering with something. She noted that multi-college districts are generally a pain in the ass. She had us look at page 27. Her stuff went on like that for an hour or so. I was dyin'.

What's-her-name, Beno, and Walton took turns critiquing each constituent group's draft of their homework. The homework was supposed to be an attempt to define each group's roles, governance-wise. What's-her-name said that the classified got an A+, and she even seemed to say that the union's stuff was first rate. She offered some weak criticisms of the trustees' draft. She didn't seem to get the Academic Senates' draft. She seemed pained by it.

There was some yammering about the grid, offered by the faculty, that indicates the roles and authorities of the academic senates. There were complaints--from what's-her-name, I think--that the grid failed to indicate how other constituent groups were involved in the tasks mentioned on the grid.

Faculty were kinda pissed, cuz our homework was to define our own roles, not somebody else's. That what's-her-name is a real whatchamacallit.

There was some yammering about how the faculty were trying to be "equal" to the district, and, hey (she seemed to say), that's not cooperative. Wendy had to point out that we (i.e., the senates) had to go to court, owing to the district's absurd interpretation of "joint agreement," and, now, if'n you know anything about the law, then you know that we've got an appellate decision that trumps all this fussing about the uppity faculty and their "equality" guff. Cuz the appellate decision goes, and it says EQUAL baby. EQUAL, EQUAL, EQUAL.

Don Wagner sniggered.

It makes me smile to think that, owing to our clueless and defiant board, all over the state, senates are makin' moves to get equality--not just substantial input, but equality or better--where, before, they just got the back of blackguards' hands.

Anyway, this went on for a while, and then, suddenly, at twenty minutes to 5, it all stopped. People stared at each other. It was like going to a movie, and then, 2/3 of the way into it, the ushers are pushin' you outa the room and into the bright sunlight.

Some of us went to Boosters across the street and tried to get blitzed.

We staggered back for the 7:00 regular meeting, and it was so unbelievably dry that i nearly died.

Once again, there were some spirited public remarks (especially about the "ALA" issue and the discontinuation of IVC tennis teams--you'd swear that tennis is some kind of communion with the Deity), but then it was strictly drone time. I was nearly in a coma at 9:00 or so, when I got the hell outa there, even faster than that Ian Walton.

I'll have a more detailed account and AUDIO files maybe tomorrow. Now, just leave me alone to my Becks.

P.S.:

(4/27/06) Since Monday, I've had occasion to review the tapes of Monday's meeting, and it does seem to me now that, in the above post (written briefly after the meeting) I was too hard on Diane Woodruff of the CCLC. It does seem to me that each of the three "facilitators" sought to guide the board toward ceasing its pattern of micromanagement.

It does still seem to me, though, that the meeting did little to move the board in the right direction. With Engineer Fuentes at the handle, the district is headed for a trainwreck. -CW

Tom gets feted, Repubs get fetid, students get paripatetic

1. Fuentes gets freedom prize

OC.Blog (http://www.ocblog.net/) has pics of a recent Orange County Young Republicans event in which Tom Fuentes received the OCYR’s annual Freedom Award. Not sure who’s sayin’ it, but, on the blog, someone gushes: “Thank you Tom for all that you have done and all that you do for our party and the conservative cause.”

Sheesh. Why doncha get a room?

What’s conservative about unscrupulous hardball tactics? Like black-balling a college program just to get back at a critic? Or spouting flat false factoids about the district’s instructors on TV? (Has he apologized? No.) Or imposing an incompetent and despised chancellor on a college community?

Nothing that I can see.

In one of the pics, Bruce Herschensohn (do you remember his diatribes on channel 7?) is shown giving our Tom the Freedom Fry Goblet. It’s a wonder the stage didn’t catch fire and spew sulphurous flames.


2. What to do?

There’s still lots of buzzage about George W’s OC visit tomorrow. Local Republicans don’t know whether to show up or not, what with the Prez siding with his big business cronies and gettin' all kind and gentle on illegal immigrants.

Check out this morning’s Times article, which quotes a Republican academic describing W’s visit as a “blunder”: Many in GOP will sit out Bush talk

3. Huell Howser at Joe's Garage

The IVC Foundation is doin' up a fundraiser Tuesday night at "Joe's Garage" in Tustin. The Foundation comprises more than its share of conservative Republicans (Fuentes' crowd). So it's at least a little odd to discover that the inimitable Huell Howser (of California Gold fame) is the guest speaker. Golly!

I wonder if those right-wingers know that Huell hosts another show, the environmentalist-friendly "California Green," or that Huell's "California Gold" is endorsed by the California Teachers Association(!), the California Federation of Teachers(!!), the California State Library Foundation (!!!), and the California Library Association(!!!!).

D'oh!

I'd go to this shindig, but I don't wanna miss Tuesday night's California Gold, which has Huell visiting a Cheeze Whiz factory at the absolute geographical center of the state.

4. “Celebrate Quack Day”

Tomorrow, IVC (student government/clubs) will host an Earth Day event, and that's great.

But wait a minute. The official flier says: "Join us for a Day of Holistic and Earth Preservation Activities!"


These include the usual "Recycling opportunities" and a trip to Caspers Wilderness Park.

But they also include "free massages," "Natural and Holistic Vendor Displays," and "Optimum Health."

What on earth do massages have to do with Earth Day?

And Natural and Holistic? Those are "alternative medicine" code words. What's the supposed link between environmentalism (Earth Day) and alternative medicines? There is no link, aside from the pesky fact that the "New Age" crowd and the "environmentalist" crowd overlap.

I gnash my teeth regularly.

Students who are fans of "holistic" and "natural" medicine might want to look up the word "quackery" in the Skeptic's Dictionary. (Quackery) They might want to visit Quackwatch as well. (Quackwatch) The upshot: if you learn a little critical thinking or a little scientific method, you'll stop wasting your time on holistic nonsense.

The flier mentions something called "Optimum Health." I Googled the phrase (with the caps), and I found mostly pseudoscientific claptrap. There's a laboratory called "Optimum Health." According to Quackwatch, Optimum Health Labs "cater to practitioners who engage in nonstandard practices." Translation: quackery practiced here.

The phrase "Optimum Health" seems to be associated with Dr. Andrew Weil, the "alternative medicine" guru. Maybe the Earth Day Optimum Health "activity" has something to do with him.

Stephen Barret (of Quackwatch) has this to say about Dr. Weil:

…According to Weil, many of his basic insights about the causes of disease and the nature of healing come from what he calls "stoned thinking," that is, thoughts experienced while under the influence of psychedelic agents or during other states of "altered consciousness" induced by trances, ritual magic, hypnosis, meditation, and the like.

…Weil's later books make many claims for ... "cures," as we shall see, but despite his reference to "abundant evidence," he almost never gives us anything more than the claim itself -- unsupported by objective and documented observations. To Weil, subjective belief, if persuasive enough to the patient, should be adequate to support the claim of reality. And by "reality" he does not refer simply to the patient's state of mind, but to the physical dimensions of the disease itself. The allegedly miraculous "cures" are not simply dramatic improvements in symptoms, but the disappearance of all physical evidence of disease. And why shouldn't this be reasonable if one believes, like Weil, that consciousness is the primary reality and that the physical aspects of disease, indeed the entire material world itself, are simply another aspect of mind?

A department of the NIH (the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine [NCCAM])--created by the lamentably New Agey Mr. Clinton--has been funding the testing of "holistic" and "natural" medicines for nearly ten years.

Guess what? So far, it has found no evidence that any of this stuff works.

No doubt, Bill feels NCCAM's pain.

5. “Swirling”

This morning’s New York Times ("College, My Way," by Kate Zernike) offers an interesting article about the phenomenon of dissatisfied students jumping from college to college to get what they want. It's called "swirling."

Community colleges are a part of the story. Here are some excerpts:

ERIN MADDEN laughs a little self-consciously referring to what she calls "my college tour." Not the kind that high school students take to look at potential campuses; hers started after she went to college and discovered she didn't like her choice. She transferred to another, and another, and another, and another, ultimately ending up with five colleges on her transcript when she graduated last year.

… These days, a majority of students take a similarly nomadic path to a degree; about 60 percent of students graduating from college attend more than one institution, a number that has risen steadily over at least the last two decades.

In large part, those numbers reflect the growing population of nontraditional-age students, adults who go to college later in life and often start at a two-year institution. But even traditional students like Ms. Madden — those who head to a four-year college right out of high school — are approaching the experience in a nontraditional way.

They transfer to get a more agreeable major or social life, or take classes at a college back home during the summer to get a leg up on the next year's credits. They take an online class, or earn credits during the year at a nearby community college where they find a required course cheaper, less demanding or at a more convenient hour. Or they do some of each.

College officials call it swirling, mix and match, cut and paste, grab and go. Whatever the term of art, it makes sense for the so-called millennial generation, students famously lacking in brand loyalty, used to having things their way, and can-do about changing anything they don't like…Some college officials see all this as the behavior of an overindulged generation, raised by helicopter parents and lacking in resiliency.

Polish utopian farm experiment plus monkey berry trees

t was a dreary day, but I enjoyed it, cuz the Reb, Red Emma, Limber Lou, some friends (including Red's German cousin w/boyfriend), and I visited "Arden," the seriously cool home of Madame Helena Modjeska, out in lovely Modjeska Canyon (Santiago Canyon).

A pleasant and nervous elderly lady gave us the tour, which started with a goofy video, narrated, it seems, by your Aunt Gerda from Nebraska. At one point, Gerda explained that, at first, Americans didn't know what to make of Modjeska, a serious actress, cuz they were used to "bombast."

That made some of us laugh, but our laughter made some others of us annoyed, but whaddyagonnado.

The house is just what you'd expect. Very cool, very dark. Somehow both Wild West and Victorian.

It was designed in 1887 by the great Stanford White. You remember him. He designed one generation of Madison Square Garden plus lots of other familiar stuff. He was murdered in 1906--the subsequent scandal and murder trial involved White's mistress, the lovely Evelyn Nesbit, an artists' model and actress.

Coincidentally, I've got pictures of that gal, cuz she was seriously beautiful.

The interior of Arden is all wood--the color of cherry, or darker. Lots of nooks and crannies. In one closet, some of the original insulation is revealed: old newspapers. You can still read some of them.

Turns out Modjeska's husband, "Count" Bozenta, wanted to be a farmer, but he had a dark brown thumb. Black even. Originally, the couple settled in Anaheim in 1876, where they started some kind of Polish utopian farm experiment. The experiment failed. So, in 1877, they moved out to remote Santiago Canyon. There, they tried, but failed, to grow olives for olive oil.

They were broke, so Madame M was forced to return to the stage. She started her American career in San Francisco. Pretty soon, she was the most famous actress of her time. (No doubt, I've left out a chapter or two.)



e toured the grounds, too, and they contain a few surprises. There's an odd and rickety two-story building that served as a wine cellar. The stair to the top floor has rotted away.

Somebody on the tour said that, inside the cellar, "it goes into the hill for over fifty yards."

I thrilled.

Evidently, Modjeska had a bear, and the bear had a bear house, which still exists. Limber Lou stared at it.

They had alligators, too. No alligator house though. Evidently, in the teens or twenties (after the Modjeskas died), these gators washed down the creek during a rain. They gobbled up lots of the neighbors' farm animals.

Cool.

There are some unusual trees on the grounds. I picked up some twiggy things that fell from an especially strange tree. Can't think of the name of it. I'll just say it was a monkey berry tree. Could be.





hen I got home, Sunny, my cat, was all pissed off. She nearly knocked over one of my bowls. It occurred to me that the bowl, which is quite old, was likely used here in California at about the same time that Madame M and her brown-thumbed hubby lived in Modjeska Canyon, about two miles from my house as the crow flies.

Think I'll keep that bowl.

Fuentean heroes, duelling powwows

1. ANOTHER FUENTEAN HERO. One of Fuentes' pals is Chriss Street, a Republican candidate for OC treasurer-tax collector. Fuentes is endorsing him, as is Chris Norby (brother of the erstwhile trustee) and Tony "Rat Bastard" Rackauckas (who's come to SOCCCD board meetings).

This morning, the OC Register reveals that Street oversaw the bankruptcy of Fruehauf Trailer Corp's pension fund. Well, all of that went south, and now taxpayers may end up spending $7 million to bail out the fund.

It appears that Street was paid handsomely for his work. According to the Reg,

Operating with virtually no oversight, Street ran the trust for seven years, more than twice its expected life span, while ringing up hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses. He also enjoyed such perks as a trust-owned SUV with XM radio.

"This is way out of line," said Richard Marshack, an Orange County bankruptcy attorney who frequently worked as a trustee. "You don't need a Phi Beta Kappa to tell you that."

This is standard stuff in the Fuentesphere.

Check out the article: $7 million bailout


2. DUELLING POWWOWS. I do hope you're all planning to attend the Shootout at the OC Corral--monday afternoon, from 2-5, at Saddleback College.

While that's happening, George W will be hangin with some of Tom's pals at the Orange County Business Council, at the Hyatt Regency (Irvine). None of us is invited, I'm sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if Tom is there. And John and Don and Nancy. It's gotta be a Republican magnet.

Local right-wingers are hopping mad because W has decided to carry water for his rich friends re illegal immigration. Those politicians who are trying to ride the latest anti-immigrant wave will want to be there to look displeased. They'll squawk, too.

See the Reg article: Rough neighborhood

I sure hope this George W shindig doesn't keep the trustees away from the big district POWWOW. Trust me, you don't wanna miss the powwow.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tom offers a prayer and then pulls out a paint ball gun and splatters every single liberal busybody in the room.

Preparing for Monday's Big Meeting

Chancellor Mathur's secret motto: Magister mundi sum!

Twenty years as the county GOP chair has given Tom a keen ear for ridiculous utterances. (Like "Spain has abandoned our fighting men and women.")

Nancy, Marcia, and Bill are a force to be reckoned with. Boy, they really finessed that ALA vote.

Really, Raghu is plenty worried. But Big Daddy Tom calls the shots, apparently.

Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.