From: "Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor"
Date: January 20, 2011 10:02:24 AM PST
To: "Staff, All Academic Titles
Subject: Appointment of the Vice-Chancellor Administration and Finance
It gives me very great pleasure to announce the appointment of John Wilton as Vice Chancellor - Administration and Finance. John was identified to fill this critical position for the Berkeley campus from a field of outstanding candidates in a nation-wide search following the move of Nathan Brostrom to the Office of the President. John is expected to begin his new position on February 1st.
John Wilton has extensive experience in both the public and private sector. For almost 25 years, he worked at the World Bank - a complex, global organization with an annual budget of $2Billion that provides low-interest loans, interest-free credits, grants and policy advice to developing countries for a wide array of purposes to assist their advancement, including in education. While there, he worked in most parts of the Bank, including operations in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe as well as in the Economic Research and Treasury departments. He also undertook two overseas assignments working on specific economic policy issues in Indonesia and the broader set of issues related to the process of transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe. In 2002, he became Vice President for Strategy, Finance and Risk, and two years later was named Chief Financial Officer. During this time he was responsible for defining the Bank's overall business strategy, overseeing its financial policies and risk management functions, and ensuring that the administrative budget was consistent with the Bank's financial outlook and aligned with its strategic priorities. He oversaw a team of over 400 staff at the World Bank.
Since leaving the Bank in 2006, John has worked as a Managing Director and the Director of International Research for Farallon Capital Management LLC, a global multi-strategy US-based investment manager. He was also a consultant to Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm. John provided these firms with global macroeconomic advice and research on specific issues.
John grew up and was educated in the United Kingdom, where he attended the University of Sussex, receiving his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in economics and statistics. He then spent two years working as an economist for the Government of Tanzania before returning to the UK to study at the University of Cambridge for his PhD in economics. He was working on his doctoral degree when he left to join the World Bank.
John will play an instrumental leadership role at UC Berkeley at a time of continuing and challenging resource constraints, partnering with the Chancellor and the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost to set long-range administrative and financial goals, and in management of the campus, the development of campus policies, and the distribution and utilization of financial, capital and human resources.
This Vice Chancellor position has broadened to include leadership of increasingly urgent campus priorities: the continuing design and implementation of Operational Excellence, the campus's initiative to reduce costs and improve campus operations; stabilization of the budget; and the establishment of a sustainable financial model for the future. The focus on these goals as the immediate agenda led to a change in title from Vice Chancellor-Administration to Vice Chancellor-Administration and Finance. Associate Vice Chancellor Erin Gore will continue to serve as chief financial officer, reporting directly to John.
I am most grateful to Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary and Associate Vice Chancellor, Business and Administrative Services, Ron Coley, who have set aside some of their other priorities to help us manage this critical portfolio, while we searched to fill this position.
I also want to express my thanks to the search committee, which was aided by the consulting firm of Spencer Stuart, for their outstanding work in advising me on this appointment.
Please join me in warmly welcoming John Wilton to UC Berkeley.
A press release announcing the appointment will be posted later today on the campus NewsCenter
Robert J. Birgeneau
Chancellor
Showing posts with label Berkeley campus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Berkeley campus. Show all posts
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Saturday, December 12, 2009
SAVE on Berkeley Violence (Dec. 12)
We on the coordinating council of SAVE condemn acts of violence taken against persons or property on our campus. We were shocked about police violence on campus a few weeks ago, and are now extremely saddened by the attack to the Chancellor's house by a small group of protesters yesterday night. This is our campus by virtue of our shared responsibility to the rights of free speech and personal safety for all. Actions that address the terrible crisis we currently face through violence, be it instigated by police or protesters, are in our view fundamentally at odds with our goal of protecting and enhancing public education as itself a fundamental public right.
There are reasons for feelings of shock, dismay, and sadness in response to events of the past weeks, but we ask the campus community, as we ask ourselves, to consider deeply what violence means on and around our campus. We urge peaceful discussion, debate, and negotiation as we try to work through the problems facing UC and beyond. The question of violence itself should be part of these discussions, as should ways to address the corrosive divisions felt by many across campus.
saveuc.org
There are reasons for feelings of shock, dismay, and sadness in response to events of the past weeks, but we ask the campus community, as we ask ourselves, to consider deeply what violence means on and around our campus. We urge peaceful discussion, debate, and negotiation as we try to work through the problems facing UC and beyond. The question of violence itself should be part of these discussions, as should ways to address the corrosive divisions felt by many across campus.
saveuc.org
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Student Eyewitness Accounts of UC Protests
From Los Angeles
Thursday November 19, 2009
Approximately 2:30pm – 5:30pm
University of California, Los Angeles
Covel Commons Parking Garage
From Los Angeles
At approximately 2pm on Thursday November 19, I joined a group of students moving from the protest rally in the courtyard of Covel Commons (which convened at noon), to peacefully protest the decision of the UC Regents by blocking the parking garage exits around the back. I was incredibly impressed by how organized the students were, as we were lead by a few student leaders with a megaphone who dispersed us to the various exits and instructed us to gather at the exit and to remain sitting at all times, in order to prevent any misunderstandings about that fact that this was a peaceful protest. I sat with these students singing protest songs and chanting for about an hour and a half, while many police officers formed a line behind a barricade at the exit behind us. At no point did the protestors get violent or aggressive, nor did the size of the crowd seem unmanageable. The student leaders with the megaphone continued to direct the protestors to stay seated and to show that this was a peaceful protest. As the police officers continued to line up behind us, the student leaders began announcing to the protestors that the police were not our enemies but our “brothers,” and not to direct any aggression towards them.
After about one hour, we had received a report from a number of students coming down the hill that that police officers were using pepper spray on another group of protestors up the hill from us (at the other garage exit), and that they were threatening to arrest us. At this point a significant group of students quickly stood up and left out of fear of being physically harmed or arrested, while a number of other students took their places. At this point, the student leaders with the megaphone announced that if the police began arresting us, we would first be given a warning at which point we had the option to leave, and that if we were told that we were under arrest, we were not to resist, but to calmly place both wrists in front of us. This announcement was made at least twice, emphasizing not to resist arrest, but to calmly place our wrists in front of us. One other student announced that if we were arrested, they would probably let us off that same day, but they could not guarantee anything.
After sitting a bit longer at this exit, I got up to get some water and join some friends in the courtyard at Covel Commons. When I arrived at the courtyard there was a large group of students surrounding a van and gathered in the courtyard, all standing peacefully, many chanting, many having conversations with each other. I was told by one of my friends that they had just been pepper sprayed a few minutes earlier. After going into the store in the courtyard to purchase some water, I came out to witness a female regent being escorted by police officers from the van into the building. While the protestors gathered around and followed the police officers and regent, chanting “shame on you” and other such chants. As the police quickly escorted the woman into the building, the protestors did not display any violent or threatening behavior, with the exception of one apple core I witnessed being thrown by someone in the crowd towards the police officers (but did not hit anyone).
After remaining in the courtyard for a while longer, I returned to the parking garage exit where I was initially sitting earlier and stood across from those sitting at the exit on the lawn (just a few feet away from the parking garage exit) behind a set of barricades. My friends (fellow graduate students) and I stood there for a long time (until approximately 4:30 pm) with our placards, and chanted with the students still sitting peacefully at the garage exit. Just as when I had left that area, all the protestors remained seated, displaying dissent by singing and chanting, while maintaining a peaceful atmosphere. After some time, however, I heard a number of taser guns being turned on, and saw the line of police officers advancing towards the student who were seated. I heard a student next to me say that the police were now threatening to use rubber bullets if the students did not move. Suddenly, many of the students in the exit stood up as I heard screaming and panicked yelling. I heard a number of students scream that the students were being tased. I heard the buzz of the taser guns, and I witnessed one student getting tased through the panicked crowd of students. The student I saw being tased was closest to the line of police officers and was sitting down when he began being tased, I saw that he was wearing an orange shirt and his arms were flailing as he was lying on the ground. I also witnessed a female police officer kick a male student in his side as he was seated. At no point did I see any students act violently or give cause for such an aggressive response, these students were being attacked by police officers as they were sitting down because they would not move. The scene was truly horrifying, and I was in complete shock at what I was seeing. I heard many of the students pleading with the officers to stop, yelling that this was a peaceful protest, and chanting, “We are students, Not enemies!” I saw many of the students crying and holding each other, many were my own students that I had had in previous classes that I taught. I remember hearing one of my own former female students yelling, “Can’t you understand, all we want is an education, put away your weapons!!” As the police officers pushed forward to clear the exit of the garage, they maintained their line facing the gathering of students who were now all standing up. I joined the protestors facing the line of police officers, as we chanted “We are students, not criminals!” and “We live here, you go home!” Many of the students moved nearby to the sidewalk of the road with their signs, as cars honked in support of the demonstration. At this point there seemed to be more police officers than students. The police officers continued to advance forward, pushing the protestors backwards down the hill. I witnessed one female student fall to the floor from the force of the police officers advancing, prompting students to yell back at the police to stop the pushing. As it began getting dark, I finally left the scene to go home, while many students remained there and continued to chant. The line of police officers also remained there and continued to advance down the hill, pushing the protestors, even though the garage exit was no longer blocked and all the regents had left.
From Los Angeles
On my way back from the protest, a bit before 3pm, I was walking down the road at the same moment that the UC regents' vans emerged from the underground parking lot under Covel Commons. A few students shouted, There are the regents! and a number of us (perhaps fifteen, there weren't many people there at that moment) began to shout, Shame on you! at the regents in the vans. There were students sitting peacefully in the middle of the road, and some police approached them and moved some of them out of the way at the same time, I believe, that the vans moved around them, because I had been standing behind the vans, and I remember the vans were not stuck there very long. After the vans drove down the road, the police were trying to move more people, a student called for everyone to sit, and then the next thing I know is I hear this clicking sound over and over again right in front of me, and I see that there are police officers standing over students, a bunch of students are screaming, and the clicking goes on. I hear a girl scream, He can't stand up, and the police officer say, Get up. I see a guy (the young black man from the photos) trying to stand up, a number of other people are helping him up, he is shaky and his legs are clearly weak because he has to lean on other students to get up. There is also a small Asian girl who is sobbing, and a student screams, This girl was tasered and this guy was tasered too! and a bunch of students standing around are shocked, upset, a couple people are crying, and the police begin retreating backwards, still facing the students, up the hill. Then a student jumps in the middle of the road and begins screaming some kind of chant, and a bunch of other people, angry, respond.
The young black student who was tased from the images was holding his right hand over his heart and sobbing, and then holding the Asian girl who was also crying. The guy seemed very shaky, and I went over to them and asked the guy (I believe his name, from the caption of those photos, is Rusty/Rustin O'Neill) where he had been tasered, and he said a bunch of times, maybe four or five times or more, over his heart, which still hurt. A CNN article mentions a training bulletin from the taser company that explicitly states that tasing on the chest is prohibited, and officers who do it will be in risk of a lawsuit, given the danger of doing such a thing and on the grounds of excessive force. I looked at the girl's arms and they were all red and there were almost welts rising from the officer's manhandling of her. She said she received one taser shock on her left arm, around the elbow crook. The friend I was standing with had videotaped the whole thing on his camera and gave the two of them his information, and I suggested they both go to the hospital. Shortly after this, a police car drove up the road, and, seeing the bunch of students in the road, put on his lights and said, over the intercom, to get out of the road. At this point however, students were so irate and so shocked by the brutality they just witnessed that there was a kind of reckless tension in the air-- they sat down and shouted at the police car in anger. The police car retreated down the road the way it had arrived.
From Berkeley
Hi,
I understand that you are each undertaking reviews of the police action on UC Berkeley's campus on Friday. I write to you as a witness. At around 1:30 pm on Friday, I was among the students at the Southwest corner of Wheeler Hall. The police (including Ryobi, Wong, and Parnelle of UCPD and Jackson of Berkeley PD) engaged us in a tense standoff.
Officer Jackson introduced himself and shook hands with the student next to me. He said that we should all get to know each other "in case we have to get intimate later." At the point he smiled menacingly and tapped his baton.
The police told us to move backward. They did not say that we were illegally assembled. They merely said, "Move." We refused to move. All present were non-violent. I very consciously kept my hands down at my sides, even as the officers I named above approached us with their batons ready.
They began to jab at us and then to strike us with their batons. We did not fight them. We moved neither toward them nor away. To my right was a student being brutally beaten by officer Parnelle. To my left, a student beaten by officer Jackson. Officer Wong repeatedly struck me with his baton. Another officer, whose name I did not catch, grabbed the others by their collars and pulled them away from us.
We did not follow them nor strike out at them. We clearly posed them no threat.
Thank you very much for your work in both of your investigations. I will be filing a complaint with UCPD against Officer Wong. If there is anything else I can do to aid your investigations, please let me know.
From Berkeley
My name is Tony Bezsylko. I am a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley, a member of UAW Local 2865 and a member of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee.
I have been involved in the political actions on campus this term, including Friday's action. My reasons for being involved in these actions all have to do with my concern for public education, and my reasons for directing these actions towards UC administration have to do with the fact that the administration is not aligning themselves strongly enough with interests of public education. The short of it is that we, and I think that I safely speak for all of us, want you and the rest of UC administration helping us to organize a movement to save public education. We want you at the rallies, we want you on the picket lines, we want you walking with us at the marches. I, however, do not write to you now about these matters. I write to you now to tell you about the nature of the police's response, as well as your response, to Friday's action.
On Friday I was a victim of and a witness to countless acts of police brutality. Those of us outside of Wheeler Hall were upset, but we were completely committed to a peaceful protest (saying so much explicitly in our chants and implicitly by sitting down on the line). The police, and you, were completely oblivious to the commitment of everyone involved, including those inside Wheeler, to a peaceful action. The occupation, though indeed aggressive, was an act of civil, nonviolent disobedience.
Now I understand that it was a chaotic situation, and I understand that the police involved were nervous and frightened. But their actions were grossly disproportionate in degree of aggression compared to that of our actions.
The worst incident I experienced was on the southeast side of Wheeler Hall. We were holding our line, locked in arms, in some places a few people deep. There were extremely thin parts of our line where police could have stepped through very easily by gently moving us aside. They chose not to do this. They chose to barrel their way through one of the thicker parts of the line using batons against stationary, unarmed students. Once this happened there was panic everywhere. I, and everyone around me, was all of a sudden being struck in the back and being attacked from the front by police. I saw one protester on the ground beaten by two police officers. Some folks standing right next to him pulled him up so he could run away before sustaining any more injuries.
I could go on for many paragraphs detailing what I saw and what trusted friends told me they saw. If you have not seen the video footage of some of these incidents, I encourage you to watch it. These actions by the police in response to a peaceful protest were extremely ugly. And not only was your approval of these actions equally ugly, so was your post-protest statement that the "wheeler hall protest ended peacefully" and that "a few members of our campus community may have found themselves in conflict with law enforcement officers." We are very grateful that all of the occupiers were not hurt, but it is a straightforward lie to say that the day's action ended peacefully. My account in the paragraph above shows this much. That account also refutes the second quote from your email. It was not a "a few members of our campus community" who were physically harmed. It was quite likely somewhere around 100 members of our campus community who were physically harmed by police, and, really, by you and your decisions about how to handle the situation. Lastly, my account also refutes your characterization of what happened as finding oneself "in conflict with law enforcement officers." Conflict can of course mean any number of things. The kind of conflict that was taking place was violent conflict involving physical harm.
I demand that you immediately issue a new statement about these extremely important issues. Trying to brush them under the rug as you are doing is not going to do anything but deepen the rift between UC administration and the rest of the university, including faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and staff. Acknowledgment is the first step to dealing with every conflict. This is something that you have failed to pay attention to in both your dealings with Friday's action as well as with the current crisis in public education.
Sincerely,
Tony Bezsylko
From Berkeley
I am writing in regards to my experience Friday November 20th as a student observer outside Wheeler Hall. I was horrified as I watched the police using excessive force on students. One particular incident I observed at very close proximity occurred on the East side of Wheeler Hall around 5:00 pm.
I had been present since about 11:00 am on the West side of the building-standing along with fellow graduate students and many undergraduates who I teach as a Graduate Student Instructor. I did not observe any acts of student aggression- we spent many hours standing, chanting and signing, keeping each other dry from the rain, and sharing food and coffee.
Around 5:00 I moved locations to the east side of Wheeler. I soon learned that a colleague in my doctoral program had been knocked to the ground and dragged by an officer, completely unprovoked. I stood next to her listening to the story when officers in riot gear began to head towards us. Although there were many open areas for the new police shift to enter, they chose to enter directly through the crowd of students. Without any warning or explanation, a group of police dressed in full riot gear, flaunting batons and rubber bullet guns, headed straight at where I was standing. Things became a violent blur as I heard students screaming and I saw the student next to me hit by an officer with a baton. I ran from the scene as soon as I could get out, terrified that my friends had been attacked or hurt. Soon after, I left campus, literally shaking from anxiety. It was one of the most violet moments of my life.
As a student and graduate student teacher I was deeply concerned for the safety of those around me- as the police presence only heightened any threat to student safety on campus and by no means provided protection or peace for us. I truly hope that the university administration takes these unprovoked acts of violence performed on students by officers seriously, and respond differently in the future to non-violent demonstrations on campus. Thank you for your time and attention.
From Berkeley
I am a third year student at UCB, and I was actively present in the solidarity protests around Wheeler Hall on Friday. I spent most of my time predominantly on the North East side of Wheeler. I witnessed and was the victim of the excessive use of force by both UCPD and Berkeley PD. At about 5 o¹clock I was in the front row of a large mass of arm-linked students standing in solidarity with the occupation. The cops repeatedly looked at me and other students and warned us not to move forward otherwise we would be beaten by the batons. So we did not move. Regardless however, a little later on the cops did choose to beat in the process of putting up another barricade between us and public space. They started to hit students. Since I was in the front, I took a huge brunt of the blows- to my arms, ribs, belly, and hands. I was pushed to the ground as students were falling on top of me. I covered my head. Cops were continuing to hit students over me. They would not stop. Eventually a student managed to help pull me up at which time I retreated a bit and let other students move forward. The hitting continued. I also witnessed another injury occur earlier on while blocking a truck bringing barricades to the NE side of Wheeler. Students linked arms around the truck. A cop tried to break through the arms of two people. A girl started screaming that the cop was crushing her fingers or hand. In the same confrontation, about 7 cops broke through solidarity lines outside the yellow caution lines and dragged some students into the 똠op¹ area and started to beat them while they were on the ground defenseless. What I witnessed on Friday was nonviolent students standing in solidarity (on supposedly public space) and in turn being abused and violated by cops from both UCPD and Berkeley PD. This certainly was not the appropriate application of force as the students were always non-violent. Claims that cops and barricades were necessary to control the crowd and discourage violence are inadequate and do not fully acknowledge the Manichean violence upon students taken by the police forces. This is unacceptable, and should be publicly acknowledged and interrogated and exposed for what they really were.
Thursday November 19, 2009
Approximately 2:30pm – 5:30pm
University of California, Los Angeles
Covel Commons Parking Garage
From Los Angeles
At approximately 2pm on Thursday November 19, I joined a group of students moving from the protest rally in the courtyard of Covel Commons (which convened at noon), to peacefully protest the decision of the UC Regents by blocking the parking garage exits around the back. I was incredibly impressed by how organized the students were, as we were lead by a few student leaders with a megaphone who dispersed us to the various exits and instructed us to gather at the exit and to remain sitting at all times, in order to prevent any misunderstandings about that fact that this was a peaceful protest. I sat with these students singing protest songs and chanting for about an hour and a half, while many police officers formed a line behind a barricade at the exit behind us. At no point did the protestors get violent or aggressive, nor did the size of the crowd seem unmanageable. The student leaders with the megaphone continued to direct the protestors to stay seated and to show that this was a peaceful protest. As the police officers continued to line up behind us, the student leaders began announcing to the protestors that the police were not our enemies but our “brothers,” and not to direct any aggression towards them.
After about one hour, we had received a report from a number of students coming down the hill that that police officers were using pepper spray on another group of protestors up the hill from us (at the other garage exit), and that they were threatening to arrest us. At this point a significant group of students quickly stood up and left out of fear of being physically harmed or arrested, while a number of other students took their places. At this point, the student leaders with the megaphone announced that if the police began arresting us, we would first be given a warning at which point we had the option to leave, and that if we were told that we were under arrest, we were not to resist, but to calmly place both wrists in front of us. This announcement was made at least twice, emphasizing not to resist arrest, but to calmly place our wrists in front of us. One other student announced that if we were arrested, they would probably let us off that same day, but they could not guarantee anything.
After sitting a bit longer at this exit, I got up to get some water and join some friends in the courtyard at Covel Commons. When I arrived at the courtyard there was a large group of students surrounding a van and gathered in the courtyard, all standing peacefully, many chanting, many having conversations with each other. I was told by one of my friends that they had just been pepper sprayed a few minutes earlier. After going into the store in the courtyard to purchase some water, I came out to witness a female regent being escorted by police officers from the van into the building. While the protestors gathered around and followed the police officers and regent, chanting “shame on you” and other such chants. As the police quickly escorted the woman into the building, the protestors did not display any violent or threatening behavior, with the exception of one apple core I witnessed being thrown by someone in the crowd towards the police officers (but did not hit anyone).
After remaining in the courtyard for a while longer, I returned to the parking garage exit where I was initially sitting earlier and stood across from those sitting at the exit on the lawn (just a few feet away from the parking garage exit) behind a set of barricades. My friends (fellow graduate students) and I stood there for a long time (until approximately 4:30 pm) with our placards, and chanted with the students still sitting peacefully at the garage exit. Just as when I had left that area, all the protestors remained seated, displaying dissent by singing and chanting, while maintaining a peaceful atmosphere. After some time, however, I heard a number of taser guns being turned on, and saw the line of police officers advancing towards the student who were seated. I heard a student next to me say that the police were now threatening to use rubber bullets if the students did not move. Suddenly, many of the students in the exit stood up as I heard screaming and panicked yelling. I heard a number of students scream that the students were being tased. I heard the buzz of the taser guns, and I witnessed one student getting tased through the panicked crowd of students. The student I saw being tased was closest to the line of police officers and was sitting down when he began being tased, I saw that he was wearing an orange shirt and his arms were flailing as he was lying on the ground. I also witnessed a female police officer kick a male student in his side as he was seated. At no point did I see any students act violently or give cause for such an aggressive response, these students were being attacked by police officers as they were sitting down because they would not move. The scene was truly horrifying, and I was in complete shock at what I was seeing. I heard many of the students pleading with the officers to stop, yelling that this was a peaceful protest, and chanting, “We are students, Not enemies!” I saw many of the students crying and holding each other, many were my own students that I had had in previous classes that I taught. I remember hearing one of my own former female students yelling, “Can’t you understand, all we want is an education, put away your weapons!!” As the police officers pushed forward to clear the exit of the garage, they maintained their line facing the gathering of students who were now all standing up. I joined the protestors facing the line of police officers, as we chanted “We are students, not criminals!” and “We live here, you go home!” Many of the students moved nearby to the sidewalk of the road with their signs, as cars honked in support of the demonstration. At this point there seemed to be more police officers than students. The police officers continued to advance forward, pushing the protestors backwards down the hill. I witnessed one female student fall to the floor from the force of the police officers advancing, prompting students to yell back at the police to stop the pushing. As it began getting dark, I finally left the scene to go home, while many students remained there and continued to chant. The line of police officers also remained there and continued to advance down the hill, pushing the protestors, even though the garage exit was no longer blocked and all the regents had left.
From Los Angeles
On my way back from the protest, a bit before 3pm, I was walking down the road at the same moment that the UC regents' vans emerged from the underground parking lot under Covel Commons. A few students shouted, There are the regents! and a number of us (perhaps fifteen, there weren't many people there at that moment) began to shout, Shame on you! at the regents in the vans. There were students sitting peacefully in the middle of the road, and some police approached them and moved some of them out of the way at the same time, I believe, that the vans moved around them, because I had been standing behind the vans, and I remember the vans were not stuck there very long. After the vans drove down the road, the police were trying to move more people, a student called for everyone to sit, and then the next thing I know is I hear this clicking sound over and over again right in front of me, and I see that there are police officers standing over students, a bunch of students are screaming, and the clicking goes on. I hear a girl scream, He can't stand up, and the police officer say, Get up. I see a guy (the young black man from the photos) trying to stand up, a number of other people are helping him up, he is shaky and his legs are clearly weak because he has to lean on other students to get up. There is also a small Asian girl who is sobbing, and a student screams, This girl was tasered and this guy was tasered too! and a bunch of students standing around are shocked, upset, a couple people are crying, and the police begin retreating backwards, still facing the students, up the hill. Then a student jumps in the middle of the road and begins screaming some kind of chant, and a bunch of other people, angry, respond.
The young black student who was tased from the images was holding his right hand over his heart and sobbing, and then holding the Asian girl who was also crying. The guy seemed very shaky, and I went over to them and asked the guy (I believe his name, from the caption of those photos, is Rusty/Rustin O'Neill) where he had been tasered, and he said a bunch of times, maybe four or five times or more, over his heart, which still hurt. A CNN article mentions a training bulletin from the taser company that explicitly states that tasing on the chest is prohibited, and officers who do it will be in risk of a lawsuit, given the danger of doing such a thing and on the grounds of excessive force. I looked at the girl's arms and they were all red and there were almost welts rising from the officer's manhandling of her. She said she received one taser shock on her left arm, around the elbow crook. The friend I was standing with had videotaped the whole thing on his camera and gave the two of them his information, and I suggested they both go to the hospital. Shortly after this, a police car drove up the road, and, seeing the bunch of students in the road, put on his lights and said, over the intercom, to get out of the road. At this point however, students were so irate and so shocked by the brutality they just witnessed that there was a kind of reckless tension in the air-- they sat down and shouted at the police car in anger. The police car retreated down the road the way it had arrived.
From Berkeley
Hi,
I understand that you are each undertaking reviews of the police action on UC Berkeley's campus on Friday. I write to you as a witness. At around 1:30 pm on Friday, I was among the students at the Southwest corner of Wheeler Hall. The police (including Ryobi, Wong, and Parnelle of UCPD and Jackson of Berkeley PD) engaged us in a tense standoff.
Officer Jackson introduced himself and shook hands with the student next to me. He said that we should all get to know each other "in case we have to get intimate later." At the point he smiled menacingly and tapped his baton.
The police told us to move backward. They did not say that we were illegally assembled. They merely said, "Move." We refused to move. All present were non-violent. I very consciously kept my hands down at my sides, even as the officers I named above approached us with their batons ready.
They began to jab at us and then to strike us with their batons. We did not fight them. We moved neither toward them nor away. To my right was a student being brutally beaten by officer Parnelle. To my left, a student beaten by officer Jackson. Officer Wong repeatedly struck me with his baton. Another officer, whose name I did not catch, grabbed the others by their collars and pulled them away from us.
We did not follow them nor strike out at them. We clearly posed them no threat.
Thank you very much for your work in both of your investigations. I will be filing a complaint with UCPD against Officer Wong. If there is anything else I can do to aid your investigations, please let me know.
From Berkeley
My name is Tony Bezsylko. I am a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley, a member of UAW Local 2865 and a member of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee.
I have been involved in the political actions on campus this term, including Friday's action. My reasons for being involved in these actions all have to do with my concern for public education, and my reasons for directing these actions towards UC administration have to do with the fact that the administration is not aligning themselves strongly enough with interests of public education. The short of it is that we, and I think that I safely speak for all of us, want you and the rest of UC administration helping us to organize a movement to save public education. We want you at the rallies, we want you on the picket lines, we want you walking with us at the marches. I, however, do not write to you now about these matters. I write to you now to tell you about the nature of the police's response, as well as your response, to Friday's action.
On Friday I was a victim of and a witness to countless acts of police brutality. Those of us outside of Wheeler Hall were upset, but we were completely committed to a peaceful protest (saying so much explicitly in our chants and implicitly by sitting down on the line). The police, and you, were completely oblivious to the commitment of everyone involved, including those inside Wheeler, to a peaceful action. The occupation, though indeed aggressive, was an act of civil, nonviolent disobedience.
Now I understand that it was a chaotic situation, and I understand that the police involved were nervous and frightened. But their actions were grossly disproportionate in degree of aggression compared to that of our actions.
The worst incident I experienced was on the southeast side of Wheeler Hall. We were holding our line, locked in arms, in some places a few people deep. There were extremely thin parts of our line where police could have stepped through very easily by gently moving us aside. They chose not to do this. They chose to barrel their way through one of the thicker parts of the line using batons against stationary, unarmed students. Once this happened there was panic everywhere. I, and everyone around me, was all of a sudden being struck in the back and being attacked from the front by police. I saw one protester on the ground beaten by two police officers. Some folks standing right next to him pulled him up so he could run away before sustaining any more injuries.
I could go on for many paragraphs detailing what I saw and what trusted friends told me they saw. If you have not seen the video footage of some of these incidents, I encourage you to watch it. These actions by the police in response to a peaceful protest were extremely ugly. And not only was your approval of these actions equally ugly, so was your post-protest statement that the "wheeler hall protest ended peacefully" and that "a few members of our campus community may have found themselves in conflict with law enforcement officers." We are very grateful that all of the occupiers were not hurt, but it is a straightforward lie to say that the day's action ended peacefully. My account in the paragraph above shows this much. That account also refutes the second quote from your email. It was not a "a few members of our campus community" who were physically harmed. It was quite likely somewhere around 100 members of our campus community who were physically harmed by police, and, really, by you and your decisions about how to handle the situation. Lastly, my account also refutes your characterization of what happened as finding oneself "in conflict with law enforcement officers." Conflict can of course mean any number of things. The kind of conflict that was taking place was violent conflict involving physical harm.
I demand that you immediately issue a new statement about these extremely important issues. Trying to brush them under the rug as you are doing is not going to do anything but deepen the rift between UC administration and the rest of the university, including faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and staff. Acknowledgment is the first step to dealing with every conflict. This is something that you have failed to pay attention to in both your dealings with Friday's action as well as with the current crisis in public education.
Sincerely,
Tony Bezsylko
From Berkeley
I am writing in regards to my experience Friday November 20th as a student observer outside Wheeler Hall. I was horrified as I watched the police using excessive force on students. One particular incident I observed at very close proximity occurred on the East side of Wheeler Hall around 5:00 pm.
I had been present since about 11:00 am on the West side of the building-standing along with fellow graduate students and many undergraduates who I teach as a Graduate Student Instructor. I did not observe any acts of student aggression- we spent many hours standing, chanting and signing, keeping each other dry from the rain, and sharing food and coffee.
Around 5:00 I moved locations to the east side of Wheeler. I soon learned that a colleague in my doctoral program had been knocked to the ground and dragged by an officer, completely unprovoked. I stood next to her listening to the story when officers in riot gear began to head towards us. Although there were many open areas for the new police shift to enter, they chose to enter directly through the crowd of students. Without any warning or explanation, a group of police dressed in full riot gear, flaunting batons and rubber bullet guns, headed straight at where I was standing. Things became a violent blur as I heard students screaming and I saw the student next to me hit by an officer with a baton. I ran from the scene as soon as I could get out, terrified that my friends had been attacked or hurt. Soon after, I left campus, literally shaking from anxiety. It was one of the most violet moments of my life.
As a student and graduate student teacher I was deeply concerned for the safety of those around me- as the police presence only heightened any threat to student safety on campus and by no means provided protection or peace for us. I truly hope that the university administration takes these unprovoked acts of violence performed on students by officers seriously, and respond differently in the future to non-violent demonstrations on campus. Thank you for your time and attention.
From Berkeley
I am a third year student at UCB, and I was actively present in the solidarity protests around Wheeler Hall on Friday. I spent most of my time predominantly on the North East side of Wheeler. I witnessed and was the victim of the excessive use of force by both UCPD and Berkeley PD. At about 5 o¹clock I was in the front row of a large mass of arm-linked students standing in solidarity with the occupation. The cops repeatedly looked at me and other students and warned us not to move forward otherwise we would be beaten by the batons. So we did not move. Regardless however, a little later on the cops did choose to beat in the process of putting up another barricade between us and public space. They started to hit students. Since I was in the front, I took a huge brunt of the blows- to my arms, ribs, belly, and hands. I was pushed to the ground as students were falling on top of me. I covered my head. Cops were continuing to hit students over me. They would not stop. Eventually a student managed to help pull me up at which time I retreated a bit and let other students move forward. The hitting continued. I also witnessed another injury occur earlier on while blocking a truck bringing barricades to the NE side of Wheeler. Students linked arms around the truck. A cop tried to break through the arms of two people. A girl started screaming that the cop was crushing her fingers or hand. In the same confrontation, about 7 cops broke through solidarity lines outside the yellow caution lines and dragged some students into the 똠op¹ area and started to beat them while they were on the ground defenseless. What I witnessed on Friday was nonviolent students standing in solidarity (on supposedly public space) and in turn being abused and violated by cops from both UCPD and Berkeley PD. This certainly was not the appropriate application of force as the students were always non-violent. Claims that cops and barricades were necessary to control the crowd and discourage violence are inadequate and do not fully acknowledge the Manichean violence upon students taken by the police forces. This is unacceptable, and should be publicly acknowledged and interrogated and exposed for what they really were.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Protests Restore UC Berkeley Library Hours
Subject: New Library Hours
From: "Harry Le Grande, Vice Chancellor - Student Affairs
Date: Wed, October 14, 2009 6:15 pm
To: "Students,"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Students,
I am very pleased to announce that library hours across the UC Berkeley campus will be returning to the spring 2009 schedule, the standard schedule that existed before budget cuts forced us to reduce weekend hours at most libraries within the campus's library system.
This decision was made in consultation with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer, who secured funding for the expanded service hours through gifts from parents of UC Berkeley students.
Recent events and concerns raised by students, faculty and staff served as important reminders to all of us that libraries are a critical resource for students and a vital part of this university. I am grateful to the
donors, the Chancellor and Provost, for their efforts.
With funding secured, library managers will now begin hiring and training student workers to staff the libraries during the expanded hours. We will begin by expanding the hours of at least one branch library this weekend and will continue with a phased approach of expanding library hours until
we are operating under the spring 2009 schedule. This return to the standard schedule will occur no later than mid-November.
In the interim, please be aware that many of our existing library facilities are not being used at capacity and provide abundant study space through the week and weekend. This includes more than 1,000 seats
available in Moffitt library and the Gardner Stacks. You may recall that, last week, a generous donor provided funds to allow students 24-hour access to those facilities during finals. Details on that gift and the finals schedule are available under the News and Events section of the
library home page.
Current information on hours of operation for all libraries in our system is always available here
Expanding the hours of our libraries requires not only generous support but also the dedicated work of library managers and other staff who, working under difficult conditions, have remained dedicated to doing all that they can to serve the faculty, students and staff of this community. I'd like to extend my thanks to them and the entire campus community.
Sincerely,
Tom Leonard
University Librarian
From: "Harry Le Grande, Vice Chancellor - Student Affairs
Date: Wed, October 14, 2009 6:15 pm
To: "Students,"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Students,
I am very pleased to announce that library hours across the UC Berkeley campus will be returning to the spring 2009 schedule, the standard schedule that existed before budget cuts forced us to reduce weekend hours at most libraries within the campus's library system.
This decision was made in consultation with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer, who secured funding for the expanded service hours through gifts from parents of UC Berkeley students.
Recent events and concerns raised by students, faculty and staff served as important reminders to all of us that libraries are a critical resource for students and a vital part of this university. I am grateful to the
donors, the Chancellor and Provost, for their efforts.
With funding secured, library managers will now begin hiring and training student workers to staff the libraries during the expanded hours. We will begin by expanding the hours of at least one branch library this weekend and will continue with a phased approach of expanding library hours until
we are operating under the spring 2009 schedule. This return to the standard schedule will occur no later than mid-November.
In the interim, please be aware that many of our existing library facilities are not being used at capacity and provide abundant study space through the week and weekend. This includes more than 1,000 seats
available in Moffitt library and the Gardner Stacks. You may recall that, last week, a generous donor provided funds to allow students 24-hour access to those facilities during finals. Details on that gift and the finals schedule are available under the News and Events section of the
library home page
Current information on hours of operation for all libraries in our system is always available here
Expanding the hours of our libraries requires not only generous support but also the dedicated work of library managers and other staff who, working under difficult conditions, have remained dedicated to doing all that they can to serve the faculty, students and staff of this community. I'd like to extend my thanks to them and the entire campus community.
Sincerely,
Tom Leonard
University Librarian
Thursday, August 13, 2009
UCB Prof Christine Rosen on Studying Budgets and Subsidies
I'd like to know more specifics about the issue of higher subsidies for professional schools as well. Haas has negotiated with the university for permission to move toward a market based, external funding model. As a result some of our faculty positions, for example, are now, as I understand it, entirely non-state funded. The external funding comes from the "market based" tuitions we charge students in our MBA and executive education programs, and from endowments.
Can the subsidies be analyzed for us and broken down by professional school as well as by departments within the professional schools and within L&S? My guess is that these subsidies vary considerably in scale even within L&S. Chris Newfield says as much in his second post:
"Thus a med school may get $50,000 per student FTE (a figure mentioned by UC's then-budget director in 2005), and a law school may get $35,000 per student FTE. One case I studied in detail had a humanities division's departments averaging closer to $5000 per student FTE and social sciences still lower than that. In that case, science departments were closer to the humanities, and engineering in between hum and the professional schools. The professional school amounts vary quite a bit, but I have never seen a systematic comparison."
What are the criteria that are being used to allocate the subsidies?
Equally important, just what are we talking about when we throw around the notion of a dollar amount of subsidies per student in one school versus another? Per undergrad student in the department's (or school's) major? Per grad student? Per total number of students, grad or otherwise, enrolled in a department's classes? Since students take classes in departments outside their majors and graduate programs, I would be concerned about these statistics. At least I would want to know exactly what is being measured and compared.
There are many ways to analyze and compare subsidies. For example, we faculty are also subsidized by the state in various ways, other than through our state funded base salaries. How do the state funded components of faculty start up packages compare across the university? Again, we may very well find that they vary considerably between departments in A&S and in the professional schools, as well as between schools. We are also likely to find that the packages granted to faculty in the sciences and engineering (a professional school) dwarf those received by faculty in the humanities. This is no doubt due, at least in part, because they include labs, but likely also related to other factors. Again what are the criteria that the campus uses to allocate state (and non-state) funding? Are they fair? Are they rational according to some logic?
It sounds like we might be trying to open a can of worms by even thinking about looking into this. What can we learn about how UC and UCB take from one pot to give to another pot that is not going to appear to threaten those that get more, while infuriating those that don't get as much?
Yet if the $/student subsidies figures that Chris N. and Charlie S. are using are disguising or distorting the reality of student subsidies, it would be good to try to figure all this out, if only for transparency's sake.
In his piece on The Cost of Undergrad Education on his website, Charlie asks:
"The new question, not previously asked, is this: Is there some logical, moral or political limit to how high student fees (tuition) could be raised at a public research university? A fee level at 100% of the actual cost of their education seems to provide a most significant boundary. Beyond that point, undergraduate students (and their parents) are being forced to not only pay for everything they get, but must also subsidize the other functions - graduate education and faculty research - which undeniably provide broad benefits to the whole public, beyond the individual student. One could call this selective taxation, privatization, or any other name you wish; but such a forced subsidization is something that deserves serious debate as a matter of public policy."
In my view we need a great deal more information before we can answer these sorts of questions. We also need to think the issue of cross subsidies through more clearly. There are all sorts of cross subsidies taking place: between departments and schools, between undergrad and grad ed. At Haas tuition is funding faculty appointments. Students take courses in other schools and departments. Several of the so called Enviro-deans subsidized the Berkeley Institute for the Environment for several years out their discretionary funds. The cross subsidies are not just monetary - they also build the "Berkeley brand." The high reputation of our graduate schools helps attract the best undergrads. Grad and UG students, alike, benefiting from having the best faculty. Buildings and rec centers are built courtesy of the tax payers via money raised by state bonds. Berkeley's world class reputation is the product of all of our strengths. We are interdependent. Berkeley itself is greater than the sum of its parts because of the all resources, publically and privately funded, that exist here in our faculty, our undergraduate and graduate students, and our staff.
Chris
Can the subsidies be analyzed for us and broken down by professional school as well as by departments within the professional schools and within L&S? My guess is that these subsidies vary considerably in scale even within L&S. Chris Newfield says as much in his second post:
"Thus a med school may get $50,000 per student FTE (a figure mentioned by UC's then-budget director in 2005), and a law school may get $35,000 per student FTE. One case I studied in detail had a humanities division's departments averaging closer to $5000 per student FTE and social sciences still lower than that. In that case, science departments were closer to the humanities, and engineering in between hum and the professional schools. The professional school amounts vary quite a bit, but I have never seen a systematic comparison."
What are the criteria that are being used to allocate the subsidies?
Equally important, just what are we talking about when we throw around the notion of a dollar amount of subsidies per student in one school versus another? Per undergrad student in the department's (or school's) major? Per grad student? Per total number of students, grad or otherwise, enrolled in a department's classes? Since students take classes in departments outside their majors and graduate programs, I would be concerned about these statistics. At least I would want to know exactly what is being measured and compared.
There are many ways to analyze and compare subsidies. For example, we faculty are also subsidized by the state in various ways, other than through our state funded base salaries. How do the state funded components of faculty start up packages compare across the university? Again, we may very well find that they vary considerably between departments in A&S and in the professional schools, as well as between schools. We are also likely to find that the packages granted to faculty in the sciences and engineering (a professional school) dwarf those received by faculty in the humanities. This is no doubt due, at least in part, because they include labs, but likely also related to other factors. Again what are the criteria that the campus uses to allocate state (and non-state) funding? Are they fair? Are they rational according to some logic?
It sounds like we might be trying to open a can of worms by even thinking about looking into this. What can we learn about how UC and UCB take from one pot to give to another pot that is not going to appear to threaten those that get more, while infuriating those that don't get as much?
Yet if the $/student subsidies figures that Chris N. and Charlie S. are using are disguising or distorting the reality of student subsidies, it would be good to try to figure all this out, if only for transparency's sake.
In his piece on The Cost of Undergrad Education on his website, Charlie asks:
"The new question, not previously asked, is this: Is there some logical, moral or political limit to how high student fees (tuition) could be raised at a public research university? A fee level at 100% of the actual cost of their education seems to provide a most significant boundary. Beyond that point, undergraduate students (and their parents) are being forced to not only pay for everything they get, but must also subsidize the other functions - graduate education and faculty research - which undeniably provide broad benefits to the whole public, beyond the individual student. One could call this selective taxation, privatization, or any other name you wish; but such a forced subsidization is something that deserves serious debate as a matter of public policy."
In my view we need a great deal more information before we can answer these sorts of questions. We also need to think the issue of cross subsidies through more clearly. There are all sorts of cross subsidies taking place: between departments and schools, between undergrad and grad ed. At Haas tuition is funding faculty appointments. Students take courses in other schools and departments. Several of the so called Enviro-deans subsidized the Berkeley Institute for the Environment for several years out their discretionary funds. The cross subsidies are not just monetary - they also build the "Berkeley brand." The high reputation of our graduate schools helps attract the best undergrads. Grad and UG students, alike, benefiting from having the best faculty. Buildings and rec centers are built courtesy of the tax payers via money raised by state bonds. Berkeley's world class reputation is the product of all of our strengths. We are interdependent. Berkeley itself is greater than the sum of its parts because of the all resources, publically and privately funded, that exist here in our faculty, our undergraduate and graduate students, and our staff.
Chris
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Exchange between Newfield and Judith Innes on budget studies
1. I don't understand what you mean when you say the system subsidizes the professional schools. Are you saying that they get more money per capita than letters and science departments? Are these "subsidies" the same across all types of professional schools? Can someone explain?
Thanks
Judy Innes
2. yes! General funds come from the state attached to student FTE (the amount has hovered around $10,000 per student FTE in recent years, but Mark Yudof cited $7700 or so in a recent talk). Once in UCOP and then on a particular campus, this state "workload" money doesn't follow the student into his or her primary departments of instruction. Part of it does, and another part goes elsewhere. Various control points on each campus (EVC, deans, etc.) from one year to the next according to all sorts of factors and variations known mostly to them. Thus a med school may get $50,000 per student FTE (a figure mentioned by UC's then-budget director in 2005), and a law school may get $35,000 per student FTE. One case I studied in detail had a humanities division's departments averaging closer to $5000 per student FTE and social sciences still lower than that. In that case, science departments were closer to the humanities, and engineering in between hum and the professional schools. The professional school amounts vary quite a bit, but I have never seen a systematic comparison.
"Subsidize" here means money generated in one place (by enrollments) being spent in another place. It's not inherently bad and to the contrary allows all sorts of great research and teaching to take place even in the absence of paying "customers" and a defined "market." Universities can and should pool resources and cross subsidize to cover special needs and opportunities. That's not always how it works, though, and it's hard to see who's going to win and lose - whether it's a department, school, or campus, without this kind of budgetary detail. Chris
3. Thank you this is helpful, but of course this explanation still leaves me a little mystified as you point out there is no systematic data. I would be surprised if my school (Environmental Design) were heavily subsidized in this way or Social Welfare for example. I hope we will have the data before proposing any blanket policies.
Judy
4. Judy, the head of your school would know your per student FTE budget total, and I assume would also know the fund sources (how much is state general fund, how much is fee money, etc.), S/he might not know how this compares to the budget of parallel units. This comparison might only be available at the next level - deans if they are departments, Provost or EVCs if schools, etc. There is no rule - and everyone says transparency is a good idea - but in my experience this information is generally withheld from the next level down, partly to avoid potential conflicts among departments - Chris Rosen's remarkable post lays this out very well.
But the other effect is that dept chairs and even deans may not understand the larger budget picture and thus can't participate intelligently in decisions about allocations. This is even more true of regular faculty members and staff. Even assuming that the EVC is fair to all discipines and that no one is taking advantage of inside information for their own unit's advantage, which of course any ambitious leader would be tempted to do, this lack of budgetary knowledge lowers the institutional's overall IQ. So for example, what would happen to Berkeley social science departments if UCB is able to raise tuition to, say $14,500 in 2010 (which would make up for most of its GF lost to the cuts via tutiion alone)? That depends on what that division's enrollments are, how much of its enrollment-based GF it has been traditionally allowed to keep, and what kind of new deal it would get under a new system. Unless these and similar facts are known or extrapolatable, it's hard to have a solid opinion and hard for an institution to make the best decision.
I think that at least division-level detail should be made available in a systematic way to whatever faculty- staff group undertakes an assessment. Chris
Thanks
Judy Innes
2. yes! General funds come from the state attached to student FTE (the amount has hovered around $10,000 per student FTE in recent years, but Mark Yudof cited $7700 or so in a recent talk). Once in UCOP and then on a particular campus, this state "workload" money doesn't follow the student into his or her primary departments of instruction. Part of it does, and another part goes elsewhere. Various control points on each campus (EVC, deans, etc.) from one year to the next according to all sorts of factors and variations known mostly to them. Thus a med school may get $50,000 per student FTE (a figure mentioned by UC's then-budget director in 2005), and a law school may get $35,000 per student FTE. One case I studied in detail had a humanities division's departments averaging closer to $5000 per student FTE and social sciences still lower than that. In that case, science departments were closer to the humanities, and engineering in between hum and the professional schools. The professional school amounts vary quite a bit, but I have never seen a systematic comparison.
"Subsidize" here means money generated in one place (by enrollments) being spent in another place. It's not inherently bad and to the contrary allows all sorts of great research and teaching to take place even in the absence of paying "customers" and a defined "market." Universities can and should pool resources and cross subsidize to cover special needs and opportunities. That's not always how it works, though, and it's hard to see who's going to win and lose - whether it's a department, school, or campus, without this kind of budgetary detail. Chris
3. Thank you this is helpful, but of course this explanation still leaves me a little mystified as you point out there is no systematic data. I would be surprised if my school (Environmental Design) were heavily subsidized in this way or Social Welfare for example. I hope we will have the data before proposing any blanket policies.
Judy
4. Judy, the head of your school would know your per student FTE budget total, and I assume would also know the fund sources (how much is state general fund, how much is fee money, etc.), S/he might not know how this compares to the budget of parallel units. This comparison might only be available at the next level - deans if they are departments, Provost or EVCs if schools, etc. There is no rule - and everyone says transparency is a good idea - but in my experience this information is generally withheld from the next level down, partly to avoid potential conflicts among departments - Chris Rosen's remarkable post lays this out very well.
But the other effect is that dept chairs and even deans may not understand the larger budget picture and thus can't participate intelligently in decisions about allocations. This is even more true of regular faculty members and staff. Even assuming that the EVC is fair to all discipines and that no one is taking advantage of inside information for their own unit's advantage, which of course any ambitious leader would be tempted to do, this lack of budgetary knowledge lowers the institutional's overall IQ. So for example, what would happen to Berkeley social science departments if UCB is able to raise tuition to, say $14,500 in 2010 (which would make up for most of its GF lost to the cuts via tutiion alone)? That depends on what that division's enrollments are, how much of its enrollment-based GF it has been traditionally allowed to keep, and what kind of new deal it would get under a new system. Unless these and similar facts are known or extrapolatable, it's hard to have a solid opinion and hard for an institution to make the best decision.
I think that at least division-level detail should be made available in a systematic way to whatever faculty- staff group undertakes an assessment. Chris
Hollinger Response to Newfield
Since Colleen Lye invited Christopher Newfield to comment specifically on my post of August 8, I suppose I should offer a perspective on his comments as they are now posted on this list. I find three things of significance, but before I state them I want to observe, for colleagues who may not have heard of Newfield, that he (a Professor of English at the Santa Barbara campus) is the author of two books on the political economy of higher education. He has earned our attention because he has actually studied the recent history of universities, nationally as well as within California. First and most important, Newfield’s comments are best seen as another item for the file, “items to be considered by any task force studying a possible increase in out-of-state enrollment and/or a possible reconfiguration of Berkeley’s relation to the UC system as a whole.” Many of his points are pertinent, and they sharpen some of the questions that several contributors to this list have already raised. His message contains no surprises. Second, Newfield’s sense of what the public needs to know about UC and its direction should be supplemented with an abundance of information beyond the simple fact that increased out-of-state enrollment will mean fewer places in UC for California residents. If that’s all that were said to the public, there is no doubt that support for such a move would be close to zero. Newfield is on more productive ground when he calls for UCOP to make a more vigorous and sophisticated effort to vindicate the role of the University of California in the life of the state. Third, Newfield’s comments are significant for their silences. While he comes out of the tradition of holding to the “one university” way of thinking, and sometimes hints that Berkeley is complacent about its situation and its prospects, Newfield stops well short of the conventional blasts at Berkeley (Ron Hendel’s posting about his experience on a systemwide committee is a convenient bit of testimony; I was on two such systemwide committees and experienced similar dynamics) for being aloof from the other campuses and from the public. And while Newfield provides the standard list of things we need to be afraid of if we take the slightest additional steps toward “privatization,” he does not allege that it is silly of us to perform the analysis that many of us have said needs to be performed, and he is sufficiently cognizant of the difficulties within UC and within the politics of California to refrain from castigating us for trying to think outside the prescribed box. As a major author of an Academic Council document that I had characterized as next to useless, moreover, Newfield takes the criticism collegially rather than responding defensively. Overall, then, I welcome Newfield’s comments, and I don’t see that we at Berkeley have any reason to be dismayed by them.
By way of postscript, I want to voice a caution about one possible course of action that Newfield mentions: going to Sacramento by the busload to talk face-to-face with legislators. I am not sure UC faculties as a whole, or even the Berkeley faculty in particular, are sufficiently of one mind to carry this off effectively. And if it were done at cross-purposes with UCOP and/or at cross-purposes with Bob Birgeneau and George Breslauer it might even make things worse. Any of us as individual citizens are of course free to do whatever we think is right and to join any lobby group we wish, but insofar as we present ourselves to the state legislature as representatives of the faculty we would need to be clear about the capacity in which we were speaking, and in what relation to our Divisional Senate, and about just what the core message is supposed to be. Wildcatting can be dangerous to the cause, however much satisfaction it brings to the wildcatter. I doubt if Newfield would disagree with this caution.
--David Hollinger
By way of postscript, I want to voice a caution about one possible course of action that Newfield mentions: going to Sacramento by the busload to talk face-to-face with legislators. I am not sure UC faculties as a whole, or even the Berkeley faculty in particular, are sufficiently of one mind to carry this off effectively. And if it were done at cross-purposes with UCOP and/or at cross-purposes with Bob Birgeneau and George Breslauer it might even make things worse. Any of us as individual citizens are of course free to do whatever we think is right and to join any lobby group we wish, but insofar as we present ourselves to the state legislature as representatives of the faculty we would need to be clear about the capacity in which we were speaking, and in what relation to our Divisional Senate, and about just what the core message is supposed to be. Wildcatting can be dangerous to the cause, however much satisfaction it brings to the wildcatter. I doubt if Newfield would disagree with this caution.
--David Hollinger
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