Newsom's Budget/Brown's Budget - Part 2

When Gov. Newsom presented his budget, back on January 10th, yours truly provided a written analysis. Now you, lucky readers, can enjoy an oral presentation on the budget by yours truly - direct from a UCLA class with slides, cartoons, and video - at the links below:

Part 1
https://archive.org/details/10bFiscal20191/10b-fiscal+2019-1.wmv

Part 2
https://archive.org/details/10bFiscal20191/10b+fiscal+2019-2.wmv

You're welcome!

Faculty on the UC Free Speech Center Academic Advisory Board

Back in the day at Berkeley

UC has released the names of members of the academic advisory board for the UC Free Speech Center, know officially as the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. Three members are from UCLA:

Board members will assist in the creation of the Center’s project priorities and future selection of fellows. They also will contribute written pieces on topics related to their scholarly activities for the Center’s forthcoming “Weekly Conversation” column, which will be featured on its website: 

https://freespeechcenter.universityofcalifornia.edu/...

Academic advisory board members

• Ahmad Atif Ahmad - UC Santa Barbara, Professor, Religious Studies; Chair of the Council on Faculty Welfare, Academic Freedom, and Awards
• Gerardo Aldana - UC Santa Barbara, Professor, Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies; Chair of the Department of Chicana/o Studies
• Amy Binder - UC San Diego, Professor, Sociology
• Simone E. Chambers - UC Irvine, Professor, Political Science
• Michael Mark Cohen - UC Berkeley, Associate Teaching Professor, African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies
• Lee G. Cooper - UCLA Professor Emeritus, Marketing
• John Ganim - UC Riverside, Distinguished Professor, English
• Jody Greene - UC Santa Cruz, Associate Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning; Director of the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning; Professor of Literature
• David Kaye - UC Irvine, Clinical Professor, Law
• Suneil K. Koliwad - UC San Francisco, Associate Professor, Medicine, Diabetes Center; Gerold Grodsky, PhD/JAB Chair in Diabetes Research
• Dana Nelkin - UC San Diego, Professor, Philosophy
• Tung Nguyen - UC San Francisco
• Stephen J. McPhee, MD Endowed Chair in General Internal Medicine; Professor of Medicine
• Constance Penley - UC Santa Barbara, Professor, Film and Media Studies
• Mary Beth Pudup - UC Santa Cruz, Director and Associate Professor, Community Studies Program
• Randolph M. Siverson - UC Davis, Professor Emeritus, Political Science
• Nella Van Dyke - UC Merced, Professor, Sociology
• John Villasenor - UCLA, Professor, Public Policy, Electrical Engineering & Management,
• Eugene Volokh - UCLA School of Law, Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law
• Keith David Watenpaugh - UC Davis, Professor and Director, Human Rights Studies

Full media release at:

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-national-center-free-speech-and-civic-engagement-taps-leading-scholars-help-drive-vision

Just When You Thought You Were Safe

Now that you are required to use two-factor authentication for various UCLA websites (and various outside functions), you might feel that your information is safe. Maybe not:

From the NY Times:

Here’s how two-factor authentication is supposed to work: You log in to your bank account or email inbox, and after correctly entering your password, you are prompted to confirm the login through an app on your cellphone, a one-time code sent to you via text message or email, a physical YubiKey device or even a phone call. That app, text message, email, YubiKey or phone call is your “second factor,” intended to ensure that even if the person trying to log in isn’t really you, he or she still can’t gain access to your accounts without access to your phone or YubiKey.

You might find two-factor authentication mildly irritating, and there’s a chance you might not even notice the extra step in the login process anymore. Regardless, you probably feel a certain comfort in the idea that at least your money or your inbox is well protected. But like so many other commonly accepted best practices in computer security, we actually know very little about how well two-factor authentication works.

In December, Amnesty International released a report describing an easy-to-apply technique being used to compromise accounts protected by two-factor authentication. The hackers whom Amnesty International investigated, who were targeting accounts belonging to individuals in the Middle East and North Africa, set up phishing pages that captured not only users’ passwords but also the one-time authentication codes generated by their two-factor services.

Setting up phishing websites that look like the login pages for well-known web services is a common way to steal passwords online. Here’s the way it works: Someone designs a website that looks almost exactly like Bank of America’s website and then emails you a message, purporting to be from Bank of America, warning you that your account is about to expire, or your information needs to be updated, and directing you to a fake site where you believe you’re logging into your bank account but instead are just typing your password into a website owned by scammers.

This type of phishing is precisely the kind of threat that two-factor authentication is supposed to protect you against. Unlike so-called dictionary attacks — in which hackers try to guess your password by running through a dictionary of possible choices — forcing people to develop more complicated or longer passwords (a minimum of eight characters with uppercase and lowercase letters, and at least one symbol and one number) does not help at all when someone steals your password via phishing. So the password-complexity requirements that have reigned as a common (and irritating) best practice in every workplace for years are increasingly supplemented by two-factor authentication, to protect you against both dictionary attacks and phishing attacks.

But it turns out that the one-time codes generated by people’s smartphones or sent via text message and email can also be phished. If you’re the hacker, all it takes is adding a component to your fake Bank of America website so that after you prompt someone for his password, you try to log in to his real Bank of America account using the password he has just provided, triggering a second-factor alert that doesn’t alarm him because he thinks he’s signing into Bank of America too. Then, on your fake phishing site, you prompt him to enter his second-factor code and use it to complete the login...

Full story at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/opinion/2fa-cyberattacks-security.html

Listen to the Regents' Governance and Compensation Committee Meeting of Jan. 16, 2019

We (finally) finish up with the Regents meetings of January. As blog readers will know, although the Governance and Compensation Committee met on the afternoon of January 16, the official recordings of that period omitted the Committee until yours truly pointed out the gap. The session included a public comments segment in which there was discussion of programs for undocumented students and others, housing at Santa Cruz, and housing at Berkeley. There was then committee discussion of UCOP functions and the implications of the Huron report (which was a reaction to the earlier critical state audit).

The committee then turned to various standards that had been set by the Regents in response to a scandal involving the then-chancellor of Davis awhile back. It was argued that there was an overreaction to the scandal and the standards were too strict. A modified adjustment to the standards was adopted.

Finally, there was the matter of the student advisor* position that had been establish as a pilot program a couple of years ago. There has been a conflict within the student government establishment as to whether the position should be continued. The advisor operates independently of the establishment, which appears to be at the heart of the issue. Not surprisingly, the present student advisor favored continuation; the establishment didn't. It appeared the Regents originally were going to endorse a one-year extension. In the end, they killed the position. My guess is that the Regents didn't want to be in the middle of a dispute and getting rid of the position was the quickest way to end the issue.
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*The position is/was officially spelled with an "o" rather than an "e," if you care.
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You can hear the committee session at:

or direct to:
https://archive.org/details/RegentsGovernComp11619

More on E-Scooters

Yesterday, we posted about reimbursements for business travel on e-scooters and other such devices. Below is a Bruin op ed dealing with another aspect of the e-scooters on campus:

Scooters are menaces on our campus that cause injuries to innocent people.

The injuries can even get as bad as a broken hip. In fact, that has already happened at UCLA.

On Sept. 24, at about 11:15 a.m., Juming Zhao, a consultant to universities in China, was walking on Charles E. Young Drive South, crossing the street to Tiverton Drive, and hit by an individual riding a scooter. Three students helped Zhao stand up, but the person responsible for the accident fled the scene.

Zhao phoned his wife, Su Chen, the head librarian of the UCLA East Asian Library. Chen took Zhao to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center emergency department, and the attending doctor examined Zhao and ordered an X-ray. At that time, the doctor told Zhao he did not find any fractures on his hip and discharged him. During this visit, the emergency department nurse mentioned to Zhao and Chen that there have been several scooter injuries on campus.

Zhao’s diagnosis changed early the next morning when his primary care physician phoned to inform him that the radiologist had reviewed his X-ray and found his right hip had fractured. The physician requested Zhao to immediately return to the medical center for surgery.

Zhao was operated on the next day. He was bedridden for a week and walked with the assistance of a walker and cane for three months. Zhao had to cancel all of his consulting work for the remainder of 2018.

To this day, he still walks with pain. He can only hope the injury will heal and not adversely affect him for the rest of his life.

UCPD received the report of Zhao’s injury from the hospital emergency department on the same day of the accident. A campus police officer came to see Zhao at the hospital and interviewed him regarding the scooter accident. Several days later, another police officer came to Zhao’s home for a second interview, informing him that several scooter incidents had occurred on campus and that the department had not been able to trace and apprehend the people responsible for those accidents.

UCLA is a world-class institute of higher learning contributing to the teaching and growth of future generations of leaders. It troubles me that someone, most likely a student, collided with Zhao and got away without any sense of responsibility or concern for their victim. The fact that the UCPD has responded to other cases of scooter accidents, but were unable to apprehend the scooter riders causing the accidents, speaks to the issue of moral responsibility of not only the unconscionable riders, but also the bystanders who witnessed such accidents.

In light of the scooter accidents and injuries inflicted on the victims, I urge UCLA to ban scooters on campus until rules are put in place to ensure the safety and health of the community, especially the elderly and those with disabilities.

The encouragement of our Bruin community members to walk or bike on campus will not only contribute to everyone’s personal safety, but will provide a healthy alternative to the use of scooters.

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Author Virginia Li is a research professor and professor emeritus in the Fielding School of Public Health’s department of community health sciences.
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Source: http://dailybruin.com/2019/01/24/op-ed-scooters-on-campus-pose-a-threat-to-the-safety-of-uclas-campus/

E-Travel, E-Reimbursements?

If other state workers can be reimbursed for official e-scooter and e-bike business travel, presumably the same will be true at UCLA for faculty and employees, or soon will be. [????]

From the Sacramento Bee:

A bit of good news arrived for state workers in a formally worded email from CalHR Thursday: Yes, the state will reimburse you for using JUMP bikes.

The email came in response to employee questions about whether the department’s policy for reimbursing bicycle travel includes electric bikes.

“They could before, it just wasn’t crystal clear,” CalHR spokesman Andrew LaMar said.

The email referenced updates to the state’s travel and relocation policy, which also clarifies that electric scooters — more common in cities such as San Diego and San Francisco — are eligible for reimbursement. For either mode of transport, the policy strongly encourages helmet use.

Additionally, the updates incorporate a piece of legislation passed in September that ensures state employees may be reimbursed for short-term lodging using services such as Airbnb and for ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft...

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article225082590.html

We advise caution, despite the travel option:

Listen to 2 of the 3 Regents Sessions from Afternoon of January 16, 2019

As per our previous post, no recording of the Governance and Compensation Committee was made available until today. The other two sessions from the afternoon of January 16^th were available on a timely basis and we archived those. So below we present what was originally available at the links below along with summaries from the Daily Bruin. (See our earlier posts on the missing official recording.) Note that there was a presentation on one of the National Labs (Lawrence Livermore) at the conclusion of the session of the Academic and Student Affairs Committee.

Academic and Student Affairs Committee

Michael Brown, UC provost and UCOP executive vice president of Academic Affairs, gave an update on the UC Center Sacramento, a research and public service site in Sacramento operated by UC Davis. He said the goals of the center include increasing student internships in state and assembly offices, increasing student enrollment in the program and making faculty available to both students and Capitol staff. Brown added the center aims to increase student enrollment by 100 students per term in the next decade.

Thomas McMorrow, chair of the UCCS advisory board, said UCCS connects faculty with students and Capitol staff more effectively than the UC Washington Center program. The UCCS program hosts biweekly lectures attended by not only students but also the staff of the Capitol and government officials.

Griffin-Desta said female athletes graduate at an overall higher rate than male athletes. For example, athletes in NCAA Division I sports have a female graduation rate of 91 percent and a male graduation rate of 79 percent. Christina Rivera, senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator at UCLA, said this is because male students have more opportunities to pursue careers in sports. Three student athletes at the committee shared their experiences and discussed ways to enhance student-athlete welfare.

Hailey Rittershofer, a student athlete at UC Davis, said as one of the first queer athletes at her school, she felt she did not know whether her teammates would accept her, and suggested increasing LGBTQ education among student athletes and supporting systems that allow athletes to explore their identities outside of sports and academics.

Evan Singletary, a student athlete at UC Irvine, said he hoped the University would provide more aid for student athletes. He initially lost his athletic scholarship due to injury. He had to work many jobs before earning back the scholarship his second year. However, Singletary said many of his former teammates without scholarships are still working jobs to make ends meet.

Brown said UCOP proposed a multiyear plan for charging supplemental tuition for two graduate professional degree programs at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. The Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition aims to offset reductions in state support for professional schools, according to the Regents’ website.

Rick Mintrop, the director of Leadership for Educational Equity Program at UC Berkeley, said the program has lacked resources in the past, and must increase tuition in order to remain sustainable. LEEP is a professional program for people with backgrounds in leading education organizations. LEEP students graduate with a doctorate of education.

Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley said he does not want to place more financial burden on LEEP students, who are already working while attending the LEEP program. He added he does not support charging the supplemental tuition. Mintrop insisted the students are middle-class and able to take out loans to finance their tuition.

The committee tabled the motion to increase tuition through PDST for LEEP for further discussion in March.

Marilyn Walker, professor of computer science at UCSC, proposed a PDST of $20,000 for UCSC’s one-year program in natural language processing, which trains students to be engineers with expertise in NLP. The supplemental tuition revenue would be used to hire an executive director to work on outreach to the industry, and to hire graduate students who would serve as teaching assistants and peer mentors.

The committee passed the motion to charge supplemental tuition for UCSC’s NLP PDST program.

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Finance and Capital Strategies Committee

Dan Russi, UCPath Center executive director, said UCOP is aware of the payroll issues UCPath has caused, and that it has caused hardships for students. He added the majority of errors stemmed from complexities such as multiple payment sources and data errors.

Mark Cianca, associate vice president of UCPath Operational Services, said UCPath implemented corrective measures such as notifying campus payroll teams in advance to finalize student pay and finding pay errors before checks are drafted. UCPath also adopted measures to prevent pay issues, such as implementing a team to address urgent pay issues and strengthening student outreach, Cianca said.

The UCPath leadership team decided to delay the final deployment from September to December 2019. UC Irvine also shifted its deployment from March to December 2019.

From https://dailybruin.com/2019/01/17/uc-regents-recap-jan-15-16/

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Note: The official recording of the Finance and Capital Strategies Committee was cut off before the session ended. We can only present what was put online. (The January 2019 recordings of the Regents sessions were plagued with early cutoffs.)

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You can hear the recording of the Academic and Students Affairs Committee and the presentation on the National Labs at the link below:

Or direct to:

https://archive.org/details/1AcademicAndStudentAffairsNationalLabs/1-Academic+and+Student+Affairs+-+National+Labs.wma

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and Finance and Capital Strategies:

https://archive.org/details/1AcademicAndStudentAffairsNationalLabs/2-Finance+and+Capital+Strategies.wma