The KKK took my judgment away

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FALSE ACCUSATIONS BY TRUSTEE:

The SOCCCD is the kind of place in which trustees go on TV to assert, falsely, that faculty work 36-hour weeks and that they each make $100K. It’s the kind of place in which a college president can falsely accuse faculty of “hate crimes.” (Trustees responded to that one by providing the fellow, now Chancellor, with a “security” stipend!)

Well, as this morning's Inside Higher Ed reports, things are getting similarly wacky at MiraCosta College, just down the road:

The president of the board of MiraCosta College, in California, has apologized for accusing faculty and staff leaders of vandalizing his home, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. In an apology sent to all employees, Charles Adams, the board chair, said he didn’t believe that recent vandalism was really committed by faculty or staff leaders and said that “I sincerely regret” having made the accusation. The board and employees have been involved in a series of disputes and Adams went on to say that “I do believe that the climate created by the Academic Senate leadership has contributed to and cultivated a campus climate that nurtures malicious gossip and unfounded allegations and attacks.”

PALM TREES, SLUSH FUNDS

According to the Union-Tribune,

MiraCosta College board President Charles Adams has apologized to faculty and staff leaders for accusing them of vandalizing his home a week ago…Adams' wife, Lillian, found the letters “KKK” scrawled on an exterior wall at their Oceanside home June 1…During Tuesday's board meeting, Adams left the dais, stood behind the public lectern and pointed his finger at the presidents of both the Academic and Classified senates, saying they were responsible.

…The North County college has experienced continuous turmoil since the announcement a year ago that it was investigating illegal sales of palm trees for private profit, leading to the unwilling departures of three administrators.

In November, the full-time faculty voted no confidence in [College President Victoria Muñoz] Richart…In May, one of those administrators, Alleen Texeira, former head of the horticulture department, pleaded guilty to one count of grand theft involving a $306 overpayment to her then-fiance for the sale of campus palms.

The other two dismissed administrators, Eileen Kraskouskas and Julie Hatoff, have sued the college.

Richart received a death threat in April, and then came the vandalism to Adams' home.

Neither Tom Fuentes (the TV trustee) nor Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur ever apologized for their outrageous accusations. Trustee Adams, however, seems to have offered an equivocal apology:

“I am writing you to ask you for your forgiveness and to let you know that I sincerely regret what happened at yesterday's board meeting,” Adams said in his message to MiraCosta employees Wednesday.

“I sincerely apologize to Abdy Afzali and to Jonathan Cole (Academic Senate president) for making those accusations,” Adams wrote. “I do not believe that they are responsible for what happened to my family and me.”

But, he said, “I do believe that the climate created by the Academic Senate leadership has contributed to and cultivated a campus climate that nurtures malicious gossip and unfounded allegations and attacks.”

This sort of finger-pointing can get mighty rich. These days, Mathur is in the habit of accusing faculty (again wrongly) of circumventing process and going directly to trustees with their troubles. As a chemistry instructor at IVC, Mathur continually did exactly that (one such episode led to his formal censure by Irvine Valley College’s Instructional Council).

Mathur, too, has claimed to have received “hate mail”—numerous times, in fact. When, several years ago, during deposition, he was asked for copies of any of the alleged “hate” communications, he said that he could produce none of them.

PHILOSOPHER RICHARD RORTY DIES:

Inside Higher Ed reports that Richard Rorty has died:

Richard Rorty, one of the leading philosophers in the United States, best known for his studies of pragmatism, died Friday. A detailed biography of Rorty appears online in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a bibliography is on Rorty’s home page at Stanford University, where he was an emeritus professor….

If contemporary right-wing critics of academia were more honest, they’d attempt to understand Rorty’s kind of “relativism” instead of the usual straw man variety.

ILLINOIS FOLLOWS CALIFORNIA’S LEAD re STUDENT JOURNALISM:

Inside Higher Ed reports that

The Illinois House and Senate have passed legislation, now under review by the governor, to protect student journalists at public colleges from administrative censorship, the Chicago Tribune reported. The legislation — similar to a measure enacted in California — is designed to reverse the impact of a 2005 federal appeals court ruling involving the paper at Governors State University, in Illinois.

We reported on the California measure back in August (The good news...).

Some "fake" student journalism from years past:

Trust us

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ONE GREAT THING about Saddleback College is its proximity to the beach. ⎯To surf. Sand. Squawkin' birds.

And to a nuclear power plant.

Yes, there's San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONG) just down the road. Inquiring minds wanna know: is the plant safe? Well, Saddlebackians, you'll want to check out this morning’s OC Register: Nuclear incidents 'more than minor':

On Dec. 11, operators in the control room of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station were bringing Reactor 3 up to full power after a months-long refueling outage…The goal: raising power to 18 percent by adding water to the nuclear core.

But rather than doing the precise calculations necessary to determine how much water to add, operators consulted a book, did some rudimentary math and added 500 gallons – twice what was necessary…When power jumped to 19 percent from 15 percent, operators alerted supervisors. Boric acid injected into the reactor halted the increase at about 20.3 percent of full power, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports.

…This incident was among more than a dozen at San Onofre last year considered "more than minor" because it could have led to a significant event, challenged safety systems or affected workers' health. In the end, the incidents had very low safety significance, and no harm was done, the commission said.

Overall, San Onofre gets good grades from the commission. Seven years elapsed between its last two major enforcement actions. But some neighbors don't trust the commission. Last year, radiation 16 times higher than that allowed in drinking water was found beneath the decommissioned reactor known as Unit 1. The commission called it "troubling" but said it was within radiation protection limits.

…Southern California Edison, which runs San Onofre, declined to discuss the Dec. 11 incident in detail. In a statement, spokesman Ray Golden said: "We concur with the NRC that these issues were of very low safety significance, and never presented a risk to the community or to the operation of the facility. It should be understood that we review and monitor every step of our operation to ensure that we work error-free. This is an ongoing and never-ending process."

The safety debate about nuclear power is intensifying as a push to build nuclear power plants surfaces in the U.S….Most of the new plants will be in the South. Nothing is planned for California, because state law forbids nuclear development until a federal waste repository comes online.

…How safe is nuclear power? There have been no major accidents in the United States since a reactor at Three Mile Island had a partial core meltdown in 1979. Radioactive gases were released, but no deaths or injuries were reported….

How safe is San Onofre?…While violations serious enough to garner official dings are fewer and farther between than they were a decade ago, there are still many minor incidents – some reported by San Onofre itself. An Orange County Register review of commission reports shows San Onofre workers:

•Improperly labeled a container of radioactive material, which wound up in a chemistry-lab trash can.
•Allowed debris to collect in water-storage tank enclosures, which could block flow in an emergency.
•Failed to promptly identify trapped air in safety-injection suction lines, which could damage emergency core cooling-system pumps.

Dave Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, has criticized the commission, testifying before Congress that it has let plants cut back on safety checks and operate with dangerously worn equipment….Lochbaum's group isn't anti-nuclear, but argues for stricter regulation. At the Register's request, Lochbaum reviewed San Onofre's recent safety records.

…Lochbaum is impressed by how hard San Onofre officials are trying…"About a year ago, I attended a public meeting between San Onofre and NRC," he wrote. "San Onofre had requested the meeting. They presented the results from a recent survey of the workforce on safety culture issues. … The survey results for San Onofre were really good – numbers that most sites would love to have. But San Onofre's presentation to the NRC was as if they got a failing grade. I sent them (a) letter commending them on having such high standards. It's not the first commendation letter we've sent, but it's in a very small group."

That's not much comfort to Lyn Harris Hicks of San Clemente, who has lived beside the reactors for about 30 years…She is deeply troubled that radioactive tritium was found last year in groundwater beneath a defunct San Onofre reactor more than a decade after it ceased operations. Public health was not in danger, the commission and Edison said...Harris Hicks is skeptical. "Tritium into the beach is the most important issue to us," she said. "This indicates it may have been seeping into the ground there all those years. We have our young surfers down there all the time. … That's the problem of nuclear radiation, of course. It permeates."

…Harris Hicks and the Coalition for Responsible and Ethical Environmental Decisions aren't convinced [that residents she be reassured by existing oversight]. She particularly objects to the secrecy surrounding physical security in the wake of 9/11.

On March 15, the commission released a letter saying San Onofre has two low-level security violations, but did not say what they are….[End]

Just for laughs, check out:

● National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says San Onofre "tsunami ready"

Officials from NOAA's National Weather Service have recognized California’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station as the nation’s first nuclear power plant to establish a tsunami and severe weather safety plan as part of the federal weather agency’s nationwide program of preparedness....

● Southern Cal Edison's advice to residents

Should any emergency occur at SONGS, San Onofre officials would immediately contact local, state and federal authorities. Those groups then make the decision to alert the public, if necessary. The public would then be notified through the siren system and by government agencies on the Emergency Alert System (EAS) via television and radio announcements. Upon hearing the sirens, residents should turn on a radio or television and wait for instructions. The EAS message might advise you to stay inside your home with doors and windows closed. Or, it might recommend that you evacuate, depending on the nature of the emergency....

● The state: What to do in the Event of a Radiological Emergency

THINGS GETTING WACKIER AT UCI:

Also from today's Reg: UCI deals with claims of anti-Semitism:

A young man in a turban, his face covered, marches around UC Irvine with signs saying "Death to Infidels. Death to Israel" during a week of campus demonstrations by Muslim students…Here's the catch: He's not Muslim. In fact, he's not even a student at UCI….Instead, he's one of many outsiders who have become embroiled in a campus war of words between a small number of Jewish and Muslim students….

See: UCI: a history

Fabulous cash prizes

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From this morning’s New York Times: A Plan to Pay for Top Scores on Some Tests Gains Ground:

Roland G. Fryer, a 30-year-old Harvard economist known for his study of racial inequality in schools, is back in New York to again promote a big idea: Pay students cash for high scores on standardized tests and their performance might improve. And he has captured the attention of Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Across the country, educators have been experimenting with cash incentives. A program in Chelsea, Mass., gave children $25 for perfect attendance. Some Dallas schools pay children $2 for each book they read.

…Until now, Professor Fryer’s idea of cash for performance has had no serious takers. Three years ago, he tried to implement a pilot program in New York City charter schools that would have given students cash in exchange for good test scores.

“They kicked us out,” Professor Fryer said of the schools that first considered the program. And some Department of Education officials were not enthusiastic, either, he said. “They laughed in my face.”

But Mr. Bloomberg has recently shown interest in using payments, raised from the private sector, as a way to change behavior and reduce poverty.

In September, he proposed giving cash to poor adults to encourage them to do everything from keeping their children in school to seeking preventive medical care. And so, he said yesterday at a news conference, he was receptive to Professor Fryer’s idea. “If we aren’t looking at everything,” he said, “shame on us.”

…Professor Fryer said that under his program, fourth graders and seventh graders who take the new round of mandatory standardized tests that the city is introducing in the fall would be rewarded with at least $5. They would get more money for high scores, with a cap of $25 for fourth graders and $50 for seventh graders. In addition, each participating school would receive $5,000.

…Professor Fryer and other educational scholars have argued that some children, especially those from impoverished backgrounds, lack the foresight and role models to be self-motivated.

“The fundamental problem with education and motivating kids to learn what they need to learn is that the payoffs are so distant,” said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning research organization. “So it’s very hard to motivate students to do well. Good students get that motivation from somewhere — from peers, their parents, how they’re raised — but the kids who are unmotivated have a very hard time understanding that what they do today pays off decades from now.”….

The new homeopathic "study" aid

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Evidently, it's all the rage. Students say it works!
For when you really need to "get a A."

See Wiki

P.S.: I'm told that there's a parallel universe in which advertising is a tad more honest. There, the ad campaign goes like this:

"An ongoing mismatch"

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IN TODAY'S New York Times: States Found to Vary Widely on Education:

Academic standards vary so drastically from state to state that a fourth grader judged proficient in reading in Mississippi or Tennessee would fall far short of that mark in Massachusetts and South Carolina, the United States Department of Education said yesterday in a report that, for the first time, measured the extent of the differences…. The wide variation raises questions about whether the federal No Child Left Behind law, President Bush’s signature education initiative, which is up for renewal this year, has allowed a patchwork of educational inequities around the country, with no common yardstick to determine whether schoolchildren are learning enough....

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: California’s Transfer ‘Mismatch’:

Latino students are more likely than others to start their college educations at community colleges. A new report from California documents the difficulties many of those students have moving on to four-year institutions and draws attention to the long-term impact low transfer rates could have on Latino degree achievement.

The report finds “an ongoing mismatch” between Latino students’ goals (many of those who enroll at community colleges aspire to transfer) and what actually happens to these students. The report, “An Examination of Latina/o Transfer Students in California’s Postsecondary Institutions,” was prepared by the Chicano Studies Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Using data from various state agencies, the report notes that the overwhelming majority of Latino college students enroll in the state’s community colleges. Of every 100 first-time Latino students, 75 enter community colleges, while 17 enter California State University campuses and 8 enter University of California campuses. Of the 75 at community colleges, only about 7 on average will transfer — 6 to Cal State campuses and 1 to a University of California campus.

While many community college students don’t necessarily want four-year degrees, the study found that the rates of transfer are significantly below what they should be, based on students’ stated goals. At the point Latino students enter community colleges, 40 percent say that they aspire to transfer to a four-year institution, and another 28 percent say that they are undecided.

The low transfer rates are one explanation for the widening gap between the percentage of Latino students that the report found in different sectors of higher education. Those gaps are particularly important as Latino students are expected by next year to make up a majority of those in the state’s elementary and secondary schools.

The report cites data to make the point that these gaps not only affect enrollments at the undergraduate level, but at the doctoral level as well. Between 1990 and 2000, the report found that 23 percent of Chicano doctoral recipients had started their educations at community colleges, a far larger percentage than was the case for other ethnic and racial groups, for which the figures were: Puerto Ricans at 6 percent, Native Americans at 19 percent, black students at 10 percent and white students at 11 percent.

The report urged state officials to insist on a “transfer culture” — both at community colleges and at the four-year institutions that could enroll the two-year graduates.

15 points of intelligence

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In the future, everyone will have an IQ of 15.

● CRANKS. They’re fun! Years ago, the SOCCCD was wildly entertained by Holocaust denier and Mathur pal trustee Steve “the ADL did it!” Frogue.

You’ll recall that he was nearly recalled by the voters.

In recent years, the Orange Unified School District has had their own village idiot, the marvelous Steve Rocco, who was elected sans campaign by clueless voters in the city of Orange in 2004.

Well, as in the case of Mr. Frogue, Mr. Rocco now faces a possible recall: Group wants to recall Rocco from Orange school district.

The Reg tried to contact Rocco about all this, but he hung up the phone on ‘em. Perfect!

Rocco, who wears a knit cap and sunglasses during meetings, has been known to go on conspiracy theory speeches and does not attend closed-session meetings.

He gained attention after victory in November 2004 election. He was elected without campaigning…In April, the board voted to restrain Rocco's speeches by making it harder for him to place items on agendas….

Late last year, Rocco and an activist group filed a lawsuit alleging board members of violating Rocco's rights of free speech. The board censured Rocco for stating in a meeting that he would "vote to fire" a high school principal rather than reassign him….

Rocco eventually bailed on the lawsuit. Also perfect.


● Once again, the city of Irvine has been designated the country’s most boring city, or something. According to the Reg,

For the third straight year, Irvine is America's safest city, topping all large cities in the nation with the lowest incidence of violent crime in 2006, according to preliminary FBI data released Monday…One of the first and largest master-planned communities, Irvine recorded a nearly 17 percent drop in violent crime last year – while violent crime in Orange County's eight largest cities climbed 2.79 percent….

Gee, I wonder how that compares with crime rates in Santander, Spain?

● Inside Higher Ed reports on a widening “cash-for-grades” scandal up in northern Cal:

Los Medanos College has been the second institution in California’s Contra Costa Community College District hit with a cash-for-grades scandal, The Contra Costa Times reported. As many as eight Los Medanos students may have paid to have grades changed; dozens of students are being investigated at Diablo Valley College, also in the district.

● Meanwhile,

The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media has announced the first fellows in a new program to encourage more sophisticated journalistic coverage of community colleges. The fellows will receive support for a major project on community colleges. Details on the fellows and their projects are available here. Inside Higher Ed congratulates one of its columnists, Wick Sloane, who won one of the fellowships. The Hechinger Institute is part of Teachers College, Columbia University.

Squawk: Shameless Plug of New Publication

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Writers Workshop in a Book: the Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Writing

edited by Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez with an introduction by Richard Ford

Chronicle Books (June 7, 2007)

"Since 1969, the prestigious Squaw Valley Community of Writers has helped develop the art and craft of many who are now household names. Instructors such as Michael Chabon, Mark Childress, Diane Johnson, Anne Lamott, Robert Stone, and Amy Tan have distilled their advice and wisdom from seminars and lectures, and the result is a book that captures the workshop experience of complete submersion in the writing process. With an introduction by novelist and short story master Richard Ford, himself a conference attendee in the 1970s, this volume gives the writer and dedicated reader a jolt of inspiration, sharp insight into matters of technique, and a feeling of camaraderie with a writing community."

So they say.