All of the westbound lanes on Wilshire Boulevard will be closed at the I-405 undercrossing on the nights of March 7th (that’s tonight!), March 9th and March 19th from 10 pm until 6 am. Best advice for night owls is to be on your merry way before 10 pm:
UCLA in 1929 as seen from Sunset Reservoir
From the Sacramento Bee’s AM Alert today:PEPPER SPRAY – Cruz Reynoso’s probe of the Nov. 18 incident at UC Davis in which campus police used pepper spray on protesting students was scheduled for release today – but now has been postponed. A task force headed by the former state Supreme Court justice was asked to make recommendations on handling protests to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. But the report has been delayed pending legal action by the union for campus officers, who want to prevent it from being made public.Available at http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/03/am-alert-261.html Update: A later news item today indicates the judge in the…
From the Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Alert story about yesterday’s rally at the state capitol: College students and activists are rallying today in Sacramento to protest state budget cuts in higher education. They will be joined at one Capitol rally by Democratic legislative leaders who negotiated budgets that included those cuts in recent years. It’s one example of the murky budget politics surrounding higher education… Full story at: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/03/college-students-and-activists-are.html It’s nice to be able to be on both sides: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqIpi6sg&w=320&h=195]Update: Dan Walters, a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, makes the same point today in an op ed that concludes with the…
After a series of racial incidents on various campuses (including UCLA), UCOP and the Regents hired a consultant, Susan Rankin of Penn State, to do a “campus climate survey.” She has done such survey work at other universities in different parts of the U.S. in recent years. This is an expensive endeavor. I have been told informally that the cost is something like half a million dollars. The survey instrument draft proposal is quite lengthy and there have been concerns about participation rates for faculty, staff, and students. Participation will be voluntary and anonymous. Each campus will have a survey….
Inside Higher Ed today pointed to an article from the San Jose Mercury-News noting that for certain families, it’s cheaper to go to Harvard than to CSU or UC. The issue is complicated. Not all private universities offer the reductions in sticker price tuition that Harvard does (and not everyone gets into private universities that do). An interesting question is what happens at lower incomes than the $130,000 family income cited in the article. Public universities and privates (if they have the resources) can lower tuition to zero. Publics may have more problems in giving the full ride (tuition, housing,…
The state capitol today may be occupied by the 99%. But it is unlikely that the occupancy rate for the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center will be that high. Keep your eye on that variable when the business plan for the project is released. As we noted yesterday and the day before, we still have not seen the business plan for the hotel/conference center, although the UCLA Faculty Association requested it long ago and although the next Regents meeting is coming up towards the end of March. If the plan is not released soon, it won’t be eligible for consideration by…
A post on this blog yesterday noted that with the upcoming Regents meeting in late March, UCLA will soon have to release its business plan for the proposed hotel/conference center if it wants to get it on the agenda. So far, no plan has been released despite an official public records request for a copy from the UCLA Faculty Association. The preliminary description of the proposal indicated that the hotel/conference center would take only non-commercial business. An example could be a campus-sponsored research conference and participants in such events. The non-commercial limitation allows for tax-exempt financing but limits the potential…
The saga of efforts to create another UC med school continues. Does every campus have to have one? ==============…While acknowledging he hasn’t looked at the school’s merits, (Governor) Brown said he is less inclined to fund it when the University of California regents haven’t committed any of the system’s state funding to the school. The medical school has been in the works for years and originally was set to open this year. But so far, UCR officials have not been able to secure ongoing state funding. UCR leaders are pushing ahead with private fundraising — the goal is $10 million a…
The next Regents meeting is scheduled for March 27-29. If UCLA wants to get its hotel/conference center proposal on the agenda – which is typically published online by the Regents about two weeks before each meeting – it will soon have to unveil its business plan. The UCLA Faculty Association has been requesting that plan for months, so far without results. There are many elements of the new plan to consider. One difference between the original plan, which would have been constructed on the Faculty Center site, is replacement parking. The original site would have displaced some ground-level parking next…
