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I hope you don’t mind a diary about local politics, which is an object lesson in why elections have consequences.
Palomar College is a community college not far from where we live. As our local Democratic club is the closest to it, and the members of the board of directors are elected in general elections in our region, we pay attention to what’s happening there. There are five elected member of the board, and one student member (and I don’t know whether the student member is elected by the student body or somehow appointed). Three of the elected members are Republican, while two are Democrats. The president of the college was also present, but it is not her role to participate in board discussions.
Before this year, board meetings started with an acknowledgement of the indigenous people on whose land the college is situated, but the board did away with that some months ago. Most recently, one of the Republican board members proposed to rescind the DEI board policy that was enacted in 2021, in response to the murder of George Floyd. I went to the board meeting along with other club members to provide moral support to the opponents of this proposal.
College board meetings can be powerfully boring affairs, and through most of the meeting this was true. However, the period for public comment, at the beginning, was a parade of speaker after speaker, of every color and a wide range of ethnicities, who argued eloquently against the proposal to remove the DEI policy. Even those who spoke to the board on other topics managed to shoehorn in their disagreement with the proposal. It was also indicated that e-mailed comments on the proposal were extremely negative toward the rescission of the policy. Also, the student board member had spoken to many students about the proposed policy change, and stated that none of the students she spoke to wanted the policy to go away. So the sentiments of a wide majority of the people present were made entirely clear.
After the public comment period was over came presentations by faculty and staff of the college regarding new initiatives and policy changes, followed by a string of votes on spending and policy changes where the votes were all unanimous. And then came the board discussion on the DEI policy. Of this discussion, and the voting that took place, our Democratic club president said “I feel there should be a required class on parliamentary procedure before you can run for office” because the board’s parliamentarian had to repeat several times how the votes would have to proceed.
The original motion was simply to remove the DEI policy. One of the Democratic board members proposed modifying this motion to creating a subcommittee of the board to modify the policy so that it would address the concerns of the Republican members. After a great deal of discussion, this motion failed. One of the Republican members proposed to modify the motion to removing the policy, but creating a subcommittee of the board to “explore other options” for some kind of DEI statement. Sadly, this is the motion that eventually passed.
During the discussion, the Republican members each individually swore up and down how racism was bad, but that the DEI policy was redundant with laws against discrimination. They also kept saying that the DEI policy left the college open to liability, but they never said what kind. Apparently, the board members had discussed this liability, but they they would not give an example of such liability. One of the Democratic board members tried to draw out such an example, but the board chair wouldn’t budge on this. When the student board member spoke in favor of preserving the policy, the board president went on a condescending rant of the sort I had never heard before. (Paraphrase: When you get older, you’ll be able to tell the difference between unreasonable ideals and bedrock principles. I am willing to act on what I know to be right despite the fact that most people present disagree with me. I will be able to sleep tonight knowing I did the right thing. Also, I have tens of thousands of constituents who aren’t here and who haven’t expressed their opinions who surely agree with me.) I thought it was kind of insane.
In the end, the student board member buckled and voted “yes” on rescind the policy while “exploring other options,” joining the Republicans. I’m sure that even if this proposed subcommittee actually gets off the ground, anything it produces will never be approved by the Republican majority of the board. The president of the board is in my district, and when she’s up for reelection, our club is going to try to find a good candidate to replace her.
You can read about the board meeting here.
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