I'm privileged to have an ongoing correspondence with
former CCSF students who have become friends over the years. I call us the Anminiroti for Annie in France,
Minako in Japan, Nicole in the USA, Rosa in Spain, and me, Tina, right here and
trying to explain what's happening at City College of San Francisco, a school that meant and
still means a lot to these former
students in other parts of the world.
Back in the year 2000 we found out that Annie, who always
dressed like a Parisian model, got her clothes not in Paris Boutiques but at the Good Will Thrift Shop in San Francisco, so
I related the report of the severed body parts found at Good Will South of Market,
suggesting that this served as a metaphor for the plight of the Civic Center
Campus. This was after Civic Center Teachers were told on a
Friday afternoon, January 9, that they would not be teaching the following
Monday because their school was closing
for earthquake retrofitting. The
students didn't learn about this until Monday, January 12, when they showed up
for the classes scheduled there and were
met by teachers trying to explain the situation. At first these students, who are learning English
and need very clear explanations, were told that the classes would be held at
33 Gough, where the administrative
offices of City College are located. That
turned out not to be the case. Instead
the following month they were sent to the Chinatown/NorthBeach and Mission
centers.
The Anminiroti are more privileged than many, but four of
the five are teachers and very concerned
about the widening gap between the haves and have-nots. As Heather Knight reported last summer,
citing a report from the Human Services Agency, San Francisco now compares to
Rwanda in terms of the disparity in incomes.
The Tenderloin is an area NOT made up of the most privileged in that spectrum.
Now Steve Rubinstein is reporting on the missing
prosthetic limbs! The man whose
prosthetic leg was found turned out to
be a victim of thieves pushing his wheelchair to an area where they could rob him
of everything he had of value. They
later tossed his prosthetic leg.
Do you see what I mean by metaphoric?
(Actually, the first word that came to my mind was
metamorphic, and that might work too.)
I realize that some defense could be made for the
thieves--that they have been desensitized by a society that closes
schools. But the analogy I had in mind was that of the
Powers that Be as the pushers--not drug pushers, but pushers of those already
vulnerable out of the area in which they have some degree of security and help,
dismembering the student body.
I'm not antagonistic towards administrators. In fact,
I've always felt sorry for them and
wouldn't take their job no matter how high the pay. But I feel agony-bordering-on-antagonism over
this closure of the Civic Center Campus and the way it was handled, so only by
creating a new word can I express the antagony I how I feel. I'm agonistic.
Since the
accreditation of City College was threatened by the ACCJC in 2012, I've
attended a lot of rallies and board meetings, but one that stands out in my
mind is the one in October 2012 that went on until 1:30 in the morning. Faculty and staff had to wait until midnight
to be heard, and then they were told they would have one minute each to speak.
The person who first spoke was the head of the Social
Sciences Department and Department of Chairpersons Council , an instructor
whose History of San Francisco course I once audited--after (oh, my God!) I'd
already received a BA and MA from another institution. She's told, after waiting six hours, that
she'll have a minute to speak, and she responds, "Oh, come on! We've been waiting for six hours, and you
didn't have the courtesy to --" When
she's given two minutes, she shows them the reconfiguration of departments that
they've come up with without any faculty or student input and says, politely,
"As this appears here, it doesn't look like it could work."
This
statements made, available on audible with this link, show the importance of
input from faculty and staff. http://fog.ccsf.edu/~mantonic/HTMLPractice/BOT_Excerpts_102512_3.html
No comments:
Post a Comment