Pizza Czar?

Excerpt from an email sent from President Drieth to JALC employees:

“At last night’s Board of Trustee’s meeting, Trustee Bill Kilquist said he would no longer vote for approval of college expenditures as long as the college continued to spend “so much money on travel and pizza.” He said he wanted one person to ultimately approve travel so there was accountability. 

As the President, I agreed to accept that role. Until further notice, all out-of-state travel must be approved by the President. 

 I will be studying the pizza data to determine if our consumption merits a new policy.”

People are losing their jobs and Trustee Kilquist is worried about pizza?  It is that lack of vision and insight that helped get JALC into this mess in the first place. Just what higher education needs – pizza data!

The education part won't suffer?

“  …I do not feel that the education part itself is going to suffer."  What does the John A. Logan College Board of Trustees Chairman mean by this?

In the January Board of Trustees meeting, the Board, under the leadership of Jake Rendleman, had the opportunity to cut almost $100,000 in college expenses without firing any fulltime faculty or staff.  Before a packed house, and after some articulate and passionate speeches, the Board decided to table the issue.  By tabling the golf issue, Mr. Rendleman, and the Board, gave a pass to the golf team, but set up the firing of full time faculty, who contribute to the College’s core mission: Teaching!

Not to pick on the golf team, but the central question is:  does the John A Logan Board of Trustees choose the sports programs, and the Community Health Education Complex over its core mission of providing an accessible quality education to residents of Southern Illinois?

On its January 28 newscast, WSIL-TV reported, “The chairman of John A. Logan College's board is revealing even he was surprised that the men's and women's golf coaches weren't informed until Saturday that their program was on the chopping block.” It’s hard to believe that Jake Rendleman was surprised.  He starts almost every day of the week at John A Logan College at the Community Health Education Complex.  After he works out, he then goes to the John A Logan Administration offices and wants to know what’s going on.  Can anyone really believe that Jake Rendleman didn’t know about the golf team’s dismissal?  Rendleman was first elected to a 6 year term in 1997.  He has already served 18 years on the Board of Trustees; one would think that by now he knew everything there is to know about the college.

Jake Rendleman is running for reelection to the John A Logan Board of Trustees.  In the meantime, tonight, the Board has a choice to make.  Education? Or, sports and the Community Health Education Complex?

The quality of Logan's courses is something that won't be cut, the Chairman insists. We’ll soon see.

It's a snow day

It's a snow day at SIU, John A. Logan and the local schools.  A good day to catch up with some old newspapers.  JALC Board member, John Sanders, had a letter published in the Southern Illinoisan, last week.  Mr. Sanders points out that the Board could have handled the proposed abolition of the golf program a little better.

He also responds to the Southern's opinion that the Board must "demand" a comprehensive plan from the administration.  That reminds us that, at the last BOT meeting (when it became obvious that the golf cut was turning into a fiasco), a member (not Sanders) complained that the Board needed better leadership from the administration.  Is that a fair complaint?

And... we're back!

Two short years ago, we created this blog as a way to share our observations on some interesting goings-on in, and around, Williamson County.  We quickly got fixated on the culture and governance of John A. Logan College, as it was at the start of the election season for the open JALC Board of Trustees seats.

Well, it's election time again.  So, we've roused ourselves, mid-winter, to take a look around.  And just in time, too!  There is controversy regarding the Community Health and Education Complex, a related budgetary emergency, and elbow throwing as the taste of fear is in many mouths.  Tuesday morning, readers of the Southern Illinoisan woke up to this unsigned editorial, the Voice of the Southern:  Golf.  An unsigned editorial is a big deal.  It's not the individual ravings of a staff writer given some space to fill, but the institutional position of the paper.  Logan got called out.  In chronological order the column relates a quick series of contradictory events that set a program up on a pedestal, invited prospective student athletes to participate and then nearly killed the program.

For those unfamiliar with the events, they are well summarized in the Southern's editorial.  For more background, see the news articles that preceded:  Logan golfers land Hamlton County's Vaughn, Golf standouts to be induced into Logan's Hall of Fame and JALC Board tables vote to cut golf.  

Five days later, there was this:  Logan women's golf signs Effingham twins.  School board elections of any kind tend to be boring.  This one won't be.