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Members of the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees have introduced a resolution censuring fellow trustee Marcie Hodge for what the resolution calls “behavior that is out of compliance with the established Peralta Community College District policies” of “civility and mutual respect” and accusing her of “emotionally ºviolent behavior.” Trustees are prepared to vote on the censure resolution at Tuesday night’s regular trustee meeting. 

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the Peralta Administrative Headquarters, 333 East Eighth Street in Oakland. 

An informal survey of board members revealed that the censure motion appears to have at least three votes for passage. If all seven trustees vote, the measure would need four votes to pass. 

Sources on the trustee board would not reveal who had written or introduced the resolution or what path it had taken to get on Tuesday’s agenda, other than to say that trustees had been advised by Peralta General Counsel Thuy Nguyen that the resolution could not be handled in closed session. Other than Hodge, no trustee agreed to talk about the resolution on the record, saying they would reserve public comments for Tuesday’s meeting. 

A copy of the proposed resolution itself was included in the background agenda material released by the Peralta administrative office in advance of Tuesday’s meeting. 

Hodge was elected to her Area 2 trustee seat last November, representing the extreme southeastern end of Oakland from Seminary Avenue to the San Leandro border. While it has been widely reported and assumed that she is running for the Oakland City Council in next year’s election for the 6th District seat currently held by Desley Brooks, Hodge has said that she will not consider such a race until the beginning of the year.  

The resolution harshly criticizes the first-term trustee for actions Hodge took during a September trustee meeting in which she called for the abolition of the district’s International Education Department and severely criticized its director Jacob Ng, as well as for accusations against both Ng and fellow trustee members that Hodge allegedly made during an Oct. 18 Laney College Faculty Senate meeting. The resolution also accuses Hodge of being “deficient” in “fulfilling her responsibilities as a trustee,” including being “regularly, substantially late for board meetings and workshops,” adding that Hodge “virtually never attends assigned committee meetings of the board.” In addition, the resolution accuses Hodge of “reading magazines and working on matters totally outside the realm of Peralta” during board meetings. 

If passed by the board, the charges of non-attendance and inattention at meetings could be particularly politically harmful to Hodge in a possible run for the Oakland City Council next year. 

But reached by telephone a day before Tuesday’s meeting, a defiant Hodge said the proposed censure resolution “trivial and has no merit. They can censure me, but they can’t silence me. What is it that they don’t want me to uncover about what is going on with the International Education Department? Why are they hiding Jacob Ng?” 

Several trustees have been expressing private concerns to reporters for weeks about what they call Hodge’s failure to attend committee meetings and chronic lateness to the closed sessions that regularly precede the board’s public sessions, but up until now, they have been unwilling to go on the record with such complaints. 

What dramatically changed the situation, sources on the trustee board say, and caused them to go public was the September 13th trustee meeting. 

The censure resolution incorrectly puts the date of that meeting as Sept. 27. 

Hodge had requested that Ng attend that meeting to present a report on the activities of the district’s International Education program. But Ng did not appear at the meeting, instead sending in a written report that was presented by his supervisor, Vice Chancellor for Educational Services Margaret Haig, who had only been on the job for four days. Visibly agitated that Ng was not present, Hodge aired a series of charges of mismanagement and malfeasance against the International Education Department in general, calling Ng by name specifically several times and criticizing his job performance. 

Allegations of financial improprieties in the International Education Department were the subject of an Alameda Civil Grand Jury investigation several years ago. 

Trustees tried unsuccessfully several times to stop Hodge from using Ng’s name in her charges at the Sept. 13 meeting, telling her that board policy prohibited trustees from publicly criticizing staff members by name. She continued talking even after Board President Bill Riley repeatedly ruled her out of order. At one point, Hodge and Riley got into a virtual shouting match. 

The censure resolution says that district personnel matters should be discussed in closed session, adding that having such a discussion in open session “could expose violators to court-ordered damages and any legal costs... [that] would not be financially covered by the District.” 

The censure resolution cites Hodge for what it calls “uncouth verbal outbursts [that] castigated the character” of Ng and of Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris. The resolution also charges that Hodge’s treatment of Vice Chancellor Haig at the Sept. 13 meeting as Haig tried to present Ng’s written report “is considered to have been demeaning, intimidating, threatening and an emotionally violent behavior.” 

The resolution also alleges that at a meeting of the Laney College Faculty Senate in October, Hodge repeated her charges against Ng by name, and called her six fellow trustees the “lap dogs” of Chancellor Harris. 

At the Sept. 13 meeting, at least two other trustees—Bill Withrow and Cy Gulassa—said they were in support of Hodge’s call for greater accountability for the International Education Department, but balked when Hodge called for the immediate abolition of the program. Vice Chancellor Haig reported at the Sept. 13 meeting that she was initiating a review of the department, and would report her findings back to the board when it was completed. 

Hodge said Monday that she was “absolutely not satisfied” with that review. Saying that it was “almost like a free-for-all over there” at the International Education Department, she said that she was “concerned about the whole process at the department. My concern is still the same as it was in September. I want answers. I want to know the actual numbers of international students who are coming to Peralta as a result of recruitment by the department. I want to know the linkage. My focus is on that. I’m not going to get sidetracked.” 

But Hodge backed off her call for an immediate abolition of the International Education dDepartment, saying that she would support its retention “if it is run right. It could be beneficial.”›