College Board Must Seek Unity

A majority of the seven trustees of the South Orange County Community College District often have appeared not to know how badly they were doing. Or if they knew, they seemed not to care. They gave the impression of lurching from problem to problem, antagonizing students, faculty and taxpayers.

Two recent developments have demonstrated the danger of the trustees’ course. In one, a judge chastised them for meeting behind closed doors when they should have met in public. In the other, an academic review team listed numerous problems at Saddleback Community and Irvine Valley colleges and warned they are jeopardizing Irvine Valley’s accreditation.

A little more than a week ago, Superior Court Judge Tully H. Seymour ruled that the trustees engaged in “persistent and definite misconduct� last year in ducking behind closed doors to consider district matters.

Only after complaints did trustees repeat in public what they had done in private. As a result, Seymour said the board was able to correct its wrongful actions, so he did not overturn its decisions.

However, Seymour’s ruling was more than “no harm, no foul.� He asked the county district attorney’s office to see if the board committed any crimes in not adhering to the Ralph M. Brown Act governing open meetings.

The judge also ordered the district to tape-record all its meetings for the next two years. That way, if complaints again arise that the board is doing in secret what it should do out in the open, the judge can go to the tape.

Last week came the release of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges’ two devastating reports, denouncing the way the trustees have governed the district for the last two years.

The commission said the district was “in crisis,� beset by bitter splits among the trustees, between teachers and the faculty union and between the two colleges. The commission pointed to a “sad, sad state of affairs� in the district, in part because trustees spend too much time interfering in day-to-day operations.

One trustee who has become famous outside district borders is Steven J. Frogue. Two years ago Frogue sought to host an on-campus seminar on the assassination of John F. Kennedy featuring a speaker who claims the Israeli secret service played a role in the killing. An attempt to recall Frogue failed to get enough signatures.

District trustees need to heed the judge and the commission, meet in public and let administrators handle the daily operations. The commission, composed of longtime community college educators from elsewhere in California, said students continue to get a good education. The board needs to take that positive and build on it, so that it can begin to unify rather than divide its constituencies.