District lets coach go, disciplines two in kickback scheme (OC Reg)

Tuition increase? Again?

     A Saddleback Valley walk-on football coach has been let go and two other high school coaches have been formally reprimanded after being accused of receiving thousands of dollars in gifts and checks via an elaborate kickback scheme involving an athletic supply company.
. . .
     Last year, Mission Viejo's Saddleback College disciplined one athletic department employee in the Lapes Athletic matter, while Irvine Unified completed an investigation but determined no wrongdoing on the part of its employees.

CSU trustees confirm plan: Voters to decide on 5% tuition increase (OC Reg)

     California State University trustees ratified Wednesday a proposal to leave a tuition increase in the hands of voters….

"As with any class, sometimes nothing works."

     Rebel Girl arrived home yesterday to find this week's Nation waiting in her mailbox. In it it, she found a kindred spirit, a community college composition teacher.  Just what she needed.  In his essay, "I Hear America Singing, Wick Sloane writes about his Writing 1 class at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and shares some of his students's work.

excerpt:

     Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, where I teach College Writing I, has more than 13,000 students, including almost 500 veterans. The average student age is 27. More than half are women, and 77 percent are people of color. Forty-four percent receive Pell Grants. 

     Many are immigrants, from more than ninety-five countries. The languages spoken in the class that wrote these poems include Creole, Spanish, Portuguese (one via Brazil, one via Angola), French and Swahili. The site of Bunker Hill CC, where Charlestown prison once stood, has good progressive credentials. This is where Sacco and Vanzetti were jailed and executed. The prison library was where Malcolm X went to read. The film Good Will Hunting was set here.

     This summer I was tracking down a student whose family has been lost in the civil war in Mali. After I wrote a column about hunger on college campuses, Bunker Hill hosted its fourth food bank in three months, an eighteen-wheeler filled by the Greater Boston Food Bank. The food was gone in ninety minutes. Amid all this, two students from here will study at MIT this fall.

     As these poems show, Bunker Hill students have plenty of intellect. The best are as bright as any I have encountered in my platinum-spoon life. What’s missing for the students here is seat time to master intellectual and academic skills. They have not read the Western canon by the time they are 18. They have not already written half a dozen research papers in MLA style when they arrive in my class. But they are able to understand the books and write such papers when shown the way.

     As with any class, sometimes nothing works. I pulled out Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” as a last resort one day and asked the students to write their own versions, saying only that they may choose a verb other than “singing.” The results the first time astonished me. They still do. My hope is that we can encourage teachers everywhere to steal this assignment and flood the US Capitol with the results. Our hope for America is that whatever crimes we may commit, voices like these will keep bubbling up and send the country soaring.

I Hear America Crying   by Chantal Midgette

I hear America crying; the varied sounds I hear;
The young teenager ends her dreams because a newborn child interferes
The widow, mother of four who lost her husband in a war
The woman being abused at home, praying to live life no more
The bullied child at school who is in pain
The Afghan family hoping they’ll be accepted again
The black man on death row for killing his own kind
Too late to turn back time, a brown leather cowl will make him blind
The white man judged as a racist for protecting himself from a black gunman
Sad to see that people doesn’t care that he’s a veteran
Crying, with tears, falling down to their ears, the sounds I hear

     To read more  poems by Wick Sloane's Writing 1 class which appear in the September 24, 2012 issue of The Nation, click here.

*

Big names set for Big Orange Book Festival (OC Register)

     The Big Orange Book Festival debuts at Chapman University on Friday and Saturday with appearances by a few dozen writers including well-known novelists such as Alice Sebold, author of the novel "The Lovely Bones" and the memoir "Lucky," and Sapphire, whose novel "Push" was adapted into the Oscar-winning movie "Precious."
     The festival, which takes place at various locations on the Chapman campus, also includes an appearance by Mary Badham, the actress who played Scout in "To Kill A Mockingbird," talking about the transformation of Harper Lee's novel into a much-loved film, and Lizz Winstead, co-creator and former head writer of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central….

Professors and the Students Who Grade Them (New York Times)

CUNY College’s English Dept. Is Threatened With Cuts in Dispute Over Course Hours (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     In a move that the City University of New York’s faculty union characterized as “extraordinary retaliation,” the English department at the system’s Queensborough Community College was warned last week that it could see sharp cuts in course offerings, adjuncts’ jobs, and possibly full-time positions next fall because of a dispute between faculty and administrators over whether weekly course hours in English composition classes should be reduced from four hours to three.
     The staff cuts and course eliminations were listed in a letter from a college vice president that is cited in the statement by the union…
     The letter … came a day after the department voted to reject the administration’s plan to begin offering three-hour composition courses next fall. Ms. Steele wrote that because the department’s existing four-hour composition classes do not align with the systemwide Pathways initiative for standardizing common-core classes across CUNY’s campuses, the courses will not be offered next fall, and Queensborough students will have to take them at other campuses…. (continued)

Out of the Past: SOCCCD images/graphics

First, a couple of old Dissent covers. This one's from 2000.

"No rat bastards. Nope" it says

From early 1999. Our enduring love of cats is in evidence.

Remember Chancellor Cedric Sampson? He had a hell of a time trying to work with our board. He and I were friendly—he used to happily receive our newsletters—until Raghu and Co. decided to try to get me fired over those very newsletters. Sheesh. 

What did this mean? Nothing. It was simply ridiculous.

This probably meant something. That's Dorothy Fortune with her boy Cedric.

Sampson died in 2002. He was fired by the board in early 2001--he had been on leave owing to illness. The action came as a surprise to many. (I do believe he resided in San Juan C when he died. Trustee Wagner briefly mentioned Sampson's death during the Nov 2002 board meeting.)

I think this is from the opening of ATEP, c. 2007. That's Don Wagner with that space-mobile in the background.

This is from the same day, I think. That's Tracy Daly interviewing Supervisor Campbell.

You'll recall "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"

This is from c. 1997. Students Delilah Snell and Diep (Deb) Burbridge led the way in challenging IVC's president and then the district re violations of their First Amendment rights. (The two prevailed.)

They've both gone on to interesting careers. I do believe that Deb has a tenured position teaching biology at Long Beach City College. And Delilah is often in the news in connection with her store, The Road Less Traveled.

Delilah these days

That's Diane Oaks, looking fashionable, at the aforementioned ATEP opening

C. 2001, I guess

Raghu Mathur's famous $1,000 chair

From September, 2000

Future SOCCCD Chancellor (and current IVC President) Glenn Roquemore doesn't want anyone to remember this, but he got his start as an administrator by playin' along with the odious Raghu P. Mathur.

Next: an old sidebar graphic:

From the archives

Click here: THE INFAMOUS DROPPED DRAWERS by Red Emma