UC official deserves stiffer punishment for dishonesty

Pashler is a professor of psychology at the University of
California, San Diego, and president of the California Association
of Scholars, an organization dedicated to fostering high academic
standards in California higher education.   Illustration by
HINGYI KHONG/Daily Bruin

By Hal Pashler

What do you guess would happen if a student at UCLA fraudulently
altered his or her academic records and was unlucky enough to get
caught? Probably you would expect the student to be punished quite
severely, and possibly even thrown out of school. And what do you
suppose would happen in the unlikely event that a top administrator
in the University of California system was found to have done the
same thing?

Aside from its bizarre premise, this question seems pretty easy:
obviously such an administrator would be fired, would he not? Well,
it turns out that under President Atkinson’s leadership,
things don’t work quite as you might expect at the University
of California. For the students, however, academic fraud is indeed
a very serious matter.

Over the years, many UC students (including quite a few at UCLA)
have been caught altering their academic records in one way or
another. Last year at UC San Diego, for example, a student working
with computers in the registrar’s office was found to have
inserted grades into her friends’ academic records. In this,
and every other such case I have heard about, the punishment was
extremely severe: the culprits were dismissed from school, either
permanently or for a period of several years.

It turns out that things work quite differently, however, when
the same offense is committed by a top administrator in the
University of California Office of the President.

Like corrupt grandees in a 17th-century court, officials at UCOP
seem not to believe they must live by the same rules as those in
less elevated positions. This became apparent about a month ago in
the case of Alex Saragoza, a vice president of the UC system.

Saragoza serves at President Richard Atkinson’s pleasure
in the president’s office and receives a salary of $207,000
per year. There he oversees policy on all campuses, including UCLA.
As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on Feb. 27, 2001,
Saragoza (also a member of the Berkeley faculty) admitted to
falsifying students’ academic records in 1999.

The case involved two football players. To maintain the
students’ athletic eligibility, Saragoza reportedly enrolled
them retroactively in classes they never attended, granting them
fraudulent course credit.

Football powerhouses in the Midwest and the South are notorious
for having overzealous coaches who occasionally try to lean on a
professor to grade a player’s exams a bit more leniently.
Such cases have resulted in embarrassment on the part of
administrators, and more than a little irritation on the part of
faculty.

Our own Saragoza case, however, goes very far beyond that,
involving not leniency but out-and-out academic fraud.

So exactly what sanction was imposed on Saragoza? Just one: UC
Berkeley suspended him from a semester of teaching on the campus.
This sounds like a penalty, albeit a very mild one. In reality, it
is not that at all ““ it is more like a joke. Saragoza is an
administrator and his entire salary comes from the Office of the
President. His teaching is essentially volunteer work.

Despite the suspension, he will continue to receive his $207,000
salary and to set policy for the entire UC system (including UCLA).
Courts sometimes sentence petty criminals to perform volunteer work
as a penalty; Saragoza’s sentence, apparently, is that he
must abstain from his volunteer work.

The inaction of President Richard Atkinson, charged with
upholding the dignity of the university, is hard to understand.
Upon first learning of the incident, Atkinson struck a fine pose
before his fellow administrators around the nation, telling the
Chronicle of Higher Education, “Academic integrity is the
foundation of the relationship of trust between professor and
student in the classroom. As such, any violation of that trust
cannot and will not be condoned by the University of
California.”

Having pontificated to the press, he proceeded to let the matter
drop, thus condoning a breach of integrity as serious as anyone can
recall on the campus of a major university in recent years. Despite
many complaints, no explanation has been forthcoming from Atkinson,
now nearing retirement, as to why he has done nothing.

Is it sheer cronyism, or something more? Professors on the
Berkeley campus speculate that Atkinson’s unethical deputy
may possibly have connections with legislators or some other form
of “pull,” but no one outside of UCOP seems to
know.

The California Association of Scholars, an organization of
faculty, graduate students and trustees from universities
throughout the state, recently wrote a letter of strong protest to
President Atkinson. We called upon Atkinson to uphold academic
integrity in a clear and decisive fashion; unless the facts somehow
differ from what has been widely reported, it seems obvious to us
that Saragoza should be removed forthwith from his administrative
post.

In our view, the gap between the treatment of students who have
altered their grades, and that of Saragoza, renders
Atkinson’s inaction not just unfortunate, but grotesque. We
believe that such cynicism and inequity ““ winking at offenses
by top administrators and imposing tough punishments whenever the
perpetrators are powerless ““ is contrary to all the
principles of a proud university system.

We believe that the students and faculty of the UC system cannot
and will not accept it. Because Atkinson has shown himself too
craven or cynical to act, protests must be directed to the UC Board
of Regents.

According to recent reports in the San Francisco Chronicle, some
regents are uncomfortable and even angry about Atkinson’s
inaction, but the board habitually defers to administrators on
matters of administration.

The university community needs to let the board know that we
expect higher, not lower, standards of behavior from university
leaders as compared to what we demand from students.

While often seen as remote figures by students and even faculty,
the regents are eager to hear from the university community,
including faculty and students. When they hear nothing, they have
little choice but to assume that administrators speak for all.

When the issue is corruption at the highest levels of the
administration, as in this case, they need to hear from the rest of
us. Those who wish to voice an opinion on the Saragoza case can
send an e-mail message to the board care of the Secretary of the
Regents, Leigh Trivette, at [email protected].