Editorial: Shine some light on chancellor search

UCLA’s search for a new chancellor is being conducted
behind closed doors, with only scattered media reports giving the
public an idea of who the university’s next leader will
be.

But that’s not the way it has to be ““ or should
be.

After Chancellor Albert Carnesale announced that his last day
would be June 30, a search committee was formed to locate a
successor. Things appeared to be running smoothly until the top
candidate for the job, Syracuse Provost Deborah Freund, apparently
withdrew from the process about a week ago, according to a report
in the Los Angeles Times.

Now, the University of California has six weeks to find a new
candidate before Carnesale is scheduled to step down, leaving the
rest of us more in the dark than ever.

There are significant merits to both open and closed search
processes, but UCLA is a public university. If this school is going
to fulfill its responsibility to the people of California, it needs
to conduct an open search in which the UCLA community and the
Californian people will know who will lead the university before a
decision has been made on their behalf.

It wouldn’t be the first time a more open search has been
conducted. The University of Arizona invited its final four
candidates to town hall meetings during its recent top executive
search. The University of Nevada at Reno conducts an entirely open
search.

In fact, according to a University of New Mexico study, only 30
percent of nationwide chancellor searches are conducted with the
same secrecy as UCLA.

The taxpayers of California fund the UC, and the UC needs to
remain accountable to California. It’s irresponsible for a
public university to hide its operations from the public.

The search committee is supposed to be representative of the
interests of the campus community, as it is comprised of student,
faculty, staff and alumni representatives, among others. But on the
17-member committee, only two are students ““ one graduate
student, one undergraduate. On a campus of more than 35,000
students, there’s no way to expect two people to represent
everyone’s interests.

Even those two student representatives on the search committee
are not allowed to discuss most of the proceedings, which makes it
even harder to let students know what is happening.

There are simply too many interests involved in choosing the
next chancellor ““ from taxpayers to students ““ for a
17-member committee to cover them all.

It’s true that the university will lose some useful tools
in the bargaining process if it decides to open up the search
process. The search may lose some top prospects who wouldn’t
want their candidacy for the position to be known by their current
school or employers. They may even lose some leeway to bargain and
to lay out competitive offers to the candidates.

But what the university would gain from an open search process
would be far more important. Real representation for all the groups
concerned as well as accountability to California’s residents
are worth the sacrifice.

The search for UCLA’s next chancellor should be much more
open, and the university loses a lot by closing the door on
California and the UCLA community.