After promising to meet with students at a November UC Board of Regents meeting, board chair Sherry Lansing has held discussions with small groups of student leaders behind closed doors at four campuses in the past two months.
The meetings, which began at UCLA in December and have since taken place at the Riverside, San Diego and Berkeley campuses, were the result of Lansing’s personal decision to hear students’ candid concerns about the university’s future.
But the format of the meetings — which have been restricted exclusively to student leaders personally invited to attend — has raised concerns among students about a lack of transparency between regents and students.
Over the next several months, Lansing will meet with students at the remaining campuses with the goal of completing the meetings — which have yet to be scheduled — by the end of the spring academic term, according to UC spokesperson Steve Montiel.
Regents Monica Lozano and Charlene Zettel also attended the meetings at UCLA and UC San Diego, respectively, said Student Regent Alfredo Mireles Jr.
Mireles said the meetings have been mostly student-led and have included about 15 to 20 student leaders from different communities invited to represent the student body.
Montiel said Lansing has reached out to a range of students, including members of the student Occupy movement.
“The goal is for her to understand what issues are most important to students and to get a handle on issues that are pressing for students in the room,” Mireles said. “Public comment at the regents meeting is not enough time for regents and students to interact.”
Mireles said student leaders and regents have shared an “incredibly broad amount of information” at the meetings, including the regents’ potential public support of Gov. Jerry Brown’s November tax measure and the possibility of adding more student regents to the board.
Mireles added that Lansing was “sympathetic” to the ideas presented in the discussions.
But some have shared concerns that the meetings were not publicized or open to the public.
UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab, who attended Lansing’s most recent meeting on Jan. 23 at the campus, said in an email that she lauded Lansing’s efforts but that more could be done to increase the transparency of the meetings.
“I can appreciate that Sherry Lansing was reaching out to Berkeley students, even on a small scale,” she said in the email. “But we should find ways to have the same frank conversations in a transparent manner too.”
Navab added that although the meeting was a step in the right direction, she hopes the board actually acts on the concerns that students have shared with them.
But Mireles said student distrust of the regents is a roadblock to future actions, including a May rally in Sacramento the regents have planned to attend along with students to protest state budget cuts.
Many attendees at the meetings with Lansing shared concerns that students would not want to stand in solidarity with regents at the rally because of the skepticism following recent tuition hikes and police use of force against protesters at UC campuses, he added.
“There have been years and years of mistrust, and one meeting is not going to solve everything,” Mireles said. “But we have to start somewhere.”
Damian Ortellado is the lead higher education reporter.