The UC Board of Regents meeting today and Thursday will take a
mere two days and include only 26 core participants. But the
preparation for this event has taken months of planning and the
involvement of numerous departments at UCLA.
The regents meet every other month, and when the meeting is set
to take place at UCLA, the event has many corners of campus
preparing long in advance.
UCLA Special Events and Protocol acts as the liaison between the
campus and the University Office of the President whenever the
regents schedule a meeting at UCLA.
The preliminary stages of planning start three to four months
before the meeting, as soon as the dates are decided, said Nadia
Torkelson, the UCLA Special Events and Protocol senior event
manager.
Torkelson listed parking, catering, security, telecommunications
and transportation services as just some of the departments on
campus involved in the planning of a Board of Regents meeting.
UCLA Catering and Meeting Room Services plays a large role in
the planning for a regents meeting, getting menu requirements from
the Secretary’s Office at UCOP.
UCLA Catering books the location for the meeting about six to
nine months in advance and holds logistical planning meetings up to
a month in advance.
The final agenda is not set until a little before the meeting
takes place, and the changing itinerary requires a changing menu
schedule, said Leslie Dean, an assistant director of Catering and
Meeting Room Services .
Dean declined to comment on menu specifics.
Security is also a concern for organizers, as there is a
standard deployment for a regents meeting, said university police
spokeswoman Nancy Greenstein.
“There is (enough) to ensure that the regents and anyone
else coming to speak or demonstrate are safe,” she said.
Greenstein would not give a size or description of the
deployment.
University police are often sent to other campuses to help with
large events, and the regents meeting is no exception. Greenstein
expects university police from UCSB to arrive for this week’s
meeting.
“There were times that if security wasn’t there,
there would have been problems,” Greenstein said.
“There have been times when people sitting in the public area
have tried to rush into the regents’ area.”
Student protests are often a common site at regents meetings,
and they can sometimes turn into serious incidents.
Ten years ago, there was a bomb threat during a highly
controversial meeting of the regents in San Francisco regarding the
future of university affirmative action policy.
Student demonstrators also were present during the regents
meeting at UCLA in November.
During the November meeting, the discussion of student fee hikes
prompted students to take their shirts off in a symbolic
protest.