The “butterfly effect” is the lone property of chaos theory I comprehend, if through a shot glass darkly.
The fanciful notion goes like this: The flapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil could, at least theoretically, lead to a tornado in Texas.
No matter how minuscule, any variation in the sequential conditions of a system – in this case, global weather – can trigger a chain of events with dramatic consequences.
When viewing the closed system of MiraCosta College, let's postulate a variant – the “palm-tree effect.”
For decades, the coastal community college has been a model of utopian collegiality. High salaries, no union, genial faculty-president-board relations.
Then, last year, palm fronds flapped and, before you knew it, a howling hurricane was flattening the campus.
Three MiraCosta educators, including a well-respected administrator, were put on administrative leave, tarred by an alleged business scheme involving the palm trees.
The District Attorney's Office is slowly (so slowly) investigating to determine if criminal charges will be filed.
Lawsuits or bribes – er, confidential settlements – are taking shape behind the scenes. The billable hours are mounting.
The faculty has risen to protest how “Palmgate” and other contentious issues have been handled by President Victoria Muñoz Richart.
Last week, three dissident trustees, who by board gag rules are not allowed to speak their minds to anyone, issued a minority report that concluded with these fighting words: “We are extremely disappointed that the Board majority has chosen to continue to ignore the Academic Senate's pleas for open and collegial dialogue. The Board, in our opinion, has failed to listen and respond to the concerns of the many faculty. While we would agree that there are issues of privacy and confidentiality involved in personnel matters, there are also issues of fiduciary responsibility, transparency, open communication and collegiality that the Board has failed to respect.”
The campus leadership has split into two warring camps: The faculty and board minority vs. Richart and four majority trustees.
In a word, chaos.
But here's the classic kicker.
In Richart's global view of management, the nasty weather is good, a teachable – even Socratic – moment from which “multiple minds” can elicit beauty and order.
A year ago, months before the whistle was blown on Palmgate by an employee who'd been sued for sexual harassment, Richart was interviewed for an article titled “Creating Appreciative Learning Cultures: From Problems to Possibilities.”
Though the scholarly essay chews much more than it bites off, I gleaned that many community college leaders, including Richart, are devout followers of “Appreciative Inquiry,” or AI.
According to Nancy Stetson, the article's author, AI instructs organizations how to “discover their strengths so they can create an alignment of those strengths, making their weaknesses and problems irrelevant.”
Community colleges, I gather, are especially fertile ground for the management model.
“In the community college,” Stetson writes, “leaders trained to facilitate AI have instituted a wide variety of appreciative processes on their campuses and, through these processes, have begun to collaboratively create positive images of the future that lead to positive actions.”
Toward the end of the article, which appeared in a professional journal, Leadership Abstracts, a subhead reads: “Victoria Muñoz Richart and Embracing Chaos.”
According to Stetson, “Richart believes that leaders must relish chaos as a creative force and trust, as the sciences prove, that order will emerge from the chaos.”
Stetson goes on to report that Richart “cautions that 'in complex organizations, this process of discovery can be perceived to be impossible, usually due to a multitude of what appear to be divergent pressures. It can feel as if chaos has taken over.' (Richart) points out, however, that leaders should 'enjoy' the feeling of chaos 'because from chaos, beauty and order emerge.' According to Richart, chaos is a creative force in the process, as 'strategic appreciative inquiry yields the order that emerges from the self-organizing environment of multiple minds.' ”
Beauty and order.
Sounds like Plato at a three-martini business lunch.
At MiraCosta, however, it's hard to see Richart's connection to the inspiring ideals. The reality is ugly and disorderly and will likely remain so until Richart is gone.
Rightly or wrongly, Richart is arguably the most reviled college president in North County's history. To stop the chaos, MiraCosta may have to endure a recall of one or more board members – that is, if Richart is not forced to resign beforehand.
You have to wonder at what extreme point Richart will come to realize that chaos is not everything she's cracked it up to be.
When she's decked out in tar and feathers – and riding out of town on a rail?
Logan Jenkins can be reached at (760) 737-7555 or by e-mail at logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
