Charlie Foxtrot directed at RTVF
Opinion Piece
For about two years I have been hearing of how the educational system at the CSUF, College of Communications, more precisely the television and film program, is allegedly being poorly administered at the dean’s level and higher. I have been waiting well too long for a solution to this alleged near incompetence and thus have called it quits for glossing over this problem to help preserve the “CSUF image”, what ever that is.
Let’s back up a few decades from now. CSUF has had a very long history of picking administrators over media programs that need proper credentials for understanding film, television, audio and related studies but not always did. On the support side, the Media Center lasted for decades but was done away with allegedly because the staff appeared to be a problem. The department was phased out to become smart classrooms program. No one could handle the problems within the Media Center so it was dissolved. The alleged hidden truth was that administration cronies filled the positions of directing the department ever since the first legitimate search for a director a Dr. Denno retired. Dr. Denno had legitimate credentials and designed the Media Center when it was first built and he was a pretty good administrator.
On the academic side, the School of the Arts allegedly tried for years to pretend they had a film and TV program when all they had was live stage. There was an alleged internal bias for live stage and anything else was looked down upon. Film was finally dropped and TV has been on life support for decades. They currently possess the best space for a TV studio but politics being what they are on that campus, it fails miserably to come up to its potential. In this case it was an administrator and faculty that held the same opinion, not too bad except you would be a fool to come to CSUF to learn acting for TV. And the university president did not seem to know any better. He was happy so long as he could call up his live stage actors for PR gigs.
Another academic department, The Department of Communications had an emphasis called TV and Film, which was created and run by Dr. Mastroianni. Dr. George, as he was called, ran a pretty good program until his passing. Dr. Maxwell and Dr. Alexander hired Dr. George from a legitimate search of candidate’s way back in the 60’s.
If you have not picked up on my point so far let me be blunt. CSUF has not done too badly conducting legitimate hires into media management positions. It is when cronies are swung into being in charge that it usually goes bad.
Now back to the present. We have a Department of Radio-TV-Film, which broke away from the Department of Communications so it could get out from under the POB accreditation scheme. Students need to learn the equipment more than they needed to take liberal arts classes, so ran the logic for this break. Currently Dr. Fink is the department chairman. He was hired from a legitimate search. He has a good reputation in the classroom and as an administrator, except he should have been tougher against the villains in this story. His power and the power of the faculty in that department has been stripped away by the dean’s office and that is where the problem lies. Once again, the we find individuals who fail to understand the areas of radio, TV, film, audio, lighting but insert themselves into the decision making process with alleged ruinous results.
The doctorate degree is a most unfortunate invention when possessed by anyone who thinks his degree transcends out beyond his or her area of expertise. At CSUF it is not where learning is preeminent it is where a bunch of numskulls think they have the credentials to step beyond their credential capabilities. And you want to know something? Right now there is a Charlie Foxtrot upon the RTVF faculty going on and being a taxpayer and a sincere concern for students and faculty, I will campaign for a management change until there is a resolution to this problem.