Students

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?

On Friday a very prestigious group of UC Davis professors came to the defense of incoming Chancellor Linda Katehi.  Unfortunately, like many who have come to her defense, they have failed to address the key issues that have brought questions.

The bottom line I think for myself is that at first the chancellor did not answer questions about what happened during her tenure at the University of Illinois.  When she did, her answers seemed in contradiction to the facts that emerged.  In short, she has not been forthcoming with information that explains her exact role.  While I agree that nothing has come forward is a smoking gun in terms of her involvement, at the same time the answers and statements that she has given have failed to put this issue to rest.

I wanted to wait until UC Davis sent me Chancellor Katehi’s response before I opined in this matter.  Perhaps she would have the one explanation that made sense of this entire thing. But her response is more of the same: denial or responsibility even as the evidence begins to mount that castes doubt on her claims.

Here is her full statement, you can decide yourself based on the evidence if it is believable:

This morning’s Chicago Tribune has now for the first time directly linked incoming UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to the growing University of Illinois influence peddling scandal.

The revelations link a politically connected Greek Orthodox priest trying to get help for the daughter of a family friend so that she could attending the University of Illinois.  In the course of doing so he reached out to a campaign adviser to State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.  A few months later, that priest aided Giannoulias with a large fundraiser that needed him at least $120,000, according to the Tribune article.

It would require the willing suspension of disbelief to buy the account offered by newly appointed University of California (UC) Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi that she was unaware of the admissions scandal that is now engulfing her current employer, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne (UIUC).

For weeks now, the Chicago Tribune has detailed the well established and entrenched practice of circumventing the normal admissions process for the sons and daughters of the wealthy and powerful.

“I want to be clear to you and others at UC Davis that I was not involved in the admissions decisions that were the subject of the Tribune’s “Clout Goes to College” investigation.”

In a week that featured a major press conference led by Senator Leland Yee and featuring Democrats and Republicans from both houses in the legislature introducing a constitutional amendment that would open up the University of California to oversight from the state legislature, now we have two letters, one from President Mark Yudof and the other from Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Enrique Lavernia.  The letters warn of the possibility of furloughs, pay cuts, and a loss of 20 percent of the state general fund support for the UC Davis campus.

Vice Chacellor Lavernia writes:

Yesterday a bipartisan group of State legislators introduced a Constitutional Amendment to allow greater public oversight and accountability of the University of California in response to a number of egregious actions by the UC Board of Regents, including recent exorbitant executive pay hikes.

SCA 21, authored by Senators Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) and Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) and ACA 24, authored by Assemblymembers Brian Nestande (R-Palm Desert) and Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge), would remove the Regents autonomy and allow the Legislature to enact statutes affecting UC policy, similar to authority granted over the California State University.  If approved by two-thirds of the Legislature, the measure would be put before the voters for final approval.

Last July across the state, UC service workers went on strike because these workers were being paid what they described as poverty wages.  The worker’s union went as far to produce an internet video that showed the life of one of their workers and the conditions that they lived in as a result of the wages and benefits that the richest and finest higher education system in the world offered to its lowest tiered workers.

We were also facing just the beginning of an economic downturn and students were facing decreasing numbers and a double-digit student fee increase.

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.