The Student Union Assembly put together a budget forum informational meeting followed by a Q&A session led by Alison Galloway regarding the effects of budget cuts after this month’s revision. Photo by Nallely Ruiz

At the Student Budget Forum with executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway, it was announced that UC Santa Cruz’s budget for the 2012-13 school year will have to stand up to some serious slashing.

Galloway said the most optimistic number for the amount expected to be slashed from the budget is approximately $4.5 million if Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed tax initiatives are passed this fall. If Brown’s tax initiatives fail, the state is expected to cut approximately $250 million from the UC system budget, and cuts to the UCSC campus are estimated to run from $18–20 million.

Students asked Galloway a variety of questions regarding where and how the budget cuts would be enacted.

“This year, we’re planning our budget around an $8 million cut,” Galloway said. “Money comes in two flavors. There’s permanent money we depend on every year, that we use to pay faculty, give professors tenure, and more. Then we have one-time money. One-time is money we can use back and forth. Typically we have some one time money that we use where we need to. This coming year, we’re planning on taking an $8 million cut out of one-time money.”

When asked about the faculty’s part in deciding what would be cut in collaboration with the administration, Galloway said the dean would first work with department chairs to determine how the one-time money will be spent in addition to planning for permanent cuts in July 2013.

“Then I get the plan, the Academic Senate gets them, and there’s a back and forth,” Galloway said. “For the 2013 budget, it’s going to be a longer process, because the cuts will be much harder to do.”

Chad Oliver, a first-year environmental studies major, asked whether the administration had given any thought to working with students in order to push for more support from the state on the forum’s Facebook page, which was set up so students who couldn’t attend the meeting could voice their concerns to Galloway.

“In the discretionary budget, there is education, health and human services, and the prison system,” she said. “There’s a lot of political pressure to keep the prison system going at the current rate, which tends to pit health and human services against education.”

Galloway also said legislators, like the UC schools, have been met with difficult decisions regarding cuts as well.

“To give the legislators credit, they’re facing some tough choices themselves,” Galloway said. “[Legislators] have to go into one room and listen to educators and their supporters, and then go into the next room where someone is saying if you cut this, I’m only allowed three trips to the dialysis machine in a year and I’m going to die. That’s the kind of pressure they’re dealing with. The concern for us is that if you’re not funding higher education, then you’re not investing in the future of California.”

Student Union Assembly commissioner of academic affairs Jessica Greenstreet said she was concerned about the role that the UC Office of the President (UCOP) plays in taking money out of the campus budget and putting it into their own budget.

“UCOP is projecting a $60 million cut,” Galloway said, “which sounds good, but then they are taking $75 million for special projects on different campuses, so they’re really increasing their budget by $15 million. When we talk to the Office of the President, we say, ‘Well, we can’t cut that — that’s a good program.’ We’re even beyond that now, as we have cut many good programs. We have cut many things that are really good for our faculty, for our students and our staff. But they don’t feel the level of pain that we do.”

Greenstreet also asked if Galloway had any plans to work with UCOP in order to reduce the amount of funds taken from university budgets.

“One of the reasons that we are trying to bring people [from UCOP] down to the campuses is so that they can see the severity of the cuts,” Galloway said. “I would love to show them the Quarry Amphitheater, and tell them we would love to have the money to fix this place up, so it can be a venue again. But we have to fundraise to do that. It’s just not in our budget.”

With the state contribution getting smaller each year, she said, the cuts will keep coming.

“We don’t have anything left to cut,” Galloway said. “There are few things we could cut and still maintain a future for the campus.”

Photo by Prescott Watson

Held simultaneously at the Mission Bay campus in San Francisco, UC Merced, UCLA and UC Davis, (with UC President Mark Yudof absent from the proceedings) the meetings were conducted via teleconference and were temporarily disrupted by chanting protestors.

UC Office of the President said the decision to hold the meetings at different locations was “cost-effective.”

Students and protestors occupied the spaces in which the meetings took place, and held extended comment sessions. Under a hundred people attended each of the protests, in sharp contrast to the thousand-plus who rallied in San Francisco on Nov. 16th, when the meeting was originally scheduled to take place.

Rescheduled from Nov. 16th after the UCPD advised the Regents to do so, the meetings ended with the approval of a proposal to petition the state for additional UC funding. No tuition hikes were discussed today, contrary to public perception of the purpose of today’s meetings.

The UC Board of Regents convened on Wednesday, March 16 to discuss how the University of California will address another half-billion dollar drop in state funding from Governor Brown’s proposed budget. The proposed cuts reduce the state’s expenditures by $12.5 billion. The state’s budget deficit is $25.4 billion. If Governor Brown’s proposed tax extensions fail, the state will need to find other areas to reduce spending and the university could see a $1 billion cut of state funding.

Chancellors from three campuses present the difficulties of absorbing past cuts. Chancellor Blumenthal of UCSC presented grave expectations for our campus’ future. “We will not be able to make these cuts strategically … These reductions will cut right to the heart of our instruction and research missions.” Photo by Prescott Watson

The first half of Wednesday’s meeting featured Chancellor Robert Birgeneau of UC Berkeley, Chancellor George Blumenthal of UC Santa Cruz, and Chancellor Michael Drake of UC Irvine in a presentation on the effects of previous cuts to their campuses. Chancellor Drake said UCI “spent a year with Band-Aids just holding it together. We were just not breathing, not moving forward.” Blumenthal described the cuts as “making us vulnerable in many ways,” and said the campus “can’t even exempt public safety operations – fire, police, and environmental health and safety.”

Vice President for Business Operations Nathan Brostrom presents to the Board of Regents data on system-wide faculty and staff reductions. Since 2008 over 4,400 faculty and staff have been laid off and 3,700 positions were eliminated or have gone unfilled. Photo by Prescott Watson

Nathan Brostrom, vice president for business operations (left), and Chancellor George Blumenthal of UCSC (right) address reporters on the effects of a possible $1 billion reduction in state funding. Photo by Prescott Watson

Campuses could face much more severe reductions if Governor Brown’s proposed tax extensions aren’t enacted, said UC Vice President for Budget Patrick Lenz. The tax extensions could fail to get on a ballot measure or be rejected by voters in June. Though a statewide survey from the Field Poll at UC Berkeley shows the majority of Californians support the proposal, several regents said they doubted its viability. If the extensions fail, the UC could be looking at a $1 billion cut. Chancellor Birgeneau of UC Berkeley said, “We have no model to accommodate that $1 billion … it would devastate our staff and faculty.” Blumenthal said if the legislature cuts that much from the UC, “some fundamental assumptions have to be thrown out.” He said there is no way we cannot cut academic enterprises and that “we are at the point of compromising quality.”

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block looks towards Doug Wagoner, university affairs chair at the UC Student Assembly, after Wagoner made a passing reference to recent controversy involving a UCLA student’s racist Youtube rant, which attracted over a million viewers and garnered national media attention. Wagoner described a program designed to fight hate across the UC. Photo by Prescott Watson

Claudia Magaña, SUA’s external vice chair, and Doug Wagoner, university affairs chair of the UC Student Assembly, presented new information on hate crimes on UC campuses. “We are concerned that there is no mention of constructive means of healing hate on our campus,” Magaña said. UCLA has attracted national attention recently from a student’s racist rant posted to Youtube, which has drawn equally controversial responses. Decrying the hateful responses to the UCLA student’s video, Wagoner said the UC community must advocate for “restorative justice,” which involves “educating the offender instead of exacting retribution on the offender.”

SUA External Vice Chair Claudia Magaña presents to the Board of Regents information on increasing incidents of hate crimes at the UC. Photo by Prescott Watson

Doug Wagoner, university affairs chair at the UC Student Assembly, presents to the Board of Regents a plan for a program based on “restorative justice” to combat hate crimes. Photo by Prescott Watson

Chancellor Gene Block of UCLA talks to City on a Hill Press about the racist rant posted online by a UCLA student, which drew national attention to the campus. “The UCLA described in the video is not the university I know, and not the university that many of our faculty, staff and other students know,” he said. “Our community has always embraced our diverse make-up.” Photo by Prescott Watson

President of the University of California Mark Yudof talks with the Chair of the Board of Regents, Russel Gould, about the decentralization of funding at UC campuses. Currently, funding at each campus is given directly to the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), and is then dispensed among the 10 campuses and other UC facilities. Decentralization would mean campuses would retain the funding they generate and pay a tax to UCOP. Photo by Prescott Watson

Chancellor Blumenthal of UCSC has been a strong advocate for increasing the amount of money UCSC gets from UCOP. Currently, all campuses generate funds and sent them to UCOP to redistribute, which results in some campuses receiving more than they generated, and vice versa. UCSC has historically received less than 100 percent of the funding generated by the campus community. Chancellor Blumenthal has fought to get what he often describes as UCSC’s “fair share” of funding.

Chancellor Blumenthal answers questions about President Yudof’s decentralization plans. Photo by Prescott Watson

A restructuring of the funding structure proposed by President Yudof would change all of this. The proposal would have each campus keep its funding, with UCOP assessing a tax, leaving the president with much less influence in funding matters. Yudof said “no great university has ever been built from a central office.” Not all campuses are as enthusiastic about this restructuring as UCSC, however. Large campuses with medical facilities will receive less money than usual under the new plan, as they are limited by what their campus communities can generate. “The smaller campuses will benefit from this,” said Nathan Brostrom, vice president for business operations for the UC. “The major opposition to this was from medical centers, [which] may be taxed more than they have been. [The proposal] is designed to be revenue neutral, not biased towards or against any campus.” This restructured funding model would allow administrators to reduce UCOP’s budget by $50 million, said Brostrom.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein

Amanda Buchanan, chair of the Student Fee Advisory Committee, started asking questions when she was told that a 2 percent tax would be included in the ballot language for new campus based fees. The tax would pay for operations of the University Office of the President (UCOP).

“I knew better,” said Buchanan, a third-year who is also a member the Student Union Assembly (SUA), UCSC’s student government.

Campus-based fees are initiated and approved by students to fund services and organizations like student government, student media and child care. Since the budget crisis has resulted in deep cuts, students have become more dependent on these self-assessed taxes to fund necessary services. Last spring students passed Measure 42, a $6.50 per student per quarter fee to support increased library hours.

In search of answers, Buchanan spoke with Free Moini, the assistant director of UC Santa Cruz Planning and Budget.

She was told that UCSC administrators want to implement the 2 percent tax as a means of offsetting the cost of a proposal by UCOP which would restructure funding streams system-wide.

Currently, revenue brought in from tuition, state funding and other sources is centralized by UCOP. A portion of these funds is distributed to each campus based on formulas determining the campus’s needs. Under this model, some campuses have more than 100 percent return on their fees, while other campuses receive less.

The funding stream proposal would allow each campus to keep the revenue it generates. However, UCOP would then assess a yet to be determined percentage of each campus’s overall budget.

With the new proposal, the percentage UCOP collects would be used “for central operations, including UCOP administration, UCOP-managed academic programs, systemwide initiatives and ongoing commitments, multi-campus research programs and institutes, and the non‐campus operations of the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.”

After the SUA and executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway met, campus administration chose not to implement the 2 percent tax on campus-based fees to address this year’s UCOP assessment.

“The proposal itself for the overall system that is being suggested is good,” Buchanan said. “It’s more transparent. But there are holes that need to be fixed. There is no cap on the tax, there’s no discussion on when the tax can increase or when it can decrease.”

The amount that UCOP assesses is not a fixed number and may change based on overall expenditures of each campus, according to the proposal.

Moini, who helps implement budget decisions, said that although there is nothing that keeps the assessment from going up, administration on each campus will pressure UCOP to keep the amount as low as possible.

“We all understand there is a common good with UCOP and they provide services that are valuable,” Moini said. “But we’re not on autopilot where the assessment just keeps getting bigger and bigger. There is an actual review and some level of evaluation.”

The assessment rate will be reviewed every few years, according to the proposal. However, it is not clear who will be a part of that review.

Moini said that taxing campus-based fees to pay the UCOP assessment needs to be considered further and will come up for discussion again next year.

“If our assessment goes up, we are going to have to find the money someplace,” Moini said. “Should the money come from the source that caused the assessment to go up? Or should it come from another source?”

The event was organized by Rajesh Srinivasan, editor-in-chief of UC Berkeley’s newspaper and Farzad Mashhood, editor in chief of UCLA’s newspaper.

“In light of the $500 million reduction [proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown], it’s an especially good time to talk with Yudof,” Srinivasan said.

Srinivasan plans to ask Yudof about his housing.

Lawrence Pitts, interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs of the UC system, and Nathan Brostrom, UC executive vice president for business operation, will also be interviewed.

After the latest UC fee hike in November, Srinivasan and Mashhood asked Yudof for an interview.

Yudof suggested the date, Srinivasan said.

“It was his idea that this would be a good time to flesh out the issue,” Srinivasan said.

Reporters from participating UC newspapers will have a chance to lead the discussion. Srinivasan said he looks forward to this opportunity.

“Any time you can get a chance to interview three of the top officials in the university, it’s a great opportunity for student newspapers,” Srinivasan said.

As UCOP continues to cut services and students become more reliant on measure money to keep those services, the regents are considering stealthily taxing new fees. For every new measure that gets passed, UCOP plans to take 2 percent of the fee. Measure fees are usually student proposed and are voted on by students.

For example, when the regents cut UCSC’s budget last year, the library was forced to trim its hours. Students passed a measure to pay extra and keep the resources available.

On Feb. 8, student regent-designate Alfredo Mireles Jr. said he didn’t even know about the tax, so obviously nothing has been done at the regent level on our behalf thus far. He did say, however, that the tax was unfair and that he would fight against it in the future. He has consistently brought the student voice — and vote — to discussions at the regents’ table, but the regents have still decided to increase fees.

If taxes are necessary — although fees have been raised enough — they should be kept within their local university and be used for projects that are tangible to the students paying them. If a UC Santa Cruz student has to pay more as a result of raised taxes, then why should those funds be used to save jobs or build new research centers at UC Irvine or UC Berkeley?

They shouldn’t. Taxes raised on campus should be kept on campus.

Illustration by Joe Lai.

California’s auditor will soon sift through the University of California’s accounting books, at the request of the California Legislature.

State Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from the 8th Senate District that encompasses San Francisco and San Mateo, requested that the Joint Legislative Audit Committee authorize an audit of the UC. The committee voted unanimously to approve the request on Feb. 17.

The California State Auditor, California’s nonpartisan external auditing office for state agencies, will conduct the review of the University of California’s finances.

“A comprehensive state audit will help further uncover the extent of the waste, fraud and abuse within the UC, and finally hold university executives accountable,” said Yee in a statement on his Senate website.

The senator asked the auditors to specifically focus on the UC Office of the President (UCOP), the head office of the University of California.

The audit will track where the UC gets its funds and where each dollar goes. Specifically, it will follow where private funds, state funds, student fees and federal funds all end up.

The audit will also search out how much money is spent per student and what the rest is spent on. Also, the inquiry will include a survey of which outside organizations the UC pays to and which funds are used to pay them.

Yee’s audit request was prompted by two recent online exposés about the University of California. Not long ago, the investigative website Spot.us reported that some of the UC’s regents have direct financial ties to many of the UC’s investments. Then CaliforniaWatch.org reported that a consulting firm, Huron Consulting Group, which was recently hired by UCLA, is being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

UC President Mark Yudof, in a recent interview with student media organizations, brushed off the state’s audit of the UC.

“I think it’s fine,” Yudof said. “When people are running out of money they often want to audit and want to make sure that all the dollars are being spent [well]. We have nothing to hide.”

Yudof also noted that the UC conducts an audit every year.

“We have an outside audit. We post it online,” he said. “… I think a lot of the information is really out there already. If the legislature wants to look at an audit then we’re happy to do that, and if they find some things we’re doing wrong we’ll fix them.”

Yee’s office rebuffed UCOP statements, explaining the need for an outside auditor.

“It’s a lot like a fox guarding the henhouse,” said Adam Keigwin, Yee’s chief of staff. “You can’t audit yourself.”

One contention from Yee’s office was that the UC allocates its finances so that funding for the university’s core functions — such as paying salaries and benefits of faculty and staff, or paying for equipment and utilities — can only come from the state funds and student fees. The rest, federal grants and private donations, go into restricted categories determined by departments and research groups.

“The UC has $6 billion of reserves that can’t be spent to mitigate fees or be put into the classroom,” Keigwin said. “We want to know what that money does. An audit will help us do that.”

The UC, on the other hand, says that its reserve is currently around $3.5 billion and shrinking. Administrators said that they cannot legally move this money to offset current funding deficits.

This is not the first time Sen. Yee has been an advocate for transparency and accountability in California’s public higher education systems.

In 2007, Yee authored a law that made executive compensation reports for the UC and the California State University (CSU) available to the public.

In the current 2010 legislative session, Yee has reintroduced two bills related to higher education that were previously vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

SB 650, an addition to the California Whistleblower Protection Act, would give legal protection to UC or CSU employees who report fraud or waste. SB 330, an update to the California Public Records Act, would bring more oversight to private organizations that contract with a UC or CSU.

Yee also coauthored a state constitutional amendment, which gives the California Legislature power to supersede the UC Board of Regents in making decisions about UC.

If the bill is approved by the legislature, it will be put to voters in November.

The audit of the University of California will start within three to four months, and will take about four to seven months to complete. When the audit is finished it will be posted on the California State Auditor’s website.

In a statement after the audit was approved, Yee expressed his incredulity about the alleged financial mishandling by UCOP, but said that accountability and credibility will be achieved by the audit.

“The UC administration expects taxpayers and students to foot the bill without asking any questions,” Yee said. “It is long overdue for the UC administration to start acting like a public institution and not a private country club.”

If passed, higher education, one of the few items in the plan that received an increase in funding compared to the previous year, will receive a $224.5 million increase from last year, in addition to a restoration of $370 million of last year’s cuts.  The $370 million of proposed restoration funds falls short of the $913 million that the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) requested.  To take effect, the budget plan would have to pass both houses of the legislature by a two-thirds vote.

Earlier this week, Schwarzenegger also proposed a new constitutional amendment to cement funding for higher education and prisons from the state’s general fund.

“We can no longer afford to cut higher education … I will protect education funding in this budget,” Schwarzenegger said in his final State of the State address to the California legislature on Wednesday, Jan. 6. “Never again do we spend a greater percentage of our money on prisons than on higher education.”

In response to Schwarzenegger’s proposed constitutional amendment, as well as his plan to increase education spending for the fiscal year of 2010-11, UC President Mark Yudof said in a statement, “These restorations, in addition to the governor’s proposed constitutional amendment earlier this week, are clear evidence that the governor understands the vital role public higher education plays in California.”

The governor’s proposed amendment would cap the contributions to the California prison system from the state’s budget at a maximum of 7 percent while allocating a minimum of 10 percent of the general fund to higher education.

Last year, California prisons received 11 percent of the state’s general fund while 7.5 percent went to higher education.

To make these cuts, the governor proposed a plan to allow the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to contract with private corporations to make up for the lost funding.

“If California’s prisons were privately run, it would save us billions of dollars a year,” Schwarzenegger said. “That’s billions of dollars that could go back into higher education, where it belongs and where it better serves our future.”

The trade of funding between prisons and universities must first be approved by a two-thirds vote of both the California State Senate and the California State Assembly in order to be placed on the ballot. A majority of California voters would then need to pass the initiative in the November election for the amendment to be added to the California Constitution. If passed, the two spending limits would become effective in the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

In an interview with the New York Times, Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff Susan Kennedy said, “Those protests on the UC campuses were the tipping point. … Our university system is going to get the support it deserves.”

Illustration by Amberly Young.

A week before the UC Regents voted to increase fees by 32.5 percent, the Nov. 23 issue of Time Magazine named UC President Mark Yudof as one of the 10 best college presidents in the United States. Yudof was acknowledged for repairing the nearly bankrupt UC system and was chosen because he “tools around dilapidated campuses and fixes them.”

The University Office of the President (UCOP) said it is very proud of the recognition.

“He is being recognized for his lifetime achievement of dedication to higher education,” said UC Spokesman Pete Kanes. “He has a way of making universities better places when he leaves than when he got there, like he did at Texas and Minnesota … he makes decisions based on what he thinks is right for the university, even if it makes him unpopular.”

UCSC community studies lecturer Mike Rotkin commented that Yudof’s award did not come as a surprise.

“As the flagship magazine for a corporate media empire, they share his values,” Rotkin said of the magazine. “Yudof is showing great success in his efforts to privatize what was once a great public institution of higher learning and turn it into, in all but name, a private university that is inaccessible to the children of the working people of California — a university which protects it’s profit centers, such as patents, hospitals, overhead on grants and private and corporate donations, at the expense of undergraduate education.”

Yudof began his career in education as a law professor at the University of Texas before he became the dean of the law school. According to the Time article, during his 26 years of employment at the University of Texas, he supported tuition deregulation that gave campuses the power to set fees. In 1997, he became the president of the University of Minnesota, where he secured funding for research and renovated the campus.

In 2008, he was named the 19th president of the UC system, and in 2009 he proposed that student fees be increased by 32.5 percent to make up for a loss of state funds. That fee increase was passed by the UC Regents in late November.

By hiking fees, Yudof plans to finance the Blue and Gold Program, which exempts California residents who make less than $70,000 a year from paying fees.

According to UCOP, the UC currently provides grant and scholarship assistance averaging $10,300 per student to 54 percent of the 230,000 UC undergraduates.

UC Santa Barbara Associate Dean of Social Sciences Leila J. Rupp sent a written response to Time regarding the nomination.

“[Yudof] is the target of [more] opposition from faculty and students than any other academic leader in my more than 30 years on the faculty,” Rupp said. “And not just because of the furloughs.”

According to a database kept by the University of California, which allows users to search the salary of any employee of the UC system, Yudof earned a gross salary of $326,791 in 2008.

Bob Samuels, the president of the University Council American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT) and a lecturer at UC Los Angeles, commented on Time’s award for Yudof.

“Time Magazine must like the way Yudof has been able to drive up the cost of education while lowering it’s quality,” Samuels said. “Since he has been the president, we have seen fees go up 42 percent, while lecturers have been eliminated and classes have been cut. Yudof might be good at getting high bond ratings, but he has managed to unite most people at the University against him.”

According to Samuels’ blog at http://changinguniversities.blogspot.com, over 3,643 employees of the UC system earn more than $200,000 a year. Since 2006, 1,200 more employees were added to this number. However, according to UCOP, those who make over $240,000 took a 10 percent pay cut this year.

Samuels thinks Yudof’s choice to raise student fees while administrators are making hundreds of thousands of dollars is a mistake.

“UC doesn’t need to raise student fees again,” Samuels said.

Second-year Ian Steinman agrees that Yudof should not be receiving Time’s recognition.

“It makes sense that a publication as representative of private interests as Time Magazine would consider Yudof a great president,” Steinman said. “Yudof is the manager responsible for minimizing dissent here and making the transition from a public to a private institution as smooth and unrecognizable as possible.”

Steinman also said that he thinks it is time for students to take action.

“His ranking [in] Time Magazine acts as an affirmation of the tremendous task before the new student movement and the work that must be done to discredit him and the project he represents.”