Shame on SWC administration for its self-serving priorities

Watching Southwestern's Governing Board cut 26 percent of the college's spring classes was tough. Watching student protesters relegated to a postage-stamp-size patio was also tough.

Watching the disrespectful treatment meted out to some faculty for defending students was really tough. But watching the college's unbridled spending over the last four months, after turning away thousands of students from classes, has been unbearable.
Students on this campus need to get mad.

Money that would have funded more classes is being spent on consultants, administrative travel, sabbaticals, envelopes, food, self-help seminars, consortiums, pensions and, of course, lawyers.

While the college is about to begin a summer session that has the least classes in SWC history, it is hiring an $11,500 "snack-bar consultant." It is also spending $122,000 for a technology consultant that many on campus do not agree with and that the state accreditation commission has advised against.

Both of these consultants seem strange to spend money on since the college already pays a hefty salary to a Director of Food Service and a Director of Computer Systems and Services.

The SWC governing board recently agreed to send six professors on one-year sabbaticals for $57,000 and to extend the $900 contract to their personal board-meeting referee, a parliamentarian they say they need because they cannot control their own meetings.

From November through the first week of March the college paid at least $99,468 on consultants for the college pension plan, technology, fiscal services and human resources. During the same period, SWC also paid at least $45,742 in legal expenses.

This all and more only a month after the college couldn't find $1.5 million to fund 429 classes this spring. VP for Business and Financial Affairs Nicholas Alioto said the college could not spare the money. It seems lawsuits and consultants were more important than holding classes at Southwestern College. The SWC board refused to touch its $6 million contingency reserve. Faculty, who have been at war with Superintendent Dr. Raj K. Chopra ever since he accepted a "lousy" $15,000 raise in 2008, refused to discuss a pay cut, especially when Chopra was laying off workers and hiring administrators.

The only option, supposedly, was for the college to cut classes. But obviously the college wasn't living as close to the bone as administrators wanted us to believe. Between February and March, Alioto's office was billed $4,084 for self-help leadership workshops. It seems the training forgot to tell him that the primary function of a school is to hold classes.
But it is not just Alioto. Every interest group on this campus is in some way guilty for the spring debacle.

One of the most recent attacks on classes is coming now from the very office that is supposed to support students—The Office of Student Services. Vice President Dr. Angelica Suarez recently negotiated a sweet deal for her building full of employees. They will get the $1.5 million that was supposed to be spent on classes this spring. (Yes, after all of the cuts, the $1.5 million is sitting in the campus coffers alongside the board's $6 million reserve.) The deal is still in the works, but Student Support Services, which receives funding from the state in a separate pot of money that can only be used for specific programs, will now be funded with the money that comes from local property tax and student fees—the money meant for academics.

So the administrators get their consultants, the faculty get their sabbaticals, the student support services get their funding. The rest of us get the scraps.

Students services are needed. They serve people with very important financial and disability needs, but does $13,477 have to be spent on ARCO Gas Cards for EOPS? Does $50,000 need to be spent on interpreting services through the DSS? Is there not some kind of compromise that can be had?

SWC, like other county colleges, should have cut no more than 10 percent of its classes this spring. The college should have held back some of the money it invested in its pension plan. Chopra should have given back his $15,000 raise and been more cordial with his employees, then maybe they would have discussed a pay cut—which they should have done. Consultant work should have been handled internally. Yearly step-and-column raises should have been suspended.

None of this happened. Students took the budget cuts full on the head.
And after taking student fees, the student government sent only six students to Sacramento to protest cuts. It should have sent busloads. The SWC ASO Senate took not one action against administration until it voted for a limp resolution calling for everyone on campus to come together two weeks before the end of the spring semester. It seems some of our elected student officials were more interested in getting a reference letter from Chopra than for speaking up for the students who elected them.

Southwestern College students, no one is going to watch out for your interests except for you and it is time for you to get mad. It is time the students pushed back. SWC's Governing Board meets at the National City Higher Education Center on June 9 and then at the Chula Vista campus in Room 214 on July 14, Aug. 11, Sept 8, Oct. 13 and Nov.10. Show up and tell them cutting classes is unacceptable.

Believe it or not, the board works for us, especially those of us who vote. In November we may have to take matters into our own hands.

Because, until the students of this campus stand up for their interests, they will continue to see their education parceled out to the self-interests of others. But, hey, at least we'll have a spiffy Frito snack bar.