Reminder

From Santa Monica Patch: Traffic is expected to be impacted on the 405 Freeway and nearby roads this weekend when construction will shut down several lanes on both sides of the interstate near the Sepulveda Pass.

And another weekend-long closure is planned for March.

The freeway will be reduced to three lanes in each direction in the area of the Getty Center from 10 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6 through 5 a.m. Monday, Feb. 9. Additionally, one off-ramp will be closed...

Construction has been underway on the 405 Freeway in and near the Sepulveda Pass since June as part of the I-405 Pavement Rehabilitation Project, a $143.7 million project to improve safety and mobility along the freeway and extend the life of its pavement, according to Caltrans...

Full story at https://patch.com/california/los-angeles/weekend-long-closure-405-freeway-begins-friday.

Falling Feeder

Santa Monica College is the top community college feeder to transfer students to UCLA. However, it, like other community colleges is having fiscal problems due to falling enrollment and other factors. The impact could be felt at UCLA due to legislative mandates concerning transfers.

From the Santa Monica Daily Press: Santa Monica College will eliminate approximately 70 positions as the institution confronts a projected $16.7 million deficit that could deplete its financial reserves by the 2026-27 school year, Superintendent/President Kathryn E. Jeffery announced in a letter to the college community. The layoffs, which affect classified staff and management positions, represent the latest effort to address a structural budget deficit that has steadily eroded the college's fund balance from $43.9 million in 2021-22 to a projected $13.1 million by the end of the current fiscal year and a loss of $3 million by next fiscal year...

The college has already notified affected employees and is working with the California School Employees Association to support those impacted by the reductions. The layoffs come after the college implemented $8.6 million in budget cuts for the 2025-26 fiscal year, including a 5% reduction in class schedules, attrition-based position eliminations and discretionary budget reductions... The financial crisis stems from multiple factors that have converged over the past several years. The college's enrollment has declined approximately 13% since 2018-19, dropping from 19,501 full-time equivalent students to 17,089 in the current year. More significantly, changes to funding at the state level have been chipping away at SMC’s finances for years.

Under the funding formula implemented in 2018-19, California community colleges receive allocations based on three components: base enrollment (70%), supplemental support for low-income students (20%), and student success metrics (10%). When the formula was introduced, 27 districts — including Santa Monica — saw funding decreases and were placed in "hold harmless" status, receiving their previous year's allocation plus cost-of-living adjustments. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state extended those protections through 2024-25. However, starting in 2025-26, colleges in hold harmless status no longer receive annual cost-of-living increases, effectively freezing their state funding even as expenses continue to rise.

...The college is... pursuing enrollment growth strategies to eventually increase state funding, though such efforts face headwinds from declining high school graduation rates. According to Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education projections, California high school graduates are projected to decline 29% by 2041, with key feeder districts for Santa Monica College seeing even steeper drops in the coming years...

Full story at: https://www.smdp.com/layoffs-coming-to-santa-monica-college-as-the-school-runs-out-of-money-next-year/.

Note that similar trends are likely to affect other big feeder community colleges to UCLA such as Pasadena. Santa Monica College has undertaken considerable capital investments over the years. Voters tend to be friendly with regard to approving bonds for educational purposes. But ultimately, the fixed costs of paying off those bonds have to be paid, even if falling enrollment leads to excess capacity. The same trends are affecting K-12 districts.

Straws in the Wind - Part 245

From Inside Higher Ed: Beginning next month, a new test will join the SAT and ACT as an admissions option for prospective students applying to the United States’ elite service academies: the Classic Learning Test, an up-and-coming exam that focuses on passages from the Western canon... For years, it was relatively niche, serving primarily as an academic progress exam for private classical schools, an educational movement that promotes the study of classic Western literature and other liberal arts. Some colleges and universities allowed it as an entrance exam, though many were test optional, meaning a student could submit their CLT score if they felt it bolstered their application... That changed in 2023, when the State University System of Florida’s Board of Governors began accepting the CLT—in addition to the better-known SAT and ACT—as an admissions exam for its public universities, which all require test scores for admission, as well as for its flagship Bright Futures scholarship program.

Now, more than two years later, Arkansas and Oklahoma have followed suit, allowing submission of the CLT for admission to their public institutions, and students in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wyoming can submit CLT scores for state merit scholarships. In addition, the University of North Carolina System recently began accepting CLT scores for students who meet a GPA threshold. The test has also become a darling of the conservative right, whose members argue that it is more rigorous than its competitors and can “restore merit” in higher education...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2026/01/29/clt-test-beloved-conservatives-continues-growing.

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From Inside Higher Ed: A collection of public school districts and university faculty members are challenging Department of Homeland Security policies that allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to conduct detainment activities on or near public education campuses. The complaint, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, comes in the wake of a surge of ICE presence in Minneapolis and Saint Paul and the killing of two American protesters, Alex Pretti and Renee Good. As the threat of immigration enforcement grows, the plaintiffs argue that ICE action at public K-12 schools and on college campuses is not only a violation of the rights of immigrants but also a disruption to the lives of U.S. citizens. 

Historically, federal regulations deemed public education institutions, churches and other religiously affiliated spaces as “sensitive locations” and therefore they were off limits to immigration enforcement teams, except in rare pre-approved circumstances. But on Jan. 21, 2025, President Trump revoked that policy, opening the flood gates to increased ICE activity in all spaces...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/02/05/ice-sued-over-policy-allowing-immigration-actions-campus.

I never promised you a Rose Bowl? - Part 12

From Pasadena Now: A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has denied a request by the University of California Regents, on behalf of UCLA, to force arbitration in an ongoing lawsuit with the City and the Rose Bowl Operating Company over the Bruins’ long-term stadium agreement. In a ruling issued on Tuesday, Judge Joseph Lipner rejected motions by UCLA to compel arbitration and stay the case, allowing the breach-of-contract lawsuit to proceed in court. 

“The court DENIES the motions to compel arbitration. The Court DENIES the motions to stay proceedings,” according to the minute order. “UCLA also filed a motion to quash deposition subpoenas and enter a protective order. The Court DENIES UCLA’s motion to quash.” ...

Full story at https://pasadenanow.com/main/judge-rejects-ucla-bid-to-force-rose-bowl-dispute-into-arbitration.

It wasn't clear why UCLA thought it would get a better deal from an arbitrator than from a trial. Either way, breaking a long-term contract was going to cost big bucks. But whatever the thinking, it lost.

Note that this affair is occurring at a time when its athletics program is running in the red, and while the university is feeling budget pressures across the campus.

Epstein in Academialand

The Epstein files that have been released involve millions of items, and the US Dept. of Justice has a searchable database:

https://www.justice.gov/epstein

Put in a name and out will come references. I typed in "Smith" and over 10,000 documents popped up. Lots of the contacts - although some very peripheral - are academics. They are often at prominent institutions. Their names aren't for the most part well known in general, but they are often significant figures in their fields. Student newspapers are having a field day searching for Epstein references to individuals at their schools. For that matter, so are professional journalists.

Remember the Steve Bannon idea of "flooding the zone," the concept that if you just keep throwing out stuff into the public arena, journalists and the general public will lose sight of what's important and what's not? So let's take a deep breath and recall what is - or was - supposed to be important.

Why was there pressure to release the files? Democrats assumed that there would be derogatory material on Trump, beyond what was already known. Republicans assumed there would be derogatory material on the Clintons. Conspiracy theorists within MAGA thought the files would expose who-knows-what: The identity of Q? The "deep state"? The fact that Epstein is an obviously Jewish name has only added to the conspiracy view in the current climate. (Nobody has made this self-evident point, so I will.)

Note that as more and more files have been dumped into public view, you don't hear much about Trump. Now, even if someone finds something more than has been in public view for some time about the Trump-Epstein connection, it will just seem to be one of thousands of such connections. The zone has been flooded. There is mud everywhere. In the confusion, what was assumed initially to be THE story has been lost in the confusion and muck.

What has emerged about Epstein is that he was very good at ingratiating himself with prominent people. And, like other con artists, he wasn't especially concerned with the truth, although he was obviously bright. He started teaching math (with falsified credentials) at a prestigious, high-end private school, got noticed by someone with connections in finance, and progressively exploited the resulting contacts in the world of finance to make himself wealthy. Part of his MO was to link up with academics and higher ed institutions, dangling the potential of research and other funding. Providing research funding gave him an aura of legitimacy in academia and beyond. Thus, his story includes prominent faculty, some of whom circled around him like bees to a flower. The New York Times has a lengthy piece on how Epstein made his money and developed his contacts if you want more detail.*

The problem is that we are moving into witch hunt territory, with individuals who were found in the file dump now apologizing, or saying they didn't know about the sex stuff, and, in any case, hoping they won't be canceled. You'll be shocked, shocked to know that there are academics who are attracted to money, who like to be flattered, and who even say off-putting things in private. Moreover, it is often difficult from the documents to know whether someone who was named in some email had any real connection.

The bottom line: It's hard to keep your eye on the ball when the juggler has so many of them.

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*https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/magazine/jeffrey-epstein-money-scams-investigation.html.

Clips

The UCLA Alumni Association has put together clips from movies & TV filmed at UCLA:

Vol. 1: 

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke_392sjUUU.

Vol. 2:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO9tVbe3TVk.

Vol. 3:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiOMxuhnw6o.

Straws in the Wind - Part 244

From Inside Higher Ed: Sociology faculty at Florida International University are outraged that their department is requiring them to use a state-approved textbook to teach an introductory course as part of the university’s general education curriculum. They say the state’s process for developing the textbook and new course framework was opaque, rushed and designed to pressure universities into adopting censored learning materials without a legal directive to do so.

Furthermore, the textbook—a heavily edited version of an open-source sociology textbook titled Introduction to Sociology 3e—now makes only cursory mentions of important sociological concepts regarding race, gender, sexuality and other topics that have drawn Republican ire. Faculty say it whitewashes the field’s key principles, diminishes the quality of education for students and intensifies the state’s attacks on academic freedom. ...Compared to the original 669-page textbook, the new version is just 267 pages. Unlike the original, the state-approved version doesn’t include chapters on media and technology, global inequality, race and ethnicity, social stratification, or gender, sex and sexuality...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2026/01/29/florida-introduces-sanitized-sociology-textbook.