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Black History Month 2025

UC regents committee hold public comments session, vote on Health CEO bonuses

The UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center is pictured. The UC Regents’ Health Services Committee held a public comment session and approved new bonuses during their July meeting at UC San Francisco. (Daily Bruin file photo)

By Vivian Stein

July 24, 2024 7:30 p.m.

The UC Board of Regents Health Services Committee heard public comment from community members and voted to alter the bonus structures of UC Health CEOs on Tuesday.

The board held its bimonthly meeting July 16 through July 18 at UC San Francisco. At its first session of the meeting, students and community members from across the UC shared public comments for the regents’ health services committee.

Joselen Contreras, a UC Berkeley student and member of the Associated Students of UC Berkeley, asked the regents to issue a system-wide standard for collegiate recovery programs, which are institutionally sanctioned groups that support students in recovery from substance use or addiction.

She added that she believes the programs should be established on every UC campus, professionally staffed by at least one full-time coordinator, given dedicated private and accessible space and financially funded by the board and campus chancellors.

Due to a lack of requirements, CRPs have developed independently on separate campuses, leading to discrepancies in access across the UC, Contreras said.

Aditi Hariharan, a UC Davis student and UC Student Association member, added that other university systems have implemented a university-wide CRP program, including the University of Texas, which has 14 campuses.

“To keep the UCs at the frontlines of student support, academic change and research, it’s vital for UCs to also supply students with support,” she said.

Four UC campuses do not yet have a CRP, said Cassidy Miller, a UC Santa Barbara student and UC Student Association member. She added that in order for centers to be added to the remaining campuses, the regents must provide proper funding and infrastructure for these programs.

[Related: UC Regents discusses UC Press, math requirements, recovery programs at meeting]

Community members also urged the regents to protect UCLA’s Jewish and Israeli students, faculty and staff.

Judea Pearl, a UCLA computer science professor, said he – and over 400 UCLA faculty members who identify as Israeli – believe the regents should do more to protect the Jews on campus.

“Since October 7th, our community has been subjected to harassment, exclusion, incrimination and dehumanization,” he said.

To treat Israeli faculty as “vital contributors” to campus life, Pearl added, the regents must work to combat antisemitism and antizionism.

Kira Stein, a professor at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and member of UCLA’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, also called on the regents to protect the rights and safety of Jewish students, faculty and patients.

“Why has the UCLA Jewish community been shown no empathy or support? And why has no one been publicly held accountable?” she said.

Elina Veytsman, a psychologist at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and member of JFrg, said the group endorses Item J2, a policy that prohibits UC departments from making political statements on website homepages. The board voted to approve Item J2 Wednesday.

[Related: UC Regents votes to pass Item J2 following months of revision and deferred voting]

Veytsman said she hopes the regents will consider a more complete ban on departmental statements, as Item J2 only bans political statements on a department’s homepage. She added that she believes any statement from a department will be taken as the official stance of the university no matter where it was found.

Jeffrey Young, an associate professor of psychiatry at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and member of JFrg, said passing Item J2 is a useful first step, but added that its limit to departmental websites’ landing pages is “odd and self-defeating.”

No one outside the university will differentiate department website statements from statements in any other forum, said Henry Friedman, a UCLA professor in the Anderson School of Management and member of JFrg.

“Individuals are free to make statements on their own behalf,” he said. “Departments should not be making political statements.”

After public comment and its subsequent closed session, the regents met to discuss adjusting bonus structures for medical executives, introduced by UC Vice President of Systemwide Human Resources Cheryl Lloyd. The current bonus structure is evaluated on a clinical enterprise objective to encourage cooperation between UC Health locations and an institutional objective for specific UC Health locations to promote teamwork among staff.

The CEOs are currently assigned two levels of these objectives, which are both weighted at 50% each. The approval of the meeting’s proposal cut the weighting of the clinical enterprise objectives to 30% and raised the institutional objectives to 70%.

“This is a substantive change to the plan document, and when we do that, we need to bring it to the regents for approval,” Lloyd said.

The board voted to approve the revision, and the changes will be effective July 1.

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Vivian Stein
Stein is a News staff writer and an Arts and Copy contributor. She is a second-year anthropology student from Thousand Oaks, California.
Stein is a News staff writer and an Arts and Copy contributor. She is a second-year anthropology student from Thousand Oaks, California.
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