By Charles Loiacono     

Weaving Tangled Webs

             The goal of any arbitrator or arbitration panel is to understand the truth and determine whether the truth of a particular situation violated the agreement between two parties. When the truth is withheld or camouflaged to mislead, then the arbitrator’s goal can be difficult to achieve.

            One such camouflaging occurred on October 3^rd when John Gross, attorney for the Board of Trustees and the administration, described ELI/LINCC teachers as full-time. The obvious intent was to have the new arbitrator, who was hearing the facts of the case for the first time, believe that these individuals were part of the regular full-time faculty. That was proven to be the intent when Gross vehemently objected when the AFA attorney attempted to clear up any misunderstanding.

            Why Gross did not know that eventually the truth would be revealed and that that stunt would only hurt his credibility baffles me. But that’s how these things go. Some lawyers will stoop to any machination that will avoid, withhold, or distort the truth.

            So much for the tools of deception; now on to what came to light as we listened to the first witness for the administration.

            Both through direct and cross-examination, the witness went through the history of ELI.

The sum total of her testimony was that ELI was a failure from the get-go.  

            It seems there was a curriculum that no one had ever seen—neither the teachers nor the Fresh Look Committee. We have requested copies of that curriculum, which supposedly dictated a holistic approach to teaching ESL.

            Beginning in the year 2000, the migration from the college into adult education began. Five years later in 2005, it was acknowledge that the program was not working—hence the formation of the Fresh Look Committee. The committee’s report was reviewed in

 some detail with excerpts in a previous issue of the VANGUARD. It was a devastating report on the failure of ELI.   

          The result was the creation of a new version called ELI B. Two years later, ELI B was declared dead when, as John Gross said, “We are pulling the plug on the ELI program.”

            For seven years the ELI program failed to teach foreign students the English language. And the beat goes on. LINCC is ELI with a new name. Why would this administration continue an approach that has failed so miserably?

            The answer to that question is simple—MONEY. Tuition, state aid, and property taxes have yielded millions in profit. The fact that accepting public funds for F1 Visa students is illegal is coming up for review. There is another answer, perhaps as important to this administration as the money—union busting.

            When the administration moved these courses out of the college’s ESL program into the adult education program funded under the continuing education budget, they removed them from the AFA jurisdiction. That meant no union, and that meant teachers would have no rights. The administration, like copper barons of old, could exploit them in any way they wanted. Teachers could be hired on a semester to semester basis and serve at the

pleasure of the employer. For this administration, that was a goal devoutly to be wished. They so enjoyed exploiting these new teachers without having to answer to the union that they cared nothing that students were not learning because the program was a dismal failure. Life was beautiful for the administration. They were raking in the money and they had broken the union as far as this program was concerned. Their dream—today ESL, tomorrow the AFA.

Dream on, Sean, for that tomorrow will never come!