Listen to the Regents Meeting of Jan. 22, 2015

As promised, but with a delay, you can hear the Regents meeting of Jan. 22, 2015. The Regents only archive their recordings of meetings for one year (for no good reason). Thus, in order to record the meetings for longer archiving, yours truly must do it in real time, i.e., one hour of meeting time takes one hour of recording time.  However, we now have the Jan. 22 meeting which was notable for a de facto rejection of a policy that would gear coach pay (very marginally) to academic achievement.  The degree was so slight that the Regents chose to send the proposal back to UCOP for reworking. 

The session began with public comments featuring complaints about the tuition/funding plan, a warning of a (then) upcoming one-day doctors’ strike in student health services, complaints about nonunion pay and conditions, and a push for fossil fuel divestment.  A brief demonstration followed. (The sound is cut off.)

The Regents approved a modified budget for the DOE labs after a major fine reduced payments to be received.

During discussion of the governor’s budget proposal for UC, it was noted that UC pension debt was listed in the proposal as a state liability although no money was allocated to deal with it.

There were reports on mental health provisions available to students and on Ebola preparations.

Various high exec pay decisions elicited complaints but were approved.

As noted above, the big news item that came from this session involved a UCOP proposal that was billed as linking coach pay to academic achievement. (The discussion starts around 2:13 at the link below.) Doubts had been expressed about this matter the previous day. Lt. Gov. Newsom, who had pushed back against an earlier UCOP proposal on coach pay at a prior Regents meeting, criticized the new plan as doing nothing. Gov. Brown was less vocal but also voted against endorsing the plan.  Athletic administrators, including from UCLA, really didn’t respond directly to the criticism but instead tended to say they were doing a good job already in dealing with the issue.  

The meeting concluded with President Napolitano reporting on various awards received at UC.

A link to the audio of the meeting is below.