Big issues of the day were approval of the Peoples Park project in Berkeley and plans to increase enrollment substantially in the future.
A link to the recording of the meeting can be found below.
A summary of the meeting from the Daily Cal is below:
UC Board of Regents approves People’s Park conversion, discuss post-pandemic future
Mallika Seshadri | 9-30-21
UC Berkeley’s plans to convert People’s Park into undergraduate and community housing can now be brought to fruition, following approval from the UC Board of Regents at its regular meeting Wednesday. Recommended for approval by the Regents’ Financial and Capital Strategies Committee yesterday, the project seeks to house 1,100 undergraduate students and will provide supportive housing for low-income and unhoused community members, according to a campuswide email from UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ. She added that construction will not begin until the park’s current residents are offered housing and other services. Meanwhile, more than half of the park will remain an open, outdoor space for the Berkeley community, and a public memorial will be erected in honor of People’s Park and its rich history...
In addition to voting on the future of People’s Park, the board also listened to concerns from members of the UC community during public comment and discussed the system’s reopening and post-pandemic future...
After public comment, regents and chancellors from various UC campuses discussed reopening plans, drawing heavily on input from Christ and UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz, whose campuses have been open for more than a month, unlike those on the quarter system. Christ and Muñoz cited relatively low campus COVID-19 positivity rates and strong compliance with vaccination and mask mandates as keys to success...
UC Student Association President Esmeralda Quintero-Cubillan said many common challenges facing students — including academic and housing difficulties — have been exacerbated since the return to in-person instruction. Quintero-Cubillan further alleged that campuses have not done enough to support these students in a time of need...
Later in the meeting, the Board of Regents discussed increasing UC capacity, a move it hopes will help promote equity in education. More specifically, UC President Michael Drake said he would like the university to add 20,000 students systemwide by 2030. This, he said, would be akin to adding another campus. While increasing capacity may involve traditional methods, such as constructing new buildings, Drake is hopeful that the UC will take a more innovative approach, lessening the time needed to earn a degree, bolstering financial aid services and promoting more online opportunities... However, Student Regent Alexis Atsilvsgi Zaragoza cautioned the board, voicing concerns about being able to accommodate and house more students.
“We have students who are being put in hotel rooms,” Zaragoza said during the meeting. “The fact that we even have to turn to that kind of option is a huge red flag to me — that we don’t even have capacity to take care of our current students. … We really need to fix the problems that are directly in front of us.”
The board also heard from Regent Emerita Monica Lozano, who presented a series of recommendations made by the Recovery with Equity Taskforce, established by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office in August 2020. These recommendations included increasing faculty diversity, streamlining the UC admissions process, making college more affordable and fostering more inclusive learning environments...
Toward the end of their meeting, the Regents also heard from Executive Vice President of UC Health Carrie Byington, who provided an update on the current status of COVID-19 in California and lauded UC researchers for their scientific contributions. She remains hopeful that, if vaccination rates continue to climb and variants are mitigated, COVID-19 could turn the corner and become an endemic virus by March 2022...
Full article at https://www.dailycal.org/2021/09/30/uc-board-of-regents-approves-peoples-park-conversion-discuss-post-covid-future/.
As always, we preserve the recording of the meeting indefinitely since the Regents remove their recordings from the web after one year. The link is below:
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