The era of über-cluelessness: most voters have no clue how clueless they are

     In my view, the moral of the “Bell” scandal isn’t that greedy and unscrupulous creeps have bilked the taxpayer; the more important lesson here is that most citizens wrongly imagine that, if evil or corruption or mismanagement is afoot in government, the “system” will detect it and take steps to deal with it. And so people are stunned by this crazy Bell fubar.
     They shouldn’t be. Our system is now such that shit happens in their city, county, state and federal government all of the time about which they haven’t a solitary clue. It's still pretty easy to get clued in. But people don't make the effort. They don't think they need to. They even think they are knowledgeable.
     They're deeply, f*cking clueless. They're über-clueless!
     The prevailing cluelessness of voters—admittedly, also encouraged by the decline of local newsreporting—is well illustrated by the SOCCCD. Our seven elected trustees oversee the expenditure of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Do people understand this? Do they know who these trustees are and how they conduct themselves? Clearly not. Over and over again, trustee incumbents are reelected, even when they act badly and irresponsibly. Several of them have done so. For years.
     The SOCCCD comprises three campuses: Saddleback College, Irvine Valley College, and ATEP (the Advanced Technical and Education Park), in Tustin. Very big things have been promised at ATEP for many years—it’s the SOCCCD’s endlessly promised but albatrossian “Great Park”—and, despite the expenditure of many millions of dollars, all we have there so far is a dinky cluster of tin buildings, a few bewildered administrators, and a few hundred students.
     The board has been divided about ATEP, but its champions have generally prevailed, in part because of the ardent advocacy of former Chancellor Raghu Mathur, who saw the facility as his Mt. Rushmore. It seems to me that it was not unreasonable for trustees, all those many years ago, to pursue the property, which was part of the old Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, and to try to do something special with it. But, in part owing to some bad luck, things haven’t worked out.
     For several years now, it has seemed to many observers that we’re throwing good money after bad. In the meantime, money gets tighter and tighter, and important college services have been cut back or worse.
     Do citizens have any idea about this? Don’t think so.

* * *

     As it happens, one of our trustees, John Williams, is also the county’s Public Guardian/Public Administrator, a job that he has royally screwed up, or so said two Grand Jury reports and lots of unhappy people who work or have worked with the fellow.
     Williams eventually faced a kind of “day of reckoning” before the OC Board of Supervisors, but at least four of the five Supes are politically affiliated with Williams. Three of them decided essentially to leave Williams and his combined offices alone, despite the top-heavy management, the irregularities and unprofessionalism, the growing costs. It was outrageous and inexplicable (well, no, it was way explicable, I’m afraid).
     Does the community understand any of this? Clearly not. In the recent election, despite those “scathing” Grand Jury reports, Williams was reelected.

* * *

     Two important issues have come up in county politics very recently: redistricting and campaign finance restrictions. Things could have gone very badly, but that hasn’t happened yet. Do you think your neighbors know about this?
     Journalists do report these things. We’ve still got some excellent news media in this county. For instance, the Voice of OC seems so far to be doing a good job reporting on important local issues in politics. I've been a big fan from the start.
     Check out editor-in-chief Norberto Santana’s recent appearance on the Real Orange (KOCE). Again, important decisions are being made—or, more recently, have failed to be made—in county government. Santana lays it out.
     And don’t forget to read The Voice of OC online!

Clueless feds, clueless youth—clueless freakin' everybody

Puppies do not plagiarize; nor do they offer poor theistic arguments

FBI Admits It Tracked Howard Zinn (Inside Higher Ed)

     The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday admitted that it tracked Howard Zinn, the noted historian and political activist who died in January, from 1949 to 1974, and the bureau released 423 pages of records from the monitoring of Zinn. Salon noted that this monitoring took place "despite having apparently no evidence that he ever committed a crime." And TPM noted that the records indicate that a senior official at Boston University, where Zinn taught, tried to have him fired in 1970. (If you are wondering if that official might have been John Silber, the long-time BU president with whom Zinn had many disagreements, it wasn't, as Silber hadn't been hired at the time.)

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age (Trip Gabriel, New York Times)

     At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site’s frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.
     At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.
     And at the University of Maryland, a student reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia in a paper on the Great Depression said he thought its entries — unsigned and collectively written — did not need to be credited since they counted, essentially, as common knowledge.
. . .
     [T]hese cases — typical ones, according to writing tutors and officials responsible for discipline at the three schools who described the plagiarism — suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed.
. . .
     “Now we have a whole generation of students who’ve grown up with information that just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn’t seem to have an author,” said Teresa Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. “It’s possible to believe this information is just out there for anyone to take.”
. . .
     …[Th]e number who believed that copying from the Web constitutes “serious cheating” is declining — to 29 percent on average in recent surveys from 34 percent earlier in the decade.
. . .
     A University of Notre Dame anthropologist, Susan D. Blum, disturbed by the high rates of reported plagiarism, set out to understand how students view authorship and the written word, or “texts” in Ms. Blum’s academic language.
     She conducted her ethnographic research among 234 Notre Dame undergraduates.
     “Today’s students stand at the crossroads of a new way of conceiving texts and the people who create them and who quote them,” she wrote last year in the book “My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture,” published by Cornell University Press.
     Ms. Blum argued that student writing exhibits some of the same qualities of pastiche that drive other creative endeavors today — TV shows that constantly reference other shows or rap music that samples from earlier songs.
     In an interview, she said the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.
     “Our notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning,” Ms. Blum said.
. . .
     At the University of California, Davis, of the 196 plagiarism cases referred to the disciplinary office last year, a majority did not involve students ignorant of the need to credit the writing of others.
     Many times, said Donald J. Dudley, who oversees the discipline office on the campus of 32,000, it was students who intentionally copied — knowing it was wrong — who were “unwilling to engage the writing process.”….

Philosophy and Faith (Gary Gutting, New York Times)

     …The standard view is that philosophers’ disagreements over arguments about God make their views irrelevant to the faith of ordinary believers and non-believers. The claim seems obvious: if we professionals can’t agree among ourselves, what can we have to offer to non-professionals? An appeal to experts requires consensus among those experts, which philosophers don’t have.
     This line of thought ignores the fact that when philosophers’ disagree it is only about specific aspects of the most subtle and sophisticated versions of arguments for and against God’s existence…. There is no disagreement among philosophers about the more popular arguments to which theists and atheists typically appeal: as formulated, they do not prove (that is, logically derive from uncontroversial premises) what they claim to prove. They are clearly inadequate in the judgment of qualified professionals. Further, there are no more sophisticated formulations that theists or atheists can accept — the way we do scientific claims — on the authority of expert consensus.
     In these popular debates about God’s existence, the winners are neither theists nor atheists, but agnostics — the neglected step-children of religious controversy, who rightly point out that neither side in the debate has made its case. This is the position supported by the consensus of expert philosophical opinion.
     This conclusion should particularly discomfit popular proponents of atheism, such as Richard Dawkins, whose position is entirely based on demonstrably faulty arguments. Believers, of course, can fall back on the logically less rigorous support that they characterize as faith. But then they need to reflect on just what sort of support faith can give to religious belief. How are my students’ warm feelings of certainty as they hug one another at Sunday Mass in their dorm really any different from the trust they might experience while under the spell of a really plausible salesperson?
     What sort of religious experience could support the claim that Jesus Christ was God incarnate and not just a great moral teacher?. . .
     But how can religious experience sustain faith in a specific salvation narrative, particularly given the stark differences among the accounts of the great religious traditions? What sort of religious experience could support the claim that Jesus Christ was God incarnate and not just a great moral teacher? Or that the Bible rather than the Koran is the revelation of God’s own words? Believers may have strong feelings of certainty, but each religion rejects the certainty of all the others, which leaves us asking why they privilege their own faith….

From the archives

Mammoth Mountain

(Click on photos to enlarge them)

Sunny Girl and her two kittens (Kathie took this one)

North of Morro Rock

Bishop sunset

Felix, cat ("Fat Thing")

Santiago Oaks Park

My good pal Buster, cat

The magnificent Ildy Pie

Sunny Girl again

The elderly, wonderful Ildy

Special SOCCCD board meeting on Wednesday

     I just noticed that there is an announcement of a Special Board Meeting posted on the district website.
     The meeting concerns the districts's Advanced Technology and Education Park (ATEP) in Tustin.
     Below are the "notice" and the first of agenda item:

(Click on the graphics to make them larger.)

Oddly, the last and crucial line of the "background" is an incomplete sentence: "As construction activities come closer it is believed that seeking professional real estate brokerage services with firms with established national higher education experience and contracts...." 

     Presumably, the author meant to say that securing the services of such a company might lead to success after all of these years of failure. Something like that. (It will certainly lead to considerable expense.)

     All is made clear, I suppose, in the remainder of the agenda, including the Chancellor's recommendation: to approve an agreement with CB Richard Ellis, Inc., which claims to be the world leader in its kind of real estate business.

     CBRE has a satellite office in tony Newport Beach that is managed by Mark Prottas.
     I did a quick search, and the guy doesn't appear to be the Grand Wizard of the KKK or anything. I couldn't even link 'im to the Republicans!

“Ask God what your grade is”

LA college district tries to use UC Hastings ruling in its free-speech case (California Watchdog)

     When the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed a UC Hastings College of the Law decision to bar a Christian student group from receiving university funds last month, some free-speech advocates winced, saying the court's opinion would be used by colleges and universities to squelch offensive or unpopular speech.
     It looks like they might be right.
     The Los Angeles Community College District is trying to use the Hastings ruling to bolster its defense in a speech code case, in which a college professor mocked a student who was speaking about his Christian faith in class.
     The Los Angeles case began in fall 2008 when Los Angeles City College student Jonathan Lopez gave an impassioned talk about his Christian beliefs during a Speech 101 class. He spoke about his opposition to gay marriage in the wake of the passage of the controversial Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state.
     According to the complaint, professor John Matteson interrupted Lopez, called him a "fascist bastard" and refused to let him finish his speech. Matteson left an evaluation form on Lopez's backpack that said "Ask God what your grade is."
     Lopez sued, seeking financial damages and a ban on enforcing the sexual harassment code, which prohibited "hostile" and "offensive" remarks in and out of the classroom.
     In a motion to dismiss, college district officials said they did not approve of Matteson's behavior and had put him through a disciplinary process. But Lopez's suit, they said, was a publicity stunt. The Speech 101 class was not a public forum and First Amendment rights could be limited in that setting, they argued.
     In July 2009, U.S. District Judge George H. King granted a preliminary injunction barring the enforcement of the harassment code at the district, the Los Angeles Times reported. The college district appealed....

College in Mississippi Withdraws Penalties Against Student Who Swore (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     A community college in Mississippi has dropped penalties against a student for using a profanity after learning he had received a poor grade on a tardy assignment. The student, Isaac Rosenbloom, said in an interview that Hinds Community College sent a letter on Tuesday stating that he would "not suffer any future consequences" related to the March 29 incident.
     Mr. Rosenbloom and a few other students had remained after a speech class one day to discuss their grades with the instructor, Barbara Pyle. Upon seeing that he had received a score of 74 on the late assignment, Mr. Rosenbloom testified in a recorded disciplinary hearing that he turned to a classmate and said, "This grade is going to [expletive] up my entire GPA." He said the instructor had told him his language was unacceptable and ordered him to detention.
     Hinds does not have detention, but it does punish students who use profanity through a system of fines and demerits, an arrangement that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a free-speech advocacy group known as FIRE, contends is unconstitutional.
     Hinds found Mr. Rosenbloom guilty of "flagrant disrespect" and issued 12 demerits against him. The college also blocked him from finishing the course and placed a record of the incident in his student file, an action that FIRE says caused Mr. Rosenbloom to lose his student aid.
     Mr. Rosenbloom, who works as an emergency medical technician and is pursuing paramedic training at Hinds, appealed the decision twice and lost both times. His lawyers, Robert B. McDuff and Sibyl C. Byrd, persuaded Hinds to reverse its decision, according to a statement by FIRE….

An "epic battle" at the North Orange County Community College District

     In this morning’s OC Watchdog (OC Reg), Teri Sforza reports on a controversy at the North Orange County Community College District. Check it out:

Irate professors rally to block new administrator

     Essentially, the issue is this: the district determined that it would pursue an eleven-month replacement of Kathy Hodge, Vice Chancellor of Instruction, now that she is retiring. (Hodge was an important player at the SOCCCD in the tumultuous years of the first “board majority,” ten or twelve years ago.)
     The district decided to find someone internal to the organization.
     But faculty, viewing the move as a continuation of a permanent VCI position, opposed this, arguing that the position is unnecessary and expensive:

     “In my twenty years at the District, this position has been used as a parking spot for College Presidents that had been relieved of their duties,” wrote Fullerton College business professor Marcus Wilson in a protest letter. “I understood the contractual obligations that required the District to use the position for Kathy Hodge, but to fill the position now in the middle of a budget crisis is difficult to understand. Last year numerous full time faculty positions were eliminated to balance the budget and an additional $4.6 million was cut from the extended day budget resulting in over 1000 classes being cancelled.
     “Dedicated faculty spoke at every Board meeting to share with you the impact these cuts were having on the students and asked that you would make students your number one priority. This year, Fullerton alone is cutting an additional $1 million of classes to stay within the budget limits. That is over 300 sections of additional classes being cut. What is the District’s priority?…Fullerton has done pretty well for almost one hundred years without a Vice Chancellor of Instruction at the District. I would think that we could go at least a few more.”

     Sforza says that this is an “epic battle” between professors and administrators and that it will continue. Probably so.
     But, for now at least, faculty have prevailed. Recently, NOCCCD Chancellor Ned Doffoney—as President of Saddleback College in the mid-90s, he was a casualty of the ruthless and lawless Frogue/Williams board majority—met with the faculty union president. Then things seemed to change. The hiring process seemed to be put on hold.
     Nevertheless, faculty went ahead with a protest at the district BOT meeting on Tuesday night.
     Doffoney backed down. On Tuesday, he made a statement:

“Due to the sudden resignation of Vice Chancellor Kathleen Hodge, the District advertised the position, Interim Vice Chancellor, Instruction, as an assignment for a period of eleven months. … [The] purpose [of this hire] was not made clear in the announcement or in subsequent communications and that lack of clarity has created uproar in the District. There is significant concern in the District about unjustified expansion of administration. While this was never the intent of the interim announcement in that the position was already filled by Dr. Hodge, this intent has been lost in confused communication for which I accept full responsibility. ¶ … The Board did not authorize, nor did the administration request the hiring of a permanent Vice Chancellor….”

     If I understand him correctly, Doffoney was suggesting that someone was needed to complete work on the “Educational Master Plan,” and the interim VCI was supposed to be that person. In his Tuesday statement, he declared that, in the “charged” atmosphere, hiring an internal candidate for the position was a bad idea. And so he withdrew his request for an interim VC of Instruction.
     Is this the end of the struggle? It’s hard to say.
     No doubt SOCCCD trustee Tom Fuentes and his minions will cite this controversy to support their apparent efforts to prevent the creation of a dean position at Irvine Valley College—a position that had been abolished in the early days of that nasty old Board Majority in the late 90s. (See earlier post, which reviews the case in favor of the position.)
     At Monday's meeting of the SOCCCD board, board president Don Wagner alluded to dark motives on the part of Fuentes and crew. He warned that, if the minority prevails, the district could face serious "legal challenges."
     On Monday, advocates of the new position, which would be housed in the Office of Instruction, made a strong case that the addition of the new administrator is needed because IVC is seriously under-administered and, further, recently, an administrative position has been abolished, its responsibilities having been effectively absorbed by an existing dean (the Dean of Fine Arts).
     My own observations over the years have long inclined me to believe that the "under-administered" assertion is manifestly true. I've made that assertion in DtB, going back many years, even before the current VPI (under whom the proposed dean would serve) was hired.
     (Yet another issue in the minds of some observers at the college is whether IVC administration is, or will be, proceeding with a particular candidate in mind. [Note that such proceeding admits of degrees.] Many of us feel strongly that all search processes ought to be as honest and professional as possible. I completely agree [an understatement!], and I share these concerns to some extent, but it seems to me that that issue is independent of whether IVC administration should be allowed this dean position.)

Streaming hostility

     To see “streaming video” of the SOCCCD board’s brief descent—re the proposed IVC dean position—into naked and fabulous hostility (at Monday's board meeting), follow these simple directions:

• Click here.

• Then click on the Video link for the July 26 board meeting.

• The “player” should then come up. If so, you can easily “jump to” item 6.5. Voila!

(Mac users, you might have best results with Firefox. The discussion of 6.5 occurs very late in the meeting.)