AMNESIA

The John A. Logan College Board of Trustees met last night.  To observe the meeting, or to read the Southern Illinoisan article about it, you would think few, if any, in the Logan community have a sense of history.  Last night was the last meeting for student trustee Christina Lipe.  It was one year ago that then student trustee Brandi Husch, at her last board meeting, exposed the Board as cowards and sneaks.  As readers may recall, Ms. Husch was cut off by Board chair Don Brewer when reading her farewell statement.  In that statement, she attempted to charge that a Board member, in closed session, had attempted to intimidate her with a dossier of incidents in her pre-student life.  The video, if you've forgotten or not seen it, is here.  It has been viewed over 9,600 times on various platforms.  No mention of the incident, or Ms. Husch, was made last night. 

Absent were Board members Bill Kilquist and Jake Rendleman.  Absent also was any sense of outrage on the part of the unions, given that the massacre of staff took place just 12 months ago.  The representatives of the full time faculty, part time faculty and operational staff all seemed to fall all over themselves making nice with the Board. 

The Southern Illinoisan apparently had a reporter present as they reported on a (single) item from the meeting, the bond issue.  No article appeared after the previous meeting, when former history professor Helen Nall made a plea for the reinstatement of history professor David Cochran.  That meeting also saw former psychology professor Gary Caldwell read a letter from 13 retired faculty expressing their lack of confidence in President Ron House and the Board of Trustees.  It was met with silence from the region's major news sources. 

Last night, Mr. Caldwell spoke again.  He asked several questions regarding the upcoming Higher Learning Commission visit.  Among them:  Will there be an opportunity for the public, faculty and students to address the visiting HLC team?  Caldwell finally managed to extract a 'yes'.  Will the date, time and place be posted, in adequate time?  This answer was fuzzy.  Vice President Melanie Pecord repeatedly said, "It's on Announce.  ...It will be on Announce."  Announce is apparently a listserv for faculty and staff, a wholly inadequate means of communicating with students or the public. The consensus, eventually, was that it will be on the Board website. 

Caldwell also took the opportunity to point out that Shawnee College is advertising for two full time history professors.  He found it ironic that such a small school could hire two, while John A. Logan has no full time history teachers.  Chairman Brewer's response was that he found it ironic that Shawnee, with 80% part time faculty, could afford to hire full time teachers.  He ignored any reference to the College, for which he is Board chair, and the fact that his school now has zero full time history teachers. 

We will close with a quote from the school's press release.  It assumes you have no access to a newspaper or the internet. 

Brewer noted that last year was a difficult time with layoffs within the College, but, he said, most community colleges in Illinois had to layoff more employees than JALC did because of the state’s budget statement. “No one wants layoffs, but when there is no other choice, you want those layoffs to be as limited as possible,” Brewer said. “We survived very well compared to other colleges.”