OCC Commentary

Shakedown Street

Jon Larson allegedly has been shaking down contractors who work for OCC by pressuring them to contribute to The Foundation. Joe Reilly's lawsuit mentions several contractors by name and the amount of the contract that was awarded. Sunguard's contract was nearly $20 million dollars over five years. Employees of OCC allegedly were asked to participate in Larson's pay-to-play scheme by being forced to ask the contractors for the payola.

When money is allegedly donated to The Foundation as a form of payola, then where does this money wind up? Are we to assume that this cash made its way entirely into student scholarships and other student sponsored activities? Does a guy who is willing to shakedown contractors do so with the best of intentions? Is Jon Larson a modern-day Robin Hood?

There needs to be an independent audit of OCC's books and of The Foundation's books. We need to "follow the money" in order to see where it lands. It seems as if college presidents are dropping like flies lately. May Jon Larson be the next to fall.

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Whereas, the OCC Board of Trustees (BoT) found it necessary to waste the taxpayers' money by paying an attorney to draft a resolution; and

Whereas, the "disgruntled" employee is actually a former assistant attorney general in NJ who filed a whistleblower lawsuit; and

Whereas, the BoT and the president are soliciting Facebook responses from their cronies to be published in the online version of the Asbury Park Press; and

Whereas, the BoT and the president appear to be desperate and scared;

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the NJEA representative and the President of the FAOCC are effectively exposing the alleged shady dealings of the president; and

Be it Further Resolved by the faculty to support the efforts of the FAOCC president, Kathy Tietge, and congratulate her on a job well done. Keep up the pressure!

Dementia Defense?

King Jon officially fired six (correct me if I'm wrong) full-time faculty members who were up for tenure this year. Maria Flynn is, perhaps, the only one who is fighting this dismissal. The others were bullied into resigning.

Rumors abound, one of which is that Larson's henchmen are preparing a "dementia defense" when the NJ State Comptroller's report and the Riley memos are released to the public. dick and his minions will begin to claim that Larson is suffering from dementia as a defense to the fiscal malfeasance, it is alleged. dick, it is also alleged, has been giddy with the prospect of being anointed President of OCC.

Ocean County College has become the laughing-stock of community colleges. "Buildings Before People" is its mantra and money over everything else rules. The students at OCC are losing superior professors to bogus reasons designed to keep the faculty scared. The administration has encouraged the leader of the adjunct union to publicly criticize the full-time faculty.

It's coming to a head, though, this oozing pustule of toxicity needs sanitizing. Larson, the members of the Board of Trustees who have allowed his reign of terror, dick and all of the upper-level administrators must leave OCC. We must clean our house. We must keep up the public pressure and truly be a union.

 

No More Secrecy

Did Larson really say that OCC has the premier faculty in the state and that, if it were up to him, he'd give everyone a raise?! What a phony! The Evil Triumvirate has been attempting to dismantle any and all faculty rights over the last 6 years plus. Why is he attempting to make nice now?

I will reiterate what another blogger posted earlier. Why do we need a "Management Rights" clause in a new MOA if, in fact, the administration is able to implement all of the things listed anyway? I do not believe that they are able to implement all of those changes without the new language in the MOA.

Did we just win a PERC decision? Why hasn't this been advertised by the leadership of the FAOCC? It was the grievance filed about sick time for Wednesdays. We WON IT, however, if we had voted for the last MOA that was presented it would have wiped out what we won.

Is it me or does it seem as though the current FAOCC leadership is operating in secrecy? Why wasn't the PERC victory announced to the entire membership?

 

Contract Proposal

The rumor around the campus is that the current FAOCC president "negotiated" the entire contract by herself and then submitted her handy work to the rest of the executive committee and negotiations team.Why weren't the members of the negotiating team involved in negotiations?

The new proposal calls for us to get 0%, 1.9% & 1.9% while the adjunct association just settled for a larger (marginally) percent and at least one member of Larson's team gave herself a hefty 10% salary increase. There is now going to be a cap on overload. Rumor has it that the administration wants that number to be down to 6 credits. The overload rate does increase, however, 6 credits times $1000 is equal to $6000 and 9 credits times $850 is equal to $7650. We lose money in overload over the next several years with the cap. Longevity increases are just gone. The longevity pay was not a lot, but certainly added up over a career.

Is it me or does it appear as if we are shooting ourselves in the foot again?

The proposal also lumps together the traditional 10-month faculty with the new 12-month faculty. It will be so much easier in the future for the administration to chip away at our rights now that the 12-monthers are included in our contract. This is a slippery slope that should be avoided. The 12-month faculty are not represented by the FAOCC, are they? Why, then, are they included in our contract?

The last time that there was an MOA was this past summer. Several members of the new FAOCC Executive Committee stood up and tried to scare the be-jesus out of the membership by saying that the MOA was the best thing that we could expect. The faculty would never be offered anything as good. They bullied us. We quaked and acquiesced. The MOA passed.

How did the new MOA work out for the faculty? Long-time faculty members who have taught DL courses since their inception were not offered the DL courses this fall. Many of these courses were given to adjuncts including many upper-level courses. Full-time faculty were, largely, left out of the process when the Master Courses were designed. Who better to design a Master Course than a full-time faculty member who is familiar with the material? VPAA Strada's son constructed the Master Courses in the math department. Maybe we can grieve some of the aforementioned atrocities? Oh, wait, we also waived our right to grieve.

This new contract proposal is complete garbage. It was not negotiated and it further weakens our status and our pocketbooks. The NJ State Comptroller is going to release a report on the community college presidents' salaries including the highest paid president, John Larson. I believe that this contract proposal should be voted down. Let's see what kind of political pressure Larson gets once his contract is exposed to the tax payers of Ocean County. The old contract is better than the current proposal. Let's let an arbitrator decide what is fair.

Vote NO on the contract proposal!

End of the Year Considerations

What kind of nincompoops schedule a major campus construction dig on the last day of the semester?! The nincompoops running OCC do! We all realize that building things takes precedence over teaching and learning and people, in general, but to plan an excavation in between two buildings that house a huge amount of students, faculty and staff on the last day of the semester is just asinine. Didn't anyone ask themselves what the worst-case-scenario might be if something went wrong? Wasn't it obvious that most students would be taking final exams and would like to have a relatively quiet environment in which to take these tests? Way to go, Buffoons!

How is the Memorandum of Agreement for the Master Course Development Team Member or Content Reviewer a benefit to the full-time faculty? The college "may" (or may not) invite us to serve on a development team and the faculty member's name would be listed within the course as being part of the development team and we will have the option to teach the course during the testing phase. What about what happens after the testing phase? We still have no rights of ownership to any course content after develping it. We have no guarantees that we will even get a chance to teach the course. How is this MOA any different from the college's original proposal? What are we getting in return for signing this MOA?

So many faculty members have expressed concern about the new negotiating team and its seeming willingness to acquiesce to the demands of the administration.  Many of us still feel like we were thrown under the bus with the last contract. The last contract is still better than what the college has allegedly proposed. Please do not sell us out. Please demand real negotiations where we may give something but we get something in return.

There were several posts in the last thread about a faculty member who was allowed to "chastise" fellow faculty members regarding attendance at a program of events. If anyone felt or still feels bullied by this faculty member, then perhaps they should speak to their dean about it. It is uncivil, at least, and bullying, at worst, for a colleague to publicly scold another colleague(s). We have been encouraged by the VPAA to identify any bullies or bullying that occurs, so please do so!

I wish everyone a peaceful, relaxing summer.

Webmaster

Ritacco, Jr?

Today's article in the Asbury Park Press about OCC not releasing papers regarding purchasing documents that should be made available through the OPRA law is not surprising. Rumors have long persisted out of the administration building that items, such as plasma tvs, have made their way to the president's house and that purchasing laws have been ignored. Why a man with top-notch credentials was ever hired as purchasing director is mind-boggling. Rumor also has it that when Joseph Reilly, purchasing manager, was hired in the summer, he sent an email to Larson and top-level administrators about the appearance of inproprieties between the President and several vendors and that Larson was furious. It has also been alleged that contracts that should have been bid on, were not, and that these contracts were awarded to Larson's cronies.

We shall see how long Larson can stonewall the law with regard to the suit. Many of us are holding our collective breath wishing that this is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to Larson's activities. A former colleague recently told me, "what goes around, comes around". Karma? Are you listening?

 

http://www.app.com/article/20110215/NJNEWS15/102150365/1278/NJTOWNS2210/OCC-faculty-sues-trustees-claims-OPRA-refusal-cover-up

Larson's Legacy is the Gateway Building?

Really? Jon Larson's primary goal is to have his legacy be a building.

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others".  Pericles

"No legacy is so rich as honesty."  Shakespeare

"When you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

I know people who have a lot of money and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

That's the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. The trouble with love is that you can't buy it. You can buy sex. You can buy testimonial dinners. You can buy pamphlets that say how wonderful you are. But the only way to get love is to be lovable. It's very irritating if you have a lot of money. You'd like to think that you could write a check:I'll buy a million dollars' woth of love. But it doesn't work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get."   Warren Buffet

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."  Horace Mann

Dr. Larson, needing a building to be "your legacy" is pretty pathetic. You are the first president of OCC to RIF people and, I believe, this RIFing is unneccessary. You are firing people because it makes you feel powerful.  Your legacy will be that you have treated your employees terribly by instilling fear and creating a toxic environment in which to work. Please do not confuse fear with respect. We do not respect you. Having a building be your "legacy" will not make anyone respect you any more than the Heiring building makes people respect its namesake. We will remember you as a vicious, mean-spirited, tyrannical, bombastic, egotistical leader. That is your legacy.

"Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good".  Ann Landers

 

Herb Germann's Report to the BoT

Brief Report on the Board Meeting  November 8, 2010

 

Yesterday with unanimous consent and authority of ANJCC: The Assoc. of NJ county College Faculty, I presented a “Call for Action “to the Board of Trustees.  Essentially, ANJCCF called upon the Board to upon the College Board “to open up talks directly with the Faculty Association for resolution by mutual agreement of the impasse.”  Additionally, ANJCCF “calls upon the College Board and to work with the Faculty Association to establish and implement a blueprint for a more collegial environment at Ocean County College.”  I stated:

The Board’s action is a clear violation of N.J.S.A. 34:13A5.3, 5.4 (a) which states that:

Proposed new rules or modifications of existing rules governing working conditions shall be negotiated…before they are established.

 “The College President, Jon Larson and Academic Vice President, Richard Strada has knowingly created a hostile work place with the goal to install fear into the teaching faculty.”

A hostile environment, I could not believe how rude and uncivil certain Board members were in attempting to kill the messenger bringing the message.  The Chairman of the Board, Mr. Thulin rudely interrupted my presentation demanding to know “who I was, and whom I represented”.  I said “did you not hear my opening remarks that I represent ANJCCF.”  He then asked “If I was vested.” all in attempt to silence me. I told him “I speak with the authority of  ANJCCF”.  He asked “do you represent the Faculty Association?” I said:  “Were you not paying attention, I represent the Association of NJ County College Faculty and since the president of ANJCCF is in class, I as an officer of ANJCCF, am making the presentation.  Now may I please be allowed to continue?”  The rudeness was so unprofessional.

Next, Tara Kelly rudely interrupted asking: “Who are you?”  I told her she was way out of line and “I have the floor.”  Hostility on campus! It was alive and well at the Board Room yesterday.  How dare Tara Kelly attempt to suppress free speech and act with such incivility? By the way does incivility apply to Rich Strada, Board Chairman, and Tara Kelly?  During my presentation  Dick Strada, by his smirking expression seemed to suggest that this is all a big joke. Does he not realize the harm he is doing to the teaching faculty? He is unfit to be a leader of the faculty and by his irresponsible actions is in large part the cause the hostile and toxic campus workplace. 

 

Unite!    Come Together Against the Tyranny from Above

 

Respectfully

 

Herb Germann

Vote of No Confidence NOW!!!

What more does it take for Jon Larson to do to the faculty so that we all stand up and say, "no"? Jon Larson is FIRING, roughly, twenty non-tenured faculty members in the spring. Jon Larson has set up an arbitrary percentage of faculty who are allowed to aquire tenure. Jon Larson is hiring non-tenure track instructors on a twelve-month contract. He did not negotiate these changes. He is just doing them.

Jon Larson is insisting that full-time faculty all teach an 8am class. Why? The current proposal from the administration, the one that we are currently at impasse on, allegedly includes the provision that all full-time faculty will be in their offices from 8am until 4p Monday through Friday. When we are not teaching classes, we are to be tutoring students. The mandatory 8am class this semester will turn into five mandatory 8am classes the following semester which will, in turn, become the aforementioned criteria plus a mandatory 2p or 3:15p class. That will have us all here from 8am-4p-all without negotiating one change. That's how you circumvent a contract.

Faculty must stand up to this bully now or else we will have nothing else for which to stand. He is sysematically gutting our contract and we have done nothing to prevent it. It's time to tell Larson and the members of the Board of Trustees that we have had it. We have NO CONFIDENCE is this megalomaniac and bully.

It is time to stop the hand-wringing. It is time to stop being a bunch of pansies. Stand up and vote NO CONFIDENCE. Do it now because, soon, you will have no one to blame but yourselves. Stop being cowards!

 

Know Your Contract!

Our contract expired on September 1, 2010, but we are still working under its provisions. The document has been removed from the Ocean.edu website, but we are still protected by it.

Article V: Terms and Conditions of Employment

Faculty Professional Duties: Faculty members shall teach classes; hold office hours; advise students; participate in student learning outcomes assessment activities, accreditation activities, monthly department meetings, two colloquia, and the annual commencement scheduled no later than May 31. In addition, faculty members are expected to serve on committees, participate in curriculum development and revision, and perform other professional duties.

 

You can see why these bogus assessment committees are being rammed down our throats. The goal is to have us all here, five days per week, 7 hours per day. We are required to participate in assessment activities, but expected to serve on committees. Please do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

If any clarification of the contract is needed, then please post here and your question will be answered.