Week O' Whinin' 2010 continues: What un-fresh hell is this?

Yesterday morning just before 10:00, I noticed a nasty smell as I opened the door to my classroom. I teach in room G-207 and in front of the door of G-209 was a fresh pile of human excrement, strategically placed so it would be smeared when the people inside the classroom opened the door to get out. Laney College is one block away from Lake Merritt BART and there is a large contingent of homeless people there, and I have had enough encounters with them to know that some of them have serious mental and emotional problems. I assume it was one of them that left the present for our students and my colleague teaching in the room about five paces from mine.

I went across the courtyard to the Math Lab, G-201, to ask the faculty on duty to call custodial services. He told me they had already been alerted, and within the hour they were on the scene, doing the unpleasant but necessary work of cleaning up after crazy people on this campus.


It was near the time of the break in my first class, and some of my students sitting near the right wall were milling about. In a completely separate incident, we had an ant infestation in my classroom. I am at least partially responsible for this, as I have not been enforcing the no food rule as stringently as I should, and several of the football players in my noon statistics class eat sunflower seeds and don't clean up after themselves.

I caught up with the custodial crew who had finished cleaning up the outside mess to tell them about the mess in my room. They weren't sure who on campus would be in charge of killing ants.

Budget cuts are hurting all the campuses, but none is worse than Laney. We can blame crazy people for the nastiest part of yesterday's news, but the graffiti and torn up bathroom closed for weeks at a time come from students who just don't care about others and a custodial and maintenance staff that is undermanned. Our last chancellor Elihu Harris is a former mayor of Oakland, now with the Obama administration. The supervisors of our district paid him $250,000 a year salary. Someone doing some snooping in the budget found that he was given bonuses that came to another $54,000 on top of that for meeting certain goals. In other words, he got a quarter of a million dollars just for showing up, and if you wanted him to actually work, that would cost extra.

The people who could make a material improvement here at Laney don't cost that much, teachers and janitors and the like. But they get laid off and forced into work furloughs and pay cuts while the upper management rolls along making six figures as though it's business as usual.

Here's my four word solution for the troubles in our college district: chop from the top.

Week O' Whinin' 2010: Second post on grand theft

I work several jobs during the usual year, but right now the only work I am doing for pay is for the Peralta Community College District, the umbrella organization which includes Laney College. As I mentioned before, being an adjunct means the district gives you nine checks a year. They might have some small interest in how the 600 adjuncts that work for them pay the rent in July, August and September, but they really don't want to pry. If you are lucky like me, there's work in your department in the Summer session and that means a good size check at the end of July that might see you through to that next paycheck at the beginning of October. Still, there's that problem of the rent in July.

A few years back, the union for the part timers negotiated parity pay. In the Peralta District, that's a line item of $400,000 to be distributed to about 600 people, which means an average check between $600 to $700 at the beginning of July. I get a fair amount of hours during most years, and my parity pay check has been slightly above that average at around $900. This year, the Board of Supervisors at Peralta found a lawyer that thought he found a way to steal that money from us. No parity pay was distributed, with the excuse that it only had to be paid if it was a specific line item in the state budget. The Supervisors used the money for other worthy goals, I'm sure.

One small problem. Parity for all the community colleges WAS a line item in the last state budget passed. So now lawyers are involved, and we know they will get paid. How soon the 600 people who got robbed by their employer will get paid is an entirely different question.

The name "parity pay" is another ridiculous slap in the face. We are in no way at parity with the full time staff, who get twelve checks a year and fully paid medical insurance. We clamor for those full time jobs, but they usually only come open when a full timer retires or dies, and then guess who decides who will get to fill that position? The full timers.

I'd call the situation a fucking joke, but I don't hear anyone laughing.

Tomorrow, more about the priorities in the Peralta district, which means more reasons for me to whine.

Week O' Whinin' 2010: First post about theft

On Friday, I had both my bicycle wheels stolen in broad daylight in downtown Oakland. Of course, I was "asking for it" because I only chained the frame to the bike stand, not both wheels as well. The fact that I've been parking the bike like this in public for several years now is no excuse, according to the people who tell me I was asking for it.

So, I'm out about $200 today as I pick up my bike with two new wheels, tires, inner tubes and the gears for the rear tire. I'll also spring for an extra cable that will make it tougher for thieves to steal the tires.

I honestly don't feel I was asking for it. Bruce McCullough of Kids In The Hall very eloquently expresses how I feel about the situation.



Since the theft occurred in broad daylight on a busy street, Bruce also expresses my feelings about the people who might have seen the theft take place.



Tomorrow: I experience theft at a larger scale from people who allegedly know better.

Week O' Whinin': A biyearly tradition (sort of)

Image nicked from BobsOldPhones.net
Original owner: Brit Ericsson

Things have come to a pretty pass in many special ways, so I decided to devote a week to whining about them. There was a Week O' Whinin' back in the Spring of '08, but I have decided as Blogger in Chief that enough time has passed that I can have another one.

It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

The first whine is short but it involves customer service, so it just feels more special.

My internet service is working fine, but my phone over the VOIP was acting up. I was getting no dial tone when I picked up the phone, but it would ring, though I couldn't answer it. The answering machine could take a message. And then, even that wasn't working.

Very strange.

So I go online to Live Chat with a customer service rep for Earthlink, and I keep getting cut off. Six times I try, but soon enough I type stuff on my computer but it won't show up in the Live Chat window. Grr! The connection is still good, I can do other Internetty kinds of stuff, but not the Live Chat.

Finally, I get to the end of a conversation with someone who tells me the problem is my phone. I don't have another phone to check this premise, but I go to a neighbor and borrow their phone and plug it into my system and sure enough, Kenrick K. of Earthlink is right.

My current state of broke-assedness is bad but not awful (a whine later this week about that), but I am without my bicycle (a whine about that tomorrow). Luckily, there's a thrift store in walking distance, they had a phone for sale for $3.25, so I once again have the 21st Century convenience of the Internets and the 20th Century convenience of a land line.

Yay, convenience!

p.s. My old phone was not nearly as old as the old phone in the picture. But it also didn't look anywhere near as nice.