By Robert Walsh, Hamilton
Community college confusion is flooding the Bitterroot Valley like spring runoff surging over the stream bed. Since this confusion about the community college district is not beneficial for Ravalli County residents, let me try to clear it up a bit.
It might be helpful to keep in mind an insightful quote from Mark Twain: “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Ravalli County residents have been fooled for ten years into falsely believing that Bitterroot College in Hamilton is a real, legitimate college. That deception and the difficulty of clearing it up is at the root of the problem.
It is entirely false that the recent school election had anything to do with Bitterroot College. The May 5th school election, among other things, was to create an all-new Bitterroot Valley Community College district. That initiative was passed by voters. The levy that was on the ballot, which was meant to fund the all-new Bitterroot Valley Community College district, did not pass. Trustees were elected to create, organize, and eventually govern the all-new community college they will create. None of these ballot measures has anything to do with Bitterroot College.
The election was not about the false idea of expanding Bitterroot College into a community college. That makes no sense and would be impossible to do since Bitterroot College is not a college. But voters were fooled by this false idea. That is why they turned down the levy. Since it appears that Bitterroot College is a productive “gold mine,” (as reported by the Ravalli Republic 3/15) there would be no reason for voters to vote for a tax to fix what isn’t broken. Sure, it would be okay to organize Bitterroot College into a community college, but why put hard-earned tax money into it when it is already functioning just fine?
The Ravalli Republic has been complicit in promoting this false idea. The paper has consistently published photos of Bitterroot College to illustrate articles that specifically deal with the creation of an all-new community college district (see RR 5/8 online edition, for the latest example). This gives the false impression that Bitterroot College is directly involved with the process of creating a community college district in Ravalli County. That is just plain wrong.
Let’s face the facts. Bitterroot College is not a college. It is not an “affiliate” of UM. It is not a UM “branch campus.” Bitterroot College is a lovely, well-intentioned but hopelessly underfunded outreach program created and governed by UM to make some college-level courses available to residents of the Bitterroot. If UM stops funding this outreach program, it will cease to exist. That is the reason for the initiative to establish a real, legitimate, permanent community college in Ravalli County.
Despite the levy not passing, the Board of Regents and the MT legislature should vote to establish the all-new Bitterroot Valley Community College district. Once voters cease to be fooled by false ideas about Bitterroot College and come to realize that if they don’t fund a community college there will be no college-level education available in the valley, they may be willing to do so.
Meanwhile, the newly elected Bitterroot Valley Community College Board of Trustees should begin now to unofficially work toward the creation of an all-new community college in Ravalli County. Thus, when the community college district is approved by the legislature in 2021 and the trustees are officially seated, they will hit the ground running.