Listen to the Regents meeting of Sept. 27, 2018

We are belatedly catching up to the September 27th Regents meeting, the final day. As blog readers know, we preserve audio recordings of the Regents meetings since the Regents only "archive" their recordings for one year.

The typical format of the Regents meetings since a reformulation occurred several years ago is that the various committees of the Regents meet concurrently or, in some cases, just before the main sessions or entirely off-cycle. There is then one final meeting at which all the committees report to the full board. Before the reformulation, there were shorter meeting of the committees sequentially rather than concurrently with some committees having sessions off-cycle.

The September 27th meeting was unusual in that the Governance and Compensation Committee had a session after the full board in which it discussed the reformulated approach. It appears that the members of that committee basically prefer the concurrent approach to the sequential approach in that the former allows more depth. There was some sentiment for making use by committees of the day before the regular two-day Regent sessions. (At one point - about 17 minutes into the committee's meeting - the participants break into laughter about some event occurring outside the meeting room; exactly what occurred is not clear, even from the video.)

Since the full board mainly hears reports from the committees on the final day, there is much repetition of earlier discussions within the committees. This time, however, there was a good deal of focus on issues and challenges facing the health sciences and the "health enterprise." Some members seemed surprised as to how large the health area loomed in the overall budget and activities of the university. There was also continued discussion of UCOP's response to the state audit.

In the opening public comments period, concerns were raised by students about support for "basic needs" (apart from tuition), student retention, and pay for student employees. A group raised concern about an upcoming meeting of a national anti-Israel student group at the UCLA campus on the grounds of anti-Semitic statements associated with the group and the fact that the meeting would be closed to pro-Israel students who wanted to monitor the proceedings. Usually, the Regents don't respond to public comments. However, unusually after the public comment session was over, one Regent asked for UCLA's policy with regard to closed meetings held on its campus and UC policies on such events more generally. It was not clear who was going to respond to that request or what the response was. But the request was for a response within 24 hours.

You can hear the Regents sessions at the links below:

Governance and Compensation:


Or direct to:

Full board:
https://archive.org/details/0GovernanceAndCompensationCommittee27/0-board+9-27-18.wma

Governance and Compensation:
https://archive.org/details/0GovernanceAndCompensationCommittee27/0-Governance+and+Compensation+Committee+27.mp3