One of Those Days: Ghosts and the Autumnal Equinox

In the writing center Monday morning, Rebel Girl reviewed a student's essay on a significant moment, a typical developmental writing assignment. This student had chosen to write about the moment his good friend had died, an event which, as he wrote in his wobbly thesis statement, "impacted my life greatly."

The essay told the story of a group of high school friends who partied perhaps too much and took too many risks. And then at the bottom of page two, when the student began to describe the sad predictable details of the particular death (alcohol; poor judgment; etc.), Rebel Girl recognized his friend, who had been her student two years ago, in the fall semester of 2006 and who had died that November. He had sat in the third seat in the second row in a narrow classroom and she was worried about him from the beginning. A handsome young Californian, but not ready to focus, to settle down, not ready to work. Willing to show up, but not willing to write. After a few weeks, he dropped the course. There was nothing she could do. She saw him on campus, said what she usually does: "Next semester. We'll try it again." Then she read about him in the newspapers.

Two years later, here he is again, described by his young friend who still tears up about that night, what it was like to see him die.

Later the same day, Rebel Girl was holding forth in front of the fancy whiteboard in one of the airy, expansive classrooms in the new Beefsteak building. The board was already full of her scribbles: a cartoon of Joan Didion, a sketch of California, and in between stretched the plot line of a chapter from The Kite Runner. The class was tracking down moments of death, moral challenges and rebirth.

There was a bustle in the hallway. Suits. Men looking pleased with themselves, moving with appraising eyes. She recognized the college president, a handful of trustees. They walked by, glancing in the classroom through the window in the door, moved on.

The class returned to the discussion.

Rebel Girl noticed a movement at the door.

Tom Fuentes had returned and stood there, watching her. Glaring, no. He had a smile on his face. Seemed genial in a paternal manner that she found a bit spooky, a bit too reminiscent of church actually, a kind of superior demeanor, the dim gracious smile, the watchful gaze that has seen it all.

She didn't even know if he recognized her as the high profile union thug she was. Perhaps he imagined she was just a typical overpaid faculty personette, doing her damnedest to promote her socially liberal agenda. Who knows?

He stood there, smiling, bobbing slightly.

Rebel Girl remembered the time when she was twelve or so and devoured trashy novels about Henry VIII and his six unhappy wives that she bought at corner liquor stores with change stolen from her mother's tips. There was something faintly Cardinal Wolsey-like about Fuentes, she thought. Fuentes would be a perfect fit for Henry's court, full as it was of intrigue and betrayal, power plays and puffed collars, men in tights and velvet cloaks.

Eventually, he moved on and she returned her full attention to the class. She looked down. She had been wearing, as she had all day, a handmade ribbon over a foot long that she had cut from the newspaper. It read: Bailout tab: $700,000,000,000

It rustled when she walked. It floated in the breeze. It was extravagant. The font size was large and eye-catching. Maybe that was what he was looking at.

Maybe.

Resolutions & Presentations

This is the first in a series of brief videos of Monday's night's board meeting.

This video presents "resolutions & presentations" regarding Saddleback College's 40th Anniversary. Mostly, it was an opportunity for politicians to get their mugs in front of the public. Still, it was fun. I edited out Mathur and Co. as much as possible. You know how they can stink things up.

At the end, Professor Bob Parsons receives a fine resolution for his 40 years of work at the college.

Click on the button in the middle!

Tonight's board meeting

(Be sure to check out Tere's Board Meeting Highlights.)

Tonight’s meeting started with board clerk Tom Fuentes reporting actions taken in closed session: there were none.

The audience was unusually large because of board resolutions concerning Saddleback College’s 40th Anniversary (tomorrow). Numerous politicians, including stunningly corrupt Congressman Gary Miller—represented by an underling, made presentations to honor the college. It was fun. I’ll have video tomorrow.

Saddleback College President Tod Burnett managed to scrape up and display 4 or 5 former Saddleback College Presidents, including the first one (1968). Naturally, lots of photos were taken, and Chancellor Raghu Mathur and board president Don Wagner managed to get in most of them.

Professor Bob Parsons was honored—he’s been working at Saddleback College continuously these forty years. He offered some entertainingly gruff remarks. Nurses Terri Whitt and Judy Krieg were honored too, though I don’t think their efforts (volunteer work in Beliz) had anything to do with the 40 year thing.

During trustee reports, John Williams presented a few artifacts from the beginning years of Saddleback College, including a college catalog that was the size of a small pamphlet. He read from the "dress code," which forbade open-toed shoes, etc.

Tom Fuentes praised the Chancellor for organizing some sort of "ethics" training event (at Saddleback College). That produced a moment of silent weirdness. Do you suppose these people are insensible of the irony? 

There were public comments. Saddleback College Academic Senate President Bob Cosgrove spoke, as did Faculty Association President Lee Haggerty, who objected to trustee Fuentes’ and Steve Greenhut’s recent remarks in OC Blog and the OC Register. Lee referred to factual errors and even the possibility of some sort of “public” negotiating violation by Fuentes.

Two kids presented the IVC 2008-9 Associated Students budget. When they finished, they were praised for the clarity of their graphs and accounting, but they were dinged bigtime for not leaving money for the next year. Evidently, IVC student government experienced some sort of windfall last year (something over $70,000 as I recall), and so their budget (half a million) was unusually large. Evidently, this crew allocated all of that to the usual items supported by SG.

You will recall that some trustees, especially Fuentes and Wagner, have long objected to the cost to students of student government and especially the manner in which student government receives income—a percentage of book sales at the bookstore. Tonight, Lang, Wagner, and Fuentes expressed discomfort with the students’ proposed budget. Wagner, for instance, suggested that it would be better to put the extra $70 K into scholarships or otherwise return the money to students. He mentioned the tough economic times in which students now find themselves.

In the end, the matter was tabled. There can be little doubt that the students are expected to bring back a very different budget next month.

THE ACCREDITATION REPORTS

Eventually, the board got to the IVC and Saddleback Accred reports. The board does not approve these documents but it is informed about them.

Board President Don Wagner, who served on the IVC Accred focus group, offered heartfelt praise for that committee. There can be no doubt that he appreciates the sincerity, dedication, and intelligence of the classified, faculty, and administration of Irvine Valley College with whom he labored for many months. He urged his colleagues on the board to read the report and to appreciate the fine work that the group has produced. He even asserted, half jokingly, that if the ACCJC does not renew our accreditation, that will be “actionable.” Wendy G, who co-chaired the committee and who wrote most of the report, indicated agreement with that sentiment. These two are lawyers.

Trustee Lang similarly praised the committee that produced Saddleback’s Accreditation report. 

It was a love fest.

Chancellor Mathur ended all that. He made a point of praising trustees Wagner and Lang for all of their unpaid work on these committees. No doubt these two deserve praise, but it is no secret that, in the course of producing these reports, some faculty put in literally hundreds of hours for which they were not compensated. Predictably, Mathur was blind to that, an omission that IVC Academic Senate President Wendy G pointedly corrected later in the evening.

There was no indication that any of the trustees were disposed to object to these reports. Fuentes remained silent.

REASSIGNED TIME AND THE "2%" RULE

The board also discussed a report of expenditures for “reassigned time and stipends” for the 2007-08 academic year. Trustee Fuentes and Chancellor Mathur took the opportunity to pretend that reassigned time and stipends are terribly expensive to the district. Mathur, as usual, offered voodoo math in explaining the cost of reassigned time, which Trustee Bill Jay briefly undercut with some impromptu calculating.

At some point, Wendy G noted that the manner in which the original 1998 “action” (there is no policy) was taken greatly exaggerated the cost of reassigned time (the true cost is backfill with part-timers; the 1998 action absurdly requires that the instructor’s pay be used in calculating cost).

The 1998 “2%” rule seems to have changed over the years to 2.4%—a fact that obviously greatly displeased Mr. Fuentes, who sought to nail down when and how that change occurred. Mathur muttered about the accrediting commission’s demands for faculty work on SLOs and the like. Fuentes remained perturbed.

In the course of the discussion, Wendy (I think) noted that the “rule” unnecessarily and unfortunately ties the hands of the college Presidents in their efforts to run the colleges. She underscored the reality that such work as the recent college accreditation efforts (she held the enormous IVC draft in the air) are produced with a great deal of uncompensated work by faculty. (That won't do.) She asked that the trustees bear such facts in mind.

Mathur stared at her homicidally.

Trustee Lang noted that, as a matter of fact, the Saddleback College Accred report objects to the “arbitrary” nature of the “2% rule.” It complains, too, about how it restricts the college Presidents.

In the end, Fuentes recommended that the matter (despite its being only an information item) be tabled so that a more “fleshed out” report can be presented. Much to Mathur's chagrin, he declared the report to be "inadequate." He expressed his hope that the 2.4% figure would be addressed and revised “downward.”

Red meat and lies

Steve Greenhut, editorial writer for the OC Register, was on KPCC’s “AirTalk” the other day, arguing with Gustavo Arellano about controversies at our district. A friend who heard the broadcast told me that Greenhut merely repeated Tom Fuentes' absurd and stunningly dishonest talking points, recently made in an interview on Red County/OC Blog.

Have you read the interviews? Fuentes offers red meat and lies. The district, he says, is threatened by “union labor bosses” and their “liberal” agenda. Virtually nothing is said about our “plague of despair,” and our serious accreditation difficulties, brought to us by Fuentes and his friends.

This morning, Greenhut repeats the performance in his column.

Naturally, Greenhut reveals that he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. For instance, he imagines that faculty seek to avoid office hours and that they pursue “fad programs.” Huh?

To prove that faculty salaries are high, Greenhut cherry picks the unusually high salaries of “the district's real estate instructor” (?) and “[i]ts Spanish instructor” (?). He repeats Fuentes’ old canard about faculty's “36-hour weeks.”

He calls me a “union activist.” I'm hardly that. He wrongly supposes that Carl Christensen is the union’s candidate for the Mission Viejo trustee seat. No, the union supports John Wiliams, who Greenhut identifies as one of Fuentes' fellow anti-union crusaders.

Well, read Greenhut's piece. Judge for yourself.

Steve Greenhut column: An endangered friend of the taxpayer:

Anyone who is not in a coma has noticed that the U.S. economy is in the tank….

Consider what's going on at the South Orange County Community College District, which operates Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College in Irvine.

The current board has a fiscally conservative majority, and has been a rare friend of the taxpayer. The board refuses to do what most public education boards do these days – give the unions what they want and then float bonds to pay for the infrastructure the districts need. One of the big secrets of such bonds is that they really are pension and salary bonds. When boards give in to union demands, they use bonds to pay for the infrastructure that they should have been able to pay for without new debt, had they held the line on pay and benefits.

The South Orange County Community College District board has constantly opposed bond issues; managed the district without debt; balanced the budget every year and stood up to the district's surly faculty union. "We are the only community college district in Orange County in the past eight years that hasn't gone out for a bond," board member Dave Lang explained during a recent interview. "You can't find a more fiscally sound college district in the state."

Furthermore, the current board has put the focus on the students, not on the district's employees. The union is furious because the board insists that all professors actually put in the office hours required by their contracts. The district is more interested in keeping the teachers in the classrooms rather than having them, say, take sabbaticals to Europe. The district has focused on expanding its core programs, such as nursing, rather than on fad programs. They've built new buildings and upgraded older ones by managing their funds rather than putting taxpayers on the hook with debt. And – here's the rub – the current board has resisted the faculty union's demand for a 10 percent raise, something that would cost more than $17 million a year if all the district's unions get a piece of that contract. This is good for taxpayers, good for students and good for the vast majority of dedicated faculty members.

Currently, there are four conservatives on the board: former O.C. GOP chief Tom Fuentes, Lang, Donald Wagner and John Williams. There are three union backers on the board: Nancy Padberg, Marcia Milchiker and William Jay. Fuentes, Lang and Williams are up for re-election and are being challenged by the apparent union slate of Bob Bliss, Carolyn Inmon and Carl Christensen. Jay also is up for re-election and is challenged by a conservative-backed candidate, Arlene Greer. If the union picks up one seat, taxpayers better open up their wallets.
…
The district has 230 faculty who earn more than $90,000 a year in base salary. Almost all those employees earn significant "additional earnings" for everything they do beyond their short week – committee chairmanships and so forth. Then they get generous benefits. For instance, the district's real estate instructor earns a total compensation package of $269,343 a year. Its Spanish instructor has a total package of $183,000 a year. A lower-paid faculty member on the list earns a total compensation package of $114,000 a year. This is for a 9 1/2 month year of 36-hour weeks with only 15 weekly classroom hours.

Writing in Red County blog, faculty member and union activist Roy Bauer explained his side of it: "Naturally, the quality of a college cannot exceed the quality of its faculty. … There was a time when faculty salaries in the [South Orange County Community College District]were relatively high. … Further, in case you haven't noticed, living in South Orange County is expensive. But the era of high … faculty salaries is long past. These days, faculty salaries do not compare well with those of other districts in the area, and this means that the [district]is headed for decline."

Bauer and others claim, unfairly, that their not getting what they want will threaten the district's accreditation.

Bauer reveals the union approach in its full glory. First, it's all about them. It's expensive to live here! Well, that's true for everyone, even the taxpayers who foot the bill. Second, the claims are not exactly true. The California Teachers Association's own 20-year earning survey finds that the SOCCCD faculty are the fourth-highest paid out of 72 districts in the state. Third, union backers are skilled at focusing attention on those who do even better than they do. The faculty union wants to be paid at the level of the Mira Costa district, which pays the highest salaries in the state and is no model for fiscal responsibility. And the union uses scare tactics (accreditation) when it can't win the arguments on their merits….

If you go to Greenhut's column, you'll find my response. I've sent a slightly expanded version of that response to "letters to the editor."

UPDATE: several people have commented on Greenhut's piece. With one exception, they blast the fellow.

Holga "Hell" at IVC, by Jason

Our pal Jason, with his odd Chinese Holga camera, took some pics this week of that weird "Hell" guy discussed in a post earlier today (Lana Lang's Repent or Hell):

Does anybody know what this gal was doing?









A couple of details:

REPENT OR HELL—reported by intrepid Girl Reporter Lana Lang

[—No, not Rebel Girl. Lana Lang!] The IVC campus quite recently became the lucky recipient of a chance visit by a wandering theological scholar, who held an impromptu guest lecture in the large quad. Eschewing the trendy but overused power point presentation, the visiting professor wrote his notes on a board, spoke in stentorian tones, and finally managed to en”rapture” a somewhat sizeable audience (see plate I and II), albeit consisting of only one individual (who was observed to take no notes.)

The topic of the thesis? Satan’s Children—who they are, and what to do about ‘em. In case you don’t have your reading glasses, here’s the list of those in desperate need of salvation. (Ahem!): “Hypocrite Christians, Lost Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and all other false religions.”

But wait, there’s more: “Sodomites, Pornographers, Pedophiles, Fornicators, Cross-dressers, Lesbians, Adulterers, Transvestites [author’s note: see “Cross-dressers, above] and all other weirdo Sex Perverts.”

PLATE I

Well, sure, that’s obvious. I mean—who can argue? Likewise Hellbound: “Scoffers, The Prideful, Atheists, Agnostics, Idolators, and all other Clueless Fools.”

Hmmm . . . is there such a thing as a clued-in fool?

And—lest we forget—the term “Satan’s Children” also encompasses: “Murderers/Babykillers, Liars, Thieves, Corrupt Politicians, and Covetous Moneygrubbers; Boozers, Dopers, Revelers, Mouthy Women, Girlie-men, and all Sin-loving Heathen.”

—In short: 99.99% of the population. The only people escaping God’s imminent though long-delayed wrath, apparently, would be: Jews who are not lost; Murderers and Babykillers who are clearly only one or the other; plus all non-weirdo sex perverts. Other recipients of the get-out-of jail-free card, judging by their absence on the picket sign: war mongers, racists, homophobes, misogynists, genocidists, morons and the embarrassingly smug and self-righteous. 

Well, Dick Cheney can relax now—except that he undoubtedly hits on at least one of the enumerated categories.

As for intrepid girl-reporter Lois Lane – she finds herself specifically called-out three or four times on God’s Official Enemies List. Alas.

The solution? Simple. REPENT OR HELL

“You know,” the lone member of the (snicker, snicker) “massive” viewing public was overheard to say, “You tell people these things . . . and they get offended!”

PLATE II

Photos submitted by IVC student Mehran Khamnehipour

IN OTHER NEWS – scientists have a discovered a strange ant species in the Amazon:

Friday Matinee: Anyone can be president. Anyone.