Modern Times (More Tales from Davis)

The old tech never went down

From Inside Higher Ed:

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Learning Management System Outage at UC Davis

Submitted by Carl Straumsheim on May 31, 2016. A weekend maintenance period turned into a week-long learning management system outage last week at the University of California at Davis, leaving faculty members and students worried they would not be able to finish finals. The university, which uses a version of Sakai it calls SmartSite, was on Thursday, May 19th, notified by its hosting company that the system would be down for maintenance that weekend. A week later, however, the system had still not been restored, and the outage threatened to affect finals, held during the second week of June. The news was first reported by the ed-tech blog e-Literate.

"[T]his is the system we're supposed to be using to download/view class information, upload assignments, etc.," a member of the university's Reddit community wrote. "Some of my classes don't even have textbooks -- the materials are all posted in PDF or links on SmartSite. We're doing midterms and are a couple of weeks away from finals!"

The system was restored on Friday, though administrators warned they were "not certain of the system’s reliability, support and capacity," and that the system would "be open for viewing and downloading course materials only" -- not uploading. On Saturday, the university tweeted the system was up and running. The university has previously announced plans to move to Canvas, the learning management system developed by Instructure.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/05/31/learning-management-system-outage-uc-davis

Your syllabus will soon be ready

Scout Money Scotched

Sorry about that, Scout

After all the efforts of this blog to supplement the online UC Scout program (scroll down for the past few days), which the governor had proposed extra money for, the legislature is not supportive:

Reject May Revise proposal to provide $4 million one-time General Fund for the UC Scout program. Adopt budget bill language redirecting this one-time funding, and augmenting UC by $6 million ongoing General Fund, to support direct student support programs within the Student Academic Preparation and Educational Partnerships program.*
---*http://abgt.assembly.ca.gov/sites/abgt.assembly.ca.gov/files/Subcommittee%20Report%20-%20FINAL.pdf (p. 40)

UCLA History: Westwood in the Thirties

Westwood in the 1930s

Now you see him; now you don't

On Thursday, UC Davis Chief Financial Officer Dave Lawlor smiled from a picture on the university’s website.

On Friday, Lawlor was gone and his image, biography and list of duties were removed from the website.

“Dave Lawlor, vice chancellor and chief financial officer, has resigned,” said a statement from the office of acting Chancellor Ralph Hexter, sent to deans and vice chancellors Thursday.

“UC Davis has taken important steps to strengthen its fiscal health during Mr. Lawlor’s tenure, and the university remains on a solid foundation of financial stability,” said the statement. “Acting Chancellor Hexter thanks Mr. Lawlor for his service. Effective immediately, Senior Associate Vice Chancellor Kelly Ratliff will serve as interim lead for the Finance, Operations & Administration division.”

University spokeswoman Dana Topousis would not offer any additional information about Lawlor’s sudden resignation. His annual salary was $422,300, she reported...

Full story (or maybe it's less than the full story at:
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article80473102.html 

Back in the day, it was the gal who ran away:

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article80473102.html#storylink=cpy

ILL-DEFINED CONTRIBUTION

Note the nearby "delete" key

(Michael Meranze forwarded this AFSCME media release.) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 25, 2016 CONTACT: Todd Stenhouse, 916-397-1131, toddstenhouse@gmail.com NEW LUXURY EXECUTIVE RETIREMENT BENEFITS TO COST UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA OVER $500 MILLION Assembly Budget Subcommittee Votes to Block Prop. 2 Funds Until UC rescinds Costly 401K Plan Oakland: A new University of California retirement plan that encourages UC’s highest paid employees to circumvent the cap on pensionable compensation (also known as the PEPRA cap) required by the Governor as part of a 2015 budget deal to boost state funding for UC will cost the university over $500 million over the next fifteen years, according to a new actuarial study. Read the actuarial analysis of the plan here. Yesterday, the State Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education voted to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in pension stabilization funding until UC rescinds the plan. Under the terms of the 2015 State Budget, by imposing to cap pensionable compensation for new employees hired after July 1, 2016 at the IRS Limit of $117,000, the University of California would be eligible to receive $436 million (over three years) in Prop. 2 Funds from the state to pay down its unfunded pension liability. While imposing this cap on its defined benefit participants, the UC Regents approved a plan in March to create an entirely new “401k” option for its employees. Under this plan, instead of limiting employer contributions to 8% of the first $117,000 of salary, UC would provide employer contributions of 8% on the first $265,000 in salary—or $7400 more in annual contributions to an employee making over $265,000 per year. Unlike its defined benefit pension, which has a five year vesting period and is not portable, UC’s new 401k has just a one year vesting period, and is portable. As such, it provides clear incentives for UC’s highest paid employees to select a 401K in order to circumvent the state-imposed cap, and in doing so, could risk the financial stability of the defined benefit program on which lower wage workers rely. “What UC has done is akin to a health insurance company incentivizing its healthiest participants to bail out of a plan that also helps people who happen to get sick, leaving the most vulnerable individuals behind to face ever-increasing costs and fewer benefits,” said AFSCME Local 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger. “Worse, in this case, it enables UC’s executives to circumvent the expressed wishes of State Legislative leaders, at a cost of more than $500 million over the next 15 years.”   A key issue behind the Legislature’s desire to impose a pension cap on UC had been the skyrocketing cost of compensation for UC’s highest paid employees—growth that has occurred alongside a tripling of student tuition and growing concerns about access for qualified California students. Since 2004, the number of UC Employees receiving salaries in excess of $265,000 per year has grown by more than 500% and an annual cost of more than $1 billion. In 2004, 629 employees earned these salaries at an annual cost of $222 million, and in 2014, 3,343 received these high-end salaries at an annual cost of $1.3 billion.[i] When factoring in the total cost of the new Retirement Benefits—including  the 401K “opt out” approved by the Regents in March--UC is slated to save only $9 million per year. According to the actuarial analysis, if UC were to eliminate the Opt-Out program and keep all of its employees in the same defined benefit pool, the savings would jump to $49 million per year, or another $580 million over fifteen years. “The Legislature is deeply troubled by not only the cost of UC’s new 401K plan, but by what appears to be an effort to circumvent the terms of the 2015 Budget Act,” said Assembly Budget Education Subcommittee Chair Kevin McCarty. “State taxpayers should not be expected to subsidize the destruction of UC’s defined benefit plan, nor the enrichment of UC’s growing executive class.” [i] Source: UC 2004 and 2014 Payroll data downloaded from http://ucpay.globl.org/

AFSCME 3299 is the University of California’s largest union, and represents more than 22,000 Service and Patient Care Technical Workers at the system’s 10 campuses, five medical centers, numerous clinics, research laboratories and UC Hastings College of the Law.

UCLA History: North Campus

Construction of Bunche Hall and (now) Young Research Library in 1962

UCLA History: Chemistry

The then-Chemistry building in 1935

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 9

And we march forward with our continuing efforts to provide online STEM education - just as the governor wants - and by way of supplementing UC Scout:

Lawsuit Arises from 2014 Racial Incident

It took a long time but now there is a lawsuit against the university. Blog readers will recall that we reported on an incident in which a black UCLA employee was stopped in his vehicle leaving the campus:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2014/09/he-isnt-judge-but-he-does-have-judges.html and later postings.

That stop occurred after another such stop in Westwood of a black judge who also sued:

A UCLA facilities employee arrested in 2014 by campus police is suing the department and the University of California Board of Regents, alleging that he was targeted because he is black.

Claudius Gaines' lawsuit, which alleges civil rights violations, also names as defendants Officer Brandon Young, who is white, and Officer Fabiola Leon, whose ethnicity is not mentioned in the complaint.

The suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday additionally alleges assault and battery, false imprisonment and negligence. Gaines is seeking unspecified damages.

"This lawsuit concerns the ominous subject of racial profiling being committed by members of the UCLA (campus police) against members of the African-American community who happen to travel around the Westwood campus,'' the lawsuit states.

A UCLA media relations representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The university previously said Gaines disobeyed the officers' requests to give them his driver's license and automobile registration.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge, David Cunningham, was himself a previous victim of racial profiling by UCLA police, prompting the department to retrain every member of its staff on the problem and pay $500,000, according to a claim filed and settled on the judge's behalf by attorney Carl Douglas, who also represents Gaines.

According to Gaines' lawsuit, he was leaving work between 11:30 a.m. and midnight Aug. 27, 2014, to drive his truck to his Inglewood home when he was stopped. Young was driving the police car, the suit states.

"Mr. Gaines ... believes that Young pulled him over (even) though he had not broken any law or public offense, but because he looked like he didn't belong in that neighborhood,'' the suit says...

Full story at http://patch.com/california/centurycity/ucla-employee-sues-claiming-racial-profiling-arrest-campus-police-0

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 8

We continue with our efforts to assist the governor with online STEM education at the secondary level & in support of UC Scout:

Our salute to the "progress" of the UCLA Grand Hotel

And our salute would not be complete without music:
(Won't work in iPhone)

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 7

We continue with our efforts to support the governor's idea of more UC-supplied online STEM education for secondary school students. They might even earn a badge! Who knows? http://edsource.org/2016/students-will-earn-digital-badges-demonstrating-new-science-skills/564198

Shoes and Such

One of the products

Jumping into the new arms race in college sports – schools battling for massive sponsorships – UCLA has landed what is believed to be the biggest shoe and apparel deal in NCAA history.

The 15-year, $280-million contract with Under Armour was scheduled to be announced at noon Tuesday, university officials told the Los Angeles Times.

The marketplace has exploded in recent months as Michigan, Texas and Ohio State have signed lucrative agreements with Nike. UCLA entered the picture with its Adidas contract set to expire next year.

“We knew that we were well-positioned to cut a deal,” said Dan Guerrero, the UCLA athletic director. “Under Armour came at us hard.”

The upstart Baltimore company was looking to add a major West Coast program to a stable that includes Notre Dame, Auburn and Wisconsin...

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/la-sp-0525-ucla-under-armour-20160525-snap-story.html

And you never know what's in the shoe:

Micro-management

Legislature Should Fund, Not Micro-manage UC

By Dick Ackerman and Mel Levine 5-24-16

Dick Ackerman and Mel Levine are Co-chairs of the California Coalition for Public Higher Education. Ackerman is a former legislator who served as State Senate Republican Leader. Levine is a former Democratic member of the State Assembly and Congress. Both are graduates of UC Berkeley. 

The University of California is the Golden State’s ultimate success story, but there is always room for improvement. Certainly, there is broad consensus around the goals of admitting more California students and for increasing diversity. These goals, however, are not going to be advanced by legislative micro-managing and more shortfalls in State financial support for UC and the California State University system.

The latest example of misguided meddling is an out of the blue proposal for a six-year plan to increase UC enrollment of California residents by 30,000, while reducing the number of out of state students by 10,000 and further reducing the State funding per student.. The devil is in the details or, in some cases, the lack of details.

* Half of the cost for accommodating the new in-state enrollment would be achieved through increased State General support and unspecified efficiencies and savings by the University. In other words, instead of the State funding the $10,000 per student required for increasing enrollment, the plan calls for only $6,900—a 20% reduction in State support.
* Out of state students already pay tuition and fees about three times the amount paid by California residents. This has produced a significant revenue source for UC educational operations. The 6-year plan would theoretically offset the lost revenue from the 10,000 reduction in out of state enrollment, by significantly boosting tuition and fees for the remaining out of staters—an optimistic estimate at best.
* The proposal does not take into account the housing and dining accommodations for 20,000 additional students—facilities that are not financed by the State
* No provision is made for capital investment to cover the costs of new classrooms and laboratories. UC already has about $3 billion in facility projects that require funds and a $1.5 billion backlog of deferred maintenance needs. The legislative plan does not address existing capital needs, let alone what will be required for an additional 20,000 students.
* The six-year plan does not take into account support for more graduate students, who are integral to both under-graduate education and research.
* The proposal includes the imposition of an Inspector General for UC—an additional layer of bureaucracy that is unlikely to produce significant benefits, since UC has already made and is continuing to make great strides in reducing expenses and achieving greater efficiencies.
* The proposal does not take into account the logistical viability of increasing enrollment—the equivalent of adding a new campus—in a six-year time frame. Neither does it do anything to advance efforts to improve diversity on UC campuses.

The 6-year plan, proposed by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) was rushed through his Assembly Budget Sub-committee without public notice or consultation with UC. Since this idea wouldn’t take effect until the 2017-18 fiscal year, what is the rush? Do we really want to transform our high quality research campuses into diploma mills? This kind of drastic change deserves thoughtful consideration and involvement of UC, other higher education stakeholders and the community.

The University is a standout by any measure of performance. It is constantly ranked as the top public research university in the world. A New York Times survey found that six of the seven colleges doing the most for low income students were UC campuses, including the top five. UC is a pillar of the state’s economy and a source of creativity and innovation. UC is the gateway to a better life for succeeding generations of Californians.

It is far more important for the Legislature, in this year’s Budget deliberations, to address the funding needs of our entire system of public higher education. UC capital and deferred maintenance needs should certainly be on the table. CSU requires an additional $100 million to avoid turning away thousands of eligible California students. Tinkering with the systems won’t get the job done. Additional State investment will.

Source: http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2016/05/legislature-fund-not-micro-manage-uc/

Stanford B-School "Affair" Coming to an End

Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business today (May 23) named the former chair of the university’s economics department as its next dean. Jonathan Levin, the son of former Yale University President Rick Levin, takes over the job on Sept. 1, succeeding Garth Saloner who announced in September that he would step down from his job at the end of this academic year...

Levin clearly will have his work cut out for him. Stanford fell to second in U.S. News & World Report‘s ranking this year, the first time in seven years that the school failed to hold first place on its own or in a tie with another school. Aside from the school’s fall in a key ranking, Levin will take over a business school that has been embroiled in a headline-grabbing controversy through much of last fall when news broke that Saloner, now 61, was having an affair with a GSB professor, Deborah Gruenfeld, who was married to another professor at the school. (see Stanford Confidential: Sex, Lies and Loathing At The World’s No. 1 Business School). Even worse, Saloner remained involved in personnel decisions directly impacting the husband, Jim Phills, who brought a lawsuit against the university alleging that he was unfairly dismissed.

Some 46 current and former GSB staffers, moreover, accused Saloner of disrupting the collegial, close-knit culture of the school and turning it into an environment of fear and intimidation, where the back-stabbing politics were so thick that few would dare challenge the dean. Those current and former employees had unsuccessfully urged the university not to reappoint Saloner to a second term, claiming that he created a “hostile workplace” in which staff, particularly women and people over 40, were hounded out of jobs and roles amid numerous violations of Stanford’s Code of Conduct and HR policies (see Anatomy Of A Rebellion: Inside The Revolt Against Stanford GSB Dean Garth Saloner). For Levin, job number one will be to restore that collegial culture at a school whose lofty mission is proudly proclaimed to “change lives, change organizations, change the world.”...

Full story at http://poetsandquants.com/2016/05/23/stanford-gsb/

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 6

We continue in our efforts to please Gov. Brown by providing our own version of online STEM education at the secondary level (as a supplement to the UC Scout program):

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 5

And we continue our public service with more online STEM education for secondary school students favored by Gov. Brown in his latest budget proposal. Online ed has some drawbacks, of course, including the risk of cheating: http://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/education/university-of-iowa/2016/05/20/university-of-iowa-investigates-claims-of-cheating-by-online-students/84673944/ But we will persevere:

Fallout from the Davis Drama

Despite the web clean-up that the now-suspended Chancellor Katehi at Davis contracted for, above is a screenshot of what popped up on Google images when I typed in "UC Davis" this morning. In any case, the Regents meeting calendar now lists a May 31 special session of the Committee on Compensation to discuss "Regents Policy 7707, Senior Management Group Outside Professional Activities." [http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may16/comp31.pdf]  This item seems to be the result of the corporate board memberships of Katehi that formed part of the Davis Drama.

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 4

We continue our efforts to do our part to provide governor-favored online education, as in our prior daily STEM-oriented posts:

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 3

Continuing our daily effort to provide online STEM education of the type Gov. Brown likes and has allocated more money for under the UC Scout program in the May Revise, we present our own link below:

Listen to the Regents meeting of May 11, 2016

As promised, below is a link to the audio of the Regents meeting of May 11. This completes the audios of the May 10-12 meeting. We remind readers that the Regents version of "archiving" their meetings is to preserve the recordings only one year. To preserve them indefinitely requires real time recording, i.e., it takes one hour of recording time to preserve one hour of meeting time. We also note that other public entities preserve their recordings indefinitely and there is no excuse - absolutely none - for the Regents not to do so.

Here, for example, is the City of Santa Monica archive: http://www.smgov.net/content.aspx?id=4292

At the May 11 meeting, public comments covered professional school tuition and other tuition/fee concerns, mental health student services, faculty diversity, suspended UC-Davis Chancellor Katehi, the defined-contribution pension option, contract workers at UC, and fossil fuel divestment. UC Prez Napolitano made a brief reference to the Katehi case, denying an allegation made in public comments that the lawyer she hired to investigate that case had previously worked for her (Napolitano). She also announced funding for DREAM students and other student awards. At the Committee on Finance segment, tuition for two professional school masters programs was approved. Some concerns were raised as to why those two programs' tuitions were approved when the Regents are scheduled to take up the general issue of professional tuittion in July. A student representative called for terminating Katehi and complained about high executive pay. At the Committee on Educational Policy, a new policy regarding student athletes was approved that is supposed to  give more emphasis on academic performance. There was then discussion of student aid and diversity of the faculty.

Note: There were problems with the Regents' microphone system especially around minute 19.

You can hear the audio of this meeting at:

Davis Drama: What's Next?

From the Sacramento Bee:

...UC DAVIS: Academic Senate meets (today) to discuss UC President Janet Napolitano's decision to suspend UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi...

Source: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article78809157.html

Transfers

From the Washington Post (on transfer students):

...The top five transfer destinations, ranked by students entering in fall 2014, in the Post analysis were:

UCLA: 3,167
UC-Davis: 3,138
Ohio State: 2,606
Rutgers, New Brunswick: 2,541
Texas A&M: 2,525

...Another way of viewing the data is the share of students entering in the fall who are transfers. Here are the top five on that measure:

UC-Davis: 37 percent
UCLA: 35 percent
UC-San Diego: 33 percent
University of Maryland: 33 percent
USC: 32 percent

Full story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/20/looking-to-change-schools-these-top-universities-take-the-most-transfer-students

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 2

As we noted in a post yesterday, Gov. Brown is enthusiastic about online education and proposes to put more money into UC's online program aimed at high school students. So we'll continue to do our part in providing such education, especially in the STEM fields that are so much in vogue:

Foreign students at UC & Other California Institutions

They just keep coming (& the reasons are not outlandish!)

The Sacramento Bee has a report on foreign students attending California universities and community colleges, showing the growth from 2005 to 2014. See the chart below:

The article that goes with the chart is at http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article78695267.html

We'll Do Our Part for Online STEM - Part 1

A previous post yesterday noted Gov. Brown's enthusiasm for online ed and some extra money he has proposed - without endorsement of the LAO - for UC's Scout program aimed at high school students. We can't match that program but we can do our part, and especially for the STEM fields that are so popular today. So here is our first installment:

Sweeping the country

Complaints about out-of-state students are not just found in California:

From the Boston Globe: The Pioneer Institute is set to issue a report on Thursday highly critical of the University of Massachusetts for admitting too many out-of state students — a charge that prompted a sharp preemptive retort Wednesday from the university, which accused the conservative-leaning think tank of favoring private colleges over public ones.

The report, based on Pioneer research, warns that the UMass system has increased academic selectivity and focused on recruiting outside Massachusetts, thereby making it an unattainable option for many local students.

For the first time, UMass Amherst in 2015 accepted more non-Massachusetts residents than residents — although by just six students.

“All this is making it much tougher for Massachusetts high school graduates to get into UMass Amherst,” said Gregory Sullivan, the former state inspector general and the study’s lead researcher. “UMass Amherst has gotten out of reach for many kids.”

UMass officials, who reviewed the study before its release, fiercely contest the findings...

Full story at http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/05/18/think-tank-criticizes-umass-for-growth-out-state-students/V6tIPYko285VFAghlwbntL/story.html

Whatever is sweeping the country, this is what it ain't:

The "other" Davis drama

From the Sacramento Bee: UC Davis and its lucrative strawberry-breeding program have won an important early victory in a lawsuit filed by two former campus scientists who have formed their own strawberry-breeding company.

A federal judge in San Francisco last week rejected an attempt by the two former UC Davis scientists’ new company, California Berry Cultivars LLC, to gain control of a family of valuable strawberry plants located in a campus greenhouse. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria rejected California Berry’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have forced UC Davis to turn over copies of the plants to a third-party grower so they can be bred this summer into strawberries.

The judge’s ruling doesn’t end the case, but it suggests California Berry faces an uphill battle. In denying the request, Chhabria wrote that California Berry “has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits” of the case.

The two scientists, Douglas Shaw and Kirk Larson, left the university in late 2014 to start California Berry. The company’s lawsuit says UC Davis is illegally trying to squelch competition by denying the company access to the strawberry plants, which were developed by Shaw and Larson.

The plants, known collectively as the germplasm, can be vital to developing new varieties of strawberries.

California Berry’s suit is the second case filed against the university over the strawberry program, which generates millions in patent royalties for the university. In 2014 the California Strawberry Commission, an association controlled by growers, accused the university in a lawsuit of allowing the breeding program to collapse after Shaw and Larson’s departure. Growers rely heavily on the breeding program; strawberries developed at UC Davis generate about half of California’s $2.6 billion-a-year crop. The Strawberry Commission’s suit was settled after the university hired a replacement for Shaw and Larson.

Source: http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article78468497.html

This story definitely takes us far afield from the Katehi affair:

UC Scout: LAO Skeptical About Budget Hike

Did you know that UC has a program called Scout* (not sure why it has that name, but...) which offers online courses to high school students to help them qualify for UC?

The governor - who is enthusiastic about online education - is proposing in the May Revise budget to allocate $4 million as a one-time expenditure to add 45 more courses.

The Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) is skeptical about the added expenditure and suggests not providing the funding until and unless some info is provided:

 – How much unmet demand exists for additional online A-G courses and which specific courses have the greatest unmet demand. 

– Whether other online providers could meet any unmet demand. 

– How the proposed level of funding was determined. 

– How UC Scout would inform schools statewide of the availability of the additional courses. 

Source: http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2016/3465/may-HE-proposals-051616.pdf
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*http://www.ucscout.org/

Listen to the Regents Meeting of May 12, 2016

We've provided audio for May 10. Now we leap to May 12. (We'll get to May 11 when we can.)

The May 12th meeting began with public comments. Topics included defense of suspended UC-Davis Chancellor Katehi, the issue of hate crimes, and the regental governance system. Then the meeting turned to oversight of the Dept. of Energy labs, mainly a presentation of using "big data" computer analysis for medical research. Gov. Brown asked if there were any immediate or close-to-immediate results that could be described. It was unclear if he was satisfied with the answer.

Changes in the regental governance system - to be decided at the July meeting - were described and discussed. There will be fewer committees with more autonomy from the full board. Regents Pattiz and Pérez expressed concerns about centralized power.

At the May 10th meeting, Pérez had expressed concerns about student dining options at a new UC-Berkeley residence building. He requested that he receive more analysis for May 12. What he got, apparently, was a set of PowerPoint slides which he thought were not responsive. Student Regent Oved never got the slides and was also concerned. But at the end of the day - as always happens with capital projects, the building was approved. [Editor's note: The problem the Regents have with capital projects which are big bucks affairs is that they have no independent analysis capability. The proposed governance reshuffle - which combines Grounds and Buildings and Investments into a single committee - does not address this problem.]

Compensation was approved for the interim UCLA VC for Academic Personnel Michael Levine.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom - a candidate for governor to succeed Brown - voted against a pay package for a UCOP executive, as he tends to do.

Certain professional school fee increases were approved with one negative vote.

UC Prez Napolitano announced various awards and retirements.

You can hear the meeting at the link below:

More Title IX-Related Concerns on Due Process

From Inside Higher Ed:

Citing an erosion of free speech and due process on college campuses, a group of 21 law professors on Monday released an open letter alleging that the U.S. Department of Education has unlawfully expanded how colleges must define and respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment.

The same argument has been made frequently in recent months by Republican lawmakers who say that the department’s Office for Civil Rights illegally created new regulations through a series of documents instructing colleges how to handle cases of sexual misconduct. Monday’s letter comes at a time when the department is also facing two lawsuits making the same claim. And a third lawsuit is on the way. The legal argument is an important one, because many colleges revised procedures based on the Education Department guidance -- sometimes saying that they had no choice but to do so.

“OCR needs to clarify which directives it considers to be guidance documents vs. regulations,” the professors wrote. “Directives that are guidance documents need to be revised to eliminate provisions containing obligatory wording, unless these provisions are expressly supported by prior legislation or regulation. Directives that are deemed to be regulations need to be brought into compliance with requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.”...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/17/professors-urge-department-education-revise-sexual-assault-guidance

The letter - which includes no UC signatories - is at:
http://www.saveservices.org/wp-content/uploads/Law-Professor-Open-Letter-May-16-2016.pdf

Something to worry about

Email received from the Social Science Research Network:

Dear SSRN Authors,

SSRN announced today that it has changed ownership. SSRN is joining Mendeley and Elsevier to coordinate our development and delivery of new products and services, and we look forward to our new access to data, products, and additional resources that this change facilitates. (See Gregg Gordon’s Elsevier Connect post)

Like SSRN, Mendeley and Elsevier are focused on creating tools that enhance researcher workflow and productivity. SSRN has been at the forefront of on-line sharing of working papers. We are committed to continue our innovation and this change will enable that to happen more quickly. SSRN will benefit from access to the vast new data and resources available, including Mendeley’s reference management and personal library management tools, their new researcher profile capabilities, and social networking features. Importantly, we will also have new access for SSRN members to authoritative performance measurement tools such as those powered by Scopus and Newsflo (a global media tracking tool). In addition, SSRN, Mendeley and Elsevier together can cooperatively build bridges to close the divide between the previously separate worlds and workflows of working papers and published papers.

We realize that this change may create some concerns about the intentions of a legacy publisher acquiring an open-access working paper repository. I shared this concern. But after much discussion about this matter and others in determining if Mendeley and Elsevier would be a good home for SSRN, I am convinced that they would be good stewards of our mission. And our copyright policies are not in conflict -- our policy has always been to host only papers that do not infringe on copyrights. I expect we will have some conflicts as we align our interests, but I believe those will be surmountable.

Until recently I was convinced that the SSRN community was best served being a stand-alone entity. But in evaluating our future in the evolving landscape, I came to believe that SSRN would benefit from being more interconnected and with the resources available from a larger organization. For example, there is scale in systems administration and security, and SSRN can provide more value to users with access to more data and resources.

On a personal note, it has been an honor to be involved over the past 25 years in the founding and growth of the SSRN website and the incredible community of authors, researchers and institutions that has made this all possible. I consider it one of my great accomplishments in life. The community would not have been successful without the commitment of so many of you who have contributed in so many ways. I am proud of the community we have created, and I invite you to continue your involvement and support in this effort.

The staff at SSRN are all staying (including Gregg Gordon, CEO and myself), the Rochester office is still in place, it will still be free to upload and download papers, and we remain committed to “Tomorrow's Research Today”. I look forward to and am committed to a successful transition and to another great 25 years for the SSRN community that rivals the first.

Michael C. Jensen
Founder & Chairman, SSRN

Art and Craft

Remember Mark and Trade on the cough drop box? How about Art and Craft? The UCLA Emeriti Association is presenting its annual Arts and Crafts show at the Faculty Center today from 11 AM to 4 PM. 

Obama on Exclusion of Commencement & Other Speakers

From transcript of keynote address at Rutgers U commencement yesterday: ...And if participation means voting, and it means compromise, and organizing and advocacy, it also means listening to those who don’t agree with you. I know a couple years ago, folks on this campus got upset that Condoleezza Rice was supposed to speak at a commencement. Now, I don't think it's a secret that I disagree with many of the foreign policies of Dr. Rice and the previous administration. But the notion that this community or the country would be better served by not hearing from a former Secretary of State, or shutting out what she had to say—I believe that’s misguided. (Applause.) I don't think that's how democracy works best, when we're not even willing to listen to each other. (Applause.) I believe that's misguided. If you disagree with somebody, bring them in—(applause)—and ask them tough questions. Hold their feet to the fire.  Make them defend their positions. (Applause.) If somebody has got a bad or offensive idea, prove it wrong. Engage it. Debate it. Stand up for what you believe in. (Applause.) Don't be scared to take somebody on. Don't feel like you got to shut your ears off because you're too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities. Go at them if they’re not making any sense. Use your logic and reason and words. And by doing so, you’ll strengthen your own position, and you’ll hone your arguments. And maybe you’ll learn something and realize you don't know everything. And you may have a new understanding not only about what your opponents believe but maybe what you believe. Either way, you win. And more importantly, our democracy wins.  (Applause.) So, anyway, all right. That's it, Class of 2016...

Transcript at http://www.newsweek.com/obama-full-transcript-rutgers-university-commencement-speech-460325

Video below:

Grand Hotel Reminder

If there are plans to save a few grand by staffing the Grand Hotel with outside contractors, the UC-Berkeley campus keeps reminding us why that is unlikely happen (or last very long if it does):

After seven months of protests by campus employees and students, UC Berkeley finalized plans to insource 69 campus workers from three private contract companies last week.

The decision to insource workers was part of the Fair Wage/Fair Work Plan, a broader university movement aiming to support campus employees andraise their salaries, campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore said in an email. She added that campus officials have coordinated with AFSCME, a labor union representing UC workers, to work out appointment details since March.

The campus has offered employment to all formerly contracted night shift and athletic custodians, as well as campus parking attendants contracted through LAZ Parking, according to Gilmore. She also noted that workers from ABM and Performance First were also given priority employment with the university...

Full story at http://www.dailycal.org/2016/05/15/campus-insources-workers-ongoing-plans/