First in a series
What rankles Council members more than anything, it seems, is the perceived highhanded manner of immediate past President Dr. Mark Rocha. They contend that without consulting anyone on the Culver City side, Dr. Rocha scratched out those parts of the previous (construction) agreement that he didn’t like, then handed the document back to City Hall for its perusal and approval 12 days after he had safely left his position at West. Council members are feeling snookered. – Aug. 27, 2010, thefrontpageonline.com
[img]1769|left|Dr. Mark Rocha||no_popup[/img]“We are living in a dictatorship,” an angry non-tenured member of the Pasadena City College faculty told the newspaper this morning hours after hundreds of his colleagues had cast the second no-confidence vote within days against the roaringly unpopular President, Dr. Mark Rocha. “He acts like a czar who can do anything he wants, and people are afraid of him. He seems to hire and fire whomever he wants without consultation. Even when he does consult, he ignores their advice.”
An outline of the Pasadena campus charges against him may sound familiar to the family of West Los Angeles College and residents surrounding the West campus who asserted that Dr. Rocha left behind a string of busted promises.
Seemingly entrenched in the President’s chair, Dr. Rocha suddenly, mysteriously bolted from West, without explanation, almost under cover of overnight darkness, three years ago this spring.
In Pasadena, he stands accused, by organized student groups and faculty members who say “we no longer fear Dr. Rocha’s intimidation tactics,” of the same type of unilateral conduct of business that dogged him in his days at West.
“Dr. Rocha has constantly violated the principles of shared governance and democratic participation,” according to the ad hoc faculty committee’s bill of complaints.
“He has disrupted the efficiency and collegiality of campus life by unilaterally increasing class sizes, for example,” said another youngish member of the faculty. “Dr. Rocha just decided, ‘We are going to start putting more students in classes.’ He never asked anybody. Not that he would have taken their advice.”
“The problem,” said one professor, “is that PCC is not a company where he is the CEO. You don’t run a public school like a corporation. Naturally, committees are in place. He just steps around them.
“He dismissed 45 part-time faculty members a week before the spring semester. How can he do that? He can’t. But he did.”
At the nub of the frustration of students and faculty – that broke into the open last November – is that the all-powerful Board of Trustees is perceived to be strictly obedient to Dr. Rocha.
Amidst the now voluble calls for Dr. Rocha’s ouster, the Trustees have armed the President with a renewed contract covering the next three years, through June 2016.
Calls to Dr. Rocha’s office were not answered.
(To be continued)
