 |
 |
 |
 |
MONTHLY UPDATE
UPDATE CONTD 1
UPDATE CONTD 2
UPDATE CONTD 3
UPDATE CONTD 4
UPDATE CONTD 5
UPDATE CONTD 6
UPDATE CONTD 7
UPDATE CONTD 8
STUDENTS SPEAK
QUALIFICATIONS
EVALUATION FORM
LINKS
MEMOS
May 23 1994
Sept 6 1995
March 20 1997
April 3 1997
Jan 5 1998
March 31 1998
Sept 15 1999
May 17 2000
Sept 11 2000
Oct 16 2000
Nov 14 2000
Nov 15 2000
Feb 10 2001
March 15 2001
March 19 2001
June 9 2003
April 17 2006
Sept 18 2006
Sept 27 2006
Oct 23 2006
Dec 9 2007
Dec 16 2007
| Update Continued 1 |
) DIRECTOR OF DUPLICITY The list of atrocities continues. We now begin to date the entries: 20. (2/28/02) THE BLOATED CUNY BUREAUCRACY Here is an e-mail we received on Jan. 31, 2002 from the NY State Department of Education: I am writing in response to your email in regard to your website about LaGuardia Community College. As LaGuardia Community College is part of the City University of New York (CUNY), it is appropriate for the CUNY Central Administration to respond to you in this matter. I am forwarding a copy of your correspondence to Otis Hill, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the CUNY Central Administration, 535 80th Street, New York, NY 10021, and asking him to review your correspondence and respond to you directly. Linnea LoPresti Office of College and University Evaluation 7/18/02 NOTE: Almost five months have now elapsed and we have yet to hear from Mr. Otis Hill, nor from any of the other 600(!) members of the CUNY Central Office gang. This is but one of hundreds of illustrations of bureaucratic slipperyness and virtual immunity from litigation (notwithstanding the efforts of Badillo and Giuliani), which is why we have been forced to use the novel approach of the Internet to expose the corruption at LaGuardia. *************** 21. (3/4/02) AN ANTI-MELLOW FELLOW We received the following e-mail from aleder @ gccnj.edu on 2/3/02. The gccnj refers to Gloucester Community College, Sewell, NJ, where Gail Mellow was Pres. just prior to her infliction upon LaGuardia: I don't know who you are but we thank our lucky stars your President is no longer at GCC!!! *************** 22. (3/15/02) FACULTY UNION CHAPTER RATTLES MELLOW'S CAGE In an unprecedented College-wide mailing on 2/13/02, the Laguardia PSC Chapter issued a document entitled CONCERNS RELATING TO PRESIDENT GAIL MELLOW'S LEADERSHIP STYLE AND DECISIONS. This "letter of concern" expounds on several serious criticisms of Mellow's behavior and claims to have been "passed unanimously" by the Chapter. In an institution rotten to the core with corruption, we applaud the rare event of people speaking out about real concerns rather than following the usual LaGuardia "don't make waves" policy. *************** 23. (3/18/02) FACULTY UNION DROPS DEFENSE OF FORMER MATH PROFESSOR Prof. Evan Siegel was fired by the LaGuardia Math Dept. at the end of the 1999-2000 academic year. He has spent this past year appealing the firing with the aid of the faculty union (PSC). A few days ago he received notice from the union that they would no longer help in the appeal. Dr. Siegel is highly educated in mathematics, an excellent instructor and very popular with students. His firing was obviously engineered by a small group of power-hungry maniacs for despicable reasons. Yet the union will not help him, just as they refused to help Prof. Millman 8 years ago when he was screwed out of a well-deserved promotion (see May 23, 1994 MEMO), and just as they, more recently, refused to file a grievance when private information from the personnel files of 20 faculty members was exposed to an unauthorized party (see Nov. 14, 2000 MEMO). Who knows how many other LaGuardia faculty were let down by by "their" union over the years? We venture that the number is large. Whose side is this union on? Some say that the union is "in bed" with the CUNY administration. If that's the case, it would compound several-fold the insanity that is LaGuardia. *************** 24. (3/23/02) LAGUARDIA LOSES ANOTHER GREAT TEACHER THRU IGNORANCE AND CORRUPTION Dear Prof. Millman, Thank you for taking note of my case. I am, of course, disappointed that the Professional Staff Congress did not decide to take it up. However, I recognize that they have limited resources and must use them judiciously. I would like to take this opportunity to say good-bye to my colleagues in LaGuardia Community College as a whole and the Math Department in particular. Please post this on your website, if you don't mind. Kind regards to all, Evan ***** Most math faculty will miss you greatly Evan. We salute the latest victim of a viciously corrupt institution. You handled the situation with great patience and behaved honorably and maturely throughout the ordeal while LaGuardia's behavior was, as usual, beneath contempt. The students have lost a great teacher; that is the real tragedy (there are so very few of us). The Administration has no conception of what the College has lost, nor do they care. And yes, the PSC leadership does indeed have "limited resources": no talent, no brains, no balls. *************** 25. (5/03/02) LAGUARDIACORRUPTION.COM IN THE NEWS AGAIN For a delightful, balanced and accurate report on this website click here: http://209.61.190.23/news2002/jan02/jan28/2_tues/news8tuesday.html Scroll down to the last article on the page. To see our blurb in the New York City Council website guestbook, click here: http://www.council.nyc.ny.us/index.cfm?page=guestbook *************** 26. (9/14/02) MATH DEPARTMENT FIRES ONE MORE JEWISH PROF This past June the dysfunctional Mathematics Department fired the Jewish Prof. it was forced to hire last year. In their zeal to hire a Jew to refute charges of 20 years of anti-Semitism, they omitted checking whether he could teach. The new Jewish candidate slated to replace him was fortunate enough to consult us before making his decision to come to ole LaG. He decided to accept employment elsewhere. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th Department choices also turned down the Department's offer, so that nobody was hired. Net result: loss of still another Jewish instructor, bringing the Jewish population of the Dept to a new all-time low. The ridiculous $35,000 salary allotted for the position doubtless also played a role in this latest idiocy. Ironically, LaGuardia had a great teacher and bargain in Evan Siegel (see #24 above) for a mere (and grossly discriminatory) $29,000. *************** 27. (10/21/02) NEW LAWSUITS AGAINST LAGUARDIA Two LaGuardia profs have recently exited the phony CUNY appeals treadmill and are currently bringing lawsuits against the College's unethical promotion procedures. In one of these cases the College's behavior has been so execrable that, should the truth be exposed in court, administrative heads would roll and the entire stinking promotion/tenure debacle would finally need to be dismantled. A demented VP has blocked the promotion of an excellent educator (for the fifth consecutive year) for refusing to participate in the administration's attempted ouster of his department chair! Is this a college or a lunatic asylum? Let's wish these two profs the best of luck in their pursuit of justice. *************** 28. (11/12/02) CORRUPTION AT BROOKLYN COLLEGE? Prof. M. Millman states "I graduated from CCNY (in 1961) and got a really great education". Anyone who would make that statement today is either a liar or a fool. Faculty who doubt this should ask themselves the question "Would I send my kid here"? Perhaps every niche of CUNY is as chaotic and corrupt as LaGuardia. A recent E-mail from a Brooklyn College prof commented on LaGuardiacorruption.com: "That sounds trivial compared to what goes on at Brooklyn College!" We replied: "We can't imagine a college worse than LaGuardia. Could you give us a couple of examples? Thanks." Here is his reply. We leave a certain committee and a certain Dean unnamed to protect the identity of the writer: "Sure - Faculty who never go to class, but get grad students who are not appointed by the Appointments Committee or hired by the College to cover their classes. Students in special programs where they finish a course at Brooklyn College at 5pm and then have to be at the next class at 5pm at Hunter College [the Brooklyn-Hunter trip by public transportation takes approximately one hour]. The head of the ---- Committee who admits to having a memory problem and loses grant proposals often enough that grants lapse before you can get approval to interview people. The Dean of ---- does not see this as a problem. Members of a Department being told to go into another faculty member's office and 'clean it out', which involved throwing out years of records of College activities along with grade books and final exams - some recent enough that it isn't possible now to assign grades for students who had Incomplete grades. The list is endless. And these are just off the top of my head!" *************** 29. (11/29/02) MORE CORRUPTION AT BROOKLYN COLLEGE Misuse of the nebulous term "collegiality" appears to be the latest tool of administrative corruption at Brooklyn College. For a description of one of the most moronic and truly nauseating cases of tenure refusal in recent years at CUNY, that of distinguished History Prof. K.C. Johnson, click here: http://nysun.com/sunarticle.asp?artID=339 *************** 30. (12/9/02) THE QUEST FOR WARM BODIES In her mindless and desperate attempt to shore up plummeting enrollment at the college and thereby rescue her ample rump from premature dismissal, LaGuardia's President has decreed that new students will now be allowed admission mid-year, during the already insane six-week semester. Furthermore, the registration period will extend one week into the semester. Thus, it will become possible for an entering student to skip the first 17% of a six-week course and still obtain credit for it in a mere five weeks. Einstein himself, as a well-documented example, could not have passed Calculus I in five weeks in his student days. How will it be possible for new (or even old) LaGuardia students to accomplish this miracle? Simple: just inflate the existing grade inflation to slightly more stratospheric levels. How will Mellow get away with this contemptible assault on academic standards? Also simple: Most students will love it - college credits plucked, as it were, like flowers from a bush. Half the faculty will not dream of objecting, as they already subscribe to the playschool theory of college education. Even those faculty with a modicum of integrity will, following the principle of Don't-Make-Waves, remain silent for fear of counter-measures of non-tenure or non-promotion. Administrators will embrace the idea as a welcome addition to their arsenal of tools for maintaining sinecure. New Task Forces and statistics will spring up to study and glorify this educational reform! CUNY Central, the bloated bastion of liberal education, will give it's blessing. City Hall will maintain its cowardly hands-off-CUNY policy. Net result: nobody protests, the LaGuardia sham gathers momentum, and taxpayers get the shaft implanted a little deeper. *************** 31. (12/9/02) MATH DEPT APPROACHES LIMIT OF ZERO JEWS With the retirement of Prof. E. Spicer and the departure of Prof. A. Berry on medical leave at the end of the Fall 2002 semester, Spring 2003 will see Prof. M. Millman as the only active Jewish Prof. remaining in the Math Department. Given the serious nature of Prof. Berry's disability and the magnitude of his disgust with departmental corruption, he may never return. Thus, when Prof. Millman retires next year, it is quite likely that the Math Department will have finally realized its goal of zero Jews. Prediction: In unwavering conformity with the principle of Don't-Make-Waves, not a single voice of protest will be heard at LaGuardia. See the MARCH 15, 2001 MEMO for background details. *************** 32. (12/10/02) THUMB DOWN ON HUNTER COLLEGE E-mail received from johnnie.douglas@hunter.cuny.edu, who comments on the LaGuardia debacle: The same thing is happening at Hunter. What's New! *************** 33. (12/10/02) EXPENSIVE ARITHMETIC LaGuardiacorruption.com has obtained the student evaluations of several full Profs in the Mathematics Department, covering the years 1980 to the present, from the LaGuardia administration. This was made possible by the New York State Freedom of Information Law. These documents show that up to 90% of the courses taught by some of these people are REMEDIAL ARITHMETIC! Salaries in excess of $75,000 for teaching 10 hours of arithmetic a week are but one more example of the terrific screwing being administered to NYC taxpayers! *************** 34. (1/27/03) THE CURSE OF ROBERTA MATTHEWS Dr. Roberta Matthews, former dean and interim President at LaGuardia, an itinerant airhead who has bounced around administrative circles for years, has been inflicted upon Brooklyn College as Provost this past year. For an account of her latest damage to students' lives, see the following article in Kingsman, the Brooklyn College Student newspaper: www.kingsmannews.com/show-archive.php?category=5&id=277 For a look at Matthews' idiotic DEFENSE of Brooklyn College's refusal to tenure Prof. of History K.C. Johnson (see item #34 above), click here: www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000346.html *************** 35. (3/29/03) MORE THAN 25,000 VISITS IN 24 MONTHS LAGUARDIACORRUPTION.COM has had 25,370 visits in its first two years online. We have now been visited by thousands of faculty and administrators from virtually every college and community college in New York State as well as by scores of other colleges and educational and civic organizations across the country and, indeed, the world. We have also been the subject of articles in the NY Post and several online newsletters. Word is steadily spreading about the once-proud, innovative college that has been reduced by corruption to its present status: administratively LaGuardia currently resembles a dysfunctional lunatic asylum while academically it falls on the educational spectrum somewhere between Sesame Street and the Video Professor. Where else, for example, can a demented vice president block the promotion of a top-notch educator for refusing to participate in the administration's attempted ouster of his department chair? *************** 36. (6/8/03) REMEDIAL MATH CORRUPTION LaGuardia's remedial math program has been a shameful disaster for the past decade, with students failing the CUNY proficiency exam (passing now required for graduation) at a 50% rate. Students who come to us from halfway around the world or who have struggled thru the NYC high school cesspool deserve far better. Mismanagement, corruption and profound incompetence are the reasons, with four different textbooks and umpteen different approaches being used in the remedial courses. Recently the Administration, sensing that something may be amiss, followed the customary LaGuardia approach to problem-solving. They appointed a "task-force". The task force was charged with the task of recommending a single text for uniform use. Coincidentally, the task force consists of two co-authors of one of the texts currently in use! If this farce were the result of mere stupidity, it would almost be forgivable. Can you guess which text the task force will recommend? *************** 37. (8/3/03) E-MAIL FROM A WISE VISITOR We received this beautifully-written E-mail today from one of our visitors. Despite its poetic pessimism, we think it clearly and succinctly describes the situation at LaGuardia and we are in complete agreement. We regret that we provide only the "irritable itch" but continue to hope for a "comforting scratch": From your many reports, it would appear that the greater majority of faculty and students are indifferent to the problems you record; this is a case of "hardness of hearts" of those who are so used to and hungry for "benefits," they adamantly resist any healthy change. The situation is not unlike that of the Pentagon's outrageous expenditures on demonstrably useless weapon systems and its support for that enormity by Congressmen to whom are reguarly published the economic advantages to their districts of the continued otherwise senseless funding. It is not unlike the blindness of American institutions of public education, in which the bureaucracies have woven such an impossible Gordian knot of such stultifying idiocy that charter schools and vouchered schools have now to be offered as alternatives, there being no correction possible from within. Under such circumstances as you describe, the noble teacher simply shakes the dust of such a place from his sandals, moves to higher ground, and awaits the fire and brimstone, realizing that comprehensive and habitual wickedness eventually destroys itself, and that no cure is possible when the patient is so delighted with his sickness and so determined to wallow in it. You seem to hope for a public reaction as a correction to the problems you cite; but a public willing to tolerate and even approve of current villianies in the government is not likely to respond to or even acknowledge - or even recognize - crimes in narrower venues. In any case, marking iniquities without laying out precise and viable plans for their correction provides only an irritating itch without the benefit of a comforting scratch. L. Swilley *************** 38. (8/5/03) STUDENTS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND ED-ETHICS WEBSITES See the writeup of LaGuardiaCorruption.com at http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org (you need to go to their archives) and at http://www.edethics.org/states_of_terror.htm *************** 39. (10/16/03) LAGUARDIA PROF BEATS COLLEGE IN LAWSUIT Kudos to the LaGuardia prof who sued over non-promotion and recently won an award of a couple of hundred thousand dollars! A LaGuardia VP was reduced to a fumbling idiot on the witness stand (not difficult) when he demonstrated lack of knowledge of the simplest administrative facts. One can only hope that some of the imbeciles, opportunists and anti-Semites who have ruined LaGuardia will also, one day, get what they deserve. *************** 40. (11/28/03) CUNY CHOOSES MEDIOCRITY Excerpts from the above-named article: "Virtually no graduates of the city's elite public high schools [Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech] go to CUNY, stripping the city of homegrown talent that otherwise would develop ties to the local economy." "Students at Baruch, CUNY's most selective school, fall into the 30th to 40th percentiles of SAT takers (meaning that 60% to 70% of American students score higher). From there, CUNY's schools plummet down to absolute rock bottom [i.e., LaGuardia]." Click here to read the article: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_nydn-cuny.htm *************** 41. (12/11/03) ANOTHER MATH PROF FALLS VICTIM TO CORRUPTION Prof. of Mathematics H. Delcham has been fired. This is but one of literally hundreds of examples of the corruption that exists in the Math Department and throughout the LaGuardia Administration. Reflect on this: a competent, well-liked faculty member has been terminated for trivial reasons while documented morons with no teaching ability and practically no knowledge of mathematics are retained, tenured and promoted. Why is a horrible instructor, who has twice been rescued by Security from the classroom due to irate students threatening her with physical violence, retained for 14 years? How can a person previously fired for incompetence return to become Chair? Why don't faculty members protest these demeaning facts? Does their fear of administrative countermeasures override their morality as human beings? *************** 42. (12/11/03) E-MAIL FROM A MATH DEPARTMENT FACULTY MEMBER [No further comment required]: I am saddened that such a hard working guy has to lose his job. It is beyond my understanding. I will miss him. And I know he is competent because I went to school with him. His math is better than most. You may post this on the website, but please leave it anonymous. Forgive me, but I do vehemently oppose the administration's action. *************** Please click on UPDATE CONTD 2 |
 Sign Guestbook |
 View Guestbook |
| Visitors: 08433 |