THE MESS OF A MANIFESTO
Is the Maricopa college system the victim of a hostile takeover or a conspiracy theory?
Is there a coup d’état underway to take over Arizona’s largest community college system?
Are things so out of whack at Maricopa County Community College District that one administrator could orchestrate a complete overthrow?
Ask the district’s governing board and top administrators, and you get the same answer: It’s a nonsense conspiracy theory.
But a faculty group and others say otherwise.
The controversy stems from a manifesto written by Jeffrey N. Darbut, the vice president of administrative services at Mesa Community College and the treasurer of the campaign to re-elect MCCCD board member Jean McGrath.
Darbut, who couldn’t be reached this week, describes
himself on social media as a “senior financial executive with progressive finance and administrative experience” who joined Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group that advocates for less taxes and government regulation, in January.
In his 2017 manifesto, “Organizational Change at the Maricopa Community Colleges,” Darbut outlines a detailed transformation of the colleges into something that looks like a private conglomerate where:
❚ Faculty is essentially silenced by turning everyone into “at-will” workers, ❚ Resources are consolidated,
❚ Programs are axed,
❚ Property is sold and
❚ Students are prepared for jobs instead of continuing their education by transferring to a four-year university.
The blueprint is a bad idea because it threatens the college’s mission of serving a diverse student population that may not have the grades or can’t afford a four-year university. And that’s not all.
John Schampel, the president of the Maricopa Community Colleges Faculty Association, lists 18 of Darbut’s recommendations that the governing board and/or the administration have implemented or are considering.
Two key suggestions made by Darbut have come to pass:
❚ The governing board ended MCCCD’s 40-year “meet-and-confer” policy earlier this year, which has triggered a tumultuous legal and internal fight with the faculty.
❚ Chancellor Maria Harper-Marinick also stunned everyone earlier this year by getting rid of the football program. That has triggered another tumultuous fight to save it.
Schampel said several other proposals being considered are eerily out of Darbut’s manifesto, including:
❚ Nixing a financial advisory council, ❚ Freezing the hiring of residential faculty and
❚ Consolidating non-faculty groups. “It is, in a word, breathtaking,” Schampel said of Darbut’s report and subsequent actions. “The report reads like the plan for a corporate takeover — squeeze every dime out of the place, ignore the effects on students, slap on a new coat of paint and (theoretically) sell it off for a profit.”
Harper-Marinick revokes the notion that her decisions are driven by Darbut’s manifesto.
“Everyone is entitled to an opinion,” said the chancellor, adding the administration didn’t commission or ask Darbut for that report.
“Not every idea he recommended is bad,” she said. “But no. The transformation is based on ideas from our task force.”
Darbut wasn’t a member of that task force.
Board member Johanna Haver said in an email that “No one is considering anything from Jeff Darbut’s plan – something I read several months ago but barely recall.”
Haver added: “I do not believe we will go so far as to make everyone ‘at-will.’ No one said anything about that to me. I have heard nothing about focusing on certificates to gain employment. That is a very bad idea.”
The colleges have 1,404 full-time faculty and 4,457 adjunct faculty, and they’ve been justifiably outraged with the board’s decision of getting rid of meet-and-confer.
Others are justifiably furious about the administration’s decision to end the football programs.
Haver emphasized in her email that the “faculty association’s claims have been based on NOTHING so you have been deceived.”
Haver is right.
We don’t have to believe the faculty association’s claims that this is part of a deliberate takeover.
We don’t have to believe that the governing board is following Darbut’s blueprint to the letter.
We don’t have to believe Darbut penned his blueprint to dismantle the college system.
All we need to do is read Darbut’s blueprint carefully and start crossing out every recommendation the governing board and the administration ratifies to make our own conclusions.