Submission: UC officials’ spending demands accountability

It is urgent that we – we who care about the future of an equitable and democratic University of California system dedicated to critical education – understand and criticize administrative abuse and unaccountable structures of power.

Earlier this month, the Center for Investigative Reporting documented that between 2008 and 2012 UCLA spent about $2 million on luxury travel, hotel accommodations and other elite benefits for (or on behalf of) officials who supposedly work for the student and public interest.

The university, for example, spent $486,000 on premium airfares for six UCLA deans. They were, at least, thoughtful enough to spend $234 of public money on “engraved cufflinks” for a private donor’s birthday (along with an $842 limousine ride for Anderson School of Management Dean Judy Olian to attend the party).

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, known for his heartwarming speeches on integrity and excellence at our Honors graduation ceremonies, charged $40,000 in public money for chauffeured car service from 2008 to 2012.

He also – despite his already ludicrously high six-figure salary – stayed at The Langham Huntington hotel for two nights for a conference in Pasadena, which cost the university about $500. This occurred in violation of a clear university policy which forbids officials from being reimbursed “unless an employee is attending an event at least 40 miles away from UCLA,” as reported by Erica Perez and Agustin Armendariz at the Center for Investigative Reporting. The conference was only 26 miles from UCLA.

There are other examples of abuse and inequality along similar lines. Our sports fetishism allows Jim Mora, the head coach of the UCLA football team, to rake in around $2.5 milion along with lucrative signing bonuses and performance-based incentives, as reported by Chris Foster of the Los Angeles Times.

David Feinberg, the CEO of the UCLA Health System, earns an approximate personal income of $1.4 million (in 2012, including base salary and bonuses). All of this is disturbing, especially in light of the current struggles of those excluded from money and power: Student tuition and debt, the budget crisis, and patient care worker exploitation are just a few major examples.

All of the examples mentioned above – luxurious extravagances on the part of people like Gene Block and Judy Olian, Jim Mora’s stupidly massive salary and accompanying benefits, and David Feinberg’s bloated personal income – are absurd. That students, faculty and staff do not consider them so, and that we have not yet successfully curbed these abuses, speaks of just how acute the need is to have a critical conversation about these issues with an eye toward substantive reform.

Fancy limousine rides, extravagant hotel stays and engraved cufflinks are probably not in the interests of the majority of us who make up the University of California system. Nor are country club memberships for our football coaches. We need to ask our administrators and other officials to stop this (or participate in direct action in order to disrupt power if we are ignored, which is often the case).

We need to ask them for transparency, accountability, oversight and, most importantly, democratic participation. The power of the UC – currently centralized in a small upper echelon nakedly unaccountable to a large population of which it claims just representation – needs to be decentralized and vested into the hands of those who are affected by its policies and whose interests are at stake.

It needs to, that is, be put back into the hands of all of us – students, workers, professors, administrators and the public more generally. Let us, then, politely remind those in power of what they asked us to internalize when we first arrived: the True Bruin creed of integrity, excellence, accountability, respect and service.

Netwig graduated from UCLA in June with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.