24 (minutes)

It's 11:32 a.m. at Irvine Valley College...

What's this? For the first time in the twenty-seven year history of the college, students are actually using the A-quad!


Nobody notices.

...Meanwhile, over by the new (and unfinished) CEC portables, Dissent's crack investigative team is on the job...

CHUNK: "Look! Behind the new temporaries! It's a construction truck!"

REBEL GIRL: "It doesn't look like a construction truck. I mean, it's unmarked. This looks more like one of those, um, one of those--alien vans."

CHUNK: "You mean like in Men in Black or the X-Files? "

REBEL GIRL: "Yeah, exactly!"

...CHUNK & REB SKULK TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CEC BUILDINGS...

REB: (in a whisper:) "Hush! Get behind this bush! Do you see those two workers? I bet they're trying to fix the electricity for the portables!...Let's listen!"

1st WORKER: "Did you bring the wire thingy?"

2nd WORKER: "The wire thingy? I thought you brought it? Which wire thingy?"

1st WORKER: "Pendejo!"

2nd WORKER: "Do you hear buzzing? I hear buzzing. Don't you hear that buzzing?"

...SECONDS LATER...

CHUNK: "Look! The fence is sorta open! Let's go check out these new CEC shitboxes!"

REB: "No. We'll get in trouble!"

CHUNK: "How are we gonna get in trouble?"

Chunk walks through the opening in the chain-link fence and over to one of the rooms. Meanwhile, Reb, former Girl Scout, walks toward the parking lot and loiters nervously by a tree that is inexplicably wrapped in yellow security tape and accompanied by an empty plastic box.

She hears buzzing. It's coming from the roof of A300. She looks up at it.

Bees. Zillions of 'em.

Chunk checks out two of the new (and electricity-less) CEC rooms. He takes some snaps:



Suddenly, a shriek is heard from the nearby Humanities Center. Chunk and Reb run inside. They find a woman holding a picture and screaming at a student. "Like this! Like this!", she yells.


REB: "It's a writing conference. Let's leave 'em alone."

Reb and Chunk wander back out to the chain-link fence surrounding the new temporaries. They inspect a sign that they find there:


CHUNK: "This is the list of classes that had to be moved to other rooms this week. Have you noticed that most of the faculty on this list are in the School of Humanities & Languages or are otherwise on Raghu's Shit List?"

REB: "Well, duh."

Just then, the stink of formaldehyde wafts over the area (from A400, no doubt), causing a swift contagion of unattractive nose-scrunching and grimacing.

...Meanwhile, inside IVC's Student Services Building, underneath the "International Flag-o-Rama"...

Students stand in line, unaware that, if certain trustees have their way, the flags of Guatamala and Bosnia will soon house tiny security cameras that will secretly chronicle their every twitch and grumble.


...And over in the A200 Building...

A young woman suddenly starts vomiting violently. An instructor runs around for help. She finds two faculty with cell phones. They think.

They don't know who to call.

"Food poisoning, probably," says one instructor.

"Yeah," says the other. "Probably."

11:56 a.m.

“It’s just awfully coincidental”

In this morning’s New York Times:

Evolution major vanishes from approved federal list

Some excerpts:

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.

The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. “There is no explanation for it being left off the list,” Ms. McLane said. “It has always been an eligible major.”

Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing.

If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless they declare another major, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.…

That the omission occurred at all is worrying scientists concerned about threats to the teaching of evolution.

One of them, Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, said he learned about it from someone at the Department of Education, who got in touch with him after his essay on the necessity of teaching evolution appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 15. Dr. Krauss would not name his source, who he said was concerned about being publicly identified as having drawn attention to the matter….

Dr. Krauss said the omission would be “of great concern” if evolutionary biology had been singled out for removal, or if the change had been made without consulting with experts on biology….

Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. “It’s just awfully coincidental,” said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University….

Now is the time

"The sun can play tricks
with your eyes on the highway.
The moon can lay sideways
'till the ocean stands still.
But a person can't tell
his best friend he loves him,
'till time has stopped breathing,
you're alone on the hill."

I don't know if Alan Cohen listened to John Prine, practitioner of hillbilly blues, country rock, and newgrass ballads, but my old friend John Smith did and I have spent much of today listening to Prine sing, on old tapes, shiny CDs, and crackly vinyl and mourning both men, Alan dead today and John dead this summer.

Alan and my old friend John were men of the same generation, I suspect. John, son of career military man, was born in 1942, spent the '60s working with the Peace Corp and in various social and political movements – which is where I met him, in the movement still, some 20 years later, in Santa Monica. In Santa Monica, he founded a runaway shelter for youth, coordinated the city's personnel department and was arrested countless times with me and others in demonstrations that drew attention to a range of issues from nuclear testing to homelessness. When he died, this past summer in Arcata, his home of the past decade, he was young—64.

I joked with Alan just yesterday, on the first day of school, that I had actually spent much of Sunday night with his video. I raised my brows somewhat suggestively. Alan smiled, his eyes doing that crinkly, twinkly thing that I liked. Alan, in case you don't know, is a star in the IVC Blackboard Tutorials for faculty. And yes, on Sunday, feeling inspired by the new year, I thought I might begin to tackle Blackboard. I failed in my effort to learn Blackboard, but I did spend time appreciating Alan's success, admiring especially as I told him, his great headshot – dapper, classy and smart. I learned, via the video, that Alan earned his BA in 1964, his doctorate in 1974. I learned, that, unlike me, Alan could master Blackboard well enough to be the college leading man.

Death comes. We gulp. The air is more precious than ever. Our lungs. Our heart. It all comes back to us, what it means, how it works. There is never enough time it seems to say or do what we should and that is the special sharp grief that survivors possess.

Now is the time, a wise friend reminded me early this summer, when my mother-in-law, in round three of ovarian cancer, went into hospice, for my husband to tell his mother what he wanted her to know. We knew she was dying and that knowledge was a difficult gift, but a valuable one. But too often, we don't know that death is coming.

Alan, a biologist, perhaps had a better, deeper understanding of death. I know that my friend John had. When I listen to Prine sing his irreverent life-affirming death song, "Please Don't Bury Me," in which he imagines his own death, I can see my friend John's smiling eyes. They had a similar twinkle-crinkle as Alan's – who knows? Maybe all men of that age have eyes that twinkle-crinkle like that. I hope so.

Still, as my friend reminded me this summer – now is the time. It is always the time. We need to tell each other what matters, that indeed, we matter to each other.

— Rebel Girl

(Photo of Alan taken from IVC website.)

Yeah, but when will they be ready?

Well, now it's in the paper:

Classes start at IVC without portables.

Somebody must've called the Reg.

Faculty sure are pissed off.

Again, I want to emphasize that lots of folks--including administrators, classified employees, faculty--worked hard yesterday overcoming a difficult and unexpected situation.

Indications are that the the CEC portables will be ready by Monday, next week.

Abject finger-pointage

1. THEY MONITORED THE SITUATION. OK, so today’s the first day of the semester, which is bad enough, but then, at about 7:15 this morning, I get this peevish call from The Rebellious One.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“You won’t believe this! G*d d***it! Jesus ******* ******!” she said (more or less).

The Reb’s the chair of her department. Turns out the CEC temporaries that her department depends on weren’t ready. She and her colleagues had students, but no classrooms. She was seriously screwed.

We’ve chronicled the sorry state of the CEC shitboxes on these pages. Thankfully, a while back, the board granted “basic aid” funds for replacement shitboxes. Great! So when the spring semester ended, the old temps were summarily knocked down. We smiled. “Things are lookin’ up!” We stomped upon the wreckage.

But then nothing happened. “What gives?” we said. Then, finally, just a couple of weeks ago, workers put up the new temps in a big hurry. But they didn’t finish ‘em.

That brings me to last week. Assurances were being thrown around by administration that the new temporaries would be ready to go by Monday. “We’re on top of it!” they said.

Well, we’ve heard that before.


The thing that irks everybody is that administration had a whole goddam summer to put up these buildings. How come they were built at the last minute?

No doubt that’s somebody else’s fault.

Plus, how can it be that nobody was informed that there might be a problem with the new buildings until the first day of classes?

Somebody’s f*ckin’ up bigtime.

Today, various administrators, faculty, and classified employees worked hard to redirect students to new rooms, and they did a great job. They deserve a lot of credit. But Jeez.

At about 3:30 this afternoon, President Roquemore sent out a memo about this “crisis.” He flat blamed the contractor. He took no responsibility at all.

But why did his crew wait until the very last minute to tell affected faculty and deans that they had no rooms? Well, says Rocky, it’s like this:

Last week it was becoming apparent that we could not trust that the electricity would be connected in time for Monday classes. Director of Facilities and Maintenance, Wayne Ward, ordered a back-up generator to provide the electricity if needed. The contractor assured us that we would be able to connect it to the buildings if needed. Wayne worked through the weekend to monitor the progress of the contractor. The contractor’s electrician did not show up over the weekend to install grounding rods that are required before electricity, for any source, can be applied to the building. This rendered the back-up generator useless. In addition, the contractor did not complete required ADA work and then let the crew off work today…On Sunday morning, Wayne informed me that the grounding rods would not be installed and that the generator could not be used.

This is unmitigated finger-pointage. To hear Glenn tell it, nobody at IVC is responsible. On the contrary, they did what they could to “monitor” progress. They deserve a prize, I guess.

At IVC, there’s lots of grumbling about the “old boys network” that seems always to protect managers who, in some cases, just don’t seem to know what they’re doing. Or worse. (More on that at another time.)

2. CAN I USE GLENN’S TIE? This morning, many instructors ran into yet another SNAFU that affected the classroom. I won’t describe it, cuz I’m not sure who’s responsible, and, for all that I know, the mistake is an uncharacteristic screw-up by a good employee. So forget I even mentioned it. I guess.

But I will mention that, when I visited the restroom this morning, upon washing my hands, I found that there were no paper towels. Had to use my shirt. Jeez. That sucks.

Happens all the time.

3. THE COPS ARE KEY-LESS. Some time after 11:00 this morning, a student popped into my office to tell me that a colleague of mine, Professor L of the English department, was locked out of his classroom and his whole class was sitting on the floor in the hallway like a bunch of hippies or something.

I ran over to B100 and learned that Professor L had called security to get the door unlocked. Guess what? Security didn’t have the key. The lock had been changed, but security (or whoever changes the locks) had failed to provid the dean or the cops with the new key!

Eventually, they got in the room. But c'mon!

4. HERNIATED DESKS. A year ago, we bought a big pile of new desks at IVC. Guess what? Already, the faux wood finish is peeling off of 'em. It's like paper. It's junk. How come we buy junk?


On the other hand, it sure was nice weather today. I'm surprised Glenn and crew didn't take credit for it.

Death in a Tenured Position

by REBEL GIRL
(with apologies to Amanda Cross, who would understand)

Chapter One: the Adventures of a Night Dean

Night was hitting the mat with a mighty thump, falling with a whine. Day doesn't give up easily in these, the last rounds of a brutal slugfest of one long hot Cali summer. The sun still flamed just beyond the rumble of the 405 freeway, where Mr. and Mrs. Sucker were driving home to their special place in hell. But nearby, the parking lots that ringed the local community college were full. The eucalyptus trees were turning into elegant blackened silhouettes, their long leaves like rags against the purpling blue sky.

A quick patrol of the hallways saw students slumped for the evening at their desks, instructors scribbling on the now ubiquitous white boards that had replaced the powdery chalkboards of the past. "Fallopian," wrote one teacher in green pen. "Capital," wrote another. "Writing has shape," declared the handwriting of a snowy-haired woman with steely eyes.

I should be in there, she thought. I am one of them.

But tonight she wasn't; tonight Kit Spark was Night Dean, with keys in her pocket, security numbers on a post-it note and nothing to do except keep the peace for three hours.

Could she do it? How hard could it be?

Brother, she was going to find out all too soon.

Meanwhile, she wondered: How many of those students remembered the orange groves where they now parked their cars? How many faculty remembered for that matter? Early on, still a fresh hire who knew only how to say yes, she once spent an afternoon in the groves with students, raising money by allowing people to pick their own oranges. The students didn't raise much money but they had fun. Late in the afternoon, a woman had driven up and asked if she could pick the orange blossoms. She'd be happy to pay she said. The fragrance reminded her of her childhood in Iran. She went off with armfuls and paid more money than the people who picked the fruit. That must have been ten years ago. Back then Kit looked like one of them – a young woman in blue jeans, squinting in the sunlight. Now, still in blue jeans, but wearing a black classic blazer, (she thought of the coat as her concession to meetings, as a kind of professional shield that she wielded.) Kit was who she was, no doubt about it. A middle-aged woman whose gray hair surprised her.

Kit exited one building and headed for another, the A-400 building where the bio teachers resided. She liked them. They were a resilient humorous bunch you could always depend on. Something about knowing how the body works gave them an edge up on everybody else. Besides, she liked the old stuff they kept around, the skeletons and bird nests, the fossils. She wished she had something like that in her classroom, but what would an English teacher do with old bones?

The quad was deserted except for some furtive smokers and equally furtive rabbits that hopped between the bushes and grass. The evening was warm. The students wore shorts, tank tops, sandals. September in Southern California. What was it her Midwestern aunt had called it? Indian summer.

Kit glanced up at the termite-ridden clock tower that loomed over the quad. It too would go the way of the orange groves soon, its square orange face, its blocky tinker toy design destined for the scrap heaps of the Inland Empire. Last year, the clock tower was the gathering place for dissent on the previously quiet campus as its platform faced the bare windows of office of the college president. But now the clock was doomed, festooned with plastic yellow tape that warned people away, and the nearby presidential windows were shrouded with drapery. Dissent had faded over time, over the summer.


Or had it?

Something caught her eye as Kit walked closer to the tower. A figure crouched in the shadows of the platform. She heard whispering, saw a beam of light flash on and off.

Just last Spring this section of campus had been cordoned off for hours when the college president found a suspicious package. The Bomb Squad was called. Students, staff and faculty were swept into the parking lot and kept there. A bomb-detecting robot seized the object and removed it to the special bomb-transportation truck. X-rays revealed no explosive device. The president's "bomb" was a sandbag, a leftover from a video production. Kit marveled at the man's suspicion, his paranoia. She thought his fear said more about him and his own predilection for violence then it did about his foes on the faculty and staff.

Kit glanced around for security, the friendly fellas packing heat who rode around the campus in a fleet of unlikely but swift golf carts, her backup. They were nowhere to be seen.

The night had officially fallen in the few minutes that had passed, a bit too quickly for the floodlights, still tuned to the length of a summer's day, to click on.

It was dark and Kit felt fear – not from the college president, a man she knew had driven home to his mansion in a gated community hours earlier, but an old fear, one that her Midwestern aunt, on the plains of Kansas, might have recognized.

(Be on the lookout for Chapter 2!)

Moving toward decency & common sense

[CORRECTION: The change in reassigned time that I reported earlier was incorrect. The RT per college went from 24 LHE to 36, not 36 to 48. Dang! That means that our colleges are still not in line with other local colleges.Sorry for the confusion.]

I’m sure that many of you have heard by now that, yesterday, Chancellor Mathur relented and granted a substantial increase in “reassigned time” for the senates. The Academic Senate of each college has gone from receiving a meager 24 LHE (lecture hour equivalents) to 36 LHE. However, to be in line with other local colleges, the number of hours must be increased by about 10.

(See Monday's board meeting for some of Bob Cosgrove’s informative graphics.)

Some background: the faculty in each of our colleges is represented by two bodies: (1) the Faculty Association (union)—in the case of contractual issues and (2) the Academic Senates—in the case of academic issues.

In recent years, these groups (along with other governance groups) have joined forces in an organized effort to oppose the damaging and unfortunate policies and practices of the SOCCCD Chancellor and Board. The two Academic Senates have worked especially closely.

As you know, this coalition has met with some success, as in the case of the OC Superior Court’s nullification of the Chancellor’s odious and illegally developed full-time faculty hiring policy. (See How rude are you!.)

Back in 1996, the Faculty Association, then controlled by a corrupt clique, employed outrageous tactics (see The infamous "same-sex" flier) to secure the victory of trustee candidates Frogue, Williams, and Fortune. The tactics were successful. The era of the Board Majority or Board Four commenced in December of ’96. (Teddi Lorch was the fourth FA-affiliated trustee.)

Naturally, the union “Old Guard” had the ear of the four. That's how it was possible for the manifestly incompetent and unsavory Raghu Mathur to snag an administrative position in 1997. (See 1994: Mathur censured for lying.)

One of trustee Fortune’s hobby horse’s was the elimination of “reassigned time” (RT), the device of releasing an instructor from teaching (in lecture hours [LHE]) for other important duties, such as chairing an academic department or a committee (Curriculum, etc.).

Anyone who is familiar with higher education is aware that RT (sometimes called “release time”) is utterly routine and viewed as essential in colleges and universities throughout the country.

Owing largely to Dot Fortune, and with the full support of the union Old Guard (see Hypocrisy unmatched), RT was abolished for all except union officers! From that point on, instructors who agreed to chair a department or committee (etc.) were compelled to do so on top of a full load of teaching. Obviously, in the case of some particularly demanding leadership roles, this undercut their effectiveness. The Academic Senates depended on RT to maintain a robust presence in “shared governance” or “collegial consultation.”

Over the years, various exceptions to the ban were granted on an ad hoc basis, but the board maintained a mindset such that the Academic Senates would never receive the level of support in RT that is routine throughout the community college system.

As a long-time IVC Academic Senate observer, I know that a series of IVC’s senate presidents have requested increases in RT, but to no avail.

Recently, in view of the important and taxing work that the senates were being asked to do, both college presidents recommended significant increases in senate RT. Predictably, the Chancellor refused to accept those recommendations.

A few months ago, spanking new SC senate president Bob Cosgrove started to pursue this problem vigorously. He and Brenda B collected data regarding the practices of other districts and colleges. In the meantime, Bob, IVC's Wendy G, and others directly addressed the board concerning the RT issue.

I recall Wendy's recent remarks before the board about the difficulty of a single mother teaching her classes while attending the meetings and doing the other work of a senate president. The situation is simply unworkable.

These appeals seemed to have some effect.

To make a long story short, as previously reported, on Monday night, Bob finally and fully presented the comparative data, and it was impressive.

Further, Bob drew a line in the sand: Unless adequate levels of RT were restored for senate officers (by Wednesday), Bob (and Margot L, SC senate secretary) would walk.

No doubt in part owing to that "threat"—and perhaps for other reasons—the Chancellor relented to a degree. The Academic Senates have had restored to them a level of reassigned time not seen since 1994. There's still a ways to go, of course.

P.S.: Today, Bob sent out an email to district faculty that reads in part:

At the August 16th [SC] Academic Senate meeting, the Senate approved the following motion unanimously:

“While the Saddleback College Academic Senate is committed to receiving 45 LHE per year reassigned time for work performed by its officers, the Senate accepts 36 LHE for the 2006-2007 with the stipulation that the officers of the Academic Senate perform only such work as can be completed with the current 18 LHE per semester. Furthermore, the Academic Senate will continue to work toward the goal of bringing the amount of reassigned time awarded its officers up to the level currently received by Academic Senates in comparable Orange County colleges in order to be in line with ‘best practices.’”