Shocked,Dismayed,Apologize,Freeze, Rename Repurpose, -- Rinse, repeat-Leaving it unresolved as a management style?
If UCOP and Cal has known about this problem for so long- why didn't they deal with it then so that CRISPR Cas 9 would not come up in stories related to it?
"UC Berkeley is disavowing its eugenic research fund after bioethicist and other faculty call it out "
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-26/uc-berkeley-disavows-eugenics-research-fund
includes:"
In late 2018, UC Berkeley bioethics professor Osagie K. Obasogie received a campus email about a research fund available to faculty members in the School of Public Health.
He was stunned by what he read.
The Genealogical Eugenic Institute Fund, the email said, supports research and education in eugenics....
But Berkeley’s eugenic research fund has been very much active.
The $2.4-million fund was offering an annual payout of about $70,000 in fiscal year 2020 to support research and education on policies, practices and technologies ...
“I was shocked and dismayed,” Obasogie told the Los Angeles Times. He, along with a small group of faculty, raised his concerns with the email’s author, a former senior administrator.
Those alarm bells prompted the school to freeze the fund and launch a review into how the university could have accepted such a gift in its modern past — it came from a family trust to the University of California Board of Regents in 1975 — for research under the banner of a now-reviled ideology.
On Monday, School of Public Health Dean Michael C. Lu disclosed the existence of the fund to the wider school faculty. Lu, who took the school’s helm in July 2019, has asked for feedback on renaming and repurposing the fund, along with potential actions such as a public apology and a public education project on eugenics across UC campuses.
No evidence has yet surfaced that Berkeley used the money for eugenic research. Instead, it funded a genetic counseling training program, among other uses. But that does not absolve the school, Lu said.
“By accepting and using these funds over the past four decades, we must acknowledge that Berkeley Public Health has been a part of this horrific legacy of eugenics and its disastrous impacts,” Lu wrote in a letter Monday to the School of Public Health faculty. “It was wrong then. It is wrong now.”
...
Science walks a fine line between developments that can advance human progress and perpetuate injustice, university ethicists said.
...Then this :
Gene editing technologies, such as CRISPR-Cas9 — whose discovery won a Nobel Prize in chemistry this month for UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin — can alter DNA to help treat diseases but also potentially favor future generations with socially desirable skin colors, hair textures or height.
...The eugenic fund was established by a family trust called the Rogers Family Foundation, which was created in 1960 by trustees and Alta Corp. Lu said they had not yet found much information about the foundation or corporation. The fund’s primary stated purpose was “the improvement of the human race through research and education in that field generally known as eugenics,” Obasogie said.
It was transferred to UC regents in 1975. It is not clear when the regents sent the funds to Berkeley, Lu said. The first documented expenditures were in 1987 to train genetic counselors — ...— until the program was shut down in the 1990s.
Since 2000, about $1 million has been drawn from the account. The disbursements include $138,325 for the school’s budget deficit, $72,647 for financial aid for low-income students, $575,999 for student support and staff salary and benefits, $123,212 for travel and conferences, and the rest on office supplies, operations and journal subscriptions.
In recent years, the funds were primarily used by one faculty member, who has denied using them for eugenic research — an assertion supported by a review of the person’s academic activities, Lu said. The dean declined to name the faculty member because the fact-finding review was ongoing.
So far, faculty and staff have suggested that Berkeley repurpose the fund to increase financial aid for underrepresented minority students, support research with communities that have been disproportionately harmed by the eugenic ideology and establish an institute to stand against eugenics and racism.
Another recommendation is to create a “1907 Project,” named for the year the world’s first eugenic law was passed in Indiana, that would explore the centrality of eugenics in contemporary life sciences and public health through essays and UC-wide forums.
The activities are aimed at correcting what Obasogie says has been the failure of medicine, public health and other scientific fields to fully acknowledge and confront their central role in giving eugenic ideologies legitimacy in the past and understanding their legacy today.
“Regardless of what was done with the money, it was just wrong for us to take it in the first place,” Lu said. “It’s antithetical to everything that the school stands for.”
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UC Berkeley public relations has now put together this response on an issue that was a known issue for a long while apparently:
"Berkeley Public Health announces plans to rename, repurpose former eugenics fund"
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/10/26/berkeley-public-health-announces-plans-to-rename-repurpose-former-eugenics-fund/
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" How career and technical education shuts out Black and Latino students from high-paying professions
Career and technical education is viewed as a gateway to good jobs. But a new Hechinger/AP analysis finds a deep racial divide in who benefits "
https://hechingerreport.org/how-career-and-technical-education-shuts-out-black-and-latino-students-from-high-paying-professions/
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"The UC must adjust tuition and fee costs to match the quality of education"
https://www.highlandernews.org/75364/the-uc-must-adjust-tuition-and-fee-costs-to-match-the-quality-of-education/
includes:
...While the UC has claimed that students are continuing to earn full credit for their coursework, the quality of education is just not the same. Over the course of the pandemic, students were reassured that they would be paying full tuition for the same quality of resources online. It soon became clear that this was not the case at all. Students are finding themselves paying thousands for empty facilities and Zoom classes. For instance, at UCR, the Student Recreation Center (SRC) remains closed to the campus community, yet it is still getting paid for by students. Additionally, important resources, such as the financial aid office, have gone completely online, and the accessibility of these resources has become a steadily increasing challenge. Even if students were to call the financial aid office, their phone lines are turned off, making them only available through email. This makes getting a response even more difficult, considering they probably have to sift through an immense amount of emails from students who rely heavily on financial aid. It does not make sense that students are still paying for these facilities as if they were operating in person.
The UC has also tried to justify that they have to keep tuition the same by claiming they need it in order to pay their lower-wage employees and to deal with the other large costs of coronavirus, but they have otherwise shown that this is not the case, since they decided to lay most employees off anyways. The lack of transparency when it comes to what exactly tuition is funding is extremely problematic. Although it is promised that money goes directly back to the students at their respective schools, it is difficult to believe this sentiment when the UC regents have obscenely high salaries while some buildings on campuses, such as several at UCR, are falling apart and while important resources remain unavailable.
Furthermore, the UC needs to stop placing the financial burden on students and start looking to themselves as an institution. It seems as if whatever decision the UC comes to with tuition, the students will always pay the biggest price. While it may look like the UC is counting on this virus being a temporary setback, they are missing the bigger picture and are not thinking about who this is directly affecting. Even if tuition were to be lowered, this would give the UC more of a reason to cut whole academic or athletic programs. Consider UCR and their proposals to eliminate the School of Public Policy (SPP) and Athletics in order to cope with financial strain. If tuition was actually lowered, this proposal would most definitely take place not just at UCR, but at other underfunded UC campuses all because at the end of the day, the UC will continue to place the burden on their students. Again, this is rather vulturous of the UC to make students either pay full tuition for half a college experience or give up programs that they benefit from"...
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"More than half of California State University campuses saw enrollment gains this fall, despite pandemic"
https://edsource.org/2020/more-than-half-of-csu-campuses-saw-enrollment-gains-this-fall-despite-pandemic/642072
_____and ,
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/satco-receives-key-rulings-from-us-patent-and-trademark-appeal-board-301159662.html
BRENTWOOD, N.Y., Oct. 26, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Satco Products, Inc., a leading supplier of lighting products for the commercial, residential and industrial markets, today announced that it had received key rulings from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Appeal Board in connection with four patents at issue in a pending litigation in the Eastern District of New York ("EDNY") with the Regents of the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Specifically, after receiving unsubstantiated threats of alleged patent infringement by the University of California, Satco filed a lawsuit in the EDNY seeking a ruling by the Court that the patents identified by the University of California were not infringed by Satco. In addition, Satco filed petitions for inter partes review against U.S. Patent Nos. 7,781,789, 9,240,529, 9,859,464, and 10,217,916—which the University of California had asserted against some Satco products in a complaint previously filed with the International Trade Commission ("ITC"). In a series of decisions capped by a ruling on October 22, the U.S. Patent Office instituted inter partes review of all four patents challenged by Satco, finding that there is a "reasonable likelihood" that Satco will prevail in demonstrating that at least one claim in each of those patents is invalid.
SATCO, a leading supplier of lighting solutions, received key rulings from U.S. Patent Office and Trademark Appeal Board
The recent setbacks for the University of California follow earlier losses it sustained in its continuing effort to extract royalties from numerous companies in the LED lighting industry. As explained in Satco's complaint in the EDNY, the University of California has mounted what it calls a "patent monetization campaign," which is being funded by a private investment company in exchange for a portion of the proceeds. This campaign was kicked off on July 30, 2019, when the University of California filed the ITC complaint mentioned above against five retailers. That same day, the University of California began sending threatening letters to numerous retailers attaching copies of its ITC complaint, and demanding payment of royalties. Yet, after months of litigation and letter-writing, the University of California mysteriously withdrew its first ITC complaint, and on May 26, 2020 the ITC terminated the investigation in its entirety.
More recently, it has refiled a substantially similar complaint with the ITC, based on the same patents and additional ones. Satco intends to vigorously defend its products in the 2nd ITC matter.
....
"We are pleased with the orders from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and look forward to finally resolving all claims made by UCSB," Bornstein said....
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At UC San Diego
"Some Graduate Students Lose UCSD-Sponsored Health Insurance at Start of Fall Quarter"
https://ucsdguardian.org/2020/10/23/graduate-students-lose-ucsd-sponsored-health-insurance-at-start-of-fall-quarter/and grievance here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_jsEwMezUzhZg-oMRNbR8zIADhRqXFxC/view?usp=sharing
includes no direct reference to UC PATH but:
At the start of the 2020 Fall Quarter, approximately 500 graduate students were left without their University of California Student Health Insurance Plans, because UC San Diego did not enroll them on time. Some of these students allege that they were left without insurance for approximately two weeks, during which time they had to make out-of-pocket expenses if they wanted to have their doctors appointments and receive their prescription drugs.
According to the United Auto Workers Local 2865 union’s grievance filed against UCSD, some academic student employees noticed that their insurance remained inactivated even though they had provided all payments and documentation on time. The grievance, which was sent to the University of California’s Labor Relations for adjudication, claims that UCSD had violated a part of the UC/UAW Collective Bargaining Agreement by not renewing the students’ insurance in a timely fashion. ...
UCSD claims that they sent the processing notification early in order to get more students insured by the start of the academic year on Oct. 1. They have also since stated that students who received medical services during their period without SHIP will be retroactively covered and be provided with reimbursements for their out-of-pocket expenses.
“UC San Diego did not purposely delay insurance for any students. The eligibility process takes time and if students are not registered when the enrollment files are transferred, their active eligibility is delayed,” a Student Health & Wellbeing representative said to The UCSD Guardian in an email. “UC San Diego works to abide by the AHP’s schedule for enrollment, but due to slow selection into various graduate education programs and registration of students, some students may not be listed on the enrollment file.”
...
The university has responded by citing discrepancies that exist between insurance enrollment and student registration. Rather than allowing students to enroll for insurance on their own, some academic departments act as an intermediary by processing and sending student documentation to SHIP. This additional step consequently makes the overall enrollment process longer.
“Moving forward, our department will work with these academic departments to create a better schedule, so that we include all students that are expecting to be included in the insurance offering,” the Student Health & Wellbeing representative said. “We would love to have everyone covered by the first day of the quarter but due to a fluid registration process – in which students are still registering for classes past the first official date of the quarter – we are unable to do this. We are working on our timing, so that this issue doesn’t affect students in the future.”
UCSD Student Health & Wellbeing will continue to work with the Graduate Division to develop better, more timely registration practices to ensure that all students who want SHIP insurance are able to receive it. However, without that support and earlier notification in September, students still found themselves in a difficult situation."