Flex week: to maximize your chance of survival

 “Stop living in an ivory castle!” –An illiterate Trustee John Williams, chastising trustee Dave Lang concerning the latter’s opposition to arming campus cops, September 14, 1998 (see)

Sharon M

     IT'S TIME ONCE AGAIN for “Faculty Professional Development Week,” aka “Flex Week”—or at least it will be time, starting tomorrow morning.
     As I’m sure you are aware, “flex” abbreviates “flexible.” The notion of a flex week reportedly originates with the practice, in Nazi Germany, of publicly (and violently) bending the persons of academics around “unwholesome and worthless” abstract sculptures and paintings. Fortunately, the term no longer refers to this, though it does retain some of its original meaning.*
     With Gary Poertner as Chancellor, the new norm comprises, among other things, an annual—as opposed to biannual—“Chancellor’s Opening Session,” which occurs in the fall; hence, there’s no Chancellor’s session this week. This is unfortunate for scribblers such as I, but it does have the advantage of reducing the potential of gatherings in which both Sherry Miller-White and Sharon Macmillan appear together, a situation risking a triggering of the apocalypse.

     1. THE "ACTIVE SHOOTER" THREAT. I observe that, on Tuesday, IVC Chief of Police Will Glen will present information regarding “classroom & office safety.” Evidently, he will focus on the “active shooter.”
     Before proceeding, I must protest: shooting necessarily is an action; hence the term “active shooter” shares the absurdity of the phrase “active actor.” On the other hand, a “shooter” will inevitably spend part of his time not shooting—e.g., while stopping for a smoke or bathroom break. I prefer to call such individuals “a shooter smoking” and “a shooter going to the bathroom.”
     The schedule describes Glen’s presentation thus:

     At any given time, the reality is an active shooter will strike somewhere in someone’s workplace. If that workplace is yours, you’ll need the proper mindset and tools to react with purpose and to maximize your chance of survival.
     Police Chief Will Glen will discuss this very important topic and help you to prepare should you face this real possibility.

     Well, yes, it is in some sense a “real” possibility. —I mean, school shootings, though extremely rare, do happen. On the other hand, being struck by lightning is considerably more likely than encountering an “active shooter” at school. I once saw a tornado while standing at the IVC bus stop. (It caused some damage to nearby homes. Luckily, no one was hurt.) My guess is that injury or death from a tornado is also more likely than injury or death from a school shooting. And so one wonders why the college has never offered flex week activities about those phenomena.

     Gosh, sometimes I think that what colleges (and other entities involving lots of people) choose to do doesn’t reflect reality so much as the public’s perception of reality. And, as you know, and as I often tell my students, if the public were a person, he’d surely be an idiot. (Don't forget that George W. Bush was reelected.)
     This whole business reminds one of a BOT meeting in 2007. As we reported previously,

     During the September 24, 2007 meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees, San Clemente City Councilman Steve Knoblock addressed the trustees concerning the specter of school violence with its “burgeoning body count." The Republican politico ridiculed the nation’s feeble efforts in addressing violent outbreaks (he mentioned reliance on "sensitivity training," among other things).
     Knoblock's bold recommendation: reject the “strategy of duck and cover” in favor of a strategy of “self defense."
     Said he,

Tod Burnett's personal arsenal

"We may see less school slaughter if students are trained and encouraged to protect themselves. On hand in every classroom and on every school campus there are innumerable books, chairs, backpacks, laptop computers, shoes, etc., that can be used at a moment’s notice as defensive projectile weapons against armed assassins…."

     Afterward, trustee Tom Fuentes, former chair of the local Republican Party, noted that Mr. Knoblock is an “esteemed” member of the community (i.e., he's a Republican).
     You can view Knoblock’s comment here: streaming video.
     Jump to section 2.5 (public comments).
     And, no, I'm not making any of this up. [END]

     2. THE BLIND LEADING THE PISSED-AT-THE-BLIND. At 2:00 on Tuesday, Dean Cipres will present something called:

Students Acting Out in Your Classroom? What Should You Do?

     It is described thus:

     What constitutes disruptive behaviors and the teamwork needed to successfully address, correct and prevent future violations of the IVC Student Code of Conduct [sentence fragment—or question sans question mark]. In addition, a representative from the Community Service Programs will cover community resources such as their 24-hour crisis hotline, crisis response team, family counseling and various community education programs.

     In recent years, some disturbing episodes of potential violence have been mishandled at the college. And so, naturally, we will now hear about ways of handling such episodes—from the chief mishandler.
     Evidently there are those who suppose that her presentation is so damned important that it needs to be repeated Wednesday morning, for, indeed, it will be. Bring popcorn.
     For a delightful romp through our recent past re "disturbed students" and addled administrators, read

• Running with Scissors - Nov 3 10
• More criticism for IVC administration - Nov 5 10
• Benighted and bewildered - Jan 11 11
• Listening? - Feb 28 12

     3.  DELIVERING MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATIONS. This year’s winner of the “Writing to Annoy” Prize is shared by two exquisitely pestiferous Flex presentation blurbs:

The Completion Agenda: What is it and what are the implications for IVC?

"Metrics."

How do we measure completion at IVC? … Depending where you look, you may see that IVC has an ARCC “student progress and achievement rate” of 68%, and IPEDS completion rate of 38%, or a VFA completion rate of 9%. The proliferation of completion metrics are part of the increased attention on student completion that has been dubbed “the completion agenda”. Rather than a uniform movement, the completion agenda is really more of an arena for ideas and metrics that are competing for our mindshare. …[K]nowing what our target is depends on how success is defined and measured. Something as apparently simple as a graduation rate actually has a variety of different implantations and definitions….

Comment: people who use the term “mindshare” are either a**holes or business teachers or both. And “implantations”? C’mon.

Sherpa: Using a Recommendation Engine to Help IVC Students Succeed

The South Orange County Community College District has created Sherpa, an academic recommendation engine that combines human expertise and predictive analytics to provide students with the right information at the right time…. Sherpa uses time and event ‘triggers’ to deliver multimodal (email, SMS, voice, text-to-speech, MySite messages or to-do list items), personalized communications such as: helping students find acceptable alternatives when their preferred courses are full, targeting at-risk students for academic interventions, tailoring information about campus events to individual interests and pushing important tasks into students’ personal to-do lists. It’s almost complete so now we need your help to determine the best way to use this tool to help our students succeed.

Comment: “Helping students,” “targeting” students, “tailoring information,” and “pushing” tasks—these are communications? No, worse, they're “multimodal” communications! And they're "delivered"! Heimat Land!

     Winners can pick up their prizes at the faculty Café (nobody and nothing will be there, as always).

*After all, SLOs are unwholesome and worthless abstractions, and we are compelled to twist our professional lives around them, wasting vast sums of taxpayer money.

Our sidebar stories are simply the bomb

     Listen, are you people paying attention?
     For instance, have you noticed our seriously cool sidebar stories?
     Right now, over on the LEFT, we’ve got:

2001: the Faculty Association's Not-so-sweet Charity

     That one’s about the union Old Guard’s involvement in an orphanage that, at least back then, was, um, way scandal-ridden.
     Then, there’s

MORE old Saddlebackian stories

The latter includes:

1. The "Sea Mountain Valley Community College District"? - That’s about our district’s name. Then
2. We don't need no stinkin' “Gauchos” - about how Saddleback was originally saddled (hehe) with that awful mascot. Then there’s
3. Dress Codes, war protesters, phantom Hippies - self-explanatory, dude. Finally:
4. A mighty fortress is our Library - which concerns just how it came about that (until recently) the Saddleback College Library has no windows.

Next, there’s:

Early Saddleback College history: "faculty wives club" - which offers even more delightful stories about Saddleback College’s early days. Yes, there really was something called the "faculty wives club."

MEANWHILE, over on the right sidebar, we’ve got:

The Replacement Clock Tower Incident - which, um, is a fantasy, I guess. But it’s true, too.
     Then there’s

Right-wingers founded SOCCCD - which is actually more about “founding trustee” Hans Vogel, a man very much of his time and place, and that's not good.
     Finally, we’ve got
2003: IVC faculty ordered not to discuss the war - which explains how it is that, to this day (the policy was never rescinded), IVC has a policy according to which instructors (unless they get special permission, etc.) are forbidden to talk about the Iraq war in the classroom.
     You betcha.

The Obama Administration "does not support blowing up planets," does support free speech

• White House Death Star petition is a no-go (Guardian UK)
     Petition urging building of Star Wars-style weapon system rejected as 'administration does not support blowing up planets' - here
• Deport Piers Morgan petition earns official response from White House (Guardian UK)
     Obama administration responds to gun-control complaints by reminding petitioners that first amendment protects free speech - here

Morning Matinee: Maurice Sendak

*

Jerry Brown wants changes at state university systems (LA Times)
     Gov. Jerry Brown said he will attend meetings of the University of California Board of Regents and California State University Board of Trustees later this month to pressure the systems to change their ways and hold the line on student tuition....

More money, more accountability for community colleges (EdSource)
     Gov. Brown’s spending plan for community colleges reflects the new focus in the state’s 112-campus community college system on increasing graduation and transfer rates through a combination of technology, smoother pathways to Cal State University and, for students, tough love....

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan offers more money for California's colleges and universities (Contra Costa Times)
     Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan announced Thursday morning gives California's colleges and universities good news for the first time in years.
. . .
     The state's community colleges would receive $197 million more in general-purpose funds next year – money that will allow colleges to restore thousands of classes, said California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice Harris….

Oh good

Apollo Group Warns of Sanction by U. of Phoenix’s Accreditor (Chronicle of Higher Education)
University of Phoenix's Accreditation Review (Inside Higher Ed)

Fishy Foundation Factoids

     [See UPDATE below.]
     Recently, we’ve raised questions concerning the IVC Foundation’s finances. Two board meetings back (November), the colleges’ two foundations provided their annual reports (see). (For video, go here.) The IVC Foundation reps included the following graphic:

click on graphic

     According to this chart, 38% of "income" (for 2011-12)—i.e., $395,000—was "district support." Wow. The amount of money given that year in scholarships was only about $173K—less than half of district support. Meanwhile, "expenses to college" amounted to $754K. 
     I don't understand these figures. They seem out of wack to me.
     But I rarely understand fiscal issues. (I should acknowledge that an apparently knowledgeable friend has offered to explain some of these data to me, but I've been too busy to contact him. I hope to do so eventually.)
     For what it's worth, at the time, none of the trustees had any questions for the Foundation folks. "Really?" I thought. "This makes sense to you?" Well, guess so.
     During the subsequent (December) meeting (video here), "audit reports" per foundation were presented (item 6.1), and, confronted with all the facts, Trustee Dave Lang (Irvine) was inspired to raise Baueresque questions about the large proportion of Foundation assets support coming from the district [no, actually the colleges: see below]. As I reported at the time, 

In the case of Saddleback [they said], it was something like 54%. In the case of IVC, it was actually more than 93%! What's that all about? Lang wanted more information about those factoids. 

(UPDATE: I went back to the video [available here] and I got Lang's exact words:

44:40 Lang: “I do have a request … I understand that there will be a separate report on the foundations in January. ... The one thing that strikes me when I review the financial information, particular this statement of activities for both of the foundations, is the level of support that the colleges provide to each of the foundations in the form of donated services and donated professional fees. For Saddleback it was like 53.4% of the unrestricted total support. For Irvine Valley College it was 92.76% of that figure. And I’m hopeful that in the reports that you’ll come back with, there may be some information that gives us a way to benchmark that against perhaps some of our other peers and community college foundations that are also out there. So I’m gonna be interested to understand that a little bit better.")

R. Morley

     How these factoids square with the aforementioned chart, I dunno. Like I said, I'm no good with fiscal stuff. But Lang's query seems to comport with mine. It'll be interesting to see where his query leads. An Orwellian episode, perhaps.

     SKEPTICISM. Many of us in the IVC community remain skeptical about our Foundation. For a while there, the IVC Foundation seemed more like an branch of the OC GOP Central Committee. The director—a Republican activist who was, shall we say, "not a good fit" as Foundation Director—was in fact a crony of then-Trustee Tom Fuentes, former chair of the latter organization.
     In recent years, scandals have broken out regarding our foundation's (or at least our scholarship program's) failure to adhere to regulations/standards and the seemingly slipshod manner in which scholarship recipients are identified. Some of us have made inquiries, e.g., regarding the absurd deficiencies of scholarship application forms, only to be assured that better forms are on their way. But then the old forms remain. 

     And it ain't rocket science. Nope.
     A year or so ago, a new foundation director was hired (R. Morley), but, fairly or not, I've heard many complaints about him. At one point, he came before my school (the School of Humanities & Languages), essentially asking us to do lots of the work of properly identifying scholarship recipients for him. Contrary to the available evidence (coming out of his mouth and revealed in his missives), he assured us that he was once "an English professor," like many in the room. Some of us were put off by this approach. 
     These tasks—following regulations, producing application forms, developing criteria for scholarship recipient selection—should not be difficult. Why do the people hired by our college have so much difficulty doing them? It's not as if they aren't paid well. (And when they prove to be incompetent, why do they keep their jobs for so long? Eh, Glenn?)

A new wrinkle:
     Recently, a letter was forwarded to me. It concerned a very large endowment to the Saddleback College Foundation. According to the information in the letter (which I have good reasons to suppose is reliable), "new procedures" have been instituted at the foundation according to which very substantial sums of money are being deducted from endowments as one-time administration fees. 
     That's not all. There's also an annual fee, and it is not insubstantial.
     It all looks pretty, ahem, excessive to me.
     More to come.

     For a trip down Bad Memory Lane—regarding scholarship and foundation snafus & curious episodes—check out the following:

• Scholarship program woes: a complete overhaul - IVC scholarship program out of compliance? General shambles
• Schol*ar*ship (the form, the process, etc.) - Ridiculous application forms, serious confidentiality irregularities, etc. Snafu.
• Mystery Solved! - the fubar explaining why the scholarship process dispensed with letters of rec this year; communication breakdown; etc.
• Take a Letter, Maria - Letters of Rec no longer required in scholarship app process? Surely you kid?!
• Wagner at the scholarship ceremony - Wagner uses the occasion to opine about prayer. Some in attendance are furious!
• Breaking news! - the Patrick Healy debacle (foundation event)
• The Foundation’s Adam Probolsky, Superhero - one Foundation dude is a local GOP operative. One of Mike Carona's "deputies"

"Mickey" Tello

• Our hero! - IVC Foundation names a manifestly corrupt bastard "hometown hero." Y'know, these days, Mike's in federal prison. Thank you, Tom. May I have another!?

• He's Tom's kind of guy - creeps
• Al Tello's wife? - the IVC Foundation director's wife and the Tan Nguyen political scandal. It's the OC GOP effect!
• Hey kids! Let's put on a book burning! - IVC's Foundation director has a curious campus event idea: a book burning. Me'n the Reb  seek to dissuade him