The Thursday morning session began with public comment, most of which consisted of anti-Israel statements, demands for divestment, etc. But there was also reference to the undocumented issue and to pay determination for nonunion employees. The prior post dealt with website issue so there is no need to repeat the summary here. After public comment, Regent Pérez asked that item B1 dealing with faculty discipline for misconduct be put at the end of the agenda if time permitted. That move, which was done at his behest since he had put B1 on the agenda back in November, was likely to kill B1 since meetings often run out of time. It wasn't clear what had motivated Pérez in November, but it may have been widely publicized reports of faculty misconduct related to Israel-Gaza. No one outside the Regents knows for sure. What does seem clear is that by the time of this meeting, Pérez likely knew that the Board would not go ahead with the hiring of undocumented students.
After the agenda adjustment, there were statements from undergraduate and graduate students. The former pushed for more resources to deal with student substance abuse issues. She also complained that most chancellors weren't meeting with student groups and suggested that there would be less angry rhetoric by students at Regents meetings if chancellors met with them. The latter express support for anti-Israel divestment, opposed the website item, but spent most of his time on a report and issues related to disabled students.
After the discussion deferring the website issue, there was a lengthy presentation on UC-Merced.
The afternoon session began with President Drake indicating that after their legal review, the committee that had been formed to deal with the undocumented issue had concluded that the risks were too great to go ahead and he proposed that the matter be deferred for one year. It was not clear what would happen over the course of a year to change the risks he enumerated which included legal risks to undocumented students who had been hired, to human resource staff members who facilitated the hiring, and to legal staff who went along with the hiring. In addition, university federal grants would be at risk. (As blog readers will know, it appears that the Biden administration had signaled to UC that it would have to litigate against UC if the plan went ahead. The political optic before the election would not be good, but a year from now the election would have occurred.)
Pérez was clearly angered by Drake's position. He complained that UC has never been a leader regarding undocumented students and that policies it has have always been reactive. Regent Hernandez was also against the one year delay. School Superintendent Thurmond was the only elected ex officio Regent present (via remote connection) and was also opposed. One of the alumni regents proposed just killing the issue since the one year delay was just holding out a false hope and nothing would change in a year. But it was ruled that such a change would have to be voted on separately, although it never was.
In the end, the proposal to defer the matter for a year passed. At that point, there was shouting from the audience which appeared to come from one audience member rather than a multi-person demonstration. It was decided to take a 5-minute break, presumably to remove the shouter. But the Regents never came back. For a time, the university seal was on the screen with the statement that the meeting would resume. But then there was a brief image of the conference room with most of the Regents gone. The seal came back saying the meeting had adjourned.
In the end, therefore, there will be no further discussion of hiring undocumented students for a year, if then. Item B1 is in limbo but presumably would be rescheduled for March if Pérez want it considered. And the website issue is definitely on the March agenda unless something else happens between now and then.
The Regents seems to be in a state of dysfunction in the moment along with some ongoing tensions with the Academic Senate.
As always, we preserve Regents recordings since the Regents have no policy on duration of retention. Our policy is indefinite retention.
The morning session is at:
https://ia601306.us.archive.org/11/items/board-1-25-2024-am/Board%201-25-2024%20AM.mp4
The afternoon session is at:
https://ia601306.us.archive.org/11/items/board-1-25-2024-am/Board%201-25-2024%20PM.mp4
And the general link for the entire day is:
https://archive.org/details/board-1-25-2024-am.
===
We have now covered the Tuesday and Thursday sessions and part of the Wednesday session. We will complete our coverage of the rest of the meetings in due course.
No comments:
Post a Comment