Pissed off readers take aim at Irvine Valley College administration

     Lately, some of our readers have been spouting off about this and that, especially IVC top administration, which has been making some big moves in their usual opaque or process-deficient manner:

18.3%!

Anonymous said...
I hear administration is closing-off the MRC [Media Resources Center, in BSTIC] to students. Is this true?
--1:04 AM, July 15, 2011

syeds said...
Yes i too heard that [a while ago].
Confidentiality Contracts
--3:18 AM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
Isn't that like cheating our community? I wonder who makes these decisions?
--2:20 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
The great “decider” that’s who
--10:29 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
Regarding cutting off the Media Resource Center (MRC), it is a done deal. It just sits empty … collecting dust while students march to the dean's office complaining about the lack of support for their computer classes. Did I say computer classes? Oops! Those are gone too. Just finished cutting the ribbon on the new BSTIC … and before the guests can make it to their cars, half the rooms have been confiscated and the centerpiece of the building, the MRC, is shut down. No discussion, no open planning and decision making, things just "happen" as a misinformed administrator spends taxpayer's money and destroys programs. 

Anonymous said...
What IS the MRC????
--5:13 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
MRC=Media Resource Center in BIZTC [sic]
--6:04 PM, July 15, 2011 

Anonymous said...
Yup, before the door even shut behind [computer guy] Dave Shinnick’s exit, they dismantled the whole network lab. So much for technology classes, huh? Now I guess I’ll have to go to Orange Coast or Golden West to finish my IT program.
--9:49 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
What's a BIZTC? [It is BSTIC, the relatively new “Business Sciences and Technology Innovation Center]
--9:56 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
Since IVC’s crown jewel BSTIC [the relatively new “Business Sciences and Technology Innovation Center”] building is now sans technology, ya think they ought to pull the T down from the sign so it reads, BSIC? or “Be Sick” Yes?
--10:06 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
The administrator, Craig "Craizy" Justice, so hell bent on shutting down IVC technology programs and facilities (while canning needed staff and creating more administrators) is probably more "malevolent" than "misinformed." True he has spent his entire adult career in academia and knows nothing of the real world where most of IVC's students are struggling to prepare for … and cares even less. But combine that with an authoritarian, vindictive, control-freak personality, and a laissez-faire figurehead look-the-other-way hen pecked president, you've got a recipe for just the kind of disaster occurring at IVC, a loose-cannon bull-in-the-china-shop VP wrecking what took 30 years to build. Wake up, faculty sleepy heads!
--12:56 AM, July 16, 2011

B. von Traven said...
Wake up? There's little chance of that. I've given up on this crew. [Note: I was responding to the comment, “Wake up, faculty sleepy heads!”]
--1:48 AM, July 16, 2011

Anonymous said...
bVt, if dissenters, their union pals & senate went after “this crew” with the [same] veracity [ferocity?] they devoted to Williams, Fuentes and the Ghu-ster, wouldn’t you think some positive change could finally come about? It appears now IVC is much worse off with the new Glenn-Craig tag team. Yes, the employee survey is atrocious and since, conditions have only gotten much worse. You may chuckle inside at other programs/departments being dismantled, but you can be sure it ain’t stop’n there; humanities could be next.
--12:24 PM, July 16, 2011

B. von Traven said...
I don't disagree that the Roquemore/Justice regime is really bad. I've tried to make that point in many ways for years. When I referred to "this crew," I wasn't referring to them, however. I was referring to the existing campus community, and especially faculty. They've always been lazy, passive (I'll leave it at that), and willing to let others do what needs to be done. But I've finally tired of being on the front lines, either as an actor or as a reporter. People, it seems, get the government that they deserve.
Of course, I could have said (and probably did say) the same thing a year ago, two years ago, ten years ago, etc.
--1:27 PM, July 16, 2011

Williams:

Anonymous said...
Not much here in the "new developments" category [sic]. Talk about beating a dead horse. How about students at IVC being permanently locked out of their new MRC? Who makes these kind of decisions? [I wasn’t “beating a dead horse.” Rather, I simply posted a recent OC Reg article about the Williams saga, without commentary. –BvT]
--5:10 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
at least you got one point right, williams gets to sit there for the next three years collecting 150k plus benefits and an ever increasing pension. who cut that deal[?]
--9:17 AM, July 16, 2011

President Obama and gay rights

Anonymous said...
Right on.
--6:21 PM, July 13, 2011

Anonymous said...
Ooh! How dare you use his middle name!
--12:36 PM, July 16, 2011

Anonymous said...
So, you are for a despot federal govt. and a corrupt DOJ? People should really get off this race thing because it’s not working anymore, nobody’s buying it. Most people are accepting of interracial marriages today.
--12:44 PM, July 16, 2011

Roquemore drops like a lead balloon

Anonymous said...
Meanwhile, his next-in-command was running the college with absolutely no management skills. He manages everyone by boring them to death with his long-winded stories. They should have doubled.
--8:26 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
Living high on the hog I see...
--9:53 PM, July 15, 2011

The Irvine Valley College “Employee Satisfaction Survey"

Anonymous said...
   Has anyone taken a hard look at the current VPI? He is cunning, a liar, and has total disregard for others especially faculty and classified staff. He has to go! If Glenn won't wake up and take a hard look at him, then they both need to go. Everyone is afraid of him because of his reputation for seeking revenge. He micromanages the deans and the schedule.
   Also, the curriculum committee once again needs a total revamp. Administration is running it by manipulating things in the background. The committee needs to be more open and transparent. How about streamlining the process while you are at it?
   Nepotism reigns with the President. Do we have to hire all of your wife's relatives?
--6:54 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
Yes he must hire ALL her relatives. That was a central condition of their marriage contract.
--7:00 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
Sounds like administration’s getting pretty smelly over there. What to do about the maggot problem?
--10:15 PM, July 15, 2011

Anonymous said...
--How ‘bout we give facilities a call to come clean it up? Oops! Not enough janitors! No paper towels or toilet paper either.
12:58 PM, July 16, 2011

Further opinery:

Anonymous said….
The organizational culture @ IVC is in the toilet for sure. B Sick!
--Posted by Anonymous to Dissent the Blog at 3:44 PM, July 16, 2011

Anonymous said….
   C. Injustice has recently removed all instructors from the computer lab. He staffed it with student help even though students earn credit for the lab. A week later, he commandeered another classified staff for the job.
   After several programming students complained they couldn't get help, he allowed one instructor to work in the lab a couple of hours a week. I think you call that leading by "exception." The way he sees it is if only four students complained, then you don't need that much coverage. What about the other students who are heading to OCC where they get a quality experience? Where they actually have technology courses.
   He intends to do the same thing with all the other labs on campus. Be warned.
   Glenn does't give a crap. The faculty and staff are afraid of Dr. Injustice. If the bully becomes the IVC president, everyone, especially the students, are in for a wild ride. Glenn better pull his head out of the sand. Or is it stuck up his wife's ass?
   C. Injustice, who probably can't log on to a computer, is destroying the T in IT at IVC.
--Posted by Anonymous to Dissent the Blog at 5:24 PM, July 16, 2011

Anonymous said….
   BvT, thanks for bringing all this to the forefront. My son is a computer science student at IVC and I’m outraged! He’s been trying to explain something about an MRC… or something like that, but I’ve been so busy at work and all – haven’t really been paying much attention I suppose. Now I think I have a much better picture, thanks! I feel like we’ve been robbed! This is unacceptable! I look forward to seeing the board about this.
--Posted by Anonymous to Dissent the Blog at 5:41 PM, July 16, 2011

Anonymous said...
   Gosh, the ink was barely dry on IVC’s 2010 Accreditation Report when the MRC was shut down by you know who.
   Ooh and gee wiz, I even recall what the report said:
   "The Business Sciences Technology and Innovation Center (BISTIC) building also has a new Media Resource Center (MRC) WHERE STUDENTS HAVE ACCESS to NEW COMPUTERS running both Windows and Mac OS applications. The Resource Center IS DESIGNED as a CENTRAL MEETING and LEARNING CENTER WHERE STUDENTS CAN MEET AND COLLABORATE on PROJECTS FOR ANY DISCIPLINE in the College" (Standard II.a, page 168).
   HOLLY DECEPTION BATMAN! Doesn’t this “MAJOR DESIGN CHANGE” now call for a "SUBSTANTIVE CHANGE REPORT" filed with the ACCJC?
   Currently on “WARNING” status pending a progress report and revisit in October, IVC risks losing its accreditation completely by pulling this kind of bait and switch on the commission, the state & the students.
--8:45 PM, July 16, 2011

Roquemore drops like a lead balloon or maybe a sack of rocks

Earlier today, IVC President Glenn Roquemore leaped out of an airplane and then smiled broadly.

 

More Williamsian ignominy

New public guardian named to troubled agency (OC Reg)

     Lucille Lyon, a division chief for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, has been named Orange County’s new public guardian. Lyon, who has more than 35 years of experience, will also serve as the county’s assistant public administrator.
     The Board of Supervisors must formally approve the appointment. The board is scheduled to vote July 26, and if approved, Lyon’s first day will be July 29, according to a memo county Chief Executive Officer Tom Mauk sent county supervisors.
     Orange County Public Administrator John S. Williams was fired by the Board of Supervisors from his appointed job as the county’s public guardian last month after being hounded by accusations of mismanagement, questionable promotions and a claim filed against the county that accuses Williams of negligence in the handling of the multimillion dollar estate of TapouT co-founder Charles “Mask” Lewis Jr.
     Assistant Public Administrator/Public Guardian Peggi Buff has already been removed from her position as a result of the county’s investigation into the department. [Reportedly, Buff is OC DA Tony Rackaucas’ fiancé.]
     Orange County’s Public Administrator/Public Guardian has been a department under so much fire county supervisors voted to split it into two departments; approved a ballot measure that gives voters the option to make the public administrator an appointed, not an elected position; and repealed a county ordinance that makes the elected public administrator the ex-officio appointed public guardian.
     Williams has denied any wrongdoing. The county spent months slowly stripping control of the departments from Williams while he refused to step down.
     Williams remains the county’s elected public administrator. Williams is paid $153,206.40 a year to head the combined Public Administrator/Public Guardian departments – a paycheck he will keep despite losing half of his job. Longtime county watchdog Shirley Grindle argued that paying Williams for his public guardian role is an illegal gift of taxpayer funds since Williams is not doing the job he is being paid to do.
     The public guardian handles the affairs of Orange County’s ill and elderly who have no one else to care for them. The public administrator handles the estates of those who die without legal heirs.
Bill Mahoney, a retired deputy chief executive for the county and an attorney with probate experience, was hired in April as a temporary stopgap to help revamp the struggling Public Guardian and Public Administrator departments.

Money for nothing

     The county can do little to interfere with an elected official – but the public guardian is a board-appointed position. With Mahoney in place in April, Williams was not supposed to do anything except sign his name on official court documents as the public guardian. Everything else – including hiring and firing personnel, overseeing day-to-day operations, making budget decisions and overhauling the troubled agency’s culture – were handed to Mahoney.
     But according to a staff report to county supervisors, that arrangement was not working.
     “Recent operational challenges that have arisen as a result of continuing to have John S. Williams as the appointed public guardian” prompted staff to recommend firing Williams and hiring Mahoney to replace Williams until a permanent replacement could be hired.
     If approved by supervisors, Lyon, a former Orange County supervising deputy public guardian, will replace Mahoney.
     Lyon also served as chief deputy public guardian for Riverside County and is past president of the California Association of Public Administrators/Public Guardian, according to her résumé. She holds a master of public administration from California State University, San Bernardino and a bachelor of arts in political science from UCLA, according to her résumé.

18.3%!

UC system tuition going up 18% (OC Reg)

     Undergraduate tuition at the University of California will rise 18.3 percent this fall, hitting $12,192 under a plan approved by university officials Thursday to help offset reduced state funding.
. . .
     “It’s a devastating decision for every student,” said Patrick Manh Le, 20, a UC Irvine senior and executive vice president of the university’s student government. “When you look at how our fees have increased exponentially, it’s just unacceptable for a public university. It’s becoming almost as expensive as a private university.”
     UC tuition does not include about $1,000 in campus-based fees, or room and board.
     Under the plan, the price tag to enroll at a UC school will be nearly double what it was just six years ago. Undergraduate tuition was $6,141 annually in 2005-06.
     The UC tuition increase is made up of two components:
     UC families already have been bracing for a planned 8 percent tuition hike that was approved last fall; this hike will raise tuition by $822 beginning this fall, to $11,124 annually.
On Thursday, the UC Board of Regents approved a 9.6 percent hike that will raise tuition by $1,068 more, to $12,192 total.
     Last month, state funding for UC schools was slashed by $650 million.
     UC officials said they would have been able to absorb a $500 million cut, as proposed by the governor earlier this year. But after $150 million was added to that amount in last month's state budget agreement, UC announced it would need the 9.6 percent hike to stay solvent.
An additional $100 million cut is possible by early next year if state revenues come in lower than projected, UC said….

Local coaches kickback scheme update! Things are heating up

District finds possible embezzlement by coaches (OC Reg)

Money don't get everything it's true
What it don't get, I can't use

     Capistrano Unified acknowledged Wednesday that some of its high school athletic coaches may have embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars of district and parent money in an elaborate kickback scheme involving a local athletic supply company....
     Capistrano Superintendent Joe Farley said the initial findings of a nine-month, internal district investigation indicate that Laguna Hills-based Lapes Athletic Team Sales, now defunct, may have overbilled the district for athletic supplies and then shared the excess cash with coaches who placed the orders.  
     "We believe there could have been criminal misconduct," Farley said in an interview Wednesday. "The findings are significant enough that it merits being turned over to the sheriff's department."
. . .
     The district's private investigator ... is working on a report summarizing the findings, Farley said. The report likely will be turned over to the Orange County Sheriff's Department by the end of the summer.
     Capistrano ... was the first district to look into allegations brought forth by Geoff and Teresa Sando of Irvine, who inherited the Lapes company....
     After reviewing thousands of invoices, receipts and canceled checks, the Sandos concluded that coaches at about 30 high schools and community colleges in Orange County may have received illegal money and gifts from Lapes.
     All of the school districts implicated by the Sandos have since launched investigations, said Orange County schools Superintendent Bill Habermehl. Many have concluded that while their coaches received kickbacks from Lapes, the funds were used appropriately for team-related expenses.
     "They found out there was nothing wrong, or there was an error of judgment but no misappropriation or misuse of funds," Habermehl said. "Ninety-nine percent of our coaches are doing nothing wrong. It's just a matter of a few who broke ranks and had a poor error in judgment."
     Others are continuing their investigations, including Irvine Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified. Habermehl also has requested that the sheriff's department launch a countywide investigation….

President Obama, of All People, Should Know That Some Rights Can’t be left to the States

1963: public opinion in Alabama supported Wallace

GUEST COMMENT

Tony Phillips

In 1961, when Barack Hussein Obama II was born in the brand new State of Hawaii, laws on the books in 22 of the other 49 United States forbade the marriage of his White American mother to his Black Kenyan father. Arizona’s anti-miscegenation law prohibiting marriage between whites and any persons of color was repealed in 1962. Similar laws in Utah and Nebraska were overturned the following year. Indiana’s law prohibiting interracial marriage held out until 1965, Maryland’s until 1967, the same year that such laws were finally overturned in Alabama*, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia that ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

By the time race was removed as a barrier to marital choice in America, Barack Obama was in the first grade. By the time inter-racial marriage was fully accepted in America . . . well that hasn’t really happened yet. While it’s more and more common for men and women of different heritage to tie the knot, there remain – and you know this as well as I do – a mostly closeted but occasionally verbose cadre of bigots in this country who, had they their way, would continue to see our country divide itself along lines not yet fully erased by centuries of blood and toil.

Yes, we all know about America’s racially conflicted past, so what’s the point?

The point is that it’s incomprehensible to me that Barack Obama, a man whose legitimacy as an American has been publicly questioned by hate-rousing provocateurs, a man whose early life confounds the prevailing norms of his generation, a man whose ascendency in the 21^st Century was made possible only by the bravery of justice-seekers in the 20^th, that he, of all people, would be behind the times on marriage equality. How is it possible that his stance on gay marriage is still evolving?

In 1969, Barack Obama was just finishing the second grade when, on June 28, almost precisely 42 years ago, thousands of gay men and more than a few women rose up for the first time against the systematic, institutional, sanctioned mistreatment and exclusion under which they suffered in this country. At the time of the Stonewall Uprising, homosexual behavior was a crime in 49 states. The last of the states’ sodomy laws weren’t officially laid to rest until the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, 36 years after Loving, and what interracial couples got in 1967, same-sex couples are still waiting for today.

I struggled with whether to even write on this topic since I don’t really have a dog in the fight. I’m a man married to a woman. Maybe this particular issue is one I should leave alone. Maybe it’s just something I should let time work out in its inexorable way. Maybe, but then when it comes to fairness, time is too sluggish a vessel. Rather than wonder, “Who am I to speak?” I wonder, “Who am I to withhold an opinion where one is clearly called for?” About something as fundamental as the question of whether all American adults have the right to flourish in the loving marriage of their choice, not taking a position is taking a position – the wrong one.

Being fair to the president, no president ever has done more or could have done more to advance the rights of gays and lesbians in this country. The repeal of the military’s policy of feigned ignorance and self-abnegation was, in itself, a triumph. The withdrawal of his administration’s support for the Defense of Marriage Act was another blow for progress. Maybe on this one issue, an issue that perhaps has the president torn over the significance of a mere word, perhaps as a straight man with no ax to grind, he just doesn’t think it’s his place to weigh in. That would be understandable. It would also be unforgivable.

It was a White president from Missouri who integrated the Armed Forces. It was a White president from Texas who signed the Civil Rights Act. Maybe it just has to be a straight president from Hawaii via Illinois who removes that lingering, ugly, codified divide that stands Americans apart from one another, mounting the hate and rot that still enlace our public discourse. Words matter. The words “marriage” and “union” are separate and therefore unequal and even if no one else can see why, surely Barack Obama can.

Taking the president at his word, or at the word of his staff, perhaps he honestly believes that deciding who can marry whom is a matter best left to state electorates. The public will, after all, is the fuel that runs the engine of our democracy and there’s no purer fuel than the public’s expression of that will through voting its opinion. I would accept that, but for the fact that any government’s most vital function is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Were it left to public opinion, our country would be a very different place. When the National Guard met George Wallace at the University of Alabama in 1963, most public opinion in Alabama was on Wallace’s side. When 110,000 Japanese Americans were herded into internment camps in 1942, public opinion largely supported it as good common sense. A fair share of American public opinion once opposed women’s suffrage and supported removal of American Indians from their land.

Some things are too important to be pushed at from behind; they must be led, kicking and screaming if necessary, from the front. The president’s failure to identify marriage equality as a civil right, not something for the states to muddle stopping one step short of an unqualified embrace of all Americans’ rights to enter into the sanctioned marriage of their choice – that, in a word, is cruel. It’s small, it’s weak and it’s cruel.

Four years ago I was fortunate enough to ask then candidate Obama a question and even more fortunate to get a response. It was at the California Democratic Convention and Obama was not yet encircled by Secret Service agents at all times. In a recess of the San Diego Convention Center I saw him on the move and thought, what should I ask this man whose passion is so evident, whose love of life and country so vividly expressed? So I asked, “Senator Obama, what do you hate?”

In an instant of pure candor he replied, “I hate cruelty. I don’t know why people are cruel.”

Neither do I, Mister President. Neither do I.

Tony Phillips

---

* Actually, as of 1999, Alabama’s anti-miscegenation law remained on the books, though it has not been enforced since Loving. I’m not aware of any other such laws remaining nominally in place, nor do I know if the Alabama law has since been officially repealed by legislation. I’m actually kind of afraid to find out.

12% tuition hike

Cal State trustees raise tuition 12% (LA Times)

     California State University trustees on Tuesday approved a 12% increase in tuition for this fall, saying the funds are needed to maintain student access and limit damage to programs and services after a $650-million cut in the university's state funding.
     The trustees, meeting in Long Beach, voted 13 to 2 in favor of the hike despite the protests of scores of chanting, sign-waving students. Demonstrators urged the board to impose a one-year moratorium on raising tuition, which has tripled over the last decade. The latest boost of $294 per semester comes on top of a previously approved 10% tuition increase for the coming school year. Continued….