UPM newletter

Ponderings of the President

By Ira Lansing

WARNING: THIS COLUMN contains innuendoes and quotes that some may claim have been taken out of context. I let the statements speak for themselves, but welcome an explanation from those cited.

Like many who have chosen education as their profession, I would imagine that there was some individual person or life experience that moved you in the direction of your major and eventually into the classroom as an instructor (if there is anyone out there who decided to teach because there was nothing else to do, I would be curious to hear your story). My own path began with my high school Advanced Placement Calculus teacher, Kathy Layton. While I was always somewhat mathematically inclined, Ms. Layton communicated to me many of the wonders of mathematics, and she did so in a way that convinced me that she was not asking me to do anything she herself would not also do. Given the workload of that class, this perception was encouraging and supportive.

Kathy Layton put me firmly on the road with numbers, but it was a graduate school experience that moved me more in the direction of the classroom. I worked for a few years for the State funded program called Project SEED (Special Elementary Education for the Disadvantaged). This program trained mathematics graduate students to teach comparatively advanced mathematics to students from low income families. While the math was not pedagogically challenging, the style of teaching was. No student’s response to a question was ever wrong. At the very worst, it was the right answer to the wrong question. By that, I mean that if a student was asked “what is 2 times 3” and answered “5”, it fell upon me to respond that 5 was correct for the question: what is 2 plus 3. This type of instruction, with constant positive feedback, proved to be quite educational for everyone, myself included. This experience established a teaching style that I still try to utilize today.

Once I entered education as a career, my style and methods were constantly being refined. Perhaps one of my longer lasting influences is the performer George Carlin. Initially gaining fame as the “hippy-dippy weatherman,” whose routine seemed to be under the influence of something (and it was not the weather), Carlin eventually moved on to be what I would call an observer of life. He may have been the first person to note that the words “military intelligence” constitute an oxymoron. Other observations have focused on the pastoral nature of baseball (whose objective is to “go home”) versus the more militaristic disposition of football (whose jargon includes the “bomb” and the “blitz”). And under the heading of “how obvious, but...” George Carlin has questioned why it is called a “hot water heater,” if you are actually heating cold water. The message I perceive in all of Carlin’s routines, is to pay attention.

With that in mind, I offer the following observations, garnered from meetings of the College of Marin Board of Trustees. Let’s start with an easy warmup:

“There is no law that can tell me how to do my job as a trustee.”

- Trustee Barbara Dolan, March 8, 2005

Sorry Barbara, there is. There are - quite a few of them in fact. Now check out the following four statements. Perhaps the chronology is the answer to the question of where’s the money:

“The County is estimating a 5.38% increase in property taxes for 2005-06, which will produce an additional $1.6 million for the College.”

- Vice-President of Finance and Facilities, Al Harrison, February 8, 2005

“The College is below its requirement for the 50% Law. We are at about 48%.”

- Vice-President of Finance and Facilities, Al Harrison, [Later at the same meeting] February 8, 2005

“At the current rate of expenditure, we are projecting for the current fiscal year [2004-05] a surplus of about $637,000. This should go into the reserve to bring us back to 6% of the unrestricted budget.”

- Vice-President of Finance and Facilities, Al Harrison, March 8, 2005

“The money is not there; it has gone to salaries, benefits and supplies.”

- Vice-President of Finance and Facilities, Al Harrison, April 12, 2005

Did I miss something? Show me the money!

Maybe I did miss it, because Trustee Philip Kranenburg explained to the Marin Independent Journal (March 13, 2005) that “budget constraints prevented the college from granting raises this year.... The college was taking care to set aside savings for emergencies accounting for 5 to 6 percent of the college’s general fund budget.... The board wants to be fiscally sound and attract quality faculty and staff.”

Hmm, do I hear an oxymoron, or will our wonderful new facilities—should we all live so long to see them—be all that is needed to woo quality faculty and staff?

Here is my solution for those on the management side, working towards the holy grail of a budget reserve: Pick a number that makes you comfortable. What is the number for a “fiscally sound” (and I would add, “responsible”) reserve? You choose—5%, 6%, 10%. Pick something. Then anything above that percentage goes into our salary and benefits. It’s a win-win situation. You have a comfortable reserve; and I’m betting that State allocations and property taxes in Marin will go up annually. They have for the last two decades, at least. Every year the District receives more than the year before.

I don’t expect the phone to ring off the hook with details from management on how we can implement my proposal, but it sure would be nice. And it would also be reassuring to know that someone else out there besides George Carlin and myself is paying attention. What about you, dear reader? How much do you care? How much does it matter to you? Stay informed. Stay involved. If you don’t, you may find yourself impoverished, frustrated and professionally stymied. In fact, your entire existence may be reduced to pondering why it is we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway! Say goodnight, George.

Building Reps: A New

Resource

for Members

In an effort to better serve you, UPM has appointed building representatives to answer your questions, hear your concerns and provide updates on union issues, such as bargaining, as well as other hot topics.

The representatives are: Robert Kennedy (Business Center, ext. 7497), Deborah Graham ( Dance-Landscape, Fine Arts, Part-time faculty, deborah.graham@marin.cc.ca.us), Paul Christensen ( Dickson, Fusselman, ext 7635), John Sutherland (Harlan Center, ext. 7434), Arthur Lutz ( IVC Campus, ext. 8518), Carl Cox (Learning Resource Center, ext. 7423), Mike Ransom (Physical Education, ext. 7579), Ira Lansing ( Science Center, ext. 7531), Theo Fung ( Student Services, ext. 7389) Yolanda Van-Ecke (Part-tme faculty, yvanecke@mindspring.com)

Good Day Madam, I’m Adam Yaddoog

Last week, Robert, a student of mine who had missed many class meetings and who was very far behind in his work, asked me, “Can I attain a ‘C’?”

“Attain?” What a strange word to use, I thought. And then I remembered that Robert was a native French speaker, and so in my most pretentious Francophile accent I replied, “Non Bob, non.”

Robert’s question and my answer (as you may realize) constitute a little joke, because they are both palindromes – phrases or sentences that can be read the same, letter for letter, either forwards or backwards. (The title of this article is also a palindrome.) Perhaps the most famous palindrome was the one written to honor Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer who conceived the construction of the Panama Canal – ‘A man, a plan, a canal – Panama.’

There are thousands of palindromes. Examples are, ‘Sex at my gym taxes,’ or ‘Red Rum, sir, is murder.’ There are palindromes from ancient Greece and Rome and in dozens of foreign languages. And it is said that when Moses received the commandments on Mt. Sinai, they were received as palindromes, so they could be read either forward or backward or in mirror image.

Which brings me to my interest in this subject. Which is that palindromes are not mere word puzzles conceived by people who delight in literary ciphers. They have a deeper significance. They are an expression of peoples’ belief in the magical power of words – that if one can find a juxtaposition of words that is unique – then these words, and the people who create them, can wield great power. The ancient Hebrew Rabbis understood the power of words when they prohibited their followers from attempting to verbalize God’s name (Yahweh,) for fear that the sheer power of the Name would strike the congregant dead. And do you remember that Ishi, the last ‘wild’ Indian in California, refused to reveal his true name because he believed he would lose power if he did? (The word Ishi simply means ‘man’ in the Yahi language.)

Propagandists and zealots and evangelists understand the power of words and how they can effect change and mislead. So do poets and novelists. And as educators we should also understand the power of words and our responsibility to use them accurately and judiciously.

I think about all this when I read the words that President White repeatedly uses in her communications with our faculty – “Together we can make great things happen.”

What is unfortunate about this string of words, is that it implies that great things are NOT currently happening at COM, and that the reason they are not happening is because our faculty is not working cooperatively with management.

I respectfully disagree. I believe that exceptional things ARE happening at our college. They are happening in our classrooms and in our library and in our counseling offices and in our Children’s Centers. And they are happening because of the professionalism and dedication and enthusiasm of our faculty. And they are happening despite the disarray and muddle and lack of leadership that exists within our administrative and managerial ranks. They are happening because of our faculty.

So perhaps our faculty should be proclaiming our own mantra:

“College of Marin Faculty – Making it Happen!”

Or as one colleague said to me ‘palindromically,’ in reference to the intimation that our faculty is uncooperative – “Dammit I’m Mad!”



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Connecting the Dots

Good Day Madam, I’m Adam Yaddoog