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Academic Senate Opposes New Powers for
UC President, Tables Costly Drop-Add Change
Paul K. Mueller | June 8, 2009
In its last meeting of the academic year, the UC San Diego Academic Senate opposed a change in policy that would give the UC President power to declare a state of “financial emergency” and implement furloughs and pay cuts.
Responding to a draft amendment to Standing Order 100.4, Duties of the President, the senate voted at its meeting May 26 to oppose the draft amendment after the issue was studied by a number of the assembly’s committees.
The proposed new Standing Order allows the UC President to declare a “state of financial emergency” and grants the president “specified special authority to implement furloughs or salary reductions at individual campuses or across the UC system.” The president would also have “the authority to suspend the operation of any existing Regental or University policies otherwise applicable to furloughs and/or salary reductions as needed.”
In opposing the proposed amendment, the assembly’s concerns, in summary, were these:
- The amount of power in one person’s hands, in a system that prides itself on shared governance, is worrisome.
- Many of the terms – “financial emergency” itself, for example – are ill-defined; and it is not clear who decides when the emergency is over.
- Because fiscal crises can be foreseen well in advance, and handled through consultation and cooperation across campuses, such emergency powers are unnecessary.
- Little, if any, consideration is given to the impact on students of furloughs and pay cuts.
Pay cuts or furloughs are best achieved by individual campuses, and an imposed, systemwide solution may hurt more than help. Individual campuses are likely to be more economical and compassionate in their decisions.
- Because of the complexities of federal, state, and other grants, and their overhead and staffing requirements, furloughs and pay cuts could cost more than they save.
A presentation by Paola Cessi of Scripps Institution of Oceanography described the complex and diverse kinds of funding that support their global work, and explained that pays cuts and furloughs are in some cases not possible — and might in fact jeopardize some grants. The SIO observations served as the framework for the senate’s eventual statement.
That statement now goes to the UC Academic Council, which will forward the various assemblies’ comments to the Board of Regents for their consideration in July.
The Academic Senate also voted to delay, indefinitely, a proposal by the Committee on Educational Policy to align drop-add dates at two weeks, rather than the three- or four-week deadlines now practiced. Adoption of the two-week cutoff, said opponents, could cost the university anywhere from $400,000 to $5 million, at the worst possible time.
The state mandates an enrollment “snapshot” of the number of students on the 15th day of instruction, and that number is the basis for instructional funding from the state. The proposed alignment risked undercounting a significant number of students and losing their funding.
The committee admitted that it based its proposal “not on budgetary concerns, but on the academic and educational merits.” Paul Drake, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs — among others — argued that the dire and darkening economic times make budgetary concerns of equal importance — a position supported by a majority of the assembly as they voted to postpone consideration of the proposal.
Less contentious items on the agenda included remarks by Chancellor Fox, an update by the literature department on the ongoing investigation into apparent cancer clusters in the Literature Building, and the introduction by Chair Dan Donoghue of his successor, current Vice Chair William Hodgkiss. Donoghue thanked the Academic Senate staff for their support during his tenure.
Wrapping up business for the year, the senate also approved a new master’s program in architecture-based enterprise systems engineering, a joint program between Computer Science & Engineering and the Rady School of Management; agreed on nominations for recipients of the 2008-09 Faculty Research Lecturer Awards; and OK’d revisions to divisional bylaws put forward by the committees on Admissions, Educational Policy, and Preparatory Education.
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