Horton Makes Decisions at UC-San Diego and UCOP

 UC-San Diego happens to house a collection of papers from children's book author "Dr. Seuss" (Theodore Geisel).*  I was reminded of that fact in reading the item below about UC-San Diego barreling ahead with its reopening plan. Dr. Suess, among other books, wrote "Horton Hatches the Egg." If you are in the tiny minority unfamiliar with the book, here is the plot:

Horton Hatches the Egg is a children's book written and illustrated by Theodor Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss and published in 1940 by Random House. The book tells the story of Horton the Elephant, who is tricked into sitting on a bird's egg while its mother, Mayzie, takes a permanent vacation to Palm Beach. Horton endures a number of hardships but persists, often stating, "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent!" Ultimately, the egg hatches, revealing an elephant-bird, a creature with a blend of Mayzie's and Horton's features.**

Put another way, Horton is stubborn and, having made a decision, will not be persuaded by circumstances to change it. Large bureaucracies often behave like Horton. Once decisions are made - which may involve an elaborate process - they tend to stick with them. So you can look at UC-San Diego's decision on reopening in that way. From KPBS:

While universities nationwide and in other parts of San Diego County are seeing spikes in COVID-19 cases, UC San Diego is holding firm in its ambitious plan to bring back thousands of students back to campus later this month. All told, about 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students will attend classes on campus in some capacity and 7,000 undergraduates will be living in dorms. These numbers differ greatly from those at other UC campuses.

In response to spikes of COVID-19 cases in recent months, both UC Berkeley and UCLA announced plans to scale back reopenings. Berkeley started its school year in late August with no in-person classes and just 2,200 students in campus housing. At UCLA, very few classes will be in-person and only about 700 students will live on campus.

UC San Diego officials say they feel confident about bringing so many students back because they’ve developed a rigorous safety plan that includes twice-a-month testing for all students and staff and single occupancy dorm rooms. Yet, some students and faculty believe the reopening plan is doomed to fail.

“I don’t know what needs to happen before UCSD can bring students back, but I know right now is probably not the time to do it,” said Daniel Heinz, a PhD student in neurobiology at UCSD.

Heinz points out that some other universities nationwide opened with similar plans as UCSD and are still having outbreaks, and says “we should be reconsidering the validity of our models.”

On Monday, Heinz sent an open letter signed by 600 students, alumni and faculty urging the university to reconsider its reopening plan. UC San Diego officials, however, say they’re confident the plan will work.

“We have to try to figure out how to operate our schools, our businesses and our society in a new environment in which we’re gonna have the coronavirus looking over our shoulders for quite a while,” said Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine at UCSD who helped design the reopening plan...

Full story at https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/sep/10/ucsd-standing-firm-ambitious-reopening-plan-despit/

I have no doubt that no matter what happens, if the bureaucracy wants the plan to "work," it will be found to "work," whatever actually happens. It's hard to let go of a decision once made. And the longer you stick with it, the harder it is to reverse. But it isn't impossible, as the UCLA example shows.

Similarly, blog readers may recall our recent post on the upcoming Regents agenda which noted that in closed session there will be discussion of a lawsuit brought by UCLA Law Professor Richard Sander to obtain certain data on student admissions, Prop 209's ban on "affirmative action," etc., via a Public Records request.*** Reversal of 209 is on the November ballot and its repeal is supported by the Regents, the governor, etc., and probably will succeed.**** UCOP apparently gave related data to a Berkeley grad student by making the student an employee and then commissioning him to write a report. While there are legitimate concerns about privacy of individual student records, UCOP could simply commission Prof. Sander to develop a report and have him adhere to whatever privacy protocols were applicable to the Berkeley grad student. 

The problem is that a bureaucracy has made a decision to resist the data request - presumably because it is feared Sander will not produce a report UCOP wants - and thus UCOP is having a Horton problem. UCOP thus sticks with litigation to defend its decision rather than make a simple accommodation. If the folks at UCOP would just take a deep breath and ask themselves what terrible things would happen if Prof. Sander wrote a report in some academic journal that questioned UC practices, an accommodation could be made. The simple answer is nothing terrible would happen. And generally the rule should be that if a UC faculty member makes a data request, the default response should be to make the data available with whatever protocols for confidentiality are needed. 

Maybe our new UC president will take a look and do the right thing.

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*https://library.ucsd.edu/research-and-collections/collections/special-collections-and-archives/collections/the-dr-seuss-collection.html

**Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horton_Hatches_the_Egg

***http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/09/regents-meeting-agenda-sept-15-17-2020.html

****I haven't seen any recent polling data but another symbolic issue - a 1990s ban on bilingual education - was reversed by voters in 2016.