UC

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Rolling Out the Welcome Wagon for Janet

Byuclafaculty

From the Daily Bruin: The [UCLA] undergraduate student government plans to vote at its Tuesday meeting on whether it should express no confidence in Janet Napolitano’s current ability to serve University of California students as UC president. A resolution about Napolitano, which was drafted by multiple members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, calls for the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and Arizona governor to comply with a list of demands compiled by undocumented students across the UC campuses. According to the resolution, students demand that Napolitano hold town halls and meet with undocumented students when she…

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A Sound Choice

Byuclafaculty

Carl Haber One of the MacArthur Fellows announced yesterday is Carl Haber of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, one of the labs managed by UC.  His prize was for his techniques of rescuing and restoring old sound recordings.  You can read more about him at http://www.macfound.org/fellows/892/. And you can hear his explanation of what he does at:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkyC5qo94b0?feature=player_detailpage]

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Retiree Health Changes

Byuclafaculty

Yesterday, this blog noted the upcoming UC open enrollment period and changes in the various health care options. Among them were what appeared to be rather drastic changes for retirees living outside California. One wonders whether the court ruling noted below might have some relevance for the ability of UC to make such changes.  Any legal scholars want to chime in?  Comments welcome. A superior court judge overturned a freeze on retiree health care for Los Angeles city attorneys this month, citing some of the same case law that made public pensions a vested right that can only be cut…

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Health Insurance Open Enrollment

Byuclafaculty

You have undoubtedly been getting emails and other material pointing to open enrollment during October 28-November 26, 2013. There are important changes in various health insurance options. If you are a retiree who lives outside of California, it is really important because there are major changes coming. Essentially, you will be getting a UC contribution towards an exchange. Info at atyourservice.ucop.edu/oe/medical Just a reminder:

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Cautious statement by new UC president

Byuclafaculty

Napolitano at recent Regents meeting Incoming UC president Janet Napolitano was interviewed by NPR for “Morning Edition” which aired today.  Most of the interview was about her experience at the Dept. of Homeland Security. On the UC appointment, she said little about the Obama higher ed proposals other than she was aware of them including costs of tuition, we are a public university, etc. She said she would spend her initial time at UC listening and asking questions. You can hear the UC portion of the interview at the link below: UPDATE: VP Biden says Napolitano should be on US…

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Supreme Court Challenge to Michigan Proposition Could Void Prop 209

Byuclafaculty

Prop 209, banning affirmative action in public university admissions, was passed by California voters in 1996.  The final vote count in favor was actually slightly higher than the chart here – from preliminary data shortly after the election – shows.  (54.6% yes rather than 54.5%.)  Prop 209’s history goes back to an earlier action by the Regents banning affirmative action at UC.  (The Regents later repealed the ban but, by that time, Prop 209 took precedence and the repeal had no effect.) The LA Times today carries a report of a challenge at the Supreme Court to a similar proposition…

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Public-Private Pay

Byuclafaculty

From time to time, news sources such as the Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Chronicle update their databases of pay of state employees including UC. Yours truly from time to time has posted objections on privacy and ID theft grounds to such posting and has challenged the news sources to post their own payroll data.  Not surprisingly, they have yet to agree – and for good reason. It’s not that there cannot be salary abuses – either in the public or the private sector.  But there are ways to deal with that problem, mainly by posting pay by occupation…

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Audit coming to Berkeley and one other UC campus

Byuclafaculty

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, after a hearing at the legislature on complaints that UC-Berkeley failed to follow up adequately on student allegations of sexual assault, there will be an audit there and one other yet-to-be-named UC campus.  Excerpt: …The audit will take up to seven months and will look at practices at UC Berkeley and three other campuses to be determined: one at UC and two at CSU. Representatives of UC and CSU at the hearing were clearly moved by the testimony and said they would cooperate with the audit. “As a woman, as a mother who has a daughter…

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Regents: Have We Got a Deal for You!!

Byuclafaculty

The image shown here is from a November 2004 video of a Santa Monica city council meeting, which appears to be the first such meeting the city videoed.  It is still on the web nine years after the event.  In contrast, the stated policy for Regents meetings is that video will be preserved for one year only.    The current policy also seems to mean that audio of the event as a file is not being made available as a public document as it was before the current calendar year.  To obtain the audio to archive under current policy –…

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Tilt!

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today runs a lengthy piece on a journal article concerning responses of whites to UC admissions criteria.  Specifically, whites in California are less likely to favor objective measures such as test scores for admission – criteria seemingly free of bias and identified as meritocratic – when it is pointed out that Asians do particularly well on such criteria.  Whites “primed” with the Asian performance results then tilt toward using fuzzier concepts such as “leadership” as criteria for admissions. You can find the piece at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/13/white-definitions-merit-and-admissions-change-when-they-think-about-asian-americans. The underlying journal article is at http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/670664. Which only goes to show: