Friday, May 15, 1998
The Year of Definition
Carnesale has had to take stands on everything from RCM to Prop.
209 before inauguration
By Mason Stockstill
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Chancellor Albert Carnesale is about to be inaugurated after
nine and a half months in office.
Of course, it was four months after he was tapped to be UCLA’s
eighth chancellor that Carnesale actually took office.
Plus, he wasn’t confirmed as the Regents’ pick for the office
until a day after it was reported that he was UC President Richard
Atkinson’s choice for the job.
All of this came over a year after then-Chancellor Charles Young
announced that he would be retiring from his job as top dog at
UCLA.
Confused? Aren’t we all. Basically, what all this means is that
Carnesale, or rather, Carnesale’s reign as chancellor, has been a
long time coming.
Carnesale’s first few months on campus were fairly uneventful.
He did everything from take campus tours to meet and greet faculty
and administrators.
"I look at this time as a learning opportunity," he said during
the summer.
In fact, it would appear at first glance that Carnesale hasn’t
really done much of anything besides deal with the effects of
actions and legislation enacted before he moved to Los Angeles.
However, the chancellor has spent a lot of time and effort
meeting with administrators, faculty and student groups at UCLA, in
order to better get a feel for the campus and the issues that
affect the university.
"He’s not the type to come in and say he’s got some new idea and
push it," said Richard Zeckhauser, a colleague from Harvard. "He’s
more likely to find the things that UCLA does very well and push
those forward."
Carnesale’s name first began to carry significance around UCLA
in March, 1997, when he was confirmed by the regents. Most of the
issues he’s dealt with since then involve things like the
Instructional Enhancement Initiative, Responsibility Centered
Management, or Proposition 209 – issues that were all essentially
set in place before his tenure began.
Carnesale has reacted – for the most part – to these issues by
saying that his hands are tied, since the issues were enacted
before he entered his current position.
Not to say that the chancellor has been up to nothing in his
Murphy Hall office. After all, he did fill the executive vice
chancellor position, the No. 2 slot in the university’s
administration.
Carnesale picked Wyatt R. "Rory" Hume, the former dean of the
dental school, to be his second in command. Though the choice
surprised some since Hume has only been the dean for a year, most
were pleased with the selection.
"At his new position, he can do a lot more good for the school,"
said Rowshan Ahani, student body president of the dental
school.
So, in essence, UCLA could soon become a very different place
from what it has been for the past 30 or so years. At least, that’s
where all the indications would seem to point.
"He’s never dealt with a public university before, and that’s
going to be a big challenge for him," Zeckhauser said.
By far the biggest issue Carnesale has rubbed up against this
year has been Proposition 209, the 1996 California ballot
initiative that, among other things, abolished the use of race and
gender as criteria in admissions to state colleges and
universities.
UCLA’s incoming admissions numbers reveal that the number of
underrepresented minorities has fallen drastically under 209. The
number of African Americans admitted fell by 42.6 percent, and the
number of Chicanos/Latinos declined by 33 percent.
Many student groups on campus have expressed anger and disgust
over the huge drop in underrepresented minority admits.
"We face extinction," said Mark Ng, chair of Samahang Pilipino.
"This goes beyond just being a problem for students of color – it’s
a problem for the entire UCLA community."
Many of these students also expressed anger that the chancellor
has refused to "take a stand" against the proposition, or even to
state his own opinion on the issue.
In fact, rallies are planned for the same day as the
inauguration, which coincides with a UC Regents meeting.
"It is inappropriate for the chancellor to be celebrating his
inauguration in a year where the diversity in this university
declined," said Kendra Fox-Davis, chief of staff of the USAC
president’s office.
Carnesale also dealt with some of Young’s final actions since he
got here.
He came to UCLA in the midst of a paradigm shift in the way the
budget is handled. A new distribution system, Responsibility Center
Management (RCM), has been established as UCLA’s system of
distributing funds.
Essentially, RCM allows for separate departments on campus to be
allocated more money than they were in the past, but also requires
that these departments pay for services, such as payroll accounting
and clerical services, that were previously free.
Early on in RCM’s test phase, some faculty members expressed
concern that the amount of money each academic unit made would be
based on non-academic criteria, such as how many full-time students
are in each department, and how much money each unit brought in to
the school.
"People have this uncomfortable feeling that this (RCM) means
that decisions are going to be made purely on the economics of each
unit," Carnesale said. "And the answer is ‘of course not.’"
In the original description of RCM, there was wording that led
some faculty members to that conclusion, but that part of RCM has
since been scrapped.
Also left over from Young’s tenure that has bothered students is
the Instructional Enhancement Initiative (IEI), a plan to increase
the number of computer labs on campus and create web sites for
every class.
IEI brought with it a course fee of $2.50 per unit for classes
in the College of Letters and Sciences. The fee was not approved by
the Student Fee Advisory Committee (SFAC), but was instituted
anyway because the committee’s decisions are not binding.
"I don’t have to defend the decision, because I didn’t make it,"
the chancellor said at a town hall meeting in November.
Key among the considerations of the regents in choosing
Carnesale was his ability to raise funds for the university.
Regents cited the need to draw money to the university in a time of
dwindling state support as a key factor in their choice for the new
chancellor.
"It’s a new time, and chancellors need to be fund-raisers and
they need to be ambassadors these days," said Lieutenant Governor
Gray Davis.
PATRICK LAM
Chancellor Albert Carnesale (left) presents U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan with the UCLA Medal.
DERRICK KUDO/Daily Bruin
Chancellor Albert Carnesale, who will be inaugurated today,
speaks about the drop in minority admission numbers at a USAC
meeting.