faculty center

A public forum was held on UCLA’s proposal to demolish the Faculty Center and replace it with a hotel/conference center. Most – not all – of the public comments and questions opposed the project or raised issues with it. Comments were made by neighborhood residents, local hotel operators, faculty and emeriti, and students. The forum began with comments in support of the project by EVC Scott Waugh. Chancellor Block joined the forum about half way through and indicated he had had airplane trouble that caused his late arrival. The chancellor in brief comments echoed the remarks of EVC Waugh. Below…

Yours truly will be posting the audio from the public forum of earlier this evening on the hotel/conference center that was proposed to replace the Faculty Center. That posting won’t happen until tomorrow. (The audio needs to be converted to video and then divided into segments that meet certain technical limits.) However, one issue that came up this evening was the flexibility of use of the Luskin gift. Did the Luskins exclusively want a hotel/conference center along the lines originally proposed? That question was not precisely answered. There were general comments about donors having particular visions. On March 18, a…

There will be a public forum at the Faculty Club tonight (7-9 PM) on the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center project which – as a prior blog entry indicated – has now be postponed for re-study. Undoubtedly, the announcement of the postponement will take some of the edge off what might have been a very contentious meeting.Yours truly suspects there will requests for clarification of what the postponement means in terms of the time frame involved, about what the process of the re-review will entail – who and how, and about other issues. Will it go as nicely as this? We…

As readers of this blog will know, a public forum on the proposed hotel/conference center to replace the current Faculty Center structure is scheduled for April 6 (7 pm, Faculty Center). This forum was shaping up to be an unpleasant confrontation. However, it appears that the train has been halted before unfortunate consequences ensued. The Council on Planning and Budget’s (CPB’s) negative evaluation of the project described in an earlier post – combined with other communications from faculty and senate committees – seems now to have led to a re-evaluation by the administration. After the CPB report was received by…

The Council on Planning and Budget (CPB) of the Academic Senate yesterday sent the letter below to the chair of the Academic Senate. I have reproduced the text below. Yours truly broke the letter down into more paragraphs than the original for readability on this blog and marked some sections with bold printing for emphasis. In simple terms, the CPB thinks the hotel/conference center project is likely to fail and doesn’t think failure is a good option for UCLA. Here is the CPB letter: Professor Ann KaragozianChair, UCLA Academic Senate Re: Residential Conference Center Proposal Dear Professor Karagozian, On The…

Yours truly was given a letter sent yesterday to the chancellor concerning the Faculty Center affair. The text is below since direct reproduction of the letter (as you can see at right) is difficult to do legibly on this blog: Dear Chancellor Block: Due to the unusual amount of discussion regarding building the proposed residential conference center on the site of the Faculty Center, the faculty within the Department of Physics and Astronomy encouraged a departmental faculty vote to ascertain if there was strong feeling within our department concerning this issue. A ballot was sent out asking whether to urge…

Prof. Dora Costa of Economics has sent yours truly an interesting list of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) about the proposed hotel/conference center slated to replace the Faculty Center. They are reproduced below. Actually, they are not just FAQs. They are FAQsTHNGAAIASYWHSPAATPFOA6 = Frequently Asked Questions That Have No Good Answers Although I Am Sure You Will Hear Some Purported Answers At The Public Forum On April 6th. Why is a luxury hotel a UCLA priority? The whole UC system is facing budget shortfalls. Faculty and staff positions have been cut, employee benefits have been cut, class sizes have increased, and…

If you are wondering, UBTI = Unrelated Business Taxable Income. In the case of UCLA entities – which are normally tax exempt – getting into commercial business renders the activity taxable. The IRS ruling below would seem not only to challenge solicitation or acceptance of such business at the proposed hotel/conference center slated to replace the Faculty Center, it seems also to challenge the kinds of activity going on – or proposed to go on – elsewhere on campus. That would include the “other” hotel/conference center going up in the Northwest area that this blog reported on earlier. See:http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/03/did-you-know-about-other-conference.html The…