Vanguard at UC Davis

Commentary: Diversity at the UC’s Falling Behind State Levels

Commentary: Diversity at the UC’s Falling Behind State Levels

By David GreenwaldSeptember 22, 200788 comments
It was no surprise earlier this week when the long awaited University of California Diversity Report came out and found that enrollment of minorities and underrepresented students have fallen well behind their statewide representation in the population as a whole.

Overall advances in UC diversity in the 1980s and early 1990s have reversed direction, the report states, and any small gains have been concentrated at a few campuses. Women and non-Asian minorities continue to have particularly low levels of representation in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, the report noted.

Commentary: It’s all a matter of Priorities

Commentary: It’s all a matter of Priorities

By David GreenwaldSeptember 2, 200780 comments
imageUC Davis

Truth be told, I’m actually a big college football fan. In fact, I spent much of yesterday watching the first full day of college football. With that said, I also think that most universities place too much of a priority on things such as their football program, stadiums, etc. It is one thing for the big programs with huge endowments to spend millions on it, but for the average school, their sports programs is not a net revenue generator.

In any case, I don’t have a general problem building new facilities and stadiums, however it is interesting when a university has no trouble finding say $31 million to build a new stadium, but cannot find a few million to improve the salaries of some of their employees who are making meager wages at best. That is where I start to have a bit of a problem with our priorities.

UCLA Incident Demonstrates Need for Independent Review and Policy Changes

UCLA Incident Demonstrates Need for Independent Review and Policy Changes

By David GreenwaldAugust 6, 200752 comments
imageUC Davis

The recent ruling on last fall’s Tasering of a UCLA student gives us the unusual opportunity to review and scrutinize the police review system in addition to discuss policies on use of force by police departments.

In August of 2006, the fledgling Vanguard, took on a seven-part series of review of the Davis Police Oversight system–evaluating each part and making recommendations for changing it.