Munger Hall or Munger Hell - Part 3 (International Edition)

As can be seen above, the story of the UC-Santa Barbara dorm has gone international; it has now arrived in the British publication, The Guardian. You can read that version of the story at:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/04/torture-experiment-architects-appalled-windowless-student-megadorm

However, the headline pretty much gives you the tone of the article.

So, there is an interesting question. Will the Regents kill this proposal? As we noted in an earlier posting, the closest the Regents ever came in recent times - 2012 specifically - to stopping a campus-level capital construction project was UCLA's Grand Hotel. And yet, in the end, after slamming the project and embarrassing Chancellor Block initially, at a later meeting they blessed it.

Yours truly, after the initial regental blocking (pun intended!) - but before the Regents later approved - predicted that in the end they would approve it. You can hear and see that presentation - a report to the UCLA Emeriti Association board - at the link below (which contains excerpts from the Regents meeting):

https://archive.org/details/PresentationOfDanielJ.b.MitchellOnUclaHotelconferenceCenterProjectTo

(If you have trouble seeing/hearing it using that link, try a laptop or computer rather than an iPhone.)

An (audio) recording of the full Regents initial meeting about the Grand Hotel is at:

https://archive.org/details/UniversityOfCaliforniaRegents3-28-2012Part2

Listeners will note that then-Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom - an ex officio Regent - was one of the skeptics.*

There are some differences between the Santa Barbara dorm and the UCLA Grand Hotel:

*The donor in the Santa Barbara case is paying for only part of it. In the case of the Grand Hotel, the donor promised to pay for project in the future and UCLA borrowed against that project.

*The donor in the Santa Barbara case - Charles Munger - has made himself the issue by insisting on designing the project himself and generally coming across in interviews as an obstinate old billionaire grouch. 

*The Santa Barbara project has received far more adverse external publicity than UCLA's hotel. It's hard to imagine that the Regents are unaware of the negative PR related to the Santa Barbara project.

*Santa Barbara actually does need more dorm capacity and is getting bad publicity for not having enough capacity to house admitted students. UCLA's need for a hotel in the midst of the budget crisis that existed back in 2012 was, to be charitable, less obvious. Santa Barbara's "business plan" for the dorm - in the sense that dorm fees will cover operating costs - will likely be more credible than what UCLA presented to the Regents.

*The existing Santa Barbara dorm plan - with its very high population density and limited exits - raises severe safety issues, unlike the Grand Hotel.

Still, it's (apparently) hard for the Regents to say no to something a campus chancellor absolutely wants. Doing so could be seen as a vote of no confidence in that chancellor and chancellors are regental appointees.

====

*There were also (negative) public comments about the UCLA hotel project in the public comments section of the initial Regents meeting. You can hear those comments at:

https://archive.org/details/UniversityOfCaliforniaRegents3-28-2012Part1

starting at about minute 15:07. Not surprisingly, Westwood area hotels objected to competition from a state-funded enterprise, i.e., from UCLA.