Video of Monday's wild board meeting: key moments

......

.....Go HERE. Look for the list of “archived videos.”
.....Click on “VIDEO” for the May 24 meeting.
.....The “streaming video” player should appear. (Mac users may want to use Firefox.)
.....JUMP TO:

Item 6.2 [esp. 50:42]
Spending $2 million in basic aid on "Westphal" legal defense
(Fuentes is among the last to speak. He says he hopes the district will "go after" those who brought the suit.)

Item 6.9
Discussion of classified personnel action—including one hire that inspired a heated exchange between Mathur and Wagner. Mathur bloviates re diminishment of Chancellor's role

Item 7.1
Discussion of “nepotism” at the SOCCCD

0:28:53 The faculty plaintiffs' ("Westphal" prayer complaint) public statement occurs (Margot/Claire, et al.)
1:09:50 Mathur speaks; it’s ugly
1:24:45 Here's where Fuentes does his best "Joe McCarthy" impersonation. He almost holds up that piece of paper. And it is a list. And he doesn’t care that lots of the people on the list have done nothing wrong. And he’s a tail-gunner. (Well, OK. I just made that up.)

UPDATE: on “going after” (discussion of item 6.2)

.....Marcia motions to separate out the part of the item requesting $2 million for legal defense in the prayer case. That occurs.
.....When the board gets to that part of the item, Marcia states that she pulled it (out of the rest of the item) to vote against it. She gives her reasons: Given that important services are being cut at the colleges, how can this large sum for defensive litigation be defended? (Note: the district's prevailing in the case would do nothing to improve the colleges or student services.)
.....Padberg explains that the action is only to set aside $2 million, not necessarily to spend it.
.....Lang then asserts: “I frankly find it somewhat disingenuous that the very folks who are speaking out about spending the money on this item are the same folks who are causing us to incur this amount of expense for the district. I’m gonna support the motion…”
.....Please note that Lang here commits a classic fallacy, namely, rejecting a view based on (alleged)  facts about the persons who hold it (ad hominem). Also, note that Lang’s point about disingenuousness in no sense addresses the point that Milchiker had just made—a point that Lang acknowledges he is sympathetic to. Note, too, that Milchiker is untouched by Lang’s ad hominem, for she is not among those who brought the suit.
.....Fuentes then says:

“It is my intent to support the setting aside of these funds. I think it is the only responsible action this board can take, to be prepared. I believe that our district will wiiiiiiin this case. I hope that we will pursue it with all aggressive action that we can take. And I hope that we can go after [51:10] those who have caused the district to spend this money and win the repayment of these attorney fees.”

.....I suppose that critics of our "prayer" lawsuit will claim that, in referring to “those who have caused the district to spend this money,” Fuentes is referring, not to the plaintiffs who had just spoken (and to whom trustee Lang just referred in his comment about "disingenuousness”), but to the organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS), who are providing the legal team for the suit.
.....But of course AUSCS are not the plaintiffs in this case.
.....I do hope that Mr. Fuentes will clarify his remarks, which could easily be interpreted as his hoping the board/district will “go after” those who have in fact caused the district to be sued, namely, the plaintiffs, which include faculty, students, and members of the community.
.....Further, Fuentes’ defenders will insist that Fuentes was referring only to “going after” specifically in the sense of gaining repayment of attorney fees. Perhaps. But given the supreme ugliness and wrongness of the notion that he seeks to “go after” those who brought this suit (plaintiffs), I think he needs to be very clear and specific about just who and how he wants to pursue this project of "going after."  --RB

More timecard shell games

.....

.....A friend sent me an article in today’s LA Times regarding fraud in various areas of government in LA County: L.A. County auditors find widespread fraud. According to the article,

Los Angeles County auditors substantiated 101 instances of fraud during the last six months of 2009, uncovering cases large and small in which taxpayers were cheated, according to a report released Wednesday. ¶ The latest report was unusual because it found misconduct that touched the highest levels of the Fire Department and the office of the county's chief executive, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraud.

.....In some instances, employees were viewing internet pornography—a problem that has arisen on several occasions here at Irvine Valley College.
.....But there were more serious findings—for instance, that “Three senior Fire Department managers played golf during county work hours but claimed a full day on their timecards, according to investigators. One of the employees also recorded overtime for that day, the report said.”
.....As in the case of John Williams, in this case, officials provided a dust storm of odd explanations and excuses:

.....Two of the employees were not disciplined because at the time, Fire Department rules allowed them to report they had worked full shifts if they worked at least one hour, a practice that has since been changed.
.....Fire Chief Michael Freeman said all employees involved had worked extra hours on other days, and he disputed the auditors' findings….

.....As you know, recently, we reported that trustee John Williams turned in timesheets to the county (re his job as OC Public Administrator and Public Guardian) that indicated that he had worked on days when in fact he was junketeering (often, in Florida) as a college trustee. This was explained essentially as an unavoidable artifact of the alleged complexity of Williams’ position as both an elected official and an appointed official.
.....We are in possession of further records and will be reporting about them in future.

Saddleback's Rajen Vurdien gets while the gettin's good

.....

Fullerton College appoints new leader (OC Reg)

.....Rajen Vurdien has been appointed the eighth president of Fullerton College, according to a release from the school.
.....He starts in office July 19.
.....The North Orange County Community College District board appointed Vurdien Tuesday night
....."Because of his personal background, he fully understands the challenges and hopes of so many young people entering community colleges," said Board President Michael Matsuda in a prepared statement.
....."I am honored to be given the opportunity to lead Fullerton College," said Vurdien, in the same release. "These are exciting times, as Fullerton College will be celebrating its 100th anniversary over the next two years."
.....A native of the island nation of Mauritius, Vurdien came to the United States in 1985 from China, where he ran language programs and taught English for the United Nations.
.....Vurdien also spent six years as the director of graduate programs in education at Gwynedd Mercy College outside of Philadelphia, the release states.
.....He worked at Long Beach City College and Long Island University and was appointed vice president for instruction at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo in 2004. He's leaving that position to take over at Fullerton.

May SOCCCD board meeting VIDEO available noon tomorrow

.
.....I'm told that streaming video of the May board meeting will be "up" by noon tomorrow (Thursday).

Peabody's Improbable History: the SOCCCD and cronyism, 2003 and 2000

...
1. Driving Through the Valley of Malls, OC Weekly, March 27, 2003 (Matt Coker)

SSSSSSMACK!

Anyone who has attended meetings of local boards, councils and commissions is used to the superfluous public ass-kissing elected officials give one another. Taking such manufactured passion to new depths is the South Orange County Community College District board of trustees, which governs Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges. At a recent meeting, board president Don Wagner paused at one point to congratulate trustee Tom Fuentes for being re-elected to a 10th term as Orange County Republican Party chairman. Fuentes had earlier toasted fellow trustee John Williams for being sworn in as Orange County's new public administrator—the part-time elected official who oversees conservancies for feeble-minded folks who can't care for themselves and have no next-of-kin. But what Fuentes did next says a lot about Orange County Republicans, county government and that particular school board: he congratulated fellow trustee Nancy Padberg for being appointed to Williams' professional staff. The same board awarded a plum district administrative job to the trustee Padberg replaced [viz., Teddi Lorch]—even though her qualifications were questionable. The funny thing—not funny ha-ha, but funny as in ironic—is Williams was first swept into his trustee seat as a reformer who would protect South County taxpayers by ending rampant cronyism on the part of faculty and administrators. Dissident trustee David Lang has long complained of cronyism practiced by Fuentes, Williams, Padberg, Wagner and Dorothy Fortune—Republicans who cast identical votes so often you'd think they trained at the old Soviet Politburo. We would have asked Padberg if she foresees any conflicts, but she was too busy nominating her new boss Williams to a seat on the California Community College Trustees board of directors.

2. “David Lang…alleges cronyism in college district,” Irvine World News, June 2000

David Lang...told his colleagues Monday he objects to the continued recruitment of friends and political allies for jobs in the district…The trustee said he was appalled at the lack of ethics he contends is damaging the reputation of the district. “One can only hope we can avoid being dubbed the Tammany Hall community college district,” Lang said.

The Morning Matinée: Rebel Girl Meets the Book Burner (2 minutes)

.....
.....One in the series of short films documenting special moments in the college's (Irvine Valley College's) history.
.....Here Rebel Girl is approached by one of IVC's own: the "idea" guy.


.....To read the original account of this episode, see "Hey Kids! Let's put on a Book Burning!" (2007)

Other films in the series:
.....• IVC: faculty banned from discussing the war (2003)
.....• Tom interviewed for “OC Insider” (2010)
.....• Dissent wins in Federal Court, 1999

Jack Scott’s Kaplan deal: “we were not consulted”

.....

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: California's Deal With Kaplan

.....Last fall, the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office announced what some perceived as a partial solution to the budget-related enrollment restrictions that threatened to disrupt the educational plans of many students. Under a memorandum of understanding with Kaplan University, students at certain community colleges would be able to take specific online courses – at a steep discount off the for-profit institution's normal tuition rates, though still paying significantly more than they would at their own college – with the assurance that the credits would transfer back to their home institutions, allowing them to stay on track to earn an associate degree.
. . .
… A standard three-credit online course at Kaplan costs $1,113, and a discounted three-credit course there costs California students $645. By comparison, a three-credit course at a California community college costs a mere $78....
. . .
.....Scott Lay, president of the Community College League of California, ...doubts that the single-course option at Kaplan will appeal to many of the state's community college students.
. . .
.....Lay believes the deal is an unfortunate consequence of the state’s disinvestment in public higher education in recent years. He noted that it was perceived as one of the few options – though not an ideal one – to keep the path to degree completion open for some students.
. . .
.....“I know [Chancellor Jack Scott's] heart was in the right place when he made this agreement, but we’re just not convinced this is the right way to do it,” [Jane Patton, president of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges] said. “The initial concern faculty had with the [memorandum of understanding] was that we were not consulted when it was written....(Continued)

Pictured: Scott with IVC President Glenn Roquemore, Friday