The Board Apostate
A new blog by ASYC President Juan Cervantes
Juan Cervantes
Issue date: 2/8/10 Section: Opinion
All of the commotion going on regarding the college got me thinking about how important a name is. Yuba Community College, that middle part seems to finally be kicking in and making people accountable.
The Community owns the college district. Through local elections seven community members have been elected to be trusted with governing the institution on behalf of the community. That Board of Trustees have sought out and hired a Chancellor with a background in higher education to aid them in making the best decisions for the college district. Beneath the Chancellor are the presidents of each of the two colleges who report directly to the Chancellor; they are responsible for managing the day to day operations of their colleges. Beneath them it gets complicated, but for the sake of this blog, those are the important characters in this particular show.
Our college is in a tough spot financially. We get most of our funding from the state and the state is broke. Recently lay off notices were given to our staff resulting in lost services. Talk around the administration seems to be that faculty will be getting lay off notices before March. Our college used to serve between 9,000 and 10,000 students, but we're now around the 8,000 mark.
Recently our Board was caught giving the Chancellor a $30,000 raise in what seems to be a blatant violation of the Brown Act. They had a special meeting to deal with the outcry from the community. That meeting basically amounted to them saying, "we could have handled this better." The Board seems to be handling situations like that a lot lately. They then proceeded to dance around how and when it would be appropriate to give Chancellor Harrington a raise. How about when we're not laying people off and turning away students?
Yesteryear they would have gone through with the raise. They would have bullied their way into getting what they wanted. We saw that in the way they handled their travel budget, or rather didn't. Today is a different day. Students are rallying, the community is paying attention, and the Trustees are now having to work a little for their pay. It's imperative that this continues. This Wednesday the 10th of February is the Board Meeting. It will be held at the Woodland Campus, and a rally will be held at 3 PM prior to the meeting. It's imperative that we continue to show the Board that we won't be dismissed, and that this institution is important to the community. We will not allow it to be leeched upon.
The Community owns the college district. Through local elections seven community members have been elected to be trusted with governing the institution on behalf of the community. That Board of Trustees have sought out and hired a Chancellor with a background in higher education to aid them in making the best decisions for the college district. Beneath the Chancellor are the presidents of each of the two colleges who report directly to the Chancellor; they are responsible for managing the day to day operations of their colleges. Beneath them it gets complicated, but for the sake of this blog, those are the important characters in this particular show.
Our college is in a tough spot financially. We get most of our funding from the state and the state is broke. Recently lay off notices were given to our staff resulting in lost services. Talk around the administration seems to be that faculty will be getting lay off notices before March. Our college used to serve between 9,000 and 10,000 students, but we're now around the 8,000 mark.
Recently our Board was caught giving the Chancellor a $30,000 raise in what seems to be a blatant violation of the Brown Act. They had a special meeting to deal with the outcry from the community. That meeting basically amounted to them saying, "we could have handled this better." The Board seems to be handling situations like that a lot lately. They then proceeded to dance around how and when it would be appropriate to give Chancellor Harrington a raise. How about when we're not laying people off and turning away students?
Yesteryear they would have gone through with the raise. They would have bullied their way into getting what they wanted. We saw that in the way they handled their travel budget, or rather didn't. Today is a different day. Students are rallying, the community is paying attention, and the Trustees are now having to work a little for their pay. It's imperative that this continues. This Wednesday the 10th of February is the Board Meeting. It will be held at the Woodland Campus, and a rally will be held at 3 PM prior to the meeting. It's imperative that we continue to show the Board that we won't be dismissed, and that this institution is important to the community. We will not allow it to be leeched upon.
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