Mind the Gap

Old-timers will immediately remember the image above. For the young-uns, it shows President Nixon's loyal secretary Rose May Woods trying to come up with an explanation for an 18-minute gap in a crucial Watergate scandal audio tape. Maybe, when she answered the phone, she accidentally pressed something that erased part of the tape. Or maybe not.

As it turns out, last week's Regents meetings recording have a gap - this one around 22 minutes - in a crucial tape, too. The Academic and Student Affairs Committee dealt with two controversial issues on May 14th. After last spring's events at UCLA, the issue of why nobody had been disciplined was raised at Regents meetings and a working group of administration representatives and Academic Senate representatives was established to speed up the process.* Of course, all of that raised issues of due process, academic freedom, etc. There was an interim report on the working group's progress at the committee. And it was followed by the issue of BOARS decisions on admissions standards for high schoolers applying to UC, a matter which we have previously discussed.** 

Unfortunately, in the midst of a slide presentation on the former issue, the audio cuts out and the video abruptly cuts to someone doing something with no audio, and then the slide reappears without sound. Go to the one hour and twenty-two minute mark at:

https://ia800101.us.archive.org/14/items/3-board/5-Academic%20and%20Student%20Affairs%20Committee.mp4.

We then see, without sound, various Regents and others having a discussion. The video continues without sound until we are in the middle of a discussion of the latter issue. But there is no sound until the one hour and forty-four minute mark. By that time, whatever presentation on the BOARS matter there was has been made. The discussion is wrapping up. Regent Leib asks if the resolution of the BOARS matter that has been made - and that we have not heard - will satisfy the legislature.

So, maybe Rose Mary knows what happened during the audio gap which we very much mind. But even if she does, she has been dead for twenty years and can't tell us.

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Note: We'll summarize the rest of the May 14th meeting in a post in the next few days.

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*See Regent Sures' complaint about the process at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg84osKAXB8.

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkGHMyjhpm0.

**https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/05/cans-of-worms-from-legislature.html.