I had an interest that night almost a year ago, sitting in the back of the boardroom at Palomar College. I didn’t plan to speak, but as a part-time professor, I supported the other part-timers and child-care workers who asked for our equity pay the board had been holding for nearly three years. That was a year ago.

Certainly the North County Times should report the "news."  That Palomar College is finally releasing pay that the legislature released nearly four years ago is a kind of news. It’s bad news. Holding a part of someone’s paycheck during a fiscal crisis is unconscionable. California education has enough fiscal trouble without creating more out of spite. If state legislators who hold up the budget for a few weeks are "girlie-men," what is the ruling majority of trustees who held back pay to the poorest of those who teach for our community?

"Girlie-Man" just doesn’t say it for the most disdainful trustee that night. Michelle Nelson seemed quite upset that a professor had written about the equity pay in these pages. After more than two years of waiting for the board to release nearly $3 million to its part-time faculty, the freedom of the press was a reasonable option for us. Ms. Nelson is not a girlie-woman. She’s an obstructionist politician who punished the impoverished workers under her control for asking for what rightfully belongs to them.

During that meeting, you could mistake Ralph Jensen’s silence for thoughtfulness were it not followed by his failure to do something. Jensen’s indifference to teachers hurt me most because as the community columnist for this paper, I’d profiled Jensen when he ran for the board. He called and said the Valley Center community needed one of our own on the Palomar College Board. I had agreed. But as I sat in the board meeting, watching two of the five trustees—Nancy Chadwick and Mark Evilsizer—ready to release the part-timers’ pay, Jensen sat inert, a comfortable incumbent. In my hard folding chair, I felt like a fool for helping him land one of the comfortably stuffed high-back swivelers with wheels. I can’t call Jensen a "girlie-man," though…wouldn’t be fair to the girls.

I remember that board meeting because it was the first one after the October firestorms. We all wanted to be positive, so after listening to Chairman McMullen tell all Palomar College had done for the fire victims, I rose to tell them how after I was evacuated with the tools of my trade—a few books and my computer—I went to the home of another part-time professor, John Sowers, and that although he and his wife would also be evacuated the next day, my colleague helped me as much as he could when I asked him. I told the board that night they could further help the campus community if they released the equity pay so those hit by the fires would have a bit more for the recovery. That was nearly a year ago and, unfortunately, McMullen, Jensen and Nelson were not campaigning that night…at least not the way they are now.

Few things sour a workplace more than unnecessarily messing around with the payroll Perhaps McMullen, Jensen and Nelson would like to be re-elected. Their prolonged release of equity pay is not a reason. For my money, they are no better than arsonists who set fires just to get credit for putting them out.

Brandon Cesmat, whose book Driven into the Shade recently received a San Diego Book Award, is an adjunct professor at Palomar College.

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