Watch the Regents Meeting of March 19, 2025

We're catching up with last week's Regents meetings, specifically the meeting of March 19. We have already covered March 18.* 

At the opening public comments session, there was a series of remarks that were pro-Israel and/or against antisemitism and some opposing comments. Other issues included staff pay, sexual violence, funding for undocumented students, basic needs, alternatives to CalFresh for undocumented students experimental fellowships, DEI issues, staff job loss, staff flexible work schedules, AFSCME pay issues, disabled masking needs, childcare and parental needs, nurse bargaining issues, and anti-abortion. After a disturbance involving bargaining issues, the room was cleared.

Among the remarks made when the meeting resumed were those of UC president Drake who noted that UC-Merced had achieved R1 status. However, most of his remarks were focused on problems in Sacramento with UC's budget and problems in DC with regard to research funding and Medicare-Medicaid funding. He talked about a legal response (not clear what that is) and the installation of Time-Place-Manner rules on UC campuses.

The Regents spent a lot of time in closed session, presumably dealing with the issues Drake outlined. In fact, they spent so much time that the rest of the March 19 program was sufficiently delayed so that one scheduled session had to be delayed until the next day. One guesses that the decision to drop required required DEI statements for hiring and advancement of faculty was made in the closed session, although there was no announcement in the meeting.

At Finance and Capital Strategies, the committee approved a hospital replacement building at UC-San Diego, student housing at Berkeley, a faculty and staff housing project at Santa Barbara, and a classroom and office building at Merced. The committee reviewed a proposal for a Berkeley Venture Capital Fund, initially to be financed by gifts. A student regent proposal to have a student on the board of the Fund was more or less squelched without a vote. There were some concerns about whether time that UC employees put into the Fund would be paid for by the Fund. Again, assurances were made - but without a specific vote. It was noted that the Fund could invest in projects related to any UC, not just Berkeley.

The Academic and Student Affairs Committee discussed support for transfer students and disabled students. The latter topic evolved from a situation at Berkeley in which a disabled student was unable to evacuate from a building in an emergency situation. The Committee then turned to a segment on entrepreneurship and commercialization. Examples were provided of a system for supporting coral reefs and a treatment for bladder cancer.

The Governance Committee swiftly approved compensation for a football coach at Berkeley and an executive pay matter (although the dollar amounts entailed were somehow not mentioned), some procedural changes regarding the Nominations Committee, stipends for expert advisors to the Health Services Committee, and the allowing of across-the-board "cost of living" adjustments for managerial employees without specific regental approval. There was a change in future meeting dates due to what one suspects was a scheduling screw up regarding venue availability. Finally, in a joint session with Health Services, four positions in the health sector were combined into two and the resulting two were elevated into the senior management group. This combination and elevation was said to save money on net.

A planned session of Public Engagement and Development was postponed to the next day.

As always, we preserve Regents meetings indefinitely since the Regents have no policy on video retention. You can see the sessions described above at the links below:

The general webpage link is: https://archive.org/details/1-board-3-18-2025 (Ignore the 18 - The link is for Mar. 19)

The Board meeting is at https://ia600202.us.archive.org/0/items/1-board-3-18-2025/1-Board%203-19-2025.mp4.

Academic and Student Affairs is at https://ia600202.us.archive.org/0/items/1-board-3-18-2025/2-Academic%20and%20Student%20Affairs%20Committee%203-19-2025.mp4.

Finance & Capital Strategies is at https://ia600202.us.archive.org/0/items/1-board-3-18-2025/1-Board%203-19-2025.mp4.

Governance (& Joint with Health Services) is at https://ia600202.us.archive.org/0/items/1-board-3-18-2025/4-Governance%20Committee%2C%20Joint%20Meeting%20Health%20Services%20and%20Governance%20Committees%203-19-2025.mp4.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/03/watch-regents-meeting-of-march-18-2025.html.