Rob Padilla: Former Saddleback student made his own cartoon series. Page 5
SOCCCD’s STUDENT NEWSPAPER
Softball: Gauchos win
6 - 2 against Fullerton College. Page 6
28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo, California
Vol. 43 No. 19
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
SOCCCD seeks to avoid L.A. district woes Facilities department takes precautions to prevent pitfalls suffered at LACCD campuses
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ADAM JONES
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he South Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees expressed concern last Monday about the problems that the Los Angeles Community College District recently experienced in regards to poor planning, frivolous spending, and shoddy workmanship with a number of contractors and construction projects. According to a recent Los Angeles Times investigation, tens of millions of dollars have been wasted due to a number of oversights in LACCD. The SOCCCD Trustees wanted to be sure that the same oversight would not plague the upcoming construction at Saddleback College, Irvine Valley College, and the Advanced Technical Education Park campuses.
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$255 million
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$30.5 million LACCD
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SOCCCD Graphic by Adam Jones and Julie Tran/Lariat
SPENDING: Average annual budgets for LACCD’s, SDCCD’s and SOCCCD’s facilities departments. LACCD could be wasting tens of millions of dollars, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It is sincerely with heavy hearts that we see a neighboring community college district experience this confluence of construction pitfalls in such an overwhelming manner,” said Facilities Planning and Purchasing Director Brandye D’lena, for SOCCCD.
According to the LA Times, bond money has paid for many valuable improvements in the LACCD system. These improvements include new science buildings, libraries, stadiums, and computer centers. Unfortunately, despite these positives, a number of
costly blunders have denied the LACCD’s 142,000 students the full potential of one of California’s largest public works programs, according to the LA Times. D’lena was confident that these unfortunate circumstances would not befall the projects
planned on SOCCCD campuses. The SOCCCD Facilities Planning staff consists of D’lena, Walt Rice, the Assistant Facilities Planning Director, and Directors of Facilities John Ozurovich and John Edwards. “With the four of us, we are able to oversee all of our construction and capital improvement projects in a hands on effort,” D’lena said. “One of the major issues that was taken in the LA Times articles was that there were once removed or twice removed positions for the management there.” LACCD’s facilities department has spent, on average, $225 million per year on their nine campuses. SOCCCD spends, on average, $30.5 million per year at Saddleback, IVC, and ATEP. For comparison, the San Diego Community College district spent an average of $63.7 million a year. SOCCCD has a smaller amount of money to deal with, and plans to keep a watchful eye on where the funds are going. The layering of consultants, a process in which the
management hires a consultant, who then goes on to hire another consultant, and so on, can result in difficulty tracking costs and responsibilities. In LACCD, the layering of consultants may have lead to some of the problems that the district is now facing. “We do layer consultants here. We hire architects in order for them to provide us with a comprehensive design. Those architects need to hire engineers in order to do that,” D’lena said. “It is their liability. So we wouldn’t necessarily want to go outside of the architect’s purview, and assign to them engineers.” D’lena explained how the proposed science building at Saddleback could be done with the layering of consultants, or by directly hiring specific specialty consultants, to avoid layering. “The scrutiny around this matter, however, will result in our continued careful analysis,” D’lena said.
ajones54@saddleback.edu
U.S. Supreme Court hears gender discrimination case on Wal-Mart SARAH BLACK
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he Supreme Court opened to discuss oral arguments, including a gender discrimination case against Wal-Mart that holds between 600,000 and 1.5 million plaintiffs, on March 29. The case, Dukes v. WalMart, involves whether women who worked at Wal-Mart will get class-action status and sue the largest U.S. retail store for discrimination. The case is led by Betty Dukes and Christine Kwaponski, and if it goes to court, will be the largest classaction lawsuit in history. “It’s important simply because of the money,” said Jeffrey Tobin, former federal prosecutor, speaking on CNN’s “In the Arena.” When you have 1.5 million potential plaintiffs, all of whom are looking at, at least, multiple thousand dollars in wards, even a company Wal-Mart’s size is at some risk.” And if women can sue WalMart, they can sue other big companies, Tobin said.
It began ten years ago, when women employees of Wal-Mart filed litigation and charged WalMart with discrimination in hiring and promoting. The company defends themselves by saying they enforce “a strong anti-discrimination policy” at the corporate level and that they have “a strong record of advancement of women,” according to a statement by Gisel Ruiz, executive vice president of WalMart, on March 29. According to CNN, this case is the most important of its class and could potentially impact both small and large businesses. The workers involved in the lawsuit say that while women make up for more than 70 percent of the entire Wal-Mart task force, they rank as only onethird of its store management. Theodore Boutrous, an attorney for Wal-Mart, countered that the company’s figures show that at “90 percent of the store, there was no pay disparity.” After Joseph Sellers, attorney for the workers, followed up by talking about what he called the “Wal-Mart way,” which he said
was the “subjective discrimination (of managers),” when dealing with promoting and paying workers. But he was continually shot down by the Supreme Court judges, after being told his logic “really shows a flaw in your case on commonality,” said Justice Anthony Kennedy. However Sellers continued to go in the vein of the “corporate culture,” which leads to the “strong, centralized structure [that] fosters or facilitates gender stereotyping and discrimination,” and then ends up taking place at individual stores. “The store managers don’t make up their own pay and promotion policy -- they follow a common set of policies that are established by headquarters in Arkansas,” Sellers said. “There is extensive oversight of the decisions they make.” But the judges were still unimpressed. The plaintiff group can be as large as 1.5 million, and WalMart is claiming the “historic” number of plaintiffs is too large to hold merit.
Photo by Phil Roeder/Flickr: CC by 2.0
ORAL ARGUMENTS: A group of female employees working for Wal-Mart are looking for the Supreme Court to try their case to sue the retail store for discrimination in management hiring. “The plaintiff’s lawyers in this case went way too far. It’s the way the plaintiffs have framed the case, implicating every store, every person. There’s no way, one woman can be representative of a million women in a case like this,” said Boutrous. “The danger is that it would expose virtually every company in America to huge, costly, baseless class actions that’s bad for jobs, bad for the economy, and at the end of day it doesn’t help
the people on behalf the case is being brought.” Wal-Mart has already been slammed with previous discrimination suits including African-American truck drivers and workers with disabilities. In 2001 alone the company paid out $6 million to 13 different lawsuits. But the match isn’t over yet, as both plaintiff and defendant have plenty of data to back up their stories. Three women now
sit on the Supreme Court, the highest in history, but the court has been known to side with big businesses in the past, including the Goodyear Tire sex-discrimination case of Lilly Ledbetter. However, both sides agree that whatever the outcome, the workplace landscape will be changed forever for future generations.
sblack15@saddleback.edu
Paramedics respond to call for ill OCTA driver Monday Bad case of flu is suspected at North Campus bus stop MARYANNE SHULTS SARAH BLACK
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n Orange County Transportation Authority bus driver fell ill and called paramedics on Monday while driving his route that stops at the bus circle on the Saddleback College campus. Daniel Juarez, 33, said he left for work this morning with a cold. As he pulled onto College Drive, he started perspiring and felt nauseated. “At first, no one else noticed,” Juarez said. “I stopped the bus and called 9-1-1. It took them less than a minute to respond.”
At the bus circle, some of his co-workers expressed concern. “He said he was feeling fine, and one of his passengers asked if he was OK, because he looked really pale,” said fellow bus driver Everardo Orhellas. “He just suddenly threw up and then called 9-1-1.” Paramedics transported him to Mission Hospital by where he was waiting to be examined. Sitting in a wheelchair, receiving oxygen through a nasal cannula, Juarez was still pale. “I’m waiting for them to check me out. They want to make sure my vitals are al right,” Juarez said. “I’m feeling better. It’s probably just the stomach flu.”
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mshults0@saddleback.edu sblack15@saddleback.edu
EMERGENCY: Bus driver Daniel Juarez, 33, was immediately taken to the hospital after he called 9-1-1. “I was swaying and then throwing up, throwing up,” Juarez said.