Here’s a trick question: How many UC regents does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Well, one of them would surely feign outrage for the preference awarded based on the light bulb’s skin color. Another would lament that all of this light-bulb-screwing is surely hurting the quality of the university and its students. A third would indignantly call a press conference and demand an independent audit into why the light bulb has not, in fact, been screwed in. In the end, though, not much would get done.
That scenario would be funny if it didn’t hit so close to home in describing the UC Board of Regents, which spearheads perhaps one of the more dysfunctional and incompetent bodies in California state government.
Though the regents rarely leave their posh meeting facilities up at UC San Francisco to make the pilgrimage to other UC campuses, their role in the lives of students cannot be understated: Regents make all official university policies, set tuition-fee levels and approve new building plans. Which is why all students should be worried about the inadequacy (if not incompetence) of the bunch currently at the helm.
In recent years, the University Of California has been plagued by a seemingly never-ending series of scandals. There were the missing secret computer files and injuries at the UC-managed nuclear lab in Los Alamos. Then there was mismanagement of the university’s pension fund. And then there were UCLA officials who illicitly sold corpses donated to the university for medical research on the black market. (That last one was my favorite.)
In all of these controversies, the regents ended up with egg on their face; their inability to rein in the unwieldy campuses and the UC Office of the President has only become more apparent in recent months, with increased scrutiny into the university’s compensation practices. The scrutiny has suggested that the regents are as much in the dark as everyone else.
When the San Diego Union-Tribune first made news of Chancellor Marye Anne Fox’s undisclosed hiring bonus, the regents were equally surprised. “It’s disappointing to learn there was a package put together that I didn’t know about,” Regent John Moores told the paper.
When the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a slush fund that pays UC executives who quit working, former Regent Ward Connerly pondered: “Why are individuals getting ‘severance’ payments for voluntarily resigning from a job?”
And of the Union-Tribune story about Fox serving as a director of 11 corporations and nonprofits? “That’s a lot of boards,” Regent Judith Hopkinson said.
Yes, a lot indeed.
One explanation for why the Board of Regents has largely allowed the constitutionally autonomous university to turn into a backwater of anarchy and mayhem is that most of the people serving on it are political hacks.
The easiest way to get a job as a leader of one of the world’s most prestigious universities, you see, is to give a lot of money to the governor. That’s how the creator of the “Power Rangers” got Gov. Gray Davis to appoint him to the board (though he had to resign in disgrace two years ago, after newspapers caught on to the fact that he didn’t actually bother attending most of the meetings). The tradition of ordaining what I call the Patronage Regents runs deep in both parties.
Then, there are the Trojan Horse Regents — appointed by governors as part of a strategy to use the university for political gain. This includes Connerly, appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson; the firebrand regent led the effort to outlaw affirmative action in California, an effort Wilson hoped to leverage in securing the Republican presidential nomination.
The final category in this typology is the ever-popular Token Regent, picked to represent the governor’s commitment to a particular group or cause. For example, trying to warm up to his Latino constituency in the months before the recall election, Davis appointed activist and United Farm Workers Union co-founder Delores Huerta to the university board.
What’s conspicuously missing in these considerations, of course, are characteristics that would make a regent-to-be actually qualified to run one of the country’s top research institutions. Which probably explains why so many of those on the current board are not.
In response to the compensation outrage, the state Legislature is now considering bills that would strip the university of some of its autonomy. It’s surely a reasonable proposal, but why not go further and simply get rid of the Board of Regents?
Initially, making the university independent seemed liked a good idea: For example, it prevented politicians from influencing curricula. However, the experience of the California State University — which lacks the autonomous status of the UC system — suggests that direct state oversight would not be a bad thing; few at CSU campuses have claimed that lawmakers have manhandled them. And the regents have proven to be as politicized as the governors who appoint them, anyway.
Scrapping the Board of Regents, though, would provide the university with something that it has lacked for years: true transparency and accountability.
