Where Were the Regents?
Why would they schedule a meeting of the Regents' Commission on the Future when no permanent Regent would actually attend? Were they planning to come but got put off by what was reportedly UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang's insistence that most of the time be allotted to statements from faculty, staff, and students?
The webcast shows that good talks fell on absent ears. See the texts by Profs. Sharon Farmer and Jack Sutton, History and Sociology; Prof. Claudio Fogu, French and Italian; Prof. Songi Han, Chemisty, Prof. Harry Nelson, Physics; Prof. Mark Srednicki, Phyiscs; Prof. William Warner, English; Prof Elisabeth Weber, German and Slavic Studies. Prof. Yunte Huang of the English Department read a poem. There were many others, including some highly-praised student statements towards the end, and we will post more texts as they come in. We have linked to some excerpts of the post-mortem among some participants.
Our email traffic already favored the view that the UCOF roadshow - like UCOF itself - is a diversion that allows the UC masses to vent while the real work of privatizing UC - making it smaller, more expensive, more oriented towards sponsor and donor money, more cut off from California's diverse majority - goes on behind closed doors. Yesterday was a good day for this suspicion, as the Regents Commission had better things to do than go to their own Commission's forum, like perhaps attend meetings behind closed doors.
It as rude, thoughtless, somewhat insulting, and pretty dumb for the Regents not to mix with the unwashed who actually do the teaching, studying, discovering, and many other necessary things like data entering on hundreds of thousands of tuition checks each and every one of which is written out to "UC Regents." It's dumb because the Regents, if they paid attention, would notice that they are already in the shit with the greater UC community, which regards them as arrogant, out of touch, autocratic, and not too bright about money.
The Regents are legally and procedurally insulated from the University over which they preside, and so may not care too much what the UC community thinks about them. Last summer, when several Faculty Associations wrote to the Regents to ask them to show signs of life in response to the obvious crisis, the joint response from then-Chair Blum and President Yudof included this statement: "We appreciate your sharing your views and we welcome having them, but we do wish to remind you of Bylaw 16.9 of the University, which states that communications from members of the faculty to the Board of Regents must be presented through the President."
This Bylaw is more suited to a caste society than to a learning community. In any case it makes it all the more important that the Regents show up to the meetings they call the rest of us to. If they miss the next UCOF session, they should have to repeal Bylaw 16.9. If they miss a third, they should just go ahead and democratize themselves.
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