Munger Hall or Munger Hell - Part 3 (International Edition)

As can be seen above, the story of the UC-Santa Barbara dorm has gone international; it has now arrived in the British publication, The Guardian. You can read that version of the story at:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/04/torture-experiment-architects-appalled-windowless-student-megadorm

However, the headline pretty much gives you the tone of the article.

So, there is an interesting question. Will the Regents kill this proposal? As we noted in an earlier posting, the closest the Regents ever came in recent times - 2012 specifically - to stopping a campus-level capital construction project was UCLA's Grand Hotel. And yet, in the end, after slamming the project and embarrassing Chancellor Block initially, at a later meeting they blessed it.

Yours truly, after the initial regental blocking (pun intended!) - but before the Regents later approved - predicted that in the end they would approve it. You can hear and see that presentation - a report to the UCLA Emeriti Association board - at the link below (which contains excerpts from the Regents meeting):

https://archive.org/details/PresentationOfDanielJ.b.MitchellOnUclaHotelconferenceCenterProjectTo

(If you have trouble seeing/hearing it using that link, try a laptop or computer rather than an iPhone.)

An (audio) recording of the full Regents initial meeting about the Grand Hotel is at:

https://archive.org/details/UniversityOfCaliforniaRegents3-28-2012Part2

Listeners will note that then-Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom - an ex officio Regent - was one of the skeptics.*

There are some differences between the Santa Barbara dorm and the UCLA Grand Hotel:

*The donor in the Santa Barbara case is paying for only part of it. In the case of the Grand Hotel, the donor promised to pay for project in the future and UCLA borrowed against that project.

*The donor in the Santa Barbara case - Charles Munger - has made himself the issue by insisting on designing the project himself and generally coming across in interviews as an obstinate old billionaire grouch. 

*The Santa Barbara project has received far more adverse external publicity than UCLA's hotel. It's hard to imagine that the Regents are unaware of the negative PR related to the Santa Barbara project.

*Santa Barbara actually does need more dorm capacity and is getting bad publicity for not having enough capacity to house admitted students. UCLA's need for a hotel in the midst of the budget crisis that existed back in 2012 was, to be charitable, less obvious. Santa Barbara's "business plan" for the dorm - in the sense that dorm fees will cover operating costs - will likely be more credible than what UCLA presented to the Regents.

*The existing Santa Barbara dorm plan - with its very high population density and limited exits - raises severe safety issues, unlike the Grand Hotel.

Still, it's (apparently) hard for the Regents to say no to something a campus chancellor absolutely wants. Doing so could be seen as a vote of no confidence in that chancellor and chancellors are regental appointees.

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*There were also (negative) public comments about the UCLA hotel project in the public comments section of the initial Regents meeting. You can hear those comments at:

https://archive.org/details/UniversityOfCaliforniaRegents3-28-2012Part1

starting at about minute 15:07. Not surprisingly, Westwood area hotels objected to competition from a state-funded enterprise, i.e., from UCLA.

No Progress

We continue to track new California weekly claims for unemployment insurance as an indicator of the state of recovery of the economy and labor market. Basically, we have been stuck around the 60,000 mark since last spring when normal would be around 40,000. 

As always, the latest data are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.

Still Problems With Vax Proof Uploading

UCLA employees may have recently received a text message indicating that proof of full vaccination is required. As we have noted in prior blog posts, there is some ambiguity in what a full set of vaccinations is since boosters are now available. In any case, yours truly attempted to use the link provided in the text message to upload a cellphone photo of his updated card which shows the booster as well as the previous two shots.

When the first pre-booster requirement came into effect, yours truly noted that the UCLA app had problems in uploading such photos which revolved around the file being too big.* The problems with having an app that cannot handle a standard cellphone photo are too obvious to repeat here.

However, the problem appears to have continued, as the image shown here indicates. The app rejected a standard cellphone photo. Was it because of size of the file or some new issue? Who knows? But, it is to be hoped that the IT folks in charge of the app do know and will fix the problem. In any event, yours truly has sent them the image here and the rejected photo.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/08/incomplete-message-part-2.html.

Hastings or Not Hastings - Part 2

Note: Hastings College of Law is connected to the UC Regents, although it has its own board. As we noted going back to 2017, the Hastings name issue has parallels with UC-Berkeley's Boalt Hall issue.* Apparently, unlike the Berkeley situation, changing the name of Hastings is a decision for the legislature and governor.

Leading law school seeks to remove genocidal founder's name

AP  11-2-21

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The University of California Hastings College of the Law will work on removing the name of its founder, who sponsored massacres of Native Americans in the 1850s, the board of directors voted Tuesday. The vote authorizes one of the nation's leading law schools to work with state lawmakers and others to change the institution's name.

Hastings Law School was founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, a wealthy rancher and former chief justice of the California Supreme Court. Its graduates include Vice President Kamala Harris and former California Assemblyman and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. But historians say the school's founder helped orchestrate and finance campaigns by white settlers in Mendocino County to kill and enslave members of the Yuki Indian tribe at a time when California law had legalized lynch mob attacks on Indians along with kidnapping and forced servitude in what some state leaders openly called a war of extermination. The expeditions arranged by Hastings resulted in the deaths of 300 Yuki, and the government reimbursed him for expenses, including ammunition. The attacks were part of a three-year series of slaughters and kidnappings by settlers known as the Round Valley Settler Massacres that by some estimates claimed at least 1,000 Indian lives.

The school began to investigate Hastings’ legacy in 2017 and has been working on “restorative justice” initiatives including a free legal aid program for the Yuki and other tribes, founding an Indigenous Law Center and creating a campus memorial to the Yuki people. “That work has raised our awareness of the wrongs committed by the college’s namesake and the ongoing pain they cause, and our decision is that we can no longer associate our great institution with his name,” said Carl Robertson, who chairs the Board of Directors.

“I’m not terribly proud of carrying the Hastings name on my law license. There is no forgiveness in this,” Willie Brown said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 2020, the law school at the University of California, Berkeley stripped itself of a 19th century namesake who espoused racist views that led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. John Boalt’s name was removed from a school building after a three-year process...

Joseph Cotchett, a trial lawyer and alumnus who has donated about $10 million to the school, told the Chronicle that if the Hastings name remained, he would pull his name from its newly opened Cotchett Law Center. “I will do everything in my power as a 55-year alumnus of Hastings to change the name, and to honor the Indian tribes that were massacred and were taken advantage of,” Cotchett said...

Full story at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/leading-law-school-seeks-to-remove-genocidal-founders-name/ar-AAQfPdo.

Just last week, we noted that in a NY Times article on this issue, there was a different message from the School's chancellor and dean opposed the name change:

...David Faigman, the chancellor and dean of Hastings Law, has led a campaign to keep the school’s name. “What would removing the Hastings name accomplish?” Mr. Faigman wrote when the results of the school’s investigation into the Hastings legacy were made public in September of last year. A committee formed to investigate the massacres said changing the college’s name might lead to a “decline in applications and perhaps a loss of philanthropic and alumni support.” ...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/us/hastings-college-law-native-massacre.html. Our post was at:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/10/hastings-or-not-hastings.html.

Apparently, he has now changed his mind:

...The dean and chancellor of the school, David Faigman, had previously argued forcefully for retaining the name, but... he now [sees] the name change as a “necessary step.” ... Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/us/hastings-law-name-change.html.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-law-partners-of-hastings-boalt.html.

Munger Hall or Munger Hell - Part 2

Our Halloween blog post dealt with this matter.* But the discussion continues:

Architect slams UC Santa Barbara mega-dorm as ‘social, psychological experiment,’ quits in protest

Los Angeles Times (Christian Martinez)

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-01/uc-santa-barbara-mega-dorm-slammed-architect-quits-in-protest

 

Editorial: Donors should give to universities with no strings, not dictate their look or academics

Los Angeles Times (Editorial Board)

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-02/editorial-donors-should-give-to-universities-with-no-strings

 

Opinion: Why the mega dorm at UC Santa Barbara will be disastrous for student life

Los Angeles Times (Dennis McFadden)

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-01/ucsb-megadorm-santa-barbara-charles-munger-design

 

Opinion: Dear UC Santa Barbara: Don’t let a petulant billionaire build a prison dorm on your campus

Los Angeles Times (Carolina A. Miranda)

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-11-01/charlie-munger-designs-uc-santa-barbara-windowless-dorm-billionaire-prison-dorm

 

Here's what it's like to live in one of Charlie Munger's windowless dorms

CNN (Ramishah Maruf)

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/02/business/munger-residences-michigan-windowless/index.html

 

Munger on controversial UCSB dorm: Fake windows are better than real windows (Video)

CNN (Matt Egan)

https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/11/02/munger-hall-ucsb-dorm-controversy-gr-orig.cnn

 

Planned windowless dorm at UC Santa Barbara stirs controversy

EdSource (Carolyn Jones)

https://edsource.org/news-updates#planned-windowless-dorm-at-uc-santa-barbara-stirs-controversy 

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/10/munger-hall-or-munger-hell.html.

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Comment: At the end of the day, if a UC chancellor gets fixated on having some large, externally-funded capital project go forward, it eventually happens. Even if regents express doubts, it goes forward. Long time readers of this blog will recall UCLA's Grand Hotel as our campus's runaway train.

Seems like there was a movie along these lines:

Or direct to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A02F0InR-dw.

News of Student Researchers' Labor Negotiations

From the Bruin: Graduate students, undergraduate students and supporters from other labor unions rallied outside Young Hall [last] Thursday in protest of the University of California’s refusal to recognize the graduate student researcher union.

More than 200 supporters for Student Researchers United-United Auto Workers gathered at noon, when speakers spoke about the UC’s stance on fellows and trainees and its ongoing contract negotiations with other UC worker unions. SRU-UAW rallies occurred at all UC campuses Thursday except at UC Santa Cruz, which held a rally Tuesday.

The UC claimed to recognize the union Sept. 2 but sought to exclude fellows and trainees from union enrollment, arguing that those who receive external funding from traineeship and fellowship grants do not qualify as employees under the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act.

The California Public Employment Relations Board filed a letter Sept. 8 stating that partial union recognition is not allowed and considered the UC’s response as a complete denial of recognition...

The UC is in ongoing discussions regarding the composition of a new bargaining unit, said Ryan King, a UC Office of the President spokesperson, in an emailed statement. He added that the UC recognizes a majority of the graduate student researchers in the union and hopes to resolve discussions soon so negotiations can begin...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2021/10/31/ucla-community-protests-ucs-refusal-to-recognize-student-researchers-union.

Before Sunset

Back in the day - the photo is dated 1931 - what is now Sunset Boulevard just north of the UCLA campus was called Beverly Boulevard. (A bit of color enhancement has been added.) Note the reservoir, roughly where the Anderson School is today.

Source of original: https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll2/id/4358.