Gosh, listening to Tom Fuentes, you’d swear he thinks that the South Orange County Community College District is about to be overrun by dastardly, wild-eyed socialists!

No, Tom, your opponent, Bob Bliss, is not the wild-eyed type. He is a long-time Republican, like you. He’s a very conservative guy.

Tom says he suspects “that [Bliss] has obtained the union's backing by promising to do its bidding.”

That’s quite a charge, Tom.

It’s irresponsible nonsense. Was Fuentes born in a barn?

I have heard Bliss speak on several occasions, and he comes across like the Republican that he is. He always makes the point that the faculty won’t always like his decisions (I believe ‘im), but he understands the importance of paying faculty well and the importance, too, of protecting colleges from agenda-laden demagogues like Tom Fuentes. (Remember when Fuentes blocked a Saddleback College study abroad trip to Spain because that country had "abandoned our fighting men and women" in Iraq? After a huge community outcry, the board was forced to reverse itself.)

In fact, the notion that faculty should be well paid is often expressed by Tom’s pal John Williams, who is part of the conservative board majority that Fuentes desperately seeks to preserve. Do you suppose that John is a wild-eyed socialist, too? Don’t think so.

Tom likes to spin tales that are south of True. He portrays himself as battling fiscally irresponsible “union bosses” with their “socially liberal agenda.”

The portrait bears no resemblance to reality. We don’t have union “bosses.” In our system, the faculty union acts as the faculty’s agent in contract negotiations. Faculty salaries in our district are comparatively low, especially relative to the high cost of living in OC, and so, as things stand, the two colleges of the SOCCCD will likely go into decline, no longer able to attract the best faculty.

Liberal agenda? What liberal agenda? Politics have virtually nothing to do with our little union and its task.

Tom dismisses concerns about our two colleges’ accreditation, saying that such worries are “an old an tired boogie man for which the faculty union is famous.”

I advise readers to go to the sites below, where they can find the letters our colleges received from the Accrediting Commission in January. The upshot: for the first time in the history of the district, our colleges are threatened with possible loss of accreditation, owing in large part to the inappropriate meddling of trustees like Tom Fuentes.

http://www.ivc.edu/accreditation/pages/default.aspx
http://www.saddleback.edu/gov/senate/accreditation.html

I guess Fuentes doesn’t read the paper much. Those who follow higher education know that the Accrediting Commission was recently taken to task by the Dept. of Education for failing to hold colleges to standards (e.g., “trustees shouldn’t micromanage”) and allowing them instead to skate by, year after year.

Now, things are different.

Our colleges will likely get their accreditation renewed, but that will be in spite of Tom Fuentes, not because of him.

"Well paid union faculty"? San Bernardino Valley Community College pays more than IVC or Saddleback. I made more in my private sector job 11 years ago than I ever will teaching students to work in my old job.