A college of the Redwoods trustee has alleged that the Academic Senate violated California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act, by holding secret meetings. The salvo is part of an ongoing dispute between the professors and the trustees over budget cuts. -db
The North Coast Journal
June 24, 2010
By Ryan Burns
Truett says the professors voted outside their regularly scheduled, publicly noticed meetings to endorse a CR budget proposal that limits enrollment. Truett objects not only to the alleged secrecy of the vote but to the vote itself. In a letter sent to the Journal offices along with copies of his letter to Gallegos, Truett suggests that the Academic Senate acted selfishly at the expense of students.
“Yes, these are tough fiscal times,” Truett writes, “but should students be cut first?”
This is the latest riposte in the nasty academic sword fight that has been raging between faculty and staff on the one side and President Jeff Marsee and the CR Board of Trustees on the other. (Even students have gotten into the fray.) Faculty and staff have accused Marsee of tyranny and the Board of being asleep at the wheel. Marsee and the Board have countered that faculty leadership has grandiose notions about the extent of their governing powers. Meanwhile, the school has been ordered by its sanctioning body, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, to get these roles and responsibilities straight by October, or its accreditation might be in jeopardy.
Calls to Gallegos and Academic Senate Co-president David Holper were not immediately returned Thursday afternoon.