The bill that is aimed at bypassing the current court hold up of student housing construction in People's Park has now gone to the governor. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
A state bill that could allow UC Berkeley’s controversial People’s Park development to move forward will head to the governor’s desk to be signed into law — dealing a potential win to the university in its quest to build more housing. AB1307, by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, whose district includes Berkeley, amends California’s environmental law so that development projects no longer need to study the noise generated from future residents.
The bill passed the state Assembly unanimously on Monday and passed the state Senate on Aug. 17, and is now headed to the governor’s desk. If Gov. Gavin Newsom signs the bill into law, it would take effect immediately. The state Supreme Court would still have to make a formal decision on the case for construction to begin at People’s Park...
The bill came after a state appeals court ruled in February that UC officials did not adequately explore alternative student housing sites and had dismissed legitimate neighborhood concerns about “loud student parties” — dealing a win to neighborhood groups that had sued to block the construction. The decision came six months after a Superior Court judge ruled that the university had addressed key criticisms of the plan and evaluated the environmental impact...
Dan Mogulof, a university spokesperson, thanked lawmakers in a statement and said the campus remains committed to building at People’s Park. Mogulof said the state appeals court ruling “could have prevented students across the state from getting the housing they need and deserve, while bestowing new powers on powerful NIMBYs who wish to impede the construction of housing not just for students but also for the unhoused and low-income families.” Mogulof said UC will ask the Supreme Court to consider the new statute when it issues its ruling...
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín expressed support for the bill in a statement...
Newsom has also expressed support for the project. In April, his office filed a brief to the state Supreme Court to let UC Berkeley take over People’s Park and build housing there... Newsom’s office said they don’t typically comment on pending legislation and that the governor will evaluate the bill on “its own merits” if it reaches his desk...
As some blog readers will remember, during the last race for district attorney of LA County, we took some pains to point out that the incumbent DA Jackie Lacey had (improperly, in our view) pursued a criminal case against a UCLA professor for a fatal lab accident and attempted to hold another faculty member in an unrelated matter hostage as part of that case.* Lacey lost to challenger George Gascón. Gascón was later subject to a failed recall effort.** He will be up for reelection in 2024. We point this fact out because there have been recent news stories about that upcoming election and those seeking to challenge Gascón.***
For the record, this time around, we don't have a horse in the DA election race.
I guess these headline problems can happen anywhere. While the docs at UC-San Francisco are donning their masks to avoid heart disease, readers further south have to be cautious that their libraries don't attack them:
From Inside Higher Ed: The University of Pittsburgh in installing panic buttons in about 400 classrooms, the university announced Friday. The buttons will send an alert to the campus police and, in rooms with electronic locks, lock the door, enabling people to exit but not enter the room. The safety measure comes in response to a “swatting” incident in April, in which emergency calls reported what ended up being a fake mass shooting in Pitt’s Hillman Library. Armed police swarmed the library, alarming students, who received no information about the phony calls until 90 minutes later.
We have been following the drama at Harvard related to the data fraud case. The only "happy ending" that seems likely to emerge is that the wide publicity will discourage researchers tempted to manipulate data in research papers from doing so. From Inside Higher Ed:
Harvard University is reviewing an embattled business professor’s tenure for possible revocation. Francesca Gino, a researcher of dishonesty, stands accused of manipulating data. Inside Higher Ed confirmed with Gino’s legal team Monday that the university sent her the tenure-review notice, but her legal team declined to share a copy of the full letter. Harvard did not respond to requests for comment about its review of Gino’s tenure. Gino has been on administrative leave since at least June.
The Harvard Corporation, the university governing body, has the authority to revoke tenure, and can do so only for “grave misconduct or neglect of duty,” according to The New York Times. Harvard did not respond to a question asking if it has ever revoked a professor’s tenure before. Earlier this month, Gino filed a defamation lawsuit against Harvard, the dean of its business school and three professors who write the blog Data Colada and used the platform to detail Gino’s alleged academic dishonesty. Gino is seeking apologies from the defendants and at least $25 million in damages.
Inside Higher Ed ran a piece yesterday entitled "UC Santa Cruz’s Admissions Gamble." Excerpt:
Under pressure from lawmakers to admit more in-state students, the University of California, Santa Cruz, accepted 50,381 total applicants this fall, up from just over 38,000 last year. Of those, roughly 23,000 are in-state freshmen and 6,600 are transfers from within California. That means in-state first-year students are up by nearly 40 percent and transfers by 2 percent.
The dramatic increase at Santa Cruz is a calculated risk, a gamble that aims to meet the demands of state lawmakers while betting that most of those students won’t actually enroll at a campus with a one-year housing guarantee in one of the nation’s most expensive real estate markets. Given the high demand for on-campus housing and a lack of affordable options in the city of Santa Cruz, the university is banking on a low yield rate and staggered enrollment so that its capacity of nearly 10,000 beds is not overwhelmed. In the end, despite record acceptance, the university anticipates increasing enrollment by 730 students this year when the fall quarter begins in late September...
If Davis were to add a "dead day" or even "dead week" to its calendar, something similar would be likely to come to UCLA. The problem is that extending each term means extending the effective fall-winter-spring academic year. Would students really want such an extension which would cut into summer? Note that Berkeley is on a semester system which means it has one less term (and break between terms) than campuses on the quarter system. But read on from the Aggie:
Two UC Davis students are hoping to implement a dead week or “dead day” into the academic calendar. Alexandria Moncada, a recent graduate in political science-political service and history and a board member of the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Advisory Board (CUAB), along with Zara Shaikh, a recent graduate in psychology and communication and the student resource representative of Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian Student Group (MENASA) for CUAB hope to bring about this change for the future of UC Davis.
“Dead week/day is traditionally a week or day set apart from the final day of instruction, and before final examination, where there’s no academic obligation for students to complete assignments or attend classes,” Moncada said. “It’s beyond the normal class meeting, and this time is dedicated for students to either review their class work, retain information or, if anything, [practice] self-care time because we all need that before finals. I think that we neglect ourselves so much before finals begin because you’re going from Week 10 straight into finals week, and there’s no time for you to adjust to anything.”
Despite the popularity of the terms dead week or dead day, Moncada said that they are not ones she likes because of their insensitivity to the fact that suicide rates spike during finals week. “A lot of students deal with a lot of suicidal ideation during finals week because it’s a lot of pressure,” Moncada said. “You don’t know whether you’re going to pass your class or not, and, like, you can’t afford that. You can’t afford to have a dip in your GPA because you’re planning on going to grad school or professional school, or you’re trying to find a job.” Shaikh furthers that the pressure of wanting to succeed during finals has not been easy.
“It was so tough for me to just keep going, especially after weeks two and three,” Shaikh said. “It was just midterms after midterms or papers and assignments and all. It was just really hard to take some time for yourself to, you know, slow down and understand and learn the material as opposed to just, you know, memorize it for exams and then be done with it.” Shaikh said that their research was heavily involved in how other UCs’ academic calendars followed dead day/week. Shaik said Moncada focused greatly on Santa Barbara’s current approach to dead week to see the best way to implement it into UC Davis’ academic calendar. With this research, they both proposed an initiative that best aligned with UC Davis’ academic calendar...
The New York Times carries a lengthy article with many photos (not reproduced here) on the planning for the March on Washington, the 60th anniversary of which is today:
The 1963 March on Washington Changed America. Its Roots Were in Harlem.
Before Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to 250,000 people, a group of civil rights activists spent a summer planning an event many didn’t want to happen.
Sixty years ago, in the summer of 1963, a four-story townhouse on West 130th Street in Harlem became the headquarters for what was then the largest civil rights event in American history, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. For one summer the house, a former home for “delinquent colored girls,” was a hive of activity — so frenetic that the receptionist twice hung up on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by mistake.
The march, which took place on Wednesday, Aug. 28, is now best remembered for Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and for the crowd of 250,000 filling the National Mall. But it would not have been possible without the organizing at 170 West 130th Street, led by Bayard Rustin, a brilliant tactician whose homosexuality and former communist ties made him a target both inside and outside the movement.
Under the aegis of the march’s patriarch, the labor leader A. Philip Randolph, Mr. Rustin brought together the heads of the five big civil rights organizations — the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, N.A.A.C.P., National Urban League, Congress of Racial Equality and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Together with Mr. Randolph, they became known as the Big Six.
It was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, following Dr. King’s tumultuous campaign to force the desegregation of Birmingham and President John F. Kennedy’s sending the National Guard to enable Black students to attend the University of Alabama; Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the N.A.A.C.P., was assassinated in June in Mississippi. As Courtland Cox, one of the march organizers, recalled, “People were sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they wanted to make a statement to the nation.”
From a bare-bones office, Mr. Rustin managed the sometimes-fractious leaders, along with labor and religious groups and a crew of young volunteers and paid staff, to create an event that still resonates 60 years later.
Below are the memories of 10 people, now aged 75 to 92, who helped plan and organize the march. Their remarks have been edited for clarity and conciseness.
NORMAN HILL, national program director, Congress of Racial Equality: The march was organized in about six weeks, which was sort of amazing, to generate that many people and have an overall impact.
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, now a U.S. congresswoman from Washington, D.C.: There had never been a truly big march in Washington. There was a 1957 march [the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom], but that had maybe 25,000 people. That was seen as an indication that maybe we could not attract many people.
RACHELLE HOROWITZ, transportation director and aide to Bayard Rustin: Both Bayard and Mr. Randolph knew that progress had to be made in Washington. You could fight all these local fights, and they were important, but unless we got legislation and the support of the federal government, there was not going to be anything done, really.
VELMA HILL, East Coast field secretary, Congress of Racial Equality: I don’t know whether I should talk about this, but there was not harmony among the Big Six. The N.A.A.C.P. was looked upon as only going through the courts. And the Urban League was looked upon by SNCC and CORE as being too beholden to business. And King was referred to as “De Lord,” not in a nice way.
DR. JOYCE LADNER, field organizer, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: That started in SNCC. It might have been Stokely [Carmichael] that started it, and it spread.
VELMA HILL: I think that the march would not have happened unless Randolph had called it, because A. Philip Randolph was the most respected leader of the 20th century. Unfortunately, enough is not discussed about him. It’s now King’s march. We loved King. But he was only one-sixth of the march policy committee.
NORMAN HILL: The first day was to be sit-ins in congressional offices. The second day there was to be a massive march on the nation’s capital.
COURTLAND COX, program secretary, SNCC: Roy Wilkins [then executive secretary of the N.A.A.C.P.] didn’t want Bayard to organize the march. And not only Roy Wilkins. But the person who could overcome that, and who people could not go up against, was A. Philip Randolph. And Bayard was his deputy. There’s nothing that Roy Wilkins could have said that would’ve made a difference, because A. Philip Randolph was there.
LYNN KILGORE HENDY, volunteer, now treasurer of Save Harlem Now!: My father [Thomas Kilgore Jr.] was pastor of Friendship Baptist Church. The church owned the building on 130th Street. My father was very good friends with Martin Luther King, since Dr. King was a child. When they needed someplace to do the planning and have a central office, they thought that Harlem would be a good place. It would probably be dangerous to put it anywhere in the South. So my father offered the building.
DR. JOYCE LADNER: A call went out from Bayard or Mr. Randolph to each civil rights organization to send two people to staff the march. That’s how Courtland Cox and I were appointed by SNCC. We were the worker bees. SNCC wasn’t especially excited about a march.
COURTLAND COX: Most people in SNCC basically thought it was taking time away from the work they were doing in Mississippi, and it was only because I had a relationship with Bayard, and his convincing me that it was going to be an important march, that we were really much involved in the March on Washington.
CLARENCE B. JONES, lawyer and speechwriter for Dr. King: Following the success of the Birmingham campaign in April and May of 1963, on June 21, then-President Kennedy invited all of the major leaders to come to the White House to consider the next step. He and the attorney general wanted to discourage the leaders of the civil rights organizations from planning any march directly on Congress.
NORMAN HILL: Kennedy thought there was likely to be violence, and that would set back the cause of civil rights. He was geared to introduce civil rights legislation, and he felt that if there was a march with violence, it would jeopardize the passage of the legislation.
RACHELLE HOROWITZ: The Kennedy administration put a lot of pressure on people like Wilkins not to sponsor it. It became a soft pitch: We are really for your marching, but will there be enough toilets? And will there be enough water? Bayard called them the Latrine Letters. That only encouraged Bayard to be more organized and more precise. It had a negative effect.
NORMAN HILL: Randolph said to Kennedy, “If we don’t march, we’ll lose all credibility. No one will follow us.” Randolph and the other leaders, with Bayard being the chief organizer, went back to organizing the march.
CLARENCE B. JONES: Dr. King traditionally after some major event took his family on vacation. They’d normally go to the Bahamas or Jamaica. But he didn’t do it this time. The thought was that he clearly couldn’t be away. So my wife and I moved out of our brand-new house in Riverdale, in the Bronx, and he moved his family in, and for the next six weeks my home became the S.C.L.C. North.
His older son, Marty Jr., said to me that of all the times they can remember being with their dad, that’s the time they most remember, because they were all together.
JINI KILGORE COCKROFT, worker for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: I was 15. My job was to type probably thousands of envelopes and stuff them and take them downtown to the central post office, so that we would notify people around the country of the march. I was also distributing leaflets on stoops in Harlem and taking them into stores. The Nation of Islam members and the Fruit of Islam were not in favor of integration. They favored separatism and self-help. They kind of tailed me when I was putting leaflets on stoops. They’d take them off as soon as I put them on. Their strategy was different from the S.C.L.C.’s. They didn’t think the march would do any good.
PATRICIA WORTHY, receptionist at march headquarters, now a law professor at Howard University: We used to get threats all the time. And of course, since I answered the phone, I was the one who got them. People threatening to bomb the place, or telling us there was a bomb in the place, or that they were going to kill us. And I would get rattled, and I would walk into Bayard’s office and he’d say three or four things, and I would get up and go back to work. He had a sense of assurance and command. He filled up a space. His eyes sparkled and he had that gray hair, and it was all fuzzy. Just bigger than life.
COURTLAND COX: There was a lot of energy in Harlem. You would walk on 125th Street and the clothing stores’ doors would be open, and you would hear the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout” blasting from the various stores trying to attract people. And if you went to 125th and 7th Avenue or Lenox, people were on ladders talking about their political views or religious beliefs about what was happening in America.
RACHELLE HOROWITZ: I had an apartment in the ILG [International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union] co-ops in Chelsea. Joyce Ladner and her sister Dorie — her sister Dorie was working as a volunteer for the SNCC office — and Eleanor Holmes Norton stayed at my apartment. I had two futon-type couches in the living room where the Ladners slept, and Eleanor slept in my bedroom.
DR. JOYCE LADNER: Dorie was very close to Bobby Dylan. He used to come to our apartment. He hung out at the SNCC office during the day, and he would come home with Dorie. We worked long hours, sometimes till 11 o’clock at night, and we were so tired when we got home. All I wanted was for Bobby Dylan to get off the sofa that I had to sleep on and go home, go anywhere.
He was serenading. He would write songs on the typewriter at the SNCC office during the day. He gave Dorie one. He wrote three songs that were inspired by her. One — “Outlaw Blues” — the last stanza is very much dedicated to Dorie. He’d be singing, and I’m just sitting there exhausted, wishing this boy would go home. Eventually he’d get up and leave, and Dorie and I would open up the sofa to sleep on.
CLARENCE B. JONES: There was a meeting as to the order of the speakers, and some people didn’t want Martin King to be the last speaker. Finally, I had to say, “Excuse me, have you heard Dr. King speak? Do you really want to follow him? Do any of you want to follow him?” I had to convince these ego-driven preachers and other people to let Dr. King be the last speaker. It was all out of ego.
NORMAN HILL: Early in the organizing of the march, Strom Thurmond [the segregationist Republican senator from South Carolina] spoke on the floor of the United States Senate, attacking Bayard as a communist, pervert and draft dodger. And Randolph called a press conference in response and indicated that Bayard would continue as the chief organizer and conferred unequivocal confidence in Bayard.
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Our jobs were really quite mundane. One of my jobs was to link people to buses so that they could get to Washington. That’s the kind of legwork that was needed.
PATRICIA WORTHY: It was a busy place, whoa! High energy, everybody committed, everybody working late hours. I was the skinniest child when I started, and I was skinnier when I left. Wasn’t much eating.
VELMA HILL: Bayard would sing songs and we would work around the clock. He was an Elizabethan tenor.
LYNN KILGORE HENDY: He had that wonderful British accent. I have no idea where that came from, but he did have one. And I just loved to listen to him talk.
NORMAN HILL: Randolph had a deep, baritone voice, with a Shakespearean tone. He projected great dignity and a clear articulation.
VELMA HILL: And he was a gentleman. I would get in the car with him and he would help me get into the car. And a lot of times he would say at a meeting on Sunday afternoon or evening, “I have to go home to read Shakespeare to my wife.” And I remember telling Norm, “Norm, if you decide to read Shakespeare to me, I will never leave you.”
COURTLAND COX: A big thing was making sure there were enough monitors and marshals and so forth to make sure paper was picked up, people were marching in line, everybody knew what the disciplines were.
RACHELLE HOROWITZ: There was an organization of Black policemen in New York called the Guardians. Bayard got them to volunteer to be the internal monitors, and he actually trained them in nonviolent crowd control, which meant encircling a crowd, not doing the policeman thing. Every day in the courtyard of the building, there would be groups of 20 policemen out there, and Bayard would be doing nonviolence training with them.
CLARENCE B. JONES: The pied piper of the civil rights movement at that time was Harry Belafonte. He had an understanding that no matter how important an event you put on, America is a celebrity-oriented country. And he convinced Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph and Dr. King. He said, you want to make sure you get great publicity coverage, we’ve got to bring as many stars there as possible. So he was put in charge of the celebrity delegation.
RACHELLE HOROWITZ: Harry Belafonte gets a lot of credit for bringing the movie stars, and he deserves it. But Ossie Davis came to the office all the time, came to staff meetings, was on the phone negotiating. He was just like the most wonderful staff person.
NORMAN HILL: None of the major speakers at the march were women.
VELMA HILL: It was male chauvinism.
RACHELLE HOROWITZ: Bayard was upset by it, but he didn’t know how to get around it. He proposed a compromise, which was that Daisy Bates, who had led the effort to integrate the schools in Little Rock, would speak and honor three or four other women who were active in the movement. There were women who were very disaffected — Pauli Murray, Ella Baker.
DR. JOYCE LADNER: There was not a spotlight in the country focused on parity for women. And race was such a dominant, overbearing issue in my life that being a woman didn’t even factor into it. I lived during two lynchings in Mississippi. The last one in 1959 occurred 15 miles from where I lived. So there was little room for me to delineate women out of that larger group of oppression.
RACHELLE HOROWITZ: In retrospect, obviously they should have had Dorothy Height [president of the National Council of Negro Women] or someone speak.
DR. JOYCE LADNER: Some days before the march, John Lewis [then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] showed his speech to us. I remember looking at it. Bayard and Rachelle looked at it. It was a communal statement; it was not John’s alone. So when the word got out that the White House and the Archbishop of Washington [Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle] wanted him to change it, we said, Oh, hell no.
NORMAN HILL: The archbishop threatened to pull out of the march unless the speech was modified. A. Philip Randolph appealed to John, saying, “Please don’t ruin this event and this day for an old man like myself.” John said later, how could he refuse Randolph?
VELMA HILL: We wanted to have the biggest showing, the most integrated showing. We wanted to pass the Voting Rights bill. I did not think the march would be that big.
CLARENCE B. JONES: I thought, maybe we could get 100,000 people. Possibly a large crowd, but I didn’t think 250,000. Now as I look back, if we had had cellphones and laptops, there would have been five million people there.
PATRICIA WORTHY: We came down on a bus, and we sang the whole way down. “We Shall Overcome” — we must’ve sang that 4,000 times. We got there at maybe 5 in the morning, and I said to Mr. Rustin, “I think I’ve talked to everyone as far as the eye can see.” The buses were starting to come, and he came over and he said, “Wow, they’re really going to show up.” That was the first time I realized that he really wasn’t sure that the people were coming, either. Prior to that, he’d given us the impression that he was sure this was going to be a success.
I went around Mr. Lincoln and I sat down and fell asleep, and I missed the entire march. I missed Dr. King’s speech. I missed everything.
=====
Note: Yours truly is particulary sympathetic to the comment on missing King's speech since he attended the March but left before King spoke (although he heard it on the car radio going home). There were no "playbills" handed out on who would speak, or speak when. The idea was to get a lot of people to come to Washington, DC and pressure the Kennedy administration on civil rights by the size of the crowd rather than some specific program of speakers. It was only later that the March became known for the King speech, and today many folks seem to think the purpose of the March was to provide a platform for the speech. Here is a description in 3 parts of the event by Jean Shepherd, a popular New York radio humorist of the time. He gives a serious commentary on this occasion, however:
NORMAN HILL: We thought that the march would bring national attention to the demands of the civil rights movement. The march policy committee developed 10 demands. A number of them were met by the civil rights legislation of ’64 and ’65. The economic demands are still relevant today.
DR. JOYCE LADNER: It was the first time that the movement became national. Before the march, everything was confined to the South or to people picketing stores in support of the South. The march made racism America’s problem, and not just what’s happening down South among those rednecks. It became recognized as a national problem.
VELMA HILL: The Big Six never worked together that way again. Sometimes I really long for the days of the march. In a funny way I wish I were 20 again. But you know, there are some young people out here, and I think Norman and I can help them. I think we can teach them. I think the coalition can come together again.
The Regents are meeting in an off-cycle session today at Santa Cruz. Yours truly plans (again) to make an oral comment during the public comments segment about the improper cancellation of survivors' health insurance. (This will be the third such comment.) Also, he has taken advantage of the opportunity to submit a more-detailed written comment that will be included in the agenda materials. Here is that submission:
To: The Regents
I plan to speak by phone at the public comments segment of the upcoming Regents meeting of August 28 on behalf of the Emeriti Associations of UCLA, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco regarding the improper cancellations of retiree health insurance of survivors. These will be the same comments I have made at the previous two Regents meetings.
Under your retiree health insurance plan, eligible survivors are supposed to have continued health insurance coverage upon the death of the UC employee. However, when grieving widows and widowers - eligible for continued health coverage - call to report the death of their spouses, they are being told that we're sorry for your loss and we have inadvertently cancelled your health insurance. We will let you know when it is restored.
I chair a labor-management committee for a major public agency that provides continued health coverage for survivors. We deal with the same carriers as UC: Kaiser, Blue Cross, etc. But we don't inadvertently cut off survivors. CalPERS and CalSTRS don't do it. This problem is unique to UC.
Fortunately, a simple fix is available. The responsible official at the UC Office of the President (UCOP) needs to pick up the phone, call the insurance carriers, and tell them not to cancel survivor policies. My experience is that the carriers will do what their customers request as long as they are paid their contractual rates. If UC tells them not to cancel, they won't cancel.
As you may know, there is a longstanding problem regarding basic administration of the UC retirement program. I am not referring to funding, but simple management, e.g., someone retires but somehow his/her pension check doesn't arrive. You will get all kinds of complicated explanations as to why these problems arise: labor shortages, computer systems, etc. But the survivor cancellation problem is easy to fix. UCOP needs to pick up the phone, call the insurance carriers, and tell them not to cancel survivor health insurance.
Below I have listed links regarding this matter. I especially recommend that you listen to the audio recording embedded in Part 1. Thank you.
-Dan Mitchell, Professor-Emeritus, UCLA --- Links: UCOP Needs to Make the Call to Protect Survivor Health Insurance
Hello. I am Professor-Emeritus Dan Mitchell speaking for the third time at a Regents meeting on behalf of the Emeriti Associations of UCLA, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. When a UC retiree dies, he or she often has a surviving spouse eligible for continued health insurance under the Regents' retiree plan. Yet when survivors call to report the death of the retiree, they are being told, "We're sorry for your loss; We're also sorry to tell you that we have inadvertently terminated your health insurance. We'll let you know when we have restored it."
This is a problem unique to UC. It's not happening at CalPERS or CalSTRS. I chair a labor-management committee of a major public agency that looks after health insurance. We don't cut off survivors.
Why don't survivors get cut off elsewhere? Because the insurance carriers are given a list of names of who to cover and they do so, so long as they are paid the contractual rate.
So, there is a simple solution for UC. The officials in charge need to pick up the phone, call the insurance carriers, and tell them not to cancel survivors. They need to pick up the phone rather than offer mysterious excuses of why this can't be done.
I have provided more detailed written material for your kits today which contains links to still more information including an audio recording of UC officials trying to explain why this blunder occurs. Please read the material and listen to the audio. Thank you.
Our weekly search for signs of recession from new California weekly claims for unemployment insurance shows a series without much change from last week. We are still at levels seen before the pandemic when the labor market was booming. Now some other indicators suggest a slowing in the economy, but we are not in recession territory.
I suspect you'll be hearing a lot about the wage dispute described below at future Regents meetings, at least in the public comments segments, although perhaps not at tomorrow's off-cycle meeting at Santa Cruz.
Why UC workers say they must sleep in their cars to do their jobs for the wages paid
Sacramento Bee, Cathie Anderson, 8-23-23
Veronika Honcharuk drives 133 miles one way to get to her job in San Francisco from her home in Placerville. She logs patients’ admission information in the emergency department at UCSF’s Helen Diller Medical Center. She works 12 hours a shift, three days a week. To clear enough money to cover her parking ($300), gas ($600) and her car payment ($400) each month, she must put in a week and a half at her job. Honcharuk’s employer frequently offers her the opportunity to work overtime, she said, and she usually takes it because she needs the money. But if she works those extra hours, she will likely sleep in her car until the next shift rather than making the journey home and back. The drive time would eat up five to six hours.
Step into the world of low-wage workers at the University of California where overtime is a necessity, affordable housing is a super-commute away and cars double as bedrooms. Now, thousands of UC workers are demanding a wage increase that would allow them to alter this reality.
“I’d love to get a new car. It would definitely help to pay my mortgage and to put more money into savings,” Honcharuk said. “There’s not a lot left over once you’ve paid a mortgage and car bill and the phone bill and all these bills. They all add up. You don’t have a lot to put aside for security.”
The UC Board of Regents could better the lives of nearly a quarter of UC employees with pay increases that would equal to 2.5% of its current operating budget — or even less, according to researchers for Honcharuk’s union, AFSCME Local 3299. They make their case for two separate wage proposals in a report being released Wednesday titled “Priced Out: The University of California’s Role in the Affordability Crisis.”
The University of California, responding to a query from The Bee, said it had not yet seen the AFSCME researchers’ report but that its leaders are open to discussing the wage proposals. Outside a recent regents meeting, AFSCME workers shouted their demands for a $25 minimum wage and across-the-board wage increases of 5% for AFSCME members currently earning more than that. The union and the UC will open talks on a new contract in January.
“UC is aware of and has been reviewing the union’s public campaign around $25/5%,” system leaders said in a statement issued by the UC Office of the President. “If that is the economic proposal that AFSCME brings to the bargaining table in January of 2024, the university will seriously consider it, working with AFSCME through the bargaining process to identify economic terms that are fair, competitive, and reflect the varying economic markets across our state.” ...
Jon Wilner at the Mercury News has more detailed information than in our prior post on UC-Berkeley and Stanford joining the Atlantic Coast Conference. but with reduced revenue:
The ACC’s proposed payments for Cal and Stanford don’t seem that much higher than what they’d earn in the Mountain West or American. And travel would be worse. So why are Cal and Stanford pushing for the ACC? — @ebrohinho
Because they are desperate to remain in a power conference — so desperate that they have offered major concessions to appease the four ACC schools in opposition to expansion. Essentially, the Cardinal and Bears are on hands and knees, shamelessly begging for an escape hatch from an awful situation that they themselves created.
The subpar states of their football and men’s basketball teams in recent years left the Bay Area schools without offers from the Big Ten during either of its western raids (the L.A. schools in 2022 and the Northwest schools in 2023). Now here they are, with the ACC as the lone lifeline to power conference status, the only option for linking arms with the major college elite.
So deep is the desperation that Cal and Stanford are willing to join a conference based in Charlotte and schlep their Olympic sports back and forth across the country,
That they are willing to accept reduced revenue shares from the ACC …
And willing to lock in their media rights with the ACC until 2036, an eternity in college athletics.
The financial piece must be hammered out in negotiations, but we have a working framework to assess.
The Cardinal and Bears would receive reduced revenue shares (compared to the existing ACC members) on a laddered basis. In the early years of their membership, the Bay Area schools would receive quarter-shares (approximately), with the amount increasing until 2036. According to a source, the average over time would be roughly 50 percent.
That would place each school about $15 million behind, with the gap steadily disappearing. Yes, the annual media revenue in the initial ACC years would be comparable to what the two schools would receive if they rebuilt the Pac-12.
Stanford, which has more money than it could possibly spend, will offset the lower revenue internally.
Cal doesn’t have the institutional wherewithal to cover the revenue disparity, but it does have UCLA. Last year, the University of California Regents attached a condition to UCLA’s move to the Big Ten: The so-called Berkeley tax would force the Bruins to subsidize Cal between $2 million and $10 million annually for the drop in Pac-12 revenue caused by UCLA’s departure.
We suspect the subsequent collapse of the Pac-12, combined with Cal’s plight, will move the regents to impose a subsidy on the high side of that range. So the Bears could offset reduced revenue in the ACC through the fee imposed on UCLA. (The Bruins are expected to receive an average of approximately $65 million per year from the Big Ten’s media rights deal. Remove $10 million for the Berkeley tax and another $8 million to $10 million from increased travel costs, and UCLA’s net annual revenue, excluding postseason events, from the Big Ten could fall into the mid-$40 million range.)
Put another way: The Bay Area schools have financial mechanisms in place to remain competitive despite the reduced shares required for membership in the ACC. The more consequential issues are locking in their media rights until 2036 and sending their Olympic sports back and forth across the country. For years, the schools refused to fully engage in the necessary evils of college sports that would have helped their football and basketball programs compete.
Why? Because those evils ran counter to the academic missions and institutional cultures on each side of San Francisco Bay. Yet here they are, desperate for membership in a conference on the Atlantic Seaboard, prepared to send their athletes back and forth across the country and prime examples of the very evils they purportedly stood against.
Years of poor decisions have left them with no choice.
The stage is almost set for the grand opening of the Nimoy Theater, UCLA's latest addition to Westwood Village! Our official open house isn't until Sept. 17, but tickets for CAP UCLA's 2023-2024 season are now available at the box office and online.
From SFGATE: ...After the California schools' last-ditch campaign to join the ACC appeared to have stalled out earlier this month, a flurry of reports Wednesday evening suggested they could be headed to the Atlantic Coast after all.
Twelve of the conference’s 15 schools have to approve new members. As of last week, there had been four reported holdouts: North Carolina, NC State, Clemson and Florida State. The rest of the conference and its leadership were apparently on board with adding the Bay Area duo (plus maybe SMU).
It’s not clear which of the four schools is flipping its vote, but all reporting Wednesday evening was pointing in the same direction. The Associated Press had the conference “making progress toward an expansion that could grab Stanford and California.” Yahoo Sports had the move as a “legitimate possibility” while also providing the clearest financial picture. Stanford and Cal, desperate for a major conference, offered to take shares that are just 30% of what existing members get, while SMU, which has deep-pocketed boosters, is offering to play for free, according to Yahoo.
If the ACC wants to add Stanford and Cal, it has all the leverage. After the collapse of the Pac-12, the Bay Area schools have frantically tried to find a major conference that would provide anything close to the tens of millions of dollars in football money both were accustomed to. Even at 30% shares, being in the ACC would be a better deal than reforming the Pac-12 with lesser powers or just swallowing their pride and joining the Mountain West or American...
Law schools may soon be required to adopt written free speech policies under a proposal being considered by the American Bar Association. The potential changes come after, but are not a direct consequence of, multiple high-profile incidents of student disruptions of speakers at law schools prompted widespread debates about free speech, academic freedom and students’ right to protest.
The decision to review freedom of expression policies for law schools dates back to 2021. The association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which the U.S. Department of Education recognizes as the sole and independent accreditor of law schools, voted Friday to accept the proposal, produced by its Strategic Review Committee, or SRC, and put it out for public notice and comment...
Standard 208. ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
(a) A law school shall adopt, publish, and adhere to written policies that protect academic freedom. A law school’s academic freedom policies shall:
(1) Apply to all full and part-time faculty, as well as to all others teaching law school courses;
(2) Apply to conducting research, publishing scholarship, engaging in law school governance, participating in law related public service activities, and exercising teaching responsibilities, including those related to client representation in clinical programs; and
(3) Afford due process, such as notice, hearing, and appeal rights, to assess any claim of a violation of the academic freedom policies.
(b) A law school shall adopt, publish, and adhere to written policies that encourage and support the free expression of ideas. A law school’s free expression policies must:
(1) Protect the rights of faculty, students, and staff to communicate ideas that may be controversial or unpopular, including through robust debate, demonstrations, or protests;
and
(2) Proscribe disruptive conduct that hinders free expression by preventing or substantially interfering with the carrying out of law school functions or approved activities, such as classes, meetings, interviews, ceremonies, and public events;
(c) Consistent with this Standard, a law school may:
(1) Restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, or that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests.
(2) Reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression.
(3) Adopt policies on academic freedom and freedom of expression that reflect the law school’s mission, including a religious mission, so long as such policies are not in violation of the law and are clearly disclosed in writing to all faculty, students, and staff prior to their affiliation with the law school.
Interpretation 208-1
Standard 208 applies to both public and private law schools.
Interpretation 208-2
A law school may, when appropriate, differentiate among students, faculty, and staff in its policies on freedom of expression.
Interpretation 208-3
Standard 208(a) does not preclude a law school from identifying the courses that will be taught, requiring courses to cover particular content, or requiring faculty, students, or staff to clarify in appropriate circumstances that their views are not statements by or on behalf of the law school.
Interpretation 208-4
This Standard does not prevent a law school from applying disciplinary action for conduct identified in Standard 208(b)(2).
Interpretation 208-5
Subsection (c) recognizes that law schools may restrict speech consistent with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Interpretation 208-6
Effective legal education and the development of the law require the free, robust, and uninhibited sharing of ideas reflecting a wide range of viewpoints. Becoming an effective advocate or counselor requires learning how to conduct candid and civil discourse in respectful disagreement with others while advancing reasoned and evidence-based arguments. Concerns about civility and mutual respect, however, do not justify barring discussion of ideas because they are controversial or even offensive or disagreeable to some.
The dean of the Harvard Business School, Srikant Datar, sent an email to all faculty on August 14 as the data manipulation affair developed. It is reproduced below:
To: HBS Faculty
From: Srikant Datar
Re: Research Misconduct Case
Earlier this month, Professor Francesca Gino filed a lawsuit in federal district court alleging defamation, breach of contract, and discrimination, and seeking damages of at least $25 million from Harvard University and from the three non-Harvard professors affiliated with the Data Colada blog (who now have identified themselves publicly as the complainant who brought forward research misconduct allegations to HBS, and have written recently about four of Professor Gino’s studies).
As there is ongoing litigation, I hope you understand that I cannot discuss the specifics of Professor Gino’s claims. After hearing from some of you with concerns, however, I do want to clarify a number of aspects of our process- many of which are now described in the lawsuit itself.
The School’s Interim Policy and Procedures for Responding to Allegations of Research Misconduct (available here) hews very closely to federal regulations and is very similar to policies at other schools at Harvard. The process for reviewing allegations at each step strives for thoroughness, fairness, and objectivity. It outlines the rights and responsibilities of the complainants, the respondents, and the institution. It pays particular attention to ensuring that respondents have both procedural rights and multiple opportunities to participate and defend themselves, including by meeting in person with both the inquiry and the investigation committees, by providing written information, and by reviewing and submitting a written response to the draft report.
To the best of my knowledge, the research misconduct allegations we received-serious allegations covering multiple papers, with different co-authors and research associates, over multiple years-were the first formal allegations of data falsification or fabrication the School had received in many years. By definition, they fell directly within the purview of the School’s policy for research misconduct. After a comprehensive evaluation that took 18 months from start to completion, the investigation committee -comprising three senior HBS colleagues–determined that research misconduct had occurred. In reaching their findings, the investigation committee members brought exacting care to their work, gathering extensive information and exploring alternative hypotheses, and looking at the totality of the evidence. After reviewing their detailed report carefully, I could come to no other conclusion, and I accepted their findings. I did this with personal concern for Professor Gino, but also with complete confidence in the investigative work that had been done and knowing I must do what is right for our institution.
I then was required to determine the appropriate institutional actions. I ultimately accepted the investigation committee’s recommended sanctions, which included immediately placing Professor Gino on administrative leave and correcting the scientific record (a measure incumbent on every responsible academic institution when research misconduct is found). I did so after consulting confidentially with a small number of individuals at HBS and Harvard, including senior faculty members here at the School, as is permitted by our policy. The sanctions reflect a shared belief that the misconduct represented a significant violation of academic integrity and that the evidence not only met but surpassed the applicable preponderance of evidence standard. I shared my conclusions with Professor Gino and, in accordance with our policy and consistent with University practice, began implementing the institutional actions. This included requesting the retractions of the relevant papers, as detailed in Exhibits 3, 4, and 5 of Professor Gino’s complaint.
We will engage thoughtfully and comprehensively in responding to the lawsuit Professor Gino has filed, providing facts in response to her assertions and focusing on the evidence. I know that we have been exceedingly diligent and careful thus far in our process, and I have confidence this will be reflected as the litigation moves forward.
I remain committed to ensuring that Harvard Business School is a place where research is carried out with the highest integrity and our community is a place where every individual is able to be their best self and do their best work.
We posted some history of the loyalty oath controversy of the late 1940s and 1960s that embroiled UC (and other higher education institutions).[1] As blog readers will recall, the end result was litigation and court decisions that ultimately reduced the oath to a vacuous pledge to support the state and federal constitutions.
It might be noted that unlike the federal constitution, California's state constitution is relatively easy to amend through ballot propositions. The state constitution, for example, contains the language of Proposition 209 - the anti-affirmative action proposition of the mid-1990s. The Regents and top administrators made known their opposition to 209 in an unsuccessful campaign in 2022 to get voters to repeal it. Did they thereby violate their oaths? Is just complying with the law - even if you don't like it - what supporting the state constitution means? The fact is that no one knows, or cares, or even raised that issue. That absence of concern illustrates how empty the remains of the old loyalty oath became after the various legal challenges.
In any case, that history led yours truly to consider the required diversity, equity, and inclusion statements that came about at UC and other institutions in recent years. As readers will probably know, DEI efforts have become part of the ongoing national culture wars. Red states are banning such efforts. However, questions about their legality have been raised by traditional liberals. Matthew Finkin[2] at the University of Illinois wrote a lengthy treatise questioning the constitutionality of required statements, "Diversity! Mandating Adherence to a Secular Creed."[3] Part of his argument, as yours truly understands it, is that although they seem to require speech through various specific guidelines, the mandates are also vague as to what speech is sufficient to comply. Thus, the requirements are both specific and vague. It was this combination of specificity and vagueness that led to the various court decisions that ultimately watered down the old oath to meaningless. (Apologies to Prof. Finkin if yours truly has misunderstood his argument.)
We also have, less surprisingly, objections to DEI statements from libertarian-leaning scholars who don't fit neatly into today's progressive vs. conservative camps. I poked around in the files of the Volokh Conspiracy of UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh and found references to legal challenges to required DEI statements, one very recent lawsuit coming from faculty at the California Community Colleges.[4] Another article references a 1943 Supreme Court decision voiding a mandate that school children recite the Pledge of Allegiance.[5] Also noted are events surrounding the non-hiring by UCLA of a University of Toronto professor after students objected to him saying in a podcast that DEI statements were examples of "value signaling."[6] (There does not seem to be litigation surrounding that particular situation.)
Finally, there IS a non-hiring case pending case against UC and UC-Santa Cruz. This one is backed by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation. According to the Mercury-News, "the lawsuit compares the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion statement requirement to anti-communist loyalty oaths during the Cold War, where state employees were asked to swear that they did not belong to the Communist Party." At least at the time the case was filed, the applicant had not actually applied for the position, stating that the DEI requirement prevented him from doing so. Whether he will be found to have standing as a non-applicant remains to be seen. But it is likely that eventually someone will be found by the Pacific Legal Foundation, or by some other group, to challenge UC. And the individuals challenging the community colleges presumably do have standing.
It might be noted that self-statements are generally found in faculty hiring and promotion cases and nothing prevents candidates from citing their contributions to, or approaches to, the general concerns of DEI. It might be better for UC to be proactive in this area, i.e., to avoid guidelines that create the specific-vague issues cited by Finkin, and to not wait for courts to step in. Lawyers have a saying that you shouldn't ask a question to which you don't know the answer. In this matter, the question is going to be raised whether we ask it or not. And we don't know what the courts' answer will be if we leave things "as is."
Reports indicate that with the collapse of the Pac-12, UC-Berkeley and Stanford are looking to join the Atlantic Coast Conference. But what might work for money-making football looks very different from the perspective of other sports that will be dragged along.
And its not just the perspective of the non-football sports at UC-Berkeley and Stanford that have a problem with the proposal. There is opposition from those sports within the ACC as the video below indicates. From TV station WRAL (Raleigh, NC), 8-21-2023:
"UNC women's head coach Anson Dorrance didn't hold back when it came to talking about the ACC exploring expansion with Stanford and Cal. Dorrance acknowledged that the two programs are elite, but for the boots on the ground the move would not be good. The concern is not only from a budget and travel standpoint, but from a recruiting aspect as well."
An article in The Atlantic argues that the syllabus has become the fine print in a contract that students don't read. The author touts use of online courseware. My impression is that the same students who in the past didn't follow the instructions in the syllabus are the ones who ignore the instructions in the courseware. But read on for yourself:
The Syllabus Is Dead: Now it’s just terms and conditions.
By Ian Bogost, 8-21-23
You may remember the syllabus. Handed out on the first day of class, it was a revered and simple artifact that would outline the plan of a college course. It was a pragmatic document, covering contact information, required books, meeting times, and a schedule. But it was also a symbolic one, representing the educational part of the college experience in a few dense and hopeful pages.
That version of the syllabus is gone. It has been replaced by courseware, an online tool for administering a class and processing its assignments. A document called “syllabus” persists, and is still distributed to prospective students at the start of each semester—but its function as a course plan has been minimized, if not entirely erased. First and foremost, it must satisfy a drove of bureaucratic needs, describing school policies, accreditation demands, regulatory matters, access to campus resources, health and safety guidelines, and more.
Last week, the office of the provost at Washington University in St. Louis, where I teach, sent out a new syllabus template for faculty use. It’s nine pages long and suggests that any detailed course content—a list of study topics, assigned readings, and weekly homework assignments—be sequestered at the very end. This is not unusual. I’ve seen and heard the same thing from colleagues all across the country, at schools big and small, public and private. At colleges and universities everywhere, the syllabus has become a terms-of-service document.
The change happened slowly. Long before courseware made it obsolete, the syllabus was pulled in two directions. On one side, it recorded a deliberate pedagogical plan plotted out by an expert. The syllabus, in its very brevity, offered evidence of that expertise. All of Greek lyric poetry or organic chemistry or political economy boiled down to this simple, confident itinerary. The syllabus was also meant to capture the letter and spirit of the learning environment: the nature of assignments, what success would mean, how the class would operate, the instructor’s style. It was a hallowed artifact in the mind of educators.
But on the other side, students never seemed to read our syllabi. They didn’t know which reading would be coming next, or what would be on the exam, or when the papers were due. A tradition of professorial barbs and sneers developed around that state of affairs: It’s on the syllabus! Didn’t you read the syllabus? Intention underlied impatience: The traditional university student matriculates to learn but also to become an independent adult. In its own small way, as a document that could and should be consulted, the syllabus gave students an opportunity to exercise self-reliance—and teachers a way of holding them accountable.
Even though most students wouldn’t encounter syllabi until college, their legend leaked out. The syllabus encapsulated the educational side of college life. This wasn’t just a course plan; it was a document that mediated the student’s relationship with the professor. It was a contract, and those who paid that contract insufficient mind—students who might find themselves in breach—were considered lazy, incompetent, or truculent.
Then, 21st-century software upended how courses were run. Whether built in house or licensed, learning-management systems became commonplace. The move made sense: The web had fully matured, and you could bank, pay bills, shop, and socialize online. Why not manage your classes too? But courseware would explode the syllabus into shrapnel. Sure, you could just post a PDF of an old paper syllabus online, but courseware lets you install weekly “modules” that show materials and assignments for each class meeting. It offers places to store readings and other resources. It lists teachers’ contact information and facilitates announcements. Suddenly, professors could also change their course plans on the fly, tweaking topics and assignments as they liked. Adopting the legalese that now seemed best suited to the context, we’d put a broad disclaimer on our syllabi: “subject to change.”
In effect, what had been marked as the “syllabus” section of a course website was no longer needed for that purpose. Now it was just a list of course policies. The syllabus had long been described as a course contract, an agreement between teacher and students about what would take place in the classroom and on what terms. But the “contract” part of that arrangement took over for the “course.”
For a time, courseware was optional. Some faculty kept using paper syllabi; others adopted the online tools. Some used a combination. But as universities invested big bucks in courseware, and as courseware companies made big bucks selling it, the pressure to adopt it increased. Student demand followed: They became irritated and confused by the notion that each course might be managed in a different way, and courseware gave students more information and greater feedback—or a sense of it, anyway. In particular, courseware’s ability to store and display grades allowed students to check in frequently—perhaps obsessively—on their performance, making courseware-run courses feel more student-centered than other kinds.
During the same period in which courseware was completing its takeover, the faculty-student relationship changed. Tuition prices rose, and the student’s role became more like that of a conventional customer. I’ve seen conflicts over grades or late assignments inspire faculty to add greater detail and more contract riders to their syllabi. Concerns about mental health, accommodation, disability resources, gender identity/personal pronouns, classroom climate, harassment and sexual assault, and other matters gave rise to pages’ worth of boilerplate. The pandemic demanded the addition of health and safety protocols. New ways of cheating, such as Chegg and ChatGPT, demanded fresh language about academic integrity. And each new policy clarification can beget subordinating policy clarifications; for example, using a software package called Turnitin to detect plagiarism requires that professors disclose that work submitted to courseware will be funneled through Turnitin, which vacuums data from those papers to benefit its business.
If the syllabus had simply gone away, educators could mourn its loss and move on. Instead, the document persists as the bloated corpse of what it used to be, and also as a ghost haunting the distributed, corporate information systems that have slowly replaced it.
Professors still cling to their old-fashioned syllabi in private. They share them with their colleagues looking for course ideas. When proposing new courses to department heads, they still draw up plans in which topics and materials, and assignments and schedules, take the place of quasi-legal notices. The syllabus as it used to be is for faculty’s eyes only.
Students, for their part, may be better off with the syllabus dead. (Used effectively, courseware serves their needs quite well.) But the bureaucratization of the traditional course plan has changed what it feels like to teach, and to be taught. The syllabus used to make a promise: that the classroom was a distinct place, separated from the world even if still coupled to it, where a common project would be undertaken, and during which trust would be presumed. Now it’s just the opposite, more a legal waiver than an invitation—just another contract rendered in fine print. If students don’t bother reading syllabi today, who can really blame them?
