Dear Roundup,
Your 29 February 2012 edition is one of the best I have read in my 30+ years here at Pierce College.
Your editorial about the need to drop NO SHOW students, so others who came on the first day to learn could be added and be able to move ahead in their educational goals, was right on.
I am surprised to read in your first page article that it has taken the LACCD so long to realize that we are top heavy with administrators at the cost of cutting needed classes for students. It certainly makes NO SENSE to keep a bloated administration being paid big buck$ to sit around the campus all summer while there are few or no classes serving students (except for the successful PACE program and basic skills).
I challenge the student government to demand that the administration and the faculty create a task force to see how we could teach several dozen MORE class sections this summer by demoting several administrators, including the many department chairs who are not needed (West LA College and Pepperdine University get by with only 6 or 7 Academic divisions, while we have several one person departments”).
After all, most of these administrators and chairs are certificated to teach, and they should serve our students by doing so rather than sitting in their offices cutting classes!
I am not asking for people to be fired, but just to help out in this time of economic emergency. I gave up some of my class assignments voluntarily so that more of our part time faculty member would not be laid off and so more students could be served with more class sections being taught by the less expensive part time instructors.
I hope someone in students government, faculty and administration will respond to this common sense call for more class sections to serve to our students.
Dr. Daniel Stephen McHargue
Pierce College Professor of History, Political Science and Law
