Going Up?

UC president Napolitano, on her campus tour, says she hopes not to press her luck and see tuition go up.

Not a guarantee, of course.

See: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_24341488/new-uc-president-keep-eye-costs

Tuition will either go up, stay the same (likely for now), or go down (has happened in the past but very unlikely under current conditions).  In fact, past UC presidents have gone with the (budget) flow:

Unbranded

Odd that the undergraduate advertising and marketing group would get the Anderson School "brand" wrong, since branding is a big part of advertising and marketing.  The word "business" has not been part of the School's title (or "brand") since the 1970s.  The name used now is Anderson School of Management or just Anderson or Anderson School, although the name carved in stone on the Anderson complex is Anderson Graduate School of Management. 

Let's Start With This Idea on the Pension Initiative: One Size Doesn't Fit All

Don't buy it.

Editorial: The pension (and retiree health) initiative on which we have been reporting on this blog sweeps in UC for no particular reason.  Yet all the propaganda concerning it so far deals with mayors and cities.  UC has no mayor and isn't a city.

Were the Regents consulted by initiative proponents?  Was anyone at UCOP consulted?  Anyone at UC at all?  Yours truly sincerely doubts it.  Did anyone in the group pushing the initiative look at such issues as faculty recruitment, compensation, or any other UC issue?  Did they look at the issue of the constitutional autonomy of the Regents?

Basically, UC needs out.  The proponents of the initiative have plenty of time either to file a revised initiative excluding UC or making an amendment to what they have filed so far. 

The Regents, as blog readers will know, amended the UC pension plan in 2010, well before the state enacted its own plan (which exempted UC because of its earlier action).  We don't want to be swept into someone else's plan.  Where the governor stands on all of this is unclear.  The Sacramento Bee is reporting that he put a proponent of changes similar to the ones in the initiative on to a state board.  See http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/17/5830657/jerry-brown-taps-pension-reform.html.  CalPERS opposes the initiative.  See http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/16/v-print/5827735/calpers-weighs-in-on-new-public.html and http://www.calpers.ca.gov/index.jsp?bc=/about/press/pr-2013/oct/pension-ballot-initiative.xml.  However, the legal fight that CalPERS is having with the bankrupt City of San Bernardino is tending to inflame the pension issue in the public mind.  See http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/18/5831919/calpers-renews-san-bernardino.html. The renewed BART strike in the Bay Area also is not going to help with public opinion.  So, again, UC needs out.  And if it can't get out, UC needs a plan pronto.

UCLA History: Early Parking

 

Cars parked around site of soon-to-be-opened Westwood campus of UCLA in 1929.

Pension Initiative Backstop

We have been covering the pension initiative that has now been filed with the state and, in an earlier post, discussed some key elements of the initiative (including the coverage of UC).  An interesting element in the initiative is a provision that provides for defense in court of the initiative by private parties.  It is quite likely that if the initiative passed, it would be challenged in court.  And the attorney general might well refuse to defend it, given the politics of the initiative. In the case of Prop 8 - the anti-gay marriage initiative - the attorney general did refuse to provide a defense.  The pension initiative has an element that provides for an outside defense backstop.  (Whether that provision itself could be challenged, yours truly leaves to legal types.)

An article dealing with the defense component of the new pension initiative from an author sympathetic to it can be found at:
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2013/10/legacy-prop-8-court-case-pops-pension-reform-initiative/

Planning for a Shake

You probably saw this notice but here is a reminder.  

On October 17th, at 10:17 a.m., the UCLA campus community, along with millions of other Californians, will participate in “The Great California Shakeout”–a statewide earthquake drill. As part of our participation, the UCLA Office of Emergency Management (OEM) will test the BruinAlert system while airing a simulcast Shakeout drill on the campus AM radio station (AM 1630).

To fully participate and maximize the effectiveness of the drill, we ask that you take these simple and potentially life-saving steps:

• DROP to the ground (before the earthquake knocks you down)
• Take COVER by getting under a sturdy desk or table
• HOLD ON to your shelter (until the shaking stops)

Please visit www.dropcoverholdon.org for more information and instructions on how to protect yourself during an earthquake...

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Yours truly is out of town today so he won’t be under his desk.  However, he is old enough to remember:

It appears that publish or perish doesn't characterize the 2nd Appellate District California Court of Appeal

Appellate Court Verdict For Hannah Carter Garden Unique 

Beverly Hills Courier, Laura Coleman, 10/14/13*

The 2nd Appellate District California Court of Appeal yesterday denied a request to publish the Court’s decision to uphold a preliminary injunction against the University of California, Los Angeles from selling the 1.5-acre Hannah Carter Garden. The traditional Japanese garden, which was bequeathed to the university in 1964 by former UC Regent Edward Carter sparked the ire of garden preservationists and the heirs of Hannah Carter, who subsequently filed suit against UCLA to maintain its promise, when the university undertook efforts to begin the process of selling the garden just months after Hannah Carter died – even though it had agreed to maintain the garden in perpetuity.

Last month, the Appellate Court of Appeal unanimously voted to uphold the preliminary injunction that L.A. Superior Court Judge Lisa Hart Cole issued on July 27, 2012, calling the university “duplicitous” in its attempt to sell the garden. Plaintiffs’ attorney Walter Moore of the Law Offices of John R. Walton told The Courier that publishing the opinion would have allowed lawyers in other disputes to site the case as a matter of precedent. “We think this opinion’s important enough and helpful enough to the public to be cited for publication,” Moore said...

Full story at http://bhcourier.com/appellate-court-verdict-hannah-carter-garden-unique/2013/10/14

*When you click on the link, it gives the date as 10/4/13 which is apparently a typo.

Yours truly can’t really interpret what happened.  It is likely that the plaintiffs felt that publication would embarrass the university which has so far not fared well in this litigation.