Board Considering Massive Misstep?

The Illuminator has learned, and has confirmed from a second reliable source with reason to know, that the Edison Community College Board of Trustees plans to issue a statement of support for KY. This support will purportedly be based on the assumption that on March 27, 2009 Academic Senate voted no confidence in KY's leadership (44-1-5) in order to preempt an impending attempt by KY to renegotiate--downward, of course--faculty pay and benefits.

Faculty learned of KY's dastardly plan on April 9, 2009, two weeks following its vote of no confidence. It is temporally impossible for the first to have predicated the latter. Such is the illogic and madness passing for leadership at Edison these days. Neither date nor time matters, nor the fundamental workings of the English language. What matters is power, fear and intransigence.

Consider also the basic difference in the way Edison's administration views this crisis, in opposition to Academic Senate and how the two views exemplify the character of the adversaries to the conflict.

The Senate voted no-confidence because as student-centered professionals, they resented KY's increasingly erratic decisions, typified by the Edison HR Columbine, which have made it almost impossible to perform their jobs: to provide our students with the best education possible.

Meanwhile, KY and his praetorian guard assume greed and bad-faith. They assert The Senate voted no confidence to protect its economic interests--essentially hitting the administration back first--before the administration could ask the faculty to underwrite with their livelihoods KY's cataclysmic failure to plan (as well as the preservation of his exorbitant salary and perks). KY himself tells us his only concern is the "behavior on this campus," by which he could only mean the Edison community's increasingly fearless stance on critical issues affecting our college. Notice that students rank nowhere near his pridehurt shock at the extent of resentment and resistance on this campus. The clearest reference to Edison's students in his recent rant was to call them names and denigrate their intelligences. This misreading of the mood at Edison reflects KY's growing isolation and irrelevance, which he brought upon himself, aided, of course, by his cabal of overpaid, undereducated, and generally malevolent advisors.

Freud called that projection. Brad Reed called it tragic. It would appear--and we at The Illuminator hope we have been misled--that our Board of Trustees will call it standard operating procedure.

Who will end this misery? Only one card need be pulled, and this whole rickety house will fall.

Tick tock, tick tock.