Facing rising rents that are outstripping their pay, a group of Teaching Assistants at UC Santa Cruz launched a grade strike and are demanding a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). Predictably, UCOP has been unsympathetic, and disciplinary actions may come soon. An array of UCSC departments, student organizations, and community groups have Continue reading “Grad. employee protests spreading across UC (updated 2/21/20)”
Category: UC-Santa Cruz
Various UC Campuses Cleared of Anti-Semitism Charges
Inside Higher Ed reported yesterday that UC campuses at Berkeley and Santa Cruz had been cleared of charges of allowing an anti-Semitic atmosphere due to anti-Israel student activities. The campuses received letters from the US Dept. of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) clearing them on free speech grounds. An article appeared later in the LA Times indicating the same conclusion was reached for UC-Irvine.
The Inside Higher Ed article is at http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/08/28/education-dept-rejects-charges-anti-jewish-bias-u-calif-campuses
The LA Times article is at http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-uc-fed-probe-20130829,0,936811.story
You can find an official letter to one of the campuses from OCR through the first link. But the unofficial word from the investigatory team at OCR may be here:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzlfcQ6E_RE?feature=player_detailpage]
Is there something in the air there?
A giant odorous cloud billowed over UC Santa Cruz’s Porter Meadow on Saturday as a few thousand people took a bong hit or two or three during an event that’s evolved into an international holiday for marijuana smokers.
Hoards of mostly college-aged men and women streamed into the grass field in a valley near College Eight throughout the day to celebrate and consume copious amounts of marijuana on April 20 — a date some call “Weed Day” that has come to symbolize a free-for-all smokefest…
Full story at http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_23072047/thousands-light-up-at-uc-santa-cruz-celebrate
There definitely seems to be something in the air:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5oVzbwYWpg?feature=player_detailpage]
Or maybe it’s in the ground:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELDcYugrp3c?feature=player_detailpage]
Who Owns the Course?
Inside Higher Ed today carries a story about concerns at UC-Santa Cruz about the ownership of MOOCs. UC-Santa Cruz is the one UC campus at which the local faculty association has collective bargaining rights:
Faculty union officials in California worry professors who agree to teach free online classes could undermine faculty intellectual property rights and collective bargaining agreements. The union for faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz said earlier this month it could seek a new round of collective bargaining after several professors agreed to teach classes on Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based provider of popular massive open online classes, or MOOCs… The union said the professors lobbied for a 12-year-old California law to guarantee that faculty – not universities – own the intellectual property rights to class lectures and course materials. But before professors can have their courses put on Coursera, they are expected to sign away those rights to the university so the university can give the professors’ work to Coursera…
UC Student Medical Insurance Limits
From the Contra Costa Times:
UC Santa Cruz graduate student Micha Rahder suffers from a rare disorder that requires her to be hooked up to an IV over two days, five to eight hours at a time, every four weeks… In November, she got a letter from the university saying she had used $378,000 of the $400,000 lifetime limit for students on the University of California student health insurance plan (also known as UC SHIP), Radner said. In early January, a little more three years after her first treatment, she received another letter. “It comes from the Office of the President of the University of California and it says, ‘You’ve reached your lifetime maximum benefit. You’re no longer covered under the student insurance plan. Please be advised that all students at the UCs are required to have health insurance in order to be enrolled.’ And that’s all it says. That’s the last line,” said Rahder, who is studying for her doctoral degree in anthropology.
Many students on the UC student health insurance plan don’t know there is a $10,000 a year cap on annual prescriptions and a $400,000 lifetime limit on all medical benefits…
Full story at http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_22453646/health-care-limits-leave-some-students-few-options
One Suspects We Will Be Hearing More About This Issue
Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/20/12
UCLA Faculty Leader Found to Have Wronged Professor to Appease Jewish Group
By Peter Schmidt
A faculty panel at the University of California at Los Angeles has admonished the chairman of the university’s Academic Senate for violating the rights of an associate professor who had been accused by an outside advocacy group of misusing his position to call for a boycott of Israel. In a letter issued this month, the UCLA Academic Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom held that the Senate’s chairman, Andrew F. Leuchter, was wrong to have told the advocacy group and the news media that David Delgado Shorter, an associate professor of world arts and cultures, should not have posted a link to a boycott-Israel campaign on a course Web site and regretted doing so.
Mr. Shorter, who had stood by his decision to post the link and had denied ever apologizing for it, on Wednesday filed a formal grievance with the Senate’s Committee on Privilege and Tenure urging it to formally censure Dr. Leuchter, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. The grievance accuses Dr. Leuchter of showing disregard for academic freedom and of violating the university’s ethics code himself by using his position for political purposes. In an e-mail sent to The Chronicle on Friday, Dr. Leuchter thanked the Committee on Academic Freedom for its perspective but said, “I strongly support academic freedom.” In an e-mail sent in May, Dr. Leuchter said Mr. Shorter had never been censured and the complaint against Mr. Shorter “was resolved informally, but effectively and appropriately, with Professor Shorter’s department chair simply speaking to him about it.”
The controversy over Mr. Shorter stemmed from his posting of a link to the boycott-Israel campaign on the Web site for course titled “Tribal Worldviews,” which he taught last winter. In a letter sent to University of California officials in March, the Amcha Initiative, an advocacy group that regards some criticism of Israel on college campuses as crossing the line into anti-Semitism, asked if Mr. Shorter’s promotion of the academic and cultural boycott of Israel was protected by the university’s rules of academic freedom. Mr. Shorter had defended the link to the boycott campaign as one of many links he posted to direct students to resources for class discussions on cultural boycotts and related matters…
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer in Hebrew and Jewish studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz who is a co-founder of the Amcha Initiative, on Friday expressed frustration that the debate had become focused on the university’s treatment of Mr. Shorter rather than the bigger question of whether the university’s ethics code should allow professors to advocate on behalf of a boycott of Israel. She said her group had never asked for Mr. Shorter to be investigated or disciplined. “There are many Shorters,” she said. “This particular incident was just an example we have brought. It is a huge issue. It is not just about a Web site. It is about what is happening in the classroom.”
More and More Getting Off Scale
The Daily Bruin today has a piece on proposals for dealing with faculty salary scales which have grown increasingly outmoded. As the table, based on a graphic in the Bruin, illustrates, most faculty at UCLA are paid off-scale. The University, for recruitment and retention purposes, tries to meet the external academic labor market. In effect, since there are only so many dollars to go around, paying more than the official scale has to mean a higher student/teacher ratio than would otherwise prevail.
Percent of faculty off scale as of 10/2010:
Merced 88%
UCLA 80%
Santa Cruz 73%
Berkeley 72%
Irvine 66%
Santa Barbara 66%
San Diego 64%
Riverside 59%
Davis 52%
The Bruin article is at http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2012/02/uc_considers_new_salary_scale_system
Unlimited Access?
Apparently not at UC-Santa Cruz tomorrow.
Organizers of the group that aims to shut down UC Santa Cruz will hold rallies at 4:30 a.m., noon and 5 p.m. Thursday at UCSC, according to a release from Occupy Education. The release said a group of UCSC students, workers and community members have decided on a strike to shut down the campus starting at 4:30 a.m.
Other that emergency vehicles, residents on campus and necessary exceptions, all traffic onto campus will be blocked, the release continued…
Full story at http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_20066765
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qslQJLnk0qw&w=320&h=195]
Update: Car plows through Occupy Education demonstrators blocking entrance to UCSC campus
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_20078788
Update: Car plows through Occupy Education demonstrators blocking entrance to UCSC campus
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_20078788
Audio of Regents Meeting on Budget, 3-16-11, For Your Listening Pleasure
The Regents meeting this morning dealt with budgetary issues. There were reports by three chancellors (from Santa Cruz, Irvine, and Berkeley) on the impact of the budget squeeze on their campuses. The Regents had various reactions to the situation. Plans were offered by Peter Taylor to generate more cash through portfolio management. He argued that even though somewhat more risk was entailed, the proposals were sufficiently conservative to insulate UC from a crisis.
There was discussion of a new plan under which UCOP would pass state funding down to the campus level so that campuses would operate more autonomously. The campuses would then pay a tax to support UCOP. It was said by President Yudof that quasi-mandates by the legislature could no longer be honored automatically, given the fund cutbacks from the state. Students urged the Regents to support the governor’s proposed tax extensions, assuming these make it to the ballot. There was also a brief reference to the anti-Asian YouTube issue at UCLA. (See the earlier post.)
The videos (actually audios with a still picture) below cover the morning session on the budget in nine parts. There was a continuation in the afternoon. Other obligations prevented yours truly from recording that session. I again raise the question of why the audio of Regents meetings is only streamed live and not archived online for future use.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
Part 6:
Part 7:
Part 8:
Part 9 (end):
UPDATE: A news account of the meeting is at http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_17626656
Out of Time? How Detailed a PEB Review Will UCLA Have on October 14?
UC-Santa Cruz’s Academic Senate presented its program on the recommendations of the Post-Employment Benefits (PEB) Task Force. As noted in a prior posting, UCLA has its session scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 14, 10 AM, Royce Hall. The Santa Cruz program apparently featured a detailed and extensive set of slides, available at
http://senate.ucsc.edu/PEB/CFW%20PEB%2017CFWslides0920.pdf
If you click on that link, you will see that the slides are complicated as they work through the implications of the various pension options. They could not have been presented in a brief time period and must have been accompanied by a detailed oral narration. It is not clear to me that the UCLA program agenda will allow sufficient time for any such discussion. I note that Shane White, chair of the UCLA Faculty Welfare Committee and past chair of UCFW, has only 10 minutes to present. Yet he is very knowledgeable about the PEB and was involved in the systemwide Senate process.
The UCLA agenda is at http://www.senate.ucla.edu/UCLAPEBTownHallAgenda_10-14-10.htm