The Joint API Legislative Caucus has concerns that the proposed UC eligibility and admissions policy, which has wide ranging ramifications and unknown consequences, has not received the proper public vetting it deserves. The current proposal has only been available for public review for a few months before being presented to the UC Regents for a decision. Outreach regarding the eligibility proposal to the Joint API Legislative Caucus, API civil rights organizations, or API higher education associations has been non-existent. - Letter from Joint API Legislative Caucus to UC Regents, 02.03.09
Hello again, fair readers! Sorry that this post is going up a little later than the last ones have. After the long weekend, I had to go back to school/work. Today, we're gonna review the last point in the Caucus' letter. I hate to be a stickler and be kinda repetitive, but in the first sentence of the paragraph, I need to correct that the new policy is not regarding admissions. It defines who is Entitled to Review in the UC admissions process. So it's an admissions eligibility policy. But I digress back to earlier posts.
And really, what the Caucus is saying hits on a broader issue of how the UC conducts its business (public shared governance? PFFFFT! Whatever!) and how AAPI's engage with the UC... and really how AAPI's aren't very organized in articulating AAPI interests in education policy making overall.
Yup! We're gonna critique the UC governance structure, but then take a self-reflexive turn. After all, self-reflexivity and dialogue are the keys to community progress! Corny? Yet so true... so
Freirean!
So, just to review what we've discussed so far...
- Part 1 - The current policy with numbers on who is UC eligible currently
- Part 2 - The new policy with table comparing numbers of students eligible in current policy to numbers eligible in new policy - everyone's numbers go up!
- Part 3 - The Master Plan, comprehensive review, and the scary table with (what I think are mostly irrelevant) predicted admissions numbers - eligibility, comprehensive review, and admissions are all different!
- Part 4 - Ethnic disaggregation and available data - we need more!!!!
OK... so today, let's talk about how systemwide (yes, across all 10 campuses and labs in Los Alamos and Livermore) policies are made and about the massive bureaucracy that is the UC. It's like a small country with 10 states and 2 science labs that make nukes! First, it's important to understand
Shared Governance. Basically, it means all the University is run by 3 crews:
- The Regents - A mysterious group of 26 people (18 of whom are gazillionaires)
- UC Office of the Prez - located in a pretty building right next to Oakland Chinatown... the offices have quiet rules (shhh! UC worker bees are working!), and the hallway leading to the Prez's office on the top floor is lit by a blue light emanating from a large UC seal... like he's the Wizard of Oz! Of course, you can't get past the front door without an invitation into the publically owned building. Again, another digression. Sorry.
- The Academic Senate - doesn't this sound like something out of Star Wars? Is that just me?
The Regents ... Who are these mysterious people???
There are 26
Regents: 18 appointed to 12-year terms by the Governor; 1 voting Student Regent (appointed by the Regents - hooray for democracy... pffft!); and 7 ex-officio members (
the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the Assembly, Superintendent of Public Instruction (head of the state dept. of ed.), president and vice president of the UC Alumni Association and the UC president).
Since the public really only has impact on the Governor, Lt. Gov., Speaker, and Superintendent... I feel it incumbent to report back that I have NEVER seen the Governator or the Superintendent of Public Instruction (Jack O'Connell - I hear he might run for Governor!) at any Regents meeting I've ever attended! Thanks for being there, Jack and Arnold! On the other hand, Lt. Gov. Garamendi was always there at the Regents meetings. I don't know about Speaker Bass, but Nunez was there on occasions.
And of course, you have the 18 appointed 12-year termers. A lot of times these folks are friends and donors or highly connected folks (like Richard Blum - husband of Senator Feinstein), and not necessarily people who have any knowledge of public education policy. They're also often very hard to reach, private citizens who are in no way accountable to voters or anyone really. Not like we could recall any of them.
So as you can tell... There's not a whole lot of ways for the public to actually participate in the discussions and debates leading up to decisions by the UC, a public institution. Of course, anyone can go to the open
Regents meeting sessions, and say their peace in public comments... all 10 minutes worth of public comments first thing in the morning, where there's about 100 people who want time to address the Regents, who are often eating bagels and drinking coffee while chatting with each other during this time. You could also try to get yourself on a Regents meeting agenda, by getting a Regent (if you can get a hold of one) to add you to the agenda. Good luck with that!
So while us commoners have little influence on what the Regents do, legislators who ultimately determine the UC's budget for the year (but who knows if that's ever gonna
happen?) are people whose opinions the UC kinda cares about. So I say to the API Caucus - get that hearing on to shed that light on this whole thing, but it still doesn't address broader issues of the UC governance being soooo unfriendly to the public as a public institution.
And another thing on non-democratic processes... it's funny that the Caucus mentions that the UC never checked in with "API higher education associations" on the new policy....
Well, because... other than
APAHE, I really don't know of any other "API higher education associations." Unfortunately, APAHE struggles to just put on a California conference on an annual basis, and can hardly legitimately call itself a "national" organization. Beyond the annual conference in San Francisco, folks rarely hear a peep from them. It's as if the organization exists on an as-needed basis as determined by its own mysterious leaders. Its membership is largely made up of senior level administrators, who definitely don't have time to run an organization. And its own governance/leadership/participation processes are about as transparent as the UC's organizational structure, leaving a lot of younger generation scholars, administrators, and others interested in issues of higher ed and AAPI's left outside of this self-proclaimed "leading national organization addressing issues such as student admissions, faculty tenure, under-representation in hiring and promotion, affirmative action and Asian American Studies." ... and if anyone from APAHE is reading... feel free to correct me on these points.
It would have been good to have a proactive organization, even if just in California, to watch over ed policy developments... in this case, to watch over the new policy proposal as it was vetted over the last TWO YEARS, and not just the last 3 months as the Caucus' letter says. There was no functioning (on a year-round basis) AAPI higher ed organization to go to even if the UC was going to buck its typically arrogant "hey! we posted stuff on our website... that's publically vetting stuff" attitude. However, even without an AAPI higher ed org around, many UC student leaders are progressive AAPI's (I mean there are so many of us Asian American students in the UC... some of us had to get into student government!), who have known about this policy for the last 2 years, and believed it was for the best to open opportunity for all California high school graduates who have met academic standards to at least get a shot at applying to the UC. To me, there's a bit of a generational disconnect going on... hence the lack of communication and differences of opinion, perhaps.
Yea... I did it... totally not being the good Asian girl... I pointed to the laundry, but not to embarrass AAPI's. Rather, I want to provoke some dialogue on the fact that there really isn't any AAPI education organization on a national level that could even be mentioned in the same breath as the
NAACP-Education advocacy arm or
MALDEF (among others), and I'm not even saying that these organizations are amazing and should be our model, but at least they exist and are players in ed policy issues! Yea there's
AALDEF, but they're NYC-focused, plus they're multi-issue focused. But, it would even be nice to have one of the national AAPI non-profits have a department or even staff member focused on education issues... BEYOND ELITE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS!
This is my challenge to AAPI's in education research, policy, and leadership... get organized, and proactive in addressing issues in all sectors of education! There are so many issues in preK-16 that get discussed, where AAPI's are affected by and are left out of, that don't get the Caucus or other AAPI public interest leaders all up in arms. With No Child Left Behind coming up for reappropriation, bilingual education struggling to survive, the thousands of undocumented AAPI students and the issue of the
DREAM Act ("undocumented students aren't all Brown" as my friend Cindylu says), and with
Michelle Rhee being the most visible Asian American in public education today (AHHHH!!!! Seriously, why is she the most visible Asian American education leader? UGH! Embarrassing!)... can we PLEASE get our act together so we can proactively articulate the interests of AAPI's in education (and not just on Ivy League or elite public university access... PLEASE!?) and a progressive agenda on behalf of these interests?
I'll be the first to volunteer to participate and spice up discussions on the formation of such an organization :)
So... that's my critique of the UC calling itself "public" and my challenge to AAPI's. I love ya'll, but let's leave egos at the door and get our act together!
But I'm not done! Tomorrow... stay tuned for my final installment for this series...
A letter to neo-cons!
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