Security Planning for 2028 Olympics

Lurie

Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus and Community Safety Steve Lurie spoke to a systemwide group of emeriti and retirees on April 29th concerning security planning for the 2028 Olympics. 

Some highlights are below. A link to a recording of his remarks is provided below the highlights.

As blog readers will surely know, Lurie was hired in the aftermath of the encampment. He was the LAPD individual in charge of the removal of the encampment with regard to the Olympics.

There will be about 17,000 athletes and related staff on campus. But there will not be competitive events. UCLA offers housing, training facilities, and medical facilities. Adding competitive events would have meant screening and protecting attendees, an excessive burden.

The Olympics are classified as National Security Special Events with the Secret Service ultimately in charge. Examples of other such events are the two political conventions and meeting of the UN General Assembly.

There will be police, military personnel (including military vehicles), and other personnel from various government agencies on campus.

Some areas of the campus will be completely off limits. Others will feature TSA-type screening. A list will be drawn up of UCLA employees who must be on campus. Others will work remotely. Those who must be on campus may be parking at remote lots and will use shuttle buses to come to campus.
Parking at UCLA will be reduced as spaces will be reserved for Olympic use. Traffic in the Westwood area is likely to be gridlocked. Cars entering the campus may be screened.

The medical enterprise will continue untouched - although there will be traffic effects.

Some lanes of local freeways may be reserved for Olympic use.

The Olympic period will run from late May to mid September. Academic calendars will be adjusted so there is no overlap.

There are concerns about cybersecurity which didn't exist when UCLA hosted the Olympic athletes and staff in 1984. (Or when the Olympics took place in LA in 1932!)

Starting in 2027, there will be communications to the UCLA community about what will be happening through town halls and other means.

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Note that there are concerns that will inevitably arise. If traffic around Westwood is gridlocked, how will ambulances get to the hospital? How will patients, some of whom are handicapped, get to medical appointments? Not all academic programs are on the standard calendar. For example, the law school normally operates on a semester system that begins in August. What happens to summer courses? What happens to public transit buses that normally come on campus? 

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You can hear AVC Lurie's remarks at the link below:

https://ia601506.us.archive.org/0/items/newsom-03-04-2026/UCLA%20VC%20Lurie%20on%20planning%20for%202028%20Olympics%204-29-2026.mp4.

Straws in the Wind - Part 334

From the Yale Daily News: Yale’s mission statement is no longer about “improving the world,” educating “aspiring leaders worldwide” or “the free exchange of ideas in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community.” The statement now reads: “Yale’s core mission is to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge through research and teaching.” Yale President Maurie McInnis indicated but did not explicitly announce the change in an email to the University on Thursday afternoon. It came after Yale’s Committee on Trust in Higher Education recommended in a report this month that the University narrow its mission statement. 

The faculty committee’s proposed mission statement, drawn from the Faculty Handbook, matches nearly verbatim the new mission statement on Yale’s website. McInnis wrote in an email to the News that the mission statement had been changed on Thursday...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/yale-following-report-narrows-its-mission-statement-to-focus-on-knowledge.

Insecure

From the Daily Bruin: ...The Panhellenic Council hired On Call Security Services – which provides security for residential, commercial and industrial properties – to patrol Hilgard starting April 6. The security guard patrols daily from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. across sorority row, a Panhellenic Council spokesperson said in a texted statement. All 10 sorority houses on Hilgard can continue hiring private security if the program helps reduce harassment, the spokesperson added in a written statement.

“I don’t think that it should come at an additional cost,” [President Ella] Hernand said. “But I also know there are limitations to what UCPD can do. It’s a very thin line.”

UCPD is aware of the reports of harassment and has increased evening patrols on Hilgard, although previous data indicated that less violent crime occurred in that area than in other parts of Westwood, said Jeffrey Chobanian, the captain of UCPD’s operations bureau, in an emailed statement...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/05/04/private-security-hired-by-sororities-after-reports-of-harassment-on-hilgard.

Just a thought

Yours truly noticed this article in the Daily Bruin:

The UCLA Anderson School of Management will launch a new sports leadership and management minor for undergraduate students this fall.

Laurie Summers, the special advisor of academic initiatives at the School of Management, said the minor... reflects a growing demand for specialized management coursework at UCLA. The university does not offer a traditional undergraduate business major...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/04/29/school-of-management-to-launch-new-sports-leadership-minor-for-undergraduates.

He wonders if students in the new sports management minor will study what it might cost to sign a (very) long-term lease for use of a large stadium in, say, Pasadena, and then try to break the lease. Just a thought, an innocent question...

Straws in the Wind - Part 333

From the Daily Princetonian: Winter session is dead. Some student employees and program staff have been laid off. The current meal swap system will be decommissioned starting next fall. Amid an increasingly uncertain fiscal and political environment, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 announced in his annual “State of the University” letter that budgetary and operational changes would unfold over several years, following departmental budget cuts and a hiring freeze implemented last year. He added that these budgetary constraints will at times require “targeted, and in some cases, deeper, reductions over a multiyear period.”

The University recently lowered its long-term endowment return expectations from 10.2 percent to 8 percent annually, and an endowment value of $11.3 billion lower than past forecasts was predicted for the next decade. At the same time, the Trump administration has passed higher taxes on large college endowments, frozen research funding, and targeted diversity programs and other key pillars of higher education. Against this backdrop, University units have cut programming, employee benefits, and library hours. These are just a few of the changes made through several rounds of budget cuts beginning in Spring 2025...

Full story at https://projects.dailyprincetonian.com/Princeton-budget-cuts-tracker/.

How Related?

UCLA women's basketball made headlines recently. It's unclear how that story is related to the removal of a planned Regents agenda item from the upcoming menu:

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may26/gov5.6.pdf.

Health Watch

Click on image to clarify
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Tomorrow, the Regents lead off with the Health Services Committee. Various objectives are summarized on the image above. Note that one set of goals involves employee and student health plans. Employee plans in particular, however, are provided by private insurance carriers such as Kaiser and Anthem Blue Cross. It seems clear that UC Health would like to capture more of that business for the various campus health enterprises.* As noted on the image below, UC Health is in the midst of "planning" with HR concerning that objective.

Click on image to clarify
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Source of images: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may26/h5.pdf.

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*The UC Health strategic plan clearly states a goal of:

More employees as a percentage of total are attracted to the Blue & Gold health benefit plan.

See https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may26/h5attach1.pdf.