Uber and Lyft on campus - Follow up

Follow up on earlier question on Uber and Lyft pickups: It appeared from the map and the official statement on designating fixed places for pickups that there were none at the hospital complex, e.g., at Reagan, the ER, and the 100-200-300 buildings. Yours truly now has word that the hospital complex is unaffected by the fixed locations and pickups and drop offs can continue as before.

Multi-factor authentication

Although in a prior post, we raised the issue of the wisdom of doing the switch to multi-factor authentication in the midst of a quarter, that's the way it is (or will be). So yours truly dutifully tried out the system and it worked without too much hassle. I suggest that you set up your authentication with two devices, e.g., smartphone and home phone, rather than just a smartphone. Doing it that way will ensure that if you were, say, to lose your cellphone or it should fail, you would have an alternative route into your account. (To add your home phone, you need to be at home.) I am told by a department representative that if you don't make the switch by Oct. 31, you will have a hassle of having to report to some office of getting it done after that date. All of this is designed to prevent email fraud, hacking, etc.

Below is the email describing the switch, in case you didn't receive it:

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) for UCLA Logon will become mandatory for all campus faculty, staff, and student workers on Tuesday, October 31, 2017.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a security enhancement that requires two forms of verification when using your UCLA Logon and adds critical protection for your sign-on credentials.

We are deploying MFA for UCLA Logon in response to a dramatic rise in the scope and sophistication of phishing, spear phishing, and malware attacks that are targeting our faculty and staff. The high rate of successfully compromised passwords is a serious and pervasive threat to information security at UCLA.

You should enroll in MFA before it becomes mandatory on October 31 to avoid delay when using your UCLA Logon ID to access resources such as VPN, Box, Google Apps for UCLA (g.ucla.edu), MyUCLA, CCLE, and other campus applications. This does not include using a MedNet ID to access UCLA Health applications, and UCLA Health employees are not required to enroll in campus MFA at this time.

Instructions for MFA self-enrollment are available at How do I Enroll in MFA? You may also contact your local IT staff or visit one of our MFA Enrollment Support locations in Kerckhoff Hall (Suite 123a: 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.) or the Faculty Center (Billiards Room: 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.) during the month of October.

As the nation’s top public university, our research, intellectual property, and institutional data are of high interest to state sponsored and organized cyber-criminals. Your financial and personal assets are also targets. Enrolling in MFA before October 31 will reduce risk to our information security and also the likelihood that you too may be the next victim.

Please contact your local IT staff or BruinOnLine if you have support questions, and visit MFA at UCLA for additional information about the campus multi-factor authentication deployment.

Sincerely,

Andrew Wissmiller
Associate Vice Chancellor
Information Technology Services

Aftershock

Anyone who knowingly interferes with the duties of California’s independent state auditor will be fined up to $5,000 under a bill signed into law Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown. Under the law, which will take effect on Jan. 1, people who obstruct a state audit “with intent to deceive or defraud” will have to pay the fine. Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance (Los Angeles County), and two other Democratic lawmakers wrote AB 562 after state Auditor Elaine Howle said in April that she had to discard part of her audit of the University of California president’s office because administrators there interfered with the probe. The president’s office runs the 10-campus system...

Full story at:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/New-law-punishes-people-who-interfere-with-state-12247847.php

No Review of Lower Court Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will not take up a conservative group’s challenge to UC Regents’ decisions that allow undocumented immigrants in California to pay in-state tuition fees and to receive financial aid. In-state residents now pay $12,630 a year in tuition and fees to attend the University of California, compared with $40,644 for out-of-state residents.

State lawmakers voted in 2001 to grant in-state tuition to all students, regardless of immigration status, at California’s public colleges and universities. But the legislation directly affected only California State University and community colleges, because the state Constitution grants independent status to UC under the governance of the Board of Regents.

The regents then voted to make the lower fees available at UC campuses to students who had attended high school in California and had applied to legalize their immigration status. They took the same steps after legislators passed laws in 2011 and 2014 making unauthorized immigrants eligible for state financial aid and loans. According to a legislative staff report, fewer than 1 percent of the students at California’s public colleges are unauthorized immigrants eligible for lower costs.

A taxpayer represented by the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch challenged the regents’ actions. The suit relied on a 1996 federal law that made undocumented immigrants ineligible for state and local benefits unless those benefits were expressly allowed by a future state law. Because the regents are not state legislators, Judicial Watch argued, they have no power to enact state laws. But a state appeals court ruled in December that the Legislature had authorized the lower fees, in the laws passed in 2001, 2011 and 2014, allowing the regents to take the final step.

The 1996 federal law “required only that state laws make undocumented immigrants eligible for public benefits” in order to receive them, and the Legislature “removed the federal barrier” and cleared the way for the regents’ action, Justice John Segal said in a 3-0 ruling of the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles. The state Supreme Court unanimously denied review of the case in February, and the nation’s high court rejected a final appeal by Judicial Watch on Monday...

Full story at http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Supreme-Court-UC-Regents-undocumented-immigrant-12247422.php

Around the System

This week's free-speech-on-campus developments include:

1) The hat incident: A student at UC-Riverside stole a Trump hat from the head of another student. The incident was uploaded to the web. Apparently, the student who took the hat eventually gave it to campus authorities who intervened. Whether she was disciplined thereafter remains unclear.

Source: http://www.pe.com/2017/09/29/video-woman-grabs-uc-riverside-students-trump-hat-begs-campus-officials-to-stop-him-from-wearing-it/

2) Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz talked about filing a constitutional challenge to Berkeley's policy in which departments can apparently invite speakers without complications but those invited by groups other than departments face certain hurdles. Berkeley's law school then invited him, removing the hurdles.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/dershowitz-says-uc-berkeley-talk-back-on-after-law-school-invite/

3) UCLA Law Professor Jerry Kang - Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion - wrote an op ed in the Bruin saying:

"We must exercise and thereby cultivate good judgment, discerning the difference between what we legally can do and what we ethically should do. While we embrace difference, we must bravely seek out “microconnections” – the surprising similarities, unexpected understandings and overlapping values that help connect us to each other."

Source: http://dailybruin.com/2017/10/02/submission-ucla-must-embrace-diversity-challenge-hateful-means-of-communication/

The other way to read the blog

At the end of each calendar quarter, we provide an alternative way of reading that quarter's blog posts. The third quarter of 2017 is now over so we do it again. Basically, you can read the blog posts from July through September 2017 in book format. However, you will lose any race of audio, video, or animated gif images. So, for example, listening to regents meetings is not possible in that format.

To read the blog for July through September as a book, use the link below:
https://issuu.com/danieljbmitchell/docs/ucla_faculty_association_blog__3rd_

UCLA History: Broxton Courtyard in 1946 & Today

The Broxton Courtyard in Westwood: 1946 and now