Visual arts associate professor Ricardo Dominguez has been cleared of one of two high-profile investigations that threatened his tenure last year.
Last year, Dominguez worked on with other visual arts department members to create cell phone technology, called the Transborder Immigrant Tool, to aid immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border.
The application — which helped immigrants locate water stores and avoid border patrol — was controversial due to issues regarding the legality of helping illegal immigrants.
In April, about 200 students and faculty members engaged in a silent march to protest the investigation. According to Dominguez, university officials had been informally investigating him since January for his involvement in creating the phone application.
His application has received criticism from several congressmen, who drafted an open letter to Chancellor Marye Anne Fox to urge her to stop using state-provided university funds for Dominguez’s project.
The investigation, conducted by UCSD Audit & Management Advisory Services, began on January 11 and came to a close on July 23, clearing Dominguez of the charge.
In the final report for the Transborder Immigrant Tool investigation, administrators wrote that the project did not entail any improper use of university funding or labor
“It is a positive end to that investigation, and we are hoping now to move forward on the proposal and the project,” Dominguez said.
Though the investigation ended on July 23, Dominguez discovered its conclusion in mid-August by accident when he received an e-mail intended for investigators.
University spokeswoman Christine Clark declined to comment on the details of the investigation, directing all questions to the university’s statement, which stated that the university does not comment on personnel matters.
The second, and continuing, investigation surrounding Dominguez concerns a virtual sit-in targeting the UC Office of the President website on last year’s March 4 Day of Action.
The 400 participants involved overloaded the website with excessive hits, causing the website to crash and display 404 error messages such as “There is no transparency found at the UC Office of the President.”
“What is unusual about it is that none of the artists involved were ever notified that the investigation had been concluded,” Dominguez said.
Dominguez and his legal team met with Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Paul Drake on September 15 to discuss the virtual sit-in investigation. Drake presented Dominguez with a document to settle the investigation, which Dominguez’s legal team is currently reviewing.
“In our meeting, what we tried to make clear is that we were certainly willing to negotiate a positive outcome of the virtual sit-in performance [on] March 4, 2010,” Dominguez said. “But, it was very difficult to make a clear reading of the document which we had not seen up until that point. It seemed to me to be a rather broad document that I had personal issues with in terms of definitions. Whether or not that was the intent or not, some of the broadness of the language made me question the certain limits.”
While such a document would theoretically bring the investigation to a close and stabilize Dominguez’s UCSD tenure, Dominguez fears it would also limit some of the art and work he was hired to perform.
Dominguez’s background involved partnering with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation — libertarians living in a declared state of war against Mexico by using nonviolent ways like the Internet to spread their messages. His partnering led up to his 1998 invention of an online activist tool called the virtual sit-in, which was used to spread rumors about UC President Mark G. Yudof’s resignation.
“Part of it, at least it seems to me, would limit the very work that I was hired to practice in the past and the present,” Dominguez said. “It is sort of equivalent to saying you’re a painter, but we sort of request that you no longer paint.”
Dominguez plans to next meet with Drake again on September 23 to further discuss the document.
