Vanguard at UC Davis

It was about 7 P.M. when we got to Mrak Hall (for those of you who don’t know this is the administration building). The ASUCD Senate decided unanimously to move our meeting out to Mrak Hall to stand in solidarity with the students protesting, some inside and some outside, in regards to the UC Regents recent decision to raise fees 32%. All the television networks were there, the police were there, and between two and three hundred students, faculty, staff were there.

After trying to hold an organized meeting on the steps we realized it was too loud to conduct business so we took an hour recess. After speaking with some of the organizers we were ushered to the front of the protest and the President of the Associated Students gave a brief speech.

In the slew of bills signed and vetoed on Sunday, the Governor ended up vetoing three bills sponsored by Senator Leland Yee that would have pushed for serious reforms of UC and CSU including key legislation that would have prohibited executive pay raises during bad budget years at the University of California and the California State University. 

Senator Yee:

“It is deeply disappointing that the Governor wants to ensure top executives live high on the hog while students suffer.  The Governor’s veto is a slap in the face to all UC and CSU students and the system’s low wage workers.  His veto protects the UC and CSU administration’s egregious executive compensation practices and allows them to continue to act more like AIG than a public trust.”

California has stamped out the Station Fire but not the crisis that threatens to engulf the University of California (UC) and destroy a premier higher education system. The UC Regents may have closed the $813 million dollar deficit by securing savings from service reduction ($325 million), furloughs ($203 million), student fee hikes ($203 million), and debt restructuring ($82 million), but they have only started their Sisyphean task, because the preoccupation with “the business” prevents them from extinguishing any fire.    

Certainly, the housing market collapse and the ensuing recession have led the State to the brink of a $26 billion financial abyss. At the brink, legislators have fractiously cobbled a budget that meets a 2/3 majority approval and sustains initiative designated expenditures.  The budget reduces by 25% the 2008 allocation ($3.3 billion), which represents 17% of the total $19 billion budget.  Student fees ($1.6 billion), medical center activity ($6.1 billion), and research grants ($2.7 billion) comprise the other major revenues.

Over 1000 students, employees, faculty members, staffers, and others affiliated with the University filled the East Quad at UC Davis on Thursday afternoon advocating against fee increases that many see as the death knell for public education in California.  Speakers were concerned about talk that UC President Mark Yudoff is moving toward a hybrid public-private university that will make fees that are set to go up as much as 32% in the next year, unaffordable for many.

Organizers and speakers alike pointed to the fact that this was an extraordinary collaboration between students, faculty and staff that in many ways was unprecedented.  All groups seemed very alarmed at the prospect for fee hikes which will make the university unaffordable and inaccessible to many segments of the population.

At first I thought it was a typo, students supposedly protesting the impending tuition hikes by going nude in the quad at UC Davis, that should have read Berkeley right?  The students claimed that their lack of attire was symbolic of the fact that they are being “stripped” of their right to accessible, affordable, quality education.

As it turns out, it must have been Davis after all, because naked to these students meant walking around in their underwear.  Kids today.  Kind of reminds me of a hunger strike at the UC Berkeley campus a decade ago, it turns out the kids weren’t exactly starving themselves as they consumed the SlimFast diet drink.  Didn’t stop the administration from caving to their demands.

September 24 has become the magical date at UC Davis.  That is the date of the first day of instruction for the fall quarter.  Planned for that day is a faculty walk out that at least 100 UC Davis faculty members have signed onto.  At issue there is that they want some of the furlough days to fall on instructional days.

At the same time, last week, UC Davis told its more than 4400 union employees that if they do not accept the furlough they will face layoffs or other reductions.

Matt Krupnick from Contra Costa Times reported last Thursday that the University of California may raise student fees an additional 32 percent by the fall of 2010.  This would boost the annual undergraduate tuition to over the 10,000 dollar mark for the first time in the system’s history.

He reports that UC regents will meet next week to discuss the phased increases which would include a more modest 7.5 percent hike for Spring 2010 followed by a much sharper increase in the fall.

At 9 a.m. Thursday morning, UCDavis’ building contractor for the West Village project began entombing ground squirrels. Using a tractor-drawn plow, workers began the long grading process that will lead to yet another subdivision of single family homes, apartments, and commercial development. Standing in the way was one of the largest ground squirrel colonies UC Davis has ever had. Stretching over an area about the size of a football field, almost 100 burrow openings provided doorways to the underground homes for the over 100 squirrels who lived there. Driving or biking by Friday afternoon you would be able to see frantic adult and juvenile squirrels trying to find those doorways, possibly to reach those who remained underground out of fear, maybe to get away from the vehicles roaring by.

It was a simple bill, along the lines of Proposition 1F, except this one for the University of California–it limited UC executive pay increases during times when there were budget cuts and student fee increases.  SB 217 would have prohibited pay raises for top executives in years in which the UC or CSU budget does not receive an increase in state funding.  

The University of California Board of Regents this summer approved exorbitant pay raises for more than two dozen executives.  The hikes, which included a 25 percent increase for UC San Francisco’s chief financial officer and pay in excess $500,000 for UCSF’s chief operating officer, came at the same time that Regents approved pay cuts, layoffs, and furloughs for lower wage workers.

On Friday, Interim Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs Lawrence Pitts sent out a letter announcing that the proposed faculty furloughs will not occur on instructional days–those “days for which a faculty member is scheduled to give lectures, lead classes or workshops, have scheduled office hours, or have other scheduled face-to-face responsibilities for students.”

In some ways, this might seem to a no-brainer as it mitigates the impact of what should be the university’s primary duty–the education of students.  However, not surprisingly this has trigger criticism from faculty leaders and representation.

There has been much talk about the West Village development providing key faculty and staff housing to employees at UC Davis who are currently unable to live in the city of Davis.  Many argue that UC Davis brings in 1500 housing units, including 475 homes with this project.  But much of that is in the form of student housing, rather than housing for employees of UC Davis.  In the first phase, the number will be just 325 units.

Realtors around Davis have expressed concern about the overall viability of the project describing it as small housing with limited equity that is unlikely to attract existing homeowners.  They pose the question as to whether the project will fail before it even gets underway.

In what an elaborate ceremony attended by many of the leaders on and off the UC Davis Campus, outgoing UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef celebrated the culmination of a long process and the beginning of the construction phase of West Village.

Everyone joked as to how long the process took, but the planning began back in the 1990s as a means to provide affordable housing for faculty and staff while supplying additional housing for some 3000 UC Davis students.

There has been a lot of talk about incoming UC Chancellor Linda Katehi and what seems to get overlooked due to the scandal surrounding her alleged admissions policy shenanigans are the huge pay increases and perks Linda Katehi will be receiving from the UC Regents while student fees climb another 9.3% this year.

Excessive executive compensation has been in the news a lot lately from AIG to the Auto Industry, but when it happens in a public institution like the University California it gets nowhere near the public outcry.

On Thursday the report was released by the commission investigating the University of Illinois.  It was a scathing report and the impact from it will be felt far and wide.  Officials will be urged to resign and there were harsh words for the top administrators the President and Chancellor for acting unethically and enabling an admissions process that would allow students with subpar scores but influential and powerful sponsors to become students at the system’s flagship school.

However, as bad as the report is, that is not our concern in Davis.  Our concern is with the status and implications of incoming Chancellor Linda Katehi.  And from our perspective it appears that Chancellor Katehi comes out unscathed.  The report directly names nine people who either knew or should have known of the admission of substandard clouted applicants at the time of those decisions, Katehi is not only not mentioned on that list but her name does not appear at all in the report.

While 20 members of the UC Board of Regents cast their vote to go along with President Yudof’s furlough plan, one Regent was still looking for a different way.  That was Lt. Governor John Garamendi who has foregone a challenge for Governor in favor of seeking the open 3rd Congressional Seat, vacated by Ellen Tauscher who was appointed by President Obama as an under Secretary of State for arms control.

Right up until the end, Mr. Garamendi was looking for another way.  He called on the Regents instead of acceding to the demands of the economic downturn to join a coordinated effort with CSU and the Community Colleges to Abolish the two-thirds majority requirement and pass an oil severance tax.

In the 1950s California led the way with an innovative and unprecedented higher education  that would enable anyone who wished to, to attend a four year college and get a college degree.  For the next half century, California had a higher education system second to none in the world.  There was the world-class University of California system that would take the top tier of student and the California State University system that would admit virtually anyone, initially at no cost and but even to this day one of the best deals around.

If this is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression one of the biggest victims will be the California Dream of an accessible and affordable college education.

Today the UC Board of Regents will vote on a controversial plan that will enact furloughs to help close the growing budget of the University of California.  UC President Mark Yudof announced this proposal last week, and the plan still has to go through full board approval and union approval.  While this plan seeks to save money by avoiding cutting jobs, and instead opting for between 11 to 26 unpaid days off proving a small salary cut, UC employees, professors, and AFSCME Local 3299 are openly stating their opposition.

The Vanguard had the opportunity to do a brief phone interview with AFSCME Local 3229 President Lakesha Harrison.  The Vanguard asked Ms. Harrison two questions revolving around this ordeal: Is this fair? And who does this effect the most?