faculty center

Normally, elections for office at the UCLA Faculty Center are quiet affairs. However, because of the controversy surrounding the plan to demolish the Center and replace it with a large hotel/conference center, this year is different. If you are a member of the Center, you should have received your ballot by postal mail – if your address is off-campus – or by campus mail. I have an off-campus address and my ballot came at least a week ago. I am told some members have not yet received ballots. The deadline for voting is mid-June. Sorry, I don’t have the exact…

Some background documents regarding the proposed hotel/conference center planned to replace the Faculty Center can be accessed below. There will shortly be focus groups on campus set up on the hotel/conference center issue. If you are part of such a group, or know someone who is, you (or he/she) should be acquainted with the documents below and many others. The Academic Senate website has many pertinent documents, for example. A simple way to track the hotel/conference center issue if you are already on this blog is to type in “faculty center” in the search option and read the resulting entries….

PKF consulting produced a questionable (mild statement) analysis of the proposed hotel/conference center to replace the Faculty Center. Turns out, PKF also is involved in producing a report to justify tax breaks for hotels in downtown LA. Warren Olney did a segment on that issue on “Which Way LA?” on May 9. You can hear the entire broadcast at http://www.kcrw.com/media-player/mediaPlayer2.html?type=audio&id=ww110509do_downtown_la_hotel The description from Which Way LA? is as follows: “David Zahniser… wrote a Times’ story about tax breaks for massive hotels in booming downtown Los Angeles. J.W. Marriot, which opened last year, is reportedly doing well enough to produce some…

The consultant’s report for the hotel/conference center proposed to replace the Faculty Center was premised on 276 rooms. Other numbers of rooms in that range have been reported. Most of us are not in the hotel business and don’t have a sense of scale. So how big is that? The LA Business Journal regularly prints tables showing larger businesses in different sectors. The May 2 issue had a listing of LA County hotels so we can look up hotels in the Westwood area. According to that listing, the Hotel Palomar at 10740 Wilshire Blvd. – walking distance to Westwood Village…

The LA Times today carries a story suggesting that not all major gifts in higher ed need to go to building new structures. Aid to students – which for UC and UCLA becomes more crucial as the sticker price of tuition rises – is an alternative. Any lessons for UCLA fundraising? Read on! Couple donates $110 million for USC undergraduate scholarships: John Mork, a USC alumnus and trustee who made a fortune in the oil industry, says the gift will ‘allow the very best kids to get a degree at USC, whether they can afford it or not.’ Buried in…

This is odd. UCLA produced a strategic plan dated January 6, 2010. In that report on page 10, it refers to a conference center. The word “residential” is not used and, of course, “hotel” is not used. The text on page 10 reads: Conference Center: A conference center at UCLA could serve three purposes: support academic programs by offering a convenient venue for scholarly programs and interaction, serve as a gateway for the Los Angeles Community into UCLA, and establish UCLA as a meeting point for international academic conferences and programs. We should conduct a feasibility study for a conference…

Yours truly doubts that most faculty are aware of the scale of the business enterprises that operate at UCLA. Below you can take a look at the 2008 strategic plan for UCLA Housing and Hospitality. Among other things, on page 9 you will find that the hotel/conference center that was slated to replace the Faculty Center is not so recent. It was first surfaced to faculty about a year ago. But it goes back at least to 2008-09. Open publication – Free publishing – More hospitality These guys are hard to resist!

We all know about the body parts scandal at UCLA. Then there was the scrambled eggs/fertility scandal at UC-Irvine. Now comes word that a former UC-Davis official will be sentenced in June for embezzlement and related offenses. In that case, the head of the Campus Violence Prevention Program for 16 years began to receive attention when a newspaper reported that she had apparently submitted false numbers on campus violence to the feds. That investigation turned up further info that she had a problem with travel reimbursement and had to pay back some money to the university. One would think alarm…