Still More About Regents Being In a Pickle Due to "Balancing" Strategy

A jarring experience for the Regents?

We have previously blogged about the too-clever strategy of the Regents concerning their selection of a student regent.  Last time around, they appointed a Muslim student regent who was anti-Israel.  At their mid-July meeting, they plan to appoint her successor: a Jewish student regent who is pro-Israel.  But there are complications: [from the Daily Bruin]

The University of California Student Association Systemwide Affairs Committee voted 10-0-2 in a closed session meeting on Thursday to recommend that the UC Board of Regents hold off on the confirmation of student regent-designate nominee Avi Oved until September. The committee, which consists of voting external vice presidents, also voted to have an impartial entity independent of UCSA investigate various allegations against Oved further. The board recommended that UCSA staff look for impartial ways to hold the investigation and return with a recommendation by the end of the month...

On Saturday, students at a UCSA Board of Directors meeting presented an email that was sent from Oved and other members of the Bruins United slate to Adam Milstein, a noted donor to many pro-Israel organizations, thanking him for a campaign donation during last year’s USAC election. The email was first presented by Amal Ali, the former president of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Riverside.  Students running for USAC offices typically fund their campaigns with donations from external organizations, fundraisers and personal contributions. In the email, Oved said he will work to “make sure that UCLA will maintain its allegiance to Israel and the Jewish community” and that he will represent the Jewish voice in student government. Conrad Contreras, the USAC external vice president and a member of the UCSA Board of Directors, said Oved confirmed that he wrote the email thanking Milstein for his donation at UCSA’s closed session meeting on Thursday. Contreras said the confirmation led him and other board members to recommend a delay in Oved’s appointment. In a public written statement he released minutes before a teleconference UCSA held Tuesday, Oved called the allegations “baseless” and “nothing more than an attack against me as a pro­-Israel student.” In the statement, Oved did not mention the email that was leaked Saturday, which he confirmed two days later as having written...

Full article at http://dailybruin.com/2014/07/04/ucsa-votes-to-recommend-delay-in-confirming-student-regent-designate/

An earlier stage of the internal turmoil within the UC and UCLA student government has already involved Chancellor Block and UC president Napolitano who condemned efforts within the government to limit free speech of candidates.  See http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2014/05/weltschmerz.html

Things don't always work out as planned for the Regents; sometimes they get positively messy: