Some California community college trustees have placed its chancellor on administrative leave and plan to terminate her contract. Last week, the Board voted to place Dr. Dianne Van Hook, the chancellor of the College of the Canyons, on administrative leave and will begin looking for a permanent replacement. Van Hook’s contract was set to expire in 2027. She has served as the institution’s chancellor since 1988.
The decision to suspend Van Hook was obviously a difficult one; the Board met in four consecutive, hours-long closed sessions before announcing that it placed Van Hook on leave. There is no indication of why the Board decided to part company with the soon-to-be former chancellor, but that’s really not what struck me about the story.
One community college trustee, Joan MacGregor, informed the Chancellor earlier this year that she would vacate her elected Board seat on August 5. According to MacGregor, she says she experienced a “hostile environment” at the college while exercising her duties as a community college trustee. She claims that other college employees identified a similarly toxic work environment in an institution-wide survey conducted earlier this year.
MacGregor isn’t the only casualty of this process. Another community college trustee, Chuck Lyon, resigned last month. Lyon’s resignation came before the local deadline to hold a special election to fill his seat. And although MacGregor determined months ago that she would resign, she waited until after the filing deadline specifically to avoid allowing the voters to choose her replacement.
“MacGregor said at a previous meeting that she purposely chose to delay her resignation to allow the board to appoint someone rather than letting the voters decide, saying she has seen a larger number of candidates attempt to be appointed when compared to the number who attempt to win an election.”
Your community college trustees don’t trust you
Can you think of anything less democratic than an elected official deliberately gaming the calendar to prevent voters from choosing their representative? To resign for so-called moral reasons but time it to ensure the voters cannot determine their representation – and then to publicly announce your rationale for doing so – is beyond the pale.
MacGregor has been a College of the Canyons Trustee for more than 30 years. Community college trustees are supposed to provide oversight over the tax dollars that fund the institution. When a Trustee cannot finish a term – for whatever reason – it remains the voters’ prerogative to choose their representation.
If you think this wouldn’t happen here, remember that a similar sideswipe happened last year at WCC, when former trustee Richard Landau resigned after the December 2022 Board meeting. The Trustees, who clearly had already determined their trusty replacement, held a barely passable process to formalize their selection, without giving sufficient notice to the community of the open seat. Instead of choosing the applicant who had gone through the November election and lost a seat to William Milliken, Jr., by just 300 votes, they chose a person who finished 6th out of 8 candidates in the November 2014 election, and who had been subsequently appointed to the WTMC Board of Trustees.
The message the Trustees are sending to you – the voters – here should be crystal clear: “You can’t be trusted.” You can’t be trusted to choose our preferred trustee, and you can’t be trusted to make the right choice on bond issues. So, the Trustees will simply bypass you. It’s as though you don’t matter.
Because in their eyes, you don’t. In case you’re wondering, your only job is to pay the bills.
Photo Credit: Adam Russell, via Flickr
