.
.
Part III
In what was originally intended as a way to maintain and improve educational standards, school accreditation was developed. In the southeastern part of the United States, the official accrediting agency is the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).
Every ten years, institutions wishing to maintain their official accredited status are supposed to spend a year scrutinizing themselves using guidelines developed by SACS. The self-study completed, they then host a visiting team of "experts" drawn from other institutions who come in, look around, ask questions, and write reports pointing out what they consider to be institutional strengths and weaknesses.
In theory, it's a good idea. SACS guidelines reflect an awareness of the kinds of problems endemic to schools, and are designed to require self-study activities that encourage reform. In practice, however, there are many ways to maintain the status quo while making it look like SACS guidelines are being followed.
The simplest way to avoid real change--the way other faculty told me BCC did it in 1971, and the way I know from firsthand experience that they did it in 1981--was to form all the necessary self-study committees, have them meet and come to their conclusions, write up committee reports identifying problems and inadequacies, and send them to an administrator/editor. This "editor" then rewrote them to make them fit the College's public relations image. A few minor problems were usually admitted to make the report believable, but according to the edited versions of the report, BCC's "forward-looking administration" was well aware of the minor problems and had them all but solved.
If a SACS visitation team didn't share the administration's view of the situation, that didn't pose a threat. By the time the visiting team's final draft came back, long after the investigators left, nobody looked at it. The media was no longer interested, and most teachers were too busy or too cynical about the whole procedure to care one way or the other.
As the visitation for the '90s approached, we were determined that the '70's and '80's procedures wouldn't be repeated.
We wrote a letter to SACS telling them about BCC's history of subverting the evaluation process. SACS didn't answer. We decided we'd attempt to meet with team members off campus at their hotel. We couldn't find out where they were saying.
The team came and left. A few of its members seemed aware of and sympathetic to our problems, but the comments of the team's leader, the president of a community college in Virginia, left little doubt that the whole evaluation procedure was largely a sham. In a final effort to push the SACS report in the direction of honesty and candor, on the 14th of February 1993 we wrote a letter to SACS' Executive Director, Dr. B.E. Childers in Decatur, Georgia.
The Southern Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges' Visitation Team has just left town.There followed single-paragraph summaries of familiar problems. The paragraphs noted that three faculty surveys, including one just completed for SACS, gave the administration disapproval ratings of between 83 and 96%; SACS team members had themselves noted that a "pervasive fear" seemed to mark the College; entire academic fields had been abolished to facilitate the firing of particular teachers; documentation had been given committee members regarding serious problems in the BCC Foundation.
Twenty years ago and ten years ago, Brevard Community College's SACS institutional self-studies were widely perceived by the faculty as gross distortions of the true state of affairs at the College. When the reports were released, the faculty realized that it had been outsmarted, that the College's administration had edited the reports and omitted all but the most superficial criticisms of the College.The words of SACS team captain Dr. S.A. Burnette at the opening banquet and during the exit presentation suggest that a third whitewash may now be in progress. In the two previous distortions of reality, the faculty blamed the administration's duplicity (and its own naivete). This time, it appears that SACS itself is a party to the coverup.
The letter included a summary of an incident witnessed directly by the SACS Team--the arrest of ex-BCC counselor Alan Thornquest and student Andrew Spilos for demonstrating in front of the King Center for the Performing Arts:
Team members watched three police cars arrive to break up a very small, absolutely peaceful demonstration asking that SACS not be a party to another whitewash. Surely the irony could not have escaped college professors. They witnessed this gross violation of First Amendment rights--rights they, of all people, should hold dear--from a private, members-only liquor lounge (a lounge built at public expense, in a public building, on public property). The demonstration resulted in two arrests "because it was not held in a designated protest zone"--a parking lot out of sight and hearing of the SACS team . . .We concluded with some words about the long-term consequences for SACS' credibility when evaluations were rigged, and stapled a copy of Orlando Sentinel writer Allen Rose's February 6, 1992 column to the letter:What prompts this letter is what came across as a parting slap in the faculty's face. The SACS written report, yet to be received, may indeed note many of the problems of this institution. But no matter its content, it will not negate the impact of Dr. Burnette's words in the Thursday morning exit presentation. He said, "Anyone who takes anything said by this committee to mean anything else other than this is a fine institution has misinterpreted the work of the committee. Anyone who might attempt to use anything said or written by this committee to reflect negatively on . . . this institution will be doing both this Committee and this institution an injustice."
Perhaps there was no prior "arrangement" between the two community college presidents. Perhaps there is no truth to the rumor that Dr. King's brother is a community college president in the same system as Dr. Burnette. Perhaps there is an acceptable explanation for the difficulties BCC's faculty had in its attempt to learn the names and local accommodations of the visiting committee so that it could try to arrange to meet with them privately. Perhaps the visiting committee was unaffected by the wining, dining, and "hovering" of the College administrators during their visit. Perhaps Dr. Burnette's words were not deliberately meant for "damage control" from team members at least some of whom seemed to interpret the situation less positively than did he.
This one's for Bud. I have said for months during the Brevard school fuss over possible loss of accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools that it doesn't really matter what happens.SACS' Dr. Childers said it wasn't appropriate for him to respond because of my legal situation. He didn't explain why that had anything to do with the SACS team's behavior, neither did he explain how he even knew about my legal situation.SACS is a meaningless bunch of academic stuffed shirts whose time has passed. And whose accreditation is an empty sack.
All of which was confirmed this week when a SACS evaluation team got themselves a junket to Florida to visit Max King's personal fiefdom, aka Brevard Community College.
Team captain S.A. "Bud" (as in good ole boy) Burnette, president of something called the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, Virginia, left this parting shot when he left town Thursday: "Anyone who takes anything said by this committee to mean anything other than this is a fine institution has misinterpreted the work of the committee."Well, Mr. Bud, I hope you will not misinterpret this: The mission of Brevard At Large is opinion and commentary. And you are about to get a generous helping of both.
Anyone who has stayed abreast of Max King and his autocratic administration has to know that BCC has the potential to be a fine school. Perhaps it will be when Max finally hits the road and takes along the toadies with whom he surrounds himself.
Under King, those who toil at BCC do not enjoy freedom of speech or dissent guaranteed to all Americans. A prime example: trumped-up charges against professor Marion Brady, and the kangaroo court hearings on whether Brady should be fired. Brady's chief accuser was a dean whose academic credentials, revealed last week, were highly questionable, to say the least.
Another was the arrest last week of former BCC counselor Alan Thornquest and a former student for demonstrating outside the college during the SACS visit. They failed to move to a parking lot where they could be seen by virtually no one except the night watchman. Thornquest, another King critic, was fired last year in what King called a faculty reorganization.
So, Mr. Bud, be assured we will not misinterpret your report. We accept it for what it is: a pile of paper worth about 25 cents a hundred pounds at the Yorke-Doliner junk yard in Cocoa.
