The court-issued injunction will require approximately 100 Patient Care Technical Employees to work during today and tomorrow’s AFSCME strikes at UC Medical Centers in Davis, San Francisco, Irvine, Los Angeles and San Diego. The University of California and AFSCME have been in negotiation over the terms of a new labor contract since June 2012, and negotiations involve AFSCME’s 13,000 Patient Care Technical Workers — including respiratory therapists, nursing aids, MRI technologists, licensed vocational nurses and surgical technicians, amongst others.

AFSCME 3299 spokesperson Todd Stenhouse said UC Medical employee strikers have asked for reforms such as safe staffing standards, staffing committees and enforceable pay, which he said would ensure a satisfying work environment in an otherwise underpaid workplace that offer disproportionately higher pay to top-level executives.

“Basically, workers are being asked to do more with less, while at the same time, UC executive payroll is going up $100 million a year,” Stenhouse said. “The executives are basically the fastest growing part of the UC workforce. You know we want to see the UC medical system be the crown jewel of California and that’s not going to happen when you shortchange patient care.”

However, UC Office of the President spokesperson Dianne Klein said the court injunction, accompanied by a temporary restraining order from the UC to AFSCME, dictates that specific UC medical employees are prohibited to strike due to the harmful impact such protests would have on UC medical care patients.

“The union said that 120 people are essential, which when you think about it, is pretty ironic because their message has always been ‘There’s not enough people,’ ‘We have staffing issues,’ etc.,” Klein said. “But they’re saying only 120 of their members are essential? We don’t believe that.”

Furthermore, Klein said the grievances held by many union members are not justified, as she said the pay of UC workers is fair.

“We’re talking about very skilled employees who get paid very well,” Klein said. “I mean the average in this unit is over $90,000 a year, and that’s just salary, not including pension.”

The pension reforms that many union members are resisting have been implemented for employees across the board — including some state employees represented by AFSCME, Klein said.

“The reason we did pension reform is because we have an unfunded liability that’s currently at $24 billion,” Klein said. “If we do not reform this, there will be no pension to pay out. So we have made a very fair offer to AFSME and they have not countered at all, they have just said no.”

But according to Stenhouse, AFSCME’s demands call for basic affordability and fair wages, not just pension reform. Stenhouse said the UC needs to address the disparity between executive salaries and the salaries of frontline care workers at UC medical centers.

“Let’s talk about why you’re protecting six figure golden handshakes for top executives at the expense of everything else,” Stenhouse said. “Let’s talk about why somebody who makes $35,000 a year has to subsidize the pension of someone who makes 1.4 million a year. This is not Goldman Sachs, this is the University of California.”

AFSCME 3299 continues their strike against the UC system for new labor contracts and fair wages.
Judge David Brown issued an injunction that would require 120 employees to work during the strike.

PHOTO COURTESY OF Kenneth Song

A version of this article appeared on page 1 of May 21st’s print edition of the Daily Nexus.

The list is based on figures from the 2012 fiscal year, and ranks Yudof, with a salary of $847,149, seven spots below former Pennsylvania State University System President Graham Spanier, who tops the list with a salary of $2,906,721. Yudof will be resigning from office this August amid heavy criticism for the monetary issues that have plagued the UC during his five-year tenure, including a near doubling of student tuition from $6,636 to $12,192.

According to Steve Montiel, UC Office of the President media relations director and spokesperson, the level of pay Yudof receives in salary is necessary in order to ensure that the UC system thrives under solid leadership.

“The Chronicle of Higher Education survey confirms that while the University of California pays as much as it can to attract the kind of leadership talent that has made it the best public research university system in the nation, there are several public universities — and many private universities — that pay more,” Montiel said.

A.S. President-Elect and third-year political science major Jonathan Abboud said the main controversy concerning Yudof’s high salary revolves around the fact that students have little control over the financial budget of the UC system.

“The Board of Regents is the body that is given money from the state to formulate the UC budget,” Abboud said. “Right now, we only have one Student Regent, and they historically have been grad students, not undergrads.”

However, Abboud also said the May revision of the governor’s budget provides an opportunity for students to have their voices heard.

“One of the major lines in it is a proposal to fund the UC enough through 2017 to effectively freeze tuition,” Abboud said. “We need to hold the state accountable to this and use this as a window of opportunity to lobby for a fee rollback, a.k.a. reduce tuition.”

According to Montiel, Yudof’s high salary is an economic strategy used to obtain the highest quality professionals in a system that harbors some of the most prestigious public universities in the country.

“The University of California is competing for talent with public and private universities that pay more,” Montiel said. “What we have going for us is our public mission and the fact that this is the University of California.”

According to Abboud, however, the rising cost of higher education is the result of negligence by the state of California, not the UC Regents.

“[The cost of tuition] is an egregious amount at a time when other staff is suffering,” Abboud said. “However, it is always important to be cognizant of the fact that while the administrative salaries are high, cutting them in any way will not affect tuition. The real reason behind tuition increases is the state of California’s divestment from higher education. It is only right for people like Mark Yudof to take part of the brunt alongside students.”

Third-year biology major and captain of the UCSB ski team Andrew Peterson said he understands the UC Office of the President’s justification for Yudof’s high salary but maintains that Yudof should make a symbolic gesture to empathize with students who are struggling financially.

“If he wanted to leave on a good note, he should maybe put down some of his salary for bettering the universities before he resigns as the president,” Peterson said. “He should really try to leave on a good note.”

A version of this article appeared on page 4 of the May 16th, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus.

In addition to the sit-in, about 100 members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 picketed outside the Sacramento Convention Center where the meeting was being held, carrying signs and figurine caricatures of various officials including UC President Mark Yudof. The arrested protesters were cited for unlawful assembly and released shortly afterward, according to AFSCME spokesperson Todd Stenhouse.

The union announced last Friday that it will be staging a UC-wide strike involving almost 13,000 workers across the five UC medical centers on May 21 and 22, prompting the University to seek a restraining order against the organization. The rally and planned strike are the culmination of about 10 months of unsuccessful negotiations between the union and the UC over labor contracts.

Stenhouse said he is disappointed with the way the University is attempting to implement cuts to staff wages and pension contribution increases while neglecting to cap executive level salaries.

“The UC has elected to divert millions of millions of dollars from frontline patient care. That undermines safe staffing,” Stenhouse said. “We have increasing outsourcing of frontline care jobs to inexperienced workers, temps and volunteers even, and that may look good on a balance sheet, but it looks terrible if it’s your grandmother in that hospital.”

Despite these claims, UCOP Human Resources Vice President Dwaine Duckett said the patient care workers are currently set to receive a raise in wages by July and have seen regular pay increases in the past.

“They’ve received consistent raises as early or late as this fall and are scheduled to receive another increase during this period of time leading up to July, so while they are on strike they will be in line for another pay increase,” Duckett said.

Duckett said the University will do anything in its power to halt the impending strike, which it claims would be extremely dangerous to the health of the patients of the five medical centers.

“We’re doing everything we can — appealing to PERB [Public Employee Relations Board] and any other body that will listen to us if necessary to avoid the strike,” Duckett said.

However, Stenhouse said patient care is the union’s most important priority, and the union has made accommodations for ensuring patient safety at the hospitals throughout the duration of the strike.

Randall Johnson, an MRI technologist at the UC San Francisco Medical Center said the lack of involvement of the workers in the staffing process is one of the main problems the strike aims to address.

“We want safe staffing and we want to be able to be a part of that process and we want to be able to arbitrate that process because we believe our staffing is completely controlled by people who don’t touch patients,” Johnson said.

According to Johnson, the disparity between high-level executive salaries and service worker wages is also a huge factor in the justification for the strike.

“They should not be making the money they are making,” Johnson said. “We, actually, in southern California have people whose pay is so low that they are eligible for state benefits. I’m sorry, that’s just inexcusable.”

Members of the University Professional and Technical Employees union picket yesterday’s UC Regents meeting, calling for higher pay and increased staffing.

PHOTO COURTESY OF Kenneth Song

A version of this article appeared on page 3 of the May 16th, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus

The meeting came to a halt when 13 people protesting inside the conference room were arrested for suspicion of unlawful assembly, while the regents cleared the room. Later in the meeting, the board discussed oversight of Department of Energy Laboratories, general finance issues and various concerns surrounding the University’s overall educational policy, specifically graduation times.

UC graduation rates have drawn much attention recently, as Gov. Jerry Brown has made several attempts to get UC students graduating at faster rates.

The governor’s budget, released Tuesday, left out his proposal to cap the number of units California resident students can take while still paying in-state tuition. But at yesterday’s meeting, he remained adamant students spend fewer years at the University.

During the Committee on Educational Policy, UC Provost Aimée Dorr presented data indicating UC students are actually graduating in fewer years than in the past, with more UC students graduating in four-year periods than in five or six year-periods.

However, Dorr noted that while UC students are graduating in less time than students at comparable public universities nationwide, they are still graduating at slower rates than students at comparable private universities.

Gov. Brown voiced concern with the lagging rates, questioning why a student would take longer than the expected four years.

“Now I will say I don’t get excited about six years. To me, four years is the norm,” Brown said. “The six year thing — when did it become normative? . . . I don’t know if it’s about the money or if people like getting their grades up.”

Board Chair Sherry Lansing and Dorr both said students are oftentimes unable to uphold the financial burden of rising tuition costs and still graduate within the expected four-year span.

“When I visited all the campuses … I often heard from students that were on financial aid … that they had two to three jobs,” Lansing said. “So, to ask someone who is working half the week at another job to finish in the four years, is perhaps just too high a burden.”

Many board members concurred that underrepresented minority students, low-income students and first-generation college students may make up a considerable portion of students who take more years to graduate, due to the additional economic and social strains facing these students.

UC President Mark Yudof pointed to “degree complexity,” saying UCLA has a tendency to hold too high a number of prerequisites for some majors, while Lansing pointed to the prestige of individual campuses, suggesting students at universities like UCLA and UC Berkeley may be more accustomed to a larger “work load” than other UC students.

However, Regent Eddie Island said improving graduation times could actually make the University less accessible.

“I believe there is data there that would suggest we can substantially improve time to graduation if we become more selective,” Island said. “Smarter kids can graduate faster. We know that. But that isn’t what we want, necessarily.”

Instead of such an adjusted admission process, Island said university officials should look to other solutions like increasing scholarship opportunities or faculty. But even with these proposals, he insisted the University not focus solely on graduation rates.

“I would hope that we stay focused on a larger mission, which is to provide high quality education to the largest number of qualified students in the state,” Island said.

UC President Mark Yudof, who will end his term this August, presented a special report titled the “State of the University of California,” in which he outlined the UC’s overall status with regard to the system’s budget, admissions and research.

“I’ve tried to outline the good, the bad and the ugly, and there’s some of each,” Yudof said. “For my part anyhow, the numbers do underscore the University’s truly rare defining goal to serve … disadvantaged and low-income students, while also producing research of world-class quality.”

The UC Board of Regents discuss Governor Brown’s recently released budget and his concern with lagging graduation rates.

PHOTO COURTESY OF Kenneth Song

A version of this article appeared on page 3 of the May 16th, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus.

During the demonstration, Armen and other students lied on the ground of the Arbor with fake blood and writing covering their bodies, in an effort to reflect the University’s “silencing” of UC students. In her letter — which was drafted last week — Armen requested the UC Board of Regents to come directly to UCSB, and requested a response by 5 p.m. yesterday. However, the board has yet to respond, and now Armen said she is launching more demonstrations and encouraging students sign a petition asking the Regents to come to campus, which has already garnered around 400 or 500 signatures.

In the past year, UC Regents meetings have been held at UC San Francisco, a graduate campus, following a number of high-profile student protests that occurred at undergraduate campuses like UC Davis and UC Riverside.

Anisha Ahuja, second-year political science and feminist studies major, said the location of recent meetings are inconvenient for many students, thus excluding the University’s main constituents from its most pressing internal affairs. Ahuja said it would be more reasonable to hold some meetings in Southern California, as the region includes most UC campuses, and added that meetings are purposefully made inaccessible to students.

“We have the majority of our UCs here, so it’s ridiculous that they’re doing it in a closed-off space like San Francisco,” Ahuja said. “They put the meetings at 8 a.m. I know the people who went to the meetings, even simply getting into the room was like a hassle itself, and so they strategically make the meetings themselves inaccessible.”

According to Armen, student activism that resulted in the passage of Proposition 30 has caused the Regents to become even more detached from students. However, Armen said she sees the possibility of a Regents meeting at UCSB as a feasible goal, and added that she plans to pressure university officials to comply with a number of specific demands addressing student needs.

“For one, I think what we want to see here is actually a public forum that students have the ability to even attend,” Armen said. “So the point is to kind of criticize the existing excuses for a meeting, which you know are purposely put in places where even if students wanted to engage in a very civil and real way, voicing their grievances, they actually literally can’t.”

Furthermore, Armen said she would question the Regents on the location of the additional funds gained from Proposition 30 passing, saying she would use the right to access California Public Records to eventually gain this information. Armen also said she would ask the university officials to use their “political power” to advocate student issues, as well as pressure them into addressing and endorsing state legislation penned by UC Student Association, such as a student loan debt forgiveness bill.

— Emile Nelson and Arda Jooharian contributed to this article.

A version of this article appeared on page 7 of the April 25th, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus

The Nexus held a Q&A with Associated Students President Sophia Armen, who attended the rally and lobbied legislators alongside other UCSB students.

So specifically, what were the goals of the rally?

“This event, specifically, was looking at actually the governor’s proposal for the budget, which essentially maintains the status quo of a sincerely underfunded University — which after years and years of severe cuts, has essentially made going to college unbelievably unaffordable and inaccessible for students.”

According to Armen, the increased funding provided by Prop 30 — which passed in November — is a short-term and unsustainable solution to the University’s ongoing fiscal woes.

“Even though there is a five percent increase to the operating budget of the UC [through] Prop 30, UCSA … essentially was saying that a Band-Aid solution like Prop 30 — which really just came from the people of California, not the politicians … is not enough, because the status quo of paying almost $15,000 per year to go to a public university, for many students — especially middle income students and working class students — is just impossible.”

How do you think Prop 30 has changed the state-level conversation regarding the funding of public higher education?

“What I think that’s really important is that we’re looking at a climate that is very different, in terms of student organizing … It was students who really made Prop 30 happen. UCSA, which is all of the UCs combined, registered over 51,000 people to vote and not only that, but our campus actually registered over 11,190 people to vote — the most in the entire nation…”

The passage of Prop 30 relied on the activism of student groups at both the campus and statewide levels, according to Armen, who said state lawmakers are now more aware of the political impact of student voters.

“We made Prop 30 happen, which, historically in California, is pretty difficult. So what we have now is, we have quite a lot of our representatives — our politicians up in Sacramento — really seeing the numbers that we brought out, and essentially seeing the importance of listening to a very large youth vote.”

But while students may hold a stronger voice in Sacramento, the state’s public higher education system continues to be underfunded, leaving the majority of its financial burden on students.

“The reality is the status quo is not acceptable. The status quo is unjust and there is a very specific campaign — on the part of not only the UC, but the state — of very real public divestment from our UC system, and then essentially a campaign of shifting the weight in the University of California of the burden of funding fully on the backs of students, which has never been a reality for public education in CA like it is right now … The importance of Prop 30, though, is this is not where we stop; this is actually where we begin because now is the time where we actually have very rare breathing room where, for the first time in my four years, we don’t have a fee increase up on the table. We can actually talk about not only freezing tuition, but actually rolling back the obscene tuition increases that have essentially not only been a campaign of the state, but of the Regents as well.”

What kind of future do you see for Cal Grants?

At the lobby conference, UCSA made efforts to improve funding for the Cal Grant B award.Armen said the student group co-sponsored AB 1365 — a piece of legislation authored by Phil Tang which seeks to increase these awards up to $1,550. According to Armen, Governor Jerry Brown decreased these awards to $1,473 in last year’s budget through a blue pencil veto.

We know you’re fighting for accessibility and affordability, as well as more need-based aid. How do you plan to implement these goals? What were short-term and long-term goals for this rally?

“The reality is essentially since 2001, there has been $900 million worth in cuts to the UC system, so what were calling on — in the state of California — is to actually provide the basic human right of education to its residents … This is not a crisis of funding, and I think that’s the most important thing to hit home. This is a crisis about priorities in the state of California. We actively, at UCSA, learned about where our money is going at the statewide level and it seems that we have an addiction of locking up the residents of California over educating them.”

According to Armen, the distribution of state funds does not adequately reflect the needs of California residents and consequently, has left university students like herself with mounds of debt to deal with upon graduation.

“I think the important thing to understand is how exactly we prioritize our society and what we prioritize in our society, especially when were hearing ever-more important discussions about the economy, about the job market — which for me, I am now entering with over $80,000 in debt, graduating in June.”

In regards to the short-term goals of student lobbying, Armen said it is essential for students to combat state initiatives like Governor Brown’s proposed unit cap — which would not allow students to take over 275 units without additional charge — as well as his ongoing push for a UC online education program. Armen said online education has been continually been pushed by the governor’s agenda, despite its clear lack of popularity with students.

“[With] this online education experiment — which…the UC Regents are being forced to invest tons of money into — we’re not seeing students overjoyed by taking online classes. As a matter of fact, the educational experience that you would receive is definitely disturbing for how much you’re paying. The reality is online education is really not a replacement of in-class instruction.”

 A version of this article appeared on page 1 of March 5th, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus.

Photo by Jonathan D. Rodgers of the Daily Nexus.

Yudof, who will be leaving his post as the leader of the UC system late August, has been acting as the University’s leading official since June 2008. After Yudof announced his resignation in January, UC Board of Regents Chair Sherry Lansing began forming the Special Committee to Consider the Selection of a President, which is devoted to finding, evaluating and interviewing prospective applicants.

With Lansing as the chair of the committee, which will include ex officio member Governor Jerry Brown, the group will move forward by working with the national executive search firm Isaacson, Miller. The firm regularly helps major educational institutions, such as Harvard University and Cambridge University, find qualified top officials and presidents, and has previously worked with the UC to fill various academic positions.

UC Regent Bruce Varner has also been appointed to the committee as vice chair and other members include Regents Richard Blum, Russell S. Gould, Bonnie Reiss, George Keiffer and Fred Ruiz. Student Regent Jonathan Stein and Alumni Regent Ronald Rubenstein have also been appointed as special committee members.

The UC Regents will be assisted by an Academic Advisory Committee that includes students, staff and alumni groups who will all be responsible for providing input during the selection process.

The Special Committee to Consider the Selection of a President will consult university groups from all 10 campuses, allowing for recommendations from the Regents committee and the Academic Advisory Committee to be checked by student, faculty, staff and alumni groups.

Last week the special committee held their first meeting with representatives from Isaacson, Miller and spoke about how to proceed with the process of searching for a new president. The committee is projected to present their recommendations for President Yudof’s successor to the Board of Regents at their upcoming July meeting.

 A version of this article appeared on page 6 of March 4st, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus

As the Educational Policy discus- sion began at 9:30 a.m., Provost Aimée Dorr presented research on the level of diversity seen in University faculty and Regents largely agreed on increasing diversity levels but made no set plans for such efforts. However, online edu- cation created a heated debate amongst Board members, as many applauded the new efforts as cost-cutting and tech-savvy while others questioned the program’s effect on the unique quality of a UC education.

Dorr’s research findings revealed that just 8.6 percent of male faculty members identify as racially or ethnically underrepresented while 30.5 percent of female faculty come from similar demographics.

But Dorr gave evidence of past diversity efforts, recalling the UC Office of the President’s recent reception of National Science Foundation funding, which will finance diversity-friendly activities amongst faculty and adminis- trators.

However, many Regents voiced dis- satisfaction with the report and Dorr conceded that the University lags in this area due to the privileged bias often seen with lower levels of diversity.

“My own view is we should be doing more — much more,” Dorr said. “We have a state that is very diverse and we have an undergraduate student body that’s incredibly diverse; diversity sort goes down at, sort of, each step as you go up.”

Other Board members called the report inefficient, as Regent Monica Lozano cited its inability to examine statistics at the campus level to measure campus climate.

“So if we’re just looking at a number — as opposed to ‘how does this translate to the experience on campus?’ — I just feel like we’re not really getting to the objective that was set when we asked for these accountability reports,” Lozano said.

Regent Fred Ruiz pointed to low diversity as a pressing issue altogether, stating it is “unacceptable” and clearly prevalent, regardless of how it is inter- preted.

“I just don’t get it … I think the Academic Senate has a great diversity statement but it’s all words and there’s no substance to it,” Ruiz said.

While Student Regent Jonathan Stein also explained the need for faculty to be as diverse as the increasingly diverse populations of UC students, he also addressed other areas of diversity concerns.

Despite extensive and largely supportive discus- sion of more representation for minorities, Stein said the Board failed to acknowledge the voice of LGBTQ faculty members.

“I want to conclude with a question that pertains to a piece of this which we haven’t touched on,” Stein said. “Do we have any sense of what percentage of our faculty is self-identified as LGBT?”

While agreeing the issue is “important,” Provost Dorr did not feel data on the LGBTQ population should be collected as suggested by Stein, who said select departments and other campus entities have already launched such efforts.

Dorr said data collection is difficult since LGBTQ faculty members are often not responsive about their sexual or gender-related identities.

“I do know a lot of faculty who still do not wish to self-identify, certainly not to be known [openly], because they encounter a lot of problems,” Dorr said.

Later into the meeting, Regents debated the qual- ity and efficiency of its online program, which is now offering over 20 classes to raise additional revenue by reaching a new audience of non-UC students, while offering UC student with more convenient options.

Points of discussion included the feasibility of the business model in a market populated by numerous free alternatives, particularly the Harvard-MIT site called edX, which is just one of a host of other more prestigious and affordable competitors.

Student Regent Jonathon Stein said online courses cannot provide students with the well-rounded expe- rience of a traditional school setting. Nonetheless, Governor Jerry Brown said ongoing financial con- straints within the University’s budget make these classes an even more appealing option.

“Let’s get real — I’m proposing five percent more in your budget [and] you’re proposing 11.6 percent; how do we make up the gap? Either students make it up in tuition increases this year and forever, fac- ulty does something different or … the people of California decide they want invest more than they have historically in higher education,” Brown said. “There’s a brute reality out there and it is the gap between five and 11.6 percent growth.”

With online courses ranging in price from $1400 to $2400, Regent Hadi Makarechian voiced concerns that prices were unrealistic, questioning Provost Dorr on the project’s decision to spend $4 million on marketing alone.

“Of the $6.9 million we’ve spent, you’ve spent the majority on marketing,” Makarechian said. “I don’t know who’d pay $2400 to take one course.”

Dorr said that course — a precalculus class — actually cost $1400 and added that marketing expenses were related to “development” on cam- puses.

UC Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley Jr. developed the idea for online courses when he was appointed to lead the Community College Transfer Task Force by UC President Mark Yudof in 2009. He said the courses made an elite UC educa- tion accessible to more students and introduced the idea for a “charter UC campus” that would focus solely on online delivery. Such a system would cater to qualified high school graduates who are unable to attend a UC university, while providing all UC cam- puses with desperately needed revenue, Edley said.

“The gap to which the governor referred — between the five percent and 11.6 percent — is very much on my mind,” Edley said. “The other gap that’s on my mind, is the shortfall of about 40,000 students in our enrollment at the UC that was identified by the polling commission.”

Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, an ex-officio Regent, said implementing an online component to the UC system is necessary, as technology contin- ues to provide users with instant communication, entertainment and now, education. As a result, the University should adjust itself to the times, treating online education as the next step in the evolution of higher education, Newsom said.

“You can’t educate this next generation like we were educated. You can’t educate my daughter, a dig- ital native, as I was educated, a digital immigrant,” Newsom said. “[Technology] is going to hit us hard in education.”

A version of this article appeared on page 1 of January 17th, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus.

Prior to the Regents’ discussion, beginning at 3 p.m., students and campus officials came before the board to present their concerns regarding a number of internal issues within the 10-campus system. Following these debates, the regents presented plans for future audits and other financial management of the university.

Officials voiced the need for continuousmonitoring and auditing of financial activity, as Systemwide Audit Director Matt Hicks said the vision for the UC audit is to develop mechanisms focusing on areas more at risk for “suspicious” activity when looking at large amounts of data.

“Continuous monitoring is data analytics typically through use of technological tools that allow management to use clear ways to assess large sets of data,” Hicks said. “These mechanisms — they can use to review 100 percent of data and, for example, identify suspicious transactions.”

Regent Monica Lozano said university members should be closely supervised since there is a constant risk for dishonesty and theft.

“A criminal isn’t [necessarily] someone with criminal action. They’re individuals who take action because there is no oversight available at the time. A person is left alone and there is the temptation of money,” Lozano said. “We want to make sure our monitoring ability is in place, particularly with finances.”

The first off–the-agenda item presented was the need for the university to offer improved health coverage to students, as UC Student Association External Vice President Erik Green — a UC Santa Cruz doctorate student in education — said current coverage does not qualify under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act as essential minimum coverage.

Green also emphasized the dangers of annual lifetime insurance caps — which limit the total lifetime benefits provided by insurance companies — and called for the regents to remove these unfair limitations from health plans of students enrolled for the 2013-14 year.

“This is a life-and-death situation for many students with medical situations like cancer or HIV, where they have an insurance cap either on annual prescription coverage or a lifetime payout,” Green said. “University coalition has requested that government allow caps on student health programs to be grandfathered in. We approach this and call on UC to be a leader in encouraging the universities to oppose this as well as allow these caps to be phased out.”

Another item of discussion was the possible addition of more environmentally friendly structures to UC campuses. UC Merced student Jonathan Lee — a fourth-year political science major — approached the board with requests for ‘greener’ facilities at each of the system’s 10 campuses.

“Sustainability is an important issue for the UC and California. As well as being an employer of the state, UC needs to lead by example. Our policies need to continue to become greener,” Lee said. “Our campus buildings need to become greener, especially new campus buildings … I’d like to emphasize that sustainability is the future.”

A version of this article appeared on page 1 of January 16, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus.