As part of a pilot program, the UC Student Association will nominate three students each year to act as “student observers” for the UC Regents. These students will participate in the regents’ committee meetings to lend student perspective to discussion. The UCSA will place the observers on three of the board’s committees.

“The big goal is to make sure student voices are being heard,” said UCSA President Kareem Aref. “With this extra opportunity, students will be able to get into those spaces so the regents never act without student input.”

UC San Diego student Vanessa Garcia is a prospective observer and has been nominated by the UCSA for confirmation by the regents. The board will consider her nomination at its November meeting, according to UCSA Communications Director Bridget Botelho. Aref said he is unsure whether the other two observers will be confirmed in November as well. Student observers will change with each school year.

The regents have had students observers in the past. The Committee on Investments has had a student observer for the past two years, according to UC spokesperson Brooke Converse. This year, however, marks the start of an official student observer pilot program — a project that is the result of collaboration between the UCSA, UC Student Affairs and the Office of the Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents, Converse said.

Aref said the additional three observer positions were modeled on those positions. He said the California Constitution prohibits the addition of student regents to the board, which led advocates for greater student representation to seek alternative avenues to gaining access to the university’s top decision-makers.

The three student observers will join UC Student Regent Cinthia Flores and Student Regent-designate Sadia Saifuddin as student representatives to the body.

“Overall, the biggest impact students are going to have as observers is to contextualize issues as they relate to students, and that’s a very effective way of changing conversations,” Flores said. “The board does recognize the importance of the student opinion.”

ASUC External Affairs Vice President Safeena Mecklai said there is still more to be done to guarantee student access to the regents.

“Student presence and student voice should be the norm,” Mecklai said in an email. “We need to continue to be critical of how we can negotiate more access for students in the Regents, and continue to look at ways to encourage Regental reform and improved student representation at the systemwide level.”

Libby Rainey is the lead higher education reporter. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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The suit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, seeks to reclaim as much of the $57.41 million deficit as possible, along with the costs the university paid for Aon Hewitt’s services.

“The University believes that Hewitt — not students or the University — should bear responsibility for Hewitt’s grossly negligent and reckless conduct,” said UC spokesperson Brooke Converse in an email.

The lawsuit details Aon Hewitt’s involvement in planning UC SHIP as far back as 2008, when the firm was involved in the UC Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan work group in determining whether a consolidated systemwide plan would be feasible and fiscally sensible.

The suit specifically mentions the names of a handful of Aon Hewitt employees — Doug Grabham, Brian Bloom and Ian Stark — who worked on developing UC SHIP.

The suit alleges, among other problems, that Aon Hewitt “overestimated the cost savings that would result from pooling the campus plans by using aggressive assumptions in projecting the cost savings associated with a system-wide plan.”

It also claims Stark, the primary actuary responsible for projecting costs and calculating premiums for GSHIP, “frequently missed deadlines, failed to complete deliverables” and failed to respond to requests from UC SHIP director Heather Pineda.

Numerous sections of the document, mainly quotes from internal Aon Hewitt communications, are redacted. The UC system is seeking to have an unredacted complaint released.

“As a policy, we do not comment on pending legal matters,” said Aon Hewitt spokesperson Maurissa Kanter. “However, calculating health care cost projections is a very complex process and involves many factors, including the quality of data we receive from our clients and their carriers. Plan design, data, communication and utilization can all contribute to variation in projected plan expenses.”

The systemwide UC SHIP was first implemented in the 2010-11 school year for graduate students before it was expanded to undergraduates the next year. During the 2011-12 plan year, UC officials began to realize claims would not cover expenses, and they brought in new actuaries to review the data.

Although Aon Hewitt originally had suggested that a consolidated, self-funded plan would save $7 million to $10 million in its first year, the complaint states, a January report prepared by Alliant Health Services, an actuarial firm hired to consult for UC SHIP management, found the plan had accumulated a $4.83 million deficit in its first year.

Alliant’s report said that the data provided to Aon Hewitt to construct the health plan were “fragmented, missing enrollment counts and generally incomplete” and that Aon Hewitt failed to regularly monitor plan performance unless engaged by UC SHIP management.

“(Aon Hewitt) claimed to be experts in this, and we believed them,” Converse said. “We let them lead the way because we were under the impression that they were leaders in this industry.”

Mitchell Handler covers higher education. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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On Monday, after Congress failed to pass a spending bill that would have funded government operations for the current fiscal year, the nation entered its first government shutdown in 17 years, placing 800,000 federal employees on furlough as parts of the government closed the next day.

Although UC campuses continued to operate normally Tuesday, should the shutdown continue for a significant period of time, it could impact educational services, financial aid programs and health care, said UC spokesperson Brooke Converse.

“We might not be able to see the impacts right away,” Converse said. “Right now, we are just monitoring the situation. We want to make sure that funding to the university continues, and we will continue lobbying for things to help students.”

Student aid and loan services will also continue to function normally for now, according to a contingency plan by the U.S. Department of Education. A shutdown of operations beyond one week, however, would “severely curtail” funds given to school districts, colleges and universities, according to the plan.

Esther Gulli, UC Berkeley’s director of federal relations, said students who plan to study abroad or travel during winter break may experience delays in passport and visa processing.

Additionally, the UC system will not receive new research grants during the shutdown, Converse said.

National research facilities managed by the university, such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will continue operating for the time being, according to lab officials. If the shutdown is prolonged, however, impacts to programs and employees will be “unavoidable,” and operations will have to adapt based on available funding and federal guidance, said Jon Weiner, manager of communications and media relations at the Berkeley lab.

Policy experts say the funding impasse could lead to a more pressing argument over the federal debt limit, which the government is projected to reach Oct. 17.

Robert Reich, a campus professor of public policy and a former U.S. Secretary of Labor, said that if the debt ceiling is not lifted, the economy could suffer substantially.

“Everything from student loans to aid to education to the full faith and credit of the United States is potentially at issue,” Reich said in an email.

Reich said that he expects the shutdown to continue through the debt ceiling’s deadline, at which point he believes the president will instruct the Treasury to continue paying the nation’s bill.

Larry Magid, a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, echoed Reich’s sentiments, and said that the national and international economies will be greatly affected if the federal government default on its debt obligations.

“My students in particular are very focused on their job prospects,” Magid said. “The job market is just recovering, and this is threatened by the ongoing crisis.”

John Ellwood, a professor at the public policy school, also said a default on the national debt could cause economic chaos.

“Markets will go crazy, and interest rates will be way up,” Ellwood said. “The U.S. will lose its economic position, and the economy will take a big hit.”

Contact Jessie Lau at jlau@dailycal.org

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The Working Smarter Initiative, which was launched in 2010, aims to save $500 million across the UC system by streamlining administrative operations to help the UC system reach financial sustainability. At its meeting Wednesday, the UC Board of Regents will discuss the progress of the initiative and plans for the coming fiscal year.

According to the regents’ agenda, the initiative will focus on smaller-scale improvements, such as campus-specific projects that help make the day-to-day business of each campus run more smoothly and improve campus life for students and faculty members, for fiscal years 2013 and 2014.

So far, the Working Smarter Initiative has exceeded its initial goal of reaching $300 million in three years by $161 million.

“Money from the state is never going to be the same,” said UC Office of the President spokesperson Brooke Converse. “Right now, we have to work towards saving money, and the university has to get creative. That’s going to forever be the case moving forward.”

In fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the initiative achieved its highest annual fiscal impact of $171 million in cost savings and new revenue. Cost-saving projects added up to $95 million, and new revenue totaled $76 million.

Some of the large contributors to the success between fiscal year 2012 and 2013 included projects such as the Statewide Energy Partnership, which aims to lower utility costs, and Liquidity Management, which rearranges money into a longer-term investment pool for a higher return.

The program saved the UC system about $157 million between fiscal years 2010 and 2011 and $132 million between fiscal years 2011 and 2012, according to the regents’ agenda. The $461 million accrued through the initiative in the past three years will be funneled directly to campuses to support the university’s core academic and research missions.

In 2009, UC Berkeley launched a separate initiative called Operational Excellence, a cost-cutting measure to streamline campus operations. While the these two projects share several similarities, Operational Excellence was not involved in the Working Smarter Initiative project proposal, said Caryl Miller, communications manager for the UC Berkeley Operational Excellence office.

“It’s important to remember this is a systemwide initiative,” Converse said. “These projects affect students heavily, but it might be harder for students on a specific campus to see on a daily basis.”

J. Hannah Lee covers higher education. Contact her at jhlee@dailycal.org.

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Mary Zheng/Staff

Amid the increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks faced by universities, UC Berkeley is doubling its efforts and allying with other UC campuses to address security risks.

UC Berkeley was previously underfunded for an institution of its size but will increase investment in its central information security program from $1.5 million to $3 million for the next fiscal year. Universities face the extra challenge of protecting intellectual property and the security data of a heterogeneous population while preserving the openness unique to a research institution.

UC Berkeley faces millions of attempts at breaching vulnerabilities every week, according to Larry Conrad, UC Berkeley’s chief information officer.

“Unfortunately, universities are a worldwide destination for hackers,” Conrad said. “To steal a Social Security number or credit card number, you get some financially stable people (in universities) you can leverage. Research universities also create new knowledge — there’s intellectual property, value on the new market.”

These cyberattacks are also becoming more sophisticated, and phishing attacks — which trick people into revealing accounting credentials by replicating login pages and stealing credentials — have seen an increase. According to Paul Rivers, UC Berkeley’s system and network security manager, hackers monitor UC websites so they can replicate login pages as closely as possible.

The number of cyberattacks campuses face may also depend on the size of the institution and significance of its research. UC Riverside receives thousands of attacks per year — compared to UC Berkeley’s millions — and its budget for next year will be far less than double that of UC Berkeley, said Bob Grant, director of technology at UC Riverside.

While corporations also face cyberattacks, the information exchanges in universities entail a more open but more vulnerable environment. Unlike corporations, campus networks allow virtually anyone to connect to a server and access the Internet from outside.

The research focus of universities also brings unique challenges for researchers and professors who want to protect intellectual property. Hackers may not always have the motivation to steal research to make their own patents — sometimes, they only look to take advantage of the information.

Handling stolen intellectual property is also more difficult because of international hackers and the challenges that come with obtaining cooperation from foreign countries, according to Brian Carver, an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Hackers often launch attacks from multiple locations or change locations, making it complicated to trace the origin of the breach.

Looking ahead: taking steps to ensure improved security

In 2009, hackers broke into University Health Services databases, gaining access to 160,000 people’s personal records for six months. Afterward, the FBI and UCPD combed through records extensively to ensure that all students were aware of the security breach and that firewalls were secure.

Now, the campus’s Information Services and Technology department plans on doubling its funding, an investment that will bring the institution up to par with its peers. Currently, the UC Privacy and Information Security Initiative is also seeking to have an advisory board for both the UC president and for each university by 2014 to guide discussions about issues of privacy and information security.

“It really does take a village to try to respond to this,” Conrad said. “The threat is too pervasive. The (other universities) help identify where the exposures are and do a good job of disseminating the info.”

However, each individual will also have to play an active role, as the most important thing for departments and researchers to do is remain aware of what data they have that could be breached, Rivers said. IST has also emphasized clear data classification standards that inform departments of the level of security their data requires.

Hackers target not only high-security computers but also devices as common as personal laptops. Just having anti-virus software does not suffice these days, Rivers said. IST offers a program called Secunia PSI that individuals on campus can use to see whether they have the necessary updated protection.

“Hackers may look for any kind of data system to get into, whether sensitive or not,” Rivers said. “So they spread out and establish capability on the campus network … That’s the basis by which our security standards require patching your system. People wonder, if it’s just my personal laptop, why does it matter to the university? Well, that’s why.”

In 2010, the university moved to create an overarching security policy. The initiative will establish a systemwide advisory board, train campus privacy leaders and form a consistent balancing analysis — a framework for decision-making when competing privacy interests, university values or obligations exist. The university hopes to fully implement the initiative in the next five years.

Despite these steps, the initiative strives to refrain from turning the university’s security program into that of a corporation. Corporations have more restrictions on accessing web servers and may perform stronger monitoring because they regard the computers as company property. According to Rivers, the university does not want to become a “Big Brother” but aims to maintain strong security alongside uninhibited autonomy.

However, security breaches remain a problem for universities. On July 24, Stanford University experienced its own security breach in its information technology infrastructure. Stanford is still investigating the source and impact of the breach but has urged all students to changed their passwords.

“Due to the emergence of so much new technology and the ever increasing amount of data we store it is of great importance that we make security a priority,” said UC spokesperson Brooke Converse in an email. “It is critical that the University be a good steward of information entrusted to it by students, faculty, staff, and community.”

Contact Mary Zhou at mzhou@dailycal.org

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The University of California filed a lawsuit against Bank of America, Barclays and 20 other global financial institutions on Tuesday, alleging the university suffered financial damages when the banks manipulated an interest rate benchmark, known as the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, that affects trillions of dollars of investments worldwide.

The 236-page lawsuit charges the banks with fraud, deceit and violating antitrust laws, all of which were allegedly part of a conspiracy to lower the Libor. Although the scale and scope of the damages to the university’s $80 billion portfolio of investments have yet to be determined, UC spokesperson Brooke Converse said the university’s retirement pool was negatively affected by the manipulation of rates.

“We have a pretty strong case in terms of the evidence that’s out there, and we have a responsibility given that we incurred losses to our investment pool,” Converse said. “We have a duty to recover those losses.”

Libor determines the benchmark rate at which many of the world’s largest banks are able to borrow money by surveying representatives from 18 major global banks. The rate impacts short-term interest rates for a wide variety of financial instruments and investments, some of which the UC system invests in. The lawsuit claims the defendants colluded to artificially suppress Libor for the benefit of individual traders.

Bank of America, listed first in the university’s lawsuit, declined to comment on the case. UBS, Barclays and The Royal Bank of Scotland, each indicted in the suit, were fined a total of about $2.5 billion in the past year for manipulating Libor and similar benchmarks.

The law firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy is representing the university and several other California civic bodies, including San Diego County, the city of Richmond and the East Bay Municipal Utility District, in similar lawsuits against the banks. Some banks are also facing an array of class action lawsuits from groups around the country.

Nanci Nishimura, an attorney with the firm, said although the wide scope of the Libor scandal is difficult to understand, everyone, from homeowners to students, is affected through the interest rates on student loans, mortgages and credit card payments.

“People need to know they’re being taken advantage of,” Nishimura said. “This is in the paper almost every day, and people think it isn’t sexy — but it’s affecting us every single day.”

But the university’s suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, may not even be heard. In March, most of the claims in a similar suit filed in the Manhattan District Court were dismissed.

Even if the complaint is thrown out, however, Nishimura says filing the university’s case has the potential to shed light on abuses in the financial sector.

“Even if this complaint were thrown out on a technicality, even if not all the claims survive,” Nishimura said, “there have been wrongs, and we’ve got to get justice.”

Contact Chris Yoder at cyoder@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

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Brown proposed about $250 million in funding increases for both the UC and CSU systems in his January and May budget proposals. Until this week, however, the funds were contingent upon reaching certain performance requirements, such as making education more affordable, decreasing the time to earn a degree, improving completion rates and increasing transfer rates, among others.

Legislators say they rejected funding conditions in the original budget proposal because the financial cuts to the UC and CSU systems would be too high if they failed to achieve their targets. Lower funding would penalize students rather than hold institutions responsible for poor outcomes.

“We, in effect, agreed it’s OK to have some accountability,” said Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. “But we lessened the accountability that was more harmful for students and directed that accountability more towards the institutions.”

This year’s budget still requires the UC and CSU systems to track and report the performance measurements to Sacramento as outlined in the original budget proposed by Brown. However, funding will not depend on meeting any specific goal.

But some of the performance measures were changed to reflect a more realistic target that better measures academic success.

“The governor had issues around the number of years people were in school,” Skinner said. “We modified that to be more focused around graduation rate versus trying to restrict the number of years people are pursuing their education, because there are so many factors that can affect that.”

It is also likely that Brown’s performance requirements will be included in future budgets, according to H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs for the California Department of Finance.

“It is going to take time to develop the metrics,” Palmer said. “In the first year, we will begin work with legislators and the UC and CSU systems to develop how we’ll measure and gather data going forward.”

Nevertheless, according to UC spokesperson Brooke Converse, the tie between funding and performance requirements as designed in Brown’s proposed budget was not feasible for the UC system.

“It would have been difficult to reach some of the numbers in the proposed requirements,” Converse said. “We are not against performance outcome requirements, but we need to work with the governor to find numbers that are more doable.”

The 2013-14 budget, though approved by the state Assembly and Senate, will need to be signed by Brown before the end of the month for it to become law.

“We are very hopeful that the budget will go through, but the governor has the right to use his blue pen,” Skinner said.

Contact Stephanie Petrillo at spetrillo@dailycal.org

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The increase will affect nonrepresented staff members at the university — staff unaffiliated with unions — which include librarians, human resources and public affairs staff, among others. Despite the planned increase, staff  members at UC Berkeley have only been authorized a 1 percent increase in salary to account for a 2 percent increase authorized in March as a market adjustment. The universitywide increase will also exempt senior UC management.

A similar universitywide salary increase of 3 percent was authorized in October 2011, but it was merit-based and given only to staff who received satisfactory performance reviews and had salaries of less than $200,000. According to UC spokesperson Brooke Converse, there has not been an unconditional universitywide salary increase in five years.

“We want to make sure that all our faculty and staff is valued,” Converse said. “The president (Mark Yudof) believes the staff deserves it.”

Converse said UC President Mark Yudof wanted to implement the increase now because staff pension contributions will go up from 5 percent to 6.5 percent on July 1. Providing the salary increase could offset some of the costs.

Robert Powell, chair of the UC Academic Senate, said that many of the faculty members he has spoken to about this salary increase are in favor of it.

However, unlike the other UC schools, UC Berkeley will not receive the full 3 percent increase due to a 2 percent salary increase for nonrepresented staff in March.

In an email in March, then-UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau said the 2 percent increase at UC Berkeley was an effort to align the compensation of the school’s nonrepresented staff with the marketplace and retain quality personnel.

“In fact, at present our non-represented staff is, on average, 11 percent behind the market as of 2012, and we are experiencing challenges in recruiting Bay Area talent to important positions here on our campus,” Birgeneau said in the email. “My primary goals in this effort are to recognize our staff, strengthen our workforce, and ensure the future of UC Berkeley.”

The funds for the universitywide salary increase will come from each campus’s 2013-14 budget.

The estimated cost of the systemwide program for core funded programs is approximately $54 million, according to Converse.

Contact Jane Nho at jnho@dailycal.org.

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article may have implied that the UC would be receiving additional funds for the salary increases. In fact, no additional allocations will be made to fund these increases. The funds will come from each campus’s 2013-14 budget.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a 3 percent increase in salary was approved for faculty and nonrepresented academic personnel. In fact, the salary increase is 3 percent for nonrepresented staff and 2 percent for faculty and nonrepresented academic personnel.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that staff pension contributions will go up 6.5 percent on July 1. In fact, they will go up from 5 percent to 6.5 percent.

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The UC Board of Regents met on Wednesday in Sacramento to discuss the governor’s May budget revision and capital projects at UC Merced and UC Berkeley, among other issues.

The governor’s May budget revision, released Tuesday, remains largely unchanged from the January proposal. Patrick Lenz, the university’s vice president for budget and capital resources, said the university did not receive any additional increases in funding in the May revision.

The budget also calls for a four-year tuition freeze for all students except those in professional schools, a restructuring of debt and discontinuation of a proposed unit cap on state-subsidized courses, which could have affected 2,200 UC students in the next school year.

Student Regent Jonathan Stein and Regent Bonnie Reiss raised concerns about rising costs of professional student fees while undergraduate and other program costs have been held constant.

“Because Prop. 30 passed and because of new state revenues, we’ve been able to hold tuition constant,” Stein said. “In reality, we’ve been able to hold undergraduate and Ph.D tuition constant while professional schools continue to rise.”

The regents also discussed restructuring the university’s debt. The state of California currently takes out bonds on behalf of the university, but UC officials say shifting the responsibility of the debt to the UC system would help lower the debt.

“That debt is greater because the state of California’s credit rating is not as good as ours,” said Brooke Converse, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President. “What we’re asking is that the state of California let us take over and restructure that debt, because if we restructure it, we’ll be able to save $80 million a year.”

The university is also working with the governor to expand facilities at UC Merced, said Nathan Brostrom, the university’s executive vice president for business operations.

“The highest priority is a classroom and academic building at UC Merced,” Brostrom said. “They are now close to 6,000 students, and they do not have space for continued growth unless they get more classroom buildings.”

The regents also approved a plan to build a new aquatics center at UC Berkeley on the current site of the Tang Center parking lot.

Protesters from American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299, a union representing patient-care workers at UC medical centers, also interrupted early in the meeting for about 45 minutes to protest in favor of higher pay and increased staffing.

On Thursday, the regents will meet in closed sessions to discuss collective bargaining matters and lawsuits related to the UC system.

Staff writer Virgie Hoban contributed to this report. 

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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Andrew Kuo/File

Following months of controversy, UC Berkeley announced that it will withdraw from the systemwide UC Student Health Insurance Plan in the fall.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced the decision to withdraw Thursday, joining four other UC campuses that are abandoning at least some parts of UC SHIP. The announcement comes after the systemwide Council of Chancellors approved various changes to UC SHIP, including campus withdrawal, in a meeting Wednesday.

“Today I am stating my support for the students’ position and, following their urging, announcing that UC Berkeley will be withdrawing from UC SHIP and returning to a UC Berkeley-operated student health insurance plan,” Birgeneau said in a statement.

Beginning Aug. 15, UC Berkeley will transition back into a campus-managed, fully funded insurance plan similar to what the campus had in place for decades before joining UC SHIP in 2011.

UC SHIP follows a self-funded model in which those paying the costs, in this case the UC system, are responsible for absorbing the plan’s risks, according to Bahar Navab, UC Berkeley’s student representative to the UC SHIP Advisory Board. Fully funded plans place risk on a separate insurance provider but generally have higher premiums.

UC SHIP currently has a $400,000 lifetime cap and a $10,000 prescription drug coverage cap. As a fully funded plan, UC Berkeley-provided insurance would also have to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits these coverage caps.

In a letter sent to Birgeneau last month by UC Berkeley student representatives, Navab and ASUC President Connor Landgraf wrote that poor management from the UC Office of the President and a desire for more local control were some of the reasons students favored withdrawing from UC SHIP.

“I think that localized control and more decentralized governance is what’s best for our campus right now,” Navab said. “It’s a two-year plan, and we can always re-evaluate after two years. If UC SHIP has changed enough that we want to go back to it, we always have that option.”

UC Berkeley’s decision to withdraw comes in light of UC SHIP’s projected $46.5 million net deficit, which earlier prompted the possibility of premium increases across the board.

According to Kim LaPean, communications manager at the Tang Center, the new plan is expected to include a 13 percent premium increase for undergraduates and a 20 percent increase for graduate students, though the campus has yet to finalize rates. LaPean said benefits will not decrease under the campus plan and that officials are working to ensure that students will be able to see the same outside carriers.

“Berkeley students were really clear that they did not want to lose benefits,” LaPean said. “The changes that they’re going to see are all going to be in the favor of the student.”

Other campuses that decided to partially withdraw from UC SHIP include UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara. Some campuses, like UCLA, have opted to stick with UC SHIP.

Students with coverage through UC SHIP next year will also see changes, including lifting the lifetime maximum, annual pharmacy cap and other caps on essential care. The UC Office of the President is currently reviewing options to close the deficit, but UC spokesperson Brooke Converse said students will not have to pay for the deficit through premium increases.

“Our job right now is to respect the campuses that want to leave,” said Scott Arno, the UCLA student representative to UC SHIP Advisory Board. “No campus should be forced into this plan. We need to make it run better so that they’ll want to come back.”

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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