Weird Tale

The Sacramento Bee is carrying a column in which the theme is that the one person who came out smelling like a rose from the Katehi affair was Katehi's lawyer. Yet - unless Katehi was refusing the advice of her lawyer - dragging the process out was a terrible strategy. We have no reason to think that Katehi wasn't in fact following the advice of her lawyer. So it sure seems as though she was getting bad advice. Does anyone really think that Napolitano & Co. would not have preferred a quiet resignation? Does anyone really think that all the bad PR that came out of a 100+ page investigatory report was a good thing for Katehi? Maybe the lawyer told the columnist a self serving tale. Who knows? Just an example: The columnist seems to think that the fact that Katehi retained her (tenured) faculty appointment was a great victory. But it was a tenured position so of course she retained it. The columnist seems to think that dragging out the process preserved Katehi's reputation as an academic and that therefore she will be able to raise money (by which presumably he means research grants). What a weird idea!

Read it for yourself, and wonder:
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/marcos-breton/article95538262.html

How (not) to win friends and influence people

University of California regents have boosted the annual pay of UCSF Medical Center’s chief executive past the $1 million mark, a move criticized by advocates for janitors who became embroiled in a labor dispute with the hospital after their pay was cut nearly in half. At their health committee meeting Thursday, the regents awarded Mark Laret a 5 percent pay hike, a $50,000 increase that raised his base salary to $1,041,543. Through other allowances and awards, Laret earned $1.2 million in 2015 and $1.6 million in 2014.

That did not include the $556,000 a year that Laret earns on average by serving on the boards of two vendors that sell products to UCSF.

“You’d think that an institution like UCSF would have a sensitivity to those issues,” said San Francisco Supervisor Norman Yee, who in February supported the supervisors’ resolution calling on UCSF to “rectify serious breaches of workers’ rights” in the janitors dispute.

In March, the state Public Employment Relations Board filed a complaint against the university, accusing it of retaliating against 24 janitors who picketed UCSF in 2014. The hospital had moved their jobs to a third-party contractor that cut their pay by about $8 an hour to the minimum wage of $10.74.

On Friday, the hospital agreed to offer jobs back to 22 of the janitors, but only on probationary status, Yee said.

Yee noted that some of the janitors had been UCSF employees for decades. “I don’t think UCSF has any inkling of what social justice means, and you can’t separate the regents from UCSF,” said Yee, who visited UCSF last week with Board of Supervisors President London Breed to urge Chancellor Sam Hawgood to drop the probation requirement...

Full story at http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/UCSF-med-center-s-CEO-gets-pay-boost-to-1-9139909.php

Japanese Garden Sale Closes

Blog readers will recall the long saga of the attempt by UCLA to sell the Hannah Carter Japanese Garden in Bel Air, the resulting litigation, and finally a sale for $12+ million with a deal with the buyer to preserve the garden. Our most recent post for those who don't recall is at:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2016/06/regents-accept-offer-from-buyer-of.html
In any case, a note in the LA Times confirms that the sale has now been completed:

$12.51 million — Bel-Air

The Regents of the University of California sold an estate on about 2 acres in the 600 block of Siena Way to a California-based limited liability company.

The longtime home of late businessman Edward W. Carter, who for decades served as president of the suburban department store chain Broadway Stores, the property had been listed for sale at $14 million, records show.

Built in the late 1930s, the estate centers on a traditional-style home with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms in about 7,300 square feet of living space. A two-bedroom guesthouse, a swimming pool, an outdoor pavilion, gardens and mature landscaping fill the hedged grounds.

Carter passed away in 1996 at 84; the property was deeded over to the Regents of the University of California, for which Carter was a former chair, in 2011.

Joyce Essex Harvey and Danny Harvey of Coldwell Banker held the listing. Jonathan Seltzer of Teles Properties repped the buyer.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hp-top-sales-20160813-snap-story.html

Note that the LA Times' story misses the fact that UCLA is to provide $500,000 as an endowment to maintain the garden. Still unknown is whether there will be any public access to the garden. For a long time, UCLA maintained limited public access, although it ended when the attempt to sell began. (Regent Emerita Velma Montoya spotted the article.)

UCLA History: ROTC

ROTC has a long history at UCLA. The photo above is from the Vermont Avenue campus in 1928. During the Vietnam War, ROTC was the target of protests. As the photo below shows, an ROTC office was damaged by fire in 1970, apparently set in protest of the Vietnam War.

Before that event, however, a unique method of disrupting ROTC on campus was recorded in the late 1960s:

Napolitano on the Presidential Campaign

Link below:

The Scarlet (15-page) Letter

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi decided to step down Tuesday rather than attend an upcoming Board of Regents meeting on her fate after learning that her boss, UC President Janet Napolitano, had already weighed in with a 15-page letter spelling out the reasons she had to go.

Katehi had been expected to appear at a closed-door regents meeting Thursday in San Diego to respond to a 102-page report into whether she had engaged in nepotism, misled Napolitano and misused her office by contracting with firms to plant positive stories about her and UC Davis after the infamous 2011 incident in which campus police pepper-sprayed peaceful protesters.

Napolitano, however, had already delivered her verdict, stating in her letter to the regents that Katehi had repeatedly “exercised poor judgment” and “engaged in a pattern of misrepresentation” to both the president and the public.

Although she acknowledged Katehi’s “numerous achievements” at Davis, Napolitano said she had “lost confidence” in the chancellor and recommended her removal.

“The letter was brutal — there was so much more there than has been seen by the public,” said one regent, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Another regent said that although the investigation “didn’t find overwhelming evidence of a terminable offense, the reality is that the relationship was so destroyed that it would be untenable at this point for Katehi to stay on.”

Once she saw the letter, Katehi pulled the plug and killed the meeting.

“She wanted to see the report before she made any decision,” said Larry Kamer, the public relations expert whom Katehi brought in as her spokesman after she was suspended in April.

“She read it over, talked with those close to her, and decided that while she had been cleared of the more serious allegations, it was time to step out of the spotlight and return to teaching, which is what she truly loves,” Kamer said...

Full Matier and Ross column at http://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/UC-Davis-chancellor-knew-she-was-out-of-time-9132635.php?t=4f664734f8e5bced66&cmpid=email-premium

Note: The actual letter has not been released to the public, unlike a redacted version of the investigatory report.

Traffic Alert for Friday

Be advised that vehicles will not be able to enter or exit campus at the Hilgard/CEY East intersection on August 12 between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. due to road work. The nearest alternative entrances/exits for those who normally take that route will be at either Wyton or Royce Drives, both of which will remain open.