NIL ain't nothing anymore

Thanks to a US Supreme Court decision, college athletes are now allowed to monetize their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). From 247sports:

UCLA Announces New NIL Initiative -- The Westwood Exchange

by David Woods, 4-21-22   

On Thursday, UCLA announced the Westwood Exchange, a new NIL initiative aimed at making it even easier for UCLA athletes to connect with potential partners on Name, Image, and Likeness opportunities in a robust marketplace.

The exchange is designed as an online portal for business owners, donors, alumni, and fans to register with the school to connect with athletes on potential ventures. This should provide a more direct opportunity for fans to connect with athletes and enhance UCLA's position in the NIL marketplace, which has grown increasingly competitive as other schools have partnered directly with donor collectives to engage in what is effectively legal pay-for-play.

The exchange can be located at the link below:

https://dash.inflcr.com/exchange/ucla

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From the website:

"The Westwood Exchange is a student-athlete NIL business registry, custom-designed for businesses, donors, alumni, and any other interested NIL dollars wishing to connect with student-athletes. Registered businesses can search, filter and initiate conversations with your student-athletes to discuss an NIL deal. Once the NIL deal between a registered business and your student-athlete is completed, the business will use the Westwood Exchange to create a transaction that will produce a direct payment to the student-athlete and automate a disclosure to the INFLCR Verified Compliance Ledger. The institution does not have to get involved in the deal and all transactions within the Westwood Exchange are consolidated into one 1099 at the end of the year for easier tax reporting purposes for registered businesses and athletes."

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After an individual registers with the exchange, they'll have access to a portal which allows them to connect with UCLA athletes who have indicated their own interest in pursuing NIL opportunities. 

Source: https://247sports.com/college/ucla/Article/UCLA-Announces-New-NIL-Initiative-The-Westwood-Exchange-186548158/.

Still Watching

We continue to keep an eye on the slow upward creep of new California weekly claims for unemployment insurance - a series we track as an indicator of the state of the labor market and economy. There are, of course, other things to worry about in terms of the direction of the economy - mainly macro things such as inflation. For right now, and for the May revise budget next month, there is however little chance of anything derailing the outlook for rising revenue. But it's always good to recall:

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

Another Security Lockdown: This Time at Berkeley

Back on February 1, the UCLA campus was subject to a lockdown due to a security threat.* There was an actual shooting incident at UCLA back in 2016.** Something similar happened at UC-Berkeley yesterday. From the Daily Cal:

After Thursday morning’s lockdown, UCPD located the suspect at an off-campus site at about 2 p.m. and determined there is no longer a threat. 

An hour after UCPD lifted its shelter-in-place order for UC Berkeley following a campuswide threat, campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof held a press conference to offer more details. Mogulof confirmed the suspect issued threats against specific campus members around 7:30 a.m., and campus issued a shelter-in-place order once UCPD deemed the threats credible.

“The threats that UCPD was made aware of this morning were extraordinarily serious and very credible,” Mogulof said at the conference. “When threats like that are received, we’re not going to take any chances when it comes to the safety of the community.” 

While Mogulof said campus will return to normal tomorrow, he noted neither campus nor UCPD can offer more information at the time due to “unique and complicated privacy concerns.” Mogulof noted that more information will be released in the coming days.  

Source: https://www.dailycal.org/2022/04/21/ucpd-locates-suspect-after-campuswide-lockdown-ending-shelter-in-place/.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/02/remember-one-day-shutdown-update.html.

**https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2016/06/additional-info-on-shooting.html.

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UCLA recently circulated (or possibly re-circulated) an instructional video on what to do in an active shooter situation.

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrbqmzCZS_A.

Watch the Regents Off-Cycle Meeting of April 18, 2022

A second April off-cycle meeting was held by a Regents committee - this one last Monday - of the Public Engagement and Development Committee. The theme was transfers from community colleges to UC and particularly to UC-Davis since the meeting was held there. Only one speaker presented by phone in the public comments session on transfers to HBCUs. President Drake made some introductory remarks. It was noted in the presentations that community college enrollment dropped during the pandemic. So, community college leaders in part see encouraging the transfer route as a way to regain lost enrollment. It was noted that there was a shortage of STEM faculty at community colleges since other employers are more attractive.

A second part of the discussion dealt with attracting more African American students to UCs (and especially to Davis). There are various organizations that facilitate transfers. The committee heard from administrators, students, and alumni on this issue.

As always, we preserve the recording of the meeting since the Regents - for no obvious reason - delete their recordings after one year. You can find this meeting at:

https://archive.org/details/regents-special-committee-on-innovation-transfer-and-entrepreneurship-4-14-22/Regents+Public+Engagement+and+Development+4-18-22.mp4.

Straws in the COVID wind

 From Stanford: ... [COVID] case counts have increased by 20% among students and decreased by 1% among employees compared to the week before. According to the dashboard, 212 students are in isolation as of Monday, which is an increase from the 147 students reported last week. The rise in student cases comes after the University lifted the Color COVID-19 weekly testing requirement for vaccinated students on April 11...

Full story at:

https://stanforddaily.com/2022/04/18/stanford-covid-19-cases-increase-to-217-during-first-week-without-mandatory-testing-for-vaccinated-students/.

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From Howard: Howard University will hold only online undergraduate classes (except for lab classes) during the final weeks of the spring semester. Final exams for undergraduate courses will also be online. A letter to the campus from Anthony K. Wutoh, the provost, and Hugh Mighty, dean of the College of Medicine, said the positivity rate on campus increased, from 2 percent to 5 percent, in the last week. It has also increased in the Washington, D.C., area.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2022/04/18/howard-u-moves-classes-online.

Possible VP-Related Traffic Jam in UCLA Area Today and Tomorrow

From Patch newspapers: Los Angeles motorists should prepare for possible delays and closures amid Vice President Kamala Harris's three-day visit to Los Angeles. Harris is staying at her home in Brentwood, one day after speaking for 19 minutes at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Brentwood a co-host said raised $1 million. 

Harris and her husband will be staying in Brentwood until Thursday, when she will fly to San Francisco. Motorists are advised to avoid the surrounding area if possible, since the Vice Presidential motorcade has the potential to severely disrupt traffic...

Full story at: https://patch.com/california/los-angeles/vp-kamala-harris-visiting-los-angeles-until-thursday.

Where to put them

From the Bruin: UCLA is considering significant measures to enroll more in-state students, such as expanding course offerings and opening a satellite campus.* Chancellor Gene Block announced new university initiatives in the winter to fulfill the University of California’s goal of adding an additional 20,000 enrollment spots across its 10 campuses by 2030. The initiatives followed an increase in the number of applications to the university. This year, the university received more than 168,000 applications – more than double the number received in 2012, when there were 72,697 applications.

One idea is to increase four-year graduation rates, which would allow the university to enroll more students in incoming classes, Block said. Another way to accomplish this would be to increase the number of summer classes so students have more opportunities to complete their graduation requirements, Block added.** “When students graduate on time, it frees up space so the campus can add more undergraduates without necessarily increasing overall enrollment,” said UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez in an emailed statement. The university will also look to increase the number of seats available in courses, Vazquez added.

As the UC system’s smallest campus in terms of area, the university needs to pursue options that will not put more pressure on an already stressed campus, Block said... More significant changes are also being considered, such as utilizing online classes and opening a satellite campus, Block’s update said...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2022/04/17/ucla-explores-options-to-increase-in-state-student-enrollment.

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*There is no cheap land anywhere near the current campus. To find cheap land, you would have to go far away from Westwood to someplace like Palmdale. ????  (Palmdale does have an unused airport.)

**Just a note that the reason UCLA switched from semesters to quarters in the 1960s was to accommodate the incoming baby boomers. The idea was that there would be four equal quarters and thus students would graduate faster. It turned out that students didn't want to attend in summer. The result was that there ended up being effectively three quarters. And since you had added an intersession between the second and third quarters, arguably the university infrastructure was being used less efficiently than with two semesters.