Conservative College District President to Focus on Finances : Education: Gregory P. Cole vows to improve the agency’s poor fiscal standing and abolish shenanigans of recent years.

If Gregory P. Cole had his way, he would recast Ventura County’s public colleges in his own conservative image.

The new board president of the county’s community colleges wants to ban condom distribution on the Moorpark, Oxnard and Ventura campuses. He hopes to freeze faculty salaries this year. And, if possible, he would change federal law to allow prayers at graduation ceremonies.

After managing conservative Republican Pat Buchanan’s failed presidential campaign in the county, Cole thinks that it will be virtually impossible to make the colleges comport with his socially conservative views.

“I think that the war has been lost,” Cole said. “Humanism and secularism have captured our institutions of higher learning. . .. Most campuses are more liberal than the rest of the country.”

But he stressed, “I’m not trying to bring a moral or religious tone to secular government. Certainly my moral and religious background influences me, but it’s not controlling.”

He said he plans to focus his attention on financial matters during his yearlong term, an approach heartily endorsed by his colleagues.

By all accounts, the Ventura County Community College District board faces tough decisions in coming months and his fellow trustees say they are pleased that Cole has taken the helm during these tough times.

The Board of Trustees is in the process of revising the college district’s policy on AIDS education and prevention. It has begun negotiations over teaching contracts, which have already prompted suggestions of a faculty strike this spring. And, board members will have tough decisions on where to lop programs to compensate for expected cuts in the state’s higher education budget.

Other board members unanimously praise the intelligence, hard-work ethic and leadership skills of the 41-year-old Thousand Oaks dentist, who has expressed ambitions for higher political office. They also agree that his style will be a sharp departure from that of his predecessor, Pete Tafoya.

“Pete has run orderly, polite meetings. His personality is more harmonizing, and he seeks out compromise,” said board member Timothy Hirschberg. “Greg Cole is less concerned with what people think. . . . I have no qualms about him being out front and taking the flack.”

Cole said he is anxious to meet the challenge. Within days of his elevation to president, Cole scheduled a special meeting to map out the district’s long-term goals and outline solutions to its most vexing problems.

For the past two years, the district has been placed on the state community college chancellor’s “watch list” for extremely low financial reserves. It is one of five college districts statewide that is in such poor financial shape that it is only a step away from the state taking over its operations.

“One of my top goals will be to get us off that list,” Cole said.

He also vows not to tolerate any shenanigans in the college district. Cole blames the district’s financial troubles partly on what he calls the shoddy bookkeeping and questionable financial dealings of the “Tom Ely era.”

Cole said he was the whistle-blower who asked Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury to investigate former board member James T. (Tom) Ely, who was later convicted of embezzling $15,000 by padding expense accounts.

“The Ely matter was an attempt over the years to cover up corruption,” said Cole, who still sounds offended. “It just wasn’t right, and people looked the other way.”

Thousand Oaks Councilman Alex Fiore said Cole goes out of his way to hunt for suspected wrongdoing. “He does have a tendency to look for the bogyman,” Fiore said. “People like that are always trying to find some wrong and trying to expose it, even though it may not exist.”

Two years ago, Cole called the district attorney’s office to complain about the Thousand Oaks City Council voting without public notice to give Ventura County Supervisor Maria VanderKolk a furnished office at the old city library. VanderKolk later refused the offer to avoid the flap.

“I just kind of went ballistic,” Cole acknowledges now. But he said he can’t help himself, given his religious upbringing and personal standards. “Not lying, cheating or stealing was instilled early on,” he said.

Raised as a Democrat and Baptist, he converted to Catholicism and conservative Republicanism in dental school at USC in the mid-1970s.

“It was very fashionable to go with the herd mentality of the liberals,” he said of the time at the conclusion of the Vietnam War. “I saw how some of the liberal faculty would influence students. I became distrustful of the liberal agenda.”

Cole dabbled in high school student government, but did not get fully involved in politics until joining the student Senate at USC.

In addition to launching a successful dental practice in Newbury Park, he has remained politically active, serving four years on the county’s Republican Central Committee, two years on the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission and three years as an elected member of the college Board of Trustees.

Cole considered running for an Assembly seat earlier this year, but backed out to spend more time with his wife Alice and his four children, who range from 7 to 13 years old. “It’s tough being a dad when you’re in Sacramento all week.”

Steve Frank, a GOP consultant in Simi Valley who attended USC with Cole, said his friend has a promising future in politics. “He’ll get as far as he wants to. If he has the fire in the belly to run for office, he’ll win it,” Frank said.

One downside, he said, is that Cole may carry baggage for supporting Buchanan, the bully-boy candidate of the American Right who has suggested that AIDS is nature’s “awful retribution” against gays.

Yet Cole does not follow all of the conservative views espoused by Buchanan, whose “America First” campaign theme often targeted unlawful immigrants.

Earlier this year, Cole supported a college district resolution urging the state community college system “to immediately suspend” rules requiring illegal immigrant students to pay substantially higher tuition fees.

Cole and others argued that the courts should decide the issue.

“There are conflicting laws on this issue,” Cole said. “I didn’t sign off on illegal immigration. I didn’t want to spend money to hire people to enforce immigration laws that are not being enforced elsewhere. Our mission is to educate students. We should not be an immigration cop.”

But Cole has strongly opposed making condoms available to students, instead favoring abstinence as the best protection against the AIDS virus.

Although Cole’s children have attended public schools in the past, he now sends all of them to Catholic schools so they can get some religious training, he said.

“At a public school, you can get a condom, but you can’t give thanks to the Creator at a graduation ceremony.”

On the college board, Cole has been the most vocal critic of condom dispensers in bathrooms on campus--a position that has angered some faculty and students. “The district should not be in the condom business,” he said.

Jason Henderson, the student trustee who has exchanged some sharp words with Cole on the issue, said he is unhappy that Cole and the other trustees do not make more of an effort to include students in making policy decisions.

“I don’t think he’s as student-oriented as I’d like him to be,” said Henderson, who was able to keep the board from adopting one revision that had no student input.

On financial matters, Cole has upset the teachers’ union by advocating no pay raises this year and imposing a cap on faculty health benefits.

So far, district administrators and the union have not reached a compromise, and unsuccessful resolution could lead to a strike, said Barbara Hoffman, president of American Federation of Teachers Local 1828.

“When it comes time to give faculty a raise, they say there isn’t money . . . but when it comes time to hire managers, all of a sudden there’s money,” said Hoffman, one of Cole’s critics.

Cole defended his stance on salary increases.

“I can understand their frustration,” he said. “But the money is not there. We may have some labor problems because of that, but I don’t think that the public wants us to go bankrupt . . . because we were too generous with the pay increases.”

The union, which was influential in electing Cole in 1989, wants to recruit a candidate to run against him in two years, Hoffman said.

But Cole said he remains confident that he is leading the district in the right direction. “You stake out some strong positions, and you bring some set course of values, and you try to lead people to those positions,” he said.

Biography of Gregory P. Cole

Age: 41

Education: He graduated in 1978 with a doctorate in dental surgery from USC. He also has a bachelor’s degree in biology from USC.

Career: He has his own dental practice in Newbury Park since 1979.

Previous experience: Cole was elected to the board November 1989, after running unsuccessfully for the position in 1981. He served on the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission from 1987 to 1989. He was also elected to the Ventura County Republican Central Committee in 1984, 1986 and 1988.

Family: He is married to Alice Cole and has three daughters and one son; ages 13, 11, 8 and 7.

Hobbies: He likes playing home computer games and tennis. He is a member of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Thousand Oaks Kiwanis Club.