How’s this for job security? A disgraced California State University (CSU) chancellor who was forced to resign over his mishandling of sexual harassment complaints when he was Fresno State University’s president will now be teaching in Cal Poly’s Orfalea College of Business as a fully tenured faculty member making a cool $165,564 per year. And get this: Cal Poly was forced to hire him.
At a time when higher education is being attacked by conservatives for its perceived liberal indoctrination, elitism, and awarding of “useless” degrees, maybe this heart-cooling story of Joseph Castro will revive conservative sentiments toward higher education and get Republicans more interested in the idea of free college. Castro stepped down from his chancellor gig when it became clear he shielded Fresno State’s former vice president of student affairs, Frank Lamas, from 2014 to 2019. Then a Title IX investigation found that Lamas violated a CSU policy prohibiting discrimination, harassment, retaliation, sexual misconduct, dating and domestic violence, and stalking against employees and third parties. Oh my! All while Castro turned a blind eye.
As far as I can tell, conservatives seem to like people who do all that nasty stuff and get away with it, right? Their de facto leader tRump said of women that his celebrity status allowed him to “grab them by the pussy.” He also paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stop her from disclosing their affair, making Donny-boy a cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater and loser who has to pay for sex, and yet conservatives lined up to lick Donald J. Trump‘s boots like a pack of groveling sycophants and mammon-worshipers.
Now there’s former pro football player Hershel Walker, the tRump-endorsed candidate for the state of Georgia U.S. Senate seat, who’s a no-abortion absolutist … except in 2009 he allegedly paid his then-girlfriend to have an abortion. Hypocritical much? Yet his no-abortion stance will probably get him elected. These kinds of scandals used to torpedo political careers, but it seems conservatives—the self-described “family values” party—would rather hold their noses and vote for unethical reprobates if it means winning. When you believe liberals are an existential threat to your way of life, it’s partisanship over morality! Yay!
So here comes Castro, who not only ignored repeated reports of his underling’s sexual misconduct but even helped secure Lamas promotions and raises, and now Castro will be teaching leadership and public policy classes at Cal Poly because Castro’s so-called “retreat rights” to Cal Poly were part of his deal to step down. Really?!?
Let me see if I have this straight. You cover for someone who’s arguably a sexual predator, the CSU doesn’t vet you effectively and promotes you to a job you’re not fit for, an investigation proves you ignored your duties under Title IX, so instead of being fired you get to step down with a $260,000 settlement and the promise of a tenured professorship in San Luis Obispo, which we can all agree is way better than Fresno?
This sounds exactly like the kind of “leadership” Republicans can get behind! Teach kids to ignore the rules, protect misogynists, and reward cronyism. This sounds better than Trump University, also know as the Trump Wealth Institute, which settled three fraud lawsuits. Perhaps for conservatives, Fresno State’s loss is Cal Poly’s gain.
As a kiss goodbye, the Fresno State academic senate declared, “Through former Chancellor Castro’s words and actions in this matter, he has violated the trust of not only the students, staff, and faculty of the CSU but also the people of the state of California. Therefore, academic senate of California State University, Fresno, affirms that Dr. Castro has demonstrated that he not only does not deserve to hold the rank of tenured professor but that he is unqualified to teach and/or conduct research in leadership and public policy.”
If only accountability mattered. You’re hired! Welcome to Cal Poly! Can’t wait for your lecture on leadershit and pubic policy! And here’s 165,564 clams a year!
That’s a lot of clams for a disgraced administrator-cum-professor. And speaking of clams, this Oct. 14 to 16 is the 76th Annual Pismo Beach Clam Festival, and it seems some eager beavers have been starting early. There’s a clam-poaching bonanza afoot!
According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, 1,174 undersized clams have been seized and 23 citations written in the last four months, July being the bumper month for poaching with 953 undersized clams discovered plus citations for harvesting 81 sandworms.
Holy shit! Sandworms! Is that a thing? Apparently Frank Hubbard‘s sci-fi novel Dune isn’t the only place with them. In real life, sandworms, also called lugworms (Arenicola marina), are large marine worms good for bait fishing.
OK, for the record, Pismo Beach clams must be at least 4.5 inches across to be legal, and they may be taken any time of the year, but there’s a limit of 10 per day. Chop onion, celery, and potatoes into bits, pour into heavy cream and melted butter, and cook over medium heat for 25 minutes. Chop up the clams and add last. Don’t heat to boiling! I recommend a few dashes of red wine vinegar and salt and pepper before serving. You’re welcome. Δ
The Shredder is flabbergasted. Send rants and screeds to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 6-16, 2022.
It is amusing the see liberals proclaiming themselves as the champions of women in the battle against sexual harassment, in view of their continuing embrace of liberal heartthrob Bill Clinton. Those of us who are of advanced age recall the Paula Jone’s lawsuit against Clinton, in which he was charged with using the State of Arkansas personnel pool as a “dating” resource. He was charged with having armed and uniformed State Troopers bring his chosen “date”, Paula Jones, from her worksite into his office, where he exposed himself and requested oral sex. As this is the sort of behavior which even the “situationally tolerant” Democrats usually condemn, it was revealing to see them relax their professed “the woman must be believed” rule in order to attack Jones. We were treated to Clinton’s Chief of Staff, James Carville, cracking that “if you drag a roll of twenties through any trailer park, you’ll get a dozen like her”. And yet Democrats profess to not understand why they are losing the working class voters, and are seen as elitists. And, of course, this incident was what lead into the revelation of Clinton’s other foray into the office personnel for “companionship”, the Monica Lewinsky matter, in which the national learned that a prompt trip to the dry cleaners can be an important career-preserving move.
Pinning this guy on Republicans is a stretch, even for Shredder.
“It is amusing [to] see liberals proclaiming themselves as the champions of women in the battle against sexual harassment, in view of their continuing embrace of liberal heartthrob Bill Clinton.”
Maybe a bit of a stretch to label Clinton a “liberal heartthrob.” In many ways, Clinton was simply Republican light. He generally espoused the same neo-liberal Chicago School economic policies as his two Republican predecessors. After all, he did support and sign NAFTA, a treaty that was concocted under the Reagan and Bush Administrations and has proven ruinous to America’s middle class.
Moreover, he followed suit with Bush and Reagan in rolling back the social safety net that had been part of the Great Society with the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Not only that, but he also listened to Republicans on crime, passing the toughest crime bill in the history of the nation in 1993 (championed by Joe Biden).
There is no chance that Bill Clinton could be elected today in the Democratic Party. His sexual improprieties would have sunk him and his economic policies are simply no longer in the mainstream of that party.
But sure, I get it, the Republicans have no actual solutions for our problems and the Clintons make an easy target for their derision.
There is no Republican [or Democrat, for that matter] “lite”.
The politicians from both sides of the aisle advocate for more governement control of our lives and finances from the lowest level to the highest office in the land bickering only on how fast and how far those controls extend.
The Founders and Framers warned us that government tends to grow over time expanding more and more into the lives of the citizens, yet the voters of America continue to elect and re-elect Democrats and Republicans to office from the lowest to the highest even though the vast majority deny any party affiliation declaring themselves “independent”.
It woud be nice to see just a few non Democrats or Republicans elected to Congress so that actual debate on the issues of the day took place and, perhaps, just perhaps, our Constitution’s limits on the federal government be followed per
Article 1, Section 8.
It’s always amusing to see those on the Right telling us who our heroes are. Mr. Donegan describes what he believes to be a “continuing embrace of liberal heartthrob Bill Clinton,” which suggests that he hasn’t been reading much lately. If he had, he’d know that the lean-left majority of Democrats and progressives have little use for the either the politics or persona of Bill Clinton. You can lump Clinton in with Bill Maher, another one imagined by conservatives to be a liberal icon, even though most of us think he’s a talentless egotistical jerk. You need to get out more, John. I mean, as a progressive, I know that the GOP would have no use anymore for that RINO Richard Nixon, with all his “Clean Air Act” and Title IX liberalism, or with that RINO Ronald Reagan for his amnesty of undocumented aliens. Only one of the two parties has gone insane, and I know which one it is….
Yes, one of the two parties has indeed lost its mind. Perhaps it is the party which insists on keeping our borders wide open, yet trills indignantly when just a few of the illegals end up in their luxury enclave. Or which pumps billions of dollars in social spending into the economy in an act titled “Inflation reduction”. Or which keep trying, in the best tradition of George Orwell’s “1984” to convince us that “scientists” keep discovering new genders, and insisting that we must adapt our language to accommodate these new discoveries, and make the use of these semantic advancements mandatory. The Democratic party may be shrinking as these changes drive away members, but there will still be enough to really burden the holding capacities of the looney bins.
Breaking news for John Donegan, from the Trib– “The November election is only a month away, and the Republican Party is struggling when it comes to signing up new voters in San Luis Obispo County, according to the latest voter registration report from the California Secretary of State’s Office. The state agency reported this past week that Democrats are outpacing Republicans in new voters in SLO over the past four years by a decisive 4-to-1 ratio. That has turned what was a Republican advantage into what is now a growing deficit.”
Allow me to add, simply, “LOL”
Sounds like a perfect fit for the Ag department!