Deadline Looms for Frogue Recall Campaign

Pulling her hat down over her ears in the morning chill early Saturday, Brenda Borron stood amid a cluster of bank branches and medical offices, a pen in her hand, asking strangers for their help.

A few smiled and declined, walking by. But many listened to the Irvine Valley College English professor’s appeal, took her pen and signed the petitions on the clipboard that called for a vote to remove one of her bosses, Trustee Steven J. Frogue.

Frogue, a member of the South Orange County Community College District board, is the target of a recall by a coalition angry about Frogue’s views and his role on a board that has drastically altered the administration of Irvine Valley College in Irvine and Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.

“I teach students to write,” Borron said. “That also means: Read, think, talk, be analytical, be critical. How could I not be involved in this recall campaign and still be able to look them in the eye?”

But for Borron and a small army of other volunteers and paid petition gatherers, the campaign has become more earnest in the last week. They are only a month away from a deadline requiring them to have 38,000 valid signatures of registered voters who live in south Orange County. And they have 20,000 signatures left to gather by March 24, a goal that may prove elusive.

If they fail, it would mean a temporary victory for Frogue, 55, a Lake Forest schoolteacher and trustee who plunged the 33,000-student community college district into controversy last fall when he proposed a three-day seminar on the assassination of President Kennedy featuring two speakers whose views are considered anti-Semitic.

But whether it would quell the debate over Frogue is doubtful. Controversy at meetings of the college board has rekindled in the last two months, requiring a heavy campus security presence for loud debates between Frogue’s supporters, who routinely denounce Israel, and his opponents, many of them from Jewish organizations.

At a meeting last week, police confiscated a 9-inch knife from someone in the audience. In January, a Jewish woman working on the recall effort said she was spat on by a man who first expressed contempt for Israel. Jewish groups have called repeatedly for Frogue’s resignation, and the Orange County Human Relations Commission found his actions to be “inappropriate” and “abhorrent.”

While many faculty members have contributed time to the recall effort, other faculty members oppose it, saying that they don’t believe Frogue holds anti-Semitic views and that the issue is being used by recall proponents to fuel political fires.

“They want to keep people confused,” Christina Ortiz, a senior graphic designer and part-time professor at Saddleback said Saturday. Ortiz said the board’s efforts to streamline college administration are necessary. “I think the people who are running the recall stand to benefit if we at these colleges remain fattened calves. But colleges have to change.”

Tony Garcia, a Saddleback English professor, said the real fight is for control of the seven-member board of trustees. Frogue is part of a four-member majority that has instituted sweeping changes unpopular with many teachers and administrators.

“I think the board is doing a good job of getting people back into the classroom,” Garcia said. “They’re servicing the students, and that’s where the money should go.”

But by forcing changes on a reluctant college community, the board also has had to spend more to defend against lawsuits challenging decisions made in closed meetings, recall supporters said.

Deborah Evans, a Mission Viejo woman who attends art classes at Saddleback and whose two teenagers take courses at the college, said many of the classes trustees claim to have created through the controversial administrative overhaul were canceled or have low student counts.

Joining professor Borron in gathering petitions Saturday, Evans said she is confident the recall drive will succeed in placing Frogue’s fate on a ballot. “There’s a lot of support in the community. We just need to tap it,” she said.