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Saturday, November 2, 2024

View from the top



 

1929 (top) versus 1984 (bottom)

♫Take Us Out of the Ball Game♫ - Part 6 (play ball - for now)

From the LA Times: The UCLA baseball team was cleared to resume using its baseball stadium at noon Tuesday after a judge temporarily lifted an order barring the team from the stadium on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ West Los Angeles campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter entered an order Monday restoring UCLA’s access to Jackie Robinson Stadium through July 4, allowing the team to complete its coming season. After that, the stadium will face an uncertain fate...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-29/judge-allows-ucla-baseball-team-to-return-to-jackie-robinson-stadium.

Friday, November 1, 2024

House Report

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued its report on last year's protests. There is considerable material on UCLA, Columbia, and other universities. From Inside Higher Ed:

House Republicans lambasted private elite colleges and some state flagship universities for how they’ve handled pro-Palestinian protests in a new report in which they argue that antisemitism has engulfed college campuses and administrators prioritized “terrorist sympathizers” over the Jewish community.

In the scathing 325-page report released Thursday, Republicans on House Education and Workforce Committee detailed the findings of their yearlong investigation into antisemitism at 11 colleges. Most of the findings reiterated many of the same points they’ve been making publicly since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, said the report is a “wholly partisan effort” that wasted a significant chance for productive analysis...

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*The report is at:

https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/10.30.24_committee_on_education_and_the_workforce_republican_staff_report_-_antisemitism_on_college_campuses_exposed.pdf.

Cramming them in

Two from the San Diego Union-Tribune: UC San Diego, already struggling to handle years of explosive growth, saw enrollment leap by nearly 1,900 this fall, pushing its headcount to a record 45,273...

The La Jolla campus also experienced a 270-student increase in its so-called self-supporting graduate program, whose participants do not receive financial help from the state. UCSD now has 1,436 self-supporting students, part of a systemwide program that annually generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the UC.

The preliminary fall enrollment numbers typically drop a little later in the year, after the UC refines its early headcount.

The new figures don’t reflect how the school intended for things to turn out when it published a long-range plan back in 2018. Enrollment was then expected to top out at 42,400, and not until 2035...

Full story at https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/10/18/uc-san-diego-bursting-at-seams-as-enrollment-soars-to-record-45273/.

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...In interviews with about 30 students, many told The San Diego Union-Tribune the school is so obsessed with raising enrollment and polishing its reputation that it pays insufficient attention to the social side of the college experience. The university often communicates in a chilly, impersonal voice, they said, which leads them to tune out rather than engage, making building a sense of community harder.

“Chancellor (Pradeep) Khosla wants students to survive with the bare minimum,” said Adalia Luo, editor of The Guardian, the campus newspaper. “Eat, drink, some housing and pretty much nothing else.”

Engineering student Charlotte Dong likes her classes and research — the vibe less so. “Sometimes I feel like this campus is soulless…” she said. “I’m a fourth year student and I just got my first (school T-shirt).” ...

Full story at https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/10/20/isolating-and-soulless-how-ucsds-breakneck-growth-is-alienating-some-of-its-students/

We keep on asking the obvious $80 million question...

There is now a voluntary property buyout offer for homeowners in Rancho Palos Verdes affected by earth movement:

https://www.rpvca.gov/1782/Voluntary-Property-Buyout-Program.

Which (again) raises an obvious question...

To which we have received no answer.