At the last, a financial report for the various med centers was presented by VP David Rubin. However, he simply referred to the written report and noted "growth" in the UC health program. The student observer referred to a lack of integration between student health clinics and the UC health centers. it was all over in less than 9 minutes.
The middle segment would undoubtedly have been the most interesting had it not been closed. The obvious topics were the settlement of contracts with the Nurses and UPTE and the remaining contract with AFSCME that had led to a two-day strike which overlapped with the meeting. Also on the closed agenda - one would guess - was the current status of the ongoing dispute with the feds that led to disruption of research funding and recent related litigation.
The opening public comments segment had an inadvertent lesson for those who wish to speak at Regents meetings. There is an obvious constraint on what can be said, given the 1-minute limit. But here is some (unsolicited) advice from yours truly. Yes, you have to be organized and speak quickly. But if you do so, you still need to be understood. Several speakers used as an acronym that sounded like PTSD, but that was surely not what it was, for a program that might have had something to do with disabled students, based on the comments (???).* The speakers thanked President Milliken for approving the program's funding. However, they condemned VP Newman for doing something that wasn't clear, but that had violated shared governance in their view. Now maybe the Regents were very familiar with the issue and knew exactly what the complaint was about. But if they weren't, they - like me - would have had no idea what the issue was, or even what the program being referenced was.
Other comments involved urging the Regents not to make a deal with the Trump administration, support for undocumented students (including alternatives to CalFresh), current bargaining with medical residents through an SEIU local, rejection of the proposed extension and modification of the cohort tuition plan, basic needs of staff, lack of consultation with faculty and staff about the conflict with the Trump administration, and mental/medical health of LGTBQ teens. There were complaints of anti-Israel indoctrination in the UCLA med school, the continued use of department political statements as a violation of university neutrality, and an anti-Zionist program sponsored by various units at UCLA. Finally, there were speakers from AFSCME - which as noted above was on strike at the time - and complaints that some students who supported the strike had been arrested in a demonstration related to the strike.
As always, yours truly preserves the recordings of Regents meetings since the Regents have no policy on retention. You can find the recordings of the November 18th meeting at the links below:
Short open meeting: https://ia601408.us.archive.org/22/items/regents-health-services-committee-11-18-2025/Regents%20Health%20Services%20Committee%204.00%20PM%2011-18-2025.mp4
General website: https://archive.org/details/regents-health-services-committee-11-18-2025
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*The answer to the riddle of what they were talking about is at:
https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/11/letter-from-prez.html.
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