College Head Faces Call for His Removal

In the aftermath of a blistering report by an accrediting committee, a key faculty group at Irvine Valley College has recommended a battery of reforms, including the removal of the college’s embattled president.

The recommendations by the Irvine Valley College Academic Senate carries no independent authority, but it is considered the official voice of teachers and professors in administrative matters. A recommendation to remove a president is considered rare.

Raghu Mathur, who has had a stormy relationship with faculty leaders of several college departments in the nearly two years he has served as president, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

In calling for his removal in a resolution adopted last week, faculty at the college saw the accreditation report as direct criticism of Mathur’s leadership and said they could not work with him.

But Glenn Roquemore, acting vice president for instruction at IVC, said Thursday he was saddened by the faculty vote and said college administrators did not share the teachers’ opposition to Mathur.

“We’re being asked to move into a spirit of solving our differences,” Roquemore said. “It’s the wrong time to ask someone to leave. His removal is not the solution.”

Mathur’s contested appointment as president in early 1997 triggered a wrenching struggle between his opponents on campus and the Board of Trustees of the South Orange County Community College District, which oversees Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College. A majority of trustees favored Mathur.

In naming the former chemistry professor, trustees veered from district hiring procedures and appointed Mathur under new ones. Faculty members objected, and two professors sued in Orange County Superior Court, winning on claims that the board violated state open-meeting laws.

However, Mathur remained president, unsuccessfully working to quell student and faculty protests. Last spring, nearly three-fourths of the faculty voted “no confidence” in Mathur. Last fall, 77% of the faculty expressed dissatisfaction with college leadership in an Academic Senate survey.

The campus conflict was among problems cited last year by a team of accreditation experts, who said the 11,000-student campus was in “crisis” and was “wracked by malfunction and misfortune.”

In reports released last month, the Accreditation Commission for Community and Junior Colleges complained particularly about the board of trustees, which it said had immersed itself too deeply in college affairs and must step back. The commission called for “immediate, extensive intervention and change” in the way both colleges are run.

The resolution adopted by the Academic Senate on Feb. 11 stresses that faculty members are “deeply chagrined” by the accreditation commission’s findings and notes that a breakdown of governance had taken place at IVC because of the polarizing effect Mathur has had.

“Raghu Mathur has been proven unable to provide effective leadership,” the resolution states. “There can be no satisfactory resolution of these conflicts as long as Raghu Mathur remains president.”

The Academic Senate called on trustees to assign Mathur to other duties and begin a new selection process that they said would properly include the views of faculty, students and staff.