Kaaawa was featured in a KITV weather report yesterday as the remains of the former hurricane, Felicia, slipped past the island.

And the Advertiser reports that Kamehameha Highway, our two-lane access to Kaaawa, was closed for five hours overnight when Waikane Stream overflowed.

Police reported about 3 feet of water on the highway after heavy rains fell throughout the evening. Officers began turning cars around at about 11:10 p.m.

The road was reopened shortly before 4 this morning. There were no reports of property damage or injuries, police said.

On K-5’s news at 9 p.m., a map purporting to show the location of Kahana Bay had it sitting about in Kaaawa, while the obvious bay sat off to the left of the marked location. Who checks these things?

Up at UH-Manoa, Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw sent out an email at 5:01 p.m. yesterday announcing plans to move towards closing programs and laying off faculty and staff, potentially including tenured members of the faculty, a process referred to as “retrenchment”.

It is a process that is likely to cause severe damage to our system of higher education, which in turn will undoubtedly reverberate further through the economy.

Several things come to mind. First, the Board of Regents and UH senior administrators have failed in their responsibilities to publicly advocate for the university system. They simply haven’t conveyed to the public the fragile nature of this system of higher education and the long-term consequences of dramatic short-term actions. Neither have they marshaled the university’s intellectual resources in this effort, demonstrating a lack of leadership.

Second, there’s a huge elephant in the room no one wants to talk about, and that is the continued development of a large new West Oahu campus.

While Hinshaw believes the university “cannot afford to continue all that we are doing”, the financial drain of building, staffing, and maintaining a whole new campus will further weaken the rest of the university system.

There is little question that there simply is no educational need for a new West Oahu campus of the size being planned. And it’s no secret that university administrators, while publicly clinging to the official line, have privately lobbied against further funding of West Oahu.

With the prospects of cuts that will diminish the stature of the University of Hawaii for years, perhaps decades, it’s time for those concerned about its future to stand up to the landowners and developers and, yes, politicians who want to profit even at the expense of the university as a whole.

And that reminds me–all those folks who pushed so hard to retain the Act 221 tax credits need to take a hard look and see that their interests are directly involved here. With a scaled back and damaged university system, their high tech hopes cannot be sustained. Under those circumstances, why should the public continue to pour resources into the pockets of investors while at the same time defunding the intellectual and educational infrastructure necessary to sustaining an expansion of the technology sector?

In any case, venting aside, it’s also worth taking a look at the retrenchment provisions of the UH faculty contract.

Although Hinshaw’s email announcement said layoff notices will go out as early as September 1, it looks like that deadline can’t be met, at least regarding positions subject to the retrenchment process because proper notification of the union and a required 45 day waiting period.

When the Board of Regents determines that retrenchment may occur, it will so inform the Union and will provide whatever information that is available, including a list of Faculty Members expected to be retrenched, and a list of vacancies for which active recruitment is occurring throughout the UH System. The Union may submit its assessment and/or recommendation within thirty (30) days of such notification. The Board of Regents will not proceed with its retrenchment action until forty-five (45) days after its notification to the Union.

And “bumping rights” apply to faculty as well according to the contract.

A tenured Faculty Member who is retrenched according to the provisions of this Article shall have employment rights to any position within the locus of tenure for which the Faculty Member is qualified and which is occupied by the Faculty Member with the least seniority, provided that the provisions of this paragraph shall not be applicable to the Faculty Member who is displaced.

“Locus of tenure” typically does not refer to the specific department or program in which a faculty member teaches, but to the college, a much larger unit, meaning that the process is going to be much more difficult than it appears.

And much of this pain is triggered by the Lingle administration’s ideologically-driven refusal to seek additional revenues and instead go the Herbert Hoover route.

With all that going on, I’ll end with an upbeat look at more of our Kaaawa morning dogs. This is Ms. Hoku, age 10. She’s been part of our morning walks her whole life, although at first she just begged to be petted and only later discovered the joys of the dog biscuit.

So click on Hoku’s photo for more dogs.