UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi is not likely to lose her job over the initial “scandal” – her moonlighting with for-profit educational enterprises or a textbook company. However, the revelations last month have made her look increasingly vulnerable and isolated, and have divided the campus in deep lines between the humanities and the STEM sciences, and, even in the latter, cracks are beginning to appear.
Every candidate for Davis City Council and every elected member of the council always talks about the need for better campus-community relations, but the last month has proven just how elusive that goal may be. More on that shortly.
For nearing four weeks, student protesters have held down Mrak Hall’s fifth floor lobby, demanding that the chancellor resign. It has been a public cat and mouse game, but, while the chancellor has been able to continue with business as usual despite the inconvenience, there have been increasing signs of strain elsewhere.
Staff and students have complained about the conduct of the student protestors, complaining of “the tactics of the protesters, including sexist and racist behaviors, threatening and bullying of staff, students and faculty who come to Mrak Hall to work.”
In the meantime, Vice Chancellor Ralph Hexter wrote disparaging comments as well, complaining that the press conference was actually “to express solidarity with the protesters who have been occupying the reception area outside the Chancellor’s office on the 5th floor.” And complaining that “many of the protesters left extensive chalk graffiti throughout the building’s stairwells, on office doors, in Mrak corridors, in bathrooms, and on the building’s exterior walls and on the sidewalks. Later in the afternoon, a smaller number of protesters took it upon themselves to do their best to erase the earlier chalking on the interior of the building.”
Of course, while the protesters are calling for the chancellor’s resignation, the failure by the university to simply remove the protesters increasingly makes them seem weak and ineffectual rather than patient and tolerant. They clearly want to avoid a show of force, like what happened in 2007, then in 2010, and culminating in 2011 with the pepper spraying.
But, while the pepper spray incident clearly left a black mark on the campus, the current strategy that the university has developed has never really worked as hoped. The bank blockers were eventually brought to the courtroom, but, while they got slaps on the wrist, US Bank terminated their contract.
Ironically, by failing to act against the protesters, Chancellor Katehi is building a case against herself that she is weak and ineffectual.
In the meantime, the UC system increasingly looks isolated and insular.
On Monday, the state legislature held two hours of audit hearings. The good news is that the state legislature was able to get a commitment from UC officials to increase enrollment by 15 percent among California residents, specifically Latinos and African Americans.
But, while that is good news, look what it took to get this. The state had to spend money to do a year-long audit of UC that confirmed that their policies aimed at increasing non-resident enrollment and therefore collecting non-resident tuition resulted in an increase in non-resident students at the expense of the children of California residents.
To rectify this situation, the State Legislature of California is having to use a carrot rather than a stick. They have given UC $25 million in additional money in order to accommodate the resident students. As these things go, that is not exactly a show of force. Governor Jerry Brown and the Legislature are getting a mere 5000 additional California students this fall for their troubles.
If the state legislature has to effectively bribe UC to do make small policy changes, where does that leave our local community?
As we have noted before, the problems at UC and the policies of adding more non-resident students in order to produce more tuition revenue have local consequences. While UC Davis has undergone their outreach through the LRDP (Long Range Development Plan) process, the bottom line remains – UC Davis, whether it is comprised of international or local residents, will be increasing its enrollment by several thousand additional students in the next few years.
UC Davis officials like Bob Segar have already acknowledged that they either cannot or, more to the point, will not provide housing to accommodate those additional students.
For years, the city of Davis has come to agreement with UC Davis on a share of students that would be housed on campus and, to date, UC Davis has always fallen well short on their commitments.
The result of these policies has put tremendous pressure on local land use policies. Davis has remained a slow growth community, with the bulk of its residents to date passing growth control measures like Measure O (which instructed the city to go as slowly as legally possible), and Measure J and Measure R (which require citizen votes to approve new peripheral housing and other development projects).
The voters have also voted down two peripheral projects in the last ten years – Covell Village and Wildhorse Ranch, and a current project, Nishi, very much hangs in the balance.
The combination of slow growth city of Davis policies and the fast enrollment growth of UC Davis, combined with their own slow growth in housing, has left the city with a historically low (0.2 percent) vacancy rate, an increasing growth in mini-dorms, and an increasingly high commuter population of students and faculty.
Something has to give. There seems to be a belief by some that UC Davis can be talked into or pressured into expanding its housing on campus. But the facts of the last month suggest otherwise. Yes, the University of California is going to add 5000 additional in-state students (a small number, to be sure), but it took an audit and $25 million from the legislature to make it happen.
The city of Davis does not have any kind of stick and it certainly doesn’t have a $25 million carrot, so how is UC Davis going to be pressured by Davis into doing anything?
If anything, the last month proves just how insulated UC really is. The chancellor is able to continue with business as usual despite a stream of bad news, a group of students camped in front of her office and several state legislators, along with a number of students, faculty and alums, calling for her resignation.
The UC system rolls off a damning audit report and banks another $25 million in exchange for a modest increase in tuition.
Just how is anyone supposed to convince us that UC can be responsive at all to anyone’s concerns?
—David M. Greenwald reporting
And if she acts and has them forcibly removed I’d bet the Vanguard would be all over it crying who knows what.
If they pepper spray them perhaps. If they effect a clean arrest, no.
Okay, I’m all for it. This small group of troublemakers need to be removed. You know they’ll have to be dragged out kicking and screaming, but you’ve just stated that you’re okay with that as long as they aren’t pepper sprayed. We agree. After that they should be charged with a crime and pay for all damages.
To clarify: I’m NOT supporting their arrest or prosecution. I am saying that from her perspective, by failing to clear them out, she is building a case against herself. I am also stating that the Vanguard would not criticize the university if they chose to act so long as the arrest is effected cleanly. I know it is a subtle nuance, but looking at it from her perspective, this approach isn’t working.
I’ll bet she’s scared S-less about trying to have them forcibly removed. A) Because she’s a coward; B) Because we’ve been down that road before; C) She has good reason to be; D) It’s too late — this should have been done on Day 1 or never — and never will drag her down. She screwed herself with the pepper spraying and she sealed her fate. UC will find a graceful-appearing way for her ouster, along with a lot of money. Maybe they have her resign and her husband magically has his salary doubled.
“The good news is that the state legislature was able to get a commitment from UC Officials to increase enrollment by 15 percent among California residents, specifically Latinos and African Americans.”
Now the legislature wants UC to use racial preferences in the selection process for admissions? Sounds like Asians are being told they are the wrong minority again. I would hate to be the Asian kid from a low social economic household who is an English learner who gets bumped by a Latino or African American so that the preferred ethnicity gets admitted. It seems so easy for these politicians to cry about the over representation of Asians in the UC system instead of commending these students for their hard work in school that resulted in their admissions into the UC system. Instead of whining they should be looking at the cultural, family and community emphasis on education and how that can be emulated in other communities.
Except that according to the audit, the non-resident students were admitted using lower standards.
The report finds, “During the three-year period after this change, the university admitted nearly 16,000 nonresidents whose scores fell below the median scores for admitted residents at the same campus on every academic test score and grade point average that we evaluated. At the same time, the university denied admission to an increasing proportion of qualified residents at the campus to which they applied—nearly 11,000 in academic year 2014–15 alone—and instead referred them to an alternate campus.”
That has nothing to do with a racial preference regarding California residents which is what your article indicated the legislature received from UC. You are confusing apples with oranges David. In this day and age race based preferences in California are simply wrong. UC admissions should not target one group for admission over another based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference. The same goes for financial aid.
Nice try at deflection.
No deflection at all. If you read the audit report, one of the repercussions from the policy has been the reduction of Latino and Blacks as a result of the audit policy.
The audit noted, “While underrepresented minorities—which the university considers to be Chicanos/Latinos, African Americans, and American Indians—represent 45 percent of California’s population, they make up 30 percent of the university’s overall undergraduate population.”
The audit found, “The university’s recent emphasis on enrolling more nonresidents has hampered its efforts to meet its own and the Legislature’s desire that the university’s student body reflect the diversity of the State.”
So the two are completely related and presented in the audit as such.
Since whites are vastly underrepresented in the UC population when compared to California demographics do you David advocate for more whites being admitted to more reflect the state?
I guess we know that BP and ZZ are more interested in the racial issue than the material of 99.9% of the article.
“This small group of troublemakers need to be removed”
While I agree that any students involved in vandalism, intimidation or the defacement of property should be charged for those actions and bear any associated penalties, I think it is important to look at the source of the “troublemaking”. The root cause of the problem is not that there are students willing to protest. It is that there were actions that were worthy of protest and that those actions were those of the Chancellor.
Use of public positions for private enrichment ( nepotism for example), favoring out of state and out of country students over Californians at a public institutions, accepting questionably ethical board positions ( KAU) and those for which one does not have approval ( DeVry) are the sources of the “trouble”. Had none of this occurred we would not be seeing the current occupation.
If we are going to hold the students responsible for their actions, surely the same should apply to the Chancellor. Or because she is wealthy, privileged and well connected, should we just “accept her apology and move on” while insisting on punishment for the protestors ? I would say let’s truly hold everyone involved accountable for their own part in this mess.
It is the UC administration’s job to hold her accountable for her actions, not this group of students. Katehi’s actions are clearly known to the UC administration, so the student protest serves no meaningful purpose other than to be a distraction and a pain. For those that want to hold Katehi responsible, the right place for any protest at this point would be Napolitano’s office, where a decision to fire Katehi or force her resignation is possible.
Lets think about the implications of your statement. It was the federal, state and local officials job in the south to enforce civil rights laws and the constitution. Does that mean that the protests there served “no meaningful purpose other than to be a district and a pain”? It’s clear that the UC administration is not doing their job just as the officials during the civil rights movement weren’t doing theirs. The students don’t have access to Napolitano’s office and it’s pretty clear that this action is having an effect even if it is slow. Further revelations are coming out and the campus is clearly more and more divided. It’s becoming irresponsible of Napolitano to keep Katehi on. And yet, she persists. That suggests that Napolitano is part of the problem not part of the solution.
Why do liberals have to associate everything with race? Just as we have Godwin’s Law there should also be some term for when liberals always have to interject race or slavery into every conversation.
It was an analogy to another protest movement where the protests proved necessary and effective.
“It is the UC administration’s job to hold her accountable for her actions, not this group of students. Katehi’s actions are clearly known to the UC administration, so the student protest serves no meaningful purpose other than to be a distraction and a pain. For those that want to hold Katehi responsible, the right place for any protest at this point would be Napolitano’s office, where a decision to fire Katehi or force her resignation is possible”
While this may be true, it is in fact impractical. The regents live in an ever greater ivory tower than the Chancellor does. What has been made abundantly clear to all who are paying attention is that there is very little in the way of accountability for UC admins. This is why direct action is warranted and even justified. The system isnt listening to the students, on who the heavy burden of student debt is laid, and the taxpayers who fund these unaccountable administrators.
If you listened to the oversight committee meeting, you would see that Katehi refused to answer basic questions, and there are no consequences for her, or at the very least no defined consequences. If a student violates the ethics codes, for say academic fraud, or a student athlete takes a free meal from a booster, there are serious potentially life changing consequences for that student. When a administrator who makes more taxpayer money than the President of the United States breaks the rules, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, there are literally no consequences for her other than a very public shaming and some bad press. Can you see the hypocrisy in this?
AdamSmith
In a perfect world, every individual would act in an ethical and non confrontational manner. The Chancellor would not be lining her pockets at taxpayer and student expense, KAU would not be buying it’s way to unearned prestige, Napolitano would be insisting on policies that benefit UC students rather than enriching her senior administrators and would be insisting on exemplary behavior from all staff, especially the top ranks. It is the failure of the Chancellor and Napolitano to provide ethical leadership that has created the student protest. True, the student protest is not as effective as a rebuke from Napolitano, or the rightful and appropriate resignation of the Chancellor would be. But then, they are using the only tactics they perceive as available to them given the power differential.
Would you suggest that they do nothing at all given the constraints that they face ?
The DeVry, Wiley, and KAU debacles pale in comparison to the graft and nepotism that has taken root under the Katehi administration. There was a time when even the appearance of conflict of interest among campus administrators was considered unacceptable. Now, the Chancellor appoints her own husband as “special adviser” to herself, a position accounting for 50% of his time and salary. What, precisely, does he advise her on, what makes him especially qualified to do it, and why does it require 50% of his effort? Ironically, his other 50% appointment entails teaching the course “Professional Responsibilities of Engineers,” in which students are supposed to learn about ethical and principled behavior in their professional careers. Other examples include the hiring of her PhD student into a UCD faculty position, and the fact that the new Engineering Dean was Associate Dean at Purdue when Katehi was Dean there. These are simply cases that casually became apparent. Who knows what else lurks beneath the surface? UCD faculty are required to complete a biennial on-line “Ethics Training” course; the upper-most echelons of the administration apparently consider this superfluous. It is high time for a truly independent agent to step in, and make a detailed and impartial assessment of how this campus is being run.
Ahhh… the difference between “ethical” and “moral” behavior… heard it said that an ethical person KNOWS it is wrong to cheat on a spouse… whereas a moral person just doesn’t do it… UC is all about knowledge (except some professors/lecturers who require you to adopt ‘their” ethics/morals, to get a passing grade)… more is the pity…
SO by those measures, Katehi is neither ethical or moral
The best professional advisor available is of course the person you do the horizontal bop with, I always say . . .
In the activity you imply, I never considered a “professional”… but, to each, their own…
David… are UC Chancellors subject to FPPC, and/or required to file a Form 700, or its equivalent?
hpierce
“are UC Chancellors subject to FPPC, and/or required to file a Form 700, or its equivalent?”
Sorry, but would you mind rephrasing that question in standard English for those of us who are ignorant ?
No, they are not. However, they are subject to the PRA.
Sure… most City/State/County/Special District management employees (decision-makers or ‘recommenders’), and all elected officials, and many appointed ones, are subject to the Fair Political Practices Act, overseen by a Commission (FPPC). Form 700 is required each year, from those required to file, to divulge financial interests that MIGHT (but often do not) lead to a legal conflict of interest. Form 700’s are signed, ‘under the penalty of perjury’. I’ve had to (for one reason or another) had to file a Form 700 for the last 30 years. Once filed, a Form 700 is a Public Record. They are based on calendar years, and are supposed to be filed by April 1 of the following year. Hope that helps… David knows all of this, and, you’ll note, I directed my post to him. Hope the above at least comes close to “standard English”… also see:
http://www.fppc.ca.gov/Form700.html
I couldn’t drill down to see if a UC Chancellor was a ‘required reporter’, so that’s why I asked David, in case he had other resources/knowledge.
I found “… rephrasing that question in standard English for those of us who are ignorant ?” a bit off-putting in tone, but am not stressing on it, as I’m hopeful your intent was innocent.
“PRA”Public Restroom Anxiety ?
Damn… can’t seem to speak in plain English… no excuse, it’s not a ‘second language’… am 98% sure your tongue was fully in cheek (probably shouldn’t word it that way when am dealing with a ‘restroom’ reference!), but for those who don’t know, “PRA” (depending on context) means Public Records Act… a “transparency” piece of legislation…