First 100 Days: New Interim Chancellor Makes Himself Known

By John R. Adkins

jradproduction@gmail.com

Interim Chancellor Mitchell Bailey kicks off his tenure at City College with a novel approach: Making himself available to students.

Bailey has been putting in the effort to make in-person appearances and answer questions that anyone might have. Long-time students at City College hope this marks a change in tone for the chancellor’s office.

“I basically never saw any of the previous chancellors at any meetings, they always seem to be standoffish and stuck on top of their ivory towers,” remarked T.J. Lee-Miyaki, a former student from 2019-22. Lee-Miyaki graduated with four associate degrees with honors and served on the Associated Students Executive Council as a senator, VP of community resources and president.

On Sept. 5, at the first Participatory Governance Council (PGC) meeting of the year, Bailey quietly crept in to not disturb the speaker and pretended to hide behind the cabinets, bringing a chuckle to the crowd.

When it was time for the chancellor’s report, he wasted no time saying exactly what was on his mind. “So, we’re going to have deficits in future years; It’s going to keep getting worse and worse until we do some things to correct them, so we’ve got some difficult decisions ahead to make,” Bailey said.

He went on to reassure the PGC that they would have a key part in making budget decisions, but they would have to work together to reprioritize programs. “We can do anything we want to do, but we can’t do everything we want to do. So it’s figuring out how we’re investing within our means and investing in what matters.” Bailey explained.

Adding to the chancellor’s newfound transparency, he announced that he would be conducting a series of four different budget workshops throughout the fall semester and is encouraging the entire college to participate so that everyone, not just the chancellor, can better understand what is in the budget.

The goal of which is to start the decision-making process in January, and avoid a period of confusion between when school starts and September when the budget for the subsequent fiscal year is finalized and people are scrambling to find out what is in the budget. “I want everyone to leave at the end of graduation knowing what’s in the budget. And having had a hand in helping create the budget … or at least having had a good fight about things that should be in the budget,” Bailey said.

The first budget workshop in the series is expected to take place on Oct. 6. The first two workshops are scheduled for October as well as one workshop per month in November and December. “Transparency is important to me,” Bailey said, “but visibility in the budget is more important.”

When Vice Chancellor Lisa Cooper Wilkins thanked Bailey for his visit he jokingly replied, “3D is always better.”

“In the past, Chancellor Martin would fulfill the report with a pre-recorded video. Sometimes it makes sense when there isn’t a lot to share that’s changed, but that also makes the chancellor unavailable to answer people’s questions, so it would make a lot of council members upset,” Lisa Wilkins explained. “I was aware that he had a lot of work to do before finalizing the budget with the Board of Trustees (on Sept. 12), so I was very pleased that despite that he still showed up in person.”

Next on his list of public appearances was the Mission Campus open house event on Sept. 17, where he could be seen mingling among the crowd of students and was seldom without someone to talk to.

He made a brief announcement to kick off the event before rejoining the crowd to shake hands and answer questions that any student who bumped into him might have had. “I have been with the college for just over 100 days now, and I continue to be impressed by the full breadth of services that we offer to all of our community. This college is a mirror of this city. You open up any of our classrooms, open any of our doors, attend any of our centers, and you’ll see our friends, our neighbors, our families, and that is a great representation and a great point of pride for this college.” Bailey announced.

Bailey has already started to gain support in the community in his first 100 days, as many individuals have had the opportunity to meet him face-to-face. This is an opportunity the City College community may have been lacking in previous years.
“It’s like night and day, really, compared to previous chancellors we’ve had. He’s what I would call a modern-day educator, just in the way he talks to students and seems willing to meet them where they’re at,” former student Lee-Miyaki said.

Bailey’s next appearance was at the Associated Students Executive Council meeting on Sept. 20, where he shed light on his key areas of focus and answered questions from students regarding issues such as accreditation and the preservation of “Free City”.