You never know what’s in the morning email
Look what we found today! Open publication – Free publishing – More parking Parking Fee Increases
UCLA
Meeting Tonight on the (Postponed) Hotel/Conference Center in the (Reprieved for Now) Faculty Club
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…
Hotel/Conference Center Train Halts; Mishap Averted
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…
UCLA History: Nuclear Reactor
The Daily Bruin last week ran a history of a small nuclear reactor that operated at UCLA from 1959 to 1984. The caption to the photo above read “Thomas E. Hicks (right), engineering professor and then-chief supervisor of the UCLA reactor, and Ronald MacLain, his chief assistant, stand on top of the newly built reactor in December 1960. The nuclear reactor, which had the power of 100 toasters, was small and used mostly for research purposes.” Full story at http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2011/03/small_ucla_reactor_used_by_students_shut_down_in_1984_because_of_potential_safety_hazards_declining_
CPB Report Nixes Hotel/Conference Center Project
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…
Letter by Farseeing Astronomers and Physicists to the Chancellor Concerning Faculty Center Demolition for a Hotel/Conference Center
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…
FAQs On the Faculty Center Replacement Project (FAQsTHNGAAIASYWHSPAATPFOA6)
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…
Ever Heard of UBTI? Those Pushing the Hotel/Conference Center Undoubtedly Have
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…
UCLA History: First Patient
This 1955 photo depicts the first patient to have an operation at the UCLA hospital.
Taxing Credibility?
As earlier posts on this blog have noted, the administration recently circulated an email containing a statement that commercial business was not going to be possible under the plan to build a hotel/conference center to replace the Faculty Center. The no-commercial rationale was based on the idea that if the University took commercial business, it would have to pay taxes. An article in USA Today published about a year ago, however, profiled UCLA – along with other universities – as competing for commercial business and certainly accepting it: Meeting planners cut back on conventions at pricey hotels (excerpt) USA Today,…