Keep the Community Alive in Community College
- A Blog about Fullerton College -

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Ho`omaika`i

It means "congratulations" in Hawaiian, where Larry Buckley, Fullerton College's Dean of Instruction, earned his advanced degrees.

I never learned the whole story, but apparently his job was in some jeopardy but has been salvaged. I've never met the man, but I've heard only good things about him, so I guess it's a good thing that he's still among us.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Get a Room -- A Locker Room

Did you know that cops sometimes wear garters that hold their socks up by attaching them to their shirts?

I know because I see police academy students dressing on the roof of the campus parking structure. No nudity, you understand. Just the occasional unexpected man in boxers. One of them said this is where they've been told to change. Before the structure was built, they got ready for class in a parking lot.

I'm not going to tell you which parking structure or when, but it's been going on for a while, and it's taken me a while to figure out what I think about it.

Finally I realized that coming around the back of my van and finding a guy reaching into his open fly to adjust... well, whatever it is guys do adjust ... pisses me off.

No, I'm not mad at the guy. I'm pretty sure it wasn't his idea. He's just going along to get along.

And I wasn't shocked or embarrassed or titillated. Just pissed off.

I'm way too old for this.

I'm too old to put up with second-class treatment just because I'm a student. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? I mean, the guys who are changing are students and the people who park in the structure are students. Someone has decided that behavior that wouldn't be tolerated in another public place is perfectly ok if it's just a bunch of students who are affected.

I don't think the practice shows much respect for me or for the students who are changing their clothes in public.

Have I got this wrong? Is stripping to your boxers while standing next to your car in a parking lot pretty much routine these days? What do you think?

California's Budget - How Long Will It Last?

California legislators finally pulled it all together and passed a budget last week, but it may come unraveled -- again! -- and pretty quickly at that.

This year's budget, which covers from June 2008 through June 2009, wasn't approved till September, a jaw-grinding 85 days late, and then it fell swiftly apart. By December it was so out of balance the governor called a fiscal state of emergency and convened a special session of the legislature... which then haggled till last week when it finally approved a plan covering the rest of this fiscal year and next year as well.

But will it last? Is the California budget in good shape for the next year-and-a-half?

Maybe not so much. There's been no real long-term fix. The state is depending on borrowed money, more stimulus money than the Department of Finance says we're likely to get, and a sale of bonds that depends on voter approval in May.

And even if we can borrow everything we want, get all the economic recovery money we need, and sell those bonds, those are all short-term fixes. We're still at sea in a leaky boat, bailing for all we're worth.

Fred Williams, finance guru at the Chancellor's office, uses terms like "smoke and mirrors" and "house of cards" and "How long can they keep this up?" when explaining the budget.

Sooner or later we need to head for dry dock and fix the damn boat.

Here's a good source of information: The California Budget Project.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Larry Buckley, Administrator of the Year

At its last meeting on Thursday Fullerton College's faculty senate voted to give their first annual Administrator of the Year award to Larry Buckley, Vice President of Instruction.

A faculty award for administration is not a totally predictable move. As Ken Collins, faculty senate president, said, "We tend to do battle with administrators."

Nor is it typical to create an award and choose the first recipient all in one meeting. Usually there's a proposal to make an award, a vote on the proposal, an announcement that nominations are being accepted, time for names to be received and studied by a subcommittee, followed by a vote of the senate.

Collins explained why faculty should offer this first award without the usual preliminaries: "We do have a situation that I think Larry in particular could benefit greatly from receiving this if it was awarded and that was sort of why we're rushing at this time."

The situation was never explained in the open meeting. What situation? Why the rush?

Collins did say he'd talked to some members before the meeting, and in fact Buckley was nominated by Jennifer Combs, curriculum chair, before Collins mentioned his name. It looked like an orchestrated move.

The closest I got to an explanation on the record was the suggestion that more information would be forthcoming at the next board meeting Tuesday night.

To be continued...

Back to School

At the age of 60 I somewhat impulsively decided to return to college. I've got a degree and more academic experience than one degree would imply, but I never found work I liked with the skills I had, and after some years of retirement those skills were rusty anyway. I needed a skill-set makeover.

So here I am listening to teachers young enough to be my children. They look out over an audience of mostly youthful faces and say things like, "You are the wave of the future."

It's a little weird.

These are my impressions, the events that have caught my eye, the issues that intrigue me.