Meeting of the Representative Council
September 01, 2016
KS (Academic Senate Prez Kathy Schmeidler) introduced guests.
Good grief! It looked like every administrator and manager at the college was in attendance! What gives?
The answer: they were there as part of an effort to respond to item 15, “Production Policy Proposal.” The proposal is Steve Rochford’s “FU” (or push-back) to Diane Oakes and Co.—they of the storied incompetence/high-handedness/arrogance. You know the story.
According to Steve’s proposal, its “purpose … is to de-centralize processes and define boundaries of authority for decision-making [re production/publication].” Because various published items “represent our classes, programs and students directly,” their content, he wrote, “are the responsibility of the disciplinary faculty and reside under the provisions of Academic Freedom.”
Now, in fact, Steve had not had time to run his proposal by the members of his School, and, somehow, the agenda misdescribed it as originating with the School of “The Arts” and not just Steve. So Steve spoke with the cabinet just before the meeting started, asking that the item be pulled/postponed until he could speak with his colleagues. Quietly, they agreed to do so.
Meanwhile, Diane and Co. were there, ready, I suppose, to defend the status quo, production-wise. Unfortunately (or amusingly), the decision to postpone the item until the next meeting was not announced until well into the meeting, when we got to the item. As a consequence, Diane and her Oakesters sat there in B209 for nothing.
I bet they were steamed.
Our new “interim” VPI, Christopher McDonald, was present and introduced himself. We’re in the “midst of an accreditation self-study,” he said, so folks “won’t see a lot of me in the next 4-6 weeks.” He said something about how he will work closely with Kathy, blah blah blah.
You know about McDonald. He was with the Office of Institutional Effectiveness down at Saddleback College, and he seemed to be well liked by faculty down there. But, I’m told (not sure how reliable this is), a few months ago, Saddleback Prez Tod Burnett assembled his administrators and managers and demanded that they sign a loyalty oath. (IVC veterans will recall that Raghu Mathur once made a similar move back in 1997. He assembled all School Chairs and then, pounding his finger on the table, he proclaimed, “Disloyalty will not be tolerated!”)
At Burnett’s special meeting, two underlings refused to salute. McDonald was one of them. Burnett was furious. McDonald was banished to IVC (this summer).
Just about then, our own Craig Justice, long-time IVC VPI, surprised everyone by suddenly deciding to retire asap. For reasons unknown to me, administration then decided to appoint McDonald as the interim VPI. HR then interceded, explaining that the appointment was seriously unkosher. They’d have to go through a formal search process. So they hastily threw a process together and, interestingly, it produced the appointment of—you guessed it, McDonald.
(After today’s meeting, referring to these curious events, I said to Kathy, “This doesn’t look good.” Her response: “It looks terrible.”)
A few minutes into today’s meeting, I asked Kathy about these odd events—in particular, McDonald’s initial “appointment,” followed by the hasty search process, followed by, again, McDonald’s appointment. I asked: Was there something irregular or problematic about it all? Kathy then carefully explained what happened: administration was careful to dot every I and cross every T, but the process was certainly problematic. In her view, it should have been “open and inclusive and consultative,” but it was anything but that. In the end, she said, a “mystery group” interviewed the candidates for the interim VPI position, and that yielded the appointment of McDonald.
Kathy reported that several actions taken by administration during the summer failed to allow discussion and consultation by governance groups (Academic Senate, et al.). Administration’s excuse? Faculty are not around for the summer. In fact, however, Kathy was indeed around for the summer, with the exception of two weeks.
Not for the first time, we were noting a grand failure of transparency and process by this administration.
Someone asked: are we going to do something about this? Kathy briefly explained the difficulty of doing more than we’ve already done over the years. We briefly discussed how the Senate might “up the ante” in our efforts to address Administration’s opaque and unilateral ways. Nothing definite was identified.
During public comments, I explained that a colleague had alerted me to a situation: students in the Writing Center and other centers on campus routinely print their work, but they must pay for the privilege. As things stand, they can do so only with a credit or debit card. The colleague noted that some of our students do not own such cards, and so this won’t do.
Budget guy Davit K (one of the many administrators/managers present) explained that soon (six weeks?) a “cash machine” will be installed in the Library, and that should take care of the problem. There was a fair amount of discussion about this, but the upshot is that students without cards will be able to pay for printing anywhere on campus.
We should keep an eye on this.
VP for Student Services, Linda Fontanilla, addressed the group. She said something about how we were “supporting the accreditation process fully.” Managers are “here today,” she said, to “get to know the Senators.”
Yeah.
The often solipsistic Ilknur Erbas White of Math carped about “parking fees.” Since she’s been at the college, she said, the fees have increased “exponentially.” Why so expensive? Where does the money go? WTF!?
Senators talked about that for a while. The fees go to pay for the police department and parking services. The fee amount is a product of negotiations, and the Senate is not involved. Ilknur carped anew about bringing guests and the cost of parking for them. She was advised to go to the parking office to get a pass.
Music’s Steve Rochford commented on the May “Ear” event at the PAC. It is great to have that publication back, he said. Both it and this event were “classy,” he added.
He then noted, nastily, that someone—yours truly—had covered the event by taking photographs, a dig at the Oakesters, who, of course, failed to cover the event in any way. I sensed their steaming and writhing behind us. Ghastly.
Cheryl stated that the library has “back copies” of the Ear, though some are tattered and even disintegrating.
The President of the district’s chapter of CSEA (California School Employees Association), Scott Greene, addressed the group, talking up the importance of conflict resolution. It is important, he said, to nip conflicts in the bud before they escalate and go out of control. “Micro-agression,” he said, “can affect all of us!”
Kathy seemed pleased to hear from Scott and his organization.
Eventually, we got to actual agenda items, including item 7, board policy revisions. Kathy reminded us of recent efforts to improve the policy concerning the hiring of full-time faculty. Next, we need to address problems with the existing policy for the hiring of administrators and managers. Unfortunately, a revision draft (?) is languishing at the office of VC (of HR, etc.) David Bugay’s office. An effort will be made to motivate Bugay to do something with it but nobody’s holding their breath.
There’s a move afoot to revise 4011.6—regulations for hiring the Chancellor. The district examined it long ago—as a result of successful litigation by the Academic Senate against the board back in c. 2000—but nobody’s done anything with it since, and our circumstances are now much improved (tyrant-wise). It’s time for a change.
A workgroup, including Schmeidler and Interim Chance Fitzsimons is being formed for that purpose.
Briefly: here’s how the rest of the meeting went.
Item 16: “Saddleback College Academic Senate and IVC Academic Senate have been collaborating during academic year 2015-2016 to explore adopting CANVAS as their Learning Management System….”\
The resolution simply asserts that its up to each Senate how they approach the LMS. It’s just a statement of respect.
It passed. (The issue of whether we will be switching to Canvas? The switch is a done deal, said Roopa M. She assured us, however, that the transition to Canvas isn’t difficult.)
Item 12: IVC has been awarded a federal grant to become an Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI). The faculty principal investigator (PI) is Edwin Tiongson. Faculty input and participation is needed.
Edwin spoke: blah blah blah…. It all sounded good.
Item 17: Full-time Faculty Hiring Priority List Development Process (FTFPLDP)
KS: please everybody look at this, think about it. Do we want to take action quickly? Do we accept the idea of adding a Tier 4?
In brief: proposal ads a tier 4. Done by enumeration, a kind of algorithm. Some schools (Math, Hum) have a superabundance of part-timers, thus logistically find it difficult to find enough of them. Tier 1 and 2 involve proportions. It’s all proportional. Tier 4 has component that is not proportional. Math and Writing – we obviously need a large number of classes.
Someone, absurdly, motioned to adopt the edits. In the end, the group decided that Schools need more time to consider this change, and so we postponed the vote.
Attachment C
Item 18: Final Exam Schedule
Surprisingly, Miriam Castroconde and her Math colleagues advocated to return to the non-traditional approach that we abandoned not long ago. Things have changed, she now says, and there is no way to set up a traditional finals week that isn’t overburdened with conflicts.
Some urged some delay on the vote to allow for more discussion in the schools. That’s what we did.
I should say that Miriam’s arguments seemed to prevail. It does look like we’ll be returning to a finals schedule in which finals week is simply another week of class with the same class times.
Item 19: Mega-Outreach
You’ll recall that, a couple of years ago, Linda Fontanilla spearheaded a mega-outreach that entailed bringing plates of cookies to businesses. Well, we’re not doing that anymore. We were asked to support the new and improved meta-outreach effort, sans cookies.
At some point, Diana Hurlbut carped about something. All I heard was, it “makes my Hurlbut tight.”
Dunno.
Item 21: please read the mission statement. Here it is, I guess:
Irvine Valley College offers clear and guided pathways to transfer, certificates, associate degrees, employment and further education to a diverse and dynamic local and global community. We support student access, success, and equity. IVC fosters economic and workforce development through strategic partnerships with business, government, and educational networks.
Item 24: Chancellor Hiring Process
The district is hiring a consulting firm. We briefly discussed who would be on the search committee. One faculty member from each Senate. A Faculty Association rep. Didn’t sound too awful.
Item 26: College Open Forum Content
“College leadership would like to develop an open forum that the college community finds useful. Suggestions for content and timing/venue are requested.”
Several senators expressed their low regard of these events.
