Watch the Regents' Morning Meeting of May 18, 2022

The Wednesday morning (May 18) meeting of the Regents began with public comments at the full board. Comments covered UC admissions and the dropping of the SAT, financial aid for students, alumni engagement with UC, the Hawaiian telescope, the proposed Munger-designed dorm at Santa Barbara, labor issues, preservation of historic murals at San Francisco, divestment from Blackrock, anti-Semitism at Berkeley, the Parnassus project at San Francisco, COVID effects on students and employees, and the Peoples Park project at Berkeley.

After public comments, there were remarks by the chair of the Regents, the UC president, and the chair of the Academic Senate. I did not find anything new, exciting, or controversial in that part of the session. 

The full board session was followed by a session of Public Engagement and Development. There was discussion of the multiyear budget "compact" between the governor and UC. But there was not discussion of the sad fate of previous such compacts when the budget outlook soured. Moreover, the 4% increase UC is proposed to get sounds good until you recognize that inflation is running around 8%. Thus, a nominal 4% increase is in fact a real decrease unless there is a drastic downward shift in the inflation rate. And if there were such a downward shift, it would probably be accompanied by a recession - with the budgetary problems that would follow. 

Concern was expressed about the bill in the legislature that would require revenue sharing with college athletes. UC has opposed the bill, arguing that revenue sharing in money-making (male) football and basketball would take funds from other sports especially female sports. In any event, as we have noted in a recent blog post, that bill has been killed for now.*

As always, we preserve the Regents recordings. You can watch the May 18 morning session at the links below:

General link: https://archive.org/details/public-engagement-and-development-committee.

Full board: https://archive.org/details/public-engagement-and-development-committee/regents+Board+5-18-2022.mp4.

Public Engagement: https://archive.org/details/public-engagement-and-development-committee/Public+Engagement+and+Development+Committee.mp4.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/05/air-taken-out-of-athlete-revenue-sharing.html.