Watch the Regents' Morning Meeting of July 20, 2022

At the first meeting of the two-day set of Regents sessions, the full board had its usual public comments session. Comments included admissions from community colleges (transfers), vaccine mandates, abortion, ethnic studies, fossil fuel use, labor relations, pesticides on campuses, UC enrollment, and online education. Although the Regents are now mainly back in-person, Chair Leib was on Zoom due to his having COVID. 

Following the public comments, there were the usual statements by Leib and Drake. Academic Senate Chair Robert Horwitz spoke about the Senate's fossil fuel memorial, affiliation with religious hospitals, and tensions around BOARS and ethnic studies. He said BOARS is in consultation with ethnic studies faculty, but gave no timing about the process. New Student Regent-designate Tesfai from UCLA was introduced.*

Similarly, he noted tensions around departmental political statements and some Regents' concerns about them which are somehow being addressed. Again, no timing was mentioned. Statements are supposed to have disclaimers indicating they do not represent the official position of the university and should have indications as to who in the department supports the statement. Horwitz expressed skepticism of the idea of an online undergraduate degree. 

After these remarks, there was a lengthy review of the US Supreme Court's Roe/abortion decision.

The Compliance and Audit Committee heard a description of the various audit plans. Regent Makarechian took note of the various medical sexual harassment cases that have arisen and wondered why audits didn't spot the potential for such situations to arise before they occurred.

Regent Park noted the plethora of audits that are done and wondered if - with so many audits - resources aren't overstretched to the point where a proper job cannot be done. She also asked why UCLA seemed to be overrepresented in the proportion of audit hours.

In Public Engagement and Development, there was much discussion of a student volunteer program. The university is opposing SB1364 in the legislature - a bill limiting contracting out.

As always, we preserve the Regents' recordings since they are otherwise deleted after one year for no particular reason. The links to the morning sessions are below:

Full session: https://archive.org/details/1-board-7-20-22.

Full Board: https://archive.org/details/1-board-7-20-22/1-Board+7-20-22.mp4.

Compliance and Audit: https://archive.org/details/1-board-7-20-22/1-Compliance+and+Audit+Committee.mp4.

Public Engagement and Development: https://archive.org/details/1-board-7-20-22/1-Public+Engagement+and+Development+Committee.mp4.

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*See http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/07/new-student-regent-delegate.html.