From the Daily Cal: The UC Board of Regents convened at UCLA on Wednesday to discuss a variety of issues, ranging from the repatriation of Native American remains to multiyear budgeting. The UC’s cultural repatriation policy, which was last revised in 2001, requires that campuses consult with tribal authorities when acting upon repatriation requests. Tensions still exist, however, between Native American tribes and UC campuses over remains that are not identifiable by culture. During public comment, Mark Macarro, tribal chairman of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians in the Temecula Valley, said the remains of Native American ancestors “still remain in ziploc bags on shelves.” Macarro added that as of June, UC Berkeley had only repatriated 313 of 10,000 remains.
UC President Janet Napolitano addressed the concerns during the Academic and Student Affairs Committee meeting, calling repatriation “a fundamental value” of the UC system. Regent John Pérez recounted his own experience protesting at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, stating that “our history as a university is deeply flawed.”
“The written presentation (of the UC cultural repatriation policy) reinforces a long history of overly technical, overly legalistic and, in many ways, dehumanizing approaches to this question,” Perez said at the meeting. “It’s important that we look at this not only in a technical sense, but that we’re motivated by that broader sense of humanity and justice.”
Separately, members of the Compliance and Audit Committee heard from Robert May, chair of the Academic Senate, on the senate’s response to recommended sexual violence and sexual harassment procedures. Based on recommendations from the California State Auditor, disciplinary hearings of the accused should be scheduled to begin within 60 days of when the chancellor files charges, and the hearing committee should issue its recommendation to the chancellor no more than 30 days after the hearing concludes. According to May, an ad hoc committee has been commissioned to define the Academic Senate’s bylaws to incorporate the auditor’s recommendations.
At the afternoon’s Finance and Capital Strategies Committee meeting, UC Office of the President, or UCOP, Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom presented an update on the proposed 2019-20 budget. According to Brostrom, core funds — which comprise state funding as well as tuition and fees — have grown by 8 percent since 2001, but in the same period, the UC system has added more than 100,000 students. As a result, funding per student has decreased by 32 percent, causing bottlenecks in graduation rates for certain majors and worsening the student-to-faculty ratio across UC campuses.
David Alcocer, UCOP associate vice president for budget analysis and planning, added that there was a decline in the number of undergraduate students who were satisfied with their UC experience. Alcocer noted that many students did not know a single faculty member well enough to ask for a letter of recommendation, which he attributed to campus budget cuts.
“The key in everything we’re looking at is trying to provide stability and predictability in all of our revenue sources,” Brostrom said at the meeting. “We’re in a solid foundation now, but we really need to build on that to maintain access and quality for current students.”
Source: http://www.dailycal.org/2018/09/26/uc-board-of-regents-discusses-native-american-repatriation-multiyear-budgeting/
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There was also discussion of faculty diversity issues at Academic and Student Affairs.
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Also from the Daily Cal: The UC Board of Regents, at its Wednesday meeting, discussed a decrease in percentage of out-of-state students to 10 percent by 2029. Danielle Smith, UC Office of the President spokesperson, said in an email that the state requested the UC system to form a report discussing the potential impact of reducing undergraduate nonresident enrollment, with results to be finalized by April 2019. According to Smith, the analysis will not impact student admissions or tuition for the fall 2019 semester.
George Kieffer, the Board of Regents chair, said at the meeting that this plan would only commence “if the state agrees to fund fully the university for the revenue that would be lost.”
“I, like others, believe that the world’s best university ought to have a certain number of nonresident students,” Kieffer said at the meeting. “At the same time, we have a deep obligation to continue addressing the education needs of Californians within the context of the master plan.”
The regents also discussed that while state funding and other “core funds” have increased 8 percent since 2001, the UC system has grown by more than 100,000 students, which has caused funding per student to decrease by 32 percent.
The board previously voted in March to raise tuition for nonresident students by 3.5 percent, effective the 2018-19 academic year, in order to better accommodate growing UC enrollment. Sarah Ampalloor, a campus freshman from Chicago, Illinois, found the March tuition hike unfair in that “people from out of state or out of country have to pay several thousand dollars more” for the same education received by California residents.
Ampalloor said the current initiative to reduce nonresident enrollment would make the admissions process too selective and limit the university from the diverse viewpoints that non-Californians bring to the table.
“We need to have more out-of-state people too, because Berkeley is such an upstanding institute that everyone strives to be a part of,” Ampalloor said. “We want to have a diverse collection of people from all parts of life.”
Nuha Khalfay, ASUC external affairs vice president, said the UC system has been discussing ways to decrease spending and increase resources for years and that recently, the board has focused its efforts on tuition. Also an out-of-state student, Khalfay said it’s “a little disheartening” that the regents’ first proposal for a solution is to cut out-of-state enrollment.
Khalfay added that among the several reasons decreasing out-of-state enrollment is not the best solution, nonresident students introduce new perspectives to the UC system.
“Out-of-state and international students bring additional diversity to the UC,” Khalfay said. “It would be a shame to lose that.”
Source: http://www.dailycal.org/2018/10/01/uc-board-of-regents-proposes-decreasing-nonresident-student-population-to-10-percent-by-2029/
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Finance and Capital Strategies also discussed longer-term budgetary issues, enrollment growth, and online education.
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The National Labs Subcommittee primarily focused on Los Alamos National Lab. Blog readers will recall that UC, as part of a team, recently won a management contract renewal from the U.S. Dept. of Energy for Los Alamos.
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Governance and Compensation approved some big-buck executive salaries. There was one negative vote on some proposals, but the salaries were approved. A plan to narrow pay ranges of certain executive salaries as per the state audit was approved. The committee also met the next day to discuss other items.
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Links below to the afternoon sessions of Sept. 26, 2018:
Academic and Student Affairs:
or direct to:
https://archive.org/details/0AcademicAndStudentAffairsCommittee/0-Academic+and+Student+Affairs+Committee.mp3
National Labs:
https://archive.org/details/0AcademicAndStudentAffairsCommittee/0-National+Laboratories+Subcommittee.mp3
Finance and Capital Strategies:
https://archive.org/details/0AcademicAndStudentAffairsCommittee/1-Finance+and+Capital+Strategies+9-26-18.wma
Governance and Compensation:
https://archive.org/details/0AcademicAndStudentAffairsCommittee/1-Governance+and+Compensation+9-26-18.wma
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