We are catching up with the Regents meeting of Sept. 19th. We have noted a few bits from that meeting in earlier posts. But here is our general summary.
Public comments discussed use of military-style equipment by UC police, Blackstone investment, nurse labor relations, Apollo Fund investment, greenhouse gas emissions, nonunion staff pay, antisemitism, complaints about excessive security, pro-Palestine divestment, AFSCME issues, problems with UC core insurance, sexual harassment, and antiunion meetings. The Board then turned to statements from student leaders which included complaints about the new time-place-manner rules, limits on department political statements, and police on campus. Other issues raised included food access for undocumented students and maintenance problems in student housing.
In the Governance committee, a new VP for the national labs was introduced. Various executive pay increases were approved. Regent Pérez asked to separate those executives who were direct reports to the Regents for approval from the other executives. He said he was uncomfortable with the current pay-setting methodology which granted raises to recent hires. Regent Cohen agreed. It was noted that there was no similar methodology for lower-paid employees. Chair Reilly said a process would be set up to look at the methodology for executives.
At Compliance and Audit, there was discussion of approval of certain military-style equipment. It was noted that UC does not receive equipment from the US military. A disruption occurred when questions began and the room was cleared by police. The witnesses who were to be questioned did not re-appear when the meeting resumed and the requests were approved.
All committee reports were approved by the Board.
At the Investments Committee, the CIO reviewed investment returns for the year ending June 30, 2024. It was a period of strong stock market returns so returns were relatively high. Regent Cohen asked why there are no benchmarks for real assets and was told they are a relatively small percent of the portfolio and a diverse mix so there is no handy benchmark.
The Athletics Commitee heard reports about athletics at Merced (water polo and basketball).
The full Board convened for a session about staff employment featuring numbers, demographics related to diversity, and other information. A survey indicated staff had concerns about pay, opportunity for promotion, remote work, and workplace culture. There was separate discussion about the 200+ senior management group employees. Then thre was then a presentation about students who participated in the Paris Olympics and Para-Olympics.
As always, we preserve meetings of the Regents indefinitely, since the Regents have no policy on duration of retention.
Below are the various links to the September 19th sessions:
The initial meeting of the full Board is at:
The second meeting of the full board is at:
Compliance and Audit, Governance, Board, Investments, and Athletics:
The webpage for both Sept. 18th and 19th is at:
https://archive.org/details/9-18-2024-board-academic-and-student-affairs-committee.
No comments:
Post a Comment