STUDENT BODY
COMMENDED

The Academic Senate’s Representative Assembly took up only one proposal on Dec. 2, voting unanimous approval of a resolution commending the student body for its civility.

The commendation goes to undergraduates, graduates and professional school students for their commitment to civil discourse, upholding the rights of their fellow citizens, the ideals of public education, and for their commitment to effecting positive social change.

The Academic Senate’s Davis Division “is extremely proud that the students embody both the campus Principles of Community and the core values of the Davis campus,” the resolution states.

With the resolution, the Davis Division further pledged to:

• Protect all students’ rights to freedom of opinion and its expression.
• Continue to stress the need for and great value of accessible and affordable, high quality public university education.
• Strive to effect real changes in our policies and procedures that uphold the Principles of Community now and in the future.
• Investigate fully the use of force against students on the campus and to hold accountable those who are found responsible.
• Ensure that the administration develops, follows and enforces university policies to respond nonviolently to nonviolent protests, to secure student welfare amidst these protests and to minimize the deployment of force, and foster free expression and peaceful assembly on campus.

Launching a fundraising campaign aimed solely at offsetting tuition hikes and freeing up donors’ restrictions on gift money were just two suggestions that members of the Academic Senate offered at a Dec. 2 meeting during a discussion of the rising cost of tuition and its threat to public education.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, who attended the meeting and joined the conversation, sympathized with faculty members and expressed concern about shrinking state support for higher education.

“It’s just a race that we are losing all the time, because as fast as we go, we cannot keep up with the pace at which the state funds are being taken away,” Katehi said. Indeed, state funding to UC Davis — on an inflation-adjusted basis — is down about 37 percent, or about $194 million annually, since 2007-08. And systemwide annual tuition of $12,192 is nearly double what it was in 2005-06.

The conversation took place during a special meeting of the senate’s Representative Assembly, called in response to the events of Nov. 18, when the campus Police Department arrested 10 people and used pepper spray on 11 nonviolent protesters. The incident came amid a series of campus demonstrations over rising tuition and budget cuts.

At the same time, the Academic Senate also faces the unprecedented prospect of simultaneous elections regarding a UC Davis chancellor: a vote of no confidence and a vote of confidence. Senate Chair Linda Bisson, a professor of viticulture and enology, opened the Dec. 2 meeting with a discussion of the election scenario.

Bisson said petitions are pending for both the confidence and no confidence elections, which would be held in winter quarter. If elections were held, the entire senate — some 2,500 members, including emeriti — would have a say. The results would be advisory only.

By the time of the voting, Bisson said, the senate and the rest of the UC Davis community would have the results of one or more of the five pending fact-finding reviews, including one by the senate itself.

Entomology professor Walter Leal, who is circulating a letter in support of the chancellor, urged a delay in the election process until the investigations are completed. “Then and only then should we put this to a vote of no confidence or confidence,” he said.

If other senate members put forth a no-confidence vote, a confidence vote seems sure to follow, with Leal noting that he already had gathered 276 signatures on a letter of support for the chancellor — and senate bylaws require the assent of only 50 members to put forth a ballot question.

Katehi listened to comments and answered questions during the two-hour meeting in Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. The audience of about 250 included 69 members of the senate’s Representative Assembly (with a total membership of 106, including ex-officio members), which has voting authority on routine senate business.

How to help students

Professor Anna Kuhn, director of Women and Gender Studies, noted both support and dissatisfaction among faculty. But, Kuhn added, faculty members seem to have common ground on reducing tuition and maintaining affordability, particularly for underrepresented students. “I hope that is something we can unite on, across the campus,” she said, urging the university to seize the moment.

The state hurts UC not only by cutting, but also by failing to pay a penny to employee pensions, with the chancellor declaring: “The state has turned its back on us as persons.” Without state funding for pensions, UC must pay the employer’s share of pension contributions with money that would otherwise go to the academic mission.

The Campaign for UC Davis – the university’s first comprehensive fundraising campaign – is part of the solution for more scholarship dollars. The campaign is already well on its way to achieving its $1 billion goal — with pledges having been secured for nearly $745 million as of Dec. 4.

The chancellor said she is already envisioning the next comprehensive campaign, primarily to build the university’s endowment.

“There are a lot of questions around this event that need to be answered,” Katehi said. But people are looking beyond that, she said, to reforming how the university accommodates peaceful protest.

A call for support for public education

“I feel for the pain that (rising tuition) has created, especially among underrepresented students,” said Katehi, who was the first in her family to attend college, and who could never have done so had it not been free — referring to her undergraduate education in a public university in her native Greece.

The chancellor recalled a recent meeting with a single mother of two, ages 5 and 9, struggling to continue her studies at UC Davis, and yet contributing as does every student to the diverse fabric of the university community. “If we lose that, we all lose,” she said.

Several faculty members joined the chancellor in lamenting the “destruction” of public higher education.

Cynthia Carter Ching, associate professor in the School of Education, cited a deep and abiding commitment to maintain higher education as a public good, “not just for the people who can pay for it.”

Physics professor Daniel Cox asked how many people in the audience had attended public universities — and a clear majority raised their hands. He recognized the students on the Quad for reminding him and others of what California risks by disinvesting in higher education.

“How do we get back to that great public university that the University of California once was?” he asked.