Those wacky Orange County Republicans!

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1. TRUSTEE Tom Fuentes’ pal Chriss Street sure is turning out to be a corrupt rat bastard. Imagine that! 

Two county workers placed on leave: Two were involved in contract sought by Treasurer-Tax Collector Chriss Street for work on county building (OC Reg)

2. Tom used to mentor this guy, remember?

Ex-GOP activist faces new molestation charges: Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, a former aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, abused the boy at his Fountain Valley home, prosecutors say. (OC Reg)

Trustee Fuentes must be mighty disappointed in this young man. But at least Jeff is good to wet puppies!

3. Undoing an undoing?

UCI reportedly working on a deal to rehire Chemerinsky. (Times)

What? You think OC Repubs weren't up to their eyeballs in the unhire? We'll see, I guess.

See also:

●Rohrabacher, Baugh GOP Operative Charged in Another Man-Boy Sex Case
●NYT editorial: a bad beginning in Irvine
●Jeff Nielsen is a conservative guy
●Street under wider investigation

Hey, get a load of that cool new high-tech campus in Tustin! (Part 1)

I TAUGHT my 3-hour class this morning and then took care of some paper work. I finished up at maybe 2:30, and boy was I glad to leap like an idiot into the wild blue yonder of the weekend! I climbed into my Chrysler 300, and zoom!

I was talking to Bob Kopecky the other day, and he said I should drop by ATEP—that's the high-tech campus that just opened up in Tustin—and take a few pics. (ATEP is the Advanced Technology & Education Park, a campus of the South Orange County Community College District.)

He's mighty proud of it; he's its Provost. (We call 'im Park Ranger Bob.)

So I figured, what the heck, I may as well go over there since it was such a beautiful day. Plus I like to look at those big blimp hangers. I can never get enough of those things.

You can get to ATEP on Redhill—it's just off Valencia. Somebody's done a lot of work to clean things up at the old base. It used to be kinda post-apocalyptic: dirt, weeds, shitty buildings, toxic waste bubbling up from beneath the earth. (Well, not that.)

ATEP, whose cozy but shiny "phase 1" sits right along Redhill, looks modern and futuristic. It sometimes reminds me of the Borg. I worry sometimes that it's gonna X-ray me or transport me to Pluto.

Eventually, ATEP will be 68 acres of dazzling high-techery and whatnotery—plus a few of the old relics left over from the Marine era, like the little white chapel and the rusted pull-up bars of death. A nice contrast.

See the pic on the left? You can see, to the right, a mock-up of a vehicle that can actually drive across the country on one tank of gas! That's gotta be a big money saver.

Evidently, the "head" inside the cockpit is built around some ancient monkey skull or something, constructed with photons or electrons, but waddoo I know. I think it glows and bleeps.

There's all manner of high-tech whiz-bangery at ATEP. Even the parking lot is unusually convoluted, as if it were designed by Rube Goldberg or maybe the City of Tustin. I could do without that, actually.

I poked my head into one of the rooms, and GOOD LORD! It was filled with dozens of Mac Pros!

Now, I'm all Mac'd up myself, and so I know just how fine these computers are. They purr. They crunch and whoosh. I drool. You can take over the world from one of those, y'know.

As the kids say (and, frankly, I do wish they'd stop saying it), "sweet!"

PART 2 OF THIS SERIES will be a tour of the inside of ATEP. Hundreds of kids take classes at the campus (sometimes called the "Entity") already, and you wouldn't believe the great contraptions & gizmos they have to work with!

I'd keep on eye on those kids, if I were you, Bob.

TUSTIN'S THE DISTRICT: GRATUITOUS BUZZKILLERY:

P.S.: On the way home, I dropped by that big dumb shopping area to the southeast of ATEP—the "District," it's called.

So, OK, I do have a complaint. I think it's pretty rude to go to something that, for decades, has been known as the "biggest" or the "stinkiest" or whatever, and then to go ahead and build something right next to it that's even bigger or stinkier!

So what do those New Age sharpies at WHOLE FOODS MARKET do? They build a store that's even bigger than those hangers! I almost fell over tryin' to see the top of it!

Plus it's filled with nothing but New Age bullshit—you know: books with titles like Know your Karma through Asparagus, books by that ashole Andrew Weil, books about enemas and nuts & twigs, books by Shirley F*cking MacLaine. —Plus "organic" sprouts and oats and cow brains and fig bars.

I liked the post-apocalyptic wasteland better.

It Ain't Over Yet:L'affaire Chemerinsky

Over at her excellent and fiesty blog, Witness LA, Celeste Fremon unpacks the latest in the UCI-Chemerinsky furor - check it out. Fremon is a journalist and occasional instructor at UC Irvine.

All the expected players and more are there, including a cameo by LA Supervisor Mike Antonovich. (Damn! I thought I got away from that guy by moving south!)

At the end, Fremon asks: "why should the rest of us care that a job offer was tendered to a Duke University law professor, and then later withdrawn?"

Her answer: "Here’s why: Because when the worst kind of petty back room political maneuvering holds that kind of power over one of the state’s best—hell, one of the country’s best—public universities, then we all damn well better care."

"It was an Avalanche"

WHAT DO OTHER CAMPUSES DO when the hiring process is corrupted? When academic freedom and the integrity of the institution is attacked?

They organize.

Today the Los Angeles Times characterizes the situation at UCI as a "furor" (one of Rebel Girl's favorite journalistic nouns) and claims that the dismisal of Chemerinsky may delay the opening of the law school, scheduled for 2009.

An online petition, signed by faculty, students, staff and yes, fellow Anteaters, alumni can be viewed (and signed) here.

The petition is an open letter to Chancellor Drake and addresses him directly:

"...if the reports are true, as our institutional and intellectual leader, and as our representative, you have failed to defend the integrity of the university, its recruitment process, and the sanctity of academic freedom you have given voice to supporting in the past. We have no idea what pressure you came under from those promising to support the university financially or politically, but we have heard nothing of your public undertaking to stand up for the intellectual independence of the university, its hiring processes which weren’t allowed as a consequence to run their course, of academic integrity and of the principle of reasonable independence. It is this that disturbs us most deeply."

The letter closes with an appeal for Drake to "reconsider [his]position, and to reverse [his] decision thus to reinstate the process for Professor Chemerinsky’s appointment. Anything less is an attack on the integrity, reputation, and morale of faculty, staff, and students alike at the University of California, Irvine."

Meanwhile, Rebel Girl has been chided a bit on another blog for her tendency to characterize this incident in particular and county politics in general in a way that might be seen as Machiavellian.

Surely, it can't be that bad, the colleague on the east coast suggested.

We know better, don't we?

--From today's Los Angeles Times:

Although Drake has denied that he took action under pressure from conservatives, [Elizabeth Loftus, professor of psychology and member of the hiring committee] said Thursday that the chancellor told the committee during an emergency meeting Wednesday night that he was forced to make the decision by outside forces whom he did not name. A second member of the committee confirmed Loftus' account to The Times but asked to remain anonymous.

"I asked whether it was one or two voices or an avalanche, and the answer is that it was an avalanche," Loftus said. "But we are not supposed to capitulate to that in the world of academic freedom."

Optometry (Red Emma)

Posting for the Reb: RED EMMA

“Can’t tell the difference ‘tween a turkey & a provocateur.”

.from “Blame the thought, Cling to the Bummer”
by Allen Ginsberg

.THE FIRING or, I guess, unhiring of Erwin Chemerinsky finds Red Emma, Lecturer and union activist at UC-John Wayne, er, Donald Bren, er, Sperm-Mart, er, Irvine, getting calls from colleagues confiding their own UCI “Can you top this?" stories, most all of them most impossible to share officially, about administrators and department heads and deans.

.My own theory regarding this class of well-compensated Yes-men and women is that they are tested for that optometric condition called myopia, which is to say that the folks at HR take them into a room and stand them in front of an eye chart. If they pass it, they are thanked and returned to the classroom, but if they fail, they get a title and a parking spot and a big salary. If, that is, the candidate cannot see forward past the length of their own arm or backward as far as their ass, he or she becomes a school chair, dean or Chancellor.

.Michael Drake strikes me as sadly typical. With all that power, salary (reported on UCI webpage as $350k), not to mention a potentially strong community behind him (staff, however meek and quiet are, I think, mostly), he appears to have been psyched out, coerced, cooked his own goose, panicked or, perhaps, been set up from the start so that, yes, this morning on KPCC’s “Air Talk” the rightwing OC Register editor started the call for his removal.

.For the record, I see Drake as a Good Guy, a medical doctor, opposed to the odious Prop 209, who must have cribbed the eye chart, and by that I mean practiced failing because he imagined he could do right, make a difference, you know. Which makes it hard to understand how somebody who worked for UCOP and has been in the system, already eaten a lot of shit for the institution (medical scandal and more) couldn’t see this coming. A generous critique suggests that nobody can, to bowdlerize Mencken, go broke underestimating the reactionary politics of this funny little historically rightwing county run by a cabal of old school GOP kooks in our funny little state, with Democrats who cooperate with Schwarzenneger for their own political gain, allowing a Gary Miller, for instance, to keep his district in a quid pro quo and who don’t fight when the Guv vetoes a ballot measure on the war. Yes, the war. Bush. Alberto Gonzales. Sorry, I’m not gonna disappoint Dissent readers.

.This is about the war. For whatever weird reason, it was Chemerinsky’s LA Times commentary piece on Alberto Gonzales (albeit his other war, on death row federal court reviews) that Drake said—not the subject, but its “existence” (sic)—led to his decision. Connect the dots, paint by number, fill in the blanks, and there appears a picture of an academic in Orange County, Birchtopia, Reaganville, Nixonland, California taking on the national Republican agenda: killing people, whether in the criminal justice system or Iraq.

.Call me Mr. Reductio Ad Absurda, I don’t mind. The metaphor is the message here, and that the “libertarian” Register editor arrived there before me—calling for the removal of a stooge, an incompetent who happens to be, yes, a putative liberal and African-American—is only one step in front of the next conservative call for, say, Mr. Gonzales, who I hear is out of a job, as dean of Bren Law School. Or John Woo or, more insidiously, some other toady who failed the eye chart too.

Andrew Tonkovich

Why? It's Orange County, Jake. (Rebel Girl)

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WE HOPE TO HAVE A POST from Red Emma later, but while we're waiting Rebel Girl would like to draw your attention to the brouhaha over at UC Irvine: Chancellor Michael Drake's decision to withdraw the offer to Erwin Chemerinksy to be the inaugural dean of the UCI Donald Bren School of Law.

Rebel Girl knew it was too good to be true when she first read the accounts a few weeks ago. Even then she had to wonder why the story was in the paper and feared the worst.
From today's Los Angeles Times:

Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law, said he had signed a contract Sept. 4, only to be told Tuesday by Chancellor Michael V. Drake that Drake was voiding their deal because Chemerinsky was too liberal and the university had underestimated "conservatives out to get me."

In his statement on his website (http://www.chancellor.uci.edu/ ), Chancellor Drake says, "I have come to the very difficult conclusion that Professor Chemerinsky is not the right fit for the dean’s position at UC Irvine at this time."

Meanwhile, in the LA Times, UCI Professor Jon Wiener claims that the dismissal is "the biggest violation of academic freedom in the histroy of UCI. Nationally, it is the biggest academic freedom case of the year. Some people are saying that [UCI senate faculty] have to take this to the faculty senate and make a faculty-wide statement condemning it."

Perhaps our own Academic Senates would like to take the matter up and consider a resolution.

If you'd like to send an email (as Rebel Girl did) to Chancellor Drake, his address is: chancellor@uci.edu.

Tuesday's BOARD FORUM: Raghu wags his finger

Yesterday’s BOARD FORUM—i.e., the “Q&A” session held by the SOCCCD Board of Trustees at Irvine Valley College—was a moderate success, judging by attendance (eventually, most seats were filled in the small hall) and the quality of the discussion.

At first, only five of the seven trustees—plus Chancellor Mathur and the hirsute student trustee—sat before the half-empty room on the second floor of the IVC Library. Nevertheless, this incomplete mass of trusteehood was in no mood for waiting—possibly because the 9-11 ceremony was set to start at 4:00—and so the session started on time (at 2:30).

Eventually, however, the remaining two trustees (Wagner and Milchiker) arrived, though not before shouting loud and indecipherable (to me) absurdities as they trudged up the stairwell.

The audience gradually grew too.

Board President David Lang offered an invocation. Tom Fuentes led us in the Pledge.

Lang then introduced the forum, which he described as a "free and open exchange of ideas." I heard an administrator gulp. He asked the chancellor to make some remarks. Fortunately, they were brief.

THE "50% RULE"

Susan S asked the first question, and it was a good one. She referred to the notorious 50% rule—a state law (since 1961) that requires that school districts, including (alas) community college districts, devote at least 50% of their expenditures to instruction. Our falling short of that standard, she said (I think), seems to be motivating new hiring, but not, it seems, of classified employees or counselors. I do believe that, in her view, such hiring is needed.

In response, Mathur explained that, like it or not, the 50% law narrowly defines instructional spending as money spent on (essentially) faculty salaries and benefits. For reasons known only to pinheaded legislators, counselors and librarians are not here counted as faculty.

Mathur seemed to argue that the various rules imposed by the state are “contradictory” and that they don’t add up. We are told that we must achieve a certain percentage of full-time to part-time instruction (i.e., we need more full-timers, fewer part-timers), and here, counselors and librarians count. But then why don’t they count in the case of the 50% rule?

Further, faculty in our district have the fourth highest salaries in the state—suggesting that we do indeed spend relatively much on “instruction.” Nevertheless, somehow, we have managed to run afoul of the 50% rule: we presently devote only 49.56% of our expenditures on instruction. Something must be done.

The obvious move: hire more full-time faculty, a big-buck item if ever there was one. That doesn’t mean we can’t hire others—for instance, non-instructional workers for the Performing Arts Center—but, obviously, we have a reason to favor “instructional” hires.

Lang chimed in to say that the district is seeking a waiver from the state re the 50% rule, and he is hopeful of securing it.

Linda R noted that, in fact, IVC’s counselors do in fact “instruct”: they teach at a rate of up to 60% of their load. Shouldn’t that be taken into account in this zany 50% rule?

Yep, it is taken into account, said Mathur.

Lang grumbled that the 50% rule “penalizes” districts that attempt to run full programs, etc. He obviously didn’t think much of that.

John Williams chimed in to say something about “golden handshakes.” (Maybe it was “milkshakes.” Could be.) He noted that our “basic aid” funding (which ties our funding, not to how many students are taught [FTES], but to a percentage of locally-collected property taxes) “almost” gives us a disincentive to “market the district,” i.e., to increase enrollments, increase "productivity," etc.

Hell, said Williams, given the way we’re funded, we could actually lose students to the point of having fifteen per classroom—like at a private university!

That remark inspired Nancy Padberg to roll her eyes, which she did so grandly that half the room recoiled.

Mathur then reminded the group (i.e., Williams) that there is no guarantee that we will remain on basic aid, and if we end up with the alternative form of funding (in which we receive moola based on Full Time Equivalent Students), we could find ourselves in big trouble fast.

Williams noted the growing phenomenon of home-owners demanding an adjustment (downward) in the assessment of their homes in order to lower their property taxes. Lang agreed that, right now, it seems that a decrease in basic aid money is expected. That’s not good.

ATEP AIN'T NO COLLEGE


Kate C then changed the subject. She noted that the state places restrictions on when and how a district can add a college, and, as far as she can tell, ATEP cannot qualify as a “college”—among other reasons because of its proximity to IVC. But, in fact, ATEP is sometimes described as a college. (Well, it’s a “park,” but then Garden Grove is a grove and Irvine Valley is a valley.)

Mathur then declared that, whichever words are used to describe the ATEP entity, the district has “no thought” of turning the thing into a college. It is a campus [i.e., a park], not a college, and the idea is to use it as a place to offer unique courses and programs that do not duplicate what already exists at IVC and Saddleback.

In fact, ATEP generates FTES per student that goes straight to one of the two “colleges.”

By way of elaboration, Raghu explained that ATEP focuses on “high-tech programs” and nursing. At ATEP, he said, we have an opportunity to “partner” with other institutions (Chapman U, CSUF) to expand nursing instruction.

(Saddleback College, of course, already has a celebrated nursing program. As far as I know, however, it offers a supply that is not meeting demand. Hence, arguably, “duplication” is less of a worry if ATEP eventually comprises some sort of nursing program.)

The ATEP concept, said Mathur, is to bring new students to the district, not to have ATEP compete for students with IVC and Saddleback. He referred to new data according to which, among the 400+ students currently taught at ATEP, 90 of them are new to the district. (That factoid sounds underwhelming to me, but what do I know.)

Lang indicated general agreement with Mathur’s remarks, though he expressly distanced himself from any commitment never to pursue ATEP as a college. “Never say never,” he said.

Mathur (who, by the way, looked like death warmed over) seemed to cringe.

MATHUR AND CANNIBALISM

Kate expressed concerns about the availability of non-instructional support for students at ATEP—such services as counseling and whatnot. Mathur responded by saying that there is a move afoot to hire part-time counselors for ATEP.

It was at about this point that Mathur went seriously wrong, in my view, for he commenced wagging that awful little finger of his—figuratively, anyway. Decades ago, he said, Saddlebackians groused indecorously about the construction of “Saddleback College North” (later named “IVC”) on the grounds that the new campus would “rob” Saddleback of students. Mathur compared those peevitudinal eruptions—and the current ones—to an event that occurred years ago in the Mathur household, namely, the time that Raghu’s older son bit his younger son “seriously.”

Good grief!

Evidently, the young fellow was motivated by jealousy or something equally base.

“ATEP is here to stay,” declared Mathur, the scolding parent with the cannibal son.

Later, Lewis L revived Kate’s concerns, emphasizing the worry that instructional growth at ATEP might not receive concomitant support services. Further, he said, it would seem that some of the ATEP faculty are unassociated with our two colleges, and they are thus unfamiliar with our college cultures and their traditions of reliance on support services.

At this point—or was it earlier?—we learned that all students at ATEP are in fact either Irvine Valley or Saddleback students. That is, in order to enroll at ATEP, a student must enroll at either IVC or SC.

Park Ranger Kopecky explained that he and his team are looking for ways to “connect” with the services at the two colleges. Indeed, there is a move afoot literally to connect students at ATEP with counselors down at Saddleback via strings and cans. He seemed aware that ATEP instructors must acclimate to “the way things are done” at our colleges.

ATEP Dean, Kathy Peterson, then explained that she is setting up (or is contemplating setting up) short-term seminars to familiarize ATEP students with college services and resources (e.g., the libraries).

At one point, she seemed to say that she has personally hired a counselor. Eyebrows shot upward.

Evidently, she misspoke. Any hiring of instructors or counselors is done at one of the two colleges. She only accepts the colleges' recommendations.

Gosh we're a prickly bunch!