Growing Pains

As pressure to keep growing enrollment continues, there are infrastructure implications:

From the San Diego Union-Tribune: UC San Diego’s race to create housing for its booming student population gained speed ...when the school broke ground on a 1,310-student village that will feature the two tallest residential towers in the University of California system. The $365 million Pepper Canyon West Living and Learning Neighborhood is one of three massive residential centers that will add more than 5,000 beds to UCSD’s housing capacity by fall 2025. The university is already able to house about 18,000 students, ranking it third nationwide, behind Penn State and UCLA. Pepper Canyon will primarily be composed of two towers, one that’s 23 stories tall and one that’s 22 stories. The larger tower has the same number of stories as the Palisade apartment complex, currently the tallest building in the broader university area.

UCSD is in the process of building or planning six buildings that will range from 16 to 23 stories in height. The expansion is creating a skyline for the campus, which was once largely hidden behind eucalyptus trees. The university, which will have about 44,000 students this fall, is going vertical because it has to...

Full story at https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2022-09-06/uc-san-diego-breaks-ground-pepper-canyon. 

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel: A judge has sided with the city of Santa Cruz authorities’ assertion that it is not obligated to provide water service to match future UC Santa Cruz expansion. Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Timothy Volkmann’s Aug. 30 ruling comes as a result of a breach of contract lawsuit filed against the city in October 2020. At the time, attorneys for the University of California Board of Regents and UC Santa Cruz announced the suit in a joint statement with the city. UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive and then-Santa Cruz Mayor Justin Cummings described the legal action as the university’s effort to “seek clarity,” a mutually agreed-upon step to settle an impasse in a long-brewing disagreement.

In subsequent court filings, university attorneys claimed that the city had committed to supplying the campus — particularly the northern edge that falls outside Santa Cruz’s borders — with water utilities, as codified in contractual agreements in 1962 and 1965. In response to an inquiry... related to the recent ruling, UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason stressed that the court proceedings were focused on service access, rather than the more hotly contested local water usage debate sparked during recent droughts. Campus water usage has declined even as its student body has grown in the past 25 years, he said.

“UC Santa Cruz is only asking that the City of Santa Cruz fulfill the promises it made when it sought to persuade the Regents to build a campus in Santa Cruz — promises set out in plain language — to provide water service,” Hernandez-Jason wrote in an emailed response to the Sentinel.

In a release from the Santa Cruz City Attorney’s Office... the city said the judge agreed the 1962 and 1965 contracts only required the city to provide water delivery infrastructure of a specified capacity to the university campus border, and to bill the university at rates comparable to other water customers — a service currently ongoing by the city...

Full story at https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2022/09/06/judge-rules-santa-cruz-not-obligated-to-provide-drinking-water-to-ucsc-north-campus/.

And, of course, there is the ongoing saga of the UC-Santa Barbara Munger Monster Dorm about which this blog has had many postings. We noted in past postings, including our review of the agenda of the Regents meeting scheduled for later this month, that there seems to be a satellite campus in some stage of review for UCLA. Adding students is not just about putting some extra seats in the back of the lecture hall. Look for more signs of growing pains - and rising costs and conflicts - in the future.

===

You can hear the text above at the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/growing%20pains.mp3