Many important things happened on Dec. 16, from progress in the Doha round of international trade talks to new revelations about potentially illegal spying by the Bush administration. Chancellor Marye Anne Fox’s exercise in hypocrisy and self-glorification was not one of them.

That day, Fox sent an e-mail to all university employees telling them of a new “Statement of Ethical Values and Standards of Ethical Conduct” adopted by the UC Board of Regents, and “asking all of you to read this clearly articulated statement of values and conduct.” What Fox didn’t say is that UCSD administrators have operated, and continue to do so, with disregard to the spirit — and, in some cases, the letter — of these very standards.

The six-page document starts out as most other flowery, affected proclamations, reiterating the university’s commitment to “integrity,” “excellence,” “accountability” and “respect.”

Section eight of the document, for example, states: “The legal provisions [of the ‘public right to information access’] and the [university] policies are based upon the principle that access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person, as is the right of individuals to privacy.”

Just two months ago, the Guardian appealed to campus administrators, urging them to block the creation of a secret e-mail listserv by our very own student government — a listserv where “the conduct of the people’s business” would be closed to public inspection. The paper based its appeal on a new section of the California Constitution added by state voters in 2004, which made access to “the people’s business” a constitutional right.

In a highly legalistic response, however, outgoing Director of Student Policies and Judicial Affairs Nicholas S. Aguilar disagreed. Instead, Aguilar argued that the University of California’s legal autonomy made it so that the new rights did not apply to the university and that the right to oversee “the conduct of the people’s business” stopped at the borders of UC campuses.

So much for the university’s commitment to constitutional rights.

Another part of Fox’s e-mail states that university employees “are expected to devote primary professional allegiance to the university and to the mission of teaching, research and public service,” and that “outside professional activities, personal financial interests or acceptance of benefits from third parties can create actual or perceived conflicts between the university’s mission and an individual’s private interests.”

In August, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Fox sat on four corporate boards — the most of any UC chancellor. By comparison, the heads of six UC campuses sit on none.

So much for professional allegiance.

Finally, there is the commitment that UC employees and students “will conduct ourselves with integrity in our dealings with and on behalf of the university,” a commitment that has surely not been met in the recent controversy over Student-Run Television pornography.

Since last March, university administrators have insisted that the matter was largely a student issue, to be handled by the students. Fox reiterated that stance to Fox News in October.

Fast-forward to November, and Dr. Fox became Mr. Hyde, as the university refused student government leaders’ demands to bring the station’s broadcast back on air and issued its own list of demands that makes Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia in the run-up to World War I look like a Christmas card.

So where was the university’s integrity then?

Then there is acting Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Life Gary R. Ratcliff, the man at the center of the SRTV debacle. During last year’s student co-op crisis, while wearing the hat of the University Centers director, Ratcliff was asked by the University Centers Advisory Board why student-funded facilities were not overseen by an actual board of student directors, instead of an impotent and symbolic “advisory” body.

He didn’t answer. Of all of his years as the University Centers head, Ratcliff said instead, “I have never done anything the students didn’t want me to do.”

There is a first time for everything, as Ratcliff proves today by continuing to block SRTV’s return, even as the students continue to make clear that it’s something they, in fact, do not want him to do.

It seems that enforcing made-up rules about student television is easier than enforcing real rules about integrity.

Surely, UCSD administrators could use some help in finding ethical values and standards. Sadly, the regents’ regal pronouncement does little in that regard.