UCLA Faculty Association: The Regents' Big Ten Decision: Not a Good Look

Yesterday, we posted about the Regents' decision not to try and veto the move of UCLA from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten shortly after the decision was taken.* If you didn't read that post, you should because what happens goes beyond where UCLA will play football and other sports. It was an exercise in micro-management.** And it was as close as the Regents come to a vote of no confidence in a chancellor. Indeed, if you micro-manage a campus-level decision, you are implicitly saying you don't have confidence in the leadership of that campus to carry out its responsibilities. The two concepts - micro-management and lack of confidence - are intertwined.

In essence, the decision was to let UCLA go forward with its move, to tax its resulting revenue and transfer it to UC-Berkeley, and then to condition the decision on an array of detailed conditions. As we have posted, there was only a small chance that the Regents would try to override the decision. Chancellor Block was their authorized agent acting within official policy when he made the deal with the Big Ten. While the Regents technically could have overridden him, the result would have been costly litigation. If you break a legitimate contract and the issue goes to court, you lose. Surely, the UC general counsel pointed this sobering fact out to the Regents in their various closed sessions on this matter. In addition, overtly overriding campus chancellors is not something the Regents like to do.

Note that the Regents in this particular case could have endorsed the Big Ten deal, suggested that the chancellors of UCLA and Berkeley get together and work out some arrangement for revenue sharing, and scheduled some future session on guidelines about what should be the protocol when a campus chancellor is faced with a decision that could have significant adverse revenue effects on another campus. Instead, they came up with a detailed eleven-point document. Here, as an example of detail, is point number 4:

UCLA will increase budgeted student-athlete nutritional support beyond levels established for the 2023-2024 fiscal year in an amount not less than $4.3 million; such support shall include guaranteed breakfast and lunch availability on campus for all UCLA student-athletes, professional dietician services, and funds not less than $250,000 set aside for additional nutritious meals while traveling.

It's true the Regents did not specify the breakfast menu, perhaps oatmeal or cold cereal, but that seems only because they specified hiring a dietician to plan the menu.

What was Chancellor Block's response to the Regents' decision? From the New York Times:***

“We’re OK. We’re comfortable,” said Block, the longtime chancellor who said he was “sad” to be leaving the Pac-12. “It’s up to the board to decide what the number is. From the very beginning, we said we understand we may have to help Berkeley with this.”

Actually, you won't find anyone saying that revenue would be funneled to Berkeley until controversy arose. And what else could Block say. Would he be expected to say in public that he was uncomfortable?

How about Berkeley Chancellor Christ?

Cal-Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ, who had hoped the Regents would block U.C.L.A.’s move, brushed past a reporter as she left the meeting immediately after it ended. “I’ve got nothing to say,” she said.

No one bothered to ask the chancellors of the other campuses if they were concerned after this decision about being micro-managed on some future issue.

What about the Regents who voted for the eleven-point decision 11 to 5? Regent Chair Leib said this:

“In the end, we’re a system, not an individual campus,” Richard Leib, the board chairman, said after the proposal passed by an 11-5 vote following a 90-minute closed session. “We’ve never had a situation where a decision by one campus had this kind of impact on another campus within our system.”

Actually, it was pointed out in the public segment of the meeting that the campuses compete with one another in various ways including for Big Buck research grants.

Why did five Regents vote against the deal?

Lark Park, one of the five regents who voted against the approval, said “it wasn’t there for me,” but declined to elaborate. Leib believed that those who opposed the deal did so for philosophical reasons. “Some people felt it would be better to put the genie back in the bottle and try to get U.C.L.A. back to the Pac-12 is my guess,” he said.

The statement above suggests that even behind closed doors, the dissenting Regents never articulated reasons for their position.

Note finally that an 11 to 5 vote means that only 16 Regents participated out of 24. In particular, Governor Newsom, an ex officio Regent, never showed up, although he was the one who insisted that the Regents involve themselves in this matter originally.

The whole affair was, as they say, not a good look.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-big-ten-decision-at-regents.html. (Includes video links.)

**Contrary to the cartoon above, yours truly likes the hyphen in "micro-management."

***The quotes below come from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/sports/ncaafootball/ucla-big-ten.html.

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