California State University Fullerton Archives - Friends For Fullerton's Future

April 15, 2020September 9, 2020Dick Jones

Dr. Jones and his “Monster”

Things are quiet in downtown Fullerton of late, since the bars and nightclubs have been shut down. Does anybody miss the mayhem? There are those boosters and lackeys that complain about the bad old days when the sidewalks were rolled up at 6 pm, but I sort of like the peace and quiet, the absence of imported trash, and a “business district” that doesn’t cost a million and a half more to keep up than it brings in. I’m tired of scofflaw booze peddlers like the Florentine Mob and Jeremy Popoff’s “Slidebar” who have been encouraged by City Hall to believe that the laws don’t apply to them.

And so for fun, I rerun this tribute post – a blast from the past – our favorite corn pone fizishun, Dr. HeeHaw Dick Jones waxing poetic on the mess he made of DTF – 13 years ago!

Dr. Jones has a strange way of relating everything to babies, he goes from one end of the spectrum to the other, aka “flip flop”. He claims that he was the “Promoter” of the Downtown Bars and Dance Halls, yet he’s the Councilperson calling the downtown, “The Wild West” and “River City”. He’s “afraid” to go downtown after 10:00pm! As recent as September 16, 2008, he voted to subsidize the renegade dance halls, because they “need help”. Before you vote on November 4th, please pass this website on to your friends and neighbors!

April 14, 2019April 14, 2019Behind Closed Doors

The Rape of the Fullerton Arboretum

by The Fullerton Harpoon3 Comments

What’s going on over at the Fullerton Arboretum? Well, it’s pretty clear: a bunch of State educrats and planners have their eyes on expanding the CSUF campus into the Arboretum grounds. Why? Because they can.

At April 10, 2019 open houses, these worthies finally unveiled their “concepts,” “placeholders” and other thin end of the wedge lingo that means construction of some sort is coming. The on-line story in The Fullerton Observer by Jesse Latour gives an excellent summary of what happened – along with the recital of the poor planning effort the planners put in to holding their own meeting. The staff drones and their flunky “consultant” obviously didn’t count on the horde that showed up to almost unanimously oppose any encroachment on the Arboretum grounds, and to point out, correctly, that the place had been overwhelmingly described as people’s favorite place at the university.

Pay no attention to the people in front of the curtain, especially the ones sitting on the floor…(image shamelessly boosted from Fullerton Observer)

As might have been expected, lie and dissimulation, and outright refusal to answer straight questions were piled one on top of one another into a classic bureaucratic dung heap. But one thing emerged in pellucid light: the people that run the university want to build something, maybe anything, within the confines of the existing Arboretum. All three “conceptual” scenarios include new buildings on the grounds that are not wanted or needed by the people who run the Arboretum. And those of us who know how these incremental approvals work know that the die is already cast.

Unfortunately, the good folk who showed up for this phony pow-wow don’t understand that as local citizens they have virtually no power to effect a stop to whatever the Cal State University system and its Chancellor in Long Beach authorize. This is particularly true since Fullerton’s Redevelopment Successor Agency seems to be pulling out of its long-standing cooperative agreement with the university. Back in the late 70s, the City actually paid to help establish the Arboretum. Does anybody in City Hall care? There is certainly no revenue to be squeezed from it.

October 25, 2017CSUF

Goons, Goblins, the Alt Right, and Antifa Oh My!

by The Rambler20 Comments

The CSUF Republicans have invited controversial conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus Halloween evening, creating quite a bit of anxiety for CSU educrats, liberal activists and local police.

Why? Here’s what happened when Yiannopoulos tried to speak at UC Berkley earlier this year:

That’s a lot of potential chaos for Fullerton, and local agencies seem to be planning for the worst case scenario. Nearby Acacia Elementary School has announced that it will be sending kids home early that day. Some CSUF students have said they are afraid to go to school. The Fullerton Police Department is working with “local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies” to plan security for the event.

Perhaps stoking the flames, student and faculty groups have denounced the event and called for the school to prevent Yiannopoulos from speaking. These efforts seem to embolden Yiannopoulos’ followers, driving media attention leading up to the event and reinforcing his assertion that conservatives’ right to free speech on campus is being threatened.

Anyway, here’s hoping that Fullerton residents won’t have to rely on the FPD’s finesse in tactfully de-escalating a Halloween riot.

August 30, 2017August 30, 2017Chronic Failure

Millie’s Mansion

by Mr. Peabody19 Comments

We here at FFFF like to remind our Friends of the sorts of ways our public resources are spent, and we have shown our readers the lifestyle enjoyed by the Presidents of CSUF. (now Fullerton City Councilman) Greg Sebourn documented this dolce vita away back in 2010. Then it was the incompetent old fool, Milton Gordon livin’ large on our dime

Recently we have been introduced to the mind of Ms. Mildred Garcia, current President of CSUF and champion of the downtrodden minorities everywhere. Her record in support of “diversity” is no doubt impeccable and she will surely find a place waiting for her in a properly diverse Heaven. In the meantime there’s that old saying about doing well by doing good.

Forget The Punchy Professor, Mil.’ Next time just hit ’em with your wallet.

President Garcia pulls in a tidy $450,000 per year courtesy of the taxpayers, and not only that, she, as befits her office, gets to live on a palatial estate – the old Chapman “El Dorado Ranch.” Here’s a shot not from the famous FFFF Spook Drone.

Of course the apologists for the social justice crusader will argue that the estate is needed to host fancy parties for all those high roller, big donors.

The caviar and champagne are on ice, come on in. Oh, wait, not you!

It would be interesting to see how Ms. Garcia characterizes her estate living on her income tax forms, but something tells me that this type of quotidian annoyance is taken care of by the taxpayers, including utilities, landscaping and painting that tennis court.

Of course that’s the real point of this post – not Garcia’s tired, old diversity screed pitched at 35,000 gullible kids, half of whom enter her university as unable to read a coherent sentence as Garcia is to construct one. The real point is to remember next time you hear someone boohooing about the underfunded CSU system to point the boohooer in the direction of Millie’s Mansion.

August 23, 2017August 23, 2017CSUF

Mildred’s Rant

by The Worm42 Comments

Yesterday a Friend passed along a letter from CSUF president Mildred Garcia, in which she uses her administrative position (and the state’s computer systems) to distribute a politically-charged screed to 40,000 impressionable CSUF students. We’ve reproduced it for your entertainment here:

Dear Titan family:

Welcome back and Happy New Academic Year! It’s wonderful to see our faculty, staff, and students breathing life back into our campus community. Each of you bring such energy to the University and a love for teaching, learning, and listening that empowers all Titans to Reach Higher in our classrooms and throughout our diverse communities.

We are at a moment in history when the marketplace of ideas that we at Cal State Fullerton promote and protect through equity, inclusion, and civil discourse has the power to heal and lead a wounded nation.

The last time we were all together, we witnessed the transformative power of upholding these and other core tenets with what was arguably the greatest achievement of our now 60-year history: the commencement of our largest graduating class — nearly 11,000 diverse Titans, the majority of whom were low-income students and/or the first in their family to put on a college graduation cap.

For years, I’ve made it a practice to read what’s written on the backs of those caps; I find the messages not only inspiring, but also indicative of the collective mood of our nation through the words of the young people who will soon be leading it.

As a woman of color, a Godmother and Tía, a proud American, and most of all, as president of a University founded on the very principles of equity and inclusion that have recently come under attack in ways this nation hasn’t seen in half a century, I am proud that at this past commencement a rising tide of peaceful resistance was evident in the words of our graduates’ speeches, in the spirit of their families’ cheers, and of course, on the backs of their graduation caps.

“Nevertheless,” the back of one young woman’s cap said, “she persisted.”

“Love Trumps Hate,” another said in rainbow letters.

“Mis padres cruzaron la frontera,” one read in Spanish, “para que yo pudiera cruzar este escenario.” “My parents crossed the border so I could cross this stage.”

These American themes of justice and hope in the face of bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia reminded me of a movement I took part in during my own youth, and given the progress we made as a nation in the decades since, I find it tragic that someone can look at a mob of neo-Nazis chanting hateful slogans on a college campus and claim that some of them are “very fine people,” or that the murderous violence their hatred sparked can be blamed on “many sides.”

This kind of language and leadership has unearthed a dark reality and emboldened the worst among us. Most recently, this culminated in Charlottesville, and when I saw a diverse group of student counter-protestors huddled together in the face of an oncoming sea of white supremacists, I couldn’t help but think of our own courageous students and a quote that was central to my Convocation Address last week: “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

Fellow Titans, just as that time had come for Martin Luther King, Jr. when he first said those words in 1967, it has come for us now. As the faculty, staff, and students of the largest university in the most diverse system of higher education in the country, it is time for us to wield the power of our collective voice to let the world know that we stand firmly and proudly on the right side of history with our immigrant brothers and sisters who made this country great long before it was a campaign slogan; with our undocumented students who have nothing to do with how they came to America and everything to do with what it means to be an American; with our Muslim faculty, staff and students who face travel bans that may impede their work and education; with African American students around the nation who attend classes in buildings named after Confederate generals who fought to keep them out of those buildings; with our LGBTQ community who fear losing their well-earned rights; and with our Caucasian Titans who remain deeply embedded in Cal State Fullerton’s definition of diversity and whose presence and voice is integral to who we are and what we aim to become.

As a public university that fosters a learning environment in which diverse perspectives from both sides of the political aisle are central to our mission, we are in a unique position to lead the country during this pivotal moment of history. We will do so by upholding the First Amendment rights enshrined in our constitution while also supporting those who may be hurt, scared, or offended by that speech, recognizing that our rich diversity is our most prized asset and that intolerance in any form is an affront to all of us. Paramount to this endeavor is safeguarding the physical safety of all faculty, staff, and students by providing a violence-free academic environment grounded in the mutually respectful exchange of ideas from all sides.

We may face offensive language from individuals with whom we strongly disagree. Our commitment to uphold their right to speak should be matched only by our determination to challenge them through civil discourse, peaceful protest, and the hope that education — the truest and longest-standing cure for hatred and violence — sparks a transformation in them that could be surmised with a quote from Nelson Mandela on the back of one of our graduate’s caps:

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

Welcome home, fellow Titans. Let’s embrace the work ahead, the challenges our nation faces, and most importantly, each other.

Sincerely,

Mildred García
President

OK, we get it. Diversity good, political violence bad. Who can disagree with that?

As you scroll through the anti-Trump rhetoric, you may notice one glaring omission. Garcia neglected to denounce the hatred and political violence that occurred on her own campus, by her own employee, Professor Eric Canin. If you recall, Canin was recently allowed to return to teaching after being briefly suspended for assaulting a student over a political disagreement.

Looking back, it seems that Garcia has never uttered a word publicly about the attack. Her failure to acknowledge and denounce this specific threat to the her students certainly calls into question her ability to “heal and lead” any kind of transformation. In that context, her entire diatribe is both insincere and hypocritical.

But hey, why focus on addressing violence inflicted by your own employee when you can talk about Nazis instead?

August 3, 2017Chronic Failure

Eric Canin, The Punchy Professor Rides Again

by The Worm15 Comments

Remember that CSUF professor who was accused of assaulting a student during a heated political argument in February? He actually managed to get himself fired over the incident… no small feat for a government employee. Surely the school’s careful and expensive termination of Eric Canin would stick, particularly after multiple investigations confirmed that he did indeed strike a student, right?

Nope. Canin’s union, the California Faculty Association, arranged for an appeal to an “independent arbitrator” who reduced the termination to a brief suspension.

Here’s the article from the Daily Titan spelling out the re-instatement. You have admire the nonsensical gobbledygook with which a system created and designed to protect public employees can shroud some simple facts, i.e. in some unfortunate manner Canin’s hand made contact with someone’s face.

It looks like an unrepentant Dr. Canin will return to CSUF for the fall semester. Students wary of Canin’s penchant for pugilism may take comfort knowing that Canin’s physical presence on campus will be severely limited, as he has been consigned to teaching two online classes. Ironically one of the classes is called “Culture and Communication” wherein I suppose Canin does not espouse physical rebuke as any sort of effective communication tool.

Culture and Communication? Distance learning is a good choice.

August 29, 2011August 29, 2011Dick Jones

Dick Jones Highlight Film

by Jan Florys Dog81 Comments

For those of you who may think that the our Mayor Dick Jones has only recently become a rude, loud, obnoxious, ignorant buffoon, I present to you a nearly 3-year old post with some of the krazy-fun rantings of Dr. HeeHaw from yesteryear. Enjoy.

Dick on The Fox

The Revenge of Dick

Dick’s Developing A Problem

Power to the People

Has Dick Gone Mad?

Dick on Preservation

October 30, 2009October 30, 2009Dick Jones

Fullerton City Council Term Limits – Who’s For and Who’s Against

by admin38 Comments

UPDATE: Here’s a post from last winter, published again to remind the Friends that Fullerton’s decision-makers promised to put the term limits issue on the next available ballot. Of course that opportunity came and went with the 72nd Assembly Special Election primary. It could still be done in January 2010 if the Special Election itself is required. In any case there is a General Election primary election next June. So let’s all remember!

In dramatic fashion our friends on the Fullerton City Council decided on January 6^th that the voters of Fullerton should decide whether a twelve-year term limit for council members is right for Fullerton.

Pam Keller joined campaign promise keepers Shawn Nelson and Sharon Quirk in placing the issue on the first available ballot, which should be in June, 2010. Predictably, antediluvian councilmen Don Bankhead and Dick Jones opposed the motion believing that you can never be around too long, be too hidebound, too boring, and too inert to serve the public.

As usual, the good government types (i.e. we know what’s good for you so sit down and shut up) like Jan Flory were on hand to oppose the idea, knowing as they do that the longer you are in office the more likely you are to identify with public employees instead of constituents. These folks pretend to defend the public’s right to choose who their elected representatives are even though they don’t seem to trust the public to do much of anything else without government intervention.

We strongly support term limits. We believe that public choice will be enhanced by term limits because the well-financed incumbents will be forced to give way to new representation that might actually give people of real talent a chance to participate in governance, people who now largely acquiesce to the inevitability of incumbency. Fortunately, a majority of the council seem to agree.

The outstanding legal issue is whether the limits can be applied to previous years in office. The final wording of the plebiscite will have to address this. Let’s hope it works out so we can end the Age of Dinosaurs in Fullerton.

May 2, 2009January 4, 2010Chris Norby

THE STRANGE & TRAGIC TALE OF HILLCREST PARK

by Fred L. Olmsted34 Comments

UPDATE: We are republishing this wonderful post by Fred Olmstead originally posted on February 21, 2009. We do so in order to highlight the fact that the park – suffering from real blight – is in the Redevelopment project area, and stands as yet another testament to the failure of Redevelopment. Sharon Quirk, are you reading this?

– The Fullerton Shadow

Loyal Friends of Fullerton’s Future, gather ‘round the cool glow of your computer terminals and follow a sad saga of miserable municipal negligence.

Located in the center of Fullerton is a resource of inestimable value, overlooked by almost everybody in and outside of City Hall: Hillcrest Park. Included in an early vision of the city it followed upon the City Beautiful, and natural urban park elements of the Progressive movement; and coincided nicely with the new auto culture of the 1920s, positioned as it was, along the original Highway 1.

Developed fully during the Depression in a rustic mode, the park soon after began a long decline into municipal irrelevance, and if anything, seemed to be perceived by many as a liability rather than a great asset. This tragic trajectory is a shameful blot on Fullerton’s history and is akin to placing your eighty-five year old mother in a criminally negligent nursing home.

After Don Bankhead and Fullerton’s Finest chased out the acid-dropping hippies in the 1960s, the park became a haven for perverts; trees began to die and were not replaced; erosion claimed many of the north and west facing slopes and was not arrested; as the infrastructure crumbled it was replaced by City Engineer Hugh Berry with incongruous cinder block walls and concrete light poles.

In the mid-1990s Redevelopment Director Gary Chalupsky, in a philanthropic mood, decided that Redevelopment funds could be used to address Hillcrest Park issues – the first official over-the-shoulder glance toward the park in years.

And here, dear Friends, the story turns from a chronicle of benign neglect to one of outright incompetence and, one might plausibly argue, a form of bureaucratic malevolence.

In 1996 the usual scoping/charette pantomime was performed with an historic park landscape architect, specially imported from Riverside. An odd thing happened: every time the consultant prepared a list of priorities for the park, the Community Services Department’s wishes kept getting pushed to the top. The Director of Community Services was Susan Hunt, a woman long known for her mindless turf battles with her constituents – (including the Isaak Walton Cabin in Hillcrest). Hunt was determined to hijack the process and divert resources from where they were needed to facilities that she and her department could control and perhaps even profit from.

Hunt was successful. The consultant, knowing whom it was important to please, seemed only too happy to abet the fraud that was perpetrated. The city council (including current Jurassic members Bankhead and Jones) went along. Chris Norby was there, too. Now he’s in charge of the County’s parks.

A new playground replaced the old one in the Lemon parking area even though no one had complained about the existing one that parents seemed to like. More egregious still, a new facility (known as Hillcrest Terrace) was built behind the Veteran’s building that could be rented out for social functions. But the real needs of the park – slope stabilization, plant cataloguing and replacement, the removal of inappropriate elements – went unaddressed – and the problems have continued unabated to this day, ten years later, as interest in the park waned again.

Last fall the City once again roused itself from its somnolence and created an ad hoc committee to consider issues related to Hillcrest Park. The time is, perhaps, propitious. Susan Hunt has disappeared into an overdue and well-compensated retirement, current Director Joe Felz is much more amenable to citizen input. It’s time to reclaim this park.

Hillcrest is still in the Redevelopment Area and remains affected by indisputable blight. This should become a priority for Redevelopment Director Rob Zur Schmied.

While we wonder if the Hillcrest Park committee will actually display the necessary independence from staff manipulation, and that they possess the necessary technical abilities, we wish them well. And we encourage citizens to make sure that this time any assessment of Hillcrest will objectively address the needs of the park and report directly to the City Council. Recommendations should be included in the City’s Capital Budget.

Hillcrest Park can and must return to being the crown jewel of Fullerton’s parks.

March 23, 2009April 18, 2009Fullerton School Board

HEY, WAIT A SEC. I THOUGHT FULLERTON WAS THE EDUCATION COMMUNITY!

by The Fullerton Harpoon26 Comments

The Education Community

On a recent post, frequent commenter van get it da artiste keystroked this gem: “I hate fullerton and its weird fusion of provincial liberals and extremist republicans.”

Now, we know exactly what “van” means. For we, too, have discerned a collection of know-nothing liberals dedicated to touchy-feely abstractions like “the arts” and “social justice” paired off with a sort of proletarian Republican claque that is terrified of anybody who would even use the word “abstraction.”

Now, Loyal friends, please fell free to share your pithy descriptions of our lovely burg. All opinions are welcome!